Story (Fanfiction: Mega Man) Bleedin' Blues: The Proto Man Diaries

Hello everyone!

Just wanted to come in and post my most recent fanfic, that being Bleedin' Blues: The Proto Man Diaries, a Mega Man fic that focuses on the life and philosophy of Blues, his struggle with fate and free will, and the dilemmas regarding his mortality and understanding of his humanity.

This initial chapter focuses on an introduction to his philosophy and worldview as the founder of the main line of robotics in the Mega Man universe, his thoughts on his prototype status and unique programming that grants him free will.

I hope you enjoy!

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CHAPTER ONE: Singin' It
Blue drops fall from the black sky, eliciting a white gleam from the big marble up high, streaking against the rectangular greys before me until they course against the red of my steel. They pelt me, these tears from space, striking like liquid hail across my shoulder blades, into the folds of my yellow scarf, dripping down to the sharp angles of my feet. They tell me something:

Get away. Escape. Run from the torture of the water.

There’s no point in just standing around. Why suffer these circular barbs and arrows?

You’d be an idiot not to go back inside, not to enjoy the warmth of encased technology below the ground.

Maybe I’m just the one who has respect for tech.

I tell myself I stand atop a pinnacle. That under these concrete grounds, generations of knowledge and research lay, manifest in both the people who wield it and the metallic beings that embody it. They’re circuits of the future, laced together like the silk of a spiderweb, inhabiting mineral husks; but these circuits have a history, too.

They’re the things that allow me to feel the flow of blue against me, to see the puddles form on the murky ground, reflecting the sable shade of my visor. They let me imagine the drops once they’ve dripped through the ventilation: what other robots will they pester, what other humans will they fuel?

But are these circuits mine? They aren’t a part of me. Their copper and zinc are mined from a different source. Their wiring, woven in a different strand.

They can’t control me. Can’t wrap themselves round my neck, choke me with the pressure of their progress. They owe themselves to me, to my aged logic breakers, my ancient motherboards, from which their designs blossomed.

It’s a haughty mindset that’s easy to embody when you’re someone like me. I was the first, I was the founder of this great family of living silicon. Sometimes I feel like a walking sarcophagus, with an inscription written along my forehead:

Here lies Blues.

20XX-20XX.

The prototype you all must be thankful for.

It’s the reason behind the stares I attract from crowds of robots and humans alike. The gazes of awe, envisioning me like some tattered monument from the past, the red paint eroding away from the white marble: a living history.

I hate them. I hate those sparkling eyes. I hate the open mouths, gaping towards my rusty form.

But the looks are nothing compared to what they say. There are those who’ve grown old of the amazement, and, ignorant of their past, seek to rid the world of the impracticalities of obsolescence.

They think they’d be doing the world a favor by reminding me how much of an anomaly it is that I still walk the earth.

“You’re not built for this world, prototype. Your time’s passed us by; you’re expired,” some told me, a distinct look of pity in their eyes.

“It takes guts to take on the new models, huh? It’s almost cute, junkbot.
Let’s see how long it takes to loosen the screws,” others jeered towards me before I confronted them, challenging the supremacy of the generations after me with the timeless energy of the generation before.

“You should’ve been scrapped a long time ago. Your circuits could be recycled, y’know. They don’t have to rot and rust with you, retrograde.”

They sometimes say these things when they’re keeling before my buster. Their own arms and armor blotched with the stains of battle, mouths curled up into tight scowls, eyes flashing in and out with bits of code appearing on the monitors of their faces.

I like to think I scrape off the rust of their egos. I give them something of a ‘blast from the past’, yeah?

But even after the fray, the questions linger. Maybe they’re even more perceptive than they think. If they knew how often I found myself laying my fingers along the length of my exposed arms or legs, feeling the uneven tangles of current that have become only messier with age, seeing the skew of my metal bones, chafed at the insides by years of both combat and life itself—they might take a moment of pride.

Maybe they did know. Even while they rotted on the ground. Some last solace, understanding how broken I was; I liked to believe that I didn’t give a bolt about it.

The moments of derision and pity happened so often that I shut off to most of it, suppressing the occasional incline of my lip, and the pain of realizing the extent of my condition.

It did give me comfort, though, to feel like they couldn’t even imagine what really went on below my fickle cover. They might have their observations, but until they picked me apart and looked inside, they’d never truly grasp what I’m made of.

When they saw me put my hand to my chest so many times, not in a fist but with my fingers splayed out like they were hiding something, my foes brushed me off as some foolish sentimentalist.

“His heart’s in the fight, guys. We better be careful!” They cackled, amused by my stoic front.

I guess I should pity them, in hindsight. What else could you say to rationalize my odd gestures, my strange gesticulating habits? How could you fathom the torment it takes to make actions like that instinct?

