A Cat Named Hershey (a Broken SI fic set in Archie Sonic's Mobius)

[Tangent]

Chapter One​

---

Ugh… okay, when did my bed get so hard, and what the Hell am I wearing on my head?

Actually what the Hell am I wearing, period? And where am I? This isn't even my house, let alone my bedroom, and why do I feel so light?

WHY THE FUCK DO I HAVE A TAIL!?

I got up off the floor and onto my feet really damn quick.

Which I greatly appreciated as I had been able to get up at all. Whatever I was, I was a lot lighter and far more healthy than the man I used to be. I could get used to this - assuming that I figured out what "this" was.

I heard the sound of guns and explosions, then noticed that there was an open window with a grappling hook nearby. I still wasn't thinking too clearly, which is the only reason I can think of for why I poked my head out of the window like an idiot as I tried to figure out what was going on.

Okay, a short bald guy with a distinctive nose and a malicious expression was scrambling up the rope. The guy looked vaguely familiar, but I'm terrible with names. Also, given his expression and the feeling of unease I was getting, I had this feeling I was supposed to let him drop or something.

Screw that. I'm not a murderer, and the creepy guy was in danger right now even if I was pretty sure that he was a bad guy. If he was, I'd deal with it once he was up here. After all, I was feeling better by the minute and that guy would be tired from the climb.

I didn't see anything handy to tie the rope to in this room, and trying to grab a rope that was secured to a window frame only by a grappling hook would probably be incredibly dangerous to everyone involved. So I waited until the guy was almost to the window and then helped pull him inside.

"Thanks, Sonic," a feminine voice that most certainly did not match the man said in relief. And then something clicked for both of us. "Wait, you're not…"

"...not Sonic," I completed as I pulled off the weird helmet that I now knew to be part of a black ops disguise and handed it to Princess Sally Alicia Acorn. "Hershey the Cat. And before we do anything else, I want you to look at me through this helmet's visor and tell me what you see."

Sally did so cautiously, not actually putting the helmet on and instead simply angling it so that she could see me through the helmet anyway. As she did so, I started taking off the rest of this stupid disguise. I knew exactly where I was now, what was going on, who I was supposed to be, and what I had been set up to do.

And I was getting pissed off about the whole Goddamn situation. Of all the stupid, awkward, idiotic potential insertion points, why the fuck did I end up getting isekai'd in the middle of an assassination attempt against one of my favorite characters!?

Well, not a mere character anymore, as I'm here and she's real, and…

"Snively," Sally spoke, interrupting my inner rant. "Why do you look like Snively through the visor?"

"Because you looked like Snively to me while I was wearing it," I grumbled irritably. "I think my stupid, idiotic, soon-to-be-ex boyfriend, Drago, set me up to murder you and frame Sonic for treason. Gave me the stupid suit and everything. I was supposed to do whatever I could to eliminate Snively if he interfered with Sonic's mission. I think he got it from some guy named St. John, but I'm not sure. Something is really fucking with my head right now."

Sally looked me up and down for a moment, then apparently came to a decision. "Gather up the disguise and follow me back to the others. Sonic can handle the mission on his own - we need to preserve this evidence and bring it to my father."

I was fine with that, actually.

And I could use the time to try to sort out my memories, because I got slammed with fifty or so years of some guy from another Zone smooshing right into, through, and all around the memories I had as Hershey Coco…

Wait…

My last name was actually Coco!?

What the Goddamn serious fuck kind of inter-Zone coincidence is that!?

Spoiler: Not a chocolate bar...

Spoiler: Totally Sonic the Hedgehog for real!

Before anyone asks: Drago Wolf is definitely Hershey's ex-boyfriend-from-Hell at this point.

And Hershey St. John is not going to be a thing in this fic.

Click to shrink...

 

[MidsizePig]

Yay! Another random tangent from Tangent!

 

[Tangent]

Chapter Two​

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I wasn't sure of everything that went on after Sally and I returned to the others and reported our finding. Well, we waited for the mission to end, of course. Sonic succeeded in at least driving Dr. Robotnik away from this facility, with Robotnik blowing up the top floor himself to prevent Sonic from following him into wherever his escape tunnel went. And both Drago and Geoffrey St. John were being held as persons of interest, as I got the Sonic costume and my orders from Drago, who supposedly got them from St. John.

Unfortunately, Dr. Quack had spotted that I was not really okay, so he had me taken to his clinic for a full panel of tests.

It was now two days later, and the news was not good.

