Marcus had been a Freedom Fighter for exactly seventy-two hours, and in that time he had accomplished several things.
He had memorized the layout of Knothole Village, which was useful. He had learned where the chili dog station was, which was essential. He had figured out how to sleep in the hammock that someone had set up for him in a hollowed-out tree trunk, which was surprisingly comfortable once you got past the existential horror of being a cartoon jackal sleeping in a tree like some kind of edgy Winnie the Pooh.
He had also, through no fault of his own, become the most talked-about person in the village.
This was not because of his powers. It was not because of his mysterious appearance or his reality-warping gemstone or his fight with Sonic. It was because of the things he said. Or rather, the things his mouth said without his brain's permission.
Every interaction was a minefield.
On his first morning, Bunnie had offered him breakfast and he had responded with "Sustenance is but the body's desperate plea against the entropy that consumes all things. But... I will accept your offering, rabbit, for even the abyss requires fuel to burn." He had meant to say "thanks, I'd love some eggs."
When Rotor had asked him to help move some equipment, he had said "I will lend my strength to your endeavor, not because you require it, but because the act of labor reminds me that I still exist in a world that has not yet earned my departure." He had meant to say "sure, where do you want this?"
When Tails had shown him a drawing he'd made of Infinite fighting the SWATbots, Marcus had looked at it, felt a genuine warmth in his chest at the kid's artistic effort, and said "You have captured the essence of destruction with innocent hands. There is a poetry in that contradiction that even I find... unsettling. Keep drawing, child. Art is the only rebellion that outlasts the artist." He had meant to say "aw, buddy, that's really good."
Tails had immediately framed the drawing and hung it on his wall.
But all of that was manageable. Embarrassing, soul-crushing, and deeply cringe, but manageable. What was NOT manageable was the thing that happened on the morning of the fourth day.
The strategy meeting.
Sally had called everyone together in the war room, which was really just a large tree stump with a flat top that served as a table, surrounded by smaller stumps that served as chairs. A map of Robotropolis was spread across the surface, marked with pins and annotations in Sally's neat handwriting. It was detailed, thorough, and clearly the product of weeks of careful intelligence gathering.
The Freedom Fighters filed in one by one. Sonic arrived last because Sonic always arrived last, sliding into his seat with the casual confidence of someone who had never once in his life worried about being on time for anything.
Marcus took a seat in the back. Or rather, he tried to take a seat in the back. His body, operating on pure edgelord autopilot, instead chose to lean against the wall with his arms crossed, one foot propped up behind him, positioned in the exact spot where the shadows from the overhead canopy fell across his face in the most dramatic way possible.
He didn't choose that spot. His body chose it. His body had an unerring instinct for finding the most theatrically lit position in any room and gravitating toward it like a moth to a flame, except the moth was a jackal and the flame was optimal brooding lighting.
"Alright, everyone," Sally began, pulling up a holographic display from NICOLE that showed the layout of Robotnik's fortress. "We've been gathering intelligence on Robotnik's operations for the past month. He's building something in the eastern wing of his fortress — our scouts haven't been able to get close enough to identify it, but the energy readings are off the charts. Whatever it is, it's big, and we need to shut it down before it's operational."
She pointed to various locations on the map, outlining patrol routes, guard positions, entry points, and extraction plans. It was a solid plan. Marcus could see that immediately, even with his limited tactical experience. Sally had thought of everything — backup routes, contingencies, timing windows based on guard rotation schedules, even weather considerations.
It was the kind of plan that deserved a response like "great plan, Sally" or "sounds good, let's do it" or even just a respectful nod.
Marcus felt the words building.
He fought them. Oh God, did he fight them. He clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ached. He pressed his lips together until they went numb. He dug his claws into his arms hard enough to leave marks in his fur. He mentally recited the alphabet backward. He thought about baseball. He thought about taxes. He thought about the most boring, least dramatic things he could imagine — spreadsheets, waiting rooms, the terms and conditions agreements that nobody reads.
It didn't matter.
Sally finished her briefing and looked around the room. "Any questions or concerns?"
Marcus's jaw unlocked like a bear trap releasing in reverse.
"An impressive design, princess."
No.
"Every contingency accounted for. Every variable anticipated."
STOP.
"One might almost believe..."
DON'T YOU DARE.
"...that it was all part of my plan from the very beginning."
YOU SAID IT. YOU ACTUALLY SAID IT. YOU PULLED AN AIZEN. YOU JUST TOLD THE LEADER OF THE RESISTANCE THAT HER BATTLE PLAN, WHICH SHE SPENT WEEKS DEVELOPING, WAS SOMEHOW "PART OF YOUR PLAN." YOU HAVE BEEN HERE FOR THREE DAYS. YOU HAVE CONTRIBUTED NOTHING TO THIS PLAN. YOU DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THIS MEETING WAS HAPPENING UNTIL BUNNIE TOLD YOU TWENTY MINUTES AGO. AND YOU JUST CLAIMED CREDIT FOR THE ENTIRE THING LIKE SOSUKE AIZEN REVEALING THAT HE ORCHESTRATED EVERY EVENT IN BLEACH FROM HIS PRISON CHAIR.
There was a moment of silence in the war room.
Every head turned to look at him.
Marcus stood there, arms crossed, leaning against the wall in his perfectly shadowed corner, and wanted the earth to open up and swallow him whole. He wanted the Phantom Ruby to activate and erase him from existence. He wanted to go back in time to the mozzarella stick and choke harder and faster so that there would be absolutely no chance of whatever cosmic mistake had led to this moment.
And then Sally's eyes narrowed.
Not in anger. Not in confusion. Not in the way that a normal person's eyes would narrow when a guy they'd known for three days claimed that their carefully developed military strategy was somehow his idea.
No.
Sally's eyes narrowed in realization.
"What do you mean," she said slowly, carefully, like someone defusing a bomb, "it was part of your plan?"
Marcus wanted to say "NOTHING. I MEAN NOTHING. I'M SORRY. YOUR PLAN IS GREAT AND I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. I JUST HAVE A CONDITION WHERE I SAY DRAMATICALLY VILLAINOUS THINGS INSTEAD OF NORMAL WORDS."
"Hmph." The sound came out like a period at the end of a sentence, definitive and infuriatingly smug. "You are perceptive, princess. More perceptive than I gave you credit for. But some truths are better left... undiscovered."
