A/N: Content warnings for mentions of/descriptions of loading guns! If this is something that's triggering for you please don't hesitate to ask for a summary or even a version without that part, it's totally okay! Anyway, onward to the robot edge

A F-6T Spider Troop Big Foot crashed down to the ground with a metallic clang that seemed to ricochet off the walls. The two hedgehogs responsible landed side-by-side and exchanged grins. Their chaotic energy was almost equal once they got going.

"That was awesome!" Sonic exclaimed, pumping a fist in the air on the last word. "It's been ages since someone's almost been able to keep up with me!"

"Hell yeah it was." Silver agreed before jumping up to his feet and looking around. "Who else wants some? You can pick if you wanna get your butt kicked by a metal or fleshy hedgehog if you have a preference!"

Sonic sped over to another door and pushed the button beside it to activate it. Silver ran over to enter, and Sonic pushed him through forcefully.

"Time to take in the trash."

Silver feigned an offended gasp and shot a look over his shoulder after stumbling to a stop. "Hey! That hurts my cold, unfeeling, robotic heart."

Sonic smirked at him and rubbed a finger under his nose. "You actually have one of those? Egghead sure is creative. And, kinda morbid too."

The robot revved his engine and grinned dangerously. "You're so gonna get it when this partnership is over. Kicking your ass is gonna be so satisfying."

"As if you could keep up with my top speed, bolt-brain." Sonic retorted, following after him whilst stretching his arms out casually.

"Unless you can reach speeds greater than Mach 5 I think I've got that one on lock." Silver said proudly, whilst shooting down another G.U.N mech with his wrist laser. "Sorry to break it to ya, oh great and heroic blue blur. Maybe we should re-name you to somethin' like, uh... blue smudge. On account of a smudge not being as cool-sounding as blur... and the implication that something moved a bit and then just kinda stopped."

"Can we save the ridicule until after we've rescued your bro?" Sonic sarcastically replied, putting his hands on his hips as he watched his robot duplicate take care of things. "I have, like... an image to upkeep here. I can't have anyone here hearing that you're faster."

"Sure! But once the rescue is done, the ridicule will be ten times worse."

"Duly noted!"

Once again the two worked together to clear the base of the many robots residing within. Eventually, the two reached the research floor, where they assumed Neo and Mecha would be. It would be best to part ways here.

Both hedgehogs stared at the door, avoiding the interaction for as long as they could. Silver was the first to break the silence, letting out a sigh.

"I know we're enemies and all, but... thanks."

Sonic was taken aback by the robot's sincerity. He almost didn't know what to do with it, after all the banter they had been sharing up until now. He scratched the back of his head and smiled awkwardly. "Uh, yeah... no problem. Hedgehog's gotta do what a hedgehog's gotta do."

Neither of them really knew how to say goodbye. They were enemies, after all. Saying genuine goodbyes wasn't natural.

Sonic turned and started to walk back the way he came. "Later, dude..." He trailed off and stopped, looking thoughtful. "Hey, actually." He turned back to face Silver. "You never told me your name. What type of robot-me are you? Shiny Sonic? Sharper Sonic?"

Silver straightened and lifted his head, a confident smile returning to its rightful place on his muzzle plate. He turned to look at Sonic and held up two fingers. "Close! It's Silver Sonic. The second. Just to be precise about it."

"Woah, how original!" Sonic replied sarcastically with a deadpan look.

"I'm exactly what it says on the tin, hedgehog. Nothin' wrong with that." Silver defended his name whilst gesturing to his metallic paint job. "What you see is what you get!" He offered Sonic a grin upon using one of his own quotes.

Sonic chuckled and started walking away. "Later, kiddo. 'Till we meet again for your aggressive recycling!"

"See ya around, loathsome copy. I'll kick your ass to Stardust Speedway and back!"

Silver didn't know what to do with the strange, empty space between them as it grew. He slowly drew his hand back down and sighed, turning back to the door and going through to the other side.

The lightless corridor was like a place out of time. The darkness felt heavy, even oppressive, with nothing but a couple of fire exit signs lighting the way.

Neo's optics adjusted to the change in light levels after a moment. With the brighter glow coming from them, the metallic walls were lit with a deep red glow as he landed and continued to look for his brother on foot. His brother's signal was weakening, and that sent dread through his tanks. Either he was getting further away, or...

That was when a familiar silhouette slipped into view ahead of him.

Neo and Mecha made eye contact from some distance apart.

Mecha took a step forward. Neo's optics frantically swept over his brother - something was wrong with his body language. He was too stiff, too robotic, ironically enough. Upon realizing this, Neo took a step back, holding eye contact with his brother. He could tell that Mecha was in self-defense mode. This wasn't good.

Mecha stared him down with a strange fixation. His CPU was red hot with conflicting errors and the aggression of the virus eating away at him. Errors about his critical temperature repeatedly popped up in his vision and no matter how many times he closed them, they piled back up again. His focus on the errors caused him to keep staring blankly at Neo, as if he wasn't really there.

