Ta-daaah! This one took less than a year! If you missed the end of the last chapter with Roll (I edited it in a day later), please go back!
Thank you all for your continued lovely reviews and nagging. (The nagging really does help!) I'm such a slow writer that once again I have to go through and edit ALL the page breaks/things ff,net constantly messes with... this time it's the . EXE 's that got auto-edited out, which is... really difficult for a fandom that has that as part of it's name...! Let me know if I missed any obvious ones in this chapter; I've read it too many times to see anything anymore...
First came the comforter and second the mattress, both folded neatly into fourths. Her pillow was set atop the comforter, the comforter atop the mattress, and the whole pile scooped up to return to her own PET. Setting it down in a random corner, Roll mused that it was kind of a pointless routine. Futons were folded to clear up space, to get them off a tatami floor mat which needed to breathe, or to prevent dust and mites from settling in. Living in a digital, mostly empty space, she needed none of these things. Someday, Roll decided, it would be nice to have a decent cabinet to store their bedding; it would look tidier than just plopping them down anywhere.
All in all, Roll was uncertain how she felt about sleeping in an actual bed. She and Rockman had always just slept on the floor. Being Navis, they didn't need to lie down when they entered their sleep cycle, but they chose to do it because simply because it felt strange to sleep standing up. But sleeping on a bare floor looked just as strange to someone like Meiru out in the real world, and it was this fact that had motivated Roll to buy futons.
A few weeks after Netto and Meiru's wedding, Roll had found a stray Mr. Prog while out shopping in Net City. When she returned him to his owner, the man was so thankful he that he forced a monetary reward on her. It wasn't much, so Meiru let Roll keep it for herself. Roll had never had her own spending money before, and was stumped on what to do with it. Rockman suggested that she buy herself a fashion chip or some virtual furniture, so one nice Sunday they went out shopping together. It had been a fun outing. After deciding that they would buy a pair of futons, they spent a good half hour picking out designs. Roll found the one that Rockman chose; it was a indigo blue and had small white dots printed in symmetric patterns all over. It looked like a virtual imitation of katazome, a traditional technique used to stencil kimono fabric. Roll didn't care much what she bought, though, and was on the verge of buying plain pink blankets when Rockman stopped her.
"What about this one?" he had said, holding up cream sheets with coral colored bunny rabbits on them. When asked why, he answered, "I think they suit you. Rabbits have cute ears that stick up kind of like your antennae."
Roll smiled, and traced a finger over a rabbit. Rockman had always been so nice to her, even when she was trying to distance herself the last few months and was nothing but rude and cold towards him. She still owed him a proper apology.
…but she couldn't do it right this second; he was sleeping. She gave his still form a fond smile as she re-entered his PET. He was buried under blue covers; all she could see was from his nose up. He had grown accustomed to a futon quickly, something she expected. It was a rare occasion that Roll entered his PET when he was still asleep but the few times she had Rockman was always tangled and completely buried in his comforter, just like a little kid. Just like Netto would normally do and still did when Meiru was not asleep beside him, preventing him from hogging all the covers.
He also, like Netto, was a deep sleeper, though with a slightly better ability to get up in the morning. This was because he stuck by a strict schedule; he had trouble going to sleep earlier than normal, and it was nigh impossible to wake him up before his scheduled alarm. Roll had shut off their alarm this morning, but she doubted that he would have heard it even if she'd kept it on. Yesterday, the day after the attack at SciLabs, Netto and Rockman had left at their normal hour like it was a normal day of work. All things considered, only a small percentage of SciLabs had been damaged, and for many people it was going to be a normal day. But Netto and Rockman had their work cut out for them; Rockman was going to use a Dimensional Bubble and his superhuman strength to help clean up the heavier debris, and Netto was needed to get and keep Rockman in a Bubble. Normally the secrecy of their project prevented them from using Bubbles outside of their test room, but with the damaged areas cordoned off from public use they could work without being seen and thus there was no reason not to help clean up the mess they had been somewhat responsible for making.
Roll had been against their plans. Both were dead tired from getting back so late, and Rockman in particular was a bit unsteady on his feet because he had spent so long in a Dimensional Bubble. Spending an entire second day in one was a foolish idea, but when she tried to convince Rockman of this, all she got was his age-old "I need to do this" speech. So she let him go, and was none surprised when he returned home barely able to stand. Netto had been very apologetic, though. He told Roll he had been trying unsuccessfully all day to get Rockman to take breaks, and asked if she could knock some sense into the blue Navi. It wasn't a hard task; she laid down Rockman's futon, forced him into it, and then forced some of her energy reserves into him. Even with the small energy boost, he fell asleep before she could return to the PET with her own futon. Without even the energy to stay awake, there was no way he could put up an argument. That had happened at eight o'clock last night. Now it was close to ten in the morning and Rockman was still sound asleep. Fourteen hours of sleep… that had to be a new record for him.
Today was Friday. Meiru did not have work today, there was no shopping to be done, no cleaning… no nothing. Meiru decided to walk to the library not too long ago, but Roll declined the offer to come along. She didn't want to leave Rockman alone, in case he woke up. For once, she was glad her schedule was empty; nothing could take her away from Rockman. She was perfectly content to sit and watch him, even without Netto asking her to keep an eye on him. Netto was afraid that Rockman would try to drag himself to SciLabs, and so he'd given her permission to use any means necessary to prevent that. Now, as Roll sat down on her legs and settled herself next to his futon, she didn't think this would be a difficult task. Rockman was-
Rockman's blanket shifted as the body underneath curled inward. "Mmn."
"Rockman?" Roll gasped. As long as he had been sleeping, she hadn't been expecting him to wake up yet.
A string of unintelligible words came from the blanket.
"Rockman?" she repeated. Timidly, she gripped an edge of the blanket and folded it down. The only sign that he was awake was that his eyes were squeezed shut and his eyebrows furrowed. She could tell he was actively doing these two things, and that the apparent culprit was pain. "Rockman! Can you hear me? Are you alright?"