WHAT TRUTHS?! THERE ARE NO TRUTHS! THERE IS NOTHING TO DISCOVER! THE ONLY TRUTH HERE IS THAT I AM A FRAUD AND A CLOWN AND MY MOUTH IS A ROGUE AGENT OPERATING WITHOUT OVERSIGHT!
Sally leaned back in her seat. Her eyes hadn't un-narrowed. If anything, they had narrowed further, reaching a degree of narrowness that suggested intense cognitive activity happening behind them. Marcus could practically see the gears turning, the connections being made, the red strings being pinned to the conspiracy board that was rapidly constructing itself inside Sally Acorn's brilliant, strategic mind.
"You knew," she murmured, almost to herself. "You knew about Robotnik's project in the eastern wing. That's why you showed up when you did. That's why you saved me from those SWATbots — you needed me alive because you needed the Freedom Fighters to execute this plan. YOUR plan."
WHAT?! NO!! I TRIPPED!! I LITERALLY TRIPPED OVER A ROOT!! THERE WAS NO PLAN!! THE SWATBOT THING WAS AN ACCIDENT!! EVERYTHING I HAVE DONE SINCE ARRIVING IN THIS UNIVERSE HAS BEEN AN ACCIDENT!!
Marcus opened his mouth to correct her. To finally, FINALLY say something normal. To just blurt out "no Sally that's not what happened at all I'm just a guy who can't control his own mouth."
"You may interpret events as you wish, princess. The truth has many faces, and not all of them are meant to be seen by mortal eyes. What matters is not how we arrived at this moment..."
He pushed off the wall and walked—no, strode, because apparently he was incapable of merely walking anywhere, his body insisted on striding with purpose and dramatic intent—toward the map table. His coat billowed. It always billowed. He was indoors. There was no wind. The coat billowed anyway, because the coat had achieved sentience and its only goal in life was to make him look like a cutscene character.
"...but what we do with the moment now that it's here."
He placed one clawed finger on the map, right on the eastern wing of Robotnik's fortress. He didn't choose to point there. His hand just went there on its own, drawn by the same force that drew his body to dramatic lighting and his mouth to anime villain dialogue.
"This is where your destiny awaits, Freedom Fighters. The question is... are you ready to face it?"
He looked up from the map and swept his gaze across the room. Every single Freedom Fighter was staring at him. Sonic looked impressed. Bunnie looked inspired. Antoine looked like he was about to salute. Tails looked like he was witnessing the birth of a new religion. Rotor was taking notes again.
And Sally.
Sally was looking at him with an expression that Marcus had never seen on a cartoon chipmunk's face before. It was the expression of someone who had just discovered that the universe was far more complex than they had previously imagined. It was the expression of someone who had found the corner piece of a jigsaw puzzle they didn't know they were solving. It was the expression of a conspiracy theorist who had just connected their first red string.
"Everyone," Sally said, her voice calm but vibrating with barely contained intensity, "the plan proceeds as discussed. We move at dawn. Infinite—" She fixed him with a look that could have cut diamonds. "—we'll talk later."
"We'll talk later" is NEVER good. "We'll talk later" is the precursor to either a very uncomfortable conversation or a very uncomfortable interrogation. And given that Sally is the smartest person in this entire comic book universe and I just accidentally convinced her that I'm some kind of omniscient chess master playing 4D games with the fate of the world, I am going to guess that "later" is going to involve a LOT of questions that I have absolutely NO answers to.
The meeting dispersed. The Freedom Fighters filed out, chatting excitedly about the upcoming mission. Sonic gave Infinite a fist bump on the way out, which Marcus's body accepted with a solemn nod that made it look like they were sealing a blood pact rather than doing a casual bro gesture.
Marcus watched them go and then stood alone in the war room, staring at the map, silently screaming into the void of his own consciousness.
He had just Aizen'd Sally Acorn.
He had just made the smartest character in the Archie Sonic universe think he was secretly orchestrating everything.
This was going to be a problem.
The mission launched at dawn, as Sally had planned. Or, as Sally now apparently believed, as Infinite had planned and then allowed Sally to believe she had planned, which was somehow even worse than just taking credit because it implied a level of manipulative sophistication that Marcus absolutely did not possess.
The Freedom Fighters moved through the outskirts of Robotropolis in a tight formation, sticking to the shadows of the industrial wasteland that Robotnik had built over what had once been a thriving city. The air smelled like oil and ozone and the faint, acrid tang of roboticization — a smell that Marcus had never experienced before but which his body seemed to recognize on some instinctive level, his fur bristling and his lips pulling back from his teeth in an involuntary snarl.
Sonic was on point, scouting ahead with bursts of speed that turned him into a blue streak against the gray urban landscape. Bunnie was providing heavy support, her roboticized arm humming with barely contained power. Antoine was doing his best, which was, admittedly, not great, but he was doing it with conviction. Rotor was monitoring communications. Tails was flying aerial reconnaissance.
Sally was leading. And periodically glancing back at Infinite with an expression that said, very clearly, "I am watching you and I am thinking about things and the things I am thinking about are going to keep me up at night."
Marcus brought up the rear, which was fine by him. The further he was from the action, the less likely he was to accidentally do something catastrophically dramatic.
This strategy lasted approximately eleven minutes.
They were moving through a narrow alley between two factory buildings when the first SWATbot patrol appeared. Six bots, standard configuration, marching in a two-by-three formation down the main street ahead. They hadn't spotted the Freedom Fighters yet, but their patrol route would bring them directly past the alley entrance in about thirty seconds.
Sally held up a fist — the universal signal for "stop." Everyone stopped. She pointed to Sonic and made a series of hand gestures that communicated a complex tactical instruction in complete silence.
Sonic nodded and prepared to move.
And then one of the SWATbots turned.
Maybe it heard something. Maybe its sensors picked up a heat signature. Maybe it was just random chance — the cosmic dice rolling snake eyes at the worst possible moment. Whatever the reason, the bot's head swiveled toward the alley, its optical sensors locking directly onto the group of Freedom Fighters huddled in the shadows.
"PRIORITY TARGETS DETECTED," the SWATbot announced in its flat, mechanical voice. "ENGAGING."
All six bots turned. Arm cannons powered up. The alley filled with the whine of charging weapons.
Everything happened at once.
