Fandom: Sonic the Hedgehog
Context: @westerntails asked for roboticized!Tom and OH! This killed me, it was so painful omigosh it hurt so bad. I need to find something to cuddle. That being said I uh—hope you enjoy(?) it! This really isn't drabble-length but I couldn't shorten it. I rarely do this, but hurt no comfort so beware.
Sonic crouched into a four-point sprinter's stance. Metal said he had a "surprise" for them, which was a joke. Whatever it was, his brothers and Amy were going to turn it into a pile of metal scrap.
The door before them slid open with a mechanical hiss, obscuring whatever was behind it with white smoke. Sonic rolled his eyes at the dramatics. "Geez, did you get that move from Villains-R-Us—"
For a split second, Sonic thought his dad stepped out of the mist. Except it couldn't be. Instead of soft human skin and a comfy plaid shirt, the figure before them all was sleek and shiny. It had the appearance of Tom Wachowski, but it was too metallic and blocky. There were no dimples or crinkles around the eyes from smiling too much. The eyes were black and glazed over, devoid of warmth like the cheap imitation it was.
Sparks of chaos energy started erupting all along Sonic's body. A boiling rage coiled and condensed in the pit of his stomach.
"Your obsession with me has crossed the line into total creeper territory!" Sonic yelled. "If you want to make some fake evil parents to tuck you in at night that's fine, but don't you DARE make it look like MY—DAD!"
Sonic charged toward the robot, eager to smash it to pieces so small—
Tails' shriek sent a horrifying chill down his spine. Sonic instinctively tried to stop and turn around at the same time, so of course he biffed it. He tripped over his own feet and his face slid along the squeaky floor. Props to whomever waxed this place, because at least Sonic didn't end up looking like a Batman villain.
He scrambled back a few feet (hopefully Amy hadn't noticed his totally uncool move) and spared a second to see what happened to Tails. It had sounded like someone stabbed his genius brother through the heart, but he was fine.
Well, he was physically fine. One would think he had been stabbed by the look on his face, and to Sonic's continued confusion, that same horror was mirrored on Knuckles' face. Sonic glanced at Amy, and she met his gaze with so much pity he briefly wondered if he'd somehow died.
"Guys, chill out it's just a fake—"
"It's dad!" Tails sobbed, his face wet with tears and his voice full of anguish. It tugged at Sonic's heart, but as he took a step forward to try and comfort his little bro, Tails pointed to something.
Sonic turned and noticed a massive monitor showing a clip on a loop. For some reason, it showed dad in some sort of glass tube. The video was taken at a weird angle, and Sonic idly realized dad was in the clothes he wore before they all left Green Hills. He looked furious, screaming something and banging on the glass. Then the light inside the tube turned red, and a million tiny bugs or something dropped from the ceiling.
Dad tried swatting them away, but it was like the little bomb from their first adventure together—the one that kept sticking to them no matter what they did. In no time at all, dad was covered, and the metallilc-looking bugs lit up with sparks. A second passed and then . . . and then—
Sonic refused to believe it. This was all a trick, some twisted, sick mind game by Metal. That psychopath of a robot just made some realistic-looking AI nonsense that made it seem like—it wasn't—
A metal hand clamped around his throat and lifted him in the air. There were some muffled shouts, cutting through the sudden fog in his brain. Sonic grasped the metal wrist, ready to fight back, when a different movement caught his eyes.
Beyond the open door, in a glass tube that matched the one from the video, next to a second glass tube—was his mom. She was . . . she was pounding against the glass the same way dad was but—but there was blood.
Time slowed, and Sonic realized that his mom was slamming her bloody fists against the glass. She was—Sonic had just seen her maybe a day ago, smiling and happy. Now her face was hollow, a shadowed weariness of trauma that Sonic had only seen in war photos. She met his eyes and the anguish increased tenfold. Even though he still couldn't hear, Sonic could swear she was screaming louder. She started slamming her entire body against the glass like she'd gone crazy, with so much force it scared him—
The pressure around his neck tightened, and suddenly Sonic's ears decided to work.
He could hear Tails and Knuckles screaming, sharp and full of fear. What turned his blood to ice though, was the actual, real howls of his mom. It matched her movements. There was no lag, no digital distortion, no . . .
The heat from a blaster, one Sonic had become all too familiar with over the past few days, warmed the fur on the side of his face.
Sonic slowly, slowly moved his gaze from his mom to the robot that held him captive. It was . . . it looked so real, but it couldn't . . . it couldn't be—
The robot's eyes burned red and the mechanical, but undeniable voice of Tom Wachowski coldly stated: