QUEEN of PAIN

[Tangent]

QUEEN of PAIN
Yet another Amalgamated mind SI by Tangent!
Also once again using Metal Sally as the body of the SI. For reasons…

O o O o O​

Tempo and I chatted with Sally and the others for maybe an hour or so before I had to end the call to answer a call from Uncle Beau. The conditions for my meeting with the other Egg Boss of Northammer had changed, and Clove wanted to bring her sister along for a consultation.

Her fully roboticized sister. Not partial, like Bunnie, Uncle Beau, or many of the Sourn Egg Legion troops.

A full conversion, like the revised analogue of my Eggman aspect had apparently stopped doing for the most part after about five years into his conquest. At least on a large scale. A decision that seemed to actually work out for him, as he had much less public resistance across Mobius than my Eggman aspect had back in Mobius-that-was.

Anyway, I had agreed, so Clove had brought Cassia along to the meeting.

I kept the lighting in the suite warm and low, with the curtains wide open, revealing what I felt was a decent cityscape view. I wanted "Hotel Hospitality," not "Eggman Laboratory."

I probably should have pushed for an evening meeting when the city lights would make the view breathtaking instead of merely decent, but apparently this was the time that worked best for Clove, so I guess she had other business in Casino Park later in the evening.

(If it's hitting the tables in any of the city's many casinos, I will be severely disappointed).

Clove stood by the window, her silhouette sharp against the neon glow of Casino Park. Cassia sat on the edge of a reinforced armchair, her movements mostly fluid, save for a distinct, slight hitch of her left knee whenever she shifted her weight.

"The General says you're a miracle worker with a wrench, Rally," Clove began, her voice tight and professional. "But he also said you were... different. That you aren't just building machines, you're building Agency."

"I'm an engineer, Clove. I see friction, and I eliminate it," I replied, sitting across from Cassia. I gestured to the flavored lubricants on the tray. "Those are for you, Cassia. High-viscosity synthetic with a molecular smoothing agent. It'll help with that hitch in your stride. Most of them are fruit flavored."

Cassia blinked, looking at the tray and then at me. "How did you...?"

"I can hear the timing lag from across the room," I said simply. "Someone did a hell of a job keeping you moving, but I can tell that they used a make-do replacement of a Robian joint. It's functional, but the feedback has to be hammering against your primary sensor-array."

Clove stepped away from the window, her expression guarded. "It was a field repair. I used what I had in the kit. The Doctor doesn't exactly stock any of the Northhammer armories with delicate instruments for his Bosses."

"Which is why I'm here," I said, standing up and grabbing my handheld scanner. "May I? Just a surface-level diagnostic. I want to see how the joint is holding up against the original conversion."

Cassia looked at Clove, who gave a small, hesitant nod. As I ran the scanner over Cassia's leg, the data started scrolling across my optics in a high-speed teal blur.

The mechanical Robian parts were surprisingly well-maintained—standard, robust conversion from one of the better roboticizer models then. But as the deep-tissue sensors engaged, I saw the markers in the biological substrate. The structural "scarring" on the original cellular templates was massive.

"This is... extensive," I murmured, my optics narrowing as I processed the repair-markers. "Your original tissues were in a state of advanced collapse before you ever went under the roboticizer, Cassia. What happened to you?"

Clove walked over, her protective stance softening into a grim honesty. "It was NIDS," she said quietly. "Neuro-Immuno Deficiency Syndrome. The Doctor... he offered the only way to stop the clock. Roboticization was the only 'cure' available."

I paused, the weight of that statement settling into my processors. I looked at the heavy-duty bypass Clove had installed on the knee. "So the metal is the only thing keeping those damaged systems from crashing again. And the new knee joint is vibrating right against those sensitive neural markers."

"Exactly," Clove nodded. "I've already installed the ALM you sent. It allowed me to safely remove the self-destruct charge without the Doctor's remote trigger noticing the tampering. But the software side... the Control Overlay… According to the specs, it will stop it from activating or shut it down if it's already active, but it doesn't remove it."

"The ALM is a firewall, Clove. It blocks the signal, but the COP is still a cancer sitting in her neural processor," I finished for her. "You've done the heavy lifting—removing the hardware threat was the hard part. But deleting a COP without scrubbing her actual personality in the process? That takes a scalpel, not a hammer."

I reached for my specialized datalink, my movements precise. "I can locate every thread of the Doctor's code. I can excise it until there's nothing left but Cassia. No ghosts, no dormant overrides. Just her."

I looked at Cassia. "It's going to feel like a sudden silence in your head. No more 'background hum' from the Doctor's network."

