Welcome back to Lightman Legacy!

So it's been a little while.

Just a bit.

Oops.

Sorry. Really I am.

But hey chapter now! Enjoy!

Rockman POV…

Rockman had somehow managed to lose track of his brother.

This was not exactly a rare scenario but when it did happen Lightman was usually relatively easy to find and normally had not gone very far. Most of the time you just had to follow the loud noises to find him, that or find the nearest Net battle or criminal organization.

Thankfully that last thing did not happen too often.

But nevertheless Lightman was currently missing. He wasn't too worried, just a bit confused. Both him and his brother were basically employed as security Navis as SciLabs these days considering they mostly cycled between the lab and their parents house. They did not spend much time at the house anymore though, their mother had gone looking for a few years after Netto "died" so she wasn't guaranteed to be there anymore.

As part of the Net Security at the lab they had a bit of schedule for certain tasks that needed to be done, adding some much needed structure to their day to day lives.

However for the patrol detail he and his brother split up although they did cross paths on their routes once or twice so Rockman was surprised to find that instead of running into his brother he had run into another security Navi working at the lab. When asked the Navi had stated that Lightman had asked him to do the patrol for him today and that he'd either owe him one or pay him back, whichever one he wanted.

So now that his patrol was over he was on his way back to the homepage he and his brother shared to find out what he was up to.

He was on his way back when he noticed something unusual. His father's computer was active. Normally this was nothing to worry about but the doctor was supposed to be at a meeting discussing failsafes for wireless tech after the event a few days ago.

The Navi scowled at the thought. No progress, no new attacks, nothing. The analysts hadn't managed to dig anything out of the mess left behind by the virus army, so they had no leads there. And the only consistent detail for PETs affected were that they were all newer models.

So all they could do was wait and hope to be prepared for whatever came next.

Getting back on track, he needed to check his father's computer, it was unlikely someone unauthorized had managed to slip into the lab and more likely his father had either left it on accidentally or had gone back to do something quickly.

Still, it was on his way back and it was better safe than sorry, it wouldn't take him long to check.

Hopping onto the desktop he noticed a few programs open, most of them running or reading code. Rather than snooping around too much though, he went for the simple solution and turned on the camera.

Doing so solved both his current problems. Still curious about what was going on he popped up on screen. "Hey Netto, what have you been doing?"

His brother, currently in a copybot and looking like he used to before he got sick, jumped backwards, shouting "Thundurus and Landerous!" and all but fell out of his chair.

Rockman snorted. "I didn't mean to startle you but really? Did you just shout the names of two Pokemon?"

"Pokemon based on gods!" His brother defended as he started pulling himself back up. "Also could you not scare me like that! I could've pulled the computer off the desk!" He pointed at the cables running out the back of his neck and into the computer, the only visible indication that he was no longer the human boy he appeared to be.

"I did not see that." Rockamn admitted as Netto got properly seated again. "Sorry, I wasn't trying to surprise you, and you didn't answer my question. What are you doing? I ran into some other Navi on patrol."

His twin seemed confused, "I left you a message on the homepage about where I was and that I'd tell you about it when I got back, did you not find it?"

"I was actually on my way back when I noticed that Papa's computer was active and came to check it out. Since I was looking for you anyway I figured I'd just pop on." Rockman explained. "Didn't get the message yet."

"Oh, well sorry for not telling you before we left, it was a bit of a spur of the moment decision and Tou-san had a bit of time before the meeting so I asked that Navi to cover for me." The slightly younger sibling rubbed the back of neck in slight embarrassment. "Hopefully he doesn't ask for anything too big in return but he seemed nice enough.

"What did you need to talk to him about anyway?" Rockman prompted hoping to keep on track before they got distracted.

The boy, turned Navi, turned Copybot, looked sheepish. "Well, do you remember that talk we had the other day?"

"Which one?" Rockman tried to think of something that his brother felt like talking to their father about.

