What'd know, another unplanned (even less than normal) chapter.
So who liked Roll becoming the traumatized teenager searching for someone to blame? And that someone just happens to be Rock. I did it because its fun to write her that way, and I don't know her personality at all. In all the megaman games she has what? Four lines?
Yak, yak and Blah, Blah… Go read.
A blaster from the past C3)
Rock walked down the hall with a grin on his face. The grin slipped as map of glowing lines was imposed over his vision. A large cluster of purple dots were traveling towards him from three diffract directions. He had taped into the security sensors of the Hunter HQ so that he would have a warning when any of the research scientists came towards him.
He looked around for a place to hide; specifically the ceiling and walls, only to find he had came into a narrow hall with no ornamentation and no removable ceiling tiles. Before he had scaled the walls or climbed into the ceiling to avoid being sited but now he was cornered and had no time to run.
Sure enough around a corner came a reploid in a long white coat and holding a decidedly nasty looking kind of screwdriver. He had just enough time to regret that Light hadn't perfected a personal cloaking device before both ends of the hallway where packed with scientists holding a variety of strange and viscous looking tools.
It was a staring match currently and Rock had a much better poker face. After several long moments a pale haired scientist raised his scanner and pulled the trigger. Rock felt the invisible waves of energy as they passed over his skin and were absorbed before they could bounce back. In a flash of light Rock had his buster on his arm and his hand folding away.
There where now dozens of different scanners trying to penetrate his skin. He took aim and fired seven shots of white-hot plasma; every shot hit and destroyed a scanner. The reploids didn't act the least bit surprised that he had attacked, they were far to busy scanning the destroyed scanners for plasma signatures.
Rock shifted his stance ready to leap over them but his movement pulled their attention back to him. He saw scanners disappear under lab coats only to be replaced with more of those frightening tools of torture and discovery. As one every scientist came at him swarming over him and hiding him from sight.
In a flash of bright light he burst from under the repiolds and ran down the hall clad in his body hugging blue armor. He felt scanning waves pass over him and saw thrown tools embed themselves deep into the walls as he ran.
Five hallways later and with more fear than he had ever felt fighting Willy's robots he was cornered in a large cubicle filled room. Some of the scientists had gotten their own armor, made for research more than fighting but looking scarier than anything Rock could remember.
"Come quietly and it will be easier on you." A female reploid was out front of all the others. Her armor was blue and purple and her buster had been replaced with a frightening tool arm ending in several scalpels and probes. Rock hated those armors, they stood nearly two heads taller than him but without that armor most these reploids would be only slightly taller than him. Prompting him to wonder why Light hadn't made him a bit taller, but at least X was only a taller by a few inches.
"I know you can speak Rock so think about your chooses. You can come with us or you can be dragged off and dissected until we know everything about you. It is your chouse and we weren't given any stipulations concerning your condition afterwards." Her eyes where a very hypnotic shade of purple but Rock wanted to watch her science-buster even more.
"Alright I go with you on a few conditions." Rock knew he could have gotten free but that would involve destroying them. And while he didn't care overly he didn't really need to and it would only make his job here harder.
His hand extended from his arm and unfolded, he saw that every eye watched it as it seamed to expand outward from nothing. He held up a finger, "first I must approve any tests." Another finger rose, "I reserve the right to remove any data you find or restrict its access." And then another finger, "I will have access to any and all files available from any public, private or governmental computers or faculties."
He could hear the grinding as they tried to close their jaws. "We might give you the first one, if this was a matter of barging. But the other two we cant give to anybody, especially a robot with a back-history that can only be found in children's stories." The repliod woman in blue and purple armor was the only one actually giving him any chouse in the matter.
Rock leaned back against the wall behind him and crossed his arms before his chest. "This is a matter of barging. I could simply disable all you, and probably receive some dame while doing it, or I could simply destroy you. So if you cant provide me with those conditions you should find someone who can, or you will never get a chance to study me."