"Please," Cassia whispered, her teal optics flickering with a mix of fear and hope. "I want the hum to stop."

"Then let's finish what your sister started," I said, initiating the deep-sync. I had Clove watch as I walked her through everything I was doing.

Not just to assure her that I wasn't putting my own controls into her sister's Robian brain, but because she was going to have to do this herself in order to actually remove the Control Overlay Program from others without burning out their personalities or otherwise changing them on a fundamental level.

Don't get me wrong. I had full confidence in my Autonomy Liberation Modules. They could absolutely do the job they were designed to do, and do it well.

But outright removing the Control Overlay Program was even better.

And I could not allow myself to be the bottle neck should the current Eggman find a way around the ALMs.

I was not arrogant enough to believe that he couldn't, no matter how much he lost as his memories of Mobius-that-was faded from his mind.

The "sync" was a clinical, quiet affair. Inside Cassia's processors, I highlighted the Control Overlay Program for Clove's benefit, informing her that it wouldn't be automatically highlighted for other patients, so she would have to keep a log of this procedure to study from until she could recognize Eggman's code language by sight. Using the "Digital Scalpel" derived from my own Nicole-and-Eggman data, I systematically deleted the parasitic code, narrating the excision for Clove.

When I finally disconnected the cable, Cassia slumped back into the armchair. A moment later, her optics flared to life—clear, bright, and steady.

"It's... quiet," she whispered. She stood up, testing her left leg. The "make-do" joint I'd replaced glided in perfect, silent synchronicity. For the first time since her sister repaired her, she moved with the grace of a living being rather than a machine fighting itself.

But even as she marveled at the silence, I could see the hesitation in her expression. "He's a monster, I know," Cassia said, her voice small. "But Rally... before him, I couldn't even stand. He gave me a body that works. Part of me still feels like I owe him for the air I'm breathing now."

Clove's jaw tightened, but she remained silent, letting me handle the final ghost in the room.

"You think his 'miracle' was an act of mercy, Cassia?" I asked, my voice dropping an octave. "Tempo, watch the door."

I tapped a command into the handheld. A holographic screen expanded in the center of the room. It wasn't a medical record; it was a black-box log from my own history—a memory of the "Mobius-that-was," rendered in holographic form due to the "benefit" of originating from both Sally's and Eggman's points of view.

"I was a Robian once. Just like you," I told her, my blue-and-grey plating catching the light from the window. "My conversion was actually painless if a bit jarring—a perfect preservation of who I was, except mechanical and with the Control Overlay Program automatically activated. But that wasn't enough for him."

The hologram expanded and flickered into motion as more of "my" surroundings became evident. It wasn't a roboticizer. It was a workshop bay. One in which machines were taken apart and put back together again.

The image showed a metallic, Robian, Sally Acorn standing on a workbench, support wires already connected to the overhead rig to prevent me from falling over during the procedure. The Doctor's voice boomed through the speakers, devoid of any warmth. Ordering his nephew, Snively, to keep an eye on the monitors recording my readings.

To make sure that I was conscious and aware of what was about to happen to me.

The recording didn't look away as industrial saws and laser-cutters descended upon the metal princess.

"I didn't have organic nerves anymore," I said, my voice flat as the hologram showed eighty percent of my Robian chassis being brutally torn away. "But I had haptic sensors, just like any other Robian. They're designed to let us feel a breeze, or the warmth of a hand... or the white-hot agony of a plasma cutter. He didn't turn them off. He wanted the neural mapping to record the exact frequency of the pain as he gutted me to build the weapon he wanted."

I let the recording play just long enough for them to hear the distorted, electronic shriek of the monitoring devices recording a Robian's haptic sensors red-lining even as the "me" in the hologram did not react.

Could not react.

Thanks to that Walkers damned Control Overlay Program!

And once the "me" in the hologram had been reduced to a head, spine, and rib-shielded life support system (what Snively called the Robian organs that used to be my heart and lungs) suspended above the workbench by wires attached to my shoulder joints, the whole process was reversed as I was rebuilt as a fully weaponized Metal Sally.

"The new parts had haptic sensors too," I commented flatly, my control over my own rage so tight that my voice sounded dead even to my own ears. "Sensors that Eggman deliberately activated so that I could feel the pain of my 'rebirth' too."

As the Eggman in the hologram rebuilt "me," Snively could be seen smelting my former parts as the "me" there could only watch placidly, unable to react due to that Walkers damned Control Overlay Program.

My limbs…

My organs…

My womb…

All lost to the fire of the smelter as "I" took it all in.

