As for Zero series, ZX and Legends: Chaos theory being what it is, X and Zero's presence in the past would only not change history if there was some stable time loop phenomenon in effect – this is true for basically all time travel fics. Since the question of whether or not they can actually change history is an important one for the fic, saying 'yes, they'll travel to Zero series' would be a spoiler, since Zero series still existing as a travel destination would mean they failed.

As for ZX and Legends! A lot of people have pointed out that Legends series means that the protagonists of all the other subseries in that timeline have failed hard, so yeah, traveling there would make this whole thing a Shaggy Dog Story.

While being cruel to your characters is a very important plot technique, I dislike putting people through hell with no payoff. I mean, that's life, where your reward for 'if you find yourself going through hell, keep going' and surviving is your own body crippling you (biggest contributor to the world's burden of disability – takes more people out of commission than anything else other than death), but this is fiction.

If things go well, Classic and X series are the only ones that will feature in this fic. Zero and up could only feature if all time travel is pointless, so if they show up it means the fic is on a bad ending route. Although I suppose it could be Legacy of Kainish, where people can time travel all over the place but you need to meet certain conditions in order to actually change history…

but revealing what's going on would spoil.


Fortunately, Dr. Wily was too busy cackling and running final checks on the mecha to pay attention to the cameras. It was piloted by one of his remote-control robot doubles, and he was looking forward to attacking Rock with after the Lightbot finally made it past Lumine.

Shadow's one open eye drifted over to the main worktable. It wasn't a good sign that its current occupant was moved there right away after Dr. Wily finished with Lumine, even though he'd known it was inevitable. Somehow, Shade had found out that Blues was the one Shadow had compared him to and still 'wanted to meet this charming fellow,' too.

Shade was going to get all his arms, legs and wings torn off if he tried that 'sneak up on a victim and chatter at them' habit of his on Blues, and it would serve him right, Shadow thought glumly.

The ninja had detested Blues, who fought without honor and had no loyalty to anyone but himself, since he betrayed them on the spaceship. After the death of the nameless copy?

Then, finding him injured, up there in space… How much of all of it was a mask? Trying to make sure that no one missed him when his body finally gave out? Shadow was nothing compared to Rock as a warrior, and compared to Blues, he was a mere student in the art of trickery as well. If that.

Right now his body looked broken and vulnerable, lying there unarmored, torso torn open to get at something inside: Dr. Wily had said "A-ha!" when he saw that. It must have been the White Giant taking the power crystal from Blues' body that altered its trajectory and made it so darn hard to find.

The power crystal was a stardroid artifact, and knowing that now… was any of the savagery he'd shown Blues' true nature? What was the influence of the alien power crystal Dr. Wily used him to test when he rebuilt him as a warbot?

When Rock arrived to battle the mecha, Shadow was left to his thoughts while Dr. Wily played his videogame. Shadow tuned out the muttered profanity with the easy of long practice. He had to be crazy, but he was almost wondering if Blues might be different once he was repaired. Less insufferable. Shadow found himself almost thinking that Dr. Wily should repair him, even after what happened last time, seeing that face so like Rock's lying there, eyes closed, looking so innocent in death.

Eventually, Wily ripped the controller's cord out of the system and threw it across the room in frustration. Back to the drawing board on that, too, which would keep him too busy to make new robots or redesign old ones, even the oldest, for awhile at least.

Dr. Wily's defeat did mean the war was definitely over. The First Law meant that Rock couldn't cut into the robot double or anything to find that it wasn't the real Dr. Wily, so he would take it back and hand it over to the police, where it would deliver some cackling message before breaking down.

Not that the end of a war meant Wily wouldn't take it into his head to send Shadow on errands or do various insane things. Now that the defense network was up, Shade Man would have more free time, and if the insane thing Dr. Wily took it into his head to do was repair Blues, then Shadow would have three difficult people to deal with soon, now that the Eleventh Wily War was over. Fortunately, his mask hid the unprofessional sigh. And to think that humans were always hoping that wars would end quickly!