Sonic blurred forward, spin-dashing into the nearest bot and punching through its chassis like a blue cannonball through tinfoil. Bunnie launched herself at another, her mechanical arm extending into a hammer strike that crumpled the bot's torso like a soda can. Sally dove behind cover, already coordinating movements through NICOLE. Antoine screamed something in French that might have been a battle cry or might have been a prayer and swung his sword at a third bot with more enthusiasm than accuracy.
And Marcus stood at the back of the alley, watching, thinking good, they've got this, I don't need to do anything, I can just stay here and be quiet and—
A seventh SWATbot dropped from the roof of the factory building directly above him.
It hadn't been part of the patrol. It had been a sentry unit, positioned on the rooftop as an early warning system, and it had apparently decided that the best early warning was to throw itself at the nearest hostile target feet-first like a mechanical suicide bomber.
Marcus looked up. The SWATbot was falling toward him, arm cannon aimed at his face, the barrel glowing with the telltale charge of an energy blast that would absolutely ruin his day.
The Phantom Ruby activated.
It didn't ask permission. It didn't wait for conscious input. It felt Marcus's spike of adrenaline and responded with the enthusiasm of a golden retriever hearing the word "walk," except instead of wagging its tail, it warped the fundamental structure of local spacetime.
The SWATbot fired. The energy blast left the barrel, traveling at the speed of light toward Marcus's face.
The Phantom Ruby said "no."
The blast stopped. It just... stopped. Mid-air. Hanging in space like a Christmas ornament, glowing and pulsing and very much still lethal but no longer moving in any direction. The SWATbot, still falling, passed through a field of warped space and found itself suddenly moving sideways instead of downward, its trajectory bent ninety degrees by a localized gravity anomaly that sent it crashing into the factory wall with a crunch of metal and masonry.
Marcus stared at the frozen energy blast hovering inches from his nose.
"Hmph," his mouth said. "Is that the best you can offer? How... disappointing."
He flicked the frozen blast with one claw. The Phantom Ruby redirected it — sending it screaming back the way it had come, where it struck the crumpled SWATbot and detonated it into a shower of sparks and scrap metal.
The explosion drew the attention of the remaining SWATbots, which was bad. It also drew the attention of the reinforcements that the patrol had apparently called in before being engaged, which was worse.
A lot worse.
The street filled with robots.
SWATbots poured out of side streets and alleyways and building doorways like mechanical ants from a kicked anthill. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. More appearing every second, the metallic thunder of their footsteps building into a constant, grinding roar. Arm cannons everywhere, optical sensors everywhere, the cold geometric precision of Robotnik's army converging on the Freedom Fighters from every direction.
"THERE'S TOO MANY OF THEM!" Antoine shrieked, which was unhelpful but accurate.
"Fall back!" Sally commanded. "Regroup at—"
And that was when Marcus's body decided it was time for a Sephiroth moment.
He didn't decide this. He actively, desperately, with every fiber of his being, did NOT decide this. But his body stepped forward out of the alley, past Sonic, past Bunnie, past Sally, past everyone, and walked into the middle of the street.
Alone.
Facing an army of robots.
He walked slowly. Because of course he walked slowly. Running would have been practical and efficient and completely out of character for the aesthetic his body was committed to maintaining. Instead, he walked with the measured, unhurried pace of someone who had looked at an army of killer robots and concluded that they were not worth the effort of haste.
His coat billowed.
Indoors. Underground. In an alley between two buildings where wind could not physically exist.
His coat. Billowed.
The SWATbots opened fire.
A wall of energy blasts converged on him from every direction — a killing crossfire that should have reduced him to a scorch mark on the pavement. Dozens of shots, fired simultaneously, creating a web of lethal energy with Infinite at its center.
The Phantom Ruby erupted.
Reality shattered outward from Marcus's body in a sphere of crimson light. The energy blasts hit the sphere and were absorbed, redirected, negated, unmade — the Ruby didn't bother choosing one response, it did all of them simultaneously, because the Phantom Ruby was the most extra magical artifact in the history of magical artifacts and subtlety was not in its vocabulary.
Marcus raised one hand. He didn't want to raise one hand. Raising one hand was the universal gesture of "I am about to do something incredibly dramatic and probably anime," and he knew that whatever came next was going to be catastrophically edgy.
He was right.
"I have traversed the boundaries of the abyss," he said, and his voice carried across the entire street with impossible clarity, cutting through the sound of weapons fire and mechanical footsteps like a blade through silk. "I have walked through the fire and the shadow and emerged... untouched. Unbroken. Unchanged."
He closed his raised hand into a fist.
"Tell me, machines..."
The Phantom Ruby's energy coalesced around his fist, forming a sphere of concentrated unreality that pulsed with the heartbeat of a dead universe.
"...shall I give you despair?"
THAT'S SEPHIROTH. THAT'S LITERALLY SEPHIROTH'S LINE FROM ADVENT CHILDREN. "SHALL I GIVE YOU DESPAIR?" I JUST ASKED AN ARMY OF ROBOTS — MACHINES THAT CANNOT FEEL DESPAIR BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE EMOTIONS — WHETHER THEY WOULD LIKE TO RECEIVE DESPAIR. THIS IS THE MOST POINTLESS DRAMATIC QUESTION EVER ASKED IN THE HISTORY OF DRAMATIC QUESTIONS.
The SWATbots, being machines and therefore immune to dramatic irony, did not respond to his question. They just kept shooting.
Marcus's body did not care about their lack of appreciation for theatrical villainy.
He punched downward.
The sphere of Phantom Ruby energy hit the ground and detonated. But "detonated" was too simple a word for what happened. The energy didn't explode outward in a conventional shockwave. Instead, it rewrote the ground. The street beneath the SWATbots' feet became something other than street — it became quicksand, then glass, then nothing at all, a void that opened beneath them like a mouth and swallowed the first wave of robots whole.
The surviving bots tried to retreat. The Phantom Ruby didn't let them.
Crimson cubes materialized in the air around the robots — the same geometric constructs that Infinite used in Sonic Forces, angular and sharp and wrong-looking, like someone had cut squares out of reality and left the holes floating. The cubes slammed into the SWATbots from every angle, crushing, cutting, dismantling them with mechanical precision that was ironic given that the robots were supposed to be the mechanical ones in this scenario.
Marcus walked through the destruction like it wasn't happening.
