[Summary]
An ambitious rewriting of MMBN 1~6 in the span of 8 arcs. A complete reinterpretation of the main story takes Rockman into deep dark places full of pain and suffering.
Netto x Rockman
Broken spirit leads to madness
Darkness of heart breeds monsters
The need for a soul
Pursuit of eternal life
Everyone's perverted desires for Rockman
My dearest Netto kun,
Come and see
Touch and believe
I am right here
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[Notes]
This is my first work. It was a nice writing exercise. The first arc is finished and uploaded as a bulk submission. The intention is to upload by arc, not chapters. In this way, any inconsistencies in the content will be ironed out before becoming public.
The plan:
Ch.1~7 Saito, Rockman, sweet child
Ch.8~26 The dream virus and the god of navis
Ch.27~51The Gospel and the man-eating navis
Ch.52~The Proto and something wearing Hikari Tadashi's skin
Ch. Duo and the mania for eternal life.
Ch. Dark Rockman, the moira of flesh
Ch. Cybeasts, the hope of pain and tears
Ch. Aristeia, the sacrifice, and nostos
If the reading of this work brings you pleasure, then my joy will be immeasurable. I sincerely pray that it is the case.
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Chapter 1: 20XX
Let us synchronize the time clock. It was 20XX. About one generation's worth of time ago, which is 40 earth-years, there were two great scientists leading the academic and political scenes of the most renowned Scilab of Den city. One was the illustrious Dr. Tadashi Hikari and the other the now most infamous Dr. Wily. Both were once colleagues with a healthy competitive relationship and made great contributions to their respective fields. It became clear, after many years, that because the advancement in technology both made was so great, the funding required for the next step in their projects grew so exponentially, that Scilab could not possibly support the works of both simultaneously any longer.
Dr. Tadashi specialized in the field of network. His vision was that of the future in which the world was connected by the internet system. Dr. Wily specialized in the field of robotics. His vision was that of the future in which the world found companions in his robotic creations. Over the limited resources of the Scilab the two minds fought, as bitterly as the proceedings would allow them. Considering the most intricate technological requirements of robots coupled with the outrageous funding projections by Dr. Wily, the board eventually voted in favor of Dr. Tadashi's vision of the future. In a fit of rage, Dr. Wily quit the Scilab with his followers, despite the reconciliatory offers of the other party, and retired. A mind as brilliant as Dr. Wily surely had offerings of positions from other organizations. The military was always interested in automatization of weapons systems and would've surely welcomed the addition of his talents. The heavy industry and manufacturing were also areas in which the demand for better robotized production lines was high, and would've paid a substantial sum of money to have Dr. Wily working for them. Yet he was found to be partaking in none of those fields. We can only infer why this was so, based on the documents from the archives of Scilab, which contain his original proposal that competed with that of Dr. Tadashi and then got rejected: he envisioned the creation of humanoid robots, not for the slavery, but for the companionship. He was a true romanticist, chasing hopelessly unrealistic dreams using public funds. World did not work like this; a project that did not result in the increase in the productivity was ultimately a burden to the society.
When a visionary such as he felt betrayed by the world, there were only two paths available: one of forgiveness and blessing of his enemies, and the other of complete vengence. A vengence that resulted in the thorough ruination of the one responsible for his fall. A vengence that rivaled the story of the Count Monte Cristo in magnitude. There were also murmurs in the Scilab, at the time of ousting of Dr. Wily, about how Dr. Tadashi framed and tarnished the reputation of his rival in order to politically dislodge him and gain a firm control over the Scilab council. Some rumors went as far as saying Dr. Wily never made such unrealistic proposals, but were erroneously driven out under false pretenses. Of course, many of such gossips should be taken with much skepticism, for people love to distort what they hear for the sake of more stimulating conversations. Most of them were probably not true, but at the same time, do smokes really come out of a chimney that has a cold fireplace? There had to be a morsel of truth in them-by how much was difficult to determine. At any rate, the combining of all clues allowed any logical mind to deduce what probably had transpired in the labyrinthine mind of Dr. Wily: he was out there seeking vengence.
