Mega Man 1. Prologue

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Megaman franchise, the Darkbreaker or Division Omega. The Darkbreaker and Division Omega belongs to DarkShiftRising and yes, I do have permission to use him, so don't start spamming aforementioned author's email with messages. I do, however, own the plotline of Advent of the Virtus. Look up Virtus on Google.  
**

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**Prologue  
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"So this is where you've gotten to, Darkbreaker?"

A young girl who looked as if she was barely out of her adolescent years lightly sighed as she walked towards the black-clad figure who had his back turned towards her, not bothering to hide her presence from him. For one thing, it was likely that he could already tell that she was there and for another, sneaking up on someone was usually a bad idea, especially if they were the 'shoot first, ask questions later' type.

Not that the Darkbreaker was that kind of person in the first place, but it just wasn't a good idea to mask your presence from someone who was considered your equal or higher on the battlefield while confronting them from behind.

Unless you were an assassin.

And god you would have to be an incredibly stupid assassin if you thought you could bump off the Darkbreaker of all people.

And worse still to attempt it now of all times. The Darkbreaker had been a dangerous individual to begin with and now...In his current condition the Darkbreaker was just as likely to tear you asunder as he was to even pay attention to you at all.

The man in question hardly acknowledged the girl; the only sign she got that he knew she was standing there talking to him was a faint stiffening of his shoulders, despite the slouched posture and even so she only caught that because her senses were much stronger than that of the average human.

"Just so you know I'm required to tell the rest of the Division your location should I ever stumble across you on my multiversal travels."

"..." There was a definite twitch this time, and the man turned, the blood red right eye flashing dangerously with power, a menacing glint in his golden left eye.

Seeing his glare, the girl rolled her eyes. "Relax; they don't know where you are... at least not yet. But I thought I would tell you that they're getting closer to this universe and it's only a matter of time before they finally track you down. Of course, this world happens to be the only habitable one in this particular reality so..."

She shrugged. She didn't need to go any further; he could figure out the rest for himself.

"...it's fine." The man finally spoke, his tone flat and dead, and not for the first time, the girl sighed and shook her head. Not because she was a callous person, but because she was not surprised to see this kind of change in people who were forced to shoulder heavy burdens. And even though she was one of those people (though she wasn't as… bitter as the person in front of her), it was still painful to watch. Seeing him this way, a man who had once burned with the very fires of the universe's genesis, so cold and cruel now...

It was still hard to see him this way and be unable to do a thing about it.

"This is just a temporary location." He growled. "I'm still on the move while my plans move forward."

He fixed her with that awful glare again, and once more she was struck by how much he had changed, how much colder, how much more the pain had eaten away at him.

"And speaking of universes and realities," The man spoke again, "shouldn't you be doing damage control in the very one you were raised in? Especially..."

And for an instant, the edges of the Darkbreaker's mouth twisted, crackling as his teeth sharpened into a razor-edged smile.

A certain smile, known and feared throughout the multiverse, as only one being ever wore that horrible grimace of insane glee. But for her...it wasn't as terrible as it was painful, to see this hero wear it now. It was only through sheer willpower that she refrained from slapping it off of him. The Darkbreaker had always been a...difficult individual, but with this hidden pain eating away at him now...he was at once more greater and terrible than he had ever been before.

"Especially since you've finally found what you've been looking for."

The girl's face darkened, her own eyes flashing with cold rage.

"...yeah. I guess I do owe you for that one. Big time."

It was the Darkbreaker who had given her the location of those particular artifacts and it was because of the message that she had even been able to find him in the first place. Even more lucky that she had made it before he changed his locations yet again. She didn't know what plan he was constructing in that calculating, brilliant mind of his, but she knew better than to ask.

She silently hoped that whatever it was, it would finally provide a way to undo the darkness that had been eating away at him for so long.

But still...Even now she still couldn't believe it. What she had been looking for was in the one place she never thought to look. The one place she would never expect it to be. Right in front of her but also hidden in plain sight.

The man smirked. "You never saw me. Consider that the price for those artifacts."

"Done." Silence could be very golden, especially if keeping your mouth shut meant that you no longer owed anyone a favour. Though in this situation, she didn't really like it as it meant breaking her promise to the others. "But it won't necessarily mean much at this point. Like I said, your friends are pretty much at the next universe over and it won't be long until they find you. And... Elisa really misses you."

A low blow, but a necessary one. Especially after Elisa had practically begged her to immediately report any clues as to where Darkbreaker was if she found any. But now here that very man stood asking for her to keep quiet about where he was.

Well... they were pretty close to finding him. It would take them longer, but the girl was confident that they would find their missing way ward member eventually.

