Chapter 25: Heart

Miles had spoken a lot about emotions when Metal had first started his journey to becoming a biological hedgehog. At first, Metal had ignored most of it, as it hardly seemed important. It was all about things that were hypothetical, illogical, non-linear. It was only when he started to experience "feelings" for himself that he bothered to pay any attention. He suspected that Miles had probably covered off every possibility – Metal could remember in detail one of the last lectures Miles had given him on something he called "ambivalence", a state he claimed that, if Metal could achieve it, would prove that he was more organic than metal – however, standing outside Amy's house, holding her in his arms as she clung to him and cried in a way that sounded physically painful for her, he had no idea what the name was for the emotion he was feeling right then.

"Just get her to bed," Rouge told him, stroking a hand over the back of Amy's head. "Take care of her, and we'll fix this."

She turned from him and got back into the car. The windows at the back of the car were dark, and from the outside, it was impossible to see what was happening within, impossible to see how Rouge, Cream, Sonic, Knuckles and Shadow were reacting or what they were doing. The only thing Metal could see inside of was the driver's cab at the front, where Miles now sat alone. He was saying something into the intercom to his friends, something he probably thought that, with the doors shut and the sound contained, would remain secret: Metal had never had told Miles that he had learned how to lip read.

"You can all stay the night at my place," he was saying. "We'll formulate a plan and take action at dawn. Don't tell Amy."

He drove away and Metal watched the car leave, watched the crimson glow of the tail-lights fade in the direction of Miles's house. Amy, her head still buried in his shoulder, didn't see any of it, didn't know that all her friends were gathering to conspire against her: no, not against her, against him. He already knew what they would do. They would wait until Amy was asleep, then they would come for him. They would take him back to the old man. He was more bother than he was worth to them. Sonic had promised as much right from the start, and the others felt no different. He could remember clearly that day they had all met in the street, when the old man had unleashed his little cyborg children on them.

"Alright you can stay," Sonic had said to him. "But if you hurt any of us again, I'm sending you back to Eggman."

Miles had tried to protest, but Sonic shot him down: "Tails, Eggman is only attacking us now because he wants Metal back. He maybe helped us fight today, but he's the reason we were in danger in the first place."

"Sonic, we can't ever let Eggman get his hands on Metal!" Amy had argued.

"Amy, if he's fighting Eggman that's fine," Knuckles had said. "But if I ever have to choose between him and anyone else, I'm not choosing him."

And now, apparently, even Miles felt that way. Even Miles, who Metal had considered to be a trusted ally, had turned on him, and was conspiring to find a way to hand him back to the old man. They had all fought the old man for a variety of reasons in the past, from saving one of their friends to stopping his plans for destruction and chaos: but none of them were prepared to oppose the old man for his sake. They saw him as a nuisance, he knew that. They didn't take him seriously. Miles and Amy – and perhaps Cream – had been the only ones prepared to accept him, but now Miles had turned on him, Cream would go with whatever she was told and Amy would go with whatever Sonic decided to do.

"Let's go inside," Amy said, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

She snivelled and gripped her hands into his upper arms, turning her head towards the front door of her house. She felt frail and uncertain, and perhaps she knew it too, because she made no protest – verbal or otherwise – when he leaned down and hooked one arm behind her knees, lifting her up into his arms. He carried her to the door, waiting as she unlocked it and opened it, before continuing inside. He pushed the door closed behind him with one foot, before carrying Amy all the way to her bedroom. He placed her down onto her bed and she curled up in a ball and hugged her legs, pushing her forehead against her knees. He reached a hand towards her but stopped, his focus shifting from her soft face to his hand, his robotic hand, contained inside one of the leather gloves Miles had given him a long time ago to allow him to attempt to use his hands like a real hedgehog.

