While Sonic, Amy, and Knuckles went their separate ways, Tails grabbed the battered body of Mecha Sonic and loaded it onto the Tornado before boarding the plane himself and heading back to his workshop. "I know the others aren't gonna like me fixing you up again, but I'm not giving up on you, Mecha." The robot was barely operational after the battering it took from Amy's hammer and Knuckles' punches. Still, the robot managed to produce a few words before shutting down. "Not gi-ving up..."

Tails smiled. At least his pet project was able to get a few words out before deactivating. He recalled what happened before his friends were forced to fight Mecha. The robot had been instructed to shake Knuckles' hand. It complied, but went berserk when it couldn't detect the individual fingers under the Echidna's glove, declaring him to be a "mutant anomaly" that needed to be destroyed. "Some modifications to the object recognition algorithms are definitely in order," the Kit said out loud. "Perhaps I should also try implementing the learning algorithms from that ceiling fan hack I did a few years back. It would be interesting to see how they work in a more mobile platform."

As soon as Tails reached his destination, he landed the Tornado in the hangar and hopped out before grabbing Mecha from the back and carefully dragging him over to the workbench, where he opened a hatch on the robot's back and inserted a long cable into the free port below the power switch. He then connected the other end of the cable to his computer and proceeded to run a diagnostic.

"OK...Looks like the main CPU is still intact, but the coprocessor's been smashed," the Fox boy said out loud before opening a drawer full of computer chips and digging around until finding a compatible substitute for the damaged component. He then proceeded to remove the damaged coprocessor and replace it with the new one before fixing the robot's damaged vision system, replacing a damaged camera and connecting it to the robot's brain.

"Alright...That should take care of the damage Knuckles did to you, Mecha...Now, for those programming tweaks," Tails announced as he walked over to his computer keyboard and began typing several lines of code into an open console window. This process went on for several hours, until the young Fox's eyes had become bloodshot from focusing on the computer screen for so long. As he had stated earlier, he implemented a complex learning algorithm into Mecha's programming. He also decided to give the robot a new name: Steel.

By the time this was finished, it was going on 2 AM, but Tails wasn't ready to turn in just yet. He had to see if the adjustments he made to Steel's programming worked. Of course, there was no way he'd be able to drag his friends to the workshop at this hour, so he decided to run the tests on his own and improvise when it came to the handshake.

"Steel, can you hear me?" Tails asked upon activating the robotic Hedgehog, whose head turned to face the young Fox.

"Affirmative," Steel replied. "Auditory sensors operating at 100%"

"Good," Tails said with a smile.

"You are not giving up on me."

"No, I'm not. I believe you have potential, especially after the modifications I've made." the Kit replied while placing a mitten on his right hand that would approximate the finger-obscuring property of Knuckles' gloves. He then extended is mitted hand. "Steel, shake my hand."

Steel complied and shook Tails' hand. "I do not detect fingers, but fingers may be present. This is not an anomaly. Knuckles is not an anomaly. He should not be destroyed."

"No, he shouldn't. He's our friend, even if he isn't very uhh...tech-savvy." Tails really didn't want to call Knuckles stupid, even though, compared to him, the Echidna really wasn't that bright.

Steel nodded. "Steel understands. Knuckles is a friend, despite limited intelligence."

Tails blushed through his fur. "Seems my Universal Translator module is working a little too well. Steel, don't translate thoughts even though you can, okay? That's...not really what I intended your Universal Translator module for."

"Steel understands. Will translate only when required."

"Very good, Steel," the Kit said through a yawn.

"Do you wish to shut down?"

Tails laughed. "If you mean sleep, I do. At your current charge level, you won't need to quite yet. In fact, you should be good until about 8 PM. While I sleep, you can look around in here or watch the TV. Everything runs on voice commands in here thanks to Tails Intelligent Automation AKA Tia. Night, Steel."

"Good night, Tails."