The alley's gamma-lit haze blurred around Mr. Prower as he dragged himself forward, each inch a symphony of grinding agony. Rain plastered his fur to his skull, mixing with the coppery tang of his own blood soaking the pavement beneath his ruined leg. The jagged dumpster lid remained embedded—a monument to Sector 7's decay—but he'd torn free, leaving behind pulp and splintered bone wrapped in shredded Royal Army fabric. Forward. Only forward mattered. Kintobor Tower's service door loomed ahead, sealed shut against the stink of irradiated waste and betrayal. Behind him, the refugees' stunned silence had fractured into panicked whispers. He heard the scrabbling retreat of feet. Cowards. Witnesses to his humiliation.
His sword scraped wet asphalt as he hauled his torso onward, leaving a trail of crimson diluted by oily puddles. The cold seeped into his marrow, but fury burned hotter. Failure? No. A tactical recalibration. Maxx's enemies had exploited rot—*literal rot*—to wound the Sword of the Acorn Throne. That insight alone was worth the sacrifice. He pictured Ambassador Kintobor's smug face behind fortified walls. Sheltering vermin. Harboring treason. *They crawled into your belly, Kintobor. Like parasites.* His claws dug into cracked concrete, knuckles white. Leverage had fled inward... but he knew the fortress's dormant intake vents. Its blind spots. Its *weakness*.
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Kintobor rotated my forearm again. "Healing of compression trauma exceeds initial projections," he murmured to scanning drones. Holograms materialized—rotating skeletal models highlighting subdermal lesions. His thumb pressed gently against my scapula fracture site. Mint-coolness flooded marrow, having fully disolved phantom echoes of Jules' grip. Bernadette's biometric console blipped once more—synaptic reintegration having stabilized. Her bandaged hand had stopped spasming, knuckles whitening beneath gauze, now no longer collapsing stiffly. Vital signs had lomg since flatlined into numbed green acceptance. Dispassion had long since settled inside her deeper than any Diamond City slum.
I should be screaming. Not internally—externally. With lungs. With vocal cords. With everything this small, rebuilt body possesses. The phantom agony of shattered bone and severed tendons still crawls beneath my skin, a ghost memory etched by Jules' grip and the dumpster lid's slow descent. Yet Kintobor's touch is glacial balm. His thumb presses against reconstructed scapula, and the mint-coolness isn't anesthetic; it's annihilation. The grinding echoes dissolve into silence. The marrow-deep fire gutters out. I try to summon the rage—the *righteous* fury—but it slips through me like smoke. My limbs are whole. Strong. Unmarked. Royal Army insignia gleams pristine on synth-leather padding beneath me. The betrayal of Sector 7's rot is erased. Only the betrayal of *feeling* remains. I flex my hand. Fingers obey. Claws retract. Smooth. Precise. Aristocratic motor control restored. I am weapon. I am Sword. Yet the echo of crawling through filth clings like radiation sickness. Failure shouldn't heal this cleanly.
Bernadette's console emits a soft, rhythmic chime—synaptic reintegration complete. Her gaze drifts across biometric readouts without landing. Gauze still wraps her knuckles where she punched Jules' holographic projection into static after his ninth demand for "progress visuals." Her stillness isn't exhaustion now. It's petrification. Dispassion has settled deeper than any Diamond City slum, calcified around her spine. She watches Kintobor adjust a neural stabilizer above my skull. No flicker of relief. No maternal warmth. Just the hollow green acceptance of vital signs that never spike, never dip. Flatlined. Perfect stability. Utter vacancy. Her thumb brushes cold synth-leather near my shoulder. Not comfort. Habit. Or perhaps measuring residual tremors Jules' genetics might've left behind.
Kintobor steps back, drones humming approval. "Well then Mrs. Hedgehog, you are on a speedy recovery and your son has fully healed." His voice echoes in the sterile chamber, Bernadette simply stared blankly, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, where's the fucking alchohol? I need a drink." The words land like stones in water. "Uhh... M-Mrs. Hedgehog you can't be drinking alchohol..." Bernadette's eyes finally snap upward. "Can't?" Her laughter cracks the sterile air—a dry, humorless sound that sharpens Kintobor's frown. "Don't confuse recuperation with redemption, Doctor." Her fingers twitch toward her gown pocket, empty now. Jules had confiscated her hip flask upon admission, calling it "unsightly for the infant's environment." The phantom weight of cool metal taunts her.
