"Mr. Higsby told me he's set up a NetBattling competition," Lan says, while he and Mimic are sorting through the small pile of battle chips he'd bought from the Bargain Bin. "It's supposed to be in a couple of days, and he's been advertising it for a while now, but no one's signed up for it." Lan makes a face as he fiddles with a Cannon chip. "Can't blame 'em, though. I mean, the prize is a bunch of rice. Who wants that as a prize for winning a NetBattling competition?"
"Curry," Mimic says.
"Well, yeah, but it's still just rice." Lan puts the Cannon chip into a smaller pile next to Mimic's leg. "I wouldn't wanna enter for a prize like that. Since Mr. Higsby set it up, he could've made the prize some kind of cool rare battle chip."
Mimic looks at him.
" . . . Yeah, he'd never do that," Lan says after a moment. "Maybe money instead? But then again, Mr. Higsby said he was setting up the competition to get more people to come to the shopping district. So I guess that means money isn't a good idea for a prize either . . ."
"Not good for the shops," Mimic mumbles. She spots one of the Bubbler chips that Lan had found and takes it out of the Bargain Bin pile, adding it to her own.
"No, it's not," Lan agrees with a sigh. "Mr. Higsby almost begged me to enter, since apparently having the champion of the N1 would bring a lot of attention and make people wanna enter just to fight me or something."
"Why didn't you?" Mimic asks. She'd always wondered why Lan hadn't entered that NetBattling competition - he loves NetBattling in all forms, and surely even a shitty prize wouldn't have put him off.
But apparently a whole bunch of rice is enough of a turn-off even for Lan.
The good news is, she knows that the competition will still go ahead, because Lan, Maylu, and Tory will all agree to compete - after Shuko decides to enter, that is. Higsby himself will also enter, which is . . . a little puzzling, considering he's the one who set it up, but whatever.
The style of battle would be pretty interesting - an all-out battle royale - except it turns out to be four NetNavis against one tiny Navi, who's too cute for anyone to attack. Little bubble-headed AquaMan, who looks more like the Navi of a toddler than a teenager like Shuko. Maybe he's been her Navi since she was a little kid or something? Whatever the case, Shuko will win the competition, purely because MegaMan, Roll, IceMan, and NumberMan all step off the edge to avoid having to attack him.
"Like I said, the prize is just a bunch of rice," Lan says, in response to her question. "And besides, what if I get called away for a Net Saver mission in the middle of it? If people entered because they wanted to fight me, they'd probably leave as well."
He's got a good point, you know, Chaud reasons. I don't think Higsby really thought out this competition anyway.
So you wouldn't enter either? Not even for training or whatever? Mimic asks him.
Nope, he replies. Seems pointless to me.
"Mr. Higsby asked if you could enter as well," Lan says. "But that would probably be an even worse idea, honestly."
"Meant t'be hiding," Mimic mumbles, looking down. "No one knows where I am."
"I told him that," Lan assures her. "And he understood, don't worry. Besides, even if you weren't hiding, you couldn't come anyway - you're still doing those experiments at SciLab, right?"
Mimic nods.
The experiments are going a bit better, now that they've established that asking her to describe things will get almost no results whatsoever. Behavioural tests have played a huge part in the experiments - during Cross Fusion, she reacts almost the same way that ProtoMan does to certain things, such as getting the urge to chase a ball if one gets thrown. One of the scientists had put a cucumber into the experimental dimensional area without telling her, just as a joke, and she'd promptly freaked out like do cats in online videos.
It's not just that, either. She's far more agile than she is as a human; Dr. Hikari had managed to expand the dimensional area to cover the entire room rather than just the experimental area, and the team of scientists had set up an obstacle course for her. They'd tested how long it took just running on two legs in comparison to running on all fours - she's fast even just on two legs, but on four legs, she'd cut her time in half and had found it much easier to get over some of the different obstacles.
Tomorrow, they'll be starting on some tests that include Dark Shadow and the other shadow-abilities that ProtoMan has. This'll probably be a little easier to do than the cat tests, since Mimic's already got a good idea of what ProtoMan is capable of with his shadows, and what Dark Shadow is capable of. Plus, Arcadia's being given a break from helping with the vaccine research, so he's offered his help with the shadow testing.
So, even if she wanted to enter the DenTech NetBattling Competition, she can't. They're not done with the experiments and there're plenty of tests left.
It's a good thing Dr. Hikari's already asked Kifune if she can be excused from Net Saver duties. She's supposed to be Lan's partner, but Lan's more than capable enough to work on his own for now, so that may be the main reason why Kifune had agreed. And Kifune might agree with Dr. Hikari that her and ProtoMan's Cross Fusion needs a thorough testing before sending her out into the field again.
