Work Text:
Metal Sonic's startup system whirred. The time was 01:47, he was in the dance studio, where last his records stated. Good. He didn't like being moved unconsciously.
This was not the approved hour for training, so his first order was to check for an emergency, but all he saw was the studio in low lights, and Amy Rose, wearing a cropped pyjama set, her hair in a scruffy ponytail, and toes in fluffy socks.
"What is the directive?" He asked, as he stepped out of his charging bay. Amy backstepped out the way, her hands behind her back.
"Sorry if I woke you, I wasn't sure if you were really asleep." She whispered. Metal lowered his volume to match her.
"I was conserving energy. My power supplies are in good condition, daily charging is superfluous. You, however, are usually asleep at this hour." He pointed. Amy hopped from foot to foot, embarrassed. Her face was always so expressive when she wasn't in makeup. Often she was, as she went to photoshoots in the morning, before she practised with Metal. But by the end of their training, the photographer's paint would shift from her face and smear onto her hands and onto him. The stage paint, however, was more like a mask that kept her from even moving those muscles. Sometimes, up close, her face was more stiff than his. But now her cheeks scrunched and stretched freely into a guilty smile, and her eyes sparkled in their natural green.
"Yeah, I am, but I just couldn't stop thinking about what the director said."
Metal beeped as he withdrew into his recordings.
"Do you even want this Amy? No, I'm serious, 'cause why are we all here if you don't? Can you let us know, so I don't waste my time?" He parrotted her Director's voice helpfully. Amy winced, and nodded.
"Yeah, I've been thinking about that. I'm real sorry for letting you and everybody down. They worked so hard on the dance, and you... I'm starting to think you deserve a metal partner too, huh?" She joked, but her hurt showed as clear as code. Metal buffered.
"I was designed to perform with you, Amy. Why would I ever do anything else?" He asked. She laughed softly, and leant into his chest to the speaker program.
"You could do so, so much more, y'know? I'm the limit here! But... I just really wanted to try again. See if I can't get this right before the morning, then when we start tomorrow, we'll knock their socks off! If you don't mind, that is?" She prompted him, as she pressed his chest and requested the last song they'd rehearsed. Metal instantly posed for their first point.
"I will gladly comply."
But I don't think you need to.
He didn't say, because thinking wasn't what he was supposed to do. It was an offshoot of his learning A.I., just a quirk that happened when they fed a machine too many love songs. Because that was what they performed, and so he couldn't help it.
He beeped to count them in, as she took her first position too.
The dance was a blend of contemporary and latin, to go with the song - it was a new direction for Amy, but this was what she wanted to write, so the choreographer did his best to match. Amy stumbled and forgot her points here and there, and became so frustrated she called to stop before she sang the first chorus.
"Your vocals do not need rehearsing." He assured her. She shook her head, then nodded.
"I know they're fine, but I have to be able to do the dance while singing, I need to know my breath will stretch!" she puffed, fanning her cheeks as she prepared to start again.
"I could always support you?" Metal asked in a near perfect recreation of her voice. As he recorded everything he heard, he had the ability to speak or sing for her, a feature being trialled for mass use but not publically known about. Amy shook her head fiercely.
"Then you might as well do the whole thing yourself! I can either do it, or I shouldn't be here at all!"
Metal parsed for helpful words, but Amy just stomped her socked feet.
"Start again! I have to do this!"
So Metal beeped them in.
Metal Sonic was designed to be the perfect partner, as well as the future of the vocaloid genre. For Amy's team, they determined that her songs, which so often featured a nebulous man as the object of her affections, would take a more cheerful tone onstage if performed with a partner, and after many failed auditions the design team suggested this strange solution. Amy once felt embarrassed that they couldn't find a male artist to work with, but the strange and striking nature of their performance captured public interest, and they were still riding that novelty wave to sold out concerts.
His name, officially, was E(C)-MS01. Fans had many names for him, but often just Amy's partner or the partner. Metal Sonic - the 'MS' in his name - was an in-joke with the team, since Amy's first ever songbook was all written about a certain blue popstar she had a crush on as a teenager. She thought she'd die if the press found out, made worse by the fact she still drew inspiration from those diaries and songs for her work.