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Doctor Jules Kintobor was a simple Veternarian who secretly was also a biologist whose hands froze mid-adjustment on the neural stabilizer. The sterile lights caught the sudden tremor in his fingers. Bernadette's demand echoed, sharp as shattered glass in the antiseptic silence. Her gaze, when it met his, wasn't pleading or desperate—it was flint striking stone. "Alcohol," she repeated, the word a blunt instrument. "Now."
Kintobor cleared his throat, the sound unnaturally loud. "Mrs. Hedgehog... Sonic is recovering exceptionally well. Introducing toxins now would—"
"Compromise your that fucking mistake?" Bernadette's lips curled into a mirthless approximation of a smile. Her eyes flicked to the infant resting between them—Sonic, silent and unnervingly alert within his medical cocoon. "He survived Jules' genetic circus act and Sector 7's garbage disposal. A sip of whiskey won't crack his 'aristocratic motor control.'" She tapped her temple, her nail chipped and dull. "*I*, however, will crack *you* if I don't get a drink in the next sixty seconds."
Kintobor flinched. The neural stabilizer above Sonic's head emitted a low, warning hum as his hand trembled near the controls. Sweat beaded beneath his collar. Bernadette's threat hung thick—not the shrill hysteria he dismissed in Diamond City socialites, but the cold, grinding promise of someone who'd already broken knuckles on holographic projections. He risked another glance at Sonic. The infant's eyes tracked him, vivid green and utterly unblinking, like polished jade absorbing weakness.
He thought of Mobius. Not the gleaming propaganda spires of New Megapolis, but the festering truth: Sector 7's alleyways, where rust ate steel faster than ambition. Where loyalty bled out into irradiated puddles, ignored by Northern Barony hovercrafts soaring toward gilded decadence. Jules' delusions of genetic supremacy, Maxx's hollow-eyed sermons on divine order—all fragile scaffolds over the rot. He saw it daily in his clinic, stitching up alley cats mangled by decayed machinery, treating children poisoned by leaking coolant pipes the Northern Barons deemed "cost-inefficient to repair." Mobius was a carcass picked clean by vultures in silk suits. His own hands, instruments of healing, felt useless against the tide. A vet patching wounds while the world hemorrhaged chaos.
He thought back to his childhood with hsi brother Colin, cleaning rusted gears in their father's repair shop when Mobius was much less polluted before the Northern Barons' chokehold. The smell of ozone had been cleaner then, promising innovation, not decay. Now? Anarchy choked the streets: riots brewed beneath flickering holograms hawking "freedom" pills, while kits starved beneath chrome-plated casinos. His hands—trained to mend broken animals—were useless against the rot festering in Maxx's throne room and Jules' labs. Mobius wasn't collapsing; it was being cannibalized by its own architects. And here he stood, applying bandages to wounds inflicted by the very machinery he'd once admired.
Bernadette's glare deepened. Her silence now was a scalpel scraping bone. He imagined Jules demanding caviar machines while slum pipes burst. Saw Maxx's Royal Army crushing dissent—and limbs—beneath polished boots. *Hypocrisy*. The word tasted like coolant sludge. His brother Colin became a lawyer because of that hypocrisy. They hadn't talked in a while now that he thought about it... Kintobor's gaze drifted to Sonic's unnerving stillness. This child wasn't a canvas for Jules' vanity. He could be so much more if he tried.
Sonic's eyes held his own—a disconcerting, ancient green. Not infantile confusion, but the cold assessment of a man observing a chessboard from a prison cell. Kintobor's breath hitched. He thought of Sector 7's alleys, the dumpster lid grinding bone, the crawling soldier's agonized devotion. That same indomitable will resided here, trapped in wrinkled flesh. Jules saw a trophy. Bernadette saw a burden. But Kintobor? He saw the rot laid bare. This child wasn't Jules' canvas. He was Sector 7's jagged indictment—a creature forged in neglect and decaying steel. What survived such a birth? Not hope. Calculation. A mind already dissecting hypocrisy with unnerving clarity.
