Smashed wall in Tails' lab...
Cratered flooring in entrance hall...
Three smashed walls...
Collapsed half of said entrance hall...
Multiple craters in the yard...
Destroyed yard decor...
One broken door...
Naruto surveyed and mentally listed the damage to the mansion; all in all, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. And thanks to him knowing Inari and Tazuna, as well as aiding in the repairs to Konoha following Pein's attack, he had some knowledge of construction. To be honest, with this tireless body and how fast it could actually move, other than needing to stop so people could get some sleep at night, Naruto felt that he could have been done a lot faster, but...had to be considerate...
'Ugh, damn eye.' Naruto grumbled mentally as his eye on the smashed part of his face suddenly started flickering, causing some of his vision to fill with static every few seconds.
...Oh, and the damage Amy had inflicted on him earlier was a factor, too...
Stumbling a bit as he meandered along basically half blind, the robotified blonde eventually stopped next to Tails' biplane, leaning against the aircraft for support. 'Just great, now I'm gonna have to ask them to open me up again to fix this thing. Fan-fucking-tastic.'
[Statement Untrue: Outside Assistence Unneeded for System Repairs]
'...Say what now?'
[Automatic Repair Protocols: Enabled. Necessary Materials: Available. Engage?]
'Huh, that's convenient,' Naruto thought, his mood perking up a little. 'Go ahead then Voice, I mean... uh yes, engage.'
[Confirmed: Automatic Repair Protocols Activated: Harvesting Necessary Components from Environment.]
'Well that takes care of... wait, what do you mean by-' "Whoa!?" Naruto yelped, falling over as what he was leaning against suddenly vanished. As it did, however, Naruto found his vision clearing and once he checked himself over, he was pleased to see all the damage Amy had inflicted was gone as if it had never happened.
[System status: 100% of functionality restored.]
"Whoa...wasn't expecting that..." Naruto said, gobsmacked. "I mean, glad I'm back to a full one hundred percent, but...What happened?"
[Automatic Repair System: In the event critical damage is dealt to systems, Auto-Repair will assimilate nearby materials necessary to reconstruction.]
'Thanks, Voice. But where did the materials come from?' Naruto thought and wondered.
"MY PLANE!?"
At the shout, Naruto pushed himself up and saw Tails, bug-eyed and gawking in horror at him, stunned.
"...You...you...you-you-you-you-you-you-you-you...YOU ATE MY PLANE?!"
Huh?
"What are you talking about, Fluff Farts?" The Uzumaki wondered.
"You sent some kind of pale grayish silvery-white, metallic liquid from your body and it covered the Tornado, then you sucked it back into yourself and it took my plane in along with it! YOU SLURPED UP MY PLANE LIKE A...A...A...LIKE A NOOOOOOOOODDLLLLLEEEE...!"
Naruto stared. THAT was how his body took in the parts to fix him? Weird, then again, he wasn't going to complain about it if it was beneficial to him. It was just different than his usual healing factor he had when he was in his own body, then.
Getting up and brushing his legs as if dusting himself off, Naruto was pleased, he admitted this would make the fix-up a lot easier.
But first...While Naruto didn't believe in revenge, that wasn't to say that years of being a prankster hadn't taught him how to be passive-aggressively vindictive.
Looking up at Tails, Naruto found himself thankful his current body lacked a mouth, otherwise, the smirk would have given him away, "Huh...so that's how this body fixes itself. Harvest the parts. Kinda cool. But you know...I wouldn't have needed to slurp up the plane if my defense stuff had worked. Could've just thrown up a shield and Amy would've worn herself out beating on that, then talked her down once she was too tired to keep swinging her hammer at me. But my defense stuff was locked up by a "User: Miles "Tails" Prower". So whose fault is it really that I needed to eat the plane to fix myself?"
Tails started shaking in horror as he thought about that point. As smart as he was, there was no way he could deny the logic of that domino effect: he had shut down the armaments and defensive systems in the Metal Sonic body. While to be fair, he hadn't expected an Amy Smash-Fit, he realized that Naruto did have a good point...and his plane had gotten sacrificed for parts to undo the damage Naruto had suffered that he otherwise wouldn't have if Tails hadn't done that!
Seeing that Tails got the point, Naruto went for twisting the knife a bit deeper, "You know...now that I think about it, doesn't that mean that, overarchingily, you're the one responsible for the damages to the Thorndyke's house?" The mechanical teen said, enjoying the look of horrifying realization on the face of the one of Sonic's friends that, so far, he could say he liked the least.
