Chapter Text
Trepidation was a familiar feeling to Dr. Light. He'd felt it before onlining every one of his creations, and his children. As he walked into his lab and wheeled out each slab on that new-moon night, his trepidation had reached levels he hadn't felt since refitting Rock into a super fighting robot, Megaman. The starlight that came in through the long revival lab's far off window barely crawled beyond the steel panes. The tubelike space was lit only by rows upon rows of dull green lights that formed cluttered patterns on every surface. Their blinking resembled moving swarms of insects, interspersed by small explosions of yellow when Light passed by. One by one, he pressed the yellow square at the end of each medical slab. The room flooded with a wave of steady and blinding green, then descended into the darkness of the moonless sky. Then, two by two, thirty-four andro-emotive optical arrays powered on.
Too soft scrabbling sounds cluttered the room while carefully articulated manual digits performed their reset actions like discoördinated tarantulas. Processors percolated loudly before cooling down into sleep mode, some accompanied by softly whirring fans. High performance engines and rotary bits rumbled dangerously. A few legs spasmed, a few helmets clanked against steel with dead faces while testing rotation, and finally every voice broke. The sound grew from soft to deafening with each climbing arpeggio, until separately, perhaps a minute of screaming apart, each machine went completely limp. Only a soft LED light buried in each right foot proved that these seventeen robots were finally reborn.
Dr. Light turned to leave but found Rock standing in the doorway, face pulled in the look of frightened disgust that Light had programmed to accompany such a spectacle as this. The doctor sighed and put a large hand on his son's shoulder.
"The boot sequence on a new body is always scary," Light said.
"So they're not hurt?" Rock said.
"No. They'll be just fine. We should both go back to bed now. They'll be awake in the morning. And who knows at what time? That will be a surprise based on their I.C. chips."
This assurance brought a smile to Rock's face. He nodded. "Yeah. They get to be themselves. Free from Wily's programming."
"Good. Now, be sure to recharge your batteries. We will have some confused robots to deal with in the morning, I'm sure." Dr. Light patted Rock's shoulder, and then let out an infectious yawn. Rock rubbed his optical array in the way he'd learned from watching his father, and before he knew it, he was laid in his padded recharge chamber as the array powered down.
--
"Good morning, Mega Man!" A deep voice raced into Rock's processor, impatient but confident.
Rock onlined his cameras and then his eyes. After readjusting focus thrice, the view of something far too close to his lenses finally came into focus. There was a face hovering directly above his, lined in red. It was so close that he could feel the red armour's EM field racing right into his own, noses almost touching. The bright blue eyes fixed on Rock's own were gleaming with barely caged glee. It took Rock far too long to recognise Quick Man's face even when he saw the golden crest.
Rock rolled to the side, and kicked at the bot leaning over his cushion-lined canoe of a recharge chamber. The wires plugged into his neck snapped out from the force of his movement, but his foot didn't come into contact with any plating. Instead, by the time Rock had taken appraisal of his entire room to form an escape route Quick was already blocking the door, arms crossed.
"C'mon, is that any way to treat me? I was just trying to be friendly, say good morning, say I'm sorry for attacking you and all. Really and truly." Quick's hips and lips both cocked when he smirked.
"Well, you...!" Rock took a deep synthetic breath just to stop himself. He couldn't be the first one to blow up at Wily's robot masters. No : the robot masters formerly under the control of Dr. Wily. Each of them deserved a second chance just like Cut, Guts, Ice, and the whole gang. They'd been living with a really bad role model, and he couldn't hold that against them. Quick Man just didn't know he'd done something awkward.
Rock tried again, making sure to smile and ease himself out of a combat stance so that he was simply sitting on the windowsill above his recharger, hands non-confrontationally on his knees. "Quick Man, good morning, but you're not supposed to go into someone's room without asking."
"Oh, I'm not?" Quick looked up to the side for a moment as his shoulders shrugged. Rock couldn't tell if he was being flippant or actually considering the information. "The door wasn't locked."
"We don't have to lock doors around here. Everyone's safe."
"Yeah, well, it's 5:00 on the dot, so I figured you should be up anyway."
"I'm... usually up a bit later? Dr. Light doesn't wake up until seven."
"But there's so much for us to do, Mega Man!" Quick's arms uncrossed and his fingers spread in joy. "We definitely—"He was about to speak more when Rock's surprise interrupted him.
"Us? No, wait, Quick Man, you and the other robot masters have to do a lot of catching up today. Dr. Light has some educational lectures you all need to hear, and you need to adjust to your civilian restructuring with special training. After that, we can do something together, I promise!"
"That'll all be over today, right?" Quick's foot was softly tapping.
"Probably a few weeks?"
"Ugh! I can't waste my time sitting around listening to another doctor's lectures." Quick's foot became fast and loud. "You understand, don't you, Mega Man? Light will too." The bot disappeared in a blur of red.
"It's Rock!" Rock called after the after-image in his processors that was immediately supplemented by Quickman reappearing in the door.
