So, as you all know, there was a nice little cliffhanger at the end of the last chapter, a little hidden file out of place in the program code from Blues. Today, you'll get to see what the Easter egg was as well as see X spar against Blues with the new defense program.
Combatants ready? Blues versus X, round one, fight!
Disclaimer: Mega Man and all related characters and information are the property of Capcom Co., Ltd., Akira Kitamura and Keiji Inafune.
It was a memory file. One of Blues'.
There was a strange filter over the visual portion of it, darkened like sunglasses. A visor? There was a display that had to have been on the visor itself; anything else wouldn't have been included in the memory file, but in the peripheral there was a stream of data, moving too rapidly for the human eye to catch. It seemed to be a message center with a great deal of back-and-forth, though none of the ID numbers were ones X could recognize.
But the scenery was so green. There was a copse of trees nearby, heavy with leaves, and the plant life looked healthy in a way that was uncommon even when X was activated in 21XX.
There was a small child with dark hair running up to Blues now, with a robot galumphing after him—a dog? —and the child was holding a soccer ball in both hands, beaming brightly up at Blues. "Do you want to play?" He sounded altogether too excited about the prospect—he'd apparently only been playing with the dog before.
The child wasn't in armor, was in the kind of clothing children wore back in 20XX, but the resemblance to X left no room for question about who this child was.
"Have you been out here by yourself all day?" Blues sounded amused, but the child shook his head vehemently.
"Ice Man was playing with me earlier, but Doctor Light is doing maintenance on him now. He was the only one that came home this time."
"Well, it'd take a lot longer if he took all six at once," Blues pointed out even as he reached down to take the ball from Rock. His hands and arms were covered in red armor, with what looked like a grey material covering what of his body was exposed.
"Yeah…" Rock clearly thought that it was more fun when everyone was home at once, rare as that was. The dog had come right up to Blues, tail wagging, and sniffed at him.
"Rock! Where are you?" A female voice rang out and both Rock and Blues looked up and around: a small, female robot with blonde hair was making her way toward them. "Oh! Blues! Why didn't you send a message?" She asked the question, but her tone and the look on her face indicated that she wasn't at all surprised that he hadn't. That was his way, apparently.
Rather than answering her question, he asked, "Status report?"
She almost rolled her eyes. "We're all fine. Oil Man won't be if he doesn't stop making a mess in the lab whenever he repairs anything—I don't know who's worse, him or Auto—but if you're so worried, why don't you just come inside?"
Rock was looking back at Roll now like really, we're having this conversation again?
Roll just stared up at Blues, frowning cutely.
"Did you come out to play soccer, too, Roll?" Blues asked, his head tilting slightly as though he couldn't think of any better thing to do on such a sunny day. As though she hadn't just suggested he enter the lab.
Rock smiled and Roll grinned at him, "You'll lose."
Blues didn't say anything back, but by the look on the twins' faces, it was all too obvious that he'd just smirked at them.
X was speechless. To see this, for his brother, for Blues, to have given him this? Something so personal, something that spoke volumes about a past they both, in their own ways, had shared? The realization had only been tempered by the sorrow that the faces he saw, of a brother and sister he knew he had, were faces he could no longer remember, faces lost to the sands of time and degradation of memory files over centuries.
Part of X was glad that he'd started loading the program to his systems as Blues was sending this memory file over. Had he waited to see what the elder Light sibling had hidden away, he wouldn't have had the sense to start the install process for a good long while.
Blues didn't say anything after that, either. He didn't know if X had known what Rock and Roll even looked like, but he thought that something like this was…appropriate. That X should know where he came from, even if none of those people were able to be around when he finally activated.
Almost out of embarrassment, Blues turned on the network and began monitoring what the security team was doing a bit more closely, almost desperate for a distraction.
Still unable to find words, X queued up the file again, slowing it down so it played at greatly reduced speeds. The information in the peripheral had been nothing but a blur to him, and he was somewhat curious as to what was actually going on in the window.
He hadn't expected it to be a chat window. Or, at least, a close approximation to it.
'Blues,' he asked, finally finding something he could talk about, 'doesn't the DWN designation that keeps popping up in the comm peripheral stand for Doctor Wily Number?'
