GOAT to the Future!?
Author's Note: Set during Shooting Star Rockman Tribe. Titled after episode 39 of Rockman EXE Axess and Back to the Future. Influenced by the tale of "Dark Stanley" from The Simpsons. As with my previous Shooting Star Rockman fics, "The Adventures of Rocky and Cancer Bubble" and "W Subaru's Great Struggle", shout-out to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for motivating me to write this. Enjoy the story and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of the Shooting Star Rockman series.
Pairing: One-sided (canon) Luna x Rockman.
Summary:
Hoshikawa Subaru and co. attend the grand opening of a new restaurant in Kodama Town. Too bad a reawakened FM-ian crashes the event and intends to make goat stew out of the eatery's customers!
"Take a coupon. 10% off all specials, today only!"
Hoshikawa Subaru accepted the ticket. He, Shirogane Luna, Saishoin Kizamaro, Ushijima Gonta, and Futaba Tsukasa were first in line to sample the delish cuisine marched out by Kodama Town's newest Choinese restaurant, Little Goat Hot Pot. The doors hadn't even been thrown open to the public, yet positive word of mouth got around, and a respectable portion of the suburbs had shown up. Ostensibly, Student Council was there conducting research for a group project on world cultures, but anyone with basic vision could easily see past the lame pretense to what they were truly up to.
"Why, hello. Where have I seen you before?" Luna studied the greeter.
He was their age, robed in a martial arts uniform, black sash, orchid headband, knee-high socks, and slippers.
"I go to your school. We're in different classes," he replied chipperly, not hiding hints of a former dialect.
"Ah, I remember. You're Yagi Kenta-kun. We've bumped into each other in the halls." Kizamaro subconsciously poked the bridge between his glasses.
"Knowing Kizamaro, he probably means that literally," Gonta whispered aside none too discretely.
The gang giggled.
"You're working here?" Tsukasa posed curiously.
Kenta distributed more leaflets. "Yes, my grandad owns the establishment. He's been looking after me since my folks died."
"I'm sorry." Subaru instantly sensed a connection. While he'd recently learned his father survived the incursion aboard his space station, choosing to travel and promote peace throughout the galaxy, Daigo's absence still ate at his ailing heart. Being thrust into his role as man of the house wore him down sometimes.
"Don't be. My ancestors were settlers on Shiisaa Island, and we've always traded in exotic foodstuffs. The Little Goat is my parents' legacy, the latest version of our family's proud tradition."
"Just hearing that is making me hungry!" Gonta drooled.
A server interjected, "Kenta, your grandpa's asking for you."
The boy excused himself, then scudded inside.
"Sit, Kenta. I have something for you." The old codger was unrolling coins behind the cash.
"If it's stir fried frog legs, I don't want any."
His elder presented a scabbard bereft its knife, clothed in a talisman featuring the Yagi crest: a ringed white dash. "It's from your father."
"Dad's?"
"This heirloom belonged to our forebearers. My grandfather willed it to my father, and my father to me. Generation upon generation. My son stipulated that I ensure you receive it. I saved it for this happy occasion. May it bestow you good fortune."
Probing his inheritance, Kenta's emotions were mixed. Thrilled because of the familial honour. Mournful because he needed no extra reminders his mom and dad walked no further amongst the living. As soon as his fingers brushed the antique, that sadness resonated with an intelligence therein. It pulsed, feeding on his negative vibes.
This minus energy…No frequencies are more compatible than yours! Give me your body!
Kenta phased in and out of the visible spectrum. He screamed in a cold sweat, fading amidst a cornflower blaze. In his place grazed a bipedal creature ostending curved orange horns. It wore a blue satin ensemble patterned with jade whorls, their bloodline's scabbard at its hip.
Twin puffs of steam expelled out the beast's nostrils. "This is the future, huh? I've been dormant too long."
"A monster!" The doyen thwacked it on the business end of a broomstick.
The animal disarmed him of his makeshift bo staff, teleporting them to the shopfront.
Understandably, the sight of a senior citizen suspended in midair by a disembodied hoof arched its share of brows.
"W-what is that?" Gonta pointed.
"Maybe a publicity stunt?"
A ginormous pressure cooker emerged in the street, into which the cloven paw deposited the septuagenarian. Startled cries rang as the invisible assailant plucked additional victims from the crowd, including Tsukasa, and added them to the pot.
"Futaba-kun!" Luna missed his wrist.
"Subaru, your Visualizer!" War-Rock piped in.
Pulling down his special lenses, he ID'd the being responsible. "An UMA?"
"After him, Subaru!"
Taking advantage of the disarray, Subaru turned an alley, and lifted his Star Carrier. "EM Wave Change! Hoshikawa Subaru, On Air!"
War-Rock and Subaru's harmonics synced, and they merged.
Rockman materialized on the Wave Road, and opened fire. "Rock Buster!"
"Rockman-sama!" Luna had hearts in her eyes.
"Subaru-kun!" Kizamaro shouted.
The class president flinched.
"Iinchou, how many times do we have to say it? Subaru is Rockman! You saw it yourself!" Gonta retreaded the trite conversation.
"No! I refuse to believe it! As if Hoshikawa-kun could ever –!" she stopped, refocusing on her support role. "FIGHT, my beloved Rockman-sama!"
