Chapter 1: I Am Your Child

Art Dump ft. @dahlia-the-nurd / clowndrawz Characters (Proxima and Milk) and just some doodles of their Megaman AU/HC shenanigans

TW for blood underneath the cut

The gist of it is, Wily worked out how to transport things between universes, but his method only drags things in, so he can't use it to travel. So, he decided to search the multiverse for robots that had managed to actually defeat their version of Mega Man (or at least an equivalent), and then steal and reprogram them to finally conquer the world with.

One of these robots was a girl named Staccato. She's from a universe where the Emerald Spears (the anti-robot terrorist group from the Archie Comics run) eventually decided to fight fire with fire and create their own series of nine Robot Masters (though they called them Execution Units) programmed to destroy every robot and robotics engineer on Earth and then themselves (that last bit is how they justified the blatant hypocrisy of the situation).

Staccato was ESN-009, the last and most powerful of her series, as well as their leader, and was the Spears' answer to Mega Man. She's equipped with a Variable Weapons System, as you'd expect, is made of future tech like Quint thanks to the Spears somehow getting their hands on the Time Skimmer (they even based her face's design on Roll like how Quint was designed to look like Rock as a form of psychological warfare. she's not programmed to think she's Roll from the future though), and instead of having a Buster as her primary weapon she can swap her hands out for what are essentially lightsaber battleaxes. And as you might expect, creating a robot who's mind is almost-but-not-quite equivalent to that of a human child and building their code on a foundation that they and everyone remotely like them shouldn't exist and it's their sole purpose to enforce that doesn't exactly lead to the most stable of Artificial Intelligences.

As you'd guess from the whole "specifically grabbing robots who managed to beat their Mega Man" thing, the Execution Units proved very effective, and eventually Roll was the last member of the Light family left, and one of the very few Robot Masters left on top of that. In one last Hail Mary play, she turned to Wily (because of course her Wily managed to survive. it's what he does) and asked him to turn her into a weapon powerful enough to avenge their families (to Bass's credit as the self-proclaimed Ultimate Robot Master, he lasted longer against Staccato than Rock and Blues combined). He did so, transforming her into Neo Woman, and she tore through the Emerald Spears and the first eight Execution Units like a force of nature.

When Staccato and Neo Woman finally clashed, they pretty much ended up ripping each other apart since they were both hellbent on killing each other with no real desire to survive themselves. Base Universe Wily's dimension snatcher grabbed what was left of Staccato, and as an unforeseen side-effect of the two robots' proximity some of Neo Woman's memories were imprinted on Base Universe Roll. Not anything she can consciously recall, just some weird moments of deja vu, some occasional trauma responses she has no idea of the source of, a terrible sinking feeling that prompts her to insist on getting upgraded so she can watch Rock's back, and somehow knowing who Staccato is despite never having met her.

For Staccato's part, being reprogrammed to be loyal to Wily on top of her horrible base programming is Really Not Fun. Fortunately after she's defeated Quint shows up, snatches her away from both sides, then repairs her and removes both Wily's loyalty programming and the Spears' everything, so now instead of being a genocidal/suicidal axe-murderer she's just Incredibly Traumatized, absolutely drowning in guilt, and lacking any true purpose!

...Look it's a start. And arguably already a massive improvement.

“No one was supposed to get hurt.” they said. “The shock bomb was meant to disable the Reploid so we could address our concerns. We didn’t expect a human to-”

“Care?”

The simple word made the human take a step back. Their dumbfounded confusion only boiled X’s blood further.

“You didn’t expect a human to care.” he reiterated with a lot more force. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

“I-“ they fumbled. “I…”

What finally got them to stop babbling was when they saw something glistening at the corner of X’s eye. That single drop formed and fell down his cheek so naturally, that the human was dead awestruck.

A new set of Archie inked pages arrived the other day, from issues 14 and 16 of the Spiritus Ex Machina arc, featuring: the Elec Man flashback part of Xander Payne’s robot-hating backstory, some rescue attempts with Elec, Quake and Pharaoh, ‘back off my dad’ Rock, and Ra Moon giving rebirth to Quick Man, after hacking into Wily’s laptop with it’s multiple tentacle analog headphone jacks.

And maybe I bought one more. Maybe that will be revealed tomorrow...for something... ;D