This fanfic was written at the request of a friend of mine, who specifically wanted R-Shadow and all of the Dimensions.
Disclaimer: I do not own Mega Man or any of the characters in this fanfic. I do own several concepts, though.
"We're all in this because we have no one else. No one else to live for, no one else to protect, and no one else to care. No one is born evil, no one is born doing the things that we do. We only do what we do because we are molded that way, to fight back against those that molded us the way we are. Think of that the next time you accuse us of being evil. Perhaps it is the ones that we are fighting against that are the evil ones. Our only crime was that we dared to exist and exhibit our free will.
After knowing everything here, can you honestly say that we have no reason to act the way that we do? Act in the manner that would have us killed with no questions asked while a human would get a mere slap on the wrist and maybe jail time if they were unlucky?"
No no no, he didn't want to be scrapped! Aircon didn't even know what was going on, only that apparently his creator Tobias had broken some laws when he had created him. He wasn't too sure what was going on, only that it was... about whoever's parts that he had been built from. He didn't hear the names of the two robots that he had been built from, only the two serial numbers, DWN-010 and MXN-047, but was that really a reason to arrest him?
Was it because he was a blond Asian-looking robot?
It didn't matter if he was, but he was terrified. Apparently whoever those two robots he had been built from were, they were dangerous. Because of that, they wanted to have him scrapped so that no one would ever be hurt by him. But he didn't want to hurt anyone! Why could they see that? Aircon was grabbed by two of the officers and he began to be dragged away. His eyes turned towards Tobias, pleading with him for help. But Tobias... just closed his eyes and turned away.
Why wasn't Tobias helping him? Tobias! Help!
With a jolt, Aircon woke up in the scrap pile, dazed from the reoccurring dream and his own badly damaged body. Why had he woken up? He couldn't quite see or hear too well, but were those footsteps approaching. Oh great, were those robots that had gutted him for parts before back to steal some more? He was surprised when whoever it was sat down beside him and began to speak.
"You look like you're in bad shape. Don't worry. My name's Compass, and this is R-Shadow. We're going to help you."
Compass...? R-Shadow...? They just wanted to help him...? He didn't have a choice, but if this Compass person and this R-Shadow person could be trusted... then everything was going to be okay. Maybe he would finally get a chance to live again.
Thank Asimov.
Born an actorbot, Dangan had known no life other than show business. It agreed with him, he felt, and the lines always just came to him naturally. Adlibbing was what he did best in cases like this, after all. Perhaps it was from all of the western novels that he had read.
Inspired by a robot that wrote western novels, Dangan was a huge western fan. He spoke with a cowboy accent on the shows he was on (which obviously were primarily westerns), wore a cowboy hat, called himself "The Bullet" on the shows, and had plenty of fans. It was a wonderful life for a robot in the show business.
That is, until the station discovered that they were running low on funds, and would have to cut back on several shows. His show, "Slingin' with The Bullet", was on the slated list to be cancelled. Dangan had hoped that his show would not be cancelled, but fate wasn't on his side. Several months after it was proposed, "Slingin' with The Bullet" was cancelled completely. Occasionally a rerun would show late at night when there were no other programs to fill it up, but the popularity of it died down.
As that had been his main show, Dangan's role in the other shows was gradually lessened until his characters were either killed off or found reason to mysteriously vanish. This left Dangan with little else to do, and he was eventually fired. Despite being fired, he couldn't just walk away. No, he had been born as an actorbot. And by then, despite illegality to silently scrap a robot that never went outside, that was declared his fate.
Naturally, Dangan wouldn't have it. He ran, vowing never to work for the humans again. He ran, faster than a speeding bullet, faster than a galloping horse, to find a new purpose in life. What could he do? Where could he go?
Perhaps it was good fortune when he met R-Shadow...
He was special, he'd been told. How exactly he was special was beyond him, but it didn't make him any less special in the eyes of his creator.
He was a Robot Master, but he wasn't just any Robot Master. He had been created from the remains of a Chankey Maker or a "Hothead" robot, a type of robot that could throw flames from its head. In a way, he could see how he had been created from it. It had big eyes, the head was the same shape, and there was little in way of a torso.
He was supposed to be special. So why did all of these people say that he had no value? That being a Robot Master created from a robot was different from starting off as a Robot Master? Was it because that his parts had been used from a dangerous robot? It had baffled him how being created from a Changkey Maker had automatically given him a death sentence that was irreversible. It wasn't as if he could have helped whose parts he was built from.
It just wasn't fair.