"Subaru, I'm not detecting Earth wavelengths off him. This guy is not a human fused with an UMA. He's FM-ian!" War-Rock flapped his jaw in Subaru's left hand.
"An FM-ian?"
"FM Planet's culinary maa-ven, Goat, to be precise!" The Billy charged, punching with the force of a speeding monorail. "Hi-yaaaah!"
"Battle Card! Break Sabre!" Shaking off the open-palmed strike that sent him skidding through a building, Rockman morphed his arm into a rotary screwdriver and regained his lost distance. He performed a sequence of tumbles, hurdles, and twists, attacking from the side, above, and below. To his surprise, the ungulate gracefully adapted, matching him blow for blow, using nothing but his bare fists.
"Trapped a hundred years and acquiring a hu-maan host, I've become the unexcelled Goat Kungfu!"
"A hundred years? He's an FM refugee, War-Rock?"
"It would seem so."
"Why are you abducting the townspeople?" Rockman switched to a flaming Ryuuenzan sword.
"These primates? They are ingredients. Under orders of the FM King, I am to scour the universe perfecting a dish most worthy of our great ruler. Don't stand in the way of me or my goat stew! Sut-yaaaah!"
Rockman banked hard right to avoid the flying kick.
Goat stew? Did Cepheus really commission his subject to complete such a humdrum task? A century on the backburner, though. Someone ought to tell the kid he was out of the job!
"A stew boiled in our enemies, of course."
Yipes. Now that sounded more like the ex-savage Cepheus they knew.
Goat Kungfu's motions were fluid, leaving few opportunities to counter. Whoever Goat EM Wave Changed with was a skilled hand-to-hand fighter.
Meaning Subaru found his weak spot.
Daring his opponent advance, Rockman feinted and zapped him in the chest. "Battle Card! Plasma Gun!"
Luna squeed, "Nice shot, Rockman-sama!"
"Clever. Then how about this?" Goat Kungfu adopted a crane stance, balancing on a single leg. Rough winds amassed around his snout, and he inhaled the surrounding greenery down his throat.
"Yuck!" Kizamaro and Gonta gagged. Lucky they hadn't had supper yet, or they would have hacked it up.
Drawing vitality from the herbage, the hybrid's scrapes healed themselves, and he doubled in stature.
"He powered up consuming the grass!"
"Battle Card! Gatling!"
Plowing past Rockman's stream of ammo like a super armoured battering ram, he delivered a hook so heavy it razed the abutting rooftop.
"N-not a scratch!"
"Subaru, his weight! In his current state, he's too slow to evade!"
"Got it!" He ducked beneath a chop, backflipped over the unwieldy follow-through, laid an explosive, and slid clear. "Battle Card! Count Bomb!"
Three.
Two.
One.
BOOM!
Released in the blast, Kenta reappeared, uninjured, on the pavement. Robbed its antenna, the pressure cooker also popped its lid, spilling the hostages and a bore of soup.
Luna raised her voice to congratulate Rockman, but he had already decamped the Wave Road and joined Kizamaro and Gonta as Subaru to check on Tsukasa and the other captives while they waited for the Satella Police to arrive. As was practice, when confronted with the posse rejoicing over Subaru's heroics, Luna denied, denied, denied.
Goat scooped himself out of the garbage bags he'd impacted upon splitting, approaching Kenta.
War-Rock interposed. "I think not!"
Subaru donned his Visualizer again. His friends activated their Star Carriers' scanning modes, allowing them to monitor the ruction as well.
"Baa! Move."
"Shut up!" War-Rock snarled.
"Don't." Kenta came to. He couldn't see either of the extraterrestrials, but heard the rebels arguing. "Leave him be."
"You're defending him? He manhandled your customers!" Kizamaro remonstrated.
"He made you eat grass!" Gonta appended.
"That was unpleasant. Only, who wouldn't be angry after spending decades cooped up in a box? He woke up on the wrong side of the bed, is all!"
"He's an FM-ian. Bloodthirsty is kind of his race's M.O. Until the FM King cancelled the invasion of Earth, that is."
"He did?" Goat bleated.
The AM-ian confirmed.
"When we combined, I picked up on his conscience. His perseverance," Kenta rhapsodized.
"As did I. You altered something in me. It felt as if my belligerence and paranoia were progressively melting away."
"War-Rock, what's going on?" Subaru wondered. Typically, subjugated individuals lacked memory of the experience once exorcised their FM-ian controllers.
"He's like you. A human able to retain his consciousness during EM Wave Change."
"If the FM King has decreed a truce, I will report to the throne and await reassignment," Goat resolved.
"No. Stay," a mentoring tongue insisted.
"Grandpa."
"Like it or not, your spirit has presided over our family these generations," he talked at where he thought the astral visitor was situated. "My grandson is obviously taken with you."
Kenta jumped on the bandwagon. "You can help at the restaurant! With your space know-how and intergalactic recipes, our reviews will be out of this world! Alrighty?"
"Plus, you'll be fired returning to FM Planet anyways," War-Rock put crassly.
Goat consented. "Then I'll do it! From now on, let's knuckle down, eh, Kenta?"
"Mm, let's!"
"Hoshikawa Subaru. War-Rock. Or should I say Rockman? Come by anytime. I'm always up for sparring."
Luna hmphed.
Tsukasa chuckled, wringing the tomato purée from his hair.
"Yahoo! Free prune juice for everyone!" Kenta klaxoned.