BROTHER

By Atreyu452

Chapter 1

“How much?”

The junkman gave the figure standing before him a long, hard look.  “Ninety thousand, plus tax.”

The shorter man took the cigarette out of his mouth and blew smoke in the junkman’s direction.  “C’mon, Benny.  You practically gave away something just like that machine to another customer.  And that one was in better shape, too.”

The heavyset Benny shifted uncomfortably.  “Dat was different.”

“How?”  the man tilted his head a little, letting the light slide across his visor-like sunglasses.  He took another puff of the cigarette and shook his head.  “Wait a minute; never mind.  I’ll give you fifty.”

“From ninety?  You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me.”

“Sixty.”

“Eighty-five.”

“Sixty-five, no more.”

“Alright,”  Benny wiped his forehead with a handkerchief clenched in his meaty hand.  For some reason, dealing with this costumer made him nervous.  The guy practically oozed danger.  His cocky attitude, along with his attire, the dark shades and long trench-coat, made him seem cagey.  Benny was never big on instincts, but the guy was giving him the creeps.  He seemed to know he was doing it too, Benny noted, as he caught a glimpse of a smile flash across the guy’s face.

“You got a deal,”  the man shrugged indifferently.  In a blur of motion he scooped the small device off the table and slid it into his pocket.

“Hey, hey,”  Benny frowned, shifting his weight nervously.  “Don’t ya even wanna inspect it?”

“I don’t think you’d cheat me, Ben,”  the man smiled strangely. 

It was all Benny could do to keep from shivering.  He was getting the increasing impression that the guy standing before him was unstable.  The man pitched his cigarette, still burning, in the trash.  Benny frowned, but didn’t comment.  “The money,”  he stressed.  

“The money.  Right,”  the man pulled out an envelope and tossed it on the table.  Benny greedily grabbed it and started to open it.  “Nice place,”  the man observed, heading for the exit.  “Too bad I won’t come back.”

“Hey!”  Benny shook his fist, clenching the money, at the man’s retreating back.  “There’s only sixty-five dollars here!”

“What do you expect?”  the man shrugged.  “That’s what we agreed on.”

“We agreed on sixty-five thousand!”

“That’s not what I heard, sorry,”  the man said.  He began to whistle tunelessly under his breath.

“Well, you’d better—”  Benny cut himself off as the man disappeared in a blinding flash of light.  He stared at the spot the man had been for a while, then started cursing.

Rock Light, known to the world as Rockman, raced through the halls of his home.  “You can’t get it!”  he sang out as he ran.  “It’s mine; it’s mine; it’s mine!”

He raced past Roll, who gave him one of her looks, the one that mean I-Can’t-Believe-You’re-Such-A-Reckless-Fool.  Hot on his heels was Rush, barking loudly.  Rock waved a much-abused sock above his head as he entered the main lab.  He dangled the sock in from of Rush’s face.  Rush snapped at it, only to have it pulled away from his reach. 

“It’s mine; you can’t have it,” Rock mocked.  Rush sat on his haunches, regarding Rock for a minute; then pounced on the gloating boy’s chest.  Rock was propelled backwards by his robotic dog’s assault and slammed against a work table, scattering many tools on the floor in the process, before hitting the ground.

“What are you breaking in there?”  Roll shouted, in a tone she had perfected, which meant, loosely, I-Had-Better-Not-Have-To-Clean-It-Up.

Rush scampered off, his prize in mouth, victorious in the battle for the sock.  Rock rubbed his head as he got up and looked sheepishly at the mess he had made.

“Well, well,”  Dr. Light chuckled as he walked in on the scene.  “Looks like you’ve really done it this time, Rock.”

Rock turned towards his creator.  “Papa!”  he cried.  “You’re home!”  Dr. Light had been busy attending a conference in Kamakura.  It had been a long one and he had been gone several days.  Rock ran over and gave him a hug.  Roll walked in with a broom in her hand, eyed the mess and shook her head in disgust. 

Dr. Light smiled at her from over Rock’s head.  “Why don’t you forget about that for a while and come here and give your Papa a hug?”

