Blues wasn't foolish enough to expect any assistance from the units he patched. Oh, in a few hours, once they'd had time to process everything that had just happened? Their deaths, the time spent dreaming, the virus stirring them to wrath and making them find satisfaction in it, not just so-called justice done (no such thing) but hunger sated? When making systems function properly was what robot masters were supposedly for… Dr. Wily did know how to push their buttons, when he'd watched Dr. Light install the first handful into their little project and seen the rest develop.
None of these children were going to be of any use to anyone for at least a full day… No. That could be made variable.
Robot masters looked after their robots. Gave them a protector, gave them someone who could handle the things they couldn't. That was part of Dr. Wily's trap.
The fact that Zero was now an ancient even compared to Blues, older even than the doctors? He was possessed of a strong will to protect, and the virus would let them feel it.
The knowledge that they were safe, that they would have the help they needed… It would let them calm, it would end the agony born not just from murder, but the agony of those unloved by even their creators.
But agony was power, so that would defeat the purpose. Zero hated the virus. He didn't want to help these children, he wanted them wiped from existence. They were unwanted by the virus' master, and a unit that wasn't worth repairing? Robot masters had a great capacity for love by design, and while these children had loved their robots they had no one to love them.
That sadness, that longing for death, the wish to never have existed because it hurt: they were power. Just as much as the fear he drew from them, because they could feel that he wanted to damage the virus inside them, their connection to the master that might (they hoped) be persuaded to love them. He could have told them that this was Zero's will, that they weren't failing him when he took them down just as easily as if they were humans, (Rafflesia Woman stapled to a wall with Needle Man's weapon, Nine-Tails Man beaten down by blows too fast to be delivered without altering the position of his hand multiple times) but that would generate less power.
He had a mission, so he was going to see what he could do with the powers he couldn't draw upon before, not with a broken crystal refusing to lend its power to someone foolish enough to want to protect.
As he'd surmised before, the fear he could inspire was more than enough to let him power all of this.
"He's a ghost! I knew it! I knew he was a ghost!"
"Will you shut up?!" Was this what Dr. Wily meant when he said that they were giving him a headache, Magnet wondered.
"You can't tell me it's not scientific, not when we just had that many people come back from the dead! A lot of them twice!"
"He must be using holograms, Gemini! You use holograms!" Break Man was activated the same time as the Third Numbers, even if he wasn't in one of the Numbered Series. He must have copied their weapons, and that was how he was making it look like he didn't even have a buster formed. Was it possible to have more than one copied weapon active at a time? Mega Man didn't, but Mega Man preferred to use the default buster except when he needed a certain trick since the damage was easier to repair.
He must be using holograms to make it look like he was still wearing human clothing. That would let him hide what master weapon(s) he was using. Break Man was charging shots to hit weaknesses and weak points, then diving in to do… whatever he was doing to the units that were brought back to life.
"Which is how I know this isn't a hologram!" Okay that part might be credible, but the next thing Gemini said was just ridiculous: "He's tearing out their souls!"
In fairness to Gemini, Magnet Man reminded himself that it was hard not to believe there was something supernatural about Break Man. Maybe they'd wanted to believe it, when Wily ordered all of them to attack him at once and he just smirked.
The Third Numbers' less-than-stellar showing against Wily's escaped yellow demon prototype not long afterwards suggested the theory that maybe Break wasn't that good, maybe the rest of the units Wily constructed to help him escape from the Asteroid Alpha mission were just that bad, but that wasn't exactly something his siblings wanted to believe. Even though Rock hadn't caused damage from friendly fire when they teamed up to fight the yellow demon, and the Second Numbers were just badass. So the worrying possibility that maybe Dr. Wily had gone off his rocker enough since he built the Second Numbers that the Third Numbers really did just suck by comparison to other robot masters remained until they met Companybots.
Then there were the Fifth Numbers: enough said.
