"What do you mean I can't have it back?" Mimic demands. "It's mine, I stole it!"
Dad stares at her. Lan stares at her. Famous stares at her. Even ProtoMan and Trill stare at her.
"You know what I mean," Mimic mutters eventually, looking away as she feels her cheeking heating up.
" . . . Right," Dad says slowly, frowning. He shakes his head a little as if he's shaking away some confusing or odd thoughts. "Mimic, listen, I'm not saying you're not allowed to keep the CopyBot-"
"You just said that two seconds ago."
"I didn't," Dad says, infinitely patient. "What I said was, you're not allowed to use it." She gives him a puzzled look, because that makes zero sense, and he explains. "It was created by the Zoanoroids, remember. We don't know if there were any modifications made to it that differ from Makoto's designs. It could be dangerous to use it."
"ProtoMan's fine," Mimic says, pointing at her Navi.
ProtoMan blinks his mismatched eyes and tilts his head. "Y'know . . . she's got a point," he says to Dad. "I used it just fine yesterday. My systems aren't any more fu- any more messed-up than they normally are, and I didn't go nuts and start breaking stuff when I was in the real world, either."
"That could just mean you both got incredibly lucky," Dad warns them. "It was a good plan, I'll admit - you prevented damage in the real world by hijacking the CopyBot before it could be used by a Zoanoroid."
"But you guys should've run it by me first," Famous adds, looking at Mimic and then Lan.
"We didn't exactly have the luxury of time right then," Lan admits.
"Even so, you're all lucky it didn't turn out badly." Famous pauses, and then glances over his shoulder through the window separating them from the room where MegaMan is being scanned. "Well, you're lucky it didn't turn out worse than it already did, anyway."
"So we're going to give the CopyBot to Makoto when she gets here," Dad picks up the conversation again, "and she's going to check it over for us. Once she's given the CopyBot the all-clear, we'll let you have it back, and you do whatever you want with it."
"Does that mean I can come into the real world again?" ProtoMan asks eagerly.
"Only if Makoto says the CopyBot is fine to use," Dad reminds him.
"Hell yeah!" ProtoMan throws his arms up into the air happily, and Trill giggles at his enthusiasm.
"How long 'till we get it back?" Mimic asks.
Dad sighs. "Mimic . . ."
"Yeah, I know we gotta wait for Makoto to say it's good. Humour me."
Dad shakes his head fondly. "It's just a single CopyBot, and if there's no malicious software installed in it, you should get it back by tomorrow."
Mimic pumps her fists eagerly, and ProtoMan lets out a wordless cheer.
"Moving on from that . . ." Dad still seems amused at their antics, but his expression turns more serious now. "Mimic, I wanted to ask you something."
"About?"
Dad gestures to the room where MegaMan is being scanned. "About Beast Out. I think I've already mentioned this, but when MegaMan uses or displays an ability he doesn't have naturally - such as Beast Out - he becomes overloaded. He goes into forced sleep-mode to allow his systems to recover. It all seems fine on paper, but I am worried about what these transformations are doing to MegaMan. Do you know if Beast Out has any negative effects on him post-transformation?"
"Aside from makin' him sleep a long time, no," Mimic replies. "Nothin' that I can remember, anyway. Worst of it comes from the transformation itself, 'least for right now - it's more Beast Over than Beast Out, 'cus he ain't got no control at all."
"Is the recovery anything similar to ProtoMan going Poltergeist?" Dad asks, with a quick glance at said Navi.
"Different, I think. ProtoMan's HP gets drained while he's the Poltergeist, but MegaMan's HP is fine - he just stops when he runs outta energy or until someone-" Meaning Iris. "-forces him to stop."
"That's a fairly good distinction," Famous muses, putting a hand on his chin. "ProtoMan sleeps after going Poltergeist because he needs to recover the HP and energy his transformation cost him, while MegaMan sleeps because he gets overloaded and his systems need to recover from that."
"Hm," Dad says, frowning. "I was going to suggest that we refrain from having MegaMan transform again, just in case it has any negative effects on him . . ."
"That wouldn't work forever," Mimic tells him. "Can't control stuff that happens, maybe they'll end up fusin' again even if you tell 'em not to." In the anime, MegaMan and Trill ended up using Beast Out again despite Trill being told not to transform MegaMan, though it wasn't really his fault - the situation was pretty damn desperate.
"Hm," Dad says again. "Both transformations seem to have been initiated by physical contact, so perhaps if we have Trill stay away from MegaMan during heated moments such as in the middle of a battle . . ."
"That wouldn't work either," Mimic says. "Beast Out don't need physical contact to activate. Think it just depends on the situation they're in, an' you can't control that."
"That's true," Dad admits, sighing. "You're certain that there won't be any negative effects on MegaMan if he ends up using Beast Out again at any point?"
"Not that I know of." Which is very good way of saying 'no, but this answer is based entirely on my knowledge from an anime that didn't give me much detail to go on in the first place, and I'm shit at this technology stuff anyway so why do you keep asking me about it'.
"I guess that's as good as we'll get," Lan murmurs, peering through the window at MegaMan. "Do you think he'll wake up soon?"
"We'll keep him in the repair system so we can keep an eye on his systems, but, yes, he should wake up within the next few hours or so," Dad replies. He glances at ProtoMan and Trill. "That being said, I'd like to keep you two at SciLab as well."
"How come?" Trill asks, tilting his head.
"For you, Trill, I want to give your systems a quick scan and check that you're healthy after fusing with MegaMan," Dad explains. "As for ProtoMan, I know he's gone Poltergeist several times already, but we've never actually scanned him after a transformation to see if he's actually okay."
"I feel fine," ProtoMan says. He pauses, then winces a little. "Well, I don't feel any different to how I normally feel, anyway."
"All the same, I want to be absolutely sure," Dad insists. "The Poltergeist Program works with you because it evolved within you and does so willingly - but it's still not a natural ability for you, just like Beast Out isn't natural for MegaMan, which could be why your HP and energy get drained when you've transformed."
"Oh . . ." ProtoMan looks down for a moment, and then he raises his head again. "O-okay then. I . . . I guess I can look after Trill while I'm here, too. I bet MegaMan'd be pretty worried if Trill was just sitting here on his own all day."
"Yay!" Trill cheers. "Hey, can I go in your hair? Like I did when I was a baby-Navi? MegaMan showed me a picture of that, and it looked super-comfy!"
"I . . . think you might be too big to do that now," ProtoMan admits, giving him an apologetic look.
"Aw . . ."
Dad chuckles at them for a moment, then looks at Mimic and Lan. "By the way, shouldn't you two be getting to school?"
Lan blinks and looks at the clock up on the wall, and then lets out a startled yelp. "W-we're gonna be late!"
"Aw, shit," Mimic sighs. She could probably get there easily on her own, but she'd rather not have to walk into class by herself because she left Lan behind, and aside from that, she's got Ragdoll to think about. Just because she's able to parkour across the city doesn't mean her cat can, too.
The only reason she can do that is because she got her cat-abilities from ProtoMan, and he's a cat-Navi, not a real world cat. Ragdoll probably wouldn't be able to keep up with her, and she can't carry him, he's way too big for that and she's too fucking skinny.
Luckily, Famous decides to take pity on them. "C'mon, you two," he says, brushing past them with an amused laugh. "I'll drive you there."
Lan follows Famous like a duckling, thanking him over and over, and Mimic casts one last glance at ProtoMan, Trill, and Dad before heading off after them.
It felt weird to go to school without Lan and MegaMan. It's gonna feel even weirder to go without ProtoMan. Especially since she and Lan are both down on Navis. Today is gonna be a weird day, she can just see it coming. For more than one reason.
It's kinda lonely in the network, but it'd be even lonelier if Trill wasn't here. MegaMan . . . well, he doesn't really count at the moment, because he's unconscious, so if Trill wasn't here, it would just be ProtoMan and Dark Shadow.
Dad says he wants to focus on MegaMan for the moment, so they're not gonna get scanned right now. Trill's scan is just a quick one, so that's happening later in the morning, but Dad wants to do a more thorough scan on ProtoMan, so his is gonna happen in the afternoon. That means poor Trill's gonna end up being all alone for an hour or two - all alone aside from the unconscious MegaMan, anyway - which ProtoMan feels a little bit guilty about, but he's planning on making up for that by sticking with Trill right up until it's time for his own scan, and then not leaving him afterwards until MegaMan has woken up.
ProtoMan's fully recovered his HP, but his energy is still a little bit low, so he settles down and half-curls up on the floor just in front of the repair system MegaMan's in. Trill crawls into the curve of his body and settles down there, watching MegaMan with quiet worry.
" . . . So . . ."
If ProtoMan had cat ears, they'd prick up. But he doesn't have cat ears even though he's a cat-Navi, so he just raises his head and glances at Trill questioningly.
Trill takes his eyes off MegaMan for a moment, looking at ProtoMan. "Um . . . Lan . . . Lan told me that the ProtoMan from yesterday . . . h-he wasn't you," he says. "It was . . . someone else. A Zoanoroid."
"Yeah," ProtoMan agrees, laying his head back down. "Mimic said some of the Zoanoroids are Beyondard counterparts to our friends."
"She didn't . . . she never said that you had one, though," Trill mumbles, looking back at MegaMan. "Or she would've said something. R-right?"
"Right," ProtoMan confirms. "But . . . Mimic didn't know there was a Zoano ProtoMan." It should feel weird, talking about a NetNavi who's basically him except different, but he's already been through this with Dark ProtoMan. Even worse is that both of his counterparts are evil and even more destructive than he is. "If she did know, she would've warned us. Even Mimic can get surprised sometimes."
"Yeah," Trill agrees faintly. His breath hitches a little. "MegaMan got hurt by the bad you. A-and . . . and then I made things worse, 'cus I thought the bad you was you, and . . ."
ProtoMan sits up and gently paws at Trill until the child-Navi is looking up at him. There's tears in his eyes, threatening to spill over, and his lower lip trembles.
"Th-this is my fault." Trill's voice is high-pitched and shaking so much that ProtoMan can barely understand what he's saying. "If I- if . . . i-if I hadn't . . . if I hadn't been there, then . . . M-MegaMan . . . h-he wouldn't be like this right now . . ."
"Trill . . ." ProtoMan murmurs sadly.