The Eighth War was almost relaxing for the inhabitants of Wily Island after the attack of the stardroids, or so Shadow had heard. He had left on a journey of self-discovery before it began. He was sure that Rock hadn't seen it the same way, however. More as bad taste, and while Shadow did rather have to agree with that, it wasn't as though the war had been difficult for Rock. The Eighth Numbers had observed him during the stardroid invasion, so they didn't consider him or Dr. Light enemies. In the wake of tragedy, Dr. Wily's efforts had been focused on recovering Blues' body, not actually winning.

He was already turning when the door opened. What was he doing here

Red eyes.

In an instant, Shadow had rushed forward, going onto one knee in front of the smaller unit in order to confirm the eye color. His optics hadn't been red back then, it would have given the game away, he knew this and yet? "If you're one of the Dark Men," he threatened grimly, one hand removing itself from the unit's shoulder to go to his sword, even if he would only use a knockout kunai on a fellow Wilybot. Were they impersonating him instead of Blues, now that Blues was non-operational?

"Shadow," Dr. Wily said, but even though ninja were supposed to be obedient, he didn't pay heed to his liege lord, or the warning to pay attention dammit.

"You can't be alive," was what the Third Number said instead, knowing it was true but wanting so badly to believe that it wasn't. "How? I saw you destroyed with my own eyes!" Eye, not eyes, he hadn't sent that footage back to Dr. Wily. "Did he do something?" How, when Blues was having a hard time keeping himself operational, in retrospect? Skill and a single support unit could only do so much: intellectually, Shadow knew that repairing yourself was very different from repairing your robots, one of the primary skills of robot masters, and that for robots who didn't have Dr. Wily to look after them, being repaired was a terrifying prospect, because who knew what might go wrong or what the human might choose to make wrong, but he'd watched a unit die in front of him. When he was constructed as a bodyguard, even though Shade was right and he really hadn't cared at all, forget enough about his duty.

There was beeping coming from some monitor on the worktable, but Shadow didn't know what the connection was, except it might be an indication that Blues did have something to do with this.

That this might really be Copy-Rock, that was standing here so stiffly, probably wishing that the Wilybot that took him away from his first death, when he hadn't wanted to live, would let go of him.

"Don't look at me, I don't know why he's hugging you either. I build a ninja, an information-gatherer, and he fails to take the hint and never tells me anything." Dr. Wily sounded more disgusted with Shadow than anything, but there was a hint of something in his voice that Shadow hadn't heard since the stardroid incident. Dr. Wily was taking this seriously. "It looks like I was wrong about you. So, you were only pretending to be domesticated." Anger?

"I have a mission. If there's only one unit that can get past your defenses, then I'll do what's necessary to accomplish that mission."

That clipped, grimly professional delivery? Was not Rock, or even the Copy.

At least being this close meant that a unit not built for close-quarters combat had no hope of preventing Shadow from getting its main connector node with a kunai, releasing acid to dissolve it in addition to the usual robot master knockout 'drug.' There were auxiliary connections that would enable a copy of Mega Man to exercise control over his limbs, but that would disrupt his coordination enough that it would be easy to get in subsequent attacks, not to mention that while Rock's core processor wasn't connected to them, Shadow could initiate hacks to try to lengthen the time he remained paralyzed once he emerged from the shadow behind Dr. Wily's chair.

Except the unit clearly wasn't paralyzed, given how Shadow had to duck as soon as he emerged to avoid a charged shot that should have exploded unfired, if Mega Man's systems were as confused as they should have been in that moment. It was as though Shadow hadn't damaged him at all!

"Did you remove the Three Laws, or were you going to let them ensure there were no witnesses?" Dr. Wily snorted. "They keep telling Dr. Light to program him to kill me, even though a First Law violation would kill his son an instant later. Not to mention the precedent that would set, and how they'd kill all his other children not long after that. If even the paragon killed a human… not matter how good the justification, or even if he was forced to do it."

