At precisely 5:15:15 AM Tokyo time, Roll Light's eyes snapped open.
It was time to get started. She smiled at the thought.
She appeared to even careful evaluation to be a tweener girl, someone just breaking into the treacherous ground of puberty. Her blonde hair (or, at least, hair-like substance) was tied back in a ponytail, except for some bangs which framed her face just so. Her never-soiled dress was red and nearly as cute as her face. To some extent, her room and her house went along with this illusion.
In truth, she was something just as marvelous, but so very different. And so was the room, and the house.
There was little in the room to suggest its differences from a normal tweener girl's room. It was on the plain side, perhaps, with only the tube-shaped bed, a chair, and a desk with a cutting edge computer. The computer lacked the typical keyboard and mouse, instead sporting an interface shaped just like Roll's hands. The walls were decorated with pictures and posters. Those pictures and posters heavily featured robots- the robots of the great Dr. Thomas Light, to be exact (and, to be maximally exact, the robot masters of Dr. Light)- but that wasn't too unusual, in that day and age. The only unusual part was that the posters were all signed, in very personal terms.
The tube that was in place of a bed was something few humans would choose, yet Roll would never think of sleeping in anything else.
The whole house was like that. It didn't look too different from the other houses in the high-end neighborhood. (You knew it was high-end because it had substantial front, side, and back yards- an almost unthinkable luxury in super-densely populated Japan.) There were just enough differences, though, for an observer to tell this house was not like the others.
There was the array of antennae above the house, for starters, in a variety of configurations and shapes. There was the fact that the utilities hookup wasn't a box on the side of the house, but a small bunker. There was the fact that the house seemed so solid- while it might be painted and decorated like those around it, the materials used were unmistakably superior. There were cameras and other security features in exceptional density. There were the meticulously maintained lawns, gardens, and decorations that framed the entire approach to the house- clearly sprung from a supremely intelligent but uncanny mind.
And there was the fact that all of those things were the work of what appeared to be, but certainly was not, a tweener girl.
Her recharge tube began to slide open. Before she left the tube, she interfaced with the house's computer systems. She swept through the queues and ticked off the systems, as was her routine. Security, computers, networks, on out to the boundaries of her domain. Clear, clear, clear. Good.
She'd expected it to be fine. If the automatic systems or robots caught anything, they would have woken her up. Still, a manual check was a good routine. It would catch tampering the automatics weren't smart enough to detect or report. It made sure there was nothing caught in the gray area of "exigency not emergency do I report it?" that confounded so many well-meaning robots.
Satisfied, she sat up. Roll Light, robot master of the Light household, emerged from her tube to face the day. It was time to get started. She smiled at the thought.
The beeping and trilling of her renovation robots caught Roll's attention almost as soon as she came down the stairs. They sounded so helpless, so needy... even if she hadn't had an innate reaction to cute, no robot master could resist the call of a robot in distress.
"I'm here," she said in soothing tones as she approached the gaggle. "What's wrong?"
It wasn't clear to her whether the robots were actually happy to see her, or if sounding grateful had been adopted as successful strategy- but, really, what was the difference? Whichever it was, the robots still squealed their appreciation at her approach, before starting into a chorus of chirps relaying their problems.
She nodded as they rambled on- robot masters had to be polyglots. "Okay, I understand. Before we begin, everyone, I want you all to understand we're stopping at eleven. I'm expecting a big job to come along later for us, so don't start anything you can't finish before then. Okay? Okay. You, I'm authorizing you to get into cabinet three, you'll find what you need there. You two, start working the electrical isolations. I'll tell Auto to expect the power losses. You, inform security of the gap this will create. You're subordinate to security for now- install a backup camera to make sure we have coverage before you kill this one."
One by one, the robots moved away as they received her instructions, whistling and hooting merrily but acting with purpose. They wanted nothing more than to do what they were built to do. When they couldn't, it was the robot master's role to intervene. Helping their robots was the essence of a robot master's existence.
Help out. It was the Light family's mantra.
Roll was a robot master and a Light both.
A smile emerged on her face as the robots went about their business. One little robot remained, moping worse than ever as its fellows departed one-by-one. "What about you?" she asked.
It worbled.
"What do you mean you can't do the replacement? Why not?"
Beep bloort.
