So everyone, remember Chaud's colourblindness during Cross Fusion, and how during No Secrets For You he mentioned that it was a potentially life-threatening handicap? And how I mentioned a while back that I wanted to write other stuff about the colourblindness thing for you guys?

Well, that's basically what's gonna happen here.

I'm torn between colour-coded landmines and water, but since I wanna write some water, I guess that'll do for now - I can do colour-coded landmines later.

That probably makes zero sense to any of you guys who're reading this AN, but it's mostly for my own benefit so I know what I'm writing for this 'part'. There's a bunch of other plots that I wanna write (actually I should probably write some notes so I don't forget them) but I've been wanting to do this water-plot since literally the beginning, and now I'm gonna write it for you guys to read!

Chaud is, of course, twelve. Once again, it's set after Beast. Which means I get to write our favourite trio of idiot Cross Fusion Net Savers! Man I love these guys.

I don't own MegaMan Battle Network/NT Warrior, on with the show!

OOOOOO

Their newest battle was taking place far outside the city, in a place that Lan had told them was called Okuden. Chaud had never personally been there, but he decided that he liked the place, even if his first experience with it was fighting for his life against a trio of shadow-like Navis who liked copying their opponents.

'Shadow-like' because, of course, the three Navis had turned into shadow-versions of Chaud, Lan and Raika. Or at least they were dark grey versions. He wasn't sure if they were any other colour, though he supposed he could always ask Lan and Raika later.

But unlike the usual cliche tropes, these shadow-copy Navis weren't forcing them to fight themselves and were instead switching their target constantly so that the trio of Net Savers were forced to switch between attacking and defending.

The shadow-Navis' current target was Chaud himself, so he was being forced to retreat while Lan and Raika tried to defend him. It was difficult since they were fighting themselves plus Chaud, hence why he was being forced to retreat.

They were so deep into the forest by now that they'd left the mountain path behind them long ago, and still they were going deeper.

"You know," Lan panted, as he ran alongside Chaud, "it's not fair if the enemy copies everything about us but they're still stronger somehow."

"They're bad guys, you expect them to play fair?" Raika irritably snapped, keeping an eye out behind them as they ran.

[Behind you!] came MegaMan's warning suddenly, half a second too late as the shadow-version of Chaud came zooming out of the trees with a dark Sword on his arm.

Raika, who was the closest to shadow-Chaud, stepped in front of the real Chaud to defend him, but the shadow-Chaud merely bounced over his head and brought the Sword down on Chaud's own head.

Chaud quickly activated a Proto Sword - the timing was faster than normal, he suspected it was ProtoMan pushing his power through their link to try and protect him - and clashed swords with the shadow-version of himself. Lan and Raika rushed forward to help him, but they were distracted by the appearance of shadow-Lan and shadow-Raika, so Chaud was left to face his shadowy double on his own for the time being.

Shadow-Chaud's eyes glittered behind his visor, and he swung another dark Sword at Chaud without taking the other away from the clash. Chaud had to very quickly download a Sword of his own to counter it, and they ended up locked in a strange upright tangle.

[How dare he steal our image!] ProtoMan muttered indignantly.

Chaud was momentarily distracted from the fight by his exasperation.

"I don't think that's what you should be angry about here," he sighed.

His momentary distraction was all his double needed to gain the upper hand, though, and he was suddenly thrown off-balance when shadow-Chaud pushed with both Swords. He landed on his back and his own two swords vanished as a result of the shock, which shadow-Chaud took full advantage of.

Chaud's eyes widened and he rolled out of the way just as two dark Swords stabbed into the ground where he'd just been lying.

Shadow-Chaud glared at him, and pulled the Swords out of the ground to try again. Chaud wasn't going to take that lying down (excuse the pun), so he sprang up and backed away, fists up and ready to fight.

Just as shadow-Chaud raised one of the dark Swords, Chaud threw him off by spinning around and running in the opposite direction.

His double was shocked into stillness for a moment, but then he ran after Chaud. Shadow-Lan and shadow-Raika noticed their current target making a run for it, and immediately abandoned their own fights to help shadow-Chaud chase down the real Chaud.

Chaud paid absolutely no attention to what his friends were doing, and instead focused on running as fast as he could. Considering how fast ProtoMan was without Cross Fusion, this was pretty fast indeed, but his shadowy double could match his speed and eventually caught up to him.

He had to duck very suddenly to avoid the dark Variable Sword that shadow-Chaud swung at him, and ended up overextending and crashing to the ground, rolling a couple of times before he came to a painful stop.

Just before shadow-Lan fired a charged Mega Buster shot at him, the real Lan came out of the trees and threw a Boomer at all three of the shadow-Navis.

Meanwhile, Raika rushed in and dragged Chaud up by the arm ("Ow!" "No time to be careful, move!") while the shadow-Navis were distracted. They ran off again, Lan joining them moments later.

Raika still hadn't let go of Chaud's arm, so when shadow-Raika fired a well-aimed Scope Gun shot at Chaud, the Sharonian Net Saver almost lost his footing as Chaud stumbled from the hit and almost fell over. But it was thanks to that grip on his arm that Chaud didn't fall over and was able to keep running despite the pain from the Scope Gun.

"I never wanna get hit by you ever," Chaud gasped out.

"Just keep running!" Raika urged.

[INCOMING!] SearchMan bellowed, successfully warning them earlier than MegaMan had managed, yet shadow-Chaud still managed to take them by surprise when he sprang out at them.