"I'm sorry!" Trill wails, bursting into tears. "I'm s-s-sorry, I didn't m-mean to, I was- I just- I thought he was you a-and I thought you were hurting M-MegaMan and I- I- I didn't know!"
ProtoMan almost panics at suddenly being faced with a crying Trill. Normally he's the one who's bursting into tears and needing to be comforted, so it feels . . . kind of odd to see this from the other side, now.
But whatever he feels, Trill is crying, and he's the only one here who can do anything about it.
He murmurs a quiet shushing noise, drawing Trill into a hug, and the child-Navi latches onto him like a lifeline. ProtoMan curls around him, laying on the floor again, purring and licking, trying to comfort him in the only way he knows how, and Dark Shadow lays its head on his side and peers at Trill quietly. There's not much it can do, but sometimes just being there is enough.
It takes a minute or two, but Trill finally starts to quiet down. He's still crying, still letting out the odd upset hiccup or two, but he's not wailing anymore, and he's not babbling apologies or excuses.
He doesn't need to do either, but telling him that isn't gonna magically make things okay for him. Better to let him get it all out of his systems now instead of telling him 'it's not your fault' and risking him bottling this all up until it explodes out of him later.
ProtoMan's just licking one of the ears on Trill's jester-helmet when he suddenly becomes aware of another NetNavi in the network. He's still in 'comfort Trill' mode, so that automatically translates into 'protect Trill' upon realising that they're not alone, and so the first thing he does before even checking to see whether this new Navi is hostile or not is get into a crouch, keeping Trill beneath him, baring his teeth at the newcomer and ready to protect MegaMan's little brother with his own life if he has to.
It's not a NetNavi he recognises. Female, he thinks, but he can't really judge a NetNavi's gender based on their appearance - he's friends with Serenade, after all, and they look both male and female, and prefer neither pronoun. This Navi looks nothing like Serenade, though; their armour is various shades of blue, except for the top part of their helmet, which is a pale kind of yellow. It looks almost like they're wearing a layered dress of some kind. Definitely not someone ProtoMan knows.
Dark Shadow is bristling beside him, mouth splitting open into a snarl, and while the unknown NetNavi does give it a quick glance, they don't seem too intimidated by it. They seem more interested in ProtoMan - or more specifically, Trill.
"Who are you and how did you get in here?" ProtoMan growls.
" . . . You're the demon-Navi," the unknown Navi says. Their voice is female, soft and slow like they're thinking about each word before they speak, but again, ProtoMan's not gonna assume gender.
"Answer the damn question!" ProtoMan snaps.
Trill wriggles a little until he's poking his head out from under ProtoMan, and when he sees the unknown Navi, his eyes widen. "Sis!" he exclaims.
"Sis?" ProtoMan repeats, glancing down at him, suddenly confused. "You have a sister? Since when?"
"U-um . . . I dunno," Trill mumbles. He doesn't seem like he's lying - ProtoMan's not even sure Trill knows how to lie. The child-Navi rubs his eyes clean of lingering tears and blinks at the unknown Navi. At his . . . sister, apparently. "H-hi, sis . . . um . . . What . . . wh-what're you doing here?"
The unknown Navi frowns. "You've been crying," she says, in that soft voice of hers.
"I was . . ." Trill glances over at MegaMan, then up at ProtoMan, and then looks back at the Navi. "Um . . . I did something bad, and I was really sad about it . . . b-but it's okay!" he adds, rushing to reassure her - it's definitely a 'her' if Trill's calling her his sister - because her frown gets a bit deeper upon hearing that he was sad. "ProtoMan made me feel better. He's really good with this kinda stuff, and he's really nice, too."
"I'm not . . . really sure how 'good' I am with this stuff, but . . ." ProtoMan trails off when he looks at the Navi. "L-look, obviously Trill knows you . . . or he thinks he knows you, anyway . . . so I'm not gonna attack you or anything. But SciLab's a private network and you're not supposed to be in here unless you've got permission, so . . . so you're gonna have to leave."
" . . . I will," the Navi says, after a short pause. "But . . . may I speak with Trill, first?"
ProtoMan's still suspicious even if Trill says this Navi is his sister. After all, she literally just came outta nowhere - and then there's the fact that Trill was very recently kidnapped by an unknown NetNavi. For all he knows, this 'sister' could very well be that NetNavi.
So if she wants to talk to Trill, she might be trying to take him away again. And that'd make MegaMan sad, because he loves Trill.
ProtoMan crouches a little lower, careful not to squash Trill between himself and the floor, but making it obvious that he's not going anywhere and won't give the Navi any openings. "If you wanna talk to him, fine. But I'm staying right here and I'm not letting you anywhere near him. Got that?"
"Yes," the Navi agrees, nodding. "I understand." She looks at Trill, who seems a little puzzled at how protective ProtoMan is being, but ProtoMan'll take 'confused' over 'not here' any day. "Trill . . . please, come back with me."
Before Trill can respond, ProtoMan growls and unsheathes his claws, digging them into the ground. "You're not taking him away!"
That pretty much proves it. This Navi must be the one who tried to take Trill yesterday. He was gonna let her talk to Trill, but if she's just trying to take him away again, she has to go, now. He'll make her if he has to.
The Navi seems a little unsettled at his display. She looks even more unsettled when she catches sight of Dark Shadow taking a threatening step toward her. It may not be as powerful as the Poltergeist, but it looks similar enough that anyone who's seen the Poltergeist in action will definitely be wary of it.
"W-wait!"
ProtoMan stops growling, and he and Dark Shadow glance down at Trill.
The child-Navi pulls himself out from under ProtoMan and gets to his feet. ProtoMan keeps a close eye on the unknown Navi, baring his teeth, making it clear that he won't tolerate any sudden movements - if she even thinks about trying to snatch Trill now, he's gonna claw her dress-armour to pieces. And then feed it to Dark Shadow.
"I can't go with you, sis," Trill says. "I'm . . . I'm sorry, but I wanna stay with MegaMan, a-and, um . . ." He glances at ProtoMan and Dark Shadow, and then looks back at the Navi. "I'm sorry."
The Navi is quiet for a moment. " . . . You worry about MegaMan," she eventually says, glancing at said Navi, still unconscious in the repair system. "Why is that? And why do you allow that demon to protect you?"
"I worry about MegaMan 'cus he's my big brother, like you're my big sister," Trill explains. "And . . ." He seems a little puzzled as he glances at ProtoMan again. "I . . . I don't think he's a demon?"
"Technically I am," ProtoMan admits, keeping his eyes fixed on the Navi. He projects more of a growl into his next words. "And I'm more than happy to prove it."
"You will not need to," the Navi says softly, stepping back. "I'm sorry I disturbed you. I'll . . . I'll leave, now."
"W-wait, sis-" Trill starts forward, but the Navi leaves before he can get more than a couple of steps toward her. "Ah . . . she's gone again . . ."
"You want her to come back?" ProtoMan frowns at him, settling back down now that the danger seems to have passed. Dark Shadow keeps itself alert, though, beginning to prowl back and forth in case the Navi decides to try and snatch Trill after all. "She tried to kidnap you yesterday. Would've succeeded, too, if Arcadia and Bass hadn't stopped her."
"She didn't kidnap me," Trill murmurs. He trudges back to ProtoMan and flops down over him, resting his arms and head on ProtoMan's side. "I don't think she did, anyway . . . I-if she had, she wouldn't have let me come back, right?"
"Sometimes kidnapping isn't always the textbook 'taken against your will' thing," ProtoMan tells him, sitting up a little so he can stretch his neck out and give Trill's helmet a gentle lick. He curls up around the child-Navi, making sure Trill is secure. "It could be something like . . . like someone convincing you to go with them by threatening you or something, and even if you don't struggle or fight or anything, it's still kidnapping."
"Did that happen to you?" Trill asks, blinking at him.
ProtoMan blinks back, a little surprised at the question. "What makes you think that?"
"W-well . . ." Trill shuffles around, snuggling a little deeper into ProtoMan's embrace until he's comfortable. "You're talking like you had that happen to you. Or . . . or you know someone it happened to."
" . . . I know someone it happened to," ProtoMan murmurs, laying his head down. He feels Trill's small hand on his head a moment later, threading through his hair, and that helps a little bit because this is kind of a difficult thing to talk about. Just another time when he failed to protect his operators. "Mimic and Chaud got kidnapped once. They tried to fight back at first, but then the person who kidnapped them convinced them to go anyway."
"How come they went even though they were fighting back?" Trill asks.
"Well . . ." Is there any way he can explain this without getting into too much detail? Shit, he wishes MegaMan was awake right now, he always knows what to say. Maybe if he just glosses over the worst of the details, he won't scare Trill too much. "The person who kidnapped them said that if they didn't go with him, he'd hurt a lot of innocent people, so they had to go."
"Oh . . ." Trill says quietly. "That . . . that person sounds really mean."
"He was," ProtoMan agrees softly. "But even if your . . . 'sister' isn't doing that, she's still technically kidnapping you, 'cus you don't wanna go."
"She's not a bad person," Trill tries to defend her.
"I know," ProtoMan says, though to be honest he doesn't, and he kinda thinks this 'sister' of Trill's is so focused on what she wants that she's incapable of listening to what Trill wants. "That doesn't make it okay for her to take you away, though. Just 'cus you're related to her doesn't mean she can't hurt you. And, yeah, that's from personal experience, too."
"You've got a lotta personal experience with bad stuff, huh?" Trill murmurs sadly.
"I'd rather not have it, 'cus it hurts sometimes," ProtoMan admits. "But it helps me protect my family, I guess."
"Okay," Trill mumbles, burying his face in ProtoMan's hair. "Um . . . thank you for protecting me, ProtoMan."
ProtoMan purrs gently. "No problem, Trill."
They make it to school with minutes to spare, thanks to Famous driving them. The only other kid who uses anything that's not a scooter or their own two feet to get to school is Yai, who literally uses that pink monstrosity of a limo every morning, so they get quite a few stares from the other kids just coming in through the gates when they hop out of Famous's red car.
Or maybe they just get stared at anyway. They get stared at lot, lately. That's probably what happens when you save the whole world and everyone actually remembers it.
