Lineage, Part 4

The Estate of Dr. Light, home of the Light Family.

Dr. Light had a lot of labs, and not much security. Mainly because there was little to steal that anyone could sell or use, Light's specialized, customized creations tending to work solely for his most private and personal efforts. Rock. Blues. Beck.


But considering Dawn "Hypotenuse/Aura" Cosineau's lineage, it made sense that she could at least made sense of some of it.

"Wily certainly liked his rigid patterns." Dawn said. "Always eight, interlocking...I wonder if that was a personal preference or simply how he had to build things without your grandfather."

Beck shrugged. "I dunno. Dad always thought it was because he was going nuts, himself. Got so used to theming his creations he flat-out ignored the obvious weakness square going on. Or some of the more ridiculous stuff. I mean... ​Sheep Man?!​"

"I suspect mental degeneration by that time. There are earlier signs." Dawn said, perusing the 'vault' before her. The 'trophies' of Rock Light, nee Mega Man, the copied weapons of dozens of Robot Masters, kept here JUST IN CASE. "Like here. Clown Man. Okay somewhat strange, but...why is his themed weapon an electrical taser weapon? Why not something like a kinetic or explosive weapon with the circus theme?"

"You ever get zapped by a Joy Buzzer? It was like that, only worse, apparently." Beck shuddered in sympathy pain, recalling the story as told to him by his own father over dinner. "So yeah, I can kinda see how that fits - practical jokes and all that. Except practical jokes don't short-circuit people."

"Not proper ones, anyway." Dawn said, as she began sliding out racks and inspecting the weapons.

"So...why are we here Auntie? How does this help with the Fazzes?"

"Finer points, Beck. About a lot of things. It's why I asked you to come with me. You're still developing as an A.I, and you would be surprised at what's important. Basically, if you're uncertain about a solution, sometimes the best way to handle it is to consult someone else...is this a micro black hole generator? Wily, you are an insane fool. These aren't toys."

Beck stared at the statue, and his eyes goggled. "Oh, yeah... that one. The one that Mom threatens to bring the paddle out for if Dad ever uses it again. Dunno what Wily was thinking, installing this in poor old Galaxy Man. Or Garrett, as we call him," he adds, letting himself idly scan a few of the other weapons Dawn hadn't looked at.

Then he remembered what Dawn had said. 

"...finer points about what, exactly?"

"Advancement. Development. Humanity."

"Auntie..."

"Sorry, I'll stop speaking like mother. I want to further develop their AI's. Much like you were. Make them more than just glorified theme park attractions. Make them..."

There was a crunching noise as Dawn opened one of the racks, and a weapon fell out.

"...Metal weakened here. Might be rust." Dawn said, leaning down to pick it up...and blinking as it activated and attached to her arm. "No. Shut down. Disengage. Do not want."

The weapon primed and launched, a bladed fan flying out and sliding to a stop at Beck's feet.

"...This was a Tengu Man's weapon?"

Then it spun, and Beck found himself flying upwards, pushed by a column of air. He found himself rapidly hitting and pressing into the ceiling. Not damaging or painful, but not exactly fun.

"I said disengage! Stop! Do I have to break you?" Dawn said, yanking at the semi-parasitical weapon

"ACK!" Beck did not know that this would be a thing that would be happening, and he did not like it one bit. Quick, what was the command for that, what did Dad say...?

"Tornado Hold: DISENGAGE!"

That did it. Of course, then gravity re-asserted itself. At least Dawn got the launcher out of the way so Beck just faceplanted on the floor.

"Good thing you're made of Xel."

"Ow."

"You'd best get your father, I don't want to accidentally tear this whole place down trying to remove this." 

"I think he'd be more cross you took one of the weapons out!" Beck snapped as he picked himself up. "Like, even I know better than to touch those! And I still don't know what any of this has to do with the Fazbear crew!"

"They're my children, Beck." Dawn said. "I owe them more than being crude copies of some odd beasts mother and Carol ran into."

Beck sighed, and flicked on his communicator anyway.