And for an instant, the world froze. The Darkbreaker's gaze, just barely controlled, turned murderous, cold rage in his eyes-

Then it vanished, the Darkbreaker stumbling backwards with a cut-off curse, one hand pressing desperately over his mouth. Alarmed, she started forward, only for him to hold up a hand to ward her off.

"NO!" His voice cracked out, and she stopped, not because of the force of his words, but because...

Just for a moment, he sounded like the man he once was.

When he took his hand away, the Darkbreaker, the REAL Darkbreaker stood there once more, staring out at the world through those cold, tired eyes again.

"No..." he said again, this time with a weak smile. "I'll be fine."

"...You sure? You certainly don't look it." She commented dryly.

He stared wearily back at her.

"I'm just...so tired of all of this. Hearing her name again..." He smiled once, "It's been a while."

And then that smile faded, his features growing cold once more.

"But I will not be swayed. I have fought for too long, LIVED for too long, and said goodbye to too many friends already...I won't..." His voice broke for a moment.

"I...can't do it again."

He looked up, his eyes burning.

"...but thank you. And goodbye."

His voice was stronger now, and heavy with an unspoken demand. The girl quickly nodded, immediately getting the cue from him that he wanted her to leave him alone. Now. As insanely strong as she was in comparison to humans who hadn't been gifted with powers, she wouldn't pick a fight with the Darkbreaker if she could help it. He was one of the toughest opponents around, and his reputation preceded him.

And if that...MONSTER was anything to go by, the Darkbreaker was definitely someone whose bad side you wanted to stay well away from.

"Well, you handle stuff like that pretty well so I guess I shouldn't really worry about you." She sighed, before turning away and using her signature weapon to rip a hole into the dimension she was heading to.

Before she went into the portal she created, she turned to face the man again, her mouth slightly open as if she wanted to say something. But she seemed to think better of it as she just faced forward again and disappeared from sight, the dimensional portal closing behind her.

When she was gone, the Darkbreaker frowned, staring unseeingly out at the world before him. He should have said that she was going to find destroying what he had found for her would be a lot harder than she thought. But he had already interfered too much by revealing the location and leading her back to the very world she had been raised in. And the two of them already knew the harsh laws of purposely breaking the rules of time and space, even if it was for the greater good and the rules could go screw themselves for all either of them could care.

But for the Darkbreaker right now, none of that mattered one damn to him. The multiverse could go hang for all he cared. It had taken far too much from him for him to even remotely feel a sense of guilt for screwing with the laws of reality.

And besides, even if some form of retribution was coming for him...he rather doubted it would arrive in any time early enough to catch him.

It was only there for a second, but in that brief moment the Darkbreaker smiled.

"It seems even here at the end...I still can't help but be a white knight to help out a lady in trouble..." Sticking his hands into his pockets, the ebony jacket kicking up in a faint breeze, he looked at the spot where she had disappeared, the cold expression softening.

"For what it's worth...thanks." He said quietly, "And good luck."

What's done is done and there was nothing he could, or would do about it now. He'd spent his life driven by that single core belief in justice, in doing what was right, and even here at the end, he still pursued it.

Besides...

The man's eyes narrowed and he turned, staring into the crystalline structure next to him, one of many natural growths on this world.

And in that shiny, reflective surface, he saw the demon with that white hair burned white by the atrocities he had committed, that saw-edged smile of insanity laughing madly back at him.

In a single blow, the Darkbreaker shattered the crystal, that hateful image scattering with the shards. The twisted reflection that stared back at him from every mirror, the monochrome stranger's mouth twisted into snarl of rage, red energy surging from the gashes in his fist.

...he had some complicated issues of his own to deal with at the moment.

The black chains flashed out, tearing a hole in the world. Without a single look back, he walked into it and disappeared without a trace. Alexander Darkbreaker was on the move again, and where his countless plans and calculations would lead, only he knew.

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**Holy crap, I am so happy to have finally been able to get this story up. At least the prologue anyways. I still have a ton of planning to do, but it's still a relief to finally get this up. It'll be a while till I post the first chapter, but I'm working on it. At least on the planning stage.**

**A huge thanks to DarkShiftRising for letting me use his character AND for editing the prologue into even more awesome proportions.  
**

**And no, he's not an actual character in the story. He's mentioned, but doesn't really play an active part.  
**

**So I guess see you until then?  
**


	2. Chapter One

**Okay, I finally get started on this! I'm sorry that it took so long, but I've been pretty busy with college. So yeah... **

**Anyways, time to start on the story! Hope you recognize some of the characters here and you finally get to meet the main one as well!  
**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Mega Man series. I do, however, own the main OC Karone.  
**

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**Chapter One  
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"GAH!"

