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lechevaliermalfet · 7 years ago

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Pistols at Dawn: A Look at Doom and Marathon

In the mid-1990s, the first-person shooter genre was born with Doom. It wasn't the first game of its type. Games like Wolfenstein 3D and Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold preceded it. Catacomb 3D came before either of those. And you can trace the lineage further back if you like. But it was Doom that saw the kind of runaway success most development studios live and die without ever attaining. That success spawned imitators. It was the imitators and their imitations – some of them using the very same engine – that made it a genre. It's how genres are born.

It was interesting to watch that happen in real time.

But that's the PC side of history.

If you were a Macintosh user, you were probably sick to death of your PC-owning friends crowing about Doom, all the more because it wasn't available for your system of choice. Doom would eventually make its way Mac-ward... after its own sequel was eventually released for the system first. Absurd as this sounds, it didn’t really matter too much. Story, and the importance of continuity between games, wasn't exactly a big concern in Doom.

But Mac users had little reason to despair. Because although Doom was and is rightly remembered as a classic, Mac users were privy to a game nearly as good – probably even equal, maybe even better, depending on who you talk to.

That game was Marathon.

More below the cut.

It's hard trying to justify comparisons between Doom and Marathon, because despite their similarities, they aren't really in the same league. It's hard to compare any game that became the jumping-off point for a whole genre to its contemporaries. But as much as I lionize Doom, and as much as everyone else does the same, it's perhaps helpful to think that this is done with the benefit of hindsight. Today, in 2018, we've had nearly two-and-a-half decades of Doom being available for almost every single thing that could conceivably run it.

Remembering Doom in its time, it would have been hard to predict that it would go on to achieve quite the level of adulation it's garnered over the years. It's not that Doom doesn't deserve it. It's more that any game attaining this level of success both in its time and in the long term is basically impossible to predict. Doom was much talked about, it was wildly popular, you heard rumors of whole IT departments losing days of productivity to it in network games, but... Well, it was just one game. Later two. It was perfectly valid to suppose, in the mid-90s, that some developer would surely supplant it with something even better. That's just the way things worked. It's just that Doom was well-made enough, well-balanced enough, that "something even better" didn't come around for a long time.

Still, the Macintosh is not where I would have expected to look for real competition for Doom.

The Mac wasn't actually a barren wasteland, game-wise. It's just easy to remember it that way, especially if, like me, you grew up playing PC games. Most of the games we think of as being influential in the realm of computer gaming tended not to come from that direction. Mac users made up a smaller portion of overall computer users at that point. PCs (still often referred to as "IBM/PC compatibles" at the time) being the larger market and thus a source of larger potential profits, that was where the majority of developers focused their attention. The hassles of porting a game to Mac, whether handled by the original developer or farmed out to somebody else, were frequently judged not to be worth the potential profit. At times, it was determined not to be profitable in the first place.

There were a few games – Myst comes immediately to mind – that bucked this trend, but most Mac games only became influential once they crossed over to PCs, like... Well, like Myst did. The Mac ecosystem just wasn't big enough for anything that happened in it exclusively to influence the wider world of PC gaming.

Actually, let's go with that ecosystem analogy for a minute.

Mac gaming in the early 90s was sort of like Australia. It's a tiny system that only accounted for a small percentage of the biosphere. It had its own unique creatures, similar to animals occupying equivalent ecological niches elsewhere in the world. But on closer inspection, these turned out to all be very different from their counterparts, often in fundamental ways. And then you had some creatures with no real equivalents elsewhere. There was a lot of parallel evolution.

Case in point: Marathon.

Being released a scant eleven days after Doom, you definitely can't accuse it of being one of the imitators. It didn't happen in a vacuum, though.

Its creators, Bungie, were a sort of oddball company whose founders openly admitted that they started off in the Macintosh market not because of any fervent belief in the superiority of the platform, but because it was far less competitive than the PC market at the time.

They started off with Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete, a multiplayer-only (more or less) first-person maze game, and followed it up with Pathways Into Darkness.

Pathways was meant to be a sequel to Minotaur at first, until it morphed into its own thing over the course of its development. In genre terms, it's most like a first-person shooter. Except there are heavy adventure game elements, nonlinearity, and multiple endings depending on decisions you make during the game, which are pretty foreign to the genre. It also features a level of resource scarcity that wouldn't be at all out of place in a survival horror game.

Incidentally, I would love to see a source port of Pathways Into Darkness. It is its own weird, awkward beast of a game, and I would dearly love to be able to play it, after having seen only maybe ten minutes of gameplay at a friend's house one time when I was about twelve.

They followed this up with the original Marathon.

Doom is largely iterative. It follows on from a tradition of older FPS games made by its developer, like Wolfenstein 3D and Catacombs 3D. Like those predecessors, it relegates the little apparent story to pre-game and post-game text, and features a very video game-y structure that relies on discrete levels and fast, reflex-oriented play. It adds complexity and sophistication to these elements as seen in previous games, introducing more enemies, more weapons, and more complex and varied environments, then layers all of this on top of an already proven, solid gameplay core.

Marathon, by contrast, simplified and distilled the elements of previous games by its developer. It opts to be more clearly an FPS (as we understand it in modern terms) than any of its predecessors, shedding Pathways' adventure elements and non-linearity while increasing the player's arsenal. However, it's still less straightforward than Doom's pure level-by-level structure. Marathon presents itself as a series of objectives given to the player character (the Security Officer) by various other characters to be achieved within the level. These can range from scouting out particular areas, to ferrying items around the level, to clearing out enemies, to rescuing friendly characters, and so on.

Marathon's story, unlike Doom's, is front and center. Where Doom leaves the player to satisfy themselves that they are slowly progressing toward some ultimate enemy with every stage, Marathon gives the player concrete goals each step of the way, framing each objective as either a way to gain advantage over the enemy, or to recover from setbacks inflicted by them. Doom's story is focused on the player character and their direct actions. For narrative purposes, anything happening beyond your ability to observe is irrelevant. Marathon instead opts to give the player a feeling that although they are the one making crucial things happen in the story, they are not directing the action themselves.

Which brings me to something interesting about Marathon's story.

The player character, the Security Officer, has surprisingly little agency within the narrative. At a guess, I'd say that's because it would be almost impossible to express his own thoughts and emotions with the way the plot is relayed. It's true that most games -- especially in the FPS genre -- tell you what to do. Rescue the princess. Save the world. Prevent nuclear catastrophe. Etc. Etc. But this is normally done in an abstract sense, by presenting you a clear goal and some means to achieve it. Even open-world games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim have an overarching goal that you're meant to be slowly working your way toward.

