And from here to Wilypocalypse....
Couple of quick notes:
1. "If-speech-is-written-like-this", it's being motor-mouthed.
2. [X: This is communication between robots over the network, the letter at the start indicates who is speaking]
[spoiler]Planet Websitia, MCP Ruins - 1 Week prior to Current Events
Nestled in a quiet corner of the Maintenance station located next to the main body of the ruined MCP, Robo-Ky rose from the seated position he'd taken and smirked to himself as the last metaphorical brick of his mental defenses slid into place, taking a moment to review everything and confirm that yes, it was all in place, as it should be and most importantly secure.
Since the incident a few weeks ago that'd seen him.....reborn, for lack of a better term, he'd spent most of his time hidden inside the Maintenance station, getting accustomed to his new body. While he still felt a strange sense of....something whenever his thoughts turned to exactly how he'd acquired it, he had been extremely pleased to find that it was significantly lighter and faster than his old one. He'd only needed about a week to get used to moving around, the height difference between his old body and this one requiring something of an adjustment period, and - much to his embarrassment - a further five days to teach himself how to speak with a proper human face. Having spent so long with little more than a crude synthesizer to communicate verbally, learning to enunciate properly had been a challenge, albeit a necessary one. Not that he'd admit it to anyone. Ever.
The rest of his time had been spent constructing his mental defences. He'd briefly considered simply porting over what he could from his old body and building on things from there, but since a unit's defensive capabilities were partially tied to their construction it'd seemed something of a waste to not take advantage of the options now open to him. What had once been visualised as a factory of some kind now resembled...well, he sincerely (and wasn't that an unusual emotion for the former Wily General. Sincerity) hoped no-one would ever get so far through his defences to even catch a glimpse of what their core - he - looked like.
The downside to rebuilding practically everything from scratch was that he'd had to find a new way of organising his memories, and that meant reviewing each and every one of them to some degree, but he'd noted that something felt.....different....regarding certain memories. Experiencing the white-hot flash of anger that had initially consumed him during Zakura's disappearance had been bad enough the first time, but going through all of it again....when he got to the point in the memory where she'd shot him a final look before vanishing in a burst of teleport static, he had to freeze the playback. At the time, he'd completely disregarded pretty much everything except his anger at the attack and his newfound hatred of both Boforte and the Doctor, but seeing it again.....he'd never really registered the expression on her face. He'd been pondering his mysterious benefactor's "housewarming gift" ever since he'd picked himself up and started to collect himself, but now he found himself wondering exactly what that little bundle of unidentifiable code had been.
Zakura....had looked sad. How he knew what sadness was, exactly, he had no idea, having not been programmed to display any emotions at all as far as he knew. That he'd managed to feel genuine rage and hatred was, in hindsight, a revelation, but.... now it seemed that emotions - in their entirety - were something he just knew, and it'd confused (and if he were honest with himself, another concept he was only just beginning to get used to, scared) him at first. Seeing her face though, understanding a little of what must have been going through her head at the moment she'd made the decision to flee, he'd felt a weight settle in his chest that he'd initially been unable to figure out. It wasn't until he'd deliberately gone over some of his older memories and paid very specific attention to Zakura's behaviour that he'd finally twigged that what he was feeling was shame. All the time she'd spent with him, as close as they'd been and he'd never once really acknowledged or attempted to reciprocate any of the emotions she'd shared with him. The determined set of her expression when they sparred, the subtle undertones of excitement in her voice whenever they were given a new assignment, the happiness in her eyes whenever they simply sat and talked during a quiet period....he'd never, not once, even attempted to tell her that he appreciated her presence, valued her friendship. Some part of him acknowledged that it was simply because he hadn't been able to, hadn't had the depth of emotion available to even begin to process any of those sentiments in any kind of capacity, but that knowledge did nothing to ease the feeling that he'd somehow failed her during all the time they'd spent together.
