#mecha to silver: you are poggers. you are pogchamp. you are not cringe.

[cyanocoraxx]

Damage (Chapter 14)

FFN / AO3

Wordcount: 7,422

Characters: Metal Sonic, Mecha Sonic, Silver Sonic

Content warnings: Dissociation, discussions about death RIP

Lucky for Silver, Mecha did their best to fix the worst of his injuries.

"Mecha, stuff still feels really uncomfortable." Silver complained, trailing behind him as he made his way to meet with Neo.

Mecha picked Silver up in one smooth motion and plopped him on his shoulders. "Is this a sufficient mode of transport for you?"

Silver folded his arms on top of Mecha's head and settled down, quite at home being off the ground like this. "Yeah, this works." He was quiet for a few moments before smirking to himself. "Commander Silver to Commander Mecha! Mush!"

Mecha stopped. "Mush?"

Silver tapped a finger on top of Mecha's head. "That was an order, soldier."

Mecha had to hold back from shaking his head. "I do not understand. Rephrase your wording. Are you referring to a soft, wet mass? Feeble or cloying sentimentality? Or perhaps the verb, to reduce-"

"It's also a way to make dogs run on sleds." Silver interrupted him, deadpan. "I'm telling you to go faster."

"Is that supposed to be humorous?"

"I love you, but man, you can be such a killjoy." Silver gave up on his joke and rested his chin on one hand. "I- Okay, that was harsh. Sorry bro."

Mecha was puzzled by this. "Is it better for one to pretend to find humour in a non-humorous situation?"

Silver thought about it for a moment. "Well... not really. That's called people-pleasing." He leaned forward a little, putting more weight on Mecha's head. "And you know as well as I do that we've never done anything to please anyone else. Well, except for our dad, maybe."

The two reached the computer room, where Neo was already absorbed in whatever he was doing. He almost didn't notice them coming in, if it wasn't for an automatic scan of his surroundings picking up their signals. He gave a beep of surprise and looked over his shoulder. Although the surprise irritated him a little, he couldn't hide the way his optics lit up ever so subtly at the sight of his siblings being safe and well.

Mecha set Silver down on a spinny chair and moved around to lean on it from behind. "How goes your progress?"

Neo gave a thumbs-up and pointed to the screen. Mecha leaned forward to look more closely. The security upgrade packages were all saved and encrypted.

Silver deliberately turned around and leaned back far enough that he was hanging upside-down from the chair. He wasn't going to pretend to understand what his older siblings were concocting on that screen, it was much too complex for him, he had already decided.

The robot's mind started to wander, and it wandered to a strangely dark place that was out of character for him.

"Hey."

Neo and Mecha both looked at him.

"What happens when we die?"

Neo and Mecha looked at each other in alarm and confusion.

"No, really." Silver looked between both of them from his upside-down position with a serious expression. "I'm serious."

Mecha moved to sit down beside him on the floor. "Elaborate."

Neo turned to give his little sibling his full attention, too. He leaned back on the desk and folded his arms.

"Well... I saw you die, Metal." Silver looked at him, and then at Mecha. "And Mecha, you... I saw your mind getting eaten alive in front of me. You nearly died." He looked past both of them, resting his gaze on the wall instead. "And I... I just had a freaking cannon to my CPU. It was scary." He frowned as he recalled the moment in his head. "If nothing happens when we die, why was I so scared to go?"

Mecha shifted to get more comfortable. "The explanation for that likely differs depending on which unit you ask."

Silver made eye contact with him again. "That's a bullshit answer."

Mecha shook his head. "Do not discredit the notion so hastily." He leaned forward to show interest. "We are afforded with artificial intelligence chips that are more advanced than those of other machines. They afford us ego, sentience, consciousness, and self-preservation instincts. And, because we are aware of our consciousness and our identities, to lose that awareness would be most regrettable. It would take away our ability to function to the same standard. Perhaps, this fear that you speak of is self-preservation at work." He paused, recalling his own experiences with fear. "Fear makes one faster, enabling a quicker escape from a threatening situation. Fear promotes survival."

"So... because we're conscious, and consciousness is an important, erm... resource, fear can help us to keep it? And fear encourages us to keep functioning?" Silver tried to simplify the concept. "That makes sense, I guess. But this whole being conscious, as a robot, thing is so confusing sometimes. Most robots aren't."

