20XX
Everything seemed to blur together as the young man ran through the corridors of this strange floating fortress, gunning down robot after robot as he ventured further in. The amount of times he's gone through this type of situation before has officially passed the point of being able to count with both hands, but regardless the severity of the situation was not lost on the armored robot in the slightest.
This young man's name is Mega Man, a legendary machine designed by renowned engineer Doctor Thomas Light, originally designed to be his lab assistant. However, Complications arose when Light's former colleague, Albert Wily, betrayed him and repurposed older machines the two built in an attempt at revenge for what he believed to be his old friend stealing his spotlight. Mega Man became involved in this conflict when he volunteered to be upgraded to combat Wily and save everyone from his rogue robots, being fitted with shiny blue armor including large boots, gloves, and a round helmet, an arm cannon, and the ability to copy the abilities of robots he defeats. He never enjoys destroying Wily's robots, evil or not, but today he had no time for concern; the clock was against him.
Wily had built a flying fortress, which was par for the course at this point, but what was noteworthy was where the airborne base had been positioned over. It was directly over the city of Arcadia, a massive city respectfully built around the nearby forests and valleys and a lax paradise for both humans and their robotic companions. This alone would seem rather trivial, if not for the fact that the entire bottom of the fortress was a giant laser cannon, and in mere minutes it would launch and completely wipe out the massive city below it, leaving nothing but a desolate crater where the last preserve of genuine, unharmed nature existed in the nation. That's to say nothing of the potential millions of lives that would be destroyed from this terrorist attack. (Though Mega Man was more willing to hold onto the hope that evacuations went by smoothly and everyone was out of the blast radius, as the latter was far too gruesome a thought for him to focus on when time was of the essence.)
After mowing through some lesser enemy robots Mega man climbed a ladder and found himself standing in front of a seemingly bottomless pit. Emphasis on seemingly, as at the very bottom he could make out the faint glint of light reflecting off the spikes below. Spikes… Every robot master had an innate flaw in their design, usually manifested as weakness to specific things. Air Man would combust from locking up if something like leaves jammed the fan implanted on his chest, Fire Man was understandably unable to operate properly in sub-zero temperatures, and so on. Mega Man's weakness is his rather fragile body, easy to impale with enough force. So what better way to easily dispose of Mega Man than to line the floor from a long drop with spikes? However, Wily was largely unaware of one glaring flaw in this idea.
Mega Man's helmet disappeared in a pixelated flash and revealed his unkempt black hair. He crouched next to the nearby wall to cover himself in case an enemy was nearby and pressed his finger against his ear.
"Dr. Light. I'm inside Wily's base, everything's going according to plan." Mega Man informed the air around him.
"Excellent news!" an aged voice stated through Mega Man's ear. "I assume you didn't stop everything just to catch me up to speed though?"
Mega Man chuckled softly. "I'm gonna need Rush Jet for this."
"Right. I'll go prepare him now." Light responded as the communication cut off.
Mega Man's helmet returned to his head as he stood back up, his armor slowly turning shades of red and white upon returning to a standing position.
A large burst of red light shot in front of him from seemingly nowhere, eventually fading to reveal a strangely robotic red dog with a peach face and large blue eyes.
Mega Man knelt down to pet the large canine's, who cheerfully pushed its head further into the boy's relaxing massaging motions. This dog's name was Rush, a robot made by Dr. Light to serve as a companion to Mega Man, both at home and in battle.
"Alright Rush, Jet mode!" Mega Man requested while he stood up from the dog. It nodded to confirm it understood his request, and began to lay down facing opposite Mega Man. Its body bizarrely flattened and contorted as it became completely flat on its back, and its feet practically locked into place on its sides.
Mega Man stood on its back, feeling the pull beneath his feet as they were magnetized into place. A whole opened in Rush's back paws as blue flames billowed from them, rocketing both Rush and his companion over the edge, into the spikes below.
...Only, they weren't quite falling. Instead, the propulsion was sending them barrelling towards the other side at incredible speeds, allowing the to cross this otherwise mission ending death trap with relative ease.
Once they were on the other side Mega Man's feet were let loose from Rush's magnetic hold on them and he leaped off, allowing Rush to unfold back into his normal form.
"Thanks, boy." Mega Man complimented the dog as he petted it again as reward.
His armor turned Blue once more and his helmet disappeared faded as he contacted Light once more. "Alright, you can bring him back now."
"Right then! Just one second…" Dr. Light responded as he audibly fumbled around trying to do something before Rush disappeared in the same beam of light he came in. "Take care now, Rock. Don't get yourself killed over there, we wouldn't be able to do much if you did!" He reminded the blue robot, in an oddly lax manner given the severity of the current situation.
"Right… I'll try." Mega Man said absentmindedly as his arm fell to his side, ending the conversation.
