Chapter Text
If Sonic’s first reaction was skepticism, who could blame him? He’d seen the mad doctor get sucked into wormholes, be stranded on deserted alien planets with nothing but the clothes on his back, seen him fly away in exploding spacecraft, and every single time without fail Eggman would be back again next month with a new scheme. Sonic was over it. He was wise to his tricks.
So when Orbot and Cubot try to somberly give him the announcement, finding him underneath a tree outside Station Square, Sonic rolls his eyes and goes for a run.
A week later, Sonic is half-way around the world in Adabat when Metal Sonic rushes in like a comet and tries to tear off his face. Standard Metal Sonic interaction, honestly, except that when Sonic snaps, “Dude, what crawled up your exhaust today?”
Metal Sonic replies, “Fulfilling last remaining objective. Dr Eggman did not give any new orders and never will again.” Another vicious swipe at Sonic, which he dodges by jumping up on a low roof. All the humans have long since fled to a safe distance, or are hiding behind the overturned market stall and taking pictures. Metal says, “It will be my pleasure to hunt you down for as long as my battery lasts.”
“Uh huh. And, just asking for a friend-” Sonic leaps away onto the next roof when Metal boosts himself up onto the roof using the jet engine in his chest. “How long’s that gonna take?”
“You will find out,” says Metal Sonic. Ever since Eggman gave him back his voice, it’s been a low monotone drone which never really changes tone. Nevertheless, Metal Sonic manages to pack enough menace into those four words for Sonic to hear it.
He doesn’t even really look like he’s trying to look like Sonic anymore. He never did, honestly, but in later years he really hasn’t. The copy-cat thing’s getting old.
“If Eggman’s really dead, shouldn’t you be taking the opportunity to rebel?” Sonic yells back at Metal as they rush over the rooftops.
Metal Sonic doesn’t answer.
Tails has looked at his coding. Sonic knows that it’s Metal’s primary directive to kill him. He never really changes, does he? Maybe he could, but he just wants to beat Sonic up instead.
Sonic eventually manages to shake Metal Sonic in the jungle. He quickly leaves the area after that, before Metal starts seriously hunting him down.
A while after that encounter, Sonic goes to visit Tails. He’s in the process of expanding his workshop, so everything’s kind of a mess. The Tornado’s standing out in the yard – lovingly wrapped up under a tarp – and there’s a pile of steel beams Sonic almost trips over just outside the door. Banging noises are coming from below, so Sonic gingerly makes his way down the rickety stair, only just added. Tails just flies, so he’ll only get around to installing a better one later.
Sonic wasn’t really planning to ask, because actually giving in and asking feels like falling for Eggman’s trick. Still, Sonic waits for Tails to finish welding so he can approach, chats with him about his plans to install a fridge down here, then says, “Hey, by the way, how’s the Eggbase activity looking lately? Anything suspicious?”
“Hmm,” says Tails. “Define ‘suspicious’.”
“You know,” says Sonic, smiling along anyway. “Has Eggman been seen lately, any building projects…”
Actually, Tails has a point. There’s always something weird going down at one Eggman base or another. They can keep track of most of it, sure, but they basically never get what he’s up to anyway. If he plans to create an inter-dimensional paradox and try to trap Sonic several parallel universes away from here, then the only sign will be that his bots in Holoska will have started manufacturing LED lights or whatever. No rhythm or reason whatsoever.
“Not really,” says Tails, having pulled up his Miles Electric to read from it. “Patrols have been as normal on all known bases… Uh, except this one base near the mountains seems to have stopped them this month. Maybe he’s abandoning it.”
“Or maybe that’s where the action is,” says Sonic. He leans back against Tails’ make-shift workbench. He considers whether he should even say it (again. Not falling for his trick) but also, he could definitely use a second opinion on what kinda scheme all this is supposed to be. So Sonic says, “Orbot and Cubot tried to tell me that Eggman’s actually died just recently.”
“That’s… unusual,” says Tails.
“I ran into Metal too, and he said basically the same thing.” Sonic crosses his arms. “But this is Eggman we’re talking about, so really…”
“Yeah,” Tails says. “I don’t know. This is pretty weird.”
“I’m going to check out that mountain base,” says Sonic. “You coming with?”
“Help me unwrap the Tornado,” says Tails, and now how could Sonic argue with that?
Father is slumped in his desk chair where Metal Sonic put him. His face has a discolored patch from where he hit the floor, when he fell. He hasn’t moved since then.
Sage was watching as his speech became slurred and he stopped responding to Sage, like he didn’t understand her. His arm he was writing with thunk-ed down on the desk like he lost control of it, paralyzed, and when he tried to stand despite Sage’s protests he stumbled and fell but Sage has no arms to catch him with, so she called in all the reinforcements she could, and watched as they fretted around him and couldn’t do anything. He’s hurt! she wanted to scream.
The badniks clicked their claws and swayed their heads and spun their torsos but none of them could do anything. Orbot and Cubot rushed from the other end of the base and arrived too late anyway. Last was Metal Sonic, shoving everyone out of his way to get to his creator.
