Phase One hinges on me waiting until Miles 'Tails' Prower to be born, likely abandoned if this world and the games are anything to go by. Helping to raise him and cultivate his mind—indoctrinating him into my plans—would be beneficial, given his genius level intellect.
Patch, meanwhile, is being broken down—his pretentious French accent stripped away layer by layer, leaving behind the raw, jagged edges of his true Northern Baronies dialect. I needed more like that, average people not seen in the games to be the boots on the ground—a network of those who slipped through the cracks of King Maxx Acorn's propaganda machine. They'd be loyal, not to some hollow crown, but to the promise of something real—something tangible—like the green apple Patch was currently clutching like a lifeline.
Phase Two was me having Tails help me and Sally overthrow King Maxx Acorn and help Sally take the throne—not for peace, but for order. To suppress those who suppresses others simply for the sake of others.
The apple juice was still dribbling down Patch's chin when I leaned in close—close enough for him to smell the ozone clinging to my quills, close enough to count the flecks of panic in his mismatched irises. "You," I murmured, watching his Adam's apple bob like a buoy in stormy seas, "are going to help me dismantle Diamond Heights from the inside." His ceremonial sword clattered to the floor as my grin widened—not kind, not cruel, just inevitable.
I wiped the apple juice off of Patch's chin with my glove, watching his mismatched eyes dilate—one pupil blown wide as Sector 7's radiation vents, the other constricting like a sniper's scope finding its mark. The calculus unfolded behind his twitching muzzle: fear of King Maxx Acorn's royal enforcers versus terror of my gloved claws lingering near his jugular.
Good. Let him marinate in that delicious cognitive dissonance, let the numbers click into place like tumblers in a lock I'd already picked. My other paw tapped schematics Sally had carved into the war table—ventilation shafts marked with grease pencil, structural weak points underlined in her precise hand.
The apple juice drying on Patch's chin was stickier than King Maxx Acorn's propaganda, stickier than the pheromonal residue clinging to Castle Acorn's tapestries. I watched his throat work around swallowed protests, watched his claws flex toward the fallen sword before curling into fists—useless, harmless fists.
Exactly where I needed him.
Phase Three unfolded in my mind like a blueprint etched in coolant—finding the other game characters before they became threats or assets to others. Knuckles the Echidna, isolated and indoctrinated on Angel Island (Strangely still sunken somehow), would need the training that would make him as strong as I was fast.
Next was Amy Rose—still a child clutching storybooks about knights and fortune telling of destines, her pink quills likely bouncing with every naive step. I wasn't truly Sonic, with any luck that would mean she wouldn't love me.
I didn't hate Amy Rose with a passion like some others I met when I was still human, but I was an adult and human in mind—and to see her and any other boy or girl as anything more than a child would be disgusting, pitiful—filthy, like King Maxx Acorn, like Jules.
My claws traced the edges of Patch's make shift suit—threadbare velvet stretched taut over ribs still sharp from Sector 7 rationing—while my quills vibrated at a frequency that made his fillings hum. I could've peeled his pretenses like overripe fruit, exposed the raw pulp of his Northern Baronies survival instincts, but I let him cling to his fraying Merkian affectation like a child to a security blanket.
For now.
Plans required patience, and I had five years of Kintobor's conditioning simmering beneath my spines—a pressure cooker of calculated mercy and surgical brutality. Patch's pulse rabbited under my touch, but his mismatched eyes held something worth cultivating: not loyalty, not yet, but the desperate calculus of a cornered thing choosing between teeth or talons. I exhaled slow, letting the scent of overripe apples and ozone linger between us like a promise—less sweet than threatening, the way rust smells like blood before the cut stings.
The last most major price was Shadow the Hedgehog—his creation, his match for my power—likely locked away in some hidden bunker beneath Prison Island. I'd need Tails' ingenuity to crack those security protocols, Sally's intel to pinpoint the facility, and Patch's desperation to keep them both sharp. My claws drummed against the war table, each tap syncing with the distant hum of Diamond Heights' propaganda drones—methodical, relentless. The scent of ozone and overworked circuitry clung to my gloves as I calculated the variables as best as I could: Rosemarie's unborn kit, Antoine's crumbling affectations, etc.