Though the other kids used to kinda stare even before that, because Mimic is the only student who takes a cat to school. She's pretty sure Tory told them once that there's a kid in his class who keeps trying to sneak a hamster in, though he didn't exactly say whether or not that kid has ever actually been successful. So maybe she's not the only student who takes an animal with her, but she's the only one who has permission, at least.
"Feels kinda weird to be here without MegaMan and Trill," Lan comments, as they settle into their seats.
Mimic shrugs. She knows how he feels - even though she's been through an entire thing of school with absolutely no NetNavis at all (her old reality was nowhere near as technologically-advanced as this one is), she's gotten used to having either ProtoMan or Arcadia with her, or both. Hell, she's even gotten used to Bass skulking around and glaring at anyone who so much as looks at her or Chaud wrong, for all that he hasn't been doing that for too long.
But ProtoMan's with MegaMan and Trill at SciLab, and Arcadia and Bass are with Chaud in Netopia. The majority of her family aren't with her right now, and . . . she's not enjoying it too much, honestly.
"Are you okay?" Lan asks her, and she realises she kinda spaced out for a full minute there.
She doesn't try to open her mouth and talk. Even before she thinks about doing that, she knows it won't work. Sometimes it's like that - sometimes she'll open her mouth and nothing'll come out, and other times she'll just know she doesn't want to talk even before she opens her mouth.
Most of the time the reason why she stops talking for a while is because she runs out of energy for it. Other times, she just doesn't want to. The latter isn't as common anymore, but it still happens sometimes.
[I'm fine] she signs, just barely remembering that she has to do that now because all the people who can hear her mental voice aren't here. And once she remembers that, it only makes her feel worse.
"You're not talking?" Lan looks worried. "Are you sure you're okay? Normally you only don't talk if you've got no energy for it . . ."
[have energy] Mimic responds. [just don't want to talk now]
That doesn't do anything to soothe her brother's worry. If anything, that just makes it worse, which is the exact opposite of what she was going for.
Fortunately for her, Ms. Mari chooses that moment to come into the classroom, so any further discussion about her not talking is cut off. Or postponed, judging by the concerned look Lan gives her before he turns to watch Ms. Mari.
"Okay, everyone, settle down!" Ms. Mari calls. "Good morning!"
"Good morning, Ms. Mari!" most of the class replies. Except Mimic. She just waves.
"We're getting another transfer student today," Ms. Mari informs the class.
That stirs up whispered discussions all over the place pretty much immediately. Mimic catches a few of the whispers easily thanks to her sensitive hearing, and most of the class seems to be wondering if this new transfer student is gonna be anything like Yai. Considering that they haven't been forced to watch a six hour introductory video yet, the answer to that is a happy 'no'.
But Mimic knows exactly who's coming to 'join' their class even before she walks in through the front classroom door.
There's a hush in the classroom as she comes in, as quiet as she was on the roof of SciLab, so quiet that even Mimic struggles to hear her footsteps. But hear them she does, and there's a faint kind of clank that you can only hear if you have Mimic's sensitive hearing - the kind of clank she recognises as the footsteps of a NetNavi using a CopyBot.
If she didn't already know everything about Iris, that would definitely confuse her. It'd certainly confuse Chaud if he were here.
"Wait, isn't that . . . ?" Lan glances at Mimic, and she nods. He blinks and turns back to Iris, now looking curious. "Huh."
"We've accepted her quite suddenly, so the school's preparation for her isn't finished just yet," Ms. Mari explains. "But she was eager to start school, so she came in a day early!"
Iris doesn't look eager. She doesn't look too much of anything, really. Despite having literally everyone's eyes on her, she doesn't so much as twitch, and Mimic can admit she's impressed with that - if she had to stand up there, entirely on her own, she would've just melted. It was difficult enough doing it with Arcadia and Ragdoll by her side and Lan and Maylu supporting her from their seats.
"My name is Iris," Iris introduces herself in her soft, slow voice. Mimic vaguely remembers hearing it before she fell asleep last night. "It's nice to meet you."
Iris bows politely, and Mimic has to wonder where she picked that up from. Does Beyondard have the same kinda school structure that this world has? Or, well, this world's Japan has, anyway. Maybe Iris picked it up from the internet or something. There's certainly no shortage of sources to look through.
Most of the boys in the class let out soft, drawn-out gasps and whisper 'cute'. Lan's the only one who doesn't, because he's too busy watching Iris like he's waiting for her to spontaneously teleport or something. That's . . . probably what he's thinking, actually, since he told her that Iris vanished on him last night. He actually asked Mimic if Iris is a ghost or something.
Before Ms. Mari can direct her to any specific seats, Iris steps forward. She comes between Mimic and Lan's desks, then pauses at Chaud's empty desk behind Mimic.
"Um," Lan speaks up, evidently figuring out what she wants, "our brother sits there, but he's not here right now, so-"
"Is it alright if I take this seat for today?" Iris asks.
Lan blinks and glances at Mimic. Does he need her permission to say 'yes' or something? It doesn't matter anyway, Iris is only gonna be here for a day, and Chaud should be back by tomorrow or the day after. Maybe earlier, even.
[she's fine] Mimic signs.
"Mimic says it's fine," Lan says, glancing back at Iris.
"We can figure out the seating arrangements when we have a full class again," Ms. Mari says, as Iris settles into Chaud's seat. "Alright, now then-"
Mimic interrupts by sticking her hand in the air, and Ms. Mari gives her a puzzled look.
"Er . . . yes, Mimic?" she asks.
Mimic quickly signs to Lan, and he dutifully translates. "She wants to know what your opinion on stalking is."
"Stalking?" Ms. Mari repeats, blinking. "Well, it's certainly not the behaviour of a model citizen, I can tell you that much. I don't hold that high of an opinion on stalkers. Why?"
Mimic signs again, and Lan blinks. "Wait, really?" Mimic nods. "Oh. I think that's a new low, even for him . . ."
"Lan?" Ms. Mari prompts.
Lan jolts. "Oh, right. Uh, Mimic says Mr. Higsby is outside on a gondola, and he's using a . . . telescope to look at you through the window."
Ms. Mari stares at him for a moment, then at Mimic. All she offers is a steady look back at their teacher.
After a short silence, Ms. Mari frowns and heads over to the window. She peers outside, and then blinks, looking faintly surprised.
"Huh," she says. "So he is. Well, there's an easy way to fix that, I suppose . . ."
And she draws the blinds down, effectively cutting off Higsby's view into the classroom.
Mimic can't help but smirk a little bit when she hears a very faint cry of despair coming from outside. And then her smirks get wider when she hears a crash not five seconds later.
Serves him right. Doesn't matter if he's a nice person, watching someone through a window with a telescope and a fucking gondola is just . . . ugh. Like Lan said, it's a new low, even for Higsby.
Seriously, he should be off running his fucking shop, not peeping on an elementary school teacher. Isn't there a law against that kinda shit? He could get arrested for it. He's lucky Mimic is only allowed to arrest Net criminals, otherwise she'd have just asked to be excused from class and pull out the old 'stop or I'll arrest you and yes I can do that because I'm technically a police officer' card on Higsby. That one's always fun.
School kinda passes by . . . more or less uneventfully. Well, it seems that way to Lan, at least - aside from the surprise of Iris showing up to apparently join their class, and then Mimic announcing Mr. Higsby reaching a new low, nothing else happens.
He does want to see if there's been any change with MegaMan, though. So after they've finished eating their lunch, he and Mimic head up to the roof, and he takes out his PET and calls Famous. He'd call Dad, except he remembers that Dad wanted to do a scan on Trill and ProtoMan, and he doesn't know when Dad's doing that, so he doesn't want to accidentally interrupt - so Famous is his second-best option.
"He's still sleeping, but don't worry about him," Famous says. "He's just fine - Dr. Hikari checked on him a few minutes ago, and his systems are almost back to normal. He should wake up some time later today."
"That's great!" Lan exclaims, grinning.
Mimic taps Lan's arm and signs something quickly.
"Mimic wants to know if Dad's scanned ProtoMan yet," Lan translates.
"Not yet," Famous replies. "He's going to do that in an hour or two. He's already scanned Trill, though - and yes, before you ask, Trill is fine. It seems only MegaMan gets the physical drawbacks from Beast Out."
"That doesn't seem fair," Lan jokes.
[life isn't fair] Mimic replies, giving him a sharp-toothed smirk.
"And I suppose you being a master manipulator has nothing to do with that."
Mimic shrugs and her only response is the slight widening of her smirk, which looks a touch too smug in Lan's opinion.
"Sometimes I wish I had the time to learn sign language," Famous comments, watching them. "Then I wouldn't miss all the jokes."
"You didn't miss much," Lan tells him.
Famous shrugs. "All the same. Anywho, I should get going now. Regardless of what you freeloading kids might think, I actually do have a job to do here." The grin takes the bite out of his words, though there isn't any to start off with.
"Okay," Lan laughs. "Bye, Mr. Famous!" Mimic waves her own goodbye too.
"It's just Famous," Famous manages to get out before the call ends.
[you do that on purpose] Mimic accuses, raising an eyebrow at Lan.
"Well, yeah." Lan grins.
"Excuse me."
Mimic spits out a hiss and darts behind Lan, and Lan jumps and almost drops his PET over the side of the roof. He fumbles and manages to keep a hold of it, though, and quickly slides it back into the holder on his arm before turning to face the speaker.
It's Iris. Of course. He's not entirely sure why he expected anyone else - it seems only Iris has that weird ability to just suddenly appear out of absolutely nowhere. Even Mimic and Chaud can't do that, though their ability to walk silently often gives the impression that they can just teleport like that. With Iris, though, thanks to what happened last night, Lan thinks this might be actual teleportation.
"Can you teleport?" Lan blurts out.
Iris blinks slowly. Mimic peers out from behind him just to give him an incredulous look.
Suddenly embarrassed that he just came out with that, Lan coughs. "I mean, uh . . . Hi, Iris. Do you . . . need something?"
Iris continues looking at him. It goes on for so long that Lan is starting to squirm uncomfortably, before Iris thankfully answers him - with a question of her own.
"Is MegaMan a special NetNavi?" she asks.
"MegaMan?" Lan blinks. Mimic slides out from behind him, though she's still kinda half-skulking in his shadow. She doesn't like being startled, even if she likes inflicting it on others.
"Is he?" Iris asks again. It'd sound like she's pressing for an answer if her voice changed at all from that soft, slow tone. But it doesn't, and Lan's starting to wonder if that's the only tone she ever uses.
