Alright, so this is my latest tragedy in the MMBN series. Um...not a lot to say right now, so I'll just say hope you enjoy and don't forget to check out the forum ( forum/Transcode-Ideas-Execute/149269/). If you want something to challenge you to write, there are 7 prompts there already! Stories after this should be getting happier for a while again.
Oh, and go to my profile and use the link to my newly opened devianArt account. I'm posting the navi symbols of navis featured in DN if anyone wants to see visuals.
It's been 80 years since the end of the Battle Network Series. Since then, science and technology has made several leaps into the future. The PET model has gone through several upgrades over the years. Now the terminal device has been phased out by a new device, the Transer. So far in the year 21XX, only the Pegasus model has been made, is functional, and out for commercial use. Many new scientists have continued the work of the Dr. Hikaris, Lan and Yuichiro—both of whom have passed away.
However, as technology has continued to advance, those who remembered the age of Net Navis have slipped away. Now, the general view about Net Navis is that they are nothing more than a tool…an obsolete and outdated tool.
"Hey, Stream," Roll coughed as a blue light jacked into the PC terminal, "How's Protoman?" The pink navi asked with curious eyes.
"He's gone, Mom. Blaze shut him down last night," the blue navi said sadly. His green eyes stared at his mother. Her pink hue used to be so bright, but now the color had dulled. It almost reminded him of humans aging, but it was much worse than that. She was dying, just like every other navi.
She sighed, "I figured it wouldn't be much longer. Blaze has the heart of his father. Protoman came down with it maybe a year after Mega. At least he's safe now; they both are." Roll shook her head after a moment. She had faded out again, "How are you?"
"Never mind that mom," the pink navi gave a heavy sigh; knowing what her son was going to say. Stream was so much like his father. When they told her and Mega about the possibility of having a child, she didn't realize that would involve her son looking so scarily alike to Hub, "Mom, you now they all would have wanted you too. Dad, Mayl, Lan, Patch. All of us just want you out of all this."
"And what about you? If I go, will you leave Patch?" Roll shut her eyes. She had been asked the same question for the past couple of months. It was amazing what had happened over the past year. Part of her wished that her that most of her human friends were still here. Chuad, Mayl, Lan, Dex, and Yai.
After Lan had put in that statement about the EM Wave System which would power the Transer, Chuad had refused to allow IPC to make the device until further testing had been done. That was until the Board had removed him, believing that he was making bad business, and prevented his son Blaze from moving into presidency. Dex, with funding from Yai, had been trying to protest the use of the new system around the world. However, his efforts fell short as Yai's company removed her and her family as well. Lan and Hub had tried so hard to prevent this; but after Yuichiro died, it just all fell apart. Then Lan passed away almost two years ago; Mayl followed him the year after. Now it was just her, Patch, Stream, Maxine, and Saphira—Max and Patch's daughter.
"I…" Stream opened his mouth for a moment, before closing it. Patch Hikari was his best friend and cousin. He couldn't just leave him.
Roll walked over slowly to him. It wasn't really easy for her to move around much anymore. Not with the EM virus coursing through her system. The dull pink navi gave Stream a hug, "It's scary how close you and your father are. I don't think he would ever leave Lan either. At least, not while he had the ability to," she said sadly.
"Mom…what's going to happen to us?" Stream asked.
"I don't know, Stream. It's just all so wrong," Roll sighed, releasing her son.
"Why they do it? Uncle Lan told them not to," Stream said sadly, looking out past Roll and towards her link on the Net. The small device was currently shut off, not that there was much of a Net to go on anymore.
"Unfortunately, some people don't listen, Stream. Just like the scientists who insisted on naming you Megaman Junior. I really couldn't stand that name. You may look like your father, but you are you own navi."
"Why do they hate us, Mom? Why are they destroying us?"
"I don't know. It just all fell apart after your uncle died. Part of me almost wished that he was still the dense little kid he used to be, but then I wouldn't have been able to have you," Roll smiled, "When Lan and Hub were testing the Transer Sysetm they were trying to see how it held up against EM waves. The EM waves would have made it easier to handle your uncle's new Brother Band System. In comparison to our PETs, Transers can do a lot more and using EM waves would have made them much more effective in neutralizing viruses than we are. It would give humans the edge that we had always had; it was allowing even those without navis to protect themselves.