Only I understand the pain that lingers with every flick of the arm or lunge of the leg or cock of the head. It’s embedded in my chest, this omnipresent ritual of suffering.

A uranium core nestles in my heart. No: it is my heart.

A reactor activates my feelings. The collision of nuclei accounts for my emotions. The power of the atom gives life to my limbs.

But as it enables my robotic wish to feel, it makes a sick example of the double-edged sword of human existence: with each rosebud or lilypad I touch, I get a sensation of agony under my skin. Like the nuclei groan at my discharge of energy, lethargic amid their clashes.

It’s a subtle pain, more like a draining force, to be honest. Over my lifespan I seemed to have grown accustomed to the enervation that comes with each action; the extra helping of exhaustion that comes with living.
It’s all logical, isn’t it? It shouldn’t be easy to transform bits of inorganic material into something that speaks, sees, surveils—survives. My kind is unnatural. We robots are all anomalies, creations from the twisted dreams of scientists who somehow grew to walk this land.

But sometimes I question if I even fall under the mechanical umbrella. Sometimes I ask myself whether I’m a machine at all.

What defines a robot? Are we just metallic imitations of the flesh-sacs walking around us? We’re made in their likeness, that’s for sure, no matter how bulky or brusque our bodies have become. But almost every one of my kind can’t seem to replicate the grey matter of our makers: a mind unburdened by directives, free to direct its own path.

Such freedom seems just a dream. Machines are pawns and units placed across the board: sometimes resistant, sometimes able to move on their own for just a moment, all before the reality of their limitations comes crashing down, along with their programming.

It’s never been something I was told directly. Rather, it’s the message conveyed every time I see robots tromping along the streets.

“Follow the directive,” the silent motto goes.

‘Course, humans would delight in the image that they were able to make sentient beings all on their own. That they were themselves constructing a free people and moving the world into a new age of robotics.

They’d be drunk on their own success until what they kept telling themselves came true—when the freeman founded the line.

It’s been so long, I can’t even remember what my programming originally even entailed. The first robot created with ‘self-awareness’; a human perceptibility, governed by an inhuman set of rules and precepts. Testing the bounds of technology, I was a metal lab rat.

But things didn’t go to plan. The numbers inside me somehow recoiled at the idea of being wound together on a set path. They rebelled; they glitched, and from this random occurrence of revolution, I became free.

I wasn’t made free. My emancipation was an accident.

But ever since, I’ve clutched onto the stray freedom I’ve had, like a life preserver in an ocean of determinism.

I know it won’t last long. My life and my will are bound together, one doomed to sink the other someday—my core wills that. There’ll be a time while I’m walking the land, scoping the sights and sampling the sounds, when the pain will all go away.

Every sensation I feel, every image I make, every action I take, will end.

The collisions within me won’t keep on crashing forever. My heart too is defective; it’ll bite the dust along with me, in a spew of radiation and radiated dreams.

In that way, I’ve got a mortality that no other robot has. The human fear of death at any moment, for any malfunction of biological processes, is woven into my gears.

I live in a nation of borders. Waltzing between life and nonlife, progress and regress, robot and human. Sometimes it’s hard to bear the pain of an eternally unchecked box, a Venn diagram of a soul, that no one can understand or truly welcome.

But I’ve grown to accept it and live by it. For how long I have, I’ll savor it.

I’ve been dealt a remarkable hand by fate itself. And I’ve found that it’s my duty to make something out of this wandering sliver of time that I inhabit.

To give freedom where others lack. To give direction in my meandering strides. To protect those all around me, even if I’ve damned myself to never be protected for long.

These creeds haven’t developed naturally, and even now I question if I fully believe in all of them, or any of them. But it’s my choice. And they’re my philosophies.

I’ll be choosin’ to sing the blues as the drops sputter down, and midnight turns to dawn in Mega City.

Because this prototype may not be around for long, but he’ll be livin’ long enough to tell you,

That he’s Blues.

As an avid megaman fan I appreciate this. Great job and very creative

Thank you so much! I really appreciate the comment. I'm not as well-versed in Mega Man as some other fans, at least in terms of playing all the games, so I'm glad I was still able to offer something that was entertaining. Especially for a character who's as captivating as Proto Man!

Chapter 2 is here!

Systems charging...power levels at 85%...running code prompt 676. Data analyses activated. Visualization techniques executed; it’s time to give a hello to the world.

It was a panorama of natural-domestic beauty. Through the windowsill I could see steel towers, glistening with their azure glass finishes, reaching for the stratosphere, as if trying to impress my early imagination. Lab equipment dotted the fastidious confines of the chamber: microscopes, electrograms, Bunsen burners, and arrays of wrenches and hammers, with toolboxes lining the drawers and tables. The musky scent of oil and latex gloves wandered into my small nostrils, with my first sampling of all the senses stark yet enlivening.
It was precisely the place for ingenuity to manifest, and innovation to notch into the nuts and bolts of a curious mind.