To go from being a simple cooking robot working happily to being a fugitive on the run. He wasn't even sure whether the authorities wanted to catch him, or whether they just wanted to fill their quotas. Either way, if he was going to be considered a fugitive, he was going to do something worthy of it. Oh, he was definitely going to make them feel sorry for what they did to him.
Having been created from a ninja robot and a samurai robot, it was no wonder that Komuso's priorities got mixed up sometimes. But whenever he got confused, he could always just play his flute and meditate in order to relax. Lately, he had been needing to meditate more lately. With all of the attacks on innocent robots going on, it was hard to remain calm.
His job as a museum tourguide about Feudal Japan was quaint, and promising, but it didn't help him whenever he would hear news about robots in other parts of the world arriving in Japan in hopes of having a better life their than they would have in the United States. With any luck, they would.
Komuso closed his eyes, and thought. Earlier, he had met a robot named R-Shadow, who had been willing to accept him as part of his group to destroy humanity. He didn't agree. Violence wasn't the answer to wrong against them. It would only work in their case, and he had told the other robot thus. R-Shadow had shrugged, said something about him always being available if Komuso ever changed his mind, and had thus disappeared.
That was what Komuso had thought, until he had witnessed something horrific. A small child, no more than six years old, with bright blue hair that gave away its robot status, was being harassed by a group of human teenagers. The child was crying, and trying to get away from them, but none of the teenagers were letting up on attacking the poor thing. The other humans just walked right around them, as if they couldn't hear the child crying.
Komuso didn't think. He had to help.
He'd saved the child and sent it home with a few older robots that had eventually come running, but the poor thing was horribly traumatized. And what child would not be traumatized with a group of teenagers physically being violent with it? Komuso himself was sporting a few injuries. Holding a hand to his chest, where he'd been kicked, the robot took a deep breath.
Maybe that R-Shadow person had had a point...
They were always together, and even in death, they would always be together.
Their names were actually Chrono and Meter, but with how close they were, everyone always called them by their model name, Clock Man. Or rather, Clock Men. Closer than any biological set of twins that humans could conceive, they stayed together, they spoke for one another, and they finished each other's sentences. All in good fun, of course.
Two purposes surrounded their creation: to have twin-studies where studying in humans was morally objectionable, and to have a measure of time. They were a supposed improvement of the Time Skimmer, all three having been created by Chronos Institute. Chronos was a rather fickle and secretive place, and they honestly didn't understand it very well. The Time Skimmer, however, had been the pride and joy of Chronos. The Clock Men didn't really care too much about it as the officials did, but it was a particularly interesting project.
Unable to recover the Time Skimmer, plus not actually being able to travel through time in a manner similar to it, caused disaster to strike for the twins. Declared useless and scrap-ready by the very humans that they had cheerfully worked for, they had fled, together, to regions unknown. It wasn't Monsteropolis or Symphony, that was for sure. They knew exactly how long they wandered, but they didn't care to tell anyone. Why would they? They had no one to tell but each other, and the other already knew.
All they knew was that a robot named R-Shadow approached them one day. They hadn't known who he was, and he hadn't known them, but he had heard of them, and was interested. He was willing to take them along with him, befriend them, and introduce them to other robots that had been declared for the scrap heap, like Compass and Aircon.
He was interested in the Time Skimmer that had been stolen years ago... and knew of a potential source as to where the machine would be. Of course, he was more interested in the person that had the Time Skimmer, and was supposedly willing to hand it over to them once they found the person with it. With little else to do, the Clock Men followed him, in hopes that maybe, just maybe, recovering the Time Skimmer would make everything well with them again...
His creator was dead, and the murderers had fled.
Compass himself wanted to just throw up, though he wasn't quite capable of the action despite how nauseated he felt. Right now, the robot just wanted to sit there with Dr. Neckam's body. He forgot about everything else; about the religious folks that had accidentally killed him, about Toby's new robot, about Toby himself. He just wanted to stay with his creator.
How odd; he'd known that humans were much more fragile than robots, but he hadn't realized just... how fragile Dr. Neckam had actually been. Sadly, that fragility had been the death of him. Why couldn't it have been someone else? Why couldn't Dr. Neckam actually have been a robot? Why couldn't it have been less violent people that had bothered the two of them?
Even when the government came and questioned him, he'd told them what had happened, but it looked like they didn't really believe him, especially the human officers. Compass requested to see his co-creator, Toby, but he wasn't allowed to. So the robot that had been sheltered for most of his life finally got to see how the police system worked when it came to dealing with robots that were "suspects".