There was a gasp and a loud thud as Karone Grace went and shamed her last name by sitting up in her bed so fast that she got tangled in her blankets and fell off the edge as a result. A few more seconds of struggling with her covers, the girl finally disentangled herself from the sheets and sat up rubbing the arm that had absorbed most of the impact of the fall.

"Ow..." Karone winced, accidentally touching a tender spot. This hadn't been the first time she brilliantly fell off the bed when she was either half asleep or jolted awake, but that didn't mean she couldn't complain about it every time it happened. "At least nothing's broken this time..."

When the pain in her arm lessened and she was sure that she wasn't going to bruise too badly, Karone leaned against the bed and stared up at the ceiling letting out a long sigh.

She had that dream again. Or rather one of the disturbing dreams that haunted her in her sleep. Thankfully she didn't have nightmares every night but the one she just had seemed persistent in doing just that.

With another sigh, Karone rubbed her eyes to try and get rid of the heaviness in her eyelids.

"That dream again... I've been having it a lot these days."

In that particular dream she was surrounded by darkness. Black stretched for miles around and all she could see, even if she squinted, was more black.

It was in that same darkness that Karone was constantly forced to run. She had no idea what she was running from, but all of the girl's senses were screaming at her to run, run and then run some more.

Which was what she did.

In that never ending darkness Karone was running away from someone. Or _something. _The only thing she knew about whatever was chasing her was that she did not want it to capture her. So she kept running.

One of those times when she was running she had made the mistake of looking back.

She really wished she hadn't then and still regretted it to this day.

Because staring back at her as _IT_ pursued her like it did every night were blood red eyes. Red eyes filled with insanity, cruelty, blood thirst and every other darkness that reflected the souls of both human and reploid kind. No matter how much she searched her mind, Karone couldn't find the right words to describe what she had seen in those demonic orbs.

And the growls and snarls she heard when she was running from _IT_.

There was no way those sounds could belong to anyone else other than a goddamned _MONSTER_.

Whenever Karone had those dreams, she would wake up feeling nauseous and covered in sweat. It always took her ten to fifteen minutes to recover enough to stand up and get her breakfast-

Her stomach chose that exact moment to let her know that it was hungry and that she better get some food _right now_.

The girl flushed even though there was no one around to hear her stomach let her know how unhappy it was. She was lucky that it had decided to go off on her now rather than in public where there were other people who would hear it because someone would have definitely been laughing at her expense. Using the edge of her bed, Karone pushed herself up and headed towards the bathroom.

Taking a quick shower always made her feel better.

It also helped when she ate a lot of food after wards.

As Karone made her way towards the shower she paused when her eyes caught her ruffled reflection in the mirror.

Staring back at her was a short and thin girl wearing an over sized white t-shirt and black shorts that was one size too big for her. The oversized baggy clothes she was wearing made the girl in the mirror appear smaller than she already was. But it hadn't been the less than fashionable clothes or the girl's small stature that caught Karone's attention: it was the girl's physical features.

The girl in the mirror was frowning; something Karone often did whenever she chanced upon her reflection somewhere. With short, light coloured pink hair that only went just past her shoulders Karone naturally stood out amongst people no matter how much she tried to fade into the background or avoid doing anything that would draw attention to herself.

And it wasn't only hair that had people staring but her eyes as well.

It wasn't unusual for people who took an instant disliking to her to mockingly say that she could easily be mistaken for a Maverick just because of her eyes.

There were also times when they would out right call her a Maverick just to get a rise out of her.

Maverick.

There were different descriptions of what a maverick was. During the era it originated in, Mavericks were Reploids who became violent, insane and berserk due to infection of a virus called the Sigma Virus, named after the very Reploid it had originated from. It was also used to refer to those who purposely attacked humans or others of their kind, even if they weren't infected with the virus. Though even when Reploids were mentioned in the second definition, it mostly regarded humans as said race was very narrow-minded back then and discriminated shamelessly against their mechanical counterparts.

In the era of Neo Arcadia, when the world was still recovering from the after math of the Elf Wars that destroyed ninety percent of the Reploid race and sixty percent of the Human one and pretty much immersed the world in flames, the term had been twisted and abused to refer to Reploids who showed any hint of individualism or human like qualities. Something that was near impossible for them not to do as they were built to be similar to humanity and meant to emulate them. Needless to say, that had been a really bad time for all mechanical life.

Now in the era that Karone lived in, the era of 24XX, the title of Maverick was used to refer to those who did not follow the laws of the world's ruling government, Legion. Two of those laws were that Reploids now had to have limited lifespans while the other was that humans had to have mechanical parts integrated into their bodies. Those who did not follow became labeled with the term and fair game for either Security or bounty hunters to go after them.