But while your actions in a given game are generally understood to be working toward the stated goal, the player is usually presented in the narrative as having a choice – or perhaps more accurately as having chosen prior to the beginning of the game proper – regarding whatever path the game puts them on. Mario has chosen to go save Princess Toadstool. Link has chosen to go find the pieces of the Triforce and save Princess Zelda. Sonic has chosen to confront Doctor Robotnik. Even the Doom Guy has chosen to fight the demons infesting the moons of Mars on his own rather than saying "fuck it" and running. The reasons for these choices may in some cases be left up to the player to sort out or to apply their imagination, but the point remains. These characters have chosen their destinies.

The Security Officer from the Marathon trilogy, by contrast, does not. Throughout the games, he is presented as following orders. "Install these three circuits in such-and-such locations". "Scout out this area". "Clear the hostile aliens out of this section of the ship". And so on, and so forth. Even in the backstory, found in the manual, the character is just doing his job, responding to a distress call before he fully realizes the sheer scale of the problem. The player, as the Security Officer, is always moving from one objective to the next on the orders of different AI constructs who happen to be in control of him – more or less – at a given time. The Security Officer is clearly a participant in events, but he lacks true agency.

In fairness, it must have been hard to figure out how to tell a compelling story within the context of a first-person shooter back in the early 90s, which is why so few people did it.

I'm not enough of a programmer to be able to explain it well (understatement; I'm not any kind of programmer), but the basic gist of it is that games like Doom weren't technically in 3D. The environments were rendered in such a way that they appeared in three dimensions from the player's perspective, but as earlier versions of source ports like ZDoom made clear, this was an illusion, one that was shattered the moment you enabled mouse aiming and observed the environments from any angle other than dead-ahead. The enemies, meanwhile, were 2D sprites, which was common in video games of any type for the day.

This was how Marathon was set up as well. It's how basically every first-person shooter worked until the release of Quake – and some after it.

The problem is that this doesn't lend itself very well to more cinematic storytelling. Sprites tended not to be very expressive given the lower resolutions of the day. At least, not sprites drawn to relatively realistic proportions like the ones in Doom and Marathon. So you couldn't really do cinematic storytelling sequences with them, and that left only a handful of other options for getting your story across.

You could do what I tend to think of as Dynamic Stills, a la Ninja Gaiden on the NES. At its best, it enables comic book-style storytelling, but that's about as far as it goes.

You can do FMV cutscenes, which at the time basically involved bad actors in cheap costumes filmed against green screens or really low-budget sets. CG was relatively uncommon (and likely prohibitivesly expensive) even in the mid-90s.

You can do mostly text, interspersed throughout your game.

You can just not have much story at all.

Doom opted for option four. John Carmack has been quoted as saying that story in video games is like story in porn. Everybody expects it to be there, but nobody really cares about it.

I disagree with this sentiment pretty vehemently, as it happens. There are some games that aren't well served by a large amount of plot, and Doom is definitely one of them. But to state that this is or should be true for the medium as a whole is frankly ridiculous.

There's something refreshing, almost freeing, about a game that has less a story than a premise. Doom starts off on Phobos, one of the moons of Mars, which has been invaded by demons from hell. They've gained access by virtue of human scientists' experimentation with teleportation technology gone horribly, horribly wrong. The second episode sees you teleported to Deimos, which as been entirely swallowed up by Hell, and which segues from the purely technological/military environments of Doom to more supernatural environs. Episode 3 has you assaulting Hell proper. Doom II's subtitle, Hell on Earth, tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the setting and premise of the game.

That's it. There are no characters to develop or worry about. It's just you as the lone surviving marine, your improbably large arsenal, and all the demons Hell can throw at you. Go nuts.

Bungie, meanwhile, took a different approach. I can't seem to find out which of their founders said it, but they have been on record as basically being diametrically opposed to Id Software in their attitude about story. "The purpose of games is to tell stories." I wish I knew who at Bungie said that.

Marathon is very much a story-oriented game. Of the aforementioned methods of storytelling, they opted for option three: text, and lots of it.

Marathon's story is complex and labyrinthine, especially as it continues through the sequels (Marathon 2: Durandal and Marathon Infinity), and is open to interpretation at various points. Much is left for the player to piece together themselves. Aside from the player character, the story mainly centers on the actions of three AI constructs: Leela (briefly), Durandal, and Tycho. Their actions, in the face of an invasion by a race of alien slavers called the Pfohr, drive the story.

Their words and actions are relayed to the player by way of text at terminals scattered throughout the game's environments. Some of these take the form of orders and objectives given by the AI to the player character, the Security Officer. Some of these are more musings or rants (two out of the three AIs you work for over the course of the Marathon trilogy are not exactly all there), which serve to flesh out events happening beyond the player's observations, and help build the world. Some of these are seemingly random bits of background information, presented as if they were being accessed by someone else (often an enemy) before they were distracted by something – usually you, shooting everything in sight.

Design-wise, there are some interesting differences.

Doom is old-school from a time when that was the only school, with levels that strike a nice balance between video game-y and still giving at least a vague sense that they were built to be something other than deathtrap mazes. But what makes them old-school, at this point, is the fact that they're levels, with discrete starting and ending points, where your goal is to move from the former to the latter and hit the button or throw the lever to end it and begin the next one.

There's no plot to lose the thread of, no series of objectives for you to lose track of if you put the game down for a week, or a month, or longer still. It's extremely pick-up-and-play, equally well suited to killing twenty minutes or a whole afternoon, as you like.

The appeal (aesthetics aside) of Doom is also at least in part its accessibility. It has a decently high skill ceiling (which is to say, the level of skill required to play at an expert level), but a surprisingly low skill floor (the level of skill required to play with basic proficiency), which has lent it a certain evergreen quality. And Id Software has been keen to capitalize on this. Doom is one of a small number of PC games (Diablo II is the only other one I can think of off the top of my head; what is it with games that have you fighting demons from Hell?) that have been commercially viable and available basically from the day they were released. In addition to DOS on PCs, Doom was rejiggered for Windows 95, and also (eventually) saw release for Mac. Also, it's been sold for multiple consoles: the Super NES, the Sega 32X (regrettably), the Atari Jaguar (also regrettably), the PlayStation, the N64, the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3, and the Xbox One (the 360 version again, via backward compatibility). And source ports have kept the PC version alive and kicking, adding now-standard features like mouse aiming, particle effects, and support for widescreen displays.

The result is a game that, if you don't mind pixelated graphics, is as ferociously playable today as it was twenty-four years ago (as of this writing), and has enjoyed a kind of longevity usually not seen outside the realm of first-party Nintendo classics.

Marathon by contrast is somewhat less inviting.