Roll frowned. "Really? Let me take a look at that."
She approached the robot and knelt down. She reached out, let her hand rest upon it...
You don't have the file you need? Why not? You were supposed to be loaded with that file overnight while I was recharging. And... there it is. So why don't you think you have it? Oh, that's just a file formatting issue! Let me edit that for you... hm, and maybe later I can set up a subroutine where you'll auto-update the formats you can read. All of you would benefit from that, it'd make sure this wouldn't happen again. That's not essential for now, though... okay, all set. Ready to go to work? Ha, that's what I thought! Alright, in that case...
...She removed her hand from the robot's surface. It warbled contentedly and scurried off after its fellows. Roll watched it go with abiding satisfaction.
Hefting her trusty broom, she walked on towards the next item on her schedule. She breezed through the kitchen to check on breakfast preps. Three times a week (per her meal plan), breakfast was simple enough that she didn't mind delegating things to her robots. It didn't take long to confirm that things were going well. Another robot was finishing setting the table.
"Good job," she said, to happy chiptunes from her robots. "I'll do a round of cleaning, then I'll be back for the dishes."
She hummed as she walked along. She pounced on any hints of dust or debris, sweeping them into the regularly-spaced openings for the house's central vacuum system. (Installing that had been one of her first big renovations. It was also one of her favorites. Among other things, it meant she never had to carry a dustpan.)
She greeted the other residents of the house as they woke up. First, Rock Light, her "brother" and fellow robot master (though his responsibilities were quite different from hers). Second, Dr. Thomas Light, benevolent master scientist and her "father". Lastly, Auto, another robot master and her...
...well...
...cousin, maybe?
He wasn't family, not like family family, but she was part of her domain, so she took care of him as best she could. It unnerved her when he got a taste for something unexpected and decided to help himself. This morning, at least, there seemed to be no drama of that nature. She remained in earshot while they ate, then attended to the table when they broke up. She finished the dishes in the time it normally took Dr. Light to finish changing clothes, meaning...
"I'm going out to exercise, Roll," he said as he cinched the belt over his gi.
"I'd like to exercise with you, if that's alright," she said sweetly, with cuteness enough to shame any mere robot.
Dr. Light never stood a chance. He smiled. "Of course it's alright. Let's go."
"Yay!" said Roll, and she opened the door for them to exit into the back yard.
They exercised for more than an hour. Dr. Light's build was a matter of unfortunate genetics and body chemistry, not sloth and certainly not diet (Roll would have sooner handed in her own processors for rebaselining than let someone in her household suffer poor nutrition). He could certainly pull his own weight, as it were.
Sweat was rolling down his body by the time they finished. Thomas' muscles ached, but it was a good ache, the ache of useful exercise. He smiled as he straightened out of his stance. "That's enough for now," he said, and bowed to his exercise partner. "Thank you so much, Roll. It's nice to have someone around to do my exercises with."
"Absolutely," said Roll, returning the bow with precision. "I hear it's great motivation, exercising with a partner."
"It is," he chuckled, "especially when my partner doesn't get tired as easily as I do."
"It's my pleasure. And my responsibility, too."
"How?" asked Thomas, curious in a fuzzy post-exertion way.
"It's healthy for you," she explained. "As the master of my household, looking after everyone's health and safety is part of my role. I have to help give you what you need. That includes exercise." She nodded vigorously at her own words.
"I think thou dost protest too much," said Thomas.
Roll blinked. "Huh?"
"You sound like you've practiced that speech."
She suddenly seemed bashful. "Did I? I... suppose I have practiced it, but I have had to explain it a lot. Lots of people don't understand about robot masters."
"I can appreciate that," Light replied, and related. He'd had to say similar words often enough; there wasn't a direct correlation to a robot master in the human experience. Still... "Is that why you requested those musculature upgrades? So you could exercise with me and keep me in shape?"
"That is what I said when I asked for them," she answered evenly. Too evenly. Her neutral tone and roundabout diction were a dead giveaway. Thomas' children were rather awful at the fine art of lying- something that both pleased and terrified him. What a paradox, that such immoral skills were also the vital tools of survival. Just like fighting was for Rock.
