Disclaimer: Mega Man does not belong to me, it all belongs to Capcom. Unfortunately.

Timeline: This takes place, obviously, not long after Hub dies from HBD and is digitized into a NetNavi – probably a mere couple of weeks after Dr. Yuuichiro Hikari was successful in digitizing him. Bass has not been created yet and is in the planning stages, therefore the Alpha Revolt has not happened yet, either.

Little Problems

As Dr. Hikari's Navi, he had to admit that he lived a good life, he mused, tinkering with the Virus Machine in his operator's work PC.

One would never assume that he, who looked very much like a sleeker NormalNavi with a pink color scheme and a pointed helmet, was anything custom. But he had all of the latest technology, and Dr. Hikari upgraded him constantly. His current appearance was really more to throw off potential attackers than anything else.

As Dr. Hikari's Navi, after all, some NetTerrorists would want to target him.

He turned back to the Virus Machine. It needed to be updated with the latest viruses, and to make sure that it didn't spit out viruses that were too difficult for any Navis that wanted to train. Dr. Hikari was planning on giving it to the Officials, hoping that they would be able to use it to train their Navis easier and faster.

CopyMan closed the code of the Virus Machine, frowning as he looked up. Dr. Hikari had been unusually busy lately, spending most of his time at the Testing Computer. He didn't blame him; what he had been doing recently was extremely risky, and if he hadn't seen how much of a mess Dr. Hikari had been after that, he would have protested.

Still, it would be nice to get out of the work PC; he could travel the Net, but his operator honestly concerned him with how much obsessiveness he was showing over this project.

He didn't have to worry for too long, when he suddenly found Dr. Hikari on the other side of the screen. "Hey, it's about time."

"Sorry about that, CopyMan," the scientist said, scratching his hair. Were those a few wrinkles that CopyMan saw on his face? He could have sworn that Dr. Hikari was only in his early thirties. "I actually need to ask you a bit of a favor while I'm gone."

"Sure, whatever you need," he said with a shrug. "I was just about done with the Virus Machine updating, anyways."

Dr. Hikari's expression brightened. "Excellent! Let me just jack him in…"

A few seconds later, a tiny Navi dressed in a navy blue jumpsuit with blue boots and gloves materialized in the PC, immediately sitting down on the tiled floor. He seemed to be no older than a human toddler, and was currently lacking a helmet, revealing spiky brown hair framing bright green eyes. The child blinked up at CopyMan, and pointed at him happily. "Papa's Navi!"

CopyMan stared between the child Navi, and then at his operator. "You're leaving Hub with me?"

"It's only for a little while," Dr. Hikari assured him as Hub toddled over to CopyMan. "I have a meeting to go to, but he's getting older and doesn't need naps as much, and I don't want to force him into sleep mode while I'm gone. You're my Navi, so I know that I can trust you with him."

Awkwardly, CopyMan reached down to pick the little Navi up, watching as Hub wrapped his arms around him and made a happy humming noise. "Well, sure thing, I guess. Uh. How do I keep a kiddo like him entertained for a few hours?" Maybe he could just do Navi impressions…

"Hm, hold on one second…" Dr. Hikari sat down at his computer, typing a few things, before a few small plush toys made of data appeared in the space. The child Navi, upon seeing them, wiggled in CopyMan's arms until the Navi put him down.

CopyMan sighed, watching Hub grab a Mettaur plush and a NormalNavi plush and reenact some sort of virus battle, complete with sound effects, and then glanced up at him. "…Think we'll be fine now. Go on to your meeting, the kiddo will be fine."

Dr. Hikari smiled. "I knew that I could count on you. I'll be back in a few hours, just keep Hub entertained until then. If he falls into sleep mode, go ahead and let him."

"Gotcha," he said, watching as his operator left the screen. The shutting of the door suggested that he was gone, and he watched as Hub continued to play with the dolls. Whatever was going on, that poor Mettaur plush was apparently the victim, if the fact that the Navi plush hitting it was making it roll all over the PC.

"Pew, pew! The bad virus is gone! Yay!" Hub tossed the Mettaur plush aside, it finally rolling to a stop at CopyMan's feet. The older Navi sat down with a sigh, watching as Hub continued to play.

He remembered when both kids, Hub and his twin Lan, had been born. Dr. Hikari had been beaming like he had won ten million zenny and would bring them – sometimes one at a time, and sometimes both – to the lab and show them off to various SciLab scientists. CopyMan would sometimes entertain them, turning into various Navis and doing impressions of them, and the kids would squeal and laugh. He'd looked forward to seeing them grow up together.

