Note: This is rushed, so expect mistakes.
Chapter 06: Escape
Pain. Pain. Pain.
Saito didn't remember screaming but he was pretty sure he was. There was another person screaming next to him. Someone familiar but in his pain-induced mind, he couldn't figure out who. He heard the door slamming open, there was more screaming and shouting. Saito could feel somebody trying to hold him up but he pushed the helper away. Even contact with another hurts.
He screamed and screamed and-
He woke up again in his bed was the next thing he remembered.
Netto broke their twin link.
"Netto..." Saito began, almost in tears.
Never have the elder Hikari twin felt so alone.
/-/
"You were right, that Hikari-boy felt different," Harp said over the phone with Misora holding the Transer up with Subaru and War-rock on the other side of the line. "He's not human at all."
"Not completely human," War-rock corrected. "He does have a human feeling to him, which makes me believe he's some kind of hybrid."
"Hence your theory he's some kind of lab rat?" Harp asked in a deadpanned tone.
"Yep," War-rock replied in a smug tone.
"I think you're crazy." Harp replied with a blunt tone, causing the AM-ian to sputter.
"But that's the most logical explanation!" War-rock exclaimed. "What's your theory on the kid then, because I'm betting a thousand zenny on mine."
"That's my zenny you're betting with," Subaru pointed out before clicking his Wizard off button, sending War-rock back into the Transer.
"Subaru!" War-rock cried.
"So what's your opinion about Saito?" he asked Misora.
"He's extremely kind for one," Misora replied. "And he acts a lot older than he looks. When he was telling his story, it was like he was in his own world."
"Like he was there, right?" Subaru asked. Misora nodded.
"He's acting, you know," Misora began. "The way he talks and moves, I think he's pretending to be a kid."
"...What?" Subaru asked, sounding a bit dumb at the same time.
"I can tell when people are acting, Subaru-kun," Misora began. "Though Saito did do a good job in hiding it but when he was talking about Rockman and mentioned the deceased operator, that's when I saw the sadness in his eyes." Misora eyes dropped a little. "He was really sad, as if he was talking about a close family member."
"Close family member?" Subaru repeated. "Do you really think so?"
"I could be wrong," Misora began. "But the sadness was really there. He just had those eyes, but when War-rock called Saito out of it, he covered it up pretty quick."
"So my theory could be wrong," War-rock huffed. From the Transer, the AM-ian turned to Subaru. "Do you think he's some really old guy in disguise?"
"Humans can't live that long," Subaru replied. "Besides, even if the body does somehow live to look that young, the organs can't."
"He could be a vampire," Misora mused and Subaru groaned.
"You can't be serious. Vampires are night creatures, not only that, they're not real," Subaru pointed out the obvious.
"Can't you let a girl's imagination run wild every once in a while?" Misora asked with a playful grin.
...Subaru was not jealous, nope, not one bit. He was not disgruntled about this at all. If War-rock was reading the young boy's mind, he would so point out to his human friend is jealous of Saito.
A beep from the Transer snapped Subaru out of his thoughts.
"It's from the Satella Police," War-rock announced.
"Misora got one too!" Harp voiced.
"What does it say?" Subaru asked War-rock.
"It says...'To those who are able to perform Denpa-Henkan with their Wizards are to head to the address attached at the bottom of the message to assist Ace in capturing and apprehending...RockmanEXE,'" War-rock blinked, reread the message and blinked again. "I'm not reading this wrong if that's what you're thinking." he informed as he turned to a see a shocked Subaru.
"There has to be a mistake," Subaru said, recovering from his small shock. "Rock can't be a criminal."
"The message isn't a fake either," Misora said over the line, frowning.
"We'll have to go and find out what's going on," Misora said. "I'll see you over there...before my boss shows up." she whispered and closed the connection.
/-/
Saito didn't like the situation he's in one bit. Going against a trigger-happy opponent is putting him in a tight spot. The only upside of this that he's acquiring information on how a denpa-human can battle. The teleportation trick is a cheat! It's not fair.
"Surrender yourself, Rockman," Ace ordered.