His body maintained that slow, measured pace, stepping over sparking wreckage and through showers of mechanical debris with the casual indifference of someone walking through a light rain. A SWATbot lunged at him from the left. He caught its arm without looking, crushed it in his grip, and tossed the disabled bot aside like a piece of trash.
"Pitiful," he said as another bot crumpled under a wave of Phantom Ruby energy. "Is this the extent of your master's ambition? Toys. Puppets on strings. Dancing to the tune of a man who thinks himself a god."
I'm doing a monologue. I'm doing a villain monologue while dismantling an army of robots. I am doing EXACTLY what Sephiroth does in every Final Fantasy VII appearance — walking slowly through chaos while talking about how unimpressed I am. I have become a CUTSCENE.
Three SWATbots charged at him simultaneously from the front. His body responded with a move that he absolutely did not know he could do — a spinning slash with his claws, enhanced by a ribbon of Phantom Ruby energy that extended his reach by about ten feet. The three bots were bisected at the waist in a single, fluid motion, their upper halves sliding off their lower halves and clattering to the ground in a shower of sparks.
"One-winged angels should not send sparrows to fight their battles," he said, which didn't even make SENSE because he wasn't a one-winged angel and SWATbots weren't sparrows and the metaphor was so mixed it needed a blender.
But it sounded cool.
It sounded REALLY cool.
And Marcus HATED that it sounded cool because he could feel, deep in his chest, the tiniest spark of enjoyment, the smallest flicker of "okay that was actually kind of sick," and he knew — he KNEW — that if he started enjoying this, if he started leaning into the edge instead of fighting it, he would be lost. He would become the cringe. The cringe would consume him. He would start saying these things on PURPOSE and then there would be no coming back.
He squashed the spark ruthlessly and kept walking.
The last wave of SWATbots formed a firing line across the end of the street — twelve bots, shoulder to shoulder, arm cannons raised, creating a wall of mechanical firepower that blocked the path forward. They opened fire in unison, a concentrated barrage that turned the air into a solid wall of energy.
Marcus raised both hands. The Phantom Ruby responded by creating a barrier of warped space in front of him — but not just any barrier. The barrier was a mirror. Every blast that hit it was reflected back at its source with doubled intensity. The SWATbots' own weapons fire tore through their firing line like a hot knife through butter, each bot destroyed by its own shot.
The street went quiet.
Smoke drifted across the pavement. Wreckage sparked and sputtered. The acrid smell of burnt circuitry filled the air.
Marcus stood in the center of the destruction, coat billowing (STILL no wind), mask gleaming in the light of small fires burning in the debris, the Phantom Ruby pulsing gently in his hand like a satisfied cat.
Behind him, the Freedom Fighters stood at the mouth of the alley, staring.
Sonic's mouth was slightly open.
Bunnie's organic eye was as wide as her mechanical one.
Antoine had fainted.
Tails was vibrating with excitement.
Rotor had dropped his notepad.
Sally was staring at Infinite with an expression that had evolved beyond mere suspicion into full-blown conspiratorial certainty. Her eyes had that particular gleam — the gleam of someone who was mentally constructing a web of connections and implications and hidden meanings that would have done credit to a CIA analyst.
Marcus turned to face them. He tried to say "sorry about the mess" or "is everyone okay" or literally anything that a normal, well-adjusted person would say after accidentally soloing an army of robots.
"The path is clear. Proceed."
Two words too many but at least it was functional. At least it communicated relevant tactical information. At least it wasn't another anime quote or philosophical monologue or—
"...As I knew it would be."
NO. WHY DID I ADD THAT. THE FIRST PART WAS FINE. "THE PATH IS CLEAR, PROCEED" WAS FINE. IT WAS ALMOST NORMAL. AND THEN I ADDED "AS I KNEW IT WOULD BE" LIKE I HAD FORESEEN THE ENTIRE ENCOUNTER AND PLANNED FOR IT WHEN IN REALITY I WAS PANICKING THE ENTIRE TIME AND THE PHANTOM RUBY DID ALL THE WORK.
Sally's eye twitched.
Not in a bad way. In a "another piece of the puzzle falls into place" way. In a "I knew it, I KNEW he was planning everything" way. Marcus could see it happening in real time — every accidental cringe statement he had made since arriving in Knothole was being retroactively reinterpreted as deliberate, strategic manipulation.
The time he said "your village is beneath my notice" — not an insult, but a CALCULATED misdirection to hide his true interest in Knothole.
The time he said "I fight because the alternative is a world too dull to exist in" — not edgy nonsense, but a CODED MESSAGE about his deeper motivations.
The time he quoted Vergil at Sonic — not uncontrollable cringe, but a DELIBERATE TEST of Sonic's abilities and resolve.
Everything, in Sally's rapidly crystallizing theory, was part of Infinite's design.
Everything.
Including things that hadn't happened yet.
This was going to be a problem.
They continued through Robotropolis, the mood among the Freedom Fighters noticeably elevated by Infinite's one-jackal demolition of the SWATbot reinforcements. Sonic kept pace with Marcus, which meant he was walking at a comically slow speed by his standards, practically vibrating with restrained energy.
"Dude," Sonic said. "That was SICK."
Marcus wanted to say "thanks" or "it was nothing" or "the Phantom Ruby did most of the work."
"Destruction without purpose is merely chaos. What I did was not 'sick,' hedgehog. It was... necessary. A pruning of the diseased branches so that the tree of our objective might bear fruit."
I COMPARED DESTROYING ROBOTS TO GARDENING. I USED A TREE METAPHOR. I AM THE WORST PERSON ON THIS PLANET.
"Pruning," Sonic repeated, testing the word. "Yeah, okay, that's one way to put it. I was gonna say 'awesome robot smashing' but 'pruning' works too."
"Call it what you will. Names are merely the chains that the mundane use to bind the extraordinary into categories their minds can comprehend."
WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?! NAMES ARE IMPORTANT! NAMES ARE HOW COMMUNICATION WORKS! WITHOUT NAMES WE WOULD JUST BE POINTING AT THINGS AND GRUNTING! I HAVE ACTIVELY MADE THE CONCEPT OF LANGUAGE WORSE BY SAYING THAT!
"Deep," Sonic said, nodding sagely.
