A/N: A thank you to Maverick Hunter Phoenix, Kink Cycko, MungoJerry, and Silver Horror for the reviews! I hadn't actually expected any... I'm so happy!

And so, therefore, I give you the next chapter! Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Rockman, Rockman X, or any of the characters mentioned in this story. I do own the plot though.

Chapter 1
The First Look Into the World

Rock stared at the empty space where his creator's hologram once stood. He nodded his head. "I will Father, I will." He looked towards X's empty capsule. "But, I think I need to find X first." With that, Rock strode out of the lab and into the outside world… one-hundred-and-sixteen years after his deactivation. Rock stared disbelievingly at the city before him.

Robots. Everywhere.

At least Rock knew he wouldn't feel out of place walking on the streets with his armor on. There were at least one robot per human Rock saw, and even then, there would probably have been more outside of their armor.

He was beside himself in confusion. Had there been more robot makers besides Light-hakase, Cossack-hakase, and Wily? Some of the designs didn't seem familiar.

Even more confusing was the lack of attention his armor seemed to bring. Not that he actually wanted attention, it was nice to be ignored; but Rock couldn't help but feel slightly disappointed that his accomplishments and fame hadn't carried on into this timeline, as many years as it may have been.

Rock decided that he needed information on when and where he was; without it, who knew how long it would be until he found his younger brother?

Rock walked up to a random human and attempted to ask the location of the nearest library.

"Anou,(1)" Rock said tapping the elbow of an older looking elderly man. The man turned to face the bioroid, looking slightly cross. "Ah, would you happen to know the location of the nearest library?"

The man 'hmph'-ed. "I thought repliroids were supposed to know those kind of things by heart. Some help you are if you don't know even that."

Rock was taken aback from the evident disdain in the man's face and voice. "I-I'm sorry. I'm new around here…. Ah, so do you know…?" Rock asked the man timidly.

"It's five blocks up from here. Take a left at 15th road." The man supplied grudgingly.

Rock smiled hesitantly and bowed to the human. "Thank you very much." He said, and started walking off in the direction he was pointed.

A good distance away from the scary man, Rock began to contemplate the man's words. He had been called a 'repliroid' and the man seemed to generally dislike him… for being a so-called-'repliroid'. Maybe it was a new word to mean robot, or Bioroid? Either way, evidently, something bad had happened to cause such prejudice from the human. Of course, it could have been just a small minority of the people who disliked 'repliroids'….

Either way, Rock was sorely hoping the latter speculation was correct. He wished to avoid turmoil of any cause.

Rock looked closely around his surroundings as he walked. Whatever this city was, it certainly wasn't the Neo Tokyo he remembered, if it was Neo Tokyo at all. A large tower stood in the distance, seemingly reaching past the sky, looming over the city and drawing Rock's attention in general.

So much had changed… the fact only served more purpose of getting to the library. Rock quickened his pace.

12th,13th, 14th, ahh… 15th. Rock counted subconsciously as he walked past the signs. Turn left….

A large explosion blew plumes of smoke and smog forcefully out in front of Rock, stopping his musings. Rock habitually jumped back (years of fighting Wily's robots tended to do so to one) and was surprised at how far he flew back. He certainly had not applied much more pressure than he usually did for such an evasive maneuver. Rock quickly dismissed it for one of Light-hakase's upgrades and quickly fell into a defensive position.

Screams ensued from all sides as both humans and robots fled fearfully from the scene. A few actually attempted to evacuate Rock as well (although none actually met much success), to whom he politely refused and urged that those get to safety quickly as possible.

When the smoke finally cleared, Rock found himself facing the side of an unusually large robot, slightly larger than Gutsman. It seemed to be shaped very similarly to…

Centaurman? Rock stared.

"Kneel, pitiful humans! You'll all fall in the name of Sigma!" The Centaur roared, raising its hooves in a threatening manner.