"Roll-chan…"
She leaned in closer to hear better. "Yes?"
"Late."
"What?"
"Late," he said again. "What… what time is it?"
If not for the pathetic state he was in, Roll would've smacked him one. He was half-dead and still all he thought about was being late to work. "Shh. Don't worry about that, you're not going to the lab today."
"No?"
"No," she told him firmly. "You're staying home."
"But… Netto-kun… Netto…" Rockman's voice faded, and the grimace melted off his face.
"R-rockman? ...Rockman?"
No response and even breathing; it was naptime again.
And so the rest of the day passed uneventfully. Every two hours Rockman would wake up, Roll would share a tiny bit of energy and, as that energy faded, Rockman would fall back asleep. He was getting better, though; each time he woke up he stayed awake a little bit longer, was a little more coherent. Netto called in the early afternoon to see how things were, and though his concern was greater than Roll thought necessary and thus somewhat suspicious, she assured him that everything was fine. Around 7:00 pm, Roll decided that (with Rockman improving and another hour to kill before he should wake up again) she could take a small break from her vigil and help Meiru make dinner. She had a talent for cooking rice that no automatic rice cooker could duplicate, and her help gave Meiru one less pot to watch.
It took a half an hour for Roll to finish the rice. Netto wasn't home yet, so she set the cooker to its "warm" setting. "Meiru-chan, are you going to wait for Netto-san?"
"Mmn," Meiru nodded. She turned down the heat on the stove and covered her frying pan full of stir-fry with a lid. "He said he wouldn't be home too late today."
"Okay. I've got the rice cooker on warm. I'll be with Rockman, call me if you need anything."
Meiru nodded, and so Roll left. She made her way back to Rockman's PET and was both unsurprised and relieved to find him lying exactly as she had left him.
"My my," she joked, settling down on her knees next to his futon, "you are such a sleepyhead today."
"Huh…?"
"Oh, Rockman!" she greeted. He wasn't supposed to be up for another half hour! "I guess I lied, you're awake! How are you feeling?"
"Nh…" Rockman gave her an unfocused stare. "Roll…" His eyes suddenly clenched shut and he made a funny sort of gasp.
Roll's insides twisted into a thousand knots. It wasn't the gasp that worried her, it was his words: he never, ever called her just "Roll". That, more than anything else, told her that something was wrong. "Rockman!" she reached out to him, uncertain on what action to take. "What's wrong? Are you okay?"
His breathing was irregular and his face flushed. "H-hot…" he stumbled.
"Hot?" she repeated. She touched his shoulder with cautious fingertips, and was utterly shocked by what she felt. She tried again with her other hand, this time a full palm on his cheek, and got the same result: he was burning hot. "What?!"
Net Navis had only a very basic sense of temperature, most of them just enough to describe a chip's attack as hot or cold. Elemental-themed Navis also sometimes radiated a body temperature, but it was not a common feature for humanoid Navis. Roll for example, kept the ambient degree of the air around her; Rockman, advanced as he was, exuded a gentle warmth which Roll guessed to be close to Netto's thirty-seven Celsius. Now turned out to be one of the few times such a vanity was useful. Why was Rockman overheating? How long had he been overheating? Did this mean Netto was running a fever? Is that why he had been so concerned earlier? Or did this reflect something else, like the temperature of the PET? Roll had been given no reason to monitor this, but it was an easy thing to check. She opened a properties window, went to the processes tab and began to search. His motherboard was a bit warm… his video card wasn't so great… his Central Processing Unit was—
His CPU was reading a temperature of 85°C.
"Ei…eighty…?!"
This was bad. The kind of CPU he used melted at around 100°C. It was advisable to keep your CPU temperature at least twenty degrees under its limit, and the highest Roll had ever seen hers get was 45°C. Why had he not gone into shutdown?! An attempt to open his Process Power Management settings failed, foiled by a password request.
With a flick of her hand, Roll banished the window. She gaped at Rockman. "Eighty… oh. Oh! Oh dear, what… Meiru-chan!" This was no time to sit around. "Rockman, I'll be right back! Meiru-chan!"
Roll dashed back to the kitchen as fast as she could. Meiru had left her PET on the kitchen table, and so Roll arrived just in time to see her Operator look up from her crossword puzzle.
"What's the matter?"
"Rockman! He's overheating; his PET is going to melt!"
"Melt?!" Meiru repeated incredulously. "What do you mean?"
"If his CPU gets any hotter it will start to melt!" Roll babbled. "I don't know why he hasn't gone into emergency shutdown, but if he hasn't it probably means he won't… or can't for some reason! This is bad, this is bad!"
Meiru got up from her chair. "W-what should I do? Should I call Netto? But he's probably on his way home…"
"…and without his PET there's no way we can contact him in his car," Roll finished miserably. "Oh no…"
"How about I get a bag of ice? Would that help?"
"No," Roll moaned, "the bag would melt." The ice would too, and she didn't know how waterproof Rockman's PET was. What they needed was a good, cold airflow... like the freezer, where their ice was made. It was not an ideal solution; freezer air was cold but not dry, and thus carried the risk of creating condensation in Rockman's electronics... but their air conditioning did not have a terribly strong fan, and the one desk fan they did own was still packed in a box somewhere. The refrigerator would have to do for now. "The freezer! Put him in the freezer!"
"Okay!"
Roll got back to Rockman before Meiru could walk to the bedroom. She crouched next to him and again shook his shoulder; he did not respond. Not wanting to waste even the second it would take to get her antennae to curl downward, she reached up and forcefully pulled one down, threw the comforter out of her way, and jammed it against his Navi icon. A quick status check revealed that he was in Sleep Mode.
"Thank goodness…"
"Roll, I'm here!"
"Careful Meiru-ch—!"
