After reading many of the other Megaman.exe fics on , I figured that I might as well say something regarding the universe of this fic. I did say in the A/N of chapter 2 that this was based on the games, not the anime. This is very important because, judging from the descriptions of the show I've seen, there are some circumstances and events in this story that, while plausible within the universe of the games, wouldn't work if based on the anime.

And another note on that, even the games only provide a loose basis for the story, seeing as 1) The games' overall story isn't completely solid, which is understandable because it is a game, not a novel, and 2) Many plot points and circumstances are terribly inconsistent between the different installments of the games. Thus, if I see you write any reviews that criticize me for not taking into account on tiny detail in the games, you're wasting your time, cause chances are I already took it into account when making my story. I'm of the belief that if something isn't completely specified in your source, you can specify it however you damn please. Now, onto chapter 4

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A Paradigm's Dawn

Chapter 4: Dull Days at Den City

Lan sat up on his bed, stretching his arms out towards the ceiling to relieve the tightness in his muscles. He looked towards the date and time display on the nightstand clock, smiling as he noted what it read: nine thirty. Lan always looked forward to Saturdays and Sundays, as they were the days of the week when he was on call duty and he could sleep in without any problems.

He turned around to make sure his wife was still asleep. Even on Saturdays he had to make sure to be quiet, as Mayl also liked to take advantage of weekends to--

Lan's expression became that of bewilderment when he observed the empty section of the bed where Mayl had been just the night before. The sheets were still crumpled and warm, meaning that she hadn't been out of bed for long. "Well this is odd," Lan mused to himself as he got out of bed. After putting on a plain white t-shirt and a pair of black pants, he left the room to get some breakfast. Lan smiled. He recalled that Mayl liked to prepare breakfast extra early on weekends when she was in an especially good mood.

He smelled nothing as he made his way towards the living room. The room was silent besides the hum of the Dell computer operating in standby in the corner of the room. From what Lan could see and hear, Mayl wasn't in the kitchen. He went to the computer to wake up Megaman and Roll--

Mayl's PET wasn't near the computer. In fact, as he observed when the bright image of the computer's cyber world appeared, Roll wasn't in the computer at all. Only Megaman was there, still sleeping soundly.

"Megaman, Megaman. Wake up." The blue navi stirred at the sound of Lan's voice and, after a few moments, stood up to face his operator.

"Hey Lan. What's up?" the navi asked in a drowsy voice.

"Hey Megaman. Do you know where Mayl and Roll are, I didn't see them when I woke up."

"Oh?" Megaman stopped as he let out a small yawn, and then looked at where Roll was supposed to be sleeping. "They aren't here? That's strange."

"I know." Lan looked around the living room, and then finally noticed a small piece of paper on the table next to the couches. After jacking Megaman out into his PET, he walked over to the table and picked up the piece of paper, reading it:

Had to go on a few errands. Will be back soon. I love you - Mayl

Lan pondered for a moment after reading the note. "I don't remember her mentioning any errands yesterday, and the last time she did anything really was a week or so ago when she went to see my mom." He paced around the room. "What could have been so important that she'd--" he was interrupted by the beeping sound of his PET.

"Lan, you have new mail."

"Let's have it."

Megaman read, staying silent for a moment. "You're needed at work ASAP. They don't care what you wear; they just want you there as soon as possible."

Lan groaned. So much for a good day of rest.

"Do you need me to do anything here while you're gone?"

Lan thought for a moment. "Actually," he began, "since Mayl and Roll aren't here I think it'd be better if I take you with me."

"Okay, sure. Just jack me into the home computer and I'll perform some maintenance while you get ready."

Lan nodded, and then made his way over to a large desk near the main door. Its location was the exact opposite of the old computer on the floor, and it housed its own machine, one of the newest models. Lan jacked Megaman in, and then went back into the bedroom to shower and change.

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Yuichiro walked silently through the halls in the upper levels of SciLab. The executive level was only two floors up, just a short walk away from the elevator doors. That is, if he had elected to take the elevators. The man walking a few feet behind him was told that the elevators were out of order. That had been a lie, of course, but the scientist needed to bide some time to get relax himself.