From a technical standpoint, Marathon is more or less the equal of Doom. The environments throughout the series are rendered at a somewhat higher resolution, but the enemies are less well animated. Marathon also introduced the idea of mouse aiming to the FPS genre, and allowed the player to use that to look (and aim) vertically, which hadn't been done before either. Even Doom, though it also introduced more vertical gameplay, locked the player's movement to the strictly horizontal; vertical aiming was accounted for automatically, although source ports have modernized this. Marathon leans into its verticality a little more as a result, and level layouts are more complex, bordering on the impossiblely convoluted without the aid of your automap.

While I wouldn't go so far as to say that Marathon would classify as a survival horror game, there are some elements of that genre in it. This is almost certainly unintentional, and I'm identifying them as such retroactively (the genre hadn’t really arrived yet). Still, they exist. Ammunition is more scarce than in Doom, forcing the player to lean on the lower end of their arsenal far later into the game than Doom does. Some weapons also feature alternate fire modes, which was a genre first.

Health packs are nonexistent; instead, the player can recharge their health at terminals designed for this purpose, usually placed very sparingly. Saving is also handled at dedicated terminals – a decision better befitting a console game, and somewhat curious here. In addition to health, there is also an air gauge, which depletes gradually whenever the player is in vacuum or underwater, and which can be difficult to find refills for.

Marathon also marks the early appearance of weapon magazines in the first-person shooter genre. Doom held to the old design established by Wolfenstein and older games that the player fires their weapons straight from the ammo reserves. If you have a hundred shotgun rounds, then you can fire a hundred times, no reload necessary. The reloading mechanic as we would most readily recognize it seems to have been added for the genre with Half-Life, for reasons of greater realism and introducing tension to the game.

Marathon's version of this, as you might expect for a pioneering effort, is pretty rough. There is no way to manually reload your weapons when you want. Rather, the game will automatically cycle through the reload animation once you empty the magazine. It does helpfully display how many rounds remain in the magazine at all times so you know how many you have left before a reload, and can plan accordingly. But it still exerts the familiar reload pressure, just in a different way. Rather than asking yourself whether you have the spare seconds for a reload to top off your magazine, now you have to ask yourself whether it's wiser to just fire the last few rounds of the magazine to trigger the reload now, when it's safe, so that you have a full magazine ready to go for the next encounter. Marathon's tendency to leave you feeling a little more ammo-starved than Doom makes this decision an agonizing one at times.

Id's game is pretty sparing with the way it doles out rockets and energy cells for the most high-powered weapons, true. But the real workhorse weapons, the shotgun and the chaingun, have ammo lying around in plenty. Past a certain early point in any given episode of Doom or Doom II, as long as you diligently grab whatever ammo you come across and your aim is even halfway decent, you never have to worry about running out. Marathon, by contrast, sees you relying on your pistol for a good long while. Compared to other weapons you find, it has a good balance of accuracy and availability of ammunition.

The overall pacing and difficulty of both games is also somewhat different.

Both games are hard, but in different ways. Doom has enemies scattered throughout a level in ones and twos, but most of the major encounters feature combinations and larger numbers. But the plentiful ammo drops and health packs mean the danger of these encounters tends to be relatively isolated, and encourages fast maneuvering and some risk-taking. If you can make it through a given encounter, you usually have the opportunity to heal up and re-arm before the next one. Doom is centered around its action. It gives you the shotgun – which you’ll be using for most of the game, thanks to its power – as early as the first level if you’re on the lookout for secrets, and by the second level, you really can’t miss it.

Marathon, by contrast, paces itself (and the player) differently. Ammo gets doled out more sparingly, and health recharge stations are likewise placed few and far between (rarely more than one or two in a stage, at least so far as I’ve played, and small enough that they can be easily overlooked). Save points are likewise not always conveniently placed, and the fact that the game has save points means that you can’t savescum, and dying can result in a fair amount of lost progress. The result is that, unless you’re closer to the skill ceiling, you tend to play more carefully and conservatively. You learn to kite enemies, stringing them along to let you take on as few at a time as possible.

The tactics I developed to play games like Doom and later Quake didn’t always serve me very well when I first started playing Marathon. The main danger in Bungie’s game is the death of a thousand cuts. Where Doom attempts in most cases to destroy you in a single fell swoop, Marathon seeks to wear you down bit by bit until you have nothing left, and you’re jumping at shadows, knowing that the next blow to fall may be your last. It encourages more long-term thinking. Similar to a survival horror game, every clip spent and every hit taken has meaning, and can alter your approach to the scenario you find yoruself in.

In short, if Doom is paced like a series of sprints, Marathon is, well... a marathon.

Another interesting difference is how both games deal with their inherent violence.

As games which feature future military men mowing down whole legions of enemies by the time the credits roll, violence is a matter of course. It becomes casual. But both games confront it in different ways.

Doom was one of the games that helped stir up a moral panic in the U.S. in the early to mid-90s (alongside Mortal Kombat, most notably). While I don't agree with it, it was hardly surprising. Doom gloried in its violence. Every enemy went down covered in blood (some of them came at you that way), some of them straight-up liquefying if caught too near an explosion. This is to say nothing of all the hearts on altars or dead marines littering the landscape to provide the proper ambiance.

The idea was simple: You were surrounded by violent monsters, and the only way to overcome them was to become equally violent. The game's fast pace and adrenaline-rushing gameplay only served to emphasize this. Doom isn't a stupid game by any means – it requires a certain amount of cleverness and a good sense of direction in addition to good reflexes and decent aim to safely navigate its levels -- but the primary direction it makes you think in is how? How do I get through this barrier, how do I best navigate through these dark halls, how do I approach this room full of enemies that haven't seen me yet?

Marathon asks those questions as well, because any decent game is constantly asking you those questions, because they are all variations on the same basic question any game of any kind (video games, board games, whatever) is asking you: How do you overcome the challenges the game throws at you using the tools and abilities the game gives you?

The difference (well, the narrative difference, distinct from all the rest) is that Marathon also talks about the violence seemingly inherent in human nature as one of a variety of things in its narrative.

To be fair, Marathon brings it up pretty briefly in its terminal text. But one of the terminals highlights Durandal's musings on the Security Officer, and humankind in general.

Organic beings are constantly fighting for life. Every breath, every motion brings you one instant closer to your death. With that kind of heritage and destiny, how can you deny yourself? How can you expect yourself to give up violence?

Indeed, it may be seen as not just useful, but a necessary and essential component of humanity. Certainly it's vital to the Security Officer's survival and ultimate victory in the story of the games.

And yet, on the whole, Marathon is a less violent game. Or at least, it glories in its violence less. Enemies still go down in a welter of their own blood, because that happens when you shoot a living creature full of bullet holes. But it's less gory on the whole – bloody like a military movie, bloody as a matter of fact, in contrast to Doom's cartoonishly overwrought slasher-flick excess.

