Chapter 3: Escape
Darkness. Silence. Mega Man had teleported literally thousands of times before. It was always so short, though; a hundredth of a second or less. Four seconds. Five seconds. A short period of time that felt like eternity. Would this teleport ever end? Where would he end up? Eight seconds. Nine seconds. What had Wily done to him? Why did everything feel so chaotic and calm at the same time? Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixt...
Sixteen. On the sixteenth second, Mega Man opened his eyes and reemerged from the teleport. The malevolent rays of the sun blinded him almost immediately. Instinctively, Mega Man grabbed hold of Bass's shoulder. Bass himself looked around, stunned. Complete darkness was on one side, with blinding light on the other. It took a few moments for both of their eyes to adjust and see normally. For nearly a minute they floated there in shock, until Bass broke the silence.
"What the hell did you do?"
"What the hell did I do? What did Wily do? Try to give you a weapon that would teleport me into the sun?"
"Wait a minute, why is your voice so weird and muffled? Come to think of it, why can I hear you at all?"
"There's usually no sound in space because there is nothing for the sound to travel through. No air. I'm holding onto your body so our voices are actually traveling through our metallic compositions. Imagine putting your ear on a metal beam while someone else speaks through a megaphone attached to the beam."
"So all I have to do is shoot your arm off and I won't have to hear you. Great. Hold still."
"Wait, Bass!" Mega Man pondered the situation carefully. "Whoever's fault this is, we are hanging in space only a few ten thousand kilometers from the sun. I don't know what kind of temperature your system can take, but mine is pushing it as it is. I'm willing to bet Wily was trying to teleport me right into the sun, but I destroyed the machine he was using to do it. He can't control my teleporter, so he must have used yours to send us here. That weapon he threw allowed me to send an energy spike through your system, resulting in increased output to the teleporter, specifically."
Bass growled under his breath, or would have, if he had a breath. "I wouldn't put it past that old coot. All right, I'm no science wizard, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to die here. Unless you have a plan to get us out of this, I'm going to start blasting. I may as well make my last action worthwhile."
"I do have an idea. I still have that energy spike weapon. Could you take another hit?"
Bass looked at his energy meter. "Yeah, I'm good to go."
"Ok, I'll hit you with the weapon, and you activate your teleporter. You can take both of us back to Wily's castle."
"Ok. I can set my teleporter on a time delay so you can just punch me at the exact right time." Bass added "But as soon as we materialize in the Doc's fortress, no more talking. You're mine."
Mega Man checked his own energy meter and grimaced, then nodded in agreement. "It's ready," said Bass. "Five seconds. Four seconds. Three. Two. One." Mega Man began to activate his energy spike weapon, but to his surprise, his arm was hit with a supercharged shot from Bass, causing him to miss. Bass quickly grabbed Mega Man and absorbed the energy before he could react, turning Silver and white while Mega Man changed back to blue. As quickly as he had done that, Bass kicked himself off of Mega Man, pointed straight at his face, and mouthed the word "Zero." In a flash, Bass hit himself with the energy spike and disappeared as his teleporter activated. Before Mega Man could fully take in what had just happened, he fell unconscious.
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"Yes, Dr. Light, I'm afraid it's quite true. Mega Man is dead, unless of course you built a robot capable of surviving the molten core of the sun!" Dr. Wily taunted over the videophone, smiling triumphantly while several mets cleaned up the mess from his last battle. Only five minutes had passed before Wily had finished "mourning" Bass and moved on to gloating.
"You won't get away with this, Wily! There will be others!" Dr. Light replied, trying to hold in both his rage and his tears at the same time.
"Others? You can't just build another Mega Man! He was a living machine by some freak accident! His free thinking is what got him this far! His experience! His character! You can't just build that!" Doctor Light could think of no reply and was silent, staring blankly at the screen. "Look, Doctor, we're old college friends, and I know how you feel. My precious Bass is dead as well. I had to use his teleport to get Mega Man to the sun. He was one of a kind, and he can't be rebuilt." Dr. Wily thought for a moment. "Ah, who do I think I'm kidding? I can easily build another one!" Dr. Wily began to laugh maniacally, until the monitor in front of him exploded. Wily turned around to see Bass standing there with his buster pointed directly at him.
"Build another one? Like hell you will, old man!" Bass gave Wily a stern look and began charging his buster. Wily turned as pale as a ghost and fell unconscious. "Damn it!" Bass shouted, "You will be awake when I kill you!" Bass began to approach Wily, but stopped cold when he heard a familiar whistle behind him.
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Mega Man slowly opened his eyes, hoping he would awaken in Dr. Light's lab. Maybe Duo would have found his unconscious form and taken him back to Earth. Perhaps Dr. Light remodified Rush for space travel to save his creation. Alas, when Mega Man opened his eyes, Earth was nowhere in sight. To make matters worse, his energy meter read at a measly one. The heat was getting to him, and there was no telling when his body would fail and let that last energy release.
"I can't go like this..."Mega Man spoke to himself. "I've been through too much. I will not go away as some floating hunk of melted debris! I will fight this!" Mega Man looked at his weapons. The flash stopper was spent, and the energy spike was gone. If only Mega Man had used the energy spike on himself! Being defeated by Bass was one thing, but being outsmarted by Bass was a punch in the stomach. Mega Man still had the Shadow Blade, but what good could it possibly do here? The Noise Crush would be utterly useless in the vacuum of space. The same would go for atomic fire. Bombs and Tornado Hold also had little practical use here. Gravity hold...now that held some potential. The last weapon...Black Hole? Yes, Mega Man had gotten Black Hole from Saturn. "If I can just reverse these weapons so they affect me..."Mega Man thought.
Mega Man's plan was not too complex, but it was incredibly dangerous. He went over it in his head while jerry-rigging his weapon copy to affect himself. First he would shoot a black hole to draw himself towards the immense gravity well, gravity so strong that not even light could escape. Then, while traveling at that immense speed, Mega Man would activate the gravity hold, reversing all gravities in the immediate area. This would slingshot him at near light speeds, toward what, he didn't know, but it would be away from the sun. Mega Man finished his rigging and also tied in his teleportation system to send him a healthy distance away from the black hole as soon as it fired.
Bam. Blip. Whoosh. Step one was complete. The tiny black hole began to pull Mega Man in as he appeared a few kilometers away. Mega Man felt the enormous strain of gravity trying to rip him in several directions at once, and waited until he could absolutely bear no more. Mega Man fired the gravity hold, hoping to reverse all forces, but that was not the effect he achieved. The black hole changed, becoming a stark white thing. It appeared to Mega Man as if all of reality was made of an expensive tarp, and someone had just cut away a piece of that tarp, revealing the blank white space which lie beyond. The enormous forces at work had created a rip in the very fabric of reality. Mega Man continued traveling in a straight line, his mind no longer able to understand the speeds at which he was traveling or the strain on his body. Mega Man looked at his energy gauge. As everything before him washed away into absolute white, his energy reading was the last thing he saw. Zero.