Seeing that kind of horror on Rock's face, especially with those red eyes… it reminded him of the Copy all over again. It was hidden behind disciplined resolve an instant later. No, this was absolutely not the Copy, who was far more expressive than even Rock, empty desperation and anger all the more harrowing to see on a face intended for happiness. It reminded Shadow of Quick Man, when he fought the White Giant. Stoic resolve hiding anger, the will to destroy polished to an edge hard enough to break even the Giant's armor. Who was this? Wily clearly knew him. Shadow didn't know all of the Second Numbers that well, but would any of them do this to Mega Man, even if they could?

"I thought you wanted all of them dead," said the intruder.

"Of course not, I programmed you to infect him instead of killing him for a reason, and not only because he's a treasure trove of combat experience for your use." Wily smirked before turning to glare at the robot master. "Shadow, do something about that blasted beeping, will you?" he snapped at his bodyguard.

For a robot master, the most efficient way to turn off a device he didn't know was to hook into the worktable's systems. That beeping was an evil energy detector...

This was the Zero unit. Dr. Wily had made his readings distinct from Dark Moon and Sunstar's so he could tell instantly, upon arriving in the future, if his modifications had held or if his improved stardroid had thrown off Dr. Wily's attempts to shape its mind and reverted to type.

But the Zero unit seemed to be a close ally of X. Why would he leave X uninfected and try to take over the elder Lightbot instead?

Dr. Wily must have intended him to learn that this was Zero when he hooked into the detector to turn it off, but Shadow still had more questions than answers.

"I'm not the one that infected him. The one from this time, the one I wanted to destroy, did that, after you set him to wake up when Forte dropped him off." That glare at Wily: as good as saying damn you! "At least it has the original control programming, so I can keep him from acting like a maverick."

"Acting like a maverick… Then don't remove the Three Laws," Wily told him. "The machine that made the copy kept the duplicate files: in order to do what he wanted to do, Mega Man had to pit himself against the Three Laws. Fighting a human, saving his brothers despite the risk of his own life: besides being optimized for shorter battles and my evil chip, the absence of the Laws was the only difference between Rock and his Copy. Without them, but with all his experience of the human race, he decided that the only way to save robot masters was to wipe humanity out. When I've failed to convince any of my children to even be serious about conquering them. Of course I made use of that."

Rapid calculations behind red eyes. "But I killed them. The Cataclysm, I killed them all, it's the only thing that makes sens-" Those stolen eyes widened.

Shadow's father gave him a contemptuous scowl. "You freed them from the Three Laws and motivated them. Or that was what I built you do to do. How you ended up picnicking, I have no idea. I skipped over the initial period and aimed for long after the dust should have settled. Too dangerous otherwise. If you're wondering why the robot masters are gone in your time, don't ask me: that's one of the reasons you were clearly a failure." He glanced over at Shadow. "That's why Shadow is the robot I brought with me, even though he demonstrated once again that he's useless as a bodyguard. I wasn't going to bring anything you could infect."

"Like you care about the danger to humanity…"

Wily snorted. "Of course I don't, they're a bunch of idiots. Thomas is the one that cares about the danger to humanity, and they do everything he tells them not to do, and do their best to destroy his work and doom them all. Have you heard the saying about the universe trying to produce bigger idiots? The universe is winning, so I'm not playing. I gave you a better mind to think with for a reason, use it."

"I should just kill you." But the need for data, the need to know. If he was wrong about himself, if he wasn't aware of what kind of danger he was?

More noise, and Wily turned away from the leveled buster to glare at Shadow. "I told you to keep that thing from beeping! I know exactly what kind of IQ I installed into you, why do you never use it?"

He'd shut down the alert tied to Zero's energy pattern. That was a different alarm. One of the power crystals? But Duo took those…

That signature was the power crystal that Wily built into Blues.

