On a note that's really more related to the last chapter, (and hoping you don't mind spoilers for years-old anime/manga), the entire plot of Card Captor Sakura (Cardcaptors in the US) happens because a very powerful magician who created dozens of familiar spirits/magical AI had an elaborate plot going that involved his reincarnation and belatedly realized, 'Wait, if I die who's going to look after all my kids!?'
So you have a twelve volume manga and 70 episode with two movies anime series that turns out to boil down to the magical equivalent of a mad scientist's precognition-assisted elaborate plot to engineer the perfect stepmom and make her as ridiculously powerful as he is/was quickly enough to keep his kids from starving to death, since they need to draw on their weilder's magic and normal magicians don't have enough for dozens of them. With a Monster of the Week format along the lines of 'Nearly drowning people for the lulz is not okay!' 'You're not my real mom, you can't tell me what to do!' 'Go to your card!' 'Make me!'
That's one way to powerlevel someone, I guess...
The Second Law meant it was highly unsafe for a robot master to attend a normal press conference, with reporters looking for a scoop willing to try to order anything in the hope of finding out something interesting. Getting exclusive interviews with Mega Man, without Dr. Light there to countermand any potentially dangerous orders or demands to reveal classified Light Robotics information, was one of the advantages of having a robot master reporter.
Plum and the station were also aware that Dr. Light wanted to support robot masters, after creating them, and even if she wasn't one of his it was still easier to get his PR department to agree to interview requests like this when they came from her. Before she and Chest ended up with Charlie, most stations had to settle for PR footage recorded by Light Robotics as the closest thing to interviews.
It would be visually effective to teleport out to one of the areas where a rampage took place, but they'd gotten footage of the ones that they could get footage of already – the station had other reporters, too – and being around that kind of destruction was distressing for a robot master. Distracting. It would be harder for both her and Rock to focus, and humans found eyes constantly shifting away and around a sign of deceit. She wasn't built for heavy labor, either: it wasn't like she could pitch in to repair those buildings, not when she was on the clock and had an interview to do.
Instead they were allowed to use a room at Dr. Light's home, since bringing Rock into the studio with human staff present solo? Fortunately she had some time before the interview was scheduled to begin, to go over his appearance and make sure the lighting and camera work wouldn't require any makeup, although that was Chest's specialty more than hers. Her skin, hair and apparel (designed to look like a dress but provide some protection near combat robots that weren't willing to take orders from a robot master that wasn't their master) were designed to look decent in all the standard television lighting setups.
It was clear that Rock had been doing repair work, though: instead of the little suit he had for formal occasions, he was wearing child-sized jeans and a t-shirt, and had clearly come from somewhere more garage than lab. She'd thanked him for granting her and the viewers this interview first, of course, before asking him if there had been any injuries.
"I'm fine," he told her, "but I needed to use an experimental mode of Rush's to get around and… deal with them," he looked sad, "fast enough. We haven't really tested it out since the stardroid invasion because he wasn't built for it. It was meant just for emergencies, in case Dr. Wily decided to blow up his base again and I needed to escape in a hurry with teleportation still blocked, not for combat. Since this attack was caused by something like Roboenza, Dr. Light and Roll wanted to check my systems over first, so this morning was Dr. Light's first chance to help me make sure that Rush was alright. He's fine too," he assured her.
"I'm glad to hear that," she said. "Any chance we'll be able to see that he's alright?" That would be an effective scene. A boy and his dog, a poor creature wounded defending humans, and while there were a lot of innocent bystanders caught up in all this… Even if Rock had already cleaned up, ruling out any more footage of him in damaged armor to convey that he had been out there protecting people, his current clothes showed that he had just been working and Rush's plight would help the viewers sympathize with a robot.
Instead of a lab, they had a fairly ordinary living room as the interview setting, but that might be a bonus: it was human-like, and the viewers were interested in how other people lived and what their homes looked like, especially a family as rich and famous as the Lights.
"I'm sorry. There was still some wear and tear, so Dr. Light's still working on him. I'd show you the lab, but Dr. Wily and his robots have invaded our home several times now and the insurance company doesn't want us to release footage of the grounds that he might use for the next attempt," he said apologetically. "That's why Dr. Light has had to turn down requests for tours."
Darn. Rush was cute and a good source of clips with replay value – Charlie would be disappointed. "That's a shame. I hope we'll see you both out and about again soon. Speaking of those who helped you in last night's tragic incidents, we have footage from viewers of three mysterious robot masters that helped take down the zombies: do you know who they are?" Plum asked, Chest's image editing software making their image appear in a box on the screen for the benefit of human viewers.