Dr. Quack gently placed the light-board sleeve containing the brain scans against the illuminated panel on the wall of the room I was assigned to. The glowing cross-sections of my cranium lit up the room, punctuated by bright, patchy highlights around the temporal lobes and prefrontal cortex.

He turned around, resting his hands atop his cane, his expression heavy with clinical gravity and deep sympathy.

"Hershey, my dear... I need you to listen to me very carefully," Dr. Quack began, his voice soft and measured. "I've completed the full diagnostic battery. We ran a high-resolution Brain MRI alongside the serum mass-spectrometry from your blood panel."

I shifted uncomfortably in my hospital bed, clutching my elbows. "Doctor, please. I know what happened. Drago gave me that suit. He gave me the orders! He told me it was a distraction operation but to keep an eye out for Snively, who was suspected to also be in the area. And I'm pretty sure that Drago had gotten the suit from Commander St. John…"

"And that is precisely where the medical record becomes a wall, Hershey," Quack interrupted gently, stepping closer. "The MRI shows significant focal inflammation throughout your visual cortex and limbic system. When combined with the psychotropic drugs revealed by your bloodwork and augmented reality visor's optic emissions, it would have created a severe, continuous neural feedback loop."

He gestured to the tox screen printout he was holding.

"Furthermore, your blood panel confirmed trace levels of an aerosolized anticholinergic neurotoxin - likely introduced through the suit's internal ventilation. It didn't just alter your perception through the visor; it stripped away your executive inhibition and critical reasoning, inducing a state of acute, high suggestibility. It's actually a marvel that you stopped when you did. And a miracle that you survived what had stopped you, if you can call having your brain scrambled surviving."

I swallowed hard, the taste of stale hospital air lingering in the back of my throat. My fingers tightened around the thin fleece blanket covering my lap. "So... it proves I was poisoned," I managed, my voice sounding small, thin, and far away even to my own ears. "It proves Drago lied to me. He set me up! He knew what that helmet would do!"

Dr. Quack sighed, a solemn, weary look crossing his bill as he shook his head slowly.

"Medical science proves you were the victim of a sophisticated chemical and psychological attack, yes," Quack said softly. "It completely exonerates you of any malicious intent toward Princess Sally. If anyone tries to charge you with treason, this medical record is an impenetrable shield."

He paused, letting that sit for a beat before delivering the second half of the blow.

"But from a legal standpoint... for the Royal Council or the Acorn Guard's investigative tribunal... it most likely renders your testimony completely inadmissible. All that's proven is that someone had attempted to use you as a proxy to assassinate Princess Sally and frame Sonic for it in the process."

I froze. "What?"

"Because your brain was subjected to active neurotoxic suggestibility during the entire window of that assignment, any defense advocate or magistrate will throw your statements out," Quack explained, his tone laced with a doctor's profound frustration at legal bureaucracy. "They will argue that your memory of the entire briefing was corrupted by the toxin. Especially with the deep disruption of your memories. They'll likely claim that Drago never gave those orders, that he never handed you the suit, and that the poison made you manufacture or misremember the entire interaction to fit the hallucination."

A cold knot tied itself in my stomach. The room seemed to tilt slightly. And worst of all, I could see the logic he was presenting. It sucked, but any testimony I could give on this matter was legally compromised and thus useless.

"You know Drago handed you that helmet," Quack continued, stepping up to the side of my bed and placing a warm, steady hand over my trembling knuckles. "And you suspect Commander St. John was pulling his strings from the top. But on paper? The tox screen and MRI prove your cognitive state was compromised before you ever stepped foot near that window."

He looked right into my eyes, his expression a mixture of fierce protectiveness and deep sorrow.

"Whoever engineered this trap didn't just design it to make you attack Sally, Hershey. They designed it so that even if you failed - even if you survived - your word against Drago's wouldn't stand up for five seconds in a court of law."

Argh!

Worst.

Isekai.

Ever!

I want a refund!

Except how do I ask for a refund for being merged with someone in another world when neither of my component identities had asked for this and I don't think any payment had been involved anyway?

Ugh.

Fuck my life…

 

[Tangent]

Chapter Three​

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Oddly enough, it turns out that they could prove that Drago and Geoffrey St. John had both not only been in close proximity to the Sonic costume, they had both handled it extensively. What caught them out at the end was the fact that Drago didn't wear gloves and Commander St. John tended to only wear just the one glove - the one with a wrist-mounted mini-crossbow attached to it. Meaning that their prints were all over the most damning pieces of the helmet: Commander St. John's on the augmented reality visor and Drago's all over the muzzle piece with the respirator still filled with drugs.