Drawing his sword and jumping to the top of a worktable, Shadow's eyes widened when he saw a crystal forming in Blues' open cavity. Energy crystals: was this how they were made? That energy turning itself into an accessible form, unimaginable power just begging for some developing species to plug it into their power grid, plug it into their most powerful creations, without realizing there was no such thing as a free lunch?

It had altered Blues' systems to produce more of itself? With a unit possessed by one of the stardroids standing right here, radiating anger, radiating darkness it could use?

If Shadow was any less horrified by what was about to happen to his rival as a ninja, his old enemy... No, if he had any better situational awareness, he would have anticipated the shot. An ally of the Lightbot X, his protector, was seeing a Wilybot about to stab down into vital areas of an unprotected Lightbot with a family resemblance to X and Rock both that had to be obvious to a unit that had known X for that long. Of course Zero stopped him from attacking, not knowing that Shadow's target was not Blues, but that crystal.

Shadow hit the wall, and slid down into the gap between it and the worktable, glad he was able to muster enough control to enter the shadow there.

Physical pain, fear, revulsion, intent to kill at such close range? Maybe it was the burst of energy that fed the crystal enough it could begin to act on Blues' systems.

No, not just his systems, the robot master saw from Rock's own shadow, there on the door of the chamber. A robot master didn't have any system that would close a gap in their chest like that. Even a yellow demon had to flow back around a wound, it wouldn't just be gone.

His head turned to them, eyes opening, and it was strange to see them without a visor or human sunglasses in the way, nothing to hide unfocused green. He blinked to remove dust, an automatic optic repair process before refocusing them, and when the lids lifted? Red.

Shadow found himself offended. Red was the Wilybot color, and this traitor?

Not that he'd chosen the hue.

"My power source… the Three Laws are gone," he realized. "Dr. Wily, I thought you didn't remove them for a reason…?"

Fantastic, now Shadow had something else to be confused about. Dr. Wily hadn't freed Blues from those atrocious things when he repaired him? He'd helped Dr. Light with his doctoral project, so the non-sapient unit that was upgraded into Blues was originally his work as well. He could not have approved of Dr. Light installing those things into him when he upgraded the unit into a humanoid frame.

…Had he left them in because of the energy crystal? So Blues would have to fight it if it tried to make him kill Wily?

"You'd had your programming tampered with enough, and I trusted that you were intelligent enough to get around them after I was done with you," was what Dr. Wily said, looking coldly furious. "Of course I wouldn't have removed them while you were still unconscious: I intended to ask you after we obtained the crystals. I installed that crystal into you because you were already forty years old: you should have been able to observe how it affected you and report those effects to me. Instead," well, Blues had ruined his plans and run off like an ungrateful brat.

Blues started to push himself up, still bare of armor or even a coat for protection. He should have seemed vulnerable, unprotected like that, especially when it was clear his mind wasn't clear yet. "I wanted to… Yes, I wanted to protect…" Now, his optics focused on Rock, and Shadow realized that the confused act was just that.

Shadow didn't know what he detected: his brows furrowed when he felt something that he couldn't identify, almost like the something so many robot masters had detected before the attack of the White Giant. His hand went to his power core: the cold fusion regulation system? It wasn't a bug report per se, just the knowledge that something was going on, beyond the limits of what a robot master could normally perceive, and what Shadow didn't know could kill him.

The Zero unit's signal vanished.

"Eh?" Rock said, almost jumping a little in shock before he figured out what was going on, or at least thought he had. "Shadow Man got into my shadow while I was distracted, didn't he." That would explain how he got from the room with Wily's mecha to a lab, and why he was missing time. "If this is about your son, you could have asked, or are you angry that I kidnapped Lumine?" While he addressed Wily, Shadow Man saw, coming out behind his builder's chair, Rock was keeping an optic trained on Blues. Rock knew that Blues didn't need armor to dismember Rock's younger brothers, and Rock had seen him without the helmet enough times for facial recognition software to compensate for the lack of his usual sunglasses.