'It does,' Blues responded at length. 'The family lines were all designated in this fashion; my own serial number, DLN-000, is properly said as Doctor Light Number 000.'
For a moment, X wasn't sure how to respond. Sure, Blues—or Proto Man, as the Wily Numbers had been addressing him—admitted that he was communicating with Wily's creations while visiting his family's house, but nothing in their chatter seemed off-kilter or suspicious; Blues didn't seem the least bit worried about talking to them, about letting them know what was going on at the Light household. It was more like walking in on a friend's chat room than anything else, more like seeing a bunch of children talking to each other. Several of the listed designations had turned the conversation towards the topic of soccer once it had hit the network that Rock had just asked Blues to play, and X froze the file during a string of soccer-related chatter.
He would have asked his question immediately, had the freeze-frame not paused on a clear image of his older brother smiling at Blues. To see that face, as cheerful and innocent as Rock looked…
For a moment, X felt that he was looking not only at his brother, but at himself, had he been younger in appearance, in design, than Doctor Light had made him. It made X feel all the more saddened that, of all those he should have grown up around, all those he should have known, only one had survived long enough to see him, to pass on these memories, single file or not.
'Who is DWN-019,' he finally asked, 'and what do they mean by saying that…Forte is going to be sad you didn't invite him?'
Blues actually chuckled slightly at that, as to a fond memory, though not the one he sent X. 'DWN-019 is Gemini Man. He was…one of the Third Numbers, the third Robot Master set to be produced.' So he was one of the older ones. 'Forte is…I suppose you could call him Rock's rival. They were fond of teasing him. I believe he has a colorful retort for them a bit later into the log.' Forte was fond of 'colorful' retorts.
It hit X then, looking at the frozen image before him, eyes trailing over the comm chatter. 'These…these are Zero's siblings.' Even with how Zero had been, what he'd made of himself after his discovery… 'You're talking to the Wily Numbers like you've known them for ages, as if they are family. Why do you…' X wasn't sure what the right way to phrase this was. 'Why are you so comfortable with them, but can't stand being around Zero? If Wily's Robot Masters were like this,' this amicable despite their creator, 'why is Zero so different to you?'
'Doctor Wily was a very sick human,' Blues said slowly, 'and his mental health only declined as the years wore on. He lost sight of his original aim long before the Wily Wars ground to a halt. He lost himself long before he began to design the Zero Project. And the Zero Project was…quite unlike any of the others.' Memories of a late night in Wily's lab while the human slept, pilfering parts for repair. The Second Numbers never minded when he dropped by and often sat and talked with him. Quick Man had been the first to warn him of this new project, of its intentions, of just how far the father of the Wily Army had fallen. Of just how much his madness had stolen from him.
Blues often wondered if Wily himself died long before the cancer stole him.
'I guess telling you how he was when we first found him didn't help with whatever you knew from back then,' X admitted. 'Although you're doing a very good job of dancing around the subject of what the Zero Project actually entailed.' A slight smirk there. 'I'm not going to push. You've had enough of a day as it is. I just…I hope that if you do ever run into Zero again, you'll at least give him the benefit of the doubt, even if it's from the other side of the room.'
A soft chime alerted X that the program had completed its installation and was ready for use. A confirmation screen popped up over the visual feed for one eye. 'Blues, should I just click 'Yes' for the program, or is there a way to set the options before I kick it into gear?'
'I always thought it easiest to just turn it on and organize from there. You're not in a situation where you're under duress, and I did take your input limits into account with how much it would push you with at the default. I'm the only other unit it will register, so it won't be like turning it on in the full security or communication networks.' Blues was fiddling with his own settings as he spoke. 'I am going to appear as a friendly unit to begin with, but I will have to become a threat to you so you'll be able to set that portion of the display to your liking and learn to wield the program.' He said it very casually, but it was a warning: this training session would get a bit messy.
'Okay,' X responded, authorizing the program to boot up. Almost immediately, there was a flurry of data, some audio, some visual. It took him a minute, but it wasn't long before the visual data had been set to a status window that updated over one eye.
For him, it was like being back with the Hunters, back in the flow of the life he had known.
Well, for the most part. He couldn't begin to place the odd audio feed he was getting.