During the years of 21XX when the father of all Reploids, the android X, was still active and running around hunting down mavericks alongside his best friend and hero of two eras, Zero, red eye coding had been outlawed amongst Reploid production.

This was due to the colour being a large indicator of infection by the Maverick virus as those infected automatically had their eyes recoded red no matter what colour they had been prior to infection. Centuries later after that turbulent century, when Mavericks weren't as rampant as they were back then, red eyes were no longer outlawed. But due to the stigma of red eyes being associated with Maverick infection, no Reploid who abide by Legion's laws chose it as their optical colour.

Not if they were _sane. _

However in humans who were unfortunate enough to be born with red eyes, there wasn't really anything they could do about it unless they decided that they wanted to chance screwing with genes. They weren't automatically branded with the title of 'Maverick' but they _were_ forced to endure strange looks due to their unfortunate genetics.

Unless they decided to wear coloured contacts just to avoid the stares.

Hence the reason why Karone hated her red eyes. Sure, her hair was attention drawing but people flinched whenever she looked straight at them.

But as much as she had hated her physical features, she hadn't bothered dying her hair or putting on contacts for a couple of reasons; the first one was that she was just too lazy to put in hours of changing her hair colour, the second that she disliked poking her eyes out and the third was that how people reacted to seeing her the first time was a pretty good indication of their character. If they treated her like crap just because they didn't like how she looked, she knew to stay well away from them.

It was a weird system that contradicted her opinion on her hair and eye colour, but it worked when it came to sorting through people who were worth her time or who weren't.

A lonely existence but it was one that Karone had grown accustomed to over the years since her Celina had passed away.

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The quick shower ended up taking a lot longer than Karone had intended, but she was more awake and aware than she had been when she had fallen out of the bed earlier. The nauseous feeling that usually accompanied her after her nightmares was gone and the only thing that she felt now was her stomach gnawing at her insides, demanding that she eat some food.

Quickly searching through her drawers, the pink haired girl pulled on a pair of beige shorts along with a matching beige shirt that was designed with lots of pockets. Over that, she put on a zippered up white sweatshirt that had a hood but left it open at the front.

There was nothing special about the clothes; it was pretty much the same clothes she wore everyday, but it would do for now. Not that it really mattered since Karone didn't really take that much notice of what she wore. As long as it was clean, wearable and didn't smell it was good enough for her.

"Guess it's time to start working on _them _again." Karone said after rinsing her dishes and putting them on the dry rack. By _them, _Karone was referring to the six who were sleeping in the basement.

No, rather it lay even further below the basement. Celina had taken no chances when she brought the three she would dedicate many years to reconstructing back to their former glory.

Unfortunately, Karone's guardian had been unable to complete her task leaving Karone to finish what she had started.

After a few minutes of stumbling and tripping in the darkness of the basement (Karone should really remember to bring a flashlight whenever she came down here), she finally found the switch she needed. Carefully concealed in what looked like a piece of junk someone had forgotten to throw away (or was just too lazy to throw away) was a switch that activated the entrance of Celina's _real laboratory. _

Celina worked in the basement as well, but the projects there weren't as important as the ones that were in the hidden lab. The projects that were in the basement didn't need to be kept hidden.

But in the hidden lab, every single anti-detection device to have ever existed as well as some of Celina's own brilliant inventions had been installed inside to make it undetectable both to the naked eye or any devices meant to seek out concealed rooms or any of the sort.

Only _one _of the hidden projects there would have been enough to get Celina arrested.

And now that responsibility and burden lay with Karone.

There was a screeching noise as the metal table that lay within the center of the room shifted to the side revealing a set of stairs that led to an even lower part of the mansion that no one but Karone (and formerly Celina) knew about.

The girl allowed her eyes to adjust to the darkness for a few minutes before descending into the darkness, the entrance of the hidden lab sliding shut behind her to conceal its secrets from the rest of the world. As she descended the last step, Karone flipped on the light switch of the hidden lab and covered her eyes quickly before she was blinded by the sudden change of lighting.

Uncovering her eyes, Karone let out a sigh of relief at the sight in front of her. Good. She didn't expect them to have suddenly upped and walked out of the lab but you never knew.

In the back of the room were six capsules that had been unearthed seven years earlier by Celina and the exploration team who were with her during the archaeological dig she had discovered them in. The intention of the capsules had been to preserve the inhabitants who slept inside until the time came that someone in the future would stumble across them and activate them again.

The capsules contained the still forms of robots from, what Celina had excitedly said, the year 20XX when the world was at the peak of its civilization, working side by side with those of mechanical nature. The era of robotics. From the complexity of their designs, they had to have been created by one of the Big Three scientists of robotics back then.