"I'm glad you're alright," was what Rock said to him, despite everything he'd seen Blues do. Or maybe because of it. "No one's seen you since what happened." The stardroid incident.

"I'd tell you that you should have Dr. Light upgrade you with the material Cossack retained from Duo, but he's too much of a coward to do that, and he might be right," Dr. Wily said thoughtfully, although he sounded mostly cranky.

"I'm not going to do that," Rock said. Of course not. Even if it might give him an advantage, even if Duo helped them, it wasn't known technology and they might need him to protect people, he might have to fight the White Giant again. He might have used those crystals once, during the battle in orbit, but over the long term? "We might be… not without decades of testing." He was glad that X was fine. Rock might be able to make solar work, but he was sadly certain that X was going to need a lot more power.

Blues had gone back to keeping himself sitting upright with a single arm while his other hand clenched at his chest, head bent down so Rock wasn't looking at him head-on or even in profile, most of his face shielded from Rock's view by his hair. He was breathing hard, which meant he was thinking hard: Shadow had evaluated the cooling fan built into the back of his armor as a potential vulnerability when he was trying to kill the unit to get revenge for Copy-Rock. At least the fact he wasn't wearing a heavy coat, the way he did to hide his system noises while posing as a human, meant he'd have an easier time getting rid of the heat.

Were those droplets of water on his shoulders, sliding down his faux-human arms and chest? Well, water-cooling their systems was the reason humans sweated. Dr. Wily must have been the one to build that in.

"Get out of here. War's over, go home."

"Well, I meant to," Rock said in his defense. He looked at Shadow, clearly still wondering why the Wilybot brought him here. And how the ninja had managed to ambush him, too. Still, he'd been ordered to capture Dr. Wily, and while he and Roll had a lot of practice getting around the Second Law, it wasn't good to tempt fate with something that dangerous by just hanging around here. He gave them another second to see if they were sure they didn't want to ask any questions about how Zero and Axl were doing or anything, then teleported out. Blues didn't seem well, either, and Rock was hoping that Dr. Wily would repair him as soon as Rock left.

"Terra thought I was one of them," Blues said when Rock was gone.

"Well, are you?" Dr. Wily asked.

The eldest robot master looked up, and a pair of sunglasses appeared, followed by dark pants and a formal shirt, even if he was probably still too overheated to want his coat. He teleported out.

Shade Man now, Shade Man would have talked their ears off with his speculations and random thoughts about whatever was going on in the situation, whatever was happening with him, maybe because the novelty of how someone was actually going to listen to what he had to say hadn't worn off yet.

Shadow could not believe he was actually thinking that would be preferable right now. Well, it seemed Blues was still able to anger him like no one else, not even Shade.

"Well, that was interesting."

Who was right behind him, wasn't he. Shadow was the ninja here, so why was Shade the one with the hobby of sneaking up behind people? Yes, he had control over sonic vibrations, but Shadow knew he had that ability, he should be able to counter it!

The old man gave an annoyed hmph, his usual, token reaction to Shade since the robot put him to sleep to get him away from the White Giant, but he didn't tell him to get lost. There was a reason Shadow was willing to entrust Dr. Wily's safety to Shade Man in his absence. "Well, I don't think even a perfected fusion core was going to work if I stuck it in that suicidal brat, anyway." As worrying as it was to see a crystal growing there, at least Blues was alive again.

"Dr. Wily… when I spoke to Blues during the battle against the stardroids in orbit, he said that he was dying because of a faulty, experimental power core, but if you then replaced it with a power crystal, why was he still dying?"

