Family Ties [PG(-13?) D/A] One-shot

[TheWebbuilder]

Arighty, before we begin I want to issue two warnings.

1) There are people who understand Bass and can write his character. I'm not one of them. I'm taking a stab at Bass because of this idea occurred to me, but I feel like I don't really have him down. Just to prepare you for any inconsistancy.

2) The ending of this ficlet is brutal. It's not gory or anything like that, but 'brutal' is the only definition that fits. I feel really iffy about the younger crowd reading on because of that. If you've seen the unedited version ShadowMan's deletion in Axess then you'll be alright, but if you've only seen the dub then I advise you to turn back now.

Begin

He ran.
 
He wasn't fast enough.
 
He knew it.
 
He ran anyway.
 
Intense fear did strange things to a person. It drove them on in the face of defeat, spurned them into acting irrationally and forced them to do things that they would have never dreamed themselves capable of.
 
He looked over his shoulder and felt such a fear. A fear that was enough to drive him insane.

It was the last thing he ever felt.
 
Bass hovered over the de-rezzing remains of the Net Navi he had been pursuing. The last member of that upstart Undernet gang was now smoldering on the ground before the crimson-eyed Navi. The Navi was well past the point of consciousness, perhaps well past the point of existence given the scope of his wounds.
 
None of that mattered to him, Bass formed another Earthbreaker in his palm and used it to eradicate whatever was left of this punk Navi. Full deletion was the only thing that mattered to him.
 
The cloaked Net Navi turned around and prepared to leave the area; when he came to a stark realization.
 
He'd been in this computer system before- many years ago.
 
Deja vu ticked at Bass' mind, while some obscure memory flittered at the edges of his consciousness. Try as he might, Bass couldn't make it compute. Where had he seen this system before? And why did he care?
 
The crimson-eyed Net Navi cast his gaze around the network. He probed every wall and corner of the system in an effort to draw out the reason for his discomfort. He had been here before, of that he was sure, so why did this place fascinate him so much? Why couldn't he brush off this feeling and leave like he intended to?
 
Everything within the cloaked Net Navi wanted, yearned, screamed, to break free of this spell and leave the area- to get back to the hunt.
 
Yet he couldn't.
 
Bass' eyes continued to dance about the area in an effort to pierce through the mystery that hung over the area like a dense fog. Something was holding onto the back of his mind, and refusing to let go.
 
Abruptly, the answer sped into Bass' mind.
 
This was Cossack's computer; he had been born here.
 
Cold fury ignited within the crimson-eyed Navi's mind. Anger poured through his veins. He had been given existence here. This was where that idiotic fool had brought him into being. This was where the root of human betrayal began. Human arrogance started here and he was the end result.
 
The fury raging through his body coursed down into his palms and ignited into a pair of Earthbreakers. Before the cloaked Net Navi even knew what he was doing Bass was in the air and raining destructive power down upon the area. Orb after orb of energy was hurled from his fingers and detonated against the floor below.
 
Data exploded and shattered beneath the might of his tirade. His fury became a living being that lashed out at all that was around him. Crystallized data storage dissipated as if it were nothing but dust beneath the whirlwind of his wrath. Craters and ash erupted from the ground as Earthbreaker after Earthbreaker pounded into the floor.
 
Finally, how long it had been Bass didn't know, the crimson-eyed Net Navi poured the last of his anger, resentment and betrayal into his palms. The rage took on a life of it's own and fused into the spiked head of the diseased beast known as Grave.
 
Pure destruction left from Grave's mouth and shattered against the landscape.
 
The rage and anger were gone, replaced with an emptiness and a hollowness that the caped Navi could never remember feeling before. His wrath had been driven from him and poured out upon the place of his birth. New anger and hatred would come, of that Bass was sure, but for the moment, the Navi was spent.
 
Bass slowly descended to the ground below, and was forced to come face-first with the destruction that he had caused. Some aspects of the Network had been so heavily pounded that there was nothing left of it. The flooring ran right up to the edge of nothingness and vanished. Gone forever.
 
Just like his trust in mankind.
 
The crimson-eyed Net Navi took a step forward, and then came to a halt. He was standing on top of a stairway. A stairway that hadn't existed either in the Navi's memories or when he had entered the area. It had just appeared out of nowhere.
 
