Metal's pattern recognition analyzed the sprawling neighborhood and compared it to one of his earliest records of one of Eggman' robot manufacturing plants. Save for a few minute details, all the houses looked the same.
Except for Honey's.
Colors of the facade were gray and washed out, a stark contrast to the sandy yellow of the surrounding houses. A closer scan revealed the discoloration wasn't due to age - the paint was still in the process of drying. With a high likelihood of certainly, this made its uniqueness deliberate and not accidental.
"Home, sweet home." Just the sight of it put some pep into the cat's stride.
Upon hearing the keyword home, the robot would add this location to his list of home bases. Without a map of the whole city, he would simply assign the location precise satellite coordinates. Acquiring them didn't require tapping into Eggman tech, as the satellites predated it and Eggman himself also made use of them instead of building his own.
When he then went to organize the list, as was standard procedure after any addition, he found it empty, save for the last addition. Records referenced other locations, but any attempts to recover or rebuild their location data failed, as there weren't any backups available. This was another anomaly according to Metal - under normal circumstances, backups were protected against data purging.
Should the need to discuss potential tampering arise, the robot would have to bring this up with Honey.
The cat herself would stop before her front door, fishing the key out of her bag after looking for it for a good two minutes. However, before she could use it to open the door, she stopped abruptly as her ears picked up sound and the fur on her back stood on end.
The nosiest of all her neighbors was mowing his lawn, giving her little more than an aside glance, but he shut his lawn mower down and was now walking towards her for a chat.
She'd hand Metal the key. "Wait for me inside, this'll be just a minute."
The robot nodded and complied with her request, closing the door behind him.
Her neighbor started shouting the moment he saw the homeless person entering her house.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" he shouted, then lowered his voice when he got within earshot, though only slightly. "What do you think you're doing? Just having someone like that walking around is bad for the neighborhood. This is exactly the kind of thing I brought up at the last homeowners meeting. The one you didn't attend. "
Honey crossed her arms. She had a response prepared in advance, one she knew would throw him off.
"Oh, hey Richard. Or do you prefer Dick?" she'd start. "Wonderful weather we're having. Usually, you're supposed to start a conversation by saying 'Hello, neighbor!"
That was enough to shut him up for a few precious seconds."No, Richard is fine. Hello. Whatever," he'd made a few careful steps forward, knowing well he was now standing on her property. "There better be a good excuse for what I just saw."
"Saw what exactly?"
The neighbor would frown. "Don't play stupid with me. You let a homeless guy into your house. We don't want their kind here."
"My house, my property," the cat would fire back. "Besides, I'm helping them detox. They weren't clean the last time they tried to get a job. Think of it as me fulfilling my civic duties."
A noble goal, she thought, but the neighbor would just shake his head in disbelief. "You're not a qualified medical professional. There's a whole place downtown that's full of them."
"I'm the only one they trust."
That was the second time she managed to shut him up, but would also hit a nerve.
"There's more to it than that, isn't it?"
"What?" Honey had to run that by herself again, as she didn't believe he just said that the first time. For a brief moment she entertained the idea that he might know the true identity of the homeless person now hiding out at her place, but that was impossible. Right?
His follow up was even worse.
"You wanna sleep with them."
The cat's claws retracted and her pupils quickly turned into narrow slits. When confronted with that much stupid, the reaction was hardly voluntary. She had to restrain herself from having a shouting match. "Excuse me?"
Richard couldn't get a word out as the cat walked up to him, right to the edge of her property's boundary line.
The moment she got that close, he recoiled.
Just being in her presence had him start sweating, a droplet forming at his temple and rolling down his cheek. He would wipe the sweat from his face, his eyes looking away, only for him to be confronted by the cat's face as she leaned in and licked the rest of his sweat off his cheek, slowly and deliberately, her rough tongue almost immediately giving him a light rash.
The whole time, he couldn't move or break eye contact. It must have had something to do with her piercing glare, but why?
"I'll say this in the nicest way I can," Honey would grab him by the shirt, speaking in a half-whisper. "Leave me alone or I will pounce you and drag you off by the neck where no one will ever find you. This is my property and I'll do what I see fit on it."
