Disclaimer: Mega Man belongs to Capcom. Keep your lawyers away from me.

I'm using the Japanese names because I think they sound better.

Also, I've been told to acknowledge Shadow Man's general hysteria and the crackiness of this fanfic. You know, as a fair warning.

The halls were dark and silent.

He stepped lightly and stepped slowly, keeping his footsteps as quiet as possible so as not to alert anyone to his presence. This was a stealth mission, a very difficult one, and if someone caught him… well. He just wouldn't let anyone catch him.

There was a crack of light shining beneath the door that led to his target, and he swore quietly as he ducked further into the shadows lining the hallway. Someone was in there? That complicated things.

Hovering uncertainly outside the door, he pulled up a list and scrolled through his options.

Go in anyway. That course of action wasn't just reckless – it was downright illogical. Doing that had the potential to send this mission spiraling right down the toilet.

Make a break for it. Unacceptable. Abandoning the mission was simply not an option. He deleted this one off the list out of pure spite.

Create a diversion. This was more plausible, but what could he do that would only catch the attention of the occupant of the room and not anyone else? Besides, depending on the identity of the occupant and what the diversion was, there could be some unpleasant… and violent… results. And explosions. In a place like this, explosions were unfortunately (and terrifyingly) common.

Find a way to look into the room and further assess the situation. Okay, this one he could manage. Perhaps he could find a way to work around this obstacle in his mission. He closed down the options window and took a look at the map of the grounds he had had the foresight to download before beginning the mission.

If he kept going down the hallway and hung a right after two doors, he could go around the room and to the other door – which happened to have a small window in it. Swiftly and sneakily, he slunk down the hall and made his way to the room's other entrance. He finally reached the other door, and he turned to look through the window—

Curses. He had forgotten this facility was built for people of average stature.

Balancing precariously on his tiptoes, he peered through the gap in the door. He sighed in relief – though the lights were on, it seemed that no one was in the room. Deeming it safe enough to venture inside, he silently turned the door handle and crept inside.

His prize was right across the room. His circuits were practically tingling with the excitement of being so close to accomplishing his mission objective, and he allowed himself a small smile of triumph as he seized his target.

New acquisition held secure in his hands, he commenced removing himself from the premises in the same way he had come – quick, silent, and unnoticed.

"Okay, guys, listen up. This isn't funny, I'm not laughing, and whoever committed this unspeakable act of larceny is going to die a horrifically painful death that I will orchestrate and carry out with my own two hands!"

DWN-024, more commonly known as Shadow Man, slammed his fists down on the table to punctuate his statement. The tableware bounced and clanked together as the table rattled, and a few unfortunate pieces of cutlery clattered to the floor.

"Um, Shadow…" Quick Man nervously shifted in his chair at the table, twitchy even at this ungodly hour of the morning. "What's got you so yelling at us this early, then? Anything I can do?" He seemed to be making an effort at keeping the peace, God bless him, but it only served to make Shadow Man angrier.

"I'll tell you what you can do!" Shadow Man shouted, giving Quick Man the pointer finger. "You can get me my Goddamn pizza back, you nimrod! Somebody took it, and no one is leaving this room until I find out who!"

The silence that followed that declaration lasted about ten seconds, but with Shadow Man's palpable anger and the tension in the room, each second stretched itself into a long, painful eternity.

"Your… pizza." Elec Man's tone was more of a flat 'what' than a question.

"Yes. My pizza." Shadow Man's voice lowered to become quiet and dangerous, which was somehow more intimidating than the yelling and table-pounding. "I was looking forward to eating that this morning. I looked in the fridge, and it was gone. I know that one of you" – he made a vague sweeping gesture with his hand – "took it. No one else could have."

"I don't think—" Crash Man started, but Shadow Man cut him off with a vicious glare. Awkwardly fiddling with his drill appendages (he got upset whenever anyone referred to them as 'hands'), Crash Man looked down at the table with a small noise of distress.

"Shadow, I realize that you're upset about the pizza, but don't you think you're overreacting a little?" Napalm Man tried to rationalize. "It hardly takes anything at all to disturb your recharge cycle. If one of us went into the kitchen last night, you would have heard us leaving our part of the building." Even if the Robot Masters were separated based on their serial numbers, they all recharged in the same wing of Wily's fortress.

Shadow Man paused to consider, his crimson eyes boring deep into Napalm Man's as if trying to see if the younger Robot Master was telling the truth.

