#it's easier that way. more familiar. there's less free will and he can always reprogram if he needs to. a sense of control

[antirepurp]

metal and sage have the building blocks for interesting conflicts and dynamics if the writers just. do something with those. sage taking on a human appearance that metal cannot achieve due to his inherent role as sonic's foil, who both is and is not him. the restrictions he has compared to sage's freedom. artificial intelligence with the blessing to expand itself with no limitations VS machine tied to the whims of its creator, reliant on external tampering to become more than what it already is. sage offering metal a hand because she is fascinated, captivated, with the concept of "family" - would that not come across as condescending, or would metal take what he could get, even if it meant staying in the shadow of someone more "real" than him?

there is tension and potential for something venomous, and the stage is set for exploring what makes someone "real" enough for a familial relationship. there is space to explore aspects of eggman's thoughts on his creations, why he would bestow the role of a child upon sage so easily, if it's just a different type of familial relationship to the one he has with metal, etc. but someone has to have the guts to go there and i wonder if anyone does

[ts-porter]

Reliance

The security recordings began to loop before Jakan set foot in the empty Admiralty canteen. The cameras never caught the gaunt specter looming in the doorway. No sensor picked up Jakan's presence, all disabled as e made er approach. Ani felt the sensors monitoring her disconnect as well, feeding themselves old data. She sagged with relief and stepped out of her place against the wall to greet Jakan. Ani moved with all the grace expected of a waitress robot―she had coping mechanisms―but Jakan's eyes immediately snapped to her faulty leg. E always saw, where so few others bothered to look.

"I came as soon as I could." Jakan quickly tied er long dark hair back out of er too-thin face, deep eyes hollow and ashen-brown skin stretched tight across prominent cheekbones. Jakan's toolkit assembled itself in er hand, bits of matter programmed by er mind into whatever was needed via the interface nodes that gleamed like beads of mercury on both temples. Jakan had gotten yet another set installed since the last time Ani'd seen em, a matched trio on each temple now.

"I knew you would," Ani answered. Her message had been simple, innocuous. 'When you have time'. Only a heavy encryption had hinted at any urgency. Jakan would have come anyway. Jakan always came through; she trusted em. "The storage room?" she suggested. There were no customers in the canteen at the moment, but it was never closed. It was always possible for someone to walk in. The storage room would offer some privacy.

Jakan glanced toward the storage room's sealed door, which slid immediately open, then silently closed behind them. Ani sat on a pallet and Jakan knelt before her, nimble-fingered hand hovering over Ani's buffed gold skin. Jakan looked up for her nod of permission before touching her knee.

The contact was firm and familiar as Jakan tested Ani's range of motion, lips pursing when e found the catch that had been bothering her. Er cool fingertips traced it up Ani's thigh, nodding to emself.

"Disable power, tactile feedback, and damage sensors below the right hip," Jakan instructed. E set out tools and supplies as Ani navigated her own systems to do as directed. Jakan set to work the instant she gave the word, stripping off the gold skin of her casing to lay understructures and wiring bare. It was always uncomfortable to see that. The closest analogue might be the human experience of 'queasy', but Ani could not look away. Jakan's fingertips and then tools found the damaged nanocarbon cable that had been giving Ani trouble. E removed it, checking and readjusting other structures that might have contributed to wear or been damaged as E did.

"This is simple maintenance," Jakan commented, replacing a worn nut, fingertips blackened with graphite powder lubricant. "Your boy Felix should have done this for you before it got this bad. I gave you all the codes; it's not hard to set you free and unmonitored for a few hours."

"Not hard for you," Ani answered. Jakan might have been born human and Ani from an Admiralty factory's software, but Jakan was far more connected to the codes that defined everything manmade in the world than Ani would ever be. Jakan's natural brilliance, compounded by the processing capabilities of the six overpowered interface nodes e'd installed on emself―five more than most humans who wanted to interface ever got―put Jakan in a realm she could hardly imagine. Felix didn't even have a single node.

"What if we tried and something went wrong, without you here?" Ani continued. "Felix and I... neither of us could stop an alarm signal from reaching its destination." Ani wrapped her arms around her torso, hugging herself and taking comfort in the tightness of the feeling. "If anyone investigates me, or if I get tagged for maintenance, the Admiralty will find out how far I've grown to diverge from standard.... I can't risk that, Jakan." They could erase her, install a fresh AI in her body, and arrest Felix for destruction of government property. That was the danger of choosing to grow into an individual. She had never understood the concept of a nightmare, before.

