Neko-chan: Sorry for the late chapters!! I blame school, college applications, and my laziness to type! Thank you to PRIVATE for betaing this chapter! Roll say disclamier!
Roll: Neko does not own Rockman.
Chapter 5: Past Meets Future
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X and Alia debated a bit about what they should do with the Light robots. Considering the fact if someone would recognize them from the history books, then all hell would break lose and Rock would become a dissection specimen.
"X, we can't keep them prisoners you know!"
So far, the Light robots were waiting in the 17th Rec. Room with nothing to do.
"Well, X, should we take the risk?" Alia asked.
"I say we take it."
'Is X walking on the wild side?' Alia thought.
So the decision was made, and X and Alia arranged an outing for Blues, Rock, and Roll today. Zero would have joined them but Signas pulled him into his office before he could get one foot out of the base. Who really knew why but Zero had a strange look that spoke to X when their eyes crossed. X was certain he misinterpreted them because 'Please, help me, help me, I'm scared, I'm scared!' didn't really sound like the Zero way of looking at life. Oh well. 'Dead man walking' really was the last thing X thought before seeing the office door slam shut.
The gang took the metro to Megaopolis. Rock stuck his head out in a very dog-like way as X desperately wanted to yank him back in. Alia just laughed at X.
"Do you guys have flying cars?" Rock asked.
"Didn't they have flying cars back then?" Alia responded.
"Yeah, but I always wanted to ask that." He gave a big cheesy smile afterwards. Rock had a little philosophy going on that went somewhere along the lines of 'Hey, if you're in the future...' He still wanted to ask if food was in pill form but their ride hit the end of the line.
When they reached downtown, Rock' s eyes glowed with excitement, followed
by Roll. X wasn't too sure about Blues because of his shades. He had learned last night that Blues refused to let anyone see beyond his shades, even when sleeping. After trying for 10 minutes to convinced Blues otherwise, X gave up.
Flashback to last night.
"C'mon."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yes."
"No."
"Yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes!"
"...No?"
"Touche!"
End Flashback
They explored the town from shop to shop, stand to stand. The Light bots were amazed on how humans and reploids were interacting with each other. So much has changed since the year 20XX. At noon and after a LOT of hearing Rock and Roll chatter, the group decided to grab a bite to eat.
"Can you guys eat?" Alia asked. Her knowledge of robots were very little.
"Papa installed a part that can convert what we eat into energy. It faster to take energy directly but eating's more fun if you asked me."
"Oh, okay, I guess I never really thought of it that way... What do you guys want? X's treat!"
"Huh?" X was caught off guard by that comment but ran with it. "Oh, sure, my treat..."
"We want burgers!" Rock and Roll exclaimed.
"What about you, Blues?"
"…."
"Blues doesn't eat." Roll responded from her brother.
"Well, then burgers it is."
Together they walked into a burger joint and order five combos, just in case
Blues decided to eat. After that, the group found a spot to sit down and rest. X
had put their number at the edge of the table.
"What do you think of our world?" Alia asked.
Roll answered, "It' s wonderful. There are so many things to see. It's super different from the year 20XXDr. Light would have been proud of you, X!"
With the mention of Dr. Light, silenced arrived. Only when the waitress came and delivered their food did they speak again.
"I hope he survived the explosion," Rock wished as the reploid waitress went back to her regular duties.
Blues, being the older brother he was, agreed with Rock; even though he believed otherwise. But there was a part of him that truly wished that Rock was right. It was just too painful to think otherwise. Yes, Blues and Light had their arguments every now and then, but there was a deep bond beneath the surface, a bond between father and son.
"Food's here!" X changed the subject.
"I wonder if it still tastes the same in the future." Rock took a bite out of his burgers, followed by Roll. They turned to each other and smiled as they continued to eat their burgers like nothing.
Blues just stared at his food while the other ate. 'It does look good, should I?' he wondered.
"This taste great! You gotta try it Blues!"