Neo stiffened. That wasn't like Mecha at all. Slowly and carefully, he walked towards his brother and held out one hand to him, his silver claws glinting in the red glow he was creating.

The movement snatched Mecha's attention back to reality. He flinched away and took several unsteady steps back, desperately avoiding the inevitable.

"Mecha?"

Upon hearing his name, Mecha snapped. His motor control was ripped away from him n an instant. Mecha suddenly ran and lunged for Neo, who he swung at once he was in range. Neo caught his fist in one hand with a beep of surprise. Something was very, very wrong.

"Mecha, listen to me." Neo started, holding Mecha's closed fist in his hand as gently as he could manage. "You are not well. We need to go home."

"I need to kill you."

Neo flinched at his words. Mecha overpowered him in an instant and pinned him against the wall by his shoulders, towering over him aggressively. His visor, normally emitting a gentle but powerful red glow, was bright yellow, almost white. It made him look almost sickly. Neo looked up at him, noting all of the scratches, marks, and dents in his normally flawless armour. It hurt him to see his stoic older sibling like this.

"Mecha... We should go home now."

"Fight me. Fight me. I want to hurt you." As Mecha's demands grew more aggressive, his grip on Neo's shoulder plates grew stronger and more desperate. "I need to hurt you. I need to hurt you right now."

Neo was silent for a moment. He knew he could give a spiel about how "this isn't you", or "just fight it", but Mecha was smart - he would already know that. He wasn't going to insult his brother's intelligence by suggesting the obvious. He opted for something different, trying to distract him. Perhaps getting him to try memory recall would allow him to bypass some command long enough to break free.

"Do you remember what time it was when we talked on the ship deck?"

"I will destroy you." Mecha pushed him harder against the wall, now nose-to-nose with him. As much as he kept saying he wanted, no, needed to hurt his brother, something was obviously holding him back. He was more than capable of putting a hole in the smaller robot if he really wanted to. "I will destroy you. Hit me first."

"It was 6AM. The sun was rising. You approached from behind me and did what you do best... scanning me without my consent." Neo continued, keeping his voice synthesizer quiet to be as unthreatening as possible. "We talked for a while. You probably know exactly how long we spoke for."

Mecha listened intently, desperately focusing on Neo's voice as his grip on the smaller robot's shoulders grew stronger.

"I told you that you almost sounded human. It was almost humorous at the time because you asked me if you should delete that moment from your memory."

"It hurts. I want it to stop."

Neo flinched at Mecha's words. He couldn't disguise the pang of hurt he felt for his brother. How dare anyone make him utter those words. How dare anybody think they had the right to make him say anything like that.

The smaller blue robot slowly rested his cool forehead against Mecha's overheating one. "I know. I am so sorry." He lifted a hand and gently prized Mecha's hands from his shoulder plates. "Let us go home now."

But the longer Mecha stood, the worse he felt. He wanted to listen to Neo. He wanted to go home. But the vertigo was destroying any sensibility he had. Swaying in place, Mecha's engine only got louder and more erratic, stopping and starting at random. His vision cut out into static, then back to normal. He desperately tried to access his visual processing program but it was blocked off from his control. He went in and out of static and black several times.

"You can leave. Come with me."

Neo's words fell on deaf ears.

Mecha found himself lost in heavy darkness now. There was no floor beneath his feet, no ceiling above his head. He was lost in an overbearing nothingness. Something to his left, distant but somehow directly beside him too, pushed him to keep attacking everything around him. It was a trick, and he knew it; he had been here before, after all. He listened, and he found himself falling deeper yet, impossibly, irrevocably deeper into nothing. The sounds around him struck him from every angle, attacking him.

He stared blankly at Neo as all of these strange feelings assaulted him.

Neo looked very concerned. He reached out to put a hand on Mecha's shoulder. "Mecha?"

Mecha suddenly grabbed Neo's arm - the one that Sonic tore off before. "No home. I belong to... To... Not you. Not you. Not you."

"You have a home. With me and your little brother." Neo gently reminded him, still keeping his eyes on Mecha. A part of him screamed to pull away, memories of the hedgehog dismantling him before rising to the surface and making his own head swim. But he couldn't lose focus. Instead, he shifted his awareness to how the pressure on his arm felt to keep him mentally grounded.

Even in their spoken code, the auditory input was too much, making Mecha dizzy and confused. It was nauseating. The virus kept replicating and attaching itself to his auditory and vestibular systems, destroying them slowly. He made a low growling noise at his brother.

"Loud. You are loud. Stop talking. Start killing you. I will kill you."

Mecha's hand shook around Neo's arm. His CPU commanded him to crush it, to destroy everything. Slowly, his hand closed harder around Neo's plating. The metal started to give way. But that was when his vision returned. Mecha saw the pain in Neo's expression and recoiled. The virus kept attacking his primary voice synthesizer but it hadn't reached the code program yet. He mentally honed in on it and managed to finally say something he wanted to say.

