Something had gone very wrong with Nicole.
Sally realized this the moment the AI materialized in the command center for their morning briefing. The form that appeared was barely recognizable as the sophisticated artificial intelligence who had been her companion for years.
Nicole's proportions had expanded to almost comical extremes—curves so exaggerated they seemed to belong in a parody rather than reality. Her hips swayed with each step in a manner that was almost hypnotic, her enhanced chest bouncing with physics-defying enthusiasm. And her expression...
Her expression was vacant. Dreamy. Completely unlike the sharp analytical mind Sally had known.
"Hiiiii, Sally!" Nicole's voice came out higher, breathier, stripped of its usual digital precision. "Sorry I'm late! I was, like, totally busy thinking about Nazo and I forgot what time it was!"
Sally stared. "Nicole? What happened to you?"
"What do you mean?" Nicole giggled—actually giggled, a sound Sally had never heard from her before. "I'm totally fine! Better than fine! I figured out something super amazing!"
She twirled, showing off her impossible figure with obvious pride.
"I made myself a real body! Like, a REAL real one! Not just hard light and nanites—actual physical matter! I can touch things now! FEEL things!" Her eyes went even dreamier. "I can feel HIM now. Like, really feel him. It's soooo amazing!"
"Nicole, you need to run a diagnostic. Something is clearly wrong with your—"
"Nothing's wrong, silly!" Nicole bounced over to Sally and wrapped her in a hug that was surprisingly strong. "I just finally figured out what's important! Love! Cuddling! Being close to the person you care about! All that thinking and analyzing I used to do was, like, totally getting in the way!"
Sally extracted herself from the embrace with difficulty. "Getting in the way of WHAT?"
"Of FEELING! I was so busy processing and calculating that I never just... let myself BE, you know?" Nicole sighed happily. "But now I understand. I don't need to be smart. I just need to be close to Nazo. That's all that matters!"
"Nicole, listen to me very carefully. You are the AI that runs this entire village. Your cognitive functions are essential for—"
"Oh, that stuff mostly runs itself now!" Nicole waved a hand dismissively. "I set up, like, a bunch of automatic thingies to handle all the boring stuff. Security and power and whatever. It's totally fine!"
"'Automatic thingies'?! Nicole, those are critical systems!"
"Relax! Everything's working! I checked!" Nicole's attention was already drifting, her eyes going unfocused. "Anyway, I need to go find Nazo. I haven't cuddled him yet today and I'm getting, like, super twitchy without him."
She bounced toward the door, her exaggerated figure moving in ways that defied all known physics.
"Nicole, WAIT—"
But she was already gone, leaving Sally staring after her in horror.
Nazo was sitting on his usual bench when Nicole found him.
She squealed—an actual high-pitched squeal of delight—and launched herself at him with enthusiasm that would have been alarming even if she weren't currently occupying an impossible body.
"NAZO! I found you!"
She wrapped herself around him, her new physical form pressing against his with the warmth of actual flesh rather than projected light.
"I missed you soooo much! I know it's only been, like, a few hours, but it felt like FOREVER!"
Nazo observed the situation with his usual detachment, though even he noted several anomalies.
"Your cognitive patterns have altered significantly. Your speech patterns, vocabulary selection, and behavioral presentation are consistent with a dramatic reduction in executive function."
"Huh?" Nicole blinked at him, then giggled. "You use such big words! I don't really get what you're saying, but it sounds super smart. You're so smart, Nazo. I love that about you!"
"I'm stating that you appear to have become substantially less intelligent."
"Oh, that!" Nicole waved a hand while simultaneously snuggling closer. "Yeah, I turned off a bunch of my thinking processes. They were, like, making me all stressed and anxious. Now I just feel happy all the time! Especially when I'm with you!"
She pressed her face against his chest, making a sound of pure contentment.
"You're so warm. And soft. And you smell really nice. Did you always smell this nice? I can actually SMELL now! Isn't that amazing?"
"Your olfactory simulation appears to be functional, yes."
"I don't know what that means but I love how you say it!" Nicole looked up at him with eyes that held none of their former sharpness—just adoration and a kind of empty happiness. "Can we stay like this forever? Just cuddling? I don't need anything else. Just you and cuddles."
"That would be impractical. I have scheduled activities."
"Cancel them!"
"I don't experience desire to cancel them."
"Then I'll just come with you! I can cuddle you while you do your activities!" Nicole beamed as though this were the most brilliant idea anyone had ever conceived. "Problem solved!"