"Sorry, but my friends will have my head on a platter if I do that," Saito said and dodged another barrage of shots. For the most part, the navi managed to dodge most of the attacks, but he received numerous superficial cuts at the same time. None of them were serious, luckily.
"Rock!" Subaru called, grabbing Saito's attention -almost losing a leg in the process-, and the blue navi faced Subaru and a girl he never met. She could fuse with her Wizard as well, so it seems. Just how many human are there who could perform such a feat? He thought about for a moment and decided not to think about it much.
"I wasn't expecting this many humans could fuse with their Wizard," Saito mused. Ace called for backup. Damn. Murphy must hate him. The jerk must hate him very, very much to make things harder than it already is. He noted another Denpa-human appearing next to Subaru. It was a giant red ox, exhaling fire every once in a while. The Ox-looking EM Human reminded him of Gutsman and Dekao.
"Ox Fire!" Subaru greeted, though he sounded a bit surprised as well.
"I got a message to come here too," Ox Fire replied. "It's been a while, Rockman." Then Ox Fire turned to Saito. "Aren't you the same guy who stopped the Wizard from the school?"
"Why yes, I am," Saito said with a smile. "RockmanEXE, at your service...well, kinda. By any chance you're here to capture me too?"
"Not really..."
"We're just as clueless as you are," Misora admitted.
"That's what we want to know," War-rock called out, Subaru and Misora turned to Ace. "Why are we arresting him? He's done nothing wrong." If Saito was surprise, he was very, very surprised. He had to make sure his jaw wasn't hanging. Thankfully, it wasn't. His respect for the boy suddenly sky rocketed.
"It's the higher ups' orders," Acid Ace replied. "'Capture the navi, RockmanEXE and detain him for questioning of the Darkloids.'"
"...I'm not with the group if that's what you mean," Saito huffed with indignation, sounding extremely offended. "I rather face deletion before I join them, thank you very much."
"And Rock has a bad history with them," Subaru defended. "He fought against the Darkloid, Beastman."
"Regardless, he is still wanted," Ace replied. Without a warning, Ace fired a couple rounds, Saito cursed, about to summon a shield but found his body was reaching his limit.
'Damn it!' He thought. Then his eyes widen when the shots were being blocked by similar plasma shots.
"Who's there? Show yourself!" Acid Ace demanded.
"You know...I give you props for looking like Acid and me but your acting of me is just terrible," The second Acid Ace commented.
"Two Acid Ace!" Ox Fire cried, panicky.
Unless Ace has a twin brother the other denpa-humans didn't know about, they deducted that one of them is fake. Saito fired the one first Acid Ace in the moment of silence and everybody watch the first Acid Ace's image blurred before changing into the one only Saito would know.
"Cosmoman!" Saito exclaimed. "You were resurrected too!"
"All of us Darkloids were resurrected," Cosmoman informed. "Did you really think we wouldn't return after all these years?"
"Kinda," Saito shrugged. "But I also thought I somebody might come back to haunt me but I never really did expected you guys. Troublesome."
A Dark Chip appeared in the former navi's hand and Saito shifted to a defensive stance, cautious and wary of the next course of action Cosmoman will do.
"I'm here to bring out Dark Rockman," Cosmoman said. Saito's eyes narrowed, his playful attitude gone and was completely replaced with absolute seriousness.
"I'll take that offer and shove it up where the sun can't shine," Saito replied. He really wanted say 'ass' but his personality program refuse to let him. "Dark Rockman is never coming out again."
"E-hem," War-rock interrupted between the two conversing enemies. "As much as we want to listen to two bickering grandpas go at it for the next few hours, but I'm bored!" Saito blinked and smiled.
"And I can't hold this form anymore," Saito said. "So…see you guys next time! Mini-boomer." Multiple blue balls materialize around Saito and imploded. Metal parts were tossed and flung across the room.
"That coward," Cosmoman muttered before he disappeared.
There was silence for a few minutes before War-rock snapped…again.
"What the heck!" War-rock shouted. "We could of went wild on them and yet you guys just stood there and watched."
/-/
"I'm never doing that again," Saito panted. Zipping through the net at mach speed and making it back home in record time, the navi immediately jumped into one of his extra bodies he had hidden in his apartment and sat down next to the charger. He thought about his encounter with Cosmoman, Acid Ace, Harp Note -though he has a vague idea who she is-, Ox Fire and Subaru.