But instead of going for Chaud, he instead went for Raika, which meant the shadow-Navis had once again switched targets.

Raika backed off quickly, letting go of Chaud to bring up his own Scope Gun to try and fend off shadow-Chaud's dark Proto Sword. Chaud downloaded a Neo Variable and swung it at his double, but shadow-Raika appeared directly in front of him via an Area Steal and used his copied Scope Gun as a club to hit Chaud in the head.

Lan caught Chaud as he stumbled back and nearly collapsed, and helped him stand.

"You good?" Lan asked quickly, and as soon as Chaud nodded, he rushed off to help Raika try and get rid of shadow-Chaud and shadow-Raika.

Lan's shadowy double came trotting out of the trees, and Chaud turned his attention to him to try and spare his friends having to deal with all three of them at once.

He blocked a couple of rapid-fire Mega Buster shots with his Neo Variable, and fired off a Sonic Boom which shadow-Lan dodged by jumping into the air. While he was up there, he copied Lan's earlier attack and threw a Boomer at Chaud, who slashed at it with his Neo Variable and cut it neatly in half. He lunged forward as shadow-Lan landed on the ground and raised his Neo Variable to attack, but shadow-Lan produced a dark Long Sword and the two vastly-different types of swords clashed back and forth for a few moments.

Despite Chaud being a better swordfighter than Lan, the shadowy double was able to gain the upper hand by kicking him back a few steps. Then he swung the Long Sword and threw Chaud back even more, watching him with glittering cruel eyes as he slammed onto the ground painfully.

Once shadow-Lan was sure his opponent was down for the moment, he hopped over Chaud and dashed over to join his shadow-Navis friends in trying to attack the real Lan and Raika.

[Are you okay?] ProtoMan asked him, sounding slightly strained.

"Surprisingly, yeah," Chaud huffed out. He managed to stand and almost collapsed, but ProtoMan lent him his strength and he was able to get up. "How are these guys so powerful? They copied us, they copied everything about us, so their power levels should be about the same, right?"

[I'm afraid that's not how these kind of things usually work,] ProtoMan sighed. [A shadow-double is more powerful than the original by definition, mainly because, of course, the world is a cruel place and it enjoys tormenting those who fight the darkness.]

" . . . Are you getting cynical on me, ProtoMan?"

[I will do whatever I please, thank you very much.]

Chaud rolled his eyes, somewhat amused, and turned around to face the battle. He was surprised when he noticed that the shadow-Navis' target had changed again, because now Raika was the one trying to defend Lan. These Navis were being like this on purpose, seriously.

He still had his Neo Variable, so he rushed toward the fight. Shadow-Raika saw him coming and aimed a Scope Gun at him, but Chaud ducked under the shot and swung his sword at the double's mid-section, managing to knock him back a few steps. While shadow-Raika was wincing, Chaud turned his attention to shadow-Chaud.

He decided to play dirty and grabbed his shadowy double's ridiculously long hair-

[My hair is not that long, surely?] ProtoMan asked, sounding slightly hurt.

-and pulled, as hard as he could. He managed to unbalance his double but it didn't last very long, and he only made shadow-Chaud angry.

His double spun around as soon as he'd regained his balance and started battering Chaud with a dark Wide Sword. Shadow-Lan spun around from the real Lan and began shooting rapid-fire Mega Buster shots at Chaud again.

Okay, so now he was their target again. Fun.

He spun around and ran for it, hearing the shadow-Navis thundering after him. No time to download a Barrier or Guard chip, and he didn't have any stashed in the PET to start off with, so either way he was screwed. Chaud heard his friends shouting behind him, but he was too focused on getting away from the shadow-Navis to concentrate on what they were saying.

Up ahead was a large clearing - it looked big enough to house an entire arena - and he decided that he'd rather fight the shadow-Navis in a wide-open space rather than this cramped forest.

But their shadow-doubles had other ideas, and instead of just letting him run towards the large clearing, one of them - probably his own double, since it was a sword - scored a hit on him when he was just a few metres away from the clearing. He stumbled to a halt painfully, and spun around to face the shadow-Navis, only to get an uppercut to the stomach by shadow-Lan's Bronze Fist.

Chaud was thrown into the air. He didn't even have the breath to cry out, but he managed to twist around a little so he could see how far away the ground was.

At least the attack had carried him right into the large clearing, although now that he looked at it from here, there was something weird about the ground. But then suddenly he had no time to consider it as he was hurtling back down.

He hit the ground with a loud splat and sank right through.

OOOOOO

Whoops, I forgot to reply to the rest of blazenight01's review . . .

Yeah, there are people in The Darkloid's Pet AU that fear and hate Navis, mainly because of the Darkloids. Since Darkloids, in that AU at least, outnumber both humans and normal NetNavis, they're winning the war and are very smug about it - not to mention they've enslaved like most of the human population.

Any surviving members of the human race that aren't slaves (or pets like Chaud) hate the Darkloids or fear them, and a lot of them also hate and fear NetNavis because they're basically the same species, even if NetNavis are fighting for humans.

Oh, and something else I forgot to mention - The Darkloid's Pet AU is basically Beyondard but with Darkloids, which is why Dark ProtoMan and MegaMan are able to be in the real world with the humans.

Anyway, who's liking What's Solid? so far? Can anyone guess why Chaud sank through the ground in that clearing rather than just slamming into it?

Read and review!