Rock nodded. "X introduced himself and told me who the other two were when we both teleported into the same place: he's the ninja." The one in ninja-themed armor with a scarf. Even if none of them were marked with a skull, those were design elements only Wilybots used – Blues and Shadow were well-known.
"They're like the Genesis Unit and the Mega Man Killers: they were built to help… Well, I don't know if they were built to help Lumine or when Dr. Wily was just working on Lumine's design. Their names are X, Zero and Axl: I don't know if they have a group name, but it's probably something like the Variable Unit or the Graph Unit if they do." Their names could be themed around a graph's axes, the zero point at the center of it and a variable's potential values graphed on it.
The cut-in image zoomed in on the Z on Zero's shoulderpad. "The blonde with a Z would be Zero?" Plum asked for the viewers at home, "And the redhead is Axl?" When Rock nodded, she asked, "Who are the Genesis Unit?"
"They're a set of three Journey to the West-themed robot masters that Dr. Wily built, but he told them to find me instead of attack me. So they just showed up one day a couple of years ago and were happy that they'd found me, and then left after that without even telling me who they were. That was strange, but better than having to fight them. I didn't find out what that was all about until they finally managed to find their way back to Dr. Wily's base and one of the Wilybots wanted to know if that really happened." Rock looked really embarrassed on their behalf. "It's not like it was their fault they weren't given the right orders or told about GPS systems, but I'm glad Dr. Wily didn't make them find me again and attack me this time."
Plum echoed Rock's embarrassed look. "So they just looked at you and left?"
"They were really glad to see me, but then they just left without even saying hello. I think they were looking for me for awhile and were getting lonely, and then they couldn't find their way back either… I'm glad they got home safe eventually."
Well, they were out of safe questions and she had to watch the time: here came the dangerous topic for two robot masters to be addressing. "What do you think about the accusations that the zombies were avenging murder or mistreatment?"
Rock frowned. "Well, if the virus this time was anything like Roboenza, then it made infected robot masters violent, made them do things that they would never have done if they had a choice. I don't think it's fair to assume that the people who were killed died because they were abusers or murderers, not when they can't defend themselves. When my brothers and the Fourth and Sixth Numbers had the Evil Chip, it made them attack people they liked. I'm sure a lot of those robot masters were friends with the people they worked with and being forced to attack their friends is bad enough without insulting the victims."
"Several of the victims had been accused of robot master abuse before this happened," Plum pointed out, because a human reporter would have the duty to ask these kinds of questions.
"Dr. Wily accused Dr. Cossack of robot master abuse before he made Skull Man kidnap him and endanger Kalinka. Yes, there are people out there who abuse robot masters, but so many people were attacked. Of course they weren't all abusers, and of course it's not okay for Dr. Wily to program robot masters to kill people just because of a few bad apples! Besides, everyone knows that Dr. Wily wants to steal robot masters, and his robots go after the ones that are abused since they think bringing them to Dr. Wily is helping them. The robot masters that the zombie virus brought back are the people that Dr. Wily didn't kidnap, so either Dr. Wily didn't bother, or those robot masters wanted to stay with their friends." Unless they died before Dr. Wily could intervene, or they were too terrified to disobey their masters and go with Dr. Wily or the Second Numbers.
"What happened is the fault of Dr. Wily's virus, not the fault of the poor people who got attacked just because they were coworkers or friends with robot masters! It's like what happened to the Cossacks. Dr. Wily went after them twice because Dr. Cossack and his daughter see their robot masters as members of their family, and that means their robot masters, like Ring Man, want to help them and would never join Dr. Wily unless he reprogrammed them. There may have been some people that were just as bad as Dr. Wily who died yesterday, but I'm sure there were also people like the Cossacks. Dr. Wily and his virus don't care, and his virus wouldn't have given those poor people a choice, just brought them back and made them attack their friends. Some of the people I had to destroy weren't even a week old when a technical problem killed them: it's not their fault they couldn't fight the programming that was forced on them, and it's not the fault of the people who were in the way when the virus forced them to attack."
For the benefit of the viewers (Rock would receive updates from Ring Man), Plum said, "We don't have many full forensic reports from the Robot Police and WRU yet, but the examinations from various national organizations have shown that the 'Variable Unit' uses weapons with a higher damage output than even the rogue Wilybots Forte and Blues." That kind of power output from a small cylinder and light handguns, not even a buster? That was worrying. What would happen when Forte made Dr. Wily upgrade him with that energy output technology? "Some have said that you and Ring Man should have tried to capture or destroy robot masters with such dangerous weapons, since they lack the Three Laws."