But he could help Sonic see the bright future he could help make reality. He wasn't just Jules' genetic experiment or Bernadette's unwanted burden. This child was a scalpel so far sharpened in neglect—one that could cut through the rot choking Mobius. Jules envisioned parades; Maxx demanded obedience. Yet Sonic? Sonic could dismantle their gilded cages bolt by bolt. Kintobor imagined those vivid green eyes mapping sewer access points beneath Diamond Heights, those tiny claws disabling Maxx's surveillance grids before kindergarten. A mind that navigated fragmented memories and parental apathy wouldn't flinch at crumbling infrastructure. The dumpster lid that shattered a Royal Army soldier? Sonic would weaponize Sector 7's decay itself.
Bernadette shifted, her knuckles cracking against the synth-leather padding. "God damn it Doc need something to drink and black out from this hellscape," she rasped. "Not having to watch over this brat." Her gaze slid to Sonic—still unnervingly silent on the examination slab.
Kintobor's hand jerked away from the stabilizer as if burned. He wasn't a man who hated, but if he did, it was those who couldn't be bothered to care for the children they made. Bernadette's eyes were red-rimmed voids, fixed on Sonic with neither malice nor warmth—only the dull resentment of a prisoner shackled to a rock. Sonic stared back, green gaze unblinking, absorbing the doctor's hesitation like data.
Kintobor had no choice but to be frozen. Bernadette's demand hung between them—a jagged blade slicing sterile air. Sonic watched, unblinking. That ancient stare dissected hesitation. Kintobor's knuckles whitened against the neural stabilizer's chrome. This mother wanted oblivion, not healing. For *herself*. Sonic? He was debris. Jules' arrogance echoed: *"Sonic understands necessity!"* Yet necessity here stank of synth-whiskey and surrender. Kintobor pictured Sector 7's alleys—rotted steel crushing Royal Army resolve. Sonic survived that. Would survive this. But Bernadette? Her cracks deepened daily. He inhaled antiseptic, tasting failure. Jules confiscated her flask; Kintobor couldn't replace poison. Yet denying her might fracture something irreparable. Sonic's vital signs pulsed—steady green indifference. Perfect stability. Perfect void.
Kintobor's fingers twitched toward a concealed panel beneath Sonic's diagnostic slab. Bio-locks recognized his tremor, sliding open with a soft *hiss*. Inside lay emergency vials: adrenaline, neural blockers... and one small ampoule of medical-grade ethanol, pure as diamond ice. For sterilizing instruments. Or cauterizing wounds of the soul. He lifted it. The liquid caught overhead lights, casting fractured prisms across Bernadette's hollow cheeks. "One dose," he rasped, voice scraping raw. "For sedation only. Not redemption." He pressed the cool glass into her palm. Her fingers closed like a trap. No gratitude. Just desperate containment. She cracked the seal with her teeth. The sharp, clean scent of pure alcohol cut through clinic sterility—ozone promise meeting decay.
Bernadette tilted her head back, throat working as the ethanol burned its path downward. A shudder wracked her—not relief, but violent expulsion of coiled tension. Her knuckles, still bandaged from punching Jules' hologram, relaxed minutely. For three heartbeats, her gaze lost its flint-edge, clouding into numb absorption. Then it snapped back to Sonic, sharper. Calculating. The ethanol hadn't dulled her; it had crystallized her resolve. "Jules will come," she stated, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. The gesture was feral, dismissive. "It doesn't matter if we are hiding. He'll smell weakness, Doctor. Like synth-rot." Her eyes drifted to Sonic's impassive face. "Especially *his*." Her fingers twitched toward the empty ampoule. Not craving more. Measuring its potential as a weapon.
Kintobor watched her pupils contract, the chemical precision locking her despair into ice. He thought of rusted alley pipes bursting—pressure finding the weakest joint. Sonic remained motionless, green eyes tracking the ampoule's trajectory. No infantile curiosity. Cold logistics. Assessing fracture points. Kintobor's own pulse spiked, adrenaline sour on his tongue. He'd handed her solvent, not salvation. Now Sector 7's violence lived inside Diamond Heights' sterile walls. Scents warred: antiseptic, ethanol's clean burn, Bernadette's faint sweat-stress musk. Sonic inhaled slowly, nostrils flaring. Cataloging threats.
