Chapter 7: You Take What You Can Get
"С паршивой овцы — хоть шерсти клок." - Russian Proverb
The gangling monstrosity was nearly twice their height— around eight feet tall— but no broader. Superficially it resembled a robot, but it was in fact a piloted machine. That was the challenge, really. Beating the mech was one thing. Beating it without hurting the person inside was something else entirely.
That was the only reason Mega Man was even there. Bass could easily handle this on his own. But while his conscience had developed to the point where he wouldn't purposefully endanger people, he hadn't quite reached the stage where he'd go out of the way to save them. He made an effort for Dr. Cossack's sake, but a fragile human inside a powerful mech was a recipe for disaster. So he found himself tagging along, for all intents and purposes, to babysit.
"Oh come on!" Mega Man dodged the splash of explosive gel and the bits of pavement that went flying after it struck the road. "This is a losing battle, and you know it. Could we stop with the property damage already!?"
One of the lingering effects of Wily's reign of terror was that certain industries— like the construction industry— had long since moved away from using robots. In this case, they'd focused on manned equipment. Even after Wily, the technology had continued in that direction. It worked well, so there wasn't much incentive to change.
These mechs could still be stolen and misused, but only on a case by case basis. Like this joker. Not nearly as ambitious as Wily, he'd used the stolen demolition mech to rob a bank. It was downright pedestrian.
Mega Man shot cover fire, distracting the pilot and giving Bass an opening, and was irritated when he failed to make a move.
"Hey, what if you paid attention to—?" He fell silent when he saw that the black and gold robot was frozen in place with a blank expression. It took a fraction of a second to realize something was terribly wrong… Mega Man had just enough time to turn in his direction when the mech pilot shot another round of explosive gel.
He flinched, shielding his face as he was pelted with shrapnel that had been Bass.
The very instant Bass came online he knew exactly what sort of condition he was in, and how bad it was. Then it took a moment to process on a conscious level. Probably the most alarming thing was that he was in a state of disassembly. Very, very much so.
In fact, it was likely he no longer resembled the human form. That was impossible to confirm, however, because there was no visual or audio feed. He was completely isolated from the rest of the world.
Yeah, this was bad.
Internal clock indicated he'd been down for six weeks. A month and a half! What the heck happened? That, too, was a mystery. Data read errors and chunks of memory missing, this black hole that stretched weeks even before the incident.
Then, over the past eight days, were logs of activity where he'd been running system analysis and diagnostics, disk defragmentation, and other computer processes… all without any cognitive functions. Sometimes it was weird being a robot.
Out of desperation, Bass tried pinging Dr. Cossack's com unit. He was such a state that he couldn't compile it into English, and wasn't optimistic it would even work. It was a pleasant surprise when the text went through.
} 01101000 01100101 01101100 01110000
Dr. Cossack startled when he got the message. "'Help'? De ty chto!" Immediately he typed a response.
} Terribly sorry, I didn't mean for you to be cognizant now. Sleep well.
Before Bass had a chance to reply, Dr. Cossack shut him off.
This time he could see and hear, and maybe it would've been better if he couldn't. Dr. Cossack hadn't started to rebuild until he was satisfied with internal hardware repairs and software restoration. Which meant that Bass was still mostly in pieces, more undone than done. Knowing it was one thing. Seeing it…
Briefly cutting off his visual feed, he listened to Dr. Cossack tooling about in the lab. Internal clock said it'd been three months.
Three.
Months.
"What happened?" Bass asked.
"That trouble you kept having with the power supply connections— you remember. I'd finally gotten around to swapping everything out…" He sighed. Unlike the problem Break Man once suffered, this hadn't been serious. It was a minor nuisance. A maintenance issue. When he continued, there was bitterness in his voice. "The installation was… sloppy. I rushed."
That, he remembered. It had been one of those particular types of minor nuisances that people intend to fix but somehow never find the time. Repairing a leaky faucet, replacing the burnt-out fridge lightbulb, patching a torn window screen. At the time Mikhail was juggling one too many projects, spread himself just a little too thin, let the stress get to him a little more than normal. When Bass made an off-hand comment about the issue, he'd decided— in a fit of exasperation— to fix the problem right then and there.
In other words: it was an easily avoidable mistake.
"First time exerting yourself in battle, it fried your energy transformer."
That didn't explain much, actually. "Yeah, but why—?"
Dr. Cossack let out a dry chuckle.
"What part of 'in battle' was unclear? Your computer system shut down to protect itself, and in the meantime, you were more or less blown to pieces."
Well. That would be why he'd been out of commission for the last three months.
Oddly enough, he didn't care who it was they'd been fighting or how the battle had turned out.
Even stranger Bass found himself suddenly and overwhelmingly missing Dr. Wily.