Most of the scientists where getting aggravated, he could tell because they kept pulling out even bigger scarier looking tools. "And what's to stop us from just getting X to order you to go?" Rock was beginning to get annoyed with this purple eyed replied, she was too intelligent.
"Go right ahead. I don't receive commands from him. In actuality I could command him, if he would listen that is. Now I simply must bid you all farewell." He could hear their snickering and someone in back actually burst out in a baying laugh. Ha gave a short bow and everything erupted in chaos.
He had used his bow as a cover for drawing a small red cub with a 2 on it from his belt and tossing it out at shoulder height. The repliods must have thought it was an attack and dodged aside, while Rock's jet sled unfolded. He leapt on it as the boosters flared on and carried him over the shocked and confused scientists.
Suddenly the jet sled gave a lurch and slammed into the cement wall, dragging Rock and it along in a shower of sparks and flying cement. After twisting the protesting sled back away from the wall and looked back at what has caused that shift in flight.
He found the purple-eyed reploid had sunk several of her science-busters scalpels and probes into his jet sled as it passed by her. She was now hanging onto the sled for dear life and looking up at him like she wasn't sure weather to be intrigued or mad. Her helmet had fallen off during the grind along the wall letting her short blue hair whip around her face as they all flew down the hallways.
Rock leaned the sled into every corner, hopping to shake her free but she clung even harder and started swearing load enough to hear of the roar of the jets and air pulling at her face. Rock looked at his velocity and fuel gauges and then checked his map of the HQ before taking another turn, purposely grinding along the wall.
He swung out into an indoor courtyard with a small pond and a few benches and tipped the nose of the sled down, skimming along the ground before stopping. He looked back and saw the purple-eyed reploid begin to release her grip, when she had he kicked the sled up into his arms and checked the damage. It was minor and would repair itself before to long, the sled folded in on itself until it was once again a small red cub with a white 2 on the side.
"I will study that." Rock looked up in time to get a hit with a ball of crackling yellow energy. Rock struggled against the restraining energy net while she griped the ground and forced herself to breathe calmly. "What a ride. What do you call that device?"
Rock pulled at the net and tried to push it away but couldn't move it at all. Stopping his pointless struggle he glared at the repliod woman. "Its called Item two. It is a jet sled, a creative and useful alteration to an ancient sport called skate boarding. So who is asking?"
She didn't respond until a new probe had come out of her science-buster and removed the Item2 cube from his belt. "My name is Akako" she fell silent as she started to scan the jet sled. Rock knew that she would be getting a reading from it if it wasn't touching him but the sled didn't matter. The sled was after all just a chunk of aerodynamic alloy with high-powered thrust jets that collapsed in on itself for storage.
"Akako? Red child? Strange name for a purple and blue reploid. So I don't suppose you would let me go if I let you scan the others." She pocketed the sled and reached back trough the energy net and withdrew another of the cubes, this one labeled with a 1.
"How do you activate these? There are no buttons and I'm not detecting any kind of digital receiver." Akako was probing at the cube with her scalpel as if considering cutting it open and then rebuilding it.
"It works on a hard electric signal transmitted through my armor and into the surface by direct contact. I would threaten you but I don't think it would be that intimidating while trapped in this net." She smiled at his joke, pathetic as it was. She must have tried activating the item then because it started to unfold only to jam while little more than a twisted ball of red.
"What happened?" Akako dropped the item as it started twitching in her hand; it folded back in on itself after hitting the ground. She ground her teeth and reached though the energy net again, taking the last red cube.
Rock smiled as he changed the absorbing flux of his armor, absorbing the energy in the net and reducing it to little more than flimsy thread. He had been scanning her science-buster while she reached for the cubes and had finally locked on the neutralization frequency.
She was involved in trying to get any of the cubes to open and hadn't even noticed that her energy net had stopped humming. She pulled the jet sled back out and tried unfolding it only to have it and the other two cubes pulled from her hands. She looked up into the humored face of Rock, "I don't stay caught long. Now I really must go."
