Here is another chapter. Can you believe that I wanted this to be a one shot? It didn't turn out that way because I got even more ideas after I started writing it so I chopped what I had into a first chapter and started on another. That is why so much happens in the first chapter.
Acorn… why did you have to point that out so soon? I was hoping nobody would notice it so soon. And Rock doesn't have emotions at least in the same way as X or any reploid; don't get upset I should cover why in this chapter. Please just read it before getting upset.
Green. No, Light didn't forget Roll or Rush, but then again it technically wasn't Light. It was a living message. Don't worry ill make it up to you. What do you mean no mention of Zero? I thought I mentioned something about him somewhere, maybe you should check again.
A blaster from the past C2)
"I don't care if it was built by Light! It isn't fallowing you around all the time!" Zero's reaction wasn't exactly what X had expected when he told him about Rock. The three of them where in the training room. X held the punching bag tighter as Zero began striking harder, obviously upset about the strange drone.
"Calm down Zero. I don't exactly have a chose in the matter. Light said it could possibly match my potential. If that's true I don't think we could stop it easily." X stepped back as Zero thrust his fist thru the bag. X and Zero where in their civilian clothes at the moment. Zero in jeans and a red shirt, X wore black shorts and a blue sleeveless shirt, Rock still wore the same clothes.
Zero ripped his fist out, sending sand across the floor, "it's a drone. It will only get in the way or get blown up. I drone with your power is still only a drone. I bet it cant even keep up with me on the obstacle course." Rock came over from where he had been standing having had heard everything.
Rock stopped beside the tattered bag, "I will race you if you wish but your speed is superior than my own without my armor." Rock had scanned Zero earlier, and every Reploid he had seen so far. Most of them where closely based on the plans for X but there where several errors and inconsistencies. Zero on the other hand seamed to be an innovative alteration of X's intended design.
Zero's hand slipped down to where his saber would have been if he was wearing his armor. This action was unnoticed by the others because X slipped in the lose sand. As he climbed back to his feet he looked at Rock, "you have armor? How? You have been in that pod for a while. Where could you have stored it without it being found or damaged?"
Rock looked out over X's shoulder listening to something again, "it appears that my storage lockers haven't been disturbed but the shielding is in need of repair. I will return." Light surrounded Rock as he transferred away, leaving a confused X and aggravated Zero standing on spilt sand.
Zero turned to X with anger all over his face, "why did you give it a transfer device."
X put his hands out in front of him and backed away, "I didn't give him one, I swear."
X was spared trying to explain something he didn't know anything about by his communicator beeping. He opened his internal COM with a thought, "X sir. We just detected an unknown transfer signal from your location."
Zero had been monitoring the com-line as well, "do you have the signal rerouted to containment?"
The Reploid on the other end of the line didn't answer, as she checked, "No sir the signal cut right thru our transfer shielding and resisted scanning as it passed thru the network. And sirs, I don't have a trace on the signals location."
Zero cut the signal and left in his own flash of light. X was left standing on the lose sand. He turned and was going to go when he slipped in the sand again. He looked up at the tall roof and sighed, "my life is just getting more and more complicated."
Somewhere deep inside the ground was an armored bunker, there was no doors or entrances leading out or in and several rooms hummed with ancient equipment fighting to do its job under inches of dust. In a small room a round platform suddenly flashes to life and a ring raised up from its base lights strobes across the platform. With a flash of white light Rock appeared on the platform. He stepped down from the platform and opened the door into the main area of this vast self-contained environment. Lights began to flicker on as he walked across the floor, dust rising in a cloud behind him.
He never saw the pair of eyes staring out from a dark corner before they leapt at him. A red blur took Rock from his feet and sent them both tumbling across the floor, coating Rock with a thick layer of dust.
He found that he was pined and something slightly wet was being dragged across his face. He opened his eyes expecting a strange robot with a devastating weapon or a wild beast that had gotten in. anything except a red robot dog that was slobbering all over him.
"Rush?" he couldn't believe it. Rush had shutdown while Rock and Light had been working on X and the pods, among a few other things.
"Rush, heel." Rush jumped back from Rock and ran back into the shadows caused by dead lighting elements. Rock pulled himself back to his feet and looked into the shadows.