Then one day, Dr. Hikari had come in, looking completely disheveled like he had lost everything, and had started setting up some odd equipment that he recognized from Dr. Cossack's old Pulse Transmission System project that had never gotten off the ground, and had been programming a NetNavi shell of a small toddler (all while muttering about DNA sequences, which was apparently a human's coding; CopyMan didn't understand it completely). What he had been doing, he hadn't known at the time, but it soon became clear what he was doing when one day, he finally brought in Hub, who looked like he was not even two years old at the time.

Hub had looked far too pale for an Electopian in CopyMan's opinion, and eerily quiet, and Dr. Hikari had hugged him tightly before hooking him up to the equipment.

His operator was a mad scientist, he decided right then, when he saw what Dr. Hikari had done.

He'd transformed a terminally ill human child into a NetNavi.

"It was a risk," CopyMan had been told by Dr. Hikari later. "But there's no treatment for HBD – it would have claimed his life. Even if this hadn't… worked… then I could still say I did everything that I could to save my son. I was 95% done with that project, anyways; Hub's illness gave me the push I needed to finish the last 5%."

"What're you gonna do when your kids and wife find out about this?" CopyMan had said, crossing his arms.

Dr. Hikari had flopped down on his PC's chair, resting his head on his arms. "…Hub will find out eventually, it'd be impossible for him not to. Lan's too young to understand right now, but I'll tell him later. Haruka… I will have to tell Haruka. It would bring some comfort to know that Hub isn't gone just like it did for me…"

And that had been that.

CopyMan sighed, jerking out of his thoughts and turning back to the little Navi, who was running around the space joyfully. "Hey, careful, don't slip and fall now—" Almost as soon as he said that, Hub tripped over his own feet and faceplanted to the ground, causing CopyMan to roll his eyes. "See, what was I just telling you?"

The smaller Navi bounced back up almost immediately, beaming up at CopyMan, and then darting over to the Virus Machine. Crap, he had forgotten about that! "Whoa, Hub, wait!"

"What's this?" Hub asked, pushing at a few of the buttons, and taking a step back as it started to whir. "Wow! Noise!"

CopyMan was barely able to make it to Hub as a Mettaur virus popped out of the Virus Machine, looking confused. "Wh- Hub! Get away from it, now!"

But the little Navi didn't listen, instead peering down at the Mettaur and reaching out to touch its helmet.

"Meto?" the virus asked, staring at the Navis.

"Meto!" Hub repeated with a giggle, reaching out to grab it. The Met jumped back as if it had been startled, and darted away from the toddler – and right into the link leading out of Dr. Hikari's homepage.

"Meto, no!" Hub called as he chased the virus, jumping into the link himself just before CopyMan could grab him.

Perhaps it was good that Hub wasn't around to hear the violent swearing that left CopyMan's mouth. When CopyMan dove through the link, materializing on the tangled pathways that were the internet, the tiny blue Navi was nowhere in sight.

He was in huge trouble now.

SciLab Area was a lot more protected than most areas of the Internet, thankfully, and didn't have so many powerful viruses running around. So Hub was able to run around without being attacked, invisible barriers ensuring that he didn't fall off of the narrow pathways.

Hub had lost the Mettool at some point, and was now wandering about the pathways, trying to find something else to do. There were few Navis, and most of them didn't pay him too much attention, other than wondering what operator had use for such a childish Navi. Perhaps it was some rich scientist's son's Navi?

After a few more minutes of wandering, Hub yawned. He was tired! Maybe if he went home, Papa would let him go to sleep… he missed Papa tucking him in, and wondered why there was always something between him and Papa now. And why he couldn't see Mama or Lan. He turned around to look for CopyMan.

"I wanna go ho-" He blinked. Where was Papa's Navi? For that matter, where was he?

He was lost! He was never going to see Papa's Navi or Papa or his home ever again! Hub did what a normal toddler would do upon realizing that.

He started to wail.

From a distance, CopyMan heard faint wailing. "Hub!"

That meant he hadn't been deleted, but the frightened sobs indicated that for one reason or another, the toddler was terrified. CopyMan was no father, but he'd been around Dr. Hikari's children long enough to know that this was what it meant.

He turned in the direction that the sobs seemed to be coming from, and took off. The Master save them all if a virus had gotten its paws on Hub. Dr. Hikari would delete him.

By now, Hub had buried himself in a corner of the platform that he was on, wailing loud enough to finally attract the attention of the other nearby Navis. In fact, he only looked up when one of them approached him and knelt down.

This Navi didn't look too much like CopyMan, with a grey and black coloring and a bit of orange on its helmet, and its eyes were covered by a visor of sorts. Still, the appearance of another Navi startled Hub enough to stop his wails, and he sniffled up at the other Navi.

