I don't think I need to say this, but I don't own Megaman or any of the characters or locations in this story. They belong to Capcom, and Capcom only.
To say that Bubbleman was irritated would be an understatement.
"Why?" The Scuba-clad robot thought to himself as he half-walked, half-hopped towards the main headquarters of Skull Fortress. "No one even knows where this place is…" he grumbled angrily before continuing, "There's no reason to continue with this." Running a diagnostic through his head, he calculated that wasting Internal operations energy on unhappiness would have a 64% chance of an undesirable outcome. Tearing his attention away from the snickers of the other robots he knocked on the skull-emblazoned steel door.
"Come in," a grouchy voice answered. Bubbleman obliged, entering the room. It was no different than usual, various robot parts and blueprints littered the floor, sharing thecramped space with empty cups of coffee and spare labcoats. The aquatic machine ambled up to the tiny desk at the back of the room, where sat his creator, Dr. Albert Wily. A balding man in his late 50s, Dr. Wily was tinkering with a small grey device that he threw aside carelessly when Bubbleman reached the desk.
"Ah, Bubbleman you received my notice?" The man said, previous grouchiness gone.
"With all due respect Doctor, if I hadn't I would not be here right now."
"Ah, yes of course." Wily shook his head of invisible fog before continuing. "I haven't slept in two days, and it's taking its toll." The old man looked up to his face and coughed, "Right. Now, Bubbleman, listen up. I have a sneaking suspicion that Megaman will try to enter here from your quadrant of the fortress, the right drainage area. I know you are specially designed for underwater combat, but the fact stands that you are a much older model than Waveman or Pirateman."
Bubbleman frowned behind his mask. Yes, he was less advanced, but that was no reason to think that he incompetent. True, his three battles against Megaman had ended in losses, but he was still quite capable of holding his own against almost any other robot.
"..And because of this handicap, I've decided to give you some help in your guard duties." Wily's gruff voice brought Bubbleman back to reality. His optics snapped back toward Wily's eyes. "I will be receiving help?" disbelief seeping out of his words.
"Yes, that's what I just said." Wily repeated impatiently.
"I hope you were paying attention, because I'm not going to repeat myself! I'm a busy man as you can see. That's all, back to your quadrant!" "But Doctor! I don't think that Megam-" but his pleas went unfinished. "I don't want to hear your mindless babble!" Wily snapped. "Get back now, before I decide to make you into a toaster!"
A few curse words rang through Bubbleman's main processer as he left the room and began to make his way back toward the drainage system. What was the point? He was sure Megaman did not know where this particular Skull Fortress was, and Wily hadn't done anything to provoke Megaman to come after him.
"He's getting paranoid." Bubbleman muttered to himself. "See's Megaman everywhere." Ignoring a familiar screech of "Buuurrrrn!" far to used to it to gain any amusement from the sight of six robots piling themselves on top of Burnerman to stop him from destroying yet another training room as he jumped into the teleporter that would take him inside the drainage system.
A streak of grey and green materialized into the water of the drainage system, revealing Bubbleman within a second. Hoping to at least have Waveman to talk to, he saw no one else there. With a sigh, he began operating at max potential again, drawing in the water that powered him. Swimming leisurely to the right latter, he sat down against the wall of a all-to familiar room. A massive grill took up one section of the wall for the waters of Skull fortress to drain from, but now it was closed, opening only every five months, or so to wash away intruders. A small hallway from which he had entered from protruded from the opposite end, revealing a dark passageway that would lead to the main "body" of the castle.
With a sigh, Bubbleman pointed the plasma cannon on his right arm toward the makeshift target against the west side of the wall. He had carved it himself, and while his aiming skills were programmed, they were not perfect, and varied with his moods and thoughts; Thoughts that were now on his earlier conversation with his creator. So, he was to receive help.
Did Dr. Wily not think him capable? What about the time that Crashman glitched and began to think he was a disco ball? Hadn't he been the one who subdued him long enough for Clownman to shock him back to reality? He wasn't completely useless!
"Then again," he noted out loud "Crazed robots thinking they're disco balls don't come along that often." He frowned. Hadn't Wily relied on him three times? Few other robot masters had even been in battle more than once! He wasn't useless.
For awhile, Bubbleman practiced his shooting skills on his target, never getting anything beyond a 70. His reminisces about his past experiences quickly drove the lingering thought of who the "helper" might be from his mind. However, it was quickly brought back to his mind when an unfamiliar voice spoke up. "DWN.011 Bubbleman?" A voice unlike any other he had heard before asked.
Bubbleman quickly turned around and had he been built with a jaw, it would have dropped.
Floating in the water from his left, the owner of the voice now floated before him. A robot he had never seen before. A robot of such breathtaking beauty that all the water seemed to become heavier around him. Atop its head was a blue helmet with a yellow crystal set in. Below that set a large pair of blue optics, blue as the sea itself. The face below those eyes was donning a flirtatious grin that was focused upon Bubbleman with apparent interest. Blue body armor covered the robots middle, and last and perhaps most interesting of all, a large fin, similar to the one on Mermaids from human legend made up its body from the waist down. Bubbleman took in and processed all this visual information very slowly, he wondered if his voice processor were glitching before spitting out:
"Yes, I am DWN. 011 Bubbleman, and who are you?" His question made system humm with interest and anticipation.
"DLN.067, Splashwoman." The Mermaid-like robot said. "I have been assigned to assist you in guarding the sector of Skull Fortress." After speaking those words, her tone became much more casual, causing him no little shock. "Well, now that we have the formalities out of the way, why don't you show me around?"