The chest part is the most heavily enforced part of the Copyroid. However, should it take too much damage, Cosmoman could pierce through the power source of the bot...and Saito could kiss this body goodbye. Thank god he remembered to bring an extra spare body before coming over. His other spares are back with Blues, and it's kept locked in the other navi's top notch security safe. Blues picked up Enzan's taste for fancy things. Multiple bank accounts, claiming he's his own son or grandson, and owning some of fanciest homes around the world...yep, Blues is a very rich man/navi. Being a navi of the former company president has it's perks.
Not only that, in one of many of Blues' safe stored most of the data from the past. Should anyone look into their past now -before and after the accident-, all they'll ever find are snippets of information of them once being Net Savior Navis and that they were supposedly deleted in the prison. In reality, Saito altered his own deletion sentence thirty years after Netto's death along with Blues' and Searchman's. The trio slowly changed little information throughout the years about Net Navis and took their operators' name off the book, for the sake of protecting their operators' tarnished reputation. All the government has on them are issues of their arrest...something Saito now regretted not taking or altering when he was hacking into the government's computers.
If any, he could blame Blues for not letting him taking that information. It could have saved him the trouble from fighting and running away.
"Blues you idiot," Saito muttered under his breath. "I told you so but do you listen? Nooo, I didn't think so."
Choosing Kodama was never a coincidence...Kodama is...was Akihara. The town Netto and Saito was born and grew up. The name may have changed, but it was still his home. He never stayed here for too long but long enough to reminisce the past and leave. For some reason, this town always attracts the trouble, probably one of the reasons why he returned in the first place.
Not only that, Netto's grave is in the town's cemetery. The oldest part of the cemetery anyways. Blues donated a lot of money when he found out that cemetery was about to be taken down decades ago. Enzan's grave is in that same cemetery as well, a different part of it but still in the same cemetery nonetheless. Blues refused to let Enzan's marker be rooted out and have some fancy building be built over it. That's why the cemetery has been around for such a long time. Saito was grateful for Blues. It was also one of the last familiar landmarks of the city. The last thing of the old times they're connected with. Laika's grave was in there too. Akihara became a second home to the Sharro soldier over the years, his old country marked Laika as a dishonorable soldier when he helped break Searchman out of the prison, but the old soldier made it over to Japan before he was caught. When he died, he was buried in Akihara's cemetery along with Enzan and Netto.
In truth, the three Net Navis thought it was also fitting that their operators would be buried under the same ground, a symbol of their past friendship and partnership.
Saito flipped open his Transer to send an email to both navis. He rather faces their wrath now than later. Blues reply was quick and short.
From: Blues
Subject: Re: Police
To attract this kind of attention in just a short time, it's a wonder what other attention you attracted in the last century. Give me a few days, I'm coming over. I'm sending Searchman an email about this. He'll be coming once he's done with his investigation. You better have a room ready unlike last time.
Ah, Saito remembered the 'last time.' He ended up feeling bad and offered to sleep on the couch, and then made Blues feel bad and he slept on the couch instead. Blues was crabby for sleeping on the said couch for about a week. A crabby Blues and a bubbly Saito in the morning don't mix. Saito found that out when he saw Blues arguing with his toaster.
The toaster didn't make it, enough said.
From: Searchman
Subject: Re: Police
I'll go through Sharro's systems and make sure we're not on their criminal system, for now. You better have a reasonable excuse on how this happened.
Ah, this time it's Searchman who's angry at him.
"What should I do now?" Saito asked to nobody in particular.
So many choices, so many outcomes and most scenarios won't end with a happy ending. Sometimes Saito wondered why didn't he take Blues' stash of sake when he had the chance -recall the fact that he's over two hundred years old and he's technically legal to drink-.
/-/
"You can't find anything about Net Navis at all!" Subaru asked. "I thought you guys had government access and all!"
"We do, but the information was the same information as what Saito told you," Daigo replied with a frown. "Most data regarding the past have been deleted in the past. Remember what Saito said? Seventy-five percent regarding the past had been deleted but the government did have one thing on the Net Navi named Rockman."
