Nathaniel's mad grin never wavered, even as Collin's nails carved crimson trails down his arm. "Bleeding's just data etched into me, and soon I will etch it into you..."
------------
That was about a month ago and thanks to his second cousin Irving's interference (who had been stationed at Fort Knothole's vaults), Collin had escaped—albeit missing two fingers and with Nathaniel Morgan's laughter still ringing in his skull like a bad song.
His surgery had finally been completed to replace those fingers with cybernetics when he finally made his way to Spagonia—specifically the outskirts—where he had been forced to hide from Morgan's experiments for weeks.
The cybernetics—crude, rushed things—itched beneath their sutures, their wiring frayed at the edges like Overlander nerves. He flexed them now in the dim light of Irving's mansion, watching the metal digits catch the glow of the fireplace—orange flickers dancing over steel the same way Sector 5's flames had danced over bone. Irving himself lounged across from him, sipping brandy with the same detached amusement he'd shown when handing Collin the scalpel to sever his own infected fingers.
Torii Pavlov, Irving's daughter then walked in—barely eighteen years old and already sharper than Nathaniel's scalpels—and dropped a dossier in Collin's lap.
He looked at it, and smiled for some reason.
The dossier smelled of gunpowder and overcooked bacon—an aroma that clung to Torii's gloves like the ghost of bad decisions. Collin flipped it open with his cybernetic thumb, the motion stiff, unnatural. Inside, a single photograph: Sonic lounging atop the wreckage of Diamond Heights' sterilization facility, one knee drawn up lazily, his grin sharp enough to filet kingdoms.
"Hello Uncle Collin," Torii called out to him coldly, her voice dripping with venomous sweetness—the kind reserved for Overlander diplomats and fools who mistook her youth for weakness. She tapped the dossier with a claw painted black as Sector 31's ashes. "Seems your little *science project* survived. Pity."
Her grin mirrored Sonic's in the photograph—all predator, no pretense—as she leaned in close enough for Collin to smell the peppermint oil on her breath, sharp as cyanide. "Daddy says you're to assist me in *handling* this hedgehog problem," Torii purred, tracing the edge of the dossier with a claw like hand that left micro thin scratches in the leather that matched the scar on her face.
Her other hand rested lightly on Collin's shoulder—not a comfort, but a claim—her claw like hands pressing just hard enough to dent fabric without drawing blood. Collin exhaled through his nose, counting the phantom pulses of his missing fingers, watching Torii's reflection warp in the dossier's polished leather.
The girl was barely legal, yet her smile carried centuries' worth of cruelty, honed by Overlander aristocracy and polished with Mobian venom. Torii's fingers—soft as silk, sharp as scalpels—traced the dossier's edge where Sonic's smirk lived in monochrome. "He's tearing down the Acorn Kingdom's corpse with his own bare hands, and at only five years old too," she mused, tilting her head just enough for the firelight to catch her long purple hair.
Collin's cybernetic fingers twitched, wires humming a dissonant tune beneath synthetic skin. He knew that look—the one predators wore when spotting fresh blood. Torii's grin widened, revealing teeth filed to points, her breath warm against his ear as she whispered, "But don't worry, uncle dear—I won't let him have *all* the fun."
The dossier creaked open to page two: schematics of Rosemarie's unborn kit circled in red, notes scrawled in Torii's looping script—*Leverage or legacy; UNKNOWN (Sonic's interest suggests latter).* Collin's remaining organic fingers twitched, phantom pain lancing through the cybernetic replacements as Torii leaned over his shoulder, her breath mint-cool against his neck.
"He's building something," she murmured, tapping the bassinet sketch with a claw polished to obsidian perfection. Collin watched the firelight warp around Torii's silhouette—human, yes, but twisted into something Mobian in all the ways that mattered—her joints too fluid, her grin too wide. "Not just orphanages. Not just weapons." Her laugh was the sound of chandelier glass shattering in slow motion.
"He is a demon building a *god*, uncle dear. And we get to break it before it hatches." Torii's whisper slithered through the firelight like a knife between ribs, her human fingers—so soft, so fragile—tracing the dossier's edge where Sonic's portrait smirked up at them.
The way her thumb dented the paper suggested she'd practiced this exact motion with actual throats. Collin's cybernetic fingers twitched in sympathetic phantom pain as Torii leaned closer—close enough for him to count the three freckles beneath her left eye arranged like Orian's Belt, close enough to smell the lemon verbena soap she'd stolen from a dead Overlander maid last winter.