'Doctor' Martin Cain looked around the various parts of the building as they walked through. He had been heavily intrigued by some of the projects the various scientists were working on, though he kept silent about it. After all, Yuichiro wouldn't like it if he knew he could tell exactly what someone was doing just by glancing at their code for a few seconds as they passed by. The man was uneasy enough about this project he had put in front of him just a few days before...

Skipping the elevators only bought a few extra minutes at most, as the two approached a large door marked 'Project Executive'. "We're here," Yuichiro said finally, breaking the silence. "I'm warning you, I highly doubt this will end up being in your favor."

"Perhaps," the black-clad scientist said, "but I'll take my chances. It's good enough to get this opportunity." He walked closer to the door and put his hand on it slowly. "It's been a long time..."

"Indeed. A long time." And if it were up to me, it would've been much longer than this. Yuichiro opened the door, and the two entered slowly.

An old man who could be no younger than fifty was seated at a large desk on the other side of the room. His hair was thinned, but nonetheless combed back neatly, shining brightly from the gel used to hold it in place. He wore a gray suit and matching gray tie, which also matched nicely with the large gray computer he was working on at the moment.

Upon seeing the pair enter the room, he typed a few things on his computer than arranged some of the papers on his desk. He stood up and approached the two. "You've brought him, I see," he said slowly. His speech was soft like an old man, yet succinct enough to evoke authority in even the toughest of employees. "I have a lot of work to do, so this better be good."

Yuichiro went to reply to him, only to be interrupted by the man behind him. "Trust me, I won't disappoint you."

"Has the meeting with the rest of the executives been arranged?" Yuichiro asked, ignoring his associates comment.

"They'll be in the conference room shortly. It took a lot of guts to request an emergency meeting like this Dr. Hikari. You're fortunate nothing too serious has been going on or you wouldn't have been granted the privilege."

Yuichiro didn't like how unimportant he considered the current crisis in his department, but in the big scheme of things he figured someone like him would have more important things to worry about. "Understood." He looked towards Cain. "I'll be in the conference room. You have half an hour to present your project to Mr. Yamato before you present it to the conference." With that Yuichiro left the room, closing the door behind him.

The two remaining in the room stood silent for a minute before Yamato began speaking. "You have a lot of guts coming back after what you pulled. One of our greatest projects was almost destroyed because of you. I came close to making sure you would never set foot here again."

"In that case," Cain said, smiling, "I'm glad you decided to reconsider. To be honest, the chances of you excepting this project are pretty low. In fact, I almost consider this a waste of my time."

"Then why did you bother coming here?"

Cain stood silent, smiling. He noticed Yamato's stern disposition, unchanging since the last time he saw him when he was fired. "I wanted to see how you'd react. Just curious."

"Indeed." He sat back down on his desk. "Please proceed."

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"Ah, so you found the virus!" Lan sat in front of the large computer in his office. On the screen was an image of Eugene Chaud, the Net Battle Officials Chief Commander. "That's a relief."

"Not quite," Chaud replied, his face expressionless, "If you'll recall, we still don't have a clue as to who might have infected the computer."

"Um... well, I guess you're right about that. But still--"

"Protoman is still searching the net for any new information," Chaud continued, ignoring Lan's musings, "I do have an idea as to how the virus got on your system though, if you feel like listening."

"Don't worry about that." Lan seemed annoyed, but that wasn't abnormal considering who he was talking to. "I'm listening."

"Very well. I was able to pinpoint the virus and its code in your PC. It was as I said: a piece of code disguised as a system command program. It could've been anything, a text document, a spreadsheet, even a simple alarm clock program. Of course, with the way computers are constructed now these types of viruses wouldn't be able to do much harm, but opening a connection to the net was easy enough based on what I saw."

Lan nodded. "That's good and all, but--"

"Don't you want to know where I found the program?"

Lan gave him a glare, but nodded in response.