"Aie!" Meiru picked up the PET, but just as suddenly dropped it. "Oh! That's hot! You weren't kidding…"
A CPU was very small. Roll had no way of telling what the temperature of the outer casing of the PET was, but if it was too warm for Meiru to handle comfortably, then Rockman must have been overheating for a long while. "Are you okay? Go back to the kitchen and get a potholder!"
"I'm fine, it just shocked me," said Meiru. She did not leave; instead, she went to the bed. She grabbed a pillow, yanked the cover off, and wrapped the pillowcase around her hand a few times. "There!" She picked up the PET with no problem. "Got it!"
Once back in the kitchen, Meiru set the PET on the middle rack of the chiller compartment of their refrigerator. "Wait here with him, I'll try calling Netto's office," she said.
She shut the freezer door, and Roll's view of the outside world went completely black. It was still plenty bright inside of the PET, but the darkness and sudden silence drained her adrenaline. Now what? There was nothing she could do for Rockman; any energy she shared with him would be snapped up by his CPU and make his problem worse. She'd been doing little scans on him throughout the day too, so she knew this wasn't a simple virus. It was something deeper. With no idea what to look for, she would need to do a full system scan, and that took time…
"Roll!" Light flooded back in from the real world. "He wasn't there. Iwamoto-san said he left about ten minutes ago, so he should be home in another ten or fifteen. Is Rockman alright? Can we wait for Netto?"
"I think so," Roll said, her lack of confidence reflecting in her voice. "The freezer should cool his PET down… I mean, there's nothing outwardly wrong with him. I've been keeping a close eye on him, and all my scans have said he's perfectly healthy."
Meiru picked up on her waver. "But melting isn't healthy, is it?"
"No." Roll balled her fists in her lap, fighting the urge to grab one of her antenna. "But what can we do? We're just going to have to wait for Netto-san."
"I could call Papa."
Papa… Netto's father, the elder Hikari-hakase. He was the only other person who knew Rockman well enough to fix this kind of thing. Nonetheless, Roll shook her head. "Hikari-hakase is probably not home. Even if he is, Netto-san is closer than he is. We should wait for Netto-san."
"But… Rockman is…" Meiru muttered slowly. "Don't you think they'd want to know if something was wrong with Rockman?"
Why was this choice hers to make? After Netto and his parents, was Roll really next in line to make decisions for Rockman? Roll bit her lip. "I don't know," she murmured back. "I don't want them to worry…" As uncertain as she was, Roll felt obligated to choose. "For now I think we should wait. Close the door, don't let out the cold. If something happens I'll let you know."
"Okay," Meiru agreed, though glumly. "I'll watch for Netto."
When the door was shut and light gone, Roll turned her attention to the blue Navi curled on his side beside her. There was nothing left to do for him without more information or a password or two. Was it worth the increase in processing power to try and wake him to ask these things, or would it be better to leave him alone in their frigid surroundings despite the condensation risk?
Rockman made the decision for her. "Roll-chan…" he sounded miserable. Trying to shut down and failing to do so, he was fading in and out of sleep.
"I know, I know." Roll leaned over and let the forehead of their helmets touch. She used one hand to support her weight and let the other rub Rockman's arm. "Rockman, can you hear me? Can you tell me what hurts?"
"Mmh… hh…"
Roll interpreted his pitiful attempt at speech to mean either "hot" or "everything". Hoping it was "hot", she explained, "I know it's hot. Your CPU is overheating, but don't worry. Meiru-chan put your PET in the freezer, so you should be cooling down."
"O-okay…"
"Does it hurt anywhere else? Are you having any processing errors?"
Rockman digested the question slowly. "Dunno," he answered at last.
"That's alright," Roll said softly, giving his arm a squeeze. As helpless and terrified as she herself felt, there was no way she was going to let Rockman see that. She would be calm and collected for him. "It's okay, it's okay. Netto-san will be home soon, and he'll make you feel better, okay?"
"No."
Roll sat back up at his surprisingly clear refusal. "No?"
"No. Don't want… Netto-kun…"
Were he and Netto still fighting? She'd gotten the impression that they'd made up after Wednesday's incident. Even if she was wrong, Netto would surely prioritize his Navi's life over a petty argument.
"Don't want him... be disappointed."
"Disappointed? No he won't! You worked so hard to keep him safe… I'm sure he's very proud of you, Rockman."
But Rockman was adamant, shaking his head. He raised his right hand a scant few centimeters off his mattress and, curling his fingers inward, the tip of his pinky flickered in and out of sight.
"Oh! This again? Is this what it has been all along?" Roll gasped; last time this had happened, it had just been an inserted segment of junk coding into his shader program which caused incorrect rendering of the digit. If it were the same, she could just find and quarantine it again.
"Different," Rockman mumbled, dashing this hope. "Found the source... of that time... deleted it. Something else... Roll-chan?"
"Yes?"
"Dark… Why?"
Roll blinked. "Meiru-chan put your PET in the freezer, remember?"
"Oh…"
Roll gnawed on her bottom lip again. She told him they were in the freezer; did he not hear her? Was his memory storage working incorrectly due to overheating? Had other systems been affected by overheating? If this problem was different from last time, could she find it with a full-body scan? It was a starting point, but not much else; there was nothing to be done now except be calming and patient until Netto arrived.
"Mmn."
"Rockman?" Roll took her hand away. He'd only made a very tiny sound, but at this point she was going to question everything.
"Roll-chan!" Rockman's eyes snapped open. "Don't... don't go."
"I'm not leaving. I'm right here."
"Don't go," he repeated.
She returned contact, rubbing his upper arm again. "I'm right here! It's okay, it's okay..." Searching for something to fill the silence, Roll hummed the first song that came to mind.
Rockman visibly calmed at both of these actions, watching her for a peaceful two songs. He interrupted the start of a third. "Mm. Why is it so dark?"
