Work Text:
While its true that Bass would never help Wily with one of his ill-conceived attempts at world domination, he could still get pissed at missing out on all the fun.
"That old bastard excluded me on purpose!"
Bass grit his teeth as he stomped through the remains of the latest Wily Castle.
The young robot was furious, imagining what might have been. Bass had been in another part of the world and hadn't even realized there was fighting to be had. There were only so many opportunities to find real opponents as the strongest robot in the world, you know? The universe was cruel and unfair. He stalked through the partially-underground complex hoping that something interesting would jump out at him. Literally. He wanted to shoot something.
In pure frustration he fired at empty Met helmets he passed, flinging them throughout the corridors. They rebounded off the walls and floor with a clatter. He didn't even have actual Mets to destroy. Who heard of a Wily Castle without Mets?! Usually at least a handful of the little brats would end up left behind when Wily inevitably vacated after defeat.
Eventually, he made his way to the boss chamber. Calling it a chamber was being generous, as the roof had caved in, rendering the area an apocalyptic debris field. If he looked up, he could see the fading colors of the day, blue shifting into purple and black as night crept across the sky.
Hopping up onto a cracked beam to gain a vantage point, Bass surveyed the area. The giant pile of metal and wire in the center was the remains of Wily's latest machine, no doubt. A few scorch marks littered the walls, telling him that the final fight got pretty wild. Off to the left, near a fallen collection of platforms, a splash of blue caught his eye. That particular shade, cartoonish and fake candy-like, always set off his sensors, demanding his attention.
Bass quickly hopped over to the blue thing, identifying it as a mashed up hand. It stuck out from beneath the rubble like a limp branch. Bass dug his fingers into the surrounding stone and metal to rip it out of his way.
There was no way this meant what he thought it meant.
Piece by piece, the fragments he removed revealed more of the familiar blue armor. His rival, Mega Man, was buried beneath the rubble. Covered in gouges and tears, his injuries showed blatantly vulnerable wires and visibly dented supports, akin to a broken bone. The boy's eyes were closed but there was a slight hint of glowing light coming out from underneath his eyelids, flickering. That was probably good news. It meant that he still had power running through him, if nothing else.
Every time Bass grazed his fingers against the other robot in his quest to uncover him, Mega Man's eyes twitched like we wanted to open them but couldn't. He would occasionally move his head from side to side, following the sound of thrown garbage hitting the ground behind them, but even that seemed like a difficult motion to coordinate. The sight of his rival struggling with such a basic process filled Bass with a dark, inky feeling that dripped through him from his core to his feet.
After getting the other boy halfway free, it occurred to Bass that he had neglected to say anything the whole time. If Mega Man could understand what was going on right now, he might still have no idea Bass was there.
That was unacceptable.
"Hey," Bass said, voice unusually quiet. Mega Man tensed. It was wrong, horribly wrong for the blue robot to act afraid when Bass hadn't had the chance to get two words out. His next ones were snarled out in a louder, accusatory tone. "Did you lose or something?"
Which, in Bass's mind, was certainly the most salient question to ask.
Mega Man did not speak. His jaw twitched, briefly revealing some teeth, but no sound came out. His round, cherubic face managed to half-contort into a look of frustration. Clearly, not all of his facial muscles were operating correctly. His mashed hand raised for a moment before he gave up trying to gesture with broken fingers, letting it fall back to the floor with a thunk. From somewhere inside his upper chest, a short series of loud sparks went off. Mega Man flinched in pain and fell still.
Bass finished removing the last of the rubble. The most egregious damage was the side of Mega Man's stomach being completely blown out, leaving a large gash that looked a lot like something had taken a bite out of his mortal enemy. Bass suspected this was because of the cave-in and not Wily, though.
The two existed in silence beside each other for a long moment before Bass stood back up, staring down at his rival's pathetic state. He wasn't sure how to feel, honestly. He was designed to be gratified when Mega Man was at his mercy, but Bass wasn't the one who put him in this position. Somehow, coming across Mega Man like this sent a deeply uncomfortable wave through him, like standing too close to a powerful magnet. Bass considered what the best option would be before turning back the way he came and exiting the room.
