Sonic Curse of Flesh Dumbots

E-100 Alpha (better known as Zero) was relentless, virtually indestructible, and dumb as mud. There were times (meaning nearly all the time), where he was considered barely, if any smarter than the Badnik shells. Though being so dim, only the most rudimentary tricky wouldn't often fly over its head, and there were moments where it looped around and he had seeming flashes of brilliance. Amy Rose had once  readied for her unwanted nemesis to smash through the door, only for him to smash through the wall instead, as it was the shorter distance to his target.

Given his limited intelligence, E-Zero made the transition actually far more smoothly than others. The pink robot was no longer the target, and so was no longer to be smashed, but there were plenty of other organic creatures to smash, that they were bigger, and now had tentacles, meant nothing to E-Zero. Though... for the residents of Acornopolis... this meant teaching the towering green E-Zero that you were supposed to use door.

"How did this Unit get stuck with this function?" Mecha Amy lamented. Good robots did not question their purpose, but this was not her purpose! "Unit Rosie should be the one teaching this pile of scrap metal, EGGMAN should be teaching his own robot have to behave... ugh."

The 'Chase Master' merely dimly turned to look at Mecha Amy. The robians around them giving E-Zero a wide breadth as they walked around the city, letting E-Zero's path finding software update  to understand you went AROUND objects, not THROUGH them.

"You're too stupid to even known when you're being insulted," Unit Amy huffed. "This Unit doesn't understand why we're doing this anyway. You should be kept in storage, and turned off when we don't need something smashed or innocent flickies birdnapped!" Amy snarled. The robians on the street tried not to look.

Zero hadn't been built with facial expressions, and hadn't been given a voice box, being intended only as a prototype. But it had been built with some basic digital communication that used digital coding to communicate simple information between other Eggman robots.

Amy was surprised when a rudimentary message, not in verbal words but digital code, was spoken to her in a series of beeps. It held no inflection, E-Zero had never been given that. But still, the message carried an innocence, from this heartless weapon that had hurt Pinky and her family.

'Why. Are. Not. You?'

And Amy suffered a brief run time error. Why wasn't she just deactivated when she wasn't needed, to save on wear and tear, to conserve energy, to ensure she'd always be ready to be deployed. Wasn't that just logical?

What right did she have to tell that to E-Zero... When she didn't do the same? Because she was once inflicted with the Curse of Flesh, like all her ancestors had been? 'Because This Unit is a person and he isn't? Because I'm a robian and he's an E-Series? Why did that feel so uncomfortable?'

'Pile of Scrap metal.' Unit Amy looked at her own metal hands.

Amy looked at herself in a nearby window, one of the few dress shops in Acornopolis, it was considered a running joke that Cream and Unit Vanilla were keeping the entire business model afloat single handedly. Amy and her fellow machines no longer felt any sense of modesty, and she no longer suffered from trivial changes in temperature and weather, and cleaning and polishing herself had replaced her old daily routines. The last time she'd worn a dress in battle against the Old Ones' slaves was also the last, it had gotten grabbed by one of Fiona's many limbs, and the acid spat at her had finished the job.

And... a very strange fact occurred to Amy, but utterly undeniable. She looked at E-Zero. 'He's naked. We're both naked,' Amy thought. 'Do I think he's different because I was born and he was built? But if the Curse of Flesh had never happened, this Unit would've been built too, by the Titans.

'Because he's stupid and I'm smarter? ... I remember all the times mobians thought Big was retarded (instead of laid back and taking things as they came) and looked down on him.

'We're the same,' Amy concluded, and took E-Zero's oversized fist she'd dodged the projectile punch of too many times. "Come on Zero, just follow my lead."

Beep. 'Acknowledge.'

+++

"Why are we getting the boss' mustache polish?" Grounder asked, his insides having been commandeered as a grocery basket. "Can't he have those two other guys do it, or just have it delivered?"