Her breath fogged the dossier's glossy surface when she whispered, "He collects strays like crowns, uncle dear. That's his weakness." The firelight caught the silver hoops in her ears—trophies from her first kill at twelve—as she turned the page to reveal his allies.
To a human like Torii, Mobians weren't just allies—they were something *more*, a secret fascination buried beneath layers of aristocratic scorn. The way Patch's ears twitched when lying, how Boomer and Buns''s furs bristled at Overlander perfumes, even Sally's too sharp canines glinting behind royal platitudes—she catalogued these details like a connoisseur savoring forbidden wine.
Her dossier's margins brimmed with sketches of Mobian ear musculature and paw pad patterns, annotated in cipher. What her father called reconnaissance, Collin recognized as devotion—the way Torii's gloved fingers lingered over Sonic's quill strokes in the manifesto photocopies, tracing the pressure variations like braille.
The fireplace embers popped, casting Torii's shadow across the dossier's pages—long fingered and grotesque, almost stretching like a Mobian's despite her human form. She lingered over a sketch of Sonic's claws shredding King Maximilian Acorn's latest royal decree, her own manicured nails scraping the paper in mimicry.
Collin watched her pupils dilate, her sky blue eyes drinking in every detail of the Mobian Hedgehog—the way her fingers trembled just slightly before stilling, betraying a fascination that went beyond mere study. Torii's obsession wasn't clinical—it was *hungry*, the kind of ravenous admiration that turned scholars into zealots and collectors into thieves.
She flipped the page again, admiring the strength in Sonic's spin dash arcs—the way his quills carved grooves into King Maximilian Acorn's propaganda posters like calligraphy written in kinetic fury.
------------
But he had a phone call to make first...
And he did make that phone call last month—now King Maxx Acorn stood in the center of Sector 5's vault, boot heels crunching over shattered old Beryl Core containment glass that had been replaced, listening to the dial tone drone like a dying man's last breath. The vault walls pulsed with residual energy, casting his fur in sickly hues of green—the same shade as Sonic's eyes when the little bastard had torn through King Maxx Acorn's royal guard like parchment.
His wife Alicia's laughter slithered through the receiver before King Maxx Acorn even spoke, her voice syrup sweet and docile as always—except for the faint clink of surgical tools in the background that betrayed her true activities. "Oh Maxxy dear, what's wrong, do you need to be 'comforted'?"
The knife embedded in the vault's control panel vibrated in time with Sector 5's collapsing infrastructure—King Maxx Acorn's fingers tightened around the receiver as his reflection warped in its polished surface, his muzzle twisting into something too feral to be called a smile.
"My dear, you know how I *love* our little talks," Alicia cooed, her surgical gloves squeaking against the phone in a way that made King Maxx Acorn's hackles rise. He could practically smell the antiseptic and burnt flesh through the line—she was elbow-deep in another "adventure."
Her sigh was theatrical, laced with arsenic laced honey, just as he licked it, why he loved her so, as she continued, "But you never call unless you're losing or you're horney. So tell me—which part of your empire is crumbling today? Or which part of you needs to be—" The vault lights flickered in time with King Maxx Acorn's twitching eye, that cut her off, his claws carving fresh furrows into the reinforced steel console.
He inhaled—slow, deliberate—letting the scent of scorched circuitry and blood-iron potential fill his lungs like promises. The knife in the console pulsed with every heartbeat, its edge catching the flickering vault lights just so, casting jagged shadows across his muzzle.
"Neither, my love," he murmured, rolling the words like grenade pins between his teeth. "I'm calling about *our* investment." Static hissed through the line as Sector 5's ruined infrastructure groaned beneath them—the sound of a kingdom dying on its knees. Alicia's 'adventurimg' went still on the other end; King Maxx Acorn smirked as he remembered the day they fell in love:
She'd been elbow deep in a dissected Overlander politician, humming a waltz as viscera slid between her fingers. "You're right," he continued, dragging a claw down the vault's pulsating core—its light throbbed like an exposed nerve. "*But*—" The knife embedded in the console shivered, its edge catching the emerald glow that matched Sonic's eyes, now that he thought about it. "—imagine what *he'll* do when he finds out. Your father I mean."
But that was when they were teenagers, before he finally got around to killing his own parents—he remembers the scent of burnt flesh lingering on his gloves afterward, how his father Fredrich had gasped like a gutted fish as the ceremonial dagger slid between his ribs when he was asleep just momens before.
His mother Helena had screamed, not for help, but in *approval*, her manicured fingers digging into his wrist as she forced the ceremonial dagger deeper into Fredrich's ribs—twisting it with the same cruel precision she'd used to teach him tax evasion.
