Rock Man EXE: Corruption
By Zoram Selrof
Chapter 1: Attack of the 80s
17:35 PM (Japan Time), Friday September the 30th, 2011…
"… Alright, class! This is all for today but don't forget homework! And, Ooyama – kun!"
"Yes, sensei?"
"Don't forget to write your name on the homework documents and do try to improve your writing a bit: it's like I had to decipher Hieroglyphs. Do you get me?"
"Yes, sensei…"
"Hah! See? Saw it coming a mile away!"
"Heh. Good insight, Yaito – chan."
"Oi, Tooru! It must be hard to bear with their plots, right?"
"More or less, Hiro – kun…"
"Huff. Let's hope someone can keep Meiru controlled or Hell will break loose. You know what I mean, right, Saito – niisan?"
"Obviously…"
"Man. Everyone despises me…"
The students of the 2 – A class had begun to chatter as they started to pack and one teacher had reminded Ooyama Dekao of his defects: he sighed while Sakurai Meiru and Ayanokouji Yaito laughed at it.
"Cheer up, Hikawa Tooru! I'll treat ya to ice-cream."
"Thanks, Akashi Hiro – kun. I get nervous every time Sakurai – san calls me to have me hang with her and Ayanokouji – san…"
"No wonder…"
Akashi Hiro struck as being slightly over a meter and fifty tall or close to it: he had jet black hair which was totally messy while his eyes' irises were blue.
"Guys! Let's move out!"
"We're gonna miss the 2:22 PM express to Oklahoma." Saito rallied them with a grin.
"Huh? When did ya come up with that, Saito – niisan?" Netto asked with obvious surprise.
"Ask Train Man, Netto – kun."
"Whatever… Stop being so moody."
"So cheerful, ya mean?"
"Whatever."
"Whatever the ever."
"Jeez."
The group headed for the lobby and changed their shoes for the street shoes before picking up their Link PETs from the lockers: Saito had his own one colored green and blue while Hiro's was colored red and white and had a silver lowercase delta character painted as emblem.
"Yo! Delta Team! What's up? Did Red Sword ask ya out or what?" He snickered.
"Jeez. Hiro – kun. That joke is outdated. Totally." His Navi replied with some annoyance.
"Did ya tell Ookarada to book Dr. Who's Awesome Diet of Silliness by the way?"
"Wha~t?" Dekao growled.
"Guts?"
"And stop with the "Delta Team" thing, too. I'm Delta! End of story"
Delta's main body color was jet black.
His forearms, boots, shoulder plates, rear-pack and helmet were painted silver.
His emblem was the same delta character set on his chest and ear-pads:
The central part of his helmet had a murkier silver color to it plus two rectangles and one band cutting across it starting at the back: some jet black hair came out from behind the helmet as well.
His face looked strikingly similar to Rock Man's although he had some slight differences regarding the eyes' irises (which were blue) and the shape of his cheek bones.
Overall, he looked extremely similar to Rock Man and seemed to be around his height as well.
"Desu! Good afternoon, Tooru – kun! Chisao – kun is going out with your little sister, desu!" Ice Man reported.
"Ah. Alright, al… Wait. Did you say my little sister? I have no little sister anywhere at all!" Hikawa uttered in disbelief.
"Huh? Desu… Strange, desu, this mail came from Chisao – kun himself, it says… ookaradachisao livinginhell com…"
"Huh? Is there a mail server named "livinginhell" whatever it means to begin with? And why would he use the nickname instead of his surname…?" Hikawa frowned.
"Forte's back at trolling." Saito annoyingly muttered.
"The mail server name is a joke… living in hell can translate as jigoku ni sunderu… That email's a prank, alright." Delta grumbled.
"Eh… Meiru – chan! We're in trouble!" Roll gasped.
"Why?"
"The Navi – Eating Virus is at loose! Someone tried to recreate Pac-Man outta the game and now it's eating Navis out there!"
"By all the…!" Meiru uttered.
"It's terrible, Yaito – sama! I barely escaped it but it swallowed ten Viruses and grew larger!" Glyde exclaimed.
"No way!" Yaito uttered.
"Who the hell came up with that?" Dekao cursed.
"Guts, guts! Guts Man saw it, too! It was chanting, too!"
"Chanting?"
"Gutsu… Eh… How was that again…?" He trailed off.
"It was saying something weird… "Onaagon Onaagis!"… But it doesn't exist in Japanese unless it's another foreign idiom."
"Huh… Guys? What's going on?"
"Oh! Tomono Noa – kun… Well…" Netto greeted.
Tomono Noa was a student having greenish messy hair and bluish eyes: he appealed as being as tall as Netto as well.