"We could explain our processors as a collection of electrical signals and interactions. That, however, does not explain robotic consciousness." Mecha explained. "It is a capacity that exceeds simple electrical signals." He tilted his head as he thought about it.

"In other words, consciousness is more than the sum of its parts?" Silver finished for him. He reached one hand up above him and studied it thoughtfully. He watched how each component in his hand moved to allow him movement in his fingers... each tiny wire, every pin, and every circuit worked together to give him that freedom. It was almost mesmerizing to see now that he really looked for it.

"It is an emergent property." Mecha concluded studiously. "It is a property that its underlying parts do not have on their own, a property that emerges only when the parts interact as part of a wider whole. One cannot rip the data from our circuitry to find where it comes from... It simply is."

Silver was quiet for a moment. And then he snickered and let his arm drop to the floor with a clang. "So we're alive."

Neo looked at him and signed, "what?"

Silver turned his head to look at him with a smile. "Don't act like you don't know. You feel it, too." He paused, his smile fading. "Hey... if you wanna talk about it, what did you see when you, erm... you know. Kicked the bucket."

Neo walked over and sat down by Silver and Mecha. He laid down in the same position as Silver and put his hand up in the air, just as Silver had been doing. And left it there. Silver waited for his reply. And waited. And waited. Until he couldn't keep waiting. The boredom was painful.

"Come on zombie bot. What did you see?" Silver nagged him, prodding him in the side with a pout.

Neo turned his head to look at Silver before signing, "robot heaven where you ask fewer questions." He playfully shoved Silver in the shoulder and sat up, earning a swat and a growl from the younger robot. Neo wasn't going to answer that. The conversation topic was already triggering his dissociation enough.

Silver sat up as well and sighed, deciding to drop it once he caught on to why Neo was actually evading the topic.

The three exchanged looks between themselves.

"We're all kinds of fucked up." Silver stated. He leaned back on his hands.

"Is water still wet." Mecha prodded him to his side. "I cannot retrieve the data on it and require your assistance."

"Shush, you." Silver hushed him with a finger to his muzzle plate. "You and your sarcasm are a pain in my motherboard. You're lucky you're actually funny."

"Funny? I expected a battle of wits." Neo signed to their sides. "But you both appear to be unarmed."

Silver leaned towards him accusingly. "What edgy quote website did you get that from, Mx. Unoriginal? Huh?"

"You cannot claim to be original," Neo signed, "with a name like Silver Sonic."

"Says Metal Sonic! How original is that? Also, Son- the hedgehog already made that joke at my expense, so you're too slow. Try again."

Neo paused. "Why do you think I use another name?"

Silver prodded Neo in the forehead on his white arrow. "Neo Metal Sonic? What's the difference?"

Neo gave him a sarcastic look. "One is my name. The other is not."

"I know, I know. I'm just teasing you." Silver let up and patted Neo where he had poked him. "Oh, and I'll start calling you Neo more often if you want. I just wasn't sure if you wanted me to or not."

"I would like that."

They fell silent for some time. A strange heaviness came over them all as they reflected on recent events.

"When we finally do get scrapped one day..." Silver began, shifting to cross his legs, "the best engineers in the universe will hold conferences to work out how we managed to survive so much crap."

Mecha roughly scrubbed his little sibling's head and stood up. "I propose that we end this conversation here. We have much work to do."

Neo shook his head as he stood up. "I have work to do. You rest." After signing, he pointed at both Mecha and Silver. "If I need help, I ask."

Mecha nodded. "Understood." Before Silver could protest, Mecha tactfully placed a hand over his mouth and picked him up. He strode over to a sideboard and jumped up onto it, where he turned around and sat down. Only then did he release Silver, who shifted to sit next to him. Silver shuffled further away from Mecha and looked down, messing with his hands. Mecha noticed, but said nothing - he was doing his best to respect the boundaries of his brothers now, even if he didn't always understand them.

"I think I'm..." Silver started but trailed off. His optics dimmed bit by bit, and his head slowly lowered. He lifted his head for a moment before it fell again - he was clearly fighting something off. "I uh... Think..."

Mecha shifted close to him and pulled the younger robot into his side. Almost instantly, Silver fell into sleep mode against his older brother. Mecha shifted slightly to make Silver more comfortable against him and made sure that he was well-supported. Without really thinking about it, he brought his other hand over and rested it on top of Silver's head, where he gently rubbed it back and forth.