Out of the six robots, three of the them were humanoid while the other three were pets built in the image of a dog, cat and a bird. They were all a little rough for the wear due to the fact that they had been sleeping for centuries but that was to be expected. But what puzzled Celina was why they hadn't been more worn down when she and the team had discovered them if they had been asleep for centuries as she and the others had estimated.

They were too well preserved, Celina had told Karone once when she had been working on one of them and the then pink haired girl had been watching her work. Their physical state didn't match with the amount of time they had been asleep for. Sure, they would have survived but the robots would have needed a lot more maintenance.

Karone stopped in front of the first capsule and peered down at the figure that was occupying it.

Sleeping in the capsule was a robot who was built in the image a boy in his late teen years, estimate of seventeen to eighteen years old. He had black, ruffled messy hair and a small frown set on his face as if he was dreaming of something that was unpleasant. Because he was asleep, she couldn't tell what colour his eyes were.

He was attractive, Karone noted, but that was it. She supposed that if she tapped into her inner girl side more she would probably be drooling a little at his appearance.

_Maybe._ Karone didn't know. One of her nastier co-workers at the museum she worked at had once said rudely to her face that she was lacking in the 'finding boys attractive and getting a boyfriend' department big time, not that Karone really bothered listening to her since she had long ago made it a point not to waste any time with the cattier girls there.

Next to the capsule of the 'teenager' were two 'kids', one of them a boy and the other a girl. The boy was built in the identical image of the older one, but instead of having black hair, it was brown. The girl sleeping next to _him_ had blonde hair that had been formerly tied up with a red ribbon, but the passage of time had deteriorated the material into scraps before Celina had stumbled across them.

Based on their designs the humanoid robots were probably siblings with the dog, cat and bird being household pets.

"You know," Karone sighed as she opened the teenager's capsule to start working on him again. She rolled up her sleeves and grasped the tools she needed. "if you didn't have such complicated inner workings, Celina and I would probably have you up on your feet _years ago_."

She got no reply from any of the capsules.

Not that Karone had been expecting one in the first place.

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**Holy crap, I am finally done! Whoo! Two days of editing and I am finally finished the first chapter!**

**Yeah, sorry about it being so slow but, uh, intro? If it'll make you feel better, Karone is going to meet Ashe and Grey in the next chapter! Whoot! The heroes of ZX Advent!  
**

**Oh, and can you guess who are the characters sleeping in Karone's hidden lab? For all you die hard fans, it should be easy for you to figure out!  
**

**So that's pretty much all I have to say. Though one more thing is... don't forget to review! Reviews are very much appreciated!  
**


	3. Chapter Two

**Well, can't believe I'm working on the third chapter so fast! But heh, the inspiration is there and I can't really do anything about it. So might as well get started typing, right? Anyways... in this chapter, you guys get to see Ashe and Grey! And the three characters (aforementioned Chosen Ones and Karone) hit it off right away (though not without a bit of snarking). But you don't want me to describe that here, right? **

**Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Mega Man franchise. I do, however, own Karone and any other OCs that you'll later see.  
**

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**Chapter Two  
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_He had no idea how long he had been like this but he knew that he had been drifting in and out of consciousness while the person who worked on him had no clue that he was aware of this, that he was aware that he had been opened up and that his core was exposed for the world to see.  
_

_His response to that had been anger.  
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_No one was _allowed _to work on him save for the Russian robotics scientists, Mikhail Cossack which then eventually extended to the man's only daughter Kalinka who had chosen to following his footsteps when got older. Not his creator, his father, Thomas Light and definitely not the insane Albert Wily who had found him wandering on his own after he had run away from Light and converted him into a combat robot for his own nefarious means.  
_

_So it was understandable that he was livid about some unknown person working on him.  
_

_His first instinct was to shoot them but unfortunately, while he was aware that someone was working on his symptoms, he was also unable to do nothing about it as the person had been smart enough to turn off his body functions, making him about as mobile as a rag doll.  
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_And it was also likely that they were human too. With the cursed three robotic laws installed within him, he was going to be unable to harm them much less shoot them even if he was suddenly active again.  
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_So he had to lie there. Forced to know but incapable of acting in anyway.  
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_At least he wasn't conscious most of the time this was happening, but that was of little consolation for one who hated to have maintenance performed on him by his own creator and was uncomfortable even when the person who was working on him was one of two he trusted.  
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_Bitter and angry about his helplessness in the situation, all he could do was pretend to be asleep and hope that the person only wanted to fix him or that they would screw up somewhere and permanently deactivate him by accident. He preferred the first option but if the person was like Wily, then the second option would be much desired over being used as someone's mindless tool in a cliche plot of world domination.  
_