On the way in, he had come across a storage space with extra parts. Wily did not keep many extra pieces around, as a general rule—he'd rather build a new robot than fix up an old one—but sometimes time constraints meant he had to make do. Pretty much all of Wily's robot masters were outfitted with the same basic components and sizing, which meant the pieces would be far too large or cumbersome to fit comfortably in someone more specialized and compact like Bass. Besides, he had no intention to use inferior parts to perform maintenance on himself and had planned to leave it all behind once he was finished scouring the castle.
But he supposed it would also be a waste to just leave them there. They were perfectly functional parts. Maybe. If the old fart hadn't completely cheapened out.
He dragged a large box of material—grabbed at random, since Bass didn't know what he'd actually need—and a few tools back to where Mega Man lay still on the ground. The blue robot did try to react as Bass approached, but his current state meant it amounted to some weak twitching. Bass ignored the pang in his core as he sat on the ground and pulled out the first piece.
Given the immense damage around the other robot's stomach, Bass decided the best place to start was to reinforce the hole. He didn't have the material to actually cover the injury, but he could add an extra stabilizer or two to make sure that, once he eventually got up, Mega Man would be able to stand without his top half collapsing in on itself. All the metal rods were too long for his rival's short torso, so he bent one in half with both hands until it snapped, tossing the unneeded piece on the ground. Then he took the other half and bit around the end of it with his teeth, tearing off the remaining length bite by bite before spitting it back out onto the floor like watermelon seeds. Eventually he determined that what he had was good enough to work. Pulling out a spot welder, he jammed the remaining rod into the open cavity and slowly, inelegantly melted the ends of it to anchor points at the ribcage on the top and the hip stabilizer at the bottom. Mega Man's body seized up like he was in pain, and he probably was. Then Bass repeated the process with another rod piece, just to be certain it would hold.
Somewhere in the middle of it Mega Man started whining miserably. That eventually tapered off when he realized that Bass wasn't going to stop. By the time Bass was done, he had gone quiet again. There was a slight indent in the ground where Mega Man had tried to grab at the earth for purchase, but his broken fingers hadn't let him get a grip, leaving him just a palm to rub a divot into existence as a self-soothing technique as he tried not to lash out at the robot next to him.
Okay, mostly stabilized. Now what?
Reaching out to grab his rival's smashed, dirty hand, Bass cradled it in his palm. Even without the additional weight of the armor, his hand was heavy, laying inert. Robots didn't really breathe, so there was no reassurance that he was doing the right thing, but he could still see his rival's eyes twitching beneath his eyelids. The broken fingers ground against themselves when Bass moved them, causing Mega Man's whole body to flinch and weakly attempt to pull his hand away. Yeah, there was no way Bass would be able to help with such small, intricate pieces.
That was more or less the extent of what he could do on his own. He cursed everything. Wily, Mega Man, himself. More than anything, Bass despised the feeling of being useless, but even he wasn't so stubborn as to think that he could actually fix this. Instead of wallowing about it, he tucked Mega Man's hands across his torso to keep them out of the way and slipped his own arms underneath his rival's back.
Mega Man let out a staticky groan as he was lifted off the ground. His head and legs swayed, controlled only by gravity. The sight was far too similar to what humans would call dead, so Bass tucked his rival close to his chest, curling the other's helmet into the space between his chin and shoulder. Bass ignored the way his rival's head fit against him perfectly. One arm supported his back as the other wrapped underneath the blue robot's knees, scrunching him into a wedge. It probably put pressure on Mega Man's decimated lower torso, but there wasn't a better way to carry him by hand where Bass could keep an eye on his condition.
Then Bass began the arduous walk back to civilization.
Bass did not have a way to contact Dr. Light, or he would have done the simple thing and demanded a teleport. The Light family had, understandably, blacklisted Bass from accessing most of their tech. Normally this would be considered a smart decision, but at this exact moment, it served as a hindrance to both sides. It wasn't even possible for him to send a message. As he walked, he made an effort to keep his stride even, trying to keep the jostling to a minimum as he exited the castle and made his way back to town. It was late into the early morning when he finally spotted the low-set fence that surrounded the Light household, and Bass absolutely, emphatically, did not let out a sigh of relief when he saw it or speed up his pace.
The door to the house opened before Bass even touched the gate.
In the doorway stood a haggard-looking Dr. Light. Illuminated from behind, most of his expression hid in shadows, but from what Bass could see, the man had aged a hundred years. For all that the dark robot ragged on Wily and Light for being old men, they were generally active and spry, not… tired, like this. The two were locked in a staring match across the yard.
