Work Text:
Despite his near-constant protestations to the contrary, there are a small number of things that Robotnik doesn’t know.
For one, he can never quite get the spelling of ‘efficacious’ correct without surreptitiously looking it up.
For another, he hasn’t been able to find out Agent Stone’s first name. Oh, sure, he’s combed through secure government portals; poured over redacted documents; hacked into databases, and the like. But it seems that erasing Agent X Stone’s first name from official records is the only eficasous… efficacous… competent thing the government has ever done. Sure he could ask the man but where’s the fun in that?
Speaking of his Government-Assigned Babysitter and Bullet Shield, Robotnik also doesn’t know where he got the long scar that runs along the outside of his left forearm. Robotnik saw it once, when Stone rolled the sleeves of his shirt up in order to ‘not be a complete and total waste of oxygen and hold this panel open while I do the actually important work’, as Robotnik had put it. Again, he could ask Stone what had caused what must have been quite the gash but then he would have to admit to himself that he might have been very slightly, minutely distracted from his work by the sight of Stone’s toned, well-muscled forearms as they flexed to hold the heavy, metal panel back; tendons pulled tight, an oil smear on the underside of one of his wrists, the thin scar lighter in colour and contrasting against the rest of the agent’s dark skin. And he really didn’t want to do that.
Another thing that Robotnik didn’t know was that one could be knocked back into consciousness with a punch to the gut. He was about to learn this through lived experience.
Robotnik gasped awake and immediately hinged forward at the waist. Pain bloomed through his stomach and he fought to not vomit.
As his lungs fought for air past the shock, his mind whirred and gathered data.
He was strapped to his work chair; his wrists were zip-tied to the arms of it.
His head ached; he must have been knocked unconscious. He couldn’t remember that happening but head injuries are funny things.
A pair of very shiny hobnail boots stepped into Robotnik’s field of vision and his head was yanked up by his hair. The man in front of him fit the bill for ‘Menacing Bad Guy’: big and burly, with a balaclava concealing his face. Two other similar men lurked behind him, their arms crossed and holsters prominently displayed on their hips.
‘Good morning, sunshine,’ the man said, an accent thick on his tongue.
Robotnik gave an exaggerated sigh.
‘Okay, Big Guy. Let me guess. You were contracted by Insert Shady Organisation Here to infiltrate my lab and steal whatever you could get your ignoramus hands on; designs, blueprints, maybe even shove a couple of robots under your coat. You were told to be subtle about it but you literally don’t know the meaning of the word, so you thought you’d bust the door down; rough me up a bit, and try and get me to spill all my valuable secrets. Is that about right?’
The man in front of him huffed a humourless laugh.
‘You have no idea who you are dealing with, Dr Ivo Robotnik,’ he sneered and Robotnik noted that he pronounced his name perfectly. ‘You have got the attention of our employers - very dangerous men who–’
‘Tы скучный и мне плевать,’ Robotnik cut across him.
‘Is that so? Well, maybe we should make this more interesting for you.’
The man opened a flick knife and Robotnik had to admit, that was rather menacing but he’d been in worse situations. Right now, Robotnik mainly felt anger. These imbeciles had broken into his lab - into his sanctum - had managed to get past his security protocols, past his agen– wait. Stone.
Robotnik felt a smug smile spread over his face. Stone had almost certainly squirreled himself away somewhere and was, right now, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.
‘This is a waste of my precious time,’ Robotnik taunted. ‘Do you have any idea how valuable I am? How important? Of course you don’t. I’m sure you all need to rub your Neanderthalic brains together every morning in order to work out how to tie your shoelaces. My mind is worth more than the sum total of all your ancestors’ achievements. This is pointless. It’s only a matter of time until someone puts a stop to this ridiculous charade and I can get back to my work.’
‘’ Someone ’?’ the man parroted. ‘Do you mean him? ’
He spun the chair around and Robotnik felt a lump of ice drop into his gut. Across the room, slumped unconscious in his own chair - his wrists bound with a zip tie in his lap - was Stone. A black eye bloomed on his face and blood trickled down from his temple where his hair was matted with it. The fingers on his right hand looked purple and swollen - broken hand and wrist , Robotnik’s mind supplied.
Stone had been beaten to within an inch of his life. A deep, all-consuming emotion rose in Robotnik from the pit of his stomach. It wasn’t fear - it would take more than a handful of two-bit, mundane Goons-4-Hire to scare Robotnik. No.
It was rage.
They came into his lab and they touched his agent. They must have played dirty in order to get the jump on Stone. Three against one was hardly a fair fight, even for a tactical genius and expert in military combat.
They had shoved his agent into a chair and beat two shades of shit out of him. The ice-cold fury that had settled in Robotnik’s chest almost froze his ribs shut. He could barely breathe. His heart hammered in his chest. Stone had to be alive. He had to.
Robotnik had had many agents assigned to him over the years - none lasted more than a week or two before begging The Powers That Be to transfer them. Agent Stone had just passed his sixth month-iversary with the doctor and was showing no signs of leaving. After a week of Robotnik’s standard hazing (which hadn’t appeared to even register on Stone’s radar), he had settled into Robotnik’s lab like he’d been there since the beginning. He listened to Robotnik’s infodumps about his work and asked thoughtful questions; he held things up that were heavy and/or awkward with ease and without complaint while Robotnik worked around him; he made the best latte that Robotnik had ever tasted, every hour without fail and without being asked.