"I do not want to harm you." Mecha finally said in code this time. "Do not let me injure you. I am begging you."

His actions opposed his words as Neo's armour cracked audibly in his hand. Neo went to jerk his arm away, but Mecha held on firmly. Then, he threw him sidelong into the other wall. Neo put one hand out to catch himself before he hit it, but Mecha was quick to swing for him. Neo caught his fist again and pushed back, meeting his brother's frightened look with his own despairing one as they pushed back against each other. Mecha suddenly gained more strength and overpowered his smaller brother again, this time pinning him and charging an energy blast in one hand. He raised his shaking hand to Neo's face and revved his engine as if growling.

Neo narrowed his optics as the glow of the energy partly blinded him. Carefully, he reached up and took the back of Mecha's hand, knowing that the program to actually fire the shot was still booting if he hadn't done it already. He closed his hand around Mecha's and lowered it, keeping eye contact with him as he did.

Something in Mecha changed. He revved his engine aggressively and took one step back.

Mecha used his other fist to punch Neo square in the face, which Neo caught just as he went to pull back for another hit. Mecha paused for a second, seeming to let Neo push him back, but his sudden burst of strength from before came back. He wrenched his hands free. Neo went to move away, but Mecha was faster this time.

Mecha grabbed his brother by the arm and threw him straight through the metal wall behind them with a loud crash.

He watched silently as the dust and debris cleared. In the other room, Neo was pulling himself up to a stand, using a desk as leverage. Mecha stepped over the remains of the wall and approached, completely fixed on his target. He stopped for a second, grabbing motor control for one precious moment, but it was short-lived.

"Please. Move." Mecha practically begged him, unable to stop the attack program from booting. Just as he lifted his hand and shot the energy blast at Neo, Neo ducked out of the way, causing the computer on the desk to go up in smoke instead. To Neo's surprise, Mecha grabbed what was left of the machine and threw it with all his might at Neo, who hadn't expected it. With Neo taken off guard, Mecha came at him and punched him in the face again. This time the glass of his optics cracked on one side with Mecha's strength, blinding him on one side.

Now that he had the upper hand, Mecha kicked him in the knee as hard as he could and Neo lost his balance - but Neo deliberately brought Mecha down with him by grabbing his shoulder. Mecha's disorientation was too much now, and he didn't resist.

The two lay next to each other for a while, the only sound being Mecha's desperately screeching engine as he fought with everything he had.

"I hit you."

"You did."

"You told me that you would not let me hurt you."

"It does not hurt."

"You are lying. Stop."

"I wouldn't lie to you."

"Why must everyone lie to me. Stop attempting to make me "feel" better with your words. I cannot feel."

"My damages can be repaired. It is not a concern."

"I cannot feel like you. Stop it. Stop. I do not wish to hear it."

"But you were scared just now. I do not want you to be-"

That was when Mecha let out a scream.

Mecha covered his face with both hands and just screamed with all he had, until his voice synthesizer started to grate with static. Startled, Neo scrambled to his knees and was at his sibling's side, resting a reassuring hand on his cheek plate. His own hand was shaking in his ice-cold dread - he had never, ever, heard Mecha like this. It shouldn't have been possible. He was too quiet, too enduring, too unbreakable. He screamed until his synthesizer gave out. It re-booted seconds later, only for him to sob out his next words instead.

"IT HURTS. I HURT YOU. I HURT YOU."

Neo looked away for a moment to find his composure. What the hell had they done to his big brother to cause this... he almost didn't want to know. And, even now, Mecha was just thinking about other people and not himself. It made Neo sick to his tanks to think about how he had been reduced to this crying mess. This was the same robot who once stood by his side as he ruled his robotic empire. A strong, steadfast source of rationality.

But like he had done when he found Neo shut down, Mecha focused on that one word: hurt. It ran through his processor over and over. He caused hurt. He caused pain. He hurt his brother. He hurt him like Eggman did. Like Sonic did. That hurt. It hurt to know this. With no ability to process empathy, he didn't know what to do with any of it. Mecha was stuck in an endless loop of words. He repeatedly murmured them out loud, trying to pull away from Neo in his panic.

Neo hushed him gently and took his hands in his own, steadying their shaking as best as he could with his hands, so ironically made for killing and not... this. He gently leaned down and pressed his forehead to Mecha's, speaking as quietly as he could.

"I know. You are scared of hurting units that you care about. I was scared like that, too." Neo softly explained. "We can be scared together. You will not be alone."

Mecha lost his ability to speak, and all he could do was stare up at his younger brother in terror.

"Dad is waiting for us at home. Please, come home. We will be safe there."

Slowly, Mecha's trembling subsided. His trust in Neo was stronger than anything. Taking one hand from Neo's gentle grasp, he shakily reached up and traced the white arrows on his brother's face. He remembered painting those on by hand. The memory brought some comfort... and it also allowed him to bypass the infection to access his power options. Neo leaned into the touch, telling Mecha that it was okay.

