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Amy liked cars. She’d had a few over the years, from the red car she used in the first World Grand Prix Eggman hosted, to her friend the Breeze when she was just a little older. Of course, though, the Pink Cabriolet took the cake for the car she’s had the longest. She made sure to take good care of it, and it had long since become her primary race car, so naturally she was bound to bring it to the Crossworlds Tournament.
The first race wouldn’t start for another hour or so, but that didn’t stop folks from getting there early, so Amy was already arriving at the starting line, checking over her car for any last minute issues. She wasn’t the most technically minded Mobian around, so she had to give herself that wiggle room. As a result… it seemed she was one of the first ones there.
But that was alright with her! She needed the extra time, and if her friends were there already, she’d probably get distracted. Amy hopped out of the car and hurried to the front to check her engine. She popped open the hood and frowned.
It… looked off, but she couldn’t exactly place her finger on it. Cars were weird, and so were engines. She pulled out the diagram Tails had made for her ages ago, and unfolded it to check, when—
“Your car has no issues plaguing its engine.”
Amy jumped at the sound of someone right next to her. Had she been so focused on the engine that she hadn’t even noticed someone walk up to her? She quickly turned to look at the owner of the weirdly detached voice,
“Oh, uh—”
Only to cut herself off, but for a good reason! At least she hoped it was. Was staring at someone a good reason?
Standing next to her was a carbon copy of herself— only not, she quickly realized. This strange replica of herself was only a fraction of maybe flesh, while the rest seemed to be made of metal, which clearly wasn’t polished nearly enough. What struck her most was the juxtaposition between her two eyes, though— the more natural green one seemed like a camera, almost, as it took in Amy’s appearance, while the other, partially hidden behind steel, had black sclera and glowed; similarly to Metal Sonic’s, she realized.
“… Did I frighten you?” The robotic version of Amy asked. “I apologize.”
“Oh! No, no, you’re alright!” Amy quickly exclaimed, realizing she’d been staring. “I was just a bit surprised.”
The replica seemed to think for a moment, likely processing the data.
“I see. I was as well.”
She then nodded.
“Designation: Rusty Rose.”
Rusty stuck out her hand stiffly. It took Amy a few seconds before she realized it was a handshake, and quickly took her hand.
“Oh— uh, I’m Amy! Amy Rose.”
“Amy.” Rusty paused. “I have heard much about you.”
Well, that didn’t surprise Amy too much; if Eggman was Rusty’s creator, which was the only option for her creator that made sense, then it’d follow that she’d hear about her. Heck, Rusty was a copy of her! Probably. In that case, she was made to understand her.
Rusty was a weird name for a Badnik, though. Eggman tended to give all of them names that sounded fresh and squeaky clean. Maybe Rusty picked it herself? It’d make sense if she was abandoned… but she really shouldn’t be speculating on her past! She was clearly sentient, so it’d be so rude!
Amy opened her mouth to reply, but Rusty spoke first.
“I should return to my vehicle.”
Without another word, Rusty turned around and started walking away— with her legs extending to step over each of the few cars in her way!
“Oh— goodbye! See you on the race track!”
Amy didn’t know if Rusty had heard what she said, but that didn’t matter. She watched as Rusty returned to her car at the other end of the starting line. It was a clunky and kinda dirty number, but Amy got the sense it was still really powerful, and could more than hold its own. She would know!
Rusty seemed to be diligent in her approach to taking care of her car, checking each part of it for any issues. She couldn’t see exactly what she was doing over there, but she seemed to have it all under control.
Really, though, Amy couldn’t help wondering where she’d come from, though. What sort of scheme had she been meant to be a part of? Why did she defect, or why was she abandoned? Who even invited her to the tournament? It was invitation only, and even Amy had been given some plus ones, so she was sure she had to be one, but who’s?
Well, whoever it was, it couldn’t have been—
“Yo, Rusty! Glad you could make it!”
Sonic.
Amy watched from the other end of the line as Sonic hopped out of his car and hurried over to Rusty and her car, a classically huge grin on his face. She couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but they seemed friendly.
Well, it’d make sense that they’ve met before, and that they were friends. Sonic was always ruining Eggman’s plans, and redeeming one of his bots was all but just another day for him. Were it most any bot, Amy wouldn’t have given it another glance! Heck, even Rusty being a robo-her wouldn’t raise any red flags! Of course Sonic would invite her racing!
But then why didn’t Sonic tell Amy about her?
Rusty was clearly meant to be her, and Sonic had told her about so many of his adventures, and his new friends. She remembered him telling her about Scrapnik Island so clearly, and about all sorts of troubles he’d ran into while away from her.
So why not tell her about whatever crazy adventure had led to him meeting Rusty? What strange happenstance had made them team up, and what plan did they foil?