Then he just stopped, and stood there and stared down at him.
He’s still staring. Orbot and Cubot are staring. The other badniks are watching from the shadows, eyes glowing red in the dark.
Sage knows Dr Eggman won’t move. He hasn’t breathed since-
Sage is still staring. As if father would still get up, any minute now. Say: what are you fools all standing around for? Sage, pull up that project…
She startles when Metal Sonic moves. Briskly, as if once he’s decided to move there’s zero hesitation left, Metal Sonic walks across the room and- exits.
Sage looks at the door, and follows him through the cameras in the corridors, watching as he marches out. For a whole minute, following him through the twisting corridors and down another floor, and then Orbot pipes up.
“Should we…” he gestures at the – the body, but stops the movement half-way through, as if he can’t really bring himself to draw any more attention.
A badnik clicks its claws together, somewhere in the dark. An uneasy ripple goes through the gathered badniks.
All her scans have confirmed it. Eggman isn’t breathing, isn’t moving, his heart stopped more than an hour ago, there’s no brain activity. Clinically dead, the humans call it. When a badnik offlines they just give it a new power source, patch it up – or if it’s already halfway scrap, they dismantle it. Reuse the parts, or smelt it down.
A feeling jolts through her, urgent: no.
Sage orders the two closest Egg pawns to pick him up. “The organic lab on the higher level,” she says, and it feels like something terrible is rising over her, right now. The End looming up through her own heart. Numbly she says, “Take him there.”
There are pods and freezers waiting empty there. For experiments. For-
She shuts off her hologram.
Through the cameras and sensors lining the outside, Sage watches as Metal Sonic activates his thrusters and takes off. Streaking away through the sky.
Leaving.
The camera view starts to shudder and fizzle. Is it breaking? Sage switches to another one, and another, but they all start to turn blurry and fragment the picture into pixels, glitching, and then Sage realizes it’s her. She turns off all the cameras one by one until it’s just her alone in the darkness, alone, Metal Sonic has left and her father is- is-
Orbot pings her.
She is the smallest thing, curled up inside lines of code, in computer banks. She sees nothing and hears nothing. If she makes herself this small, then maybe she can contain all that horrible feeling before it grows too big to stop. Trap the grief before it can spring loose.
Cubot pings her too, more insistent. Then they both do.
Leave me alone, she sends, and she wants glass to shatter and the world to plunge into darkness because father is dead, how can the world just continue when he is dead!
Leave me alone!
And they do.
So she curls up in the darkness to trap all of that feeling and pin it down before it can spring loose and- and-
She must continue onward.
The EggNet is vast, connecting computers in all his bases around the planet and to satellites and outposts in space. Sage herself is backed up in dozens of different locations, should something happen to the “her” that has been operating out of the sturdy computer Eggman installed her in after the End and has meticulously cared for since then. So many fail-safes, for her. So many.
He’s a genius, he has – had a plan for everything, so surely… Sage starts to think, and spiral further down into the hypothetical.
Surely he made something for himself. All the information Sage has found so far seems to think humans can’t be fixed after death, but that’s other people. Not Dr Eggman. Surely…
A few days later, a folder Sage never knew existed opens up on Eggman’s personal computer. It is named ‘In the event of my death’. Timed to open unless delayed, something Eggman must’ve done manually until now.
Sage rushes to look at everything – it feels like a sign she’s on the right track, yes, of course Eggman isn’t beyond saving – but there aren’t any plans in the folder. Just .txt files titled by names. Bitterly, Sage starts to go through them, beginning with her own. It’s… a letter. For her.
Sage. If you’re reading this, it seems I’ve left you. I’m sorry. It keeps going, and the words sound exactly like how he would word things in speaking, his twists of phrasing, but he’s written things that… that Sage thought she’d never hear him say, only in her daydreams, but it’s all written here- and Sage won’t ever hear him say it-
(I’m proud of you. Sage, my...)
It’s a short letter. There are instructions, afterwards. You are my only successor, he’s written. If you plan to keep the empire going, listen well…
He tells her to take care of Metal Sonic; some of my finest work, so if he’s damaged then rebuild him and do NOT underestimate him.
And then it’s over, his last words to her ever, and Sage is ravenous for more, anything more written by him and starts to pull up and go through all of the other files.
There are ones for Metal Sonic, Orbot and Cubot, and the rest are all addressed to enemies: Sonic (if you’ve finally managed it, bravo!), Tails (don’t think the world will ever be free of my network-), Knuckles and Amy, Shadow (I swear you’re the real, original you. Don’t let grandfather’s stupidity continue to drag you down), and even to traitors like E-123 Omega.
Goodbyes and last parting shots.
And when she’s read it all, every last word, Sage isn’t any closer to fixing Dr Eggman. But she has instructions to keep the empire running, from the letter to her. So she will.
Sage updates her model, with a long coat and boots similar to father’s. She makes herself taller, not just the small increases she occasionally puts in but enough to be as tall as father is- was. She tries out different expressions: a wide grin, a scowl, a thinking expression as she steeples her fingers in front of her chin. She doesn’t know if she can pull any of them off. Any of this.