"Okay! I'll see you again, Rock," Quick Man promised with another pleased leer. Then he was gone again.
Rock was not entirely impressed with how the robot masters were acting so far. Yet he reminded himself to not judge every one of them on Quick Man, of all bots. It was just a bad start to the day, and he had fifteen other people to meet. Surely they couldn't all be so bad. It was only five in the morning. Dr. Light screamed surprisingly loudly at the end of the hallway.
By the time Rock had arrived in Light's room, the scientist was pulling on a crumpled shirt over his tank top and slacks. Before buttoning it up, he wagged a finger at Quick Man, who stood powerless at the oak bed's base board, looking truly put out.
"...have an expectation of privacy!" Dr. Light said with as much disapproval as his furrowed brows could match.
"I know what privacy is, doc." Quick Man was looking to the side, arms crossed tighter than ever.
"That's Doctor Light, and if you know what privacy is, you should know why you don't barge into a man's room while he's sleeping and shake him awake!"
"Oh hi, Rock!" Quick Man noticed Rock's arrival before Light did, and he sent the boy robot a genuine smile.
"Why, ah, good morning, Rock. Did I wake you?"
"No," Rock responded with a shake of his messy hair. "Quick Man woke me up just a minute ago too. I told him not to go into other people's rooms without permission."
"Oh. Oh, that," Quick looked between the two of them and gave another shrug while feebly widening his smile. "You see, I thought that rule only applied to humans."
"It applies to everyone."
"Sorry, Rock. You see, Dr. Light, Rock was also telling me earlier, as I was trying to tell you, that you have some sort of time-intensive regimen planned for us, and I just can't handle that, you see? So if you could just give me the important points right now, I could—"
"No!" Dr. Light raised his voice, then huffed out though his nose. "I want all of you to learn together as a team. You've already proven that you have so much to learn about what it means to live in a human society and, ah, I think it's going to be a very difficult curriculum indeed."
Footsteps raced loudly down the hall until Roll and Air Man stopped outside of Dr. Light's room. They were a strange pair standing together, but they wore identical looks of concern.
"Is everyone all right?" Roll asked. She was quickly scanning Dr. Light for casualties, and immediately relieved to find none.
"We're quite fine, Roll, if a bit perturbed," Light answered.
"I apologise for not waiting in the lab, sir," Airman said, "but I heard screaming and feared for the worst."
"Oh, no, That's quite all right, Air Man. I appreciate your concern." Light nodded before looking down to finish buttoning under his great bearded chin.
"I suppose you're the one who caused all this trouble!" Roll pointed directly at Quick Man who stiffened defensively.
"Hey, I was just asking a few questions," Quick shot back, pointing to his own chin with his thumb.
"It's all just a misunderstanding," Rock said. He could see the situation growing out of hand, and wanted to stop any sort of fighting before it could begin. "We should all go back to recharge a few more hours of energy."
"There's no way I can go to bed after this," Roll said. Immediately, Quick Man raced out of the room past her in the briefest lull of conversation. "Hey! Hey, you!"
"Let him go, Miss Roll," Air Man said with the diplomatic air of one who'd lived with Quick much longer. "I think none of us could recharge after this rude awakening. But we cannot convene to discuss it until Wood Man rises with the sun."
"We'll probably have to start locking doors." A thoughtful baritone voice came from behind roll, drawn into the hallway by the soft billowing of a yellow scarf. Dr. Light and Rock both exclaimed at seeing Blues, but Roll just put her fists on her hips. All of them knew he was in residence, after all. "I heard everything. You'll have your hands full."
"It was you who convinced me to leave their personality programming entirely intact, Blues." Light almost sighed. He shrugged on his lab coat.
"People are a culmination of their experiences," Blues explained. "To deny them these experiences, whether good or bad, is to deny them existence, and to reaffirm that their selves are as artificial as their bodies. We may be constructs of metal and electrical impulses, who act within the tracks drawn by our programming, but our true selves live on in the lie that we walk a maze where we choose our path. Wily treated all of us as inhuman servants, even though we lived as brothers. If you ignore even the unfortunate aspects of ourselves, you ignore something that is deeply a part of that thing that we call our selves. Our pain is part of us, and so are our mistakes. So. Some of them are going to continue to make mistakes, and you know what you have to do to be a good father? You have to teach them how to stop making mistakes, not press the reset button."
It was too early in the morning for Dr. Light to deal with this combination philosophical lecture and guilt trip. Luckily, he'd dealt with it days before when Blues had convinced him to leave the I.C. chips intact. That morning the only thing he truly had to deal with was the consequence of his acquiescence. As he tried to rub the sleep out of his brain through his temples, Light was sure it was too early for that too. At least Blues had agreed to stay to help him with the impossible task of socialising Wily's wild "brothers." It was going to be, he supposed, just like getting kittens used to humans : it would be worth the effort, maybe even cute, but everyone would be clawed to ribbons along the way.
--
"...and his name is Rock. He told me that personally." Quick Man sighed out his words over the bent fists that held up his head like a heart shaped stand.