"We are in the freezer."
Rockman frowned at this, his eyebrows furrowing. "Have I asked that already?"
"Yes. Three times."
Despite his physical state, Rockman chuckled. "Oh gosh. I apologize in advance if I ask again."
"Nn," Roll shook her head, encouraged the the length of and cognition of his apology, "I'll tell you as many times as you ask."
"Really?"
"Really."
Slowly, Rockman reached out his good hand. Roll clasped it with both of her own.
Rockman was miserable. Netto could tell. He could always tell. Rockman was his better half; they had no way of keeping secrets from one another. Why Rockman was trying to hide it was beyond his reasoning. It was a wasted effort, he could see right through it. Rockman... his Navi, his better half, his twin, was miserable and Netto could do nothing about it. Absolutely nothing. It was infuriating. When his older brother needed him most, he couldn't even do something as simple as hold Rockman's hand.
Netto was sitting curled in an office chair, arms hugging his legs close and chin resting on his knees. Rockman was two yards away, lying in a diagnostic chamber. For all intents and purposes it just looked like Rockman was lying on a table that had a convex, glass lid covering it, but the distance between them was far greater than two meters. Rockman wasn't on the table; he was in the wall it was connected to, in the computer. The Rockman in front of Netto was just a projection. It wasn't real. If he broke the glass (and he'd been giving that serious consideration for the last hour), it would disappear. He and Rockman were in two different worlds. Nothing could change that fact. He and Papa had spent countless hours devising ways for Rockman to come to them... but neither of them had a way to go to him. It was infuriating.
I did this.
More than a few times, Papa had tried to get him to leave. Papa kept repeating over and over to both of them that Rockman was going to be fine. He told Netto not to worry. He told Netto to go upstairs and get some work done. He told Netto to take a break and get some tea. He told Netto to go analyze his Bubble Generator to find the cause of this. He'd said all this and more, and Netto didn't heed a single word of it. Netto knew he wasn't helping anything by being here, but it was unthinkable to leave Rockman behind like this. Unthinkable.
From the moment he got up, it was clear Rockman was in no mood to answer anything more than yes or no questions. After a full morning of poking and prodding by Papa, even these simple answers turned into silent nods or head shakes. Now he was pale, his breathing was all funny, and Netto had a vague sense of nausea which was either due to worry, empathy, or something deeper between the two of them which he didn't want to contemplate. It was like a swarm of mice was gnawing at his insides. Plus, there was the whole fact that his right hand kept alternating between tingly and numb and he didn't trust himself enough to type anything. Unfortunately, this one really couldn't be brushed off as empathy or coincidence. It was unsettling, but he wasn't going to tell Papa. Papa would freak out. Papa always got this weird look on his face when Netto mentioned something new or strange about his link with Rockman, like he regretted giving them it. Netto couldn't imagine a world in which he wasn't linked to Rockman. He didn't want to imagine such a world. What was done was done; Papa couldn't take it back.
Watching his father pluck at a keyboard, Netto wondered how much more he could take. He hated this room. More than once he had sat in this very chair watching Papa try to revive Rockman into some state of consciousness. More than once he had lain on the second, identical table next to Rockman's and had been forcefully Cross Fused with his Navi piece by piece. Being here meant that he'd screwed up, that Rockman had taken the fall, and that one or both was them was paying the price. Today it was Rockman's turn to pay the toll in full, and the guilt was... just...
I did this. It's my fault.
Normally Rockman wasn't awake for these sessions. Normally he had the easier of the two scans; he didn't need to get hooked up to endless electrodes, didn't need blood taken. Today, neither of these were true, and it was driving Netto insane. He almost wished this was a Cross Fusion problem. That had an easy solution: re-Fusion. Getting re-Fused byte by byte was painful as hell, a stinging burn that spread slow as molasses, and the tube was totally claustrophobia-inducing, but Netto never complained. It was always, always his fault that their Fusion had failed or that Rockman had to take a hit. He deserved the pain. He was glad to endure it for Rockman... and would gladly endure it ten times over this instant if it would do Rockman any good. He felt like such a kid just sitting here watching Papa work. It was like going back in time about ten years, back when he didn't know a thing about Navi programming. He couldn't do anything for Rockman. Anything at all.
It's my fault and I can't do a thing for him.
When he was little and things were bad, he would make a tent out of his bedsheets and curl up with his PET and it was like they were alone in their own tiny world, just the two of them. Netto wished he could do that now. He wanted to run away, to hug his PET as close to his chest as possible, to apologize until the words made no sense anymore... but he knew that wouldn't help anything. His problems, much like he himself, had grown up. Hiding under sheets couldn't fix Rockman. He could tell Rockman, "It's okay, I'm here" as many times as he wanted, but it wasn't true; he was stuck outside the glass. He couldn't do anything.
The bar of light scanning its way repetitively up and down the contours of Rockman's body made another pass down. When it got to his shoulders, a sharp jolt struck Netto in his own right shoulder and shot down the length of his arm, right to the tip of his pinky finger. It was gone as soon as it'd come and left no real damage, but it startled him enough that he gasped and one of his heels slipped off the edge of his seat.
Papa missed the noise, but unfortunately the movement caught his eye and Netto couldn't hide his grimace in time. Papa drew a quick conclusion as to what this meant. In an instant was up, bending over the diagnostic tube. "Hang in there a bit longer, Rockman. I'm almost done, just a little more. Okay?"
Rockman's skin was now positively ashen. His shallow breathing had turned into no breathing, and on the light's commencement of another pass upwards, he exhaled a pitiful, "Papa..."
"Only a little bit longer. We're almost done, Rockman, just a bit more." Their father's worried gaze traveled over the tube to his second son. "Netto? Are you all-"
"I'm fine."