But he wasn't a real hedgehog. He never had been, and although he had come close, he now never would be, and mostly it was because of those hands. As his fingers twitched in the air above Amy, he heard a small creaking sound and then a pop as the vicious point of his forefinger bit through the stitching of the glove and protruded out into view. He turned his hand over, looking down at the underside of it. Creases had worn into the glove from the movements of his hand over time, and, looking down at it, it looked like the same shape as a normal hand – like Amy's or Sonic's – but it was an illusion. He pulled off the glove and then the other, looking down at the underside of both of his hands. They were flat, metal squares, just like the backs were. His fingers had all the bends in them that a normal hand had, he had the right number of fingers and they were proportionately sized, with a thumb, the middle finger was the longest, the finger on the end was the smallest, but they didn't function like normal hands. They didn't feel anything – pain, heat, cold, texture – and they weren't pleasant to touch. He knew that from the way Amy would talk about how cold they were, he knew it from the damage he had inadvertently caused with his fingertips and he knew it from the way they felt against his own face. He didn't like the way they felt when he touched his own face with them, and so, as much as he often felt the urge to touch Amy's face, he never did, because he didn't want to see or hear her reaction to feeling that against her.

She sniffed and cuddled into herself. He lowered his hands and looked down at her again. Her eyes were closed, long, delicate black eyelashes resting against her cheeks, slick with tears that continued to silently leak out of the corners of her eyes. He wanted to wipe them away for her, his hand instinctively moving to do exactly that, only stopping when his fingers, curled into tapered needles, appeared beside her face; her soft, delicate, beautiful face. He swallowed, feeling that tightness in his throat, something that had started only recently, and seemed to manifest when he felt tense. He turned his attention to the little shelf on Amy's wall, retrieving her fluffy little brown hedgehog toy. He gingerly picked it up and brought it over to her, gently pushing it into the space between her arms and her legs. After a moment, she noticed it there, and moved her hands to it, gripping them into it. Fresh tears burgeoned from her eyes, but she managed a smile, her eyes opening slightly to look down at her favourite thing. She stroked a hand over it's fuzzy quills, her smile widening, before closing her eyes again. Her body seemed a little looser then, the object having had the effect he had desired of offering her some sense of calm.

Metal took a quiet step back, deciding it was best to let her sleep. Something he had learned early in his new body was that sleep was a fantastic cure for all sorts of problems, and he was certain that it would help Amy. He watched her a little longer, watched her grip on Thistle lessen, her limbs slump, her face soften, her breathing deepen and slow. With her face more relaxed, he could see she still had a small line on her cheek, where she had been whipped in the face by a stray branch of a rosebush the day before. The wound had mostly healed, but she had some fur missing still. He knew from experience with his own body that missing fur was always the last remaining sign of a wound: he had noticed that the scar on his neck from the operation the old man had performed on him had healed already, but the area he had shaved was barely covered with a layer of stubble. He found himself reaching a hand out towards her face again, towards the small mark, but again he stopped himself, kept his feet rooted to the spot to stop himself from getting close enough to make contact. It was an urge that grew stronger and stronger within him all the time. Every time he carried her, felt the warmth of her body against his own, every time she touched him, every time she leaned into him. It was hypnotic and all-consuming, and so he was only able to fight the urge then when he heard something move behind him.

Metal turned his head sharply, the lenses in his eyes reacting as they did any time he felt that surge of what Miles called "adrenaline" through his body, his peripheral vision widening, colours fading as the visual enhancements activated, turning everything shades of pastel green and greys. When he realised that the noise was merely a small stack of cards, leaning against a box of cards, that had presumably been knocked off-balance when he had moved Thistle, he took a deep, calming breath, his vision easing back to normal, colour returning and his scope of vision narrowing. He reached up a hand and gingerly picked up the loose cards, bringing them around to inspect them. He paused to check on Amy, confirming she was still soundly asleep, before turning over the small stack of cards and fanning them out, the way he had seen her do so often. There were five cards there, two of which he recognised instantly, one of which was clearly associated with the two he knew, and the other two were cards he had never noticed before. He knew about the Knight of Cups – that was the card Amy had told him she now associated with him, and, as he understood a "knight" was something noble and brave and useful, he considered it an upgrade from the "page" that she had previously assigned to him – and he recognised the King of Cups, the card Amy had long ago told him he should aspire to be. One of the other cards in the selection was the Queen of Cups, and the other two were called Death and The Tower.