He knew that voice, never with that tone or abruptness. He found himself hoping this wasn't some cruel trap. He took a step towards the Shadow, stopping dead still as he saw a glow that could only come from the barrel of a charging blaster. "Don't move Rock."
Rock didn't know what was going, he knew that voice but she would never be so hostile to him and he didn't even think she was able to use a buster. "Roll? What's going on? Why are you doing this?"
The Blaster reached a full charge and fired, Rock barely got out of the way as it hit the floor super heating the metal where he just had been. "Why? Why? You want to know WHY!" a flurry of small plasma shots came out of the darkness.
Rock found that every shot was fired with an accuracy almost as well as his own. Several times he felt this skin warm as the plasma came very close to him. Roll kept talking as she shot at him, "you left me. You locked yourself in that lab for so long I thought you had forgotten me. And then you didn't even come back out to save me from Willy."
The shots were very close and could seriously hurt him without his armor but he just couldn't bring himself to hurt Roll. "I wanted to save you but Light said it was more important to get the pods out so Willy couldn't get them."
The Shots paused but only a moment, "and what about leaving me out there in the first place. Even if I couldn't help I could have come in and talked to you while you worked. You abandoned me. Rush might not care now that your back but I do."
Rock rolled behind a dusty writing desk just before another charged blast struck it, shoving it and Rock along in a tumble of burnt wood and bruises. He untangled himself and began to stand when a fist in his back dove him back down.
He felt the buster pushed against his neck and wondered for a moment if his backup memory chips still worked. If she shot him he may not be coming back from it if those chips had decayed any. "I should shoot you right now. I never understood why you where so freaked out when you got rebuilt the first time." She pushed the buster a little harder; "I reacted the same way the first time. And the second and third as well."
Even when the Blaster was pulled back he didn't move until a toe under his shoulder rolled him over. He blinked, and then again and then rubbed his eyes at what he saw. Roll was standing over him with a buster pointing at his head. He knew she was using a buster but he had thought it was one of his old ones; instead it was a slimmer red one. And she wore matching armor too.
He began to sit up but laid back as she narrowed her eyes. Her armor looked like his except a bit trimmer and made in shades of red and pink. Her helmet had a shorter neck guard that let her hair down her neck and over her shoulders. The big difference between his armor and hers was that hers and a mask guard that was currently pushed up on her forehead.
After a long silence during witch Rock thought she might fire the growing charge from her blaster she relaxed. Her hand reformed from inside her buster after the charged energy disappeared. She offered her reformed hand to Rock.
He took it a little hesitantly and she pulled him to his feet, before driving a knee into his groin and letting him fall again. "That was for forgetting me." When he was finally able to stand again she had disappeared and he could see no tracks in the dust to say where she had gone.
He walked, or limped, down the hallway and into the one room that was dust free. He dropped into a chair before the main lab console and entered his access commands. The console was even more impressive than the one back in the old lab. He wasn't much for coming up with anything himself but he could improve any existing design. Strangely much of MegamanX's mental constructs came from the incident that made Light more than a recording but less than human and for this reason X could actually think in original terms weather they where defined by logic or emotion.
Rock put his feet up on the console and leaned back. He started to think of how he felt abandoning Rush and Roll. His logic told him Light's research was more important than his friends but because he was built to simulate emotions part of him was twisted in aguish over leaving them. At several times in his long life he had considered asking Light why those simulated emotions felt so strong sometimes, but every time he was distracted, often enough by Willy tiring to take over the world.
Finally the computer screen flickered to life and he began entering routines for the countless robots around the incredibly vast compound. He hunched forward and began checking various charts that came and went with his flickering fingers and clicking keys.
Finally as everything was underway to put everything in the compound back to a state of order he pulled up history logs. Light had assured Rock that the world wouldn't pass him by as he slept and sure enough there where condensed info logs for nearly the entire time he was gone.
He trimmed over everything, noting that Willy was never heard from again and that much of the world stayed in a state of prosperity for a long time. The information logs said that technology was on a decline, a slow one but even now the modern technology level was a good deal below the normal before Rock had gone into status.