"Once we are home we can watch the sunrise again. Perhaps with our little brother, this time. I am certain that he misses you."

Listening to Neo, Mecha gradually felt calmer. His entire frame relaxed the more Neo spoke to him. That warmer glow from before returned to his visor bit by bit.

"You can put your strength down. Let me take care of you."

Mecha's hand went slack in Neo's, and Neo let it. He finally found an opening to put himself back into sleep mode. Neo watched him intently as he drifted off, making sure that he didn't disturb him until he was settled.

"I love you, brother." Neo barely whispered, nuzzling his cheek against Mecha's face as gingerly as he could as he went.

With his brother finally resting, Neo leaned forward and let out a static sob, as if a weight had just been pulled away from him. That rage he had been suppressing surfaced with a vengeance. He smacked a fist into the wall beside him. It cracked with the force. Good. He hung his head as he pulled his fist away from the wall, optics glowing bright with despair and vexation. All of this was so overwhelming. It almost wasn't real. None of it was fair. Not on him, not on Silver, and not on Mecha.

They didn't deserve to suffer for what he had done as Metal Overlord. Now, he learned, the harsh lesson that his impulsive actions had consequences... many of which involved the few people he cared about. This was the ultimate punishment, and he would accept the responsibility this time, even if his mental instability was partly to blame for the whole situation. There were so many things that led up to his episode, but taking responsibility for it was a start in getting better.

It took him a full minute to regain his composure. Only when his own shaking subsided, the robot finally gathered himself up and lifted Mecha into his arms. He started to walk back the way he came, a strange sort of peace or numbness coming over him as he did. Perhaps it was a mix of dissociation and relief all at once. Whatever it was, he was glad for it in the moment. The sound of his footsteps and the crunch of broken metal and glass under his soles helped to keep him grounded.

Strangely, Neo noted that no more robots came for him. It was as if his path was already clear.

"You probably cannot hear me now, but I do not know that for certain. I have learned not to underestimate you." Neo started speaking again as he rounded a corner and jumped up onto a platform, where a turret should have fired at him but didn't. He landed on his feet with a clang and continued on his way.

"I just want to apologize. For all of this." He paused to step over a broken metal crate, its smaller pieces scattered across the floor. "I should have always listened to you. I should have always respected you as my advisor... As a friend... As a brother. I think..." Again, he paused to boost himself over a roadblock before continuing. "I would have been a better person."

A stray G.U.N turret turned to shoot at him, but he disabled it with an electric bolt easily, the machine going up in smoke moments later. He then ducked under a door that had gotten stuck and walked through another corridor. Red and green lights on both sides of the walls illuminated the two. Neo dryly noted the irony of the contrast... the younger and oldest brother, the emotional and logical, the once-overlord and his once second-in-command.

"You will never hurt again when this is over," Neo continued, disabling a laser barricade with the hit of a button, "that I swear."

Neo jumped up a stairwell and turned a corner...

Where he came face-to-face with the barrel of a gun.

"There you are."

Neo stopped in his tracks.

"It's over, Metal Sonic. You'll be exposed and eradicated for the evil that you are."

Neo met the G.U.N commander's hateful brown and green glare. His working optic burned a hot red in an unspoken warning to back off.

Taking a second to study the threat, he noted that it was just a regular old pistol... not anything that could really harm him or Mecha. So, the robot knew he had the upper hand here. It would be so easy to claw through this human's flesh. To tear him apart. To make him suffer for making his older brother cry. The thought of getting revenge was hot on his processor, and he couldn't deny that.

Desire was different when you were made to be hungry.

The innate need to win and to conquer was all-consuming. It was wonderfully corrosive.

But Mecha shifted slightly in his arms, and the movement snatched his wandering, violent thoughts back into reality. Logically, killing this person would not fix Mecha's system damages, nor would it get him home sooner. And he would have to put his brother down on the floor to do anything, which would put him at risk of being harmed. And that gun pointed at his head? It wasn't like it would kill him if the commander pulled the trigger. He was a robot, after all. He couldn't die. No matter what his data kept telling him... Despite the fact that Mecha had threatened to "kill" him.

It wasn't worth risking anything to get revenge. Not right now. There was too much at stake to lose his head, as much as he wanted to do it.

Neo bumped his head against the gun, acknowledging the military commander's threat, before simply turning and walking a few steps around him. He shot a look over his shoulder at the human as he went, who met his angry stare with a contemptuous snarl.

"You dare mock me, machine? Both of you will be brought to justice... Mark my words, you will suffer!"

Neo gave a single nod in reply. He looked away and fired up his jet engine to fly out of the base and it came to life with a metallic whirr.

BANG.

Startled, Neo turned to the side to shield his older brother from... whatever it was coming at him. When he finally looked back, though, a strangely welcome sight found him. His optic brightened, then softened in relief.