It was a lie, a complete and utter lie. Netto was at his breaking point. He couldn't watch any longer; he was going to be sick. Another soft, "It's okay, it's okay, it'll be over soon," from Papa, and nausea won out over his guilt. With a hurried excuse of, "Tea," he scrambled out of his chair and the door.
This was his fault. All of it, everything.. Netto had never been so glad to be alone in a hallway before; nobody saw his walk deteriorate, nobody saw him slump against the wall, and nobody heard him bash his head against the plaster. He built the Bubble Generator. He let Rockman use it. He let Rockman use it again the next day, when they both knew how stupid that was. Netto was an idiot, and had no way to fix this mistake.
...but he knew someone who could help. Last night he and Roll had both done full-body scans with the tools available to them, and his wife's Navi had found three more kilobytes of junk coding than his had. How she had done this was both astounding and beyond him, as his tools had come directly from Papa, the man who created Rockman. Papa hadn't said anything yet, but Netto was sure he would; his curiosity must be peaked, and so far they had yet to fully cure Rockman. She was going to be called in sooner or later, and now was starting to look like an ideal time. She, if nothing else, could be physically near him.
Unwilling to face his partners upstairs in the lab, Netto opted instead for a pay phone out in the lobby. It took him a minute to fish out a zenny card from his pockets (Rockman knew the numbers by heart) and another to dial the correct number (Rockman kept their contacts list). Nobody answered at home, so he tried (after two unsuccessful number combinations) Meiru's PET and was greeted by Roll.
"Oh hello, Netto-sa- Meiru-chan! Don't do that, it's heavy!"
"It is not," came his wife's voice. "Put me on."
"But..."
"Put me on or we'll never hear how Rockman is doing! Hurry up! The shorter this call is, the shorter I have to hold everything in one hand." Her Navi obliged, and Meiru's face filled the screen in front of him. "Netto! How is everything?"
Netto shrugged. Rockman wasn't in any immediate danger, true, but the condition in which he had just left his Navi... Searching for words to give the two worried women, he instead noticed the background behind his wife: blue sky. "Are you outside?"
"Huh? Oh, yes. I'm walking home from the market! Roll got us a very good deal on a chop of lamb... guess what we're having for dinner?" Meiru smiled, raising a handful of their reusable shopping bags into view.
"Lamb curry?!"
"Ding-ding-ding!" Meiru cheered a positive. "A biiiig pot!"
Today had been awful. Today was going to continue being awful. But at the end of this day his wife was going to be waiting at their happy little home with a heaping plate of his favorite dinner.
"I love you."
Meiru blushed at the compliment. "So... don't come home too late, okay? How are the repairs going?"
"So far no luck," Netto sighed. "Which is why I called. Can we borrow Roll?"
"Of course! Should she head down now?"
"Yeah, if-"
"I cannot," Roll interrupted, taking up half the screen. "I will come as soon as Meiru-chan is home and all the groceries are put away."
"Roooll, I can see our front door. It's fine."
"It is not! I will walk you-"
"Roll..."
"Okay, okay! We don't need her right this second, take your time!" Netto was inclined to agree with the Navi here; he would feel safest leaving his wife alone when she was home with all the doors locked and heavy kitchen items put away. All parties agreed, and with a few parting words the call was ended.
Netto headed back the way he'd come, stopping briefly at the front desk to warn Bob and the twins of their impending pink visitor and where to send her when she arrived. He needed to go back. Needed to hurry back. A realization was setting in that he had abandoned his Navi right as Papa's tests were going painfully downhill. Even if they needed Roll, how could he have just... why did he just...? Netto found himself running, an inexplicable panic propelling him down the hallway. As he got closer, raised voices confirmed his suspicions.
"No! Papa, stop it!" Rockman was yelling, pounding on the tube with his one good first for all he was worth.
Papa was bent in half over his desk, chair pushed aside and forgotten, typing furiously. "Rockman, it's okay, Calm-"
"No, please! Let me out! Papa...!"
"It's okay, hold-"
"What's going on?!" Frozen in the doorway at the scene that met his return, Netto found both his voice and feet and ran to his Navi.
"I don't know, he just-"
"Let me out!" Rockman pleaded, still fighting.
"Stop it! You're hurting him!" Netto shouted.
"No, the scan is almost-"
"Stop it! Let him out!" Netto roared, pounding on the glass himself.
"Netto, please, we need to-"
"No! Let him out!" His brother was trapped in that tiny little enclosed space being ripped apart and Papa wasn't even looking, "Let him out!", still typing and not stopping and it was getting difficult to breathe, "Let him out!", but Netto to knew what needed to be done and grabbed the wheeled chair he'd been sitting in earlier, raising it high-
"Netto, what are you doing?!"
"LET ME OUT!"
The chair crashed against the chamber with a horrible noise, Rockman disappeared from inside, Papa was running around it, and Netto slumped against it, breathing hard. The chair had been bounced off without so much as a single crack in the surface. He hadn't succeeded in forcing a plug-out; Papa must have plugged Rockman out.
"Netto... Netto look at me..."
Papa was pulling him away from the glass, grabbing his chin to look in his face. With a jolt of horror, Netto understood why. He had used the wrong pronoun: Let me out, not Rockman.
"Get off me! I'm fine." Netto struggled free of his father's grip.
"Netto...!"
"I'm fine!" he growled. It was a lie. His pulse and breathing were still racing, and the unnecessary volume was a total give-away. "Where- where's Rockman?"
"Here," came a muffled reply. On the screen on Papa's computer, Rockman was slowly picking himself up into a sit on the virtual representation of the table he'd been laying on a moment earlier. "I'm okay." This was also an obvious lie; he chose to get up facing away, his posture held a heavy slouch, and his voice was the exact opposite of his Operator's, almost too soft to be heard.
"Boys, I am... I just..." Papa was at a loss. "I am so sorry. We'll try something else. I'm so sorry. I promise I won't..." He ran a hand through his messy bangs. "Let me go to my office and get... I think I can... Stay here, I'll be right back."