"Well . . . I guess he is," Lan says. Iris tilts her head questioningly. "He's my best friend. Basically my brother, I guess - I couldn't really imagine my life without him, now. So, in a way, he is a special NetNavi." And not just because of all his abilities or even his ultimate program. Even if MegaMan didn't have any of that, Lan would still love him, and his answer to Iris would still be the exact same - MegaMan is a special NetNavi, and nothing's ever gonna change that.
"Do you know why Trill won't leave MegaMan?" Iris asks. Her eyes flick to Mimic for a moment. "And why the demon-Navi protects them both?"
"Demon-Navi?" Lan repeats.
Mimic tugs on his hand until he opens his palm, and she fingerspells on it.
"I don't think ProtoMan can be considered a demon-Navi," Lan says thoughtfully. "He's a Virus Navi, a cat-Navi, and a guardian-Navi. But I don't think he's a demon-Navi."
Iris's expression changes a little bit. It's not much, just a slight frown and narrowing of her eyes, barely even enough to be noticed. But Lan's pretty good at figuring out expressions from people who don't make much of them - a lot of his family, his adoptive family that is, have a habit of not expressing themselves through conventional means, after all. Mimic's a pretty good example of that right now.
"Mimic told me you were probably talking about ProtoMan," Lan explains to Iris, because that slight change in expression was definitely confusion.
"She didn't speak," Iris says, glancing at Mimic again.
"No, she fingerspelt it onto my hand," Lan replies. "Sign language, y'know?"
"Sign language," Iris echoes softly. It's like she's never heard the phrase before. " . . . You . . . are similar to MegaMan, then. Because you look after a sibling who's younger than you, and who needs you."
"Uhh . . ." Lan blinks. Sure, Iris made that same observation yesterday, but it's still a bit surprising to hear it again. "I mean, I guess? But I don't think she needs me as much as Trill needs MegaMan."
[can take care of myself] Mimic signs.
"More or less," Lan says. His sister shrugs, conceding that point.
"You're both . . . quite mysterious," Iris says.
"You say that, but you're more mysterious, aren't you?" Lan frowns a little. "You just show up out of the blue, asking all these questions about Trill and MegaMan and me and Mimic and apparently ProtoMan, and you also met Chaud in Netopia even though he's in Netopia and that's hours away by plane."
"I didn't use a plane."
"And then there's that," Lan says, nodding. "No offence, but . . . hardly anything you say makes sense. Can you teleport? I mean, you did kinda vanish on me yesterday . . ."
"Yesterday?" Iris tilts her head.
"Y'know, in the break room," Lan clarifies. He nods to Mimic. "You watched me put Mimic to bed. Or . . . to the sofa. Then we talked for a bit, and you . . . you just vanished."
"Did I?" Iris asks softly.
Lan blinks, and suddenly he has to suppress the urge to sigh. This conversation is going in circles, just like yesterday's, and even though Mimic's actually awake for it this time, even she seems a little puzzled by Iris's lack of actual responses. If Mimic is confused - Mimic, who basically makes confusing people via manipulation a professional sport that she wins every single time unless Chaud's playing too - then this is definitely a weird conversation.
Then there's suddenly a loud slam followed by multiple groans of pain, and Lan jumps. Mimic only blinks, and suddenly she looks . . . oddly smug.
"The heck was that?" Lan wonders, looking over in the direction the slam came from. He's a little surprised when he discovers that it came from the door leading up onto the roof. "Uh . . ."
[people tried to burst in] Mimic tells him. She pauses, considering that. [burst out]
"Uhh . . ."
[I locked door] she explains, gesturing to said door.
"Why?" Lan asks, frowning.
[to stop that] Mimic signs, again gesturing to the door - or more specifically, whatever poor souls ran straight into a locked door because Mimic didn't want them to burst in on them.
That does beg the question of when she locked it. And . . . if she locked it after they came up here, how the heck did Iris get up here? Like with the break room, there's only one door leading up onto the roof, and if it's been locked this entire time, Iris couldn't have come through there.
Is she like Mimic and Chaud? Can she parkour her way up a building even when any other human would be physically incapable of doing so? That still doesn't explain how she vanished on Lan yesterday, but it'd be a much less creepy explanation than 'she might be a ghost'.
The school bell rings out, distracting Lan from his thoughts. He'll have to try and figure out the mystery that is Iris at some other point - for now, he's got school to get through, and then he and Mimic are heading to SciLab afterwards.
"Sir, we've managed to intercept an emergency message from one of Falzar's generals. We could not stop it from reaching its intended target, but we were able to decode it."
A faint growl.
"It appears to have come from the Sunset Warrior. His message had an oddly desperate tone to it. He was begging for assistance in returning to this world, which is quite unusual for a Zoanoroid of his reputation."
Another faint growl, this time more impatient.
"Yes, sir. Aside from begging for help, his message contained something that you may find of interest."
The growl is more questioning now.
"Apparently there is a Beyondard NetNavi who is capable of using Beast Out. His name is MegaMan."
Another growl. This one is firmer than before.
"Yes, sir. We believe he may very well be the same NetNavi who defeated you and Falzar when you first discovered Beyondard."
The growl is more intense now.
"There was something else, too."
An expectant silence.
"According to the message we intercepted, there is a Beyondard version of the Sunset Warrior. And he appears to be capable of turning into . . . a demon."
Another questioning growl.
"That is what the message said. Word for word. He is apparently able to transform at will."
The growl is longer this time, accompanied by the faint sound of something like thunder rumbling in the distance. This goes on for several moments.
" . . . Of course, sir. Leave it to me."
They head to SciLab after school's over. Maylu comes with them because Roll wants to go and see MegaMan, and apparently Tory's coming too (though Mimic's not sure when that was decided), and then Dex and Yai invite themselves along as well. Seems even Shuko's coming, because Lan says she's gonna be meeting them at SciLab.
Dex tries to suggest inviting Iris to come with them as well, but she's up and vanished as usual. Even Mimic doesn't really understand how Iris can manage that - though she is wondering why Dex apparently thought it would be a good idea to invite a total stranger (at least, a total stranger to most of the group) into one of the most secure and important places in the entire city, if not the entire damn country.
They get to SciLab, and Mimic is abruptly reminded of who the source of most of the conflict in this episode is - meaning, Zoano NumberMan, who's managed to infiltrated the NetNavi group like he did in the anime. She's a little worried about the NumberMan she knows, because things have been changing (partly because of her) and for all she knows, Zoano NumberMan could've decided to delete his counterpart instead of just simply knocking him out.
But she has no way of knowing until NumberMan shows up, and she's not willing to wait until that happens to expose Zoano NumberMan. Except she's not entirely sure how to go about this.
Luckily, she gets an idea when ProtoMan jumps out of the cyberworld and almost collapses his Navi-hologram in his eagerness to greet her, pushing the limits of the fragile semi-solid hologram by rubbing his head against her cheek and just basically being as clingy as physically possible.
Dark Shadow sits with Trill on thin air nearby. It seems that ProtoMan's not leaving Trill alone for a second, even though he's excited to be back with Mimic - and she's happy to have him back, too. It was lonely without him, even with Ragdoll and Lan and their friends.
Hey, ProtoMan, Mimic says.
ProtoMan stops rubbing his head against her cheek for a moment and leans back so he can look at her, blinking his mismatched eyes. "Yeah?"
You wanna delete a Zoanoroid?
Her secondary Navi's eyes widen.
Mimic glances at the screen showing the interior of the network in the lab. The group of Navis is still there - minus ProtoMan and Trill, obviously - and they're just watching MegaMan in the repair system. Zoano NumberMan is lingering near the back of the group, head lighting up at random as he mutters to himself. Probably trying to gather information.
It's NumberMan, she tells ProtoMan. Zoano NumberMan replaced him to infiltrate us.
ProtoMan bares his teeth, and a faint growl starts rumbling in his throat. Lan, who's standing close enough to hear that, looks a little puzzled but doesn't comment.
I have no idea why he's here, though, Mimic muses. ProtoMan tilts his head questioningly. Zoano ProtoMan is a Falzar Zoanoroid, but Zoano NumberMan is a Gregar Zoanoroid. If anything, it should've been a Falzar Zoanoroid trying to infiltrate us. The only reason it was Zoano NumberMan in the anime is because PharaohMan, who was a Gregar Zoanoroid, told Gregar about MegaMan being able to use Beast Out.
"We don't know where he went after . . . that," ProtoMan says quietly. Too quietly even for Lan to hear. "Maybe he was a traitor or something."
I doubt it, Mimic murmurs. Doesn't matter much anyway, we've still gotta stop him from finding out about Trill. And to do that-
"Delete him," ProtoMan finishes, nodding. "Gotcha."
One more thing, actually, Mimic quickly says, before ProtoMan can turn away. Before you delete him, can you download his native language? The language of Beyondard, that is.
"Um . . ." ProtoMan tilts his head. "Sure, but . . . why?"
We're gonna need it at some point.
ProtoMan blinks again, then shrugs. He heads over to Trill and crouches down.
"You wanna go back into the network now?" he asks.
"Mm-hm," Trill agrees, nodding. Then he pauses, and he looks at Lan. "A-actually, um . . . hey, Lan, could I have the heart container?"
"Heart container?" Lan repeats, blinking.
"Yeah," Trill confirms. "I, um . . . I just thought that Dark MegaMan's probably lonely without MegaMan around."
"Oh, that's right," Maylu speaks up, eyes widening in sympathy. "No one else can hear him, right? That must be lonely . . ."
"Sure, Trill," Lan says, smiling softly. "Be careful with it though, okay?"
"Okay," Trill agrees.
As soon as he has the heart container held very carefully in his arms, Trill nods to ProtoMan, and they head back into the network.
It takes a shitton of effort to not immediately launch himself at the Zoanoroid the second he gets back into the network, but he manages it. Now that he knows this NumberMan is a Zoanoroid, ProtoMan wonders how the hell he didn't notice before - NumberMan's NaviMark is on top of his head, sure, so seeing the Cybeast symbol in place of that would be difficult unless you're specifically looking for it, but Zoano NumberMan's colours are slightly off.
Although . . . they're only off enough that you'd notice he wasn't this reality's NumberMan if you already knew he wasn't this reality's NumberMan. Maybe that's why no one noticed.