King Maxx Acorn remembered how warm the blood had felt splattering across his muzzle, how his father's last breath had stunk of imported cigars and betrayal. The chandelier above them had swayed gently—as if applauding—casting fractured light across his mother's face as she stepped over the corpse without breaking stride.
Her claws had dug into his chin, forcing his gaze upward, her smile dripping with approval like the dagger dripped with his father's life. "Good," she'd purred, licking the blood from his cheek with a slow, deliberate swipe of her tongue. "Now, let's discuss *your* inheritance."
"Oh yes mother, let's start now start right now." The blade was still warm in his grip, slick with his father's life, when Helena made her fatal mistake—she turned her back to dress for the opera, humming an off key rendition of the old Kingdom of Acorn national anthem. King Maxx Acorn remembered the way her fur caught the candlelight—golden, pristine, deceptive—as he drove the dagger between her shoulder blades with the same precision she'd taught him for filleting political rivals.
The sound she made wasn't a scream, but a wet chuckle, her claws scrabbling at the mirror as her reflection smirked back at her—golden fur matted crimson, the same way King Maxx Acorn's own muzzle dripped with her life now. She turned, the dagger still lodged between her ribs, and licked his cheek with a tongue that tasted of iron and expensive wine. "You forgot to twist it clockwise first," she rasped, gripping his wrist with dying strength to demonstrate—the blade grinding against bone with the same practiced ease she'd once used to carve Sunday roast.
King Maxx Acorn watched her collapse onto the Merkian rug—it's intricate patterns now ruined by arterial spray—as she gasped out her last words around a mouthful of blood and pearls:
"Now *that's* how you overthrow a dynasty." Her laughter bubbled wetly when he twisted the dagger again, just to be thorough. The chandelier's crystals rained prismatic light across her still twitching corpse, turning the scene into something grotesquely beautiful—like a dying angel.
And when her eyes turned silver for the smallest of moments—just a flicker—King Maxx Acorn saw something older than himself in them, something that stank of metal and ozone and the hiss of something far, far, far worse than Anarchy Below pressing against the inside of her skull.
But that was the past then, and now with the call he had made last month, his son should be finally coming home soon...
------------
Sir Armand D'Coolette's claws scraped against the whiskey glass's edge—slow, deliberate—letting the sound fill the war room's silence like a whetstone sharpening treason. The ice had melted hours ago, diluting the liquor into something as weak as the excuses his so-called allies fed him. His reflection in the amber liquid wavered—distorted—just like his patience since his son Antoine vanished early in the morning last month into Sector 5's smoke choked ruins. The boy had inherited his mother's soft heart and his father's sharp tongue, a combination that made for excellent speeches and terrible survival instincts.
The decanter trembled as artillery rattled the palace windows; Sir Armand D'Coolette didn't reach to steady it.
Let it shatter.
Who cares anymore.
He sure as hell didn't now.
He hadn't in a long time.
Let the glass carve rivers into the oak like the Overlander trenches had carved scars into his back.
He then inhaled—slow as he always did—as if tasting gunpowder and the ghost of his son's cologne still clinging to the study's velvet drapes. The whiskey burned less than the memory of Antoine's last words to him before he left the next morning when he and his wife Mary were still asleep, (*"I'll make you proud one day father"*), spoken with that same damnable earnestness that made Sir Armand's claws flex against the glass. The boy had never understood the one most simple rule of Mobius: pride was for fools and corpses. Survival demanded colder currencies.
Across the room, the grandfather clock—a relic from the royal Acorn dynasty's bloodier days (or when that bloodiness was far less hidden) back before he was a knight with the 'honor' of Sir, when he was only Armand D'Coolette, just a simple young man, barely even eighteen, from Merkia, and had so much unfounded hope for the world—ticked with the same rhythmic precision as a firing squad reloading.
Sir Armand D'Coolette's claws tightened around the whiskey glass, his reflection fracturing in the amber liquid like the kingdom outside his room was.
He remembered when he first entered the Kingdom of Acorn army—just a boy with a sword and a chip on his shoulder wide enough to bridge continents. Back then, his claws weren't stained with political blood, his teeth hadn't learned to bite through lies like Overlander ration tins. He'd been *hungry*—not for power, but for something nameless, something that gnawed at his ribs like winter in an old Merkian trench.
King Maxx's father, Friedrich, had seen it in him—that feral glint—and smiled like a wolf spotting fresh meat.