Could any of those scandalous murmurs have been true? Dr. Tadashi passed away soon after due to the quick deterioration of his health. Sure, he had an appearance of a Santa Claus, with a big fluffy white beard and a large beer belly, but he was a man of academia, not a man of manual labor. His passing was deemed too soon and unexpected, even if he had a bad liver with hypertension and diabetes mellitus type II. Perhaps the karma came back to his head and struck him down. Perhaps Dr. Wily was right.
Dr. Tadashi, fortunately, had a son to succeed him-enter Dr. Yuichiro Hikari. Perchance, Dr. Tadashi knew something others did not, for by the time of his death, he already had the ground paved for the stable succession of power. Dr. Yuichiro was accepted as the new leader of the Tadashi supporters without much resistance. He also walked in the footsteps of his father and picked up his father's work on the network and internet. An apple not so far from its tree, Yuichiro as a scientist was unanimously recognized as unrivaled in his genius. With his lead, the world was ushered into the new age in which everyone was connected through this virtual world his father created and he perfected.
Then, Dr. Yuichiro took a strange turn in the direction of his works. He introduced a new race of artificial intelligence to help people navigate this vast uncharted territory that was the cyber world, and called them 'net navigators,' netnavi or navi as shorthand. His work resembled the vision of Dr. Wily too much, and many of his supporters became uncomfortable enough with this sudden development that they openly retracted their support for Yuichiro in the council. A schism was formed and Dr. Yuichiro lost the supermajority support that he had enjoyed up until this moment.
It was around this time that he married a beautiful girl named Haruka and begot two sons-monozygotic twins. In the honor of the work of his father, he named them Saito (Site) and NettoNet, in the order they were born. The joy of fatherhood gave him a consolation from the recent passing of his father, and the setbacks he experienced in the Scilab.
By heavens! A blessing and then a misfortune. Truly, God gives and then takes away; must he always? It did not take long for the couple to realize something was wrong with their firstborn, Saito. As an infant, he was unconsolable and highly irritable. He did not eat regularly and preferred to sleep. He was lagging behind in weight and height gain. The only developmental milestones he kept up with were the language, hearing, and social ones. When Saito was only 3 months old, he had already went through a complete panel of diagnostic tests from the Den city hospital. The cardiologist assinged to the case of Saito was Dr. S. His name was something along the line of Sando, or Sanda, or perhaps Sano. It does not matter in this narrative, and we shall simply call this physician as Dr. S. After all tests, includng mildly intrusive ones, all he could tell the Hikari family was that the results were inconclusive, and that he suspected something was wrong with the infant's heart. He could not rule out structural reasons. Perhaps the anatomical defect was hidden by the still communicating foramen ovale of the heart (a hole that connects right and left atria of the infant heart. Closes in 6 mo~ 1 yr). He also could not rule out the problems of the heart conduction pathway. EKG during one of the episodes of Saito's fit showed some tachyarrythmia that appeared to be of supraventricular origin. The poor Dr. S. was doing his best, but the impression the Hikari family received was that of incompetance. When furious Haruka demanded the change of physician to the hospital administration after the meeting, she soon found out that it was physically impossible to do so as the department of cardiology was severely understaffed, and none of the other doctors in the department had any experience with pediatric patients. The hospital then tried to defend its honor by making an argument of how excellent a physician Dr. S was (he is not), and that if he could not help Saito, then no other instutitions would be able to. Hospital services usually did not enter a heated verbal exchange with its complainant, but such was how furious Haruka was. At any rate, she abandoned the idea of going to someone else for the health of Saito and decided to stick with the Den city hospital.
It took another 6 months before exasperated Dr. S sent an order to the lab for a complete karyotype scan to see if the cause was anything genetic other than the well known ones, which were routinely screened. Luckily for him, the direction of investigation was right, and Saito's diagnosis was confirmed as HBD. Ah, the satisfaction of completing the puzzle! Dr. S became a little proud of himself. He gave himself a pat in the back with this blatantly untrue idea: he was the best doctor alive! (again, he isn't).