Thomas looked at her again, trying to spot any evidence of the upgrades. Naturally, he found none. It had been years since Roll's activation; technology never stood still. It especially couldn't stand still with Light and Wily, doctors of similar brilliance but very different beliefs, in the vanguard. At Roll's request, Thomas had been able to dramatically increase her strength without compromising her superb flexibility or changing her profile.
That profile, as always, was cute as a button. Sensing his weakness, she gave him her most kawaii smile. It would have melted butter, to say nothing of hearts. It defused any urge Thomas might have had to push the issue.
"Thanks again," he said instead, unable to resist returning the smile. "I noticed your form's improving, too."
"Is it? Great!" she said with a clap. "I need to be able to keep up with you, after all. Now, I know you'll want a shower since we're done. I'll have clean towels standing by when you get out. I'll be sweeping up out here."
Thomas laughed. "Nothing's ever clean enough for you."
"It just seems like that because you and Rock are always leaving messes behind you," she said without too much scolding in her tone. "All kinds of messes. Someone's got to clean up after you two."
"I suppose that's true," Thomas allowed. "I think I will go shower, now that you mention it."
"I'll be out here," Roll said again, trying to end the conversation. She walked slowly enough that Thomas was well inside before her hand found her broom.
She hefted it with a twirl, eyes gleaming with excitement. "Oh, yeah," she said. "I'll be out here."
When she was done with her extra exercises, Roll had to tackle her least favorite chore: balancing the books. The math of it was no problem at all. No, it was something else that made her reluctant to take up the task.
"You're frowning."
Roll looked up, startled. Rock Light, her closest brother, was standing close by, looking earnest. "Out of the lab already?" Roll said in surprise. She checked her timetable to be sure. "That was fast."
"Maybe I'm just getting that much better," he said with a small smile. She cocked an eyebrow. "Or... maybe there was just less to set up today to get started."
"Right," said Roll.
"I'll have to go back down eventually," he allowed, "but for now I thought I'd come up. So, what's bothering you? Can I help?"
That impulse might have been reflexive, but it was no less sincere for it. It hurt Roll to disappoint him. "I don't think so," she said. "The problem isn't anything we can control."
"Oh," he said, face drooping, but it picked up again. "Well, let me be the judge of that. Tell me about it."
She couldn't resist. "It's just... I don't like working with these financial systems. I can't avoid them, either. Dr. Light's finances are a lot more complicated than he realizes, I think."
She took a simulated deep breath. "Normal household expenses are one thing, but we have special arrangements with all of the utility companies that have to be tended. The work we do here in the family labs... some of that work gets charged against Light Labs' accounts, some of it is "personal expense", and those have to be kept separate and managed independently. We've got financial relationships with the World Robotics Alliance, half a dozen universities, and a dozen trade and industry groups. We have special accounts for some of the more exotic materials we buy, since we have to comply with import-export restrictions. We have investments in various markets-you have to keep a balanced portfolio, of course- I use a fund manager, it just makes sense, but I still have to check his work... and this is just our family finances. Light Labs has its own accountants, thank goodness. Then there's the patents! I've tried to offload as many as I can on to Light Labs, but anything you guys do on family projects ends up our responsibility, and even with someone else doing the licensing, trying to keep up with those takes a few hours a week. And that's saying nothing about insurance, which- between you, and the tech, and the wars, and the rest of it- is practically a job all by itself."
Rock blinked. "Wow."
"Yeah," Roll said glumly. "Wow. My thoughts exactly."
One fact had jumped out to Rock even amidst that avalanche of words. "You've hired people to help you?"
She stiffened. "Well," she said carefully, "technically, Dr. Light has hired people to help him."
"And you manage them."
"On behalf of Dr. Light," she said, more defensively than she'd meant to. And it was true. All of her official communications to these people had a large version of Dr. Light's signature at the bottom and, just above the signature in small type, the words "Sent on behalf of".
She wasn't trying to deceive anyone. She just wanted to help these other people come to the right conclusion. They didn't understand that the Light family's finances fell in her area of mastery. They didn't understand that a robot master, if acting on the orders of a human in her area of mastery, could get disquietingly close to the realm of giving orders to other humans. They didn't understand the mental gymnastics she'd have to perform if they, detecting she was a robot, attempted to give her orders of their own.
They didn't understand... and they didn't need to. Those power relationships didn't need to be involved. This was all about Dr. Light, right? Right.