"Yo, grandad. Yeah, I figured you- woah. ...Yeah, we're still alive. ...Tengu Man's. ...okay, give us a few minutes."

He clicked off, and directed the sort of look at Dawn that said 'I am so glad I am not you right now'.

"Just be glad you didn't pick anything more dangerous. Like the Heat Crash. That would have earned you a week offline without any television or video games. When Doctor Light grounds his robots, he don't mess around."

Dawn was only paying the most basic attention.Instead, she had knelt down, looking at the launcher.

"Hmmmm...weapon in stasis, my systems barely match, and yet..."

"Huh?"

"Having some ideas, Beck. For a lot of things. After being connected to a world as it's reborn, you find yourself looking at your old world from an angle of inspiration and improvement. And I think there may be more here than you taking a pratfall...

"Oh by the way, you can put all the blame on me, so your dad will just yell at me instead of you."

"Your idea, not mine...so," ventured Beck, after a moment's pause. "How can I help develop those guys? Do you, like, need to open up my A.I. Core or something?"

"Hopefully not. I'd hate to lobotomize you by accident. Though your mother might disagree." A smirk. 

"Har har har. But really, what do I gotta do? I'm not exactly qualified to teach anyone their ABC's or anything." As he spoke, Beck knelt down and started cleaning up the mess made during the accident with the Tornado Holder. Might as well.

"You'd be surprised." Dawn said. "After all, father just started out as a mindless engine of destruction."

A laugh. "Yeah, I know that story. I think they even wrote a song about that!"

"You mean the same people who are so puzzled your father has hair?"

"And they thought Grandad was crazy. Well, who's crazy now, huh?! ROBOT HAAAAAIR~!"

---

"But the burning in your heart I did not put there." Dawn murmured.

"Beg pardon?"  Tormon Barros had grown out his beard some, and between that and his more casual clothes it might have been harder to identify him as one of the Society slash Foundry founders.

Ring ring. Arielphone.

"This is the Sierra residence. May I ask who's calling?"

"Hello Miss Sierra. It's Conall." Conall's tone was still boisterous, but not as intense as it usually was.

"Oh! Hello, sir. What's the occasion?"

"Thinking out loud about something else. Back to business. The radius, is it too large?"

"If we had to have Saundra do it by herself, yes...but it may be more possible with Marvin helping her. Still, for something of this scale..."

"I don't need it tomorrow. Just sometime in the near future."

"Right. So, a massive excavation, a hardening of the ground...and you'd perform the construction from there?"

"Yes."

"I suppose I could ask Daniel to help..."

"I don't need rainwater. Saltwater. I plan to partially run this facility to test some theories on desalination."

"In addition to your primary purpose?"

"Mother always did like it when she could make something do more than one thing."

"Ah, well, I may as well start with the good news..." There was small talk about the Foundry's planet, some Earth sojourns, and general building efforts. "Now the other news, I would not inherently call it bad, just...it exists. You told us to destroy our process for creating Augments, which we have done. However, there are two pressing issues. One is confirmed, one is merely rumor. The confirmed issue is that we are still encountering naturally awakened Augments on Earth. We had a few in our service, Dominique being one...but since we've started our Earth visits we've encountered five new ones."

"...That's troublesome. It sounds like something is causing an unnatural spike in augmentations. But... didn't Augments require regular treatment, else they would die as a result of their transformation? Or does that not occur in naturally-awakened Augments?"

"It is only needed in our process. I believe you had a woman who accidentally created a few in your second year on Ardea. We've studied their records: their brains are stable."

"Ah, right... Hm. It does sound strange, but unless we find someone intentionally causing this, it's not really a 'problem to solve' unless one of the new Augments decides to abuse their powers. Thanks for bringing this to my attention, though. If I see anyone not part of the Foundry exhibiting signs of being an Augment, I'll let you know and it can be looked into if need be."

"That is the second point, actually..."

"You have a method to acquire the saltwater?"

"Once the grounds have been stabilized, yes. What do you want in exchange?"