Metal pulled the Knight of Cups loose with one hand, taking a moment to study it. It was a decent image, of a knight in armour on horseback, looking quite brave and noble, if a little stale as he was basically at a standstill. But, the part that bothered Metal about the card, the reason he had been a little offended when Amy had chosen it for him, was the particular animal used to depict the knight: it was a tenrec. Metal had only met a tenrec once in real life. The old man had chased after it through a forest for some amount of time. Metal had tried to tell him he was wasting his time, the thing was clearly not Sonic, but the old man had persisted, eventually cornering it with an army of his mass-produced and inferior robots. There, the creature had finally turned to face him, revealing pointy features and ragged, fake quills. He hadn't even been the same colour as Sonic, he had more been a deep shade of purple than blue, but the old man had still spent some amount of time interrogating the worthless wretch. Eventually he let it go, after which he had told Metal that it was a tenrec, also known as a "fake hedgehog". Metal had always thought that a strange title, as, despite the tenrec having had short, sort-of quills, it much more closely resembled some sort of rat than a hedgehog.

Metal decided that Amy's intent had been true, and that she had associated him with the valour of the knight, the symbolism of the card itself, and not that she had been subtly trying to tell him he was an artificial hedgehog, a mere rat posing as Sonic. However, he still felt it a bit of a let down.

He carefully put the card into the box on the shelf alongside the remainder of the deck, leaving him with four more cards. The Death card did not look particularly interesting, and so he quickly discarded it to, returning it to the box on the shelf. The Tower card was almost as uninteresting to him, save for one thing about it: the colour and shape of the tower, and its depiction in rocky seas reminded Metal of the old lighthouse not too far from the old man's lair. It was curious that the two places looked so similar, almost as though the artist who had created the card had taken inspiration from the real location in question. But, thinking no more of it, he added the card to the box, turning his attention then to the two remaining cards he held: the King and Queen of Cups.

He had never really looked at or considered the Queen of Cups before, but, looking at it then, he noticed it wasn't as colourful as some of the other cards, and was made up entirely of shades of pink, purple and blue. Even the queen herself was coloured that way. She was depicted as a wolf, but she looked serene and almost sad. In a way, she reminded Metal of Amy that night. Sad, reflective, intuitive, but still strong and capable, adaptable and fearless. And, next to her, was the King of Cups, the card Amy had told him he should aspire to become. The king was a little more colourful than the queen, a little less sad, but there was something else strange about him. He was holding something in each hand, a cup of water in one and some kind of golden artefact in the other. He wasn't looking at either object, but it seemed as though he was finding the balance between the two, or trying to choose between them.

Metal thought that maybe, right then, just as Amy seemed like the melancholy queen, he was like the king facing a decision. In one hand, he had the reward, the other the water – his emotions – and the way out of the state of indecision was to pick one over the other. Metal reached up to the box and retrieved the card depicting a tower. Looking at it again, he already knew what he had to do, he just needed to be sure about why he was doing it. Was he doing it for the reward or for the cup of water?

He looked at the sad queen again, before looking over the top of cards at Amy. She was fully asleep, but it was clearly not a restful sleep, as she was occasionally twitching, her face flinching into a frown, small moans escaping her infrequently. Her hands would grip at her treasured toy from time to time, and, when she squeezed it tight, it seemed to momentarily quell the tension, as her face would smooth over and she would let out a small sigh.

His eyes still on Amy, Metal blindly placed two of the three cards in his hand back into the box, retaining one of them. He took a step closer to Amy again, peering down at her one last time, assuring himself that she would not soon wake from her tormented sleep, before quietly taking his leave. He moved back through the house to the kitchen, to an old plastic pot that sat on top of the fridge, containing an array of colourful marker pens. He reached up to it, his hand hovering over the pink one, before moving to another colour. He remembered what Amy had said pink meant, and he remembered what she had told him about other colours while they had been working on making garlands and wreaths. She had spoken of the symbolism and importance of different colours, and he knew that the colour he needed then wasn't pink: pink wasn't strong enough for the purpose he required.