"When they activated the EM System, the Net around them started to fall apart. Lan deactivated it immediately. Normally, EM waves don't really do much to us. Sure they make us get bugs, but that was about the worst that ever happened til last year. Now, well, I guess we know they can do a lot more." Roll sighed, remembering the day when Lan had come back home, white as a ghost. Megaman had almost gotten seriously injured during the test. It had taken Mayl a while to get him to return back to his normal self.
Stream sighed as he looked down at the ground, "But Uncle Lan told SciLab that the process was too dangerous for navis. He told them that they would have to find another way."
"Unfortunately, money does weird things to people. It makes them forget. Once SciLab got the proper funding for the project and the right people, they had no guilt about ripping open the files. Plus, it didn't help that Bass started a riot and got a lot of us marked as deadly killing machines," Roll shut her eyes. Mega had been furious when he found out. It had only been a few months after Lan's death; not only was the approach tacky, it was just wrong. The Hikari family had to lock him in the PET to make sure he didn't get out and cause any trouble. Roll eventually had been able to calm him down; she knew he was just hurt that someone could think so low off them. What they had done to them and all the Net Navis was an injustice that she was sure only a few would remember after a hundred years. They would just go in those textbooks like every other outdated device; they were nothing but tools. Tools that just weren't paying for the bills anymore.
"I still can't believe that no one stop them," Stream said bitterly. In truth, he somewhat understood why Bass had been the way he was. Most of these humans only looked at their navis as data. When they heard something new was around the corner, they discarded them like trash.
"Stream! You know that wasn't true. Plenty of people spoke out against it," Roll said, being stern for a second before allowing herself to relax, "But I guess in the end it doesn't matter. All of us are good as deleted now that the Transer System is in full effect."
"And that is exactly why you should shut down. Mom, there is no reason for you to go through with this. You don't have to stand her a let this virus kill you! Please!" Stream begged. Every day he watched as Roll had lost a bit more of herself. Her color fading was only the physical. She had become less energetic. Sometimes her process slowed to a crawl and she didn't even realize.
"I can't! I promised him…" Roll said, looking at Stream.
"Who could you possibly have…dad?" the blue navi asked.
Roll nodded, "Lan didn't know that the virus had already infected him since the very first day he ran the test. Hub was resistant for so long," the pink navi closed her eyes trying not to cry, "I begged him to let Patch shut him down. I promised him that I would make sure nothing happened to you. That you didn't get the virus."
"Mom…"
"I know it was a stupid promise. I'm your mom and I'm supposed to look after you. But I didn't know what to do. It seemed to hut him more than anyone else just because he was still human. I couldn't watch him do that to himself! He tried for so long to fight it. To somehow make everything right. But this was something he just couldn't solve. I would have promised him anything just to get him to shut down. He...I…" Roll cried, unable to stop herself.
In seconds, Stream was hugging his mother, but yet he couldn't find it within himself to lie to her. What good was it to tell her it was okay? It wasn't. Their lives were hell on the Net, which was 90% deleted by this point. As the EM waves became more abundant, the systems that held up the Net were allowed to fall into disrepair. The Net Navis became infected with something known as the EM Wave Virus. The only way to fix such a thing was by turning off the same system that was now in every home on the planet. A few people had tried to develop anti-EM wave shields for their PETs. However, they didn't seem to work.
Eventually, they all caught the virus. Those that were shut down by their operators. Stream clenched his jaw. How ironic. The same society that had wanted Net Society peace was now committing genocide. It had taken them years—and a lot of undercutting around powerful people—to sell their point. Many people had been against harming their navis. But as the virus claimed more navis, it soon was realized that navis were going to be a thing of the past. Stream didn't know how many navis on earth where left, but at the moment he didn't care.
"Mom, I know how you hate breaking your promises, especially to Dad. But please, consider it. I know that you gave your word, but you're becoming just like him. And just like you did, I hate seeing you like this. Dad wouldn't be mad at you if shut down. He wouldn't want you to be in pain, just like you didn't want him to be," Stream said softly.
Roll looked at her son. Even Hub's determination was in him. Geez, they really had taken the best parts of both of them, "Okay, for your sake." She said before a window popped up in front of them. A brown haired man looked kindly at the two of them.
"Hi Patch," Roll said warmly, "How's Max and Saphira?"
