I, FIONA (a Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI)

[Tangent]

Never watched through mlp, not the biggest series on my Watchlist

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You don't really need to know much anyway, as the MLP stuff is tangential to the main story at best.

 

[Tangent]

I, FIONA
Yet another Sonic the Hedgehog AU/SI fic by Tangent
With prereading, editing assistance, and occasional input by Brain Power!​

On intuition, I immediately swapped forms to what I suspected would be a new state. Flesh and blood, metal and oil, all of it was stripped away to reveal an existence that seemed almost impossible.

I was not disappointed by it.

Confused, and wondering how this was even possible, but not disappointed.

I was a holographic vixen. A literal three-dimensional image of myself, with little sections breaking off into squares and back here and there as my resolution quality shifted about.

And exactly where am I being projected from anyway?

I was basically Nicole, only as me and without any support hardware.

So brazenly impossible that I literally should not be able to even exist in this state right now. It's like being able to use a phone without physically having a phone.

And an awe-struck Sally was sticking her hand through my leg…

"Please stop that. It feels weird."

"Sorry," Sally apologized as she withdrew her hand. "But how?"

"I have no idea," I admitted. "Hold on, I need to check something else…"

And, with that, my perspective shifted as I was suddenly shorter.

And, at a guess from my continued ability to move and the lack of any salt residue, a dead ringer for how my little sister should look right now. If she were dressed in a smaller version of what I had been wearing, anyway.

Okay, note to self: Worn clothing scales to fit size change. Seems exploitable. Explore later.

Even my IFF transponder signature in this form was the same as Fio's.

I did not, thankfully, inexplicably develop a crush on Tails, so there's that.

Satisfied but also rather severely weirded out, I swapped back to my default state as a Mobian.

"Okay, that was weird, and I'm never turning into my little sister again without her permission. And maybe not ever again even with her permission, because that sounds super creepy…"

"So… If Fio get's age-up updates, would your Fio Form also be updated?" Sally asked curiously.

"One: we're not calling it that," I stated flatly, suppressing a shudder. "Two: I have no idea, and the fact that it might is weirding me out even more than I already was! At least my new Holo-Me state is my apparent age and not Nicole's! And how can I exist in that state without a projector!? All I am in that state is data! There's literally nothing physically there!"

I'm basically like a cybernetic Danny Phantom! This shouldn't even be possible!

"Magical Bullshit Superpowers?" Sally playfully suggested as I collapsed back onto the damp moss and stared up through the canopy at the morning sky.

"May as well be," I huffed. "At least the stuff I can do as me makes some sort of sense. Well, more sense than the whole have other states of existence thing at any rate. There are literally any number of people out there that can pull off what we did earlier."

"Really?" Sally asked dubiously. "Like who?"

"That wouldn't actually surprise me in the least," I nodded, eliciting a giggle from Sally for some reason. "Scary-ass owl. You don't live to be that old as a spy spy without being damned good, and he's at least… I dunno… Thirty or something. Maybe a hundred?"

"That's a bit of an age range there," Sally pointed out with a grin. "Anyway, I think Who's in his sixties or seventies."

"Ah," I nodded sagely. "Older than dirt then."

"We should probably get up and head for the community center for breakfast," Sally suggested as she got up.

"Sure," I said agreeably as I got up to follow her.

Meals were mainly handled as a community thing in Knothole Village.

At least for now, while the population was so low and the gap between the ages so large.

Things would change in the future, of course, as we rescued more people. And if we can get one of the derobotization events from the irritatingly hazy outsider memories to happen, Knothole would be sitting pretty.

The temptation to find another e-book to have my Auto-Fiona self-transcribe the Archie books into was really really strong now, given that I managed to get the entire Muppet Show that way without having to remember every single episode that the outsider had ever watched.

Having all of Archie Sonic in a convenient e-book that I could use would help so much against Darth Lardass.

And actually doing so could backfire horrifically in so many ways than just my desire to avoid seeing the live-action versions of certain events.

If Robotnik…

No, it didn't even have to be him!

If even someone like Snively got ahold of this hypothetical e-book of Sonic, the Freedom Fighters would be doomed!

Anti-Sonic could do a ton of damage with that kind of info! The pre-greened Scourge could take everyone down with that!

All of our strengths and weaknesses, every secret, everything we loved and feared, all contained in what would practically be a step-by-step guide of what we did to foil any particular grand plan?

Even if the value of future intelligence may drop severely as events butterfly away from the supposed predictive nature of Sonic the E-Book, just those alone would allow anyone to utterly destroy us.

And it would be even worse if, in creating such a predictive work, I somehow managed to lock all those future events in place, dooming us all, hero and villain alike, and everyone between, to the Cracked Eggman's Final Fuck You as the Super Genesis Wave collapses the local multiversal cluster.

What do you do when you know a secret so big that telling anyone, anyone at all, even yourself, might destroy everything you ever loved and cared for?

"Are you alright?" Sally asked in a concerned tone, placing a comforting hand on my shoulder as we continued walking towards the community center. "You look like you're having some pretty heavy thoughts."