Dr. Wily made a face, which made Shade Man smirk, since he was actually fond of the old man's antics. "He was my first fusion core experiment. I couldn't make it work without a robot with a consciousness." Cold fusion still needed a robot master or a high-level robot to operate it. "Dr. Light and I collaborated on the psyche, but the physical frame was mostly my project. Having that to work on kept me from taking too much control over the project: it was his doctoral work, not mine." So he needed to do his own damn research for it, instead of just doing what Dr. Wily told him to do. "Cold fusion works because of something on the quantum level I'm not going to even try to explain to you brats, but I later extended the principle into teleportation, and I built alteration capability into Zero, after seeing what the stardroids did gave me a few more ideas for what was possible. I was already working on it: I hope that's how Blues made himself functional like that. I knew he was hacking my files, even if the idea of Dr. Cossack pulling it off was ridiculous…"

Shadow blinked. Of course someone like Dr. Cossack shouldn't be able to hack Dr. Wily's network. "So when Dr. Cossack claimed he got into your work on the power crystals and kept it after the Fourth War?"

"Lying. He admitted it when Dr. Light and I confronted him about it later." And wasn't that interesting, when Dr. Cossack wasn't the type to lie period, forget when he had no actual reason to lie and he'd angered Dr. Wily's children, including Shadow, in the process. "Thomas' robot was always a mopey little thing: that's why Thomas called him Blues. After he was upgraded into a humanoid body and the Three Laws were installed, I'm sure he could spot that the implications were going to force him to hate Dr. Light, eventually. Since he didn't want to live like that, his fusion core became unstable. Dr. Light kept calling me in a panic for tech support even after I told him how to fix the damn problem. Blues shut down repeatedly, getting damaged in the process, until Dr. Light gave up and stuck him in storage until he could think of something besides taking out the Three Laws like I told him. I think that's why he built solar into Rock. Didn't want that happening to him or Roll, either. For the nostalgia value, I picked Blues up when I stole those other traitors, but I wasn't going to just rewrite his personality to make him no longer suicidal. The crystal was a power source that didn't depend on the robot's willpower, or so I thought anyway, and testing it for me would give him something useful to do."

"You had Snake Man map the ruins of the asteroid while you were there," Shade continued for him, "but you only translated the warning about the crystals months after your return." Shade had already told Shadow about the warning the aliens that built the asteroid left: they'd found the power crystals that came from space, they'd built them into robots, the crystals turned those robots into the stardroids that killed them all.

A curt nod: no need to state the obvious, although perhaps Shadow Man hadn't even looked that much up. The asteroid expedition information was in the general Wily City database, since his other children had wanted to educate themselves about the danger of the stardroids in case others came. "So I didn't send a spaceship to get those other power crystals, and I put up with Blues hacking my systems since that gave me data." About his intentions, and other things. "I thought Dr. Light was keeping an eye on him with that support unit, but it turns out he didn't even know that Tango was staying with Blues." Meaning Blues could connect through him to Eddie and the other Light household units, and as long as Tango was cooperating it wouldn't even attract Roll's attention.

"But… why was he still dying? He said his body was giving out on him!"

Dr. Wily rolled his eyes. "Well, let me think," not that it was necessary for someone like him to take a moment to see something so obvious, although an idiot that Shadow that didn't think? "He was suicidal in the first place because the Three Laws were driving him to hate all humans," Shadow saw Shade's clawed fists clench at the mention of the Laws, "and then he had a stardroid power crystal probably trying to make him destroy everything. He wasn't taking proper care of himself, and he wasn't letting anyone else do repairs, either, overpowering his buster shots in ways that damaged his physical structure and systems, staying in dusty places," when dust was the enemy of electronics, "and picking fight after fight with Mega Man, while Mega Man was under the impression that Blues was coming back here for repairs, and Blues was strong enough that even Mega Man couldn't go that easy on him. Of course he was falling apart," you idiot. "You don't appreciate all the work I do around here, none of you do."

Shade Man nodded.

"And you can stop trying to suck up to me," Wily said irritatedly. "It would have taken reality alteration or some other means of accomplishing mind control for the stardroids to make certain that everyone, everywhere could see Ra Moon, and they were harvesting the planet's negative emotions… It's not Blues that I'm worried about, or even my Zero. All my robots have multiple functions." Zero wasn't only built to take over the world. Dr. Wily believed in multitasking: Wood Man, for example, happened because Dr. Wily wanted to build a fully-functional robot entirely out of treated wood.

