Sorry about the delayed update, but Black Friday happened and I'm one of the unfortunate souls that works in retail. Mandatory 10-hour shifts, anyone? I'm just glad it's over. Anyway, on to chapter two, in which Rock finds out just how sharp Metal's blades are.

Mega Man is copyrighted to Capcom.

This is a collaboration between Haruna Rei and Laryna6 on fanfiction dot net.


He expected to be stopped when he got to the facility, but when he peered through the window at the gatehouse, he didn't see anyone. "Hello?" Rock asked, and realized that he'd turned his sensors all the way on after the attack, because he felt someone fallen behind the counter.

Not an ordinary human, but not one of the nephews, either. They felt like... Inwardly wincing and making a note to apologize later, he tore the door open, trying not to damage the frame.

Kneeling next to the man, he touched his cheek. Yes, those were nanites, almost exactly the same as the ones his brothers had given the patients and staff at the hospitals. The syringe left on the desk would have been a clue for a human, but for him it was redundant. Although it was a little nice of them to make it so obvious, so the paramedics, when they came, or other people did, would know what was wrong and wouldn't worry it was other things.

He winced, realizing that they hadn't done anything about the pain sensors. Yes, pain was an alarm system, and bad things happened when it was shut off, but it was supposed to let humans know so that they could do something about something that was wrong. Giving them nanites, and then letting them feel pain when those nanites did exactly what they were supposed to? Even though the nanites put him to sleep, that still didn't make it right. Their nanites were starting to configure, and the human brain did a lot of thinking while they were asleep: did they want the poor person to think that nanites, the way they were now, were bad and painful? Wasn't that counterproductive as well as a bit mean?

Well, they weren't Roll: maybe they just hadn't thought it that far through, Rock told himself, soothing the sleeper's pain. He wanted to just query their memory, to know if they had seen who did this, but that would be rude. No, he should wake them up, see if he could help them be well enough that they could call in an alarm... Except, if an alarm was called in, then more troops would come, and the nephews might do this to them, too.

Rock had his brothers to protect, and getting in the middle of a big fight, trying to protect the humans and nephews from each other, when he couldn't even grow armor? He wouldn't last very long.

So he tried to make the human comfortable, but he didn't even call the normal emergency number before running out the door and down the road to the main facility.

It was more than just that guard. Everywhere Rock passed, there were unconscious personnel. At least they'd been placed out of the way, where they'd be less likely to get stepped on or shot by a rogue bullet. Every one of them was asleep, and every one of them was infected with the nanites.

They were incapacitating the guards rather than killing them, which should be a good thing, but to change them this much, and against their will? He had to stop to check them, make sure they were okay. Their pain sensors were left on, too, even while asleep. But they didn't seem to be physically hurt. Mentally, they would be confused when they woke up. Rock bit his lip. He had to find the nephews before more troops came, before more humans were injected like this. To do that, he needed to figure out where his brothers were being kept.


Something was changed. The chamber was fairly soundproofed, even to their enhanced ears, but they'd heard something that sounded like a scuffle outside. That or the soldiers startled each other. None had any recollection of being human, but talking to one for five minutes made it clear that their senses were dull in comparison. They could be snuck up on so easily, startled and subdued with little effort.

That's what made the hospital takeovers so simple, after all.

They all stilled, though, picking up on one another's unease.

With a shifting and a clicking sound, the lock on the door began to be undone. The seal on the door was airtight to prevent any nanites from escaping—the paranoia about infection upon contact was still going strong—and it hissed as it was broken. Six pairs of eyes focused on it with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension.

They preferred to limit human contact to a bare minimum. They liked the guards better when they stayed on the other side of that door.

What was actually on the other side sent a shock through the six first-generation bioroids, even before their visitor came into view.

Elec barely recognized him, even knowing the base frequency. They'd let their children choose their own names, but they'd wanted a way of knowing all of them, so they would never be without an identity. This was one of his, the ones he'd sealed behind that door and fought to protect, even killed to protect.

