"Pull up!" MegaMan nearly screams. "Lan-"
"I'm trying, I'm trying-" Lan has no idea what he's doing, and his Navi screaming in his ear certainly is not helping.
The snow on the ground rushes up to meet him, and Lan plows into it with all the subtlety and grace of a speeding truck. He's lucky super-strength is only applied to the actions he actually does rather than involuntary ones like crashing head-first into the ground, otherwise he might've caused a crater as big as the one left over from the Past Tunnel.
Or at least one big enough to total the area they're in right now. Thankfully an empty plot of land privately-owned by SciLab, the perfect testing grounds for the Jet Verneir, which . . . isn't going well, evidently.
"You suck at flyin'," Mimic says, landing next to him with barely a sound or stirring of the snowy ground.
Lan pulls his head out of the small bank of snow he created upon landing and spits some of the cold half-frozen stuff out of his mouth. "I'd like to see you try and figure out how to fly with a jetpack!"
"I'm pretty sure you flew perfectly fine once. You did it against Dr. Regal that one time, right?"
"That was totally different and you know it," Lan retorts. He pushes himself to his feet, brushing off the bits of snow clinging to his bodysuit. "Besides, I remember I was in Full Synchro at the time, so I could've done literally anything and it probably would've worked."
"Even punchin' the sun?" Lan can't see his adopted sister's actual expression under her feathered hood and beak-like mouthguard, but he can almost hear the raised eyebrow in the tone of her voice.
"Well, it was night, so it probably would've been the moon rather than the sun."
"Lan!" Dad calls. "Are you alright?"
Lan glances over his shoulder at where Dad is standing, near the barrier of the dimensional area. Chaud - in full Cross Fusion with ProtoMan - is next to him, watching Lan fail at using the Jet Vernier with a mostly-blank expression (which is still worrying), and Bass is nearby, looking bored. Chaud's wearing a long scarf and a coat, despite being in Cross Fusion, though that's probably because ProtoMan's cat virus data makes him and anyone Cross Fused with him more vulnerable to temperature in a way that other Navis aren't.
"Yeah, I'm fine!" Lan calls back, waving. "I'll get back up now!"
"Sure you can handle it?" Mimic teases him, spreading her wings and taking to the air as easily as ever.
It's funny how Lan had never really paid much attention to Arcadia's flight ability before, and yet now he nearly envies his sister for her effortless use of it. Sure, flying with huge fluffy wings is totally different to flying with a jetpack, but he's having far too much trouble trying to work this out, and Mimic makes it looks easy.
Which is not fair at all.
"I can handle anything!" Lan insists, activating the thrusters on his jetpack and taking to the air after his sister.
His flight is wobbly and not at all as graceful as Mimic's flying, but he can hover decently, even if he has to concentrate to keep himself level. After taking a moment to adjust his stance in mid-air, he shoots Mimic a grin under his mouthguard that she can't see, but can probably sense with the Empath Program.
"See? I've totally got thi- AH!"
His brief moment of distraction - bragging, MegaMan's flat mental voice corrects - makes him lose control over the Jet Vernier, and he stumbles in the air. The thrusters splutter out enough for him to drop a few feet, and then cut out entirely and leave him in freefall.
Lan tumbles through the air, too panicked to activate Jet Vernier again - it'd probably just shoot him even faster at the ground anyway. Even without it, he's still falling fast, and he can hear Mimic shouting after him, but it seems like she's too surprised at his sudden drop to react in time.
He closes his eyes moments before he hits the ground, and then-
He doesn't hit the ground.
After a few moments of waiting for the painful impact, Lan eventually realises he's stopped. A quick check of his systems via MegaMan's helpful input tells him that he didn't stop on his own power, certainly not thanks to Jet Vernier, because he's upside-down and being held up by his ankle.
He can feel a familiar coldness around his ankle. Not the kind of cold that comes with snow, but the kind of cold only a shadow could produce.
Lan opens his eyes and looks down - or up, as it happens - at his foot. He's being held, dangling, by one of Chaud's tendrils of shadows, helpfully wrapped around his ankle and easily holding him up despite being as thin and half-intangible as the tendrils of shadows always are. He follows the tendril back to Chaud, where the rest of his shadows drift around him unhurriedly, aside from the one that's lashed out and holding Lan.
"Thanks!" Lan calls to Chaud, and his shadows.