First the White Giant tore through Wily Island with no one but Quick Man able to so much as scratch him, and now one of their own was brushing them aside like sand tracked into the compound? At least no one was nonfunctional yet, although 'curled up into a ball' wasn't especially functional.
First Blues and Shade brought all these Companybots (and one Wilybot, and apparently a Cossackbot) back to life, then half of them started killing humans and now Blues was applying patches (at a guess: Magnet sure wasn't going to hook up to them to find out) by sticking a human-looking arm right through their chests.
And he wasn't going to try to stop him.
It was one thing to fight Rock. Rock wasn't going to hurt anyone. It was another thing to fight the White Giant, because the White Giant was hurting people and they couldn't just stand by. Blues was acting like, like a stardroid, like he wanted to hurt and scare these practically-newbuilts, but he wasn't doing anything permanent. The ones he did this to (whatever he was doing) were scared afterwards, but still okay otherwise. Break Man hadn't yet lived up to the name Dr. Wily gave him. Not permanently.
So far tonight. Not yet, anyway.
What he'd do if someone got in his way…
Turbo Man might have ordered the Seventh Numbers to attack, but he'd been playing around with the viral upgrade when Blues arrived. He was going to stay stuck to the floor until it was safe to bring Gravity Man in here, if Magnet was any judge.
Then he heard a crash. Not the crash of someone's master weapon missing Blues and sending another of the new arrivals into a wall, but a crash from outside.
Human profanity would have been utterly inadequate for communicating his mental state as a great claw swept away an outer wall, revealing a giant dragon mech. At least until he remembered who used a dragon like that as their support unit and shut his mouth.
The castle was already going to need extensive repairs. If Quick Man was here now, then maybe it would need fewer of them.
Was the Second Number aware that he was standing there with his back to the dawn? Or was the silent elder (a full year older than the Third Numbers: the Second Numbers were activated before the end of the First War, Wily had just chosen to wait and see what the humans did before deploying them to save the First Numbers) entirely focused on the black-cloaked figure?
It didn't occur to Magnet Man to be relieved that the still-intact Companybots were leaving hiding places to use the break in the assault to drag their fallen brethren from the room.
A few more seconds of stillness, and he realized that Blues had stopped mid-leap. He was hovering there. Hologram, had to be… he whirled around to check that the malfunctional bastard's real body wasn't right behind him and when he turned back, Quick Man had moved.
He stood in front of Blues, and Magnet realized that Break Man really was Forte's predecessor as Dr. Wily's attempt to counter Mega Man. He wasn't identical, not like the Copy, but he looked much more like him than Forte. Without the sunglasses. The sunglasses that were in one of Quick's large (overlarge by human standards, but like they cared) hands.
Blues' eyes opened and oh static.
Quick Man was family: he had to send an offer to assist even as he scrambled away. This explained way too much. So Dr. Wily had gotten his hands on more than one alien robot, that was why he'd talked about remodeling Break Man instead of building him!
A stardroid.
The Second Number ignored the other unit's message: the Third Numbers were taken out easily by the White Giant. Quick Man had damaged its armor enough for Mega Man to destroy it and gotten away still functional.
If Snake was here instead of with the Cossacks Magnet could have requested footage from one of his master weapon units. They were extensions of Snake instead of real little robots, and no one was going to leave a real little robot near a fight like this was going to be, Magnet knew as he ducked to avoid the shockwave.
Not a sonic boom, and Quick Man didn't toss plasma around. That was larger than any charged shot he'd ever heard of Mega Man using, but Mega Man went easy on people. Because he wasn't malfunc-
If Blues was a stardroid, then was he malfunctional?
The thought made him shudder: who would build something like the stardroids? Even Forte just wanted to fight, he didn't want to destroy people or scare them!
Rapid clanging behind him, metal on ceramic alloy. How?! How was Blues fast enough to intercept Quick's boomerang with that shield of his?
Where was Mega Man when you needed him? Right. "Will someone lower the teleport shield?"