Uncapping the pen, he then placed the card down onto the breakfast bar, carefully holding it in place with one hand as he gripped the pen with the other, carefully starting by replicating what he had once, long ago, watched Amy do: he drew two hearts in the lower right-hand corner of the card, colouring them in just as she had done, before proceeding to write a message above and alongside them.

Amy awoke with a groan, gripping her hands into something soft. It wasn't quite fully dark outside, the distant hint of sunrise lightening the sky just enough to make everything in her room clearly visible without the need for artificial lighting. She looked down at her hands and smiled when she saw Thistle there, bringing her up to her face and kissing her. She already knew she would not be able to go back to sleep, and so she rolled onto her back, stretching out her arms and legs, realising a series of things then: she was still wearing her fairy dress and even her shoes, she was alone, she was holding Thistle but hadn't taken her to bed with her and the fairy garden everyone had worked so hard on was still ruined after Eggman had attacked it and left a message about wanting Metal back.

Amy groaned and brought Thistle up to her cheek, snuggling into her. She remembered then that, the night before, Metal had handed her Thistle. He had carried her to her bed, and given her her special something, just like he had the last time he had seen her cry. It was his way of trying to comfort her, but, in that moment, she was certain he must be more in need of comfort than she was. She hadn't been upset for herself, she had been upset for him. She got up, placing Thistle on her pillows, and took off her shoes and dress, changing into her regular clothes. She felt a little scruffy and dirty, but had a higher priority than getting herself clean. She pulled on a pair of socks and made her way through to the living room, fully expecting to find Metal asleep on her couch; and so, when she got there and found her couch vacant, she frowned.

The blanket she had given Metal was folded neatly in the centre of the couch, and there was no evidence that he had slept there at all.

"Metal?" she called out softly.

She walked all through the house, checking every room, softly calling out to him as she went. When she failed to locate him, she pulled on her boots and headed out into her back garden. The sun was starting to peak out at the horizon, casting long shadows across the land. Amy studied her garden carefully before moving into her shed. The space was small and she could tell at two glances that Metal was not there, but she called out for him regardless. Her calls, however, remained unanswered, and, denying her panic, she moved back into the house and started around it all over again, opening cupboard doors and even looking under her bed. She knew it was ridiculous, she knew he wasn't there, but accepting it meant facing up to where he might be, and a small part of her already knew the answer to that, and she was not prepared to face it.

On her third round of the house, Amy stopped by the breakfast bar, noticing then that one of her tarot cards was sitting there, conspicuous by the fact that it was, literally, the only thing on the otherwise clean and clear surface. She approached the bar and reached out a hand towards it, touching the side of her finger to one corner of the card, spinning it around until she was looking at it the right way up.

When she noticed the writing along the bottom of the card, her heart skipped a beat before picking up the pace, her breathing becoming short and shallow along with it.

She reached her now shaking hand over to the card again, sliding it closer to herself, looking down at it warily. It was the King of Cups – the card Metal coveted so much ever since she had told him he could be that card one day – and, in the lower corner, there were two hearts, identical in appearance to the two hearts she had drawn on the Page of Cups card she had given to him back on Little Planet: only these hearts had been drawn and coloured in bold red. To the side and above them, a series of ones and zeros were written, which, to Amy's eye, looked no different to the message Eggman had left in the fairy garden for her the night before.

She took a few panicked breaths, shaking away the tears that were threatening, and grabbed up the card, running out the house without even pausing to close the door behind her. She ran all the way, up the quiet, single-track road, towards Tails's house. As she approached her destination, her brain was too occupied fighting back the dark, dark thought that was brewing in the back of her mind to even notice – far less consider – how odd it was that several windows of Tails's house were illuminated, the lights within casting a warm glow out onto the surrounding grounds. When she reached the door, she held the card in one hand and raised her other hand, banging the side of her fist against the door.

That was when Amy realised there were several people already inside Tails's house, the murmur of their voices falling silent at the sound of her frantic knocking. She heard a few more faint whispers, the words and even the voices themselves indecipherable. When it all fell silent again, Amy banged harder on the door, letting out a cry of frustration, her final thump causing a small crack in the wood of the door. Again, she heard more murmuring, and again the voices shortly died down, and the door remained closed before her.