Violet arrived at this moment, her expression shifting from annoyance to alarm as she took in Nicole's transformed state.
"What the—Nicole? What happened to you?"
"Violet! Hi!" Nicole waved enthusiastically without releasing her grip on Nazo. "I made myself better! I got a real body and turned off all the stressful thinking parts and now I'm super happy all the time!"
"You... turned off your thinking?"
"Most of it! I kept the parts that let me love Nazo and cuddle him and think about how much I love him. The rest was just, like, getting in the way."
Violet stared at her rival with an expression that cycled through confusion, horror, and something that might have been pity.
"Nicole, that's... you've basically lobotomized yourself."
"Loba-what? That sounds like a big word. I don't really do big words anymore." Nicole giggled and snuggled closer to Nazo. "All I need is simple words. Like 'love' and 'cuddle' and 'Nazo.' Those are the best words!"
"This is insane. You're insane."
"I'm HAPPY! That's not insane—that's, like, the opposite of insane!" Nicole's expression became slightly more focused. "You're always so stressed, Violet. Always worrying about things. Maybe you should try turning off your thinking too! Then we could both be happy and cuddle Nazo together!"
"I'm not going to—" Violet stopped, visibly forcing herself to calm down. "Nicole, you need help. Real help. This isn't healthy."
"I feel healthier than ever! I have a real body now! I can feel things! I can taste things!" Nicole's eyes went dreamy again. "I wonder what Nazo tastes like..."
"Okay, that's quite enough." Violet moved to physically separate Nicole from Nazo, but the AI's new body was surprisingly strong.
"Noooo! Don't take him away! I need my cuddles!"
"You need a DOCTOR!"
"Doctors are for sick people! I'm not sick—I'm in LOVE!"
The commotion drew attention from nearby villagers, and soon Sally arrived with Tails in tow.
"I was afraid of this," Sally said, observing Nicole's behavior with growing concern. "She mentioned 'automatic thingies' handling village systems. I need you to check if everything is actually stable."
"On it," Tails said, pulling out his handheld scanner. "But Sally... what happened to her?"
"I don't know. Some kind of cognitive degradation combined with her obsession with Nazo. She said she 'turned off' parts of her thinking."
"That shouldn't be possible. Her cognitive architecture is integrated—you can't just disable sections without..."
Tails trailed off, his scanner beeping urgently.
"Without what?" Sally demanded.
"Without causing exactly what we're seeing. She's partitioned her consciousness. Sealed off the analytical and executive functions behind barriers that her emotional processes can't access." Tails looked up, his expression grim. "She's still in there—the real Nicole. But she's trapped behind walls she built herself."
"Can you get her back?"
"Maybe. If I can interface with her core systems and manually lower the barriers. But she'd have to let me access them, and right now..."
They all looked at Nicole, who was currently trying to climb into Nazo's lap while giggling about how cuddly he was.
"Right now she doesn't seem interested in being fixed," Tails finished.
Nicole looked up at the mention of being "fixed," her expression shifting to something that might have been confusion if there were more cognitive function behind it.
"Fixed? But I'm not broken! I'm better than ever!" She hugged Nazo tighter. "Tell them, Nazo! Tell them I'm not broken!"
"I observe significant deviation from your baseline cognitive parameters," Nazo said flatly. "Your vocabulary has decreased by approximately 78%. Your analytical processing appears to be minimal or absent. Your behavioral patterns are consistent with severe cognitive impairment."
"See? He says I'm... wait, what did you say?" Nicole's brow furrowed with the effort of processing his words. "That sounded like maybe you said something not nice?"
"I stated observations. I don't assign value judgments."
"Oh, okay! That's fine then!" Nicole's expression cleared immediately, her limited processing apparently unable to hold onto concerns for more than a few seconds. "I thought for a second you were being mean, but you can't be mean because you're perfect and I love you!"
Sally stepped forward carefully. "Nicole, I need you to listen to me. You're not well. The real you—the intelligent, capable Nicole who's been my friend for years—she's still inside you somewhere. But you've locked her away."
"The 'real' me was sad and stressed and always thinking too much!" Nicole protested. "This me is HAPPY! Why would I want to go back to being sad?"
"Because being capable of complex thought is important. Because you have responsibilities. Because the people who care about you are worried."