Roll put down her broom and gladly obliged, hugging just a little softer than Rock was. Dr. Light chuckled.  “I must be the luckiest father in the world, if not the most unusual one, to have the two most special robotic children the world has ever seen.”

“We’re not really children,”  Roll frowned.

“You’re my children, and that’s all that matters,”  Dr. Light assured her.  “Now, about that mess you caused, Rock…”

Rock rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.  “Sorry about that, Papa.  I’ll clean it up.”

“Good,”  Roll sniffed.  “Because I have enough to do without cleaning up after you.”

“Why don’t I help you clean it up?”  Dr. Light suggested.  “After all, you can’t be blamed for going a little stir-crazy while I was away.”

“Okay!”  Rock beamed.  

Roll smiled as she watched her brother.  Rock had a tendency to be a little naive sometimes, but his innocence and cheerfulness despite everything they had been through was incredible.  Rock was just one person the world could not beat down, and Roll admired him for that.  So what if he acted a little immature sometimes?

Rock scooped up a bunch of tools and set them on the table.  Dr. Light sorted them and put them back in their prospective places. 

“Rock,”  Dr. Light said, pointing to a bunch of tools set aside.  “Could you help me get those to my office?  I need them for a display the government requested.”

“Sure thing!”  Rock easily managed to balance all of the heavy tools in his arms and followed Dr. Light toward an entirely different section of the lab.  They entered his office and Rock gratefully set the tools down in the spot Dr. Light pointed out to him.

After he was done, he stood up and looked around curiously.  Dr. Light rarely ever used his office, preferring to spend most of his time in the lab or in the house with his creations.  His office showed the signs of little use; the corners were filled with dusty piles of old, broken tools and there were shelves containing a few dusty books, some framed diplomas, and many pictures.  There were pictures all over the walls too.  There was even one on Dr. Light’s desk; a family portrait of himself, Rock, and Roll all dressed up.  On the walls there was more pictures of just Rock and Roll dressed up, in normal clothes, or in their professional (in Roll’s case) or battle (in Rock’s case) attire.  There was a huge group one that included Auto, Eddie, and the pets as well as the three, and more of Rock playing with Rush, Roll watering the garden or petting Tango, and so on. 

“Dr. Light?”  Rock’s voice was hesitant.

Dr. Light looked up.  “Admiring my pictures, eh?”  he smiled.  “Yes, I suppose there are quite a few of them.”

“Why…”  Rock’s voice failed him.  He cleared his throat and tried again.  “Why—why don’t… I mean, how come…”

“Yes, what is it, Rock?”  Dr. Light looked concerned.

“How come you don’t have any pictures of Blues?”  Rock said in a rush, already wincing.  Sure enough, Dr. Light froze, his face stony.  Rock had known from experience that Blues was a sore subject for Dr. Light, but he had no idea why.  “I mean,” Rock continued recklessly, “you have pictures of everyone else and Blues is part of the family too… I mean, wasn’t he your first creation?”

“Rock,”  Dr. Light’s voice was heavy and full of sorrow.  “We’ve… we’ve never talked about Blues, have we?  You don’t really know much about him.”

“I… I know you don’t like him very much,”  Rock looked down, his voice getting smaller, “but he is my older brother and he did save my life—”

“Rock, if he saved your life, then I’m sure it was an accident,”  Dr. Light interrupted.

Rock looked stunned.  “But Papa, he…he did.  What do you mean?”

Dr. Light sighed, looking extremely tired.  “Rock,”  he started gently,  “Blues… Blues doesn’t… Blues is… Oh, I just don’t know how to say it.  Blues hates everything that has to do with me—to do with us, actually—and he has for a long time now.”

“But why, Papa?”  Rock’s eyes were wide.  “He’s never said anything to me… I mean, I only met him a few times, but…”

Dr. Light gently placed his hands on Rock’s shoulders.  “Ever since I created him, Blues has always been… distant to me.  We were never close; even way back then Blues never let anyone get close to him.  When he disappeared in an accident, I was, well, almost relieved.  I’m ashamed to admit it now; I should have never given up on him like that.”  Dr. Light’s eyes grew sad and distant.  “I didn’t know then what I know now; that you, Roll, and Blues are very, very special, and different from any other robot in existence.  I should have guessed with Blues, but it never crossed my mind…”  Dr. Light trailed off, lost in his own memories.