Now he just needs to figure out some way of deleting this Zoanoroid before he can do any damage, or whatever it is he came here to do. Mimic didn't say why Zoano NumberMan came here to infiltrate them, but since he's not trying to break stuff like Zoano ProtoMan was, maybe his mission is different. Well . . . yeah, they're on completely different sides, so of course they'd have different missions. You get the point, anyway.
ProtoMan doesn't want anyone else to get caught up in this fight, not after what happened yesterday. Maybe he's not totally one-hundred percent just yet, not enough to fight like he did yesterday, but he should be able to take down Zoano NumberMan, right?
"Hey, Trill," ProtoMan murmurs, crouching down to the child-Navi's level. "You remember earlier, when we were talking about how some of the Zoanoroids are counterparts to our friends?"
"Yeah?" Trill blinks up at him, adjusting his careful grip on the heart container. Another reason to get him outta the way for this - MegaMan wouldn't want Trill or the core in harm's way at all.
ProtoMan says nothing, instead opting to just glance at Zoano NumberMan, who's focused entirely on watching MegaMan and muttering to himself. The Zoanoroid doesn't notice the glance.
Trill follows ProtoMan's eyes, and he looks puzzled for a moment before it sinks in, and then his head snaps back to ProtoMan and his eyes are wide and he looks scared, now.
"Stay with Roll," ProtoMan tells him, getting to his feet. Trill nods and tightens his grip on the heart container, the core inside pulsing, and he does as he's told, though Roll looks a little puzzled to suddenly have Trill clinging to her side.
Not counting ProtoMan himself, the two strongest NetNavis currently in this network are Roll and GutsMan. Between the two of them, Roll is the best option to leave Trill with - after yesterday, she definitely won't let Trill out of her sight.
So now that Trill's out of the way, ProtoMan can focus on the Zoanoroid.
"Hey, NumberMan!" he calls, heading over to him. He makes sure to keep a friendly grin on his face even though every inch of his systems are practically screaming at him to tear apart this bastard who dares to threaten his family.
"Hm?" Zoano NumberMan's head flashes with random lights as he glances over. He jolts a little upon seeing ProtoMan coming over, which is a bit odd, but whatever. ProtoMan's not here to ask him questions, he's here to delete him.
"Mind if I ask you something?" ProtoMan requests. He stops a very short distance away - he's close enough that he can reach out and rip Zoano NumberMan's arms off, but he's not so close that he'll raise the Zoanoroid's suspicion.
"Er . . . of course, what is it?" Zoano NumberMan turns to face him fully.
"What's your opinion on being eaten alive?"
Zoano NumberMan jerks back, blank eyes widening, and ProtoMan drops his smile.
Dark Shadow strikes without warning. It startles everyone, most of all Zoano NumberMan, and ProtoMan ignores the shocked cries of his friends as Dark Shadow physically shoves the Zoanoroid forward, allowing ProtoMan to flash out his claws and smash Zoano NumberMan to the side, sending him stumbling.
"Seriously?" ProtoMan demands, stalking after him. Zoano NumberMan tries to scramble away, babbling protests, and ProtoMan spits out a hiss and lashes out again, digging his claws right into the glass of Zoano NumberMan's head and dragging him close enough to snarl in his face. "You thought you could get away with this? You're a complete moron!"
To emphasise his words, he throws Zoano NumberMan away, making his head crack against the ground. The five cracked holes where ProtoMan dug his claws into the glass are fully visible and very satisfying to see.
"I'd be less offended if you'd just walked up and shot me in the face!" ProtoMan snaps.
"What're you talking about?" Roll cries, though she isn't moving from where she's standing because Trill's still clinging to her. "ProtoMan, stop, what's going on!?"
"He's a Zoanoroid," ProtoMan hisses out, not taking his eyes off Zoano NumberMan as the Zoanoroid tries to struggle back to his feet again.
There's a few shocked gasps from his friends, but he's too intent on his prey to care anymore. Whether or not they believe him is up to them - but it should be easy to see that this NumberMan isn't the one they know by now. He's already seen the Gregar Cybeast symbol in place of NumberMan's NaviMark.
He's got the same kinda power our NumberMan has, Mimic informs him. Literally the same - if Zoano NumberMan wasn't a different colour, they'd be more or less identical.
She doesn't need to mention that using Beast Out would boost Zoano NumberMan's power regardless of whether or not he's on equal terms of strength to the NumberMan they know. ProtoMan knows that without needing to be told - and he's thankful that Mimic told him this much, because that makes this much, much easier.
NumberMan's not a weak NetNavi, really. He was good enough to get into the N1 Grand Prix, even if he only lasted a single round. But, at the risk of sounding like an arrogant puffed-up bastard, ProtoMan is far, far more powerful, even without going Poltergeist.
"W-wait!" Zoano NumberMan cries, holding out a hand to try and stop ProtoMan. He may as well have tried to stop a system wipe-out, for all the good it does. "Hold on, please, just listen to me-"
ProtoMan clamps his teeth down on Zoano NumberMan's outstretched arm.
The Zoanoroid lets out a shrill howl, but ProtoMan's nowhere near done yet. He digs his claws into his prey's shoulder and pulls with his teeth, and Zoano NumberMan's scream becomes a pained scream. ProtoMan can feel the Zoanoroid's arm straining in the socket, trying to resist, and his prey is attempting to shove him off with his other hand, but ProtoMan's got a good grip and he's not letting go.
And then he has to let go, because Zoano NumberMan's arm rips out of his shoulder with an odd tearing sound, and the Zoanoroid's scream now becomes a shriek. ProtoMan lets him stagger away, clutching at the shoulder where his arm was.
Dark Shadow appears behind Zoano NumberMan and slams into him, sending him sprawling, and upon seeing it, the Zoanoroid lets out a terrified sob and tries to scramble away. Dark Shadow simply splits open its mouth in a jagged grin and darts forward, swallowing his other arm whole and closing its mouth, then it backs off a few paces.
Zoano NumberMan's other arm is just gone. There's no jagged tear leaking data like there is with the arm ProtoMan bit off - it's just simply not there anymore, and the space where it was is covered in a mass of blackened glitches. It obviously hurts just as much as having his arm torn off, though, because Zoano NumberMan's shrieking is even louder than before.
"This is kinda chewy," ProtoMan comments, taking a little chunk out of the arm he's holding. "Not what I expected, honestly."
What the fuck were you expecting? comes his secondary operator's incredulous mental voice.
"Not this," ProtoMan replies. He tosses the arm away, and it hits the ground and starts to disintegrate. Zoano NumberMan watches it with a mixture of horror and fascination, then starts when ProtoMan takes a step forward. "Alright, I don't want any leftovers, I'm pretty much the only Navi here who actually eats on a regular basis, so . . ."
"What are you?" Zoano NumberMan sobs.
ProtoMan grins, showing off his teeth, and Zoano NumberMan cowers. "You don't want me to answer that, trust me."
Mimic told him to download the Beyondard language, but he's not really sure he can do that the way he used to be able to. The last language he remembers downloading is sign language, and that was before he got the Poltergeist Program, before he got his virus data. There's more than one way to download a data package, though - literally, in this case, although he's not downloading a data package so much as stealing the data he needs.
There's the standard way of downloading stuff - just simply download it directly into your own systems, or onto your operator's PET if you have an operator. But there's a less-favourable way of downloading information, and since ProtoMan's not sure the former method will work for him anymore, he has to use the latter.
To put it simply, he has to literally consume the data he wants to download. Which, in this case, would amount to eating Zoano NumberMan.
Maybe it's frowned upon, but holy shit is this method far more satisfying right now. He doesn't even care if he can still do the traditional download method - he can delete two Fishys with one attack. If he eats Zoano NumberMan, he can download all the data he needs and then some, and he can delete the Zoanoroid at the same time.
So that's exactly what he does.
Dark Shadow bursts into tendrils and happily holds down Zoano NumberMan for him, and ProtoMan starts biting and tearing chunks out of the Zoanoroid. He can hear faint retching coming from the direction of his friends, he can almost feel their horrified looks, and he hears Roll telling Trill not to watch - which is good, because he's kinda caught up in doing this and he forgot that Trill probably wouldn't enjoy seeing him eating another NetNavi alive, even if the child-Navi likes watching horror movies with ghosts and stuff like that.
Ghosts are one thing. Cannibals - even if Zoano NumberMan isn't technically a NetNavi - are something else entirely. Especially if you're seeing it first-hand instead of just on a TV screen or whatever.
The humans are similarly horrified, and he hears a few of them trying to beg him to stop, but Mimic's mental voice is louder than their verbal voices because he can hear it directly in his own mind and she's telling him to keep going. He doesn't have Arcadia's Empath Program, but he's willing to bet that Mimic's probably thinking that Zoano NumberMan deserves this. It's definitely what he's thinking.
By the time he finally gets to the data he needs to consume, Zoano NumberMan has largely stopped struggling. His shrieking has turned back into screaming, which got weaker and weaker until the only sound he can even make is the occasional choked whimper, and he twitches violently whenever ProtoMan yanks out some of his internal data - the NetNavi version of guts and stuff like that, basically - and gulps it down.
The internal data tastes a lot better than the data making up Zoano NumberMan's body, honestly. It tastes warm and squishy and he likes it. Maybe a bit too much, but he loves cybersteaks and fish just as much, so he'll be happy with any of that.
He's eaten most of the internal data when he suddenly realises he has the data needed for Beyondard's native language. It sounds like complete gibberish to him, but he's managed to consume it, so he's able to translate it. Just in time, too, because now he's gotten to Zoano NumberMan's memory data, and all of that just happens to be in Beyondard's language. Which makes sense, because Zoano NumberMan would remembers things in his own language regardless of whether or not the actual events were spoken in that language.
The most recent memories come through first. He has the slightly odd experience of watching this attack on Zoano NumberMan through his prey's perspective rather than his own, and has to admit he does look pretty damn terrifying. A little further back shows him the memories of Zoano NumberMan meeting the real NumberMan and knocking him out in Internet City to take his place and come to SciLab with IceMan and AquaMan.
That one doesn't make too much sense, if ProtoMan's being honest. He still doesn't know why Zoano NumberMan wanted to come here in the first place - but maybe eating more of his memories will help with that.
