A giftfic for Haruna Rei that may be expanded once The Time Travel Fic (Burn The Bridge Home) is safely complete.

Snippet title: Why Was He Repairing This Murderer?

AU of Hitoshi Ariga's Mega Man Gigamix, with spoilers.

Why was he repairing this murderer? No, he knew why. They all needed to fight together to defeat the stardroids. The clock was ticking to Terra's deadline, and he'd been separated from the others who came up into orbit to fight. For all he knew they might be dead now: The Cossackbot, the Fifth Number, that idiot Forte, even Mega Man.

That last was hard to believe, even now, but when Terra came so close to killing him? Would have killed Mega Man without Dr. Wily's plans and Cut Man's sacrifice?

There might be no one left to fight except him and Blues of all people, and Blues was half-deactivated. At least he'd taken refuge in this satellite before falling unconscious: he must have had the same idea Shadow did, although Shadow was thinking more in terms of combat utility than concealment to recover. It was hard to find shadows in space for him to use his ability to ambush the stardroids, and if he could manage to deal with only one of them at a time he might have a chance.

If the others were dead, and the stardroids were free to gang up on him?

Well, that was why he was repairing this robot at all. It wasn't like he was in a position to do a decent job. He just needed Blues conscious and mobile, so he could buy Shadow some time while the stardroids finished him off.

He must have been injured even before coming up into space: Shadow had to remove the bindings so he could see what he was dealing with and where to focus his repairs.

Inside Blues' body, instead of a fusion generator he found the shards of what had to be a power crystal. The one Dr. Wily recovered from the asteroid? Why had he left it with Blues, the traitor, instead of ordering Shadow to retrieve it?

Remembering what the crystals from the White Giant's arm had done to the Cossackbots gave Shadow pause.

He removed Blues' helmet. If Dr. Wily had redone his eyes, made them Wilybot red instead of Lightbot green, then if Blues was family instead of just an outsider who had spat on Dr. Wily saving his life, then perhaps it was possible…

So this was why Blues had kept his eyes concealed all these years, Shadow saw when he carefully opened a lid. Both his eyes opened, wide with shock.

Black surrounding a white iris.

The eyes of a stardroid!

Was this the shapeshifting stardroid that could turn his body into metal and flow around strikes, or had Blues been one of them all along? One that was hiding on the asteroid and replaced Blues after their arrival, meaning after his betrayal of Dr. Wily, or did it explain his treachery as well as his cruelty?

Did the crystal have something to do with it?

Speculation hadn't kept Shadow from jumping back, ready to strike if the stardroid attacked, but Blues' body remained inert. Now that he wasn't touching him, there wasn't even the soft vibration of a cooling system fan with no air to move across his systems here in vacuum to tell him that there was any function left in Blues' body.

He struck, aiming to ensure that Blues couldn't reactivate behind him to attack a moment before vibrations in the structure of the ruined satellite told him that they were here.

He was outmatched. An unknown number against one.

He was going to fail again, wasn't he?

"Star Man still hasn't been able to locate Shadow Man's body."

Dr. Wily looked annoyed. After all this, everything he'd done to keep the Wilybots from getting killed, Shadow getting lost in space (if not torn apart by stardroids)? He shouldn't have sent him up there just with the assumption that being alien technology might give him some advantage. Should have picked someone more responsible. Maybe even Shade Man, since now the vampire was taking Shadow's place by hovering over him and he wouldn't have to deal with that if he'd sent Shade up as a punishment for putting him to sleep and the vampire was the one to disappear instead.

"At least he did one thing right," he said. They wouldn't have known that Blues was up there if Shadow hadn't opened his eye. The view showed enough of the ruined space station's wall color and composition that Star Man could identify it and retrieve Blues along with Rock, Forte, Ring Man and Sunstar's remains.

"He didn't damage Blues' head when he wasn't certain whether or not this truly was Blues?" Shade inquired, and Wily snorted in answer. As though Shadow wouldn't have stabbed Blues knowing it was Blues. Or tried, at least: who was the one stuck patching up the excuse for a bodyguard after every single time he picked a fight with Blues? Exactly!

"He could have destroyed the chips that hold Blues' personality," the Seventh Number persisted.

"That would have been the effective thing to do." Meaning there was no way Shadow would actually have done it in general, forget whatever reasons Shade was asking about or trying to imply. Damn hesitance to employ the kind of brutality it took to win a war… Robot masters were better than humans, just like Thomas planned, which was why they deserved to survive and why they kept failing to win.

Someone was going to look after them when he was gone. Someone every bit as good at being a monster as humanity was. Someone able to keep Blues under control so he didn't run around slowly killing himself.

Well, Dr. Wily knew, if he wanted someone done right, he'd have to build them himself.

Or rebuild them.

He turned to smirk at Sunstar's remains.

The crystals hooked into robots and controlled them. Blues having a crystal inside him all those years should make it easier for Dr. Wily's next project to hook into his mind and systems. Training up his successor by having it keep alive the first real robot he'd built: there was a certain symmetry to it. The first and the last, the beginning and the end.

"Omega," he said thoughtfully, already mentally dissecting the stardroid master's remnants and considering how to incorporate them into his own physical design. "I'll call you Omega."

A departure from the musical naming theme, but that was Thomas' idea, not his. Thomas loved music way too much for someone who couldn't sing worth a damn. He remembered sharing a lab with him back in grad school, and Thomas would always want the radio on and then he'd start caterwauling along with it until Albert yelled at him or threw a shoe at his head.

The project they'd worked on together: "Idiot boy," he told Blues. "As though I was ever going to let you die." He was just waiting for Blues to grow weak enough from that system problem that he could send a robot out to pick him up for repairs without Blues dismembering them.

He half expected Shade Man to remind him of when he called Dr. Light a hypocrite for not wanting to repair his robots so they could go get themselves killed fighting the stardroids, but that was entirely different. It was one thing for a robot master to make their own damn decision, and another thing entirely for them to be driven to seek death because of mental illness.

Even if it was Thomas' fault in the first place for installing the Three Laws, Blues was his project too. He should have stolen all of them from Thomas as soon as he agreed to install those things. "Going up there to fight already half-dead: you stupid, suicidal brat!"

Suicidal, a death wish at the least… Well, he'd see about that. "You need a keeper," he said savagely. "And you're going to stay right there on that table until I've built you one."