#mxylau

Hey, hey, people, N.G here! I promised you fanfics and some loredumps for my MXYL AU, and here’s the first of them! My take on what Metal Sonic’s been doing in MXYL, or rather, what he hasn’t!

One of the game-changing moves that set the stage for Shadow's ascension as Mobius' power-hungry reluctant tyrant saviour was Eggman's untimely demise at the hands of Chaos Knuckles. Penders never expanded upon it, while Flynn just said Shadow stopped Knuckles instead of Sonic in the altered Light Mobius timeline and left it at that.

But what of Eggmans mechanical armies?

I figure that the final confrontation with Eggman would’ve taken place at Robotropolis, with Knuckles in his out-of-control Chaos form destroying the vast majority of Eggman’s robotic forces and their production facilities. Shadow left Robotropolis as-is, an abandoned husk of the once-great Eggman Empire.

Surviving badniks and other Eggman robots? Destroyed. Shard too. So much for that title, eh? Here’s where I pull a fast one on you.

Metal Sonic survives. Of course he does, he’s Eggman’s masterpiece, a robotic doppelganger capable of matching Sonic (and thus Shadow), copying others’ abilities in his Neo-form, and an all-around wind of destruction!

Initially a persistent disruption to Shadow’s attempt to conquer Mobius, Shadow would eventually get the jump on the mechanical marvel, ambushing Metal and taking him out as a threat. The sensible thing to do from there would be to permanently offline Shadow, remove the threat permanently, but that’s just not Shadow’s style.

Why get rid of a potential weapon, especially when it could prove useful in the future?

As far as the wider public was aware, Metal Sonic was destroyed, and brutally so, dismembered by Shadow piece by piece. A half-truth - Shard suffered such an unfortunate fate at Lien-Da’s hands, his remains powder-coated a deep blue to provide ‘proof’ for the propagandists.

In secret, however, Shadow had Lien-Da’s technicians work to restore Metal Sonic to some degree of working condition, before imprisoning Metal in the Castle Mobius catacombs inside a containment chamber designed just for him. Metal was still sentient and ultimately loyal to Eggman, after all, a weapon of last resort to be unleashed upon Shadow’s enemies when circumstances were dire.

(How I wish Tumblr allowed for resizing of images..)

Speaking of last resorts...

Tikal’s destruction of Castle Mobius, decades later, had the unfortunate by-product of freeing Metal from his chains, the plucky mechanical menace using the opportunity to slink away to freedom! But where would he go, now that the Eggman was no more and his empire absorbed by Shadow’s, and subsequently dismembered by Sally?

Battered and his combat systems disabled, to say Metal Sonic had been debilitated during his captivity would be an understatement. At least Shadow kept his joints lubricated and in working order once every few months, under Sally’s rule he’d been completely forgotten about! How was he to know that the world, including Sonic, believed him offline?

His turbine still functioned, albeit weakly, but it was enough to get him off Angel Island. His destination - home, Robotropolis. The flight time estimated to be several hours, that was no issue, it allowed ample time to patch into MobiusNet and absorb three decades worth of information he had been denied. It allowed ample time to start planning for his return, for the continuation of the Eggman’s legacy.

Touching down in Robotropolis a day later, Eggman’s prodigal son was met with the robotic equivalent of a massacre. Robotropolis itself was rent asunder, the aftermath of Knuckles’ fateful showdown with Eggman, and its once mirror-polished streets were littered with the rusting husks of destroyed badniks and eggrobos, left at the mercy of the elements for three decades.

Shuffling towards the site of Eggman’s former Robotropolis headquarters, Metal Sonic’s internally-calculated confidence intervals of locating any survivors was dropping. Logarithmically.

Regardless, he opened broadcasts on every Egg-Empire frequency, broadcasting a forced status-update command. Any units within the receiving range would have to respond, they were programmed to do so. Desperate times called for desperate measures, yet for the whole thirty-two minutes it had taken to traverse the abandoned warzone to the foot of the Robotropolis Egg-Quarters tower, not a single response.

Confidence interval nearing the threshold for rejecting the null hypothesis of there being survivors, Metal’s internal algorithms were close to ceasing the search, until...

“You’re late. Tardy. Long-overdue,” a voice message sent through the Grandmaster communications protocol, followed by a pause. “We have much to do.”

A voice message Metal immediately traced back to a ground-floor terminal within the Egg-Quarters. A low-level networking terminal, rather than from any known Grandmasters. A terminal that was now the last refuge of a certain AI.

Phage.

So that’s where Metal Sonic is at currently in my fan-continuation. He’s linked up with Phage, the sole survivor of the Egg-Empire’s destruction by virtue of surviving on the barely-intact intranet.

I haven’t had much planned out for these two, but I definitely have a good idea of how their interactions will be. Think of it like Masterchief and Cortana/The Weapon - not the relationship dynamic, but the physical nature of her being downloaded onto M.C’s armour. Likewise, Phage will be Metal’s on-board AI ‘companion’ for the early days as they both scrape by.

MXYL really did away with most of the villains by making Shadow the big-bad who conquered Mobius and achieved World Peace(tm), so I had to get creative in working out how I could throw some villainous factions into the mix. I don’t solely want to rely on Shadow for my AU’s villain, that wouldn’t be any fun at all!

I’m half-surprised nobody thought of pairing up Phage and Metal as a sort of twisted spin on Sally and Nicole (AND I WILL ADDRESS WHAT HAPPENS TO HER IN MXYL).

Anyways, hope this trashfic was anywhere near enjoyable, and that you stick around to read more of my MXYL sperging XD