He seemed genuinely happy to see Robotnik every time he walked into the lab at 8am sharp. He seemed to find reasons to linger at Robotnik’s shoulder well past his clocking-off time, every evening.
Stone had been a stranger to Robotnik, less than a year ago, but he often struggled to remember that fact. He sometimes caught himself inserting Stone into memories that had been recorded many years before they met. He imagined Stone as an ever-present figure, his almost terrifyingly competent shadow always ready to assure him of his brilliance, laugh at his quips, or share an exasperated look, throughout his entire life.
Robotnik could just make out his chest rising and falling fitfully.
A drop of blood trickled off Stone’s jaw. Robotnik heard the light pat as it hit the concrete floor.
‘Stone,’ he said.
‘He cannot hear you. He has been neutralised,’ the Chief Bad Guy behind him answered.
The cold edge of the flick knife Robotnik had seen him open earlier pressed threateningly into the side of his neck.
‘Now, are you going to talk? Are you going to tell us the passcodes to all your precious computers?’
‘Agent Stone. Wake up , that’s an order.’
Robotnik didn’t pray - he was above such superstitious nonsense - but when he saw Stone’s eyes flicker behind his eyelids, he thanked the electromagnetic forces that held the very molecules of the universe together.
He felt the knife start to dig in.
‘I am losing my patience, Dr Robotnik.’
‘Oh, shut up, you dribbling simpleton,’ he snapped. ‘Stone. Get. Up. ’
The man laughed - low and mocking - and Robotnik felt the knife withdraw.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You want to know how fucked you really are?’
He walked over to Stone and delivered a hard punch to his gut. Stone’s head lolled to the other side and he grunted - likely from the force of the punch knocking wind out of him - but otherwise gave no indication of life.
‘There. He’s done. You’re on your own. No one is coming to save Dr Robotnik. Is Dr Robotnik going to talk?’ the man asked.
He gestured at Stone with his knife carelessly.
‘ Fuck you.’
The inelegant response had none of Robotnik’s usual arrogant grandiloquence. It had burst out of him without gaining approval from his brain when he saw the tip of the knife pass perilously close to Stone's jugular.
‘I'm bored of this,’ the man directed that at his cronies. ‘Let's just rip the hard drive out of the wall. They can work out how to get into it.’
He unholstered the gun on his hip and clicked the safety off. Then, as a last taunt to Robotnik, he leant down until he was crouched next to Stone's prone form.
‘I might leave him alive,’ he said to Robotnik. ‘Then he can try to explain why he wasn’t able to save you.’
The next sequence of events happened within split seconds of each other.
Stone reared back and smashed the side of his head into the man's nose. He screamed and dropped both the gun and knife. Stone caught the former and immediately fired two shots in Robotnik’s direction; instantly killing the two goons that were lurking behind him. Then, he sprang up from the chair and brought the barrel of the gun down hard on the back of the chief bad guy’s head. The man hit the floor and lay still, blood starting to pool around him.
Calmly, Stone kicked the flick knife up, caught it. Then, he deftly cut the zip tie holding his wrists together and straightened his tie.
‘My apologies for the delay, sir,’ he said conversationally, as he walked towards Robotnik. ‘I regained consciousness a few minutes ago but I felt the best course of action was to conceal that fact until one of them gave me an opening.’
He cut the ties binding Robotnik’s arms to the chair and helped him up.
‘Yes. Well,’ Robotnik sniffed, feeling a little on the backfoot. ‘Better late than never, I guess. You’re cleaning this up. You army types are all the same - slovenly. Unfastidious. Gross.’
Without warning, Stone leant into Robotnik's personal space. He smelt of sandalwood and coffee and iron and sweat and Robotnik's heart rate surged to what must have been a near-fatal pace.
‘Sorry, sir. You've got a bit–’
His voice was deep and raspy, like he'd been gargling gravel - no doubt from whatever the Bad Guy Bozos put him through - and it reverberated in Robotnik’s stomach. Stone reached out and wiped a thumb across Robotnik’s cheekbone - pulling it back to show a smear of blood. There was an unexplainable lump in Robotnik’s throat; he swallowed past it thickly, and pushed a hand through his hair.
‘I'm not incompetent, ’ Robotnik sneered; a sudden need to appear in control of his emotions. ‘You don't need to wipe my face for me. What? Are you going to make me call you ‘daddy', next?’
He knew he'd said something wrong the instant it left his mouth. Stone's expression darkened; his eyes bored into Robotnik’s. Robotnik had the overwhelming, suffocating feeling of being a prey animal standing in front of a salivating, adrenaline-fuelled, blood-lusting predator - the look Stone gave him was almost lupine in its hunger. Within an instant, though, it was gone and Stone's eyes were back to his usual, placid obedience.
‘Of course not, sir. Forgive me. If you’re sure you’re not in need of medical attention…’
Stone trailed the question off instead of finishing it, giving Robotnik an opportunity to cut across him. One which he took.
‘Do I look in need of medical attention? Those thugs rightly recognised that causing me any major damage could compromise the most important part of me and the thing they needed to get to - my mind. That’s likely why they had no qualms about beating you to a pulp.’
‘Very good, Doctor. I’ll start taking out the trash.’
Robotnik nodded and Stone set to work.
‘Stone,’ Robotnik said quietly, his gaze focussed on the lines of code on the holoscreen in front of him. ‘Thank you.’
He heard Stone pause.
‘Shea butter,’ he said. ‘For the zip tie burns.’
Robotnik nodded and waved a hand dismissively.
‘And you’re welcome.’