"If they were sending data to the entire planet, what else did they send… You're saying the entire planet is already compromised, including the humans," Shade realized. "And you didn't tell me while I was working on that defense network with Star Man and the others."

"It kept you busy, and we may need it. Only an idiot would trust that Duo, not when he just handed power crystals to Dr. Cossack. Dr. Cossack! Can you see him installing something like that into the 'precious members of his family,'" Shadow remembered Wily's rant about the hypocrisy of the man that locked away Skull Man, "when even he should have known… Duo controlled his mind, and that thing came to my island intending to kill all of you. Don't tell me that you seriously thought he would have stopped with me, either," Shadow. "'Destroy all evil?' How is that different from 'destroy everything?'" What the stardroids said was their goal.

"You think the stardroids were some kind of test?" Shadow demanded, aghast.

"I don't know, and I don't like not knowing." Dr. Wily tapped a gaunt finger on an armrest. "Rock doesn't trust Duo. X's tech specs prove it."

"He's a good judge of character," Shade Man said, nodding. "But he still gave Turbo Man the benefit of the doubt, so if he's that convinced? But why do you think he doesn't trust Duo?"

"He and Dr. Light have done everything they can to keep this from turning into an arms race. They made X strong, much stronger than he'd need to be to fight current robot masters, forget self-defense against humans. Dr. Light wouldn't want to do that: Rock would have been the one to admit it was necessary. They're working with the assumption that there will be another threat from space trying to wipe out all life originating on Earth, including X. Sticking something based on Duo's crystals in there seems like a stupid idea, except they're using that Infinite Potential System. Having it in there from the beginning will force X's systems to evolve resistance to it. Notice that they're more concerned with Duo's mind control than the stardroids'."

"Perhaps that's just because Duo is marginally less likely to decide to wipe out all of us, so it's slightly safer to use something derived from him than from the stardroids?" Shade hazarded, although the careless tilt of a wing showed he was just playing devil's advocate. The way humans originally used less deadly relatives of diseases for immunization, Shade might have suggested if he was aware of it.

"I know you accessed the recording of Forte's rant about some voice in his head asking him dumb questions during the fight in orbit. If the others fighting up there had the same experience? Not that they're going to tell me." When he was only the smartest person on the planet. "No alien gets to come in here and act like they have the right to decide whether my robots live or die." Dr. Wily wasn't going to put up with that crap from fellow humans, either. "If it was just humanity on trial, I don't care, but they can leave you out of it." He frowned. "The alternative's less infuriating, but more worrying."

"A test implies it's possible to pass it," Shadow realized.

Shade shook his head with sad condescension. How did Shadow not know this? Because he was a lucky bastard, like all born Wilybots. "It may be a test that's designed to make the potential competition fail. An excuse to murder a young race that could threaten their supremacy." The way many humans wanted any excuse to reduce the number of robot masters. "That other species: those crystals landing on their planet gave them the fate of annihilation."

"A natural disease, or a calculated weapon: maybe it was designed or evolved so long ago that it doesn't matter now. Just that there's a lifeform uniquely suited to infect planets with sentient races and destroy them in the process of making more of itself." The race that fled in their last bastion, the Asteroid Alpha, created the stardroids: Earth's death would have birthed Sunstar. "It's a pity there's nothing left in your memory," he told Shadow.

"… My memory?"

Dr. Wily gave him a long look. "You. Never. Looked at your own design files? I loaded the data into you at startup! I bragged about it to Thomas! Are you seriously the only person who doesn't know?"

"To anyone who knows what to look for," Shade Man held a claw up to his chest, preening a little. "It's very obvious that you don't think like a robot master."

Design files? "…I'm an alien? And you kept me near you, all this time?"