That's what she told herself, anyway, in her more anxious moments.
"Oh," said Rock, not accusatory at all. "That makes sense."
She was taken aback. "It does?"
"Of course," he said. He rapped his knuckles on his head- invoking an imaginary helmet. "How many times have I had to be a brevet commander of emergency response teams? How many times have I had to thread the needle between positional authority and the Third Law?"
Her shoulders relaxed. "I suppose if anyone could understand, it would be you," she said.
He nodded sagely.
"Anyway," she said, collecting herself, "that's not the hardest bit. The hardest bit is... well..." She pursed her lips. "They really need a robot master."
"To up their efficiency?"
"No. To care."
That staggered Rock. "Huh?"
Roll looked down and poked her fingers together. "The financial systems are dumb," she said, almost guiltily. "They aren't helpful at all. They'll let you make mistakes. They almost want you to make mistakes, since there's always someone else who stands to profit if you do. It's just all so... messy. And mean-spirited. I don't like it."
"Hm," said Rock, tapping the side of his face thoughtfully. "Remind me to introduce you to Bank Man sometime."
Roll gave him a stare. "Bank Man?" she said. "I never heard of... wait, Bank Man? Are you kidding? You are, aren't you!"
Rock couldn't hide his smile for long, and soon he was laughing.
"Rock Light, you are impossible!" she said, trying to cover her own smile with mock anger.
"Bank Man," Rock said, still laughing. "Whoever heard of Bank Man!"
Roll shook her head in mirth and grabbed her broom. "Alright, you've had your fun. Now get out of here. I actually have work to do, and I don't have the cycles to parallel process our financials. Shoo."
She moved the broom as if threatening to sweep him up. He allowed himself to be moved to the door. He was out in the hall before popping his head back in. "You know what? You're not frowning. I told you I could help."
"Shoo!" she said, applying the broom to his face. With a laugh he stumbled away; a deft move by Roll shut the door. He was right, though.
Smiling, she sat down at her terminal and got to work.
The last round of changes didn't help as much as I would have liked- I think you guys can get the groceries a little faster than that... okay, I think I know what to do. I'll change these associations... here, and here. This is considered Western food, and that is with the condiments. That should help you find them faster.
What's that? Why don't I program in the grocery store's exact layout? Because layouts have a shelf-life, that's why- ha ha, get it? Shelf life? Never mind... Anyway, what if the store's layout changes? What if we move and have to go to another grocery store? If that happens, we'd have to redo the layout from scratch. This way you can achieve high performance no matter what happens in the future. Besides, figuring things out with context and clues, that's a higher-order mental function than just memorization, and shouldn't we be trying to evolve our brains and get better? That's what I thought.
Alright, program complete, and now I'll set it up so you'll share the program with the others when you go recharge. Good work, team.
Roll blinked as her hand broke contact with the robot. It gave her a cheery tootle and waddled off to join its brethren. Roll had to smile at that. Few things pleased her as much as happy robots.
The robots had finished putting the groceries away while she'd been working on their program. That meant it was time to prepare for the next thing. Three, two, one...
"Lunch is on the counter," she said over her shoulder.
"How do you do that?"
Rock's voice, slightly awed. She smiled.
"It just seemed like the right time," she said as she turned. She watched as Rock and Dr. Light grabbed items from vastly different menus.
"Were you tapped into home security?" Rock asked.
"What, you think I'd cheat like that?" she said, mock-offended.
"I wouldn't call it cheating," said Rock. "I'd call it being efficient. Just like me, you use the tools you've got."
The owner of the Variable Tool System, also known as the Weapon Copy System, would say something like that. "Well, that wasn't the trick anyway," said Roll. "There are other ways..."
"Mega Man! It's time for you to die!"
Boom- an airburst explosion, if Roll was any judge. Thomas nearly choked on his rice. Rock and Roll sighed in unison.
"Is that Forte?" said Thomas, coughing up rice. "Again?"
"He's... actually fifteen minutes late," Rock said abashedly. "Compared to when he's shown up the last few months, that is. I've had my combat programming loaded since yesterday, just in case. When he didn't show up on time, I'd actually started to think maybe he wouldn't. You know, maybe Wily had him tied up with something else."
Roll huffed indignantly. "Ha! As if. Like Forte listens to Wily." She crossed her arms disapprovingly.
