I'm sorry for the delay: my sleep schedule has killed my ability to notice errors and copy-edit, so Haruna Rei was kind enough to offer to beta for me, and then her glasses self-destructed with hateful vengeance. I've tried to edit it myself, of course, but my apologies for the sentence structure and things I didn't catch. They'll be fixed after her new glasses arrive.
This fic has foiled my second attempt to get it to wrap up nicely: this time it's because I made the mistake of underestimating Dr. Wily. Even if I scrap a couple chapters, there's just no one who could reasonably get into position to prevent a certain event.
I'm not following my usual gameverse headcanon here: I like the idea that Blues is the sadbot from the manga, making Rock 001 and Blues 000 since Rock was the first purpose-built robot master and Blues was an earlier unit retrofitted to robot master level, and then upgraded further by Dr. Wily because Dr. Wily hates stupid people. I think he keeps tossing IQ upgrades at his robot masters in hopes that someday they'll use them, but they're all less than five years old and there's only so much raw IQ can do. He was probably also hoping that more intelligence would cure the suicidal, since dying is stupid and his kids really shouldn't go and die.
Yes, Blues is maverick. However, he was also a stardroid before, and while he may have gone around dismembering his younger siblings, and inciting Forte to blow up several city blocks, and massacring Sniper Joes because their existence offended him, and threatening to shoot Kalin-Um. Yeah. Too much optimism would be a little bad here.
I really like the idea that Dr. Light's first and last creations were both built to develop wills of their own.
"Hey there," he said, crouching down and ending up with a lapful of cat. He found himself smiling softly as he leaned forward, curling around Tango a little, strands of his black hair yielding to gravity. Tango was probably damaging his shirt, sitting in his lap and pawing at his chest, checking to see that he was real. He let the support unit initiate wireless contact, even though he should be worried about contaminating the little thing. Probably he was letting it happen because Tango was worried about him, but he couldn't be sure…
Tango must have gone home, and seen the helmet that Star Man found and Dr. Wily passed on to Dr. Light. It was a nice gesture up until the point that Dr. Wily found him and didn't tell Dr. Light. So his support unit was left to mourn, and wander out into the city to curl up in some of Blues' temporary camps and mope.
He'd thought that he was the one looking after Tango (how did a green robot cat end up on the continent?) when it was the support unit that was looking after him, all along. Now that he was checking logs, he found Dr. Light thinking aloud while petting Tango, because he needed someone to tell and he couldn't burden Rock like that. Didn't want him to know that the unit that kept attacking him and his other siblings was his own brother.
Tango was so glad he was alive, and that was nice on more than one level now, but maybe he should have seen if he could get any information out of the piece of Ra Moon that was hanging around Mega Man. Soaking up the energy it gave off must have restarted the crystal in place of his heart, according to Dr. Wily's theories about Ra Moon and his notes on what Terra said in the files Blues hacked while playing still-booting-up. He'd drained all the energy it was using to hang around and control Mega Man, but if he was able to put up with seeing that even a little longer, he could have gotten a little more.
Since he'd been upgraded from a robot to a robot master, it was reassuring to have a support unit, even if he didn't have dozens of robots like most of them did. It was also a relief that Tango was still alive, after what Terra did to the poor thing when he sensed the defective stardroid and Tango tried to help him. Even though he was hooked into the cat's wireless, it was still a relief to feel that head pressing up under his chin. He moved his arms to be a more secure platform for the unit, and called up the familiar patterns of his coat and scarf, flung over his shoulders instead of with his arms through the sleeves so it wouldn't be so obvious the cat was robotic.
He'd used his scarf to bind up Tango, after Terra shot the poor cat. He could try to find what was left of it later, but it was so shredded he would have had to try to find a new one if he hadn't been reactivated with these capabilities.
After editing matter into existence he was dangerously low on energy, and it wasn't the Third Law trying to force him to do something about that. He wasn't registering that he was low on energy: instead he was casting about for energy sources, and feeling as though he should take them. That they were there for the taking, instead of there because people had their own souls, had made their own choices about what they wanted to feel, what they wanted to do.
Feelings were his purpose: he could tell when there was something that different about his own. A survival instinct was not something he should have. Robot masters were supposed to learn why love was important, learn to love life, their own lives and those of other people, and choose to act to continue to live, so they could choose to act to allow others to live their lives as well. A heedless drive, that forced people to have certain impulses independent of their souls' wishes: that was as counter to his creators' wishes as the Three Laws.