And yet it's Marathon that feels compelled to grapple with its violence, to ask what motivates it, not just in the moment, but wherever it appears in the nature and history of humankind.

On the whole, I think I come down on the side of Marathon, personally. Its themes, its aesthetic, and its characters are more to my liking. True, part of this is simply because Marathon has characters. Doom has the player character and a horde of enemies. Even the final boss of each installment has no narrative impact to speak of. They simply appear in order to be shot down. They're presented as the forces behind the demonic invasion, but aside from being bigger and stronger than all the other demons you face, there's no real sense of presence, narratively. And that's fine. But on the balance, I tend to prefer story in my games, and Marathon delivers, even as it's sometimes a bit janky, even as I get the feeling that Bungie's reach exceeded their grasp with it.

I can recognize Doom as the game that's more accessible, and probably put together a little better, and of course infinitely more recognizable. Id still sells it, and generally speaking, it's worth the five whole dollars (ten if you want Doom II as well) it'll cost you on PSN, or Xbox Live, or Steam.

Bungie, meanwhile, gave the Marathon trilogy away for free in the early 2000s. It's how I finally managed to play it, despite never owning a Mac. There are source ports that allow it to be played on PCs (or Linux, even). About the only new development in the franchise was an HD remaster of Marathon 2: Durandal for the Xbox 360. In the same vein as the remasters for Halo or Halo 2, this version changes nothing about the original except to update the graphics and adapt the control scheme for a 360 controller.

I'd love to see a remake of Marathon with modern technology, even though I know it's extraordinarily unlikely to happen. Bungie's occupied with Destiny for the foreseeable future. The most we've gotten in ages is a few Easter eggs. 343 Guilty Spark in the original Halo featured Durandal's symbol prominently on his mechanical eye, which fueled speculation for a little while that perhaps Halo took place in the same continuity. There's another Easter egg in Destiny 2 that suggests two of its weapons, the MIDA Multi-tool and the MIDA Mini-tool, fell out of an alternate universe where Marathon's events occurred instead of Destiny's. But that's been it.

The tragedy of Marathon is that it wasn't in a position for its innovations to be felt industry-wide.

Doom had the better overall playability and greater accessibility. If you were to ask where a lot of FPS genre innovations came from, the average gamer would probably not point to Marathon as the progenitor of those things. Quake would probably get credit for adding mouse aiming (even though it wasn't a standard menu option, and had to be enabled with a console command), or else maybe Duke Nukem 3D. Unreal would most likely get credited as the genesis of alternate firing modes, while Half-Life is probably the one most people remember for introducing the notion of reloading weapons. I'm not totally sure which other FPS would get the nod for mainstreaming the greater presence of story in the genre – probably Half-Life again.

But since it's free, I would strongly recommend giving the Marathon trilogy a spin. It's a little rough around the edges even judged by the standards of its time, but still eminently playable, with a strong story told well. And if it seems at times like the FPS That History Forgot, well, that's because History was mostly looking the other way at the time. It's part of the appeal for me, too. It feels at times like a "lost" game.

Let that add to its mystique.

#doom #marathon #retro games #retro gaming #first person shooter #fps #id softward #bungie

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alphawave-writes · 5 years ago

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Experimental Design chapter 6: ‘Bare bones’

Synopsis: Stone gets patched up by Robotnik. The two of them get surprisingly intimate. A new foe rears its face.

Read it here on or AO3. You guys can also find me on twitter @alphawave13.

If you like my writing, please do support me by buying me a ko-fi, becoming a patron on Patreon or requesting a fanfic commission from me. Especially with COVID, any little bit helps me out a lot.

Stone woke up with a parched throat, a blinding headache, and an unnatural cold surrounding his body. His surroundings were dark, with a single light source above his head. He sat up slowly and opened his eyes, taking in his surroundings. He recognised the sterile white room, with its tiled white walls and floors. He glanced down, surprised to find he was wearing only his boxers and his socks. There was a large bandage wrapped around his abdomen that wasn't there before. Underneath him was a soft medical-grade bed.

Stone put a hand up to his head as the memories flooded back like a tidal wave. He remembered the rifle in his hands, the blaring alarms, the shouting voices and the deafening white noise of something aimed for his back. He remembered the Commander saying something, just before Stone limped over to Robotnik's mobile lab. The last thing he recalled was Robotnik's carefully blank face breaking into surprise and worry.

He heard the sound of heavy footsteps on the floor as Dr. Robotnik came into view, snapping on a pair of latex gloves.

Stone knew he missed the doctor, but he had no idea how relieved he would feel when he finally saw him again. It was less than a week since he last saw Robotnik, but considering everything that's happened to him, it felt longer than that. That pompous moustache, that sharp glare, that weird greying stubble he could not get rid off no matter how cleanly he shaved, Stone missed it all.

“Doctor,” he smiled.

In an instant Robotnik was by his side, his expression focused yet vacant.

“D-doctor?”

Robotnik ignored Stone, leaning forward and harshly tugging at the bandages on Stone's abdomen. Stone gritted his teeth, waiting for the shocking pain, but there was nothing, not even a bit of tenderness. As he glanced down, his abdomen had completely healed over, fresh pink tissue healing where once there was just blood and muscle.

Robotnik folded the bandage and put it on a tray on the lone table in the room. Stone was still staring at his abdomen in wonder. He knew he went out cold, but there was no way he was unconscious for that long. Not for the injury he sustained. “What did you do to me, doctor?”

“Obviously I took that insipid spray-on skin product for burns and added a few nanoparticles of my design. Induces hemostasis, increases the speed of tissue regeneration, and well-tolerated by the body. Haven't had a chance to test this bad boy out, but I'm glad I get a human guinea pig to test it on.”

“That's amazing, sir.” Stone didn't understand a single word Robotnik said, but it sounded impressive. Even if it wasn't actually all that amazing, at least Robotnik was here and safe and well. God, how much he missed his voice.

“I know I am,” Robotnik smirked. “And so are you.”

Stone's breath hitched. Was this a dream? Was all this a very realistic dream he was having? Was he still dying in that carrier ship?

“Yes, you are amazing…ly idiotic.”

Stone bit back a frown of disappointment. Nope, this was reality, alright.

“Instead of getting yourself to the medical bay, you choose to bleed out in my lab?” Robotnik asked incredulously.

Stone ducked his head. Why did he go to Robotnik anyway? It wasn't like the doctor's lab was closer than the med bay, and he certainly didn't know the doctor had this spray-skin-thing, whatever it was. And yet as he stumbled into the complex after being dropped off by the airship, delirious with blood loss, he decided to go straight for Robotnik. The man who never cared about humans. The mad scientist who dreamed of a world of machines. The psychopath that would shed allies off his skin like a snake if they proved to be no longer useful.