Bernadette suddenly straightened. "Nonething matters anymore," she whispered, the ethanol sharpening her voice to a razor's edge. Her gaze locked onto Sonic's unnerving stillness. "He sees it. The rot inside us all." Her bandaged hand hovered above his forehead, not touching, as if tracing an invisible fracture in the air between them. Kintobor's diagnostics flickered—synaptic patterns spiking in jagged, unfamiliar waveforms. Not distress. Recognition. Sonic's tiny claws flexed against the synth-leather, silent witness to Bernadette's unraveling truth.
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Bernadette thought of when she was a child, still with some hope for the future. She remembered sitting in her small garden, the smell of freshly cut grass mixing with the scent of ozone that had become increasingly common in the air. Her father was a simple gardener, who always insisted on nurturing something beautiful amidst the decay. One day, he brought home a fledgling flicky with a broken wing. Bernadette spent weeks tending to it, feeding it scraps, wrapping its tiny limb in makeshift bandages. She felt a fierce determination, a warmth spreading through her chest as its chirps grew stronger. It was a fragile thing, but it was *hers*. Then came the Barony patrols, enforcing curfew with brutal efficiency. They trampled the garden—her father's pride, her sanctuary—under polished boots. The flicky, startled, fluttered into their path. One enforcer didn't hesitate; his stun-baton crackled, reducing the bird to charred feathers. Her father pulled her away, whispering, "Don't look, Bernie. Don't ever look." But she did. She saw the smirk on the enforcer's face, the casual cruelty. That smirk, she realized later, was everywhere—in Jules' diamond cufflinks, in Maxx's sermons, in the way Charles examined her newborn like malfunctioning equipment. Hope wasn't extinguished in a single moment; it was eroded, grain by grain, by a world where kindness was a liability.
She hated it when people called her Bernie. It wasn't loveable; it was a taunt. Like Jules's fingers digging into her arm at diplomatic galas—her joints bruised beneath silk while he praised her "refined stillness." Refinement was just shackles polished silver. She remembered the Barony enforcer's boot grinding charred flicky feathers into mud. The smirk. That same smirk lived in Charles's clinical detachment, in Jules's diamond-studded indifference. Hope didn't die screaming; it choked on ozone and synth-gin fumes while no one watched. Gentleness became a vulnerability parasites fed upon. So she armored herself in vacancy. Each dismissal—Jules mocking her "hysterics," Charles diagnosing her womb's "suboptimal output"—was another brick in the wall. Numbness wasn't surrender; it was fortification. A silent rebellion against a world that devoured tenderness whole.
The garden's memory lingered—not as solace, but as indictment. Her father's calloused hands coaxing life from poisoned soil, whispering, "Beauty persists, Bernie." Lies. Beauty invited destruction. The flicky's trusting hop toward sunlight became ash under a boot. Jules's courtship felt like sunlight too, once. Champagne bubbles catching Diamond Heights' artificial dawn. Then came his hands gripping her hips, not in passion but possession, murmuring, "Your lineage complements mine." She'd flinched. His eyes hardened. "Sentimentality is inefficient, Bernadette." That moment crystallized it: love was just another scrap fed into Mobius's decay engine. Sonic's birth? Not a miracle. An obligation. Another chain. She'd push him away before the rot could claim him too. Distance was the only protection left.
Kintobor's ethanol burned clean. Too clean. It didn't blur; it sharpened. Sonic watched her, green eyes dissecting her trembling hands. Jules would come. He always did. Weakness was a scent he tracked like bloodhound. She crushed the empty ampoule in her fist. Glass shards bit her palm—real pain to eclipse the hollow ache. Blood welled, bright and startling against clinical white. Sonic's nostrils flared. Not fear. Assessment. Kintobor lunged forward, "Mrs. Hedgehog—!" She waved him off, dripping crimson onto synth-leather. "See?" she hissed at Sonic. "Everything bleeds. Everything breaks." Her voice cracked. Not grief. Triumph. Nihilism wasn't despair; it was the final, furious truth scraped raw from Mobius's bones. Rot was the only constant. And she'd make sure he knew it.