"He didn't give you a body to save your life, Cassia; he 'cured' your NIDS because a bedridden girl is useless leverage. He wanted you sturdy enough to keep Clove in line for the next fifty years. You aren't his patient. You're his property."

Cassia watched the "Weaponization" of the Princess until the end—until the screaming of stressed metal stopped and the cold, unfeeling machine remained.

She looked at her own hands, the lingering gratitude finally shattering into a thousand jagged pieces. The "miracle" hadn't been a gift; it had been a transaction she'd never signed for.

"The debt is canceled," Clove hissed, stepping forward and placing a hand on her sister's shoulder. She looked at me with a newfound, fierce resolve. "Rally... tell us what the Alliance needs us to do."

"First," I said, packing the handheld away, "just do what you think is best for you and your people. You, Beauregard, Breezie, King Nigel, all those smaller GUN member states scattered along the coast of Northammer… You are all capable leaders. You don't need me to run things. You just need the tools to be able to stand up to the Eggpire. To prevent Eggman from taking control again."


I centered myself, and looked Clove directly in the eyes.

"You want a playbook? Fine. Everything you need is right here," I said as I touched her chest, "and here," I completed as I touched her forehead. "That's your playbook. You don't fight for my pride. You fight for yours. Your sister's. Your people's."

Clove met my gaze steadily as I said my piece, then nodded sharply.

The Revolution was here.

 

[Tangent]

QUEEN of PAIN
Yet another Amalgamated mind SI by Tangent!
Also once again using Metal Sally as the body of the SI. For reasons…

O o O o O​

Montgomery the Mammoth carefully made his way to the balcony overlooking Studiopolis.

He was still recovering from his "sudden illness," which had laid him out just over a couple of months ago, and had only recently been cleared for home recovery a few days ago.

Even now, his staff and his nursemaids hovered discretely out of the way, ready to come to his aid if he needed them, but otherwise being professionally unobtrusive.

A miracle of modern medicine, given that his "revised" body had been recast to be in its sixties, which he hadn't been prepared for when he had ridden out the reality warping effects of Julian's Genesis Wave toy.

A toy that had apparently been upgraded somewhat since the previous two times it had been used.

Bright lad. Not a lick of common sense for a would-be world conqueror, and no magical potential at all despite some of the admittedly bizarre things the boy could do with technology alone, but definitely a bright lad.

Monty, as his revised self had apparently liked to be called, had managed to weather the changing world unaltered each of those times by shielding himself with the power of Ixis. He had even thought to actually prepare himself in case whatever toy young Julian used to accomplish such foolery was used again.

Apparently, he should have gone ahead and had the lad assassinated because the foolish boy had gone and made an even more powerful version of his toy, which had all but completely overwhelmed Monty's magical defenses against such shenanigans. Because now Monty was stuck in his, admittedly luxurious, penthouse apartment in Studiopolis after his "health scare," managing his image and his revised self's business interests even as he carefully worked to properly merge his two lives together.

At least Monty got to enjoy the fact that his revised self had a taste for the finer things in life, so his meditative integration was taking place in comfort instead of hiding out in some cave in the middle of nowhere.

Monty watched the cityscape of Studiopolis, the neon lights reflecting in the amber of his glass. His "illness" had left him a bit thinner, his frame slightly less imposing than the ancient conqueror of the "Before-Time," but his eyes held a clarity that had been missing for centuries.

His body would recover. His will and mastery of Ixis magic had weathered the storm of recreation intact, so his body would follow soon enough once he was done integrating his new "past" into his psyche.

It wouldn't do for his minions to put him into hospice because they thought he had succumbed to dementia or some other age-induced frailty of mind.

So, he had to integrate his new self into his greater self and ease into the position of power that had come with his revised life.

Interestingly, Mina Mongoose was one of his again.

Not empowered, of course, as Mogul's revised self had not been a mage until he had remerged with himself, but as a performer under his media label, complete with her manager, Ash Mongoose (whose romantic interest in his client had apparently survived the transition into the new Mobius). Mina was quite talented, and Mogul was pleased to note that his revised self had given her enough creative freedom to ensure that the songstress remained a loyal money maker for his label.

He might gift her with speed again later, as that had worked out back in the previous version of Mobius. It was always nice to have an unknowing sleeper agent to call upon should the need arise…

Still, those were trivial matters in the face of the ongoing Gaia Crisis.

Unfortunately, Mogul was going to have to leave resolving the petty slap-fight between the Light and Dark sides of a pair of gods better left asleep to Julian and his rowdy playmates.

Perhaps he would get involved once his body was back to the way it was supposed to be, but for now Mogul simply wasn't physically up to the task even if he had the will, knowledge, and magic needed for the task.