Barros started giving a list, Dawn recording it as she watched the sun set over the desert horizon. She knew the person was coming long before Barros did, but said nothing to see if Barros could finish his list of requests. He almost did.

"Sir?"

Dawn hadn't caught the young man's name, though she'd immediately identified his power set. His body had shifted, taking on a form between human and animal, a perfect blend of both. By many technical terms, a lyncanthrope, but the young man didn't like the term: he didn't change on the full moon and he had full control of himself, thank you very much.

"Yes, Cezary?" Cezary, a Polish version of Caeser, which ironically could roughly be translated as 'hairy'. Had his name defined his awakening? Life had been stranger.

"Um...well, uh, I was just wandering around the motel and...found a bad smell sir."

"Bad smell? Of what?"

"Of the five we've encountered, two joined us, two preferred a normal life using their abilities quietly, and one...was hostile. And not as in control of his powers as he thought. The battle resulted in his death. Like you said, natural born Augments are incredibly rare. Encountering two in the past few years would be astonishing. Five...the one who died. His last words were very garbled, hence I cannot confirm anything save our own concern...but they may have included the words "They promised.""

"That..." Ariel paused and swallowed. "That's, um... ominous. Yes. I don't know who promised who what, but it sounds like there's something going on here after all. Unless, of course, he'd simply gone mad, but... well, I don't usually deal in coincidences. Most kobbers don't."

"That is our concern. Someone may have rediscovered our process, or found their own. Perhaps not. We do not have any evidence confirming or disproving it. Yet, anyway. It would be best if you passed the possibility on to those best served by knowing such possibilities."

"After last time? Believe me, I'll spread the word. The last thing any of us need is a repeat of what happened on Ardea."

"You and me both."

"Well, I don't know any other way to describe it...death, sir. I smell death."

---

It was a random Motel 6, part of the isolated patches of places people stayed in on the way to or from Vegas. Dawn had used it as a meeting spot, and Cezary, who had stayed behind because the desert heat made him immensely uncomfortable. But not so much that he hadn't gone to find his boss and his boss' client.

He'd been right. It was death.

Springtrap had joked that for some reason, Sine had built in a criminal investigation program into him. Which wasn't wrong, but compared to Dawn's analytical ability, some of it programming, some of it long conversations with Kirigiri, he might as well have been...well, wholly the rotten wrecked electronic he appeared to be. But the curiosity, THAT was her mother's. She'd asked Barros to hold off a moment on calling the police.

She was not human. She would not leave hairs, or fingerprints, or trace evidence. And while she was not an expert in coroner-type medicine, she had access to a lot of databanks, both onboard and in the Cloud. So it quickly became obvious to her what had happened.

Suicide, she was fairly certain. The man she was looking at was probably in his late twenties, but he looked several decades older. His body was ravaged, the signs of addiction and its prices. It was a little unclear if he'd deliberately overdosed or done it semi-accidentally, but based on the lack of signs of a struggle, it seemed like he'd realized on some level what was happening to him and made no effort to fight it. No evidence of this being faked, or any sort of set up.

The body. The drugs. The bare bones of a bare life.

And a recording device. At first, Dawn had thought it was a cell phone; instead, she'd found the next generation of the tape recorder. Digital, with a five hundred hour memory. Which was good, because it would have been a lot harder for her to copy the file if it had been a classic magnetic tape cassette. She put it down with machine precision, and indicated that Barros should now call the police. She'd stand in for Cezary; he might have smelled the corpse from a considerable further distance than she could have, but you could smell it outside the door. Perhaps someone was getting fired soon; the corpse was at most 36 hours old...

While she waited, she began playing back the recording. A suicide note perhaps...

...yes.

But not how she'd expected.

"It’s a long story, but one you’ve never heard before. This story is about a place that dwells on the mountain; a place where bad things happen. And you may think you know about the bad things, you may decide you have it all figured out but you don’t. Because the truth is worse than monsters or men...."

----

...The recording was right.

...Sometimes, the best solution was to consult someone else.

...But...for this tape...this story...

...who did you possibly consult?