"What is it?" Subaru asked. Any information regarding the navi could be useful in knowing the enemy and the past.
The past...what's so important about the past that they need to unearth and find that they must learn for the sake of the present? Why the secrecy? More importantly...who is Rockman? Why the past does centered on him the most?
Subaru is a kid. A kid is naturally curious for answers. It's bound to get him into trouble.
"There's...an arrest warrant for the navi that helped you," Daigo replied. On the computer screen appeared a mug shot of Rockman's face along with two other individual. "That Rockman and two other navis had a warrant to be capture." Subaru examined Rock's face thoroughly. The face is completely different from the Rock he's the other day. The Rock he knew is amused, extremely optimistic and he could be serious when he wants to be. The Rock he's looking right now looked miserable, sad and utterly lost, as if he had nothing to live for. He doesn't like the past Rock and paused to think for a moment: if this was the past Rock, then is the current Rock a fake? "There wasn't a logical explanation other than they were considered an S-class threat."
"S-classed!" Subaru cried. "There's no way Rock could be an S-classed criminal!"
"Is S-class that serious?" War-rock asked.
"They are considered to be criminals who committed treason to their own country," Subaru explained. "Basically, they're wanted throughout the world."
"And a capture on sight order," Daigo added. "...Reporting to the authorities first, of course."
"...So basically we just let a supposedly dangerous criminal go without us knowing...twice!" War-rock cried.
"You didn't know..." Subaru reassured. "But Rock didn't look like the type to be a criminal."
"And with that blue jumpsuit on, how couldn't anybody find him after so long?" War-rock grumbled.
"He could have hid himself among us," Daigo replied. "From what you learned from Saito, Net Navis were based off of us humans. I wouldn't be surprised if Rock took on a human identity and appearance to live."
"That's so...advance. Was there such a technology back then?" Subaru said. "We can't do that for EM Beings at all.
"My theory is that the technology never made it out to the public," Daigo replied. "The technology was probably given to Net Navis with the highest regard or that the technology was created by someone close to Rock."
"So do you think he betrayed humanity with that very technology?" Subaru asked eyes wide.
"No, from what you described to me about Rock, he's not the type to do that kind of thing," Daigo replied.
"Well, whoever he is," War-rock began. "He's good at hiding. He could be under our noses for all we know."
Oh…if only they know.
/-/
A couple days later, Saito leaned on the pillar outside of the airport for support. Waiting is so boring, the human/Navi hybrid concluded that years ago, but his infinite patience is the only thing that's keeping him there…plus the ride back to his apartment is a long ride and the person he's waiting for is going to pay for that said fare.
Yes, Saito can be evil when he wants to be.
"Now arriving from Choina."
'Finally,' Saito thought.
A man in his late twenties, early thirties stepped out of the terminal with a duffel bag swung over his right shoulder. He wore a simple dark suit with a black and white striped tie. His eyes were covered behind a pair of shades, making him more mysterious and Saito watched with amusement was he saw middle age women were giving the man second glances.
Oh, if only the ladies knew.
"It's been a long time, Blues," Saito greeted quietly with a smile.
"You got some nerve to be relaxed about this situation," Blues said with a disapproving look.
"I'm not as relaxed as I look," Saito said, chuckling slightly. Seriously, Saito isn't. He hasn't slept a wink. His program is a bit of a fritz, but he's not gonna tell Blues that.
The former red navi sighed.
"Come on," Blues said. "We need to start planning about this situation and figure out how should we trend this."
"All right…but you're paying for the fare," Saito said.
Blues grimaced.
"Still a kid," he muttered. Saito just laughed.
/-/
Author's Rambling: There! I finally updated! It's a freaking miracle. If you guys want to know why, TheFanFicGuy killed and ate my plot bunny(to TFFG: Told ya I'll blame you). I got a message to update and well, I pushed all my homework aside and forced myself to finish the chapter. My second reason for not updating this story for so long is because I got into the Katekyo Hitman Reborn fandom.
Feel free to vent out your frustration on me through via review. :D
To Fortunate Fighting Singer: Raven, is that you?
Happy birthday TheFanFicGuy! :D