Chapter Text
[Chaaaaaaaaarmy: i am going to kill him]
[Chaaaaaaaaarmy: and then]
[Chaaaaaaaaarmy: kill him again >:3 ]
[Vector (commissions open): Charmy, no]
[Move It Move It: Charmy YES]
Belle's phone kept buzzing with notifications from the private chatroom Tails had set up. Everyone was on high alert, given that Dr Eggman had actively started attacking places in search of Sage and Linden. The badnik forces were encroaching on every possible angle on every major settlement, them having quickly found out that neither of the runaway robots were still at Vanilla's home after the first attack.
Mecha had been kind enough to keep an eye on the immediate surroundings of where the house wagon was parked, more built for fighting than the Tinkerers. Sage was completely out of it, unfortunately, running through potential outcomes of this mess she kept blaming herself for. And Linden had been oddly quiet the whole time, hardly a sob heard from under her covers.
[Lylat Wars: There's been nothing but badnik sightings everywhere I look. No wonder Sonic's busy, this is getting out of hand.]
[piko piko: thank you for keeping an eye on everything, tails.]
[piko piko: i've been trying to keep things under wraps.]
[piko piko: there's been wanted/missing posters everywhere.]
[Blaze: The thought of that almost makes me feel bad for the doctor. Almost.]
[Move It Move It: Its harder to when ur fighting robots ALL the time. AND the faces and names are wrong! I mean Sage is chill with her name but yknow]
[Metal Gear Solid: poor linden.]
[Move It Move It: YEAH!! POOR LINDEN! So true babe]
[Knock knock it's Knuckles: I'm still not hiding them on Angel Island]
[Beauty Thief: Shadow says it's too dangerous to let them stay on The Ark, but I think he's just worried about them being alone.]
[Shadow (Do Not Disturb): :middle_finger: ]
[Beauty Thief: I rest my case~]
Belle didn't want to have to relocate. If they went anywhere, even to a different dimension, Dr Eggman would just find them anyway. He always had ways. He could hijack their minds, or their bodies. He could send more robot after them, maybe even Linden's own former chassis. The family of Tinkerers had their hands tied, practically puppeted.
[Tinker's Belle: I don't think we're going anywhere that far, or anywhere else.]
[Tinker's Belle: Neither of the twins could handle it.]
The server went from having several people typing to no one. Outside of defeating Eggman somehow, there wasn't going to be any way to give the three kids, Belle included, peace. Belle was only a teen, in the same sense as her sisters being kids despite different manufacturing dates. The Tinkerer sisters couldn't be displaced, alone, defenceless or anything without something going wrong, as long as they were being looked for.
Belle put down her phone, trying to keep herself together. Things would be fine, and if she could just reassure her sisters, she'd probably feel better and kind of useful instead of stressed out of her mind. At least Sage was visible, sitting while surrounded by blankets and pillows, so if Belle started with the reassurance that Linden, too, was okay-
But there was only pillows, Linden's notebook and pen, and the unfinished robo-chao under the covers.
Sage started mumbling her new and old worries, worse than before, as Belle grabbed her phone again to ask for any sign of the runaway wooden girl.
◇◇◇◇
What was the one thing all Sonics and Sonic-alikes do better than anyone else?
Run.
Metal didn't have speed pumping through his pistons, no lightning in his cogs, but he kept running. He couldn't fly without the turbine in his intended chassis, but he kept going forward as fast as his wooden feet could take him through the woods. He wasn't built for running, but he was absolutely built to run. It was in his programming.
If he was gone, he wouldn't drag more suffering to anyone else. It was his own wellbeing that had dragged Sage and Belle into worrying about him, that then led to all of this. If he could function instead as a distraction, not as a lure, then he'd keep his creator away from his friends and family.
His existence as Linden was temporary. It always was. Of course it was. That's what happened in the many, many manga like this. The protagonist would have a lot of fun being a girl, almost seeming happier like that, but they always go back to being a boy, normal, as expected of their birth. And from creation, Metal Sonic was meant to be Sonic, made of metal. As plain and simple as that, right there in his name.
It was over. All that happiness, it was done for. Metal would be found, taken, placed back in his old body, not get to wear nice clothes, not get to sound sweet and cute when she wished to make sound. He would be Sonic, but better, again. Sonic, but loyal to Dr Eggman. Because Dr Eggman gets what he wants. Dr Eggman wanted Metal to see Sonic in the mirror. Dr Eggman wanted everyone to see a monster like Johnny.
Dr Eggman wanted Metal to run. And this wooden body wasn't built for such intense running.