And it wasn't pretty.
He'd heard gossip from where he'd been held, from the cops that were watching over him. Toby had tried desperately to get ownership of him, but due to legal technicalities, he hadn't been allowed to. Would he never see Toby, or his robot? The thought of a future, without everyone that he already knew, was a terrifying thought. And government reassignment of robots was never pretty.
He would bide his time for now, but he had to get out of there. He had to get out of there, out of the grasps of the humans that held him, and back home. Maybe he could find Toby...
And what about the leader, the one who started all of this, the one who would recruit other robots and cause a genocide that would have a significant impact on human history to the point where most people would block it out of their memories completely?
It was quiet in the laboratory where the robot woke up. The unnamed robot that would later be known to the world as the psychopathic leader of the Dimensions, R-Shadow, tilted his head, rather confused. His legs were functional, missing only the outer casing which was easily spotted on another lab table. His left arm didn't function at all; status reports showed that it was mostly complete, just missing a few integral receptors. His right arm, torso, and head seemed fully functional, however.
Where was his creator? Shouldn't his creator be here, finishing him up? But scans showed that this room had not been touched in months. What was going on? Carefully, the robot slid off of the lab table, stumbling towards the computers as he managed to get used to his legs. It was difficult figuring out how the computers worked with only one arm active, but he stumbled through several files (many of which made no sense - they kept talking about someone called "Mega Man" or something) until he located what appeared to be his schematics.
He spent the better part of the next few weeks scavenging whatever parts he could find in the laboratory to get his body completed. He slept in his armor when he felt like he was running low on power, which was incredibly uncomfortable. Was that normal? He didn't know, honestly, he just knew that it was chilly without it. Eventually he got so used to it that he didn't think there was any other way for a robot to sleep.
During the days he was repairing himself, he also researched whatever information he could find on the computers that he could only assume that his creator had left behind. For him? He honestly had no idea. Most of them kept referring to some "Time Skimmer" and a robot named "Quint". A couple of his parts had been labeled "SVN-001 QUINT". Was Quint him? It didn't seem like it... Quint's specifications seemed like a miniature version of himself, and several key things, such as core placement and such, were too different.
Regardless, the Quint file intrigued him. It was the closest thing he had to his own identity. Maybe he could learn of this Quint person and fulfill that robot's purpose, if he couldn't find his own? It took a little bit of searching, but he finally found a file that seemed to be the earliest dated notes on the Quint project. Almost too eagerly, though he wasn't aware of the emotion at the time, he opened it.
Immediately, a bombshell landed on him.
It was another ordinary day at the makeshift Dimensions base that R-Shadow and the others had created out of the laboratory that the leader had woken up in. It was a simple base, selected mainly for the available resources and the amount of defense that had been programmed into the systems. It had been a simple matter for R-Shadow to reprogram the systems to allow the other seven Dimensions in without attacking them.
Compass Man honestly wasn't sure where Master R-Shadow was at the moment. He had been gone for hours, even though there hadn't been really anything planned for today aside from raiding a few places to gain some energy. These places themselves were rather quiet and would not raise too much attention. The perfect hideout for a group of misfit robots that did not want to be caught and killed.
The door opened. Compass Man squinted a bit in the sunlight and watched as Master R-Shadow walked into the room with something in his hands. He stood up, and headed over to the other. The other seemed... had Compass not known the other so well, he would have sworn that the other was incredibly distraught. But that was impossible. The other barely showed any emotions to anyone, and the most they had seen from him was anger.
What in the name of Asimov could have possibly happened for the other to act the way he was? Compass was about to place his hand on the other's shoulder, when suddenly R-Shadow turned to him. Compass Man took a step back, before studying the younger looking robot. Master R-Shadow looked somewhat disheveled, and his posture was poor. Slowly, Compass Manreached out to place his hand on the other's shoulder, trying to peer into the other's eyes through the visor.
"Master R-Shadow? Is everything alright?"
If anyone else had asked that, it was likely that they would have gotten a plasma sword to the face. Compass Man was allowed to get away with several things that the others could not get away with. R-Shadow gave a sigh, and glanced up at Compass Man's face, as if studying him.
"Quint."
That caused the Dimension Second-in-Command to blink for a moment. He knew that the other had been relentlessly hunting Quint. For what he didn't know but he had assumed it was to kill the other. But judging from the other's expression...
"I'm sorry?" he asked.