He thought at first it was only a few rotten apples in the Kingdom of Acorn's military—then realized the orchard itself was rancid. Sir Armand's whiskey glass trembled as Sector 5's collapse echoed through the palace walls, the vibration crawling up his spine like the memory of the late King Friedrich Acorn's claws tracing his Merkian battle scars during that first private briefing.
The old king's breath had smelled of peppermint and gunpowder that night—always gunpowder, even after the war—when King Friedrich Acorn pressed the ceremonial dagger into Armand's palm and whispered, "You'll kill for me, won't you, boy?" The blade was heavier than it looked, its edge catching the firelight like a promise. Armand had been nineteen at that point in time, still somehow faintly smelling of Merkian wheat fields and his mother's lullabies, not yet stained with the metallic reek of Overlander blood.
Friedrich's claws had torn through many Overlanders with his sword, and if he couldn't do that, he'd poison them, he still believed that the Overlanders he was killing were threats to all Mobians, and King Friedrich Acorn had poisoned them—slow, meticulous—letting the toxins seep into their veins like whispers rustling through Merkian wheat fields. Sir Armand's whiskey glass trembled now, the ice long melted, diluting the bourbon into something as weak as the late king's excuses.
The years went by and King Friedrich Acorn had died through a tragic 'assassination' and he was about twenty or so (he honestly forgot what age he was exactly at that point since he had started drinking after his first kill) had managed to rise through the ranks at that point and now more often then not just ordered killings fram afar unless they were too high profile.
Like one Bernadette the Hedgehog's parents who had commiting a 'thinking crime'.
Sir Armand D'Coolette's claws traced the rim of his whiskey glass, the amber liquid catching the dim light like liquefied regret. The dossier on Bernadette Hedgehog's parents—marked "TERMINATED: THINKING CRIME"—lay half-buried under battlefield reports, it's edges singed from when he'd tossed it into the fireplace last week only to retrieve it hours later, drunk and furious.
He remembered the way the man he had sent to kill them had typed the report of what happened on that farm that day—the precise spacing between words, the clinical detachment—as if describing livestock culling rather than Bernadette's mother clutching her bleeding throat, her husband's spine protruding through his uniform where the sword had punched through. Sir Armand had approved the termination order with the same nonchalance one might sign for new cavalry boots.
Now, about two decades later, the whiskey tasted like ink from that damned report.
He remembered the report almost six years ago from Diamond Heights, when that very same girl had died less than a week after her son was born—Bernadette's corpse half-buried under rubble, her fingers still curled as if clutching the infant she'd died protecting. The whiskey turned to ash in Sir Armand's mouth. He'd signed the order for her parents' execution, yes, but never hers.
The lines still fucking blurred these days, like ink in rainwater.
The grandfather clock's pendulum swung, its rhythm syncing with distant artillery. Sir Armand's claws flexed around the glass. The boy's wide eyes had mirrored his mother's, soft with a hope that made Sir Armand's ribs ache.
He'd lied that day.
Told him knights *did* protect people.
Just not the ones who asked questions.
It wasn't all bad however he supposed, his son wasn't completely hopeless—at least he had Mary's strategic mind beneath that soft hearted exterior. Sir Armand remembered the first time he'd seen her, a sharp tongued Merkian intelligence officer interrogating a captured Overlander spy with nothing but a letter opener and sheer psychological brutality.
The spy had cracked in seventeen minutes—Mary's record at the time, now it was fourty five seconds, that poor bastard—and when she'd turned those violet eyes on Sir Armand, flecks of Overlander blood still drying on her claws, he'd felt something primal stir beneath his ribcage.
Not fear.
Not lust.
Okay, maybe a little bit of lust, he couldn't help that Mary was beautiful!
But it was mainly recognition.
She licked the blade clean with that same slow, deliberate swipe of her tongue—the one that made Overlander spies piss themselves before she ever laid a claw on them—and tossed the letter opener onto Sir Armand's desk with a clatter that sounded like a challenge. Blood dripped from its tip onto his unfinished supply report, blooming across the parchment like a declaration of war.
Mary's smirk was sharper than the blade, her fangs glinting in the oil lamp's flicker as she leaned over Sir Armand's desk—close enough for her gunpowder and roses scent to drown the whiskey's burn. "You look like a man who knows how to keep secrets," she'd purred, tapping the bloody letter opener against his knuckles. "Or one stupid enough to think he can outrun them."
The Overlander spy's confession still dripped from the parchment between them, ink and blood swirling into Rorschach stains of war crimes. Sir Armand had caught her wrist mid-air—felt the rabbit quick (despite the fact that they were both coyotes) pulse beneath fur still damp with sweat and someone else's arterial spray—before pressing the blade flat against his own throat in a parody of vulnerability.