The first meeting with the Hikari family after Dr. S made a diagnosis was a complete disaster. He first began with much excitement and pride that he finally figured it out: Hikari Saito had HBD! He also did not forget to add that it was an extremely rare disease, was genetic, and that there was nothing he could do to definitely cure the boy. Only an extremely insulated lifestyle combined with medications that only addressed the symptoms were in his power to prescribe. Yuichiro might not be a medical doctor, but he needed not be versed in jargons to understand what 'extremely rare disease' meant. It meant no cure, extremely expensive experimental treatments, and unaffordable medications with dubious effects that were not covered by any insurance. It additionally meant Saito was doomed. His boy was doomed, but whose fault was this? What had this little being that did not yet know good from evil done, so that he had to be struck with such a fate? This could not be true. Netto was fine, and he was a monozygotic twin. Saito and Netto shared the same genetic code down to the telomeres. If Netto was healthy, then the doctor had to be wrong. This was clearly a mistake.
In response, Dr. S explained that the genetic code alone was not enough to guarantee the expression of some diseases, and HBD was one of such cases. He speculated that in the womb, during the development, Saito and Netto competed for the resources, for they shared a placenta, and either Saito yielded too much to Netto or Netto took too much and left little for Saito. Indeed, at birth Saito's weight was already less than that of Netto. Good news was Netto was to be a perfectly healthy boy in the future with no risk of HBD occuring. None of this reached the couple. The Hikaris were angry, at the fate, at the God, at the world, and the fury was projected onto Dr. S. They denied this could be true. They stuck with their rationale that since Netto was healthy and Saito shared his brother's DNA, the diagnosis of HBD was faulty. Dr.S could not do anything but surrender, with a promise to screen Saito's karyotype again. The next meeting was scheduled.
Second meeting was mildly better in that Dr. S was no longer harrassed. He was a rude elitist looking down at all who are medically uneducated, including his patients, but he had his share of woes. One of the doctors at the department of cardiology had to leave his post for a week, and Dr. S consequently had to fill the vacancy by taking up the night shift duty every two days. At this point he was not so sure whether he was drinking coffee or coffee was drinking him. At any rate, the Hikaris...they bargained. It was not a haggling commonly seen in a market, but involved asking the same question (but rephrased every time) to the physician over and over again, in hopes of finding a procedure that would save Saito's life. Dr. Yuichiro Hikari being an erudite scientist did not help either, because he apparently read well over 100 HBD-related literatures in hope of finding something for his son. In fact, he started asking sharp questions that Dr. S had much trouble answering. He was a practicing clinician; he had long forgotten the biochemistry of the pathophysiology of HBD. The discussion did not change the fact: Saito had a phenotypically expressed form of HBD and that he was destined to live a limited life of suffering. When this cold fact sank in, after 40 minutes of heated discussion, Haruka finally lost her composure. She covered her face and cried as if the world was going to end. This ended the heated argument between Dr. Yuichiro and Dr. S, because no speech had meaning before the crying woman. Haruka was impossible to console, and she shed tears all the way home.
Haruka refused to speak to anyone for a full day, including her husband, even though he came back home early because he was worried about his wife, the love of his life, and their sons, who were potentially neglected in their mother's depression. The next day, Haruka was resolved. She accepted what was given to her and her diseased son, and was determined to give Saito the best life he could have, with much care and insulation, until he was no more. What could Yuichiro do other than agreeing to this only solution? Well...
Little did Haruka know that Yuichiro went to church regularly to pray during the last six months. There were much begging and pleading to God, even making promises of sacrifice, on the condition that the God saved Saito. He believed that he experienced something extraordinary and miraculous during this time, but now he was no longer certain. He accepted those signs as an answer to his prayers, and believed that Saito would live. After the diagnosis, he felt those had been his imaginations. His faith left him as quickly as it came. Then, an idea flashed in his mind. An idea so depraved that it could not be spoken aloud, yet so tempting that it could drive a man into a total madness. He found hope in the netnavi project he had been pushing forward. Perhaps, with time, and if Saito survived a few more years, then he could...
See, the acceptance of Saito's impending death never came to Yuichiro. As he agreed with Haruka that the couple would do everything they could do to give their son the best life possible, there was a fire glowing in his eyes. It was a passion in his soul-a passion for the blasphemous scheme he was developing-reflected in his eyes, for they are the lamp of the body. Haruka did not notice this. She held Saito in her arm. Saito smiled at her, and she smiled back. She hypnotized herself with a spell as old as humanity itself: 'It will be okay. All will be okay.'