Author’s Note: ‘Steel Nightmare’ is a Megaman X fanfiction project that I wrote back in 2015, and originally published on a website dedicated entirely to such fiction works by members of various fandoms. I have long been a gamer, and the Blue Bomber and his successor’s adventures are easily some of my favorite sidescrolling challenges, games I enjoyed from start to finish. Over the years, I saw some brief flashes of potential in the X games for some genuinely bleak or grim storylines or narrative techniques, all of which ended up being softened in final presentation, and I came away somewhat disappointed. In the end, I decided that if I wanted a truly unpleasant experience, story-wise, with this beloved property, I was going to have to write it myself.
So, let us begin the novel that is ‘Steel Nightmare’!
There had been darkness, nothingness, for a time unknown. It could have been minutes, hours, or years, he didn't know. What he did know was that he was coming back toward consciousness.
The darkness behind his eyes seemed less dense, for one. Secondly, a faint pain throbbed in his arms and legs. The green text flashing before his mind's eye told him that his battery reserves were at 34%, though his life force meter read .00015%. He should be dead, by all accounts. Yet death only truly came at absolute zero percent. Then, or if the life spark unit were detached from the main battery and auxiliary for more than an hour.
The mechanoid made a mental effort, the equivalent of a grunting tug, and brought up a diagnostic of his body. Left arm, blown off. Right leg destroyed from the knee joint on down. Main torso unit, mangled. Head unit, cracked in various places. Left optic shattered, balance off 14% in right optic. Audio receptors intact.
This would be fine and dandy to know if he had a way of detaching himself from the pain. But even he felt the roaring fires of agony stoking as he came back around.
Robot Masters knew all manner of pain.
His right optic flickered to life, the chamber around him tilting madly into a hazy focus. The throne room he lay in appeared to be full of rubble, layered in dust and decay. How long had he been down? Why was he now coming back to activation?
Then he saw it, a small floating spheroid, hovering toward him. The gate monitor, he thought. It opened, and must have brought me back around. The metallic ball hovered closer, and now he could make out several tentacle-like appendages snaking off of it.
Stamped in the middle of the plate facing him was a snake wrapped around a needle. A medical bot, he thought. Looks fancy. The hovering bot drew within a few yards of him, and then a small panel slid to one side, a thin blue arc of light spilling out from it. The mechanoid looked to the left slightly to find a flickering blue hologram of another mechanoid standing in midair.
The holographic newcomer was of a sort the damaged Robot Master had never seen. Enormously armored, the other bot had the appearance of a shining medieval crusader. His shoulder plates were heavy and rounded, and his overall stance and affect was somehow regal.
The hologram displayed full color, though, after a flicker. White and red stylized armor, and a narrow optics slit in the head unit. The Robot Master was reminded a little of himself, though this newcomer had a somewhat sleeker overall look. The stranger also looked more menacing.
"Can you hear me," a low, gravelly voice said from the medic bot's speaker, the words in time with the faint rise and fall of a bulbous face covering on the stranger's faceplate.
The damaged Robot Master managed a weak "Yes," in reply, barely audible.
"Good. The medic bot is going to soon be joined by an enclosed transport vessel. It is going to put you inside, so that you can be brought to me. It will maintain your condition, and attempt to alleviate your pains. How are you feeling right now?"
The stranger sounded genuinely intrigued, though his massive arms were folded over his chest. His narrow, slitted eyes stared like a knife into the Robot Master's optic, which chose that moment to flicker, causing the world to appear to flash in and out of existence.
"I, hurt," the damaged mechanoid responded.
"I see. Harvey, lock down his tactile nodes, make him comfortable." One of the segmented steel arms on the medical bot reached out, and even as the damaged Robot Master watched, dumbfounded, it opened a sliding plate on his chest armor and tapped in a sequence that should only have been known to Dr. Wily.
It had been one of many failsafes the sneering old human had implemented when constructing the Robot Masters. They could not shut down their own pain, and Wily himself kept a device on hand to cripple them with a wave of agony if any of them became rebellious.
But they all needed occasional maintenance. Hence, the tactile node and external diagnostic board installed in each Robot Master. He could easily work on them without causing discomfort.
As the medical bot shut down his artificial nerves, the damaged Robot Master went slack. Another failsafe; should anyone deactivate their tactile nodes, the Robot Master would be paralyzed, only able to see, hear and speak.
He felt nothing, though. The stranger spoke up again. "Better?"
"Much. I have very little life force left, and my main battery is now operating at 28%. It has fallen 6 points since awakening."
"Not to worry. The transport is now between the control gates. It will be to you soon. I will speak with you again when you arrive at my facility. And don't worry; Harvey will hook your battery and life force units to chargers inside the transport."
The Robot Master's view changed as his body, what remained of it anyway, was lifted by some kind of grappler and eased into a well-lit mobile maintenance vehicle. The stark white interior smelled of oils and electricity, the muffled burn of ozone.
The medical bot floated into view on his right, and began running cords into various ports on the Robot Master's body. "What is your name," he asked of the stranger, whose holographic display had shrunk and rested now on his open chest plate.
"You may call me Hephaestus," the strange bot replied. "And I already know who you are, Knight Man. We are well met, and about to be even more so." With that, the hologram winked out, and Knight Man began to fade into the darkness of unconsciousness.
His time of disrepair was over.