Rock jumped to a bench and withdrew the item1 cube, it split into three in his hand and he tossed the first into the air. As her leapt on the floating platform he tossed another and then another after that. The first platform begin to collapse but the propellers stayed long enough to propel the half folded platform up to Rock who caught it and tossed it again.
Akako watched in amazement as he walked on stepping-stones across air, gracefully keeping one platform always in front of his foot even as he leapt towards it. He reached the top wall of the courtyard and caught the flying platforms and let them fold back into one small cube. She thought she saw him smile before he turned and walked out of sight on the roof.
Akako walked back towards the lower levels of Hunter HQ, towards the R&D department and her office. She ran into her fellow researchers as they had fallowed her signal hoping she was still with him. After telling them what had happened and getting her helmet from someone who had grabbed it for her she continued down to her office.
She looked at the long scrape along her helmet and knew even without looking that her side was covered in scrapes as well. She sight and transferred her armor away, dropping down almost a foot in height without breaking stride. She waved her hand at the security scanner to open the doors into the science laboratories.
Inside there was a vast array of rooms, each one specializing in a different field of research, the entire science laboratories took up two floors and a better part of a half-kilometer underground. She passed down hallways walled in glass, seeing untended projects or assistants gathering information while the older researchers where out hunting Rock.
She sighed as she paused at a room with only one large wall screen. On the screen was a schematic of MegaManX, or at least part of a schematic. Everything they knew about X was up on that wall and it still was mostly incomplete. She turned and passed another room just like the last without more than a glance. Zero wasn't as complex as X, still mostly incomprehensible but not on the same level as X. "I wonder if we will need a new screen for Rock?"
She kept on walking farther into the maze of knowledge and mystery. She thought of the little bit of information she had gotten on Rock's jet sled. She could probably recreate the sled with little trouble but the physical compression was intriguing. It was like how Rock's hand folds away, or X's and Zero's for that matter. Their hands folded away to nothing while most other reploid's hands will only be drawn inside the buster.
She tapped in her access code and stepped into her office. When the lights didn't come automatically on she reached for the switch along the wall. With a click light filled her office, showing Rock sitting at her desk with his feet up on a stack of folders. He wasn't in his armor anymore but she knew he could call it again instantly.
She didn't move for a moment as she watched him turn something over in his hands. "Akako. You didn't say you were the head of reverse engineering. I suppose that you still haven't reached above seventy four percent comprehension regarding X's configuration and abilities?"
He sat a small sparkling crystal on the desk before him that she recognized immediately. "That's an old three dimensional data storage crystal, we haven't been able to recreate them and our current ones are beginning to fail. How did you get one?"
He picked up a folder and started flipping pages, Akako had to keep herself from tearing it from his hands. "Maybe you should be asking what is on it and what it will take for me to give it to you." Rock picked up a pen from the desk and started writing in the folder, his hand streaking across the page.
She couldn't restrain herself any longer, she stepped closer and tore the folder from his hands and slapped the pen from his fingers. "Don't disturb my research or I will dismantle you here and now and never put you back together. Do you understand me?"
Rock frowned, sending a shiver down Akako's back as it never reached his blank eyes. "Alright I will not touch any of your research." He stood and reached for the data crystal but paused and left it sitting as he walked out of her office.
The door shut behind him and left her standing there fuming that he would be so bold as to write in one of her project folders. "He could seriously upset the project." She went over to her chair and sat down, felling the indentation he had left and grumbling again. "Not only did he mess with research but he shifted my cushion."
She picked the pen up off the floor and opened the folder, ignoring the data crystal for now. She went to rub out the fist line of his hard angular writing when she saw what he had wrote. She dropped her pen and started reading what he had put down and examining what he had crossed out. She opened her communication and called the project leader for the folder.