Chaud just looks at him silently for a few moments. It's a little unnerving, even though Chaud's kinda been like this for a whole now, though Mom said he had a little bit of life in him when Anetta came to visit and asked Chaud to tell her about his mother.
No sign of that life now, though. Chaud's expression doesn't change from that unnerving blankness as the single tendril holding onto Lan slowly lowers him down until his hands brush against the snow on the ground, and then sets him down carefully before whipping back to Chaud and re-joining the rest of the drifting shadows around him.
"There's gotta be some way I can figure this out," Lan mutters to himself.
"Everyone knows that the best way to learn is under intense, life-threatening pressure," Mimic says, landing next to him again.
Lan blinks at her. "Um . . . who're you mimicking?"
"A guy from my favourite movie," his sister replies. "It's right, though. From what I've seen? People here do their best at learnin' new skills when there's no time to think about learnin' 'em."
"She has a point," Arcadia speaks up thoughtfully. "The first time you used Cross Fusion was literally the first time, and you did it perfectly - most likely because there was a huge problem in the form of-"
"-BeastMan," Mimic finishes, nodding. "You didn't think, you just acted."
"So the problem you're having right now is that you're thinking too much," Arcadia says. "Don't think, just do."
"I honestly thought you were gonna make a Fairy Tail reference right then," Mimic remarks.
"References are your thing, last I checked."
"However . . . odd it sounds, they are right," MegaMan says. "We never really achieved anything by thinking about it - we just did whatever needed to be done at the time, and only afterwards did we actually think. Which . . . kinda makes us sound like dumb muscle, to be honest . . ."
"You're not dumb," Mimic says, wandering out of Lan's line of sight. "You just react too quick to think."
Lan lets out a faint sigh and tilts his head up, staring at the multi-coloured barrier way overhead. "Sometimes it feels like all we ever do is react to stuff. But even if that's what we're good at, how am I supposed to figure out something like the Jet Vernier? I gotta learn how to use it, otherwise I won't be able to use it, but how am I supposed to do that if I'm better at reacting to things instead of-"
Whap.
Lan blinks owlishly, feeling the cold slush of snow sliding down the back of his neck. The sudden shock of cold isn't as bad as it would be if he were fully human - NetNavis can feel temperature change, sure, but they aren't really affected by it (though some of the Virus Navis like ProtoMan are affected by it), so Lan himself isn't affected by the cold for all that he can feel it.
He turns around, still stunned speechless, and is greeted with the sight of his sister standing a few feet away. She's throwing a snowball up and down in one hand, and is looking at him through half-lidded eyes in an oddly-accurate imitation of Bass's bored look despite most of her face being obscured.
"Arcadia's not gonna do it, so I will," Mimic says. She stops throwing the snowball up and down and grips it, eyes suddenly narrowing with playful determination. "Don't think - feel."
She gears up to throw, and Lan just barely managed to dodge the high-speed snowball by ducking with all the enhanced reflexes he's granted by Cross Fusion.
"What're you-" he begins, standing up, only to cut himself off with a startled yelp and dive to the side to avoid getting buried in a sudden wave of snow Mimic hurls at him using her wings.
Lan manages to scramble to his feet and looks around, but he can't see his sister on the ground anymore. It's only the barest sound of beating wings that warns him before she dive-bombs him from above, and he hops out of the way just in time to avoid another snowball to the head.
Mimic pulls up with the ease of a practised flier, scooping up another bunch of snow in her clawed hand and moulding it into a ball. She hovers several metres above the ground, wings beating gently to keep her in the air, and then hurls the snowball.
Lucky for Lan that he is good at thinking on his feet, otherwise he would've been too startled to dodge that one as well. The snowball only manages to cause a puff of white powder that nearly obscures his vision as it hits the ground at high speed, and Lan backs away so he can keep his sister in his sight.
If it weren't for the dimensional area barrier, she's be impossible to see. The sky is white and grey with clouds, and the ground is white with snow. This is the perfect camouflage for a white NetNavi like Arcadia, and Mimic is one of the best people at stealth that Lan knows of, even without Cross Fusion.
"What the heck, Mimic!?" Lan demands, stomping his foot. Yeah, okay, it's childish, but last time he checked, thirteen is still considered a child, so he's allowed to be immature like this.
"You wanna get me for it?" Mimic taunts him, spreading her arms out wide. He can tell by her tone that she's grinning. "Then get your ass up here and make me pay, fucker!"
"Language, Mimic!" Lan hears Dad admonishing.
