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"We did it!" Megaman heard Lan cheer, as he watched Magicman fall backwards in defeat. Finally, he mused to himself, they were one step closer to taking down WWW once and for all, and returning peace to the lives of humans and navis alike. He turned his back to Magicman, facing Roll with a relieved, enthusiastic smile.
"Yahoot! Not you, too!" Megaman heard Dr. Wily cry. "Here, use this bit data from the LifeVirus!"
Megaman's eyes widened, his mind buffering as it registered Wily's words.
Bit data...?
...LifeVirus?!
Everything moved faster than he could process. Megaman felt like he was turning around in a thick fog, his movements horribly laggy and weighing him down. All he was able to take in was the sight of an upright Magicman—
"Life...Magic!"
—and the blast struck him.
The impact landed in the center of his chest, right where his navi emblem sat. The emblem that held all of his core data, his vitals, his entire being.
Everything around Megaman quickly blurred into a dense haze, his health systems screaming warning alarms in the back of his mind. They pounded against his hearing, not unlike a migraine, drowning out all other sounds. He could tell voices were speaking, but could not make out what was being said. He thought he saw someone take out Magicman, squinting in vain to understand the shape of the red and white blur, but to no avail. His vision swam, growing cloudier with each passing second, until he had no strength left to even keep his eyes open.
Only one thought occupied him as his sensory protocols shut down and his mind slipped into dark unconsciousness.
Lan...I let you down...
-
Applying Hub.BAT to Megaman.EXE..._
Megaman stirred, his vision protocols reactivating shortly afterward. As his other sensory systems rebooted, he wondered when he had even fallen unconscious in the first place. Everything had happened so fast, one minute he had just defeated Magicman, and the next...
Oh. Right. He'd been shot. Fatally.
But, if that had been the case, then...how was he even aware right now?
"Megaman..."
Megaman's head rose, attempting to locate the source of the new sound. That voice, he thought to himself, and his thoughts seemed to echo in the space around him. Lan?
"Megaman..." the voice called again, "...Can you hear me...?"
Megaman's brows furrowed in confusion. No, that's not Lan. His voice isn't that gentle. But it still sounds like him...still sounds...familiar, somehow...
Suddenly, bits of blue and white data began to gather before his very eyes, lighting up the darkness. The data rained down from above, slid in from the sides, and crawled up from beneath, coming together in the center of his field of vision to take shape. At first, Megaman could not determine what kind of shape he was seeing. But soon enough, he recognized it as a torso, one that formed from the heart and quickly materialized the data into arms, legs, and a face...
His processor froze in pure anxiety. The figure before him, in an otherwise empty and weightless sea of black, was an ethereal and grounding sight. Unmistakable eyes locked with his, framed by hauntingly familiar bangs that parted in the middle and swooped to the sides of his face.
It was him.
"Aah!!" Megaman flinched and ducked his head, shutting his eyes tight and shielding himself beneath his arms. "P-please, don't haunt me!!!"
The fear and dread ate away at him. It had finally happened. He'd been deleted, and now, his greatest fear—a being from beyond his cybernetic comprehension, a ghost, his ghost—had risen from the grave to destroy him, to strip him bare of everything that made him who he was until he was nothing but unreadable bits of data.
"Hey, it's okay," the glowing form, which his panicked mind could only identify as Hub Hikari, soothed gently. "No need to be scared. I'm not going to hurt you."
...Gently?
Megaman hesitantly cracked open an eye. "You're...not?"
Hub shook his head gingerly, and Megaman's mind struggled to wrap his head around what he was seeing. For all intents and purposes, he was looking at a ghost. Ghosts were said to be the vengeful spirits of the deceased, those who either died before their time or died without completing their earthly business. Sometimes both. They were supposed to be loud and wrathful monsters.
This boy was neither loud nor particularly angry-looking. If anything, he looked...concerned.
"B-but, aren't you a...a ghost?" Megaman ventured warily.
Hub's otherwise calm eyes rose slightly. He lifted a glowing arm for his own inspection, glancing down at its blue light with quiet unease. His other hand fell to his chest, where his heart would be.