Bass blinked as his mind registered this fact. Cossack must have hidden something in this Network, and hidden it so far underneath the surface of his computer system, away from prying eyes, that it had taken the caped Net Navi's tirade to expose it.

Whatever was lurking down there, it must have been important.
 
A seed, a trickle, a hint of joyful revenge ignited in Bass' stomach. Cossack had left something behind.
 
Bass' life had been taken from him.
 
Now Bass would take whatever of Cossack's that was left.

Beneath the folds of his cape, a grin swept over the cloaked Net Navi's lips as he took his first step down that staircase. Already he could feel the seed of anger and fury beginning to grow into a new fit of fury.
 
The staircase led the caped Net Navi down, down and down. Deeper and deeper the staircase dropped, turned around and folded in within itself- this pattern continued for almost a quarter of an hour.
 
A lesser Navi might have wondered just how Cossack could have buried the data so deeply beneath the surface and still had a functioning computer. Perhaps he would have wondered what was hidden away and why. After the fourth flight, a lesser Net Navi might have countered up all sorts of horrible images and monstrosities that were so dangerous Cossack had no choice but to hide them so deep. After the seven flight, the Navis in question might begin jumping at their own shadows as they imagined that the monstrosities had gotten loose and where just waiting for something to destroy or devour.
 
Bass was not that kind of Navi. It didn't matter how deep this tunnel went or what was at the other end. He would find out. And then he would destroy it. Each step he took only served to fuel his pride and anger, thus making him stronger.
 
Bass rounded another set of stairs and then came face to face with the end of this miserable staircase. A doorway barred his progress and prevented him from going any further.
 
An Air Burst took care of that obstacle, revealing the other side to the crimson-eyed Net Navi.
 
A modern digital laboratory awaited him. Bass stepped into the room and looked around; data and coding was scattered about the floor. Hastily scribbled notes and computations haphazardly sat upon every flat surface in the area. Tools and coding strings crouched upon tool racks or monitors of information.
 
For a brief moment, Bass' anger flared. He had come all this way for an empty room full of data. Data that probably pertained to his creation.
 
This was all that Cossack had buried beneath his computer. The fool...
 
A snarl burst from Bass' lips as a purple sphere materialized in his palm. The caped Navi whipped about and prepared to launch it at the nearest wall-
 
And stopped dead in his tracks.
 
The Earthbreaker fizzled out of existence.
 
Resting in the nearest corner of the room, almost directly behind the door that the crimson-eyed Net Navi had entered from, stood a vertical tube. Inside of that clear, glass sphere was the form of a Net Navi. From the way the Net Navi was suspended in mid-air and slumped against nothingness, Bass was forced to assume that the Navi had been created but never brought online.
 
The caped figure took another step towards the glass container and studied the person on the other side of the glass wall.
 
The figure was female.

And she looked almost exactly like he did.
 
Golden boots swept up the front of the Navi's legs and came to a rest just below her knees. Circular rings jutted out from the ankle and calf of the boot. A green skirt dangled from the Navi's waist over a black body-suit. Cloth armor stretched from the Navi's neck down to the top of her diaphragm. Small gold disks, bearing the appearance of bracelets, hung around her wrists. The Navi's helmet was green, sported a jewel on the forehead not unlike Bass' own, and had two small fins that started just above the Navi's eyes, swept up her head and stopped just past the back of the Navi's head. Brown pig-tails emerged where the fins left off and came to a stop just below the Navi's shoulder-blades.
 
The Navi's appearance had stopped Bass cold.
 
The crimson-eyed figure walked closer to the glass container, paused, and then placed his palm against the clear wall. What had Cossack been up to with this Net Navi? And why had he buried her so far underneath the surface to be forgotten about?
 
Uncertainty flooded the warrior and threatened to defeat his tentative anger right then and there. This Navi wasn't so much unlike himself; created by humans and then betrayed and abandoned without reason.
 
The caped figure thrust the feeling away and turned his back on the glass wall. This was not his concern, the sooner he got out of this place the better. Then he'd drop an Earthbreaker on this tunnel and bury that Navi, Cossack's last creation, beneath the rubble. The Net Navi had been created to serve mankind, that was enough reason to justify her death.
 