Wily would've been mocking and cruel. Insulting Bass's fighting ability and the fact he still hadn't destroyed Mega Man, saying what a loser he was for being blasted to bits in the first place. It would've been infuriating…
… at the same time, he knew that Wily would've spent every waking moment repairing him. Forgetting to eat, staying up all hours of the night, strung out on caffeine pills and other more questionable stimulants. Pouring his heart and soul into his work, expressing love the only way that old man knew how.
As great as Dr. Cossack was, it just wasn't the same. It was hard to put a finger on why, exactly. His interest was more scientific than personal. He was impressed with Bass as a technical accomplishment. Angry at himself for negligence, not anxious or grieved the way that Wily would've been under all the bluster.
Bass would've given anything to hear 'look at this mess, you useless bucket of bolts' right then.
"I can't afford to keep doing rebuilds, you know," Dr. Cossack teased him later.
"It's not a full rebuild," said Bass, playing along. "This is more like half of one."
"Two-thirds."
"One-third."
"Half." Then he smiled. "You're very lucky. I'm not sure you understand just how lucky— this could have been much, much worse."
The blasting gel hadn't hit him square, which helped. More importantly, Dr. Wily had taken great care to install protective shielding around the most vital and delicate computer components. He'd paid special attention to the drives that held things like his AI, memory recordings, personality… the things that were irreplaceable. There'd been some physical damage to the internal hardware, but nowhere near as devastating as it could've been.
(Dr. Cossack couldn't help but notice all of that was 'after market', designed and put in place well after Bass had been built— which meant this was not the first time he'd been through something like this.)
On the flip side, Bass's stubborn refusal to do an off-site backup had been a problem. What was lost was lost for good. With Dr. Light's help, Dr. Cossack used the AI copy he'd made and, ironically, Roll's programming to fill in the gaps as much as he could.
It was a bit of a slog, painstaking and time consuming, but in some ways it was also… illuminating.
He discovered a lot of things— mostly by accident— like the fact that Bass still didn't fully trust him. It wasn't personal. The only people he trusted completely were Break Man and Oma Wily, which Dr. Cossack felt was pretty reasonable.
Or like the fact that Bass felt somehow responsible for Dr. Wily's death, which Dr. Cossack thought was completely unreasonable. There was both lingering pain and smoldering rage from some of the more awful things that had been done to him.
The regret that he'd never actually told Wily that he loved him, and now he never could.
The nagging anxiety that Dr. Cossack still might decide to get rid of him.
There was also the fact that, oddly enough, shortly after the blocks were removed from his programming Bass had tampered with some of his own memories. From the timing it was clear they involved Zero, and Dr. Cossack wrongly assumed it was some of the more painful memories surrounding those events. It stood out as the only change he'd ever made to his software.
Mikhail realized that most of these things would have to wait until a better time to unpack and address. There were some things that he could start tackling now, however:
"You know… you shouldn't feel guilty that you still care about Dr. Wily, or that you miss him."
"I've never felt guilty about anything in my life," Bass replied sharply. "What do you know, anyway? It's none of your business." Then he grumbled angrily to himself. "Digging around in my mind like that… tch."
"It was unavoidable for data recovery, I'm afraid—"
"Sure. 'Data recovery'. Whatever."
To that Dr. Cossack just sort of smiled, shaking his head before continuing. "Just because you love someone, that doesn't mean you are okay with how they treated you. And resenting them for it doesn't negate the fact you care about them, either."
For the next half an hour or so Dr. Cossack worked in silence. Then, rather abruptly, Bass revisited the topic.
"You know if he was alive, I'd still be on his side." He fully expected Dr. Cossack to point out that ultimately, he hadn't really had a choice, only the illusion of it. That as much as he rebelled, it was because Wily had allowed him to.
To his surprise, Dr. Cossack didn't mention it.
"That's true," he said. "But he isn't, and so you're not."
Bass had no response for that.
That night Dr. Cossack broke out the vodka. He poured two shots and placed one besides Bass, tapping the two glasses together. "Tvoyo zdorov'ye!" Then he downed both, one after the other.
By the end of the hour, he'd completely reverted to speaking Russian. Which was fine, Bass had no problem understanding him.
It was different, though. Just everything about it was different.
Dr. Wily never smoked, he never drank, he never showed a desire for intimate companionship. Dr. Cossack did all these things, sometimes in excess. Where the one had been closed off and distant, the other was overflowing with emotions… he was currently sobbing into his hands about how much he missed his daughter. Bass had seen him drunk before, but never like this.