Blues hung back, just sort of drifted on the network, his focus drifting between data streams even as he kept an eye on X as he booted up the new program and set it to execute. He expected it'd take a few minutes for X to get used to the new input and figure out how he wanted to receive it, so he wasn't about to inundate X with an overflow of information on how to use the program, not yet.
It took a little while for X to adjust the scroll speed and text size for the status window to a comfortable level. While he had no problem reading the data in the small font he set, it had been going either too fast or too slow, and with the data moving erratically now, with only one entity on the net to worry about, only one person there besides him?
'What in blazes is this audio feed I'm getting?' he finally asked. 'I swear, it's like humming or white noise, but I can't figure out what it is or what, if anything, it has to do with the program. Did I install something wrong?'
Humming? 'No, no, that's supposed to be there. It's installed perfectly if that function is translating properly.' That was the happiest Blues sounded all day, like that X could even hear that was a very, very good thing. 'Though I imagine it's rather…empty with only me here.' Pity. 'That sound is the Harmony, though it isn't much of one with only one unit.' It reminded Blues of when he was still young and innocent, when he was newbuilt and still trusting. 'Try replaying that memory once your video feed isn't cluttered.'
'The Harmony?' X had never heard of such a concept, never known there to be anything like this in all the years he'd been active. 'Blues, that doesn't mean anything to me aside from the dictionary definition of the term.'
'I apologize, I should have explained that first. The Harmony is a phenomenon that occurs whenever a Robot Master hits a network. It is…not an actual sound, though an audio translation is a good translation since it works so much like music. It is the thrum on the network of the Robot Master's mind and it changes according to what the individual is doing and…depending on their mood. It is an accurate indicator of status.' So X would be able to read him much more accurately with this enabled, once he figured out what the sounds meant. 'Were you a Robot Master, you'd be able to feel my contribution to the Harmony as a second mind pressing against yours and a degree of empathetic communication would take place. A great deal, as we are family. Not so much between strangers, next to none between enemies.' But X was an android and couldn't experience that due to his mental defenses. Blues himself sometimes set the Harmony to audio input if he wanted something soothing to listen to, and so he'd chosen an audio input for X.
'So I can learn to translate the Harmony into, what, an emotional understanding, sort of like music? Or will it be different because it's not a language I'm fluent with, that I can't understand it the way you do?'
'At the very least, you will learn to read the changes in the Harmony that reflect emotional or status changes, given enough exposure to the individual. We…in my time, there was never anyone but Robot Masters on the network and humans couldn't hear the Harmony, so this is uncharted waters.' But he'd seen the opportunity to show this to X and he couldn't not do it, not when it was such an integral portion of how Robot Masters communicated.
X held still on the network for a moment, adjusted the way the audio sounded to him, startled when he tweaked the feed to mimic a harmonica and actually heard music, actually heard a tune.
And wow was it catchy.
Blues nodded over the network, watching X adjust himself and settle into the program. A major concern had been overwhelming the android with too much data, but he'd taken care when programming the default settings, was sure to set it well within parameters that wouldn't drown X out.
'Alright,' X said finally. 'I think I'm ready to test this.' The only thing that left X perturbed about the whole system was that , with the way Robot Masters managed the network, there wasn't an origin point to trace to, something that had been like meeting someone in a crowded room for Reploids. He could tell from the data scrolling along in his visual feed, however, that his systems were able to identify that there was a presence on the network.
Blues prodded at X's shields then, let X feel how it felt to have another presence poke at him with this defensive program when that other unit wasn't dangerous. 'Anyone who could perceive these shields, this program, would probably inspect them this way. And they're behaving as they should, good.' The shields sort of shimmered on the network, not quite repelling Blues, but almost tensing at the prodding. A Robot Master would still be able to hide from X here, but they wouldn't be able to ambush him. The shields would sense and react to their strike immediately as though X himself were another Robot Master. Not that that would be an issue with just Blues here, but if someone in this era tried building another…
With no warning, Blues did something to the shield, his sound on the Harmony shifting to something more intimidating as the best description for his action was that he'd really smacked it. There was something after, though, as though he'd planted something onto it and X's peripheral went up in alarm, detailing status as the program shifted and targeted Blues as a hostile unit. The shields strengthened in response to the 'thorns' of trash data he'd thrown at the program to try and confuse it.