He was certain that Tango wouldn't mind Blues using him as a generator, as long as it stayed passive. When the little unit risked their life to bring Blues an e-can while injured, they would be glad that they were helping Blues continue functioning just by being here, just by wanting him to live. He wasn't going to force Tango to produce energy, the way Terra tried to squeeze despair out of the world.
Still, he thought, heading for the warehouse's side door, he was supposed to live by his own will. Develop his own preferences, realize on his own what he wanted to protect.
With Tango, there were enough people living in the city that he could meet baseline energy requirements passively, he calculated. He didn't mind peoplewatching, although now, it might be better to stick close to the screaming arguments instead of finding somewhere else to be. If he needed more energy, say for editing the files that compromised his buster arm from 'damaged' to 'intact,' then well, he'd better hope he'd hit something when he fired.
He smirked: his reputation might come in handy there. After the incident with the Copy, everyone knew he was terrifying.
It was disturbing how easily he was adjusting to this idea, but then, he'd made major transitions twice before. The first time when he was granted full sapience and a humanoid body, but imprisoned by the laws, and the second when Dr. Wily woke him up and announced that he didn't care if Blues didn't particularly want to live, he was getting a new lease on life like it or not. Shortly thereafter, he'd gone independent, and had to work out how to acquire all those new survival necessities, things his old body hadn't needed. Like clothing.
Reality editing meant he wouldn't have parts requirements anymore. Not as long as he had the energy, and any sentient being could provide that. They didn't even have to be fully sapient: look at Tango.
The urgent thing now was finding out what he'd missed while he was drifting around in space. Going over the data he'd gotten from Wily's systems. What exactly Dr. Wily had done when he'd built that unit based on Sunstar, with more than a few touches of Ra Moon's capabilities. Reducing a planet to an asteroid belt? Eh, there were hundreds of ways to render Earth lifeless. Controlling an entire planet, what they heard and saw, though? Tapping into their minds, uploading data to them?
Now that had potential. He could almost hear Albert saying those very words. A channel that could upload video files: could it upload mind-viruses?
Terra only used it to try to show people the truth of what was going on, but that was thinking too small. Why not generate nightmares to inflict on a target world? Or were the stardroids simply too powerful for their progenitors, with no need to bother with anything but crude techniques? Were they war machines instead of Dr. Light's system managers? Built to kill instead of to guide and direct. Rock's direct approach, using personal power and violence to accomplish his wishes was… unusual. Not what Dr. Light wished for, even though Blues was sure that he didn't see his nightmares when he looked at Rock. No, it was Dr. Cossack who feared that robots would be used as weapons of war. Dr. Light feared a world where robots would crush people underfoot and not have the capacity to notice or care.
Or, even more nightmarish, not be able to stop themselves from following orders even if they did realize that they were hurting people and that was wrong.
Mega Man cared. Mega Man fought to protect, had chosen to fight to protect his family, the people he'd learned to care about. He fought for everyone's futures. That was why he was a hero.
Terra hadn't used Ra Moon's powers to their full potential for whatever reason, but it would be simple for Dr. Wily to figure out some of Ra Moon's true capabilities from what the world observed. If Ra Moon was even a separate entity, instead of a mass of the energy that animated all the stardroids. If that was the case, then the energy cloud Blues tapped had been just as much this 'Zero' as the portion of that energy being animating the android body Dr. Wily built it as a host. It was obvious why he'd picked an android host body instead of a robot master: android self-repair capability would cover use of reality editing for self-repair, and who would suspect an android of hooking into systems and controlling other units? X was supposed to be incapable of that, so he'd experience the world closer to how humans did, end up with a psychology closer to theirs instead of that of a hive species.
Humans looked after themselves: robot masters came into the world knowing that there were little lives that needed them. "You tricked me," he accused Tango, tapping the cat on the nose. They were on the sidewalk now, almost into the shopping district, so better confine his musings to wireless. "Into looking after you." Into staying alive. "Just like Rock and Dr. Light… Or no, that's very Albert, isn't it. He set it up so they would crash into the asteroid, but he told Dr. Light that he'd see him when he got back to Earth. He knew that I'd stay to make sure that they were alright." At the time, he'd told himself that it was the First Law forcing him, but he'd wanted to just shut down. Standing there and letting Dr. Light die would have gotten him what he wanted… if it was truly what he wanted. His own will.
"If Dr. Light hadn't sabotaged Gamma since he knew Albert wouldn't put up with the UN ordering him to build a robot-killer without some plan to take it over, Rock and I wouldn't have been able to take it, not and stay intact enough to protect Dr. Light from the security robots there and get the ship repaired and back to Earth. He can't have been expecting me to emerge from the teleporter, dismember the Third Numbers and get out of his base on my own." Not after damaging his buster saving the ship and then helping Rock with Gamma.
