Rockman doesn't belong to me! He and all his buddies belong to Capcom.

Brotherly Love

Rock was expecting for a normal day, filled with helping Netto with school-work and patrolling the cyber-world with Blues-kun.

Instead, Rockman emerged from sleep mode to a home-page strewn with excessive amounts of blue streamers, blue banners, blue balloons... blue everything. It was all cybernetic, of course, but that didn't lower the level of pure blue-ness that had invaded and wreaked havoc across his personal space.

Processors slowing down...

Error ID#3098: Overloading... Lag...

Conclusion: Cannot comprehend situation.

Rock blinked once. Twice. Three times.

"What."

It wasn't a question, but a statement. The whole event was overheating his processors. Just what the hey was this?

Oh. There we go. As if it were an answer from cybernetic God, a screen beeeeooooped into existence right next to him.

"Well?" Netto asked inquisitively. "How do you like it?"

"...Wha?" Rock replied smartly.

"The decorations."

"Oh... Yeah," Rock amended, finally catching up. "The decorations. Um... They're very... blue."

"But do you like them?"

Rubbing the back of his helmet nervously, the navi mumbled quietly, "Th-they're very, very... nice. How much time did you spend on them?"

"Not long."

Rock knew Netto was lying through his teeth, but he brushed it off. Pointing it out would've made the brunette boy stressed-out and upset.

"They're beautiful," he commented honestly. "But you might want to lay off some of it. All the color is lagging my systems."

"Oh! Sorry! I didn't know that would happen," Netto trailed off, face instantly falling. "I'll tone it down."

"It's okay, Netto-kun. And thanks for working so hard on them. They really are nice."

"Hehe... You're welcome, Nii-chan!"

Rockman listened as Netto tapped out and replaced a couple lines of HTML coding, trying to change the values of the cascading style sheet* and the tags that controlled the appearance of his home-page. With a final, ringing click, the blue decorations disappeared.

All of them.

"Was that... supposed to happen?" Rock queried gently.

"...No. It was only supposed to get rid of only a couple of the decorations. Wait a sec, I'll try again."

Control-Z**, over and over again. All the decorations reappeared. More clacking. They all disappeared again.

"I could've sworn I did it right that time..." Netto muttered from the screen.

Control-Z. Clack-clack-clack-clack. The banners, streamers, and balloons flashed on and off, on and off...

Netto emitted a guttural noise that sounded partially like a dying pig and partially like an angry brown-bear.

"Netto-kun," Rockman soothed softly. "Do you want me to check over your work?"

"No, I'm fine," the boy replied. That was strange. Netto never refused Rock's help on stuff like this.

The decorations flashed on and off a couple more times. Rockman was getting a headache; his processors were having to rapidly adapt from overloaded to passive and back again.

In fact, he was getting a bit irritated as well.

"Netto, please."

"Don't worry!"

"I insist."

"But-"

"Netto-kun."

"...Alright."

Grinning in triumph, Rock pulled up the file for the home page and began to scan through it, searching for the inevitable mistake.

...and there it was.

"Netto-kun, you closed your 'div' tag incorrectly," he said, inserting a slash into the tag. "I see you were trying to put a switch of sorts on that particular section of decorations. Quite ingenious. But without the slash, it affected the rest of the decorations as well."

A moment of silence. Rock refreshed the home page (the area blinked white for a second) and tried the tag again. Approximately one fourth of the decorations switched off.

Another moment of silence.

"Oh..." Netto whispered from the screen, voice cracking the tiniest bit.

"It's okay, Netto-kun," Rock said, smiling encouragingly. "HTML is very complicated. Even I make some small mistakes on it, sometimes, and I have a couple dozen gigabytes of very meticulous AI in my processors."

"Yeah..." Netto consented from the screen, then went silent.

Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick.

"Hic."

"Netto-kun..." Rock called softly, putting a hand futilely on the screen. "...Are you crying? It was just a little mistake, not anything life-threatening. You don't have to feel bad..."

"I know."

The screen went blurry, and Rock was instantly worried. That was, until a peach-ish outline swiped the blur away. That was when he realized the blur was a tear.

"It's okay... Don't cry, Otouto... I don't mind helping."