Think of it as self-programming. You taught yourself to love.

It made sense now.

Love manifested when he didn't have to think about it.

Some time after, Neo finished uploading the security patches and sent them to every unit on the ship to be downloaded.

---------------------

The hole in the wall was a message: you are not invincible. You are mortal.

Grow up and start acting like an adult or lose your life.

Silver sat alone in the dark of the room his fight had taken place in, and in front of him lay the remains of the robot who had tried to destroy him. Armed with a set of tools, Silver clumsily tried to solder two parts together. But his hands kept shaking or faltering, and he was growing more and more frustrated. Minutes turned to an hour with little progress. There was too little left to salvage, and there was nothing he could do about that.

Silver gave an angry beep of frustration and tossed a wrench aside. He hunched over and held his head in his hands, his anger prickling him from the inside.

And that's when he started crying.

"You're so insecure."

"Daddy's boy."

"Die knowing how worthless you were."

"I'm going to love doing this to Mecha and Metal."

"Fuck you." Silver whispered shakily over his clicks. "Fuck you..." He scraped up a bundle of wires in his hands and, at the feeling of them in his hands, his anger turned into a poignant sadness. "F-Fuck you."

He went to close his hand around them, to crush them like he should have, but couldn't bring himself to do it. This machine tried to destroy him. It wanted to destroy everybody in the base. But somehow, destroying these last few pieces of them felt too ugly. Too inhuman. Too sadistic. This only spurred him on in his onslaught of emotions, and he curled over and sobbed into his chassis instead.

All of that talk to Sonic's face about being a machine who doesn't forgive was bullshit. He wanted to see the good in everyone. But, some units, they just made it so hard.

A soft red glow grew behind him. Silver didn't notice, too deep in his hurt to pay attention to anything around him.

Mecha gently rested a hand on his little brother's back and crouched behind him.

Silver didn't need to look - he knew it was Mecha by the size and weight of his hand. At this point, the brothers would recognize each other by the tiniest things - from the way their feet struck the earth to the distinct humming of their engines. The younger robot relaxed slightly but didn't try to outwardly acknowledge him apart from this.

"Why do you grieve?" Mecha asked, softly. "I would like to understand."

"Were they scared?"

Mecha slowly moved to sit beside his little brother, giving him his undivided attention.

Silver hesitated before making eye contact with his older brother.

"Were they scared to die, Mecha?"

Mecha let the question sit in his processor for a while. It was too easy to give a "we can't die, we're machines" response, and he knew it wasn't what his little sibling was looking for in his emotional state. But the truth was, he wasn't sure. He didn't know that unit well enough to comment, nor did he know what AI upgrades they got from G.U.N, if any. Though, he sorely doubted that the military would afford a mech from the Eggman Empire anything that would truly benefit them.

He answered honestly.

"I do not know."

Silver sighed shakily and turned his head away. "Thanks for being honest. I never want a bullshit answer."

Mecha let him look away, but kept his gaze fixed on him to show interest. "You need not thank me, brother."

Silver flinched inward at the "brother" part - their closeness was part of why this all hurt so bad.

"I-I keep thinking about what happened to you, and... how scared you were. How you weren't in control of anything. You're my big brother, and you've never been scared in your life before that. So did they go through that, too? That organic motherfucker... he had a hold on them. And I hate that. I hate that so much." Silver's sadness turned to bitterness. "Robots aren't just... things to be controlled and used. Metal or skin, it doesn't matter, we're all trying to live. It's not fair. It's not."

Mecha let him finish before interjecting. "I do not believe that they and I shared the same experience." He looked down at the pile of scrap metal in front of them. "This unit willingly sought out a deal with the humans. They chose to relinquish control. What I experienced was not a choice, rather, it was a treatment forced upon me. I had no choice but to adapt and endure."

Silver let his sibling's response sit in his processor for a moment. "I... Yeah, you're right." He sighed. "I just find it hard to understand why someone would willingly do that to themselves. Do they really think that low of themselves? To give up their very mind, their own body, to someone who doesn't give a damn about them? I pity them. They must have really hated themselves, or just didn't care."