War. Prosperity ended with war, several wars fallowed by others. Rock didn't bother thinking he could have helped, they where human wars and he would have made no difference being there. It interested him that a Doctor Cain was the one that had found X. Cain was a botanist/ archeologist but had managed to discover enough about X to make the initial blueprints for the first reploids.
Finally his emotions overrode logic, he started searching for information on Roll. A while later he was ready to call Light and ask him what was going on. Every file he found that had anything to do with Roll, and there were more than he would have thought, was encoded and marked classified. It was imposable. His clearance was right below Light's and could only be locked if Light thought them unsuitable for anyone to see. Rock hadn't even read all his own files because Light thought they might upset him.
"Interesting reading?" Rock turned around and found Roll leaning against the open door. She could clearly see what was on the screen, "so you're wondering what happened? Well to bad for you. I'm the only one who has the passwords for those files and I don't want you to see them." With that she turned and went down the hall.
Rock got up and started after her, only to be tackled to the ground as Rush came jumping in the door. A good twenty minutes later Rock finally calmed Rush down enough that Rush would let him back to his feet. Barking and running around him Rush was happier than Rock would have thought he would be.
When Rock went out into the hall Rush bit his hand, not hard but just enough to get a grip and begin pulling him. Rock let Rush pull him down the hall and up stairs and finally back down into a small section where Light had insisted on building living quarters.
This was the first time Rock had ever been in the compound let alone this section. The first door was plainly Rush's with a computerized doggy door build into the larger, but this wasn't where Rush was leading him. They passed a door covered in blast marks, some very old but others still fresh. Remembering his welcome back he could guess that this was his room and that Roll had been decorating his door for a long time.
Rock could see other doors down the hall but they all had seals locking the doorframes. Rush stopped and released his hand Rock looked up at the door and involuntary took a step back. Drawn on the door was a crude drawing of him in his armor with various injuries, some of them he had suffered before and knew they hurt much more than they looked. And there stamped across his face in big red letters, 'GO AWAY MEGAMAN!'
He turned to leave but found Rush blocking his way growling. "Rush I cant do this now. She needs to calm down first and then I can talk to her." Even as he said it he knew it was wrong, she had had a long time to think. So much time that she probably was past calm and right into homicidal.
"I think you should start now." Light's image flickered into being over Rush's back where a small holograph projector had extended. "It took me quite a few years before she even began to trust me again, and even to do that I had to make her that armor. She wanted it and she watched you enough to know how to use it, even before her missions."
Rock knew better than to ask what missions but he had a lot of questions still. "What is going on Doctor? I'm glad you brought her and Rush back but why so long before I woke?"
"Because he needed information he couldn't get from hacking computer nets." Rock turned around expecting a blaster aimed at his face but he found Roll out of her armor. His eyes nearly popped from his head. She looked older, not a lot but enough to have become more than a girl. His eyes roamed over her shapely form under her coveralls before returning to her face. If his face could have paled it would have been a new shade of white.
She stood with her arms crossed under her breasts and glared at him until he thought he might like the blaster pointing at his face instead. She actually smiled at his expression, not the sweet smile he remembered but a predatory smile. "Dr. Light rebuilt me after you had been in stasis for a few weeks. He made me like I was before but I refused to put in stasis. So after a few years stuck down here I got board, Light saw this and asked me if I wanted to do some scouting. I said yes and went out into the world looking at people and find things that he didn't find online."
She held up her hand and with a small flash of light her blaster arm was there, "after I was blown apart by a mob protesting one of the wars Light rebuilt me again and gave me a set of armor made from one of your old ones. When a came back again nearly torn to shreds I told him to make me my own, it had some nice functions yours doesn't. And when I woke up on the recovery table again I told him I wanted a new body, he didn't want to but after I destroyed a few of his computers he did it just the way I wanted with new armor to go with it. I haven't been blown up since."
"Well yes that is what happened." Light looked very uncomfortable. "I didn't feel it was save to wake you from your stasis until X had been activated. And I couldn't find anyone else to do scouting so I asked Roll. I'm sorry for the pain it caused you Roll." Roll snorted at Light's apology. Rock wondered who the Doctor had wanted to do the scouting.
