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Ivo barely realised when it started. A cough, then a coughing fit, then soggy flower petals coming up his throat and landing in a wet heap on the mossy ground of the mushroom planet.
He looked at it in disgust and elected to ignore it. There was nobody else here (apart from Stone) so it must be a foreign disease he'd contracted from this planet and was certainly not hanahaki.
It didn't stop when he got back to earth. Really, it only got worse.
He held them in in front of Stone, but the red alien saw when they left to find the emerald and offered his insightful commentary.
"Is that a reaction to the Goat Milker?" Ivo gave him a bewildered look. "You cough up those plants after seeing his face. Have you been cursed?"
He answered a curt 'no' and didn't explain any further to the creature. They continued on to their quest for the emerald.
Once he had the power of the emerald, Ivo was finally free from those infernal flowers. He could control whether he had this disease or not.
He could interact with Stone without the incessant tickling pain in his throat, without the thought in the back of his head-
It all came crashing down because of that damn hedgehog. Of course it did.
The days of recovery were some of the worst. The agent was constantly close and monitoring his condition. Ivo ordered a drone to incinerate the petals and edit the scans of his lungs. Let Stone think he was just coughing up more blood from the internal injuries, what difference would it make?
The crab wasn't easy to hide secrets in. The flowers were just getting bigger and more frequent, scratching his throat and coming out spattered with blood. The proximity to Stone making it worse, no doubt.
He hid them in dirty takeaway containers or had them incinerated when Stone was around. When he wasn't Ivo was free to throw them up in the toilet until he felt well enough to go watch more La Última Pasión. When Stone came back, he felt sick again.
Of course they had to work with the hedgehog and his little friends.
He spit more flowers into the toilet as quietly as possible, while he changed. It was bloody, but not so bloody he couldn't see the vibrant rose with thorny painful stalk attached at the bottom of the bowl.
Ivo Robotnik would not die over a haircut. Upgrading from flowers to stalks meant nothing.
Getting paired off with Sonic resulted in yet another space creature making unwanted observations about his condition. Ivo leaned down to spit some more flowers onto the floor after he and Stone separated.
"Woah, dude," the Dorkupine laughed his annoying laugh. "You actually have it bad for him too, don't you?
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Something about my attitude renders me undesirable to all possible genders… my future is a cul-de-sac." Ivo stared at himself in the mirror.
The hedgehog snorted. "You're pretty stupid for someone who's supposedly some genius doctor."
Ivo ignored that remark. What did alien hedgehogs know about human attraction anyways?
Being distracted with his new grandpa didn't stop the flowers, but it did leave him coughing less.
So when Ivo got the call from the agent about his supposed 'bad feeling' he knew he could cut him loose now. He could stop the flowers and thorns and blood. He could hang out with his grandpop instead anyways. It wasn't the same.
And what did Stone mean by there being more to the plan.
He should have known.
There was only one thing left to do. Only one person to say goodbye to.
It wouldn't be the flowers that killed him after all.
Stone was on the ground watching the screen. He should have known. It was so obvious in hindsight. The secrecy, it was for the flowers.
"This is Doctor Ivo Robotnik," blue hyacinths "dedicating my final livestream to one very special henchman..."
The doctor roughly coughed and red (blood spattered) roses fell out of frame. "Agent Stone."
Stone thinks he said something, but he can't even hear himself think.
"If I can't rule the world I might as well save it, for the one and only person who ever cared about me." Lilies, red and yellow (blood).
"Stone... You were more than a sycophant to me. You were... a syco-friend."
Was he? The thorned (bloody bloody so much blood) roses the doctor was choking up between sentences—
"I'll miss your lattes with steamed Austrian goat milk." Orchids. "I love the way you make 'em!"
Was he crying?
"So... I guess there's only one thing left to say. It's been a real drag! Thanks for nothing." A rainbow of blood-stained flowers fell from the doctor's mouth just before the feed cut out, as colours burst across the dark sky.
Stone didn't look. No explosion could ever match the colours of the petals that had fallen from the doctor's mouth.
He should have said something. He should have-
Stone turned and walked away.