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The villagers say her creator is the would-be despot Doctor Eggman. They are all lies, of course. After all, her creator is Mister Tinker, her beloved father. How could someone so kind and caring be that callous villain?
(It’s a blatant lie. They’re lying, lying—)
Put on the pointed green cap of tinkering. To be a maiden of creation, one must be able to weed out all distractions. Her father taught her that patience is needed to craft something sublime. She’ll tune out their lies; her father is not Doctor Eggman.
(If it really is true, if her father is indeed Doctor Eggman—)
She’ll show them that her father is innocent. She’ll make her Dad proud.
Her father is Doctor Eggman, and she is a Badnik.
She knows this, of course; it wasn’t that hard to deduce. The Eggpawns passed by her without batting an eye. Still, she holds on to a sliver of hope that her father is not as evil as they say. She tells herself that she’ll just need to talk to him. He has his reasons for doing this, surely.
However, when the truth sneers at her, at her precious father, she simply cannot accept it.
Maybe her father was a delusion, thought up by a wooden puppet who desires to create. It’s like how she’s a jumble of wood and metal that pretends to be real.
(To deduce the truth by yourself, and for someone who knows the truth to tell you so—
It hurts differently.)
She stares tearfully at the photograph in her hand. Her father carried her with such ease back then. She reminisces the time when she sang his favourite songs joyfully and helped him fix the rides he made for the villagers at Windmill Village. Why was he so kind and yet so cruel in giving her the ability to feel?
(Maybe it would be better if she was just like the other Badniks.)
“My father is in there somewhere, right?” she asks to no one in particular.
“...Maybe.” She wasn’t paying attention, so she couldn’t tell who responded. “No matter what, I’m sure your father will be proud of all the good you’ve done today.” Oh, it’s Tangle.
The egg-shaped man has his coffee the same way as her father: with lots and lots of sugar. However, he is not her father, not anymore. Still, she hopes that deep down, her father is within Eggman somewhere.
“You—did you keep my boy safe out there?” the ranger asks her, relief evident in his voice. “I don’t know how to thank you….”
A Badnik’s only purpose is to destroy Sonic the Hedgehog and his friends. It will try its best to attack them, hinder them, to fulfil its master’s lifelong goal of world domination. It has no choice, no autonomy.
She, too, is a Badnik. However, she is different in the fact that she has free will. She has the choice to make the world a slightly better place. So, she’ll pave her own path, one separate from the tyrannical Eggman.
“That’s fine. There’s no need.” She’s surprised at how earnest her smile is. “It’s what I do, I guess.”
The recently acquired Motobud is different from other Badniks. Defiant against his programming, he cuts topiaries in the likeness of the very hedgehog the other Badniks would try their hardest to destroy.
She finds his countenance comforting, in how it rejoices when it successfully cuts another topiary in the shape of Sonic’s head. She finds companionship in him, as another Badnik who is free from Eggman’s domineering grasp.
Perhaps, for the other Badniks, there is hope.
(To all those Badniks screaming, writhing—)
(No, that’s not true, we serve Doctor Eggman willingly—)
(Eternal salvation awaits.)
(Calling all Badniks. Proceed to the given coordinates. Latitude 2.4 ° N, Longitude 49.55 ° S. Your master beckons you.)
To establish independence is to distance oneself from any individual trying to control you. But when the signal tells her to move to a set of coordinates, she cannot resist. Autonomy is a fragile thing for a robot; it can effortlessly be taken away from them at any given moment. If one has proper technological prowess, a robot’s autonomy is like an Eggnet tower against Sonic and his friends (she has to remind herself that she’s part of his group of friends now)—transient.
(She hates it. She’s tired of being yanked around.)
A wooden door stands in her way. It bars her from her objective. She smashes it; obstacles need to be eliminated.
A fox cub stands in her way. She issues her warning to him. If he does not cooperate, she’ll have to make him disappear.
“Get…out. Have to…get out.”
“Fight it, Belle! I know you can!”
(But she can’t. Despite how hard she tries, she simply cannot, cannot, cannot.)
She tries to hit the fox cub to get him to move, but a blue blur stops her. Yet another obstacle she has to get rid of.
She is forced to destroy a life using the very tools bestowed by her father.
She feels sorry for the cobalt blue hedgehog. But, in this callous world where one’s free will can be stripped so easily, perhaps death is salvation.
(He is an obstacle to your objective. Obstacles need to be removed.)
(She screams, but the inky, black void cannot hear her.)
( Fear not of nothingness, for in nothingness lies salvation.)
Her Motobug comrade has the obstruction pinned down. She moves in for the kill, swift as a snake—
PAIN…T.
…
To be yanked around like a puppet by her loving father.
(No. That creature that looks just like him is not her father. Her father is somewhere deep inside.)
“I-It’s me. I’m okay.”
(This facade is heavy. But, for the sake of her father, she must go on.)
Eggman’s insistence on pulling the rug under her just when she’s starting to make a stand for herself irritates her. Just as she was starting to find her path, too. She’ll put a stop to this, no matter what. She’ll make him pay, even if it's the last thing she does.
In a world where Badniks are destroyed regularly, it is hard for a Badnik to fulfil its purpose. Perhaps it is why they try so fervently to destroy Sonic.
Motobud’s purpose was to deliver her father’s letter to her.
They leave the now-decommissioned Motobud behind. It lies unmoving between the waves of Badniks that are marching towards Eggman’s city. In a way, it has served its purpose.
To think that he was also created by her father.
(She won’t let Eggman have this victory. She’ll protect her father’s last gift to her, no matter what.)
Her father is gone. Still, she thinks as they race towards Eggman’s multicoloured base, she’ll be alright. She has people beside her, people willing to stand with her. People who are willing to help her. She’ll be strong.
Was that not the purpose her father had granted both her and Motobud the ability to be independent? To shape the world into a slightly better place. Does losing him affect her ability to do just that?
(...No, it does not.)
The world may be in shades of grey, but she’ll paint it, paint it with vibrant colours. The colours of the world are on her fingertips, after all. She’ll fix everything they bring her, from a child’s broken toy car to the Restoration’s vehicles.
She’ll continue her father’s legacy.