Bass could leave. He didn't want to be there in the first place. It felt wrong, a betrayal of everything he stood for to bring his battered rival back home for repair. Yet his feet were rooted in place. He'd come all this way, he rationalized; to turn back now would be cowardly and a waste. He pulled Mega Man's limp body even closer, memorizing the feel of him.
Bass felt warm when Mega Man gave a curious hum into the column of his throat. Instinctively, he hunched down over him, wanting to wrap himself around the other for reasons that danced across his programming like sparks. Sudden, impossible to ignore, but also impossible to grasp. A sign of danger, live wire.
"Are you going to stand there all night?" Dr. Light said. His voice was calm and conversational, as if Bass were standing next to him and not in the street. Mega Man's head jerked up, bonking into Bass's chin. The chin guard on his helmet meant that he didn't really feel it, but it kicked Bass into action. The robot scowled as he elbowed his way through the gate and stomped up to Dr. Light, stopping directly in front of him.
The doctor's eyes snapped to his son, and his face morphed from forced neutrality to horror. He reached out, but Bass stepped back, unwilling to hand over his rival just yet. He didn't need the man to fuss, he needed the man to work.
To his credit, Dr. Light seemed to realize this. He immediately changed tactics by stepping aside and ushering the robots through the door. "The lab is this way, to the right," he said as he scampered off ahead.
Bass hesitated before stepping through the threshold onto plush carpet.
He was struck by how familiar it all was. Bass had been there once before, after all, back when he had convinced them that he was a friend. The couch looked exactly the same, and the layout of the living room hadn't changed. The walls were the same inviting, neutral color they had been. Even the pillows on the furniture were uncannily familiar, as if he'd stepped back in time, back to when he was little more than a puppet for Wily's plans. He didn't like thinking about that. He had been newly built, back then, but what had ever convinced him that listening to that shitty old man would make him the strongest?
In the lab, Dr. Light had already cleared off a workstation as well as gathered a large number of instruments that were vaguely familiar to Bass. This lab was much more organized than Bass was used to with Wily, clinical. Alien, almost. Bass felt his hackles rise as he stood off to the side, uncertain of what his next move should be.
Dr. Light pat the workstation. "Lay him here, please."
Part of Bass wanted to rebel. To throw Mega Man to the floor and start yelling. He did not take orders from Dr. Light or from anyone else. But there was still that tiny, rational part of him that said this is why he bothered to come here. He'd be working against his own purposes if he wanted to be petty now. Instead, he stiffly walked forward and deposited his rival where Light asked him to. His arms ached when they slipped out from beneath Mega Man's body. His chest ached too, where the shorter, slighter robot had laid against him during the trip. Tired from carrying him, maybe? But Bass could haul much heavier things much further distances without issue. He scowled to himself as he cut off the thought.
Bass stood up straighter once he was done, but made no move backward, looming next to the table. Dr. Light looked at him askew, but wisely said nothing about it. Instead, he pulled out a tool, hunkered down, and finally started fixing Mega Man.
Bass's eyes were locked on everything the doctor touched. He peeled away the armor like skin from an orange, discarded haphazardly to the side. Then, much more gently, Dr. Light cut away the torn, jagged edges of Mega Man's false-flesh where his stomach was blown out, being mindful of wires and circuit boards. This made the hole larger, yet the neatness of it somehow made the injury look less dire. Dr. Light then took a current tester and lightly touched the tines to various points, checking exactly where Mega Man had electricity flowing to. His eyebrows furrowed as the places he touched beeped less and less.
"Not good," he murmured. He tapped a tine against one of the rods that Bass installed. "I assume this was you?"
"Yes," Bass said. "I didn't want the stuff in his chest to fall out on the trip."
Dr. Light frowned, but whatever he was actually thinking, he didn't voice. "Not a bad instinct, though this setup really only works if his circuit boards remained attached to their mounts. If they had been knocked loose, then—"
"Then your precious little robot wouldn't be functioning at all right now," Bass said. He didn't need a human to tell him, a robot, how robots worked. He wasn't stupid. "It was never a fix, more like a tourniquet. Is that what its called? The thing where humans have broken bones and they wrap it to keep it from moving until its fixed."
"The word you're looking for is 'stint'," said Dr. Light, lips curling up for a moment. "You have a point. I suppose that materials for a more proper fix wouldn't have been readily available to you."