IT'S NOT DEEP, SONIC. IT'S THE OPPOSITE OF DEEP. IT'S SO SHALLOW THAT AN ANT COULDN'T DROWN IN IT. BUT IT SOUNDED DEEP BECAUSE I SAID IT IN A GROWLY VOICE WITH DRAMATIC PAUSES AND THAT'S APPARENTLY ALL IT TAKES IN THIS UNIVERSE.
They reached the eastern wing of Robotnik's fortress without further incident, which Marcus attributed to the fact that he had obliterated every robot in a six-block radius during his involuntary Sephiroth walk and there was simply nothing left to fight.
The eastern wing was a massive industrial structure — all steel and pipes and humming machinery, the kind of building that existed solely to look intimidating and house supervillain projects. Sally directed the team to an access point on the ground level, a maintenance hatch that Rotor had identified from stolen schematics.
"Sonic, you and Bunnie take the north corridor," Sally instructed. "Rotor, you're with Antoine on the south. Tails, stay here and keep watch. Infinite and I will take the central path to the main laboratory."
Marcus noticed that Sally had paired herself with him. This was not accidental. Sally did not do things accidentally. She had specifically chosen to be alone with him — with the mysterious, edgy, apparently omniscient jackal who kept claiming that everything was part of his plan — and Marcus knew, with the certainty of a man who had read too many mystery novels, that she was going to interrogate him.
He was right.
They moved through the central corridor in silence for about two minutes before Sally spoke.
"So," she said, her voice casual in that way that was specifically engineered to sound casual while being anything but. "You said my plan was part of your design."
Oh no.
"Care to elaborate on that?"
OH NO.
Marcus tried to say "I misspoke" or "that came out wrong" or "I have a neurological condition that makes me talk like a Bleach villain and I'm very sorry about it."
"Some designs are too vast to be explained in the narrow corridors of conversation, princess. You will understand in time. Or you won't. Either outcome serves the greater tapestry."
THE GREATER TAPESTRY. I SAID "THE GREATER TAPESTRY." I JUST TOLD HER THAT WHETHER OR NOT SHE UNDERSTANDS MY ALLEGED MASTER PLAN IS IRRELEVANT BECAUSE IT'S ALL PART OF A "GREATER TAPESTRY" THAT I AM DEFINITELY NOT WEAVING BECAUSE I AM NOT A MASTER PLANNER I AM A MAN WHO DIED EATING CHEESE.
Sally was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice had the careful, measured quality of a detective presenting evidence.
"You appeared out of nowhere, three days ago, at the exact moment I was about to be killed by SWATbots. A stranger with powers unlike anything we've ever seen, carrying both a Phantom Ruby AND a Chaos Emerald. You destroyed those bots effortlessly, then deliberately introduced yourself using a name that suggests limitless power. You challenged Sonic — the fastest and strongest fighter we have — to a combat test, which allowed you to assess his abilities firsthand while simultaneously earning his respect. You then joined the Freedom Fighters, positioning yourself inside our organization. And now, on the eve of our most important mission, you casually reveal that the entire plan was your design."
She stopped walking. Marcus stopped too, because his body refused to keep walking when someone was delivering a dramatic analysis of his alleged machinations. His body recognized dramatic tension and refused to undercut it with continued locomotion.
Sally turned to face him. Her eyes were laser-focused, analytical, burning with the intensity of a mind that had taken disconnected data points and woven them into a narrative that was completely, utterly, devastatingly wrong but also internally consistent and entirely logical given the available evidence.
"Who are you really, Infinite?" she asked. "And how long have you been watching us?"
Marcus's heart hammered against his ribs. This was it. This was the moment. If he could just — JUST — say something honest, something real, something that would dispel this insane conspiracy theory that Sally was constructing around him—
He opened his mouth.
"I have been watching longer than you know, princess. Since before you drew your first breath as a freedom fighter. Since before the first circuit was soldered in Robotnik's first machine. I have watched from the spaces between moments, from the shadows that fall between seconds, observing... waiting... calculating."
He paused. His eyes glowed behind his mask. HIS EYES GLOWED. They had NEVER done that before. The Phantom Ruby was apparently so invested in maintaining his edgy persona that it was now providing dramatic lighting effects for his face during conversations.
"Everything that has happened was meant to happen. Everything that will happen... is already written in the language of inevitability. You were always meant to develop this plan, princess. And I..."
He turned away from her, presenting his profile in a way that was optimally dramatic, the light from a nearby console catching the edge of his mask and creating a gleam that had no business being as cinematic as it was.
"...was always meant to be here when you did."
Sally stared at him for a long, loaded moment.
Then she pulled out a small notebook — an actual, physical notebook — and wrote something in it.
Marcus couldn't see what she wrote, but he was absolutely certain it was something like "INFINITE: OMNISCIENT MASTERMIND?? — EVIDENCE MOUNTING" followed by a complex web of arrows and annotations connecting every interaction they'd ever had.
He had created a conspiracy theorist.
He, Marcus Webb, dead mozzarella stick victim and reluctant edgelord, had accidentally turned Princess Sally Acorn — one of the most intelligent and capable characters in the entire Archie Sonic canon — into a full-blown conspiracy theorist who was now convinced that he was secretly orchestrating the fate of the world from behind a mask and a billowing coat.
And the worst part — the absolute, unequivocal, no-contest worst part — was that he couldn't correct her. Every attempt to say something normal, to downplay his supposed grand design, to admit that he was just a scared, confused man trapped in a cartoon jackal's body, came out as yet another cryptic, edgy confirmation that yes, he was exactly the omniscient puppet master she thought he was.
He was trapped in a feedback loop of cringe.
Every edgy thing he said convinced Sally further. Her increased suspicion made him more nervous. His nervousness triggered more dramatic statements. His dramatic statements convinced Sally further. And round and round it went, an ouroboros of edge eating its own tail for eternity.
They continued through the corridor in silence — Sally scribbling occasional notes in her notebook, Marcus dying inside with every step — until they reached the main laboratory.
The door was massive, reinforced steel, with a complex locking mechanism that would have taken Rotor hours to crack.
Marcus's body walked up to it and placed one hand on the surface. The Phantom Ruby pulsed.
"Locks are merely suggestions made by those who fear what lies on the other side."
The door dissolved. Not opened. Not unlocked. Dissolved. The Phantom Ruby denied its existence, and the door obligingly ceased to exist, disintegrating into motes of crimson light that drifted away like embers from a fire.
