“Oh, I can’t believe....”

Amy was currently flying off towards Sonic and Tails’ home, which in itself was a difficult thing to really accept, though actually kind of a bit exciting as well.

“What has happened to me? What am I?”

These were both questions she actually now had pretty clear answers to, at least in some respects, but that didn’t mean they were answers she wanted to accept. In fact, if it weren’t for rather liberal use of her new emotional processing fail-safes, she doubted she’d be doing anything but crying in a ball somewhere or shrieking in horror at her new state.

Instead, she was capping all emotional processing at a maximum of 70% and had made significant use of the ability to partition particularly extreme responses to her new situation into their own little semi-isolated processing ‘box’ (...I’M AN ABSOLUTE MONSTER NOW…WHY…WHY…WHY…). While she knew this approach to her situation couldn’t possibly be considered healthy (whatever ‘healthy’ meant for her anymore), it was the only thing she could think of to remain functioning, and she didn’t want to risk going back to the earlier extreme of a near complete shutdown of her ability to feel (or, she supposed, to ‘emulate’) emotions.

She shuddered as she suddenly recalled the ‘machine-like’ quality her thoughts and personality had largely taken on as emotional processing was throttled as low as .00001% and how she had then gone on to ‘decide’ the most ‘logical’ course to preserve ‘unit integrity’ and accomplish ‘unit-specific goals’ was to demonstrate capacity to infiltrate the designated ‘targets’ and apparent loyalty to the ‘maker’s’ plans and orders.

“No, I can’t go back to being like that.”

For a moment, she distracted herself from the unpleasant memory by gazing out at the landscape passing swiftly below her.

“Still, this…this is kind of amazing.”

She was probably hundreds, or rather exactly 1,20… (wait, she didn’t care) of feet in the air, with the land beneath her flying by at speeds that even the Tornado would have trouble keeping up with. The clouds, they didn’t seem so far away, and she knew, if she wanted, it would hardly take any effort to join them….

“Wow…”

For a moment, she forgot just how horrible everything was and just began to enjoy the truly amazing feeling of flight….

Still, eventually, her internal GPS (and it galled her that she now had such a thing) registered that she was only a few miles out from her destination. However, it seemed pretty clear that arriving at Sonic and Tails’ home while flying might raise a few eyebrows. Also, she realized she’d dropped the holomorphic field projection sometime shortly after leaving Eggman’s base.

Halting her forward momentum, she descended to the ground and reinitialized her ‘disguise’. Somehow, it was almost more disturbing to see herself once again looking like ‘herself’ rather than the clearly metallic and artificial form she had previously borne.

“This, this is all fake now…isn’t it? I’m not…I’m not really ‘Amy’ anymore, am I?....”

For a moment, her emotional throttling and partitioning programs strained to contain the breakdown that threatened to erupt before…barely…managing.

“I…maybe…maybe Tails can fix this, somehow….”

She really couldn’t imagine any way that he actually could fix something like this…but it was still a hope she clung to. Needed to cling to.

Shaking her head, she began to run, though eventually she realized she was moving ‘too fast’.

“Wow, I’m really moving. I mean this is more like Sonic’s speed than my own.”

Actually, it was about .933335 of Sonic’s normal running speed and could be increased if additional system resources were committed. For a moment, she just tried to process the fact that she was now running nearly as fast as Sonic and could theoretically run faster than him if she was willing to expend additional resources.

“...I need to slow down. Everyone will realize something is different…wrong...if I run up to them at this speed….”

Stunned a bit at being in the very ‘Sonic’-like situation of realizing that she needed to ‘slow down’, she reduced her running speed to something more believable for ‘Amy’. Though, something about that chafed quite a bit.

Still, she didn’t have much time to dwell on it as Sonic and Tails’ home appeared before her. Drawing near, she noticed Tails and Sonic—and even Rouge and Knuckles, who must have been visiting for some reason or another—looked to be waiting for her with visible concern, probably alerted to her approach by one of Tails’ security monitoring programs.

Slowing down as she approached them, she belatedly realized…something…and made some quick adjustments so that she would appear to be breathing hard, or even actually ‘breathing’ at all.

