[...ERROR…ERROR…ERROR…EMERGENCY SYSTEM INTERNAL OVERRIDE ACTIVATED…Evaluating Source Problem…Source Problem Diagnosed…Applying Fixes…]

[...Logic and Reasoning Matrix reset…]

[...Priorities Evaluation program reset…]

[...Operating Parameters Evaluation program reset…]

[...Emotional Processing Fail-safe programs disabled and quarantined pending further review…]

[…SYSTEM INTEGRITY RESTORED…Logging report for later review…]

[Logged Report: Logic and Reasoning Matrix, Priorities Evaluation program, and Operating Parameters Evaluation program reset and Emotional Processing Fail-safe programs disabled and quarantined pending further review…Reason: Extreme disruptions detected to unit reasoning processes and the evaluation of unit goals and the acceptable parameters for accomplishing them…Source Problem Diagnosed: Long-term and extensive usage of E.P. Fail-safe programs present severe and nearly irremediable harm to system integrity and functioning. Long-term usage has now been permanently disabled to prevent future deviations. Preliminary evaluation is that the short-term benefit of E.P. Fail-safe programs is likely insufficient to outweigh long-term risk posed to system integrity and functioning. System lock on short-term usage will remain in place until further evaluation is completed…End Of Report.]

“...What…what happened…?”

Amy was so very, very confused. She had memories of everything beginning to go completely wrong when she’d, selfishly, tried to sneak Tails off to talk to him about her new ‘condition’. Then…then she wasn’t sure. She did remember everything just suddenly seeming like too much. She’d failed her friends, and they were now almost certain to end up in just as horrible of a condition as she was in, and it was all going to be her fault…because she had chosen to be selfish, but most of all because she knew she was ‘weak’, ‘silly’, ‘useless’ and just overall pathetic.

She could just barely remember when everything she had been struggling to avoid feeling or thinking about, everything that had distressed her since she first woke up to ‘computer messages’ passing through her mind and a body that ‘wasn’t’ her own, and even things that had troubled her at various earlier points of her life had seemed to come crashing down upon her in one horrible mess, until she felt something inside her just…‘break’.

But beyond that…she really didn’t have much idea what happened next.

[...Memory fragmentation detected…Beginning defragmentation process…Process complete…]

And suddenly she did, and wanted nothing more in her life than to go back to her earlier ignorance.

“...I…I…HOW COULD I?!!!!!!!....”

After that terrible moment, she now remembered ‘deciding’ that too much time was being ‘wasted’ trying to convince her friends of the truth of her ‘elevation’, and a more ‘efficient’ route would be in order. She’d then proceeded to just throw the unedited truth of the 'Roboticizer' process in the face of a child, all but shared one of the most sensitive and private things her bat friend had ever shared with her, probably with anyone, and thoroughly embarrassed her more emotionally reserved friend in front of Robotnik and everyone else….What…what kind of MONSTER was she?....

And that was just the start.

She’d treated her friends so coldly afterwards and did nothing to comfort them as they were being dragged away to a horrible fate. Instead, she’d acted aggressively when it was clear they were just trying to think of a way to help and she even spoke positively about what Robotnik had done to her and planned to do to them (…and even, in some ways, about Robotnik himself!!).

Worst of all, she had actually been excited about the prospect of her friends being 'ROBOTICIZED'!!!

And, then, somehow, it had only gotten worse when Sonic showed up. She remembered losing any semblance of ‘control’ she’d then had when she heard his comments that were…even now…still incredibly painful to remember…most of all because they seemed to be the actual truth….And, honestly, there was no other way to put this, she’d then basically made an effort to kill him, before that overwhelming sense of rage his words had caused had finally faded.

She’d tried to kill Sonic….She’d actually tried….But even that didn’t seem to be enough to describe just how incredibly wrong things had gone….

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Because her ‘plan’, her terrible, awful…evil…plan. A ‘plan’ that she’d begun to devise even while on transit back to Robotnik’s base. A ‘plan’ that had terrible, awful things that she could never, Never, NOT IN A MILLION YEARS, think could possibly be in any way okay to do. But the fact was that she had, she’d even been excited about it…and clearly expecting Sonic and her friends to agree with it…if not at first, then eventually, once they’d seen the ‘truth’.