The peg that served as the joint for his right knee was starting to slip out, and any chance of it coming out completely while running would be disastrous. Metal was forced to stop and analyse the damage, of which there was little. Until it could be properly adjusted and replaced, minimal tinkering was required beyond hammering it back in, so Linden could get herself going pretty eas-
"Ughhhhhhhhhhh!" Metal complained to the open air with a synthesised guttural groan of frustration. He thought of himself as her again…
"Are you okay?" A voice from the other side of the clearing jumpscared the wooden runaway, "That was really loud. It could have scared Froggy."
Big The Cat, known ally of Sonic and friends, was fishing at a small pond in the middle of the woods. With a camping stool and a picnic basket, he seemed to have been set up for the long haul. Of course he was there. Metal had gotten so comfy, so out of practice, that his attempt at running away got him noticed.
Unfortunately, he also seemed to have all the good rocks near him for hammering back in the knee joint peg. Metal gave a thumbs up, limping towards the fisherman before pointing at a rock and tilting his head.
"Oh, you can have the rock," Big was naturally confused, "I don't need it for fishing."
It was nice to bow as a way of saying thanks, given that Linden didn't have her notepad to do so properly. Metal then sat down in a huff on the floor, wincing a little at how his leg creaked, before grabbing the rock and starting to hit the peg. This was the closest she was getting to finishing her chao friend. This was the most tinkering he would ever be allowed to do.
"It's a nice day to sit in the forest," Oh no, Big was attempting to make small talk, "I'm glad Froggy ran out here."
Froggy? Like the one with Chaos' DNA still imprinted onto it? This buffoon was really still hunting for the same frog?
"The air makes me feel nice and calm," As if he wasn't already ridiculously patient, fishing all the time, "It's still. Can you feel that with your wooden body?"
So that meant he was observant, of course he was. Metal shook his head. He could see how the wind effected the world around him, but he couldn't feel it unless it was tough enough to make movement difficult.
"That's a shame," Was Big, of all people, pitying her? "It feels like… A nice hug from a friend. You should know what those feel like. Everyone deserves nice hugs."
Metal didn't. Metal was a monster. Metal was better than Sonic, above the need for hugs. But Linden got hugs, and softness, and loved ones in a way that was more than arbitrary titles Dr Eggman gave only once he had made someone who, for a time, he saw as the one perfect child. That meant the still wind felt comfortable, but fleeting, if following Big's description.
"It feels nice because it isn't trying to go faster than it needs to, I think," Mused Big, "I can't really run super fast, but I don't want to, anyway. Going fast makes everything harder, sometimes. If I went fast, I wouldn't find Froggy, and I wouldn't have met you, little girl."
Big didn't have to go fast, though. He didn't have to be cool, slick, speedy and unstoppable. Metal absolutely had to.
"And if you weren't going fast, you wouldn't have hurt yourself like that."
… Gears and starters. Big was right. Linden was there, hammering her knee back into a functional position, because she pushed herself in a way she thought she had to but never did. She wasn't under Dr Eggman's command like this, he probably wouldn't even recognise her beyond a passing similarity to Belle. She wasn't told to run in any way beyond past pressures haunting her.
So, did Linden want to go fast? No. Did she want to stay far away from her father? Absolutely. Did she want to go back to mimicking a guy she hadn't seen the face of since getting this body, a guy doing his best to make sure Dr Eggman wasn't hurting her? Did she want the stuff the real Sonic was doing in her name to go in vain? No way. Not at all.
If she was going to show the world what she was made of, she had to be honest. And she wasn't made of metal.
She was Linden.
There were better tools to fix her knee with back home than with some rock she found on the ground. There were people who could fix it better than she could, too. While getting back home fast was something she genuinely wanted now, she wasn't going to be able to with the damage. Maybe, when she worked up the courage, she could ask Big to help carry her home somehow. The dirt seemed easy to write in, at least.
But instead, she looked out at the pond for a moment. Eggman wasn't going to find her in some far out forest. She needed the moment of still air. It felt like the world hugging her.
◇◇◇◇
[Big: I have Linden with me.]
[Tinker's Belle: Gears and starters. Thank you, Big.]
[Move It Move It: :froggy_pog: :froggy_pog: :froggy_pog: :froggy_pog: ]
[piko piko: good job, big!]
[piko piko: i'll let cream know, too.]
[Chaaaaaaaaarmy: but i wanted to be the one who found her :( :( :( :( :( :( :( ]
[Chaaaaaaaaarmy: can she run away again?]
[Vector (commissions open): Charmy, no. We can't make the crimes for cases ourselves]
[Chaaaaaaaaarmy: :( ]