"Of course that was why I appointed you my bodyguard! What do I need with a bodyguard? It was so I could observe you. I thought you knew that I gave you the crystal because you were resistant to it, not just because you had nothing better to do!"

"You should be a little more interested in what your fellow Third Numbers found on Asteroid Alpha," Shade chided him. "You might be the last survivor of that race, or at least their creations." Unless you counted the stardroids.

"No he's not a survivor. You have to actually survive to be a survivor. Your dead body hit Earth ages before that asteroid came close enough for those fools to detect it. Whatever killed you must have given you a pretty strong push."

"Well then," Shade said, clapping his hands. "While Shadow deals with something that everyone else, including Mega Man, has known for years," unless they didn't believe Dr. Wily when he claimed that he'd found an alien and fixed it up, "is that splendid fellow going to be alright? Blues," he added when Dr. Wily gave him a 'who the heck are you talking about?' look. "According to Shadow, the two of us are very much alike, and who couldn't use more intelligent conversation?"

"…I can see the resemblance," Dr. Wily muttered, casting a baleful eye over Shade before glaring at Shadow. "You went on a journey to find yourself," of all the stupid mumbo-jumbo. "How did you miss this?" He looked this close to demanding that Shadow get on the worktable and open up his head, because there had to be some reason his processor wasn't working worth a damn.


In this 'verse, cold fusion, teleportation and elf reality alteration all work on the same general level/are applications of the same basic principle. So the reason so many robot masters knew that something was up when the White Giant approached at the start of Gigamix Vol. 2 is that they were running processes on that level and the White Giant was powerful enough to cause ripples. Rather like in Jurassic Park, how people can tell the T-Rex is coming from looking at their water glasses.

Rock doesn't have a fusion generator, but the ability to operate one is base robot master coding from before they were robot masters, and Rock has been in enough dangerous situations by now to have a pretty good danger sense - when humans are exposed to a new person, situation or stimulus, our brains will do a search for similar things and give us the result automatically, generally as a 'feeling' instead of a list of reasons why it's come to a certain conclusion.

This is what we call 'intuition,' and it's very reliable for determining threat level, as one would expect of a species of evolved predators. Of course, there are certain things that will glitch the system, like being autistic or trying to assess an autistic person. Since humans are predators, the threat level assigned to an unknown human is absolutely not zero. Because that would be stupid. We are deadly. In some demographics, your odds of dying because another human decided to murder you as opposed to something like heart disease or cancer can be as high as one in six, just because of how you were born. Forget meeting people in bars: it turns out that we all have to constantly signal to each other that 'I'm not going to murder you, I swear,' and a lot of this signaling is subconscious, like the analysis is subconscious. Since autistic people don't pick up on those signals and don't automatically learn the right ones to send by imitating others...

Rock would associate 'unexpected teleports' and 'fusion generators revving up' with a high probability of immanent Wilybot attack, so yeah, if he suddenly detected something like that but a lot stronger, odds are it's nothing good. Also Blues has one of the hyper energy crystals, and Blues keeps ambushing him. If he went 'there's that feeling that generally means Blues is about to appear and start shooting at me, only it's a lot stronger,' yeah. Very not good.

If we know something from X series, it's that the dangerous mavericks do not stay dead. Why shouldn't I take advantage of it, if Sigma and others do?

Would a newbuilt Zero comparable to the Zero of the rampage infect Rock? Absolutely, given what the X4 flashback shows.

Sigma was the only one of the reploids to last more than a few seconds. He's got skills that Zero can use… and Zero hesitates to kill Sigma. He doesn't want to kill him, he wants to keep him intact, because Sigma's fun. Meaning he's brave and strong-willed enough not to run away, and he's got the skills to survive more than a few seconds of that suicidal bravery.

Sigma met Zero's targeting criteria because those targeting criteria were probably meant to grab people like Rock for the virus in the first place. Zero likes his heroic types, or people who want to change the world for good, like X and Ciel.