Inbox: Mask or Menace

[megabytes]

"You've reached the comms device of Megaman.EXE. I'm not available at the moment, so please leave a message and I will respond as soon as I am able! Thank you!"

Comments

[megabytes]

Good!

[Apparently all he needed to distract himself was to treat Hiro just like





and now he feels like a terrible person.]

[microbrobotics]

[ Good job there Megaman. He pauses again, looking at him. ]

You okay?

[megabytes]

...yeah, I'm fine. Just...just thinking.

[microbrobotics]

About what?

[megabytes]

It's nothing. Really.

[This blanket is very interesting, clearly he should stare at it intently.]

...you know, we never actually did the other thing you asked for.

[microbrobotics]

Huh? What was that?

[ He's forgotten already. ]

[megabytes]

You wanted me to tell you more about Lan. Remember?

[microbrobotics]

-- oh yeah, I did. So tell me about him already.

[megabytes]

[Geez, Hiro, impatient much?]

Well...what do you want to know?

[microbrobotics]

What do you like most about him?

[megabytes]

I...I don't know. Everything?

[microbrobotics]

Except the stuff you complained about earlier?

[megabytes]

That's stuff he does, that's different.

[microbrobotics]

So what's something he does that you like?

[megabytes]

...he likes to help people. I don't think I've ever seen him brush something off as "not his problem," not when someone really needed help. [He laughs.] We once spent hours hunting viruses online and trying to collect data just to help out at the lab.

[microbrobotics]

Seriously? That's pretty cool. Reminds me of Tadashi.

[megabytes]

[He puffs up a bit at "pretty cool." Proud big brother is proud.]

Well, your brother is pretty cool, too. He probably hasn't gotten yelled at by a law enforcement agent for it, though. ...has he?

[By "yelled at" he means "threatened with arrest and/or deletion." And by "law enforcement agent" he means "member of an international net-police organization who was in the middle of hunting down a cyberterrorist group." The Hikari bros lead a colorful life.]

[microbrobotics]

Um ... actually. He has. He definitely has.

[ And thrown in jail too. That was a fun night. ]

[megabytes]

...what did he do?

[microbrobotics]

Protected me, mostly. The bot fight ring I was scamming got busted, so we both ended up in jail ...

[megabytes]

Oh. Okay. That's...different.

[IE infinitely less illegal than what Lan did.]

...why were you scamming a...a bot fight ring?

[microbrobotics]

Because I was bored?

[megabytes]

...I feel so bad for your brother right now.

[microbrobotics]

I stopped eventually jeez ... Besides, it gave me a lot of things for the bots I'm presenting at the expo.

[megabytes]

Really? What kind of things?

[YOU HAVE TINY SCIENCE CHILD'S ATTENTION]