"Because then he wouldn't get order us around genius." Scratch lamented his poor feet. Mass public transit hadn't really been part of your average mobian's architectural design, they really liked using their legs for some reason. Maybe that was where Sonic's mutation came from. The Egg Legionaries had demanded one be put in place, but that was still being constructed (having EVERYTHING be made out of Nicole's nanites had been deemed a vulnerability).

"Hey guys..." Coconuts said.  "You notice anything strange going on?"

"Like what?" Grounder asked.

An avian robian, bumped into Scratch while his head was turned.

"Oh, excuse This Unit!" she said politely.

"Uh... you're excused?" Scratch said.

"Thanks, have a nice day," she smiled and waved back at him as she continued on her way.

"Uh..." Scratch had to dig deep into his file tree to find what was supposed to be the proper response to the 'T' word (it wasn't like Robotnik ever used it), and responded stiltedly, "You... are... welcome."

"THAT! That's what I'm talking about!" Coconuts pointed. "All these people around us! But they're not scared of us, not hating us, what's the word?"

Grounder reconfigured a drill hand into a dictionary and turned the page with the other drill hand. "Let's see... here, we go. 'Neeee-ice!'"

"Yeah, that's it! Nice! They're being nice! Did Doc get them all under mind control and forget to tell us?"

"There's no giant statue of him towering over every building, so I kinda doubt it," Scratch said.

"Yeah, and there's none of that swirly-eye stuff neither!" Grounder said surprisingly astutely, remembering the brainwashed Walrus tribe.

"Well, it's starting to feel really weird!" Coconuts said. The hustle and bustle of robians going about their day drowning out his ramble except to his fellow Sonic Search and Smash Squad (which they'd proven to be just as effective as before, they couldn't really get any worse). "These are the people we terrorized, bullied, and stole candy from their babies!"

At that moment a baby robian in a stroller was pushed by, giggling.

Scratch did not say, because he didn't want to admit, that the three simply weren't as infamous as part of Robotnik's horde as they'd once been.

"Well," Grounder shrugged. "They're robots now, we're robots. I don't see what the big deal is."

"Except they're not working dawn till dusk acting like zombies!" Coconuts said, not looking where he was going, and bumped straight into a robian chipmunk wearing a cloth red hooded cape (the only thing she was wearing), her head casing that had been her hair in a permanent bun shape.  

"Hey! Watch where I'm going!" Coconuts complained.  

"Why aren't you at school young Unit?" Rosie asked sternly, her face even.  

"I don't go to school lady!" Coconuts snapped back, hands on his hips.

"Oh? And when is the last time you went to school?" Rosie asked.

"Uh, never?" Coconuts said awkwardly.

"Well! We're just going to have to fix that aren't we!" And Rosie dragged the robot monkey away.

"Guys! Help!"

Scratch and Grounder looked at each other confused, not having a clue what to do.

"Hey man, nice tank tread mod." Someone tabbed Grounder on the shoulder, and he turned to see a robian who vaguely reminded him of himself, what species did Robotnik say Grounder was based on again? Oh right, a mole! He also had decals all over himself. "Did you do it yourself or did ya have someone mod it for ya?"

Grounder struggled to think of a plausible, sort-of-true, answer, lying had been something Eggman had of course programmed into them, but like many things, it didn't quite work as well as intended. "Uh, Doctor Robotnik?"

"Whoa," said the mole robian. "They're actually letting him do that?! This Unit really digs the drills too, ha ha! Did Eggman do those too?"

"I'm uh, a special case, and, yes?"

"Oh that's cool! I gotcha! Ya think he might be willing to spot me like that?!"

Grounder felt himself sweating, Eggman had built so many features into Grounder that the robot himself had trouble keeping track of all of them (and more often than not, ending up eating up his processing power). "I... uh... that is... I'll ask?"

"Oh that's totally radical! Thanks man! I know some other dudes and dudettes who might be interested too." The robian mole patted him on the back.

Poor Grounder's CPU nearly had a melt down wondering he'd gotten himself into.

~ Fin