The realisation of all of that had gotten him thinking about his conversation with the unknown unit whose body he now inhabited. The unit had said something about having a serious think about where he'd come from, and where he'd like to go in the future. While reviewing the memories of his attempt at rebellion, once his battle with Borockman ended and his recollections prior to waking up in the ruins had ended, he'd attempted - with the benefit of both hindsight and having this sudden, new insight into processing emotions - to follow his original plan to its' logical conclusion. Assuming he had succeeded in defeating Borockman, his next step would've been taking direct command of the Doctor's forces. And that lead him to a thought he was not comfortable with. If he'd done as he'd originally planned, the lesser units would've followed his orders without question, they wouldn't have had any choice anyway as per the basic level of their AI. Some of the less intelligent Robot Masters may have followed along too, but the others, the Fortress Bosses and especially the small number of CopyBots present in the Doctor's ranks at the time? The only way they'd agree to fall under his banner is if he'd done to them exactly what the Doctor had attempted to do to Zakura. Picturing her expression at that final moment, then being able to understand what she must have been feeling and then realising that he'd been planning to inflict that exact fate on practically every sentient unit in the Doctor's forces....with his newfound grasp of feeling, he felt sickened by it, and shaken by the fact that he was feeling that way about, essentially, everything he was and had been to that point. Painfully aware that he couldn't simply change who he was and how he thought overnight (not without rewriting his code so much he'd simply stop being himself, anyway) he'd instead quietly resolved to at least try and approach things differently going forward.
Pushing the last of the errant thoughts to the side for future consideration, he flexed his fingers experimentally, grinned again at how quickly they responded to his commands, and headed for the door. He still didn't have a proper destination or plan in mind, but he now felt secure enough to at least try and make a start on something productive, and frankly he was getting tired of hiding in what was essentially a robot graveyard...
...Or at least, leaving had been the plan. He'd only just reached the door when the faint hum of distant propellors reached his ears. Slowing, he poked his head outside and immediately ducked back in as he caught sight of a Hogale slowly approaching the scrapyard. Not willing to risk exposing himself so soon, he positioned himself out of sight of the doorway and slipped back onto the network, bringing all of his firewalls up and poking around until he found one of the Monopellans currently on patrol. From there it wasn't much more effort to patch himself into its' optic feed and observe the Hogale from a safer perspective. For the next ten minutes or so all he did was watch it slowly (painfully slowly) approach. Eventually, it stopped roughly over the middle of the scrapyard and dropped a large object from its' cargo bay before slowly (painfully slowly) turning around and retreating back the way it came. He hadn't managed to catch a glimpse of whatever it'd dumped beyond registering that it was large, though he had felt the impact of its' landing even with his attention divided as it was. He was curious, certainly, but opted to wait until the Hogale had vanished over the horizon before cutting his connection to the Monopellan, withdrawing from the network and finally stepping outside for real. Picking his way over the debris that'd been kicked up from the impact, he eventually reached the object, and quirked a brow at the sight of a stasis capsule sitting in the middle of a large crater. The capsule itself appeared undamaged by the landing, but what was more interesting was that if he was reading the blinking lights on its' top correctly, it wasn't just functional, but occupied. Tilting his head in thought, he poked at it over the network and smirked as his probe broke the lock program with no real effort. In the real world, the lights on the capsule flickered for a moment, then settled again as the front panel slid down with a hiss of pressurised air.
Withdrawing from the network and refocusing his attention on the real world, Ky caught his first glimpse of the capsule's occupant.
A girl, hanging limp from a large batch of cables attached to various parts of her body, eyes closed and face devoid of any expression. Her skin (synthetic skin, he had to remind himself) seemed a shade or two paler than the average human, certainly paler than what little of his remained exposed since he'd removed his helmet, and her hair was a glossy midnight black, streaked through with patches of crimson. The only other piece of colour visible was the form-fitting black undersuit she was clad in, leaving her hands and feet exposed.
Ky frowned at the sight, mind racing as he tried to understand precisely what the Doctor's (and who else could it be, really?) motivation for abandoning this unit could be. Tentatively, he tried to access the capsules' interior mechanisms and grimaced at the thick firewalls protecting the reactivation protocols. Thankfully, he was familiar enough with the Doctor's coding style that it didn't take too much time to chew through them and activate the pod's startup sequence. All of the cables save for the main power cable attached to the girl's back retracted into the roof of the capsule, and she slumped forward as the bulk of what was supporting her vanished, and....
....nothing. No signs of life at all, despite everything being set for the unit to reactivate. Ky blinked, scowled, and spun on his heel.
"Well that was a waste of time."
He'd made it only a few steps when a small voice that he couldn't place rang out in his head.