Sally wrote something in her notebook.
They stepped through.
The laboratory was enormous — a cavernous space filled with machinery and monitors and the unmistakable hum of something Very Big and Very Dangerous being built. Banks of computer screens lined the walls, displaying readouts and schematics in Robotnik's proprietary coding language. Robotic assembly lines stretched across the floor, dormant but ready.
And in the center of it all, seated in a hovering chair that was absurdly comfortable-looking for a villain's lair, was Doctor Robotnik himself.
Not Eggman. Not the sleek, modern version. This was the original, Issue #1 Robotnik — round, mustachioed, wearing the yellow cape and red-black outfit, looking like an egg that had developed ambitions of world domination. He was eating what appeared to be a sandwich and watching something on one of the monitors — it looked like a cooking show, which was such a mundane thing for an evil dictator to be doing that it almost made Marcus laugh.
Almost.
Robotnik looked up when they entered. His eyes went wide — first with surprise, then with anger, then with confusion as they settled on Infinite.
"FREEDOM FIGHTERS!" Robotnik bellowed, launching himself out of his chair, sandwich forgotten. "How did you get in here?! My SWATbots should have—"
"Your SWATbots are scrap metal," Sally said calmly. "All of them."
"ALL of them?! That's impossible! I had—"
"Nothing you had was sufficient," Infinite said, stepping forward, and his voice filled the laboratory with the weight and resonance of a funeral bell. "Nothing you have will ever be sufficient. You build your empire on gears and circuits, Robotnik, but you have forgotten the one truth that no machine can replicate..."
Don't say it. Don't say the thing. Please, for the love of God, don't say—
"...that true power is not constructed. It is born. And you..."
He raised the Phantom Ruby. Its light painted the laboratory in shades of blood.
"...were born with nothing."
I JUST TOLD THE MAIN VILLAIN OF THE ENTIRE SERIES THAT HE WAS BORN WITH NOTHING. TO HIS FACE. IN HIS OWN LABORATORY. WHILE GLOWING RED. THIS IS THE MOST SEPHIROTH THING I HAVE EVER DONE AND THE BAR WAS ALREADY IN THE STRATOSPHERE.
Robotnik's face went through a fascinating spectrum of emotions in about two seconds — shock, fury, indignation, confusion, and finally, to Marcus's surprise, something that looked almost like... recognition.
Not of Infinite specifically. Robotnik had never seen him before. But recognition of what the Phantom Ruby was. His eyes locked onto the crimson gem, and Marcus could see the scientific hunger ignite behind them — the mad genius recognizing a power source beyond anything in his arsenal.
"What IS that gem?" Robotnik demanded, greed momentarily overriding his anger. "That energy signature — it's unlike anything I've ever—"
"It is beyond your comprehension," Infinite said. "As are all things of true worth."
Stop insulting the villain! He's right there! He has weapons! He has an army! Well, he HAD an army, but he could have more! Why am I ANTAGONIZING him?!
Robotnik's face flushed red — impressive given that his skin tone was already questionable. He slammed his fist on a console, and the laboratory came alive. Panels in the walls slid open, revealing weapons systems — laser turrets, missile launchers, and something that looked disturbingly like a giant mechanical hand designed specifically for swatting annoying intruders.
"You dare lecture ME about power?!" Robotnik roared. "I conquered this entire PLANET! I turned your precious kingdom into a PARKING LOT! I am the greatest scientific mind in the history of Mobius, and I will NOT be condescended to by some edgy jackal in a HALLOWEEN COSTUME!"
He called my outfit a Halloween costume. Even Robotnik thinks I look edgy. The VILLAIN thinks I'm too edgy. When the bad guy thinks you're overdoing it, you've achieved a level of edge that transcends morality and becomes a universal constant.
The weapons systems activated. Every turret in the laboratory swiveled toward Infinite. Every missile launcher locked on. The giant mechanical hand clenched into a fist.
Robotnik grinned maliciously. "Let's see how your 'true power' handles THIS!"
Everything fired at once.
The laboratory became a kill box — energy beams and missiles and the giant mechanical fist all converging on the spot where Infinite stood. It was overwhelming, excessive, comically over-the-top firepower deployed against a single target.
Marcus's body didn't move.
It didn't dodge. It didn't run. It didn't even raise the Phantom Ruby.
Instead, Infinite reached up and slowly, deliberately, adjusted his mask.
That was it. That was his entire defensive maneuver. Adjusting his mask. Like someone straightening their tie before a business meeting.
The Phantom Ruby activated on its own, interpreting his complete lack of urgency as a command for maximum dramatic effect. A sphere of warped reality expanded outward from his body, and everything the weapons systems had fired — every laser, every missile, the entire giant mechanical fist — hit the sphere and simply... stopped mattering.
The lasers curved around him like water around a stone. The missiles forgot they were missiles and became confused, flying in circles like disoriented birds before slamming into each other and detonating harmlessly in midair. The giant mechanical fist passed through a region of space where the concept of "kinetic energy" had been temporarily revoked and drifted to a gentle stop inches from Infinite's face, bobbing harmlessly like a balloon.
Marcus flicked the frozen fist with one claw. It drifted away.
"Is that all?" he asked.
And then, because his mouth was a terrorist organization operating independently from his brain, he said the thing. The THING. The line that he had been dreading, the line that he could feel building in his throat like a sneeze that could not be stopped, the ultimate Sephiroth quote, the one that EVERYONE knew, the one that had been memed into oblivion and still retained its power despite decades of overuse:
"I will... never be a memory."
He said it quietly. Almost gently. With the soft, sad certainty of someone stating a fundamental truth about the nature of existence. And it made absolutely zero sense in context because nobody had said anything about memories or forgetting or any related concept. He just said it because his mouth was physically incapable of being in a dramatic confrontation without quoting Sephiroth's most iconic line.
Robotnik stared at him.
"What does that even MEAN?!" the dictator sputtered.
"It means exactly what it needs to mean, doctor. No more. No less. And if you cannot grasp its significance..."
He raised one hand. The Phantom Ruby's energy crackled along his claws.
"...then you are even less than I estimated."
I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT MEANS EITHER, ROBOTNIK. I'M RIGHT THERE WITH YOU. WE'RE IN THIS TOGETHER. TWO CONFUSED INDIVIDUALS ON OPPOSITE SIDES OF A CONFLICT, UNITED BY OUR MUTUAL BEWILDERMENT AT THE THINGS COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH.