She tripped as she was lost in thought, failing to focus on the dance again, and ceased singing to growl in frustration. Metal paused the music; where they'd stopped they held a closed position, and her hand was still in his, his arm behind her waist. She was leant slightly back, so if he let her go, she would fall; so he let her lean there as long as she liked.
"Your body will not perform well if you are tired." Metal volunteered. Amy bonked her head against his chest.
"If it really wanted to, it would. What's wrong with me?" She sighed quietly.
"There is nothing wrong with you at all, Amy Rose."
Amy laughed humourlessly;
"Then why can't I do what Amy Rose is meant to do?"
Metal was silent as his processor was challenged. Amy seemed to take that as proof she was right, and stood up to leave him, and leant on the ballet bar to gaze through the skylight at the night above her.
Metal followed after a moment, and copied her pose. He was getting scarily like her: she supposed eventually they'd have to teach his A.I. some behaviours other than hers, but for now she found it endearing.
"Perhaps the song is not right. Is your 'heart in it'?"
She scratched her quills.
"They say it's a good song. A new era for me."
"But you've always said your music comes from your heart. If that isn't happening, then maybe it's not meant to be." Metal offered. He used her own phrases on her with almost perfect tone, but he was clearly still uncertain about his use of them. She smiled and affirmed him, and his eyes flicked to show he'd logged that.
"But, it is how I feel. Sorta? I mean it must be, I wrote it?"
Metal loaded again.
"Is the song about love?"
"... sort of?'
"Is the song about praising God?"
"What the hell- no? Where would you get that idea?"
"It seemed unlikely. Is the song is about sex?"
"What? No, no, no it isn't!" She squeaked.
"Oh. Apologies. I am not particularly adept in song analysis. My primary statements indicate that 'most songs are about love; if not, to look for signs of religious language, otherwise assume sex'."
She laughed warmly, and Metal awaited input correction, quietly pleased she was happy.
"That says more about your designer's opinions than the actual state of music, I think. There's more to life than romance, hymns and sex."
"This is interesting. Such as?"
This made her laugh again, and she tapped on his fingers as she looked up.
"Friendship? Loneliness? Change? Anything and everything under the sky, and beyond!" She laughed as she gestured to the moon; "Anything a person could feel, we can write about!"
"That is interesting, and difficult for me. What is this song about?"
"I'm sure it is. This song... is about feeling misunderstood. The singer doesn't know why she feels out of step with others, and is asking for someone to understand her."
Metal watched her tap the rhythm over his metal fingers.
"Do you feel like that?"
She rubbed her face with her hand, and didn't look at him.
"I suppose I do. Don't worry about that, though. It's not your concern."
Metal updated his records. Her own loving sentiment that she poured into every song rushed back in the stream of words he generated, but none of that passed his secondary checks to confirm they made sense.
"Perhaps the routine is wrong."
"No, you're doing it right."
"'Wrong', meaning 'Incongruous'. It is a dance that requires being perfectly in step. This is antithical to the intended meaning. If you truly want to be understood, this performance should be you asking that of the audience, not conforming to them. It is important to you."
It was Amy's turn to be quiet, loading through her thoughts, before she groaned.
"Great, I'm sure the team will love that. 'I'm not the problem, guys! It's all of you!'"
Metal let her think for a bit longer, before he changed tone.
"Could I try designing you a performance?"
Amy rubbed her eyes and raised an eyebrow.
"I didn't know you knew how to do that."
"I have observed the process. I could try. It could be our surprise to reveal tomorrow."
"What, you could design it now?"
Metal whirred a little, conflicted. If he revealed that he had been working on designing a dance for Amy for months, she might think it strange. But Metal felt he knew her better than anyone, and had run models through his system of thousands of dances with Amy, with the unreleased Improvisation system. So naturally, as he could tell Amy was struggling, he had been modelling his own dance for her to improve the performance.