The comment only seemed to worsen Netto's emotional condition. He was out-right bawling.

"It-it's so unfair for you!" The boy practically screamed. "Why do you have to be stuck in the cyber-world, no cake, no special food, where neither me or mom can even hug or touch you?"

'What?' Rock thought to himself. "Netto-kun, what do you mean?"

"I spent practically my whole life bossing you around a-and putting you, my own older brother, in so much danger..." Netto continued blubbering, as if he hadn't noticed the question. "I wanted to make it up to you. I wanted to give you the best birthday a navi could ever have!"

Rock immediately panicked. Birthday? He checked the date. Sure enough: June 10th.

"B-but the most I could do was decorate your room while you were sleeping, so I spent so much t-time on that, and I went so over-board that it was hurting you."

"It wasn't hurting me, per se-"

"And I couldn't even fix it on my own. I had to get y-you- the one who should be enjoying the present- to fix the flaw in your own gift. All that hard work went to waste, and all I wanted to do was give you a special birthday!"

"It's still a special birthday-"

"Because I love you, Nii-chan. You'd do everything for me. You're the best brother anybody could ever ask for, and I screwed up your birthday so badly..."

"Netto-kun, if you would just listen for a-"

"Why does the world have to be so unfair-"

"Stop cutting off my sentences!" Rockman growled. Netto immediately shut up, still sniveling a bit.

Long silence.

"Nii-chan?" the boy poked tentatively. It wasn't common for the older Hikari to snap.

Rock took a couple of deep breaths to calm himself down. His chest heaved and his clenched fists slowly unraveled, but his expression betrayed his irritation.

"Netto-kun. Otouto," Rockman began evenly. "We're twins, remember? Do you know what that means, bakka?"

Netto flinched on the screen. Rock was definitely not happy. He used the "B" word. Therefore- angry Rockman plus possibly-trick-question equals X; solve for X- he did the math and chose not to reply.

"It means it's also your birthday," the navi ground out. "And do you know what makes me happy? When you're happy. The only way you're ruining our birthday is by crying, Netto-kun." The steam was released, and Rockman's expression softened. "What makes you think you're allowed to do that? Going off and crying on your own birthday, silly. What were you thinking?"

Rock watched as the boy on the screen's expression slowly morphed from scared, to confused, to understanding, and then back to confused.

"What?"

Rock sighed; "Allow me to explain. Otouto, I'm a living corpse. I'm supposed to be dead. Each day I have with you in this borrowed life of mine is a treasure in itself. Even if we can't touch or hug or anything like that, every minute is a good enough birthday present as it is. All this stuff, all this decoration business, is unneeded. I only needed you."

"But-"

"No 'buts', okay?"

"...Alright."

"Great. Let's go bust some viruses, Otouto. Spend some quality time together."

"That sounds good." By then, all the boy's tears had dried, and a small smile was spreading across his face.

Rock chuckled. "There we go. A smile. That's a good present."

"I'm sorry, Rock-nii. I was just a bit tired," Netto confessed. "I spent the entire night on those decorations. I guess I was too stressed-out."

"That's fine." Rock paused. "But you might want to take a nap."

"Nope. Don't wanna waste precious birthday time."

"Heh. Let's go, then."

Netto sniffed one last time.

"Okay."

End

~x-X-x~

*= CSS for short. Basically, it's what makes an HTML web-page not a black-and-white bore. It adds color, effects, that sort of stuff.

**= Control-Z is the shortcut keyboard command for the happy-fun-time button, otherwise known as "undo."

A/N: If anybody's wondering why this sucks so much, it's because I wanted to give myself special conditions for writing it. I made sure not to develop or think of the plot before today, basically forced myself to marathon this shot in one go, and posted it right after finishing. Therefore, there are probably countless errors, typos, plot inconsistencies, and rushed portions. Feel free to jeer at them, cuz' I sure as heck am not going to fix them just to remind myself of the slap-dash nature of this story. It was half the fun.

Either way, I'm doing another birthday shot for Saito tomorrow (I might make it a collection) with exactly the same conditions. I don't know what I'll do for it, but I think I might make it Blues/ Rock.

Oh, and if you're wondering, I still have school so that made for even less time to write this.

Peace!