As expected, the program reared like an agitated cobra, the shields not at all broken through.
X stepped back at the first sign of attack, allowing the program to run on its own for the most part. He did focus the program towards Blues, towards where the attack had come from, commands rippling over the shield as X remained on the defensive, watching, waiting, and listening. If he could just tell where the attack was coming from, tell before the strike, he should be able to actively counter or deflect it, keep the shield from having to do all the work for him.
He really hoped the program worked that way. If it didn't, he'd have to ask Blues what that line of coding had really meant.
Of course, with a Robot Master being what it was, it was difficult to tell what direction the attack would come from at any given moment. An attacking unit wouldn't manifest themselves like a Reploid or human on the network; that'd be giving away too much of an advantage. One of the main purposes of the program was to defend the android even when he had no idea what just hit him.
Like now.
Now he just had to keep attacking until X figured out how to tell where Blues' self was concentrated. So another smack, this one from below X, like the network itself heaved as though with an earthquake, sending the android careening into another portion of the secured server.
Pushing himself to his feet, X felt the shield bristle around him, felt it as if were a plethora of eyes and ears scouring the server. The strikes were coming in hard, and they were hitting from random locations. With a unit like Blues, it was difficult to tell where he was coming from. Being the network meant that he wasn't constrained like the Reploids, didn't have a signal that could be traced.
But he did have a center of power, a nexus for his control. Moving through the network, X kept the shield steady, watching the flow of data streaming over his eye, slowing the text down only a bit as the readings started to move faster than he could follow. To find him, X couldn't rely solely on the shield, couldn't rely just on insight. He effectively had to split his concentration, watching the data feed scroll by while keeping himself aware of the network around him.
A shift in the reading, and X dropped into a defensive crouch, hoping he'd translated the data properly.
This time, when Blues struck, the shield actually pushed back. It wasn't a full deflection, wasn't a full parry, but X did manage to focus and strike back at Blues and it pushed both units apart. Blues' focus coalesced again after a few moments and the sound over the Harmony had an odd sort of trill for a moment. When he spoke, he sounded pleased. 'Very good, you're getting used to how I feel on the network,' and thus, better able to focus and target him.
Good, X thought, quickly highlighting the changes he'd recorded in the data feed, set the systems to display the text in a different color so that there was a more direct means of tracing when the shift happened. He knew it wouldn't be the same—no one attacked from the exact same vantage point after that point had proven ineffective—so he had to quickly direct the program to look for similar data.
He'd finished setting that command just in time, the text color switching in the feed, and X readied himself. This time, it wouldn't be a simple counter. X intended to hit back.
Blues also noticed that X wasn't as reluctant to spar as Rock always had been. The child truly hated fighting, even play-fighting, and would try to talk Blues out of it every time he needed more training. It never worked, of course, and he made sure Rock could defend himself, but if he'd just gotten down to business like X was now, it'd have been over with more quickly.
X was learning quickly, too, so Blues stepped up the ante and this time, when he attacked, it was less of a smack and more of a slice into the shield.
The data had been different, but not enough so that the system couldn't trace it, didn't alert X, and he strengthened the shield near the point where Blues' energy was aiming. Only at the last second did X realize the change in attack, moving deftly to the side even as the shield was hit, and hit hard.
This was X's little network security bubble, and like hell anyone was going to pop it like it wasn't even there, wasn't effective, and X reached out with his own power, augmented the shield, and struck out at the energy that was quickly recoiling from his vicinity. Springing back, he ran a diagnostic on the program. The shield was sturdy, had already sealed over where the energy had stabbed into it, and X reinforced that point, almost like putting an extra layer of material over a patched hole. Within seconds, the shield was back up to full strength.
X tensed, recoding the data to a third color for the difference in attack. The faster his systems could identify a source, the quicker he'd be able to respond and the less likely he was to be caught off-guard by a change in attack pattern or method.
Were X built with an animal form rather than a humanoid one, he would have snarled at Blues.
A feeling like approval on the network, even as Blues laid into X again, this time slicing at his bubble in two places, one from the front, one from above. With each attack, Blues pressed more strength into it, pushed X a bit further to force him to adjust and learn. Blues hadn't broken through the bubble yet and while X had been landing counterattacks, Blues didn't appear to be hurt at all. His data stream would just splash back like drops of water, then condense again when he gathered himself up.