And just how close were they?
Sonic knew how much Amy liked him, even now that she’s not tackling him every five seconds, or bugging him about marriage here and now. It didn’t take a genius to see how happy she’d get when he gave her so much as a wink, or how excited she’d get when it was just the two of them.
She didn’t expect him to like her back, at this point. He didn’t run from her like he used to, and that was surely enough for her, but this still ached.
Rusty was clearly a good friend to Sonic, so why was this Amy’s first time even hearing about her, and not even from Sonic?
“Amy? Are you alright? Are you having trouble with your car?”
“Tails!”
Amy turned quickly at the sound of the young fox. Tails seemed a bit surprised as she did so, jumping back a bit. She brightened up a bit as she realized something.
“Oh no, my car’s fine!” She quickly brushed off his last question, then she turned to look towards Sonic and Rusty. “It’s just… Do you recognize her?”
“Who?”
Tails looked past Amy, scanning his sight ahead until he finally saw the two talking.
“Whoa— Eggman made a copy of you?” Tails asked, paused, then frowned. “And you also got a cool robot instead of a creepy doll?”
“Tails, focus!” Amy huffed, then shook her head. “Has Sonic ever mentioned her to you? Anything about a ‘Rusty Rose?’”
“No, but I wish he had! Seriously, the way her head is built makes her look alive! Can you even imagine what kind of tech made that…”
Tails trailed off as he glanced over to Amy, his fur standing on end as he realized she didn’t look curious or interested at all. But he knew the look she did have, or at least traces of it, from when she was younger. The way her fists used to clench whenever someone she didn’t recognize and looked even remotely similar to her expressed interest in Sonic. The strange way her mouth reeled, as if finding the right words to say.
But then there was the way she seemed to deflate at the sight, and the way her stance wavered, but her eyes kept staring ahead.
“Uh— don’t worry, Amy!” Tails exclaimed, tugging gently at her arm. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this! It’s Sonic, after all! Maybe she just slipped his mind?”
Amy didn’t respond immediately, her brow gently furrowing.
“But how? He remembered her enough to invite her racing… but not enough to bring her up?”
“Well… uh…”
Tails trailed off. He hadn’t really expected Sonic to have been the one to invite her. He did remember Sonic being kind of secretive about who he was inviting, but he’d brushed that off as him just wanting it to be a surprise.
It… wasn’t really making his case any easier to defend.
As Tails thought, his ear twitched at the sound of someone else pulling up to the start line. He turned his head a bit to see Rouge pulling up on an extreme gear. He forgot she could ride one of those things, but it didn’t matter.
“Hey, Rouge! Over here!”
Rouge glanced over at him and Amy, then got off her gear, holding it under her arm as she approached the two, waving with the other.
“Tails, Amy,” She greeted the two in turn, then looked at Amy. Her smile faded slightly as she saw the look on Amy’s face, though. “Say, you aren’t looking too hot, Amy. What’s the matter?”
Amy shifted a bit where she stood, clenching and unclenching her fists.
“Uh… Tails, are you sure about asking Rouge…?”
“Amy, Rouge is a good deal older than both of us; I’m sure she’ll have a good explanation!”
“Explanation?” Rouge echoed, quirking an eyebrow up. “For what, exactly?”
Tails nodded in the direction of Rusty and Sonic, who were still talking. Rouge’s eyes narrowed a bit as her ears twitched. Maybe she could hear what they were talking about over there, with how powerful her hearing was.
“My, they certainly seem to be having fun,” Rouge finally said, glancing at Amy.
“I’ve never seen or heard about her before today!” Amy blurted out, then sighed. Rouge clicked her tongue, her eyes trailing back to them.
“Oh really?” Rouge hummed, watching as Rusty said something, and Sonic proceeded to start laughing. She folded her ears back, just a bit. “Sounds to me like Blue over there has a secret thing for pink robots, then.”
“Wait, what?!”
Tails couldn’t believe his ears— he’d called Rouge over to help! Not to dig the hole even deeper!
“So… that’s why he invited her here?”
Amy’s voice wavered as she looked down, moving her hands up to her chest. Rouge merely shrugged.
“I don’t have a better explanation for this… unless, of course, you’re about to ask them why they’re so buddy-buddy, right?”
At Rouge’s words, Amy got a bit of a glint in her eye, but it was gone before she even blinked.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea…” Amy said, glancing over as Sonic flipped which side of Rusty he was standing on.
“Oh come on, Amy. How else will you know for certain if Little Miss Romantidroid over there really is homewrecking or not?”
“What— homewrecking?!” Amy gasped, shaking her head. “Hold on! There isn’t anything to wreck! Me and Sonic aren’t dating!”
“You’re not? There goes my advice.”
