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SUBJECT: Experiment Log: DWN-014
AUTHOR: Dr. Albert Wily
DATE: May 28, 20XX
FORMAT: Holovid + Telemetry with attachments


The chamber visible in the background of the holovid is encrusted with brilliant purple crystal growths. The door has been left wide open. Flash Man is standing on top of the tallest crystal in the center of the room, staring at the door, quietly murmuring, "Come on, Mega Man. Come to me. I'm waiting for you..."

Eventually, Mega Man cautiously enters the room. Flash Man smiles with excitement. "There you are, Mega Man! I've been waiting for you for so long."

Mega Man scowls and brings his Mega Buster to bear. "What do you want?"

"What do I want?" the Robot Master replies, jumping down from his perch to land right in front of the other robot. He activates the Time Stopper, and the video jumps ahead. The next thing it shows is Flash Man holding Mega Man's helmet under his arm for a moment before casting it to the side and jumping back.

Mega Man springs into action, running after Flash Man and opening fire. Flash Man jumps again, only taking one hit out of the entire series of shots, spraying back with his own rapid-fire buster and peppering the hero with condensed plasma.

"If that's what you want, then why attack me?" Mega Man asks as he futilely tries to dodge, switching to the Air Shooter in hopes that the upward-rising attack can intercept Flash Man mid-jump.

Flash Man manifests a shield of purple crystal in front of him, and the tornados splash off of it with no visible effect. The crystal falls to the ground and shatters, and Flash Man takes the moment of distraction as an opportunity to trigger the Time Stopper again.

When the video resumes, Mega Man's blue and white armor has been pockmarked all over by buster fire, and chunks of his hair have been scorched off. His armor changes color again, copper and yellow now as he equips the Metal Blade. Flash Man is all the way on the other side of the room, keeping the central crystal pillar interposed between the two combatants.

Mega Man tries jumping on top of the crystals himself to gain the high ground and a clearer line of fire, but he has to fall back to avoid another spray from Flash Man's buster. He protests, "This doesn't even make sense, Flash Man!"

"It's too late now, Mega Man." Flash Man's voice sounds dejected, even though the Robot Master appears to have the advantage in the fight -- he's only taken a single hit. He jumps up to the top of the pillar that Mega Man just retreated from. Mega Man was clearly waiting for that, and he hurls a Metal Blade at Flash Man right as the Robot Master touches down, but another activation of the Time Stopper interrupts the video again.

Flash Man isn't there anymore when the playback continues, and the Metal Blade whizzes across the room and embeds itself in the crystal on the far wall. Instead, Flash Man is behind where Mega Man was standing, with a pair of Metal Blades embedded in his chest. Mega Man himself is turned around to face him, his buster trained on the Robot Master, and he fires one last Metal Blade before the video cuts out in a burst of static.


SUBJECT: Re: Experiment Log: DWN-014
AUTHOR: Dr. Albert Wily
DATE: May 28, 20XX
FORMAT: Plain Text


DWN-014 is the first of the Mark II Robot Masters to exhibit Wily-effect energy manipulation at scale. It demonstrated the ability to create solid crystals that persist without energy expenditure. This suggests many promising avenues of research for further application of these energy fields.

As for the Time Stopper itself, it appears to work as designed, but the temporal distortions caused a loss of telemetry data. The desynchronization between DWN-014's chronometer and a reference clock indicates how long the effect was active from the user's perspective, but otherwise I have no information about what happened during the weapon's effect period. I should have anticipated this problem and programmed the transponder to record during the weapon effect and transmit the recording afterward. If I can recover DWN-014's memory data from the wreckage I may be able to reconstruct the missing data from that. I will also need to investigate why the effect failed on the third usage.

However, DWN-014 also seems to have developed an obsession with DLN-001. If it hadn't TOYED with that accursed robot of Thomas's it would have been by far the most successful experiment of this set. I wish I understood its thought processes, but as yet I have had minimal progress in analyzing the generated personality routines. Hopefully, recovering the memory data will provide some insight into this as well.


Meanwhile, in 21XX:


X looks up from the archive with a frown on his face and turns to Dr. Cain. "This is two Robot Masters where it looks like we're missing some really important data. Do we have anything else on this from Dr. Light's archives? Maybe Rock himself had some clues."

"I don't know." The elderly scientist shakes his head. "But we can try to find out. It shouldn't be hard to cross-reference."

X nods at this. "Let's go, then." He points at two junior-rank Maverick Hunters nearby who quickly snap to attention. "You're on monitoring duty. Report to us if anything happens here or if any Mavericks come within the perimeter."

"Yes, sir!" The two Hunters salute in unison. X waves them at ease as Dr. Cain adjusts the tele-harness on his wrist, and the two of them vanish in parallel beams of light.

They touch down in the ancient laboratory that once contained X's ethical testing capsule. This was once buried ruins, but X had insisted on restoring it back into serviceable condition. Of course, the facility had been upgraded with modern equipment, and the repairs on the antique computer systems had been especially difficult, but he had wanted to hold onto the only tie he had to his past. And in the end, it had proved to be worth it -- the restored systems contained a wealth of first-hand historical knowledge that had been otherwise lost to the passage of time.

It only takes a few minutes at a terminal for Dr. Cain to find what they were looking for.