X was reacting more like one of the Wilybots, like a robot built for battle, though considering the android's history, that only made sense. He'd likely gotten past the phase where he'd plead for peace, if he even was ever idealistic enough to try it to begin with.
X bounced back, away from the latest barrage of attacks, and focused his energy around him. So far, he'd only been using his own power to amplify the shield, to strengthen his own defenses and move through the shield to attack. From what he could tell of Blues' response, however, the shield was serving as a buffer when X attacked from within.
So I have to attack from without, X realized.
He felt for the shield, felt how far that bubble spread around him, and established where his line of defense ended. Just outside of that, outside of the reach of his defenses, he could raise his own weapons against his opponents. Though by no means tired or severely impacted by the use of his own energy on the shield, X knew that he would not have a lot of time to fight before the taxing of his systems required he either fall back to Cyberspace or end up caged by whatever was fighting him.
Capture, as it had been during the Maverick and Elf Wars, was not an option.
His energy coalesced around the shield, forming into two distinct balls of energy. He would have preferred more, preferred a greater degree of retaliatory capability, but to wield more than two weapons? He was only built with two arms. His control would be clumsy at best, a waste of effort and energy.
Deftly moving aside, Blues' next attack missed, and X lanced out with one of the orbs, the energy morphing into something very similar to Zero's saber. The blade turned only at the last second, X realizing that he had no idea what a straight attack would have done to Blues, much less whatever of himself Blues was using to attack. The blade skimmed along the data stream before recoiling, reforming into a ball of energy just outside the shield.
Blues retaliated immediately in X's moment of hesitation, slamming down on X's shield, causing fractures along the android's defense. 'Don't hesitate to attack,' Blues admonished, even as his focus skirted up from the redirected attack, letting the energy veer off and dissipate. 'Something like that is costly to you, is it not? Don't waste your arms if you're not going to seriously attack.' There was an audible frown in Blues' voice. Did X think he'd have actually hurt Blues with that? 'Or did you just assume that I did not have shields of my own?'
'You can't fault me for being worried about attacking my own brother. Whether or not you have shields says nothing for the fact that I've never sparred with you before. Zero, yes. Axl, yes. You?' X lashed out again, this time not holding back as the blade swept towards his brother's data. 'I just needed to know when I have to let up. It's like knowing the phrase or signal to get your trainer or master to let go, to stop.'
That was the second time 'Axl' was mentioned, but Blues didn't ask about it, just amended Axl's designation to 'veteran and sparring partner' in his dictionary of 'people X knows who aren't here', then deftly summoned a shield to intercept X's attack. The blade pushed on the shield and the impact would have sparked had it been in the physical plane. Then Blues pushed the shield a bit up and out, deflecting the blade and sending it spinning upward. 'That's better. Don't worry yourself over me on this plane. While yes, a direct hit would do some damage, you aren't aiming to kill. I can feel that in your attack. I'd recover even if I did sustain damage.'
That seemed to be just what X needed to get goaded into full sparring mode, the saber still held at the ready for close-quarters offensive strikes. The ball that had been hovering at his left suddenly grew in size, in intensity, before splitting off into two smaller orbs that hovered above X's shields.
He may only have two arms, but that didn't mean X hadn't learned well how to use ranged armament in combat.
As he moved closer to Blues, closer to the nexus where all the attacks were focusing around, the two orbs hovering above him began to glow before firing out missile-like bursts of light, targeting the core—or at least what X hoped was Blues' core on the net—and he dodged another series of attacks, stabbing through the data streams.
An instinctive part of Blues wanted to push his own defensive program into caging X as he'd done to Phantom, to set an example of who had true dominance on this network. Blues vetoed that urge and ran down the line to veto whatever directive set was prompting the urge—the mastering subprogram, no surprise there—and while X rained attacks down on his nexus, on his focus, Blues let it dissolve and coalesce in a different point on the network, though his shields did get slammed by the energy spheres. His shields trembled and shook, as though to shake loose of X's energy (it felt a bit odd), but held fast. He smirked. X was finally taking this seriously. Perhaps he wasn't so different from Rock, after all. Rock had been reluctant to strike at Blues, too.
