A/N: I am officially disappointed in you, . Not a single other B-day fic for the twins this year? Bah, humbug.
This is Day 2 of my self-imposed birthday fic marathon! Go check out Brotherly Love for the conditions I'm putting myself through. Oh, and BT Dubs, I don't own Rockman. Capcom does.
Oblivious Love
Days like this, Rockman always wanted some kind of crisis, however small, to happen somewhere on the Net. There wasn't a single word in the dictionary appropriate for describing the sheer level of boredom that he was going through.
Oh yeah, and it was his- and his brother, Netto's- birthday. Usually, he was patient and easily pleased, but Netto had left the house without a trace before he had woken, leaving him to spend their birthday alone.
Honestly, he felt a bit put-out by the whole affair.
So, in a nutshell, he was stuck rampaging through the Net alone on a blazing June Tuesday, blasting every single virus that was unlucky enough to cross paths with him with fatal charge-shots. He was, fortunately, getting a lot of zennies and chips for the "Chip Trader Special."
A mettaur squeaked fearfully before meeting it's untimely demise (music to his ears), and a couple gunners followed shortly. As the data finished disentegrating, a 100 zenny-worth coin popped up. It quickly found its way into a bag filled with previously-collected brethren.
"Some birthday this is," Rock grumbled, readying his buster for another shot. A flash of motion caught the attention of his peripheral vision. "Don't think I can't see you!"
He whipped around so fast, the area lagged for a fraction of a second before catching up. In just another fraction of a second, the charge-shot was out of the buster and slamming into the target. Another second and the virus pixelated and disappeared before the blue navi could even identify it. Each shot was a discharge of pure, pent-up rage.
He couldn't help noticing in his mind's eye how utterly terrifying he must've looked. It really was no wonder he hadn't seen any other navis since morning. It wasn't like he did stuff like this often, and it wasn't like he was hurting anybody. He stopped his little train of thoughts and went to collect his prize.
...Except somebody had beat him to it.
"Are you done yet, Rockman?" A familiar red figure stood a couple cyber-feet away from him, casually pocketing the zenny coin that he had rightfully earned (the jerk).
"Blues," Rock acknowledged. Then, he sidestepped and tried to brush by the official navi.
The swordsman mirrored and blocked him.
"Excuse me," Rock growled mock-respectfully. "I need to get by."
Silence.
Rock tried yet again to get by Blues (with, hopefully, a bit more force and an intentional shove to the other navi's side), only to have history to repeat itself. This time, however, Blues grabbed ahold his shoulder and slammed him into the floor.
"Rock, what's gotten your core programming in a twist?" Blues questioned as he pinned the blue navi to the ground. "You're blocking off a major transportation server with your childish little hissy fit. I thought you were more mature than that."
The receiver of the question didn't answer right away (he was waiting for his processors to recover from the rather forceful meeting of his head and the floor). When he did make a sound, it was to eloquently announce, "That hurt."
Dot... Dot... Dot.
Blues sighed and slowly let go of his shorter companion, only off-handedly noting the dent he had made in the server floor. Rock, however, saw it loud and clear and quickly jotted down a reminder to himself to get revenge later.
"So?" the white-haired official prompted, somehow managing to massage his temple under the visor. "What do you have to say for yourself?"
Rock pouted and rubbed the back of his head bitterly. "Nothing. I'm not doing anything wrong. Since when was busting viruses a crime?"
Blues gave off an aura of nonplus as he asked softly, "Have you taken a good look around yet?"
"...No."
Rock glanced at his surroundings for the first time since he started his little rampage.
...Oh.
"...Oops," he squeaked.
Blues raised an eyebrow (though it was invisible under the visor). "That's it? 'Oops?'"
"Eheh..." Rock chuckled nervously. "I... guessed I kind of scratched the foundation programming of the area..."
The white-haired navi he was talking to shook his head and sighed. "Quite an under-statement. Try again."
"Okay, fine," Rock admitted, adjusting his helmet (one of his nervous ticks). "More like 'utterly destroyed.' How about that?"
"Better."
Indeed it was.
Zooming out a bit and surveying the server as a whole, anyone would've thought a lava-containing, bullet-spewing, ten-mile-wide tornado had swooped by. The data that made up the walk-ways was falling apart and disentegrating with each passing second, badly-damaged by plasma charge-shots. Holes and smoking scrapes were littered across the surfaces of every block of data, remnants of aim thrown off by a frustratedly shaking hand.
Rock hadn't even noticed how mad and dangerous he had gotten. That may or may not have been because of his exclusively determined focus on viruses.
"Now we've got to get out of here before the whole area crashes," Blues stated sort of unhelpfully. The snow-haired navi grabbed Rock around the waist (much to both of their discomfort) and beamed out.
~x-X-x~
"Answers. Now."
That was the first thing Rock heard as the light that came with beam-trans faded away. Honestly, not the best way to welcome somebody back to coherency.
"You can't boss me around like that, Blues," Rock stated, sticking out his tongue.
A look of genuine astonishment found its way onto the official navi's face. Rock knew his last statement was a bit rude for his standards, but it just came out.
