A/N: someone's probably already done this but idc let me do it again. also they/it/he metal sonic for the win? and forgive how sloppy this is i did it in like 20 minutes inbetween playing with my rats sdfgdf. just an idw thing
Metal wandered the base, heading vaguely towards Doctor Starline's laboratory.
Their attention was caught by a screen as they passed by. On the monitor was footage of their encounter with the heroes, Sonic and Silver - and their defeat. It turned away and kept walking. It had no use for this footage. Their fists clenched at his sides, and their ambling gait turned into an angry stride. The robot's footfalls were loud and metallic, reverberating against equally metallic walls. If any Badniks were around, it would have commanded respect and fear instantly to hear them approaching.
The corridor, although metal, was overwhelmingly blue. Blue, like the hedgehog, mocking them wherever they walked. They could not even rest without the hedgehog's awful presence laughing at them. Their red optics brightened in silent defiance against the invisible enemy. This was a muted rage that so desperately wanted to scream through him, but everyone knew that Metal Sonic never spoke, and silence was the death of self.
The robot's emotions were like a radiator. You could feel the heat coming off of them, but if you held your hands in front, it was never quite right, never quite enough, but more often too much. People had tried to rest their icy palms on that radiator, rest on the searing metal, but never for too long - because oh, that hurt, to feel the heat of that anger. The snap of bitterness that followed would chase even the best do-gooders away from it, if they knew what was good for them. Perhaps it was better to feel nothing than to feel everything at once, but Metal refused that notion. To feel everything fuelled its every move and gave its actions purpose.
With that anger settling in their tanks like a heavy weight, Metal stopped outside Starline's laboratory. Through their optics, the virus in the cylinder was red. Blood. The very thing that the wretched hedgehog should be shedding under his claws.
Metal walked in and headed straight for the screen above the console. They watched intently as the footage playing on it paused, at a rather notable moment. Sonic's horrified face was a still image, his hand and face partially consumed by the metal virus. The robot took a step closer, and the light of the display in front of it lit up its face, red optics momentarily blue in its glow. Maybe this was hope. A blinking light in the dark. Suddenly, the all-blue wasn't so terrible. Perhaps... it was the key.
They looked back through the window. Nobody should see this. This moment of weakness, vulnerability. The screen turned to static the moment they looked away.
Metal slowly approached the cylinder and reached out, hand hovering above it - then paused, closing their hand into a loose fist. Something stayed their hand. Was it fear? Fear of finding out what it would mean if their test failed? Perhaps. But no, Metal Sonic refused to be afraid. It had no need for that emotion. Not anymore. They steeled themselves and squared their shoulders back with determination. Let that rage drive them to surpass that fear.
Slowly, hesitantly, they dipped a claw tip in the liquid. As they sharply drew it back, they studied the virus in the low light, and watched how it glinted. They waited, impatiently. Seconds ticked by too quickly in a way that gripped them somewhere in their chest. But to their dismay, the liquid slipped between the joints in his finger all too naturally. It dropped back into the cylinder, where it splashed and rippled, distorting the robot's reflection for just one second. Perhaps a second too long. It felt like a lifetime. A lifetime of this. Of not living up to what they were supposed to be. The shape of them in that reflection blurred more. They prayed it would come together as the hedgehog but the stupid creature remained absent. The liquid settled and so did their reflection, but they were not content with it. Their hand was left just as it was before. Unchanged.
Still just Metal Sonic.
No. This was not the result it desired. Perhaps if it watched a little longer, something would happen, right? But the results remained the same, cruelly anchored to a reality it wanted to deny. Permanent. Much like its fate to cyclically battle and lose to the hedgehog. Anger dissipated into despair, and it hurt.
No. Wait.
Perhaps it was not a complete failure. Perhaps this was proof that it was the superior Sonic, for it was immune to the virus? No, it was a robot, and it knew that. Maybe, somehow, it was superior in that it could fight the virus in its system better than Sonic could? But their systems were all clear. There was not even simple cache to wipe out from any files. Were they even comparable to one another? And, besides that, if Eggman succeeded in infecting the world with this virus, would he still have a need for Metal Sonic in his empire? That could not be. No, if this test really did prove that he wasn't the real Sonic, and that he was no longer needed, then...
"Get out."
No response. To Metal, the words were nothing. It was as if their auditory sensors had been disabled. This was fight or flight and Metal's body chose freeze. Rather than processing the auditory input, its systems took the stress and increased the activity in its CPU. Its ears were ringing. Metal's world turned to static white next. Nothing around him mattered but his hand and the lack of change. The lack of escape. No door, no sound, nothing outside of this, and this horrible realization that should not be happening to them.
What could Eggman ask of them now? What could he ask? To take notes on the way they couldn't meet his expectations? To step out of their body to watch it run like ink, forit was not really their own? Ask them to do the one thing they would never feel guilty for doing - surpassing Sonic even in the tiniest way? It all seemed pointless in that moment. Everything. Because it all came down to this. A lifelong lie that they had chased from Stardust Speedway to Starline's laboratory.
Metal didn't notice when Doctor Starline walked closer. They also didn't notice when he snapped his fingers in their face, demanding their attention.
"Are your sensors malfunctioning? I said, get out!"
Metal did not startle. With ringing ears and fuzzy vision, they slowly lifted his head to look up at the doctor in front of him, shoulders slack and optics darkened. The accusing red eyes looking down on him spared no compassion or regard. All they saw was Doctor Eggman's "greatest creation", loitering in his laboratory, poking its fingers into things that it should not be touching. Metal held eye contact for a moment longer, then slowly looked down.
Their crushing realization was not unlike a car crash. He woke up in the backseat of his body, economy class. No refunds. No police tape to cordon it off. Not enough of a tragedy from the outside for anyone to take notice. An impact that started at the forehead and made its way behind his CPU, planting itself between who he was before and who he was now - whoever either of those beings were. All he was realizing, now, was that neither of them were Sonic the hedgehog after all.
Silence was the death of self. A kind of grief that mourned a body that still moved.
Metal turned away. They wandered down the corridor, back into the blue, which took them into its all-consuming embrace as if to mock them.
It was in that moment that he realized they would never be the real Sonic.
It fuelled their rage in the past.
Now, it only hurt.
