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Charmy had plans to kick a crater into one of Eggman's many creepy rust-buckets until he found himself floating upside down several feet in the air, in front of a very familiar and very angry girl.
Well.. she might have been angry. Charmy could never tell with Sage considering the fact she literally only had one facial expression.
"You, insect-boy." Sage was all business as usual as she jabbed a black finger at Charmy, "Explain yourself."
Charmy blinked rapidly "Huh?"
Sage narrowed her eyes dangerously "Do not play ignorant with me. You have been infiltrating my thoughts ever since we raced against one another in Dodon Pa's competition. I want to know why. Now."
"You're not gonna believe this but I have no idea what you're talking about," a sarcastic snark from Charmy. The sounds of battle far below him were starting to get him angsty. His team needed him and here he was getting interrogated by this wannabe poser. "And what the heck does infiltrating mean? Stop making up words you weirdo!"
Sage had half a mind to rip the wings off of this moronic termite and drop him onto the concrete to be splattered like the insect he truly was but something inside of her was actively keeping her from doing so. That something in question being a cloudy feeling that had made itself a home in her chest, a strange sensation she has been dealing with for a month now.
It was ultimately why she sought out Charmy; she wanted answers. Usually Sage wouldn't even give such an idiotic, illogical boy like him the time of day but these new unwanted emotions were beginning to affect her performance to the point where even her father noticed. To disappoint Father was unacceptable on her part and she promised herself to get to the bottom of it sooner or later. After some persuasion, Sage finally managed to convince her father to attack Seaside City with the convenient excuse of a Chaos Emerald being held on display in a local museum. An ingenious calculation on Sage's part; she had the bee right where she wanted him.
Sage glowered, "I'm going to ask you one last time... why have you been infecting my thoughts, you striped fool? Were you really capable of mental warfare this entire time? What are you hiding from me?"
"What's with all the questions, do I look like a freakin' oracle?!" Charmy griped. Being forced upside down was NOT fun-- he was starting to get dizzy. Being held in place by Sage weird holo-power-whatever wasn't like being held in place by Silver's psychokinesis; Charmy's skin was starting to tingle strangely and he didn't like it. "Can you let me go now?! I gotta go bust up your dad's stuff!"
"You will not do anything of the sort. Now answer me."
"No, you answer me! You're the one thinking about me like some stalker weirdo! It's not my problem you--"
Charmy suddenly went very very quiet. It was kind of harrowing. Apprehension immediately gripped Sage, "What?"
A heartbeat of awkward silence passed before a big, stupidly smug smile formed on Charmy's slightly pink muzzle "You like me."
Sage twitched "What."
"You LIKE ME!" Charmy barked a laugh as he flailed around; "You like me, you like me, you liiiike me! You got a big crush on little ol' me! Hahaha!"
Sage was so stunned by such hubris that she hadn't realized Charmy somehow managed to escape her hold, but he didn't fly off nor attack her. He just continued to point and laugh at her like some schoolyard bully. Sage had two options in front of her person-- she could divorce Charmy's fuzzy black head clean from his shoulders and then personally mail whatever remained to his moronic Agency or she could stand there and take his disrespect like a complete dunce. Considering the fact Charmy was still alive and breathing air... she had chosen the second option. She just couldn't will her hands to move towards Charmy's neck in order to break it.
"I mean, I don't blame you," Charmy's snarky comment brought Sage out of her furious-embarrassed daze. He made a big show of looking at his nails... gloves... it was irritating Sage's very soul. "I am pretty awesome! But don't get too excited because I don't want your weird computer-girl cooties."
"Cooties aren't real you stupid boy." was all that Sage could hiss out. It was pathetic but any other insult she had managed to cook up completely died in her throat. She was so scandalized.
Charmy must've picked up on that fact because he had the gall to lean towards her with a hand cupped at his antennae "Sorry, is that all? Come on, you're supposed to be getting all scary or something!! Say something edgy!"
Sage suddenly went eerily calm "I'm going to kill you."
"Uh-huh, sure." Charmy stuck his tongue out at her, "Killin' me won't change the fact you've got a big fat crush on me."