"Hideaki drop what you're doing and get back to your lab. Ill be sending you an updated project plan, it isn't fully competed but I want you to try it. Now. If this pans out we might finish the prototype in a few weeks." Her eyes were stuck on the long line leading off the page where the pen had dragged while she pulled the folder from Rock's hands. "I don't care that you're hunting for Rock. Get To WORK!"
Rock wandered around the impressive, in size not capability, research facility. Apparently no one thought he would come down here while the researchers were hunting him because the entire time he was walking he only saw a few reploids in lab coats that were much to busy with their work to notice him.
He finally walked into a short long room with a row of targets against the far wall. A counter nearby had several different kinds of busters sitting there waiting testing. He picked up the first and scanned it, finding it to be weaker in power than he would like but with a faster reload and fire rate than he had ever seen in a single barrel plasma buster. It had no charge function but the shear speed of the repetitive hits would make the damage from one shot blend into the next. If it could be kept aimed on target it could deliver damage surpassing a supercharge shot in the same time as charging took.
He slipped the buster on over his hand and felt his arm shifting its circuitry into a matching alignment. Raising his arm he watched as his hand folded away and a very slender barrel protruded from his arm. Turning towards the targets he fired a short burst of rapid fire, five shots so close together that they seamed one, left the barrel and struck the first target.
He looked at the target and back at the buster, the aim was severely off, he had missed center by almost a centimeter. He walked over to a bench and picked up a screwdriver, working one handed with the buster on his other he adjusted the barrel alignment until he had it properly positioned and then closed the buster again.
He turned around and almost ran into a very angry looking old man, a human man. "And just what do you think your doing with that buster. You rookies think you can just grab any buster and run off and blow up a maverick. HUMPH you are more likely to blow of your foot, or someone else's. Now give me that buster, I'm waiting for Mr. Zero to come test them for me and adjust the aiming."
Rock looked at the hand the man held out for the buster then back at the targets behind him. He raised the buster and pointed it at the man's face, seeing the color drain and his eyes widen. He shifted his arm and fired, a long strong over shots passing over the man's shoulder and striking deep into the center of a target.
His hand extended and he removed the buster dropping it into the mans still outstretched hand, "this is a nice buster but the power could be increased a bit more or only the best marksmen or infantry will be able to use it to any great effect." He walked over to the table and picked up another buster. "Zero was cornered into doing paper work and sent me to test the busters for him."
He scanned the new buster, finding it almost the exact opposite of the one he had just used. It had a very poor rate of fire and a nearly nonexistent reload speed, however it did have an incredible power level. Its charge rate was high but the interesting thing was the level to witch it could be charged. It charged to full in about the same time as a supper charge but it cared almost twice the power.
He moved over to the workbench and adjusted the barrel to fix the aim before placing it on his arm. He started charging and studied the man, who had recovered from his fright and was studying him just as intently. The power level toped off and Rock snapped the buster up and fired without looking away from the man.
The man gaped as a target was destroyed, and Rock hadn't even aimed. "Who are you mister? You don't look familiar to me but I know everyone except rookies." He took the buster as Rock offered it.
Rock ignored the man's words for the moment. "If a reploid where skilled enough he could use both those busters in tandem to even better effect than a pair of standard busters. However this buster needs an improved reload time or it will be only good against highly armored targets and artily attacks."
He picked up the last buster and scanned it, only to be confused at what it told him. It looked as if it fired inversely charged plasma from a standard buster configuration but could be switch back to firing plasma with the standard charge. The confusion was that if someone was to shoot a target with inversely charged plasma nay shot fired afterwards would be drawn towards the same spot even if directed in an entirely different direction.
He pulled on the buster and found it already properly aligned. "You wont be able to test that one." He turned and looked at the old man. "I made that one for mister X or mister Zero. They are the only repliods I know of that can fire the inverted plasma."