As Bass completed his turn, his red eyes happened to fall to a memo resting on the closest work bench. Bass stopped as he recognized it as a memo written in the hand of his maker. Cossack had been so busy that if he didn't write something down, he forgot about it. It wasn't unusual for the scientist to leave notes everywhere.

But the first words written on that paper arrested the renegade's attention.
 
Bass stepped over to the memo and let his eyes scan the paper. Cold dread flooded his chest and almost immediately turned to anger.
 
I've just completed work on the next model of the Independent Navi Project. Why this little girl is so closely tied to Bass' core programming that she could almost be considered a sister of sorts! I know the notion is foolishness since Navi's can't breed, but since she was developed from the same template I used for Bass, I find it hard not to think of Soprano as Bass' sister.
 
It's amazing. We've come a long way together, and made more headway than we'd ever thought possible with the Independent Navi Project, but I feel that Bass has gone as far as he can. Hopefully, with the creation of this model, some of Bass' flaws will be erased and removed altogether-

The caped Navi jerked backwards.

Bass' flaws will be erased and removed.

The anger in Bass' chest exploded into hatred and threatened to consume him alive.
 
A whoosh interrupted Bass. The caped figure spun about, instinctively tracing the sound that had broken his concentration back to the glass container. The container had been opened, some kind of time-delay mechanism must have been triggered and now the hibernating Net Navi was coming online for the first time.

Bass' flaws will be erased and removed.

The fury in Bass' chest ignited into wrath and anger. This Net Navi had been his replacement. Even before SciLab had ordered his execution, Cossack had been preparing to put him down, to remove him from the equation. He'd wrung all of the progress and mileage out of Bass that he could and now he was preparing to do the same with his next little chunk of data.

This Navi, Soprano, was his replacement.
 
Beneath the folds of his cape, Bass' hand began channeling the power of his Grave Cannon.
 
The glass cage finally opened. The green-clad Navi's blue eyes slid open as her levitation came to a halt and deposited her on the ground. The female hesitated for a moment and then took a wary step forward. With the confidence of that first successful step, the Navi took two more and then stopped to look at Bass. Her eyes widened at the sight of the caped Net Navi, and then her mouth exploded into a smile.
 
"Bass? Is that you?" Soprano's speech was halting and overly synthesized. It marked her as the archaic toy that she was. "Did Cossack send you down here to wake me? He said that he found some bugs in my coding and asked me to go into hibernation so he could fix them... did he succeed?"
 
Revenge and deception rose in Bass' throat.  A smile ripped across his lips. The crimson-eyed Net Navi nodded in response to the barrage of questions.

"Then it is you! Brother!" Soprano beamed. A second passed before her grin faded as a realization surfaced in her mind. "But what about Dr. Cossack? Where is he? Why isn't-"

Soprano came to a painful stop as Bass' hand flew out and closed about her throat. Soprano's voice choked off as bewilderment and unbelief flooded her eyes.

"Human puppet." Bass kept the Net Navi at arm's length and slowly increased the pressure of his hold on the green Navi's throat. "You have no right to exist."

Soprano's hand clawed at the renegade's arm and tried to loosen his hold.

She failed miserably.

"B... bass..." The words came out of the girl's clenched windpipe as little more than a moan. "...Why...?"
 
"... You were born a traitor." Was the renegade's answer.
 
The hand bearing the Grave Cannon came up and revealed itself to Soprano. Bass reveled in the fear and despair that creased his sister's face and flooded her eyes as the bugged wolf-head stared her down. Her naiveté and innocence sickened him. Destroying her would be satisfying. It was just.
 
The Grave Cannon discharged.
 
The room shook.
 
Soprano was dead.
 
Bass was gone in an instant.
 
A memo flipped lazily in the air, blaspheming the gravity of what had just happened with it's flippant attitude. The note came to rest face-down on the ground where it would never be seen, revealing another line of writing.
 
hopefully Bass' flaws will be removed when he meets Soprano. It must be lonely being the only thinking Net Navi on the internet; I try to be there, but I know that I can't understand everything that Bass deals with. Hopefully Soprano can fill that void in his life; and together, the three of us will reach a new potential.

Fin
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