He left, silence filling his wake. When sure he was a distance gone, Netto shuffled around the empty tube, kicking his fallen chair out of the way. Papa had left Rockman's PET here, right next to the keyboard. There was going to be no more of this. They were done.
"Rockman. Let's bail."
No response.
"Come on," Netto repeated. "Plug out. We're leaving."
"Papa said stay."
"Screw that! Plug-ou-"
"Papa said stay!"
"Aaagh!" With a growl of frustration, Netto plonked down in Papa's chair. Fine! If Rockman wasn't going to leave, then he wasn't either. There was no way in hell he was going to leave his Navi alone with Papa again and who knew what their father was planning to do now that his fears about their link had been stirred up. Netto ran his hands through his own messy hair, mindful of the similarity in action and appearance; when long and unkempt, his bangs grew kind of like his father's. He missed his old headband.
"Um, sorry to intrude?"
Roll!
"Oh thank goodness," Netto sighed. He waved her towards the blue Navi; she seemed timid to approach Rockman and Netto didn't have the heart to explain.
"Rockman?" The Navi in question made no acknowledgement of her presence. She walked a wide path around the table and stopped in front of him. "...Rockman?"
When one of her pink gloves moved into his downcast gaze, his head shot up. "Roll-chan!" he gasped. With no warning, he grabbed her around the middle and pulled her into a tight hug. "I thought I was..." The rest of his sentence was lost into her shoulder. With him sitting and her standing, she was a full head taller.
If Roll, facing Netto's point of view, was surprised by this action she did not show it. She returned his hug, and for a good while just held him and hummed a faint song. Eventually, a one-sided (for Netto, who couldn't hear Rockman) conversation was started.
"What happened?"
...
"What was he scanning for?"
...
"Why would that hurt?!"
...
"Yes, it's okay..."
...
"No, I won't..."
"Boys, I'm- oh, Roll!" Papa reappeared through the open door, his greeting cut short. "Just who I wanted to see! Did Netto call you? I'm glad!"
"Hello, ojisan." Roll's greeting was much more curt. She gave Rockman a small pat, "Rockman?", and they separated from one another. "How may I help?"
"I've got a few questions about the analysis you ran," he answered. "But first, I need to see to Rockman."
Almost on reflex, Netto scooped up his PET.
"Netto, I'm not going to hurt him anymore, all right? Listen! I've got a real-time diagnostic tool here..." Papa held up a tiny flash drive. "We'll install it onto his arm and all it will do is passively monitor his program as he uses the arm. After a day or two we'll compile the data and go from there, okay? It may slow down the arm's response time, but it won't hurt, I promise. I promise. Rockman? Is this acceptable?"
Netto shared a skeptical look with Roll. Roll tilted her head down to do the same with Rockman, then returned to him and gave a tiny nod. If Rockman was okay with it, Netto supposed he had little say in the matter. He nodded an okay to his father as well.
"Good, good. Netto, may I have your PET? Rockman, plug-out, you'll need to reboot after I download it."
"Go on," Roll murmured softly. "I'll wait here."
Netto relinquished both PET and chair to his father. Now was his turn to watch over Rockman; Roll couldn't see what Papa was doing out here to the PET and- a sniff caught his attention. Roll was crying.
"Roll?" both men echoed each other.
"Is he shut-down?" she mouthed with no sound. When she got a yes, her shoulders slumped with a sigh and she buried her face in her hands.
"What's wrong, dear?" Papa asked, momentarily forgetting the task at hand.
"I'm okay, I'm okay. Please keep working."
"But..."
"It's just...yesterday I said I'd stay with him, you know? He asked me not to leave, a-and..."
"And it should've been fine, because I was here," Netto interrupted her. "I'm the one who left, Roll. I didn't..." with a begrudging glance at his father he edited this to, "We didn't know this was going to happen. But he's going to be fine... right Papa?"
"Yes. We'll sort him out. He'll be up again in a minute; can I plug him back in, or would you like a moment?"
With two hard swipes Roll batted away all the evidence of her tears. Her resolve was visible. "I am okay. Please plug him in."
So Rockman was brought back and laid down upon the table with some apprehension until Roll jumped on as well to sit beside him. The "monitor" Papa had described manifested itself as two red rings around Rockman's wrist and arm, and as the program was initialized thin red lines- one up from the wrist along the inside of the arm, another down from the shoulder along the outside- slowly traveled to connect both rings. When asked, Rockman admitted it to be unpleasant but tolerable. While these lines loaded, Roll kept up a constant dialog.
"...and I was talking to our neighbor Ramen about the festival next weekend and it turns out his Operator is running a fried noodle stand! I told you he was named "Ramen" for a reason... and he says it's to die for, so I told him we'd make sure to stop by. Ooh, and Netto-san? Meiru-chan bought a new kimono- or rather, we got a deal on one at the end of last summer- to wear, but you know... it's not going to fit now, so please, whatever she decides to wear instead tell her she looks beautiful!"
All three men laughed at this.
"It's a disappointment, but I'll manage," Netto answered.
These last three days had been miserable, particularly for Rockman. But now, for the first time in three days, Rockman was smiling... and even though he had played zero role in that, Netto couldn't be happier.
Roll was a patient Navi.
…but even her patience had its limits. She turned to look at the row of clocks above the security kiosk; on each clock, regardless of the time zone, four minutes and twenty-two seconds had passed since she last checked.
"Where is he?"
True, her own antennae had deemed Rockman healthy enough to go to work this morning, but letting him leave had been like pulling teeth. She didn't want him to go; the last time her antennae said he was perfectly fine he ended up almost melting into oblivion. She didn't trust her scans. And even though she'd watched him like a hawk on Saturday and Sunday and he did look better, she didn't trust appearances either. Rockman, like Netto, had a tendency to hide, ignore, or brush off his problems as nothing serious. But to deny his problems to the point of melting…
Roll bit down on her lip and scanned the crowd again for signs of blue. Nothing blue popped out at her; Rockman wasn't here yet.