"You know he has a point, Tails." Someone called.
Tails when ridgid at that, then after a moment, let out a shriek as he started writhing around, clutching his head and shouting at himself while hitting himself in the head. Seemed hearing someone who agreed with Naruto and his logic was the final nail in Tails' proverbial coffin about how he had messed up.
As the young fox did that, Naruto looked up and saw a familiar color scheme. Pink, red, and white...
"Amy? What are you doing out here?! What about your arm?!" the former human yelped.
"Like you said, Tails may have overarchingily been the one responsible for the damages to the Thorndyke's house, but I'm not denying that this wouldn't have happened if I hadn't lost my temper in the first place. I'm taking responsibility for that." she stated.
"Have you ever dislocated a shoulder before? It hurts like hell, especially once the adrenaline wears off, and even after popping it back, the arm usually needs to be treated and set to recover for a few days. Come on...we're getting you patched up." Naruto said, zooming over to her before pulling her along by her uninjured arm.
"I popped my shoulder back in place, I'm fine." the Rose protested.
"No, you're not. And unless you want your arm surgically reattached and reset, you're coming with." Naruto stated firmly, his words making Amy briefly go pale. She did not want to deal with being cut open if it could be avoided.
"...Please tell me you're not serious about that..." Amy gulped.
"You wanna risk finding out if I am? And before you say anything about leaving you alone about this, note both for and off the record that I know how to quit as much as Sonic knows about slowing down." The Uzumaki stated.
At that, Amy laughed, surprised at how much the humor helped alleviate her worries. "Ok, ok, I'll go along with you." the hammer-user said as she couldn't help but smile, if Naruto was making THAT his comparison, then it said a lot about how pointless trying to convince him otherwise would be. Besides, while Amy did acknowledge it that she could be stubborn, the fact was that this robotic–confined new addition to those staying with them was merely just trying to look out for her. She accepted that.
Naruto lead Amy back into the mansion. While he may have seen this place as too much personally, one good thing about why anyone would need so much living space in the first place was there weren't really a shortage of spare rooms. Locating an unoccupied one, he took Amy into it and sat her down before propping up her arm with some pillows.
"Keep your arm propped up, relaxed, and don't move it, ok?" The Uzumaki said, then looked around until he found a suitably-sized square of cloth.
'Oil! Voice, you there? Could use some help.' Naruto mentality requested to the voice within the body he was using.
[Affirmative.]
'Could use your help with setting up a way to help Amy with her injury from earlier.'
[Negative.]
'What?! Why's that?!' Naruto wondered, shocked.
[Providing assistance to Primary Threats will only result in termination. Advisory: Primary Threats have taken hostile action. Course of action recommended: Immediate Termination of threats.]
'Not a good idea.'
[Inquiry: Why?]
'Oh, you can ask questions now?'
[Confirmation: I can. Inquiry Repeat: Why?]
'Because I don't want to, they may be my only way back to regaining my normal body. So until then, I need them.'
[Acknowledged. Counterpoint: They hove proven deceptive. Odds of further deceit: 83.75%]
'Maybe from most of them, but Cream seems too honest to trick me, and Amy's too blunt.'
[2 out of 5 potential hostiles friendly: odds of deciet: 55.675%: Recommended action: Terminate remianing threats.]
'The only one who can unlock most of our body's functions is one of those 'primary threats', so if we elliminate him and-slash-or his friends we're stuck handicapped like this, Voice.'
[...Correction: Recommended Action: Maintain current opperations.]
'That's already the plan anyways. And in the meantime, I can come up with ways of driving Sonic insane while I'm here with these guys. That work for you?'
[...Fully acknowledged. Directive Acceptable.]
Was it his imagination, or did Voice sound...pleased...just now? After a moment, Naruto shrugged it off. 'Yeah. And he can't do anything about it without turning everyone against him. Take it you like those odds.'
[Confirmation: Parameters of new objective: Acceptable.]
'Yeah. But speaking of objectives, I do have a question that doesn't add up...'
[Inquiry: And that would be?]
'The doctor who built this body...it's obvious that he values the individual complex and despises all organic life enough to want his inventions to purge them, yet he programs his machines to obey him when he's an organic himself. That's the case, then why should we listen to him? Destroy all organic life yet obey an organic?'
[Processing: Inquiry Invalid: Doctor current state of organic contradics prior states of mechanical.]
'...What?'
[Simplifying: Doctor has means of converting organic to mechanical: HAS previously subjected self to process.]