O o O o O​

"The math is a deliberate provocation," Specialist Collin Robotnik stated, his voice tight as he adjusted the resolution on the primary terminal. He didn't look at Tower; his eyes were fixed on the structural analysis of the new unit. "G.U.N. has held the proprietary rights to the GR Core for fifty years. We built an entire military infrastructure around the spatial footprint of Gerald's original Chaos Drive design because it was the only way to achieve stable, clean Chaos Energy containment. It was our primary lever for Federation membership—the one thing Dr. Eggman doesn't give to his allies and the one thing we wouldn't share with ours."

Commander Abraham Tower stood with his arms crossed, his gaze fixed on the hologram of the small, metallic canister. "And now we have the R Core."

"The R Core is an impossibility," Collin snapped, tapping a key to bring up a comparison overlay. "She's shrunk the footprint to a 7.5-ounce volume without losing even a single watt of output. This 'Rally'—this rogue Metal Sally unit—is selling our most guarded tactical resource in a form factor that fits in a pocket! She's bypassed fifty years of gatekeeping and handed the keys to Breezie the Hedgehog!"

Hope Kintobor, sitting at her station as a civilian consultant and ward, leaned forward until her nose almost touched the holographic projection. While Collin was fuming over the "provocation," Hope was mesmerized.

"I don't understand why you're so mad, Collin," Hope said, her voice filled with genuine wonder. "Look at the shielding. She's not using lead or heavy-metal baffles at all. It's a crystalline lattice... it's like the energy is being folded into a higher-dimensional space to save room. It's brilliant. If we put these in the new G.U.N. Beetles, we could double their armor or add weapons because we'd have so much extra space!"

"It's not about the 'extra space,' Hope," Tower said, his voice dropping into a stern, instructional tone. "It's about the fact that Breezie is no doubt already decentralizing production. Our intelligence reports show shipping of R Cores from at least three other neutral city-states. The monopoly is dead. We can't use the GR Core as a diplomatic incentive if every independent household can just buy an R Core at a hardware store."

"But... then the people would have readily available clean power," Hope countered, looking confused. "Isn't that the point? No more smog, no more Eggman-style coal plants. This is what Great-Grandfather Gerald wanted, right? Clean energy for everyone?"

Collin let out a sharp, bitter laugh. "Hope, you're a genius with a soldering iron, but you're a child when it comes to how the world actually works. Power isn't just electricity; it's leverage. And this rogue unit just took our leverage and turned it into a consumer product. Commander, we need to authorize a containment strike. She's a Metal-class unit—designed specifically as a high-performance counter to Sally Acorn's tactical leadership. If she's applying that level of 'counter-strategy' to the global economy, we need to shut her down before—"

"No," Tower interrupted, his voice like iron. "We are not sending a strike team into a neutral city-state to engage an elite-class counter-unit of unknown capacity. I know exactly what happens when you provoke a rogue asset, Collin."

He glanced toward the shadows where Omega stood in silence, and Shadow stood with his arms crossed. Not that Commander Tower thought that either of the two would refuse the mission if it was given to them, but if they made the attempt and failed…

"We don't know her motives," Tower continued. "She hasn't shown hostility. If we go in guns blazing against a unit designed to out-think a strategist of Princess Sally Acorn's caliber, we turn a potential ally into a very well-funded enemy. We need a lighter touch."

A feminine chuckle drifted from the back of the room as Rouge the Bat detached herself from a darkened pillar, tapping a glowing notification on her handheld.

"The timing is impeccable, Commander," Rouge said, her eyes flashing with interest. "Breezie just broke the news on all channels. She's hosting a 'Grand Prix of Chaos' in Casino Park. First place gets a Chaos Emerald, and her new protégé—this 'Steel Princess'—is headlining the event to show off her new car."

Rouge adjusted a white glove, a playful but sharp glint in her eyes. "High-stakes racing, 'nouveau-riche' tech-icons, and a Chaos Emerald up for grabs? It's like she's begging for a visit."

"Your mission is evaluation, Rouge," Tower said. "I want to know if 'Rally' is really the one designing this tech, or if Breezie is just using a convenient rogue Metal unit as a front. Get close to her. Find out what she wants. If she's as brilliant as Hope thinks she is, maybe she can be convinced that the Federation is a better partner than a media mogul."

"And if she isn't interested in talking shop?" Rouge asked.

"Then we reassess," Tower said. "But for now, the R Core—this Chaos Drive Mini as Breezie has decided to call it—stays on the market, and we stay in the shadows. Keep your eyes open, Rouge. If this rogue unit is as dangerous as her math suggests, the Grand Prix is going to be more than just a race."