So, yeah, it turns out that I didn't even have to make an appearance at the trials.

Although I had mixed feeling about this, as I realized that it was a mistake of my own that even let anybody else find those prints in the first place, because that helmet was a sealed system with a respirator. I should have thoroughly wiped everything down before putting any part of it close to my face, which would have wiped away the very prints that the investigators had found.

Congratulations, Dumbass, the bad guys got caught due to laziness on everyone's part...

Anyway, trials plural because Drago Wolf wasn't a citizen of the Kingdom of Acorn. His sentencing fell to Lupe, who basically exiled and shunned him. Never again would he receive any help nor even the slightest kindness from any member of the Wolf Pack Nation. He could be dying of starvation at their feet and they would not feed him. He could be dying of thirst and not one member of the Pack would give him water. He was, for all intents and purposes, a walking ghost to them, condemned to remain forever alone at least as far as the Wolf Pack Nation was concerned.

Somehow, I could not bring myself to care about my now ex-boyfriend. As far as anyone could tell, he had been the one who had decided to drug me on top of just letting the misinformation and the augmented reality visor do their things. Due to that, the Wolf Pack Nation had apparently decided that I would be the one to inherit Drago's hut and all of his worldly possessions as my rightful compensation. But I did not want any of it and they understood. It held no more value in my heart than it did in theirs. Lupe ended up distributing what was actually needed appropriately, and the rest was just sold off with me receiving a portion of the proceeds anyway.

Geoffrey St. John though? He was a citizen of the Kingdom of Acorn. Even worse, he was a military commander caught in a plot to assassinate one of the royal heirs and frame a Knight of the Realm.

High Treason of the worst sort, and a crime with only one penalty. His trial lasted the longest because St. John had been a Hero of the Resistance and the son of another hero. They wanted to be absolutely sure that he was guilty before consigning him to death.

King Max had him executed before I was even out of the hospital. I don't think that the period of discovery was even over yet. Granted, I was pretty sure that Geoffrey was actually guilty, but that's just messed up!

---

I sighed as I looked over apartment listings for the increasingly more inaccurately named Village of Knothole. Inaccurate because Knothole had received enough refugees to have left the status of being a mere "village" a while ago.

The king was back, the kingdom restored, both heirs were reasonably safe, and everything was precariously balanced like a house of cards next door to a pogo stick contest. Because, yeah, King Max having a war hero executed before his trial was even over wasn't sitting well with some people. Not that they necessarily believed that Geoffrey had been innocent. It was more that King Max had bypassed part of the process just to get the result he wanted over with faster.

That's not a sign of a good or kind ruler.

Still, I was already here in Knothole anyway, and I had little reason to stay with the Wolf Pack Nation considering that I did not care to be known as the Ghost's Wife. I mean, Drago and I weren't even married, and I'm not sure that we ever would have gotten married. Drago had filled the respirator of that muzzle piece with enough drugs that Dr. Quack had insisted on having me held for observation until they were absolutely sure that I was clean.

I could have died.

According to Dr. Quack, I should have died. Either Drago had no idea how to moderate the aerosol mechanism to keep the dose levels reasonably safe, or I was conveniently supposed to die after killing "Snively" as "Sonic" and leaving the scene.

And for the life of me, I had no idea which one of those possibilities was worse. I mean, yeah, any feelings I had left for Drago were gone either way, but how many signs did I miss or choose to be blissfully ignorant of?

I…

I didn't know.

Because, yeah, having your memories scrambled apparently doesn't just fix itself on a schedule. Sure, I didn't actually forget everything - not in the conventional sense - this wasn't some bizarre form of amnesia. The memories were there. They were just… broken. Scrambled and mixed together in a fragmented and disorganized mess that left me functional but…

Adrift.

I was Hershey Coco, yes, but I was also some old human guy now living as Hershey Coco, and I was having trouble remembering much of either of my former lives. Congratulations, Hershey, two down and seven more to go if I went by the old nine lives legend.

Which enough cat-type Mobians actually had as a Chaos ability that I couldn't exactly discard that as a reason I had survived that overdose. Which had once been considered to be a huge advantage for Cat types if they knew that they had it, but 1 Up was better because you could accumulate extra lives if you had it. And no Mobian ever had both of those Chaos abilities together. If you had one, you couldn't get the other.

And how the hell did I even know that? Was it something I had learned as Hershey or as Tangent? Or did I just…

Oh…

I looked over at the book on the waiting room coffee table. Chaos and You, by Nate Morgan. I remembered reading that once as Hershey a few years back.

Okay, that's one mystery solved.