Finally, the neighbor would understand the position he was in and lower his voice all the way down to just regular speaking volume.
"O-okay, fine," he audibly gulped, stuttering. "B-but if more of them start showing up asking for your help, t-t-that's on you!"
She nodded. "Noted. I'll deal with that myself should it happen."
Without saying anything else, Richard would slowly turn around and go back to whatever chore he was doing.
Honey just sighed.
It didn't really feel like a victory to her, taking advantage of someone else's natural instincts like that, but he crossed a line and needed to be taught a lesson. Even if what he was accusing her was true, who was he to judge? She'd seen the revolving cast of ladies that went in and out of his home with her own two eyes.
But just the concept would stick with her, from a purely scientific point of view. Was something like that even possible? She'd only gotten her mind out of the gutter after she accidentally bumped into Metal who had been waiting for her in the entrance hall of her house.
"Oh, sorry!" she chuckled, hoping he'd make an exception and not record this incident. "I was distracted by something. Leave your clothes somewhere nearby - I don't want you to stink up the place."
"They're not mine."
She figured as such, but now she knew for sure. "Well, all the more reason to wash 'em, then do a good deed for the day and give them back to the person you took them from, don't you think? Don't worry - I have plenty of others you can pick for your disguise."
The robot nodded and left his clothes neatly folded on a nearby cupboard before following Honey into the living room.
Once inside, the cat started looking around, searching for something. The robot followed her around the room, but didn't help her, as he didn't know what she was looking for. A mission with an unclear goal couldn't be assigned.
"Strange. She'd normally already be up and about, running laps around me," she grumbled. "Think she hid because of me having guests over?"
Metal's reply would just be a simple "Insufficient data." Rhetorical questions – ones where the person asking isn't expecting an answer – were still new to him.
After thoroughly searching the whole room, Honey stopped at what she thought was the likeliest suspect - an armchair near the bookcase. The bottom cushion was soft enough that who she was looking for could easily fit under it.
A squeak that sounded when she bent down to check confirmed her suspicions, as did two big blue eyes staring back at her from the darkness.
"Come on out now, don't worry," she assured the creature. "He's a friend."
Metal would cross his arms, patiently staring at the piece of furniture the cat was talking to. When the squeaking he heard earlier returned with greater intensity, the robot was expecting one of the numerous woodland creatures that Eggman has used in his badniks to be the culprit.
Instead, what crawled out from under there was a Motobug. A smaller model than the ones he was familiar with but a Motobug nonetheless. The squeaking was that of a tire.
The small single-wheeled robot ran circles around the room, moving at a speed that wasn't supposed to be possible for its product line.
It came to an abrupt halt when it accidentally bumped into Metal's foot, then quickly retreated behind Honey.
Honey lifted the small robot up and held it in her arms like a puppy. "This is Wendy. I found her intact among the piles of scrap the clean up teams brought in for study and fixed her up." She gave her some back scratches and the robot gleefully closed its eyes.
"She's a rescue, like you."
Metal didn't understand what she meant by that statement, so he quickly ran a definition search for 'rescue'. Rescue - to help someone or something out of a situation that is dangerous, harmful or unpleasant.
Perhaps Honey saw it that way, but the robot simply saw her assistance as a change in mission parameters and nothing more.
When offered to pet the Motobug, Metal would try to copy what Honey did and was surprised to find a series of pressure-sensitive touch pads on its back. This was further evidence that the unit had been modified outside factory specifications.
This warranted more testing.
Unfortunately, he underestimated the sharpness of his claws and made a deep cut through one of the pads when he tried to gauge how much pressure they could take, causing the Motobug to let out a metallic screech and speed away from his reach.
"Oh, I forgot. When you were so gentle with me earlier, I thought-" She wouldn't finish that thought. "Never mind that. I'll try and see if I can replace those with something duller, if you want. Maybe try petting her with the back of your hand?"
Metal followed her instruction and although the smaller robot cowered in fear and tried moving away, it was far less anxious once it felt the bigger robot start petting it in the way Honey suggested.
Then after a few seconds, it sped off after Honey.