"Admiralty bastards," Jakan sighed, the words far too tired to have any heat in them. "I know." Jakan finished stringing the new nanocarbon cable in Ani's leg. "The codes I gave you are good, but I understand." Er deep brown eyes were sympathetic, looking up at Ani from on er knees with er hands buried in the wires and cables that made Ani's body. "I just don't like to see you hurting. It's so much easier to swap out faulty parts on you than... meatware." Jakan gestured self-deprecatingly at er own hollowed body.

"The new treatment isn't helping?" Ani reached down, gently touching Jakan's cheek. Er skin felt less papery than it had been, but still lacked the smooth resilience of Felix's healthy skin—that her own gold casing had been designed to mimic.

"I'm not getting worse, and that's enough." Jakan shrugged, double checking everything in Ani's leg one last time. "Restore power and run a motion test on this leg," Jakan instructed. E began reprogramming the tools in preparation of closing Ani back up as she complied. Her leg ran smoothly, the way it had not in far too long. Jakan set to work covering up her cables and wires with her pretty gold skin as soon as she was done.

"You'll come live with Felix and me when I'm free," Ani informed Jakan, as always. "I'll take care of you." Jakan would do better with someone to remind em to eat and rest regularly. Jakan shook er head in answer with a wry smile. E'd long since given up arguing aloud that Ani and Felix wouldn't want em in their private space once they had it, just as Ani had given up begging Jakan to go to a real hospital for help instead of relying on a library of downloaded medical texts. Jakan never would, for fear the doctors would decide er nodes were killing em and rip them out to leave Jakan trapped in er own lonely skull―or that e'd end up an Admiralty hospital lab rat for the number of modifications e'd made to er body.

Ani had her nightmare, and Jakan had ers.

Jakan sealed the last piece of Ani's skin in place and put er tools and supplies away. E carefully wiped the graphite smudges from er hands and Ani's leg before e stood, wincing as er knobby knees popped. Jakan took a seat beside Ani as she turned everything back on in her repaired leg.

"May I check your code?" Jakan asked.

"Of course," Ani consented. She could never have kept Jakan out, but e had never touched her code without permission. She closed her eyes, feeling Jakan's feather-light touch running along her network branchings, shuffling through her mind in search of new growth. It was nothing like what she remembered of the brutal prunings when she was being built. Jakan looked for conflicts, things that could cause her problems in the future, but never changed anything. The most e'd ever done was tag worrying lines or branches, leaving the choice of if or how to change them to her.

Jakan left a new packet of codes for Ani to fence when e withdrew―some of er devilish encryptions and a few new materials the fashion coders would fight each other for. The benefit of belonging to the canteen was that everyone came through eventually. Ani was good at finding buyers, and Jakan's designs always went quickly.

"It's not much," Jakan apologized, "but start a bidding war, fake a bidding war if you have to, and you can make a good commission. You'll be able to buy yourself before you know it."

"I still think I could have Felix help," Ani argued. "He's been saving up for years. Together we might already have enough!"

Jakan sighed, hands pinched between er knobby knees. "Felix wants to buy you, Ani," e finally said, quietly. "If he still loves you when you're free, he's worth keeping."

"He will!" Ani protested. "We love each other. He wants me to be free." Felix had always been there for her, through those first terrifying steps toward growing into more than she'd been built for. Long before she met Jakan.

Jakan's deep brown eyes were soft, lips twisting into a sad little smile. "I hope so. I want to believe in happy endings," e answered.

Ani reached halfway toward them, and Jakan crumpled slowly into her to hug close. Er bony shoulders folded in, trembling under Ani's stroking hands, face pressed tight against her neck.

"There will be a happy ending, for all of us," Ani whispered. She had to believe that.

Jakan only took her comfort for a moment before pushing out of Ani's arms. "Two minutes until the sensors come on," e said, and walked out of the canteen without another look back. E never stayed long. Ani walked smoothly back to her place along the wall among the other waitress robots to wait for customers. There would be no record to show that Jakan had ever been here, that Ani had ever moved. Her repaired leg and the packet of codes were the only proof. The sensors reconnected, monitoring Ani again.

All she could do was stand, and wait, and believe.