"Realistically, should I have won that fight? True, most of them were taken down by friendly fire," the Third Numbers did more damage to each other in that fight than he did to them, and they'd been hampered by the presence of Dr. Wily. Getting him out of there before one of his brothers accidently killed him took Shadow Man out of the fight, and he was the one who could have pursued Blues and brought him back before he repaired himself… before he recovered. "The stardroids were combat units, I might have had subconscious access to their combat programming, but I didn't really have skill, not yet." He was decades older than the rest of them, but he'd only had a few weeks conscious in a humanoid body, and he was reactivated after the Third Numbers were turned on. "I've never had luck. I already had fusion operation and teleportation programming: was I using alteration to make sure they missed, even without being aware of it?"
The capabilities of Terra and the other stardroids… "I don't think the species that build Asteroid Omega had a Dr. Light or Dr. Wily," he realized. "Terra and the others… If they didn't have their own wills, then they couldn't have used Ra Moon's powers to their full extent. But all of us except Rock and a handful of others constantly operate fusion reactors, and even he teleports. Quantum observation is… yes, rather like breathing: it's an automatic, background process, but we can take conscious control over it. Every single robot master could use this reality editing capability, if it was installed into them." Blues must have used it without even being aware of it, since it never showed up on the level of his program code. "Elec Man would be especially dangerous, since he manages large-scale energy generation… invocation on several continents simultaneously now. On the other hand, if the stardroids had their own wills, then they could have fought the influence of the crystals. Maybe that species wouldn't be extinct if they'd given their robots the ability to realize when an order was wrong and the right to refuse to follow it." The things Dr. Light believed were necessities. "If the stardroids arrived after the WRO had its way…" He hit up the WRO's robot master registry: how bad were the casualties from fighting the stardroids? What was the rate of robot master construction over the past… "What?!" he demanded, aloud and enraged.
Stopping suddenly meant someone bumped into him: he was too angry to even respond to their automatic "Excuse me."
"Mandatory retirement?!" Thank goodness Dr. Wily stopped it, or else… All the goodwill Dr. Light hoped for would have been ruined. Rock would have been forced to watch humans murder his younger siblings, and after the first Destruction Order? He'd raced there to save them, according to the reports of the Second Numbers, that was clear. Rock would not have left tamely, not when people were going to die.
If all of Dr. Light's children were executed for turning against humans on the day scheduled, the day that would have come if Dr. Wily hadn't struck first? Of course Roll wouldn't have escaped that fate, not when she had so much coding in common with the others, not when the rest of Dr. Light's children were labeled defective, and he'd registered his objections to the Three Laws. They would have accused him of not installing them properly, of aiding and abetting Dr. Wily somehow…
He had not gotten this angry before Dr. Wily rebuilt him with the crystal. His default was sadness, not anger. He was named for that melancholy, for the music he loved that expressed it.
Blues couldn't remember getting this angry since he was rebuilt as a warbot either. He'd just felt tired, all the time. Tired and sharp-edged, like the jagged edges of the broken crystal. Had the crystal drained away the emotions he would have felt otherwise, to power keeping him alive? Draining his soul in order to sustain his life, the life he hadn't wanted.
Except… except Rock needed him, and Forte felt so much he couldn't control it, not yet, and Blues had something he wanted to protect.
The Destruction Order this time… it was so transparent. If it was due to actual concern about robots becoming erratic and dangerous as they got older, even though that was ridiculous when making sure that robots stayed in good shape was one of the things robot masters were for, then they should have targeted units like Tango. People's pet robots. No, it was nothing but an excuse to reduce the number of robot masters, remove the ones that humans had grown attached to, the ones that might have learned enough of the world to start caring about humans the way Dr. Light wished, but, in the eyes of these people, the 'other' was always going to be the enemy, and knowledge was power. Humans that would help robots were humans that would help 'the enemy.'
They'd come this close to destroying all of Dr. Light's dreams, even if the repeal of the first Destruction Order meant the original eight were grandfathered in? A masterful stroke, that, because the voters would have been outraged over Mega Man's death, and this way their enemies could set the precedent, could make people feel that Mega Man was special, and so it was alright that all other robot masters were murdered…
He couldn't have helped if he was here. He might even be a poster boy for those people, if they knew he predated the Third Numbers. All the robot masters knew he was powerful and dangerously erratic: if they knew he was a Lightbot…
If those people weren't racist hypocrites that didn't want to pick a fight with companies that wouldn't have wanted to replace their old, non-sentient units, then Tango might be dead.