More weapons fire sounds. "The next round burns your flower beds, Mega Man! Now come on out and fight!"
"He'd better not touch those chrysanthemums," Roll said sternly. Those had been tricky to get how she wanted them- she'd had to make two dozen updates to the gardener robot software to get them just right.
Rock stood up from the table. He sighed, not so much annoyed as resigned. "I guess there's nothing for it. Let's go, Rush. Time for our monthly appointment."
"I'll be in the lab," said Light, with a thinly-veiled subtext of "I can't bear to watch!"
"And I'll secure the house!" Roll said enthusiastically. "Oh, Dr. Light, don't leave your lunch behind. I know I don't normally allow food in the labs, but I'll make an exception. You need your strength after all that exercise. I'll send the cleaner-bots in later."
"Thanks, Roll," said Light gratefully, and clutching his bowl he went on his way.
There was a distant yell of, "Change- Mega Man!" Rock already had his combat programming loaded and his gear ready to go, Roll thought admiringly. He certainly was a master in his chosen realm- even if that realm was one most robot masters found unnatural.
And she was a master too, wasn't she? Time to assert herself in her realm. She snapped her eyes to the wall. She advanced and extended her finger into what looked at first like a power outlet but, clearly, wasn't.
Her world expanded.
She saw the house's security grid as intimately, as immediately, as she saw things with her eyes. It had been disorienting the first few times; now it was second nature. It was another part of herself, one she just happened to leave behind sometimes. The house, altogether, was just another machine, just like her body. She was it, when she wanted to be.
First things first: she double-checked the house's teleport shields. If they were breached, nothing else mattered. But no, both layers were intact, with no records of forced entry or even of external queries. Good. Physical security was next. Of the cameras, only a few were reporting movement, and those were the ones pointing out the front yard, watching Mega Man and Forte doing their monthly dance.
She resisted the temptation to watch. She had a job to do.
Anyway, no visible movement didn't mean nothing was there. Not when Wily was involved. Forte might issue his challenges as a rogue agent, but that didn't mean Wily couldn't plan around them. She'd resume her search in a moment; first, she had to complete the lockdown. All external barriers were intact, none reporting any threats. She secured everything that could be. She confirmed Dr. Light had made it to his lab and, after a moment's hesitation, locked him inside. It was for his own good- he wouldn't be coming out anyway, so all this did was keep intruders out.
Without nearly as many qualms she locked Auto into his lab, too. No one needed that kind of complication at a time like this.
Lockdown complete, she returned her attention to security sweeps, going from system to system, sector to sector. And... there. Intruder. A not-entirely-unexpected intruder.
Roll disengaged from the security system and grabbed for her broom. Two rooms away- there. Shadow Man. One of his eyes was closed, as usual; the other regarded her with some boredom.
"Confound the security here," he said in dull, uninterested tones. "It appears my stealth has failed me again. I've been detected. I'll need to abort my mission."
She regarded him from just outside melee range. "Don't think I'm ungrateful for our arrangement," she said, "but doesn't it hurt your pride as a shinobi to give yourself up like this?"
"My pride is only on the line when I'm trying," Shadow Man replied.
"I think I understand, then," Roll said. "These missions don't interest you, even though Wily keeps sending you on them. They matter to him, but not to you. So you're not invested, even if stealth is your area of mastery."
Shadow Man sighed. "Can I at least observe the battle between Mega Man and Forte?" he said, though his robotic heart clearly wasn't in it.
"Fighting Mega Man is Forte's area of mastery," Roll said, though she'd said the words before. "If Wily wants to learn about that, he can ask Forte for a memory dump and debrief later on. You're still on mission, remember? You were never in position to see the fight."
Shadow Man almost looked relieved. "In that case, I'll be going... what?"
Roll's head had jerked. When Shadow Man stopped speaking, she gave him a withering look. "Our arrangement depends on you coming alone!"
"But... I did come alone!" Shadow Man said, looking far more embarassed than when he'd been 'caught'.
"Really?" said Roll, pointing the broomstick towards Shadow Man's face. "Wily didn't assign any other units to this mission?"
Shadow Man leaned back uncomfortably, treating the broomstick with great caution. "I came alone," he insisted. For all of his shinobi stylings, he wasn't much of a liar. Roll believed him.
