Chapter Text
For Stone, sneaking away from GUN forces and getting the crab up and running again was as simple as he could've hoped, safe for a rather unpleasant swim in the river, one that required a thorough deep cleaning afterward. Once his clothes were cleaned and the inside of the crab was drained of its water, all Stone could do was stare at what was left in its wake. Though most of it was still soaked, the floor still had the occasional brown puddle, and he could almost still see where everything had been left before Tails had flushed him out.
Soggy chips, some avocados, and various bowls were strewn across the room. Shuffling through the mess, he initiated the crab's flight sequence and set course for the last place anybody would look to find him. Green Hill, Montana. He sighed as the autopilot kicked in and the hum of the engines filled the inside of the cabin, the screen at the front of the room reading the ETA. Turning his head around the room he noticed again the mess left behind.
Without even thinking, he went to grab a mop and broom and began to get to work. It was therapeutic, but at the same time, it felt wrong. Like going into the room of someone who had recently passed, everything is still left as it was when they were still alive, ghosts of a time you can no longer go back to. A fitting analogy, stone thought, considering the circumstances. But this crab was the last of the Doctor’s creations he had and was thus his only remaining connection.
After a couple of hours, sweeping up the food and broken bowls turned to mopping the floors, turned to cleaning the screens, turned to polishing the white and silver surfaces, turned to deep cleaning the entire inside of the crab until the inside reeked of every cleaning chemical you could imagine. And it was then when there was nothing left to clean, that Stone was left alone with only his thoughts and the hum of the engine once again, now forced to relive the events of the past couple of days without anything to distract him.
It had all happened so fast. He thinks back on how in just a matter of days, he lost everything, and so soon after gaining it back. And by ‘everything’, of course, the stone is only thinking about Ivo. The message he broadcasted to the world still playing in his head
‘If I can't rule the world, I might as well save it!’
‘You were the one and only person who ever cared about me’
In any normal situation, such an admittance would be out of character for Ivo, but knowing his death was imminent seemed to have given him the push to come to peace with feelings he otherwise would’ve left buried deep in his old, angry soul. Ivo had spent his entire life outcasted by others, he lashed out at those around him, chiefly Stone, thinking of him as no more than a pawn, an obedient assistant who would do whatever he wanted. It wasn't until he was faced with his mortality that he stopped the act. He stopped being angry, he stopped being vengeful, and he used his final moments to thank the person who had spent all these years with him.
‘You’re more than just a sycophant to me. You were…a syco-friend’
Snapping him out of his trance, the crab's autopilot beeped, alerting Stone that they had arrived at the selected location, a section of unincorporated woodland away from the prying eyes of the main town. The crab slowly touched down as the loading bay opened, Stone walking out into the familiar pine forest of northwest Montana, the place he had spent those first couple years without Ivo. The newly mangled moon hung high in the sky, another reminder of what had happened. However, he wasn't here for sightseeing.
He began his trek to the town center, at this time of night there would be nobody to see him but he still tried to play it safe, sneaking around the best he could until arriving at his destination. It was mostly rubble now, condemned after the events of Ivo getting the Master Emerald and rampaging through the town in a giant robot, but the dusty sign still stood above the door. ‘Mean Bean Coffee Cafe’
Sneaking his way in through one of the back entrances, he wasnt surprised to see that the place had been ransacked by GUN, the all the walls had been gutted of all of its technology and hidden features, leaving the place a husk of plywood and wiring scattered across the building. And it was at this moment, all at once, that it dawned on him.
He wasn't here for sightseeing…but what was he here for? Why had he been drawn to this location of all places knowing full well he couldn't go back to running the shop? Why was this the first place he thought to go after fleeing London? Thoughts ran through his mind as he reached down to pick up some of the leftover trash on the floor, eyes tearing up in anger as he recognized the red lens of one of the egg drones. And then all at once, all that was let out. He threw the lens as hard as he could against the wall, shattering it upon impact. A primal scream of pure anger left his lungs.
He was breathing heavily but his blood still boiled, looking to his side he saw one of the old screens, reflecting back to him his disheveled appearance. His eyes were baggy, his clothes filthy, and his eyes puffy. He couldn't stand to look at it. Without any control of his own body, he punched the screen, again and again and again, screaming until there was nothing more than shards. It was at this moment, with his knuckles bloodied and his breathing slowing, that he fell to his knees, and sobbed.