The cold murder that crossed in Sage's eyes could've been enough to even send Sonic running for the hills. "You. Irrelevant. Termite. You have no idea just what you're up against. I'm going to kill you. Don't you understand? I'm going to seperate your body into unrecognizable pieces and then have each of them be put into a fleet of Badnik. I'm going to personally deliver your ridiculous helmet to your even more ridiculous crocodile fool of a boss. You--"
"That's a whole lot of words for I'm-so-hopelessly-in-love-with-you-Charmy," taunted Charmy, unwisely.
Sage responded to that assertion with a swift kick to Charmy's gut that sent him careening the whole 17 feet back to the ground and right into the back of an unsuspecting Vector.
"WHAT THE HELL?!" Vector hollered as whirled onto his junior teammate with a volcanic wrath once he gained footing, "Charmy?! Where have you been, kid?! Stop playing around, we've got--"
Charmy coughed up something that was probably blood and weakly pointed upwards "Crazy girl at 2 o'clock."
"...What?" Vector followed Charmy's finger and bore witness to a pissed off Sage who had a hoard of bloodthirsty Badniks by her person, "Good Gaia kid, what did you do?! You were gone for ten minutes!"
Espio suddenly materialized nearby, bruised but fine. He accused, "Did you provoke her, Charmy?"
Charmy took flight trying to ignore the aching dullness in his stomach. Sage had a kick, he was sure he was going to wind up with a gnarly bruise later. Her violent reaction only proved him correct; the holo-girl did indeed feel some way about him. For the time being, Charmy didn't have it in him feel smug about it. For now. "No, she provoked me with her stupid girly cooties."
Espio's muzzle scrunched in confusion, "That... just.... nevermind. We have far bigger things to worry about."
"You've got that right." muttered Vector. The Badnik swarm was closing in now a little too close for Vector's liking. Vector could question Charmy later, he had a museum to protect until Sonic and the others arrived, "Let's clean up the Doc's junk, boys!"
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In the end Eggman was successful in retrieving the chaos emerald from Seaside City's museum, but Sage lost something very precious to her in the aftermath; her pride.
After examining Metal Sonic's minor damages, bidding Father her congratulations and accepting his own praise, Sage retired to her room for night to engage in a long brooding session that could rival even Shadow the Hedgehog's own. Sage believed, or perhaps rather deluded herself, into thinking that inflicting her wrath onto Charmy would be more than enough to dispel the foreign emotions his presence caused her, but it quickly became clear to her that was not the case. Her plan was supposed to be a simple calculation; get her answers, make that infuriating boy suffer, move on. As satisfying as kicking the stripes out of the bee was, it ultimately did absolutely nothing for her. The feelings were still there in an almost parasitic way.
Did you hate what Charmy said or did you hate how he said it?
The observation came unwelcome in Sage's mind. She made an effort to shove it away, lock it somewhere deep in the back of her head. She hated him. She did not hate whatever he said or whatever complete nonsense he believed, she hated him. Him and the rest of his infuriating friends who constantly stood in the way of her father's vision for this world.
The voice returned as quickly as it left, But do you, really? Why did you react so hard? Was he telling the truth?
Sage realized she was beginning to corrupt her bed and made some feeble effort to calm herself down. She shouldn't be allowing this foolishness to affect her so much. She had bigger and better things to worry about. There was no time for frivolous juvenile nonsense like boy troubles.
...."boy troubles" would imply that she does like Charmy. Which she doesn't. She does not. It wasn't as if Sage thought of him unwarranted on the regular while performing her tasks around the Fleet. It wasn't like she repeated the time he offered friendship to her during that race in her head over and over. Now that she was thinking about it, the way he didn't even hesitate for a second about wanting to become closer to her without fear or judgement made something deep inside of her artificial heart run warm.
"You like me."
A realization came crashing down onto Sage suddenly; She threatened to hurt Charmy with everything under the sun, she physically attacked him and his team, she promised that she would be his executioner, the last thing he would ever bear witness to and yet... in the end she did not deny that she liked him more than she should. That, ultimately, was what bugged her so badly. It wasn't his snarky little comments, it wasn't even Charmy in general, it was her own denial.
She never denied it, not even once.
Sage grabbed a nearby pillow and screamed into it. She truly was a fool. A stupid young girl with a juvenile crush deep on the inside.