“I can’t…I can’t believe I nearly forgot something like that.”

She realized she hadn’t truly breathed once since her ‘awakening’ as a ‘Robian’, a ‘Unit-Metal’ series robot. In fact, it was only due to the influence of her ‘Tactical-logical analysis suite’ (or TAS for short) that she’d even registered the problem this would pose. It was just another unwelcome reminder of the fact that she wasn’t truly ‘alive’ (or at least ‘organic’) anymore, and one she didn’t have time to deal with. Though, she also realized (again thanks to her TAS) that she’d also forgotten to add any wear or dirt to her ‘clothing’ and ‘fur’ and ‘spines’. Since it was all just fake now, it hadn’t even occurred to her, which wouldn’t seem to mesh well with the story she felt she had to sell….

However, hopefully, everyone would believe she’d stopped at her home first to change and freshen up….That, that was depressingly like something she might actually have done….

“Amy?”

Tails was the first to speak as she arrived at the house and stopped in front of them, now ‘breathing’ hard.

“Are you okay? You’ve been missing for four days, and Sonic thought something bad may have happened to you after he visited your home recently and saw evidence of some kind of fight….We…we were worried.”

“FOUR DAYS!!!” Amy thought in enormous surprise, freezing for a moment in shock. While it seemed like something that had just happened, she realized she hadn’t actually checked to see just how long it had been since she’d been kidnapped…and roboticized.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Shoving that revelation into the ‘box’, along with all the other things she didn’t want to deal with, she proceeded to try to sell the story she felt she had to.

“It…it was horrible….” That at least was true. “...I was kidnapped by Eggman….”

Everyone reacted with concern.

“...I only just escaped.” That was…sort of true. “It’s…it’s so good to be back with you guys and safe.” That was…far less true than she wanted it to be.

Everyone was looking at her with pity, and Tails quickly began to show anger.

“Errgh, Eggman, he always causes everyone problems. I’m really sorry you had to deal with something like that Amy and that none of us were aware of it or able to stop it.”

His anger faded for the moment, and he began to look relieved.

“But, I’m glad you were able to get away….I guess he just can’t succeed for very long in any of his evil plans?”

The fox boy was grinning back at her, and she ‘returned’ it.

“Yeah…none of his plans really work out in the end…do they?....”

Tails gave a laugh in response to that, and her comments appeared to earn a smile from everyone else as well. It was really difficult for Amy to maintain her own ‘smile’ then. Meanwhile, all of her friends, even the normally stoic Knuckles, took a moment to congratulate her on her ‘escape’ and to try to comfort her after her obvious ordeal.

What followed next was probably the most uncomfortable experience she’d ever had, at least where her friends were concerned, as she gave a very edited version of her kidnapping and ‘escape’. After bringing her into the house, they’d even had a meal ‘together’, convinced she’d probably not have had much opportunity to eat anything since her kidnapping. While the doctor had indeed made sure she was capable of ‘eating’ and ‘drinking’ as part of her infiltration capabilities, all that meant now was that she was able to consume and convert organic matter for a modest boost in her energy reserves.

And while she was able to determine a complete chemical breakdown of everything she ‘ate’ and ‘drank’, nothing about that included something as ‘pointless’ as taste or finding ‘enjoyment’ in the experience, a capability which the doctor hadn’t bothered to make even the slightest effort to reproduce in her new form. And, consequently, yet another thing was added to the rapidly filling ‘box’ within her.

Indeed, almost nothing about her experience since arriving back with her friends was something she would term ‘pleasant’, as she tried to convince them that she was ‘fine’, or at least as fine as someone who’d recently ‘escaped’ from Dr. Eggman’s clutches could be.

Eventually, she was relieved when Knuckles and Rouge left and everyone else began to get ready to head to bed for the night. She’d been offered Sonic and Tails’ guest room, as they assumed that she probably didn’t want to sleep back at her home and be alone just yet after her recent terrible experiences.

This was true…but also not true…but she didn’t think she could say anything about that…not yet.

Looking around the guest room, which she was only vaguely familiar with, having never actually needed it before (her home wasn’t that far away after all, at least not for a Mobian hedgehog), she wasn’t quite sure what to do….

