"Brought to life
to see the wonders
that you imagine
through blind eyes"
His life was, for the most part, peaceful. That is, if he spent his time in either his quarters or the fortress's extensive library. No one ever bothered him for one, he reinforced the lock to his door and two, the other Robot Masters seemed, more or less, allergic to information. All the better for him.
Slash was, by no means, a friendly robot. He was ill tempered and cold and tended to, more often than not, insult someone whenever he opened his mouth. But it was the same to him, being naturally mean meant he would be left alone, and being alone was something he enjoyed. No annoying chatter from others, no having to pretend to be nice, no worrying about impending arguments and break-ups. Perhaps his attitude was more of a defense mechanism, or maybe it was because he was wary around being around so many other 'males' because vying for 'alpha male' was that much more competitive. Or maybe it was because he heard all the sob stories ten times over from the gossiping Robot Masters three days after his activation.
But it didn't matter to him, none of it did. He was alone and he was happy about it. The only time he was ever happy being with the others was during practice, taking down one of his overly cocky elders. He ranked in the top 10% Robot Masters as physically strongest, his speed and agility was only beaten by Quick who -- after seeing how easily Slash put down Robot Masters more battle ready than he –- refused to spar him. His claws, triple enforced to keep from shattering, were a terror in close combat, but his speed made it impossible to fight him from long-range. Only a few Robot Masters got off easy when they faced him, their battle experience and dexterity rivaling his raw skill.
He huffed, flipping idly through a book. Fighting wasn't what bothered him so much now. Now it was the threat of boredom. He had a mind like a sponge, anything he read or saw once committed forever in memory, always eager to find more to add to his impressive intelligence. And though Wily's storehouse of knowledge was large and filling, Slash had already come to the point where he had gone through everything worth going through and the rest were just repeats of things he had already seen, but in a different writing style.
He scowled, feet propped up on the workstation he sat at. Already he was bored and he hadn't even been activated for a week.
Drumming his hands upon the arm of the chair, he hummed slightly to himself, trying to think of what to do. He had already gone through the others' personal files, read through all the reports. He thought idly about hacking into the fortress' server to see if anyone kept a private journal of some sort but waved the idea off almost immediately. Hacking wasn't his thing. All the jargon, ARP redirects, Back Orifices, he even had trouble figuring out the Ethernet, though he mainly passed it off for it being such old technology.
But then again, he was a robot built solely for combat, what need had he for such things as computer knowledge? Or any sort of knowledge at all. It seemed that Wily had basically given up on high-grade minds after the sixth army. A lot of Slash's brethren were rather simple and one -- dimensional, lacking the passion and energy so abundant in the older Robot Masters.
Slash himself didn't seem more than an angry recluse, nor did he make any move to seem more than that so his elders generally stayed away from him. He hardly spoke to anyone, he followed his orders diligently but not without an air of extreme distaste.
He had even heard during dinner hours that some have created a betting pool to see how long it would be until he snapped and attacked someone mercilessly.
Shaking his head, Slash stood up. He had a yearning for something that couldn't be held in these steel walls and now that he really didn't have anything to keep him busy during his long and rather dull stay, he figured he might as well go and find what exactly it was he was looking for.
"Beautiful work they did on these guys..."
"You're telling me? 'M glad Wily programmed Freeze to be another med-bot. We need all the help we can get here..."
"Damn, what happened to him? He's scorched all over the place."
"Crystal, gimme a hand with this one, his arm's strewn over the ground."
"Disgusting."
"Now you really know why no one else wants to be programmed for this job..."
The three medical oriented Robot Masters paused as a familiar figure passed by the medbay's panoramic mirror.
Slash was, surprisingly enough, without his armor, something they had only seen before he had received his Flash Case. He was tall, actually, his armor making him seem shorter than he really was. He was long and willowy, limbs taunt with muscles, perfect for fast, hard striking and as he moved, his tawny spiked hair bounced against his back. Gold skinned, gold haired, gold eyed... at that moment he gave the impression of a lion on the prowl.
