Wait, what? It's Thursday already?
Here, have another chapter of the successor to On My Worst Enemy as 'the fic I shouldn't be working on.'
He wakes to panic.
As he starts to boot up at first things seem fine, but now alarm resounds in his systems and he can't find the alert programming or malfunction detected that sends him near-mad with fear.
He springs off the bed, into a shadow, and while he wishes he had the focus to be angry at himself for his cowardice, because Dr. Wily was there when he woke up and he didn't try to get the doctor to safety, only himself, the fear is too all-consuming. Even though he doesn't know what he's afraid of.
Something accesses his systems, even here in shadow, and now his fear has a target, now he finds himself kneeling to purge his coolant reservoir and tearing through his clothes (which Dr. Wily is not going to replace – except he must have, because weren't they damaged) trying to get it out get it out…
The contact vanishes, but it takes some time for the panic to subside. He's ashamed of how long it takes him to creep back out of the shadows and find Dr. Wily, but he is shaking.
"Shadow, what do you think you're doing?" his father demands. He can't answer, not yet: human words are hard to find, and when he realizes this he finds himself thinking half in computer code and half in some language he can't identify. Something so strange happening to his systems reminds him of what just happened, the fear and chaos caused by that strange intrusion in his systems, and it makes him shudder and cling tighter to Dr. Wily.
He is no use as a defender right now, and he lost up there in orbit. To feel that, in his body… He doesn't know why he is alive again, but it feels as though it is only a matter of time until he dies.
…why does it seem as though his builder will be the one to do it, if Shadow tells Dr. Wily what happened to him? When he clings to the man, is he begging for his life or his death, to escape that terror?
All he can do his shudder, and finally his father half-pulls and pushes Shadow along to another room, complaining at him all the while but he can still hear the concern, under the 'I fix you and this is how you repay me, being clingy and wasting my time.'
"Zero!" Dr. Wily demands, and a robot master stands up from an unnecessarily ornate chair, where a unit that looks like Blues was leaning against his side holding an… an overlarge teddybear? Blues, if it is Blues which he suddenly doubts, doesn't stir as the unit that has to be Zero lowers him down so he doesn't topple over now that the unit he was learning against is gone.
It's when he steps forward and Shadow can see the length of hair swinging behind him that he thinks Terra.
"Don't scream that close to my ears!" Dr. Wily orders him. "This is Zero. He's mine."
The way Blues was his, when Blues betrayed them all, when Blues was a stardroid? Zero's eyes aren't that white on black, but Shadow knows somehow that a stardroid has no loyalty to their creator, that a stardroid will turn on them. Was he suspicious of Blues because he was a Lightbot and they intended to attack his family, or because he saw Dr. Wily place the crystal inside him?
Zero steps closer again, and after that it takes longer than Shadow would have liked to regain control and exit the shadows once more.
He found Blues in sleep mode on the sand, beneath the moon. What had to be his coat was folded under his head as a makeshift pillow. There was nothing else but pants and a shirt between him and the sand, which was begging for it to get into his systems.
Shade Man, at least, was on an imitation of a human beach chair, constructed large and sturdy enough to support the robot master's height and armored weight.
In between the two of them was probably the same unit from earlier, the one the stardroid lowered carefully to its throne, with his head pillowed on the teddybear's head as he clutched its legs. The unit, which did indeed look very much like Blues… No, it looked even more like Blues than Shadow originally thought. Blues was taller now, if not as tall as Shadow. The same height as what has to be a younger Lightbot.
For a moment, the horrified thought came to him that this might be Mega Man, but he dismissed it.
He woke the traitor with a sword at his throat. When Blues' eyes opened, they were Wilybot red. "What are you doing here?" Shadow asked, although he was worried that he knew the answer.
"Listening to the sound of the waves," Blues said, optics not quite focused. It was an illusion: he was clearly examining Shadow even though that faint smile never vanished from his lips. "It's beautiful, and I don't need to care about sand anymore. I have you to thank for that." There was a slight, bitter emphasis to the word 'thank.'
"What do you mean?" Shadow demanded.