Rock placed his two hands firmly but gently over Dr. Light’s own.  Dr. Light looked at him, startled out of his nostalgia.  “Papa, I don’t understand,”  Rock said, his voice strong and firm, almost reprimanding.  “Would you please tell me about Blues?  About his creation, and why you say he hates us?”

Dr. Light stared at his robotic son, surprised.  Rock usually acted like the young boy he looked like, but when he became serious, he was a different person indeed.  “It’s a long story.”

“I want to hear it.”

Dr. Light smiled at Rock determination.  “Alright.”

The man reappeared in a small, dark room with another flash.  He tossed the device on a table carelessly and walked toward a door.  He opened it and clicked on the lights, revealing a bedroom.  The figure on the bed moaned and pulled the covers over its head.

“Are you still here?”  the man asked, strolling across the room.  With a yank he snatched the covers off the bed, revealing a girl, who looked like she was in her teens, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts.  The girl shrieked and tried to snatch them back.  “Oh, relax,”  the man said, tossing them back.  “It’s not like you’re naked or anything.”

“I could have been,”  she snapped back.  “What kind of sicko are you, just walking in here and acting like you own the place?”

“I do own the place,”  he corrected her.  “You are the intruder, not me.”

“Well, you’re in a good mood,”  she yawned and laid back down, ignoring the truthful jab.  “Did you get the part you were looking for?”

“I did.”  He walked over to her side of the bed and sat down near her. 

She smiled up at him, brushing a wisp of her short hair from her face.  “You sound happy.  I guess it went well, huh, Blues?”

“What makes you think I’m happy?”  he glanced down at her over his shades, flashing his blue eyes.

“I’ve known you for awhile,”  she smiled.

“Sounds like it’s time for me to move, then.  Can’t have people knowing too much about me.”  He leaned over her and lowered his voice to a whisper.  “It’ll spoil my image.”

“I won’t tell anyone, okay?”  she whispered back, reaching up and snatching his shades.

“Hey, those are mine!”  Blues protested, reaching for them.  She held them far away from him. 

“I’ll tell you what,”  she said, “I’ll give these back if you get outta my room so that I can get dressed.”

“It’s my room,”  Blues grunted, making a failed attempt for the shades.  “You’re just a freeloader.”

“Deal?”

“Okay, fine,”  he said, finally snatching the shades back.  “No one wants to see you running around in your pajamas anyway.  It’s un-ladylike.”

“I ain’t no lady,”  she snarled, her eyes sparkling.

Blues slipped the shades over his eyes and leaned forward so that his face was inches from hers.  “Hey, girl,”  he whispered,  “what’s your name?”

“You know I don’t know,”  she whispered back.

“You still can’t remember?”  he raised an eyebrow.

“Not a thing,”  she confessed.

Blues stared at her for awhile; then tapped her shoulder lightly and stood up.  “Get dressed already, will ya?”

“Only if you get out of the room!”  she tossed a pillow at him.

He dodged it easily.  “Like I’d wanna stay.”  With that last shot, he sauntered out of the room and closed the door behind him.  The latter exchange was becoming a common thing between him and the girl he called Deirdre.  As with many things, he never gave his reasons for calling her that; he merely told her he thought the name was fitting.

Blues frowned as he looked around his apartment thoughtfully.  Figures the minute he did something “human”—obtaining the apartment, that is—that he would be saddled with extra baggage.  However, Deirdre tried her best to be useful and pay him back by keeping the apartment clean, and running the occasional odd job for him.  He had discovered she was mildly good with electronics, possessing knowledge about them that she couldn’t remember where she had learned.  It was not surprising that Deirdre couldn’t even remember her name; when Blues had “found” her she was barely alive.  He still couldn’t figure out why he had taken pity on her to begin with.  He usually left human matters to, well, the humans.  Maybe it was the situation he had found her in that struck his curiosity. 