And yet that very man had fixed him up and bandaged him without a second thought. That man saved his life.

Stone swallowed, which was a little bit uncomfortable to do with his dry throat. He had to be careful about his choice of words. “Why did you tie me up? Where are my clothes?”

But Robotnik did not answer. Instead he asked in a low tone, “Are you thirsty?”

The doctor had mastered the art of the evil glare, perfectly unravelling someone down to their deepest insecurities, or at the very least make them extremely uncomfortable. The fact that Robotnik had utilised that move on Stone should make him scared, but all Stone could concentrate on was the proximity of their faces, the adam's apple just peeking over Robotnik's turtleneck, and those dark, impenetrable eyes. He shifted uncomfortably. Being this close to Robotnik in only his underwear was dangerous, to say the least.

Robotnik leaned closer, his hot breath hitting the shell of Stone's ear. “Answer me,” he quietly ordered.

Stone inhaled sharply. He felt dizzy with something. Not dehydration or fear. It was like there was something in the air that they breathed out from both their lungs, slowly eroding the invisible wall they've erected between their bodies.

“I am,” Stone whispered.

“You are, what?”

“Thirsty.” It took all Stone's effort to not stutter. “I am thirsty for some water, sir.”

Robotnik patted him condescendingly on the head, like a cartoon character would pet a dog. “Good to see your hearing is still intact.”

Stone tried his hardest not to smile at this quasi-compliment. As always whenever he was in the doctor's presence, that was impossible.

As Robotnik strutted away, the tension seemed to vanish if only temporarily, leaving Stone alone with his thoughts for just a moment, and those thoughts were all on Robotnik. This was probably one of the few times Stone had ever seen Robotnik without his coat, giving him a rare glimpse at Robotnik's backside proper. His posture was not military straight, but it wasn't slouched either. With every little movement, Robotnik's back muscles could be seen, flexing and stretching to an invisible rhythm that only Robotnik heard. Stone's eyes drifted downward to Robotnik's hips. With just that, Stone felt years and years of training wash away as a more primordial entity took control over his mind.

Stone thought a lot of things about Robotnik, but didn't think Robotnik's ass would look that good.

OK, so it wasn't the most spectacular ass he'd ever seen. That luxury would still go to Stone's second boyfriend Clark, who got butt augmentation surgery done as a 20th birthday present to himself. Still, Robotnik had a good ass, and that was not something Stone could say lightly, considering his own extensive background in the military and then with G.U.N. Now that Stone could get a proper look at him, Robotnik didn't have a bad body either. A little bit on the lanky side, but he made up for it by being deceptively strong. A fitting metaphor for his brilliant mind. And that was nothing compared to his high cheekbones and his devilish grin and the way he could purr out his commands with ease.

It never occurred to Stone to think about his boss this way, but Robotnik was strangely attractive. Not in a conventional manner, but then Stone never cared about conventional. Conventional was boring. Robotnik was exciting.

As if on cue, Robotnik strode back with a pitcher of water. With his free hand he tilted Stone’s jaw back. “Open your mouth and drink.”

Stone's brows furrowed. “I can drink it myse—glggh!”

With little ceremony, Robotnik tilted the pitcher into Stone's lips, splashing a little bit as he tipped it to the correct angle. Stone swallowed and gulped, letting the cool water caress his throat, drinking as much as his pitiful throat could handle until Robotnik mercifully tilted the pitcher upright and dropped it on the tray beside him.

Stone wiped his lips, breathing heavily. “I-I could’ve drunk it myself. I’m not that weak.”

Robotnik’s lips thinned. “But you are feeling weak?”

“I don’t, actually.” Which was strange in and of itself, but Stone had a feeling Robotnik had something to do with that as well. At least he felt like a flesh and bone human, and not like a cyborg. He didn't want a Inspector Gadget scenario to occur with him. Stone still thought it was absolutely ridiculous that the first Inspector Gadget movie was the doctor's first introduction to Matthew Broderick.

Of the numerous crimes Robotnik has committed, not seeing Ferris Bueller's Day Off in this day and age was probably in the top 3 of Stone's list. One day he'll rectify it.

Robotnik gingerly placed his hand on Stone’s healing wound, watching him for any sign of discomfort or pain. “Who did this to you?” He asked lowly.

Stone turned his head away. “It doesn’t matter.” He couldn't disclose any more classified information than he did.

“It very much matters,” Robotnik sneered. “This isn’t just any weapon. This is an infrared pulsed electrical projectile you got blasted with. At the sheer electromagnetic intensity you got hit with, it would have disintegrated your flesh faster than you can sing the Thai alphabet.”

Stone scrunched his brows as he tried to remember whether the Thai language even had a proper alphabet to sing.

“This kind of weaponry wouldn’t be used by anyone,” Robotnik continued. “I’ve developed one version of it for my own personal use. But the other versions? Only a few have access to it. And they would know what kind of weapon they were utilizing if they dared to hit you with it.”

“I got lucky,” Stone said, even though that was only partially the truth. He had protective equipment of course, but he chucked it all away before he got to Robotnik. “A lot of us weren't as lucky. It got messy.” He bit back a frown. Very messy, he didn't add.

Robotnik pressed his hand on Stone’s chest, the dull edge of his fingernails just barely felt beneath his latex gloves as he tugged at Stone's chest hair. “You said you were to go against an island nation. Tell me exactly what island nation it was.”

Stone suppressed a warm shiver as he stared back into Robotnik’s eyes. “You know where I went.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“Soleanna,” he admitted. “I was in Soleanna.”

“As I thought.” Robotnik trailed his hand down, pressing his fingers into Stone's toned stomach. His touch was light, intoxicating, but brief as it travelled up, past his sternum and neck to cup his jaw. His touch was gentle, like he was handling a piece of fragile machinery, even though they both knew Stone was far from fragile. It made Stone feel like Robotnik might have cared about him. That perhaps he mattered to the doctor. That perhaps Robotnik might touch him more intimately like this under different circumstances, alone and shut away from the world, breathing in and out their secrets and never revealing them to another living soul.

Robotnik's fingers shifted, and warm heat shot from Robotnik's touch into Stone's blood vessels, heating him up from the inside. Stone had no idea if the heat was intentionally evoked by Robotnik or not.

“A Soleanna guard shot you.” Before Stone could stutter out a how did you know, Robotnik continued, “They're one of the few who even have PEP weaponry. The only others are G.U.N, and the only reason they even have it is because of my work, back when I worked in their R&D department.” Robotnik squeezed Stone's jaw lightly. “G.U.N wouldn't shoot you, would they?”