_He already had bad experiences regarding that.  
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_But when the person started talking to him, he figured that he could cross them off being like Wily from the list.  
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_First of all the person was a woman who liked to talk a lot.  
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_She would talk and talk and talk and would continue to talk to the point that he wished he was able to sit up and tell her to shut up.  
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_It was _annoying. _She would just go on and on about how her day had went and just how adorable her adopted daughter was and just how much of a genius she was and how she hoped that she (the adopted daughter) would follow in her footsteps of either archaeology or reploid engineering. It was enough to drive even _Rock _neurotic, which was saying something. _

_But once again there wasn't a thing he could do about it.  
_

_So he listened. He had nothing better to do and as pointless as most of the woman's ramblings were, he might be able to get some information about the situation off of her.  
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_The first shocking piece of information he picked up from her was that it was the year 24XX; four hundred years after his time. He did expect that some time had passed, but _four hundred years_? Or three hundred years plus, but how long had he been asleep?  
_

_He needed to be up _two hundred years ago.

_He also learned that had it not been for the woman's interference through illegal means, he would have been permanently deactivated. No... not just him. They would have deactivated him with Rock and Roll soon following after wards. They might have kept the pets, but they wouldn't have been activated and instead would have been brought to a museum and put on display, which wasn't really that much better than being destroyed.  
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_He supposed that he should be grateful for her appearance, considering she broke the law to save him and his siblings from being scrapped in their slee[ with no way to defend themselves.  
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_After listening to her talk, being the only companion he had for the moment, he realized after a time that he hadn't minded that she was working on him. At least, as much as he did before. Through descriptions of what she did just to make sure that he and his siblings weren't destroyed and the fact that her working on him improved his condition bit by bit, he realized that he was in... safe hands.  
_

_The woman sincerely wanted to fix him. She wanted to activate him for the sake that he would have a second chance at life in this new time and not because she wanted to gain fame for discovering beings who came hundreds of years before her time. She honestly just wanted to fix his core so that it wouldn't cause him any more pain and she wanted to remove the three laws of robotics that restricted his free will because everyone deserved their own freedom and that she trusted him to be a good person.  
_

_One day she had excitedly told him that she managed to make a program that would get rid of the three laws for good. Though she would install them after she got back from the archaeology dig she had been looking forward to for some time. A week, she giggled. She would destroy the laws in a week.  
_

_However the woman had been unable to keep that promise to him.  
_

_When he flitted back to consciousness again he had a feeling that more than a week had passed. Checking his systems, he saw that the laws that bound him his kind to humanity were still there.  
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_Renewed feelings of anger and betrayal began to rush him for a moment until a second female voice, much younger than the one that had belonged to the woman who had been talking to him for so long, had cut through his thoughts and told him that the one who had been working on him all along was now dead.**  
**_

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Karone slammed the tool that she had just been using down on to the table in frustration and glared down at the robot's exposed core, her red eyes scrutinizing it as if doing so would give her the answer as to what to do next. This hadn't been the first time she came across this problem but the more she looked at it, the angrier she got.

"I'm going to have to agree with Celina on this one," Karone growled, continuing to glare at the robot's power source. "What the _hell _was your creator thinking when he made this thing as your _core_?"

The reason Celina had chosen to work on the oldest of the robots first was solely because of the thing in his chest.

The robot's core was a crystal of some sort. Once Celina scanned the crystal to see just what kind of crystalline solid could power up a robot that existed hundreds of years ago, it was revealed to much more than just a pretty stone.

The crystal was literally an alien product as its entire structure was made up of minerals that could _not be found on Earth. _And as attention grabbing that revelation was, it was the second thing that clinched Celina's decision to work on him first: the crystal had enough energy to destroy all of Legion as well as the rest of the continent.

Of course something like that would bring up a lot of questions.

One of them being: _what the fuck was wrong with the creator? _

Because you would have to be one really sick person to install something so unstable and powerful into your own creation. Something that could not only blow _him _up but also the unfortunate souls who just so happened to be in the same country as him as well.

It was probably because of this particular robot that Celina had decided to keep them a secret. Had any person who worked for the Legion government taken a good look at him, they would have had him scrapped regardless of him being from the era before the Cataclysm, something that was very rare.

Never mind that he was still alive and merely asleep, they would have destroyed him anyways. Never mind that he was a sentient AI like half the world's population, the crystal in his chest was basically a death sentence. And it wasn't just him; they would have probably done to the same thing to his siblings as well just to be safe.

Or put them up in a museum for display.

Being someone who thought that everyone deserved second chances, Celina naturally had a few things to say about that and then some. Condemning a person to their death because of something they can't help, such as an unstable entity with the explosive power of taking out one tenth of the world?