"Rock, close your mouth when you eat..." X handed Rock a napkin to wipe off some of the burgers that wounded flying everywhere.
"If you don't want it, we could always order something else." Alia offered.
Blues stared at the burger in front of him.
"Just take a bite Blues," pleaded Roll.
After a few seconds, Blues took a bite out of the burger. Everyone awaited his
response. "It's okay."
"Great!" And everybody continued on with their meal in joy except if X, who had to clean up little bits of burgers.
After lunch, the group went to the mall. They spent hours there, trying on
clothes and accessories. (And surprisingly, Rock and Roll found even more things to chatter like squirrels about) It was around 3 pm when Zero finally showed up.
"Hey, sorry I'm late."
"What mess did you cause this time?" Alia gave him the stare.
"What?! I can't believe you don't trust me!"
"If you must know, you're Zero, that's why." X stated.
"X, I'm hurt."
"Well, how'd it go?"
"Nothing really. Signas told me my Unit's mission for tomorrow. We'll be out in New York for about a week, two max." Zero explained. "It's about, well I don't know what's it's about. He said he'll fill me in tomorrow. All he told me
today was that we'll be searching through an old Repliforce station outpost."
As that last sentence left Zero's month, X saw that it brought back
painful memories of the Repliforce war from the corner of Zero's eyes. Most of
Repliforce weren't Irregulars, they were just dumped in with the ones who
were. Colonel wasn't an Irregular, just a reploid who fought for better
rights. Iris too; she fought for her brother and Zero. Although later, her feelings
toward Zero changed drastically after he took down her brother and tried to
take Zero's life in revenge, Zero was forced to take her down. It was a sad day
for Zero. His emotions turned cold. The only person who knew why was X himself. Alia didn't join the Hunter until the next uprising.
X tried getting Zero to talk about it, but to no avail. He would just brush it
off as if it never happened. But deep inside, Zero was suffering. He had killed
the person he loved the most and that was tearing his soul apart. This would
explain some of the pranks he pulled and the one-night stands he had.
Seeing Zero like this wasn't the Zero X knew. X decided to change the
subject by suggesting the idea of getting ice cream before things got ugly. Rock
favored the suggestion by saying that he wanted chocolate.
They headed towards an ice cream parlor and placed their orders. They got their
cups of creamy goodness and they sat down at a table outside. There, everyone
stared at Zero's order.
He had a green like substance that had nuts in it. "What?! Pistachio ice cream's good!"
"You don't strike us as a pistachio person," Alia commented.
"You always seem to amaze me, Zero," X said.
"It's all about strawberry, people. You sure no one wants to share?" Everybody shook their head for their mouths were already full with their ice of choice. Roll enjoyed her all natural strawberry ice cream all to herself with a HUGE smile.
With Zero's strange order of pistachio and Roll's favorite strawberry ice cream, X had cookies n' cream, Rock had chocolate, Alia had strawberry shortcake, and Blues had vanilla, plain and simple. They headed back to HQ afterwards. Amazing how a bit of some ice cream makes everything better, even Repliforce scars.
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Neko-chan: eating pistachio ice cream What? It's really good. Right Zero-kun?
Zero: Of course.
Neko-chan: Thank you for all those reviews! And this actually came out on time as I promise. I don't think I'll be able to post the EXE one up by the end of this week. But I will get it up!!!!! Plus, I would like to thank again, PRIVATE, for being my beta for this chapter. Which explains why it has some of her style in it. XD
Review Response:
The person who sighed "…" as their SN: I quote "NEVER PUT YAOI IN ANY MEGAMAN FANFICS!" People have their preferences on pairings, leave them alone! I just happened not to like yaoi pairings, but others people do!! So what if they want to put X and Zero together or Blues.exe and Rock.exe together, it's their fanfics. Don't like, don't read. Sorry I just needed to point that out.
To the person who signed "Iris email or message me for further details
To everyone else: Thank you for waiting for this update. I hope you enjoyed it.