Bubbleman's main processor was on the verge of overheating as it searched for what new programmed emotion he was feeling. A quick scan of all possibilities yielded nothing, so he stopped, figuring it best just to reply. "There isn't much to see, that grate leads out of the castle to a river, and that corridor leads back to the interior."
"Wow, this has to be a pretty boring job." Splashwoman said with a wink, revealing a purple eyelid. "What say we lighten it up a bit?" He was going to ask her how before she answered that question for him. She opened her mouth…and sang.
Her voice was unlike anything Bubbleman had ever heard, though the words she was singing were next to impossible to understand, the elegant tone it carried was beyond anything Bubble could compute. He was hypnotized on that adoring song she was singing, practically zoning out as he tried to focus. It was nothing less than one of the most beautiful things he had ever heard. It was a literal Siren's call; luring unlucky sailors to their doom with its hypnotic melody.
Bubbleman was lost in a world of song. He felt as if he was floating throughout a dreamland, where no strife could ever occur, and not the boring dump of a drainage system that reality told him he was in. Then, as abruptly as she had started, Splashwoman stopped singing, bringing Bubbleman back to reality with a crash. "Well?" Splashwoman asked somewhat impatiently in a way that made him think it had been more then the 3 seconds it had been since she stopped singing.
"Did you like it?" Her tail swished with what he could only interpret as agitation.
Bubbleman was at a loss for words. "I will say this," He said slowly. "I am programmed to be fluent in fifteen different languages, and not one of them has a word that can describe the beauty of that song." Splashwoman let out a vain giggle. "I get responses like that a lot, but can I help it if I'm so talented? I remember one day when I had a karaoke competition with Gutsman…" She went into a long-winded and self-promotional tale, which Bubbleman relished, as it gave him time to think.
This emotion he was feeling, he had finally found the definition of what best matched it in his databanks. Love (Noun): A profoundly tender, passionate affection for another. 'Could it be?' He questioned himself internally. 'Is this "love" part of my programming? If so, is this "love" for her? How is this emotion even logical?'
"…And would you believe it? He actually broke the stage!"
"I do believe it." Bubbleman said, trying to piece together parts of the story he had heard. "He's no lightweight."
"Yeah," Splashwoman said, oblivious to the fact that Bubbleman had hardly been listening. "It was a good time, but it was boring having my audio receptors repaired. Speaking of boring, what do you do all day around here? It doesn't seem too exciting."
"To be honest," Bubbleman said feeling awkward, as if one mistake could cost him his life, "There isn't much to do. I mainly practice my shooting on that target." He said, pointing towards the makeshift target with small scorch marks everywhere. "Hmm, Mind if I try?" Splashwoman asked. "N-no," Bubbleman's speech chip stuttered. What was wrong with him? "Go ahead."
She gave him another wink, and suddenly, a large black and silver trident appeared in her right hand. "It has its own individual teleportation system." She explained, mistaking the blank look in Bubbleman's eyes for confusion. "But you should know all about that, dealing with guys like Metalman," a micheivious twinkle shone in her opticals. "Or should I say the world's largest can-opener?" She laughed to herself, and then aimed the head of her trident towards the wall. Faster than a human could blink, three separate trident heads, radiating with laser energy flew from the original, and embedded themselves in the wall.
"Ooh, I wonder how I did!" Splashwoman said happily, and swam over to wall. A still conflicted Bubbleman followed. "Let's see, a 65, an 80, and a…30?" Splashwoman said incredulously. "Alas, my combat skills are not quite up to par with my singing…"
"On the contrary," said Bubbleman, finally computing the massive emotion calculation that had been going on since he met Splashwoman. "If that was your first time aiming for such a small target as compared to a larger one, there is a 79% chance that you will have much more success in future."
"You're sweet." Splashwoman said, using a phrase she had learned from a human female. And with that, she planted a small kiss on where his cheek would be. Bubbleman's electronic brain surged out of control, impulses and memories went everywhere. He was laying on a table half completed, he was fighting a brown-clad Megaman and was in great pain, he was waiting inside a teleporter and the memories continued.
"Bubbleman?" A calming voice that sounded like it was from miles away resounded.
"Are you alright?" Bubbleman who was still malfunctioning, desperately attempted to manually override his memory circuit board to find out why he had glitched so suddenly, once again realized where he was at the sound of her voice. "Yes, I am…okay."
"What happened?" Splashwoman asked. "You looked like you were about to explode! Was my kiss that hot?"
"No." Bubbleman replied slowly. "It's that something I had repressed overrode me."
"What?" Splashwoman asked, looking concerned and confused.
"That…that I love you Splashwoman." Bubbleman said somberly.
Splashwoman stared at him for fifteen seconds straight, completely motionless. Then, without warning, she swam forward and embraced him a human gesture known as a "hug".
"You big idiot! I was wondering when you'd pick up on my charms!" She laughed, pulling him tighter. "Ever since I saw your photo in the laboratory, I loved you too! Everything about you is just delicious! Those flippers are adorable, and you love the sea, Just like me!" She was swaying them in the water with the force of her embrace. "I knew there was someone out there for me instead of all those lecherous humans!" And with that, she pulled down Bubbleman's mask revealing a mess of wires and hydraulics, and kissed him there, longer and more passionately than before.
Bubbleman made no effort to escape or calculate what was happening. He just sat there with Splashwoman's lips on his water converter, blissfully content with his new partner.
'Maybe this guard duty won't be so bad after all…'