The Megaman War:
Part 2 – Decisions, Destruction, Duty, and Destiny

By Hadrian (Hardman) Howell

Chapter 15: Vital Statistics

Rock wouldn’t remember Dr. Light stripping the remains of the armor off of his body in the blackness of the night on the way to the hospital. He wouldn’t remember the doctor asking what happened. He WOULD remember the conversation between the doctor and Thomas Light, however.

“We have a severed limb, and he’s going into shock! I need-“ A nurse was shouting to be heard.

“What in the world happened to him?”

“Not your problem! Just stabilize him!” Dr. Light ordered.

“He’s losing blood way too fast, what’s his blood type?” another nurse asked.

“B+,” Dr. Light answered automatically, without really stopping to remember he knew this because of his earlier altering of Rock’s biology.

“How did you-“

“STABILIZE HIM, damn it!” Dr. Light cut the medical doctor, who’d introduced himself as Dr. Herring, off.

Roll was four steps behind the stretcher they were hauling Rock into the Emergency Room on. They’d have had a proper cart if they weren’t so packed with the other victims of the Master’s attacks. The burn wards were full, and many more rooms were loaded with the survivors pulled from the wreckage of the building destroyed by Gutsman. Most of this didn’t even pass through Roll’s mind. She was too busy crying too hard while a dispassionate doctor asked her questions.

“Are you his next of kin?” the doctor asked.

Through her tear-soaked haze, Roll managed to nod, her mind locking onto the word ‘Next.’ The doctor almost made it sound like Rock wasn’t coming back…

There was a commotion even further behind Roll, as two of the orderlies were trying to stop the doors to the emergency wing from opening for some uninvited visitors. Their efforts weren’t much good.

“BABU!” Bon shouted in anger as her burst through the double doors, holding them open as Tron dashed through, Tiesel closely behind.

“Tron!” Tiesel was shouting behind her, “You can’t go in there! You can’t follow him into the room! What are you doing, anyway?”

Tron ran on wordlessly, her face drained of color. She’d HEARD Rock’s cry of pain when… whatever it was stole his arm away. She’d HEARD the anguish in his voice. It had awoken a nameless fear inside of her stomach, and made her want to be sick. She couldn’t explain it, but she was… concerned? No… Worried. She was worried about that boy.

Up ahead of the Bonne family, ahead of Roll, ahead of Dr. Light and his rampant argument with Dr. Herring, there was Rock, lying with his eyes half open, not really seeing anything. His mind couldn’t lock in on the commotion around him. He was too far gone into shock to really notice much of anything. He knew his right hand and forearm hurt, but everyone around him told him it was a ‘ghost pain’ whenever he tried to mention it. Whenever he tried to use his voice.

One of the nurses couldn’t help but stare at his face, lined as it was with the evidence of Dr. Light’s system. “What in the world IS this boy?” she asked aloud.

“None of your concern,” Dr. Light told her before returning to the red-in-the-face Dr. Herring. “I’m not trying to step on your toes! You’ll be paid in full for any medical procedures you would normally undertake in a situation like this, but this boy is a special case! You’ll be paid for everything as long as you stabilize him! That’s all I ask!”

“And then you want me to clear the emergency room? Leave him to you? How do I know you’ll actually help him? How do I know you won’t make him worse?” Dr. Herring demanded.

“I’d have to try really hard to make him worse,” Dr. Light grumbled, looking down at Rock’s arm. The stump ended just below the elbow, which meant Rock could, theoretically and with the right technology, have full use of the arm again. Dr. Light had, after all, been originally taught in the use of prosthetics. He was on his home ground here…

But to tell Dr. Herring that would initiate a search for his records, which would tip off far too many people that Dr. Light was alive, and not dead underneath the mountain. He had no doubt that the White House knew about Megaman, but he wanted, for some reason he couldn’t really explain, to remain out of that picture. At least for the White House. What Wily knew couldn’t hurt them then.