Pieces on the board shifted in my mind—calculated trajectories of influence and coercion, each variable weighed like stolen ration packs. Patch hunched beneath my scrutiny, his Merkian bravado flaking away faster than Diamond Heights' irradiated paint. Good. Let him feel the weight of my silence pressing down like Sector 7's collapsed factories—heavy enough to fracture pretense, measured enough to avoid crushing useful bones.
Phase 4 was the last major phase I had in mind at the moment. It could be summed up in one world: longevity. I need to lay the ground work for this order to last at least more than ten minutes after I die. Sure Shadow is possibly immortal, but even if he is, he could still die, before he makes it to Silver's time to pass on the torch, and that's if I can get him on my side.
I need the common people to see me as different from Jules, different from King Maxx Acorn—their benevolent protector, not their predator. That my iron fist of a hand was necessary to keep the kingdom and wider world of Mobius from falling apart—that I had to be harsh, because reality is harsh, because war is harsh—but that I *cared*, at least for those who were mine.
That also included the Overlanders—but only the ones who didn't want to try to exterminate Mobians as revenge—they were just basically Humans, like I was in my previous life, but slightly more colorful and mostly four fingered.
Then Doc, Doc would finally see I was right—that my way, the lethal pragmatism honed in Sector 7's radioactive crucible, was the only path that didn't end in caves gnawing on irradiated roots. My claws drummed against warped floorboards, each tap syncing with Diamond Heights' distant curfew siren—methodical, relentless—while Patch's apple core trembled in his grip. The arithmetic was simple: I'd let Sally carve her scalpels into Castle Acorn's ribs, let Patch cling to his fraying affectations like a security blanket, let Rosemarie whelp her little soldier in Maxx's crumbling nursery. Because once Tails emerged from that toxic womb, once his first breath hitched with the same coolant-tinged air that forged me, I'd have my architect.
Soon Doc could make his paintings again—proper ones, not just schematics—but first I needed to etch my designs into Mobius' bones. The plans hummed behind my teeth like static before a storm, layers upon layers of contingencies folding into each other like origami blades. Patch's breath hitched as I adjusted his collar, my claws lingering just shy of drawing blood—a seamstress tailoring her mannequin before the final stitch.
Sector 7's radiation had taught me this: kindness without leverage is just another form of starvation. Doc was a kind man—too much of one for this world—but kindness could be weaponized just like pain, given the right hands. My claws traced the grooves in the war table where Sally had carved her schematics, etching my own contingency plans onto the lacquered wood with surgical precision. For Patch, a bruised apple and a threat wrapped in camaraderie—for Rosemarie's unborn kit, a future either shaped into a scalpel or broken against one—for Tails, once he emerged from the radioactive wreckage of this kingdom, a purpose honed sharper than any of King Maxx Acorn's propaganda blades.
The simple calculus was elegant in its brutality: offer the desperate just enough to make them loyal, the ambitious just enough leash to hang themselves, and the powerful just enough rope to weave their own noose. My claws tapped an idle rhythm against Patch's stolen sword—not quite a threat, not quite reassurance—while Sally's scalpel carved the last ventilation shaft into the war table's veneer. Every flick of her wrist was a promise—of surgical upheaval, of arterial precision—and I let the sound settle into Patch's twitching ears like a lullaby sung in the key of treason.
"You can go now Patch," I murmured—not softly, not roughly—just with the measured cadence of a surgeon lowering his scalpel after the first incision. My claws lingered near his carotid for half a heartbeat longer than necessary, letting him marinate in that delicious uncertainty about whether this was mercy or menace. His ceremonial sword lay between us like a gilded bridge over quicksand, its dull edge catching the flickering hologlow of Sally's schematics.
Patch's breath hitched—Northern Baronies vowels clotting in his throat—as I tossed him another apple, this one stolen from King Maxx Acorn's private orchards. The fruit arced through the musky air, its bruised flesh still humming from the gamma irradiated soil that nurtured it. My claws drummed against the war table's edge, each tap syncing with Diamond Heights' distant curfew siren—methodical, relentless—as Sally's scalpel carved the last ventilation shaft into lacquered wood.