_Like hell._

But as much as she protested ending the life of someone who would be unaware of it being forcefully shortened, she wasn't stupid enough to just leave the power source unchecked. It took her a while, but Celina came up with the idea of replacing it with another core constructed out of Energen Crystals.

Two hundred years before, during the era of the Neo Arcadia, Energen Crystals were being studied by the legendary scientist of that time Ciel Chevalier to try and solve the power crisis that plagued the only active city on the planet at the time.

To those who worked in the fields of either science or history, Ciel's name was well known. She had been the leader of the Resistance who fought alongside the legendary Zero against the dictatorship that was the so called utopia of Neo Arcadia. And it was after the fall of Ragnarok, the destruction of the city that had symbolized oppression and the permanent death of the Crimson Knight Zero, it had been Ciel, leading the remaining members of the Resistance, who had restored order.

Ciel Chevalier who had been the founder of the Resistance that eventually became the independent peacekeeping force that was the Guardians had played a huge role in developing the world in to what it was today.

Not much was known about Ciel other than her aforementioned accomplishments and the fact that she had fought alongside the legendary hero Zero and that she had been a prodigy genius, developing the Ciel System that still continued to power the world at the age of _sixteen_. Her past was shrouded in mystery and the ones who would have probably had anything on her was the organization she had founded, the Guardians.

And it was highly unlikely they were going to be giving out that information to anyone.

Feeling her head throb before she could start working on the core again, Karone winced. She closed up the robot she had been working on for hours as her head throbbed once again and her stomach acid clawed at the walls of her stomach. Glancing at her wrist, she saw that it was nearly three and that she had once again missed lunch.

As much as she would have loved to continue working on the robot, she needed to get some substance in her if she was going to keep a clear head. There was no way she was going to allow herself to screw something up just because she decided to skip a meal and she highly doubted that the robot, once he was active, would be very understanding about permanently damaging something within him just because she had been light headed from lack of substance.

And dammit, that meant she had to actually get out of the house since she ate all of the leftovers in the fridge for breakfast this morning.

"Sorry." Karone said apologetically to the boy. "But I need food if I'm going to keep working on you."

She gently shut the lid of the capsule and turned off the lights in the hidden lab, ascending the stairs and heading out to civilization for the first time in two weeks she had shut herself in the mansion.

* * *

Karone momentarily forgot about the throbbing pain in her nose as she stared at what had squeakily shouted at her in a high pitched voice to "Watch it!" before smashing her in the face in its angry huff, much to the horror and exasperation of its companions.

Due to her stomach acid clawing at her and nagging her to get something into her stomach before it clawed an ulcer into her stomach's inner walls, Karone's mission had been to find a restaurant she knew that sold decent food and devour it as fast as she could so that she could get back to what she had been doing.

Unfortunately she hadn't realized that someone was behind the corner and had rammed into them, knocking them on to the pavement hard which then inacted the object's anger towards her and resulted in being bashed in the face.

What had struck her could only be described as a floating belt buckle with a 'W' shape. The middle point of its shape was dark blue while its edges, or wings, were white. But what was the most curious thing about the object was that it had a face. One that wasn't expressive, but it still had facial features with glowing blue-green eyes that brightened a little more whenever it spoke.

"Model A!"

The companions of the now dubbed 'Model A' were a human girl who Karone estimated to be around the same age or maybe a few years older than her and a Reploid boy who was in his pre-teens, around thirteen to fourteen years. They both had green eyes and silver hair but while the girl's had a bluish tinge to it, the boy's had a more gray shade to it.

"Model A!" The boy turned to the W floating shaped object angrily after he helped up the girl that Karone had knocked down as she turned the corner to get to a restaurant she often bought food at. "That wasn't very nice! Apologize!"

The object turned towards the boy and even though it was unable to express any emotions, Karone got the feeling that the sentient belt buckle was offended by his friend's demands.

"But Grey!" He whined. "She knocked down Ashe!"

"Not intentionally!" Karone snapped, not liking the fact that the squeaky sounding belt buckle was shaping her to to look like some sort of baddie. "And you hit me in the face before I even had the chance to apologize!"

"Yeah? Then maybe you should have looked where you were going so that this wouldn't have happened in the first place!" Model A retorted.

Karone rolled her eyes. "That's a little hard to do when you're turning a corner."

Model A probably would have snapped back another comment had it not been for the girl, presumably Ashe, deciding to end what would have erupted into an ugly argument. Which would have been interesting because it would have been a floating belt buckle and a short pink haired girl screaming at each other. It would definitely make for an interesting sight to any bystanders who decided to watch.