All the pressure of the days past finally crashing down on him, the rage had subsided, and in its place was only anguish. He sat there and sobbed for what felt like hours until he had no more tears to give. Leaning against the remains of the bar counter he looked through the boarded-up doors, just barely seeing the night sky on the other side. And it was at this moment that he heard something beneath the rubble. Something beeping.
He jumped to the pile he heard it from, digging through the wood and dust not caring about the still-fresh cuts on his hands before he found a hole in the floorboards. Peeking through he saw a disc with a familiar red glow. The opening was just barely big enough for him to fit his arm into, and after some effort, he pulled out the disc. It was undoubtedly of Ivo's design. Polished white, with a single red dot in the middle. It was upon rubbing his finger over the red dot, reminiscing over Ivo’s iconic color palette that the device lit up. And from it sprung a holographic screen displaying a face he thought he would never see again. It was him, his long shaggy hair and dawning his stained bathrobe, meaning this must have been taken just prior to Shadow’s escape.
“Hello Agent Stone. If you’re hearing this, then my superior intellect has somehow been bested, and I am dead, gone to the big laboratory in the sky…” Ivo looked up, a hand over his heart with the other wiping a faux tear from his eye. The doctor's familiar bravado brought a smile to Stone’s face, though he still remained confused.
“Now I know you’re probably wondering how I knew to put this here, but because I'm feeling nice, I’ll explain it to you. Following the…incident with that blue freak and his 2 new friends, as you know you and I went away on our own, living as hermits while I gorged myself into this” Ivo gestured at his beer belly, a look of disgust on his face. “But It recently dawned on me that I am not long for this world. For one of the one things my genius can't fix is mortality.” Stone winced at that last statement.
“It is with that that I decided to make a ‘will’ of sorts. In the event of my untimely demise, I wouldn't want all my creations to sit abandoned, or god forbid those pansies at GUN get ahold of them.” Ivo faked a gag at the thought, garnering a soft chuckle from Stone. “I knew to put it here because I know you're a hopeless sentimental individual, and that in the event of my death, this would be the first place you would look” Stone's smile widened more, even in death Ivo was the smartest one in the room. “Attached to this disc are the coordinates to my magnum opus, my vault. Encased inside its endless corridors lies every fabricator I have at my disposal. Any robot, machine, android, or synthetic you could imagine can be built right in-house”
Ivo then makes an exaggerated movement to look around the room, making sure nobody was listening before saying what he was about to say. “Stone, I see you as an…ally. You may be a sycophant, but by god, you're my sycophant.”
‘You’re more than just a sycophant to me. You were…a syco-friend’
“It is with only you that I entrust this information, only you to use my machines and my gifts to their fullest potential. Whether or not you use it to take over the world or save it I truly do not care, just for the love of all that is holy do not donate them or so help me I will crawl right back up from Hell itself to make sure you're SORRY!” Ivo’s gravelly yelling voice coming back towards the end. Stone simply stared, a smile still on his face at Ivo’s familiar bravado and inflections
“Once you arrive, the door will be locked via a voice activation phrase. But, I won't give you all the answers, you'll just have to figure that one out for yourself, HA!” Ivo threw his head back in mock laughter before looking back to the camera. “Goodbye, Agent Stone”
The hologram shut off, and Stone was once again left in darkness, staring at the disc in his hands, but it wasn't long before he got himself off the ground, steeling his nerves and the steady pain in his knuckles, making his way back to the crab.
There was no time to sit on things, he could think about it on the way to the vault. Ivo had entrusted his legacy to Stone, and he would die before he put it off for even a second. In what felt like no time at all, he had arrived back at the crab and quickly typed in the coordinates into the computer, they had led to an old chemical plant located in the dunes of west Texas.
With newfound vigor, he enabled the autopilot and set course for the vault. As the vessel took off and flew to the selected destination he was finally able to tend to his new wounds. It had taken a while, and he was really putting his medical knowledge to the test, but he had finally cleaned out the wounds, properly wrapping his knuckles in bandages.
Stone looked into the bathroom mirror as he finished applying the bandages, finally able to get a look at himself for the first time since…everything. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot, what were once filled with joy and ambition, were now filled with nothing but steeled determination.
Stone would make sure that Ivo’s legacy lived on. One way or another, and nothing was going to get in his way.