Hopping out of his car, Knuckles approached the group, all while looking at Rusty and Sonic.
“Knuckles– you’ve never met her either, right?” Tails asked, frowning. Knuckles responded first by shaking his head.
“Not once in my life.” Knuckles crossed his arms, scowling a bit.
“Then don’t be so hasty to dismiss your idea, Knuckie,” Rouge nodded her head towards the two. “Tell us, what were you going to tell Amy to do?”
Knuckles stared at Rouge for a minute, squinting for a second, before sighing.
“Simple; if Sonic is flirting with that bot, then the best payback is to beat him up.”
“Wait– hold on! We’re not doing that!” Tails exclaimed, putting his hands up. “We don’t even know what they’re talking about!”
“I sure do,” Rouge said, smirking a bit. “Something about some big adventure they had, and about her ‘loosening up…’ heck, I’d say he’s more into the conversation than she is.”
“And that totally sounds like flirting! Right?” Knuckles gestured back at the two, then looked to Amy. “So all you have to do is take your hammer and hit him over the head! You used to do it all the time, right?”
“But Sonic talks like that to anyone moody! He tries to get Shadow to loosen up all the time!”
“True, but it’s not like he’s hiding Shadow from us. None of us have even met the girl, and suddenly she gets to be his plus one. Don’t you think that’s a little strange, Tails?”
“Which is why he’s gotta be taken down a peg! Seriously, Sonic ought to have at least told Amy about this, right? She’s got every right to kick him to the curb here!”
As the three continued to talk, Amy couldn’t help but spiral more. What if Sonic and Rusty really were a thing? She’d be lying if she said she wouldn’t mind, but she was grown up enough to handle that door being shut for good. It was the hiding that hurt her. Why hadn’t he told her? Told anyone? Did he not want them to know? Did he not want her to know? Did he think she wouldn’t be able to handle it, or…
“Oho! What’s this?”
Suddenly, an all too familiar boisterous voice spoke up from behind Amy, taking them all by surprise.
“Sonic’s friends plotting his downfall? I thought I’d never see the day! You’ll let me join in, yes?”
Amy turned a bit too look up at Eggman, who had bent down just a bit to talk with the rest of them.
“This doesn’t concern you.” Knuckles said with a frown, glaring up at Eggman. It wasn’t a surprise he was here, given that he had an invitation to the tournament, but he clearly still wasn’t welcome. “So why don’t you go back to your car and—”
“Hold on,” Rouge placed a hand on Knuckles’s shoulder as she interrupted him, her eyes glinting with realization. “He might know something.”
“Know something?” Tails echoed, frowning. “But…”
“Eggy, can you tell us who she is?”
Rouge jabbed a thumb over in Sonic’s, and more importantly, Rusty’s direction, directing Eggman’s attention to her. Eggman wasn’t looking long before he responded.
“Yeesh. What half-rate inventor made that hunk of junk?”
Eggman’s words caused a new wave of conversation among the three, but Amy didn’t notice the heat rising between them as a cold chill ran through her.
No one knew who Rusty was. No one knew why she was made, or why she looks like Amy. No one knew who made her, and no one knew what that ‘big adventure’ of Sonic’s she had been a part of.
She was just someone no one knew existed until Sonic decided she was coming racing with them, even though he hadn’t even told anyone. Even though he didn’t tell her.
“D-don’t cry, Amy!”
Amy didn’t think she was going to until Tails said that.
She raised her hand to her eye, trying to stop any tears from falling. She didn’t feel any, but that didn’t stop her chest from feeling tight.
“Why… Why didn’t he just tell me? We aren’t even…”
Amy couldn’t finish her sentence, a hush falling over the group.
And then another voice popped up, low and rough.
“Tell you what?”
Shadow’s tone would be easily mislabeled as annoyed by anyone else, and his expression moreso, but if that were the case he would’ve just headed back to his car, which was a decent distance from Amy’s. Shadow wouldn’t have wasted his time if he didn’t care.
“Shadow…” Amy glanced over at Sonic and Rusty, Shadow following her gaze. “It’s—”
Amy hardly got the chance to start her sentence, let alone finish it.
“That idiot…!”
Shadow pushed past Tails and Rouge as his air shoes activated, sending him speeding to the other end of the racetrack. His eyes locked onto Sonic before narrowing.
Sonic heard him when he was almost there, turning around and trying to wave at him.
“Shadow! What’s—”
That was all Sonic got to say before his face collided with Shadow’s fist.
-
Turned out that it was a good thing Amy hadn’t decided to follow Knuckles’s advice. It hadn’t taken long for the staff to intervene with Shadow and Sonic, disqualifying the former from the race for ‘unsportsmanlike behaviour.’ It could’ve been argued that it was a lot worse than that, but no one had, really.