Outside, thunder rumbled—or a fox Mobian fell from Diamond Heights' crumbling skyway. Bernadette didn't flinch. Blood dripped from her clenched fist onto Sonic's sterile cocoon, staining synth-leather crimson. Kintobor recoiled, instruments clattering. "Contamination!" he choked out, scrambling for disinfectant spray. Sonic's nostrils flared again. Not distress. Cataloging iron-scented truth: Bernadette's sacrifice, Kintobor's panic, the rot blooming bright red.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor—polished boots on marble, deliberate. Slow. *Too slow for Jules*. Bernadette froze mid-snarl, broken ampoule shards digging deeper. Kintobor fumbled a neural suppressant hypo. The door slid open without chime or warning. Not Jules' theatrics. This arrival carried stillness like a blade.
Tall. Impossibly gaunt, yet radiating contained velocity. Russet fur muted under clinical lights, nine tails coiled tight against a charcoal trench coat. Five-fingered hands—Overlander hands—rested loose at his sides. No ambassador's insignia. No escort. Only pale eyes scanning the room: Bernadette's bleeding fist, Kintobor's trembling hypo, Sonic's blood-flecked blanket. His gaze lingered on the infant. Sonic stared back. Green met grey. Comprehension flickered—*antithesis recognized*.
"Doctor..." The voice was dry leaves scraping stone. Kintobor jerked upright. "Mr. Prower! What are you doing here, and what happened to your leg!?" Bernadette didn't turn. Her fist bled onto Sonic's carrier. The Overlander Ambassador came forward, his fifth finger tracing the smear of crimson and synth-gin evaporating on polished marble. "The Ambassador is detained." Pale eyes fixed on Sonic's unnerving stillness. "A Sector 7 collapse crushed his transport. Unfortunate... inefficiency." He limped closer, the drag of his injured leg whispering like sandpaper against the sterile silence. Russet fur beneath his coat was matted with dried coolant and something darker near the thigh. "They prioritize gala optics over structural integrity. Predictable decay." His gaze didn't waver from Sonic's face. "This... is Jules Hedgehog's 'legacy'?"
Bernadette snorted, a wet, broken sound. "Legacy? More like a time bomb." She shook her bleeding hand, droplets spattering Kintobor's pristine instruments. "Sees right through the bullshit."
The Ambassador—Prower—ignored her. He leaned down, movements precise despite the injury. His nostrils flared. "Ozone. Ethanol. Copper tang of... fresh trauma." Sonic's green eyes tracked him. No infantile curiosity. Cold assessment. Prower's sea blue irises narrowed fractionally. *Antithesis amplified.* Kintobor scrambled forward, disinfectant spray hissing uselessly. "Mr. Prower, your leg—!" He gestured at the dark stain blossoming through torn fabric. "You must permit me to—"
Mr. Prower silenced him with a raised five-fingered hand. "Irrelevant." His gaze never left Sonic. "This specimen exhibits anomalous neural activity. Jules broadcasts vitality. Bernadette bleeds despair." He tilted his head, a predator dissecting prey. "Yet *he*... processes." Sonic's tiny claw twitched—microscopic acknowledgment. Prower straightened, the motion smooth but costing him. A muffled gasp escaped as weight shifted onto the ruined limb. "Prioritize the variable," he commanded, voice brittle as cracked ice. "My mobility is suboptimal... but secondary."
Kintobor flinched. Secondary? The jagged tear exposed compound fractures, shredded muscle weeping coolant and blackened blood onto pristine tile. Yet Prower's gaze remained locked on Sonic—calculating, detached, as if observing experimental data. "Sterilization protocol breached," Kintobor hissed, snapping gloves from a wall dispenser. The scent of ozone intensified as he activated overhead UV lamps. "This requires immediate debridement. Your femoral artery—" His words died as Prower's five-fingered hand closed around his wrist. Cold. Precise. Like surgical steel infused with glacial intent.
"Variable analysis first," Mr. Prower whispered, his breath carrying the faint metallic tang of internal hemorrhage. He gestured toward Sonic's carrier with his chin, eyes unblinking. "Debris shifted during the Sector 7 collapse. Structural instability reflects societal decay. Observe." His grip tightened on Kintobor's wrist—not pain, but imperative. Sonic blinked slowly, green irises tracking the rhythmic drip from Prower's mangled leg onto sterile tile. Each drop hissed faintly. Coolant? Blood? Or something engineered?