SUBJECT: Flash Man - Encounter Log
AUTHOR: Rock [DLN-001]
DATE: May 28, 20XX
FORMAT: Holovid + Telemetry + Annotations


In contrast to Dr. Wily's holovids that were assembled from multiple cameras and sensor arrays to build a full three-dimensional reconstruction of the entire room, Mega Man's own recordings only show what he himself could perceive. To be fair, that's a lot of data, and it takes several heads-up displays to show it all: in addition to the main visual feed, windows show directional proximity sensors, directional audio, a 3D model of Mega Man's body reflecting the positioning of his body and the status of his major systems, and a log of annotations that Mega Man himself thought were worth commenting on at the time.

The recording shows Mega Man navigating through what used to be a large warehouse. It appears that Flash Man has renovated it, coating everything in purple crystals. Mega Man ducks behind cover for a moment, then jumps out to blast a sentry turret, and an annotation pops up: "The Robot Master has been here long enough to have called in support."

He drops down through a hole that had been blasted into the floor into the smaller storage rooms below the main warehouse, switching to the Air Shooter in order to knock a Sniper Joe out of its walker mecha before finishing it off with a burst of shots from the Mega Buster. Finally, he sees the doorway into the room Flash Man has prepared as his lair. He takes a moment to mentally gird his loins before guardedly walking inside.

"There you are, Mega Man! I've been waiting for you for so long," pines the Robot Master, visibly starting to radiate violet light.

Mega Man levels his buster at him. "What do you want?"

"What do I want?" Flash Man jumps down from the pillar of crystals to stand right in front of Mega Man. He suddenly opens up the shutters on his buster and a flash of blinding white light explodes from the emitters inside.

The holovid glitches out and skips forward, showing Flash Man holding Mega Man's helmet under one arm for a fraction of a second before a "TELEMETRY CORRUPTED" error message appears and the whole display freezes. But then another window formatted like an annotation panel appears overlaid on top of the holovid. It contains a fuzzy green video, still from Mega Man's perspective. The audio is muffled and distorted, but Flash Man's voice can still be made out.

"You. Forever." Flash Man gets in close and removes Mega Man's helmet, tucking it under his buster arm before reaching out to run his hand through Rock's thick black hair. "I want time to stop right now, just you and me. Mega Man and Flash Man."

A status light on Flash Man's buster blinks a few times and the Robot Master curses. The annotation window disappears and the holovid resumes with Flash Man throwing the helmet to the ground and jumping away. Mega Man gives chase and lets loose a few buster shots, but he only lands one before he has to fall back in the face of a barrage of counterattacks. He asks, "If that's what you want, then why attack me?"

Flash Man jumps into the air again. Mega Man changes weapons and fires off three Air Shooters to try to intercept, but Flash Man blocks them with a crystal shield. Mega Man glances down to keep track of the shield as it falls, but Flash Man freezes time again at that moment.

"TELEMETRY CORRUPTED"

The green video is slightly clearer this time.

"Because I can't have you," Flash Man spits bitterly as he unleashes a storm of attacks against the helpless blue robot. He jumps back across the room, taking cover behind the pillar before the Time Stopper effect ends and the main video continues.

Mega Man switches to the Metal Blade and tries to take the most direct route across the room, jumping up on the pillars, but Flash Man immediately opens fire as soon as he comes clear of the cover, forcing him to back off.

"This doesn't even make sense, Flash Man!"

From behind the crystals, Flash Man replies, "It's too late now, Mega Man."

Mega Man trains his buster on the crystal summit, preparing for Flash Man's next attack, and when he's not disappointed he lets a Metal Blade fly, but before it can strike home --

"TELEMETRY CORRUPTED"

The green video shows the blade freeze in the air and Flash Man easily leaps over it, taking a wide arc through the air out of Mega Man's field of vision.

"Just give me this last moment here together with you."

Suddenly, the video becomes perfectly clear, the window enlarging to show more of the picture as Mega Man flares bright green and spins around, firing off two Metal Blades that cleanly strike central mass.

The Time Stopper effect switches off abruptly and the main holovid takes over as Flash Man only has enough time to look down at the impact before Mega Man finishes the job with a third shot.

The victor kneels down to touch the fallen Robot Master, briefly turning purple as his Variable Weapon System copies the Time Stopper, and then he teleports away.


SUBJECT: Warehouse Covered in Crystal! Another Robot Master Attack?
AUTHOR: Ripot, CPS Television Network
DATE: May 28, 20XX
FORMAT: Video


"Ripot here, on scene at what appears to be the site of the latest Robot Master attack. Mega Man entered a few minutes ago, and I can hear weapons fire coming from inside. I'm confident that everything is going to be okay here!

"But the big mystery is the purple crystals all over the building." There's a burst of static as Ripot's video feed is briefly disrupted. "Huh. That was weird. I've never seen anything like it, and Light Labs hasn't had a chance to respond to our questions yet."

Another burst of static. "There seems to be some sort of interference in the area, so this reporter is going to fall back for now. We'll bring you more on this story when we hear from Mega Man or Light Labs. This is Ripot, signing off."

Word Count: 2117
Total Words: 6563
Games by Coda (updated 10/1/2023 - New game: Adrift)
Art by Coda (updated 8/25/2022 - beatBitten and All-Nighter Simulator)

Mega Man: The Light of Will (Mega Man / Green Lantern crossover: In the lead-up to the events of Mega Man 2, Dr. Wily has discovered emotional light technology. How will his creations change how humankind thinks about artificial intelligence? Sadly abandoned. Sufficient Velocity x-post)
Old Posted 11-07-2017, 02:19 PM Reply With Quote