[Coda]

Meanwhile, in 21XX:

Dr. Cain seems unsettled by the parts of the story filled in by Rock's perspective. X seems more thoughtful.

"What about Crash Man?" X asks. "There's missing parts of that one, too."

"I'll see if I can pull that up." Dr. Cain scrolls through the archives and selects the appropriate file.


SUBJECT: Crash Man - Encounter Log
AUTHOR: Rock [DLN-001]
DATE: June 11, 20XX
FORMAT: Holovid + Telemetry + Annotations

The first part of the holovid shows Mega Man working his way through the industrial district. There are a lot of damaged buildings, and Crash Man has a lot of robots patrolling the area. Mega Man makes liberal use of the Leaf Shield to fend them off, especially when he needs his hands to climb over barriers and fallen machinery.

Finally, he reaches a closed blast door, and one of the telemetry windows indicates a Robot Master energy signature on the other side. With no apparent way to open the door properly, he resorts to forcing it open by pulling up on it with both hands, slipping inside before it slams closed again from its own weight. The telemetry signal strength indicator suddenly drops very low, and an annotation indicates that the recording was reconstructed offline from Mega Man's memory data.

Crash Man turns around to face the door, but he doesn't approach or attack or even raise his weapon. Instead, he only says, "I don't want to have to fight you, Mega Man."

Mega Man lowers his buster slightly, but quickly raises it again when Crash Man shines green, jumping and showering the room with Crash Bombs. The spread of exploding bomblets covers so much space that even moving as far away from the bombs as possible the scattering explosions still scores his armor.

The green light vanishes even before the Robot Master finishes his jump, and he smashes feet-first hard onto the ground, staying completely still. Mega Man doesn't give him the opportunity for another feint like the last one and lets loose a stream of buster shots, but Crash Man doesn't dodge at all. "It doesn't have to be like this," he says, and Mega Man hesitates again.

As soon as that happens, Crash Man glows again and jumps. Mega Man interrupts the attack, switching to the Air Shooter and intercepting the Robot Master in the air. Crash Man fires back after touching the ground, still glowing green instead of stopping like before, and he goes on the offensive. The two robots exchange fire repeatedly, but unexpectedly Crash Man goes completely dark in midair. The telemetry shows Crash Man's systems send one last message and then stop transmitting -- he's forced his own system to shut down. Mega Man's Air Shooter, already in flight, collides with his unresisting chassis to throw him across the room.

An annotation appears, containing the private message from Crash Man: "I can't help you directly, but I can do this for you. Take my weapon. You'll need it to break into Dr. Wily's Skull Fortress."

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Word Count: 504
Total Words: 7067