Mecha pondered on that for a moment. "Not everything is comprehendible, even to a machine. Sometimes reasonings are just out of one's understanding, regardless of how much data we collect and analysis we conduct... they just are what they are. We cannot peer into this machine's mind to find the precise switch that flipped that led them to make that decision."

Silver nodded slowly. "Yeah. In other words, we all perceive things differently. They thought... they thought that this was for the best." He scooped up the shards of metal in his hands and, slowly, his frown turned into a sad smile. "It is what is." Then, he laughed. "I just wish the pair of them hadn't, like, insulted me so hard before beating my ass. Kinda hurt my fee-fees. Made me feel a bit cringe."

"Elaborate. What is fee-fees?"

"Feelings!"

"Understood." Mecha gently scrubbed his sibling's head. "Do not dwell on their words." He stood and offered a hand to Silver. "Come. Let us dispose of them properly."

Silver took his hand and let Mecha pull him up in one swift motion. The two looked at each other for a moment before setting off to an unspoken destination.

"Hey, Mecha?"

Mecha gave a beep of acknowledgment.

"What happened to the first Silver Sonic?"

Mecha looked straight ahead. "It was destroyed."

"Yeah, thought so. Did you ever meet it?"

"Affirmative." Mecha answered him. "It was a relentless war machine with a much larger build than your own frame. It simply followed orders and continued to destroy despite enduring critical damages to itself. It lacked sentience and was significantly slower than other units in our series. This led to its destruction."

"It wasn't sentient?" Silver asked, baffled by that. "Are you sure?"

"Affirmative. It was not sentient." Mecha confirmed it matter-of-factly. "The unit did not interact with the world, nor did it respond to any of us. It would only perform actions that it was commanded to carry out by its primary user."

Silver nodded slowly. "And what happened to it in the end? Was it not re-built?"

"Silver Sonic MK I was completely destroyed by the hedgehog. Its remains were disposed of out of a garbage chute soon after."

Silver grimaced. "That's brutal. Damn."

Mecha listened to his sibling's emotional response patiently, but then proposed a more logical side to it. "Consider this: a light switch is flicked off for the last time. This occurs regardless of whether the switch, or the one flipping the switch, knows that or not."

"Is that meant to be a more poetic way of saying, like... its destruction was inevitable?" Silver asked, frowning. "What the heck, Mecha. That's so morbid."

"No. I am stating that the unit in question was never aware of its existence in the first place. Therefore, its disposal in the manner that we just discussed is not conventionally "brutal" as you described it." Mecha explained carefully. "Do not grieve for it. It did not feel."

Silver couldn't help but feel a pit form in his tanks, even with that explanation. "I get that, but... I dunno, it still makes me sad. They never got to experience what it's like to be..." He pushed the last door open and stepped outside onto the ship's deck, where the wind met him at just the right time. "Alive." He started walking to the edge. "They could have been something. I can grieve that loss of what could have been."

"It was something. It was a machine." Mecha stated from behind him. He stopped a small distance away and let Silver continue forward.

He privately noted how much Silver was resembling his organic template these days.

"No... more than that. It could have been more than a mindless robot." Silver came to a stop at the barrier and rested an arm over the top. "Whether it was like us or not, it was our sibling." He looked down at the remains of the Egg Pawn in his hands and, slowly, a smile formed on his muzzle plate. "We're all family here. I just wish everyone saw it that way."

Mecha slowly moved to join him, where he stood by Silver's side. He put his arm around Silver's shoulders supportively.

They shared a quiet moment of reflection before Silver spoke again.

"I'm sorry you didn't find what you were looking for here." Silver stood on his tip-toes and reached over the edge. "Just know that I would have liked to know you as family, too, if you would have let me." He looked down at his hand. "If robots do go to whatever afterlife may or may not exist... go safely, now."

With that, he let go.

After a moment, Mecha lifted his hand and opened his palm. "May I?"

Silver laughed a little and nodded. "Yeah, go crazy big M."

With laser precision, Mecha aimed at the metal pieces and fired an energy blast at them. The remains turned to nothing but dust, and the tiny pieces of shrapnel glinted in the light as they rained down from the sky.

A glimmer of life before plummeting out of existence.

Only, this time, it was love that sent it on its way.

-------------------

In the glow of the engineering room's many screens, Neo and Mecha stood leaning against the wall. Neo absent-mindedly messed with his wrist tangle as he waited for Mecha to tell him what was on his mind.