Blues' expression blanked out as quickly as the emotion came. "Actually, I can. I'm higher on the Net Savior pecking order than you are, so my orders are to be followed."
Rock rolled his eyes. "Oh, my apologies. I suppose I should just prostrate myself in your presence now, O' Great and Wonderful One."
Silence. That was, admittedly, quite uncalled for.
"What's gotten into you, Rock?" For the first time, he swore he could hear a note of concern on Blues' voice as the taller navi put a hand on his shoulder.
"Nothing's wrong with me," Rock replied, brushing the hand off. "I'm feeling fine."
"Rockman, you charged throughout ACDC area-" So that was the server he had destroyed. "-and basically trashed the place with your reckless abandon, and you're speaking as if somebody's stuck a moonblade up your craw. And look at yourself!" Blues gestured in his direction for emphasis. "Even now, your hands are balled and shaking. Something's gotten you royally ticked off, and as your superior and ally, I won't have it."
More silence. There was a strange abundance of it in their conversation, given the topic.
"Well..." Rock trailed off, trying desperately to calm the unintentional shaking of his fists (he really hadn't noticed it. In fact, he'd barely even noticed he was still angry).
"Go on."
"I- I guess I just felt a bit neglected."
Pause.
"What?"
"Netto-kun isn't spending any time with me."
"That's it?"
"Well... No..."
"Then what else?" Blues asked roughly as he crossed his arms and tapped his toes impatiently.
"You see, it's also..."
"Also what?"
"It's also kind of Netto's, and my, birthday?" Rock answered, more question than statement.
~x-X-x~
"Happy Birthday, Rock."
The sun was a wonderful thing, really. It was bright and warm, motherly. Of course, the cyber-sun wasn't nearly as comforting, but it still did the job quite nicely.
And cyber-sunlight was honestly very soothing on a bare head and face. Blues never thought he'd experience the feeling, but there was a first for everything. Like, for example, laying sprawled-out on a cyber-park bench, helmet off for the first time in nearly a decade, head in the lap of his greatest rival, and the rival's hand in his precious, snow-colored hair.
"You have the most beautiful blue eyes. I really haven't the slightest idea why you wear that horrid visor of yours all the time," Rockman mused whispily, twirling a strand of white hair between his thumb and fore-finger.
Blues gave a noncommittal grunt as he patiently reviewed the events that had led to this. What in the name of heaven or hell had convinced him it was a good idea?
You see, Blues was programmed for mostly combat, not for understanding emotion. As soon as Rock had confessed the fact that it was his birthday, the blue navi had broken down crying. Blues' processors had no advice to offer, so he had naturally panicked.
One thing had led to another, and in a desperate string of promises to get Rock to shut up, the smaller navi had somehow gotten Blues to agree to a couple hours' time to stroll in the park.
Then, through another string of promises, Rock had convinced Blues to take off his helmet and visor and...
...lay his head in the smaller navis lap? Blues didn't know. He probably had around twenty college-level psychology textbooks stored somewhere in his data-base, but Rock remained an unshakable mystery to him.
To be honest, it actually wasn't that bad. The situation was strangely comfortable. Rock agreed to calm down and reign in his irregular emotion patterns (he was going to get those checked later) and Blues was getting some good old R-and-R for once in his life.
And what was so wrong with giving one's friend- er... rival a birthday present? Netto was probably off getting Rock something special (although the blue navi remained strangely oblivious to it. Even Blues was familiar with the tradition of keeping birthday celebrations a secret), but in the meantime...
Blues sighed. The sun felt really good.
"Hey, Blues-kun?"
"Hmmm?" Blues almost didn't notice the affectionate honorific tagged onto the end of his name.
"Where has Enzan been in all of this?"
Blues' eyes popped open in a flash. Oh, shoot...
End.
~x-X-x~
A/N: And that leads to the shot for tomorrow! That's right. Another birthday fic tomorrow, same slap-dash conditions as this one and the last one. I don't have the actual plot mapped out for the next one, but I'll be sure to make it a sequel of sorts to this one.
Again, minimal double-checking and editing for this (part of the conditions for my marathon), so there are probably lots of mistakes. Feel free to insult them, but I won't allow myself to correct them.
If anybody's wondering, this is completely separate from Brotherly Love. It's the same concept, but the plots don't affect each other.
Smell ya' later, you MelodyEXs!
P.S. I commission all other committed BN writers who've read this Author's Note to write a short B-day fic for one or both of the twins. Do it or I'll kill you.
P.P.S. As an explanation for Rock's rapid mood-swings, I think of his navi form as an almost-separate entity, but also as a puppet for his soul to commandeer. On Saito's birthday, the original soul is closest to the navi form. Since Yuuichiro couldn't have possibly known the exact attributes of his at the time one-year-old son, he would've made a couple mistakes in programming Rockman. Therefore, when the original soul of Saito is closest to the navi form, the programmed emotions and reactions conflict with Saito's actual emotions and reactions, creating the seemingly-PMSing mess of a navi you see in this fic. Does that make sense? No? Ah, whatevs.