A pop of static, and Rock Light finds himself in his childhood -- no, his only -- home. The good doctor working late into the night, tinkering and fixing spare parts. Rock looked out the window, down to the people below. As silent as ever, even when they weren’t asleep. The neon signs near the apartment complex they lived in buzzed, still dim and dingey. A clock somewhere struck 12:15AM -- instinctively, Rock moved away from the window. He heard the sounds of the coffee machine brewing, wondering if he had made it before he left, before he remembered that this wasn’t how he left his city.
It was a memory, yes -- a compilation of memories, of nights that were so similar they blurred together. But it wasn’t what he specifically remembered before being taken to Hive City. He wasn’t in the apartment, not truly especially judging by the way his vision flickered like a tape in a vcr player, but he ignored that knowledge for now.
“I made coffee,” Rock said, pulling up a chair from across the doctor, his father’s work desk.
“I smelled it. It smells like --”
“Oil. Yeah, yeah!” Rock laughed like a recording. “I didn’t put any in -- I know you’re going to ask me.” There was a ghost of a smile on the doctor’s face, familiar.
“Fool me once, kid. Fool me once.” There was a pause, and the doctor spoke again.
“This isn’t your memory,” he said, standing up from his seat. “Someone’s stuck you in some kind of dream simulation. You see how your vision flickers, like you’re watching TV?”
“Whether you want to or not, kid, you gotta wake up. I’m not there to fix your systems if it fries. This one is all yours.”
Megaman… didn’t sigh, but hung his head and shook it. It figured, didn’t it? The coffee was still brewing, long after it should be finished. And it figured, too, that he dreamt of a memory -- he wasn’t known for his imagination, he supposed. (Anything he imagined was just something else he remembered.) Regardless, he recalled the doctor saying as such before.
“So… how do I get up, then?”
“I can’t tell you that. Finish dreaming is probably the only way.” And with that, he blinked and was out on the apartment building’s roof, sitting alone. Finish dreaming… but he couldn’t dream.
He’d just have to help someone finish theirs, then.