"She's doing fine. The real question is how are you?" the man said guilty. He wished there was something he could have done. But by they were out of time. He had dedicated so much of his life to discovering a way that both navis and EM Waves could coexist on the same network, but they just couldn't. The man clenched his fists; he had to sit here every day and watch as his cousin and his mother's navi became weaker and weaker until they meet their deletion. Stream had started showing signs of contracting the virus—amazing seeing how long he had been operational during the time of the EM Wave break out. Roll may have been too sick to notice it just yet.
"The same as always," she said back.
"Roll…are you sure you don't want me to shut you down? Not to be rude, but your data is collapsing. I know Stream is your son, but Mega, Lan, and Mayl are gone now. Stream's okay with me. Well, for as long as we can anyway. Look, the point is that you don't have to torture yourself to stick around. You can be free."
Roll looked back at the man, turned to her son, and then back to Patch, "Okay…"
"You'll…you do it?" Patch said incredulously, he had lost track of the days he had asked Roll and she had refused him.
"Yes," Roll said as she felt Stream's hug tighten a bit.
"Alright," Patch said, "I'll go get Mom's PET. It'll only take a few moments." He said as the screen but off.
"Thank you," Stream said quietly. He felt kinda odd about it. Thanking someone for accepting their own death wasn't really something to be thankful for. However, it beat having to watch her become more and more of a shell each day.
Roll merely nodded, "Just be safe okay, Stream? Don't get into too much trouble."
"Too much? I thought you would say none at all."
"You're your father's child and a Hikari at that. You'll always find trouble, even when you're not trying to."
Stream laughed, "I'll miss you, Mom."
"I'll miss you too, Stream." Roll said, giving her son one last hug. Patch returned a minute later and inputted the permanent shut down sequence. It was the one last resort measure in any PET.
As Roll's data disappeared onto the Net—or what was left of it—Patch looked back at the remainder of his cyber family, "Whatever happens, you guys will always be people to me."
Stream nodded, "Same to you. I…I just wish everyone else did too."
"So do I, Stream," Patch said looking out his window and watching as a few of the neighborhood children where bragging about whose Transfer device looked cooler. The new Leo model had just come out, giving Pegasus a run for its money, "So do I."
This has probably been one of my hardest tragedies ever to write because the honest truth is that there is no happy ending to this (and it involves the death of many many navis…I miss BN). The Net Navis just disappeared. I know in Starforce, Megaman asked Geo to hunt down some data for him, but I also believe that Lan had called him back to return that research data.
Sure they could have been converted but then that means they would have still be alive more than likely unless ever last one of them got deleted either during the EM wave conversion or by viruses they couldn't fight because they no longer had NetOps. Another cause is that the navis realized what was happening to them and they got up and started a riot. Then we have my scenario, NetOps who cared enough shut down their navis after realizing that there was no way to save them.
No matter whichever way you roll the die, you will always get snake eyes in this scenario. For ALL the Net Navis to be gone like ghosts, that would mean that something had to kill them all. Independent navis, like Bass, wouldn't go down without a fight. So, the EM waves disrupting their coding and giving them all fatal bugs. Sorry if I really upset anyone but this is about one of the least dark ways I can think of that would lead to the end of Net Society.
I know that they're a few "navis" in Starforce 1, but they are never seen after the original game and to me, they lack a personality that each navi had in BN. They were just like, okay do this job, say something cheesy, gone.
In terms of the models, I don't remember which model came first in terms of Transers, so I just made it the Pegasus one since that's the version I own. As for Starforce seg-ways from this...I don't know yet. I'm a comfortable BN writer, but I sorta struggle with the SF fights. It's mainly because I can't really visualize the attack sequence clearly because of the confusion between game and anime. Does Geo swipe the card or does he just call out an attack? If he just calls it, doesn't that give him access to every battle card he owns? 0_0; You all see my dilemma (it may not be that bad, but I seriously need help with this). I like BN and SF is a updated continuation of it, meaning that I wouldn't mind writing Starforce. I just can't get fight concepts down right. If I ever do, you all may or may not see some SF stuff in addition to BN stuff popping up in the future from me.
Oh, and why did I change MM Jr. to Stream? Because MM Jr. is a horribly generic name, probably meaning that Capcom or whoever wrote that section of SF2 couldn't be bothered to make a name for Megaman's son.
And on that note, Ghost501, logging out.