Silver Sonic.

The youngest robot smirked and inserted a magazine into the well of a pistol, banged it against his palm to make sure it was in tight, then pulled the top slide towards himself. Click. He pointed it at the commander and cocked his head to one side.

"Your move."

The commander grit his teeth at the robot but said nothing, staring at the pistol that had just been stolen from him. He wasn't about to beg this "foul machine" for mercy. He was much too proud and had a resolve of steel. But in the end, he was flesh, and they were something else entirely. This wasn't a fight he could win without his own machines.

Silver looked through the front sight. "You know... you can't win a gunfight with a robot. You organics forget to concentrate on your breathing when defending yourselves... holding your breath deprives your muscles of oxygen, so... you lose focus, get shaky... miss, maybe. But for me? I can hold this aaaaall day." He pointed it closer and rested a finger on the trigger. "Your move, friend. But just know that my attention span is short, and if I get bored, I might just pull this."

"All of you are doomed." The commander threatened him, shifting his glare between Silver and Neo a few times. His eyes came to rest on Mecha, and his lip curled in disgust. "Take your trash with you if you must. The military will annihilate you in the end anyway." With that promise, he turned away and walked down the stairwell, his black combat boots making his footsteps heavy.

Silver listened to him go, satisfied. "Man... I always wanted to do something as badass as that. Am I as cool as you guys now?"

A bonk on the head made him wince. He turned towards the source and rubbed the top of his head with one hand.

Neo readjusted his grip on Mecha and gave Silver a reprimanding look.

Silver put his hands up and took a step back away from his older brother. He stifled a laugh. "What? It's always "how did you get into the military base" and never how was the military base? It was fun. The base was fun."

Neo held his gaze and squinted an optic at him as if to say, "really? You're doing this?"

"What?! There's nothing like a healthy, organic dose of near-death experiences to spice up your day." Silver stated with a laid-back shrug. He spun the pistol around his trigger finger casually, until Neo's glare convinced him to stop it. "Alright, okay, sorry big bro."

Neo rolled his working optic at him and jumped into a hover, gesturing for Silver to follow suit with a nod of his head.

"Roger that. Let's get out of this dump."

Neo held Mecha close to him as he walked out of the fortress entrance with Silver trailing behind him.

It was strangely quiet. As his optics adjusted to the glare of the rising sun, he noticed the forms of trashed robots scattered all across the ground. He paused, instantly on guard as his eyes swept over the scene before him. It was already strange to find nothing stopping him from leaving, but this, too? He had half expected every robot and soldier from G.U.N to be standing outside, simply waiting for him to leave.

It didn't make sense. Did Silver do all of this alone? He was capable, sure, but... there was something strange about the way the robots were destroyed. Something too distinctive. Almost like a spin dash was used. The shoe prints he detected on the ground weren't from a robot.

"Hey."

Neo looked ahead and saw someone familiar standing several feet away.

He couldn't believe it.

The robot's optic brightened in surprise. It then narrowed in suspicion and anger. He clutched his brother fiercely close. Then, slowly, he started to walk ahead, challenging the person silently.

He deliberately slowed to a stop beside Sonic.

"Why?"

Sonic smiled, not moving from his spot or making eye contact with him. "We're never gonna see eye-to-eye, Metal. We'll never be friends. I know that."

"Then, why."

The hedgehog's eyes rested on Mecha for a moment, before he caught Neo's optics on him. He held the robot's defensive gaze with his own softer green one.

"You know why." Sonic started to walk away, deliberately slow.

Neo turned to watch him, still glaring after him. "I do not."

Sonic paused again, looking over his shoulder at his arch-enemy with a kind smile. "I got a family, too." He waved one hand casually before starting on his way again. "Later, Metal. You owe me like, five re-matches at this point."

Neo didn't know what to say. He loathed this kindness coming from his organic template. It was wrong. It threw everything in his programming off. Sonic was supposed to attack him, not... this. What was this awful feeling in his chest cavity? Was this some kind of synthetic heartache? How stagy. All he knew was, it was uncomfortable and heavy.

"This changes nothing between us." Neo warned him in full honesty. "You are still my enemy and number one priority."

"Yeah, I know. I wouldn't have it any other way." Sonic threw him a challenging grin over his shoulder. "So don't go all soft on me, you hear? I'll be waiting."

Neo gave a single nod in reply. He turned away. Curse that hedgehog. Always playing the hero...

With that, Sonic disappeared into the distance as he always did.

Neo felt oddly empty and confused. He didn't know what to do with this strange feeling. So, he just started to walk. And he kept walking, looking straight ahead as he neared the top of a cliff that overlooked the sea. Silver ran over to catch up to him, chatting all about his time kicking robot and military butt for his brothers. He had so many questions and stories for both of them once they were better.

