Something Like Family

by Jixie

Mega Man © Capcom

- Note: The setting for this fic is Mandi Paugh's 'verse' (Mega Man: The Series). If you're not familiar, no problem, it's pretty self explanatory. All you need to know is that Mega Man and Break Man (Proto Man) are living beings because reasons, which is a fluke thing that can't be replicated; Bass is a flawed prototype for 'Reploids'; no other robots are sentient. - This first chapter "Joyride" takes place during Mega Man: The Series # 18 "Taking Action", special credit to Mandi Paugh.

- My previous fic "Things Trivial and Cherished" takes place near the end of this (although the timeline in intentionally nebulous). It's not required reading, both fics stand alone. That said: if you enjoy this one, I bet you'll like that one too.

- Special thanks to beta reader aJennyAnn

Joyride

The signal tracer in Wily's ship was out of calibration. Again. Tracking Mega Man was harder than tracking normal machines, no thanks to his annoying unique physiology. It was one of the many, many things that Dr. Wily hated about him.

He struggled to split his attention between flying the saucer and adjusting the tracer. The smart thing would've been to use an auto-pilot, but for all Wily loved automation, here he was unwilling to give up control.

Bass was watching him, looking decidedly amused.

"Why don't you mind your own business?" Wily snapped when he noticed.

"Or," Bass replied, "I could fly it for you."

Wily made a coarse, nasal sound that was all at once both a scoff and a snort. "You've got to be kidding."

…but no, he was serious. While Bass didn't push the issue, he seemed intent, verging on enthusiastic. Wily shook his head. He knew letting the robot take the controls was a terrible idea— Bass had neither piloting experience nor pre-programmed skills, and this was not exactly a teaching moment.

The tracer beeped, shrill, persistent. Wily glanced at it, then over his shoulder at Bass, then back at the device. He grumbled. He sighed. He let go of the control stick and slid out of the pilot's chair. "Don't crash."

For humans, learning new skills was a gradual curve. With computers, it was a series of maddening starts and stops. Bass often split the difference between the two. But learning was still learning, it was always a process.

Wily found himself smacking face-first into the signal tracer display panel as he was flung about the cabin.

"For land's sake! What are you doing?"

"I got it," Bass insisted.

A quick look at the monitor confirmed that no, he definitely did not 'got it'. "Up! Pull up!" Wily said frantically. Moments later he scrambled to stay on his feet, grabbing the dash to avoid rolling down the steep incline that was the floor. There was a crash from deep within the ship indicating that the Guard Joes had taken a tumble. Irate, Wily shut off the tracer and stepped besides the pilot chair.

"Don't jerk the control stick, it requires light touch." Wily pointed to a switch on the console. "That's the craft's stabilizer, it's there for a reason. Use it." After a moment, he grunted. "We're too high, bring it down to a lower altitude. Gradually, you fool. It's not a race."

Finally he was able to return his focus to the signal tracer, turning it back on and quickly getting it calibrated. With that taken care of, he really should've taken over piloting, but… what the heck. Bass wasn't doing a great job, but he'd managed to not kill them. So far.

"Slow down," Wily scolded.

They got closer to their target, and both of them made the grievous mistake of assuming that the other was paying attention to where they were headed. This turned out to be a problem, because Mega Man was in prison of all places, ironically for being falsely accused of murdering Dr. Wily. The moment the saucer was in shooting range, they were blasted out of the sky. In a truly hilarious twist of fate, they crash landed right into the prison itself.

Wily read Bass the riot act, although he was almost angrier at himself for having let the robot pilot in the first place. Bass was on the defensive, insisting it wasn't his fault. After all, they'd been shot at. Wily himself would've crashed under those circumstances.

The argument stopped dead when they realized Mega Man was there.

In a cell.

In cuffs.

It was all too easy. Too easy! And if anyone was going to bungle such a sure thing, it was Dr. Wily and his circus of incompetent robots. Neither Bass, nor the cadre of Guard Joes, nor Wily using the ship's defense lasers were able to take down the persistent blue pest. Break Man showed up, and the situation quickly devolved from there. Soon Wily found himself retreating. Bass, on the other hand, was unrelenting. In the end Wily had to use ship's the tractor beam to literally drag him out of there.

"I had them," Bass said, fuming. He spent the next few minutes sulking in silence.

Wily was equally furious, if not more. How Bass had managed to flub that, he didn't know, and he'd been there to watch it happen. The only reason he'd built Bass and kept him around was to beat Mega Man. If he couldn't do that, what was the point?

His anger slowly subsided, and he asked for a ground-level diagnostic. While Bass had taken some pretty bad hits, there was no major damage. With that out of the way, Wily found himself relinquishing the controls once more. "I'm tired," he said. "Take us back to the fortress."

It was couched as an order, but Bass could tell that Wily was accommodating him. It was impossible to stay mad, he grinned and took over. Moments later Wily was thrown into console. Again.

"Careful, imbecile!"

It was a bumpy ride home, but they made it in one piece, which sometimes was all that one could ask for.