7 Plot Coupons and a Sweet Leather Jacket

There's No Place Like Home And Perhaps That's A Good Thing

Eggman steps outside to see what landed and smiles. It seems Rouge did as she promised. Metal Sonic is right at his doorstep. Broken and in pieces. Desperate for help. Eggman scowls performatively "took you long enough." Cranking the intimidation up to Eleven. His spectacles glare in the sunlight. Metal shys away despite having no other options.

"Don't bother backing out now. You have nowhere else to go."  Ivo pulls out his tool box and walks over to Metal. "Sit still and I'll make sure it only hurts a little."  He menacingly looms over the pile of scrap to be.

Metal cowers. He beeps, "I'm ready to comply now. I'm yours. I'll be a good little robot for you."

"Dangerous choice of words. After your last stunt you're going to have to prove it. Are you sure?" Ivo chides like a disappointed parent. Ivo is skeptical.

Metal forces himself to beep out what Ivo wants to hear "Yes, master. Anything."  The doctor grins wide at the robots groveling. He really is desperate.

"Eject your hard drive. Tell me when it's safe to remove."

Metal freezes. Ivo can tell he's hesitant to give up the one thing guaranteeing his worth as a robot. The stupid little thing thought he could use the drive as leverage did he? How foolish.

A minute passes. "Status on the drive."

"Preparing to eject."

"Why is it taking so long?" The mad doctor taps his foot impatiently.

"Cooling systems not fully operational. Data packing slowed to prevent heat damage." Even his most musical chimes sound exhausted.

That answer adds up. His currently obliterated turbine was his primary cooling apparatus. Eggman is willing to wait if it means making sure the precious data remains intact. "Status"

"Thirty four percent."

"Come sit on the counter while it buffers." Ivo walks to the hangar door and opens it. He waits for Metal to do as asked.

The halls are black with white accents. The emergency lights a dim red on standby. Steam bursts through pipes from above at measured intervals.

Metal hobbles inside and follows the path he remembers the repair counter being on. He stops in front of the hydraulic door and looks to Ivo.

He presses a button on his remote, opening the door without a word. Metal sits himself on the counter. Metal beeps out "Hard Drive ready for removal."

The lab is exactly as Metal remembers it. Blindingly white, meticulously organized and more sterile than piss. Germs don't live here. Nothing does.

Ivo smiles warmly at Metal, patting the top of his head, "Good boy."  He gently nudges the robots sides and Metal turns around on the table, granting him access to his repair panel.

"Tell me you're proud of me." Metal thinks he's going to die. He's begging for a last request. A final meal on death row.

"You aren't in any position to be giving orders." Ivo unscrews the access panel and pulls out Metal's hard drive. Metal is nothing but a faulty tool to him. Tools are owed no kindness.

The robot slumps forward, dead. Ivo laughs like an off brand Santa "Hoo hoo hoo! Finally!" He dances about as he plugs the drive into his computer. He opens up the first file he sees in it and his excitement quickly fades.

Ivo can't read that. He should've anticipated this much. He did the base code work for the mechanical side of things and laid the framework for the AI but this is a far cry from what he wrote. By the nature of what Metal was built to do a deep learning algorithm was needed. What Ivo neglected to account for is that deep learning AI code themselves and often take shortcuts for efficiency.