Marcus walked through Robotnik's laboratory with the same slow, deliberate pace he'd used on the street. Machines crumpled as he passed them, warped and crushed by casual waves of Phantom Ruby energy. Computer banks fizzled and died. Assembly lines twisted into abstract sculptures of tortured metal. He wasn't even trying to do it. The Ruby was just... vibing, casually dismantling everything in his immediate vicinity because it could and because it thought the aesthetic was appropriate.
"You build walls of steel and call them strength," he said, placing his hand on a massive computer terminal. The terminal dissolved under his touch, circuits and wires unraveling like yarn. "You forge chains of iron and call them control. But steel bends. Iron rusts. And the walls you build to keep the world out..."
He turned to look at Robotnik, who had backed up against his hovering chair and was frantically pressing buttons on a remote control that didn't seem to be connected to anything that still functioned.
"...become the prison that keeps you in."
That was actually kind of good. I hate that that was actually kind of good. I'm going to have a crisis about this later.
"SWATBOTS!" Robotnik screamed into a communicator. "SEND EVERYTHING! SEND EVERYTHING I HAVE!"
"Call your armies, doctor. Summon every last machine in your arsenal. Fill this room with steel and fire and fury."
Marcus's body turned to face the doors through which reinforcements would presumably arrive. His coat settled around him like dark wings folding. The Phantom Ruby hummed, eager, ready, practically purring with anticipation.
"It will not matter."
The doors burst open. SWATbots flooded in — dozens of them, a metallic tide rushing into the laboratory. Behind them, larger units — Combots, the heavy-assault variants, bristling with weapons and armor.
Marcus felt his body settle into a fighting stance that he definitely didn't know. It was fluid, balanced, one hand raised with the Phantom Ruby blazing between his fingers, the other hand low and ready, claws extended. It was a stance that said "I have studied seventeen martial arts and combined them into one discipline that exists solely to look incredible while being maximally lethal."
The first wave of SWATbots reached him.
He moved.
It wasn't speed — not Sonic's kind of speed, anyway. It was something else. Something that looked like speed but was actually reality warping so localized and precise that it mimicked superhuman agility. He was in one place, then another, then another, each transition accompanied by a flash of crimson light and the crunch of a robot being dismantled.
A SWATbot swung at him. He caught its arm, twisted, and used the bot as a weapon against three of its companions, swinging it in an arc that sent all four crashing to the ground. A Combot fired a barrage of missiles. He stepped sideways through a fold in space that put him behind the Combot, and he placed his hand on its back almost gently.
"Rest now," he said, which was an INSANE thing to say to a robot.
The Combot collapsed inward, its internal structure warped by the Phantom Ruby into a shape that was no longer compatible with the concept of "functioning." It crumpled like a crushed aluminum can, sparks shooting from every seam.
More bots. Always more bots. Robotnik was throwing everything he had at Infinite, and Infinite was dismantling each wave with the casual precision of someone doing a mildly boring chore.
"This is the cycle, doctor," he said, catching a laser blast in his palm and crushing it — CRUSHING A LASER — like it was a physical object. "You build. I destroy. You build again. I destroy again. An endless repetition that serves no purpose except to demonstrate the gap between your ceiling... and my floor."
He ducked under a SWATbot's swing, rose up inside its guard, and placed a single claw against its central processor.
"Every dream has its end. Every nightmare has its dawn. And every empire..."
He pushed. The SWATbot's processor crackled, sparked, and died.
"...has its fall."
I am a walking fortune cookie. A fortune cookie that was written by the combined creative efforts of every edgy anime writer who ever lived. My dialogue should come with a parental advisory warning: "Contains excessive philosophy and dramatic pauses. May cause eye-rolling in mature audiences."
The last SWATbot fell. The laboratory was a graveyard of mechanical wreckage, sparking and smoking and twitching in its final mechanical death throes. Marcus stood in the center of it all, not even breathing hard — because the Phantom Ruby apparently handled cardio as well as reality warping.
Robotnik was pressed against the far wall, his remote control dangling uselessly from his hand, his eyes wide with something that Marcus had never expected to see on the dictator's face.
Fear.
Genuine, honest-to-God fear.
Not of the Freedom Fighters. Robotnik dealt with the Freedom Fighters regularly and viewed them as annoyances. Not of Sonic, whom Robotnik hated but understood as a rival.
Fear of something he didn't understand. Fear of a power that didn't play by the rules of science or technology or any framework that his genius-level intellect could categorize and counter.
Fear of the unknown.
"Be grateful, doctor," Infinite said, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "Today, I am not here for you. Today, my purpose lies elsewhere. But the day will come when my gaze turns fully upon your empire..."
He leaned forward, just slightly, just enough for the light of the Phantom Ruby to cast crimson shadows across Robotnik's face.
"...and on that day, you will understand the true meaning of the word 'Infinite.'"
I JUST USED MY OWN NAME AS A THREAT. I USED MY OWN NAME. AS A THREAT. "YOU WILL UNDERSTAND THE TRUE MEANING OF THE WORD 'INFINITE.'" THE TRUE MEANING OF THE WORD INFINITE IS "WITHOUT END OR LIMIT." THAT'S IT. THAT'S THE MEANING. IT'S NOT MYSTERIOUS. YOU CAN LOOK IT UP IN A DICTIONARY. IT'S RIGHT THERE. PAGE 742 OR WHATEVER.
Marcus turned away from Robotnik and walked toward the laboratory's main console, where — according to the mission parameters — the data on whatever Robotnik was building was stored. Sally was already there, having used the distraction of Infinite's one-jackal war to access the system through NICOLE. She was downloading files, her movements quick and efficient, but Marcus noticed that she was also writing in her notebook.
She had been writing in her notebook DURING THE FIGHT.
She had been observing him, taking notes, documenting his behavior while he dismantled an army of robots and quoted Sephiroth at a dictator. She had been gathering evidence for her conspiracy theory in real time.
Marcus wanted to look at what she'd written. He also very much did not want to look at what she'd written. He suspected it was something like:
"Subject 'Infinite' displays combat abilities consistent with pre-planned engagement. Dialogue suggests foreknowledge of Robotnik's defensive capabilities — 'It will not matter' indicates prior intelligence on SWATbot deployment capacity. Possible implications: Infinite has infiltrated Robotnik's forces before? Has been monitoring Robotropolis independently? Time traveler?? MORE RESEARCH NEEDED."