"[That's the thing about children,]" Dr. Cossack explained, his speech halting and his pronunciation rusty. "[You do your job right, you help them grow into a person. Someone who has their own life. You— you do things right and they leave you.]" He paused, wiping his face with a handkerchief and stuffing it back into his pocket before pouring yet another round. "[After Svetlana died, I… It was just the two of us, and it felt like it would always be the two of us. But now Kalinka has her own life. I'm so proud of her…]" With that, he burst into tears again.
Bass was sharply aware of the fact that he should say something. What, exactly, he didn't know. He thought about pinging Break Man for input, then decided against it.
The moment had passed, and Dr. Cossack pulled himself together. He studied Bass for a second, then went on another tangent. "[You won't leave. No… but that's worse! You don't have a choice. Are you here because you want to be, or you have to be?]"
Bass shook his head. "[Idiot.]"
Then there was a strange sort of amusement that flashed in Dr. Cossack's eyes.
"[Do you know… do you know the doctors Cornelius and Amelia Hart? Excellent engineers, both of them. We worked together on the RoboPolice project. That was, ah, before your time. They… were very interested in taking you off my hands. In fact, they made an offer.]" He shook his head, chuckling quietly to himself. "[But by then I realized— well. They are good people. They are! They are also very… detached. Logical. Excellent engineers, but not— not cut out to be parents. You understand what I'm saying?]"
He paused.
"[It's true, when Break Man first brought you here. My interest was more… how did you put it?]"
"[…more scientific than personal.]"
So, he had seen that.
"[Ha! Yes. It was true then, but not so much these days. I've spent months in here—]" Dr. Cossack tapped the side of his head and grinned. "[—and in here.]" He set his hand over his heart.
"[Don't be ridiculous. I don't have a heart.]"
"[No heart, but a smart mouth, eh?]" He laughed. "[You know, little robot… we can never know another human so profoundly.]"
That was true. Between Dr. Cossack and Dr. Light, Bass no longer had any privacy. Or secrets. It was something he had to live with, but that didn't mean he had to like it. He dealt with this by sassing back.
"[If you know me so well, and didn't dump me in the nearest junkyard, then you're a sucker.]"
Briefly Dr. Cossack reached over to Bass and touched his face.
"Da. [I am a sucker.]" Then he poured himself another round. "[Some people rescue a stray dog, or a flea-bitten cat. Doctor Mikhail Cossack? He brings a wild wolf cub— a tiny war machine— into his home.]" He took the shot straight to the head.
After a minute, he tried to finish his thought.
"[I don't expect to ever replace Dr. Wily, just as you could never replace Kalinka. That doesn't, that doesn't mean—]"
He fell silent.
A good half an hour later, after giving up on the shot glass and chipping away at the vodka straight from the bottle, he started to laugh.
"[What?]"
"[They. They say. They beggars can't be choosing, hmm? Choosing. Chooser. Ha.]" He paused, momentarily lost. "[Let me tell, you. She had, ah, a few… mis, miscarry. You know? She lost… them. We were— we were so happy to, so happy, for our little girl. It, it— I was happy, then.]" Taking a deep breath, he tried to gather his thoughts and bring the point home. "[But I always, I, I wanted a— Hang on. Hang on, I need an, another…]"
But all he managed to do after that was to drop the bottle, which somehow didn't break, leaving a glistening trail as it bounced and rolled away under the work table. With a groan, Dr. Cossack rested his head in his arms, folded on the edge of the table. When he spoke again it was almost inaudible.
"[Beggars, you and— and you and me. But. Here we are.]"
He blacked out shortly after that.
"I hope you don't mind, but I took the opportunity to have this serviced."
Pulling the wristwatch out from his lab coat, Dr. Cossack handed it to Bass.
"Cool."
Since it was awkward to do with one hand, and his right arm— the whole right side, really— was still somewhat of a mess, Dr. Cossack helped him wind it and put it on.
"…Dr. Light confirmed that you were right on both counts. It was Frederick's, and he did pass it down to Dr. Wily as a gift."
Bass studied it quietly, watching the second hand tick. "It's kind of stupid for a robot to wear a watch, I guess."
"Hmm. Well, I suppose it's equally stupid for a scientist to buy an industrial polycarbonate dining chair so that a robot who doesn't eat can join him at the table for dinner."
"Or as stupid as a combat machine wondering what snow flakes feel like." He suddenly broke into a wicked grin. "This doesn't get you off the hook for getting me blown up, you know."
Dr. Cossack put on a look of mock hurt, then sighed. "No, but doing two-thirds of a rebuild so soon after—"
"Half. Half a rebuild!"
- A/N: This chapter used to be its own ~6K one shot. It was very meandering. This is much better, it's all the good stuff parsed from that.
- A Patlabor? In my Mega M—? *ducks thrown tomato* Alright, alright! Sheesh.