"Even if they had been, I wouldn't have bothered," Bass said, crossing his arms. Which was true. There was no reality where Bass took the time to nurse his rival all the way to health—he wouldn't be able to. He could do basic maintenance on himself, but Bass had a wildly overactive self-repair system and a unique composition that meant he rarely needed an actual fix. Repairs, for him, expedited things when he was damaged, but he also had the option to just leave it and injuries would 'heal' themselves so long as he had sufficient energy to work with.
Given his rival's reliance on his creator after fights, he got the sense that it didn't work that way for him. It was one of the features that made Bass better than Dr. Light's pet robot.
Dr. Light went back to fixing. An ancient program in Bass's processor unearthed itself, cataloguing every little piece of Mega Man's internal structure, mapping out weak points. He had neglected to do so when he had the other at his mercy earlier, even when he was sticking his hands into his rival's body cavity, but in his heart of hearts, Bass was an opportunist. He had no qualms about taking advantage of his rival's weakened state to learn more about how Mega Man ticked. He was so focused on mapping the topology of his insides that he missed when Dr. Light switched focus, opening up a hatch in Mega Man's chest to fiddle with a small, suspended box.
After replacing a few wires in the box, Dr. Light pulled off the blue helmet and ran his hands through his son's dark brown hair. "Can you hear me, Rock?"
"Yes, Dr. Light," Mega Man crackled out. Despite sitting right in front of them, his voice sounded muffled and distant, as if he spoke through a tube. His mouth did not move to match his words, instead opening when he spoke and closing once he was finished.
"I'm going to plug in a cable," Dr. Light said as he gently pulled the blue helmet off his son's head, setting it aside. "If you can, please run a quick diagnostic on yourself, so that I know what to fix first."
Mega Man attempted to nod and relaxed, turning his head to the side to obediently present a port on the back of his neck—usually covered by his helmet and hair—for Dr. Light to plug in to. The cable connected to a simple laptop, and soon after a stream of error codes appeared, indicating a long list of system failures that plagued him. Dr. Light's face grew more and more incredulous as the list just kept going.
"…I don't believe this will be much help, after all," the man said, running a hand through his own white hair. "I suppose this will have to be a complete overhaul, from top to bottom. What on earth happened to you, my boy? Rush was distraught when he teleported back home without you."
There was a long hesitation before Mega Man, reluctantly, opened his mouth again. "Fight against Wily was fast. Building collapse… was faster. Couldn't reach Rush. Sent him back… without me."
Dr. Light let out a breath, clearly distressed by that answer, but made no comment. Reaching out, cradling the young boy's face with one hand, he stroked the boy's cheek with his thumb, looking like he was about to cry.
The sight was so tender and sincere that it made Bass viscerally uncomfortable to watch. His boot made a loud scrape against the floor as he recoiled. He winced. Mega Man's eyes fluttered as he attempted to open them, whereas Dr. Light looked up like he forgot Bass was there.
"What?" Bass said loudly, face growing heated. "I didn't come here to watch family bonding."
"You brought… me home," Mega Man said, and even through the terrible quality of his current voice box, there was a note of wonder.
"Wily doesn't get to defeat you," Bass said. "That's my job."
For the first time in hours, Rock managed to get his eyes open. They were glitchy and unfocused, but he still managed to look in Bass's direction. "Why?"
It was a question that Bass had been asked by the other robot a hundred times, but somehow, this time, it felt different. Still, he stuck to the tried and true answer. "What do you mean, why? I want to be the strongest robot, so I have to defeat you."
"I'm not the strongest," Mega Man said simply.
"Yes you are," Bass said. It was as obvious as saying one plus one equaled two.
"Proto Man's buster is a lot stronger than mine," he insisted slowly, every syllable drawn out like each word was its own program to run. "Guts Man is stronger. Fuse Man is faster."
Bass loomed over him, jabbing two fingers into the boy's face. "But you're the one who wins. If you aren't the strongest, then what are you?"
Mega Man was silent. He didn't seem to have an answer for that, and so Bass huffed, leaning back and crossing his arms in a satisfied manner.
For about two seconds.
Then the doubt set in. What the hell did that make Bass? He's supposed to be the strongest robot in the world, and yet he had never managed to get a clean, definitive victory against his rival. Not once had Bass ever managed to legitimately get one over Mega Man.
If Mega Man was the one who wins, then Bass, as the one he fights, was the one who… loses.