Rock's internal communicator beeping interrupted the rather tense conversation. He checked the signature wondering who in this time knew it, the only markings where an energy signature that was only X's. "Hello X. how did you find my communicator address?"
Roll went back into her room and Rush jumped in the closing door, leaving Rock with his new mission. "Actually I found it in a history log and gave it a try." Rock could hear the laughter in the background. "Ok, ok. I found it in a Childs story book." Rock was smiling for the first time in what felt ages, and actually was.
"So just a quick question, where are you? Our scanners can't even tell if you are using a COM, let alone where you're at." Rock's smile slipped. If their sensors where even on half the capabilities of the ones from his age they would be swarming all over the compound.
"You or anyone else doesn't have any right to be anywhere near here. You will stop scanning immediately and never attempt to find it again." he could hear the anger in his own voice and was wondering what X's reaction would be. He had been pretending to be a simple drone so that they might lower their guard and he had just told them he wasn't.
"You listen here you chunk of scrap. That is MegamanX you are talking to and leader of the Maverick Hunters. He has saved the world twice already and you will treat him accordingly." Rock didn't know who the voice was and didn't really care.
Rock was trying to ignore his emotions but they where much more powerful than logic at the moment. "Listen up whoever you are. I don't care what he leads; he could lead a pack of lemmings off a cliff for all I care at the moment. He only saved the world twice? I wager that children's storybook had enough of what I have done to make your world seam a fluffy bunny filled dream. So when I decide to speak I will speak how I wish to whoever I wish."
Rock cut the communication and changed his contact code before walking all the way back to the main lab console. Once there he checked the repair progress and left again. This time he headed upwards, up and up past doors and large equipment bays, past hangers of plains and jeeps. He finally stopped at an elevator at the top floor, he pressed his palm against the doors and could feel the scanners as they checked everything.
Once inside the doors shut with a click and he typed an impossibly long code into a control panel. Finally the elevator began to move, going down, down past all the floors he had climbed up down past the main floor and even deeper then before. Even Rock had no idea just where this compound was but he knew it was deep under ground. Finally the elevator stopped again and he had to enter another long code before the doors would open.
Stepping inside the elevators snapped shut with a clang that echoed around the small space. There was nothing here except plain cement walls and his sensors and every other sensor ever made would say that there was nothing but stone for miles around. He hated this part but it was the one thing no intruder would ever think of trying.
Taking a deep, if unneeded, breath, "I am little teapot, short and stout. Here is my handle and here is my spout. When I get all steamed up and give a shout tip me over and pore me out." As he finished the little chant and dance he couldn't help but shudder. Sometimes he wondered if Light did that just for a laugh.
The elevator behind him opened again and another hidden door on the back wall opened, reviling a room full to the ceiling with smaller versions of Lights pods. It was a disorganized mess, just how he liked it. He walked in and started pushing pods aside and looking inside others. He smiled as Light flickered into existence in a corner, "I never did understand how a robot could stand being disorganized. But I knew that if I tried sorting hem you would just mix them all up in short while."
Rock didn't answer as he was trying not to have a tall stack of pods fall on him. Light went on speaking but was smiling as several pods fell on Rock. "You don't actually need to put on your armor anymore. I adapted this centuries personal transport system to work for you. You will have to select what weapons you want to take before leaving the base and come back to change them but other than that you can transfer into and out of your armor."
Rock pushed a red pod off his head, "thanks Dr. Light." After the doctors hologram disappeared he spent a few minutes thinking what weapons he would likely use. In the end he decide on nothing except a few handy Items. X had most of Rock's functions already and even a few things incorporated from devices that Rock had found useful. Rock could ask Light to integrate them into him but he already had a perfect understanding of these as they where.
Leaving the room and making the long journey back to the main chamber he stopped outside the transfer room. He had expected at least Rush to come see him off, or probably try coming with him, but the only things moving nearby was cleaning robots sweeping up the dust. He gave a sigh and went into the transfer room, to find a small box sitting there.
He opened the box and found a note sitting on a pink ribbon. 'Don't get blown apart Mega. I don't know what I would do if I lost you. At least before I tore you apart myself.' He smiled and folded the note up before tying the ribbon around it. With the note and ribbon in his pocket he stepped on the transfer pad and vanished in flash of light.