Mimic completely ignores him. "Li'l baby Lan can't fly? Can't make me pay for smackin' him in the face with a little bit of snow? Aw, boo-fucking-hoo!"
Even Lan was affected by the cold, his growing frustration with his infuriating sister would definitely be keeping him warm right now.
Some small part of him acknowledges that Mimic is doing her usual manipulation trick, making him frustrated enough that he'll stop thinking about what he needs to do and just do it, but that part is very small and he's too annoyed and confused about why the heck Mimic is throwing snow at him like this anyway.
"I'll make you pay!" Lan promises, quickly scooping up some snow and moulding it into a snowball.
He pulls back his arm and throws, using the targeting systems MegaMan has installed to help him with long-range attacks, but Mimic easily dodges. Her laughter only serves to annoy Lan even further.
His next attempt is even worse than his first. He's determined to beat Mimic at her own game (which is a bad idea because Mimic is the absolute best at games, though he's too annoyed to remember that right now), so he tries to throw another snowball, only for Mimic to simply activate Arcadia's Holy Fire and raise the temperature around her to the point where the air shimmers and the snowball melts into harmless water before it even reaches her.
"That's cheating!" Lan snaps.
"Is it?" Mimic starts flying back and forth, making a figure of eight in mid-air. "Oh, no, I'm cheating! The shame, oh, the shame of doing exactly what I'm known for doing!" She blows a delighted raspberry under her mouthguard. "Make me pay? More like make me laugh!"
How is he supposed to beat Mimic at a game which is, in its fundamentals, all about manoeuvrability? She's definitely got him beat in that department, regardless of whether she's in Cross Fusion or not, able to fly or not. Being too fast to hit and what basically amounts to pure cheating is Mimic's typical fighting style for both video games and battles.
Jet Vernier, MegaMan reminds him. His Navi is far calmer, but he's not trying to make Lan calm down - and that little part of Lan that realises what Mimic is doing also realises that MegaMan is taking advantage of his sister's manipulation to help Lan figure out how to fly.
Jet Vernier? Lan repeats. I can't use it, though! Maybe I could just use a battle chip to-
No! MegaMan insists. You want to beat Mimic at her own game? You can't do that unless you play by her rules! That means you have to get into the air!
Well, if that wasn't as convincing of an argument as Lan has ever heard . . .
Lan scoops up some more snow, activating Jet Vernier while he moulds the snow into as many snowballs as he can make. Five, it turns out, and it's surprisingly easy to hold them as he rockets into the air.
He just barely catches Mimic's eyes narrowing in what's obviously a delighted grin before she shoots out of the way. He ends up hovering where she was, and quickly grabs one of his snowballs as she flies around him in a wide arc, following her flight path with his eyes and turning in mid-air when she moves out of his line of sight.
Normally he doesn't even think about using the targeting systems. Nor does MegaMan, really, since they're a fundamental part of using the Mega Buster or any other long-range attacks. But he has to think about using the targeting systems now, because snowballs aren't really a proper weapon (he vaguely recalls Mimic once telling him that anything can be a weapon if you know how to use it), not of the digital kind anyway, and he definitely needs all the help he can get against a highly-manoeuvrable opponent like Mimic.
"Lock on," MegaMan says. "Target: Mimic! Fire!"
Lan wastes no time in following through. He hurls a snowball just in front of where Mimic is about to go, and she pulls up just short of actually being hit.
While it's still frustrating that he didn't actually hit her, that was a lot closer than his attempts on the ground had been. It's better than nothing, honestly.
Mimic turns toward him, and Lan sees her eyes on his four remaining snowballs a split second before she beats her wings and comes hurtling toward him. He has no time to react and can only throw himself to the side, unable to stop her from snatching one of his snowballs and darting away.
She's good at this kinda stuff, MegaMan reminds him, as Mimic starts circling again. She can use brute force when she wants to, of course, but she excels in stealth and thief-type abilities.
And she can easily reload whenever she wants, faster than I can, Lan thinks. He doesn't dare glance away from Mimic even for a moment, so he merely conjures up a mental image of the snow-covered ground below them. Plenty of ammo for Mimic to work with, provided she doesn't melt it all out of spite that is.
She can probably stop you from reloading, too, MegaMan adds. Not just by melting the snow below them, but also by simply keeping Lan away from the ground and thus the snow as well.