You wouldn't be walking away if it was Zakura in that pod
That stopped him short, and he turned his head slightly to regard the capsule and its' occupant over his shoulder. While he couldn't say he recognised the girl, there was little doubt in his mind that she was a Wilybot. With regards to his current mindset, that made her an enemy, but at the same time it looked for all the world like she'd simply been tossed out like garbage, and there just had to be a reason for that....
"Tch...."
Curiosity won out in the end, and he stepped back toward the capsule, reaching out over the network to try and contact the girl, and stopped dead when he registered the frankly ridiculous lock program surrounding the girl's presence. An experimental poke at it caused it to ripple, and he stepped back to weigh his options. Considering how advanced this thing seemed to be, it was likely that it was being monitored by someone, and if he did attempt to break through it to reactivate the unit, it could conceivably give his presence away before he was ready to....announce himself. Really, that was a risk he wasn't sure he was willing to take, especially since he didn't recognise this unit and had no idea if there was even anything behind the lock program. Still....
In the real world, he tilted his head and regarded the girl again. For a brief moment he could've sworn he caught sight of a white headband fluttering in the breeze behind her head, but he blinked and it was gone. How long he simply stood there he couldn't begin to guess, but eventually the thought occurred that simply abandoning her as he'd been planning to do was something Robo-Ky would do, and the memories of his prior actions with Zakura had soured him on continuing along that particular way of thinking, so that left....
"....Eh. [tornado fang] it."
Reinserting himself into the network, and mentally bracing himself for whatever the consequences of this were going to be, he gathered up everything he had, picked out what looked like the relative weakest point of the lock program and simply brute forced his way through it and into the core programming of the unknown girl...
???
The first thing that caught Ky's attention was the sheer drop into water directly in front of him. The second was that the moon hanging full in the sky over his head appeared to be falling apart, with a massive section of it fragmented and drifting away in a manner that made almost made it resemble a comet's tail. Turning, he found himself at the end of some kind of walkway leading to what looked like a castle of some sort, though a distinctly more....old-fashioned one than the kind he was used to. There didn't appear to be any light beyond what was shining down from above, but he wasn't detecting any movement either. He was about to advance when he realised his mental self still resembled his old body, and that was a complication he didn't need if this unit proved to still be active and/or a Wilybot like he suspected. A few seconds of concentration saw his form ripple and shift to resemble the body he now inhabited. He briefly considered manifesting his defensive systems as Thunderseal again, but the thought again occured that that particular weapon might be a little too recognisable, so he didn't bother to physically manifest a weapon for the time being, thinking that if he did need to fight he'd figure something else out. Cautiously, and with his systems constantly scanning for any sign of activity, he advanced towards the structure ahead of him.
A half hour later saw him both extremely pissed off and more curious than ever. Every single set of doors he'd come across in the building had been locked behind the same kind of aggressive firewall as the initial access point to this unit, and while he was certainly capable of breaking those locks the amount of time and effort he'd had to expend on each one had seen his mood grow progressively worse. On the positive side, he was at least seeing signs of some sort of mental activity, and the surroundings had become a little easier to understand as well. Every so often he'd catch a glimpse of hulking, black-furred things through the windows he passed, but every one of them appeared to be dormant, seemingly asleep. He'd also seen patches of vegetation on his wanderings, but just like with the creatures he'd spotted it seemed....off....withered and dry. Whether or not these things were a reflection of this unit's mental state he could only guess, but it was certainly intriguing, and he was still trying to figure out the reason a unit like this could have been locked in stasis and dumped in a scrapyard, of all places.
When it came to the place he was exploring, the first couple doors he'd broken down after forcing his way in revealed rooms decorated in such a way that he was reminded of something akin to a classroom or lecture hall, though he'd not had any context to explain the various decorations and other odds and ends scattered about them, so he'd stopped investigating the smaller doors and focused his attention on trying to locate wherever it was this unit's main conciousness currently resided.