R-Shadow pulled his helmet off and tossed it onto the ground next to the other objects, and Compass Man took another alarmed step back. Master R-Shadow looked like a complete wreck. His eyes were somewhat puffy and red, as if he had been crying, his hair was a complete mess, and there seemed to be fluids on his face. Crying. Compass Man could not ever remember seeing R-Shadow crying, ever. The other had in fact gotten offended when he had been asked, once.
"Quint's dead, and I don't know what to think," the Dimension leader said. "I thought I would be happy. I really did..." He trailed off, glancing over at the objects he had brought in. Compass Man did the same thing. One seemed to be a destroyed jackhammer robot, and the other seemed to be an odd laptop device.
"Quint gave those to me," R-Shadow said. "We can use them, he said." He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "To think, I hunt for the one person in my family that I thought I hated, only to find out that he was probably the one person that would have accepted me for who I was. Ha."
Compass Man was silent. He didn't know what to say to any of this, to any of the information. Slowly, he knelt and examined the words on the side of the laptop device.
'TIME SKIMMER' and 'PROPERTY OF CHRONOS INSTITUTE'.
He reeled back. This was the Time Skimmer? He knew something loosely about the device that both Master R-Shadow and the Clock Men had wanted, but he didn't know that it had been this simple-looking laptop. Compass Man stood back up, though, focusing on R-Shadow. The other was leaning against the wall, staring blankly at nothing. Compass Man placed his hand on the other robot's shoulder.
"Master R-Shadow? Why don't you go get some rest? I'll take care of these," he offered.
That seemed to snap R-Shadow out of whatever daze that he had been in. He reached up and gripped at Compass Man's hand, and pushed it off of his shoulder.
"No... I'll do it. I'll be fine. I just need some time to think." Upon hearing that, Compass Man was quiet for a bit before asking another question.
"What happened to Quint?"
"None of your business about how he died." The Dimension Second-in-Command winced slightly upon hearing that. Well, at least it seemed like Master R-Shadow was going back to normal. "But I gave him a good burial. I am not letting him get thrown into a scrapyard or be used for spare parts."
Now Compass Man was confused, considering R-Shadow had had a major Quint complex and wanted to kill the other, but he just nodded. "Right..."
"Compass, I'll be in my room. Tell the others that I am back and that I don't want to be disturbed."
"Yes, Master R-Shadow." Compass Man watched as the robot that looked like a teenager picked up the destroyed jackhammer and the Time Skimmer, and retreated further into their base. Once the other was out of sight, the Dimension Second-in-Command leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. He was no psychologist, and he had never actually known a psychologist personally, but even he was able to tell what was going on with their leader. It would be obvious to anybody.
R-Shadow was depressed.
That was dangerous. It meant that he was capable of anything that even anger would prevent him from doing, and if they weren't careful, they would end up paying the prices for it. But they would be just fine, wouldn't they?
They were a family. Sure, the only two that were related amongst the entire group of them were the Clock Men, and they were twins. None of the rest of them were related to each other at all, outside of being thrown together by circumstance. It would be funny if in some odd way, all of them ended up being related to each other (though R-Shadow acted very young compared to the rest of them. Being the youngest would probably not sit well with the Dimension Leader, if Compass Man knew him well enough). He thought back to several moments in their lives.
He and R-Shadow had met when the former had saved the latter from a group of humans. They'd been together since. In fact, if Compass Man hadn't met R-Shadow when he had been a nervous, young robot, then he wouldn't have believed that the other could ever have been that innocent. Not long after that, they had found Aircon in a dump, poor Aircon who had been bitter and angry with his creator for abandoning him. The others had joined up too, not too long afterwards.
The Symphony City incident happened a little bit later. Using the Time Skimmer, R-Shadow and the group went back in time, with a Grey Devil that the other had created using some plans from a laboratory that he had accessed to and the jackhammer robot that R-Shadow called "Sakugarne". Compass Man hadn't been there for the initial attack - he had been sent on a secret mission elsewhere. That had been fine with them; always have a backup in case the main one failed.
One by one, the group of them fell to Megaman and Bass. Konro Man, Dangan Man, Aircon Man, and Komuso Man. Chrono and Meter, the Clock Men. Compass Man had come back just in time, to try to protect R-Shadow. He'd gone down, too, to those two robots there. He was dying, but for some reason, he wasn't bothered.
No matter what happened, whether their backup plan worked or whether it failed after their deaths, at least they had done their best. They'd worked together, sat together, been a family together. Compass Man couldn't ask for a better group of friends and family. Not even death could keep them apart.