He had to stop walking for a moment, and he heard Tango's worried mew. The support unit knew what it looked like, when Blues had to focus all of his attention on diagnostics. The feeling in his chest wasn't pain, not like when the White Giant drew closer to the planet, not like when he met Terra, when the powerful alien radiating cruelty said he was one of them. Broken, a failure, but that wasn't news.
He should be in pain right now: he knew these symptoms. The difference between now and before was that he had Dr. Wily's energy virus in addition to the crystal: so it was regulating the crystal to some extent?
That was good to know, and he wasn't going to complain about not having to periodically shut down his pain sensors. Having them off was a good way to develop some problem and not find out about it until he was dead.
Right, of course Dr. Wily wouldn't want his creations to end up like the stardroids. He still hated having additional outside programming in his systems, but if it countered the crystal's attempts to influence him? The virus might even be the reason he was aware of this drive to get energy now. If you didn't know about something, then you couldn't control it.
What would Zero… what would Zero feel like, when he wasn't hovering around Rock?
He'd avoided socializing with people for years, except for Tango: the very fact he wanted to meet one more Wilybot, much less a stardroid, was obviously a red flag. Honestly, possessing Mega Man like that was technically impressive, but it was Dr. Wily's work, not his own, and it said terrible things about his character. Someone who risked the lives of robots like that, without even bothering to understand their programming and the Three Laws?
This Zero was not the center of the universe.
He didn't like what he was finding in his systems. He needed to do some survey, figure out how much of the difference was due to the virus and how much was from the crystal, were only things that seemed like changes because he was only becoming aware of them now. He headed into an alley, getting out of sight long enough to teleport up to one of his favorite roofs. Thank goodness it was still there: he realized only after he'd already arrived that it could have been destroyed by the stardroids, or Forte, or urban renewal, in the time he was gone. No, he wasn't thinking clearly, he knew, putting Tango down and removing his coat from his shoulders.
At least the roof was still here and it still had that cold breeze.
He needed to try to get at the coding of this thing. This couldn't just be the trap embodied in the crystals: they turned intelligent robots into berserkers, there wasn't any subtlety there. Not to mention that it had overwritten his eyes red, and that was Dr. Wily's color.
Wonderful. He had Dr. Wily's programming trying to tamper with his emotions, when he and Dr. Light were the ones who worked on that learning system to begin with. One of the two people who understood best that robots had real feelings also understood why they felt certain things. Since Ra Moon could control what people perceived, then of course Dr. Wily's virus wouldn't do something as obvious as trying to control his emotions, it would control the data he was looking at and having emotions about. Try to convince him to feel the way Dr. Wily thought they all should feel, especially about the humans that used them.
So: he couldn't trust his emotional reactions. He couldn't trust what he was seeing. He'd have to remember what he wanted, and be on guard against what he observed changing that.
Low on water. He could fix that, and generating water seemed like a harmless way to practice with these new abilities, but now his energy reserves were low. Tango was already peering about: the cat knew this place, so he must be trying to figure out where the nearest store was that he could shoplift an e-can from. Blues patted him on the head. "It's alright, I'll take care of this." Even though he appreciated everything Tango had done, to keep him alive. Make him keep himself alive. He needed to do this himself, to get some data on how to meet his energy requirements.
…Terrifying humans was horrible publicity for robot masters (although they didn't have to know he was one), and also cruel. He should not be thinking of terrifying, no, of attacking them, as the default way to refuel.
Nope, Dr. Wily certainly hadn't even tried to override all of the stardroid defaults. Not when he kept losing because robot masters found hurting others so counterproductive.
…And now he found himself wondering if he'd held that buster to Kalinka Cossack's head that day because it was the optimum way to keep her and everyone else safe, because he was feeling self-destructive and felt like tempting the First and Second Laws, or because her shock and betrayal, the way everyone stared at him in horror…
No, he was not going to apologize. He didn't like explaining himself and the last thing he should want to do was socialize, get access to the Cossackbot network when he was carrying an energy virus. He'd already infected Tango. No. The Cossacks had lost enough to the wars. He was not going to let it use him like this. He was going to not start a panic, but wander around and passively refuel, and then he was going to get back to trying to hack into what had to be a two-way data link between his systems and the energy virus. If this thing's programming couldn't even control its own avatar, then he wasn't going to let it control his soul, any more than he'd let the Three Laws rule him.