“I guess…things are working out?....”

As far as she could tell…no one suspected there was anything truly amiss. Though, she realized she’d messed up in more than one way.

Her first big mistake at…you know…forgetting to ‘breathe’ had been hopefully corrected quickly enough that it wasn’t going to be an issue. She’d added a subroutine to ensure that she was always ‘breathing’ now, and in a further burst of awareness (also provided by her TAS), added several more to ensure that she was always mimicking all the, now unnecessary, movements that would be expected of a ‘living’ being (having realized that the ‘statue-like’ stillness she would now easily be capable of would be a rather telling giveaway). She’d also eventually realized she’d never actually taken a break to ‘use’ the bathroom.

Embarrassingly, she realized that, along with a great many other things, it wasn’t necessary anymore. Still, if anyone noticed….

“...Great, if this goes on much longer…I’m going to have to pretend to ‘freshen up’, aren’t I?....”

It wasn’t that she’d ever been embarrassed by bodily necessities…but somehow the thought that she might have to pretend that she was performing them made her want to blush (which was also something she wasn’t strictly capable of anymore). As it was, her projection did exhibit the ‘normal’ signs of embarrassment at the thought.

And, looking at the bed in her guest room, she realized there was another area where she probably had to pretend.

“I don’t actually sleep anymore, do I?....”

No, her files on the ‘Unit-Metal’ series quickly informed her that a ‘low-power’ mode was probably the closest she could get, unless she wanted to initiate an actual system shutdown. But the thought of just turning herself ‘off’, like a TV or something (even if she would also include a timer to restart at a specified time later), was almost too horrible to contemplate.

“No, no, there is no way I’m just going to switch myself ‘off’ like a machine that I’m done using for now.” She visibly shuddered. “No, I guess I’ll just try this ‘low-power’ mode. I guess I have to ‘change’ first though.”

She’d been ‘wearing’ the same clothes all day, though eventually she’d subtly worked in some 'dirt' and general ‘crumpled-ness’ that would seem ‘normal’ for something she’d been wearing for a while. Also, and it grated on her to do this, with as much as she hated such things, she’d also added a stain or two (a necessity that had also been related to one of her mistakes that she’d hoped no one noticed).

During the meal she’d ‘eaten’ with her friends, some mustard had been spilled on her ‘dress’, and she'd immediately cleaned it up (she’d always been particularly fastidious about her appearance, so that part at least, wouldn’t have appeared out of place). Only, she’d soon realized her ‘dress’ looked far too ‘perfect’ afterwards, without even a hint of a stain to show for the earlier spill. And while she was good, she knew she wasn’t that good, at least not without some of the special cleaning agents she kept at home and a bit more time to work on it. Hoping no one had caught that, she had quickly added a, very faint, barely perceptible, yellow 'stain' to her ‘dress’ and had been extra vigilant about such things afterwards.

She now had several actual outfits to change into now, including pajamas. Sonic, with surprising graciousness, had volunteered to go and pick up some of her things, since everyone thought she might want to spend as little time as possible back at the scene of her kidnapping for a while. Still, however much she appreciated that, she realized she didn’t actually need any of her clothes or accessories anymore and that they would probably be more of a hindrance than anything else if she chose to try to wear them (and some of them, like her earrings, would be basically impossible to actually wear anymore).

‘Sighing’, she stored a pair of the pajamas Sonic had brought her into a, frankly, rather impressive sub-space storage device the doctor had installed into her frame (seriously, she could probably fit everything in her house into it with plenty of room to spare) and adjusted her projection to mimic the appearance of the nightwear instead.

“...I don’t know if I should be excited or disturbed about how easy this is.”

Concentrating for a moment, the ‘pajamas’ briefly assumed the likeness of a dress she’d seen online that she’d really wanted to buy but just hadn’t been able to justify the expense. After admiring in a mirror just how good it looked on her, her expression suddenly fell and the ‘dress’ shifted back into the ‘pajamas’ from before.

“It’s fake. It’s all fake…I’m fake….”

Pushing aside the temptation to increase her E.P. throttling and partitioning further than she already had, she decided it was time to just ‘go to bed’.

“Maybe everything will somehow seem better in the morning….”