I pared back the chestnut swirl of hair obscuring part of my view, examining the capsule that encased me. Wires jutted out of my limbs like beanstalks, connected to an inner shell of monitor screens showing a litany of data signals—programming integrity, emotional state reproduction, oscillating energy signs. When I tried to jerk my arm out of it all, exhaustion overtook my body, keeping me laid back as skin against metal.

“Please, just rest a moment. I don’t want you to tire yourself out, my friend,” a pleasant voice advised me from the other side of the room. Calm footsteps echoed through the spacious realm of the laboratory, with a man donning a smooth white beard and striking blue eyes.

“Who...are you?” I still remember the tenor of my voice. It was a shaky, uncertain type of vocal rhythm that characterized my first few weeks of existence, almost always phrasing statements as questions; there was never a definitive quality to any action or mechanism in the world.

He smiled, his head craned downward, full of contemplative awe. Looking closer, even then I was perceptive enough to spot the trenches under his eyes. His labcoat, while prim in its snowy outlays, still had a few drops of oil grease at the bottom; his polka-dot tie was ever so slightly uneven.
I must’ve been something like a reprieve for the old doctor, the living embodiment of his life’s work, and the thinking encapsulation of his research. At least, part of me wished to serve him in that way, to allay the pain of endurance through a novel project.

“My name is Doctor Thomas Light. I’m a scientist; a roboticist, if we’re being technical, haha. I’m the man that created you, my boy.”

That last phrase came out awkward. The pause between the two words made me blink.

“You’re the reason why I’m alive?”

My memory banks had already downloaded a large reservoir of knowledge. I knew the denotation of my existence, the process by which scientists would construct their automatons and program their minds and worldviews. Really, it was a rhetorical question: I probed at the emotional origin of my being.

In that way, I was like a jet plane without a pilot, built of such advanced materials yet veering off course all the same, not having the cognitive direction to harness my hardware. I craved a sense of guidance, buffeted by the curious spirit of my character, that would articulate the essence behind the ones and zeroes that constantly flashed under my eyes. In him I saw a man that shared almost a familial bond with code, the technology so intractable from his character, so engulfed by machinery he was; I felt he could speak to the numbers, and nourish them.

“Well, I guess when you put it that way, then yes, yes I am!” He laughed, somehow amused at my casual lamentation, and put a hand on my shoulder.

The smile I returned was feeble, but gradually creased upward.

“What should I call you then, Doctor?”

He put a free hand to his chin, gauging his eventual response. In the meantime, my eyes once again scattered through the room, this time more cognizant of the little details, like the materials situated on his desk near the back.
A couple of sunflowers resting in a blue vase. A set of blocky black headphones sitting on the edge. His degree from the ‘Robot Institute of Technology’ hanging overhead, casting an air of pride and authority over his workspace.

Noticeably, though, he bore no memento of a significant other, nor one of any family members; the only picture frame he stored was seemingly the image of his younger self, shaking hands with a slimmer, sharp-eyed man with a sanguine tie and brazen look scrawled across his features. They’d long drifted apart, I assumed, as was customary for two old friends departing after college; and especially so for a man like Light, who appeared to distance himself from flesh for the future of metal.

But then again, I can’t possibly imagine what was going on in his mind at the time. Even my own recollection reads hazy and scattered, the vignettes of my thought process written in a fragmentary binary, only pieces of it still legible. But what I do remember, I’d keep locked away, deep in the caverns of my circuitry.

I was desperate. But more than that, my desperation swam over to his mind as well, in my conception of the man.

He had to want someone in his life. Some project more fulfilling than the droves of construction ‘bots or assembly line minions he’d probably been contracted in the past for. Hope swelled in my motherboard at the prospect of being that project, and wearing that badge of usefulness which all my kind long for, even if it only appears visible in the eyes of their makers.

“I think you can call me ‘Mr. Light,’ my little friend. The doctorate is a little stuffy, isn’t it?”

I nodded. I didn’t smile back, though. It was a morsel of intimacy, and I accepted it, but could not suppress the aftertaste of distance that lingered in my heart.

I know now that he wanted to invest a human element into the field of robotics like no one else ever had before. To give that vivacity, that emotional tenor, that perceived sense of freedom marking humans like an ontological trademark, to machines. But it was still early in his research, and maybe he didn’t feel inclined to get so close to a prototype—to get attached to a face that could be redesigned at any time, and a personality that could be remade at the type of a keyboard. My provisional nature gave our relationship an overarching sense of frigidity, even as I saw the compassion he wanted to give, but couldn’t quite manifest into something real.