X was in his office reading reports and signing documents needing his approval. He hated doing paperwork but could never bring himself to skirt his duty like Zero did. Thinking of Zero mad his pen pause over another paper. Zero was his closet friend and he was glad he was back from the dead but whenever Rock was around or mentioned it was like he was someone else.
Rock. Now that was a problem waiting to happen. He had thought Rock was just a drone because of his unresponsive attitude but now he knew that Rock wasn't just a drone, and unfortunately so did everyone else. Rock had returned, transferring right into a meeting about him that was supposed to have been transfer shielded.
That had set off an entire episode with the human government and his base commanders. They had spent the last of that meeting shouting at X and Rock about security protocols and clearance. X groaned as he remembered Rocks response, "I have clearance higher than any of you." Rock wouldn't say another word after that about anything.
Well not another word until the base commanders called for the research scientists to come and take Rock for study. That was a disaster. Rock had disabled six different reploid researchers, without any weapons of his own, and avoided every attempt to corner and scan him. The research division had taken it as a personal challenge and where now hunting for Rock throughout the entire Hunter HQ.
X was still a little surprised that Rock had been able avoid them so far. X and Zero often had trouble getting away from the researchers and usually only got away because they had work to do. And somehow Rock was avoiding every one of the hundreds of scientists and researchers, without even calling his armor. X was trying to decide if he should ask Rock to teach him how to get away.
He finally wrote his signature on the page before him. He still couldn't believe no one had tried forging it, it was after all just an x. he pulled another form in front of him, reading it briefly before signing it. He thought he might actually finish the stack of forms on his desk when his office door opened and in walked Rock.
He looked at the door for long moments expecting a swarm of researchers with scanners and tools made from reploids nightmares to come in after Rock. When it was apparent that they weren't coming he turned his attention back to Rock, who had sat down in the only other chair in the room.
"You need to tell me how you are able to escape them like that. I can't walk down a hall in my armor without one of them trying to make off with my buster." X dropped his pen and looked, honestly looked at the strange robot before him. Robot being a strange word he found was used before reploids where made. Drones now where much like old robots but for some reason Rock was just different.
"Isn't hard. They never look up." Rock ran his fingers through his hair, a motion that X realized he had just done and one he often did. Did that mean that rock was emulating him or that it was just a random trait they both had.
Rock never took his eyes away from anything unless it was to stare just as hard at something else. Just then the door opened and Zero walked in with his classic swagger, he stopped when he saw the stacks of papers and the pen sitting near them, "I just remembered. I have to go test some new busters for the R&D."
Zero turned to go only to find that Rock, who he hadn't noticed was in the room, was leaning against the doorframe and blocking Zero's escape. "I don't much like paper work either. Care for that race now?"
Something about the way Rock spoke just didn't strike X as right. He spoke with the tone and facial expressions of someone vaguely amused but it didn't seam right. Almost as if drawing his attention to what it was Rock blinked one of his few infrequent blinks. Rock's eyes were blank. There was no other word, they were intelligent and had seen great and terrible things but the emotions in his voice or face never touched his eyes.
"Maybe. A race would be nice but how about something a little more intense." X blinked at Zero. He was growing used to Zero's seaming distaste of Rock but this was like Zero couldn't decide whether to jest or jibe.
"You mean a bit of sparing? I'm sure it would be interesting. But I think maybe you should go finish your paper work." And with that Rock turned and went out the door, making sure it closed before Zero could fallow.
Zero went to open the door but X cleared his throat. "I think Rock just went to test those blasters for the R&D. so pull up that chair and give me a hand." Zero groined as he caught the pen X tossed him.
There you go chapter two. I'm not sure what ill do in chapter 3, probably a bit of sparing between Rock and Zero but who knows.
This chapter may end up getting rewritten later.
See there Acorn. He dose have emotions but they aren't emotions in the same sense as repliods or humans. He has an emotional processor that emulates human emotions while defying logic. Emotion versus logic. Whatever is stronger is often what is used but just like in people emotions can be over powered by logic, and vise versa.
Later