Even further back than Zoano NumberMan knocking out NumberMan is the memory of being in a dark, cavernous room with an odd stone . . . thing on the back wall. Odd growling that ProtoMan somehow understands as words despite hearing nothing but the growling comes from that stone thing, and finally, he knows why Zoano NumberMan is here.
He's eventually done with his prey, so he sits back, wiping off the data from his mouth. All that's left of Zoano NumberMan is a half-eaten shell bleeding data, and the only thing ProtoMan hasn't actually eaten or even touched is his core - it pulses in his chest, fully exposed because ProtoMan's eaten pretty much everything else, but with each pulse it gets weaker and weaker until finally it dims entirely, and then Zoano NumberMan's body begins to disintegrate into deletion.
Huh. That's pretty interesting. ProtoMan's deleted NetNavis before, but he's never watched how the core of a NetNavi reacts upon deletion. Cool.
"I'm done!" ProtoMan announces, bouncing to his feet and spinning on his heel to face his friends, grinning. "And I got the data, too."
His grin drops a little when he sees his friends' horrified expressions, and only then does he remember that consuming data like that is frowned upon by most Navis. Which would include his friends. And also their operators.
Ah. Um.
Good job, Mimic tells him, and his grin comes back because his operator's praising him and that honestly matters more to him than the horrified stares of his friends. The language?
"I now speak it fluently!" ProtoMan cheerfully reports. "Though it still sounds like total gibberish to me."
Yeah, it sounded like gibberish in the anime, too. Did you get anything else?
"I got his memories, too, so I know why he's here. Apparently Zoano ProtoMan sent out something called an emergency message - no points for guessing it's use - which the Gregar army intercepted, though apparently it still reached the intended target."
"What?" Dad speaks up, apparently startled from his horror at watching ProtoMan cannibalise a Zoanoroid by this new information. "Do you know what was in that message, then?"
"Yeah." ProtoMan nods. "Zoano ProtoMan was trying to tell his leader about me and MegaMan. He mentioned MegaMan being able to use Beast Out, and me being able to turn into a demon, but that's it. I guess he knew the emergency message would be intercepted, so he was being vague on purpose, and . . ." He glances at Trill, who's clutching the heart container like a human clutches a teddy bear. "They still don't know anything about Trill."
"Well . . . there's that, at least," Dad sighs.
"Did you have to eat him, though?" Famous asks. The tone of his voice makes ProtoMan think he's wincing, even though he can't see the human's face. "That was . . ."
"Horrible," Maylu finishes in a faint voice. She sounds like she's about to throw up. "I-I didn't even know it was possible to do that . . ."
"It's . . . it's another way to download data," Roll explains. She's pale and there's a just-barely visible tremble to her body. "Most Navis don't like it, though. Because . . . because you have to eat the data to download it."
"I didn't know if I could just steal the data I needed the normal way," ProtoMan tries to defend himself, because even if Mimic praised him, the fact that basically all of his friends and most of his family are horrified and sickened by what he did is kinda hurtful. "Consuming it was the only way I could think of, and Mimic told me to delete him, so . . ."
"You decided to delete two Fishys with one attack," Glide says. He's just as pale and sickened as Roll and everyone is, though.
"That was sick, guts," GutsMan murmurs faintly. He looks a little green, even though his face doesn't follow the typical structure that most human-Navis do.
"I'm really sorry, ProtoMan," IceMan squeaks, from where he and AquaMan are clutching at each other. "B-but, um . . . y-you're scary. You're really, really scary."
"Oh," ProtoMan says, and his shoulders slump because he hadn't intended to scare his friends, he just wanted to do what his operator told him to do, and this was the most efficient way he could think of doing it.
Are his friends gonna avoid him now? Are they gonna make up excuses to stay away from him in fear of him turning around and eating them, too? He wouldn't eat any of them, really, he wouldn't. He only ate Zoano NumberMan because that was his best option.
"Sir!" an unfamiliar voice calls over the intercom connected with the lab they're all in. "There's someone here requesting permission to come into Lab One. A NetNavi."
"Who is it?" Famous asks. He sounds a little relieved, as if he's happy to have a distraction.
"He says his name is NumberMan, and that he's being impersonated by an impostor."
There's a slightly awkward pause.
" . . . We've already resolved the situation," Famous eventually says. "Let him in, he's fine."
"Yes, sir."
A moment later, the real NumberMan appears in the network with an escort of a couple of security Navis. The two security Navis leave pretty much immediately, since there's no danger or any crises currently going on, and NumberMan looks around for a moment, taking in the scene.
" . . . What has happened, here?" he asks.
"You don't wanna know," Roll tells him. "Seriously. Just don't ask. Please."
NumberMan seems a little unnerved by that. "I am . . . honestly curious to find out what did happen, now. There was an impostor of me - he looked like me, he sounded like me, he acted like me, but he was not me. I am aware that he most likely infiltrated this group for some reason that I cannot fathom. Do you know what happened to him?"
"I just said don't ask," Roll says, with more force than is strictly necessary.
NumberMan jerks back in surprise. "But-"
"Don't. Ask."
"Roll-"
She sighs heavily. "Fine. You wanna know what happened?" She gestures to ProtoMan angrily. "He just ate your impostor, that's what happened! While he was alive and everything!"
NumberMan stares at her. After several moments of nothing but shocked silence, he slowly turns to look at ProtoMan, and all ProtoMan can do is shuffle his feet and stare at the ground.
He doesn't want his friends to avoid him because he ate someone. But he's already done it, and now it seems like he's gonna have to make do with just interacting with his own family for the rest of his life. They'd never abandon or avoid him just because he ate someone, he knows they wouldn't, but his friends? Yeah, it's starting to seem more and more likely that he's not gonna have any friends after today.
MegaMan's probably not gonna be happy if he leaves Trill, but ProtoMan can't face the others anymore. It doesn't matter anyway - Trill's fine, Roll's looking after him right now, so hopefully MegaMan won't be too upset with ProtoMan.
He streams himself out of the lab's network and activates his Navi-hologram, appearing on Mimic's shoulder. He winces upon seeing the expressions of the humans - they're all just as horrified as the Navis were, except for Mimic, who seems to be getting increasingly confused and worried.
He can't deal with the staring, so ProtoMan darts out of sight entirely, burrowing himself into Mimic's hood. Dark Shadow stays crouched up on her shoulder, staring back at everyone while ProtoMan hides.
He just wanted to please his operator. He just wanted to get rid of a threat to his family. That's all.
Why'd it turn out like this?
There's an extremely awkward silence for a good several minutes, during which ProtoMan stays hidden in Mimic's hood and Dark Shadow just sits on her shoulder like a shadowy gargoyle.
Mimic is honestly glad when MegaMan eventually wakes up, which has the very welcome effect of breaking the awkward silence because everyone's pretty damn relieved to have something happier to focus on instead of ProtoMan eating a Zoanoroid alive.
She has to admit she doesn't see the problem with it. She told ProtoMan to delete Zoano NumberMan and get Beyondard's native language - and he did. It's not like he hasn't threatened to eat other NetNavis before, and besides, it's technically not the first time he's eaten a NetNavi. Sure, she and ProtoMan were in Cross Fusion at the time, but it was still both of them, technically, so . . . cannibalism isn't really a new concept.
Except apparently it is, at least to everyone here, even Lan and Dad.
Mimic retreats into a corner and watches everyone else greeting MegaMan happily - Trill especially, and he's offering up the heart container, beaming when MegaMan praises him for looking after it for him. Absolutely no one mentions what happened a few minutes ago, though there is a slightly awkward pause when MegaMan asks where ProtoMan is, and the only response anyone will give him is 'with Mimic'.
"Are you okay now?" Trill asks, as MegaMan carefully takes the heart container from him.
"I feel just fine," MegaMan replies, smiling. "My systems are totally normal again - right, Dad?"
"That's right," Dad agrees, with a nod. "And there shouldn't be any negative effects from using Beast Out, but even so, it's best to excercise caution with it - especially since you can't control yourself when you've transformed."
"Right," MegaMan murmurs, expression darkening with worry for a moment. "Did . . . did I hurt anyone, when I was . . . ?"
"No," Lan tells him, much to MegaMan's obvious relief. "You were focused on fighting Zoano ProtoMan - you did end up in Internet City, but no one was hurt, and the buildings can be fixed easily, so it doesn't matter too much."
"I was . . . fighting Zoano ProtoMan?" MegaMan frowns. "How did . . . I mean, did someone stop us, or did we both just run out of energy or something? Actually, what happened to Zoano ProtoMan after that?"
"We're not sure where Zoano ProtoMan is," Dad says. "Chaud said that Arcadia and Bass chased him out of the military base's network, but he hasn't been seen since then."
"And it was our ProtoMan who stopped you," Lan adds. "He went Poltergeist and fought both of you to a standstill, then helped us to capture you until you and Trill got separated, and he scared off Zoano ProtoMan, too."
"He did?" MegaMan's frown turns into a smile, and then he looks out at the screen, toward Mimic. He opens his mouth, no doubt about to thank ProtoMan, but he pauses when he sees that ProtoMan's not in sight. "Um . . . where is he? You said he was with Mimic, but I don't see him."
"He's, um . . ." Lan looks decidedly awkward, as does basically everyone else.
Mimic can just about feel faint trembling from inside her hood, and she looks away from the screen - away from MegaMan - and says nothing.
If anything, the lack of response from literally anyone makes MegaMan pretty worried. "Did something happen to him? Guys, c'mon, what's wrong?"
No one looks eager to answer MegaMan's questions. Mimic's certainly not gonna do it - and she knows ProtoMan doesn't want to, either, because he's not moving from his hiding spot and Dark Shadow is still perched on her shoulder, staring at everyone like it's daring them to come anywhere near its host.
"Seriously, what the heck happened?" MegaMan demands, looking around at everyone.
Eventually, it falls to Lan to speak up. "W-well-" he begins.
The door to the lab opens at that exact moment, and Makoto - the woman who invented CopyBots and was tricked by the Zoanoroids into making CopyBots for them - walks in with two cases in either hand. One is smaller than the other, able to be carried easily, but the second is larger and she's wheeling it behind her.
"Hi, Famey!" Makoto cheerfully greets him, and then she notices the mood in the lab and pauses. "Um . . . did I come at a bad time?"