Eventually, an alert pinged into his peripheral vision to inform that his scans had picked up something interesting, and he'd been lead to another nondescript door, though the corridor surrounding it didn't appear as formal as the school-like area he'd been exploring previously. As expected, there was an exceptionally nasty lock covering it, but his patience was nearing its' limit so he decided to forego attempting to simply pick the lock in favour of basically kicking the door almost off its' hinges. Memories of the last time he'd done this had him arming every single defence program he had, fists clenching in anticipation of an incoming attack. Instead though, he was met by....a bedroom. Two sets of bunk beds (though he hesitated to actually call them that. One appeared to be balanced on stacks of books perched on top of the bed underneath it, and the other was tied to the ceiling and otherwise unsupported) at opposite sides of the room, one completely empty, and the other....
The top bed was empty, but the bottom seemed to be occupied. Moving closer, Ky was pleased to note that it seemed to be the girl he'd seen in the pod, so it looked like he'd found the core program. She was asleep, curled up on her side and buried so deep into the covers that only the top half of her head was visible, and even then her eyes were covered by a black sleepmask decorated with a very familiar skull pattern. She hadn't reacted at all when he'd made his entrance, so he made the decision to actively scan her core program (something that he probably wouldn't have done if she'd been awake, as it was something of a faux pas among sentient units to do without asking permission first) and wasn't surprised in the slightest to see another lock program binding her. Further inspection proved that it was the sleepmask keeping her from waking, so he spent a few minutes poking at the coding to try and figure out the best way to untangle and safely remove it. No sense in going to all this trouble to find the unit only to accidentally fry her brain trying to wake her up. Finally settling on his approach to this, he started to pick at the code for the lock program and was eventually rewarded with the sight of the mask slowly disintegrating. The girl stirred slightly, and Ky opted to slowly back out of the room and start making his way back to his entry point. Better to have this confrontation in the real world where he could reasonably say he held the advantage as opposed to a place where a potential enemy could get the upper hand.
He'd made it about halfway when his defense systems practically screamed at him, and he whipped around just in time to catch a glimpse of a black mass barrelling towards him. He just about brought his hands up in time to intercept it and found himself flat on his back and pinned with a set of unnervingly sharp teeth snapping closed mere centimetres from his face. The situation did give him a chance to actually get a look at the thing, which he assumed was one of the sleeping things he'd seen earlier. It almost reminded him of a wolf, if wolves stood 6 feet tall and wore decorated masks. With a grimace, he managed to get a foot underneath the thing's chest and shift his weight just enough to throw it off, scrabbling back to his feet while trying not to take his eyes off it. The thing rolled with the throw and was on its' feet before him, but didn't immediately press the attack again, instead raising its' head and emitting an ear-splitting howl before starting to circle. The swift tak-tak of claws on concrete meant his ears, and a chorus of low growls from somewhere over his shoulder implied his circumstances had just gotten a lot direr, made even worse by the fact that he really wasn't all that keen on fighting back, not wanting to hurt this unit without having a chance to talk first. He'd just about resigned himself to combat when the creature he could see stiffened and pulled back slightly. He risked turning his head to see behind him, and was met with the sight of about another half-dozen of the things, and behind them, the girl, stumbling towards him while rubbing at her eyes. Her outfit here was different to what he'd seen outside, being a black tanktop decorated with some sort of heart design, and a pair of white pants covered in roses. From the looks of it, she was still waking up, but she did stop just short of where he stood and raise her head to look at him, surprise slowly spreading across her features as she observed him.
"Oh. Uh....hey?"
Ky blinked. That wasn't the reaction he was expecting.
"Hi?"
The girl tilted her head, and he could almost see the question marks dancing over her head.
"Who're....what're....?"
Still waking up, then. Ky would've rolled his eyes if not for the presence of the wolf-things.
"I'll explain outside, alright? You mind....-" - he gestured to the creatures. The girl stared at him uncomprehendingly for a few seconds before something seemed to click in her head. She didn't say anything, but the wolf-things sniffed the air in unison before slowly backing away and dispersing into the darkness of the surroundings. He didn't bother to thank her and simply spun on his heel, sprinting back to his entry point and withdrawing from the network entirely as soon as he was able, leaving a rather confused and drowsy-looking girl standing motionless where he'd left her.
Planet Websitia, MCP Ruins
Ky shook his head slightly as his awareness shifted back to reality, still standing in front of a motionless girl suspended in an open capsule. As that thought occurred, though, she opened her eyes. And made no other attempts at movement or anything. Ky frowned. She was clearly awake, so what was the issue..? She made eye contact with him at that point, and her eyes flashed at him repeatedly. He tilted his head, trying to work out what was going on, before giving the mental equivalent of a shrug and poking his head back onto the network.