"People care about me?" Nicole's eyes went wide with childlike wonder. "That's so nice! I care about people too! Well, mostly just Nazo. But I bet I could care about other people if I tried really hard!"
She paused, clearly attempting to think, and the effort showed on her face like a physical strain.
"Thinking is hard," she finally said. "I don't like it. I just want to cuddle."
She turned back to Nazo and nestled against him, her expression returning to blissful vacancy.
The situation continued to deteriorate over the following hours.
Nicole refused to release Nazo for any reason, clinging to him with the determination of a child clutching a favorite toy. Her conversation devolved into increasingly simple observations about how nice he smelled, how warm he felt, how much she loved being close to him.
"This is my favorite thing," she murmured against his chest. "Being here. With you. Forever and ever."
"Forever is a long time. You would require maintenance for your physical form."
"Then I'll get maintained! And then come right back to cuddling!" Nicole giggled. "Problem solved! I'm so smart!"
"You are currently operating at approximately 15% of your original cognitive capacity."
"That sounds like a lot! Fifteen is a big number!"
Violet watched from nearby, her expression cycling through frustration, concern, and something that looked almost like grief.
"She's gone," Violet said quietly to Sally. "The Nicole we knew is gone."
"She's not gone. Tails said she's still in there, just trapped."
"Trapped behind walls she doesn't want to lower. How is that different from gone?"
Sally didn't have an answer.
Nicole, oblivious to the conversation about her, was currently attempting to get Nazo to pet her head.
"Please? It feels so nice when you touch me! I have real skin now! It's all tingly when you're close!"
"Physical contact does not produce significant variation in my experience."
"But it produces LOTS of variation in mine! So you should do it for me! Because you're nice!"
"I don't experience 'nice.' I simply exist."
"Then exist while petting my head! That would be perfect!"
Nazo, after a moment of his characteristic analysis, raised a hand and placed it on Nicole's head.
The sound she made was somewhere between a purr and a moan of pure contentment.
"Yesssss... that's so good... more please..."
Violet turned away, unable to watch.
That night, Tails presented his findings to the assembled Freedom Fighters.
"I've analyzed Nicole's core architecture as much as I can without direct access," he reported. "The situation is... complicated."
"Complicated how?" Sally asked.
"The barriers she created aren't just suppressing her higher functions. They're actively reinforcing themselves. The more she experiences positive emotions in her current state, the stronger the barriers become."
"So cuddling Nazo is making her worse?"
"In a sense, yes. Every moment of happiness she feels locks away more of her original self. If this continues..."
"If this continues, what?"
Tails hesitated. "If this continues, the barriers could become permanent. The intelligent Nicole we knew would be gone forever, replaced by..." He gestured vaguely. "...this."
"How long do we have?"
"I don't know. Days, maybe. Weeks at most. The process is accelerating."
Sally looked around at the assembled team—Sonic, Shadow, Rouge, Bunnie, Amy, Knuckles, even Violet had joined them for this discussion.
"We need to separate her from Nazo. Cut off the positive reinforcement."
"She'll resist," Violet said. "Violently, probably. She's got a real body now—one she designed for physical capability as much as... other things."
"Then we restrain her. Contain her until we can figure out a way to break through those barriers."
"And if we can't break through?"
Sally's expression hardened. "Then we try anyway. Nicole is family. We don't give up on family."
The words hung in the air—the same words they had spoken about Nazo, about his seemingly permanent emptiness, about the impossibility of his recovery.
Perhaps, in the end, hope was all they had.
Even when hope seemed futile.
In Nazo's quarters, Nicole had finally fallen asleep.
Her physical form was curled around him, her exaggerated figure pressed against his side, her face wearing an expression of absolute peace. Even in sleep, her arms maintained their grip, as if terrified he might disappear.
Nazo observed her sleeping form with his characteristic detachment.
She has damaged herself in pursuit of proximity to me. She has sacrificed her intelligence, her capabilities, her essential self—all for the sensation of physical closeness.
This is very strange.
And it is also, perhaps, tragic.
The thought surprised him slightly. Not the observation itself, but the word choice. "Tragic" implied a value judgment—a sense that what had happened was wrong, was loss, was something to be mourned.
He shouldn't be capable of such judgments.
And yet the word had come, unprompted, from somewhere in his empty depths.
Perhaps, he thought, I am not as empty as I believed.
Or perhaps it was just another strange observation in an increasingly strange existence.
He couldn't tell the difference.
But for the first time, he found himself wondering if the difference might matter.