Sigma? Another threat to humans? Rock frowned. He had hoped there was no such thing in X's era, at least.

Sighing, Rock resolved to look up every scrap of information he could find later. He silently hoped X wasn't too caught up in this situation, and that he was safe. Hopefully, his brother didn't end up like this robot, or Zero.

Zero…. Rock wondered what had happened to the android, but placed his thoughts for later introspection. The so-called repliroid in front of him demanded his attention.

The Centaur seemed to have finally noticed him. "Oh? You're still here? Idiot. Trying to protect these weakling humans? Pah!" The robot actually spat at this point. Rock nearly jumped. "You're hopeless. These humans are doomed anyways. Forget them." The robot casually raised one of his legs to stomp down on a human's head.

Rock gasped in horror. No robot – even one of Wily's robots – had ever intentionally killed or hurt a human being. The only ones with the ability to do so were X and Zero.

These robots shouldn't have been able to break the three laws of robotics, unless….

Rock's thoughts were abruptly cut off as he hastily evaded one of the robot's hooves.

"Die!" the centaur growled as he repeatedly attempted to stomp down on Rock.

Rock dodged and jumped away neatly. He activated his buster and charged it. Not quite sure of the other robot's defense, Rock charged to the third level and fired.

To say Rock was surprised when his shot completely tore through the centaur's armor, and into the circuitry was a slight understatement. He himself was thrown back a couple yards, not anticipating the strong rebound from the sheer power of his buster. Rock shakily stood up and walked towards the presumably dead robot. He felt… guilty? He couldn't tell. The feeling was new to him; he felt horrible, if that were any indication to his current emotion.

Rock stared silently at the robot's corpse as oil and coolant spilled out, and… a flicker of something purple.

Rock, without thinking, reached down and cupped the thing with one hand. The thing twisted into a purple skull before vanishing.

Dark matter. What was it doing here? Rock was certain that Duo had destroyed all particles of it before he left. So, why….

"Hey, you! Deactivate your weapon and turn to face me with both your hands in the air." A commanding voice spoke from behind Rock. Startled, Rock spun around without deactivating his buster and aimed it at the speaker.

"Hey! I told you to deactivate your weapon!" the person said, almost exasperatedly, but Rock wasn't listening anymore.

"Zero." Rock said quietly. He tensed, compressing the urge to shoot the android on the spot.

The speaker, Zero, smirked at Rock. "Cool, you know my name, eh? Yeah, well, I suppose you would, 'cause I've saved the world a few times and all…." And with that, the android went off on a tangent into a narcissistic monologue about his 'greatness' and 'heroific-ness' if such a word existed.

Rock listened to this carefully, unsure of what to make of it. This was… Zero wasn't it? Wily's last creation. But… he didn't remember him? And what was this talk about… saving humans?

Light-hakase, he had said that Duo had taken Zero back into Wily's fortress… or whatever was left of it (Zero hadn't slacked off in making mass destruction; not even in his own home). Now that Rock thought of it, he had never learned of what happened to the android after he was supposedly taken back to Wily's fortress. Rock wondered what happened after some thirty years.

Even so, Rock understood that Zero had changed, but was it for the better, or for the worse (although Rock extremely doubted this; the fact that the Wily-bot hadn't attacked him yet provided evidence)?

"Hey, Zero!" Rock snapped back to attention and saw a smaller spiky haired robot with a scar (a scar? But robots didn't have those…) over his face in the shape of an 'x'. Zero, distracted, stopped in his monologue and turned to face the other robot, who promptly summoned two pistols out of thin air and shot at him.

"Bwah?!" Zero cried in surprise as the robot shot at him. He ducked hastily and the salvo of plasma bullets came flying towards Rock. In a split second, Rock jumped into the air, far out of harms range and landed gracefully a few yards back.

Rock wondered if the spiky haired robot was another enemy, but he realized that throughout Zero's monologue, he hadn't lowered his buster from Zero's form. Perhaps then… this robot was Zero's ally?