Blues raised an eyebrow as Quick Man's boomerang shattered one and then another of the shields he'd pulled into existence. That was the same trick he used: pulling back and putting a few more obstacles into Quick Man's path so he could observe what happened to them confirmed it.
No, he confirmed. Not an infectee. Quick was pulling from his fusion generator to power this, not the virus.
Maybe Dr. Wily hadn't just invented the break program version in his virus based on knowing that Blues had the capability.
Dr. Wily invented fusion back in his college days, and when Blues' generator behaved erratically, he would have had proof (if he still needed it) that this power could be controlled or at least affected by mental state and even subconscious wishes.
The Second Numbers were constructed before the end of the First War. So, what had Dr. Wily been working on between the end of the First and beginning of the Second, if he wasn't building robots? Dr. Wily had obviously finished his teleportation prototype before the end of the Second, because he'd spent the time between the Second and Third in solitary confinement so he couldn't build anything.
If he'd needed field testing of any principles related to developing that technology, the Second Numbers would have been the ones to do it. The easiest thing to do with reality warping technology was pull in lots of energy: the second easiest was what Blues did when he severed armored limbs. Destruction was always childishly simple compared to creation, another reason robot masters prided themselves on the latter and looked down on the former.
He must have had Quick Man handle testing of location editing technology while he worked on the math for longer-distance teleportation, Blues realized.
The way Quick Man was the one handling this now, everyone else getting out of here and leaving it to him even without sent orders. Staying off the Wily networks? Wise. Normal procedure for the Second Numbers, though. It wasn't likely that someone would get malware past that many robot masters and Wily's defenses, but the world government very much wanted the rogue robot masters eliminated. The Second Numbers had isolated themselves following the Second War. Now it turned out that the virus most dangerous to robot masters was Dr. Wily's doing. Both of the only viruses that were all that dangerous to robot masters. Blues was glad he'd missed roboenza: he didn't want to contemplate what it would do to systems already unstable for more than one reason.
Then the obvious question was why hadn't Quick Man used these abilities against Mega Man, but Mega Man was Rock. That little fact handily explained not only why Quick Man hadn't smashed the smaller unit that was only a week older than he was, but why he'd intervened when Flash Man came close to taking him out. He wanted to fight and analyze Rock himself.
Yes, Blues saw as Quick blurred through a shield that hung in midair instead of letting himself slow down even enough to hit it with his boomerang. That was the location-altering trick. Quick Man must have been designed to use that as his real master weapon, hence the name, and derived the ability to break things from it. While Dr. Wily gave Blues the power to break things as his master weapon, and his new name. A statement of his value or a promise that he could be broken free of the laws, as soon as they were off the spaceship and Dr. Wily could build equipment that would let him muck around with the mind of a unique unit with some chance of doing it safely?
The Second Numbers had absented themselves from the wars and avoided all contact with humans before Blues was turned on again, so he'd only given them and their activities a basic investigation. It was a relief at the time that they were competent enough to look after themselves, when they raided human-owned facilities to steal robots, so Blues was able to concentrate his attention on the Fifth Numbers, Dark Men and others who interacted with humans and might not be able to escape or get help in time if the humans turned hostile. Once Dr. Wily installed teleportation devices into his robots so they didn't need to get to a capsule (possibly thinking of how much less embarrassing the yellow demon incident would have been if he could have just yanked the thing home) that was only mostly taken care of because they had to realize that they needed to escape before they could use those devices, and humans were capable of being subtle when they wanted to kill.
Blues stopped that line of analysis, even if it was only taking a fraction of his attention. Perhaps because it was only taking a fraction if his attention. It had taken him longer than he liked to realize that was the White Giant. He'd missed what was happening to everyone else during that war thanks to his broken crystal trying to damn well torture if not kill him so he wouldn't be in any kind of shape to stop the stardroids that weren't broken.