“O-of course not,” Stone stuttered. He suddenly thought of Robotnik with a gun, pushing it into his temple or his mouth, forcing him to suck on it like it was a cock. Stone shifted on the bed, trying his hardest not to imagine what Robotnik's cock might taste like. Would Robotnik look as dazed as when Stone sucked on his gloved fingers that one night, or would he have a different reaction? Would his cheeks heat up like Stone's did?

“And how many of these 'terrorists' did you dispatch? How many Soleanna soldiers did you kill?” Robotnik asked.

“I can't remember.” Stone was too distracted imagining himself sucking on the shell of those pink ears. They looked like they'd be delicious. “T-too many,” he guessed.

“Did you hesitate?”

He shook his head, frowning. “No.”

Robotnik suddenly smiled. “You don't think about the families you've destroyed? The destruction you've caused?”

Stone stared into Robotnik's eyes but only saw his own reflection within those dark irises. He felt like he was hypnotised, his body being pulled apart molecule by molecule. Like Robotnik could bridge the gap between their bodies and have his wicked way with Stone, biting and kissing at Stone’s bare skin with that ferocious little grin. He could not answer. He didn't need to. Robotnik already knew.

“You didn’t,” Robotnik uttered. “Not a single thought on the lives you took. All you cared about was your mission. Your single-minded brain was focused on one and one thing only.”

He wasn't wrong. Stone was focused on one thing only, and that one thing was Robotnik’s pink lips. They were chapped slightly. The doctor hadn’t been putting on his lip balm lately. Actually, it looked like he hadn’t shaved properly since Stone left on the mission, his stubble more pronounced, growing in patches over his face. Would it be soft or prickly against his skin? Would those chapped lips feel pleasant against his own? Would it help if Stone licked them?

Robotnik tilted Stone’s head up, his smile devilish.

“You do whatever you’re told, don’t you, Tariq?”

Stone sharply inhaled. Robotnik knew it was his real name. It sounded so sweet from his lips. Would his real surname sound just as sweet from Robotnik’s throat?

“I think I figured you out. You’re not a petty human.” Robotnik leaned forward until his lips were a breath away. “You’re a machine. You’re my machine,” he whispered.

Stone suppressed the loveliest shiver to roll down his spine. Robotnik had always said from the beginning that he only cared about his machines, that they were the only things that did their tasks perfectly. To be Robotnik’s machine, prized beyond belief, to be used at his disposal, it shouldn’t sound so tempting. But he wanted it. He wanted Robotnik to use him. He wanted Robotnik to treat him and care for him and care about him. He wanted that insufferable smile, that devilish pride and irresistible intelligence. Most of all he wanted Robotnik to look at him like he looked at his prized robots, with something akin to love and affection.

Stone felt his heart skip at the mental image of Robotnik beaming down on him. No. No no no. He wasn’t. He couldn’t. He shouldn’t be in love with Robotnik. He could not be in love with his boss.

“Tariq,” Robotnik purred. “I only trust machines in my employ. So tell me, are you man or are you machine?”

To his own surprise, he did not hesitate. “I’m your machine, sir,” he breathed.

Robotnik never smiled so triumphantly before. “Good boy, Tariq.”

Robotnik dramatically whirled around, rolling the latex gloves expertly off his arms and flinging them into the nearest bin with a swish. Stone shivered, suddenly aware of the cold air conditioner blasting against his skin and the warmth filling his veins at the compliment Robotnik gave him. He could breathe again, but he had gotten far too used to that choking atmosphere, of Robotnik so close to be tasted, a breath away from imminent destruction.

He had always admired the doctor. He made no secret of it. But today it felt like something had changed dramatically. Like everything around Robotnik was more saturated in colour. He couldn’t look away from Robotnik and the tiny sliver of his wrist and the smallest roll of his shoulders, the way his dark eyes drifted back onto Stone, lingering for a second too long on Stone’s form.

This wasn’t admiration, he slowly realized, and this wasn’t some weird kink he had. This was warmer, softer, more intimate. And it was all because of Robotnik, that damned Robotnik, that amazing and intelligent and childish and petty and handsome Robotnik.

There was no denying it. This was love.

He loved Dr Ivo Julian Robotnik.

He loved his boss.

Shit.

Stone suddenly stood up, stumbling in wobbly legs. He had to get out. This could not be true. Of all the people he had to fall in love with, it could not be his boss. Not now, not when he still had so much to prove, to the world and to himself. Not when he was still so far beneath the doctor's level.

“Where are you going?” Robotnik snapped.

Stone gestured weakly at the door. “Out. Home. Somewhere.”

“Oh no you don’t.” Robotnik crossed the room blindingly quick and forced Stone to sit back down on the bed with his strong, ungloved hand. “I haven’t finished with you. I still need answers.”

Stone bit back the urge to moan from the rough way Robotnik pushed him back, instead redirecting his attention to the frustration building in his chest. It worked a bit too well. “Is that all you care about? Answers? Results? Nothing about how or why I got shot? About what I did on this mission?”

“Even if I asked, you’re going to give me that ‘classified’ spiel. And you’ve made it clear you won’t tell me anything about who you really are.” Robotnik sounded a little hurt from that last statement.

“Not by choice, I…do you know what happened? I'll tell you. I was supposed to investigate Soleanna with my old squadron. I was supposed to go in and wreck this complex of factories and leave no witnesses. But it was all an ambush. They were waiting for us, these Soleanna assassins. If I didn't act on my feet, we could have all died. I wouldn't even be here to tell you this.”

“I told you not to go with G.U.N,” Robotnik shook his head, scoffing. “Of course they didn't consider such an obvious possibility. I would have at least five different backup plans for every individual and every organisation that could potentially betray me.”

“Do you know what would have happened if I said no to G.U.N? They would have ransacked your laboratories, all of them around the globe. They would have taken everything away from you, just like they took everything from your grandfather before you. They would have ruined you.”

Robotnik’s lips twisted, his eyes not meeting Stone’s. “You wouldn’t have lost anything. You'll just find another hapless scientist to serve beverages to. Why do something you clearly didn’t want to do for no benefit at all?”

“But then I wouldn’t be working with you, doctor. I did it so I could continue to work with you.” Stone took a shuddery breath, worked up the nerves and said, quieter, “I do care about you.” A lot more than I should, he didn’t add.

The mask on Robotnik's face cracked, his face going through a variety of different expressions, unable to find one that was suitable for the swell of new, confusing emotions. He eventually settled on something remarkably hurt and vulnerable. It was heartbreakingly beautiful.

“You shouldn’t care about me,” he croaked. “No one does.”

“Well, unfortunately for the both of us, I do.” Stone reached up and put a hand on Robotnik's shoulder. “And if I may be bold, sir, I think you care a little bit about me too.”