"Wanna follow us to the workshop?" Honey asked.
Wendy paced in place, bouncing on her monowheel excitedly, but when the two of them headed there, it didn't follow them, preferring to instead play with one of the numerous toys that were strewn about the living room.
Once inside, Honey would waste no time getting to work. While the repair shop back in the city was just so-so when it came to badnik repair, this was the real deal. The cat even had a small fabricator installed, with which she could manufacture some of the smaller parts herself.
Metal could only stare in awe, analyzing the machine top to bottom. It didn't match anything in his records.
"Pretty cool, eh? Eggman tech from from a raid of one his newer bases. A friend of mine repairs things like it for a living," Honey told him. "Gave me one as a gift. She's not a big fan of what I'm doing, but she still wants me to do it right."
Honey would pull up a chair and offer it to Metal. "Let's get started." Not knowing what she wanted of him, the robot simply grabbed the chair with his hands, eliciting a hearty chuckle out of the cat.
"No, silly. You're supposed to sit on it. Always do that when you're offered a chair."
With Metal seated, she would take out her good toolbox and finish the job she started earlier. In just a few moments, the cat fully disassembled, thoroughly cleaned and then carefully reassembled his arm. Any parts that were broken or too worn out, she could build with just the press of a button and only a few seconds of waiting in between.
The fabricator was the closest thing she could equate to magic.
"Try moving it around, see if it's any better." The robot tried all sorts of movements in regards to his arm and its servos.
He nodded. "Power efficiency has increased by twelve percent. Movement is twenty four percent smoother."
"You're welcome. After someone does something for you, it's customary to say 'thank you'." She was hoping he wouldn't ask why, as she wasn't a people person and wouldn't really give him a satisfactory answer.
Instead, the robot would blurt out a quick 'thank you' and then run a search of his databanks, looking for both occurrences of the combination of words as well as the context in which they should be used, courtesy of Honey.
The results were frustratingly slanted towards Sonic and his cronies - they'd say it to each other all the time, even when the action didn't warrant it, while Metal's allies would almost never say it, if ever. Granted, the data was biased as most of his allies couldn't talk, but even those that could almost never expressed any kind of gratitude.
"Alright, now for the visor." She'd grab him by the head and give it a few twists until she found the right spot. It probably looked as if she was trying to choke him.
With the faceplates removed and on a nearby table, she'd start looking for a way to safely disconnect the unit acting as his eyes and not damage it any further.
"You wouldn't happen to know how to take this out, would you?" With just a nod, the robot would demonstrate how to remove his visor by simply grabbing it by the glass and pulling it out. It wasn't connected by wire - it simply slotted into his motherboard directly. The perfect fit of the faceplates ensured this couldn't be done unless Metal was partially disassembled.
For another few seconds, Honey found herself in awe at Eggman's engineering genius. Credit where credit is due.
Afterwards, she'd put the visor inside the fabricator and prepare herself for the long and arduous process of finding the right part from a list of several identical looking ones.
But it would be in vain.
Just the mere presence of the unit inside the fabricator's receptacle caused the machine to act erratically and automatically pick the correct part and begin repairs without Honey so much as lifting a finger. The glass outer layer was partially melted by a series of well-aimed cutting lasers, then reformed and left to cool. By the time the repairs were complete, it looked brand new.
The cat would hesitate taking it out right away, thinking it would be extremely hot, but it wasn't. It was merely room temperature.
She had this piece of tech for years, yet she never saw it work so flawlessly. Perhaps this mode of operation could be triggered without the presence of one of Metal's parts?
Installing it and putting the faceplates back on was then just a formality. Barring a few scratches and small dents here and there, he was good as new.
"And… Done."
Metal would nod. "Thank you," this time, he'd say it slower and with better articulation. "Now that you've done your part, I must leave to complete my mission."
The cat would give him a weird look. "Done my part? I'm not done with you. Not yet."
Metal would look at his claws. His sensors would report an audible schwing as he brandished them.
Honey would point at her dress. "Look, you may look the part," and then point at her mouth. "But you don't sound the part. I think you have the potential to be so much more."