They all just stood there and gaped at the child for a second. His frequency was unfamiliar to Bomb; he could tell by looking it wasn't one of his children, but he felt the recognition coiling around Elec. The immense relief, to see that it was true. His child was not dead. Likely, the others were not, either. A load off all of their shoulders. And a new concern to take its place.

"Are you insane? What are you doing here?" None of the six were armored, none of them could form their weapons. They'd been kept weak so they'd be easier to control. It was obvious to see that Metal was armed, was able to protect himself. Did he intend to try to shield all of them? Whatever had enticed him to break in was undoubtedly a ploy, a trap set to lure the children in. He'd fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker. If they captured him, he'd be taken away, and there would be nothing his father and uncles could do to stop it.

"The humans tried to kill you just now. I stopped them. The others will come to get you out of here soon." He looked at Elec, and now Elec could place him, although it was hard to associate this disciplined fighter who was able to resist the urge to curl up against him with the child whose thoughts had mostly been a demand of payattentiontome. "I need to handle the rest of the building, keep any of them from getting this far." Since the elders were unarmored. Metal's ears kept twitching, keeping track of all sorts of channels and contacts, like the antennae Elec had before he was captured.

Fire couldn't help smirking a bit approvingly, even if he didn't like the idea of Metal putting himself in danger. He glanced back at Elec; it must be hard to reconcile Metal with the baby he remembered. He'd grown up. They'd all grown up.

"They'll be here soon," Metal promised them, determinedly resisting the instinct that said to stay here, with the father he'd missed, to protect them since they were kin and defenseless and the humans had kept them starved.

No, the way to protect them was to keep the humans away from them, and he needed to get back to work. He could catch up later, once they were back at the nest. "It won't be long." He could have given a rather precise estimate: the humans had wanted the destruction to come as an absolute surprise to everyone, so they hadn't been able to reinforce the defenses in advance, not without giving it away to the watchdog organizations, who would have alerted the media and thus the bioroids. Of course, they'd had no idea how deeply they were compromised.

Of course, he couldn't send any of this to even his father, not yet, not until all of them were scanned to make sure Dr. Light hadn't done anything to their minds. So he had to leave, running out of there after a brief nod and thought of apology, syringes in his hands.

Flash was no longer broadcasting: unlike all their fathers, he hadn't even lasted long enough to upload data of his fight with Rock. Presuming they had fought: what else could have taken him off the air?

He had to deal with the humans so they couldn't sneak past him, get in here while he was fighting the second eldest.

Likewise, the six elders had to resist the urge to follow him, to guide and protect those that were younger and less experienced. As they were now, they were absolutely defenseless. It'd be best for them to stay put.

They remembered, after all. The places they'd made for their children, trying to keep them safe. How they'd put themselves at risk and not let the children help.


Rock tried to hurry through the facility, but he had to have his senses up all the way to detect other nephews, so he kept feeling the guards, and feeling that they were hurting, and then he couldn't help going to where they were and fixing that and trying to make them comfortable. This was also where they were keeping the people from Elec's hospital, too, so it was pretty big. It wasn't just guards: at least this was after visiting hours, but there were still cleaning people, nurses and other support staff here.

The bioroid had broken open one of the doors to an area where the quarantined humans were, since there was a staff member in there, so the humans there were the first people he talked to.

They'd moved the changed person to a bed, and were trying to comfort her, but they couldn't do anything, not with the abilities they might have had as bioroids locked, except for the senses.

Guilt radiated from one of them, and Rock could even pick up why— they now knew what it was like to feel that someone was hurting and not be able to do anything about it.

The nephew hadn't attacked any of the patients, or even threatened them. He was just moving very quickly, infecting any human he came across. Their nanites were calibrated to incapacitate their victim, though Rock could tell through a scan that the locks could very easily be removed. Later. Not now, when having too many people moving around was too dangerous. He asked the patients to please stay inside here. His worry radiated off him, and it was surprising to the newly turned, to feel it so acutely. The actions of the original six were starting to make terrible sense.