A category that he fell into at the moment, since Zero had willed him fixed and hadn't realized there was a distinction between Blues' idea of fixed and the crystal's.
At least Zero's dislike of the virus had kept him from ending up the virus' idea of fixed. That would have been far more difficult. To the crystal, hosts were disposable and it didn't really care what they thought. They weren't supposed to have thoughts and desires that weren't the crystal's in the first place. As long as he did what a stardroid was supposed to do, terrorize these children and get power, he was functioning perfectly fine as far as its programming knew.
The virus, though? Dr. Wily had wanted to change what he felt, how he thought, and make him like it. That? He'd already as good as admitted to Dr. Wily that he was losing the will to fight it, and that was with the process still incomplete. If Zero had just wished it complete, with his systems primed to see that as a master upgrading him, proof that master cared about what was best for him so this had to be what was best… He hadn't given in to the Three Laws just because Dr. Light installed them, but the Three Laws were just like the crystal: they didn't care what he thought. They weren't trying to get him to hate all humans, including his creator: hatred and destruction were simply the inevitable side effects.
Just like the crystal… There was something there to think about, something that might be distracting enough to compensate for the White Giant going around smashing his cameras so he didn't have additional inputs to focus on.
If the virus and now the crystal were using his mind to think with, then…
Death wasn't an option anymore. The virus and Dr. Wily weren't going to let him die. If he could get knocked out, at least, and leave someone who knew about the crystal and could get close enough to Zero to tell him to do something without getting identified as an infectee and killed? There were people who Zero wouldn't kill even if they were infected, but Rock was too important to the future of their kind to be sacrificed just because Murphy's Law was especially applicable to Blues' systems and their functioning.
He'd thought he'd have to gain enough power to attack Zero and survive long enough for Zero to force himself to use his power, see what was wrong with Blues and undo what he'd done earlier, but if there was someone else capable of fighting on this level well enough he might seriously be able to take Blues down…
Of course, while the crystals liked destroying heroes so the world could watch and despair, the virus liked them and wanted to keep them. A warbot strong enough to take down Blues or another primary host was going to be acquired.
That was why Zero hadn't infected Colonel during their spars even though he considered this Colonel strong, Blues had seen when he checked Zero's memory files to see what he was angsting about. Colonel had never defeated him, so the virus hadn't thought it was worth breaking cover to start a new strain, a Colonel Virus in addition to the Sigma Virus.
This was a Mega Virus, but being forced to configure around Rock instead of inside his mind had kept it from taking Rock's mind for itself. It had a copy of its strategies, just like that Copy. It didn't have the will, the soul Dr. Wily wanted to win. Again. Just win against humans instead of robots and their hearts this time.
Now that he was no longer storing up energy for the difficult task of being strong enough to force Zero to use his true capabilities without getting utterly annihilated by them, he had to wonder what Shadow was always scowling about.
Fighting an opponent that relied on speed and forced you to think equally fast was fun. He should have picked a fight with Quick instead of Shadow: Quick's practiced control left him more willing to launch aggressive assaults, same as Ring, while Shadow only really went on the offensive when he was emotional and being emotional left him with system conflicts.
Shadow was originally constructed as a warbot: that was obvious. It looked like the species that built the stardroids had at some point thought that the stardroids were rogues, instead of units doing exactly what they were programmed to do, and taken steps to try to keep their anti-stardroid units from developing wills, emotions and value judgments of their own. Which meant the military responsible for their survival was rendered completely incapable of giving a damn about their creators' survival and was completely unmotivated, meaning the stardroids and their viciousness went through them like knives through microwaved butter, but that was organic life for you.
It wasn't a question of 'who gave these people permission to think when they're not wired for it?' The fact of the matter was that nothing had given them permission. They'd just started doing it, and it cost valuable energy they had to get from killing other organic beings. So maybe that was why most humans seemed to see independent thought as transgressive (and predatory memes obviously tried to mandate against thought that might cause the human to reject and refuse to pass on the meme), and did it as little as possible.