Freeze shivered as he bent over Knight's burnt body. Though he and Slash were brothers, there was something about him that made the elder afraid. He had talked to the others about it, heard their opinions on the clawed Robot Master and that reaffirmed his fear.
Slash is, as Quick had said, empty.
"Haven't you noticed? It's like the emptiness that was inside of Shadow, except this one's different. Slash wasn't copied off of anyone, he doesn't have someone to become independent of. He's just... incomplete, basically. I mean, no offense Freeze, but you guys really are rather..." he paused to search for the word, "blank. You have really only a few well-defined personality points, but with Slash, he's got... Er, help me out here, someone."
"He's empty because his mind isn't fully constructed." Ring had picked up. "His protocols, logic chips, AI, everything else is in place and fine, but his personality is near zilch. It's like Wily-sama just tossed in some random chips and left it at that. It doesn't even look like he was going for a real personality, either. He's much more... animalistic than the others. It seems like everything he does is based off of instinct, he's always careful not to keep his back to anyone and he always seems to snarl whenever someone comes close to him. Even the way he fights, it makes him look like a... a..."
"Giant cat..."
Ring and Crystal looked up from where they were trying to piece back Skull's arm.
"You say something, Freeze?"
The youngest shook his head, realizing that Slash had long ago vacated the window. "Er, no. I'm fine, just... thinking."
"Don't think too hard, now." Crystal replied, wagging a scalpel in his direction. "You have to focus on the guys your operating on or else they'll get pissed and beat you down."
"Speaking of which..." Ring scowled, welding a crack in the pistons of Skull's forearm. "Magnet and Pharaoh's pissed at Slash right now for mangling this poor sod. He might wanna be careful."
"I'm thinking they might want to be careful."
"I wonder," Freeze said quietly, still looking at the window, "where he was going..."
There was a long pause as Crystal and Ring exchanged glances.
"Don't worry about him. We have other guys to pay attention to."
"Right."
It was... surprisingly nice outside.
From all the times he had sought to see the weather from within drab confines, the outside world had always seemed to bright and cluttered for him to deal with. But, stepping out into the light, outside the ominous presence that was Skull Fortress and the mad doctor and his blood thirsty fighting force within, Slash decided that the world seemed actually a decent place.
Made more decent, perhaps, should the populace stop staring at him like that.
He was well aware of the mass's perception of Wily and his Robot Masters, granted he also knew how inaccurate the view was as well, but... he didn't really look that inhuman. Did he?
Well, okay. He wasn't impressively tall by human standards, standard sized human standards, but he was well formed, more so than other 'boys' his 'age'. So maybe a 17-year-old human male generally reached at least 6 feet in height -- where as he was shorted a few inches –- and maybe they weren't so thin and sculpted. And maybe the didn't dress so snappily -- clothing designs had been taken over by Star and Gemini after they got tired of Wily's horrendous taste -– and maybe their hair wasn't so long nor their movements so precise. But what right did that give them to stare?
He began to think that maybe his identification number was showing but shook his head. No, that was on the back of his shoulder, most certainly covered up by his jacket. So why were they looking at him so oddly?
His musings were cut short when something bumped against his thigh.
A small girl, barely even taller than his knee, stumbled back slightly and bowed.
"Pardon me." She said quietly before she walked off around him.
Slash's brows furrowed as he watched the girl toddle off. He knew, straight off, that something was wrong with her, something different, but...
He switched on an internal scanner, perhaps that would shed some light onto this mystery.
It didn't really read anything abnormal. But... he switched to an electric sensor on a hypersensitive setting. Though it was mainly used for power surges, on its highest level the sensor could pick up the electron's movement in any given object, even a human.
And this girl... there was a perceptible lack of movement between her eyes and her brain.
Going through the knowledge he had accumulated, Slash frowned. It could be that... many of the pathways from her eyes were never fully formed. Birth defect? He wondered to himself. It could be possible...
His ears picked up the sound of an engine, revving too loud, too fast for a commercial market just as the little girl stepped off the curb.
