Author's Notes: This one owes a lot to an immobilizing injury on my part, namely fracturing a toe. While not as bad as what poor Blues is dealing with here, it did give me a lot of time where I had to be off my feet and keeping to sedentary activities such as, say, writing fanfic. I only realized the correlation while I was typing this up from my fic notebook.

In keeping with my use of the Japanese names (Blues=Protoman, Rockman=Mega Man, Forte=Bass), I'm using Rightot in place of Auto for the green robot who's got a few screws loose upstairs.

This is set sometime after the intro stage of Rockman and Forte, or Megaman and Bass, as it was released in the US.

-o-o-o-

The lab was silent, save for the quiet buzz of the fluorescent lights overhead and the occasional grind of a hard disk. Blues lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling. It was dead boring being stuck here like this, immobilized from the neck down while a small army of nanobots finished rewiring the multitude of connections that had been severed when he had been nearly cut in half by King's axe.

He supposed being stuck like this served him right for being so careless. But how was he to know that this new robot would be so powerful? Oh, well. He was pretty sure Rockman would be able to take care of it. He always did. Blues just didn't like sitting this one out, unable to keep tabs on what was going on.

This was ridiculously boring. Blues made a promise to himself that as soon as he was able, and as soon as this latest mess with Wily was over — there wasn't any proof yet, but he was pretty sure that Wily was behind this simply because Wily was always behind anything this big — as soon as this was over, he was going to go on a long journey somewhere. But where to? America had been interesting, and it had been a few years since he'd last been to New York. That had been fun. Or maybe somewhere in South Asia. He hadn't been there yet. Mumbai, perhaps? Or maybe Bangalore?

The sound of the lab door opening broke into Blues' inner travelogue. By turning his head all the way to the right, he could just make out Roll, quietly shutting the door behind her. "Hi, Blues," she said, making her way over to the lab table where Blues lay.

"Hi," he said.

"How're you doing?"

Blues tried to shrug, realized that the necessary servos weren't hooked back up to his motor network, and settled for trying to sound nonchalant. "Better than I was when I 'ported in."

"Yeah," Roll replied, looking at the floor. Oh, that's right. She'd been the only one in the lab when he had teleported in, a sparking wreck. Roll, who had always been squeamish about exposed wires and parts, screamed so loudly that Rightot had come running in, waving a wrench and loudly declaring his intentions to "defeat any foe who may be threatening the cute and innocent Roll-chan."

Light's new lab robot was weird.

"Sorry if I scared you," Blues apologized to Roll.

"Oh, no, it's okay. It was just kind of, um, startling."

"Yeah, I imagine that was pretty unexpected."

Roll looked over his body which, from the outside, looked completely intact now. "Looks like Dr. Light and Rightot did a good job with the repairs."

"Does it?" Blues lifted his head up the few centimeters that he could. "Good."

Noting his limited range of motion, Roll asked, alarmed, "Are you stuck like that?! King didn't do some sort of permanent damage to your motor systems, did he?"

"No, I've just had them deactivated for awhile. The cosmetic damage is fixed, but there's a bunch of nanites fixing all the little fiddly connections, and Light didn't want me moving around and messing that up."

"Ew, nanites. Can you feel them moving around inside of you?"

"No. And it's faster than having all the rewiring done manually. I'd probably still be here a couple weeks from now if that were the case. As it is, I should be back in action by this time tomorrow."

"Oh, good!" Roll said, clasping her hands in front of her. "Ah! That reminds me!" She looked around for a place to sit and, finding none, dragged a stool over from a nearby computer terminal, talking as she went. "Rock stopped by earlier to pick up some parts."

"Is he doing all right out there?" Blues asked, a note of concern creeping into his voice.

"He's okay." Roll plopped down on the stool, found that the top of her head was even with the top of the lab table, and set to adjusting the stool. "I think he was worried about you, so I promised I'd check up on how you were doing." With a final crank of a lever, she gave the stool a satisfied nod, and then hopped up onto it, at a better conversation level. "But you'll never guess who he ran into."

"Cut Man?"

"No, silly. Forte."

"Oh, no. What's that idiot doing now?"

"Helping Rock, apparently."

Blues stared at her, incredulous. "You're kidding."

"Well, I don't know if 'helping' is the right term, but Rock seemed pretty sure that they were at least on the same side."

"You sure this isn't just wishful thinking on Rock's part? I mean, look how many years it took for it to sink in that Wily wasn't just going to up and reform."

"Well, Rock said that Forte said something about how defeating King would prove that he was the strongest robot."

Blues snorted. "Yeah, okay, that sounds about right. Did Rock say how much farther he thought he had till he got to King?"

"I asked him how long until he could come back home, and he said he wasn't quite sure. King's been trying to assemble this robot army—"

"I know. He tried to recruit me."

"What'd you say?"

"I said no. Apparently that was the wrong answer."

"Oooh." Roll winced. "I'm sorry."

Blues tried to shrug again and sighed as he was reminded of his immobile state. "What's done is done. I'm fixable."

"And I'm glad of it," Roll said. "We'd all be really sad if anything really bad happened to you. Um, not that this wasn't really bad, but …"

Blues smiled slightly. "I know what you mean. And thanks."

Roll gave a quick glance up at the clock on the wall that didn't go unnoticed by Blues. "You have something you need to do?" he asked.

"Um, sort of. I left a couple bread loaves to rise, and they should be about ready to be punched down and shaped. And I said I'd clean up the mess Rock left behind."

"Well, if you need to go, then go."

"Sorry to run out on you like this."

"It's no problem."

"You need anything before I go?"

"No, I'm all right."

Roll scooted the stool back to the computer terminal where she got it from.

"Wait, Roll, actually, there is something you can do."

"Yes?"

"Does that computer have access to the net?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Could you find a good music station for me? Just so I have something to listen to while I'm here."

"Any preferences?"

"WWOZ out of New Orleans, if you can find it."

A quick clatter of keys and then, "Got it."

"Perfect. Now, if you could just pop open the panel on the right side of my neck, there should be an audio cable there." He turned his head to give her access and heard the muted "pop" of the panel being opened. "Got it?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, now plug that into the headphone jack on the computer. There. Perfect. Thank you."

"You sure you'll be okay here by yourself?"

"I'll be fine, especially now that I've got some tunes to listen to. Go on."

As Roll shut the door behind her, Blues went back to staring at the ceiling, to the sound of the DJ's voice saying, "…and that was 'Tank,' by the Seatbelts. Next, we jump back a few decades for Duke Ellington and 'Way Back Blues…'"

-o-o-o-

Comments, especially constructive criticism, are always welcome! Thanks for reading!