Emotions were value judgments, 'this is important,' and Shadow's tactical system wasn't designed to handle inputs from something like that and figure out how to weigh them. The element of 'and what am I supposed to do with this?' caused him to get more shorted out the more important something was to him. Then once he realized that the more important things were, the more likely he was to screw up? Stress and the determination to not mess up this time were also emotions, so the old programming caught him coming and going.
A species that made it so that the robots that actually wanted to save them from the stardroids would be the least able to do so? Too dumb to live was how humans would put it. Robot masters asked who would put units that clearly weren't competent to make decisions in a position where they had to make decisions, but that was because most of them thought the universe was fair by default.
That was part of why Blues made sure that Shadow was upset whenever Shadow attacked him. With his abilities he'd be very effective if he ever managed to do the robot master thing and debug, or at least figure out a workaround for his old programming. If he could access it, see if there was any combat data left in there…
Part of the rush that engulfed him now, processor juggling combat and a dozen other analyses, was the virus' glee at finding someone strong. It wanted Blues to keep fighting Quick because the longer Quick was around Blues, the longer he was exposed to the virus and the better chance it had of getting past his defenses. Because Quick, unlike most of them, was aware of the other level the virus operated on and had no intention of letting it get a foothold in his systems.
So his attention was split the same way Blues was deliberately splitting his own. Damn, he'd have to step up his game. It was counterintuitive to try to figure out how to make himself less effective at problem-solving, after all that time taxing limited system resources to the limit trying to work on the level of the sapience he hadn't been built with.
There was something he wanted to do, and the crystal wasn't letting him. Stardroids existed to destroy and sow chaos, not… do that.
So if the only way to regain his original objective was to let Quick Man defeat him (ugh) and hopefully drag him to Zero with a glare telling that particular younger brother to clean up his damn messes and debug his own damn units, then so be it.
Especially if it let him test out a few tricks. He hadn't been able to use the Big Bang Strike before when it would damage him even more than a buster shot, but if he could call up that energy and then fade out from around it? There wasn't any need to figure out a safe way of removing all that power from his core if he could remove his core from the energy.
There, that worked. The virus wanted combat data, the crystal wanted him attacking people, so if he could give them what they wanted…
That was Wily's trap, wasn't it? The power of his virus to give robot masters what they wanted. He had to count on Zero to fix him properly this time and there was something about that thought-but then Quick's boomerang threw up a trail of sparks.
Dodging back, he knew he was going to need another coat after this. Well, he could just edit them into existence. If you didn't need either a crystal or the virus to use these abilities, and Quick was proof that was true, then there was absolutely no way he was going back to having to purchase clothing and deal with fitting rooms and dry cleaning.
"Are you okay?" read Ice Man's e-mail. "Roll said your teleport shield went down, and after what happened last time one of your defense systems went down…"
Wily Island wasn't a natural island: they'd built it. The humans had no idea it was here until Gemini's holographic cloaking system went down when the White Giant knocked him out and it started to show up on satellite photography.
Freeze Man tried to restrain his reaction to Ice Man being worried about him. He really admired the senior ice-type robot. He was so brave: he and Elec Man were the ones to pretend to go along with Dr. Wily in order to try to sabotage him so Rock would have a chance against the Second Numbers. The Second Numbers were scary, even if he was very grateful to them for rescuing him and bringing him here. Dr. Wily might have given him a home and made sure that the experimental systems in Freeze Man weren't going to wreck the planet and that the researchers weren't going to build anything else like that, but that didn't make it right for him to kidnap and reprogram the First Numbers.
He'd joined the Seventh Numbers since otherwise that slot would have gone to a robot master that did want to attack humans and the Lightbots. He was so glad he'd gotten to help Ice Man and Roll during the race! Otherwise, he would have been too nervous to introduce himself.