'Oh, right...that happened once,' Naruto recalled, thinking about what Nicole had told him how Eggman had been a robot before, 'But he's not a machine now, so my question is valid. And if he was made immune to being converted into a machine again, then the question stands and still needs an answer for why we listen to an organic when we're expected to destroy all organic life; which includes him. See why I don't get it with that contradiction? He probably doesn't even have an answer for it himself...'
[Processing: Inquiry Accepted. Conclusion: Unknown. Further Processing required.]
'I'll leave you to that, then. But first, we help one of those friendlies.' Naruto thought, gathering the things he would need for the makeshift splint for Amy's shoulder.
[Acknowledged.]
'Thanks, Voice.' Naruto said. While he was no medical expert, one thing Jiraiya had managed to instruct him in during that training trip that was actually useful was first aid and field treatments. Beaten it into his head, technical terms and all. Same from Tsunade, Shizune, and even Sakura.
He took a thick, stiff, squared fabric that looked more decorative than for anything else and Naruto set about folding the cloth in half diagonally to make a triangle, his vision being taken up by a virtual grid passing that showed the correct lines and angles he would need as he did so. Then did the same across itself diagonally to form a triangle. That way, when worn as a sling, the "fat" middle portion of the triangle would support Amy's arm and the thin corners of the triangle would form a comfortable neckband behind her head.
That done, the Uzumaki carefully slipped one end of the cloth under Amy's arm and the other over her shoulder, being careful not to snag her hair so her moving her head wouldn't trouble the knot while ensuring that her injured arm was hanging comfortably at a roughly 90 degree angle and her fingers extend just far enough beyond the "cuff" of the sling that it was possible for Amy to use them for simple tasks like writing while her hand was still supported by the sling.
"There...we...go..." Naruto said, finishing setting her arm. "That good, Amy? Was taught by some medics I know that outside of surgery, shoulder dislocations should get treated by placing them in a splint or using a pillow; keep the affected arm and shoulder immobile for four to six weeks to allow the muscles and other soft tissues to rest and heal. Apply an ice pack to the shoulder three times a day for fifteen to twenty minutes. You'll be able to resume most activities within two weeks, but avoid heavy lifting and anything involving shoulder movements for between six weeks and three months."
"No hammer with my right arm for three months, got it." Amy nodded, then looked at him oddly, "How do you know this stuff, anyway, though? Not that I'm not grateful, just odd hearing a robot knows this stuff about medical treatments for organic life, is all."
"I wasn't always metal, remember? Had my own fair share of injuries." Naruto replied.
"Oh...right..." the pink hedgehog winced "I'm...I'm sorry, didn't mean to remind you of that..."
"Hey, none of that." Naruto stated firmly. "For now, you just rest up and recover, ok?"
She nodded. "You're actually a pretty good guy. Who are you? I mean, in all the other ways besides physically, you're no Metal Sonic. So who are you, really?"
"Naruto. Naruto Uzumaki." He said, then held out a hand which she shook with her left one.
"Naruto, huh? Interesting name." Amy mused.
The robot shrugged as the conciousness within it directed, "Well...would you believe it that's because I'm not from around here?" Naruto asked.
At that Amy covered her mouth as she tried not to laugh again. Not from around here?! Oh, how could she NOT help but find that funny, given how the reason everyone ended up on Earth was because Eggman was trying to use the Chaos Emeralds to manipulate all of reality and Sonic damaged it?!
"...I see..." Amy said, keeping from bursting from the humor of his word choice, but was unable to keep from smiling. "You know...kinda remind me of Sonic a bit. Not the robot body, but as a character."
Naruto would have blinked at that if he still had eyelids. "Meaning?"
Amy sighed, "Well...To be honest; there's been lots of times when Sonic did something or didn't do something that made me wonder why I ever liked him. But in the end, he always comes through for me. He may do crazy things and he may do stupid things, but he never does dishonest things. That's why I'll always have faith in him."
Naruto nodded. "Appreciate honesty. Appreciate reliability. You want someone like that in your life."
"Yeah." Amy agreed. "I do."
"I can respect that." Naruto nodded, then moved towards the window and opened it. "Anyways, be back in a bit, gotta get materials for fixing this place up."
With that, he activated the jet engine-based propulsion system in his back, which surprised him as he thought Tails would have shut that off too, and flew outside, stopping and hovering in the air, turning around and looking over the mansion again.
'Oi. Voice. Sorry to ask so much of you, but got a way to make sure that we get everything for this place? I'm not leaving it busted up.'