Mega Man smiled halfheartedly at where his dog once stood as his helmet reformed before running off deeper into the base.
He ventured further into the base, eventually finding a long steel door split into two sides, a large circle in the center. As he approached the circle twisted and the two halves retracted into the floor and ceiling, allowing him entry. Usually, these types of doors were at the end of whatever facility he was going through, meaning at the very least he was close to the end.
He walked into the tall dark room, nothing of importance seemed to be here at all. The room was a dim blue color completely devoid of any sign of life. Suddenly, the door completely snapped shut. Mega Man jumped back in shock before bolting back for the door. He banged on it and even attempted to shoot at it with his arm cannon, but it wasn't budging. He was trapped inside.
Mega Man heard a noise from the other end of the room and whirled around, holding his arm cannon out front of himself out of caution.
A strange spaceship looking device emerged from a hole in the floor, a glass spherical dome overtop a round yellow base, there was no mistake it: This was Wily's escape pod, the Wily Capsule.
Mega Man slowly approached, waiting for something to happen. It was in his nature to fully evaluate what the opponent would do before taking any action, and today he couldn't take any chances. His armor switched into red coloring once more as he continued hiss advance, slowly lowering his arm as he did so. Nothing had happened, and as it seemed, nothing would happen.
Suddenly, bright flashes of white began to flash from the center of the capsule. Mega Man shot towards the ceiling, but instead of his usual cannon fire, it was a wire with a claw attached to the end. It buried itself into the ceiling and began to retract, narrowly pulling the blue robot over a flash of lasers fired from the strange capsule. The capsule took off after the airbound Mega Man. Mega Man's armor changed color once again to yellow and a tinge of bronze as the wire hook disappeared in a mess of pixels and he began to free fall towards the small pod.
A metal saw blade appeared in Mega Man's hand as he tossed it down at his opponent, hitting one of the back engines on the capsule and sending it spiraling down towards the ground. Mega Man changed back into the red and white colors once more, shooting his wire hook towards the ground near where the capsule was set to impact and using the device to pull himself down passed it before it could crash. As he landed, he changed color one more time into a brown and white color scheme, successfully catching the flying device with one single arm, holding it above his head with relative ease.
He sat the capsule down and pried underneath the glass lid, flipping it off the device entirely with relative ease. Switching back to his natural blue colors, he hopped up onto the rim of the capsule with his arm cannon pointed to the person inside if it.
"Wily! I won't let you hurt-" Mega Man began to speak before noticing something off. The person inside was noticeably not the Dr. Wily he knew. Dr. Wily was a balding short old man with a large gray mustache and hair that fringed out to the sides to an extreme degree.
This man however, appeared to be a tall young man in his 30's at the most with extremely long red hair that followed down to the middle of his back before parting into fringes, largely obscuring his white lab coat underneath. The most bizarre thing about him is that he appeared to be… grovelling? His knees were tucked under his body, uncomfortably scrunched by the chair beneath him and his hand was slammed against the control panel as he bobbed his head up and down, whimpering and asking for mercy. If it wasn't for the shock of this not being who he was expecting, Mega Man would probably find some odd humor in this bizarre display.
"P-please don't hurt me! I don't want any trouble!" The man begged.
"Who are you!?" Mega Man asked demandingly.
Suddenly, the man completely stopped his formerly erratic bowing motion, an eerie silence taking hold of the room. Without lifting up his head or pushing up with his arms, he rose to his feet, placing his height above Mega Man.
He finally lifted his face to lock eyes with the blue robot, revealing a chilling sight. A part of his face was largely missing, revealing and unnatural mesh of organic and inorganic parts. What should have been the whites of his eyes were instead an empty black, and bright red appeared to shine through his eyes from the back of them, almost as if it was emanating from his skull.
"Can't you tell?" he said in a terrifyingly emotionless tone, deeply contrasting his former facade.
"Mega Man? What's going on? You only have ten minutes before Arcadia City is destroyed!" Dr. Light panicked through transmission. Mega Man attempted to back away from the disturbing man so he could get out of there and contact Light, but before he could move a muscle he felt a sharp pain in his chest. He looked down to be met with a horrifying sight: In his daze, the man had effortlessly stabbed Mega Man with a previously concealed blade.
Mega Man returned his gaze to the man again, the life visibly leaving his face as they locked eyes.
A twisted and haunting smile found its way across the man's lips as he twisted the blade within Mega Man to add to the young robot's suffering.
"I'm Dr. Wily." he spoke calmly as he slowly removed the blade from Mega Man. Before Mega Man could react further, he gashed the robot's face, causing him to fall over, destroyed.
One last time, Mega Man's communications device sounded as Light made a futile attempt to contact him once more.
"...Rock?"