"We couldn't start fights with them during the zombie attacks: that would have been a First Law violation. The infectees were killing people. Stopping them as soon as possible and saving lives took absolute priority. Starting a fight with X, Zero, Axl, Forte, Quick Man or Flash Man when they came to help save lives wouldn't have just wasted time and let the zombies all have longer to kill people before we could get to them; it might have left Ring Man or myself too damaged to fight, or forced all the Wilybot volunteers to go home and stop helping." Which might have left them with no one capable of fighting robot masters to take down the zombies. "I mean, Dr. Wily didn't order them to fight the virus he made, and a lot of them do have blanket orders to avoid unnecessary damage. The zombies were all civilian models, so they could get around that and fight them since they weren't in much danger of getting hurt, but Ring Man and I are both capable of defeating Wilybots. Ring Man has standing orders to capture units like Forte and the Second Numbers, but the First Law trumps the Second and he's a keeper of the peace: he didn't want to start a fight while innocent people were being hurt."
Plum nodded. "A human would have had the discretion to ignore the zombies to go after what they thought was a bigger threat, but robot masters like us, with the Three Laws, have to put the welfare of innocent bystanders before any other consideration. What do you think of the proposal to give the WRU a 'Zeroth Law' authority allowing them to temporarily disable the First Law under certain guidelines for units like Ring Man?"
Rock looked puzzled that people were really proposing this, even though it was far from the first time. "…I don't think Dr. Cossack would like that: he's a pacifist. He might have built Ring Man to be able to subdue robot masters, but that was because without robot masters that can capture Wilybots, then… then there's what happened to my brothers and the poor people who tried to stop them in the First War."
Plum waited in sympathy until he could continue.
Rock went on after a moment of silence. "Dr. Light has always said that a robot master with the Second Law is… is like my brothers when Wily reprogrammed them. Without the First Law, there's nothing they can do if someone orders them to kill their friends. The Second Law makes the existence of the First Law absolutely vital for the protection of both humans and robot masters. Even if the ability to turn off the First Law is only in the hands of experts and legal authority, what happens if someone makes a mistake, or orders a robot master to do something that is only possible if they go and kill people first? Without the First Law, they couldn't just point out that they'd have to kill people to fulfill the command so whoever gave them the order could rescind it: a robot doing something to get out of following instructions is a Second Law violation, unless they're invoking the First Law. The Second Law without the First is way too dangerous, especially since the Second Law covers orders from anyone, not just the authorities. If the WRU built warbots with a disabled First Law and a functional Second, Dr. Wily could just order their own warbots to attack them. He wouldn't even need to reprogram them first: the Second Law would force them to turn on their masters if a human ordered them to do it.
"Dr. Wily has tried to order me to stop fighting him, of course. But he'll use his robot masters to kill innocent people I don't stop him, so the First Law trumps his orders and I can still fight him. The First Law does mean that robot masters are really limited in what we can do to try to fight people like Dr. Wily, but that's not a bad thing. Keeping people alive should always come first. A lot of robots have standing orders that they can't leave their work areas: one time an old man who was walking home at night fell over across the street from Guts Man's construction site, and if it weren't for the First Law he would have had to just stand there instead of being able to go over, help them up and ask if they needed an ambulance. The First Law gives robot masters the ability to help people and protects us from being ordered to hurt people, so it's the most important of the Three Laws."
Despite her official area of mastery, Rock was much better at presenting things to an audience than she was. Imagine being programmed to take that personally the way Forte did instead of attributing it to his age and experience and seeing him as an admirable role model… "What do you think we'll be seeing next from Dr. Wily?" she asked the expert on that man.
"Well, we just had a Wily War, and from what I've heard the zombie virus was something that went wrong. My guess is that he wanted to revive the dead robot masters and pick out the ones he wanted to use for the next war while he still had plenty of time to upgrade them. Since the virus made them attack humans but didn't make them obey him – that's why they left Wily Island even though he hadn't declared a War yet – he'll probably have to go back to the drawing board. I think the Yellow Demon that tore through New York's Central Administration Building to find its mother several years ago was meant to be the fake enemy for the Fourth War: since it escaped, he kidnapped Kalinka Cossack to force her family to fight instead. It's impossible to tell what Dr. Wily will do next, but he uses fake figureheads very often." Even Dr. Light, a couple wars ago. "He might have to pull something else together in a hurry now, so I hope that all the doctors who have built multiple robot masters will stay safe." So they didn't end up like Drs. Light, Cossack and 'Mr. X.'