"I have concerns about our sibling." Mecha started, quietly. "I believe that recent events have made them... less efficient."

Neo nodded slowly and gestured for Mecha to continue. Knowing Mecha's wordy way of talking about things, he guessed that the robot didn't mean the "less efficient" part as an insult to their sibling.

"They attempted to repair the enemy." Mecha explained. "I cannot comprehend the emotional basis behind it in the same manner that you can, for I lack the emotional range that would afford me higher levels of empathy." He looked to the console and folded his arms. "But I believe that they are suffering."

Neo nodded again. "We are all suffering. In different ways."

"Affirmative. However, our manners of... coping, are vastly different." Mecha responded, trying his best to maneuver the emotional side of the conversation. "Our sibling has not yet found how to manage their experiences with loss and ceasing of functions. I propose a theory to you: both you and Silver Sonic have struggled with the notion of being "alive" in an organic sense. Perhaps it would benefit them to speak with them on the matter."

Neo found his optics dimming as he listened to his brother. He knew all too well how that struggle felt for himself. Having life data within him that he couldn't place anywhere, delusions that he was the real Sonic, experiencing simulations of pain... it was all too much to bear when things got bad for him. But there was one thing that Neo was learning. The path to recovery was not a straight line. It was more akin to a spiral. You continually circle back to the things you once thought you understood, and find deeper truths.

"I will address our creator and speak to Silver."

Neo pushed back off the wall and started to walk away to find either one of them.

Mecha hesitated, but then reached out and grabbed Neo's shoulder plate. Neo looked over his shoulder with a questioning beep.

"I implore you, continue to be kind to him. Our influences on him are strong."

Neo's gaze softened. He turned back around and gently bumped his forehead against Mecha's for a moment.

"Silver is our little brother. I will not fail him."

"I trust you."

With that said, Neo turned and walked away, leaving Mecha to keep watch over the ship's console. He decided that speaking with Eggman first would be a good idea - their creator needed filling in on the chaos that had taken place on the vessel anyway. He put out a long-range scan and continued to the doors to go outside, where he waited for some time for Eggman to return.

Eggman climbed out of his Egg Mobile and looked up to find a familiar blue robot watching him.

"Well hello there, Metal! How were things?" He called over to him as he swiped some dirt off of the glass of the machine. "That blasted hedgehog didn't show up, did he?"

Neo wasn't sure how to answer that honestly. He gave a shrug and resisted folding his arms defensively.

"What do you mean you don't know?" Eggman asked him as he walked over. He fixed his glasses and folded his arms. "Did something happen, Metal? Tell me."

"Defective robot." Neo explained briefly in sign. "It tried to take over."

Eggman looked puzzled, and then irritated. "Blasted thing. You took care of it, I assume?"

Neo nodded. "Mecha and I regained control of the ship. Silver trapped the robot. I destroyed it."

Eggman patted Neo's head and walked by him. "As expected from my boys. Nothing else was ruined, was it?"

Neo turned to follow him, feeling a strange... emptiness from the interaction. And now that Eggman was ahead of him, he couldn't sign anything in reply. He caught up to his creator and walked beside him so that he could continue to sign.

"No. Everything is in order." Neo clarified. He paused, finding the doctor's reply irritating. He almost had the idea to sign, yes, we're all fine, thank you very much, but didn't.

He couldn't fathom why the doctor was withdrawing like this yet, but he intended to get to the bottom of it, and now.

"Very good, very good." Eggman replied. "It's very useful that the three of you get along so nicely now."

Neo thought about that. Was the doctor assuming that the robots would just fix each other when they needed to now, especially now that Silver knew a few things himself? He had left them to their own devices, after all...

"I am concerned about Silver Sonic." Neo told him, looking more insistent. "He is upset about recent events."

"Oh?" Eggman raised a brow at Neo and slowed down. "In what way?"

"His programming. It is starting to affect him." Neo explained. "He thinks he is alive and is scared."

Eggman sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Dear Chaos."

The doctor's frustration caught Neo off guard. His insistent expression turned into the start of a glare.

"What can you do?" Neo asked, his hand movements terse now. "We must try to help him somehow."

"Not much I can do, Metal, not much at all." Eggman told him, looking away from him.

"What do you mean?"