"Secrets are kind of like kidneys," he murmured, watching her pupils dilate at the proximity of his fangs. "Everyone's got two until they piss off the wrong surgeon." Mary had thrown her head back laughing—a sound like shattering glass and cavalry charges—before sinking her claws into his epaulettes and biting his lower lip hard enough to draw blood.
The coppery tang mixed with whiskey as she whispered, "Guess I'll have to be your surgeon then," right before the office door burst open to reveal a panting squire—barely fourteen—holding a dispatch marked with the royal seal. Mary's claws retracted from his epaulettes so fast they left threads dangling, her smirk never faltering as she snatched the letter mid-air and sliced it open with her bloodstained nail. The seal's wax cracked like a rib under interrogation.
Sir Armand watched her violet eyes scan the orders—how they dilated at certain phrases, how her pulse jumped beneath her fur when she hit the third paragraph—before she tossed the parchment into his lap with deliberate carelessness. The words 'urgent recall' and 'Sector 7 unrest' (before it started openly crumbling) stood out in bold strokes, but it was the hastily scribbled addendum at the bottom that made his whiskey sour stomach twist: *King Maxx Acorn requests your presence. Bring the Merkian Coyote.*
The ink had bled where someone's claw had pressed too hard, tearing through the parchment's fibers—just like Friedrich's nails had torn through Overlander flesh that night in the trenches. Sir Armand remembered the way the king's breath hitched when the poison finally seized his lungs, how his claws had scrabbled at his own throat like a man drowning in air. Mary had watched from the doorway, her silhouette sharp against the torchlight, her tail flicking once—slow, deliberate—before she stepped over Friedrich's twitching corpse without breaking stride.
Blood pooled around her boots in Rorschach blossoms, and when she licked her fangs, Sir Armand saw the ghost of his own reflection in her pupils: a coyote pup who'd just learned how to bite.
Their first kiss was a few months later and it tasted like gunmetal and betrayal, Mary pressing him against the armory shelves with a claw hooked in his belt—right next to the throwing knives—while outside, the Overlander prisoners screamed under interrogation. She bit his tongue hard enough to draw blood, and when he gasped, she licked the wound closed with a chuckle that vibrated through his ribs.
"You're mine now," she'd whispered against his lips, her claws tracing the fresh scar on his shoulder from where an Overlander bayonet had nearly gutted him last winter. Sir Armand had only grinned—all fangs and no remorse—before flipping her onto the munitions crate with a clatter of loose bullets scattering across the floor.
He wasn't so sure about having kids at first but Mary had talked him into it and love had a way of convincing you of things like that.
The bottle was now empty.
And then Sir Armand started crying.
Mary—who had been silently watching from the doorway—didn't roll her eyes, didn't sigh. She just crossed the room in four strides and yanked him up by his collar with one hand, the other already slapping him hard enough to make his teeth rattle. The sting was worse than the whiskey burn, worse than the memories clawing through his ribs like scavengers through trench corpses.
"Pathetic," she hissed—not a whisper, not a shout, but the precise decibel that made Overlander interrogators piss themselves mid-session. Her claws dug into his jaw, forcing his chin up until he met her violet eyes—no pity there, only the same predatory gleam she'd worn gutting that spy decades ago.
The slap still burned, but her thumb wiped away his tears with surprising gentleness, smearing the wetness across his cheek like war paint. "You'll find him," she said, softer now, though her claws remained hooked in his collar—anchoring him to the present, to the weight of his son's absence.
Outside, another explosion rattled the windows, casting prismatic shadows across Mary's face—for a heartbeat, she looked like the young intelligence officer who'd once bitten his lip bloody, not the mother who'd taught their son how to hold a knife without flinching. Her claws slid from his collar to his cravat, undoing the knot with the same precision she'd once used to skin Overlander informants alive. The silk whispered against his throat like a garrote being pulled taut.
"You're thinking in circles now," she murmured, pressing him back against the kitchen table where his bottle now layed empty—her claws dragging down his chest with just enough pressure to make his breath hitch. The whiskey glass toppled with a crystalline clatter as Mary straddled him, her thighs bracketing his hips like twin sabers.
She smelled like gun oil and the citrus perfume she'd worn since their honeymoon, when she'd pinned him against the Merkian dunes with a knife to his throat.
The table groaned under their combined weight as she tore open his shirt—buttons scattering like shrapnel—before biting his collarbone hard enough to draw even more blood.
Just how he liked it.
And just how he loved her despite everything that had happened to the rest of Mobius...