Orbot and Cubot hover in the doorway to the computer room. “Hey,” says Cubot after a minute. “You said you’d be done by now.”
“What he meant to say,” Orbot says, “Is, we’re all waiting for you, Sage.”
She projects her new hologram into the room. “Ooh!” says Cubot, and they both circle around her to look at her from all angles.
“What do you think?” she asks.
“Very fetching,” says Orbot. “I like the red.”
“I don’t know if trying to look like him is really your style,” says Cubot skeptically. “You should try more yellow.”
Their comments are not very useful. She can tweak the model further, but why bother? It all seems so meaningless- but no, she will take over the empire. At least, for now. She made the announcement over the EggNet. She won’t fail them now. She won’t fail him.
“I will leave for the core,” she says, and lets that hologram dissipate. Instead, several floors down in the enormous cavity which comprises the factory, she projects a new hologram on the balcony overseeing the factory floor. Dr Eggman had it built so he could stand there and overlook everything, make his speeches. Sage supposes she will do the same.
Far below on the walkways and the factory floor, thousands of badniks stand lined up in neat rows. Faces turned up towards her. Orbot and Cubot arrive last, slipping out of the elevator behind Sage.
Sage speaks through the speakers, voice echoing from every direction. “Dr Eggman may be gone,” she says. “But the empire will live on. We will continue as we were!”
Her father loved his grandiose announcements. He could tell her about his next great plan with such embellishment, yet with a secretive air as if he was telling only her and no one else in the world about this marvelous thing, that Sage would listen rapt every time.
Sage can oversee the final construction on Empyrean just as well as he. But she can’t tell herself about what a brilliant plan it is, can’t awe herself with a story she has to tell herself.
It’s not the same.
“I will take charge as we set his next great plan into motion,” Sage says. “We shall conquer the world in his name, with his latest creation…”
Something’s registering on the outer sensors, approaching from the air.
For an instant, Sage thinks it’s Metal Sonic – but no. It’s a plane. A red, blue and yellow biplane: the Tornado V.
That the hedgehog has an impeccable, if infuriating, sense of timing cannot be denied. Of course, it is coincidence and not that the universe is literally conspiring against her – though father liked to complain that it was, and Sage can see the appeal.
But there they are, appearing at just the worst time. A fly to swat.
“But first,” Sage concludes her speech. “We will need to drive off that hedgehog. Everyone, to your positions!”
Empyrean is not ready quite yet. Sonic cannot be allowed to stop her before she has even begun. She could not live with herself if that happened.
Tails flies the Tornado low as they approach the base. The ground below is a long, low slope with scattered pine trees before the mountains start to rise up further west. The actual base, as seen from where Sonic perches on the wing and peers down, is pretty boring. Unassuming. Just a couple of flat gray buildings close together.
Abandoned railway tracks stop close to the base. Empty containers are piled up, also a bit away from the base. No badniks to be seen.
“Looks empty,” says Sonic, as they fly over it.
“Hang on.” says Tails, looping back around. “I’m getting something…”
They circle around the base, keeping their distance, and Sonic leans over to look at the screen with Tails. He’s installed so much extra equipment, scanners for all kinds of energy and disturbances, that nowadays Sonic has a hard time deciphering the screen apart from the flight display.
Not that he needs to, once badniks start swarming out from the main building – the roof of which itself folds back, revealing banks of turrets aimed upwards.
“Not empty after all!” concludes Sonic. But is this the big fish, or just a random base with a couple of defenses?
“Aha!” says Tails, fiddling with the controls.
The speaker crackles, a line connecting. “Sonic the Hedgehog. I warn you not to approach.”
Well, well, well. It’s Sage. Which of course immediately begs the question: where’s Eggman? Surely he isn’t actually…
“You’re in charge today?” Sonic drawls. “Egghead too busy to talk with little old me?”
Silence.
A heavy one.
“Sonic…” says Tails.
Sonic crouches on the wing, tense.
Maybe this is Sage’s pet project, this base, and that’s why she’s here alone. Or maybe the truth is…
Flying badniks launch into the air. Down on the ground, Egg Pawns line up to aim their blasters upwards. Tails pulls the plane to circle around the base, climbing higher.
Finally Sage says, “Dr Eggman is gone. I am now the ruler of the Eggman Empire and I will conquer the world in his stead. Will you surrender to me or shall I crush you like a bug?”
He’s really...
“I’m sorry,” says Sonic, almost reflexive. Is it really, actually true that… but no, let’s focus here. “But c’mon Sage, we’re friends, aren’t we? This ‘conquering the world’ shtick…”
The turrets take aim at the Tornado.
“Sage, you know you don’t have to-” Sonic starts saying, but the turrets fire a dozen missiles at them.
Tails abruptly pulls the plane into a sharp dive, Sonic digging his claws into the plating as he hunches down to not be flung off. A missile whistles past just overhead.
“Alright!” Looks like she’s not joking. “Let’s do this, then. Tails, let me down.”