"The heaviest," I agreed as I tried to shake off my weekly dose of self-inflicted existential dread.

"Like the weight of the world is on your shoulders, and you don't know what you can do about it?"

"Yeah, pretty much," I agreed, taking some comfort in the fact that Sally herself - and indeed all of our friends - were there helping to shoulder that burden, even if not one of us, myself included, fully knew what part of the load we each carried.

O o O o O​

The community center was a multi-story structure wide enough that some trees were literally growing through it. The materials and designs were specifically casted so that nature would grow within and through it.

This was obviously a deliberate choice on the part of those who built it, as this meant preserving the concealing canopy of leaves above the village where there would have otherwise been a large gap.

I'd say something about chimney smoke, but I don't think I've even seen a smokestack anywhere in the village. Just some wires and cables leading to waterwheels and wind turbines.

Winter must be fun here. Note to self: Procure heavy blankets to distribute. I don't care if they have enough now, we're going to have more people here eventually.

No idea from the outsider's memories as to how the matter of properly heating the village during the colder months was actually handled, but there was probably something already in place.

I wouldn't know. I was very much a city brat before the fall, and learned all my camping skills from Mighty and Ray back when Sonic and I were hanging out with them. Meaning that the two extremes that I was most familiar with were comfortably civilized and roughing it to the point where rooting through the trash looked attractive.

Knothole Village was somewhere between those two extremes, but I wasn't about to complain about living here now given that I had been living out of literal military style foxholes for months now.

Anyway, I followed Sally into the community center, got in the chow line and took my share along with everyone else. There was no jostling or vying for position, and even Zippy seemed to be waiting in line patiently once he finally strolled in.

Huh. Guess nobody woke him up.

Bunnie and Tails came in next, taking their place in line not too far behind Zippy.

There didn't seem to be any specific order to who sat where among the benches and tables, with everyone randomly congregating into little groups.

Way too many people for my tastes, but it was nice to see that most of them were smiling and friendly.

"So, you're the new girl, huh?" A grumpy looking pig sat his tray next to ours and took a seat. "Can't say I think much of somebody who insisted that our main fighting team go rescue a badnik that tried to get Tails roboticized."

"Fair," I concede… Not with grace so much as merely acknowledging his point of view. "I also happen to know more about that particular badnik than Darth Lardass himself, and he's the one who wrote her code."

"Are you seriously going to keep calling Robotnik that?" Sally scolded me. "There are kids present!"

"I'm sure they've heard worse," I noted as I took a sip of my juice. "The point is, Eggman can't seem to make a machine designed to interact with people without giving them actual personalities. Fio worked so well as bait because she literally fell for Tails, and only the restrictions of her mission directives forced her to follow Eggman's orders."

"Ha! Eggman! I love it!" Zippy said as he joined us. "I'm going to call him that from now on!"

"Go right ahead," I smiled. "He'll always be Darth Lardass to me."

"So, we're just supposed to accept this robot because she has a personality?" the pig asked pointedly.

"Well, no. She'll have to work at making friends, just like anybody else. All having a personality gets her is essentially being just another of Darth Lardass' many many victims. And becoming my little sister. Fiona Fox, by the way."

"Hamlin," the pig responded, introducing himself in turn. "So… you're some sort of super ninja or something?"

"Or something," I said with a smile. "I'm still working on getting to where I want to be, skill wise."

"Don't let her modesty fool you," Sally said with a grin. "She literally tossed Sonic around a few times when we went out to meet her the other day. He couldn't even get a single hit in!"

"I was having an off day, Sal!" Zippy tried to counter.

"You were being impatient and let me lead the encounter," I critiqued. "I doubt I'd have fared anywhere nearly as well if you had actually had your head in the game, Zippy."

"Okay, yeah, fair," Zippy oh-so-graciously accepted the out I offered to him.

"Anyway, Fio living here will be good practice for everyone anyway," I pointed out.

"How so," Hamlin asked dubiously.

"It's going to be a while before somebody comes up with a way to consistently deroboticize anyone regardless of which method was used to roboticize them. So anyone we manage to rescue is probably going to be stuck as a Robian for a while. And it would really suck if we treated them badly for something that literally is no fault of their own."

"Oh yeah," Hamlin nodded, looking suddenly thoughtful. "I hadn't thought of it that way yet."

I took Hamlin's implied claim that he would have thought of the issue on his own eventually with a grain of salt, but didn't call him out on it.

The point was that the issue was being openly discussed now, years early, and hopefully rationally rather than reactionary.

I hated using my new little sister's situation like this, but needs must, and this would help her too, so I can live with the guilt if it leads to a happier tomorrow.

Speaking of, where is Fio?

 

[ptbptb]

Okay, note to self: Worn clothing scales to fit size change. Seems exploitable. Explore later.

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If you take off clothing while in holographic form does the clothing remain holographic if you switch to meat or metal forms? You could sell impossible clothes to exhibitionists and people in very hot climates... Wait. They probably wouldn't be able to pick them up. Lol.