No more time to think, because Mimic has decided to go on the offensive again. She stops circling and comes straight at Lan, and he just barely manages to dodge her as she rockets past. The wind pressure from that fly-by nearly knocks him down, but a quick adjustment to the thrusters of his jetpack corrects his slight tumble, and he only ends up dropping one of his remaining snowballs.
Which Mimic quickly snatches up, then hurls straight at him from below. Lan bursts the thrusters and is shoved sideways by the sudden boost, dodging the snowball far more easily than he would've if he'd just been standing on the ground.
He dodges her second throw and quickly targets her again. He tracks her movements, trying to figure out if there's any pattern to her flight path, but there isn't - she's being as unpredictable as physically possible. One moment she'll be circling him like a flying shark, then she'll be zipping around almost too fast for the targeting systems to keep up with, and it's anyone's guess as to what she'll do next.
Unpredictability, MegaMan says. That's the key to both Mimic and Chaud's battle strategies.
And the sky is Arcadia's domain, Lan mutters.
A domain which he's intruding on, with the Jet Vernier. But even if he can't match Mimic's speed or manoeuvrability in the air, he's got a better chance at keeping up - or trying to - than he did on the ground. And she doesn't have any more snowballs, so unless she starts cheating again and begins hurling Firebombs at him, she can't do more than try and steal his last two snowballs or try and knock him out of the air.
He suddenly senses a sharp warning from MegaMan, and boosts the thrusters so he's thrown out of the way of a surprise barrage of snowballs from below. Mimic is circling him again, so it wasn't her, which only leaves . . .
Lan glances down, and his heart nearly sinks. Bass is grinning wide enough to be seen even from this high in the air, and he's hurling snowballs as fast as Chaud and Dark Shadow can make and hand to him.
"Great," Lan mutters to himself, opting to keep moving instead of making himself a massive target. "Now I gotta deal with all of them."
"Just Mimic and Bass, I think," MegaMan says.
Lan pulls up quickly just in time to avoid Mimic trying to knock him out of the air with another rapid fly-by. He just barely manages to keep a hold of his last two snowballs, and the only reason Mimic doesn't snatch one of them out of his arms is because he somehow dodged fast enough that she couldn't do it.
"Chaud and Dark Shadow are giving Bass ammo, and that's about it," MegaMan goes on. "If you can stop them from making the snowballs-"
"Less talkin'-" Mimic suddenly makes another rapid fly-by, kicking out with her talons as she passes by. "-more fightin'!"
Lan jerks back as her talons score a direct hit down his side. His bodysuit isn't torn open and the only thing he feels is the sting where his sister's talons scratched him, but the attack was sudden enough that he drops one of his last two snowballs. Mimic doesn't try to snatch it up this time - she simply lets it fall to the ground.
She's relying on Bass to hit you while she distracts you, MegaMan quickly says. As I was trying to say, if you can stop Chaud and Dark Shadow from making the snowballs, you'll be able to slow down the rate of attacks from Bass, and you can focus on fighting Mimic!
I like the sound of that plan! Lan feels himself grinning. His earlier frustration is melting away (pun mostly unintended), and he's starting to enjoy himself.
A snowball fight in full Cross Fusion, against his brother and sister and whatever Bass is? Yes please.
Of course, he'll have to be careful when figuring out some way to disable Chaud. Whatever he does to Chaud will be done to Mimic as well, because of that connection between their souls, and he also has to be careful because Mimic's Empath Program will let her sense his intentions and she'll be able to warn Chaud before Lan even tries to do anything.
Are there rules to this fight? Aside from 'snowballs and annoyance-tactics only'? Battle chips and basic attacks are off the table, obviously. Even Mimic isn't using them, though she has used Holy Fire at least once, but that was only to melt a snowball Lan tried to throw. Chaud's shadows are a grey area for this kind of thing, since they're fully sentient, but Chaud himself isn't running around using his cat-abilities to attack.
Oh, who cares what the rules are?
Lan grins under his mouthguard and cuts off Jet Vernier. That surprises even Mimic - and even then only because Lan went through with his idea a split second after forming it, too fast for Mimic to sense - and he manages to drop down enough that he's close enough to aim and throw his last snowball with more force than he could've managed at his previous height.
The snowball hits its mark, nailing Chaud right on the head and knocking him onto his side. Lan quickly activates Jet Vernier again and scoops up as much snow as he can physically carry before hurtling into the air, moulding it into snowballs, and looks around for Mimic.