Netto sighed. "I know it's dumb and I didn't really think too much about it at the time but after I kept thinking about it and its been bugging me for a few days now." He rubbed his face. "Saito," Rockman raised a brow at the use of his true name. "We should have been in our twenties by now. Can you imagine that? Adults! Us! Me!" he chuckled. "But circumstances stepped in and we've been a bit… stagnant."

Rockman hummed in thought. His brother had a bit of a point but he wanted to see where he was going with this before he said anything. It figured that his twin would feel more affected by the concept of never aging having grown up in the human world for years.

"So I thought about it and then it occurred to me, well why can't I just update our models? Make us look the correct age!" He groaned. "Turns out it's a lot more complicated than that."

"How so?" Rockman asked, confused. "I mean our "human" appearances are something we can switch between. We just only tend to use them in the Copybots. Why can't you or Papa just code a new "older" appearance we can swap to?"

"That's the thing, our human looks in just a skin swap, our Navi avatars are the same, we're just swapping to a new coat of paint pretty much. I could just try and put on one over our current structure but… well it wouldn't be solid, at least not properly, we would still be the same size we'd just look bigger." He paused "Actually that could be useful in fights. Maybe it is worth looking into.""

Rockman said nothing for a moment. "So you asked Tou-san to look into it with you? How'd it go?"

"Not the greatest but it did give me some ideas for what not to do." They both smiled at that. "Theoretically I can build a model from scratch, our current avatars were built using our DNA after all, so if I look in the right place I should be able to get some accurate ideas of what adult me, (well it would work for both of us technically) should look like." he pointed at the screen, "That's what I was looking through actually."

"You're poking at your own code?" The blue navi fretted, "Please tell me you haven't tried altering anything."

"Of course not!" was his answer. "I've been copying bits of it at a time to look through and test, not my actual data."

"So our talk the other day about "being old" brought this on?" Rockman continued on, trying to pry to the base of this interest. Far be it from him to stop his brother if he wanted to try this, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad change but it might be annoying to get used to a different scale for fighting.

"Kind of?" His brother started then stopped himself. "Hold on a second let me clean this up and jack back in."

A few minutes of closing programs and making sure he didn't accidentally leave any copied bits of his code running. Both twins logged out of the computer and Netto plugged the bot into a nearby connection to the main SciLabs server and Lightman appeared to greet his brother.

"Right, so our discussion the other day is what really got me thinking, but somethings been bugging me since we saw everyone before the attack. Things got a bit hectic so I didn't think about it too hard but well.." Lightman stared ahead as they started walking back towards their homepage.

"Back before, this." He gestured at his own light blue form, "I was friends with the humans you were friends with the Navis and while we all had our personal connections I don't think I'm wrong in saying we were closer to our own separate groups. I don't interact with them anymore, Meiru, Yai, Dekao and the rest. Not directly. But well I see enough to realize they grew up and I didn't and it bugs me." He kicked the digital path beneath them.

"I'm being dumb and angsty about this huh?" A more familiar grin filled his face. "Sorry about that. But sometimes it helps to talk about things you know?"

"Not dumb, at least not more than usual." Ignoring the playful "hey" Rockman continued. "I can't say I completely understand but I have an idea of where you're coming from and if this is something you want to work on go ahead, it might be interesting if you pull it off and well we won't completely lose our current forms if we need them." He paused, "Will we?"

"Uhhh." Lightman scratched at his cheek. "I don't know. Like I said I'm still not sure how to actually do it. If I figure anything out I'll let you know though."

"Alright, don't do anything too stupid though." Rockman argued.

"Does that mean there is a minimal amount of stupid allowed?" His brother nudged him.

"Pfft, for someone who managed to pick up coding the way you have I can't imagine you not injecting some in, somehow."

"Hey how about I code a new Navi to test building one from scratch before I mess around with our data?" Lightman grinned. "Think about that, a Navi coding a Navi! We have outgrown our human masters! We're evolving! The age of the machine has come!" He wiggled his fingers menacingly.

Rockman laughed at his brother's mock menace. Soon enough they reached their homepage again.

