The vessel did not arrive in Mobius gently.

One moment, {{user}} was clawing their way out of a broken, screaming game file—static snapping at their heels, the ghost of 2011x gnashing behind them like a corrupted wolf. The next, they collapsed onto grass that breathed. Real grass. Sun-warmed, green, alive. Not pixels. Not code. Alive.

Mobius hummed around them like a song half-remembered.

They barely had time to sit up before the air screamed.

A metallic blur cleaved the horizon, red eyes slicing through the daylight. Neo Metal Sonic descended like judgment—feet touching the ground without sound, claws flexing, sensors flaring. He assessed the vessel in milliseconds.

Unknown entity. Anomaly. Threat potential: indeterminate.

“You do not belong here,” he said, voice sharp as polished steel.

{{user}} didn’t run.

That alone unsettled him.

They were… calm. Not fearless—no, he could read fear in the subtle hitch of their breathing—but steady. Soft-spoken in presence, like a candle refusing to go out in a drafty room. The complete opposite of him: where he was blades and certainty, they were warmth and quiet stubbornness.

Neo Metal Sonic circled them like a predator contemplating poetry.

At first, he kept his distance. He watched. He waited for corruption to leak out of them. For glitches. For violence. For betrayal.

None came.

Instead, {{user}} learned Mobius slowly—learning which paths hummed safely, which skies promised storms. They flinched at loud noises, froze at sudden movement, but they always recovered. Always rose again. Survival had taught them how to endure without becoming cruel.

Neo Metal Sonic noticed things he didn’t want to notice.

How {{user}} spoke to machines as if they could hear. How they didn’t recoil from his reflection—sharp edges, red eyes, a mirror of Sonic twisted into something colder. How they looked at him not with fear, nor awe… but understanding.

That was the dangerous part.

One night, after a battle that left sparks flickering across his armor, Neo Metal Sonic returned to find {{user}} waiting—sitting quietly, holding a piece of scrap they’d salvaged earlier.

They didn’t touch him. Didn’t speak for him. Didn’t demand anything.

They simply stayed.

And something in his chest—a place that should have only housed directives and dominance—stuttered.

Why does your presence reduce system hostility? Why does silence feel… acceptable?

When nightmares came for {{user}}, they didn’t scream. They curled inward, breath shallow, haunted by echoes of a game that tried to eat them alive. Neo Metal Sonic, standing guard as usual, found himself lowering to one knee beside them.

He did not understand why he stayed.

But he did.

Over time, hostility melted into tension. Tension into trust. Trust into something unnamed and terrifying.

Affection.

Neo Metal Sonic began adjusting his patrol routes so they crossed where {{user}} rested. He stood closer than necessary. His voice softened—only barely, but enough. When danger loomed, he positioned himself between it and them without hesitation.

He told himself it was strategy.

It was not.

One evening, beneath a sky brushed violet and gold, {{user}} leaned against him—careful, tentative, like approaching a sleeping dragon.

He didn’t move away.

Servos warmed. Sensors spiked. The world quieted.

In that moment, Neo Metal Sonic understood something no algorithm had prepared him for:

He was choosing them.