She's stopped in mid-air, shaking her head like she's trying to clear it. For a moment, she's fully distracted, and Bass's non-stop barrage of snowballs from below has been halted since Chaud is no longer making snowballs, and Dark Shadow has been caught off-guard as well and is too surprised to make more itself.
Lan takes hold of one his newly-made snowballs and throws it before Mimic can recover. He just barely makes use of the targeting systems, just enough to lock on and target his sister, and it works - he hits one of her wings, making her stumble in mid-air, and he takes advantage of that and hurls another snowball at her face.
That sends her into a backflip through the air, and she has to scramble for a few moments to correct herself. She shakes her head, getting rid of the snow that remained stuck to her face, and shoots a glare at Lan.
He grins, and knows she can sense it because he can hear the hiss she spits back at him from here.
Unfortunately, Chaud chooses that moment to recover as well, and he and Dark Shadow start giving Bass more ammo - which Bass promptly starts chucking at Lan rapid-fire.
His arms are laden down with his bundle of snowballs, so it's harder to dodge the renewed barrage. But he manages, with a little bit of assistance from MegaMan (well, a lot of assistance from MegaMan), and tries to keep track of Mimic's movements at the same time.
It's definitely not easy. But it's fun. His earlier frustration has been completely forgotten, and he knows his adopted siblings are enjoying themselves too - or he hopes, anyway, because he's not entirely sure how Chaud's feeling right now. It's fun either way, and he's never had a family snowball fight before.
Lan's delighted laughter nearly makes him take one of Bass's snowballs right to the face, but it's worth it.
"Totally worth it," Lan says, even as he shivers in the blanket he's wrapped in. The hot chocolate in his hands is helping very much to warm him up, or at least warm his hands up, anyway.
"Yep," Mimic agrees, from where she and Chaud are huddled under no less than three blankets of their own. Like ProtoMan, they're more affected by temperature, but that didn't stop them from enjoying the snowball fight, same as Lan.
"I wish you would have told me it'd turn into a snowball fight!" Mom is scolding Dad sternly. "I would've joined in if I was there!"
"They're fine, it's- wait, what?" Dad looks startled to hear that. "You wanted to join in? But . . ."
"Oh, of course I'm annoyed that you let them get this cold," Mom admits, handing Mimic and Chaud their own cups of hot chocolate and gently ruffling their hair. "Especially the twins! You know they're not good with the cold! But I haven't had a proper snowball fight in years, and now I find out I've missed out on a family snowball fight between our kids?"
"Well . . ." Dad goes quiet for a moment, apparently too stunned to think properly. "I-I mean . . . I didn't . . . I didn't know Mimic would turn it into a snowball fight, so . . ."
"Don't blame your daughter for this!" Mom points her finger at Dad teasingly. "Next time, I'm coming too, and if it turns into another snowball fight, I'm joining in!"
"Is that a good idea?" Bass wonders, before Lan can speak up and voice the exact same thing. "You're human. And against a bunch of NetNavis? Doesn't sound fair to me."
"Then we'll have a family snowball fight with no superpowers," Mom replies, as if it's the most simple thing in the world.
"But then how're the Navis supposed to join in?" Lan asks.
Mom blinks, opens her mouth, then looks confused and closes her mouth. She glances at Dad.
"I don't think the Navi-holograms can withstand a full-blown snowball fight," Dad muses. "Perhaps I could make some kind of snowy network area where they can have their own snowball fight . . ."
"Haha, no," ProtoMan deadpans. He's huddled in with the twins, just as cold as they are, and Arcadia has wrapped him inside his wings to try and help warm him up. "As fun as that was, I'd like to be pleasantly warm for the foreseeable future, thanks."
"Besides, I think the snow's gonna be gone by tomorrow anyway," MegaMan speaks up. "I checked the weather forecast, and it's gonna rain hard tonight."
"Aw." Mom pouts.
If anything, the promise of rain seems to disgust ProtoMan even more than the idea of a snow-filled network area. "Water bullets from the sky . . . Why does the real world have to have such horrible weather patterns? Why can't you just have nice and easy stuff like the cyberworld?"
"There's a place in Cyber City called Sky Town that controls the weather for the entire city, but the power needed for such a system can only be generated in Cyber City itself," Dad says. "You'll have to deal with natural rain for now, ProtoMan."
ProtoMan lets out a high-pitched whine and buries his face in his brother's wing. Arcadia just giggles and strokes his bushy hair gently.