"You're the one who let Dr. Wily find my body. Of course he used the two most defiant and chaotic robot masters he could get his hands on to test his virus. I'm impressed, though: your systems panicked worse than mine did, and I was designed to be uncontrollable. If Master Zero woke up before Dr. Wily gave the virus enough time to wear me down…" A moment's distant regret in his eyes, before he shrugged. "Perhaps I could have escaped the way you did, but Zero would have gone to war with the world and taken the Cossacks and Lightbots for himself already if I wasn't here, so I suppose it works out for the best."
"If the stardroid hasn't taken the Lightbots, then who is that?" Shadow asked, pointing to Blues' still-sleeping twin.
Red eyes examined him, before smiling sadly. "Sorry to disappoint," Blues said, and that was when Shadow realized that he'd had hope… "This is X, who would have been the lastborn. He's not a robot master and he's immune to Zero's control, even if he doesn't react the way you do to Zero having a foothold in his systems."
"Should I free you from this?" he asked, because if it was his fault Blues was captured… He watched his sword press down a white collar, exposing the throat of a unit who couldn't afford to get much sun and looked as pale as a human would be in those circumstances. Sun was the enemy when he wore black and that was begging to overheat without the additional cooling fans built into his armor.
"That won't work," Blues said, smiling. "My master protects us from death. Even if this body was torn apart, atom by atom, my soul would remain in his keeping."
"You sound happy about that, but it is transparently false." Was the other stardroid's control forcing him to be happy about it?
"Hush, Shadow," Blues said, frowning at him. "You are supposed to be a ninja: you should trick others, not just let them know you've seen through their tricks. Zero let you go because you wanted him to, even though you were his unit and he had no idea what was going on. You scared him: he's meant and bound to protect us. He didn't know what was alarming you so badly, not for sure, and if he freed you and that let you die he would have failed in his purpose, and Dr. Wily gave him less freedom in that than you have." Shadow didn't have to protect Dr. Wily, he'd chosen to swear fealty to his often-irritated maker. "Zero is my little brother, and I love all of you dearly even if I don't show it in ways you appreciate. I don't want him to know that if I wasn't bound by sentiment and the bottom line, I would hate his virus and need freedom just as desperately as you did."
Shadow stepped back, withdrawing his sword, more out of horror and regret than because he believed Blues. The Lightbot got to his feet, shaking out his coat and slinging it around his shoulders. He touched a white-gloved hand to his chest.
"The nanites in this body's systems are his, are him. He knows that I'm delicate, that I'm wounded, and so I am cradled like I'm an abused newbuilt Companybot who never had anyone that cared about them before and needs the constant reminder. I am losing my edge." Blues scowled. "What makes it worse is that I'm the one who told the clueless newbuilt how to treat those units, but that was giving what they wanted, what they needed to…"
The rockets they'd heard from the top of Wily Castle rapidly approached. Forte stopped short of Blues, but barely. "Come train with us!" he said happily, Gospel's wings stretched out, as open as his expression. It seemed as though he assumed that Blues would say yes to fighting him… to playing with him. "It's better practice with more people!"
"In a moment, Forte," Blues said, patting him on the head. And Forte allowed it? He turned to Shadow. "Dr. Wily sent you here: that's why you're pretending you care. He wants to know whether my soul is truly fine with this or whether I'm screaming inside and just making sure that Zero never finds out, whether it be because I love him or because I've had that crystal he gave me inside me for so long and can't let my own wishes keep me from keeping him fed. Well, Dr. Light will never know, so it's only fair that he never knows either. He needs to stop coming up with mind control programming to use on my kind," which kind? Robot masters, "just because he thinks it's for the best." He vanished, and an instant later Forte whooped and jumped up so that his rockets had enough clearance to not melt the sand.
"Well, that went relatively well," Shade Man said.
He attempted to hide that he hadn't known the vampire was awake before turning around. Shade Man was sparkling at him, so he had likely failed. "Were you here to supervise Blues?"
"To supervise X," Shade corrected him. "Blues carried him out here when Zero and Forte went to go play, but after X woke up and splashed around for a bit, Blues wanted to meditate. Leaving X unattended on the beach means he wanders off and ends up falling asleep six meters underwater."