That being said, though, Amy had decided to drop out of the race anyway. She just didn’t feel right racing like this, with her mind in such a state. She was still thinking about it even with her face washed and sitting in the stands.
“Room for one more?”
Amy looked up, only to freeze up once again.
“S-Sonic!”
Under any other circumstance, Amy would’ve been scrambling to look presentable in front of him. She was sure her bangs were a state, and the puffiness around her eyes probably hadn’t gone away.
As it was, though, she was frozen for a good few seconds, before she was able to bring herself to speak again.
“You… aren’t racing?”
Sonic gave a sheepish smile as he took the seat next to her.
“Uh… nah. Thought it’d be better I come sit with you instead, yknow?”
Amy couldn’t keep a pang from shooting through her heart. Even after she reasoned it away, it still disoriented her.
“… Oh.”
Distantly, Amy could hear the announcer speaking, the race starting in front of them. She wasn’t really paying attention, though.
Glancing in Sonic’s direction, she caught his eyes darting away, but only barely. Had she not met his eyes for that split second, she’d think he’d been focused on the race the whole time. Even so, she wasn’t sure it really hadn’t just been her imagination.
“… So… where exactly did you meet Rusty?”
Sonic seemed conflicted for a moment, almost grimacing before he relaxed, letting out a sigh.
“Do you remember a while back, when Eggman went after that big old prism thing?”
“You mean… the Paradox Prism?” It took Amy a moment to remember the name. “I remember, sort of. What about it?”
“It… kiiiinda had another couple of worlds inside it…?”
Amy blinked once, then twice. She then turned back to the race.
“Like… how Blaze is from another world, right?”
“Kinda like that— but the Shatterverse was different! They all had guys that were almost like you guys, and Rusty was one of ‘em.”
Amy watched as Rusty overtook Tails, hardly glancing back at him as he spun out of control.
“She’s a version of me…?”
Amy’s chest felt tight again, but she didn’t falter, watching as the track below changed to a dark reddish scene.
“Shadow didn’t really want anyone to know about it, but I thought ‘hey, no one’s gonna question a Robo-Amy, right? Perfect for a plus one!’”
Sonic laughed at himself, but it turned weak before trailing off in a matter of seconds.
“Guess I got a bit distracted, though.”
Amy didn’t really know what to say as she watched Rusty weave through the towering apocalyptic buildings that sprung up around the track, as if she’d been doing it her whole life, while the others seemed to lose their way and fumble.
She didn’t realize Sonic had shifted closer to her until their pinkies touched.
“You and Rusty– it’s not really fair to compare you two. Sure, she’s as strong and as brave as you, but she’s way different.”
Amy turned to look at Sonic as he nudged her gently. Seeing the way he smiled at her could’ve made her heart stop if it wasn’t already beating out of her chest.
“She’s my friend, but words couldn’t describe how happy I was to see you after all of it.”
In that moment, Amy remembered what Rusty had said to her.
‘I have heard much about you.’
She was sure Shadow wouldn’t just talk about her, especially not enough to say ‘much,’ and no one else Rusty knew would be able to tell her about her.
No one but…
“... You told her about me.”
Amy was vaguely aware of Rusty’s victory in the race as she said those words, the announcer’s voice blaring in her ears, but she didn’t pay attention to it. Instead she watched as Sonic froze, then stammered, clearing his throat. She hardly even knew he could blush, let alone turn as red as he was now!
“What? How did you– I mean– no, I didn’t!”
“You did!” Amy felt her mouth curve into a smile, her excitement rising. “She told me herself!”
“She told you?!” Sonic gaped for a moment, then shook his head. “Hold on– when was that?!”
“Just before you got to the race. Rusty saw me struggling with my engine! We didn’t talk much, but I distinctly remember–”
“Oh, would you look at that!!” Sonic shot up, pointing at the racetrack. “Tails just crossed the finish line! I should really check up on him– catch you later, Amy!”
“Sonic, wait!”
But before Amy had even gotten her words out of her mouth, Sonic had already sped down the line of seats, leaving those still populating them wide-eyed as he blazed past.
Amy felt a familiar, warm feeling rise in her chest as she saw him run from her, her fists clenching as her brow furrowed, before she called out.
“Sonic the Hedgehog, don’t you run from me! I know what I heard!!!”
Amy’s voice rang out loud enough that, to those with sensitive enough ears, it could be heard from far below. In fact, down on the racetrack, just before the finish line, Rouge let out a soft chuckle.
“Hey, what’s so funny?” Knuckles asked as she caught up to him, looking her way as she lifted her hand to her mouth.
“Oh, nothing,” Rouge hummed, smirking a bit. “Just that a certain someone seems to be following your advice.”