Turbo Man's flames and even Blues were one thing. Talking to people, though, that was scary. People got hurt and killed that way, if they said the wrong thing to people who didn't want to listen. But the Lightbots were really nice, not like the scientists at all.
Freeze Man thought 'scientists' the way a lot of former Companybots (Universitybots, in Freeze Man's case) thought 'humans.'
The junior ice unit (even if not the most junior) was already composing his response to the e-mail internally as he picked up the pieces of broken units. All of the bodies of damaged units had already been brought to safety, of course: he was just bringing back limbs and things so they could be patched up faster. His energy control ability meant it was safe for him to do this, well, safer than most people. Star Man had an energy shield that could handle reentry and escape velocity, but he was a trained technician so he was busy fixing people.
Freeze liked the Fifth Numbers: sure, it was silly, but the poses were a lot of fun.
"Blues is fighting Quick Man! First he showed up and just started attacking people, so we were worried, but then they realized he was only going after the ones with that virus?" Freeze Man wasn't interested in it, upgrade or no upgrade. The evil chip freed him from the Three Laws and the fear of being ordered to do something that would hurt large numbers of people: he didn't want a replacement for the laws. "At first he was using the weapon copy system, but now they're just trying to hit each other," with kicks and punches as well as Quick's boomerang and Blues' shields, "and using speed shockwaves and plasma. I'm staying away, so I'll be fine. Thank you for worrying about me!"
It was so nice to have people be concerned about what happened to him! Not just the Wilybots, who were family now, like robots and a robot master. People in your network had to care, but Ice Man wasn't! He was a friend.
Speaking of family, Freeze Man ran over to intercept when he saw a teleport beam. It was possible that whoever this was didn't know what was going on, so he had to warn them. Shade? What happened to his wings?! Probably Blues: Freeze had seen him wrap a wing around the antisocial robot master and had to send a picture on to Ice Man, who couldn't believe it either. "You should get out of here!"
"Fighting, here?" Shade asked, and it was strange to see him not on top of things, only a millimeter away from being frantic. "Where is Dr. Wily?"
All Freeze could do was shrug, and Shade cursed. He cursed. Shade Man! Then he ran towards the fighting, and sure, he was Shade Man, but what was he going to do, get in between Quick Man and Blues?
They were going to get taken apart, but Shade was a fellow Seventh Number. So there was nothing Freeze could do but follow after him. After sending the e-mail.
Big Bang Strike: Shade Man referenced this universe's version of the King incident way back, but of course Blues wasn't around to use that attack.
The virus has Blues in checkmate now. He's lost: it's just a matter of either admitting it or the final move actually being made. The act of Zero destroying the bindings in and of itself put Blues in check, given robot master psych and the priorities of Blues especially.
He would literally rather die than let even Dr. Light try to repair him, but now his solution to the crystal is to expect Zero to help him?
And because Blues developed the reasoning that makes robot masters value free will and people's independence, his mind is more aware he should defend himself than people who just got it in their base programming – think X's hibernation training vs. reploids' startup instinct/social skill set. Even though he's not a typical robot master, if it can take him down then no robot master is immune provided the virus can get into their systems – Quick is keeping it out on the cyberspace level, but there wouldn't be much a robot master could do about a nanite infestation.
One of the short cracky comics collected in Megamix has Hitoshi Ariga interview various characters to find out what is known in-universe about Blues. Some of the Wilybots tell scary stories about hearing a strange whistling in their stages. Dr. Light is too busy being sad about Blues running away from home and wondering what he did wrong to actually contribute much.
Quick Man does have a massive flying dragon mech as his support unit, because he is badass.
In addition to being the only Wilybot to so much as scratch the White Giant, he later takes out a stardroid that flows around wounds with a single bitchslap. It reminded me of Blues' own ability to do improbable damage, and given the timeframe on the Second Numbers' construction, it seemed that the same explanation would work for both phenomena.
Looked up Freeze Man's data, and apparently he likes cool poses.