Blues lanced at X's shields with multiple projectiles, aiming to overwhelm and burst his defensive bubble.
X was aware of what the nexus felt like, what Blues' energy felt like, on the network, and was quickly able to reroute his secondary weapons fire, even as the sword collapsed to reroute his energy to amplifying his shields, to adding outer shields of his own energy that actually counter-attacked the projectiles.
It didn't stop him from falling back as his status screen started drifting towards the yellow, his own energy feeling where the weaknesses in the shield were starting to form, patching them ahead of the program actually repairing itself. A pair of whips sprang up outside the shield, reaching out to bat aside or obliterate the throngs of data bombs that were assailing his system.
X ticked his head to the side, program quickly changing from a small peripheral over one eye to a full visor, data and status images blinking up in a way that made his status easier to track, his defenses simpler to build or repair. Ensuring that he kept his metaphorical back to Blues' nexus, he began to charge a new energy orb, letting the power build until he would be able to use it…if he had a chance to use it, he amended.
Blues' shield sort of undulated as the Robot Master considered X. He could almost see Blues' head tilt, even over the network, as Blues considered his next plan of attack. X was doing well with the personal assaults, but Blues hadn't tried any subjugation techniques. Perhaps that'd be the next thing to work on, though he'd have to start a bit lower: this sensation would likely be uncomfortable to X and he didn't want to cause pain the way he had to Phantom. X hadn't done anything wrong, after all.
So a little bit of pressure, like herding a robot to a desired point. Nothing painful or necessarily scary if you know what it is. Blues' aura pushed on X, not quite pinning him, but restraining him some, limiting his movements and slowing him.
X felt the push, felt himself starting to get backed into a corner, and started shunting all his energy towards the orb building at his back, pressing out with the shield as he tested the barrier of Blues' containment. It wasn't yet a cage, wasn't yet pinning X to the spot, but he felt the walls at the edges of his periphery, knew that Blues was going to quarantine him, much as he had done to Phantom, and he needed to find an out.
Now.
Recoiling back, or as much as he could given the circumstances, X released the orb, the bright ball of energy lancing towards Blues' focus once more.
Blues' immediately reaction was to hit the orb with some of his own power, not at all wanting it anywhere near his nexus. As he did that, he clamped down harder on X, restraining him further, making the pressure a step more severe, though still nowhere near what he'd done to Phantom.
The orb, a split second before impact, shattered into dozens of smaller orbs, blasted apart into a large net of light, before each of the individual little sparks sped towards Blues.
The moment X felt the orb break apart, he pressed outward, reached out, and his energy lashed out with fire and electricity, coursed with power, as he attempted to push against his brother's constricting hold.
Blues reeled in surprise and in that moment, it was like the entire network was trembling, surprised by the blow. His focus, his nexus, seemed to dissipate as his presence felt evenly distributed everywhere. Another tremor, then Blues coalesced again, his shields intact. If they'd been fighting in person, he may have shaken his hand, the one without the Buster, as though he'd just burned his fingers. 'That…was impressive, all considered,' Blues acknowledged, though he didn't attack again. He was still holding X, but it didn't have that restrictive feeling that it had before X retaliated. Now, instead, it was like being behind a second set of shields, like a second defense. He scanned X: that had been a lot of energy; did the Cyber Elf need to rest, or was he good for more?
X felt the press of Blues' scan, the request for status information, and he redirected the shield to cut that feed off as best as he could. At the same time, he pulsed his own energy out again, pushed outward against Blues' hold. It wouldn't be enough just to stave off the attack, to hold back the quarantine program.
X had to break free of the prison before the lock clicked shut.
His brother may have had the years and the network control to keep X…
Wait a minute…
Network control.
That was it.
Energy pulsed over the shield, reinforced it once more, as the tendrils of power lashing around the barrier X had in place continued to whip out, attack any force that drew too close. Even as he pushed more of his energy into the shield and the data streams defending him, he reached out for the network. Even logged in, Blues was assuming control where X had remained just a passenger in the flow.
No more.
X kicked his admin access fully online, pressing against his brother's hold on two fronts, knowing that the exertion over the net would be carefully masked by Blues. After all, he'd already dealt with the base after presumably attacking one of the legendary Maverick Hunters. To attack their leader? He knew that Blues would not let the base know of this.