Eggman wouldn't say it now, but his guilt was starting to eat at him. He had watched this happen to Neo already, and had apologized to the robot before, but now the news that Silver might be next in line for a breakdown of some description was a lot to take in. He had shut Silver away out of fear of this, and his deep emotions, too. He was sorry, but still didn't know how to make any of it better. He was panicking and angry at his lapse in judgement.

In his shame and frustration, the doctor kept looking away from his creation, denying him an answer.

Neo glared at him fully now. Looking away from him when he needed to sign to speak was like running away, if not disrespectful. He beeped at him several times to get his attention, each one growing more insistent.

"Metal!"

Neo stopped.

"I can't fix you."

Eggman continued ahead for a few steps.

"The kind of broken you two are... I can't fix it. I'm sorry. It's beyond programming, or hardware issues, or literally anything I can get my hands on."

Neo just stared at him. That blank look only frustrated the scientist more.

"I. Can't. Fix. You." Eggman repeated, harsher this time. "I can't fix either of you."

Neo looked away, now. His optics glowed brighter.

This was insulting. He hadn't asked to be fixed, like he was some walking error, or some kind of problem... he had asked for help.

"And the other thing is, Metal... you boys are killing machines. You're not..." he trailed off, finding Neo's angry optics on him again. "You're not..."

"Say it." Neo signed back, irritated. "Just say it."

"... You're not just ordinary people. You're killing machines, and he needs to remember that. I can't coddle you too much anymore-"

"He is a child." Neo snapped back at him in sign. "A child!"

"So are you! And you still managed!"

Neo froze. Hearing that made him bristle with a hot kind of anger. His optics narrowed at his creator in a warning.

"Don't give me that look, Metal." Eggman sighed, rubbing his forehead again. "I don't mean it as an insult. I mean it quite literally."

"I did not manage. I suffered."

"Yes, and you asked me to put you out of your misery, son, but that still wasn't enough. What else can I do?"

Neo's engine hitched for a second as a sharp stab of anger rended through him. He wasn't going to afford that a response. So, he went back to the first part of Eggman's reply.

"So what if I am a child?"

"Then it makes this very complicated."

"It is not complicated. You just give mixed messages."

"Mixed messages? Like how?"

"Tell us we are our own people when you feel like we are your sons. And then revoke it when you feel like we're just your inventions again." Neo replied, hand movements short and forceful now. He took a step forward challengingly. "What are we today?"

"Metal, don't."

"Tell me, what am I?" Neo glared at him and took a step forward. "Machine or living being?"

"You're a machine."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!"

"But I am sentient. I can think for myself. You call me a child. What am I, then? With all of these qualities? How do I live with this? How? What do I tell him?"

Eggman fell silent. Neo held his ground, unwavering. He would drag an answer out of his creator with silence.

He waited.

"I don't know." Eggman finally admitted. "I don't know what that makes you. You're a machine, but a person, but I can't define you any more than that."

Neo slowly withdrew his blind rage. It twisted into something black and hollow. Something ugly and inhuman.

"You're my sons, but you're robots, too. And, I love all three of you. But..." Eggman fixed his glasses and folded his arms. "Y-You need to grow up and realize something. You can't be the same kind of person as everyone else. You just can't. You're murder machines, for crying out loud. I can't switch off that killer programming in your heads. I can't just not send you after our enemies. I can't just let you three go and do whatever the hell you want. You have a job to do."

The robot found a dangerous red glint coming over his optics.

The disrespect tipped him over the edge.

"Watch me."

Neo turned on his heel and stalked back out of the room. He slammed the door behind him to shut out the shouting of his creator.

"Metal! Don't you dare disobey me now!"

Neo smacked a fist into the wall beside him as he walked away, leaving a sizeable dent in it. Good. He turned a corner and raked his claws down the wall. Marks now marred the metal all the way down to the next corner. It looked better that way. He heard Eggman step out of the room to go after him. He broke into a run and charged an electric bolt in his hands, which he sent into the floor and stomped over. It left a black mark on the floor. Beautiful.

All the work he had done to get a better grasp on his anger seemed to come undone in an instant. All of this, and his entire existence after his downfall as Metal Overlord, was so much bigger than himself. And that vastness, that urgency, swallowed him whole.

In a way, his brothers towered over him.

They were people. And they were better than him.

The idea of someone disrespecting their personhood was an insult to the worst degree. And, worst of all, it had come from their own father.