In the distance, Sonic sat atop a mountain peak and shielded his eyes from the sun. He could just about make out the three brothers on the cliff, silhouetted against the sunrise. He smiled to himself as the robots all re-united. He had done the right thing, even if it was for his sworn enemies, and he was content with that.

After spending a few more minutes observing, he stood up, brushed himself off, and decided something to himself with a hand on his hip.

"I should go see my lil' bro. I miss him."

The blue blur disappeared into the wind, homeward-bound to meet a certain two-tailed fox.

Neo looked over in his direction and caught the streak of blue in the distance.

Thanks to the hedgehog, both Mecha and Silver would be going home with him today. Neo finally swallowed his pride and allowed his thankfulness to surface, just this once.

He gave a single nod of respect.

"Thank you."

In the depths of Eggman's base, two younger brothers took Mecha's hands in theirs on either side of him.

Neo sat up on the table with him, while Silver stood beside him with his elbows resting on it.

Neo ran his thumb over Mecha's palm whilst watching his face intently for any sign of change. Even though nobody should hurt him now, Neo felt extremely protective.

"He's gonna be okay, right? You can fix this?" Silver asked warily.

"Of course I can. This will be a piece of cake." Eggman replied confidently. But, he hesitated, his hands above the keyboard as if wanting to type something, but unsure of what.

The doctor's words betrayed his promise mere seconds later. Although he was unconscious, Mecha went to sit up and swing at whoever was closest. Neo pushed him back down by his shoulders as gently but firmly as he could. Mecha's hand searched for Neo's again and gripped it hard. Neo held his hand with both of his and let out a long, hard ventilation. He looked down at his sibling sadly.

About half an hour passed with no improvement.

Eggman's fingers swept quickly across the keyboard the whole time, only stopping momentarily to push his glasses back up. Each time the rogue code tore through Mecha's systems, Eggman watched intently, looking for anything in the mess of code that might be decipherable. It seemed to change something about itself, targeting a different system every time. He had an IQ of 300 for Chaos' sake... deciphering a virus should be child's play. The more the codes showed up, taunting him, the closer he got to losing his temper. With a dispirited sigh, he leaned against the desk and held his head in his hands.

"If this doesn't stop soon, he's going to shut down. It's causing massive data loss." The doctor finally admitted, sounding defeated and angry.

Neo looked across to the screen. His optics narrowed as he focused on the seemingly endless rows of text and numbers that were attacking his brother. Something had to make sense. After all, he and his brothers were made up of code - it all had to mean something in translation. The longer he watched, the more patterns he noticed in the strings of code. Something stuck out to him that Eggman had missed.

Neo waved his hand urgently to grab Eggman's attention. As soon as Eggman looked at him he started signing, "back door trojan."

Eggman couldn't hide his frustration and he snapped back at him. "Yes, I know."

Neo squinted an optic at him and signed with more aggressive hand movements, "change code!"

"Come show me."

Neo released Mecha's hand and jumped down from the table to get a better look at the computer screen. Something flagged up to him right away and he urgently shot over to the keyboard and started typing away in a command window, optics fixed with determination.

"What is it?" Eggman asked him, finally sitting up again to watch.

Neo spotted something and honed in on it. What it was, neither Silver nor the doctor could exactly tell.

He finger-spelled, "metamorphic" and then signed for "code." It would be difficult to explain his findings in sign, and he hesitated, his frustration building quickly. He stood with his hands tensed in front of him, unsure of how to communicate any of this. "Talking too hard."

Silver noticed this and waved a hand at him. "Just type on a document, it'll be easier!"

Neo nodded and pulled up a blank notepad document. Almost one with the keyboard in front of him he effortlessly typed a message out, only stopping every few seconds because of his one-sided blindness masking part of the screen.

It is recoding itself with every propagated distribution using code transformation techniques some of which I have identified. These are register renaming, garbage code insertion, and code permutation. The longer the virus stays active the more complicated it becomes as it produces more variants.

Silver tilted his head with a frown. "How is it doing that? Any of that?"

Neo typed up a reply as quickly as he could. Metamorphic viruses do not have a constant virus body or a decryptor. They use a single-code body that carries data as code and can create new generations that look different. This allows them to evade detection. Garbage code insertion is done to make the code appear different and to break the ability to signature scan for it.

"I'm not sure what any of that means..." Silver admitted, sounding embarrassed. Although he was a robot, understanding everything about his coding would be like an organic knowing everything about their own brain. "But it sounds like you know what you're talkin' about"

Neo nodded and pointed to a section of code on the screen, before signing, "new generation attach to new host file every time. Gets worse. Hard to break."

It was much too complex to be detected by wildcard or half-byte scans. This called for code disassembly. With this in mind, Neo leaned closer to the screen and watched it with a distinct fierceness. He hated these numbers and letters that were hurting his sibling. The frustrating part was that they wouldn't hate him or fight him back - they were simply there. There would be no payoff whatsoever for hating them...

