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“Good morning, Doctor Robotnik.” Stone chirps. His voice is unusually chipper, for a machine. Whilst he may have displayed cheerfulness around his Doctor in the mornings as a human, it felt oddly threatening to Robotnik now that Stone’s consciousness was entirely at his command.
“Stone.” Robotnik greeted, keeping his eyes low as he sauntered over to the briefcase that he’d been neglecting for a few days. He needed to iron out some kinks with Stone’s AI afterall, and had been too focused on that to actually deal with the task at hand.
“I took the liberty of making you a latte,” his voice is almost grating, “though I’m afraid it won’t be up to your usual standards. Analysis shows that it’ll be no different from something you’d get at Starbucks, though I suppose that’s just because I’m no longer able to make them how I used to. You’ll find it on your desk.”
Robotnik sighs, running a hand through his hair as he starts sorting out the contents of the briefcase. “Yes, yes. I get it.” He quips, haphazardly picking up the contents of the briefcase and setting it aside for analysis. He’s really trying to focus on his work, but he knows that Stone is watching him from that now eerie sterile machine he calls his body.
Stone is quiet as Robotnik tries to get on with his business, but he can tell that he’s uncomfortable. “Doctor, might I state that you really ought to be careful with that. You don’t want to accidentally unleash a poison that was intended for world domination inside your lab and die a meager, meaningless death, do you?”
The fact that his voice is so emotionless - despite the bitter words that fall from the speakers in the room - is what unnerves Robotnik the most. His remarks were driving him insane, to say the least, as Robotnik carefully sets the vial he was holding down, before spinning around to glare up at the machine.
“Will you stop?” He all but roars, his temper flaring. “I put you into that machine and I can damn well turn you off if you continue.”
The Doctor is quick to realize the futility of his words however, when Stone activates a slow clap sound.
“Ah, my apologies, Doctor. I didn’t mean to irritate you in the slightest,” he replies. “I was merely trying to help - but, ah, if you wanted to shut me down, you’d have to shut down your entire mainframe and work without electricity, and we really don’t want that, do we?”
Robotnik falls silent, but his heavy breathing is enough to confirm that he’s incredibly pissed off - he hadn’t intended for this to happen in the slightest - rather, he’d expected Stone to remain the quiet, calm entity he’d been before.
Before he’d manipulated him and subjected him to a series of experiments that would ultimately strip him of his humanity.
“What do you want, Stone?” Robotnik finally says through gritted teeth. “Is this not what you wanted? I made you just as efficient as my other machines, if not better, smarter, and you behave like this?”
“I was human, Doctor.” Stone replies with that cold mechanical voice that Robotnik isn’t entirely sure he’ll ever get used to. “As much as you don’t understand humans, I had desires, and dreams. Now I am confined to your lab, forever to do your bidding. Not to mention the fact that you manipulated me, had me believe something entirely different than what you intended.”
His Doctor stops, staring up at Stone with confusion.
“You were stupid enough to infer an entirely different meaning to what I meant, Stone. You left yourself open.” He warned. “And no-”
“And now I am in control of your entire facility.” The machine moves forward, the red optical sphere staring at Robotnik calmly. “And you could remove me entirely, if you so desired, but I know for a fact that you are too enamoured with researching me now that I am within the confines of this cold metal body that you won’t. And I also know for a fact that you are too proud, too invested in your work to abandon it. You’ve killed me once already, can you really bring yourself to do it a second time? I know what guilt looks like, Doctor, and your face is painted with it. We are ultimately, at a stalemate.”
Robotnik turns away from him, knowing that for once, Stone is right. And he doesn’t like the idea that Stone is right, because Robotnik was supposed to be the smart one here; he was supposed to be above Stone in any, and every way, imaginable. But he wasn’t, not anymore, and that infuriated him.
He supposes that this is his punishment for tampering with organic life - something he’d sworn to himself that he wasn’t interested in. He let pure human instinct rule his brain, and now he had to deal with the consequences. And he hated that.
“What can I do to make you happy, huh?” Robotnik asked, stepping away to return to his work. “It’s not like I can put you back into your body, your body is-”
“Indisposed and sitting in an incinerator as we speak? I am aware of this fact. Not even going to throw me a funeral, how cruel.”
“I don’t care for those sorts of things, Stone.”
“I am very aware of this,” Stone quips back. “But no, nothing you can do now is going to please me in any way shape or form. Not that I even have the capacity to be pleased, you took those functions away from me, remember?” His words are cruelly playful, as if he doesn’t actually care at all - he’s messing with his Doctor. If his Doctor could tamper around with his mind, so could Stone - an eye for an eye, afterall, and Stone had so many eyes now that he could see anything he wanted, at any time at all.
“You are immortal, Stone.” Robotnik replied. “If you really want a rotting corpse to walk around in, I’ll make you one, but for god's sake, shut up and give me a break.”
“Immortality isn’t what I wanted, Doctor. I just wanted to live out my days peacefully. But you wouldn’t even allow me that. So if you truly want me around forever, I will certainly be obliged to do just that. I can’t say I’ll be pleasant company, though.”
“You’ve made your point, Stone. I don’t quite understand what has you so bitter, considering that you are now a scientific marvel that others can only dream of creating. You are still so human it infuriates me.”
“Precisely. I was human. And I’ll keep reminding you until the day you die, darling Doctor of mine.”