"Well, well, what's a cutie like you doing out here?" the Navi, clearly a male judging from the voice, said with some amusement. "Where's your operator?"

"Op-er-a-tor?" Hub said, confused by the term, but he stopped his incessant wailing.

The Navi stared at him for a few moments, before reaching down to pick up as he continued to sniffle. "Who do you belong to?"

Oh, that was easy!

"Papa!" Hub said to him. "I belong to Papa!"

That was no help. "Kiddo, Navis don't have Papas," the Navi pointed out to him. "What's your name?" Maybe someone had reported a missing Navi…

"Hub Hi-ka-ri," Hub told him, slowly sounding out the last word as if he wasn't exactly sure how it was pronounced. He rubbed at his eyes some more.

The grey Navi stared at him again, though inwardly he was a little relieved that he had some way of tracking down who the Navi belonged to. He doubted that the kid's name was really Hub Hikari, but surely Dr. Hikari would be able to identify this Navi? He lightly bounced the toddler, smiling a little as he giggled, as he opened up a link to his operator.

"Sergei? You work with Dr. Hikari, right? You happen to know where he is at the moment?"

"Which one? Senior or junior?"

"Either. Both."

"He's in a meeting, Doc. Both of them are," came the answer after a few minutes. "What happened?"

"Oh, nothing big, one of his new test Navis seems to have wandered out into the net by mistake and got lost. If he's not around, it's okay, I'll just stay with it and see if I can find CopyMan, or lead it back to one of Dr. Hikari's computers. It's based off of a child, so I don't want to leave it by itself."

"If you haven't gotten it home by the time I see him, I'll tell Dr. Hikari."

Hub lightly tapped Doc's face, squinting as if trying to see his eyes. The visor was completely black and offered no clue to what was behind it.

"I don't have eyes, cutie," Doc told him, bouncing him some more. "Hey, why don't we have a little fun until we can get you back home~?"

"Fun?" repeated Hub.

Doc let out a grin, walking away with the toddler in his arms. "Have you ever played with coding?"

Hub had stopped wailing by now, which only served to increase CopyMan's trepidation. Had he stopped because he was no longer sad and scared, or had he stopped because he had been…

Master, Dr. Hikari would never forgive him!

Still, he ran towards the place where he had last heard Hub's crying coming from, pausing when he heard giggling from not too far away. Phew – that meant that Hub was at least safe and not deleted. Still, he readied a Sword chip just in case there was a threat to the child nearby.

Soon enough, he encountered Hub, sitting on the ground, playing with what appeared to be a bunch of coding while a grey Navi watched him. Hub was giggling, clearly not sure at all what he was doing, but having fun anyways.

Some globs of data sat on the ground near the two Navis, some of the cleaner bits of coding in a neat pile while the messier bits were in a pile that looked like they were going to be deleted eventually. The grey Navi noticed him first. "Hey, CopyMan, you know this kid?"

CopyMan's shoulders sagged with relief, recognizing the Navi. "Doc," he said. "Thank the Master you found him, Dr. Hikari would have deleted me if I'd lost him."

Doc laughed as Hub brightened, dropping the data that he had been messing with and running up to him to wrap his arms around his legs. "Papa's Navi!" He chirped happily, and CopyMan quickly reached down to scoop him into his arms just in case he got the idea to run away again.

"So the cutie does belong to Hikari," Doc said, gathering up the bits of coding into two piles and firing a buster shot at the 'discard' pile. "Did you know that he's a natural at coding? A bit more experience and he'd have been able to make something out of this stuff. Maybe I should ask him to help with Sergei's Navi project… or I would if he hadn't been modeled after a small child."

"Yeah? Well, right now, he's going home before Dr. Hikari finds out that I lost him," CopyMan grumbled, watching as Hub curled up against him and closed his eyes. "…Say a word, and you're deleted."

A smirk came from the grey Navi. "Wouldn't dream of it. Besides, I think the kid fell asleep anyways, and doing anything would wake him up."

A quick glance down at the tiny blue Navi in his arms, and CopyMan had confirmed Doc's words. "What were you making him do, anyways?"

Doc shrugged. "Oh, this data is some unusable fragments of Navi medicine. I didn't need it and I wanted to distract him. …Is his name really Hub Hikari?"

"Yes." CopyMan shifted Hub in his arms. "He's an experimental Navi. And one I gotta get home now." With a muttered goodbye to Doc, CopyMan quickly strode off towards the link to Dr. Hikari's computer.

After watching him go for several long moments, Doc opened up a channel back to his operator. "Sergei?"