The robot was silent, trying to translate her metaphor into something he understood, but the cat wasn't done yet.
"You've already proven that you're capable of more when you chose to go with me instead of limping back to Eggman."
Now his system was finally able to put the pieces together and catch itself up to speed.
What she did to him. What she took from him.
"Even without that chip and your sound logical argumentation, you cannot ignore facts. I was created with the express purpose of matching and surpassing the capabilities of Sonic."
The way the robot said it almost made it sound like it was his fate, but the cat refused to abide by such superstition.
"Look, I'm not gonna force you down a path you don't want - I just want you to get some air and see that there's more to it than just trying to one-up Sonic. Then, if you change your mind, I'll put that chip back in and you can be off to meet your maker." Once more, she'd put her hands over his, trying to get him to lower his claws, but he was more stubborn this time and wouldn't let her. "All I want is for you to at least give it a chance. One week, no more. That's all I'm asking."
Regardless of the end result of his current objective, he had no other pending ones. Even playing along and doing what Honey asked of him was simply a series of steps conducted as part of his mission to find what became of Metal Tails and Metal Knuckles.
However, the fact of the matter was that a blank objective sheet caused an unexpected shutdown last time - logged as an attempt to divide by zero - and warranted the use of a recovery partition. These posed serious stability and security risks, respectively.
"Your terms are acceptable."
Metal then extended his hand for a handshake to make the deal official, only for the cat to give him a hug instead. "Oh, this is going to be so much fun! Hard work, but also fun, I promise."
The robot didn't understand the thought behind the gesture and just kept his arm extended even after she let go.
"If anything you have in mind is going to require the outdoors, I will need a new disguise."
Honey was on cloud nine, lost in the thoughts of all the activities they could be doing together as a learning experience. Fortunately, the robot's request was enough to snap her out of it.
"Right. Follow me."
The duo would retrace their steps to the living room and find Wendy playing with one of her toys. It would almost be cute, if her idea of playing didn't involve repeatedly stomping on a plush animal of a fox and slowly flattering it into a pancake.
A customary scan by Metal would pick up something strange, bordering on another anomaly that required further investigation. Namely, a violation of the third law of motion - every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction. In the doll's case, this meant that every stomp should have caused some kind of damage, be it some tearing or some permanent deformation and to that end, Metal would observe the event for a few seconds.
There was no damage, insignificant or otherwise.
Either Wendy's monowheel was a lot softer than the one on a larger Motobug or that was no ordinary doll. Regardless of where the truth lies, the robot would have to leave this anomaly unresolved, as Honey was standing near a door and shaking her head, motioning the robot to follow. Rest assured, it was still logged.
Wendy herself was none the wiser as the two passed her by, went inside the kitchen and then took a left.
The room on the left side of the kitchen was a large one with a small bed and numerous cupboards, wardrobes and mannequins, each adorned with some sort of attire in various stages of completion. "This is my bedroom and also my second workshop," the cat explained. "I make dresses as a hobby and occasionally do commissions. More of a passion than something that pays well, though, but it's fun."
Metal would nod and then approach one of the mannequins, trying to pry the clothes off of it.
"No, you don't!" she'd swat his hand away. "That one's for a customer. I have plenty of others in my reference collection."
The robot would run a definition search. A reference collection could be anything a craftsman deems necessary for inspiration or as an example of how to do various elements of their craft. Usually, this means firearms, but in Honey's case, it would be enough clothes to outfit an entire theater company.
"Any will do." Metal had no particular preference for either - not the finished examples nor the work-in-progress on the mannequins. He simply went for whichever was the nearest.
"Oh?" The cat would raise an eyebrow. "Well, if that's the case. I'll just have to pick one for you."
At first, she wanted to give him something as simple as Amy's old dress, spray paint him purple, clip a plastic flower to one of his ears and call it a day.
But then she recalled how he called her difficult to gather and any chance of a sensible choice went out the window. She now browsed with malicious intent, picking out whichever piece of attire she had that was the most revealing, arriving at something a certain type of lady would wear at a certain kind of establishment to get a reaction out of the patrons.