A second thought ran around the train track of his mind: Would this work? The theory was sound, and it would only take some minor initial adjustments, but… he’d need more materials to make a fully functional hand and arm, but Megaman, if not Rock, could be back on his feet again sooner than Wily might expect…

His thoughts passed only briefly over the remains of Fireman’s own right arm, cauterized by the light saber during Megaman’s battle with the overheated foe. If Wily could make something so soulless work, then Dr. Light could too… He was SURE of it.

Several orderlies stopped Roll and the Bonne family from entering the Emergency Room itself. Bon initially tried to power through anyway, but Tiesel and Tron stopped him. The four concerned faces were directed to the waiting room, where they sat for fourteen hours.

Rock could barely think. He’d been drugged for some reason, but the System itself was helping him fight it. He saw a blurry shape, red and yellow and gray. The shape that had run into him. The one that had saved his life.

“Why…?” Rock’s voice struggled to ask.

The shape said nothing, but remained in his vision for a while, and then it vanished right as he heard the screams and shouts, and Dr. Light demanding they get him to a hospital…

But that had already happened, hadn’t it? Or was it all some weird dream? Rock couldn’t tell anymore. He drifted in his dreamlike state for a while before succumbing to the drugs and falling into a fitful, pain filled sleep.

He awoke to a rhythmic beeping sound. His heartbeat.

His eyes cracked open, releasing a painful wave of light through his head. He groaned slightly before trying again. The room he found himself in had a sterile white paint job, and the bed was uncomfortable. A TV on the wall opposite him was playing the news…

“And in the aftermath of the attack of the terrorist identified as ‘Fireman’, over 4000 are dead, with hundreds more critically injured. New Detroit Police has stated this attack is link with the equally unbelievable violence and destruction caused by ‘Gutsman’ the day before. Further evidence suggests these two terrifying attackers were agents of the now infamous Dr. Wily, currently in control of Cheyenne Mountain or, as he insisted it be called in his latest demands message, ‘Skull Fortress.’ The death toll in New Detroit since the rise of this Dr. Wily has reached 16,456, with an undetermined number of people injured, in hospitals, or buried. Many believe that these numbers would be immeasurably higher if not for the heroic efforts of New Detroit’s own super hero, Megaman, who stopped both attackers with extreme prejudice…”

Rock slipped back into a dream of dreams of nightmares. His mind descended into a realm beyond his senses, curling up into a ball in the shock of what was happening. A voice unlike his own spoke to him in the darkness.

16,456.

That’s how many lives are on your hands as much as they are on Wily’s.

Rock lifted his arm to look at it. He had a hand, of sorts. It looked bulky and mechanical. His forearm was swelled, and it looked almost like someone had stuck a football into the skin. The whole assembly looks alien. Unfamiliar, yet still a part of him…

What Am I?

Tiesel slept in the waiting room, snoring softly while leaning on Bon, who was likewise asleep, cooing occasionally at some private vision. Tron sat wordlessly across from Roll, who had long since cried all the tears she could manage. The blond girl looked up, noticing the other three for the first time, really.

“Oh… hello. You’re…” Roll asked in a faltering voice. Tron blinked and looked up.

“T… Tron,” the black-haired girl said in return. “Who’re you?”

“Roll,” the blonde girl said, trying her best to smile. “Are you here for Rock?”

“Rock? Oh… you mean Megaman.”

Roll shook her head. She couldn’t help but think of Rock and Megaman as two different people, somehow. “So how do you know him?” Tron asked, bravado covering her voice. “Did he blow up your car or something?”

“No,” Roll said, shaking her head and laughing, just a little, despite herself. “We’re… childhood friends. He’s practically my brother…”

“Ah,” Tron nodded, throwing a dirty glare at Tiesel and Bon to cover up a small, inexplicable feeling of relief that passed through her mind.

“How do you know him?” Roll asked innocently.

Time seemed to stop as Tron returned her gaze to the absolutely clueless face of Roll. Her mind screamed at her to lie. To remember that they had escaped from jail and were convicts on the run. To realize this goody-goody blonde girl would probably turn them in.

But then again, wouldn’t Megaman do it too, if he knew? He wouldn’t… would he? Or would he?