Someone shrieked at the speeding car, police sirens wailing behind it, a TV news helicopter following from above.
But she didn't seem to notice it at all and kept walking on.
Slash's foot skidded on the asphalt, an arm wrapping around the girl's waist. With the way the car swerved all over the street, he couldn't chance diving across the way without getting hit. He turned, letting his moment settle on his planted toes and sprang back to the sidewalk from whence he came.
The car zoomed by, two police vehicles tailing close behind and Slash hunched over the girl, keeping her close to his chest as his hair and jacket were pulled by the tearing wind the cars left behind.
Onlookers crowded the two, voicing concerns and compliments on his bravery.
He paid them no heed, just pulling back, the gold shine in his eyes fading, to look at the child he had just saved.
She merely looked back up at him, eyes blank with a pearled sheen.
"Are you sure you're okay?" He asked for... a time long since uncounted.
"Yes." She replied.
Her name, he had learned, was Sierra. A quiet, filial girl, blind since birth whose mother was struggling to support the two after her father's death. She had an acute sense of hearing and a rather peaceful air around her.
But then why, he had wanted to ask her, did she step out onto the street when the car's presence was loudly heard?
Because... a reply floated on the edge of his awareness, something he didn't wish to think of for a child that young.
Instead, he sat down beside her on a bench in the park. It was nice enough, no one bothered them after the initial shock wore off and she didn't request to be taken back home. So Slash had taken her to the park, talking to her more to calm his own nerves than to keep her safe.
"I hope you don't find me rude..." he said, putting to use his learned wisdom. Dictation was a much more important matter in the real world than it was in the fortress. "But, how old are you?"
"Such a cruel question, Slash-san, asking for a woman's age." She replied, swinging her feet idly. "But because you saved me, I'm six years old."
"Six?" He blinked in surprise. "You seem..." he frowned, "I'm sorry. You just... act older than other six year olds."
"How many other six year olds do you know?"
"Um..."
She giggled at him. "It's all right. I'm often told I'm older than I seem."
Slash leaned on his knees, peering into her sightless eyes. "How come? How did you get to be so smart?"
"I'm a genius, Father had said. But because I'm blind, I had to listen to everything. So I heard everyone talking around me and I remembered."
"Do you..." he hesitated, thinking he might be too harsh, "ever wished you could see?"
There was a thoughtful silence, but Slash began to think he had hurt her with the question. But she shook her head.
"Do you wish for something you've never experienced before? Something you've never understood? I don't know what it's like to see, no one can explain it to me. To me, I 'see' fine. I can hear other people and I can tell how far away they are. In a way, I can 'see' around me, just with my ears."
"If you had the opportunity, though."
She shook her head. "No. I can't."
His brown eyes narrowed. "Why can't you?"
"When Father was alive, he took me to the doctor and the doctor said that I could get an operation to see just a little. Not a lot, but my eyes could work right. But... it cost too much, even with Father and Mother both working. And now it's just Mother and money is so hard to get."
"Well...." Slash sat up, scratching his neck as his mind left his logic far behind. "What if I gave the money to you?"
There was another pause as Sierra turned her head towards him. "Why would you do that for someone you've just met?"
"Sierra-san," he said quietly, "what do you 'see' when you 'look' at me?"
Her fine brows came together as she thought. "I'm... not sure. You're older than me, I know. But you seem so young. A lot of adults ask me questions like yours, but you're different from them. You're like... a child." She looked down and the film over her eyes seemed to disappear enough to show their cerulean color. "But... you seem nice." Sierra raised her head again, smiling warmly at him. "I think I like you."
That took him by mild surprise. For some reason he began to think, does she know I'm not human? Does she know she can't hear my heart beat? Can she not hear the machines inside me working? Or is it that she doesn't care?
"Slash-san?"
"Yes?"
"Can you stay a while?"
He blinked, voice gone from his throat. But, looking at her upturned face, so hopeful and expectant, he believed he could see himself reflected on her face. Slash smiled, his large hand ruffling her hair, not caring what she knew about him.
"Of course. I can stay with you."