"Speaking of important figures in robotics that have been targeted by Dr. Wily, do you think that 'X' is a reference to the 'Mr. X' who was chair of the WRU and handled its outreach and publicity until he was killed by Dr. Wily?" The man who organized that gladiatorial game so various countries could show off their attempts at creating warbots. That was the first war Plum had covered. According to Charlie, he'd gotten the sense that the organizers had hoped that Dr. Wily would kidnap their creations, so that when they got them back they'd have some of Dr. Wily's upgrades to study. He'd said darkly that in the interviews running up to the tournament, some of them had boasted that their creations could even beat Mega Man, which was literally asking Dr. Wily to kidnap them as well as just dangerous! What if Dr. Wily had won that war? Did they really think their control programming was good enough to force their creations to return to them from Dr. Wily without Mega Man taking them down and removing the Evil Chips first?
Fortunately, although it was hard to think that people getting badly hurt was fortunate, the Copy had damaged the Sixth Numbers too severely (and then Dr. Cossack had fixed Dr. Wily's changes to their systems when he repaired them) for the people who put those poor robot masters in danger to benefit from it.
Rock blinked and tilted his head. "Um, I don't think so, but now that you mention it, Lumine is another word for Light. It's possible that Dr. Wily decided to give that set of four robot masters a theme naming system, but I don't know who Zero and Axl would be. Since Lumine doesn't fit the mathematical theme naming of the others, I think it's probably a coincidence. Dr. Wily wouldn't think Mr. X or Dr. Light were good enough to have two of his creations named after them."
She nodded, feeling the camera focus in on her as the interview drew to a close. Smiling, she turned back to the camera and said, "Well, that's all the time we have with Mega Man: I'd like to thank you for answering my questions, and also thank Dr. Light for giving us some of your time. This was Plum reporting for CPS, now back to Chest at the station."
Sitting on a stack of boxes in a warehouse, pulling his legs to his chest with windbreaker-clad arms wrapped around them, the copy might have been a picture of misery if he wasn't so clearly frustrated and almost angry instead. "He knows they're a threat to his family! She knows it too, she knows what Mr. X was like, so why are they…"
Who was a threat to Rock's family? Humanity? 'Not while Dr. Wily lives,' Shadow might have said if that wasn't classified. Not when speaking might have sparked confrontation.
This warehouse was where he'd retreated after saving Copy-Mega Man from Cut Man, who was the first to attack him after a shot from his buster severely damaged the unarmored Roll. Fortunately for both Roll and the copy, who would never have forgiven himself for killing the unit he loved as the sister he remembered, the Cossacks were on the scene, with the heli-trailer they'd built after the Fourth War for the next time Rock fought units that weren't Dr. Wily's and wouldn't have him to repair them afterwards. The combatants in the Sixth War might have been actual warbots, but they still weren't as sturdy as Dr. Wily's designs.
Even without factoring in Copy-Mega Man, who subdued them far more brutally than Mega Man ever had.
Finding Copy-Mega Man here… Shadow didn't know if it was a good sign or a terrible one that the now red-eyed false Lightbot (just as Blues was a green-eyed false Wilybot) wanted to be found after all this time avoiding Shadow's attempts to track him down, but he was alert for booby traps. This robot master had a full copy of Rock's tactical data as of his creation and might still have the master weapons he'd accumulated in the Sixth War.
The copy was seated with his back to the window, and Shadow had considered placing Jiraiya there to line up a shot, but he wasn't going to risk his support unit after a logged order from Dr. Wily had sent the poor thing running right into Roll's broom with Shadow unaware..
A poor omen for his ability to protect other units, if he couldn't even keep track of his support unit's safety. Fortunately recovering Wilybots from the Lights' and repairing them was practically an automated process at this point.
It might look as though Copy-Mega Man was thoroughly distracted and not even armored, making him as off-guard and harmless as he was going to get, but Shadow wasn't going to underestimate Rock's expertise, not when Rock was one of the few units used to going unarmored and switching into armor at a moment's notice when the next war started instead of armored by default.
What data input was the other robot master focusing on? Shadow Man wasn't going to try to request a data link, not when the copy of Mega Man was infected. Not when he was a copy of one of the oldest of their kind, and Mega Man had Dr. Light and Roll in addition to himself going over his firewalls and anti-hacking protections, to try to keep Dr. Wily from getting access to his systems somehow and reprogramming him. Connecting to Copy-Rock would have left him open to attack, and when a unit already had a grudge against him and something was making him angry enough to leave him wanting to lash out?