Robotnik flinched, but did not push Stone's hand away. He still wasn't looking at Stone. “And what gives you that idea?”

“You didn’t let me die,” Stone said. “You treated me yourself.” He pressed his fingers tightly, feeling the tight muscles. “You didn’t kill me.”

“I could,” Robotnik said lowly, still not pulling away.

“Could you?”

Robotnik’s lips fell. “I could make your life a living misery.”

“Could you?” Stone pulled slightly, bringing their bodies closer.

Robotnik was now staring at Stone with those wild, desperate eyes. “I-I could…I could…” He fell silent, the cold realization washing over his face.

It was the first time Stone had seen Robotnik look so defenseless, like a child lost in the adult world, making new toys to make their tragic, horrible world brighter and better. He stared at Stone’s lips, words rising and falling with his lungs, never leaving his throat. If Stone were a crueler man, if he was what the doctor assumed he was, he might just leave Robotnik to stew and think about why he could be so weak in this moment. But Stone wasn’t that cruel. Far from it.

Stone slid his hands up over Robotnik’s cheeks. “You care,” Stone said simply.

“Care,” Robotnik said, as if he’d never said the word before. He might not have. His face suddenly scrunched up, his last defense mechanism activating. “I don’t…I-I don’t care. Not about you, not about anyone, not even about humanity. All I care about is this," he pointed at Stone's injured side, "that injury, and the weapon that caused that injury. That technology is mine. I know my own work better than anyone. No one takes what is rightfully mine.”

Stone frowned. “Is that really all you care about?”

“Absolutely,” Robotnik lied.

Stone glanced around the room, crossing his arms around his body. He could argue more, but he was tired all of a sudden, and he gave up the idea of pushing it further. It was wishful thinking on his part, that Robotnik might have cared about him. Of course Robotnik didn't. Of course not. “You wouldn’t know where my clothes are, do you?” Stone asked.

Robotnik frowned. “Your clothes are in tatters.”

“I kinda need to wear something. I need to go home. It’s late.” He assumed it was late anyway. He had no idea what day it was, or what time it was.

Robotnik stared at Stone for several seconds before going to the end of the room. When he returned, he quickly shoved a black coat into Stone’s arms. Robotniks’s coat, Stone quickly realized. The red trimming and the lush material and the faint scent of fizzing copper—similar yet distinct to the scent of blood—was evidence that it was the doctor’s.

“I will not allow you to ruin my reputation by going out in your rags or your underwear,” Robotnik explained quickly. “I expect my coat to be dry cleaned by the time you arrive tomorrow morning. Any speck of dirt or dust, any later than first thin in the morning, and there will be consequences.”

“So does that mean I’m…I’m still under your employ?”

Robotnik turned his head away suddenly. “For now,” he uttered.

Robotnik still kept his head turned away, and it was only then that Stone understood that Robotnik was waiting for him to get dressed. He slipped himself into the slightly-too big coat, one hand gripping the front to keep it closed. It still exposed his calves, and he might get some funny looks if he lingered around the base like this, but it was more than enough for a quick trip back to his car. And the warmth of this coat. It almost felt like the doctor was hugging him, wrapping his arms around his body and trapping him in a lovely cocoon.

A quiet, relieved chuckle bubbled out of Stone, quickly turning into polite laughter. Robotnik's face scrunched up in confusion. “What are you laughing at?”

“N-nothing, I just…I guess I was right about something today,” he smiled.

“About what?” Robotnik narrowed his eyes.

“That you do care about me.”

Robotnik settled his eyes on Stone, his gaze dragging further down, down, away from Stone's face to his exposed legs. The smallest smile crept up his face. “Go home already. I don't need you to slack around tomorrow when you inevitably don't get enough sleep.”

“Rich coming from you,” Stone mumbled to himself, too quiet for the doctor to hear. He stood up and slid his feet back into his tattered shoes, clutched the dark coat tightly around his body, and headed for the exit. His hand went for the door scanner and paused. He turned around, daring a glimpse at Robotnik, who pretended to busy himself with his nails.

Stone smiled to himself. He shouldn't do this, shouldn't say this, but he felt he owed Robotnik something for saving his life. And he knew exactly what he could give in return.

“Tariq Hajjar,” Stone said, barely louder than a whisper.

Robotnik whirled his head in astonishment.

“My real name. It's Tariq Hajjar,” he continued. “Do with it whatever you like.”

Robotnik tilted his head, trying his hardest not to smile. He failed this time. “You do realise what I can do with just that information alone. I could find all your dirty secrets with just the tap of a button.”

“I know,” Stone smiled. “Good night, doctor.”

As he opened the door and went out into the brisk, cold air, he thought he heard Robotnik whisper, “Good night, Stone”. He shook his head, a giddy grin spreading across his face. It was probably wishful thinking, but he was getting warm just thinking about the way Robotnik's stare swept over his body, as if admiring him. It might’ve been the first time Robotnik stared at anything with the tiniest bit of sexual interest. It probably didn’t matter in the end. The chances of the two of them getting romantic were slim to none. Workplace romances were frowned upon, and he certainly did not need to recreate the plot of ‘The Bodyguard’. The doctor would probably ban all relationships if he could. It was impossible.

Still, imagining Robotnik smiling down warmly for once, his gloved hands gently caressing Stone’s face to lean in for a tender kiss, certainly put a smile to his face. And who knows? Maybe that day might come. Maybe they might kiss and be one with each other, and it will be just as right and wonderful as Stone imagined it would be.

After all, Stone knew the doctor cared. Maybe he just needed a bit more of a push.

—

Stone did not expect the explosion. No one did. Not his squadron, not the Soleanna soldiers he was fighting, and certainly not G.U.N. It exploded in the distance, raining fire and metal from above, plumes of black smoke choking the sky.

The tiniest distraction was all he needed to get the advantage, shooting and killing two and incapacitating a third. He tapped at his ear.

“Guys? What happened?” A bit informal, but then any formality went out the window after this fight. It should not have happened, no one should know he and his team was here. This was a surveillance mission, to spy on an illegal weapons factory. Soleanna soldiers should not be protecting such a factory, and he should not have to resort to deadly force.

“One of the neighboring factories caught fire. A detonated charge of some kind. You have to evacuate now,” the intel officer said.

Stone frowned. “Team Rock? Status report.”

All he headed was static as the intel officers tried to patch him in.

Stone gulped. “Were they…?”

More silence. An admission of guilt. The team had split up to check the other factories in the compound, before they got ambushed. If they didn’t die in the blaze, they must have perished in the gun fight.

Stone suppressed a shiver, recalled his training, and centered his emotions. The time for mourning was later. The Commander was expecting him to do a good job, and Stone will do it. If not for him, then for himself. If not for himself, then for Doctor Robotnik. He wanted to go back. He missed him so badly.

