Family of Steel - Man on Fire

[Proto Man]

The volcano burped, releasing a spray of lava that nearly reached the lip of the mountain. Proto Man kept his gaze on Heat Man as he mulled over the other machine’s accusation. Try as he could to formulate a defense, the red robot knew he’d come here with thoughts of subduing a renegade, potentially homicidal machine. Yet now he was confronted with the undeniable fact that Heat Man wasn’t a renegade and had only killed in self-defense. While Proto Man had never taken a life, he knew he was responsible for the slaughter of far more than twenty people. The ‘terrorists’ Dredd had gunned down in the Data Verse would haunt the boy robot for a long time.

“You can play Blue Bomber if you want to, Proto Man,” Heat Man added, perhaps noticing the dilemma the other robot had put himself in. “But just be aware that this isn’t Monsteropolis. Sure, some of my brothers are up to the same old tricks, but in this place, we’re all no different than you. We may not feel every nuance of human emotion, but our decisions are our own. There is no Wily here...there is nothing guiding our feet and pointing our weapons. While some of the old world remains inside of us, we are not drones, and you are not Mega Man.”

Proto Man’s shoulders sagged as his weapon reverted back into a loose fist. The android frowned as he tried to process everything. Was it possible that the Omniverse had given Wily’s sons a form of will? Certainly Roll and her brothers had shown far more intricate personalities than Proto Man remembered from his espionage trips to Light’s home and labs. What did this mean for Proto Man? For the first time in a long time, the sentient machine felt a little less special...and try as he might, he didn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing.

“What you did still isn’t good,” the preteen android replied, his voice weak and devoid of his previous conviction.

The other robot’s response served only to further muddle the morality of the situation. “I’m sorry,” Heat Man said, his eyes and body posture clearly revealing at least a modicum of genuine sadness. “When you lived and died doing little more than killing, it becomes hard to unlearn old habits.”

At this point, Proto Man was truly at a loss for what to do. He’d spent the last few months trying to track down a bunch of evil machines, and now the reality made him feel like the villain. Fortunately, the mountain started to violently shudder beneath the pair, causing Proto Man to panic and Heat Man to fume with rage.

“What’s going on?” Heat Man shouted, his eyes falling to the inside of the volcano. “We should have three more hours...I know I set the machine right!”

“What are you talking about?” Proto Man replied as he rushed over to the other Robot Master. In an instant, any visible tension between the two melted away in face of something much worse.

“I’ve designed some programming that controls volcanic activity...it’s a hypothesis I had about controlling the rate of dissolved gas formation. All my field tests were perfect, I don’t understand what is going on…”

From behind both robots, a response came in the form of a rasping voice with a foreign accent. “The answer’s simple...someone just waited until you left and then reversed all your settings.”