White, gloved fingers dug into his arms so hard the metal audibly creaked. He should have taken advantage of Mega Man's failure and finished him, not brought him home to be fixed. Who cared whether Bass beat him fair and square or kicked him while he was down? It was an arbitrary restriction to his victory, and certainly not one that Wily designed him with. There was no low too low for a miserable bastard like Wily to sink in his quest to beat Dr. Light, and, literally being built with that mentality, there shouldn't by any barriers between Bass and victory. Not where Mega Man was concerned.
Bass's arm began running the program that turned it into a buster, which Bass force quit as he turned on his heel. He didn't need to see this. He didn't need to be here. Why was he here?
Bass stopped in his tracks when a loud, metal clang rang out, followed by a glitched cry of pain. Mega Man had reached out, misjudged the distance, and accidentally smacked his broken hand against Bass's forearm.
"D-don't leave," he said, leaving the injured hand hanging in the air between them.
"If I have to be here another minute, I'm blowing you up," Bass said as he jerked his arm away. The sudden, violent contact had his battle-oriented programs roaring. He wanted to be right up in Mega Man's face where he belonged.
"You… W-Wily," Mega Man said, a determined glint appearing in his glitchy eye.
"What about him?!"
"Need your help to beat… Wily."
Frozen, Bass felt the words ping-pong throughout his system.
"What about the nerd with the glasses and scarf?" Bass asked, face scrunching.
Mega Man blinked at him, blue eyes shining. Like when Bass would play fetch with Treble and Treble caught the ball. "Wily Machine was really fast. You're… faster. Better at this. I think."
"Better at everything," Bass corrected automatically.
Bass had been thinking about how to get back at Wily for having a grand old battle without him. It certainly wasn't the worst offer Bass had ever received. He and Mega Man had worked together before, for a certain value of 'together'.
"I suppose I have some free time." Bass glanced around the room before spotting Dr. Light's chair, which he had neglected to use ever since they all entered the room. Bass hooked his foot around one of the legs and pulled it close to the edge of the table, dropping into it and putting his elbow next to Mega Man's shoulder. He leaned his head into his hand, staring down at his rival from a new angle.
Mega Man already looked pretty different, even though virtually nothing was actually fixed. The bright lights of the lab lit up his face in a way that didn't allow for deep, gaunt shadows, which meant he looked less miserable than he had back at the castle. If Bass ignored the way Mega Man's eyes couldn't track anything, he could almost convince himself that his rival was fine. Especially with the dopey half-smile that Mega Man insisted on pointing at him.
Briefly, he was overcome with the urge to headbutt Mega Man while he was down on the table. Just… really fast. To wipe that look off his face. That smile had to be some sort of disruption tool, to throw his enemies off their game by filling them with confusing signals.
To break free of its hypnotic spell, he glanced up at the doctor and quirked a brow. "You gonna fix him or what?"
Dr. Light gaped.
"What?!"
Mega Man's head clunked against the table. "Don't have to… yell, Bass."
"Shut up. I'm not taking lip from a guy who can't sit up on his own. I just need the old fart to fix you so we can go kick the other old man's butt."
"I, well, ah," Dr. Light stuttered out before finding his footing, "I'll need some elbow room to continue working on Rock."
Bass didn't move.
"Um, Bass…?"
Bass sat up primly, allowing his eyes to fall closed. "You'll figure it out."
He did not cede the chair, nor the space by Mega Man's side.
Rock giggled at the completely out of place vote of confidence. Of course Bass would suddenly think highly of Dr. Light's abilities when it served him.
"We'll get out of here… sooner. If he has room," Rock pointed out.
"Tch." Bass leaned back in his chair.
"I suppose that will have to do," Dr. Light muttered. His face went through a variety of twitches that Bass didn't have time to interpret before settling on resignation. He picked up his tools again and got back to work.
Mega Man's free, less injured arm wiggled for a moment on the table. "Hold my hand?" he whispered.
Staring down at him, Bass slowly lifted his hand—the one he would normally turn into a buster and aim at Mega Man's face—and slid his fingers across the blue robot's palm. Mega Man's hands were much softer than his own. The unexpectedly gentle touch made his rival squirm a little.
Then he interlaced their fingers, gripping with far too much strength. Can't let his greatest enemy think he's weak.
"Ow," Mega Man intoned flatly.
"Baby," Bass said without heat.
FIN