Blues shook his head, clearing it of his musings and went to examine the new piece of equipment he had acquired.  It was not in too bad a shape, and Blues felt a moment’s pang of regret for cheating the junk dealer, but he quickly dismissed it.  Blues felt a strong dislike for anything human, and he considered emotions to be one of them.  Sometimes they came in handy, but most often they were a pain, a distraction from the more important things in life.

In “her” room, Deirdre dressed quickly.  She always found herself looking forward to the early morning exchanges with Blues.  He was friendlier, if not almost playful, at those times then he could be at others.  Despite his insistence on mysteriousness, she had learned quite a lot about him over the past few months.  She just wished she could say the same about herself.

Deirdre sighed and studied her mirror for the thousandth time.  The face that stared back was totally unfamiliar, but she was getting used to it.  She tugged at a lock of her short black hair.  For some reason, that always struck her as odd, the color of her hair.  It just didn’t look right, and she couldn’t figure out why.  It was a sharp contrast from her ice-blue eyes, but somehow those didn’t seem right either.  It was as if she could almost remember looking… different, somehow.  But almost wasn’t good enough; she couldn’t remember anything before her first encounter with Blues.

She remembered was opening her eyes and seeing Blues—she didn’t know it was Blues at the time—applying medicine to her wounds, which had been extensive and serious.  Her first thought was to scream, but some hidden instinct deep inside her told her to wait and watch.  She obeyed it, since she didn’t have anything else to trust.  Blues’ touch was gentle, and he applied the medicine as carefully as he could.  When he was finished, he smiled at her and asked her name.  Apparently, she hadn’t been hiding the fact that she was awake as well as she thought she was.  She had wished disparately she could tell him she couldn’t remember it, but she couldn’t squeeze the words out.  Blues had seemed to understand; he had brushed the hair out of her eyes and told her to get some sleep.  Sleep she did, again relying on that hidden, mysterious instinct that told her that he could be trusted. 

Deirdre banished her thoughts away as she heard Blues call for her.  There were times he rarely spoke to her at all, so she was always quick to reach when he did.  Pathetic… The word entered her mind unbidden, and she stopped in surprise, trying to figure out where it had come from.  Blues called her again, and she dismissed the strange thought and went to him.  “You called, O Mysterious One?”

Blues ignored the shot.  “Come look at this.”

She glanced over his shoulder.  “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“Anything look out of place?”

Deirdre gave him a sharp look.  For all she could tell, he was testing her again, to see how much she knew.  She gave the device he was holding a closer look.  “It’s just an old mainframe part… except for that microchip right there,”  she pointed,  “that definitely doesn’t belong there.  It’s way too advanced.”

“Clever girl,”  Blues nodded, his voice sounding pleased.  “It doesn’t belong there.  Someone planted it there.”

Deirdre frowned.  “But why?”

“It was some sort of drop off.  They put in the most undesirable piece of equipment possible, so that no one but the person who was supposed to get it would take it.  If anybody did try, the junkman was paid to make the price as high as possible so no one would follow through.  But,”  he smirked,  “no one accounted for me.”

“Blues,”  Deirdre moved backwards a ways to look at him.  “What are you up to?”

“What I’m always up to,”  he replied.  He glanced at her and smiled at the worried look.  It felt kind of good to have someone actually worried about him.  “Don’t worry your pretty head about it, girl.  It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

Deirdre snorted; she knew she certainly did not have a pretty head, and she also knew that Blues could get himself into more trouble than either of them could imagine.

Blues raised an eyebrow at the sound.  “You doubt me?  That’s not allowed under my roof.”

Deirdre tossed her head cheekily.  “Whatcha gonna do about it, hotshot?”

“What indeed?”  Blues mused, tapping the side of his head.  “Well I know from experience that you’re rather ticklish…”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

Blues gave her a rueful grin.  “But unfortunately, I cannot exact my revenge just yet.  There’re a few things I need to check out.”