Lan and MegaMan's Cross Fusion doesn't need testing - at least not to the same extent, anyway. She doesn't resent them for that; it'd be stupid to wish that she had a normal Cross Fusion, because it never would've been normal with her.
What's 'normal' for Cross Fusion, anyway? Chaud wonders.
That is an excellent point, Mimic admits.
"We're going to be testing your intangibility," Dr. Hikari says to Dark Shadow. It crackles out its usual odd static-sounds, nodding. "For now, just stand there and let Chaud try to hit you - don't fight back, remember."
[no hurt us] Dark Shadow signs vehemently.
Dr. Hikari still doesn't look entirely convinced. Mimic can't really blame him - Dark Shadow has already attacked Lan just for pissing off Mimic. But there's no need to worry in her case; Dark Shadow is extremely protective of her, and would never do anything to hurt her intentionally.
Dr. Hikari still won't be convinced of that, ProtoMan says, as Mimic unsheathes her claws and gets ready to take an experimental swipe at Dark Shadow.
I can see where he's coming from, Chaud says thoughtfully. Dark Shadow attacked his son - of course he'd be wary of it, even if it knows not to go after Lan like that again.
Mimic slashes at Dark Shadow's chest. Her claws do absolutely nothing, and there's a shock of cold as her hand passes through it. The shadows making up its body ripple and come apart, leaving a visible trail where she'd slashed at it, but the slash is quickly and smoothly repaired.
"There's a brief moment in which the tear had been visible," one of the nearby scientists says. "It wasn't too long, but it was still there."
"Could you do it again?" another scientist asks Mimic. "We'd like to measure how long the wound stays before Dark Shadow repairs itself."
Mimic nods and raises her claws again.
They have to repeat the same test a few times before the watching scientists manage to get good enough data. In the end, they discover that wounds given to Dark Shadow stay for a minimum of half a second before it repairs itself. And the bigger the wound, the longer the repair time.
"Do you feel any pain?" Famous asks Dark Shadow curiously. He's relaxing on a chair next to Dr. Hikari's computer, not exactly taking part in the experiments but still offering up the occasional question or prompt, like this one.
[no pain we come apart we form again] Dark Shadow replies.
"It says it does not feel pain," ProtoMan calls, translating, "and if it comes apart, it will form itself again."
A few of the watching scientists quickly make a note of that.
"Can you be forced out of that form if you can't repair yourself quickly enough?" Dr. Hikari asks.
Dark Shadow nods, flickering slightly.
ProtoMan had told Mimic about how it had come apart when BeastMan had attacked the Science-History Museum. It had to re-form itself back then, because BeastMan had managed to slash at it fast enough to make it unable to repair itself without putting some distance between them first. That memory obviously makes Dark Shadow uneasy, since it seems to want to protect ProtoMan the same way it protects Mimic.
Dr. Hikari doesn't miss Dark Shadow's uneasy flickering.
"We'll test your limits tomorrow," he tells it. "For now, we're just seeing how far your intangibility goes."
"We think it can touch things, but things can't touch it," ProtoMan says. "Arcadia is the one who figured it out - he was watching one of our battles in the Colosseum, and noticed that Dark Shadow was unable to stop an attack from hitting me."
"If Dark Shadow had tried to deflect the attack itself, it probably would've been able to stop it," Arcadia puts in. He's not materialised yet, just sitting in the network of Dr. Hikari's computer. "But since the attack hit it, rather than the other way around, it just went straight through."
"Write that down," Dr. Hikari tells the scientist next to him. She quickly types up everything ProtoMan and Arcadia had said.
Later that day, Mimic lies face-down on the sofa with Ragdoll loafing on her back, purring. She's absolutely exhausted - they'd ended up testing Dark Shadow's limits after all, since they were already sort of heading in that direction anyway, and Mimic had attacked as fast as she physically could (which was very fast, surprising even her) and Dark Shadow had come apart in tendrils of shadows before it could repair itself again.
She'd had to re-do the same test multiple times, because the scientists needed accurate results. Dr. Hikari had called the tests to a halt when he noticed that Mimic was starting to slow down, and he'd had to carry her back home because she'd been too tired to walk on her own.
She feels the sofa dip beside her, and hears Lan's amused voice.
"You look like you've been running across the entire city all day," he comments.
[feel like it] Mimic signs with one hand. She's too tired to speak, and one of her arms is comfortably trapped under her chest, so she can't be bothered to drag it out just so she can sign with both hands.
"Dad workin' you ragged or something?"
[slashed dark shadow until it came apart] Mimic tells him. [did it over and over]
"Um . . . why?" Lan sounds incredulous. She can't blame him; she's just told him that she's spent the entire day attacking Dark Shadow for seemingly no reason, after all.
Mimic lifts her head and rests her chin on the sofa cushion, looking up at him. [testing limits] she explains. [needed accurate results so lots of testing]
"Yikes." Lan pulls a face in sympathy. "Sounds like you had a worse day than I did."