Blues dropped the growing prison on X so abruptly that it could have burned him. The Robot Master actually shuddered and retreated from where X was on the partitioned network, the equivalent of taking more than just one or two steps back. One thing that Blues did not want was the rest of the base finding out who and what he was, asking questions and pressing him with their suspicions. He hated explaining himself, hated having to walk people through things when it was none of their business, though he'd been trying to be patient with X.
But this was a clever strategy, given the situation, and it did effectively cause Blues to drop the trap, even if it wouldn't work on a network where Blues wasn't trying to hide. Had Blues not cared, he'd have locked X and kicked him the way he had Phantom. The way he'd do to any enemy unit that tried to gain unauthorized access on his network.
Unauthorized access into his mind.
So Blues hung back warily, slightly unsettled but none the worse for the wear after X's outburst. He drew his shields around himself more tightly than before, spinning and weaving the energy around his being, focusing it around his nexus. X was trying to block any attempt by Blues to check his status, to see how he was doing, and Blues had to remind himself that X wouldn't know Robot Master etiquette, that X would be working by his own experience with sparring. In this situation, X was probably rejecting scans regardless of how they felt. X may not even feel the subtle changes in intention from one to the next.
So instead, Blues fell back to just observing X.
X had been involved in enough training sessions, enough rank and enlistment tests, to know that it was far better now to hang back, build his own defenses, prepare for the next wave, than it was to go in with all guns blazing.
He smirked at the thought, remembering how badly Axl had miscalculated Zero's observation for a fallback maneuver when the rookie had been going for his promotion to General shortly before the Jakob Project incident. Had the young gunner realized that Zero was watching for an opening rather than pulling back to avoid his gunfire, it was very likely that the promotion would have actually been granted that day.
The offensive net that X had placed around him drew closer to the shield, wove into a tight web around him, as the shields were repaired once more, the visor quickly showing all green on the status board. He pulsed fresh energy into the shield, adding a new layer to the defensive shell cocooning around him, and waited.
Behind the visor, his eyes narrowed as he took a calming breath, trying to keep himself steady even as he felt himself start to flicker. He still had more of a fight in him, enough energy to handle a few more rounds, but if Blues just insisted on pushing harder each time the attack renewed?
X really hoped that his brother was the type that allowed a spar to end without one side really having proven themselves over the other. If not? X was going to be digging himself into one seriously deep hole.
Well, Blues mused, X clearly didn't want to play the game where he tries to escape the quarantine program (to many of the Robot Masters, what he and X were doing would have been an excellent game), so Blues decided to return to attacking the shields and letting X practice with defending and returning fire. X was just watching him now, was gathering himself and repairing and enforcing his shields, which was a wise move.
Blues began his attack anew as abruptly as the other times, there was not even a sense of him readying his stance, only that at one moment, the Robot Master was observing and the next, there were new projectiles being lobbed at X.
X read the signs, narrowed the trajectories, and the tendrils snapped into action, parrying and blocking the projectiles, doing whatever could be done to keep them from attacking the shield directly. New orbs were flung out, aimed at Blues when he could afford a relatively clear shot, some of the projectiles his brother was hurtling intercepted by cluster bomb orbs that served more as countermeasures than part of a return offensive.
While X was distracted by the rain of projectiles, while he was concentrating on deflecting or impacting them, Blues made his move. He hadn't really been very mobile thus far in the fight. He'd mostly stayed still and attacked X from a distance, at a stationary point. This time, however? Blues rushed X with his nexus directly, his own shield crackling under the strain of the bombs X was using to try and defend and struck X with his own aura, not just with an extension, punching forward to puncture the shield and rip it open.
X hadn't been as prepared as he would have liked, but his systems registered the shift in the nexus the moment it happened, X diverting all his energy to holding the shield together as the energy tendrils hastened to form into weapons. A pair of orbs were flung out, serving as fragmentation grenades right in his brother's path, as he raised his saber once more. The blade struck a moment too late, sensors screaming as the shield started to move into the red faster than X's energy could repair the damage.
If he didn't move…
Behind the shield, X toppled to one knee, reaching out and finding the exit point from the network.
