Chapter 11: What Side You Land On

"Finally!" Forte yelled out as everyone backed away. The temperature hit a medium point again, and Forte let out a sigh of relief.

"Hey, Forte! Can you still blow stuff up?" Bomb Man asked. Forte shrugged and held his arm out in front of him. Nothing happened.

"Did we break you?" Cut Man asked.

"No, I just can't form my blaster anymore. This sucks…I can't fuse with Treble either." Forte sighed.

The other robot masters looked sad. Watching Forte blow stuff up and fuse with Treble had always been cool.

"If it makes you feel better, we can blow stuff up for you!" Bomb Man yelled out, forming two lit bombs. Forte paled, but it was too late. Everyone else joined in, and Forte and Treble bolted out of the room as a display of powerful fireworks filled it.

The sounds of ripping wind, glass shattering, and explosions were quickly followed by a faint teleporting sound and Wily screaming at the top of his lungs, and then the movement of large feet.

"Why won't you understand…
That things will always be this way now…

There isn't anything to turn it back,
Unless you can tell me how…

Because I can't turn back time,
Some things will never change…"

The song, in Blue's ears, was suddenly interrupted by a tapping on his shoulder, so he flipped around and saw a most surprising guest.

"Proto Man! What are you doing here?"

"Your stupid robots could have KILLED me!" Forte yelled. Wily just blinked.

"It's not my fault you were screwing around with them." Wily responded calmly, sweating slightly. Forte was mad, after all.

"They wanted to know about me being human! Some of them were nicer about it than others…one of them tried to kill me because he was jealous!"

"Robots don't have feelings, Forte."

At those words, Forte's mouth hung open.

"What do you mean? Of course they have feelings! One was jealous of you never paying attention to him! I hate Mega Man! I had feelings and could make choices!"

Wily sighed. "No, actually, you couldn't. Every "feeling" you had was pre-programmed. Everything they did was a choice made by their programming. They have as much choice as a coin does of choosing what side it lands on."

"They were curious about me! They were thinking, they knew my personality, all of it… they even tried to blow stuff up for me since I couldn't…"

"They're just adapting to new things, based on what they already have. If they couldn't, they would be stuck in a loop…and they'd be failures."

Forte thought for a minute.

"How would that make them any different from a human?"

"Humans don't have limits placed on them that keep them from doing things they shouldn't, no matter how much they want to. Humans don't have to follow every command their creator gives them, if they are programmed to. The difference between robots and humans is that while a robot and a human can both desire to do something, only the human can actually act on it no matter what it is."

"But we can think and act on our own will…"

"Something without reason, instinct, or motivation won't do anything. Those are things they had to have. And it was all programmed…when I program the robot masters, it's simple… destroy Megaman on instinct, that is your motivation, my orders are your reason."

"But that's basically what humans are!"

"Humans can change their reasons and motivations at will! Can robots do that?"

"What about King?"

"King was the biggest failure I've ever made… a robot that somehow shattered his own programming! I think I might have accidentally thrown free will into him…"

After tapping Blues on the shoulder, Rock had definitely not gotten the response he expected. Blues looked around, stared at him, and ran for his life.

"Proto Man?" Rock wondered, watching Blues run as Dr. Light struggled to catch up. Neither one bothered following, and instead watched the stage as the song hit its finale.

"No matter what I go through…

I! Will! Not! Die!"

As Blues ran, he began slowing down in a matter of minutes, becoming increasingly sluggish. His arms dragged down to the ground, he began to sweat, and the pain in his chest got worse. A vendor he walked by noticed and offered him a free drink.

"Whoa kid, are you OK?" he asked.

"I'm…just fine…" Blues said, taking the drink and swallowing it in one gulp. It didn't help any, and Blue's breathing was getting labored. He stopped moving and leaned against a booth.

The pain is his chest seemed to explode in magnitude for a split second, during which his knees buckled and he collapsed onto the booth, sliding down the front of it until he was flat across the ground, lying on his stomach.

The song quickly stopped, as the band stopped playing and stared in front of them in shock. As the song and the crowd quieted, people could hear sirens breaking the night air.

Everyone turned around and quickly moved out of the way as a stretcher came their way and ran past them, going in the direction Blues had gone.

"Oh no…" Dr. Light whispered, as the stretcher began to come back, followed by a group of other people. Dr. Light didn't see who was on it, but it seemed so obvious…he heard a band member ask one of the people that had been following the stretcher what happened.

"The impossible…a kid about 10-years old just had a heart attack."

"Well, how do you know we didn't just all break our programming like King?" Forte asked.

"Ha, don't make me laugh. Mega Man's the same way. Originally, he was programmed to be a lab assistant, and then he was reprogrammed to be a battle robot to save the world! He never chose to become a battle robot, he was made to. It became his purpose, and he set off to do it because it was his purpose. Proto Man had no purpose, so he defected and set off on his own! Your purpose was to destroy Mega Man, so that's all you ever thought about!" Wily debated back.

"But I'm human now! And I still want to kill Mega Man!"

"…That I can't explain…when you became human, your personality must have stuck with you… But there is another thing… As a human, you could attack me! You almost murdered your own creator!"

"…Wait a minute. If I have to follow all your orders, why didn't I destroy Proto Man when you told me to?"

Wily had no response to that, and gave up.

"I don't have time for this! Enough with this debate…and your dinner's getting cold. Start eating."

Wily pointed to the clock, which said "6:00", and Forte stared glumly at the incredibly burnt steak in front of him.

"How do you even survive?"

"It's better than nothing. I have enough supplies to last me and you two and a half years." Wily said, sitting down and stabbing the steak with a large knife. "Damn it!"

Around Rock and Dr. Light, a large clock chimed 6 times as people in the crowd murmured and whispered to each other.

"A boy at ten years old…"

"A heart attack! Impossible! He looked too healthy to have heart problems that severe!"

"I saw him walking strange, so I gave him a free bottle of water…not sure how much that helped."

"Mommy, mommy, is he going to be alright?"

"…Where is that kid's mother? Or father? Or anyone for that matter…he should not be walking around alone in a fair!"

"Dr. Light, do you think we should follow?" Rock asked.

Dr. Light nodded and began to head toward the exit, with Rock following.