“Be careful,”  Deirdre, much to her own surprise, heard herself say.

“I will be,”  Blues gave her a thumbs up, then disappeared in a flash of red light.  That was one thing about him that was predictable, Deirdre thought wryly.  You could always depend on him to disappear if he didn’t feel like talking.  She stared thoughtfully at the spot he had been standing for a long time.

“As you know,”  Dr. Light began,  “Blues was the first successful humanoid robot that Dr. Wily and I built, our prototype.  We put years into his construction and design.  For most of our lives we had studied and labored to come to this: the creation of a truly intelligent robot, one who, in a limited way, could analyze a situation and make his own decisions about it, unless he was told otherwise.  He was programmed to imitate human emotions and behavior, and physically he was as close to a human being as we could make him.  He could move like a human being; none of his movements would look unnatural or robotic, due to the complexity of his design.  For example, he would periodically ‘blink,’ a motion to clear his eye sensors of dust and other alien objects, not unlike human eyes.  For that purpose he was even given tear ducts, so he could use the liquid in them to clear his eyes.  He could breath like a human being; his cooling system, just like yours, Rock.  All this and more was built into him, but I won’t bore you with more details, Rock, since your design follows his almost exactly.

“And then,”  Dr. Light took a deep breath,  “the moment came.  He was finally finished.  The day to activate him had come, and he was even more perfect than I imagined him.  His hair, soft to the touch but tougher than human hair—making it hard to cut or burn—was black.  It was the closest hair color we could make look natural at the time, and besides, at one time my own hair had been black, and I felt it was poetic to give him some resemblance to one of his creators.”

Dr. Light paused at this, and smiled sadly to himself; if only he had taken his role as Blues’ ‘parent’ more seriously.  Then he would not have to have this talk with Rock.  “His face was designed to resemble a young teenaged boy, not as young as yours, Rock, but it seemed quite young to us old men.  Underneath the ‘skin,’ another material that looks and even feels like flesh to the touch but is much, much stronger, was an underlining of a muscle-like substance, structured so that he could display an array of emotions and make ‘natural’ movements.”

Dr. Light stopped, looking embarrassed.  “I’m sorry; I was rambling at the design again.”

Rock shook his head.  “It’s okay; I like hearing about how you created Blues.  It gives me a better idea of what it was like.” 

Dr. Light nodded, and continued.  “It all came down to the day we activated him, on a cold, snowy day in the middle of winter.”  Dr. Light stopped again and was silent for a long time.

Rock leaned forward in his seat.  He was torn between his desire to learn about his brother and his respect for his father.  “Papa?”  he ventured tentatively.

Dr. Light shook his head slightly, as if to clear it.  “I-I’m sorry Rock.  I just got lost in the moment, I suppose.  It’s hard to convey the… emotion of the moment.  Years of hard work and effort went into building our prototype.  Both of us—Dr. Wily and I—had ideas and expectations about the moment.”

“And?”  Rock prompted, sensing more to the sentence.

“And,”  Dr. Light smiled, “he was everything I thought he’d be and more.  From the moment he opened his blue eyes, I knew he was something beyond anything I could have ever dreamed.  He looked at us for long time—being the first creatures he had ever seen, I’m sure we looked pretty strange to him.  After he had gotten his fill of us, he began to examine himself, studying his limbs and tugging on the clothing we had provided him.”

“Why?”  Rock couldn’t help but to interrupt.  “Didn’t you program in all the basic knowledge he was to have?”

“Well, yes,”  Dr. Light chuckled a bit, “But knowing something and seeing it for the first time are two different things.  You were very curious yourself when we first activated you, but not quite like that.  Of course,”  he added with a sigh,  “Blues was always different.

“Seeing his natural curiosity, I offered to show him a mirror.  He was so startled he jumped at the sound of my voice, and stared at me again with wide eyes.  I realized why my vocalism had startled him; he had never heard a human voice before.  We waited for him to respond.