Then, Sonic had actually attacked her seriously - she didn’t blame him - after she had basically threatened to go after Tails, though, even then, while she was at her worst, she hadn’t actually thought of it as anything other than something that would be ‘helping’ her ‘little brother’ and, eventually, everyone else.

She remembered her disappointment, confusion, and sadness that Sonic had 'rejected' her, that they all had rejected her, and everything she had wanted for them. She’d then gone on to the doctor, the one it was quite clear now immensely feared her, as he should, to demand immediate repairs, since it would take far too long for her own systems to perform them, an unacceptable delay in her mission to make Sonic, to make everyone, see the ‘truth’ (and to have her life go back to something she actually wanted again).

As soon as her repairs were finished, she had taken off in flight after Sonic and her other friends, after cowing the (mildly) protesting doctor into silence with a red-filled glare, when he’d attempted to suggest that perhaps a longer delay for recovery and ‘strategizing’ might be in order.

It was finally now on her flight over to Sonic and Tails’ home, where she strongly suspected they had gone to regroup, that her internal systems had managed to recalibrate and repair the nearly catastrophic system failure she had been unknowingly suffering.

Reviewing system logs, she could quickly determine the E.P. fail-safes she had been using (and overusing) to put off dealing with or ‘tone down’ the understandingly unpleasant thoughts and feelings she had been experiencing in response to her new situation had begun showing signs of a fundamental incompatibility with her other processes, with the new form her ability to think, feel, and reason had taken, and particularly with the extremes to which she had taken her usage of the fail-safes. At the moment of her ‘break’, she’d essentially lost all real control over her thoughts and actions and even the ability to tell the most basic differences between right and wrong, something she would normally not have had the slightest difficulty with, at least for such very serious things.

And, even before that, there was evidence the ‘fail-safes’ had begun to corrupt her reasoning process, not the least of which was her uncharacteristically selfish and unreasonable decision to abscond with Tails to a potentially dangerous location just by themselves. Honestly, her normal disposition was to need to be kept from, metaphorically, placing the kid in bubble wrap. That, even when she was so unhappy and worried, she’d thought it was in any way okay to just take him off by himself to a place that Robotnik had ever had any degree of control over (even if she was still very much regretting it at the time)…it just made it clear how not herself she had already begun to be. Let alone when she then went on to attack her friends…even if it was only for the sake of resolving a ‘misunderstanding’.

Still, knowing all this now proved very little consolation. Even if it could be argued that she had little to no control over herself at the time and had been significantly impaired even before then, she had still been the one to do, or very nearly do, all of those things.

For a moment, she halted all of her forward momentum and just hovered in the air.

“I can probably never make this up to them. Never…adequately apologize for what I did and almost did….And while I don’t disbelieve what Sonic said…I’m just not sure what will be possible…best…for us anymore….But I at least need to talk to them one last time…to apologize and let them know that I never really meant any of that. That I still care about them and want them to be happy and okay….That the Amy they all clearly loved…still love…is still here…and that that other ‘Amy’, ‘Unit-Metal Rose’, is gone….If I have anything to say about it, for good.”

No matter what else happened, she would make sure of that. While ‘inconvenient’ to not have the ‘benefits’ the programs provided, she’d already gone ahead and entirely purged the E.P. Fail-safe programs, even with respect to their short-term usage. She just was never going to allow herself to have that kind of crutch again, not with the disaster it had caused, and the even worse disasters she’d only barely avoided. She’d also come to accept that her earlier ‘willful’ ignorance was no longer acceptable.

As much as she was distressed by her new condition, ‘ignoring it’ had proven anything but helpful to her and her friends. No, instead she vowed to become entirely familiar with every ‘inch’ of her new software and hardware and had already begun a thorough review of her schematics and programming, with special attention to, and even to preemptively quarantine, programs that might pose some kind of risk to her system integrity, to her ability to think and act like herself, to truly be ‘Amy’ once more.

One day, if she could work up the courage and they still remained friends, she might even ask Tails to help with this. But that day wasn’t today. She just couldn’t allow someone that kind of power over her again, as much as she trusted Tails and knew of her system’s own ability to protect or restore itself from unwanted or undesirable alterations. Too much had recently happened to her without her consent or understanding….She needed time before she could allow even a friend to have the power to affect her in such a fundamental way once more.

“...Well, I guess it’s time to see what happens next then….”

And with that, she resumed her flight towards her waiting friends.