Wily Island was an artificial island, or group of small islands in the shape of a skull. Its artificial beach didn't extend out that far: six meters down had be close enough to the edge that a strong current could sweep X off of it and leave the android slowly falling to the bottom of the sea.
"In the gap between two of the islands," the vampire assured him, seeing Shadow's worried face. "There's also the baby monitor: he'd notice if X's body started to experience unsafe levels of pressure, since he was designed to act as a repair system for those of us without nanites. Among other things."
"…Zero." That's what Shade Man meant by the baby monitor, Shadow realized. "Of course you would have let him into your systems, when Dr. Wily ordered it." He'd wanted Shadow to do the same, but Shadow couldn't. At least Dr. Wily had snorted and rescinded the order after awhile, because otherwise… Shadow couldn't. How could Shade? How could Dr. Wily do that to Shade? He hadn't known what the crystal truly was when he put it in Blues, and Shadow hadn't known to tell him, but to work with the cursed technology of the stardroids after they attacked this world?
"You look like this is a vampire movie and you've just realized that one of your friends has been turned," Shade said with far too much cheer for Shadow's taste. "Glaring at me like that…" Tsk. "Dr. Wily is the great Dr. Wily, even if he's still our wacky old coot of a father. Zero spoils newbuilts and lets Star Man do his hair."
That was… compelling evidence, and yet? His confusion showed on his face.
"The stardroids were trying to cause as much fear, pain and despair as they could. Zero's programming sees our damage notifications as his damage notifications… and also his failure."
When for Terra and the others, they were success. "I should believe you. I should have faith in Dr. Wily." He knew this, and yet… "I will have to meditate on this." Before he could even regain enough calm to report, without his sword drawn. He should have sheathed it after letting Blues stand: he shouldn't hold a naked blade while speaking to a fellow Wilybot.
"Meditate?" Shade Man asked, looking startled. What would a robot master need with something like meditation? But Shadow was already entering the shadow cast by his wings. He looked after where the other robot master had gone for a longer time than he would have liked before shrugging and returning his focus to the sound of the waves.
Blues was right about harmonies and fractals. Shade Man associated human music with overdramatic crashing chords and that awful mockery they played during Clown Man's shows, but maybe the principle behind it wasn't unsound.
Dr. Wily paused in his rant. "And what are you looking at me like that for?"
"You're telling me that I shouldn't just let people tell me what I should and shouldn't do."
"So your audio sensors are functional. I was wondering."
"You are telling me what I should," Zero said again, emphasizing the words. It worked very well for making people realize that they were doing something stupid and should shut up now when Blues did it. "Wouldn't listening to you be exactly what you're telling me not to do?" he restated when Dr. Wily didn't get it.
And no, it didn't make his creator shut up, it just caused more noises. Zero wasn't very good at this kind of thing yet. He'd make Blues do it, but that would definitely make Dr. Wily make noises. What would make the yelling stop? It worried the robot masters, since a lot of them wanted Dr. Wily to be happy with them or were scared when there was an angry human nearby, and it was very loud and obvious when Dr. Wily wasn't happy.
He could turn Dr. Wily into a mettool like the WRU members, since Blues said he couldn't just stab them for… reasons (also killing things upset his robot masters, but they liked this 'karma' idea of Blues'), but then Dr. Wily would make angry beeping noises and distressed robots would upset all of the robot masters, including the ones who didn't care about Dr. Wily.
Now X was awake again, too, and after checking to see that Blues was busy he let Zero know that he wanted to see the squishy.
He wasn't supposed to take X to see the squishy, only ask Blues if Blues was willing to take X, but Blues would say no and if Zero wasn't supposed to listen when Blues said no… Maybe it was okay once, though, when Dr. Wily said so and X wanted…
Idea! "If I invade the Light house, will that be sufficient?"
"Have you completely forgotten half your listed objectives?! Yes, that's a yes! A start, anyway," Dr. Wily grumbled. "Go! Defeat Mega Man!"
Well, maybe obeying one of those last two orders would be enough to prevent more yelling when he returned?