Opening comments:
Hello, nice to meet you, my name is Jikoken'o. You can call me Jiko for short. :) I've decided to try my hand at fanfiction.
I considered calling Bass by his Japanese name, Forte, simply to prevent me from constantly misreading 'Bass' as a fish, but I guess I'll just stick to his english name...
Bass stared skeptically at his creator. Wily was getting up in his years, and it was a very real possibility that extended periods of time exposed to an array of unnatural electronic waves had some kind of adverse effect upon the mad scientist.
"Really? That's the best a 'genius' like you can come up with?" Bass did not hesitate to coat the word 'genius' with some venom; he didn't exactly respect Wily. The sarcasm seemed to be lost on the old man, however, as Wily just cackled and ranted on about how infallible his plan was this time.
"It's brilliant! Mega Man's sister is so weak and vulnerable, after all, and I'll bet he's got more of an attachment to her than Light. I don't know why I didn't think of kidnapping Roll sooner."
Air Man, who, in the summer heat, had been given the humiliating position as Wily's window fan, meekly offered, "But, sir, I believe you have tried kidnapping her b—"
"SILENCE, FOOL! And turn yourself up to 3, I'm melting over here."
"Yes, sir..."
With no sympathy for Air's circumstances, Bass just continued to stare with a glazed expression. "And, since you dragged me in here, I suppose you expect me to kidnap the Blue Idiot's sister?"
"Yes. With Roll in our territory, Mega Man will be forced to come for her... But this time, I'll threaten to deactivate Roll, which will render him useless. Then I will have all of my robots attack him together! Mega Man will be overwhelmed and ultimately defeated. And I'm sure that kidnapping Roll will be an easy task for a powerful robot such as yourself." Wily was not one to openly compliment his 'children', but he knew that stroking Bass' massive ego a little bit would be enough to jump-start the cocky bot into action.
"But of course it will. Expect me back in no more than half an hour." With that said, Bass was gone faster than Quick Man. Wily chuckled at how easily manipulated Bass was.
True to his word, Bass kicked open the backdoor of Wily's base in exactly 25 minutes with a flailing, screaming girl in his arms. Her tears and threats of "Rock will never forgive you!" had no impact on Bass. He planted her feet on the ground in front of Wily, but kept a strong grip around her arms and waist to keep her from trying to attack or run away. She did take a couple of swings at Wily's face with her legs, but apparently being in a short dress limited her range of motion.
"Wonderful! Good work, Bass, I knew you could do it." The doctor smiled a crooked, wicked smile.
Bass shrugged impassively. "Any idiot could have kidnapped this girl. She was in the front yard, completely alone. I didn't see Light or Mega Dweeb anywhere."
"Oh, really?" Wily looked Roll up and down, just to make sure she didn't have a buster hiding anywhere. Roll made an ugly face in return.
"If this is another one of your stupid plans to lure Rock here, then you have bad timing," she stated impudently, "because he and Dr. Light left town for an electronics convention and won't be home for a week or so. I stayed home to catch up on laundry, which Bass very rudely interrupted..." Apparently she was more indignant at having her chores intruded upon than being kidnapped.
"..."
"..."
Bass and Wily exchanged surprised expressions.
"Are... are you freakin' serious?" Bass groaned.
"Lovely. Just lovely." Wily's palm flew up to his forehead as he sighed heavily and threw himself into his office chair. He wasn't expecting such a wrench to be thrown into his plan.
"Now what are we going to do, GENIUS?" Bass spat angrily, and unintentionally tightening his grip on Roll in the process. When she started to whimper, he relaxed a bit and mumbled a small apology.
"Well, we can't just let her go or my plan will be ruined. She'll be too hard to catch again if she knows. I suppose if it's only a week, we could keep her locked here and just wait for Light and Mega Man to come back." Wily mulled over this option calculatingly and nodded his head; it didn't seem like it'd be too difficult. "You watch over her Bass, it's your fault we're in this mess anyway."
Bass began to yell and squish poor Roll again. "WHAT ARE YOU GOING ON ABOUT, YOU OLD GEEZER?! THIS WAS YOUR PLAN! I OUGHTA SLUG YOU!!"
"B-Bass..." Roll uttered with what little air hadn't been squeezed out of her lungs. "You're bruising me..."
"Ah, oops." He loosened up again. "Screw it, whatever. I'll take care of the girl for the time being, but I wanna be the first to knock Mega Man's brains loose when he comes to save his damsel in distress."