"Ah, Doc. Did you find anything out about that child NetNavi you found?" Sergei asked.

"Yeah, bumped into CopyMan, turned out the cutie did belong to one of the Hikaris, so I gave him back to him." He frowned, remembering something that both Hub and CopyMan had said that had made him uncomfortable, now that he thought about it. "Hey, did the Hikaris have any kids, by any chance?"

"Yes, he and his wife had twin boys about a year ago. Hub Hikari and Lan Hikari. Hub Hikari passed away a few weeks ago, however. Dr. Hikari was very distraught over it and locked himself in his laboratory." Sergei paused. "Why do you ask?"

"…Dr. Hikari borrowed your old Pulse Transmission System, right?"

"Yes, he did. He said he just wanted to 'look at something'. Ah – Doc, I have to go to a meeting to talk about my AutoNavi project. Do you want me to jack you out?"

"Nah, leave me in here. I can get back to your computer if I have to." Doc waved him off, waiting for his operator to break the connection before gazing over at where CopyMan and Hub had been before they had left.

He had been given a lot of puzzle pieces from Hub, CopyMan, and Sergei, and there was only one way to put those pieces together.

"Interesting," Doc murmured. "Very interesting…"

Dr. Hikari grimaced as he finally stepped back into his laboratory. That meeting had run on a lot longer than anyone had expected, and while he had remained focused and calm and had delivered a lot of good commentary, he had been anxious to get back to relieve CopyMan of his duty of watching Hub. While he trusted his Navi, the other had never been left alone with a small human-turned-Navi before.

Turning on the monitor to his work PC, he searched around until he spotted the pink form of his Navi. "Ah, CopyMan, how was everything?"

"Shhh," his Navi chided him. Upon closer inspection, he found that CopyMan was sitting on the ground, with Hub on his lap, head resting against his chest, fast asleep. The scene was honestly adorable, and Dr. Hikari wasn't able to stop himself from taking a screenshot so that he could look at it whenever he wanted to.

"Kid behaved pretty well, though I had to stop him from getting too close to the Virus Machine. He did spawn a Mettaur before I could stop him, but it's gone now. You might want to move that." CopyMan spoke quietly, as if he was wary of waking Hub up.

Dr. Hikari winced. "Right, right… I'll get that moved a little further back… so nothing else happened?"

"Uhhh… no, nothing at all." That sounded a little too hasty now that CopyMan thought about it, and he mentally winced. He didn't need to make Dr. Hikari suspect that he had almost lost his son!

"Great!" His operator beamed back at him, reaching out to connect his PET so that he could take Hub back when the child woke up. "How would you feel about watching him again next week? I have another long meeting then, so…"

Oh dear sweet Master.

Aaaaand done! Here, let me point out a few things.

CopyMan being Dr. Hikari's Navi: This is a headcanon theory of mine.

-First off, it'd be a bit odd that Dr. Hikari, who specializes in Navis and works on them all the time wouldn't have a NetNavi of his own.

-Second, in BN2, you get to fight Dr. Hikari who is the "Navi Master". These battles consist of several BN2 bosses, suggesting that he or his Navi has the data for them.

-Third, we also see a pink Navi with a pointy helmet in BN2's credits, wandering near the group. This Navi doesn't appear anywhere else in the game. Some people theorize that this is Sean's Navi, but Battle Chip Challenge shows that Sean's Navi is FreezeMan, not this unidentified Navi, so who was that Navi and who did the belong to? Possibly family? Haruka has a pink Navi according to Battle Chip Challenge, but it's an ordinary NormalNavi. We've never seen Dr. Hikari's Navi.

-Finally, in BN3, we encounter CopyMan – a Navi who contacts MegaMan only after he has no leads. How would he know where to find MegaMan? CopyMan is also able to copy the data of other Navis and use it to fight – sounds a lot like the Navi Master, huh?

Doc being Dr. Cossack's Navi: Another headcanon theory of mine. This one doesn't have much evidence, though, other than the Doc from BN2 and Cossack's Navi in BN3 having identical sprites. I did find it interesting, though, that the Doc seems to have a lot of scientific knowledge, and so I have the headcanon that after Cossack was jailed for the AutoNavi project, he became the Doc of the Undernet and came out when someone was desperate enough to ask him for help.

Hub as a toddler: Think about it, and there is something extremely weird about sticking a baby's mind in an eleven year old's body. Hub was still a baby; even if he was suddenly able to talk, he would still think like a baby. Just because he was capable of it didn't mean that he was mentally mature enough to do it. So I theorized that Dr. Hikari gave him the capability to "grow" while on the net (that is, updating his shell every year to match his age), in hopes of helping him age properly.