Tron’s eyes narrowed and she nearly spat her response. “He wrecked my air ship.”

You’re a killer.

And for that matter… who am I? Rock? Or Megaman?

Dr. Light’s sleep deprived form entered the waiting room, and instantly received a storm of questions from the two girls.

“Is he all right?” Roll asked earnestly.

“Did the plan work?” Tron asked almost at the same time.

Tiesel yawned a sat up. “What plan, Tron?”

“Babu?” Bon asked sluggishly.

Dr. Light held up his hands and smiled as much as his tired face would allow. “Rocky… er, Rock will be fine. He’s asleep in the recovery room right now.”

Roll sighed in relief but Tron pressed her point. “What about the plan?”

Dr. Light shrugged. “We won’t know until he’s awake and we can go visit him. If I had to guess though, I’d say it went off well enough.” Tron smiled at this point. “It was a great idea to have, Ms. Bonne. I’m not sure I would have thought of it myself.”

“It comes with being a natural genius,” Tron’s said, almost automatically. Roll gave her a questioning look as Tron blushed. She was always used to basking in the praise of older people, but now that she thought about it, it didn’t really seem appropriate.

Cutman laughed as he sat on a rudimentary throne built of broken pieces of stone from the collapse of one of the buildings Gutsman had taken a disliking to. He held the severed piece of Megaman’s arm in one hand, looking at it. It was very like his own arm, except it was that serene blue instead of his blazing orange. Cutman decided to keep it as a trophy.

Reggae and Plantma’am were tending her garden, far below Dr. Wily’s mad cries of total, incoherent rage. Fireman had lost. Somehow, Reggae had known he would. Dr. Wily had expected it, but he was angry all the same. It was always insulting to hear someone destroyed your superior work…

Shadowman had disappeared from the Fortress in the last few hours, and Reggae had seen Icema’am leave as well on one of the security monitors. He didn’t know if either of them had been sent on assignment, but he didn’t ask, for fear of inviting Wily’s rather undirected wrath. Quickman was anxious for his chance to fight Megaman, but Reggae was almost sure Dr. Wily would try something else first. Maybe Knightman and Yamatoman, as the two Masters worked almost impossibly well together. Or maybe Wily would try something new. Either way, the fast-living Quickman was going to have to wait his turn…

Pharaohman had been dispatched in accompaniment with the Yellow Devil to the Middle Eastern country of Saudi Arabia for reasons unknown to Reggae. Possibly to seize the foreign country’s oil reserves and cut off a major supply of energy for the world. It might also be a scare tactic, meant to implicate the US in a plot against Saudi Arabia or Iran, or possibly even the shakily democratic Iraq. Elecman had been teleported to Japan, and massive power surges in Tokyo were already claiming a spot on some news lines. Magnetman was now leading the defense of the Fortress in the absence of the Yellow Devil, his ability to toss tanks around like kids toys being very effective in holding off the various military units while the reconstruction of the face of the mountain continued with the aid of the remaining Masters.

Dr. Wily was also traveling deeper and deeper under his stolen home these days, seeking out new and interesting weapons that had been researched here before the takeover to use against both the American Military and Megaman. While the Masters and the Yellow Devil could easily destroy the military presence around the Fortress, Reggae knew that Wily was using the scattered units as a testing ground for the devices he was adapting to his own nefarious purposes.

The one that worried Reggae the most was the solitary reference to a battle robot that was under construction on the lowest levels he’d seen while perusing the German’s files in his absence… Something about the name ‘Gamma’ struck some nameless chord of fear deep within his very soul.

Eyes snapped open behind a black visor in the gloom of the crushed building. The figure in crimson and gray stretched in the darkness, content with his work well done. He’d been discovered, but that hadn’t been a problem. The bigger problem was the other presence he could feel. He was not alone in this barren city block.

Standing in one swift, silent, fluid motion, he easily leapt to the hole in the ceiling of his makeshift lair. It was time to draw the Butcher out of hiding. The hunter would become the hunted.

Prometheus… no… Protoman would make sure of that.