She still glared at him. "Don't go anywhere. We'll talk about our arrangement after I'm done," she said, then whirled and ran.
It had only been a matter of time, she supposed, before Wily got frustrated with the lackadaisical attitude of his would-be spy. Eventually he'd doubled-up on trying to infiltrate the Light household, using Shadow Man as the cover for the new agent. Well, Roll would put a stop to that. And she might even turn this to Shadow Man's advantage, too. If she could show that Shadow Man was just being cautious, which was why he was still coming home safely, she could secure the house a little more and help Shadow Man out in one swoop.
She loved helping out.
Now, to stop the intruder...
She pressed in on the bottom of her broom, spun the cleaning element to disengage it from the broomstick, and followed the protestations of her robots.
The shooting hadn't been stopped for five minutes before the robots emerged. Roll had staged them so they could be ready for just this purpose.
Their cooperation was eerie to most aesthetics. It wasn't silent; on the contrary, the robots communicated with each other quite a bit. That they weren't communicating in any way a human could understand was the eerie part.
Eerie or no, the robots moved with great purpose. They had a job to do: repair the damage of the monthly duel.
There wasn't as much damage as one might expect. Robot masters were certainly capable of great destruction, but it was anything but a default setting. Rock avoided collateral damage to as great an extent as possible. He couldn't have called himself "Mega Man" if he followed any other policy. For his part, Forte had learned a great deal about Rock: namely, that he didn't have to threaten mass destruction to provoke a fight, only local destruction. If Forte pushed too far, he caused Rock to fight with the desperate fervor to save others that summoned his greatest powers. In between was the sweet spot.
Forte had learned, in other words, that he could accomplish more with threats of violence and no follow-through than he could with outright demolition.
Throw in Rock and Forte's mutual preference for combat in the vertical plane, and the majority of their plasma bolts had sailed off into the atmosphere, dissipating harmlessly.
"The majority" was not the same as "all". The front yard of the Light house had been torn up yet again, potholes had been blown in the road, and a few of the houses sported new and messy-looking plasma burns.
That those plasma burns were limited to the surfaces of the houses… well, that was Roll's doing.
Most of the renovation robots tended first to the road and sidewalks, under the logical principle that emergency services, if any were needed, had to use the road. Others moved to the neighbors' houses, replacing damaged materials, resurfacing their faces, repainting... and taking the opportunity to up-armor those houses in the process. It'd been years since the Lights had moved to this neighborhood. Thanks to Roll, few original materials remained of those houses' exteriors.
Roll couldn't let other people be hurt any more than Rock could. If there would be fighting in her neighborhood, her solution was to fortify the neighborhood.
The neighbors had complained, at first. They were hardly accustomed to such aggressive, unsolicited help. Yet the upgrades were paid for out of Roll's household budget, and they did increase property values. Roll never made it inconvenient for them—not any more inconvenient than post-battle repairs normally were, at least.
So the robots worked on, making the world a little better if a little stranger. In the background, insurance claims were filed with documentation attached. Money flowed from some bank accounts to others. All of it happened under the watchful eye of one of the eldest and most-practiced robot masters.
As Roll had said, Rock and Dr. Light made all sorts of messes. Her role was to clean them up.
"Phew!" said Rock, once more out of armor and back in his human-esque clothes. He was slumping in one of the kitchen chairs, showing his exhaustion. "Forte pushed me really hard that time."
"You're so brave, fighting him off like that," said Roll. "A robot master who only cares about fighting... it's such a scary idea. It feels... wrong. I'm glad you could take care of him."
"Much closer with some of those buster shots and he would have taken care of me," said Rock, sipping liberally from an e-tank. "He's getting better, and he was already Wily's fiercest fighter.
"Still," he added, "I've got something he doesn't have."
"What's that?"
"People worth fighting for," Rock said, tipping the e-tank in her direction.
Roll's core just about over-heated at that. She turned and started sweeping a portion of the floor that was already swept, mopped, waxed, and polished.
Dr. Light walked into the kitchen then. "Your armor's in the repair cycle," he said to Rock. "Another hour or so and it'll be good enough to support combat, and in three hours it'll be back to one hundred percent."
"Did you implement those changes we talked about?" said Rock excitedly.