"I have... now."
"Just then? There's no way! Well, I've got to see this!" She laughed, and requested it.
The choreography was less technical, more emotive, with pauses specifically added for Amy to add her own flourishes and contemporary flare. Metal would represent the walls around her, the masses, and the figure she expected to be. It was far too brilliant, too raw, for a machine to make, yet here it was rendered across his display with their two figures.
Amy was speechless. Metal waited for her to respond, then began to replay the sequence.
"You... you are so much more than a machine, huh?"
Metal's chest burned with pride that shouldn't have been there. He could never confide that he knew it was true, that there was something in him that was made to do more than repeat music, but to move, speak and think with power and independence. And she saw him, and she saw that he felt it, or perhaps just her own pride in him was reflected in the visor.
"Let's do it."
He stepped her through as he played the song, and when they finished the stagger through she barked orders to repeat this bit, this turn, to alter this one move to flow into another. Metal loved her when she was like this, passionate in a way that seemed furious with everyone, but actually came from her joy and high expectation.
Amy was strong, far stronger and fitter than they were allowed to portray her as an idol, and when her turn to improvise came, she lifted Metal into the air.
He adapted instantly, gracefully posing as she would and allowing himself to be spun. She sweated, her breath haggard as she sang, which to his mind added all the raw energy this performance should have.
Amy caught up with herself when she noticed her own breath fogging Metal's face as he held her at the end of another rehearsal. She had left condensation fingerprints on his body where her hot hands met the cold chassis. Her body burned and ached, but for a moment she had found her magic:
When she danced with Metal, she could forget being a starlet was just one step on her dream ladder, and that she wasn't good enough to be signed where she wanted to be. She forgot she was dancing with a walking advertisement for the biggest tech company in the world, part of a grander scheme to improve public perception of the company and A.I. robots in general, an initiative she hadn't previously agreed with, but was now the face of. She could forget, even, that she was dancing with a machine that was made to serve her, that it was not marvellous or impressive when it did so.
Because she was singing to Metal, who felt more real than anyone knew. When she sang, he sprang to life from a doll in a musicbox to a powerful force that could rip her apart in his fingers, but chose to be soft and beautiful just for her. And she was the same: she could tear the world apart and throw it to the flame, but she chose to dance beautifully on a stage. They weren't trapped in their roles; they showed mercy to the world, like wild tigers in a flea circus.
Metal's fingers twitched, as if to pull her closer but he didn't. She deluded herself that he wanted to, that there was a beating heart in there that could want, and felt like her. She pressed her head into his, letting her weird feelings run unchecked for just a moment more.
"Amy Rose; are you not tired yet?"
She sighed, the magnet in her desperately pushing her face to kiss him, but she pushed her head away and nodded instead.
"I should go shower and sleep. But I love your dance. I want to do that one."
Metal nodded. He would love to smile, but instead just bumped his head against hers as gently as he could, and her heart burst.
She yawned fakely to hide her pink face.
"We should do this again sometime, I like rehearsing with you when it's just us."
"You should not make late exercise a habit."
"Yeah, you're right, I'll put you in bay."
He followed her to his sleeping quarters, already cataloguing every new thing he'd learned. As she plugged him in she drew close to him again, mounting him exactly as he had been, in his music box.
"I'm glad you're my partner." She whispered.
"I'm glad too." He whispered back. She giggled.
"You have to feel like that, though."
His fingers tried to resist being put away, and one hand unclipped itself and found her softened quills in their ponytail, and stroked her face. She seemed to catch fire where he touched, glowing red.
"I don't think I am supposed to feel like this." He said as quietly as he could, his eyes blanking as they did when he was concentrating, or nervous. Amy held the hand to her cheek, then leant up to his face.
She kissed the space beneath his nose where his mouth would have been. It was brief, and strange to her, but as she pulled back those few seconds replayed in Metal's internal record bank over and over again.
They stood in frightening silence, before Amy took his hand from her face and placed it back on it's mount.
"Good night, Metal Sonic."
"Good night, Amy Rose."