Rock shot three times, hitting each remaining target with a green glowing ball of plasma. Then switching the plasma charges back to standard he fired three shots towards the sidewall. Watching as they turned and flew towards the targets, all three striking and destroying the same target. "If you allowed for different wavelengths in the plasma energy you could have several targets that are seek able in order the order they had been fired." Rock shot several more shots of plasma at the wall until the seeking shots had destroyed the targets.
He placed the last buster on the table and walked to the door. "My name is Rock. If you make anymore interesting busters like those I will test them for you." And with that he walked out. Only to find he had stepped into a steel cage setting against the door and the cage door drop with a clang.
"I finally found a way to trace you down, motion sensors. So Rock shall we go discuss our first stage of research?" Akako was there without her armor still, wearing a blue tunic and a short blue skirt. She activated a remote and the small-wheeled base of the cage started fallowing her as she walked.
"A steel cage? A bit archaic isn't it? I could call my armor and physically break free." Rock learned back against the bars of the cage, wanting to see what she thought she could do.
"It isn't just a steel cage. It is formed with a mirroring layer that refracts transfer beams. So you couldn't beam anything in or out of there. The mirroring layers are very fragile and difficult to produce or we would use it as a liner in the construction of buildings. I know you can beam through shielding, I plan to find out how, but I doubt that you could get free of this." Akako stopped next to an elevator and pressed the call button.
Rock thought of this, first that old man had created busters that hadn't been thought of in his time and now they had some kind of transfer reflecting substance. Maybe their technology wasn't degrading but rather evolving along different paths. He saw a flash of pink and dropped to the ground as great gout of flame washed across the top of the cage.
Without a sign of what had fired the fire stopped, leaving the cage unharmed until Rock stood again shaking the bars and sending a shower of small silver flakes cascading down around him. To test it he called both his busters, they appeared around his hands and he called the rest of his armor. "But how did you do that? You don't have any flame weapons. Do you?" Akako was sitting on the floor where she had dropped to avoid the flames as they slammed into the elevator doors, melting them solid.
"I do." She hadn't seen Roll, and he had only seen a glimpse of pink, and he didn't feel like telling her he didn't attack the cage. He griped the bars and pulled them apart while more silver flakes fell on him. He didn't think she needed to tell her his fire-based weapons where back at Light's compound.
He stepped from the cage and offered Akako a hand back to her feet. She was his height actually, strange considering most reploids where built tall. She was studying him again as he stepped back, he looked at the warped elevator doors and decided that he would go thank Roll.
He felt a sudden lurch just as he started his transfer procedure. He fell backwards off the transfer platform inside Light's compound. Akako landed on his chest with a grunt, she had grabbed him when she saw he was starting a transfer. He tossed her aside and got back to his feet, "are you insane! You might all be incompetent fools in this century but even you should know not to jump into an active transfer beam." He recalled some of the more gruesome results of a failed transfer back in his own time.
"Where are we?" her words froze his thoughts. He had just brought her to his home, or as close as to home it would be in this century. She tried to stand but fell with a cry of pain as her leg twisted from under her. Her knee had come through the transfer reversed, causing several structural warping as she tried standing on it.
"This is my home. And maybe your new prison." Rock picked her up and carried her into the main chamber and toward on of the automated repair and recharge tanks. He ignored her words and demands for answers; he even ignored her slapping his armor and bruising her hands. He placed her into a tank and pushed her back until the lid closed and her eyes closed and her chest stopped moving while the tank took charge.
"Bringing home guests already Mega?" Roll was leaning against the doorframe in her pink armor. "That wasn't a good idea, especially since she is an obsessive researcher. But if you want to think with your eyes go right ahead." She turned a left before Rock could answer.
He looked at Akako inside the tank, she was pretty. He didn't feel like sleeping so he just climbed into another recharging tank, one configured to restore his long depleted sub-tanks. His last thought before unnatural sleep was that maybe he should ask Light for an older looking body.
There chapter 3. I didn't like it. What did you think?
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