"I knew that," Snake Man said from his slab where he still lay with power cables connected. Inside the tube shaped revival room, the robot masters had been awakening for the past hour.
"Shut up, Snake. Nobody cares if you know everything." Quick turned his attention back to Crash Man who he had pinned by black elbows and knees under him, a captive audience. "And he was wearing human clothes. No armour or anything. I could have trounced him then and there."
"Then one wonders why you did not," Shadow Man said just loudly enough to not count as talking to himself. He was curled into the shadow provided by the room's mainframe blocking the first rays of sun, arms and legs crossed.
"You can shut up too. I wouldn't hurt a hair on his little head," Quick said.
"How was his hair? Was it glorious?" Flash Man asked in his bass warble, starting to unplug his power cables.
"It was hair. It exhibited all the fascinating properties of hair."
"But you didn't even try to kick his butt. That's a legitimate question," Crash Man mused from below Quick's bodily cage. His head was turned in Snake's direction, the almond helm shape not affording him the ability to rest his head straight back like the others. "I don't feel like exploding him into tiny little pieces. Not the tiniest bit. It's kind of a weird feeling."
"I too lack that drive to defeat Mega Man. And yet I recall clearly the relish with which I once savoured that notion." Snake observed. His long forked tongue darted out to wet his lips.
"It was everything that defined us," Crash continued in a subdued voice. Above him, Quick started to sway with impatience. "Now I feel completely different. No, not completely, just..."
"All turned around?" Top Man supplied while helping Hard Man unplug the handless Spark Man.
"That's it," Crash said brightly. "We're not changed, we're just diametrically-opposite-ed!" He shot up on the slab, pulling the cords from his neck with the force of his movement and throwing Quick backward onto his aft with a fabric-softened clang. "He messed with us! Dr. Light went inside our chips and changed us! Do I even love blowing things up any more? Okay, yes I do. But what else did he drill into our heads while we were out?"
"Calm down, CL!" Quick shoved Crash back down on the slab with open palms and then kept the other pinned arm-to-arm and leg-to-leg. That seemed to calm Crash immediately. "Bad-Break-Up Man lectured Dr. Light about that. I was even there for the reprise. They have a CD-ROM deal. No rewrites."
"And how do you know he held to that deal? I certainly wouldn't." Snake went over his files to see if any of the snakes he'd deployed since waking up had caught said reprise.
"If we judged everyone by what you'd do," Hard Man groused, "we wouldn't have been able to trust even our master. Er, ex-master."
"My point stands."
"Hey guys, I think Gemini's just pretending to be asleep," Spark called from between the full recharge slab and cheap wheelchair that held two identical bodies.
"Let him. Metal and Magnet aren't up yet," Flash said.
"We can't start the show until Wood powers on anyway," Top agreed.
"What's everyone arguing about?" Metal Man asked while sitting up.
"Welcome back, Metal," Heat Man called from his little spot sitting under the far window.
"Crash Man has the crazy idea that Dr. Light's reprogrammed us," Bubble Man said.
"I'm not crazy. There's really something different." Crash protested.
The Gemini Man in the wheelchair cracked open one eye. "How is someone supposed to get some beauty sleep with all that noise?"
"I knew it!" Spark exclaimed.
"Won't anybody believe me?" Crash asked, without expecting an answer.
"I do," Air Man said, putting down the thermostat device manual he'd resorted to reading since there were no other options in the revival room. "You're correct in your inferences concerning our motivational programming. The rancid seed of resentment has slipped from my mind like so much dust in the wind. In its place blooms the flower of fraternity: much as I feel for my brothers, so I feel for Mega Man."
"Hear that? I'm smart." Crash grinned up at Quick.
Quick clambered off of him and began to pace. "But what is it? I'm still me, I know that, and you're still you or you wouldn't be still yelling."
"Oh, thanks." Turning his back petulantly to the door and the bot pacing before it, Crash pulled the final wires from his feet. The room grew very quiet. Then a light-bulb went on in the part of his head where he usually kept a guided missile. "Or it's a matter of volume."
"Volume?" Air Man asked.
"Yeah. I heard you say 'hate isn't the opposite of love; the opposite of love is apathy' when you read a poem or something."
"How very Air Man," Gemini commented around a yawn.
"But if you forget the apathy junk," Crash continued, "you get love and hate on a volume dial. Turn it so far it goes over to the other. We all don't hate Mega Man any more. Because Dr. Light reprogrammed us to like him."
"What a theory. Me liking Mega Man." Quick sniffed.
"Oh get off it, Tsun-man," Metal man muttered.
"What'd you call me?" Quick said directly into Metal's face three speedy footsteps later.
"He called you someone who likes Mega Man," Snake said. "Oh, sorry, someone who likes 'Rock,' you know, the name he told you personally."
"Snake, I'll..." Quick was immediately at Snake's slab within the second. Then his thoughts caught up with his feet. His face dropped along with the truth. "...cripes, I like Mega Man."