"Alright, that's enough you two!" She said, stepping between them and shooting them both glares. "You're not going anywhere with this by blaming each other so I think you should _both _apologize to each other!"

There was a scary glint in her eyes that suggested they better to as she said.

Both Karone and Model A fumed, glaring at the other party but not saying anything as Ashe was right that their arguing was completely pointless; all they were doing was blaming each other either for not apologizing for knocking his friend down or not getting the chance to apologize because a certain hot head bashed her in face first.

Also, because it was likely that she would hit them if they started again.

"...fine." Model A said, sounding like a whiny kid he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and knew that he had been in a wrong. "I'm sorry for hitting you."

Rubbing the bridge of her nose, Karone felt the warning signs of an oncoming nosebleed and inwardly swore. Better make this quick then before they-

"H-hey! A-are you okay?" The boy, Grey, said suddenly with alarm in his voice. "Model A!"

"I didn't do anything!"

-too late.

Karone sighed, using the sleeve of her sweat shirt to try and staunch the flow of blood streaming down her nose. Not that it really did much good as red started blossoming over the white material. "Believe or not, this is a usual occurrence for me. Don't worry; I'm not going to bleed to death and it's not Model A's fault, so don't blame him."

Unfortunately she forgot to bring a handkerchief with her, so the pink haired girl removed her sweat shirt and held it to her face.

Ugh, the blood was going to be hard to wash off later especially since her sweat shirt was white.

"I'm fine." Karone added as an after thought, mostly just to reassure them she wasn't going to drop dead on the streets from blood loss.

"...right." Ashe said, disbelief completely written on her face as she looked at the red sleeve with the huge dark red blossom on it before staring her straight in the eyes. "You expect us to believe that with your eyes being blood shot too?"

Karone rolled her red orbs, shooting the silver haired girl an annoyed look. "This kind of thing has been happening for most of my life, so I'm pretty sure I know what I'm talking about." She paused. "...I have a weak constitution, not to mention that I skipped lunch today so my body's been pushed to the limit more than usually should."

She shrugged.

"I just didn't take care of myself all that well today, so this is the result."

Alright, she was lying. But it was the only plausible excuse that worked well with having to explain why she was often... ill.

Nosebleeds and blood shot eyes weren't the only things she suffered from.

She also tended to suffer from a fever that left her lying in bed -depending on how bad it was- for either an entire day or several of them.

And sometimes her body ached so much that she literally couldn't move a muscle save for her eyes.

Other than that, Karone was perfectly fine. She didn't struggle to breathe and on good days when she wasn't incapacitated, she could get a lot of stuff done like a normal person.

Karone used those days to either go to her part-time job in museum or work on the robot.

The reasons neither Celina or Karone actually thought that she had a weak constitution was because none of her symptoms matched up with being sickly or any other syndrome. As alarming as the fevers, stiff muscles and nose bleeds were she tended to be fine later.

As it was, Karone just had her off days.

Though her off days had been hitting her more frequently lately. Unfortunately her nose bleeds and even more demonic looking than usual eyes were the symptoms that hit her the most in public. She often had to duck out for those, to make sure no one would see. Other wise they tended to freak out and draw the attention of every single person in the room.

Kinda like now.

"Okay, you know what?" Ashe said, reaching forward and taking the arm that wasn't being used to staunch the blood flowing from her nose into her hand. "You're not 'fine'. Losing that much blood can't be healthy and we're going to have to do something about it!"

"Wh-what? HEY!" Karone shouted as the silver haired girl began dragging her somewhere. "Where are you taking me?"

She tried to take her arm back but the other girl must have had enhanced muscles or something because Karone was unable to retrieve her limb back from her.

"To the nearest washroom of course! I'm not going to treat your nosebleed in public!"

"A little help here?" Karone turned so that her eyes met that of the boy's.

The boy looked sheepish. "Sorry. Once Ashe has her mind set on something it's near impossible to get her to change her mind."

Model A piped up. "You're just going to have to do as she says whether you like it or not! What Ashe wants she usually gets!"

"Hey!" Ashe shouted, whirling around to glare at the object.

Karone cursed her luck; it was situations like these that made Karone hate going outside.

* * *

**Whoo! I'm finally done! And I told you that Karone would meet Ashe, Grey and Model A!  
**

**This takes place about a year and a half after Advent, so by now the three of them are well known heroes. So why does Karone not recognize them? I'll give you a hint: Karone is a bit of a recluse who cares about studying history and working on the character who everyone should recognize by now.  
**

**No seriously.  
**

**You should know who he is.  
**

**Anyways, in the next chapter Karone has a late lunch with the Chosen Ones of Model A and Model A himself against her will.  
**


End file.

Mega Man, Adventure, Humor