[Affirmative. Base in state of disrepair: Acknowledged. Restoration: required. Assessment of damages. Structural scan: Initiating.]
'Wha...!?' Naruto started to say, but stopped as twin red beams of light shot from his optics, instantly hitting their mark, scanning every inch of the mansion within seconds. Once finished, a diorama of the building and grounds appeared in Naruto's vision, the image highlighting the damages he had noted before as a box appeared giving details on each one, including listening what he would need and how to repair them.
'Whoa...that was a head rush.' Naruto thought, then shook his head and flew off to find a hardware store or something similar so he could get what he needed.
'Oh good, he's gone.' Sally thought with a sigh, making her way over to Amy once the mechanical hedgehog was out of the building.
Seeing the princess, Amy sighed, already having a feeling where this would end up going, "...I can see why you tried to stop me before and how you said things were lot more complicated than I first thought." the pink hedgehog said, but looked relaxed, "...I can feel it, even in that metal body that's not actually his own," she smiled, "he's got heart. And a lot of it."
The Acorn female nodded, so far, Naruto had shown he was that way. Willing to fight if he had to, but wasn't at all a bad person. As that thought crossed her mind, it made her feel even more guilty over what they had done to him. While their past experiences with Eggman pointed to it being the pragmatic and practical approach to things, her knowledge of the fact that Naruto WASN'T just some Badnik made her conscience beat herself up inside.
"Yeah...Look, can you talk to Naruto? We... we sort of messed up and got him really mad at us..."
"Really? How?" The pink hedgehog wondered. So far, she could and would admit that, their first interactions aside, that he was a good guy, so the idea of her friends needing her to play mediator was surprising. Naruto seemed like someone who could appreciate directness, so what was stopping them from just going to him directly rather than some pointless, annoying roundabout?
Gulping, the chipmunk looked panicked at that, it wasn't a topic that she wished she had to speak of, but she supposed that was just part of the consequences of her bad judgment over the situation.
"Well...you see, Amy...we were worried about any killswitchs or control programs that were in that Metal Sonic body he's in. He asked why we couldn't just shut them down, but it wasn't that simple, couldn't do that without direct headlines to those systems in Eggman's network." Sally trailed off.
"Huh...that's actually unusual..." Amy mused, knowing how Eggman constantly wasted his time with complex plans and elaborate over-the-top schemes to defeat Sonic, which always failed; Eggman's inability to plan for or adapt to the long-term since Sonic usually smashed Robotnick's plans so quickly that he never got to the long-term phases of his plots, the blue hedgehog was just that powerful; or being blinded by his hatred of Sonic and self-destructing as a result of that tunnel vision. But even as she mulled that over, she nodded, "so, you guys fixed that for him? Why would Naruto be mad at you all for that?" she asked.
"Welll..far from proud of it, didn't exactly have much of a say in it with how we handled the situation..." the chipmunk shuttered. "We...shut him off and disassembled him to fix it, went in manually to remove those killswitch systems from him...he didn't appreciate that. Was against the idea from the start, actually..."
"Wait...WHAT?!" Amy yelped, horrified, "So let me see if I got this straight, then," the rosette started with a deep frown marring her lips. "You want me to help you smooth things over with Naruto because he's mad at you for betraying his trust, forcefully shutting him down, basically ripping his brain out, and dissecting him against his will?"
Sally couldn't stop herself from wincing with each added detail, not helped at all by the accusatory glare the pink hedgehog was burning through her skull with. "...That...about sums it up, yes."
"Okay, good to know we're on the same page," A shiver ran down the princess's spine as Amy's frown slowly turned up to a suspiciously kind smile. Sure enough, not even a second later, a dreadfully familiar hammer poofed into existence in Amy's good hand before she rested it on her shoulder and the girl marched towards her. "Now then, how about I "smooth over" your head for going through with such a STUPID idea?! Why shouldn't he be mad?! Better yet, how could you all do that to him?!"
"Amy, I get it! Like I told Naruto: we had good intentions but we went with the wrong way of doing it! That's why I want to apologize and make things right for!" Sally yelped as she backpedaled away from the injured Mobien; it didn't surprise her that the pinkette was so upset by what had happened. Amy had always been a "make your own choices" kind of person (including a certain aging incident) who believed people should be free to their options, so it wasn't a shock she was a bit steamed when she heard that they turned Naruto off and operated on him completely against his will.