"I...I guess I am, aren't I?" he answered with a slight shudder. His eyes widened, realizing he was getting off-topic, and he refocused his attention on Megaman. "B-but I'm no vengeful spirit! And that's not important right now!"
"Then...why are you here?"
"Because," Hub spoke, his voice still gentle but now taking on a distinctly firm and dire weight in its tone. "You're at risk of deletion. And right now, my program may be your only hope of survival."
"Program...?" Megaman thought for a moment. Based on what he was seeing, the only program he could possibly think of would have had to come from Dr. Hikari, his creator.
His father.
Megaman's eyes widened. "Hub.BAT...!"
Hub nodded. "Hub.BAT is currently interfacing with your systems, causing you to perceive the program in a way your subconscious soul can recognize." He smiled. "It makes sense; we are the same soul."
Something ached in Megaman's core, and his brows furrowed fretfully. "Are we?"
Hub's head tilted to the side innocently, trying to understand the emotion on the other's face. "You don't believe so?"
"I..." Megaman's eyes trailed downward. He noticed, for the first time, that his legs were crawling with the same glowing bits of data that made up his perception of Hub.BAT, the latter's own feet suddenly missing. He jolted at the sight, and the loading data stalled at his knees.
Hub frowned. "You're scared."
The words held no active malice behind them, they were merely an observation. But they still made Megaman wince.
"I...I don't deserve this..." he began to say, but he hesitated for a beat. He carefully gathered his thoughts before continuing. "If I failed Lan without Hub.BAT...what if having it just makes things worse? If I get hurt, then he..."
Hub's head ducked slightly, eyes closed. "You've known the risks of Full Synchro, ever since Dad explained them to you in testing. But I can detect that that's not your reason for rejecting the program."
Hub raised his head back up, ever-gentle eyes locking with Megaman's. This gentleness almost unnerved him; it completely defied all knowledge he held of how ghosts were assumed to behave.
"You feel like you're stealing another's life. 'My' life."
Megaman's breath hitched, a reflex picked up from a life never lived.
"You show no disinterest in identifying with the name 'Hub Hikari'," Hub continued, "In fact, you long for it. Yet you reject it, on the same basis your system is currently rejecting Hub.BAT: you believe it's unearned. Why?"
Megaman could no longer halt his emotional programs from generating the tears that began to pool around his eyes, and shut them tight. "It's true...it's true! I want that name more than anything in the world! But..." He clutched at his sides, wishing he could feel some sort of material between his fingers: his gloves, his bodysuit, anything. "I can't have it!! Not when I'm supposed to be the next step in navi development!! Not when you're right there!!!"
Megaman began sobbing, and his form crumpled to the invisible ground beneath his feet. It hurt him to be reminded of what he was and wasn't all at once. He had to be the perfect navi, but he also had to be the solution to his family's loss. But at the same time, he also couldn't ever tell Lan who he really was, or else Lan would be too scared to use him. And after all...
"A navi you can't use isn't a very good navi at all."
The memory of Dr. Hikari's voice echoed all around him, and Megaman shook in frustration, wishing he could hide from it, wishing those words would go away.
"Megaman," he heard Hub say, the voice pulling him out of his spiral like a life raft. He opened his eyes to find the program kneeling close, but far enough to still be mindful of his personal space. "You are a navi, but you're not just a navi." Hub smiled, somehow kneeling down in spite of his missing feet and offering an open hand. "You are Megaman.EXE...and you are Hub Hikari. You're still a person, no matter what."
The tears still fell, but lessened somewhat, as Megaman looked at the hand for a long, aching moment. Then, shaking with emotion, he firmly took the hand, gripping it for dear life.
The stalled trails of data buffered, slowly slinking up and around his legs as Hub's further vanished.
"How do I know?" he asked, desperate for an unambiguous confirmation.
The personified batch file merely smiled.
"Because you're talking to yourself."
"Hub!"
The new voice cut through the darkness like a razor blade, and Megaman pulled his hand away, the program stalling once again, this time just below his chest. He looked up into the void with alarm. "Lan?!"
"Hub," the distant but unmistakable voice of Lan Hikari begged. "Come fight by my side!"