Dr. Light smiled. "Of course. When I said one hundred percent, I meant your new one hundred percent."
"Great!" Rock said with a fist-pump. "I can't wait to try it out!" Not because it meant he'd be a stronger fighter, Roll knew. Rock had been created as a lab assistant. He couldn't help but geek out on new tech.
"Sounds like a pretty good day, despite our interruption," said Dr. Light. "I did those changes, and made some more progress on our other research project."
"I replenished our parts supplies, set up the next three experiments, and got Forte out of our hair for a month," Rock said.
"I took care of the house!" Roll said.
After a second's hesitation, both Rock and Dr. Light smiled and nodded- perhaps a little too enthusiastically.
"Yes, of course- good job," said Dr. Light.
"I don't know what we'd do without you, Roll," added Rock.
Roll preened.
There was a crashing sound beneath their feet. Dr. Light groaned. "I'd better go and check on Auto," he said. "It doesn't do to leave him unsupervised for too long."
Rock hauled himself to his feet. "Which means I'll need to rally the lab robots," he said. He walked to Roll to hand her the spent e-tank. "Thanks, sis."
"My pleasure," she said sincerely.
He brushed past her on his way out- and then whirled, eyes wide.
"What is it?" Roll asked, unnerved. Rock's face had an almost... Mega Man look to them.
The little lab assistant, who also happened to be the most destructive force on planet Earth, frowned. Maybe he was still hyper-alert from being in battle, but something had sure caught his attention. "Could I see your broom?" he asked.
Roll hesitated, but decided that whatever he thought about the broom itself would be less weird than her saying 'no'. "Here you go," she said, handing it to him.
He took it, and immediately did a double-take. "Is this broomstick... titanium?"
She snatched it right back. "And what if it is?"
Rock blinked. "It has notches in it. What kind of cleaning can you possibly be doing where you dent titanium?"
"Well," she said, half-chuckling, "cleaning is hard work, you know?" As bad a liar as Shadow Man was, he was still better at it than any Light, and Roll was a Light through and through.
"And when I went to put Forte in the recycle bin," Rock said, slowly, "there were robot parts already in it. Robot parts that weren't from any of our family work in the labs."
Roll began sweeping at an area that was already so scrupulously clean that her efforts actually made it dirtier.
"Roll... what did you say you did today?"
She stilled the broom, and looked at him again. "I told you already," she said, meeting his eyes. "I took care of the house. It's a small area of mastery, but it's mine."
It stalled Mega Man for a good while. Then he smiled. He had boyish charm in spades; it took effect immediately. "Good job, Roll!" he said. "You're the best robot master I know!"
Roll fairly swooned.
Roll was the last Light to rest that evening. Rock turned in early, of course- he'd expended a lot of energy in his duel with Forte, and he had plenty of maintenance and clean-up tasks for his body to do to ramp down from combat ops. Auto worked odd hours and consulted no one on what those were. A few of Roll's robots were assigned to keep an eye on his lab, just in case. As for Dr. Light, well, he wasn't a young man anymore. He could maintain during a war by sheer force of will, but this wasn't wartime.
It also made sense for the robot master to be the last to rest. How could she meet their needs if she was down and they were up? No. Better to wait.
She sat still in the darkness as the minutes stretched on (she suppressed her internal chronometer so it wouldn't tell her) and the house slowly went still and quiet. When there'd been no noise for a good while (other than her ever-industrious renovation bots), she nodded contentedly and allowed herself to go to her own room.
It was, she realized, the first time she'd returned to her room since waking up in the morning. That was no real surprise. Her life wasn't in here. It was out there.
She laid down in her tube. An interface plugged in to the back of her head, reconnecting her to the house's computer system. One last sweep through the work queues for the overnight worker robots... one last security sweep... one last check of system logs... good, good, good. Okay. She could recharge then.
She hit a switch inside the tube. It began to shut. As it did, it brought photos of her family into her line of sight. Elec Man, Ice Man, Flame Man, Guts Man, Cut Man, Bomb Man, Dr. Light, and Rock. Always Rock.
Help out. Continuous improvement. Light family mottos, entwined for the sake of all who bore that surname. They would follow the mottos for her. She would do the same for them.
She smiled. "I love you too," she said.
Shutdown procedures claimed her as the tube clicked shut.
End.