"I come from checking a question with the Math teacher and you're all here like there's something going on."
"Ask Rafael." Netto rolled his eyes.
Tomono frowned but he opened his locker and changed his shoes before picking a green and black Link PET: its emblem was two triangles missing the base and being intercrossed plus three round dots on the middle of the formation and to the sides of it: the whole set was colored bronze and set against a navy blue background.
"Rafael… Can you tell me what's going on?"
"Well… Pac – Man got loose."
"Pac – Man? That game from the 80s?"
"Yeah. Someone had the bright idea to try to recreate it inside of the Cyber World and now it's running loose."
Rafael's man body color was black and he struck as being around the same height as Delta yet he was shorter then Glyde by about 8~9 centimeters and Guts Man obviously overcame him in height.
His face had a hard-to-spot scar in the shape of the Alphabet letter "X" drawn above the nose: his eyes' irises were green and he looked youthful: spiked brown hair came out from behind the helmet.
His head was encompassed within a helmet having a copy of his emblem set on the forehead with a metallic rim: the forehead piece was colored red while the rear part was black: a red stripe extended from the forehead and through the middle of the helmet while heading towards the rear: the sides of his helmet had white armor constructed over them: a small cavity housed the ear-pads from where a red stripe originated and was drawn across it until the end: the helmet design also included two small yellow pieces extending until the edge of the lower jaw.
His chest armor had the emblem set on its middle: three parallel red lines were drawn over its upper edge and extended past the neck's base and apparently until his back: the segment below the emblem was colored yellow and it included a red stripe on the center which extended until the edge of the chest armor.
His shoulders had the shape of a red triangle drawn on their upper face while their main color was black: a thin round yellow stripe was present just where the arms began.
His arms' skin was also gray in this spot yet it soon got covered by black armor having a metallic piece of the elbow colored in a thicker shade of gray: the armor extended until the wrists where a trapeze-shaped piece of armor originated: his hands were covered in white "gloves" as well like most Net Navis.
Two thin red stripes ran down the unarmored gray-skinned body until the waist where another piece of armor was present: it had the general shape of briefs underwear and the color of choice was black as well.
Yet another red stripe ran down the center of it and curved to continue towards the rear.
One gun-belt colored silver was attached on the waist and had holsters for two guns which looked like modified handguns colored purple and having a white muzzle.
His boots began over the knees and extended until the feet: the color of choice was black again and there also was a red stripe running down the length of them across the center: the outer sides of each one had a white-colored triangle-shaped cavity which included a lower gray edge and a red stripe running down the rightmost edge: his heels' armor was metallic gray in color as well.
Lastly, two white triangle-like extensions protruded from the rear of his body and extended diagonally towards the ground in a SE direction.
Overall, he looked heavily customized and cool.
"Who'd do that?" Tomono wondered.
"A die-hard fan which was lazy and programmed that on a rush without thinking of the consequences, surely…" Rafael sighed.
"Kya~h! Pac – Man has broken through the firewall!" Someone shrieked in the background.
"No way!" Everyone gasped.
"Bad, bad boy. You shouldn't have tried to eat my cool cloak, did you know that? I'm gonna strike back at you for this…"
"Grrrrr…"
"Whoa! Forte and "Gospel Jr." came!" Netto gasped.
"Say, when was that thing firstly spotted?"
"Around two hours ago… It showed up out of the blue in Internet City's still-under-construction 5th district…" Roll reported.
"Looks too convenient to be an accident if you ask my opinion…"
"You guys. What have you done now?"
"Whoa! Enzan!"
Ijuuin Enzan stepped into the hall while carrying his Link PET and holding out an ID card which read "ONBA Ace Net Battler Ijuuin Enzan" on it as if stating why he'd bothered to come here: he had that classical "nothing-impresses-me" face on.
"Look! We'd just finished classes, we got to know about this Pac-Man thing, and now it broke here! It's not like we're to blame!" Hiro protested to him.
"I didn't ask for your POV, Akashi." He merely replied.
"By all the… Is he always like that?" Hiro asked Netto.
"Yeah. That's how I met him over two years ago."
"Enzan – sama! This program certainly looks hostile and is "devouring" data while growing in size, yet…" Blues reported but trailed off as if he'd found out something else.
"Yet?"
"Yet… I made it eat a Mettool with a sensor attached to it and what it really does inside is classify data… And there seems to be an encoded signal exchange… It's being controlled in live, sir… In short, sir: it grows in strength and size yet the Navis and Viruses are "stored" inside of cavities as compressed data." Blues reported.
"Then it's no silliness. This is a well-programmed job. We can't go the usual approach and just delete it: we need to retrieve the Navis' data at the very least." Enzan muttered.
