He chuckled good-naturedly at Rockman's apology.

"It's good to see you again, glad you're doing ok," he gave the blue guy a smirk and a flippant hand wave, "Eh, it wasn't that bad. We all made it out alive, didn't we?"

He caught himself. He needed to be more gentle, more!

"I'm really glad that we had friends that were able to help get us out of all that," his expression softened, "I was able to reach Ellen just in time and that's what's important."

He nodded to himself, then felt as though he'd been too vulnerable.

"But yeah! It all worked out in the end!" he gave his best, cheesiest grin, "We beat a baddy, learned a couple of things, and we got a rare chip out of it! Not bad, I'd say."

He ended with a satisfied smirk. He was getting better at this whole conversation thing. Usually he'd rely on Ellen to carry the momentum, but as this was his first time talking to a Navi by himself, well, at least he thought he was doing alright, all things considered.

Awkwardly, he shuffled on his feet. He blew a strand of hair out from his eyes. For all intents and purposes, he was quite the different Navi than Cometman had seen in the Colosseum; less bitey, less controlled, and certainly more grounded in reality. In fact, he didn't look much like his bark; he wasn't even making eye contact with Cometman. Just staring a little bit past him.

"Welcome," he said, though it felt sort of stupid to say. Cometman had been to this world before. Wasn't a first time. "Sorry about the whole, like, fight to the death type thing. Not my idea of a pleasant day, that's for sure."

It was becoming more and more obvious to Rockman that all his life, he was using Netto as a proxy to socialize. It was a lot easier then, when they just bounced off of each other. He was terribly adrift on his own. And terribly awkward.

Cometman clenched his fist and swiped out a message with a swift fury.

"Things getting heated in friendship land?" Ellen asked, peering over at Cometman's disgruntled face.

He paused, gathered himself, then growled out his frustrations and threw his hands down, then folded them across his torso, "I don't get this guy. He's all over the place! Sometimes he's nice, other times he's standoffish, and other times he's just straight up mean?? Makes me wanna fight the guy, maybe I'd finally get a straight answer out of him then... I won't, but," he huffed.

"I mean we already fought the guy, beat him too," she mentioned, leaning back and reminiscing.

He fell slightly onto the window behind him, then let his head fall backwards, looking up at the ceiling of Ellen's desktop, "...How can we even help him?"

"I was really hoping you're strategy'd work cause I have no idea," she chirped.

He stared up at the simulated ceiling that was roughly converted data to a visual format. It was extended pixels from the background extrapolated and constantly shifting with colors. It existed because it had to exist, because he was there looking at it, because he could see these things, these things had to be seen. It was freaky and weird as heck and he just wanted answers all over again.

"I wanna grab that guy by the shoulders and scream at him," he grumbled, squeezing his arms.

"Is that really what you want to do?" Ellen pressed cautiously.

He growled, "No. What I really want to do is get to know him better and be his friend, but maybe the direct approach isn't best here and I gotta be more... Gentle." he sneered as it felt like a betrayal of some sort.

He leaned forward off the window, righting himself and caught Ellen looking at him with a soft smile, to which he mumbled, "What's that look for?"

She laughed and threw up her hands, "Nothing! Nothing, I'm just, glad, that's all!" she smiled, "Why don't you go visit him?"

"I think I'll do just that," he smirked, quickly swiping away his unfinished message and writing a new one.

[MSG ]: Alright, make way then, I'm heading over.

"If he gives you any grief, you can suplex him again," she chuckled, giving him a thumbs up.

He opened a portal to Rockman's Net, giving her a thumbs up in return as he stepped through.

What we are? What a bizarre thing to say. A navi just knew. What the hell would be the purpose of a navi who didn't know– they wouldn't be very useful, that's for sure. Rockman tapped his foot as he tried to figure out what he should say, how he should swerve out of the trajectory of this impending…thing.

Well- first, the talking part. Cometman asked him about talking to people, his operator, which he found woefully naive, never mind the sword in his side or the pain in his head. He laughed, though the sound was sort of distant to him.

[MSG: ️] I talked to my partner.

Vague enough, and true. More like he shouted incoherently, and Blues listened, because he always listened. Cometman didn't need to know that partner didn't mean his operator in that context. As little personal information as possible…

You really are an antisocial freak, huh. [MSG: ️] I don't need your help. A friendship with the approach of fixing someone sounds kinda shit.

Ugh. The sting of guilt hit him like a lead pipe.

[MSG: ️] …It's nice of you, but I don't need your help.

He was still tapping his foot.

[MSG: ️] We can talk, I guess. If you want. My Net is open.

[MSG ]: I want to chat about Navis and what we are, because you seem knowledgeable about that. And to be quite frank, I want to help you. You're a nice guy and I want to be your friend, that's the long and the short of it.

He sent the message and leaned back on a window Ellen had opened up for him. She had that look on like she was trying to solve a hard puzzle, and she wasn’t known to really like solving puzzles.

"What’s on your mind, Ellen?" he asked, peering up at her.

"It's just...!" she growled, clutching her arms in close, "I'm thinking about that fight we had with that Rockman and how weird it was."

"I mean, the whole colosseum was weird but, what are you talking about in particular?"

"Man, it was like," she flipped her hand about, "Okay so there was this one time when Netken had a huge update that brought a bunch of old players back into the game and they all had this way of fighting where they clearly knew what they were doing but they weren't familiar with the new meta and also they just hadn't fought in a while. That's what Rockman's fighting reminds me of! Kinda rusty, and experienced all wrapped up. And what was going on with his Operator the whole fight? Like, I know he's a different Netto and mind controlled and all that, but he really did a complete one eighty after breaking out of Serpentine's control. I don't know what I'm trying to get at, it's just... There's something else going on between those two, you know?"

He was inclined to agree, especially being told by ghostly Rockman to not tell his Netto about all this.

"He seems awfully lonely," Cometman noted, "Poor guy."

[MSG ]: By the way, have you had the chance to talk to your Operator or anyone else about what you went through? We haven't spoken to Netto about it, but I still think that this is something you should talk to someone about. If you want, you could even talk to me about it, considering I know something about what happened and went through something similar.

He did remember Cometman. He remembered his voice in the cacophony of all of them under Serpentine's influence, alongside his operator's. He remembered the way they fell slowly under the influence, then all at once; both her and the other her, echoing back and forth, their insecurity a perfect knife.

And he remembered their attacks against him, and he remembered– well, he remembered too much. He blinked a few times as if to clear it from his mind. He shot a quick message to Blues to indicate he was going to take a quick walk, and he exited the IPC network.

[MSG: ️] I'm fine

Pause, pause.

[MSG: ️] I mean, from that. All good here. Why do you want to meet?

Prickly prickly. Maybe they just want to know why you were such a psycho? Rockman blew a scoff from his nose.