With his (theoretical, what with being a robot) blood even hotter than the blazing sun outside and steam emanating from his head, Bass carried Roll off to the Robot Masters' residential area of Wily's hideout, leaving Wily behind to flesh out his demented (and partially retarded) plot.
Now permitted to walk on her own two feet (the hideout was all locked up with no escapes and a lot of Wily's robots around, so she had no motivation to run), Roll followed Bass down a long hallway. The place looked more like a storage warehouse than a home; there was no decoration, photos, or furniture outside of the bare basics... Even the floor was a cold, impersonal metal. Their footsteps echoed against it in a lonely, barren sort of way. There were doors on each side of the hallway, each labeled with the DWN numbers of the room's residents.
Near the end of the hall, Bass stopped shortly in front of one of the doors. He stopped so suddenly that Roll, who had been curiously reading all of the labels, walked right into him. "Ow..."
Bass just stood like a pole, lazily glancing down at his prisoner. He advised halfheartedly, "Be more careful," and unlocked the door.
When it clicked open, Bass tugged the hesitant Roll inside and locked the door behind them. Little alarms went off in the girl's brain, and she began to look around worriedly, like a helpless rabbit walking into the lion's den. The room looked just as basic and emotionless as the rest of the 'house'. A bed (with no blankets or sheets), a shoddy lamp, and a closet. Roll wondered briefly about what was in the closet, but she was more concerned with her present situation.
"Um..." She was almost too afraid to ask. "Wh-what are you going to do...?"
Bass was completely oblivious to what was going through Roll's mind and answered dully, "Since apparently I'm a baby-sitter bot now, you have to stay with me. I don't know why the old idiot doesn't get one of his other useless robots to watch over you, though... I've got better things to do..."
For some silly reason, Roll felt guilty for being thought of as an inconvenience. (Whether it was her polite nature or sincere sympathy for the irritable robot, Roll wasn't sure.) "I... uh, I'm sorry..."
"Don't apologize, it's not like you asked to be kidnapped. This is Wily's fault. I don't know why that kook didn't think to scout things out first, but he's getting old and stupid." Feeling quite done with talking about his main source of irritation, Bass lowered himself onto the bed and laid on his back. Roll lingered awkwardly by the doorway with a million different question flooding into her mind all at once. Soaking in the silence for a moment, she carefully picked her first inquiry.
"So... what am I going to do all week...?" Roll feared that the answer was 'nothing'. Roll was a very task-oriented robot; she gained the most satisfaction from a job well done. And it was impossible to do a job well if there was no job at all.
"I don't know... I suppose you'll just have to tag along with me so that I can keep an eye on you." It was obvious that Bass wasn't as interested in the details as Roll was. He looked more interested in the patterns on the ceiling. But Roll persisted, wringing her hands nervously all the while.
"What... what about sleeping? Do I have to sleep in the same room as you...?"
"I can't watch you if you're in another room," he replied in a very matter-of-fact tone. His cool demeanor only unnerved Roll further. Her eyes continued to grow wider, and she was currently shuffling back and forth on her feet, itching to move somewhere but with no place to go. The image it created looked more like something to the effect of dancing than fidgetiness, however, and had Bass been looking in her direction, he probably would have laughed.
"B-but... but I..." The sentence died on her lips and the room fell silent again.
It seemed to Roll that Bass did not speak body language, nor pick up on tone of voice. He remained as apathetic as he had been when he lugged her into Wily's room in the first place (treating her, she remembered with a little bit of resentment, like a backpack or some other unwieldy package). Outside of anger against his 'father', Roll wondered if Bass was even capable of feeling anything at all. Such a train of thought led her to consider Bass's objectives and motives. Was his sole purpose of design to fight? Did he actually truly want that for himself, or was he just doing his job? Did he even 'want' anything at all? Roll wasn't sure, but with these new ideas taking shape, she cast a quiet, solemn glance at her kidnapper. A sudden desire to answer these rhetorical questions formed in her fickle, girlish mind. After all, he felt like a different being in this domestic setting; she had seen him fight with her brother before, but that Bass and this Bass seemed like different people. Was it just a mask, or were there more facets to him than met the casual viewer's eye?
More and more questioned developed, and Roll found pondering over them to be a good way to pass the rest of the uneventful evening.
Closing comments:
Ah, it's been a while since I've written something. It's a little bit stiff, but I hope that you enjoyed it anyway. I'm not aiming to be too articulate or poetic, I just wanted an excuse to write about these two. (chuckle) Please be sure to review, I want to know what you all thought of this! :)