It was just as dark in here as on that day: it was bright outside, just like back then, but the only light came in through that tiny window. If anything, it had been allowed to become even dirtier over the years, let even less light through. Shadow thought the crate the copy was sitting on was a different crate, but it was in the same position. The scene was far too similar to what came before, when he brought the Copy to this place thinking he'd saved the life of his fellow Wilybot. If only it was that easy.
He didn't even know what to call him. That was why no one but Rock was able to call out to him as he died, but while Rock had the right to give someone else the title of Mega Man, Shadow certainly didn't and he wanted this unit to develop into their own person besides, instead of being trapped by Mega Man's emotions and obligations to the Light family until he died of it a second time.
"You saved me when I didn't want you to, and there you are, thinking I shouldn't try to save my-his family?" Copy-Rock demanded, breaking Shadow out of his thoughts.
Sitting down in a meditative posture on top of one of the crates, Shadow worked to focus himself before responding. "Protecting others is a worthy endeavor, I simply don't feel I have the right to comment on how you live your life, much less tell you what your priorities should be," he said, remembering a certain vampire. "You are developing into a very distinct person from your original," or so he could hope, but when Rock knew the copy had chosen death and self-sacrifice because that was what he would do in that position? The Lightbots might be opponents of Dr. Wily, but their loss would be regrettable. "I failed to set you on a path that would keep you alive before. I do not wish to repeat that error."
"So you're going to babysit me until you think I'm not going to violate the Third Law? You?"
And Copy-Rock didn't even know about that incident on the submarine when he brought Dr. Wily to the Lights after the White Giant attacked. Shadow hoped Copy-Rock never found out, although realistically Shade Man could be counted on to tell him if the Dark Men didn't blab about it the way they had before. His only hope was that Copy-Rock would continue to nurse his grudge against Wilybots and avoid their company. "I was ordered to attack Mega Man, not protect you, but a proper robot master would have been moved to protect you earlier, instead of only intervening after Bl-" No, it wasn't his doing. "You are right to hold me accountable for Roll's injury." Copy-Rock wouldn't have taken that shot if he'd known the truth earlier. "If I'd gone against my orders, you could be with your family even now." When Shadow had no Second Law to force him to put a human's orders over another robot master's survival.
But had his earlier self developed with one, was he used to that restriction on some level? He hadn't seen any reason to intervene, hadn't felt moved to intervene, the way the only reason he'd intervened to protect Roll during Battle and Chase was that Dr. Wily had given orders for Shadow to ensure her survival. If he'd merely been tasked with observing to be sure Mega Man complied with Dr. Wily's orders, would she have lost an arm along with the human child she'd grabbed with it to get him out of there when the Gilliam Knights attacked?
Whatever emotion made him save Copy-Rock awoke within him too late to save Roll from nearly dying on the very same day. Would it have awoken only after she was near-fatally injured, and without the Cossacks nearby to operate, during Battle and Chase?
If his original self was clearly a warbot, and he'd been rebuilt as a bodyguard, then why did his core programming fail to assign any importance to protecting anyone, even Dr. Wily? When it seemed to have given the man the place of his lost builders?
He'd wanted to fight the White Giant uselessly instead of protect Dr. Wily: had they known they were doomed when they built him? Had they never programmed him to protect them?
Had he even tried?
"Not my family, I'm a Wilybot."
Shadow looked up at the sound of Copy's dejected tone. "Do you think that matters to them?" He knew that much about Mega Man, about the family and species that produced him.
Copy was silent, refusing to look at Shadow now, false-Lightbot green eyes dark. Shadow might have risked letting Copy see Jiraiya, since Rock's memories were full of support units and it might help him to have company that wasn't a Wilybot robot master, at least, but the copy wasn't the original and his support unit had already been damaged enough. Attacking the support unit to get at the master wasn't something an ordinary robot master would even think of, he knew now, but at least the thought of it still chilled him. He didn't want to be the reason Copy-Rock had that on his conscience as well as everything that already weighed down his heart.
Then the side of the warehouse blew in. As he cursed the interruption, Shadow's eye adjusted rapidly to let him look at the figure silhouetted against the bright afternoon sun.
The word that boomed from the White Giant answered the question of why it was here. The same reason it invaded Wily Island back then - to kill Shadow's builder, his fellow Wilybots... the people he wanted to protect.