He kept going. He slammed a fist through a window as he passed it, partly to destroy his own reflection, and partly to just destroy. The way the glass crumbled and shattered beneath his fist felt good, and the sound it made as it spread onto the floor was even better. It was like music that soothed a deep scar in his processor, for he was escaping a prison invisible to others.

"You humans could never understand how much this hurts." Neo spat to himself in code. "We do not need fixing. We need help. We need-"

In his blind rage, Neo didn't process that someone was in front of him. He smacked into the metal frame before him, which swiftly gathered him into its arms before he could lash out in anger.

Neo growled in static and struggled violently, instantly going to charge an electric bolt in his hands again - but then he stopped.

"We need acceptance."

That familiar voice dragged him out of his red hot haze in an instant. The robot looked up to meet Mecha's soft gaze with his own despairing and angry one. As his head tilted back, the white arrows on his face melted down and dripped onto his chassis.

Mecha lifted his head and looked down the corridor. He could hear the doctor coming.

He released Neo and grabbed his hand instead. Then, he started running without warning. Neo ran with him, keeping up with ease.

"Thank you."

"Do not thank me." Mecha looked back over his shoulder. "I heard a commotion and came to investigate. I assume that you had an unsuccessful conversation with..."

"Yes. And I am pissed."

"Does a bear defecate in the woods."

"Not all members of the family Ursidae live in the woods. Think, Mecha."

"Where are we going." Mecha asked him. "I am uncertain of where to take us. I presume we are not headed to the woods to find bears."

"Away." Neo told him flatly. "I am uncomfortable staying here for the rest of today after what I have been told."

"Affirmative." Mecha reached up to his ear with his free hand and pinged Silver, asking him to meet them. He didn't question Neo's decision or reasoning yet.

"... And I feel disgusting making this call, but I think we need to do this." Neo added. His distaste was clear in his expression.

"What are you thinking?"

"We should arrange to meet with him."

"Who?"

"Him."

"Why."

"I want Silver to interact with a real living being. I think it will help him."

"Affirmative. Your choice of being is curious, however."

"No. It makes sense." Neo narrowed his optics, almost not believing he was saying these things. "They are more alike than we could ever know."

"I trust you."

"It's time for us to trust someone else for once."

------------------------------

A cheerful orange spilled across the horizon. It came as if it had missed the sky and wanted nothing more than to warm up those cool blues to a radiant gold.

Silver stretched his arms up and out, relishing in the way each component clicked into place as he did. He shook his arms out and bounced up and down a couple of times. He relished in how the earth crunched under his weight. The way the wires in his arms and legs moved to accommodate his weight. The freedom to move felt so good.

He let out a deep sigh through his vents, and then planted one foot further behind himself. He crouched slightly lower, fixing his gaze on the horizon with intent.

"This is what real freedom is like?" The robot grinned and fired up his jet engine. It whirred to life before spitting out a few licks of flame as he kicked back all of his power into it. "I could get used to this."

"You could, huh?"

Silver looked over his shoulder. The glow of his optics lit up his muzzle and nose with amber, adding warmth to his smile.

"Damn right I could!"

A familiar blue hedgehog stepped forward to stand beside his youngest robot copy. He grinned back at him and rubbed a finger under his nose. "You haven't changed since we last met. Glad to see it."

Silver laughed. "I'm not changin' for anybody. I don't care what anyone says." He crouched a little lower and fixed his optics back onto the horizon. "No number of verbal or physical beatings can put me down. So... What you see is what you get!"

Sonic gave a nod and copied the robot double's stance with a grin that egged them on. "If you have time to worry..."

"Then run!"

Two sonic booms rocked the landscape at the same time, and with that, the pair were gone. A streak of silver and a streak of blue lit up the land for a few striking moments before fading away into nothing.

In the distance, two robot brothers watched over them. Neo crouched on a rocky clifftop, watching intently. Mecha stood by his side, an ever protective and reassuring presence.

But something bittersweet hung in the air between them.

"Brother."

Neo looked away from him. His expression was sad, his optics dull with shame and guilt. He hated that he was so torn up about his little sibling hanging out with their enemy, but at the same time, it made sense that he was. Stuffing this feeling down was difficult.

"This was the correct path. I am sure of it." Mecha slowly sat down beside his younger brother and let his feet dangle from the edge of the cliff. He looked out to the sunrise, and when Neo finally looked at him, he took in just how peaceful his sibling looked. His optics brightened just a little, inspired by his sibling's rationality.