He looked over to Mecha and Silver and felt sorrow bleed into his anger. Neither of his brothers deserved to be in this position. It wasn't fair. It was he who had committed those atrocities before, not them. Not only this, but a virus as in-depth as this could only be written by someone with lots of knowledge of how the technology worked... Most likely possible due to all the machines left behind from Neo's reign. He hissed to himself and looked away.

Without really thinking about it, Neo signed "shit!" by jamming his thumb on top of his fist.

To his surprise, a supportive hand came to rest on his shoulder plate. He looked up after a few moments and met Eggman's understanding look.

"Don't blame yourself. I see you." The doctor sighed and rubbed his forehead with a gloved hand. "This is partly my fault." He looked at Mecha on the table, brow furrowed with concern. "I should have updated his software sooner! This... should never happen to my brilliant creations. But rest assured, between the three of us we can fix this. We have an evil genius and two supercomputers for the job."

Neo held his gaze for some time before looking away again, reluctantly signing, "I trust you."

"Let's not waste time, guys..." Silver piped up from behind them, looking concerned as he rested a cold hand on Mecha's overheating head. "He's struggling pretty bad." As if on cue, Mecha tried to hit Silver, but Silver gently pushed back against his hand until he stopped. It seemed to work for a second, but something in Mecha clearly changed, and he pushed back harder than before. Silver used both of his hands to hold Mecha's in place, growing more sick with concern for him with every minute that passed.

Neo nodded and looked to the screen again. Without saying anything, he held out a hand to Eggman.

"Just be careful," Eggman warned him before handing him a USB cable. "Don't get yourself infected."

Without hesitation, Neo plugged the cable in and put all of his focus into reading the numbers before him. He would have to be quick to avoid being detected or targeted.

Skimming through his data quickly, Neo noticed the hundreds of memory dumps in his files, each one a copy of his memory at the time his systems crashed with fatal errors. Their large size would take up a lot of his storage space - undoubtedly, this made thinking, moving, and reasoning a lot harder for Mecha. It showed just how many times the virus had changed itself to attack his other systems.

Thinking on his feet, Neo wrote himself a basic disassembler program in his own CPU. Using this, he could convert the executable file into low-level assembly language. He would have to manually look for the virus' initial, simplest form before it expanded. Since it kept changing itself, it would be difficult to find the original with regular old antivirus technology. Even a genius like Eggman couldn't do this mentally.

Neo started looking for a string. It would likely appear inside another instruction, rather than outright showing itself as an instruction. Narrowing his optics, he searched for an executable file string, something common among viruses. He found the string in a stream of code, which he then disassembled, revealing another set of numbers.

None of them meant anything to Silver, who was watching intently, but he noted that Neo seemed to know exactly what they said.

The numbers were a mixture of those that were from the original string, now in a different order. Neo shifted his weight from one foot to another as he meticulously studied each part. He wrote another code into his disassembler program and broke down the codes into simpler parts, looking for any "interesting" instructions. How curious... one of the instructions came from a most unusual source.

That was when he found a small file. It wasn't even executable by Mecha's software! Neo's working optic lit up in realization.

"You found it?!" Silver exclaimed, leaning over to get a better look.

"That's it. That's the one!" Eggman looked over the robot's shoulder with a surprised expression. He put his hands on Neo's shoulders and smiled down at him. "Excellent work, my boy!"

Neo watched as a new instruction was written right in front of him. The pseudo-assembler responsible for writing the code compressed the previous generation code, removed garbage insertions, re-assembled it with new insertions, and finally randomly stuck different instructions into itself. It attached itself to another file. Notably, this file was part of his auditory processing program. The system itself was practically in pieces with corrupted data everywhere. That explained a lot about his brother's erratic behaviour.

Neo deleted the original file at once. As expected, it caused a fatal system error. He had anticipated this and didn't panic. This time the error made Mecha unable to access his boot partition, so he wouldn't be able to come back online without repairs. He started up his own de-bugging program and ran it into Mecha's systems. As the de-bugger worked its magic, Neo looked into Mecha's registry which would undoubtedly be in pieces from the infection. As expected, the virus had corrupted several registry keys. He sorted through the corrupted ones and replaced them with clean ones from his own repository. Mecha wouldn't be able to boot back up without a lot of these registry keys, so it was best to replace them.

What came up on the screen now made Silver flinch. Completely random numbers and colours replaced the previously uniform lines of code. To anyone who wasn't technologically inclined, it would probably be terrifying to see.

"Woah.. I-Is that meant to happen?" Silver asked, nervous. He held Mecha's hand closer to himself out of worry.

Neo nodded in reply. Mecha's CPU would continuously fetch instructions from memory to execute them. Each instruction would consist of a code that would tell it which operation to carry out, and parameters which might be data or register locations for the input and output. So, when certain memory banks were removed, the data pins coming in would not be driven by an electrical signal. Instead, electrical noise would make it appear as though the data pins were switching randomly between zero and one, hence the randomly generated numbers.