"Nope," Famous says, far too eagerly. "You came at the perfect time, actually. Thanks, Makoto, seriously!" And he says it almost desperately, too sincerely, in such a way that makes poor Makoto extremely confused.
"O . . . kay . . ." she says slowly. She shakes her head. "I'm . . . not even going to ask. I bet you guys know why I'm here right now, though!" she adds, forcing some of her cheer back into her words.
Despite the awkwardness and the lingering horror and the mild confusion Mimic feels at why everyone's so bothered about ProtoMan eating Zoano NumberMan, she can't help but get a little bit excited about this. It's suddenly very obvious what's inside the bigger case, and she has to stop herself from bouncing on the spot.
"I gave it a thorough check," Makoto says, setting down the smaller case on a nearby desk and bringing the bigger one to the middle of the room. "I've used all the methods I could think of, used every virus detection software I had access to, performed all manner of tests on it, and I even took the energy core out to study it. As far as I can tell, this CopyBot is perfectly fine for a normal NetNavi to use!"
And she undoes the latches keeping the case closed. The lid springs open, revealing the small humanoid form of the CopyBot Mimic stole from the Zoanoroids curled inside.
This time, Mimic actually does bounce. She practically rockets out of the corner she's been in for the past several minutes, and she crouches down and carefully tugs the CopyBot out of the case, unable to suppress a massive grin.
As soon as the CopyBot is out of the case, she takes out her PET and aims the jack-in beam at the port on its chest, and jacks ProtoMan into it. The CopyBot glows just like it did when she first used it, and then it stands up on its own, growing and changing shape, until finally the glow dies down and ProtoMan is standing in front of her, in the real world once again.
Just like he was yesterday. Except there's no crisis, now.
"H-hi," ProtoMan whispers, giving her a shaky grin.
"Hi," Mimic whispers back, speaking for the first time since she left him at SciLab earlier.
As if that's a signal of some kind, ProtoMan drags her into a hug that's tight enough to be affectionate but not so tight that he's crushing her bones - which is very possible because NetNavis, even the small ones, are a hell of a lot stronger than the average human.
"Um," she hears Shuko murmuring, "he's not going to eat us, too, is he?"
ProtoMan immediately wilts and tries to hide again, but it doesn't work as well as it did before because he's bigger than she is now.
Mimic shoots Shuko a glare. "I just might," she snaps.
"Congrats, guys, you've got a CopyBot now!" Famous exclaims, projecting very forced cheer into his words. He glances at Makoto. "I noticed you brought in two cases, though. What's in the other one?"
Makoto grins back at him. "It's something I've been working on since you and those kids saved me from that Zoanoroid!" she replies, picking up the second, smaller case. "Ladies, gentlemen, Famey-"
"Why am I separate in that list?" Famous wonders.
Makoto ignores him. "-may I present to you, the Hyper-Magnetron!"
Mimic jerks her head up at that, and is completely surprised when Makoto opens the second case to reveal the bulky gun-like machine that she wasn't actually supposed to have invented at this point. Or at least, she wasn't supposed to give it to them at this point.
"What is it, exactly?" Dad asks, frowning at the machine. "It looks . . ."
"It kinda looks like Raika's Scope Gun when he's using Cross Fusion," Lan comments, peering at it curiously. "Except blue."
"Thanks to you and your sister," Makoto says, nodding to him and Mimic, "and that other NetNavi, the data of the CopyBots I created for the Zoanoroids wasn't destroyed. I don't doubt that if you hadn't shown up when you did, the Zoanoroid who attacked me would have destroyed all of it. But since he didn't, and since I still had access to it, I could work off that data instead of having to start from scratch, and I made this!"
She takes out the Hyper-Magnetron and holds it up for everyone to see.
"The CopyBots have a weakness that we can exploit," Makoto explains. "There's a defect in their energy cores - unprocessed energy is located there, and that's what the Hyper-Magnetron targets. That energy is what stops the energy conversion program from becoming unstable, so if it were to be targeted with an electromagnetic pulse . . ."
" . . . the CopyBot would self-destruct and take out the Zoanoroid using it at the same time!" Famous finishes, expression lighting up. "That's genius! Thanks, Makoto!"
"I've only been able to produce one so far, and it's still a prototype, but it works," Makoto tells them. "I've tested it against some dummy CopyBots I created for that exact purpose."
"We'll provide you with the funding and materials you need to create more if you're willing," Dad immediately offers. "This could be a massive game-changer in fighting Zoanoroids if they try and use CopyBots to fight."
"Woohoo!" Lan cheers, punching the air with both hands. "Look out, Zoanoroids, we've got a whole new way of kicking your butts!"
It's certainly very welcome. And it'd be useful if they get attacked by Zoanoroids using CopyBots, which is so likely that it's almost laughable. Almost.
So, now they've got the Hyper-Magnetron early, and Mimic has a CopyBot of her own. She's not gonna use it in battle, that'd be stupid - for one thing, she's not sure a CopyBot would be able to handle ProtoMan's level of power, and it definitely wouldn't be able to handle him going Poltergeist if he has to. Plus the CopyBot bodies are kinda fragile. But she has it, and she's happy, because now ProtoMan and Arcadia and maybe even Bass if he wants to can come into the real world whenever they want.
"You ate him?" MegaMan repeats incredulously.
ProtoMan winces, but Mimic's hand threading through his hair makes him relax almost automatically, and he nearly purrs before he remembers the topic of the conversation. This is something he doesn't think he's ever not gonna be happy about - with the Navi-hologram, he was happy just to have his operators able to touch him, even if they had to be gentle and could only pet him with their fingers or something. But with this CopyBot, there's no need to be gentle, and Mimic can use her whole hand instead of just a finger or two.
It feels awesome. His friends can pet him properly, and now his operators can pet him properly, too.
It's almost enough to make up for the fact that he's probably lost most of his friends who don't live in the Secret Village.
"I mean . . . yeah," ProtoMan eventually replies to MegaMan. He's on the floor, head on Mimic's lap, enjoying her petting him, but Trill's just told MegaMan what happened in SciLab before he woke up. Evidently, MegaMan is not happy about it.
"That's . . . kinda horrifying to think about," MegaMan admits, with a disgusted cringe. "Eating a Zoanoroid, of all things . . . That must've tasted terrible."
ProtoMan raises his head and blinks at MegaMan. He looks a lot smaller when ProtoMan's in a CopyBot and he's still using his Navi-hologram.
"You're not . . . you're not disgusted or anything?" he asks faintly, almost unable to believe what he's hearing. "'Cus I ate someone?"
MegaMan purses his lips. "Well . . . listen, don't get me wrong, it's not really something I approve of. It sounds horrifying and honestly I'm glad I was unconscious at the time. I kinda feel sorry for everyone who has to live with the memory of watching that." ProtoMan lets out a faint whimper and buries his face in Mimic's lap, and she leans down and presses her lips to his head comfortingly. "But I do get why you did it. Mimic told you to delete him and get some data off him, and eating him was the best way to do both. I'm . . . well, I'm not really that surprised, if I'm being honest. It was only a matter of time before you actually did eat someone."
"Mm," ProtoMan grunts, unable to raise his head. He's not ashamed of what he did, he just wishes everyone else wouldn't act like he did something wrong.
"Out of curiosity, though . . ." MegaMan begins. "What did he taste like?"
ProtoMan raises his head just enough to rest his chin on Mimic's knees, and she goes back to petting him. "Um . . . surprisingly good, actually. The internal data was definitely the best part, it's right up there with cybersteaks and fish. It was kinda messy, though, but, um, I don't really mind getting messy, so . . ."
"It sounded kinda . . . weird," Trill speaks up. He's been pretty quiet since they got back home, but at least he's not actively avoiding ProtoMan. "Like . . . like how you eat fish, or those cybersteak thingies. And, um, that was . . ." He kinda wilts. "It was a little bit scary," he admits in a tiny voice. "You were a little bit scary."
" . . . Oh," ProtoMan murmurs, now wilting himself. "I'm . . . sorry."
"N-no, it's okay!" Trill quickly rushes to reassure him, flapping his hands a little wildly. "It was scary when it was happening, I'm not scared of you now! I just, um . . ." He winces. "I don't think I wanna listen to that again, though."
ProtoMan personally didn't take much notice of the noise, but that's probably just because he was the one making the noise in the first place. He tries to imagine it from everyone else's perspective, and . . .
Well, maybe he can understand why everyone was - and is - so horrified. If he came across a NetNavi that was eating another NetNavi like that, he'd probably be a little freaked out, too. It must've been really bad to actually see him doing that.
But Zoano NumberMan deserved it, for trying to infiltrate them. For trying to threaten ProtoMan's family. That Zoanoroid was lucky all ProtoMan did was eat him. At least now, the other Zoanoroids won't have whatever information Zoano NumberMan was able to gather in the anime - the Cybeasts'll probably send more to try and figure out the 'mystery' of ProtoMan and MegaMan's abilities, but as long as they don't find out about Trill, they won't have to worry too much.
"You know," Lan suddenly speaks up, sounding thoughtful, "Bass is kinda like our cousin."
They all stare at him. He's lying across the sofa next to Mimic, leaning against her and staring up at the ceiling, and he's been doing that for the past several minutes.
" . . . Dude," Mimic says, "what the f-" She glances at MegaMan. "-hell."
"I know, sorry, it's not what we're talking about." Lan waves his hand. "But . . . I mean, I've been thinking about what Iris was saying, about you and Chaud and how you're like my little brother and sister - well, you are, basically - and that got me thinking about how the Navis all fit in with this family, and obviously that made me think about how Bass fits in, since he lives with us, too."
"And you decided to bring it up while we're discussing ProtoMan cannibalising someone, why?" MegaMan asks.
Trill tugs on his hand. "What's cannibalising?"
"It's when a creature eats something that's from the same species," MegaMan explains. "Basically, it's what ProtoMan did, though . . . well, the Zoanoroids technically aren't NetNavis, and ProtoMan's a different type of NetNavi as well. I'm not sure if it can be considered actual cannibalism."
"Think it's cannibalism the same way Skyrim still classes it as cannibalism even if you're a Khajiit eating the corpse of a Nord," Mimic says thoughtfully.
"And you would know all about that, since you always choose the cannibal option so you can get the health boost," ProtoMan replies dryly.