Mecha looked to him again. "Do not grieve. To let someone go free despite your own disagreements with it... is an act of love."

Neo stayed silent. Hearing his sibling explain such a deep concept so robotically was almost endearing, if not amusing.

"I have learned..." Mecha started, looking out to the sun again. "That we may eventually let go of loss, but never of love. Sentient beings remember how others made them feel more than anything." He looked down at his hands. "I believe... I am beginning to understand this more."

Neo squinted an optic in thought before signing, "But what is love to a robot?"

Mecha put his hands back down and leaned back a little. "What is love. Baby don't hurt me. Don't hurt me. No more."

Neo rolled his optics and leaned into Mecha to nudge him playfully. Okay, he couldn't decide if he preferred the cold robotic answers, or the oddly human answers. Just where the hell did Mecha get this humour from, anyway? There was no way it was from Silver alone, as some of these references were too... organic.

They both fell quiet and looked out to where Sonic and Silver had vanished from sight.

Neo flexed his claws and squinted his optics in a frown. "I still want to kill him so badly."

Mecha cracked his knuckles like he had seen Silver do so many times before. "I concur. I believe this is something known as... restraint."

"Me and restraint are not on good terms."

"You appear to be on agreeable terms at this current time. That is a start."

"This is merely to help our sibling."

"The reasoning does not matter, for you are still restraining your own programming."

"I guess so."

"You have come a long way, brother. You should take pride in your accomplishments. The person you have become."

Neo looked at him curiously.

"You can suppress programming so integral to your identity for the sake of another. That is strength. That is selflessness. The you who I knew in the beginning... he was not so kind."

"I am still broken." Neo dismissed him with a wave of his hand. "Who am I if not damaged?"

"You are just you, Neo. You are just yourself."

The pair let this settle in the air between them for a few moments. Neo softened and looked away, disarmed by his sibling's response for a moment.

Mecha turned to him. "Do you still wish to die?"

"No."

"Then, persist in functioning despite your breakages. They do not define you. Not anymore."

Neo stood up and scanned the landscape below them, subconsciously looking for something. Something unspoken, but so integral to both of the machines.

Mecha followed after him. He quickly caught on to what his sibling wanted without them exchanging so much as a word. "I propose that we-"

Neo cut him off by signing, "Race."

Mecha gave a nod and booted up his own jet engine. "Interrupting my responses in that manner does not increase your flight speed, brother. Consider that perhaps you are making up for your lack of sp-"

Neo promptly left him in the dust with a sonic boom, quite literally.

Mecha shook his head and wiped the dust from his chassis. "Your buttons are far too accessible."

Neo stopped some distance away, turned around, and waited for Mecha. Mecha's jet engine finally finished booting up. He jumped into a hover and then shot off towards his sibling to meet him. The pair stayed high above the ground, where they eventually caught up to their robot sibling and organic rival.

Silver's scans picked them up in an instant. He looked up at them and gave them the biggest grin he could manage. "Hey! Think you can keep up, slowpokes?"

Neo narrowed his optics at him in response and pushed his engine to the limit, shooting off ahead of all of them in an instant.

Sonic watched and laughed loudly. "I see your bro's still got a superiority complex."

"Boy, do they." Silver snickered in reply. "They need to be the fastest robot in the grocery store."

"Hi, Mecha!" Sonic shouted up to the other robot with a friendly wave. "Feeling better?"

Mecha waved back before pushing more power into his own engine to catch up with Neo.

This had become a two versus two situation very quickly.

"You're gonna let 'em disrespect us like this?" Sonic prodded at Silver, practically begging for them to go faster. "Your bros are showing us up and I can't be seen being slow 'cause of you!"

Silver snorted at him before laughing. "Then let's get going meatbag!" He grabbed Sonic's hand and boosted himself into the air several feet. Once he had enough momentum, he threw Sonic ahead of himself and broke into a sonic boom around him. "Step it up already, hog!"

Sonic picked up the pace and went all out to keep up with the overhead robots. Racing his long-time rivals had never felt so thrilling, and he had never raced all of them at the same time. It was like a dream come true for the world's fastest hedgehog.

For a few precious moments, the four of them were evenly matched.

It was almost like this was how things were meant to be.