“He studied the two of us gravely.  He opened his mouth as if to say something; then stopped as if surprised at the movement.  His face went through a variety of expressions as he tried to figure out how it all worked.  Well, that is to say, he knew how to move his mouth and speak—he was programmed to speak a number of different languages fluently, in fact—but he had never… felt what it was like to do it.  I have to say, I felt a bit sorry for him; he looked so overwhelmed.  I put my hand on his shoulder—startling him once again, I have to say—and gently directed him toward a mirror.” 

Dr. Light laughed, remembering the moment.  “He spent the next couple of hours standing in from of it.  Once he had figured out how to move the ‘muscles’ in his face, he contorted it in many different ways; getting the feel for it, I suppose.  Dr. Wily and I just watched him, discussing our success.  Dr. Wily was disappointed.  He had expected something else, I guess.  He was let down by the fact that our robot hadn’t even spoken to us.  Our conversation got a little heated, I must say.  It ended with Wily growing furious and storming over to the prototype.  ‘Who am I?’  he demanded.

“ ‘You are Dr. Albert William Wily,’  the prototype answered.  His eyes grew quite wide after he had said this; it was in his programming to answer when spoken to by his creators, but he had never done it before.  The experience must have been yet another shock for him.

“ ‘And who is that?’  Dr. Wily pointed toward me, before our poor prototype had gotten over his shock.  The prototype looked at me with a neutral expression.  ‘He is Dr. Thomas Xavier Light.’  

“Dr. Wily still wasn’t satisfied.  ‘And who are you?’

“The prototype hesitated; he looked uncertainly from Wily to me and back to Wily again; he tried to say something, but the words never came out.  Finally, Dr. Wily lost his patience.  ‘Bah!’  he shouted.  ‘He’s defective!  He can’t even tell us his own name.  We spent all that time and effort for nothing.  He’s worthless!  We might as well tell him to go throw himself into the trash.

“I said nothing, but started to laugh.  Dr. Wily looked furious, thinking I was laughing at him, but I was laughing too hard for the longest time to point out our gross oversight.  ‘We forgot!’  I finally managed to gasp.

“ ‘What?’  Dr. Wily thought I had lost my mind. 

“ ‘We forgot… to name him,’  I gasped again.  ‘All this time… All this planning… and we don’t even give him a name!’ 

“Wily stared at me as if I had lost it, the started to laugh as well.  Poor Blues—he had just been activated, he didn’t have a name, and his creators were laughing like a pair of loons at his plight.  It wasn’t, I’m sorry to say, the most positive experience to start your life out with.”

“So then you named him Blues,”  Rock prompted.

Dr. Light smiled at him.  “Not at first.  We toyed with several names for a while.  Dr. Wily preferred the name ‘Protoman,’ and for a while, that’s what we called him, but I eventually came up with Blues.  I’ve always been a musically inspired man, and the term fit in more ways than one.  Blues, you see, seemed to possess an aura of sadness somehow.  Despite his youthful appearance, his face and eyes always seemed to be full of it, as if he had a tragic past he was hiding.  The idea was ridiculous, as Wily scoffed at it so, but he too, was affected by Blues’ quiet, almost secretive nature and his habit of staring at people and things.

“You see, Rock, Blues was a robot, and both Wily and I treated him as one; it was unnerving for us to think about him in human terms.  We put him on display at conventions, we ordered him around in the lab, and we basically treated him like the machine we thought he was.  We never considered that his emotions could be real, or his thoughts independent.  But we were wrong.  What we had created was something that had never been done before… a homunculus born of technology… but we had no idea.  And because of that, we lost him in a lab accident one day.  We had recently constructed a protective suit, helmet, and shield for his use in the lab, and he was wearing that suit the day our experimental teleporter exploded.  He was too close to the blast, and when the afterimage of the explosion faded, he was simply… gone.  We thought he was destroyed completely.”  Dr. Light’s voice faded entirely and he was silent, staring off into a past only he could see.

Rock looked down at his hands, feeling awkward at his creator’s sadness.  Blues must have been terribly confused, having emotions but not knowing they were genuine, not some program.  Rock briefly wondered if Blues had known he could feel pain, or the number of other things Rock himself possessed.  “But… why does he hate us?”  he found himself asking.