He was probably not that far off.
"Data's downloaded," Sally announced, pocketing NICOLE. "We have everything we need. Let's move."
They moved. Through the destroyed laboratory, past the trembling Robotnik, through corridors now devoid of any functional security systems, and out of the fortress through the same maintenance hatch they'd entered.
The other teams were already at the rendezvous point. Sonic was tapping his foot impatiently. Bunnie was carrying an unconscious Antoine over one shoulder — apparently the southern corridor had had its own excitement. Rotor was uploading data from his own terminal access. Tails was hovering in the air, twin tails spinning, watching for pursuit.
"Everybody make it?" Sonic asked.
"All present and accounted for," Sally confirmed. "Mission successful. We got the data."
"SWEET!" Sonic pumped his fist. "And how about you, Infinite? Sal said you two were heading for the main lab. Any trouble?"
Marcus tried to say "nothing we couldn't handle."
"Trouble is a relative concept, hedgehog. What you call 'trouble,' I call... a passing inconvenience. Like a cloud drifting across the sun. Present for a moment. Forgotten the next. The laboratory has been... cleansed of Robotnik's mechanical infestation. What remains is merely the husk of ambition stripped of its teeth."
Sonic blinked. "So... it went well?"
"Define 'well.' In the grand calculus of existence, all outcomes are equally meaningless. But if you are asking whether the mission objectives were achieved... then yes. The data is secured. The path forward is illuminated. And Robotnik has been reminded of his insignificance in the face of forces he cannot comprehend."
"Cool, so it went well," Sonic concluded. "Let's go home. I'm starving."
Marcus closed his eyes behind his mask and took a deep, shuddering breath.
Seventy-two hours. I have been here for seventy-two hours, and I have already become the most dramatic person on the planet. I have soloed an army of robots while quoting Sephiroth. I have convinced the smartest person in the resistance that I am secretly controlling everything. I have a Phantom Ruby that responds to my emotions by being as theatrically extra as possible. I have a coat that defies physics. I have eyes that glow for emphasis during conversations.
And I have a mouth that will not, under any circumstances, let me be normal.
As they walked back toward Knothole, Marcus fell to the back of the group, letting the others walk ahead. He needed space. He needed quiet. He needed to not talk to anyone for at least twenty minutes so that his mouth couldn't betray him further.
Sally fell back too.
Of course she did.
She walked beside him in silence for about sixty seconds, which was fifty-nine seconds longer than Marcus expected her to last.
"Infinite," she said.
Here it comes.
"When you said my plan was part of your design... did you mean all of it? The patrol routes? The entry points? The timing?"
Marcus didn't answer. Not because he was being mysterious, but because he was desperately trying to figure out how to communicate "I misspoke and everything I say is involuntarily dramatic" without it coming out as another confirmation of his alleged omniscience.
His silence, predictably, was interpreted as confirmation.
Sally wrote something in her notebook.
"And the SWATbots that attacked me three days ago — the ones you 'happened' to save me from. Was that part of the design too?"
SAY NO. JUST SAY NO. ONE SYLLABLE. TWO LETTERS. THE SIMPLEST WORD IN ANY LANGUAGE. N. O. NO.
"There are no coincidences, princess. Only the illusion of randomness imposed by minds too limited to perceive the pattern."
THAT WAS THE OPPOSITE OF NO. THAT WAS THE MOST YES THING I HAVE EVER SAID WHILE TRYING TO SAY NO. I BASICALLY TOLD HER THAT YES, EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED, EVERYTHING IS PLANNED, AND ANYONE WHO THINKS OTHERWISE IS STUPID. WHICH IS ME. I AM THE STUPID ONE. I AM THE MIND TOO LIMITED TO PERCEIVE THE PATTERN BECAUSE THERE IS NO PATTERN.
Sally wrote furiously in her notebook.
She wrote for a long time.
Marcus walked beside her, coat billowing, mask gleaming, Phantom Ruby pulsing, looking every inch the omniscient mastermind that he absolutely, categorically, unequivocally was not.
And somewhere, in the cosmic bureaucracy responsible for his situation, someone added another page to the file labeled "MARCUS WEBB — ONGOING ENTERTAINMENT VALUE: EXCEPTIONAL" and stamped it with a smiley face.
Later that night, after the mission debrief, after dinner (during which Marcus had described Bunnie's cooking as "a fleeting rebellion against the entropy that claims all things — warmth in the face of an uncaring cosmos, seasoned with defiance and served on a plate of borrowed time" when he meant to say "this is really good, Bunnie"), Marcus retreated to his tree hollow and lay in his hammock, staring at the ceiling.
The Phantom Ruby sat on his chest, pulsing gently.
His coat was draped over a branch. It had stopped billowing the moment he took it off, which confirmed his theory that the coat was, in fact, haunted.
"What am I doing?" he whispered to the empty room. And mercifully — perhaps because there was no one around to hear, perhaps because even the curse had limits, perhaps because the universe decided to throw him one small bone — the words came out normally.
Just a guy. In a tree. Asking himself what the hell he was doing.
He didn't have an answer.
He fell asleep to the gentle pulse of the Phantom Ruby and the distant sound of Sonic snoring in the next tree over, and he dreamed of mozzarella sticks.
And in a small hut on the other side of Knothole Village, Princess Sally Acorn sat at her desk, surrounded by papers and notes and string and pins, staring at a board on which she had constructed an elaborate web of connections linking every statement Infinite had ever made, every action he had ever taken, every suspicious coincidence and loaded phrase and cryptic non-answer.
In the center of the board, written in large red letters, was a single question:
WHO IS INFINITE REALLY?
Below it, in slightly smaller but equally intense letters:
AND HOW LONG HAS HE BEEN PLANNING THIS?
She stared at the board.
The board stared back.
She picked up her pen and added one more note, circled three times for emphasis:
"There are no coincidences" — HIS WORDS. He TOLD me. He told me to my face and I almost missed it. What else has he told me that I haven't decoded yet?
She looked out her window toward the tree where Infinite slept.
The moonlight caught the edge of his coat, which was draped over the branch.
It was billowing slightly.
There was no wind.
Sally narrowed her eyes and wrote that down too.
To be continued.