With a cry of fury, she kicked the door open and marched into the house, moving into the living room, pausing only long enough to acknowledge to herself that everyone who had shared the ride home the night before was now gathered there, before fixing her attention onto Tails.

"What does this say?" she asked, trying her best to keep her tone controlled.

Tails looked around the others nervously before taking a few steps towards her.

"Uh, that looks like one of your tarot cards, Amy!" he answered in that scratchy voice he used when he had been caught red-handed in the middle of some sort of scheme. "Wh-why don't you tell us what it says?"

"Don't be cute, Tails," she said, stomping up to him, closing the distance between them. "What does this say?"

She held the card up directly in front of his face. He leaned back a little, eyes crossing to focus on the card. He scanned over it, his eyes widening a little, the corners of his mouth turning downwards.

"What does it say, Tails?" she pressed.

"Um, I'd have to run it through the scanner," he said.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because... I just wanna be sure I've read it right."

Amy hadn't been expecting the answer he gave, and she was so caught off-guard, she relinquished the card to him, not regaining her senses again until he had retrieved his scanner and was holding it over the card.

"Honey, are you okay?"

Amy turned to Rouge, who had finally changed out of her wedding dress, though now appeared to be wearing a pair of Tails's shorts, the draw-string waist cinched in to make them fit, topped with a vest Tails sometimes wore that fitted a little too snuggly around her ample chest.

"Do I look okay?" Amy answered her.

Rouge shook her head, and Amy began scanning around the others gathered there. Shadow was standing leaning against a wall, his arms folded, one foot raised and pressed against the wall; Cream was knelt on the floor alongside Knuckles, who had, like Rouge, changed out of his formal clothing; and Sonic was sitting on the couch, his arms out at his sides over the back of the couch, in much the same position Metal usually sat on Amy's couch.

"What are you all doing here?" she asked them.

She looked up at the clock on the wall.

"It's five twenty in the morning," she read from the clock, before lowering her eyes to scan them around the room. "A little early for you all to be here, isn't it?"

"We've been here since last night, Amy," Knuckles answered her.

"Knuckles!" Sonic snapped at him.

Amy made to press Knuckles for more information, but, just then, Tails made a small gasp, and her head snapped around, the wide-eyed look on his face doing little to ease her ever-mounting concerns.

"What does it say?" she asked him.

He shook his head, moving his eyes to her after.

"I-I can't..." he said quietly.

"What does it say, Tails?" Amy demanded.

"What is it?" Rouge asked, moving between them.

"Metal's gone, and he left me a message, but it's written in machine language," Amy replied.

"Binary code," Tails quietly corrected her.

"And I need to know what it says," Amy continued, ignoring his interruption.

Rouge turned to Tails.

"Well?" she asked him.

He shook his head and Rouge sighed.

"Give it here," she said.

He numbly passed his scanner to Rouge, who accepted it confidently, holding it up in front of her face, her eyes flicking over the screen. As her eyes moved, her face fell.

"What does it say, Rouge?" Amy asked her.

"Oh, Amy..." Rouge muttered under her breath. "Sweetie, you don't wanna know..."

Amy scowled at her, but Rouge shook her head, giving her a pitying look. Amy made to grab the scanner from her, but she yanked it out of her reach. Amy gave her a dark look and lunged at it, but it was whipped away in a blue blur, only appearing again when Sonic stopped at the other end of the room, his eyes studying the screen.

"Oh..." he muttered once he had read the message.

"What does it say, Sonic?" Amy called over to him.

"Ames, I..." he began, shaking his head. "I mean, it doesn't say what I thought it would. I thought it was gonna be him telling you he was going back to Eggman, back to being his old self."

"So what does it say?" Amy insisted.

Sonic shook his head, and, with a grunt of annoyance, Shadow snatched the scanner out of Sonic's hand.

"Give me that, you fool!" he snapped.

He sighed before quickly reading the message and then moving flat, expressionless eyes to Amy.

"Some things are best left unspoken," he said softly.

Amy growled and started towards him. He shook his head solemnly and Sonic leapt in between them, catching Amy by her arms.