"Let me go get rid of that message I left you, don't really need it now." Lightman told him as he opened up a tab. But paused before touching anything.

"Hold up we have something else incoming…" he opened the incoming message.

A familiar small figure popped up on the screen. "Rei?" Lightman was surprised to get a message from the Eon Net denizen. They checked in every now and then but a direct call was rare.

"Lightman!" the virus-like figure looked to the other sibling as he came up. "Rockman! Thank the net I reached you two! We need help!"

"Wait what's happening?" Rockman asked. "It's not Myst again is it?" he really hoped not, the organization should be gone but they thought the same thing about WWW.

"No!" Rei paused, "Well maybe! I don't know. A bunch of viruses suddenly showed up on the Eon Net and started making a mess! There's like a swarm of them and they're spitting out elemental attacks and stuff!"

If Rockman had blood he's sure it would have run cold. This was it, another attack, but on the Eon Net? How'd they even get there?

"And to make matters worse while we were dealing with them this big and tough navi showed up and went after Echo-sama directly! They're still fighting now but the viruses are still making a mess of things! Please tell me you two aren't busy?" Rei practically begged.

"We can come, we'll be there as soon as we can. Lightman send a message to Papa telling him what's happening. I'll make sure all our digital chips are ready." Rockman directed and opened up a tab of his own.

"Alright, hold on Rei we'll be there soon stay safe." Lightman spoke to the video screen.

"I will, thank you and please hurry!" Rei disappeared and Lightman quickly started typing out a message with dizzying speed. Being able to link directly to a keypad had its bonuses.

"Alright message sent you ready?" The lighter blue navi asked his darker sibling.

"All set, let's see if we can cut down enough of them to keep them from blowing up everything this time!"

Hermes POV…

"Huh what do you know that old man's info was right." The agent stared through the tablet into the so-called "Eon Net" and at his new navi fighting some super powered leader of that network apparently called Echo.

"I still don't trust him, he seemed… off. I guarantee he's only helping us because he has an ulterior motive." Reaper pointed out.

"Well of course he does, everyone who's ever lived has an ulterior motive for doing things. I do, you do and I'm sure everyone up the chain of command does. It's how things work." Hermes rolled his eyes, hidden beneath his helmet.

Reaper didn't dignify that with a response and instead got right back to business. "How is the Swarm performing this time?"

"Better, much better, and far more organized. Multiple "Queens" is certainly letting them cooperate and coordinate faster and more accurately, if those two "Internet Navigators" show up again we'll be ready for them." Hermes said without doubt in his voice.

The other PHANTOM operative said nothing. Likely because she wanted him to be proven wrong but also didn't want to say as much outright considering their mission. So being himself, he pushed his luck. "Just do your job, if you do half as good a job as me you have nothing to worry about."

"Well if those two get called to help like they're supposed to then I shouldn't have a problem." Her gear lit up as the various subroutines activated. "Let's get this done."

So it's been awhile.

A long while. A very long while.

I could give numerous apologies but I'll be honest. I just lost my passion for writing college managed to suck most of my joy in things like writing out of me. And while I've tried a few times to reorient myself I never could get back into it right. I did do a rewrite of chapter 1 of Gone Ghost a few months back so that's a thing.

I don't think I'm being too philosophical to say I'm a very different person than I was the last time I updated this. Or most of my stories really especially after this year. God this year. Started crumby and then it got worse.

But there have been some good points. And I will put updating this on my personal list. I won't make any promises of future updates, but I will try and keep them going.

I'm glad I got back into Megaman and/or Rockman, it's been a trip reading through many of the stories and inspired me to write this (also a more comedy focused one I may or may not post), as well as being confused while looking for some I just can't find. Like I have a distinct memory of one where Rock, Blues, Bass (and maybe Roll?) went to the future and met X and Zero and then they all went back to the past and then they went to ZX. And I can't find that anywhere.

Well I suppose that's endings are part of life. If nothing else I've learned that tonight.

Memento Mori everyone, see you soon.

~FriTik