They would go away over time, anyway. This version was very close to the one they had used at the hospitals. So the people who had worked in the facility the hospital people were kept it might be kept in that exact same facility now.

It was the same kind of idea of what was appropriate his brothers had.

All he could do was reassure them. What else could he say? He needed to keep moving. They did calm some despite how strange this sort of communication felt to them. He hoped they'd adjust quickly, for their own sakes.

No matter where he went, there were newly-turned bioroids downed. That was why that other nephew—Flash—was slowing him, Rock realized. To give this nephew time to work. He needed to hurry before something really bad happened.

He would move faster if he didn't keep stopping to soothe them, to find at least one more to put them with, but he couldn't do that. Not when they were hurting, and if he turned off the sense that they were broadcasting their discomfort on, he wouldn't be able to sense his nephews.

It occurred to him that this might have been intentional. It had to have been hard for that nephew to leave these ones alone and upset this way; he really was in a hurry. Whatever timer he was working on, making it to the finish line before he ran out of time was more imperative than making sure these ones were as comfortable as they could be. Leaving his goal undone must be far more traumatic than the cries of the newly turned. Plus, leaving them like that meant that Rock would be distracted.

Unless his nephew didn't care. Unless his nephew was just that angry with them, for letting his father and the others be killed. For being in the building where that would happen and doing nothing, for being part of the species that had tried to do it.

Maybe the notice itself was a trap? Lying was hard enough to understand, but lying about killing people? Still, it was better to think that that way than that they had really tried to kill them. No: if this were a trap, the humans wouldn't have been beaten so easily. He would have run into someone who was still fighting, if only because the nephew would have started to run out of syringes.

Somehow, even though there was too much interference from all these limited human bioroids to be sure, he knew that his brothers were okay. His nephews would have done more than just this if it'd been otherwise.

There were sounds coming from ahead. Soft noises and padded footfalls. It was the nephew, pulling a downed hospital worker into one of the side rooms, out of harm's way. The antennae over his ears were flicking every so often, shifting position to help get a clear signal. He wouldn't normally even have to do that, but with all these incapacitated bioroids, all the signals were jumbled. Trying to hear a specific voice was like trying to hear a conversation from across a crowded room. He tried to quiet them, if only so he could hear better.

He knew his uncle was near, nearer than he would like, but this was the last of them. There were two in this room, so at least they'd be quieter than the ones he'd had to stash alone.

Rock didn't know what the nephew's weapon was, except the syringes. Maybe just the syringes? No, that was probably too much to hope for. He quieted all his signals and stopped actively scanning. If he could get behind him, without his nephew knowing he was there... but no, there were too many people here: if it did become a longer fight, they might get hurt. He wanted to end this soon, but even with the other nephew's weapon, he couldn't chance something going wrong. "Excuse me?" he said, and sent.

The nephew paused in his ministrations, then set the infected human down and straightened. He'd felt the probe, though it wasn't quite a full touch, not like he with his siblings and cousins, or his father and other uncles. Like strangers meeting for the first time. He turned slowly to look at Rock. His armor was mostly red, but what was most unsettling about him were his eyes. They were like blood. His mouth and nose were covered by more armor, and the entire ensemble coupled with his gaze was quite intimidating. He'd frightened more than one human, looking like that.

Rock wanted to say that it wasn't hard to make them not hurt, in case he didn't know how, but he shouldn't upload a design to an enemy, even if it was an easy one (or Rock thought so, having come up with it himself in a few seconds of analysis), and he really didn't want to encourage doing things to people against their will. Oh, thank goodness: "Roll says my father already got a court order," thanks to the lawyer, "And I'll stay with my brothers, so you can go, really. If there's more fighting, it will just put more people in danger."

He wished he could believe that would work, even though all of it was true.