"Says the werewolf who eats hearts for perk points," she retorts.
"I think we're getting sidetracked," MegaMan comments idly. "Lan?"
"So, I was thinking," Lan says, jumping on that immediately because apparently discussing the benefits of cannibalism in a video game makes him uncomfortable, "Bass was made from the data of PharaohMan, right? So that kinda makes him like PharaohMan's kid."
It takes ProtoMan a moment to remember PharaohMan - technically they've only met the one from this reality once, and they've never met the other one, though they would've if Zoano ProtoMan hadn't apparently levelled Zoano PharaohMan's pyramid. But the PharaohMan from this reality isn't someone ProtoMan's ever gonna forget, because that bastard deleted MegaMan - even if it was temporary - and was gonna make ProtoMan and Arcadia his fucking pets or something.
And then somehow he'd just forgotten that Bass was made from that PharaohMan's data, even if Bass occasionally makes a reference to it. It's really hard to associate Bass with someone like that. They're too different.
"I guess," Mimic says. "So the kid's better'n his dad. S'not much of a new concept, we've seen it before."
Meaning they've lived it before.
"Well, yeah, but hear me out," Lan insists. "Bass is like PharaohMan's kid, and PharaohMan was made by Grandpa."
Oh. ProtoMan's starting to see where this is heading.
"And . . . that makes PharaohMan kinda like your grandfather's kid?" MegaMan guesses.
"Yeah! So that makes Bass kinda like our cousin!" Lan finishes. He looks at them all expectantly. "Right?"
" . . . Does that make Mom an' Dad his aunt and uncle?" Mimic wonders.
"He likes them well enough," ProtoMan muses. "I guess he wouldn't be too bothered by the idea."
"What about me?" Trill asks. "What am I?"
"Well, you're MegaMan's little brother, so you're one of the kids, like us," Lan tells him, and Trill beams.
"That's a lotta kids," Mimic comments. She suddenly perks up, and although ProtoMan can't read her mind beyond hearing her direct thoughts, he immediately knows what she's about to say. "Chaud! Chaud's back!"
He grins and scrambles to his feet, startling Ragdoll, who's lying on Mimic's other side. He gives ProtoMan a mildly irritated look before settling back down with all the care characteristic of a real world cat.
"Can I do it now?" ProtoMan asks eagerly.
"Not yet," Mimic replies, concentrating. "Wait 'till he's through the door."
ProtoMan waits very impatiently. He's been waiting to do this ever since Mimic suggested it - he can hardly wait a moment more, and he's practically bouncing out of excitement.
Finally, he hears the front door opening, hears the voice of his primary operator saying something to Dad - who went to pick Chaud up from the airport - as they walk in.
Alright, he can't take this anymore. He literally cannot wait.
ProtoMan darts out of the room, into the hallway, and just barely manages to not launch himself at Chaud at full speed. It'd probably kill him, and that's not what ProtoMan wants, so instead of slamming into Chaud and breaking his bones, he just slams into Chaud and pulls him into the tightest hug he can manage without killing him by accident.
"What the hell," Chaud wheezes. "What? Who's attacking me?"
"Me," ProtoMan replies, drawing back enough so he can grin at his primary operator.
Chaud stares at him. "Oh my god," he says softly.
"Wait, how the fuck is he in the real world?" Bass demands, appearing on Chaud's shoulder to stare at ProtoMan like he's never seen him before.
Arcadia appears at the same time, eyes wide. "It's a CopyBot," he whispers.
"What."
"ProtoMan's in a CopyBot!" Arcadia exclaims excitedly.
"What."
"We've got a CopyBot!" Arcadia shouts, jumping up and down.
"We were gone for two fucking days," Bass says incredulously.
Behind them, Dad is laughing so hard he has to lean against the doorframe, not even bothering to tell Bass off for swearing - not that he ever does, Bass wouldn't listen anyway.
"We have a CopyBot!" Chaud cries happily, throwing his arms around ProtoMan.
"What the actual fuck," Bass says.
Later, when the excitement has died down - which takes quite a while, because ProtoMan keeps demanding more petting from both of his operators, and they're more than happy to oblige - they head up to Mimic and Chaud's bedroom.
And Mimic's already told them what she's decided to do. She's gonna tell them about Iris - or at least everything she knows about Iris from the anime. Which is . . . a lot, she thinks. It's enough, anyway.
"First off," she begins, looking at Chaud, "you know she's the girl you met in the military base, right?"
"I gathered as much," Chaud replies. He's sitting on their bed with Lan, and Mimic's on the chair at their desk. The Navis are all on the desk, including ProtoMan - he's exited the CopyBot for now and it's sat in the corner like an oversized doll, which is kinda what it is, actually.
"Right," Mimic says, nodding. "Okay, so . . . she's from Beyondard." Chaud nods, because he'd already figured that out for himself, but it's definitely news to Lan, who looks surprised. "An' before y'ask, no, I dunno how she does that teleportin' stuff. I mean, usually NetNavis make noise when they jack into somethin', but I dunno if she jacks into anythin' when she does that . . ." She trails off, because everyone is staring at her. "What?"
"She's a NetNavi?" Lan asks, voice nearly breaking on the last word.
Mimic blinks. "Did . . . did I not mention that?"
"Evidently not," Chaud replies dryly.
"Oh. Well . . . she is. She's usin' a special kinda CopyBot to walk around - I think it can turn into data or somethin'? Anyway, y'know that blue NetNavi who tried to take Trill?"
"That was Iris," Arcadia guesses, and Mimic nods.
"Yeah, it was. Iris is-" She only hesitates for a split second before deciding to just go ahead with it, because there's no way she can explain Iris without mentioning this. "-Colonel's younger sister."
"What!?" just about everyone in the room yelps. Everyone aside from Trill, who's never met any version of Colonel, Beyondard or not, and he just looks really confused.
"Younger sister of Beyondard Colonel, that is," Mimic clarifies, just in case it needs clarification. "The Baryl from that reality said he needed Colonel to be a machine who follows orders or somethin', 'cus'a the war. So he asked Dr. Tadashi Hikari to take out . . ." What the fuck was it, again? Oh, right. "He asked him to take out the kindness and personality data an' delete it, 'cept that's not what happened. It got taken out, yeah, but Dr. Tadashi Hikari-"
"Just call him Grandpa, it's exhausting just listening to you saying all that every single time," Lan interrupts, somewhat exasperated.
" . . . Grandpa made Iris outta that data," Mimic finishes. The word feels a little strange on her tongue. "She can separate Trill from MegaMan when they use Beast Out, an' help to control the transformation. She was made to be Trill's caretaker, too."
"Is that why he calls her his big sister?" MegaMan asks, glancing down at Trill, who blinks up at him in a vaguely puzzled manner.
"Probably," Mimic says. Truth be told, she's not entirely sure about that - Trill only has very vague memories of where he came from because the Dr. Tadashi Hikari - Grandpa - of Beyondard decided to make him a baby-Navi. A baby-Navi who can somehow grow up enough to become a child-Navi. "But I guess Trill escaped or somethin', an' he came here, so Iris came after him and now she's tryin' to take him back to Beyondard."
"Because he's the Synchroniser," Chaud says, and Mimic nods. "If he's supposed to get rid of the Beast Factor in Beyondard and end this war of theirs . . . well, I guess I can understand why Iris is so desperate to take Trill back."
"But she's not being nice about it," ProtoMan speaks up, frowning. "She's trying to force Trill to go back with her, and she's not listening or even trying to understand why he doesn't want to go back."
"I don't remember much about that place, but I do remember it was lonely and I didn't like it much," Trill mumbles, fiddling with the hem of his shirt. "This place feels much better. There's lots of people, they're all nice, and I've got MegaMan and all of you guys, too."
"We won't let Iris force you to go back," MegaMan says, drawing him into a gentle hug. "We're just saying that we understand why she's trying to do that. Some people do things that seem pretty bad when they're desperate."
"Yeah," Trill agrees faintly.
"So what do we do about her?" Lan asks, frowning. "She's just wandering around and she knows all about Trill and his powers and everything, and if she can control him when he uses his powers . . . the Zoanoroids could try and kidnap her if they find out."
Kinda like how Dr. Regal tried and succeeded - twice - to kidnap Mimic for her knowledge of the future. And even worse is the fact that Iris actually did get kidnapped for exactly that reason in the anime. So that means Lan's worries are perfectly valid and very real.
"M'not sure what to do about that," Mimic murmurs. "They did kidnap her in the anime. But that was 'cus they noticed she knew stuff about Trill, and the only reason they were interested in Trill is 'cus Zoano NumberMan managed to find out that he's the reason why MegaMan can use Beast Out."
"But Zoano NumberMan's been deleted, so that's no longer a danger," Arcadia says. He, Chaud, and Bass had been filled in on what happened at SciLab earlier. "And if the Zoanoroids come after anyone, it'll be ProtoMan and MegaMan, since they don't know anything about Trill."
"If they did, it'd be me and Trill instead of me and MegaMan," ProtoMan murmurs.
"I'm glad it's me instead of Trill," MegaMan says firmly. "If they tried to come after Trill, I . . ." He hesitates for a moment, and then his expression sets. "I'd feed them all to ProtoMan."
"Free food!" ProtoMan cheers, and despite the serious topic of conversation, that gathers a few laughs from everyone.
"Think it's best if we leave her alone for now," Mimic says, still chuckling a little bit. "'Long as the Zoanoroids don't notice her, she's safe."
"That is true," Chaud admits. "And I guess there's not much we can do to stop her from vanishing on us if we try and track her down, so . . ."
"She joined our class today, so maybe we can try and talk to her tomorrow," Lan says hopefully.
"She's not gonna be in our class tomorrow," Mimic tells him. "She just joined so she could talk to you." She pauses. "And me too, I guess. She's not comin' back to our class."
"Oh." Lan blinks. "Uh . . . well, I suppose we just wait 'till she shows up again on her own, then."
There's no better plan that any of them can come up with, so they agree to that. It's all they can do about Iris - she's one of the few things that Mimic can't directly interfere with, just because of her nature alone, and the whole 'random teleporting' thing. But at least they're not gonna be totally blindsided by the big reveal and everything, now.
Mimic isn't really ashamed to admit that she's kinda wondering how Iris will react when she discovers that they already know about her. At the very least, her reaction should be worth a bit of amusement.
