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Amy was a mage. Not an overtly talented one, mind you, but she was still capable of using magic to some degree.
Mostly, though, she used what you might regard as Arcane Magic. It relied on cosmic forces, such as Fate. Her favoured school was divination, and while she preferred to use her fortune cards as a medium, she could also use a crystal ball. Aside from that... Well, it was embarrassing. But her other skills laid in basic telekinesis and barrier magic, which she wasn't super great at? But whenever she wanted to impress somebody, she'd break them out just to add to the whole mysticism of her divination.
But after a while, she figured out that Arcane Magic wouldn't cut it forever. The boys were getting faster and tougher than ever, and Amy needed an edge to keep up! So... After that whole mess involving Perfect Chaos, Amy started looking into other schools of magic to augment her current skillset. And eventually, she stumbled across the strangely named school of Chaos Magic. Which... Now that she knew the whole story behind the Chaos Emeralds, felt bizarrely applicable.
The central defining tenet of Chaos Magic was the idea that belief was a tool, and when properly utilised via an altered state of consciousness called Gnosis, would result in genuine magical ability. Essentially, believe something hard enough and it would become true. It was a strange and esoteric form of magic based on change, with a lot of falsehoods obscuring what was actually true. But soon enough, after enough practice, Amy was able to harness the power of Chaos for herself.
It came in slowly. Short bursts of speed that let her match Sonic, and brief moments of strength that let her fight blow for blow with Knuckles. But then the stranger bits started to pop up, like the ability to summon her trusty Piko Piko Hammer wherever and whenever she pleased, or her ability to leap higher than anyone else she knew. But all of that paled in comparison to the most bizarre and almost entirely unexplainable abilities she had begun to wield.
Amy could heal herself. Indefinitely. As long as she was conscious, she could heal from... A lot. She wasn't sure of the exact boundaries. A few years ago, she'd broken her arm during an intense raid on an Eggman base. And it'd hurt. It'd hurt so badly it was like death. And then she'd thought, very strangely: "Sonic will save me." This was curious for a few reasons, mostly because Sonic was two miles away fighting Eggman. But Amy had believed, she'd hoped, wished, prayed, and--
With a glitter of little lights, it'd been fixed. The arm had snapped back into place, sealed and fixed as though it had never been broken. Her arm had unbroken itself, all because Amy had thought so clearly and distinctly of Sonic and his overwhelming heroism. Looking back, that was how a lot of Amy's strange manifestations of Chaos Magic had come into being. She wanted to chase Sonic, so she'd become fast. She wanted to protect Sonic, so she'd become strong. The facts lined up.
Amy loved Sonic. And that empowered her to do things she never would've dreamed of doing otherwise.
It became one of those background facts in her life. The sky was blue. The grass was green. Amy Rose could heal from the worst of things, so long as she believed in Sonic.
That's why it was suddenly so shocking to her when, one random day, it started to glitch out.
===
It was a standard raid on an Eggman base.
Sonic was amazing as always, Tails was flying high, Knuckles was punching through every badnik he saw, and Amy was just fabulous, thanks for asking! They'd gotten some information from Team Dark about some strange plan to steal an ancient relic that would allow Eggman to rule the world! And you know, it was just... Business. They had this sort of thing down to a science by now, clearing out rooms in under three minutes flat. Everything was going according to plan...
Right up until Eggman unveiled some new robot made of buzzsaws. It was sharp and loud and extremely dangerous, and-- Look. The sound hurt her ears something awful, and Amy made a bad decision. She stepped left when she should've stepped right, and everything went right to Hell. One of the buzzsaws managed to cut deep into her gut, so deep that Amy's torso was practically attached by a mere six inches of flesh. There was so much blood, and she couldn't focus, and everything was... Was going dim...
Sonic. Sonic would save the day. A-And that meant, that meant he would save Amy, because-- Because he always saved the day, right? He was fast and amazing and so cool, so naturally, it-- t-that meant he, he'd be right there to save her! Come on, magic, come on! Sonic, Sonic, Sonic, please work! He'd saved her life so many times, she idolised him, she wanted to love him, to protect him, to chase him, why wasn't it working? She stared at the wound. At the pool of blood growing around her. And it wasn't healing.
No, no, no, that-- That wasn't right, it-- It was supposed to heal.
But it wasn't.
... Oh.
So this was it, huh? Taken out by a glorified buzzsaw.