"But I do hope this isn't the last time we talk, much less meet Patch," I murmured while he was about to scurry away—his mismatched eyes darting between my extended claws and Sally's scalpel still etching weaknesses into royal infrastructure. The scent of his fear—overripe apples and Merkian cologne gone sour with sweat—lingered thick as Sector 7 smog as I leaned back onto the war table, one leg swinging lazily like a pendulum between threat and invitation. "Unless you'd prefer I send dear Princess Sally to collect you next time?"
My grin split wide enough to show phantom canines—not kindness, not cruelty, just inevitability carved into cartilage and quills. The blueprint of conquest hummed behind my ribcage, its ink forged from Sector 7 coolant and stolen medical ethanol, its parchment stretched taut across Mobius' shuddering spine.
I heard Patch leave as I looked out the window—his footsteps more frantic than graceful, his breath hitching with each stumble he tried masking as dignified strides. The scent of his fear lingered—overripe apples crushed underfoot, Merkian cologne soured with sweat—but beneath it, something darker, richer, clung to the air like Northern Baronies beetroot stew simmering in a starving man's pot. Useful.
"Why did you entertain him Sonic?" Sally asked flatly, her scalpel being twirled around in her fingers—the blade glinting dangerously in the dim light. My quills bristled at the question, nostrils flaring as the scent of antiseptic and rusted metal filled my senses—a concoction that always clung to Sally's workspace. I leaned back against the war table, claws drumming an idle rhythm against the surface—each tap echoing like a metronome counting down to some unseen catastrophe. "Because broken things make the best tools," I mused, as I turned around to face her.
Patch's fear was still thick in the air—a pungent cocktail of sweat, crushed apples, and desperation—but beneath it was something far more precious: raw, unfiltered obedience. Sally's sky blue eyes narrowed at me, her grip tightening around the scalpel as her royalist instincts clashed against the pragmatic cruelty she'd learned from Diamond Heights' gutters. I inhaled slowly, the scent of ozone and war table lacquer filling my lungs, then exhaled just as measured—letting my claws drag along the schematics carved into the wood, scoring fresh lines through Castle Acorn's structural weaknesses.
"You carve the castle's ribs," I murmured, "That's great, I can run fast; useful. But what about everything else?" My claws traced the cooling grooves Sally's scalpel had left—not mocking, just pressing the point deeper. The scent of her irritation spiked—metallic, like surgical tools left too long in sterilization tanks—but beneath it lingered that addictive sharpness of adrenalized calculation. I tilted my head just enough to catch the fractured light glinting off her lenses, watching equations refocus behind them. .
"Kindness without leverage starves, princess. But cruelty without precision?" My grin split wide, slow as a blade sliding between ribs as I leaned into her space, letting the scent of Sector 7 coolant clinging to my quills override her antiseptic aura. "That just makes us the new Maxx Acorn." Sally's scalpel froze mid-twirl—her wrist tendons flexing like puppet strings caught between tightening royalist protocols and the delicious anarchy of my whisper against her ear: "But imagine the artistry of carving puppets who *thank* you for the strings."
I watched her pupils dilate—not from fear, but from the electric thrill of systemic dismantlement—as my I continued, "The world has more than enough chaos, decay, and anarchy, but what about order, true, long lasting order?"
I leaned back, claws still tracing the schematics, my voice dropping to something softer—something almost gentle, the way you'd murmur to a skittish animal before snapping its neck cleanly. "Patch won't be the only one we'll break and rebuild, Sally. There's others, isolated and indoctrinated, naive and clutching storybooks—ripe for molding." The scent of ozone clung to my quills, but beneath it, the faintest trace of Kintobor's medical ethanol lingered—a relic of the days when kindness wasn't just another form of leverage.
Sally's eyes looked up to mine as she sighed, her shoulders relaxing just slightly—though her fingers remained coiled around her scalpel like a viper poised to strike. There was a moment, brief as a dying breath, where her royalist facade cracked enough to reveal the girl beneath—the one who'd starved in Diamond Heights' gutters, who'd learned the weight of a blade before she'd learned the weight of a crown.