Mimic raises an eyebrow, silently prompting him to explain.
Lan sighs and slumps against the back of the sofa. "I . . . kinda signed up for that NetBattling competition. The one I told you about yesterday," he says. "I went to Mr. Higsby's shop again today - Maylu, Tory, Chisao, Ms. Mari, and Rush came with me. And we found out that Mr. Higsby still hadn't found any competitors."
Mimic keeps her free hand still. Any comment she can think of making would either be sarcastic or might prompt questions she doesn't want to answer, since most of what she knows comes from the day of the competition - which is tomorrow, apparently.
"But then this girl showed up on the street," Lan continues. "Her name's Shuko - apparently everyone calls her an evil girl. Though Mr. Higsby says she even calls herself that, so it's not like the nickname is entirely unfair. She's really unlucky, Mr. Higsby says, and every single shop closed their shutters just so she wouldn't wander in. Anyway, she said she was gonna compete, and Mr. Higsby started freaking out 'cus apparently no one else would enter if Shuko entered, so me, Maylu, and Tory offered to enter."
[good luck with that] Mimic signs.
"Yeah," Lan says thoughtfully. "It might be interesting - if everyone's so scared of her, then she must be a strong opponent, right? And, besides, I feel kinda sorry for her. It looks like she doesn't even have any friends, and she seemed really sad."
Lan glances at Mimic as he says that last sentence, and she wonders how much of his decision to enter the competition had been influenced by her. He'd felt sorry for Shuko in the anime, but he's bound to be more sympathetic toward her now because of Mimic.
Well, whatever. Not like this matters to her much anyway - she's gotta go to SciLab tomorrow as well, so she's not likely to get involved in this anyway.
The next day, she heads to SciLab with Dr. Hikari, and they make an odd discovery - Mimic can touch Dark Shadow.
Not in the normal way, of course. She hadn't been able to pull it off Lan when it had been attacking him, and she'd spent the entire day yesterday ripping and tearing through Dark Shadow's body without actually touching anything that could be considered solid.
It happens randomly, like most of these things do - she's covering her claws in the same shadow-claws that ProtoMan sometimes uses. She can still use the shadow-claws even when Dark Shadow has formed itself, because while it uses a lot of shadows to make up its body, it leaves just enough for ProtoMan or Mimic to use themselves.
Dr. Hikari wants her to try attacking Dark Shadow using the shadow-claws, to see if her attacks will be any more powerful and make it easier to tear into its intangible body. But when she tries slashing at Dark Shadow with the shadow-claws, she hits it so hard that it gets slammed into the dimensional area's barrier, and bursts apart into writhing tendrils.
Mimic looks at the tendrils blankly, and then lifts one her shadow-clawed hands to stare at it.
"Interesting," Dr. Hikari muses. "You couldn't touch it at all yesterday, only force it to come apart. What did you do that was different?"
Mimic raises her hand and flexes her shadow-claws.
"You used the shadow-claws?" Dr. Hikari blinks, then watches Dark Shadow form itself again. "Is it alright if we try that again? Not as hard, of course, we don't want to accidentally hurt you - either of you, that is."
Dark Shadow glances over its shoulder at him and nods. It turns back to Mimic and gestures, inviting her to try again.
Cautiously, Mimic moves toward it and holds out one of her shadow-claws. She pokes Dark Shadow in the chest, and is surprised when it doesn't go through like usual - instead, Dark Shadow steps back when she pokes at it, and she feels a solid mass where she'd touched it.
Curious now, she unravels the shadows from her other hand and tries to poke at Dark Shadow with a clawed finger on that hand. It goes straight through, like it did all of yesterday. Then she tries with the shadow-clawed hand again, and discovers that it still doesn't go through Dark Shadow's body.
"Looks like Dark Shadow can be touched by the same kind of shadows that it's made from," Famous comments. One of the nearby scientists types that up rapidly even as he continues. "I guess it makes sense. Like begets like, and all that."
"I'm not sure that phrase applies in this situation," Dr. Hikari says hesitantly.
Mimic, meanwhile, is still distracted by the fact that she can actually touch Dark Shadow. She's covered both of her hands with shadows again and reaches out, letting Dark Shadow close the distance and put their hands together.
"I wonder if I can do that when we aren't using Cross Fusion . . ." ProtoMan says softly. Mimic feels the same awe and curiosity from him that's filling her, and Chaud seems pretty damn fascinated as well.
"This is so cool," Chaud says eagerly. "Imagine the kind of things we could with this!"
[fight throw attack] Dark Shadow suggests. [we us fight better together]
"Together," Mimic echoes quietly.
When she gets back home later that day - not as exhausted as she was yesterday, thank god - Lan's already back, looking in equal parts annoyed and satisfied.