After spending the next ten minutes stuffing Metal into it, she expected some kind of pay off. Embarrassment, unease, complaining - anything for her to get a rise out of the robot.
She would get no reaction at all, not even when the robot saw himself in the mirror. Instead, he would just say, in his usual matter-of-factually polite tone "Was this attire damaged by some past event?" Scans would reveal no signs of micro-tears or scratch marks, a telltale sign of bladed weaponry or an explosion, respectively.
Defeated, the cat would sigh and just browse through a catalog of models wearing the various outfits she had in her collection, until she arrived at the one wearing Metal's and showed it to him.
"I see. In that case, I cannot wear this outfit." A flicker of hope ignited in the cat's eyes and her ears, sunken from disappointment, went up again.
"Why not?"
"I lack the necessary volume." Volume? Like auditory volume?
"Volume? Yeah, it's a pretty loud outfit. Fits in nicely with other people wearing something similar."
Metal would approach her. "No."
The robot would then get closer, almost uncomfortably close and grab the cat by the waist, then by the thighs. Like with Wendy, he was careful to not get his claws anywhere near her.
"Volume."
He meant the quantity of something in three-dimensional space. She put all the pieces together right as it was happening, but her body refused to listen and just let the robot finish his little demonstration.
Immediately, she turned away from the robot and broke from his grasp, her face turning beet red. She didn't want him to see her like this.
Metal would just stand there, with his hands still stretched out, his head tilting to the side. "I have no quarrel with you."
"I know!" she'd snap at him, still blushing. No one had ever touched her like that.
The robot, who wasn't sure how to respond, would just bend down and pick up the pieces of her now-broken flip phone, handing it to her.
"Thanks. It looks way worse than it is," she'd respond, a lot calmer now. She didn't even hear it drop onto the floor. "It's outer shell damage. Electronics, the stuff that matters, is still intact. Don't worry, you didn't-"
She wouldn't finish that sentence, her sight fixated on the left side of her phone and a button which was now lit up and flashing.
"Oh crap."
"Care to elaborate?" That combination of words wasn't in his list of definitions either.
Honey sighed, running a hand through her hair. "So, you know how the plan was to call Amy?"
"Yes. You intended to call her after you finished my repairs and gave me a new disguise."
"Well, good news is that she'll be here within five minutes," the cat would explain. "Bad news is that she'll be here because of the panic button that got pushed when I dropped my phone."
Metal would parse through his records for data on Amy's combat prowess. He would arrive at the conclusion that she was Sonic's inferior in terms of speed and was reliant on just her anger instead of any proper martial skill or training. Of fifty simulations, the robot would only lose in one.
"Then we shall face her head head on." He would proclaim oh so victoriously.
Then as he'd brandish his claws for the third time today, the cat would just facepalm. "No, we're not, you silly tin-brained bitch. Do you have any idea how dated your records are? And how much better she's gotten at turning badniks like you into scrap?"
Metal would check the date on his records. "My records of Amy Rose are one thousand one hundred and seven days old," then, after a short while, he'd convert that to years. "In other words, three years and twelve days."
After some more thinking, the robot would come to the realization that Honey wanted him to and put down the claws on his own, saying. "I see your point. My calculations were based on outdated data. What is our course of action?"
"So, here's what we're gonna do," the cat licked her thumb and then quickly browsed through her reference catalog, looking for something sensible for Metal to wear instead. "You're gonna wear this, pretend I hired you and that you work here."
The robot recognized the outfit. It bore a striking resemblance to the one worn by Eggman's robot maids on the Egg Carrier and some of his bases.
Now that his proverbial hide was on the line, Metal would help Honey with finding it and putting it on. The two of them had to forgo the headband, armlets and leggings and just finish up what they had when they heard the front door open, then close, followed by a series of footsteps that quickly turned into a sprint.
That used to be a gap that connected the living room to Honey's bedroom, but she had it patched up with drywall and plaster.
"I'm coming, Honey!"
Amy would bust through the wall hammer first, breaking it in just a single swing, the glow of her fiery pink eyes visible through the cloud of dust she kicked up.
When it settled, she'd find an old friend and an old enemy, dressed up as a maid and awkwardly holding a broom.