"Amy, trust me, you don't wanna know what it says," he insisted. "At least, not right now. I don't think you're in the right frame of mind to hear it, you know?"

She craned her neck to peer over his shoulder as Knuckles swiped the scanner from Shadow. Shadow appeared not to care, which, Amy assumed, was down to the fact that he, much like most of her other friends, seemed to be under the impression that Knuckles couldn't read.

"Okay Amy, this is pretty intense," Knuckles said in a low voice. "Are you sure you wanna hear it?"

Amy nodded, and, as the one friend she knew she could trust not to sugar-coat the truth, Knuckles began to read the message aloud to her.

"The red hearts of passion and love," he said. "One is yours, because you are full of passion and love in everything you are and everything you do. The other is mine, which is full of love and passion for you and because of you. I'm ready to become the King. Don't follow me. Stay safe and be happy."

Amy froze.

"Amy, sweetie, don't do it!" Rouge begged behind her.

Amy tore her arms out of Sonic's grasp and turned around, marching over to Tails.

"I need the key for the Tornado," she told him.

He shook his head.

"Give me the key, Tails," she said sternly, holding out an upturned hand expectantly. "Don't you dare try to stop me. I can't get there on foot, you know that, so give me the key."

"Amy, you don't know how to fly the Tornado," he told her.

"I don't care, I'll figure it out," she plainly replied.

She was angry, anger was literally the only emotion she could feel or process in that moment, but it was not the usual, passionate, vocal anger she felt over minor things, this was a seething rage that was increasingly manifesting itself as a cold, calculated and motivated need for action.

"You don't have to figure it out," Tails told her. "Obviously I'm coming with you."

Amy lowered her hand, studying his face for a moment, reassuring herself that the determination she saw in his eyes was genuine before nodding her agreement.

"I can fly the Tornado."

Amy and Tails turned as Cream stood up from the floor.

"I can," she insisted. "I can get Amy there. You can fly there yourself, right Tails?"

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Tails asked her as she joined them. "It's gonna be really dangerous."

Cream nodded her head.

"Mister Metal is my friend," she said with conviction. "And I'm not gonna let Eggman – or anyone else – hurt him. I'm coming with you, and I will fly the Tornado."

"Okay," Tails agreed.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" Sonic said, holding up his hands. "Before Amy got here, we all agreed that if Metal chose to go back to Eggman, we would let him go."

"Sonic, come on, you read that message," Knuckles said, shaking his head before starting across the room. "Count me in, you guys."

"What?" Sonic echoed.

"I'm going with them," Knuckles answered, stopping beside Amy. "They're gonna need someone strong to bash down the doors to Eggman's lair."

He punched his fists together and hardened his glare.

"I'm going, and that's that," he said.

Sonic shook his head, but before he could say anything, Rouge spoke next.

"Tails isn't the only one who can fly there unaided," she said, moving over to Amy's other side. "I'm coming too."

"Really?" Amy asked, turning to her in surprise.

"Of course I am!" she said. "I'm not letting my best worker leave!"

She smiled and winked at Amy, who let out a shaky breath, tears blurring her eyes.

"Guys, you can't just blindly go rushing after him," Sonic tried. "The message said we shouldn't follow him. It's not safe for you to go in there!"

"Piss or get off the pot, Sonic."

Sonic turned his head with a frown, watching as Shadow walked past him, moving over to join the others.

"You're coming too?" Rouge asked him as he stopped alongside her.

"Of course I am, you shouldn't even need to ask," Shadow scoffed.

"I dunno, you kinda play both sides sometimes..." Knuckles muttered.

Shadow gave him a hard look before turning to Amy.

"I wouldn't be standing here right now if it wasn't for you, Amy," he said. "None of you would."

Shadow pointedly looked around everyone else in the room, including Sonic behind him.

"I was ready to kill you all on the Space Colony ARK," he said a little to easily for Amy's liking as he met her eyes again. "But you changed my mind, Amy. You helped me find myself. You saved me from myself, and you saved everyone else from me too. I haven't forgotten what you did for me, so if you need me to do this for you now, I will do it gladly."

"Thanks, Shadow," Amy said, a tear spilling out of one eye in relief.