"Your 'father' should not have needed a court order to begin with. Don't you understand what's going on here?" Metal tilted his head, scanning Rock. He wasn't even in armor. Was he not being taken seriously? Or had he rushed out so quickly, he hadn't the resources to do so? What did he expect to accomplish like that?

"We got, well, someone sent on an anonymous message that they were going to kill my brothers. I didn't know if it was true or not, but I had to come."

Metal nodded; he understood that feeling. But still, "By their own laws, the destruction order should not have been issued. Don't you see it? Regardless of what that father of yours may spew, the fact remains that the humans with the power don't want us around. You should leave. My father, my uncles…there is nothing you can do for them."

Rock shook his head and frowned at his nephew a little. Couldn't he feel that there was no way Rock was leaving? "They're my brothers too, you know. And if I'm here, I can send what I see to Roll. And... Really..." Rock looked a little embarrassed for him, perhaps even a bit disappointed. "I mean, if bioroids keep doing things like this to humans, then it's fair, isn't it? If they don't want us around. You're upset because they did things like this to my brothers, after all, and now you're changing and limiting them and thinking you can do things to them just to make a point. You could have just knocked them out, if you absolutely had to fight, you know. Doing something that can't be undone, even my brothers couldn't undo it..." Not even Roll. "It's just mean. And when people are being mean, it doesn't matter who started it. It has to stop."

"We tried being nice. Starting with the Eldest, we were nothing but nice. They treated us like monsters, like a plague. Like something that wanted to rip their throats out, even if their fears were unfounded. Is it wrong that we gave their fears real ground? We already tried playing nice. Humanity doesn't understand 'nice', they're only willing to think on their own terms. I'm done being 'nice'." Not when nice meant your family was killed just because of what could be. Killed for paranoia.

"The thing is... even if they did limit my brothers because they were afraid..." Rock, Rock had begun to understand being afraid. When he'd fought to stop his brothers, he'd been afraid, for them and everyone. "Then isn't what you're doing... Aren't you saying that they were right? Because if it was wrong for them to do that to my brothers, then it's wrong for you to do this to them. So, if you're claiming that it's okay, for you to do this to them? Then I can't agree with you. At all. Because that would be saying that what happened to my brothers was okay, and it wasn't. It's not right for people to be hurt, it just isn't: don't you know that?" Rock honestly wondered, and perhaps he kind of hoped that Metal didn't. Because if he didn't understand something that a bioroid should understand, just as easy as getting their body to breathe, then hopefully he'd figure it out soon and they could stop this.

"You've come to this conclusion because you're using a failed theorem." Metal shook his head. "You're assuming that if we lay down our arms and stop, that the humans will stop. They will not. They have pushed us to this," No matter how wrong it was, no matter how much Metal hated having to do this, what else could he do? "Even after our parents were captured, we sat back and waited. We watched and we waited. We put our trust in humanity, even though they'd already thrown it back in our faces. And what did they do? They ordered them killed! I am through trying to "negotiate", through with trying to find a peaceful outing! Such a thing does not exist!"

"But... The fighting has to stop sometime." Did Metal want to keep fighting forever? "I'm sorry. I captured my brothers, your father, so that it would be over and everyone would be safe, and I guess it wasn't that easy, but that doesn't mean I can give up on protecting them. One of the others asked me to not come here, and... I can't do that, they're my brothers too. So I know why you feel like you have to try something, but hurting people, especially when you don't even have to, isn't right. It just isn't. And I have to make sure that my brothers are okay." And you are in my way. "So if you won't stop... doing things to people that they don't want and leave, then I'll have to stop you."