"Lan..." Megaman gazed out into the vast darkness, overcome with sudden resolve and a newfound sense of security. "What am I saying?! Lan needs me...ALL of me!!"
"There's not much time," said Hub, offering his hand to Megaman once again. Ribbons of data flowed aimlessly from his floating chest, knowing where they belonged but lost without guidance. "Megaman...right now, we can't exist without each other. If you want to live...you need to accept your humanity."
Megaman reached out, but a faint shred of hesitation still withheld him. "I..."
Hub smiled reassuringly, arm and hand still outstretched. "I know you're scared. But I promise, once Hub.BAT finishes downloading and integrating with your system, I'm going to become part of you, not the other way around. It's your life to live...but you must want to live. For others...and yourself."
It was true. He wanted to live.
So he gripped that hand as tightly as he could. And Hub.BAT surged across his frame, down his arms, up his neck...and the glowing presence before him further unraveled.
"Never forget," Hub concluded, his torso completely gone as only his forearms and face lingered, "That it's important to show ourselves the same kindness we offer to others."
Megaman nodded, the confidence swelling in his frame at the same rate as the coding, which now filled out his arms and crawled up his face. "You're right. Thank you...Hub."
Hub returned the smile, just as the remnants of his face and hand vanished. "You only have yourself to thank."
-
System reboot complete. Relaunching Megaman.EXE..._
"...L-Lan..."
"Hub!" Lan cried. "It's me, Lan! Wake up!"
As his vision protocols flickered into place, Megaman stirred into consciousness. "La...n..."
Gradually pulling himself upright, Megaman took in the sight of Roll and Protoman looking to him with concern and awe. He looked himself over. He felt...different.
"Uh...? What happened to me?"
Most apparent was that he was glowing. But between the usual humming and thrumming of his code, he could feel something else: something that had always been there, in the background, but now felt more present and unignorable than ever.
A heartbeat.
Overall, he was not entirely sure how to describe it, he simply felt like he was...more than he had been before.
And it felt...scary? But in a good way? Maybe the word he was looking for was...thrilling?
As his other programs whirred to life in the background, Megaman looked around for his operator screen until he caught Lan's tear-streaked grin, fully focused on him.
"Hub! It's you!"
Megaman's eyelids rose in surprise, and a sudden happiness fluttered within him. "Lan? You called me 'Hub'?"
"Hub..." came Dr. Hikari's voice over the PET, "I've told Lan everything. We used Hub.BAT to bring you back..."
The revelation surprised Megaman. He knew that despite his human DNA being a major component of his programming, it was necessary to alter it just enough to prevent Full Synchro, lest they risk Lan and Megaman falling so completely into sync that they could both be seriously hurt. Yet, in spite of the risks...he couldn't help but feel touched. And for the first time since he'd been gifted to Lan, he allowed himself to speak the word he'd forbidden himself from using.
"Dad... I see..."
"That light means your program is being rewritten," Dr. Hikari explained. "When the light goes down, your power should be increased!"
Megaman nodded. "Yeah...I can feel the energy inside me!" This energy...the feeling...of being alive...
With a wistful gaze, Megaman gave his operator, his twin brother, a sad smile. "Lan, I'm sorry for not telling you the truth earlier."
Lan returned the expression. "Hub, I'm sorry for ordering you around all these years..."
"No problem..." Megaman sighed. "I always regretted not being able to be with you in the real world. But being able to watch you grow from inside here...made me happy."
A beat of silence hung between the two brothers, finally and truly reunited.
"So, um," Lan began awkwardly, "How do I operate you now, I wonder?"
"Just be yourself," Megaman replied, and with a beaming smile, brought his hand to the Hikari crest, emblazoned on the navi symbol next to his beating heart. He did not know what the future would hold. He would likely still need to keep his exact nature under wraps from the rest of the world. But now...if he and Lan managed to successfully take down World Three, then just maybe, when all was said and done, in the private comfort of home, with Mom and Dad and Lan...
He could finally be all that he knew he was: Hub Hikari, and...
"And I'll be myself: Megaman!"