"Maybe "Gospel Jr." can catch that thing's attention and strike at it while we have the chance?" Forte suggested.
"It could work. What do you think of it, sir?"
"Well. Forte's power is nothing to be looked down upon, so… I don't mind it." Enzan replied.
"Onaagon Onaagis!"
"That rings a bell." Saito muttered.
"Heh, heh, heh, heh… So? Do you like my little pet? Did you feel like you were waiting for something to happen? No more! Wait's over. Here you have a pilot episode of my new show." A voice rang out with obvious amusement.
"Who goes there?" Forte questioned.
"My, my. Maybe if you call me the "Bringer of Doom" you would be able to tie the plot-holes together?"
"Bringer of Doom? Z – Nation? R – Nation?"
"None. I work on my own."
"Wait a minute, you! Aren't you Proto's thief and Serenade's hacker, the one who acted over a month ago?" Forte grasped.
"Yeah. If you had been paying attention to my pet then you'd gotten my name straight away. Mirror."
"Mirror?" Noa frowned.
"By all the… I see! Onaagon Onaagis is the mirrored version of Sigaano Nogaano! And that's that guy's alias!" Saito cursed.
"Good catch, Hikari Sr.!"
"Senior? Take that back, you!" Saito grumbled.
"Maybe I'll wait until Amazon takes orders again."
"This guy is nuts or what?" Yaito complained.
"Dunno." Dekao muttered.
"Pac – Man! Sing them the Destruction Song! We all die in 3 turns' time once the counters reach 0!"
"Isn't that a technique from Pocket Monsters? How unoriginal, really. He could've come up with something else." Delta grumbled.
"So that guy's a copycat."
"Take this, Pac – Man rip – off! Hell's Buster! Hell's Rolling! Spit it out!"
"Grrrr!"
"Delta Ray Edge!"
The sounds of a battle rang out yet the sound which was louder was the pitched shriek of the giant Pac – Man and the growls of "Gospel Jr." which sounded like it was filling the thing with cuts.
"Good! Dark Arm Blade! Let's make a hole and take the Navi data out so you can then delete it!" Forte instructed.
"Ms. Lucy is waiting for you and Mr. T. D. tonight at 20:00 PM for a two-hour session in her club, Enzan – sama, sir." Blues announced.
"Yeah. I'll go right after the debriefing and… Wait. I don't know any Ms. Lucy and I dunno who "T. D." is!" Enzan distractedly began to reply before gasping upon realizing.
"That wasn't me, sir! The "Eye", sir!"
"The "Eye"…? You mean that "Eye of Mordor" hologram thing? The culprit imitated your voice?"
"There's no way I'm going to such a place with a guy like him…" Delta annoyingly whispered to Hiro.
"Ah… So you're waiting for me to make the first step forward?" Hiro whispered back with a grin.
"Jeez. Let's talk that later at home!"
"Ms. Lucy invites Sakurai – sama to come and learn the basic arts to become the CO."
"Heh. Delighted. Tell her I'll drop by anytime... Heh, heh, heh." Meiru made a smug smile.
"Oh come on! Meiru – chan! That's a troll! You heard Ijuuin – san: there's no such "Ms. Lucy" anywhere!"
"Pity. I'd liked to." She shrugged her shoulders.
"I've got the data! Now eat bombs, you freak!"
"When it comes to bombs Bubble Man – sama's Electron Bombs are the best." The culprit laughed.
"Shut the trap up." Forte growled.
"Bring me an owl and we're at peace. Make it be Kaepora Gaebora – dono, too." The culprit taunted.
"A magical owl from Time's Ocarina…" Delta muttered.
"Mr. Walking Wikipedia is willing to help?"
"Leave me alone."
"Alright. Then… Lights out! Hop!"
All lights suddenly went out (obviously the natural daylight remained in the lobby) and the PETs were the only source of light.
"Grah! It's pitch-black here!" Forte cursed.
"A Cyber World blackout?" Enzan gasped.
"Fu, fu, fu… Try to find me, gentlemen. Ask for help from the TIA."
"The TIA? Don't you mean the CIA?" Hiro asked.
"No, no. The TIA. Specialists in Air-land Investigations. Lights on!"
"All the data has been released but that monster thing is nowhere to be seen! Are you repeating what happened in June or what?" Forte demanded.
"Heh, heh, heh… Guess so. What better way to start off than with a bang? Bye!"
"Damn. Ran away… What an afternoon! How promising, truly!" Enzan cursed.
"Jeez. First it was wrong place, wrong time. Now problems zero on us, then?" Netto grumbled.
An air of annoyance and defeatism hung around the lobby: their afternoon had been spoiled…