As long as Blues didn't cage him…
X flung himself from the system, his form fractured and shaky, as he collapsed in a rolling heap on Blues' floor. His breathing was ragged, and as he forced his body to stabilize, he tried to push himself up, succeeding only in rolling onto his back. His body fractured again, coalescing and calming, though X figured he was showing up a lot more ghostly and transparent than he wanted, especially in front of his brother.
"I'm sorry," he coughed out, looking over to his brother's bed. "I should have stayed, should have…" He tried raising his head, realized how heavy it felt, and laid it back down on the floor. He was thankful he was still stable enough not to start sinking into the floor.
Blues stood from the bed and knelt beside X in one fluid motion, frowning in a way that was quickly becoming recognizable as his 'worried' face. "Don't apologize. I should have asked you if you had the energy to continue. The point…wasn't to best me. I didn't expect you to win, not your first time around. Not when you are still so unwieldy with the program. You did well, very well." Something that could have been a smile might have graced Blues' face had his face not turned to neutral immediately.
"Can't complain…that you didn't know. I shut down your scanning ability. You wouldn't have known." He smiled, even though he could feel how low his energy levels were. "You spar differently than a Reploid. I guess…I guess I should have made it clear that we don't allow scans because it allows a unit to see what systems, if any, are edging towards red and specifically target them." He took a deep breath, allowing himself to go a little more transparent in order to fully stabilize his form. "So, I'm fairly certain I missed something. You didn't seem too pleased with my efforts against the quarantine."
"To us, sparring is a game. It is play. It is an exchange, a serious learning experience, but if it's sparring and not a real fight? We scan one another to know when to stop. As for the quarantine…well, that was a…viable tactic, given the situation, but it wasn't…an effective strategy on the whole." Not to mention that by Robot Master terms, by the rules of the game, X totally cheated. "X, consider for a moment that I did not care whether the security team or the rest of the base knew I was here. Consider for a moment that I decided that on the whole, them knowing did not matter. Consider that it did not matter because I could have quarantined them all. You would have pulled bystanders into the fight and given me more weapons to fight you with." Blues wasn't even winded by the match, though he'd settled to sit cross-legged on the floor, his back against the bed.
"If claiming administrative rights doesn't work, then what kind of hope do I have to break out of quarantine? Everything I did just pushed you back, gave me maybe enough room that I could find an exit point, but to hold off the quarantine without stopping it? I don't stand a chance if the first thing done to me is containment. I can't shut that down the same way I can deflect direct attacks against myself and the shield."
Blues nodded, "We'll have to practice again. I won't lock you severely, not when you haven't figured out how to break it." Blues thought it was something best experienced, that experience was the best way to learn. And if X could learn in a controlled environment, all the better. "I think you should rest, though. It…next time, let me see it when it's time to stop." So Blues wouldn't just keep attacking while X became exhausted.
X smiled and nodded. "Any chance I did good enough to earn a hint about how I address the caging before I go?"
Blues actually did smile this time, but didn't respond. No, Blues would rather see how X approached problems, how he tried solving them.
A shrug this time. "Ah, well," he said, closing his eyes. "I'll see you tomorrow, Blues. Get some rest. Goodness knows we both need it." He let out a stuttering sigh, his form dissipating as he merged with Cyberspace to rest and restore his energy.
It took several days, but Blues eventually ran out of parts. He'd worked on Rock off and on over those days, whenever he was entitled to a span of 'private' time, usually when they assumed he was sleeping and charging. It never even occurred to him to correct X's assumption that Robot Masters need sleep. The box under his bed was now a box full of old, worn parts wrapped in cloth. He needed the proper opening to have some Hoppiders dispose of it for him. Until then, it was taking up prime real estate under Blues' bed.
The bundle, a now mostly-repaired Rock, remained securely wrapped, usually topped with his trench coat. It was an added deterrent. He knew that humans were very territorial about their bedrooms, which was their most personal space, and so placing a personal object on a curious object in one's bedroom would deter visitors from poking at it. Not that Blues had any visitors aside from X, who couldn't pick anything up, but that wasn't the point. It should work the same way for Reploids either way.
A feeling of approval came over Blues when he ran a current through Rock's core to check the child's systems and the physical components returned with all green.
Now he just had to do something about Rock's outermost layer.