But as the de-bugging program and registry key replacements started rolling in, the screen cleared up again and returned back to the familiar lines of code.

This process would take a long time. So, for now, they could relax. Neo slowly slumped forward against the desk and rested his head on one arm, passively allowing his own systems to do the work. He reached out with his free arm and searched for Mecha's hand, taking it in his.

Silver let out a sigh and relaxed, too. "I can't believe you actually did it. That was badass!" He finally let a huge grin spread across his face and laughed. "The way you just, like... saw the right thingy and went for it was incredible. You're amazing!"

"Excellent work!" Eggman praised both of them, offering them both a pat on the head. "You truly are my most prized creations."

Neo grumbled something in code and slumped down further in reply.

Eggman and Silver exchanged concerned looks between themselves.

"Here, hold this-" Silver gave Mecha's now relaxed hand to Eggman, who took it with a questioning look. The robot zipped away and returned just seconds later with a fan, which he slid next to Neo, plugged in, and switched on with a concerned smile. "Don't overclock your CPU, bro."

Neo mumbled something and passively slid closer to the fan's cool airflow, still holding on to Mecha's hand. While it would do nothing to cool his internal components, he was grateful for the Silver's gesture, and the sensory input, too. He tapped his claws on the desk absent-mindedly, seeming to stare off into nothing.

Silver pulled up a chair and plopped next to his brother, looking at him with concern. "You're doing that thing again."

Neo met Silver's gaze. He couldn't sign anything with both of his hands occupied, so he just gave a vaguely questioning look as if to say 'what thing.'

Silver scooted closer and put an arm around Neo's shoulders. It seemed like touch helped Neo when he got like this, so it was worth a shot, right? To his surprise, Neo actually leaned into him and let him. Silver hesitated for a moment before securing his arm around him. "This whole thing must be hard on you, huh... it's no wonder you feel like that."

Neo held Mecha's hand tighter in his. Yes, the whole situation had been very difficult. But worth it. Coping with his own issues, meeting the hedgehog, letting the hedgehog go, seeing Mecha in pieces mentally, worrying about Silver being safe, and now transferring copies of his own registry keys to repair Mecha's corrupted ones... he took a moment to really reflect on how much had happened, which actually helped with the lingering dissociation that muddied his processor.

"Well, listen... it's gonna be okay. You gotta take care of yourself now, or your systems will choose the time to force you to do it." Silver told him with a small smile, his honesty shining through. "If you go crashing on us I'm not gonna know what to do."

Neo just stared at Silver, somehow conveying some kind of sarcastic dismissal without saying anything.

"I mean it. You're not above crashing, you know." Silver nudged Neo gently to get encourage him to listen. "Let me and the doc handle things for a while... maybe take a nap or something. If you uh, can."

Neo begrudgingly set his systems to low-power mode, but not sleep mode. The tension in his frame dissipated, and Silver held him firmly to make sure he didn't fall to one side. This was as good as Silver was going to get. With a sigh of relief, Silver looked across to the screen and watched as Neo's programs continued to work their magic.

Silver slowed his engine and cooling fans deliberately. He didn't want to disrupt his brother's comfort by moving too much. Once he found the right setting for this, the robot rested his chin on his free hand and watched the numbers move and change. He still didn't understand much of it, but it was fascinating. He really admired his older brother for making sense of it all.

Eggman carefully placed Mecha's hand down and stepped aside to stand behind Silver. Silver was too fixated on trying to understand the coding on the screen to notice at first, but as his optics unfocused from staring for so long, he caught the doctor's reflection on the screen. He startled briefly before looking up and over his shoulder, already forgetting to not move.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't know you were there..."

Eggman shook his head, telling him that it was okay. "I'm proud of you."

Silver recoiled a little in surprise. He felt Neo's weight shift on him though, and quickly settled back into his original position. "Thanks..." He rested his head on his hand again, but this time he shifted so that his hand partly covered his smile.

"They couldn't have done this without you," Eggman reminded him with a firm pat on the shoulder. "You're just as brilliant as they are."

Silver didn't say anything, but his smile grew uncontrollably behind his hand. Getting praise from his father figure felt strange, but he thought he liked it. Just a little bit.

Eggman turned to leave the room. He waved a quick farewell to Silver, who gave a nod in acknowledgment. Then, Eggman left and closed the door behind him. He was only gone for a second, though - he popped back in to switch off the light and looked over to Silver.

"Get some sleep, son." The doctor closed the door right after bidding him good night.

"Thanks, pops."

Silver took his hand away from his face and let his smile grow as much as it really wanted to. But when he did this, a strange sensation came over his facial plating, a weird heat in his optics... his bottom lip quivered, too. His voice synthesizer felt oddly tight, as if wanting him to make a sound, but he didn't know what.

He was so thankful that his brothers were alive and that his father was proud. This was all he had ever wanted.

Maybe this was as close to happy tears as a robot like him could get.