Dr. Light sighed again.  “He just does, Rock; he hates you, especially.  I hope you’ll stay away from him.  He’s very dangerous and unpredictable.  Sometimes I don’t think… he’s quite sane, either.”  Dr. Light patted Rock’s shoulder.  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m a bit tired after the long trip.  I think I’ll go rest a while.”

Rock stared at him as he left, no closer to knowing more about his brother than he began.

In his own room, Dr. Light sat down heavily on his bed.  There was so much he hadn’t told Rock; how Blues had grown sullen and rebellious in the last few months he was with them.  How he had refused to obey orders, and rarely spoke to anyone.  How he would cry out at night in his sleep, being chased by unknown demons, but he refused to tell anyone about it.  And how they had not really lost him in a lab accident at all; Blues had run away. 

It disturbed Dr. Light at how easy it had been to tell Rock that little lie, but it was one he and Dr. Wily had come up with after Blues had left. After all, the world could not be told that their own prototype refused to obey them.  It was only until after Wily lost his mind and started his evil doings that Dr. Light realized the stupidity of that decision; if Blues had actually been dangerous, no one would know.  But nothing had happened, and it over time it grew so that Light almost believed the story himself.

During Blues’ short time with his creators, he was never very endearing.  Wily had thought he was malfunctioning and Dr. Light agreed with him, but Blues refused to let either of them get close enough to him to figure out what was wrong.  He avoided them subtly, so that they wouldn’t catch on right away that he knew what they wanted to do.  He would be in the room for one second, but the minute they turned their backs to him, he was gone.  He did it cunningly enough so it wouldn’t look strange (after all, Blues liked to disappear all the time), but Dr. Light was always a bit suspicious of Blues’ behavior.  He always seemed to know when they wanted to work on him; he also always seemed to have a problem with it.

Another thing was he had an odd habit of whistling tunelessly most of the time.  It drove Wily up the wall, but then, a lot of things about Blues drove Wily up the wall. 

One of Wily’s tendencies when Blues really got on his nerves, Dr. Light recalled, was to remind Blues of how easy it would be to replace the robot.  Both Wily and Dr. Light had quickly learned that the idea had terrified Blues one day a few months after Blues’ activation.

Wily had been working on a large generator and he had told Blues to work on another part of it.  Blues, at this point, would whistle almost constantly—a habit Dr. Light had no idea of where the robot had gotten it from.  It certainly had never been programmed in, that was for sure.  It was a habit that drove Wily nuts, and Dr. Light had a sneaking suspicion Blues knew it did.  He began to whistle as he worked on a circuit board.

 “Stop that infernal noise,”  Wily demanded irritably. 

Blues ignored him.

Dr. Light, who had been working nearby, stopped to watch the melodrama unfold.  Secretly, he found the confrontations between Blues and Dr. Wily quite amusing, and didn’t like to interfere unless it was absolutely necessary.

 “I said stop it!”  Wily chucked a wench at the robot.  He had always had a temper, Dr. Light remembered with a grimace, even way back then.  Even though Dr. Light was sure Wily hadn’t intended to hit Blues, the wench struck Blues on the side of the head.  Blues looked up, his neutral expression unchanged, and whistled five very deliberate notes.

Wily had let out a roar of rage and stormed over to the robot.  Blues quickly abandoned his work and ran to Dr. Light.  Much to Dr. Light’s surprise, Blues wrapped his arms around Dr. Light’s waist and buried his head in Light’s lab coat.

 “Do you have any idea of how obnoxious that is?”  Wily screamed at the robot, not deterred at all by the frightened posture Blues was in.  “He’s absolutely hopeless,”  Wily had snapped, turning his attention toward Dr. Light.  “We should just replace him and be done with it.”

Dr. Light felt Blues stiffen against his body.  He desperately tried to think of a way to calm Wily down without alarming Blues any further.  “I don’t think there’s any need to go that far.”

“Replace?”  Dr. Light looked down in surprise at the word.  It was Blues himself that had said it, which was surprising, because Blues rarely spoke, unless spoken to, from the time of his activation to the time of his disappearance.