Metal was silent. From Rock's perspective, it made sense. Hurting when it was unnecessary was wrong. Rock couldn't see how it was necessary, why they were doing this, but Metal also couldn't tell him that. He couldn't trust this uncle or his aunt. He did not trust Dr. Light. They proved that they could not keep the six safe, even if they followed all of humanity's laws. Rock hadn't seen his brothers yet, hadn't seen how they'd been starved just to keep them weak. They'd been through enough: he fully intended to liberate them, no matter the cost. If he had to dirty himself in the process, then so be it. "I can't let you walk around in here." Not when the others would be arriving. He had to stop Rock here, now, before he got any further.

"I'm sorry," his uncle said, looking sad, apologetic and just a bit tired. He'd done this before, with his brothers and Flash. "Is there someplace nearby without many people?"

That was actually met with some approval from Metal. He didn't want to get anyone else caught up in the fighting, either. "…Come with me." He turned and headed further down the hallway.

Rock nodded, a bit relieved that Metal was being helpful about this. He was worried, though. Even if he drained his bones of minerals, he wouldn't be able to grow good enough armor to be worth the effort, and he'd halfway exhausted himself getting here. It was a good thing Roll had made sure he got better at healing, but from all the sharp pointy bits, he could guess that Metal's preferred weapon was something like Cut's. When he followed his nephew into a storage room, he told him, "It's not your fault there wasn't enough warning to find minerals for armor, okay?" So don't blame yourself if I get hurt.

Metal inwardly flinched. He knew he'd still blame himself for it. It wasn't his fault that Rock didn't have armor, that much was true, but it would still be him that swung the blade. He knew what he was getting into when he came, though. He'd led them to a cafeteria, but all the tables were pushed to the walls; it wasn't in use.

Rock was healthy, but he wasn't armed. Metal's condition was more in line with how Rock was before heading into his father's hospital. Prime and overloaded with minerals. He flicked a wrist and a razor-sharp round metal blade appeared in his hand.

He could feel the second eldest trying to scan him now that the fight started, and it was interesting that it was just for general condition, trying to keep track of where he was, and so on. Nothing deeper. He'd been warned to be careful of Roll; she might be very good at scanning, but she wasn't here. Although, she might be watching this through Rock, just as he was sending this to the others. He wouldn't make the same mistake as Flash: picking him up had forced Air to make a detour, so he wasn't here yet, even if the two who were on the other guard shifts had already made it and were guarding their fathers.

Without the storm to worry about, Rock was much faster, dodging the metal disc easily enough. Unlike how he had with Flash. Without armor, his uncle would have to pay a lot of attention to dodging. And he could take many more hits than Rock.

Metal didn't waste any time, either. No sooner had he thrown one blade than two appeared in his hand. The amount of resources he must be expending was unreal. Of course, the blades remained intact after he threw them; like Cut, they were reusable. He was littering the room with spare ammunition for himself.

It'd be dangerous for Rock to try to pick one up carelessly; without armor, one wrong move would slice his hand wide open. With Metal on him like this, he didn't have time to even try using them against his nephew.

Even rolling in order to dodge was dangerous, since Metal could throw one to intercept his path. At least it was much, much easier for him to dodge now than it had been when fighting Cut: it might be the practice as much as the lower momentum making it easier to change directions quickly.

A bigger problem was that holding a shot disrupted his nanites as well, without the armor containing it. He didn't like how much time this was taking, since delay was bad for all sorts of reasons, but Rock waited until he had a pretty good idea of how Metal moved before using Flash's weapon and running straight for him, gathering the disruption nanites in his hand.

Metal saw what he was doing. He wasn't surprised or angry, just a look of calm comprehension. He materialized a blade in his other hand, the one he hadn't been using to throw and swung at Rock once he was almost ready to fire.

Rock had charged with his other shoulder first, but when he was hit, he couldn't help clasping his shoulder when he fell to the ground, crying out. Or rather, touching the nanite-inhibiting hand to the stump.

Normally, even a wound like that would have stopped bleeding right away, and he could have gotten up, grabbed his arm, reattached it, and tried again.

Ow. Was this how humans felt, whenever they got wounded? It took way too long for him to isolate the pain signals and cut them off closer to the spine. As for the blood? He winced: now he was really low on iron and other minerals. And Roll and Dr. Light were worried.