My claws flexed, not to intimidate, but to emphasize—a conductor's gesture before the symphony of subjugation. I watched Sally's pulse flutter beneath the thin skin of her wrist, her grip on the scalpel loosening then tightening as the implications of my words sank in. To outsiders, my posture would read as dominance—spines bristling, shadow stretching—but she recognized the subtle tilt of my head, the way my smirk softened at the edges just for her. This wasn't the brute force of Jules' propaganda or Maxx's pheromonal puppetry; this was the precision of a surgeon excising rot while leaving healthy tissue intact.
The war table groaned under my weight as I leaned forward, not crowding her but sharing the space—our mingled scents of coolant and antiseptic forming a third entity between us. My voice dropped to a register that would've been a purr if not for the undercurrent of voltage, each syllable calibrated to bypass her royalist defenses and resonate with the girl who'd stolen food from Diamond Heights' dumpsters. "You to help me want to rebuild, not just demolish. Fine, thank you. But castles need foundations, Sally." I tapped the schematics where her scalpel had carved ventilation weak points. "And foundations need hands to pour them—hands that *believe*."
"But you're so powerful Sonic—why not just take control now?" Sally asked, her fingers still coiled around the scalpel—though the blade had ceased its restless twitching. The scent of ozone hung thick between us, mingling with the metallic tang of her sweat slicked palms, the sterile bite of disinfectant clinging to her sleeves.
I exhaled through my nose—slow, measured—letting the scent of her uncertainty curl against my quills like Sector 7 mist clinging to barbed wire. "Power isn't just speed or strength, princess." My claws skimmed the war table's edge, not carving but caressing the woodgrain, the touch calculated to unsettle with its gentleness. "It's knowing when to let the apple drop so they scramble for it themselves." The corner of my mouth twitched—not a smile, not a snarl—just the baring of teeth in something too deliberate to be instinct.
"There's also perfect timing—doesn't matter how fast I run if I tear down the walls before the mortar's dried," I murmured, tilting my head just enough to catch fractured light glinting off Sally's lenses. My claws drummed a lazy rhythm against the war table—not impatient, just relentless, like Diamond Heights' curfew drones circling overhead. The scent of her sweat shifted—less fear now, more calculation—as she inhaled the truth between my words: raw force builds rubble; persuasion builds empires.
My smirk softened—not kindness, but the lethal patience of a lynx watching prey dig its own grave—as I leaned back into her space, letting my spines catch the light like a crown of obsidian daggers. "You know this, princess. You've seen how Maxx's enforcers broke backs but rarely loyalty." My voice dropped to a register that vibrated through her ribcage, calibrated to bypass royalist protocols and resonate with the gutter-smart girl who'd laced her dolls with razor wire.
The scalpel trembled and fell.
"Sonic, Doctor Kintobor is here to pick you up," Rosemarie announced—her voice flat, but her fingers twitched near the holster disguised as a diaper bag.
"Well then, untill next time Princess Sally Acorn." I secretly smirked to her—my voice a velvet wrapped scalpel sliding between royalist ribs—before turning toward Rosemarie with measured steps that made the war room's floorboards groan like condemned men. My spines rippled in deliberate sequence, not bristling but flowing—a king's cloak woven from shadow and quicksilver—as I paused just close enough to catch the accelerated flutter of Rosemarie's pulse beneath her perfume.
"Rosie," I murmured teasingly, the nickname softening my vowels without dulling their edge—like a blade sheathed in velvet but still capable of drawing blood. My claws brushed imaginary dust from her shoulder, an almost affectionate gesture that still made her freeze as if I'd pinned her by the throat. The scent of her panic—baby powder and adrenaline—coiled thick around us, but beneath it I caught the richer aroma of determination, buried deep like a seed waiting for the right conditions to sprout. Useful.
The child in her womb kicked as I leaned down—not looming, but bending at the waist with theatrical grace—until my breath stirred the fine hairs at her temple. "Would you always live your child?"
Rosemarie's lips parted, "If they're not stupid enough enough to die, then yes."
I exhaled through my nostrils—I saw that coming, but still...