At that, Amy thankfully halted her advice, though her furious expression didn't change, "I may have been pissed at him back when I thought he was just another of Eggman's tin cans, but even I know routing around in a guy's head against his will is messed up. So...No."
"Huh?" Sally wondered. No what?
"No. I am NOT going to force this. YOU'RE who needs to find a way to get him to open back up to YOU. If it's as important to you as you say, then that's why it has to be that way. You messed up, you fix things. Simple as that. So rather than drag everybody else into this, you have to accept that you need to settle things directly." Amy said.
Sally stared, then sighed, while she would gladly have extended making things better with Naruto already..."But he doesn't want anything to do with us..."
"You accepted he has the right to be angry with you, so all you can do is wait for an opening to be able to mend things." Amy stated matter-of-factly.
Sally stared at the other girl, "Right..." she nodded, the royal did have to admit, whenever she wasn't being Sonic–crazy or angry, Amy usually had some solid advice.
At that, much to Sally's relief, Amy dismissed her hammer and went to sit back down, being careful with her arm.
"Thanks, Amy...needed to hear that." Sally admitted. Still...she would have appreciated if she knew where to begin with getting Naruto to open up to her so she could apologize. It was why she had turned to Amy for help with in the first place.
"I know what you're trying to do and why, but it'll just make a bigger mess the more people you drag into it." Amy said, getting Sally to nod.
"I want to make things right with him, but he doesn't want to hear me out. I understand why that is, but trying to make things right with someone who doesn't want anything to do with you is harder than I wish it was."
'Stupid city...how am I supposed to find where to go? All these buildings look the same! Give me a good forest any day...' the metallic Uzumaki thought, growing more and more annoyed by the moment as he zoomed around the streets of Station Square.
However, after going around trying to find where he needed, he caught the sound that was universally associated with trouble: Sirens.
Skidding to a stop, the mechanical ninja soon found himself surrounded by a number of single-seat, open-cockpit, open-wheel formula racing cars with substantial front and rear wings, and an engine positioned behind the driver.
"Hold it, hedgehog!" One of the drivers said, getting out of his car and removing his helmet as he marched up to Naruto to show a human man with peach skin, orange hair and green eyes. His racing suit was a white and red uniform with a matching helmet.
Hearing what this guy called him, Naruto wished he could roll his eyes. 'Of course... have his appearance, inherit his issues...stupid dash-happy pincushion...' the Uzumaki mentally complained. "And you are...?" Naruto asked.
"You know me, Hedgehog. We went at it in speed when you first showed up!" the man said. Not answering the question.
"...I don't have time for this..." Naruto said as flatly as the voice codec module synthesizer allowed him to.
"Hold it!" Naruto jerked before turning to see a hand clamped on his shoulder, "You're not going anywhere until after we race! I will NOT have anybody, faster than me, on my highway!"
Naruto felt like groaning. "Look...I know the guy that you think I am, but I just look like him. Ok? Go away."
One of the other racers took their own helmet off to expose a middle-aged woman with blonde hair, peach skin, and blue eyes. She looked mortified as she looked at the metal hedgehog.
"...Look, it's obvious that you're a robot based off of that hedgehog thing that showed up in Station Square, and I'm sorry for Sam's impulsive behavior. Can't you just please humor him so we can get on with things?" she asked as she leaned in and muttered into his ear, glad "Sam" as she exposed his name to be, wasn't really listening.
"...And why should I? I have things to do." Naruto asked, turning his head to her.
[Analysis: Race Recommended: Reasoning: System Calibration required: odds of success: 99.99999%] Voice pipped up.
'Voice...you...you...want...me to race this bozo...?' Naruto wondered, truly bewildered by that, then mentality sighed, 'Olgilvie...this is ALLLLL your fault, I just know it...'
"Look, just humor Sam, we'll compensate you for it however you want. Please, we need to get back to our jobs!" the female racer begged.
Huh...compensate. THAT actually gave Naruto an idea that could help him with the issue of the Thorndyke's place needing to get fixed up. Besides... 'Well I just got fixed up, wouldn't hurt to give a test run to make sure everything is working correctly. Not counting the stuff Tails locked away.'
"...Fine...let's race," The former human said, FINALLY getting Sam's attention, "but one condition: See, there's some fokes who went out of their way to help me with something. Home got a bit banged up for it before everything got settled. I win, you foot the bill for what I need to get their home back to how it was before. I'd do it myself, but..." Naruto gestured to himself, "nowhere to carry a wallet."
At that, Sam smirked cockily and narrowed his eyes, "Got yourself a deal, hedgehog. Let's go."