"You're right," Shadow Man finally concluded. The entire room breathed a collective sigh of relief, just to tense up again when Shadow kept talking. "But I still don't know who took my pizza. No one is leaving until I know who I can blame."

"Are you kidding?" Time Man squawked. "I'm already 5 minutes and 47 seconds behind schedule!"

"This is ridiculous," Fire Man growled, narrowing his eyes dangerously. Ice Man and Guts Man, the only two unlucky enough to be sitting next to the hot-tempered Robot Master, edged away nervously. "I'm not going to stay here just because you're throwing a temper tantrum over some lost groceries!"

"I bet it was Forte," Crystal Man said with an unpleasant leer that was out-and-out creepy. The guy had such a shady attitude; it even freaked people like Shade Man out sometimes. "He doesn't sleep in our wing of the building."

No, Forte slept alone in what Wily insisted wasn't a broom closet. Forte also happened to prefer going out to obtain nourishment, as he disliked spending time in Wily's fortress. Crystal Man, however, really didn't like Forte, and Shadow Man just wanted someone to take his anger out on for his lost pizza.

"You're probably right. Forte deserves to be punished for his crimes!" Shadow Man announced, once again dramatically slamming the table. "You're all dismissed!"

Time Man bolted for the door before Shadow Man could finish his sentence, muttering about being horribly late.

Gemini Man finally emerged from his room after an hour-long conversation with his reflection, which had dragged on for longer than it should have due to a strange variation of the 'no, you hang up' argument. He strolled into the entertainment room, intending to beat Snake Man's high score in Pong (because there was no way Gemini Man could let that creepy bastard's name stay at the top of that damned Top Players list).

The first thing that Gemini Man saw when he stepped into the room was that the TV was on, and Flash Man was staring at it. Flash Man's expression… well, the only comparison Gemini Man could come up with was the face of a person who was not only constipated, but also very, very angry at their own inability to defecate.

Gemini Man glanced at the television. A commercial for wigs was playing on the screen.

"Oookay," Gemini Man muttered, turning around and walking right back out.

And the other Robot Masters called him a freak for only ever talking to himself. It wasn't Gemini Man's fault that he was the only one whose circuits weren't completely fried.

It took Shadow Man roughly two and a half minutes to locate Forte's broom clos—room and determine that the younger robot was inside, probably deep into his recharge cycle.

At this hour? How lazy, Shadow Man snorted inwardly. Never mind that it was still early, that Wily worked Forte too hard, and that Forte almost always ended up getting the brunt of Wily's anger whenever Rockman won. Which was a lot. And had also happened yesterday.

Nevertheless, Shadow Man kicked the door in, shouting over the sound of the wood ricocheting off the wall, "Forte!"

"Mmmnn… wha'zzit?" Forte rolled over to face Shadow Man, squinting in the bright light coming from the hallway. His red eyes were unfocused and contained small flickers of static – a common side-effect of being woken suddenly from an incomplete recharge cycle.

No matter. Shadow Man had no reason to feel bad – the reason Forte was so tired was because he had been up last night stealing Shadow Man's pizza!

"My pizza, Forte," Shadow Man said, deceptively calm. "I know you took it."

Forte kept staring, incomprehensive.

"What I want to know is why, Forte. Why it was the pizza and not Heat Man's Hot Pockets. Why you didn't take Ice Man's fudgesicles instead."

"…I didn't," Forte said plainly, his eyes slowly starting to focus. He was still far from higher order thinking, however, which explained the lack of hostility.

"Stop lying, Forte," Shadow Man hissed, leaning in close. "I'll have you know… I don't take kindly to pizza thieves."

Forte blinked.

The explosions that followed could be heard at the other end of the fortress, where Crash Man was trying to pick up a vase he accidentally knocked onto the floor (and, miraculously, hadn't broken in the process). He had been at it for about fifteen minutes, and he had finally gotten the vase to balance on his not-hands. The sudden noise, however, startled him into dropping the vase, which, upon impact with the floor, shattered into pieces.

Crash Man whimpered.

Blues was the only one having a good morning.

Relaxing languidly on the roof of Dr. Light's labs, he whistled a low tune as he stretched his legs out in front of him. For the first time in what felt like forever, he was content to just sit back, settle down, and enjoy a decent meal.

In his hand was a slice of pizza.