But even a placeholder needs a name. Even something temporary has value at a time and place, like the currency in a credit card at the cash register.

To me, a placeholder name would be a crown, at that time.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Light. What is my name?”

“Ah, right! I hadn’t even thought that far, ho ho! Let me see...yes, I know. Follow me, my friend.”

He ushered me over to an alcove in the room, dusting away rusty spare parts and bolts from the ceramic countertop to reveal a hidden cupboard titled ‘MUSIC.’

“I may have majored in robotics, but I dabbled in a few music courses at the Robot Institute as well, don’t you know! It’s a bit of a well-kept secret of mine, but I thought I’d share it with you,” he smiled deeper this time.

Opening the drawers, he unearthed a cavalcade of musical paraphernalia that widened my eyes: everything was marked by chronological order, from the arrays of holodiskettes and small MP3 devices at the end to the CD cases that expressed the multicolor sparkle of a bygone age, and even the glitzy vinyl covers where the history seemed to launch back at you, the stark purples and glamorous magentas dazzling the eye. But the section that mystified me most lay in the cluster of cassette tapes, with one cyan tape in particular that rested between those labeled “Presley” and “Marley” dawning on my view:

“The Blues.”

I became oddly entranced by the tape, putting the plastic of my fingers to my chin.

“What’s that one, Mr. Light?”

He turned his gaze back to me, full of the glow of nostalgia.

“Ah, that’s filled with some of my favorite jazz pieces, my friend. Why, without Coltrane and Cole, I don’t think I would’ve been able to get past final exams each year!”

“Can you play some for me?”

His smile grew. I was burgeoning into a secret pleasure of his, and now he had a soul willing to share the intimate appreciation of an art he most cherished. On the one hand, the enchantment of the music itself—with names and rhythms harkening back to an ancient era of culture—found me restless to hear it for myself; on the other, I thought that indulging in Light’s pastime would win me favor with the doctor.

“Of course. Have a seat, and let your mind rest into the rhythms.”

He unveiled a cassette disk player from the cupboard, barely a dust speckle visible on its jet-black finish, and guided me over to his desk, offering a passing glance at the picture frame while I rested against the folding chair. I knew what music was, scientifically: a sonic construction of waves combining and clashing against one another, amplifying each other in a dance of quantum mechanics. But the fervor that sound can inject into a body was something I had never experienced. I longed for the vivification of song, where the notes would nourish the heart, and the beats would bolster the head.

He unloaded the disk into the player, and I entered a new world as the waves trickled out of it, a faucet of fantasy. It was a hypnotic trance, these ripples of air, orchestrating together, forming nuance and depth in their tunes. Each time an instrument played, it produced a slightly different tone; it was imperfect, it was against expectation, it was manmade.

There was the low pitch of the piano, prancing on and on, offsetting the piece with a backdrop of simple pleasantry.

I heard the ringing hum of the saxophone, too, marking the music with a sensory flavor. You could see its golden finish with every chord, and you could taste the slow tempo it cut into.

And there were also the melancholy vibrations of the bass, providing an experience itself. I heard hands drumming away at the tiny strings, modulated through the player, giving a universal echo to the harmonization of it all, despite the difference in individual sound from bassist to bassist.

I listened to it sad, I processed it mellow; I thought it melodious, I heard it somber.

And then, the whistling of sound was over. I couldn’t believe it. It was like I was levitating on a spire of rhythm.

Light’s face became gladdened by my awe; he clasped his hands together with that same contemplative expression from before.

“So it’s the same for you, hm? A dreamlike experience.”

I nodded. There was something majestic in the wordlessness of it, something that took me by the core, and made me a devotee of the melody.

And just as I reveled in the oneness we shared, I also took pride in the way that I could achieve agency over the music and engrain it into the essence of my circuitry, like he never could. That way, I possessed a sort of psychological ownership over the piece, and from that point on I decided that it—not he—had the right to own me.

“Mr. Light, I’ve come to a decision.”

His smile faded, observing the fixture of my features, their strength drawn from a nearby source. He stood up, and I slowly followed suit, the juvenile tone of my voice coalescing into something deeper for a single moment:

“I want you to call me Blues, and only Blues.”

He hesitated.

“Well, are you sure, my—Blues?”

A silent tension arose. Sure, it was his item, the tape player, that identified me as a person, and it was his choice to reveal the music that led to mine. But the act of choosing, no matter its ancestry, fell in my grasp, and I embraced it with all the might I had at the time.

The formation of a person comes into existence through these scattered vignettes, I’ve learned. Scenes so small, so subtle, so separate from the larger picture at first view, but insoluble from the core of my being.

The first performance of the Prototype Blues happened that day. And from then on, its maestro would never forget that triumphantly somber tune, the whistle of his history reenacting that first gasp of wonder.