"Hey! What do you think you're doing Axl?!" Zero wailed as he turned his head to face the other robot from his position on the ground. "You could've hit me!"

"But I didn't!" The robot, Axl, grinned. Zero frowned.

"The fact that you could've counts." The disgruntled Zero huffed.

Axl ignored the fuming android and instead looked towards Rock, a serious look replacing the teasing one he had a few moments before.

Finally, a few terse moments later, "So, you're the Irregular responsible for this?" Axl asked Rock awkwardly. His face relaxed into a innocent confused expression as he said, "'Cause really, you don't look much like most of the Irregulars I've faced before." He frowned. "Now that I think about it, you look kinda like X." Axl turned to Zero inquisitively.

"I'm not sure if he's related to X or not." Zero shrugged. "He looks like he would be though, eh?"

Rock listened as the two conversed, intrigued by their mentioning of X. Perhaps it was his brother X (he didn't quite think that many people were named X nowadays… not that he knew what 'nowadays' was), although Rock wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not.

"Anyways, we're gonna have you come with us to Irregular Hunter HQ with us." Zero said as he approached Rock. Wary, Rock backed away slightly, right hand resting on his buster habitually.

"We're not gonna bite you know. We just need you for questioning." Axl said as he lightly fingered his pistols, spinning them around on his index fingers like a cowboy out of an old western movie.

'Questioning' and 'coming with us' started to sound more dubious than before.

"Can't I… not?" Rock said, sounding more like a mouse than robot.

"Unless you can magically make yourself less suspicious, or completely disappear altogether, I don't think so." Zero said offhandedly.

Rock bit his lip and took a step back, feeling uncertain whether or not to follow Zero somewhere (were one to be nearly killed by someone, they wouldn't follow them either, even if the other person had forgotten about them). Finally, Rock raised his buster to point at Zero looking awkward (as he himself had never initiated a fight (the Wily-bots were always the ones to challenge him)), yet at the same time trying to look intimidating as well.

"I'm sorry, but I'm not quite sure I want to follow you to… Irregular Hunter HQ." Rock said, sounding more uncertain and apologetic than threatening. "Won't you let me go?"

Zero looked bemused. "Sorry kid, but we can't really have that." His hand moved to the handle of… something strapped on his back. Rock tensed and crouched into a more stable position.

"Yeah, we can't just let an Irregular go and weak more havoc, can we?" Axl said as he pointed his guns at the Bioroid. He released the safety with a click.

Rock's situation seemed to get more worse by the second. Looking at the outcome of the last time he had fought with Zero… well, he didn't really stand a chance against both Zero and another robot of who he hadn't anything to gauge his strength with.

Rock grimaced as he weighed his options. Considering how little percentage there was of him somehow defeating both Zero and Axl, there really was no other choice but to run. He looked around the sparsely populated area and examined the tall buildings on either side of him. He calculated the space in between the two buildings and their approximate height, seeing whether or not it would make it….

Rock allowed himself a smile as he got his calculations. Perhaps he had a chance after all.

"Fine then." Rock replied loudly to the awaiting robots. "Don't expect me to come easily without a fight."

"Good," Zero said back to the Bioroid. "It wouldn't be fun otherwise."

Axl grinned. "Don't think we're gonna go easy on you just 'cause you're cute!"

Cute?

Rock was distracted and he nearly slipped as he charged forwards. What weird opponents he had.

No matter. Rock smiled childishly. He would come out the winner this round.

(1) Anou: It doesn't really have a correct translation, but if you were to translate into English, it'd mean something along the lines of um, or er. It's just a filler word really.

Actually, I need some information on X, Zero, Axl, and the history of Rockman X in general. As I've said before, I myself have never played any Rockman/MegaMan game... so, yeah. Help would be very much appreciated!

And so, on this note, review please!