He said he was fine. He said he wanted to go to work. He said he wouldn't overexert himself today. He said she would be the first to know if something happened. And, more than anything else, he told her not to worry. In her defense, she had listened to him. For a full hour, anyway. Then panic had set in, and three e-mails later she had forcefully set up a lunchtime meeting to check on him. Now she was here... and he wasn't.
Another clock check: only two minutes. The crowd here was larger than usual, what with security being tightened after last week's incident, and a check-in line of sorts was forming by- There! A flash of blue with a yellow accent; Rockman!
"Rockmaaan!" she called, waving. A step behind came someone taller, red... Blues?!
"Yes. I understand."
Normally, Rockman found Blues much more intimidating.
"Mm-hmm."
And normally, the tone Blues was currently directing towards him was met with meek compliance. But not today. Today Blues was the last in a long series of annoyances that was stretching Rockman out like taffy, and his patience was worn to its breaking point. He knew what Blues was here for. He knew what his orders were. Knew what the warnings were going to be, what the consequences would be, what he and Netto now faced.
"Rockmaaan!"
And now he was going to forget all that for the next hour because Blues was leaving and Roll was here, past the security checkpoint waving her entire arm at him. Her smile was the best thing he'd seen all day.
"Her too. Understood?"
"I get it, Blues."
Roll offered Blues a small bow as they drew near. "Aah, um, good afternoon Blues! Is everything going well?"
"Yes, thank you. If you'll excuse me..."
"Oh, um- just a minute! I need to tell you..." Blues stopped, turned, and Roll shrank a little under his visored stare. "I know it's still summer, but Yaito-chan is planning an elaborate trip to Jawaii for the winter holidays. Just a warning... she's going to stop at nothing to get Ijuuin-san there, at least for Christmas Eve. I... I thought you should know."
Blues's stare was enigmatic as always. "I shall endeavor to keep Enzan-sama's schedule open." With a faint cough he turned away again, muttered, "Thank you," and pixelated to nothing.
"Was that... was... he laughing?! Uwah, I do not understand that Navi..."
Truth be told Rockman didn't either, and didn't want to. All he wanted was to disappear with Roll into their little secluded camera (he'd lied in his report and written the location of another, newer one with roughly the same viewing area) and do nothing but watch the clouds with her. It was raining today.
"Come on." He grabbed her hand.
The line to get in was at least 8 long, being held up by the Navi at front. It was a female humanoid with a long iridescent skirt and a single, asymmetrical plume of a feather on her helmet... and a giant, three-pronged trident in her hands.
"It's my default weapon, I can't- what would I do with it, I work with the janitorial department!"
But Yin and Yang were not letting her in with it, and Rockman wasn't in the mood to wait. The twins knew who he was; if they remembered Roll from the other week was anybody's guess. He brushed his way through the middle of this quarreling trio with a, "She's family, it's fine," which was met with confusion but no real objection so he carried onward. Pulled and keeping an obedient step behind, Roll bowed a quick apology.
"Rockman, what-"
"Come on."
The first stop was the lab. Predictably, Netto wasn't around when needed. George was though, and he could relay the message just as well.
"Iwamoto-san."
"What's up, Rock- ooh, Roll-chan is here, eeh?"
The playful smile was not returned. "If you see Netto-kun, tell him to shut up. He'll know what it means."
He turned on his heel to leave, giving Roll a tug. She bowed another apologetic goodbye.
They continued in silence up two floors until Roll timidly spoke up. "Rockman. You're pulling me."
"What? I- oh." He stopped and let go. "Sorry."
"Nn-nn," Roll shook her head negative, indicating no harm was done. She stepped beside him and they continued their walk. "Is everything okay?"
"Yeah." He didn't really have the energy (and had been forbidden in some cases) to explain.
"Are you sure? Netto hasn't pushed you too hard today, right?"
"Oh, no. We think our problem with the Bubble Generators is somewhere in the log-in process, so all I've been doing is logging in and out all day."
"Is that safe?!" Roll asked, aghast.
"Yes, yes," he reassured," it's just... a lengthy process to repeat over and over." Obnoxious to the point of insanity was a better description, but Roll didn't need to know that. "It would be faster if we could actually work. The Net Police are still asking questions about our incident report... and we had a minor hiccup when a construction worker happened to walk past and see me in a Bubble... he thought we were under attack from a Dimensional Area and ran... and of course Netto-kun chased after him..." That memory in particular made him want to wearily rub at his eyes, but he refrained knowing the outcome would be frustrating. "And this brace isn't helping matters any. The response time of my arm is 15% slower than normal and you would not believe how incredibly difficult that makes typing! I can't sync them so I've been doing everything one-handed, and..."
He words died as they reached their destination. Where had that rant come from? He'd been hoping to get away from it all and forget, but somehow had just told Roll everything. Why did she always have that effect on him? There was no time to ponder this or be embarrassed by it, as Roll was now taking last step into the camera's glowing portal and disappeared.
"Sit," she commanded when they were both in.
"Aah, okay? I'll just turn on the screen firs-"
"Sit!" She grabbed his shoulders and pushed, forcing him down. She sat behind him, a choice he did not understand and questioned until she barked, "Shush! Just sit." She hadn't let go of his shoulders yet, and began to alternate between squeezing and letting go.
Was this... a massage? Rockman didn't see the point; as a Net Navi, he had no muscles which would benefit from such. But Roll kept at it. Pressure and release, pressure and release... the rhythm of it was, in fact, quite relaxing. She made her way down his shoulders to his shoulder blades, worked around the pack on his back, and then up and focused a slow attention down his bad arm, bending and stretching it out. This in particular felt nice, as he had kept this arm immobile almost all day. It was hard not to melt under her touch. His exhaustion was catching up with him.