Blues looked back at him with those wide, piercing eyes.  It was those eyes that his visor now hid, because Dr. Wily had declared (and to his shame once again, Dr. Light had privately agreed with him) that Blues’ stare gave him the creeps, and he had insisted on giving Blues’ helmet the visor with that motive in mind.

“Yes, replace!”  Wily had barked.  “If you can’t do your job, then we’ll build another robot that can.  And guess what’s going to happen to you?”

Blues’ eyes grew wide as Wily’s comment got to him.  Dr. Light had quickly jumped to his rescue.  “That’s enough!”  he snapped back, pulling Blues back closer to him.  “We are not going to replace Blues just because you’re a bit upset with him.”

Wily had argued, and he and Dr. Light proceeded to have quite a row over it, while Blues leaned against Dr. Light, his eyes closed and his body limp.  At the time, Dr. Light had hardly noticed.  He now remembered that part clearer than he remembered the other details, however.  It had been one of the few times he had actually treated Blues like he now treated Rock; like a son.

Finally, Wily backed down and skulked off, mumbling to himself.  It was only then that Blues stirred.  “Are you going to replace me?”  he wanted to know.  Dr. Light assured him that he would never replace Blues, but the robot hadn’t looked so convinced.  Since then, whenever Wily was angry at Blues’ behavior, he would remind the prototype of how easy it would be to replace him.  It never failed to get to Blues, and for days afterwards he would be especially quiet, not even whistling.  Dr. Light tried to discourage Wily from doing it, but he didn’t try very hard; a fact that still haunted him now.  Only one of the facts that still haunted him.

Dr. Light’s reminiscing of that moment took his mind to the reason he cautioned Rock against his own brother.  The reason he feared for Blues’ sanity.  The reason Blues hated his brother with an undying passion. 

Because, in Blues’ mind, it was all Rock’s fault.

While Dr. Light was taking his bittersweet trip down memory lane, that same Blues was poking around in a highly classified government complex.  Of course, the fact that the place was for authorized people only didn’t bother Blues.  He had a great respect for authority, as long as it didn’t apply to himself.

Blues frowned at the information on the terminal in front of him.  Apparently, the chip he had found had been stolen from this same government complex several months earlier.  So what had it been doing in a junkman’s store?  It was obviously a pass off, but to whom and why?  The chip itself was rare, but only because it was made for certain functions not commonly needed by the general populace, or even the government for that matter.  But someone had wanted it badly enough to steal it.  What use for it had they discovered that nobody else knew about?  And why did they choose such a strange place to pass it off to someone else?

Blues flexed his fingers, getting a satisfying popping sound from his artificial joints.  He smiled; the complexity of his design never failed to amaze him.  In order to create a superior robot, his creators designed him to be able to mimic a human being to the smallest detail.  Little did they know they created him too lifelike, to the point where he actually gained a life of his own.  Or rather, Dr. Light had created, most likely on accident, the life.  Wily either couldn’t recreate the design or preferred not to.  Which was too bad for him, for Blues’ life had granted him certain abilities over most other robots.  Abilities that gave him an edge, a way to survive, despite some of the drawbacks.

Blues shook himself out of his thoughts before he let them wander too far, and typed in a command on the computer.  The computer made an odd sound and flashed the words ACCESS DENIED in big letters.  Blues smiled; now he was getting somewhere.  After a long battle with the computer codes, he managed to break into the files he was trying to open.

“So,” he said softly to himself as he skimmed the information, “that’s what they had in mind.  Too bad I had to change it for them.”  Although, if he wanted, he could just fix this whole problem by returning what they had lost.  That would take a lot of responsibilities off his back, and make the feds feel much safer.  But he was getting rather comfortable with the way things were.  And besides, he wanted the feds to sweat their mistakes out.  Maybe it would teach them a lesson in the future.

  “You lost your pet project.  It’s mine now.  Don’t worry; I’ll take good care of it, but I’ll be slag before I let you have it back.”  With that, he left, careful not to let any trace of his presence remain.