"Shuko won the competition," Lan tells her, when she prompts him. "Her NetNavi was . . . His name's AquaMan."
Lan takes out his PET and brings up a picture of AquaMan to show Mimic. He'd been adorable in the anime - seeing him in real life (even if it's just a picture) just hammers the point home.
"Can we see?" Arcadia calls.
"Yeah, one second," Lan says, quickly sending the picture to Mimic's PET.
There's a moment of silence.
And then Mimic hears an odd noise, kind of like air escaping from a balloon, and she takes out her PET to look at the screen incredulously. Arcadia seems fine, if a little bewildered, but ProtoMan is just ducking out of sight, and the odd noise fades with him.
"Yeah, that's basically how we all lost," Lan admits. "No one wanted to attack AquaMan, he was way too cute." He sighs. "And really devoted to making Shuko happy. Seriously, he could give ProtoMan a run for his money, and that's saying something."
"What exactly is that saying?" ProtoMan demands, poking his head back into sight.
"Nothing, never mind," Lan quickly says. "A-anyway. Mr. Higsby let Shuko use the shop's rice cooker to cook the rice. But he forgot he hadn't paid the electricity bill, so the electricity in the shop was cut off. Shuko freaked out about it and said it was her fault 'cus she's such an evil girl or something like that, and AquaMan . . . well, I guess he wanted to make her happy, so he went to the power plant to turn on the electricity for her." He sighs and now he starts to look more annoyed than satisfied. "He got caught, and then he started crying and flooded the entire network. Me, Mr. Higsby, and Shuko went to the power planet to try and stop him."
"Wait, how did AquaMan flood an entire network by crying?" Arcadia asks.
In response, Lan shows them another image on his PET - this time, it shows AquaMan in the middle of a massive puddle with water gushing out of the hole at the top of his bubble-head like an overpowered geyser.
"I'm never going near him," ProtoMan immediately decides. "I would probably make him cry, and then I would get wet."
"I probably wouldn't make him cry, but I'd still avoid him anyway, in case he does start crying," Arcadia agrees.
"That massive spout made it really hard to attack him," Lan tells them. "It just absorbed anything we threw at it, and AquaMan was crying too hard for anyone to get through to him, even Shuko. She, uh . . . wasn't reacting well. She kept crying and being dramatic and saying how she's an evil girl . . ." He looks uncomfortable as he continues. "It kinda got annoying after a while. She just wouldn't stop."
Lan shakes his head and glances at Mimic.
"I kinda thought she was a little bit like you," he confesses. "But, honestly, you've never been annoying like that."
Like that? What's that supposed to mean? Does Lan think she's annoying in some other way, or-
Stop overthinking it, Chaud tells her.
Right, yeah, okay.
"Mr. Higsby managed to convince her to calm down," Lan goes on, unaware of Mimic's brief moment of panic. "She told us that we needed to plug the hole on AquaMan's head, and the water would stop flowing. Then MegaMan did a Double Soul with NumberMan! He used it to analyse the battle - well, if it can even be called that - and figured out what to do. He blew away the water with a Dice Bomb, then he told me to give him Air Shoes so he could get to AquaMan, and an Elec Sword so he could plug the hole. It was really cool! And all of his stats were powered up. Number Soul is really useful."
Mimic wonders if Number Soul would give MegaMan the ability to figure out some way to defeat ProtoMan and Dark Shadow easily. ProtoMan and MegaMan haven't actually fought each other one-on-one since the N1 Grand Prix, and ProtoMan had lost back then - and when they'd battled against each other in that double-battle with Arcadia and Roll as their respective partners, the four of them had fought each other to a standstill.
It's anyone's guess who would win if ProtoMan and MegaMan were to fight one-on-one now. ProtoMan's gotten a hell of a lot more powerful, but so has MegaMan. Double Soul might make him more than a match for ProtoMan's shadows and cat-abilities.
ProtoMan would love that, Chaud says proudly. He hates fighting easy NetBattles.
"Oh!" Lan suddenly exclaims, startling Mimic. "I just remembered - Mr. Higsby wants us to head to his shop tomorrow. He said he's got something to show us." Lan winces and looks at her awkwardly. "But you can't really go, though. Um."
"It's f-fine," Mimic dismisses. She already knows what Higsby wants to show them anyway - Shuko, who's now working part-time at the Chip Shop as Higsby's assistant.
Besides, it'd be weird to just show up suddenly. Higsby knows her, but Shuko doesn't, and they'll either have to explain Mimic's . . . situation, or lie to Shuko and keep her in the dark. Which'll be kinda weird, since everyone else in the shop will know who Mimic is - or isn't - and Shuko won't.
Maybe it's best if she stays away from Higsby's Chip Shop for the time being. Or at least she could try going there when Shuko isn't working. Lan should understand if she explains the reason why she wants to avoid Shuko, right?