As soon as he did that, her presence there practically football tackled him, glomming on to what little of himself he'd allowed to show with what was essentially a death grip. Huffing a mental sigh (and rolling his eyes in the real world), he decided to try and open a communication channel with her.
[K: There a problem?]
Her response was....unexpected.
[?: YAY! I'M NOT ALONE ANYMORE! It-was-seriously-way-too-quiet-around-here-but-now-you're-here-and-I-don't-have-to-put-up-with-the-quiet-anymore!]
Ky blinked again as he tried to parse exactly what he'd just heard, and eventually just gave up.
[K: Is. There. A. Problem?]
[?: A problem? Oh, right. Um.....I can't move. Almost all of my systems are locking me out and I can't open them! HELP!]
In the real world, Ky pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. This'd better be worth it....
[K: Alright. I'll need to take a look at the locks before I can do anything. If I'm going to do that I'd appreciate it if you'd keep your pets away from me.]
A feeling of immense excitement and....gratitude?....flooded across their link.
[?: Can do!]
[K: Fine. I'll do what I can to help. For now...]
Even as he tentatively accepted the welcoming hand back into the girl's systems, in the real world he tugged the last remaining cable in the capsule free in a shower of sparks, scooped up the girl's limp body and carried her back towards the Maintenance Station to try and find a quieter, safer place to work.
The next day...
"I CAN MOVE AGAIN! AND SPEAK! WOO! YAY FOR BEING ALIVE!"
Ky just about resisted the urge the slam his head into the nearest wall. He'd spent most of the night helping the girl - who he now knew as Ruby - regain control of her systems, which mostly involved smashing more of the Doctor's lock programs. They'd spent quite a lot of that time conversing (or more accurately, Ruby talked AT him and he'd occasionally chip in with a question or grunt of acknowledgment), and he was no closer to getting any kind of answers to any of the questions he'd had regarding her presence here. She'd been able to confirm that yes, she was a Wilybot, but beyond that she had no clue how or why she'd wound up in a stasis capsule and dumped in a scrapyard. And she was just so cheerful. He suspected it was something to do with her power core, honestly. He'd never heard of a "Kinetic Conversion Engine" before but apparently that was what was powering her, and she'd been flitting around like an overexcited puppy ever since he'd helped restore her mobility, sometimes almost blurring from place to place she was moving so quickly.
Well, he'd gotten almost nothing for his efforts, save for a vague sensation of warmth in his chest, and he'd wasted enough time milling around. Rising from where he'd been sat, he headed for the door and back out into the scrapyard, taking a moment to get his bearings and obtain a map from the Overseer Unit before heading in the rough direction of RPM City. He had a couple ideas of how to proceed, but needed to get somewhere a little more...useful in order to implement any of them. A muted whoosh of displaced air saw Ruby standing in front of him with an inquisitive expression on her face.
"Oh, are we leaving? Where we going?"
Ky raised an eyebrow.
"We?"
She responded with a confused blink.
"Well, yeah. You helped me and-I-have-no-idea-where-I-am-or-what-I'm-doing-here-and-I-feel-really-lonely-by-myself-so-I-thought-I-could-maybe-tag-along-with-you-so-I-don't-feel-lonely-anymore-and-maybe-we-can-be-friends?"
She'd finished that little speech with her head bowed and was now staring up at him from beneath her fringe witha hopeful expression. His immediate thought was "Nope" and he was about to dismiss her when a vague memory of Zakura looking at him with a similar expression resurfaced and he paused.
What? You're gonna leave her here on her own? You wouldn't abandon Zakura, why is she different?
That voice in the back of his head again. He closed his eyes in contemplation before making a decision.
"Okay. Fine. You can tag along for now. What happens later, I don't know yet."
And with that, he resumed walking. Ruby responded with a whoop of delight and quickly fell into step beside him, humming absently to herself while he was lost in thought. Eventually though....
[R: *poke* Hey.]
.....
[R: *poke* Hey.]
.....
[R: *poke* He-]
[K: What?]
[R: It's too quiet on here. Talk to me?]
[K: .....]
???
"Sir, the signal you asked us to monitor has been confirmed offline. How would you like to proceed?"
[/spoiler]