But then-- Then something weird happened. There was a loud rumble, and Metal Sonic punched through the ceiling like a meteor from heaven. There was a flash of movement, a burst of speed, and the buzzsaw robot was destroyed in a matter of moments. His claws were dripping with the black oil-blood of the robot he'd just slain, and his eyes were aglow with fire. He was less a machine, and more a murderous manifestation of the Eggman Empire's hatred for all living things.
She remembered the first time she ever met Metal Sonic. It was a monster, with sharpened claws that left painful marks in her skin from where it had grabbed her. A horror, with an inhuman voice that made her tremble whenever it spoke. A nightmare, a thing that could pretend at the mannerisms of living beings, but never truly capture the quintessential essence of what it meant to live. Amy had only known Metal Sonic for one day, that one dreadful day.
And she'd spent years thinking about him. He was like some desperate, terrifying animal. He frightened her.
Suddenly, without any warning, her heart skipped a beat. A weak pulse, skip, and then-- TH-THUMP. Her heart beat so fiercely and forcefully that it physically lifted her off the floor for a moment. Her body was suddenly aglow with twinkling stardust, a cosmic tornado that yanked all the blood back into her system, sewed the wounds shut, and dragged her up onto her feet. And-- Wow! She felt amazing! Better than she'd felt in a couple of years, actually. She... Guessed that the healing just took a minute?
The entire fight around her had stopped for a moment. Everyone was staring at her, like they'd just seen a ghost.
"... You good?" Sonic asked, looking shocked.
"Yeah," Amy replied breathlessly, eyes locked onto Metal Sonic. "I'm so good."
The fight from there devolved. Sonic and Knuckles spent all their efforts on keeping the buzzsaw robot away from Amy, Tails started focusing exclusively on the horde of Badniks... Which meant that Amy got the lucky honour of fighting Metal Sonic. The few occasions that this ever happened were events that she cherished, a chance to vent all her frustrations on the robot's durable shell. She summoned a Piko Piko Hammer, so light that it felt weightless in her hand, and she charged.
It felt good. It felt good to be fighting Metal Sonic, to crash against him with all the fury and adrenaline her body could muster. He'd attack without mercy, his steel claws ripping through flesh and his plasma pulse burning through her bones... But it didn't matter. It didn't matter because Amy felt so amazing, so floaty and bubbly, that she could bounce back from any wound he laid on her. Come on. Come on! More, more! She started to laugh, a hysterical giggle escaping from her lips.
Metal Sonic grabbed her by the throat and rammed her into the wall, repeatedly smacking her body against reinforced steel. She reached out and wrapped her palm around his skull, and then dug her thump into Metal Sonic's eye. Glass cracked and digital LEDs popped as she applied pressure, and she began to crush his skull like a soda can. He put a hand around her throat, sharp claws pressed against her throat, and then squeezed. Amy gasped for air, and smiled like a woman possessed.
[[Just give up,]] Metal hissed, his sharp artificial voice low and cold. Every wound on Amy's body snapped shut on the spot in a shower of twinkling stardust, and she gasped with delight at the sensation. His grip tightened around her throat, and Amy lashed out with her hands to blind him. That just made him snarl louder, squeeze harder. Claws dug into Amy's flesh, so sharp and so brutal and callous and-- And then. For no particular reason at all. Amy proceeded to say something very stupid.
"Please," she breathed, so quiet that only the two of them could hear the words from her mouth. "Tighter." A moment later, she actually processed what she'd said.
And then wanted to scream, because WHY. WOULD. SHE. SAY. THAT????????
Metal Sonic, in response, dropped her like a stone and then bolted away, igniting his jet engine just to get some space between him and Amy. The fight, suddenly over, settled over Amy's being like a warm blanket. Twinkling lights lazily danced along her throat as it traced the thin scratches and bruises that he had left on her, and-- Oh, that felt good. It felt good to feel that happening, to feel herself healing from the brink of oblivion... Though the feeling was overshadowed by the wretched amount of shame that followed.
She was Sonic's girl! She loved Sonic, why would-- She wasn't interested in Metal Sonic, and she never would be! And, and--
And oh, good Gaia, she was thinking about the way that his claws felt around her neck.
... Nobody. Could ever. Find out about this.
===
[[... And then she asked me to squeeze tighter.]]
Eggman raised an eyebrow. "Hm. Didn't know Amy was a freak like that."