"Wait!" Sonic cried out, holding up his hands.

"You can't stop us, Sonic," Shadow said over his shoulder. "So unless you're about to tell us you're coming too, save it."

"Okay, we can do this," Sonic said, moving over to join them. "But we do it my way, got it?"

"And what's that?" Rouge asked him.

"The only ones who are fit enough to actually go deep into Eggman's lair are me, Tails, Knuckles and Shadow," Sonic replied.

"Oh, I see," Rouge replied, putting her hands on her hips. "Just the boys, huh? You think us girls can't fight too?"

"That's not what I said," Sonic replied.

"But it is what we all heard," Rouge replied, before slapping him across the face.

"What was that for?" he wailed.

"I thought your deal was that you're so fast nobody can land a hit on you," Rouge casually replied, before slapping him with her other hand.

"Stop that!" Sonic ground out through tightly clenched teeth.

"I shouldn't need to," she coyly replied. "A weak little girl like me, who isn't even "fit enough" to go after Eggman should be no match for Mister Super Sonic, right?"

Sonic paused.

"That is not what I – ow!"

Rouge smiled, her hand still poised in the air after delivering her third slap.

"You didn't let me finish!" he argued.

"Fine," she groaned, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms over her chest again.

"We do this in three teams," he said, his eyes glancing warily over at Rouge several times as he spoke. "Me and Shadow will go first, because we can get there in an instant. Right, Rouge?"

"Ugh, I just got this too," Rouge complained, before producing the red chaos emerald.

"Where were you keeping that?" Knuckles asked, eying her over.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" she replied, smirking as his face twisted in horror.

"Next up, Tails and Rouge, you guys fly Knuckles over," Sonic continued. "And last of all, Cream, Amy, you guys follow in the Tornado."

"Where and when do we rendezvous?" Rouge asked.

"We'll leave a message for you," Shadow replied. "I'll spell out "land here" with Eggman's innards."

Sonic gave him a withering look, before turning to Rouge.

"We'll be in his lair," he told her. "When we get in, it'll trip the security, and the place will be surrounded. You guys land in the yard and fight your way inside. Cream, Amy, you guys land on the outskirts and take care of the stragglers."

"We're not going there just to fight Eggman, Sonic," Amy reminded him. "We're going to get Metal back."

"And we don't know where he'll be," Sonic replied. "So we have to come at it from all angles, okay? We do this my way – the right way – and we win. Everybody understand what they need to do?"

The others nodded and voiced their agreements.

"Alright, let's do this," Sonic said, with an affirmative nod of his head.

He grabbed the chaos emerald, and in the blink of an eye, he and Shadow vanished.

"Come on you two," Rouge said to Tails and Knuckles.

Tails hurried over to a small wooden rack on the wall, lifting a set of keys from one of the hooks there.

"Here," he said, throwing them across the room. "Good luck, and we'll see you there!"

Cream caught the keys and nodded. Tails hurried outside and Amy and Cream followed him, moving outside as he and Rouge took to the sky, each holding one of Knuckles's hands. As they sped off, Cream grabbed Amy's hand and started to run. Amy ran with her, towards the hanger where Tails kept his beloved plane. As they ran, Amy suddenly found that she could no longer hold it back, no longer contain that one, dark, ominous thought: this was it. That dark, foreboding reading she had carried out was becoming a reality. The Knight of Cups had just gone to Death, The Tower was Eggman's lair, and the solemn Queen of Cups was her, consumed by her sorrow. That still left the King of Cups, the card Metal wanted to be, the card he had chosen to leave his message for her, the card that she had told him he could one day become.

She just hoped that he would realise that destiny and be around to celebrate it, rather than achieve it posthumously after making the noble, knightly sacrifice he seemed to be making.

Next Chapter: Metal confronts Eggman and they discuss his future. Eggman tells him he is suffering because his transition to an organic life-form has been a failure, and he presents Metal with two solutions to this problem. Amy and Cream finally arrive at Eggman's lair, but what they find there isn't exactly what they expected. When they are inadvertently separated, Amy finds herself alone facing Eggman, and he has a little unpleasant surprise for her. Chapter 26: Metal