Hat Twenty-Two: Hardhat

The hard hat had been placed on the shelf in line with several others. Above, other shelves also had lines of the yellow helmets. Along the wall of the equipment van, behind each hat, was charging port, and a cable ran from each of the hats to the ports. Each but one. For this hat, the cord that would have charged it and kept it in sleep mode had been jostled loose as the van had been driven to the job site.
But the hat wasn't to be worn. It was to work. It was a little robot, versatile in aiding both constuction and demolition, called a Met. And this one was quite awake.
The van had been at one project site where the work had been finished ahead of schedule, and it had been decided by the contractor to allocate the van to another project that was running a bit behind. It had arrived at the new site at quitting time, so, aside from a pinch of paperwork that acknowledged the arrival of the van and best place to insert/distribute resources, and a quick glance inside, the van had been parked and left. But that final slamming of the door had been just enough to cause the loose connection to fall out completely.
Thus, the Met was awake. Chattering with its sleeping neighbors on the shelf, beeping about the work that had been finished, and blipping about what the next task might entail. It was not concerned about not being fully charged for whatever task that might be. After all, it wouldn't be awake if it wasn't suppose to be, right?
As the noise level outside the van dropped though, it begain to consider. Quiet was unsettling. It had only experianced quiet once before, when it had been in for repair, and the mechanic had it run through some tests to make sure it was fixed. Quiet ment the Met was being watched. Tested. If this was a test, what did the test entail?
It had no standing orders, there was no visible task that its preprogrammed directives could discern and execute, and there was no signal broadcasting instructions. There were only other sleeping Mets.
The Met blipped an inquiry, but there was no response.
It stepped off the low shelf, and immediately noticed it was trailing its charging cord.
The Met, as the bottom shelf was its designated spot, was usually one of the last in the van to be unplugged and brought out of sleep mode, but it had once been mixed up and placed in a port on a higher shelf. It remembered this time, when it had once been one of the first awake of its group. It had gotten the chance to see the other Mets being unplugged.
The logic gates in the Mets programming made a sudden connection. All the other mets were asleep, and its cord was trailing. It had plenty of obsevational data that the cord should be plugged into the wall.
The met concluded that that was the test, hopped back up on the shelf, and manipulated the plug into its outlet. Immediately, the subsystems that put it in charge mode kicked in, and the Met fell asleep.
The next morning, the worker in charge of the mets noticed that one was sitting backwards on its shelf. Despite none of the others being oriented wrong, the worker figured it had shifted around during transport. And went on with preping the Mets for the day.
The met, when it woke, had a set of tasks ready for it. It thus concluded that it had been fixed and passed the test, and was thus sent back to work.
The day was othewise normal for both Met and worker.
Except, at the end of the work shift, when the worker went to plug in the Mets on the bottom shelf, it was facing the wrong way again, and already plugged in and asleep.

Congrats to Rock for a new game! (It's about time, Capcom, thank you!) With this, Twenty-Two Hats is finished. For those visiting this story in the future, all previous 21 hats were completed in 2012. Yup, I'd been waiting since then for an actual new and official game, just so I could upload on a launch day. Pie points if you saw this hat coming! Also, a HUGE thank you to everyone who's taken the time to R&R. I tried to respond to every review that contained an inquiry, but I know (in hind-sight) that I didn't always manage that.
I don't own any mets (they're owned by Capcom), none of which were harmed in the making of this story. I do own a LOT more Rockman paraphernalia than I did back in 2012.

Hmmm, Rockman 11. Eleven times two is twenty-two. Twenty-two times two? Two twenty-twos!

BONUS SILLY POEM! Hat 22 alpha

Mostly yellow, the hat sat
Nothing unusual to be found about that
A hat that sits is only proper
Yet this hat happened to be a hopper
It didn't exactly jump up and down
But never the less, it got around
Spotted here and there and other spaces
The hat was seen in many places
Sometimes by friend and sometimes by foe
Those who see the hat will know
Whether close at hand or very far
From a classic to legends, to a shooting star
See the hat, smile and remember
The fight is for peace, lasting and forever.