This one crosses over with The Only Use for a Broken Machine. If you're a Meta fan and don't mind yaoi, I'd read it if I were you.




The dour gray clouds that hung overhead fit Sonic's mood perfectly as he lay back against the cold bark of an oak, in one of the higher branches, arms folded behind his head. He'd come to the edge of this forest to get Shadow off his mind for a little while. He let his eyes close, making his expression emotionless, and his mind began to wander.

'Other than Shadow, all the bad guys in and out of the world have been acting up too…' He thought back to a few months ago, when Mephiles the Dark showed up. 3 months before that, he got sucked into the world of King Arthur. 'Lancelot didn't look half bad with that sword and all… Agh! No! Don't think about that!' he mentally chided himself, trying to get his thoughts back on track.

‘But, of all the bad guys out there, Eggman hasn't done anything in almost a year now…' he pondered. 'Usually he's the first one to stir up trouble. He must be planning something big…' As soon as the thought crossed his mind, his right ear flicked in an involuntary response to an unexpected sound. At this, his eyes shot open and his vigilance spiked for a moment. Though he couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, there was a distant, yet detectable sound disturbance. He dismissed it as being a plane or something similar and let his eyes conceal themselves once more, huffing discontentedly. The sound was getting louder and the cause, closer. Very close. Too close for comfort. He cracked one eye open just in time to get a glimpse of gleaming red steel before it struck him square in the face with incredible force.

The blow caught him unawares and knocked him several yards back. He hit the grass and grit back-first and skidded a little, wondering what hit him. He shrugged off the pain in his left eye and stood to face his attacker, wearing his trademark grin.

"Not bad, Metal." 'A good fight will cheer me up.'

The lifeless being that stood before him didn't respond in any way. His screen, crafted to look like a set of eternally glaring eyes, seemed almost frozen.

"I hope you've gotten better since last time," Sonic brushed a little dirt off his shoulder as casually as if he hadn't just been kicked in the face at breakneck speed. "Kicked your ass pretty good that day, didn't I?" he thought back to the last time they'd met. Metal had always put up a decent fight, but no amount of upgrades, gadgets or gizmos could beat the one he'd been made after. The robot still wasn't budging, but his "eyes" seemed to be scanning Sonic.

‘Guess he's just here for the fight,' the latter figured.

In an instant, he shot straight into his steel doppelganger like a bullet, delivering a hearty punch. The machine countered quickly by grabbing the arm used to punch him and using Sonic's own speed against him. Centripetal force made it simple to yank him around in a rough U-turn and throw him straight back where he came from, toward the trees. Thinking fast, Sonic took hold of a branch and used the same type of force to flip up onto it and land in a crouching position. He was wearing a black eye that did everything in its power to contradict the smirk on his face.

"You have gotten better."

As soon as he said this, he used his overpowered legs to launch himself off the branch and straight into Metal, knocking him to the ground. He kept him pinned there by the shoulders. This did little to restrict his movement; the thruster on his back started up and in a blur of fur and steel, Sonic was shoved quills-first into the bark of the same tree he'd jumped off of. His eyes were but an inch or two away from those of his attacker.

Looking that closely at a computer screen really isn't good for you.

The walking death machine then backed off, slowly hovering several feet away, then landing gently, his glowing red eyes still fixed on the cobalt youth, arms folded. The teen's quills were slightly embedded into the tree, but he managed to yank himself free, and proceeded to copy Metal's exact position, adding that same signature smirk. Too bad Eggman wasn't there to see it. Surely he would've yelled, providing extra entertainment.

A noticeable wind had started up, making the trees sway back and forth and the grass billow like the waves of the ocean. It was calm and peaceful, but it was a sure sign that a storm was on its way. It portrayed the mood between the two fighters in that moment very well. The furrier one took a few small, slow steps toward his opponent, then dashed right into him, jabbing an elbow into his chest hard enough to make a dent. The defending robot let out a garbled and strange electronic sound in response.

'You'd think Eggman would be smart enough to know how to program him to talk clearly,' Sonic pondered for a split moment before following up the jab with a powerful left hook.

His enemy tried jetting back at Sonic, but it wasn't too hard to step out of the way and use a homing attack to send him into the dirt before he could turn around. Bits of glass were left in his wake as his cast-iron face ground into the earth. A crack of booming thunder split the air. At this, Sonic left his enemy behind. No sense standing anywhere near a robot that runs on magnetism outside in the middle of a lightning storm, right? Instead, he headed back for the apartment building, nearly at top speed. The sooner he got inside, the better. The speed of light was faster than the speed of sound, no matter what.

Before he'd covered more than about 50 miles, something struck the back of his head from above. Caught off-guard, he was sent skidding and rolling in the dirt, dazed and winded. Black fog clouded his vision, but he could just barely see two pairs of shoes that exactly resembled Shadow's other than color standing near him before he blacked out…





Sonic the Hedgehog, Shadow the Hedgehog, Hyper Metal Sonic, Mephiles the Dark, Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik © Sega