Roll noticed. She always did. "Would you like to lie down a bit?" she hummed.
"No, I'm okay... I just..."
But Roll moved to sit beside him, and guided his head to her shoulder. Too tired to be abashed about this closeness, he nodded off before he could even thank her.
A small sound brought Rockman back from nothingness. At least he thought there'd been a noise. It was quiet now, and Rockman was willing to pretend he'd imagined it if it meant he could go back to sleep. Fatigue still weighed heavily on his body; judging by this and how slowly he was booting up, he could tell he was not inside his PET. This wasn't a particularly worrying fact (or rather, it was too much effort to be concerned), it just meant he would need a few seconds more than normal to fully activate. At the moment, however, his first inclination was to let the nothingness take him again. This too was unusual; he rarely woke up in the middle of the night on his own. Something or someone must have woken him just now. Vaguely he realized this should be a cause for worry, but again it was hard to muster the energy to do so. If he trusted his voice enough to speak (which he didn't), he would tell this mysterious noise-maker to give him five more minutes to sleep. It was a phrase Netto used often and, though Rockman himself had never once said it, seemed appropriate in this situation.
Netto. At the thought of this name, an electric shiver went down Rockman's entire body. Without really knowing how or why he knew it, somewhere in the recesses of his mind he could tell that Netto was awake. This was troubling. Rockman had only ever encountered two scenarios in which he was asleep when Netto was not: either he was injured and undergoing repairs or had received an upgrade that required shut-down. Senses coming to, he could tell he was on his side. This was normal, as the pack on his back made lying flat uncomfortable... but his head was laying at too much of an upright angle to be on the floor, and a softness that was not his futon was beneath him. Cracking open his eyes, one saw an old-fashioned wallpaper and the other blurry-because-it-was-too-close black and hot pink. Black and hot... pink...
Twisting his neck, Rockman found himself staring into Roll's upside-down face.
"It's hard to reboot remotely, isn't it?" she sympathized. "Don't rush getting up. Take all the time you need."
He was on her lap. He hadn't meant to fall asleep, especially not asleep on top of Roll. When had this happened? How did it happen? How were Roll's legs so soft and why was he thinking this sort of thing when he should be getting off-
"Oh!" Roll gasped and, still resting on her legs, Rockman could feel her small twitch of surprise.
This was the prod that he needed, and he jumped up. "What's wrong?"
Roll point ahead of her; she had turned on the camera and the wall in front of them was filled with today's stormy skies. "Thunder!"
Settling in to a more comfortable sit out of her line of vision and hoping his face wasn't beet red, Rockman questioned this proclamation. "Thunder? How can you tell? This camera's only got video, no sound."
"Oh..." Roll mumbled sheepishly. "Lightning, I meant. I've only ever heard thunder, so I guess I got them confused."
"Wait... you..." he gaped at the pink Navi, a truth dawning upon him. "You've never seen lightning before?"
"Never live," she answered, still scanning the sky for more. "Meiru-chan's never been too fond of thunderstorms, so we usually stay away from windows."
"But... never? Gosh," he blinked, struggling to grasp this idea. "Netto-kun was very different, he pointed my PET at... well... everything!"
Roll agreed with a giggle. "That's so like him to try and include you in everything. So you've seen a lot of thun- lightning?"
"Yeah! Especially up here in this camera, it's got a much wider view than my PET."
Roll drew her knees up, clasped her hands around, and rested her cheek upon them to face him. "Aah, lucky! What kind of things have you seen?"
Her smile grew with each story he told, and he racked his brain trying to think of everything he'd encountered: a snow storm that covered everything, eventually even the camera lens; an ice storm that turned the bare trees into a crystal web; a typhoon where the trees were blown almost horizontal...
"...and last year in June, right when all the rain stopped? There was a rainbow that went from one side," he motioned the left side of the screen and made an wide arc across the length, "aaall the way to the other, the brightest I've ever seen!"
"Uwaah! Did you take a picture?!"
"No, unfortunately. This is a security camera, so..."
"Aah, so taking a screen cap would be compromising," Roll sighed, understanding but still downcast. "I would have loved to see it."
"Next time you can."
"Eeh?"
"Next time! If it happens, I'll come get you." Nobody knew that he was bringing her here and she was by no means a threat to their security. It would be easy to make this happen, provided that another rainbow would spring up sometime and he could get her here before it dissipated.
Roll gave him a blank look. "Really?" Then a big smile. "Really?! Oh, that would be wonderful!"
"Of course!" He chuckled at her enthusiasm. "What else would you like to see?"
Taken aback at the enormity and possibilities of this question, Roll turned again to look outside. "Maybe snow? And... and not a typhoon, that sounds scary. Ooh, a sunset! The sun must set in this direction in the Winter, right? And maybe a day when you can see the moon during the daytime... and..."
Rockman let her ramble, a fondness growing inside him. Who knew making her happy could make him so happy? When her ideas grew beyond the range of a mental note, he interrupted her with a full blown laugh. "Roll-chan, you need to write down a list! You can cross off "Gray and Drizzly with a Chance of Thunderstorms"."
"Are you teasing me?" she pouted, her cheeks puffing out a bit.
"Not at all!" he waved his hands in a sign of surrender. "It's just..." he too turned to regard the outside world, "...the weather is never exactly the same twice, you know? There's something nice or different about every day."
"Aah, yes. I suppose there's no way to see it all," Roll admitted. "Sorry."
"Don't be sorry, of course there is!" he smiled again.
"Eh?"
"It's easy," he shrugged. It was a simple solution. "We come here every day."
"E-every...?" Roll stumbled.
"Why not? If we're not busy, that is."
"B-but... every..."
The two of them went back and forth debating the logistics and merits and even long after she left and much mulling over it, Rockman still couldn't figure out why such a plain suggestion had caused Roll to get so pink in the face and tongue-tied.