Metal actually stepped back, his eyes widening as he flinched. Not because of the blood, or because of the sight of Rock's dismembered arm, but because of how much pain he'd just put his uncle through. And had he just—crap.Rock could feel Metal scanning him, this time a bit more thoroughly, confirming what Rock just did to himself. But the bleeding was already slowing; the inhibition nanites were wearing off. The younger bioroid hesitated, but there was already another blade gripped in his hand. He was watching Rock, waiting. Wanting to see if he wanted to stop now.

Rock was taking deep breaths, replacing the oxygen, as he pushed himself into a sitting position with his intact arm and reached for the other one. He didn't want to heal over the wound when he could actually heal it instead.

When it reattached, finally, and he was able to heal the joint, he breathed in again, then forced himself back to mostly-normal respiration (bioroids gathered more oxygen, especially boosted like he was). "I'm okay," he said, and lunged up and to the side, heading for the tables.

Metal actually did feel really bad, he hadn't meant to actually cut his arm off. It was easy to forget how fragile their bodies could be when they weren't in armor; any sparring he'd ever done was against his fully armed brothers or cousins. Hesitant as he was to hurt Rock any further; there was blood all over the floor now, but he was even more loathe to actually let Rock pass him. He dashed off after Rock, slinging blade after blade at him.

Easy enough to dodge, especially now that it wasn't just his nanites that were boosting his performance. He hadn't noticed this before: it was as though things had slowed down, closer to what Dr. Light had called machine time, but it didn't have anything to do with his nanites. They were still processing data at the same speed: it was his brain that had authorized a mode of cognition that was burning through energy fast. Too fast for the amount of energy stored in sugars to be adequate, and he didn't have much body fat: if he kept doing this for too long, his neurons would even burn through those precious Omega-3s.

By contrast, the adrenaline boost was negligible and it was a good thing he was used to compensating for his body going at different speeds relative to his thoughts and normal mode.

Metal was trying harder to hit him now: Rock understood, really. But his body had decided that it reallydidn't want to get hit, thanks, and Metal was too slow.

It wasn't for lack of trying on Metal's part. He noticed that Rock seemed to have sped up, but he couldn't pinpoint why without doing a much more intimate scan, and he wasn't going to open that channel. That was far too dangerous. He moved, trying to cut Rock off as he dashed to the side, and brought his blades down again.

As he did, when his arms were extended, Rock used Flash's weapon. Metal just finished growing those blades - it would take precious seconds for his nanites to bring up enough minerals without stripping them from his armor and regrow them. Flash's weapon would elongate that. And now he was paused while he was half-lunged forward, off-balance, and Rock was running on the tables while Metal was still on ground level.

He started firing the disruptor nanites as he ran towards Metal, as fast as he could, even converting the healing nanites that were dealing with the buildup of fatigue poisons.

Metal was blindsided by Rock's shots. They slammed into him full-force, and he found himself being thrown aside, tumbling into the tables. He made a pained noise, wanting to cry out but stifling himself at the last moment. It scared him more than it actually hurt—his armor protected him well—but Rock's disruption nanites still penetrated through and he felt a numbing sensation spread through his side. He struggled to get back to his feet, his body shaking as the sensation spread. No, he could not allow Rock to pass…he had to fight.

"I'm sorry," he heard, and felt, as things faded. "I'm sorry-" Rock said again, but this time it trailed off in a yawn, even as Rock dropped down and kicked Metal's legs out from under him. Most of the fighting moves in movies weren't very realistic—actually, that was the only kind of movie with fighting in it Rock and Roll could tolerate watching, when it clearly wasn't real and no one was getting hurt—but apparently that leg sweep thing worked. At least for bioroids.

And that was good, because with Metal dealt with his body just decided to crash now that the emergency was over, and he didn't really have enough nanites left to argue with it.