Adrenaline pumped through his body as he plowed through, grabbing a gun from one of the dead bodies. With military efficiency, he wiped out any who stood in his way and got outside. The airship was flying low, waiting for his signal to drop down and pick him up. Big and menacing and eerily quiet, it was yet another vehicle inspired by the doctor’s early work for G.U.N, and the reason Stone agreed to interview to work for Robotnik in the first place.

He ran to the coast next to the factory, the airship on its way to drop down. The bulletproof metal slowly creaked open, allowing him temporary passage.

And then he heard the crack of lightning. His instincts propelled him to the side, the laser blast hitting his side, completely destroying his bulletproof vest and the underclothes beneath.

He staggered, but remained upright, limping into the carrier. A hand reached out towards him; the Commander’s hand, hard and cold and imposing like the man itself. Stone took it and let himself get lifted into the vehicle, the metal doors creaking closed.

Before it closed, he got a good look at the Soleanna soldier who shot him, and especially the other man trailing behind him, wearing flowing white robes with numerous ornaments across his body. He’d seen that man somewhere, but he couldn’t remember where from. The man gave a malicious glare at him.

No, not at him. At the Commander. At the man still cradling Stone in his arms, steadying him as the doors shut fully and the airship took flight once more.

“Who was…who was that?” Stone managed finally.

The Commander frowned, his eyes lowering as it often did when he was deep in thought. “Hopefully someone you won’t have to deal with, Tariq. Hopefully.”

Stone nodded dumbly. “I did the job. You promised. You can’t reassign me from Dr. Ivo Robotnik.”

“You deserve a charge that will treat you better. Not this dangerous egomaniac that could blow you up into smithereens if he felt like it.”

But Stone laughed softly, his eyelids fluttering, getting heavier with every minute. He was getting delirious from blood loss but he couldn’t care. “You don’t understand, Commander. We deserve each other. If I left, he’d crumble. I’m his Stone.”

The Commander shook his head. “Always the stubborn one, Tariq,” he whispered as Stone drifted away into unconsciousness.

—

It turned out none of the dry cleaners would be open and have the time to properly clean the coat by the time Stone had to go to work, which basically meant Stone had to do it himself. But somehow he did. The teleporter pad to Robotnik’s other laboratories around the world did help a little bit in achieving this monumental task. Now it smelled brand new, and not like Stone had done some self-pleasuring into one of its sleeves. Not that he did that, even though the thought did cross his mind more than once that night. In his defence, it's a deceptively soft coat.

It was a shame to have to part with Robotnik’s coat. Maybe in the future he could get his own mad scientist coat and have matching outfits with Robotnik. Or would that be too similar to couple outfits? Did it matter if they were terrorizing some population of people? Would Robotnik care if Stone dressed up in the same outfit as him, or would his massive ego get stroked even more at the possibility that someone liked his style? Once he figured out Robotnik's tailor and saved his money up a bit, he might be able to get his own coat, one that he wouldn't mind getting dirty a bit if the mood came to him.

As Stone stepped into the laboratory, Robotnik was lounging beside his computer. His gaze swept up to Stone as soon as he entered, appraising his appearance slowly. His eyes honed in on the coat draped over Stone’s arm.

Without a word, Stone handed it over to the doctor, who observed the fabric closely and smoothed his gloves, no doubt analysing for some foreign contaminant. Then Robotnik took it up to his nose and sniffed it loudly. “Hmm,” he hummed. “This was an amateur job, which means either you didn’t go to the dry cleaner I specifically asked you to go to, or you did this yourself.”

“Doctor, it's not even open today. Even if I went, they wouldn’t be able to dry clean your coat in 5 minutes.”

“Oh, talking back now? Getting complacent about your role here?” He flicked his hand to the wall. “Pin yourself to the wall.”

Stone bit back an excited grin as he put his hand to his chest and pushed himself back to the nearest wall. Robotnik was in front of him, so close he could be tasted, the air choking of his presence.

He loved it, not that he would ever admit it to the doctor, not unless he wanted to get punished.

Although…come to think of it, if he were to act out of line, how would Robotnik punish him this time? Perhaps it might be worth the risk. Stone liked a bit of danger, after all. Wasn't that why he agreed to work for Robotnik in the first place? The danger and wonder?

“Agent Ben Stone, real name Tariq Hajjar,” Robotnik said. “I could punish you right now. Remind you of your place here.”

Stone waited for the ‘but’.

“—but lucky for you, I’ve got bigger fish to fry.” He put his hands as far as they could go. “And right now we're cooking a blue whale.”

“Isn't a blue whale a mammal?"

But Robotnik didn't hear as he glided away and typed frantically on his computer. Images of the island nation Soleanna flickered by, too fast to be comprehended. They were all landscape pictures, showing the beautiful coastline, the Venetian inspired buildings, the gorgeous waterways, and finally the gleaming gold and white castle.

“Soleanna. Just off the coast of Italy. British-ruled for a time, so the main language is English. Despite being a world leader in marine biology and marine technology, it had a decrepitly ancient Monarchial system as its governing body. And its ruler? Duke Vittorio. A man who singlehandedly revolutionised his country to not just the modern age, but far beyond.”

An image of Duke Vittorio flickered up and Stone felt his heart drop. That was the man. The one with the white robes. The one that glared at the Commander with that evil stare. It might've even given Robotnik's evil stare a run for its money.

The image flickered on the screen, and a new image took its place. It was surveillance pictures from the Badniks, taken of some Soleanna soldiers carrying a mysterious weapon. A weapon that Stone had only encountered once yesterday.

“My hunch was more than correct. They’ve stolen my technology, and they’ve commercialized so it could be in the hands of these pathetic tinker toys? Imitiation may be flattery, but this is theft, and theft means war.”

Stone turned to Robotnik. “You’re not suggesting…”

Robotnik smirked cruelly, cutting to the last image of Duke Vittorio. “This man is not any common fool. He has an expert knowledge in energy field technology. This is no mere mistake. He has purposely converted my technology for his asinine purposes.” He clicked a button on his gloves and the badniks hummed to life. “I think it’s time we taught him just how far my inventions have come since then, shall we?”

Stone could only smile politely even as he felt the evil within Robotnik fester and bubble within Robotnik. A similar but sharper evil from the one bubbling within Stone. “We shall, Doctor. No one messes with us.”

When Robotnik grinned, Stone couldn't help but match it. This was personal.

#Stobotnik #Ivo Robotnik #Agent Stone #sonic 2020 #This chapter was fun to write BUT MAN is life kicking my ass right now #I might be busy with stuff so the next chapter might be late

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