Light of Hope

I. Mega Man

It was just a normal day.

It was the middle of the day, and Rush and I were helping Tempo drill into some ancient relic that the city wanted investigated. Well, I was working, and Rush was watching. I had been happy to do it - I hadn't gotten to spend much time with her recently, having to help set Mega City back on its feet again. It had only been three months since Sonic and his friends had left, and we had been able to aid the people who had been trapped in the city for weeks. Now was just a matter of restoring some more buildings. There wasn't a lot left to do.

Now, focusing on the rocks, I once again felt so happy that I had my sister Roll back. There had been a real possibility that we wouldn't be able to save her. But Sonic had promised that he would make sure she came back to us safely, and he had kept it. I looked at Rush, my red robotic dog, patting him on the head.

"What are you smiling about?" Tempo asked with a little laugh. She had a bright smile on her face, making her deep green eyes light up. Even with dirt on her face, she looked pretty.

"I-I was just thinking how glad I am that we got all my friends back, is all," I said, not looking at her in the eye. "Those few weeks were scary. I was pretty sure Wily was going to win. I don't know what we would have done without Sonic."

"Had Sonic not been here, neither would his enemy," Tempo explained, her demeanor changing back to its serious tone. She didn't have a lot of control over her emotions. "Having that man around made things far more difficult than they needed to be."

I paused, crushing through a few rocks. "You ever wonder how they're doing?" I asked.

Tempo hesitated for a moment. "Yes, I do. I often hope for Sonic that he does not face anything like what we had to fight."

"So you ended up liking him in the end?" I asked.

Tempo shrugged. "His intentions were true. He really wanted to help us conquer the evil in our world. It is hard to hate him when he helped us so much."

"But..." I said with a smile.

"But he has almost killed me twice," Tempo chuckled. "I hope he does not get possessed again and turn on his friends. But it is fun to tease him."

"You have an odd definition of teasing," I said.

Suddenly, the rocks we were on top of collapsed beneath us. We fell beneath the ground, falling into a pretty deep hole. Rush tried to get under me so that I could land onto him, but a rock fell onto him, sending him tumbling to the ground. When we finally stopped, I got up and searched for my dog. Once I saw that he was just scratched up but otherwise fine, I ran over and grabbed Tempo's hand. "It's okay, we're fine. You're okay."

She looked shaken and frightened, her eyes not moving off of a single spot in the darkness. She had been taken off guard, and she was terrified of being trapped underground. Her strongest emotion had always been fear. "Mega Man?" I heard Dr. Linde's panicked voice. "What happened? Are you two okay?"

"It was a cave in," I replied. I looked up, noticing that the sun was gone. We were trapped inside. "There's no way out above. We're stuck, but we're unharmed."

"Tempo?" Dr. Linde said. I took the opportunity to drill through the rock pinning Rush to the ground.

"I-I am here, Mother," Tempo said, voice shaking.

"Stay calm, Tempo," Dr. Linde said. "I'm sending help right now. They should be there within a few minutes."

"R-right," Tempo said, rising.

"Are your remote teleporters down?" Dr. Linde asked. "It's saying they're not connected."

I looked at my screens, realizing I did have an error report for a component to my teleporter. "Something's been dislodged," I told her.