"Tell me Megaman, what exactly is that plus parts named 'Iloveyou' that you have installed in you Navi Customizer.

Megaman took a moment to respond, surprised that Chaud had suddenly started speaking to him. "Well," he began, "That was given to me by Roll about two weeks ago. We had a small fight, and she wanted--"

"Where did she get the part?"

"Oh, she told me she got it from a Net Dealer in the Den Area. She said the cute pictures were too good to pass up."

"That plus part is the virus."

Lan put his face closer to the computer. "What? But that isn't even an actual program. It was just simple image and--" Lan paused for a moment, then trailed off his last few words. "--and a text file."

"Exactly. The program was embedded into the text file, which was then executed when Megaman jacked into the computer. The program was set to open the net connection five minutes after being executed. According to the logs, that's exactly when it happened."

Lan and Megaman were silent for a minute, letting Chaud's explanation sink in. Megaman was the first to speak. "I'm sorry Lan."

"Don't worry about it," Lan replied, "We couldn't do anything about it. Chaud did say these types of viruses couldn't be detected."

"We do know now," Chaud said, apparently proceeding from where he left off, "that whoever did this knew exactly how to get the virus into the computer, and had full knowledge of the relationship between your navis. The only problem is that information doesn't help us at all. Anyone from a disgruntled business partner to a small-time hacker could've done this."

"Is there any way to find out?"

"Not right away. But I'll be sure to keep this top priority. If we find anything, we'll inform SciLab at once. I'm going now."

"Wait, Chaud!"

Chaud was still, his face unmoving.

"I... I just wanted to know if you were still mad at me and Megaman. I--"

"What's done is done. I have an obligation to help you, and you have an obligation to receive my help. There's nothing more to it."

Lan let out a sigh. "If you say so."

The section of the computer screen showing Chaud's image faded away, leaving nothing but a collection of windows cascading the screen.

"I don't think he'll ever give us a straight answer about that." Megaman opened some data screens in the PET's cyber area. "As for this plus part..." One of the data screens displayed the image of a large pink heart with both him and Roll during their wedding, with another data screen below it displaying a short message. Megaman let out a long sigh. "To think that someone could take advantage of us like this."

"Don't worry Megaman," Lan said confidently, "Whoever did this will pay, believe me. Chaud and Protoman will make sure of it."

"Thanks Lan. Anyway, I forgot to tell you: While you and Chaud were talking, Lenny from the Waterworks called and left a message saying his computer was infected with viruses and needed to be purged before he lost all his data."

Lan got up immediately. "W-What? How long ago was this?"

Megaman put his hand behind his back nervously. "Uh, about 5 minutes ago."

"Wonderful..." Lan groaned as he took Megaman and left his office to take care of the call.

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Haruka hummed a short tune to herself as she watched the potatoes boiling in the pot on the burner farthest away from her. She took a soup spoon and dipped it into the pot directly in front, tasting the delicious tomato soup that was simmering on the burner. Still not salty enough. Has it really been so long since my husband came home for lunch that I've forgotten how to cook for him? Haruka chuckled at the joke she made, then put a small dash of salt into the brewing mixture.

Before she could check the firmness of the potatoes, she heard a ring coming from the phone on the far side of the kitchen near the living room. Setting the oven on 'auto-cook', she went over and pressed a button on the console, causing the screen above it to display the worried face of a young, red-haired woman.

"Oh Mayl, how are you!" Haruka smiled at the image of her daughter-in-law.

"Hi Haruka. I'm fine, thank you..." Mayl seemed to be gazing around the room as she spoke.

"Is something wrong? You don't look so good."

"Well, there really isn't anything wrong per se... it's just... well..." Mayl continued to shift her gaze, apparently avoiding eye-to-eye contact with the person she was conversing with.

"What? What is it?" Haruka's expression became tense as she continued to watch Mayl fidget.

"Well... first, I wanted to say I'm glad that we're getting to know each other better as friends. It really does mean a lot to me."

"Why... thank you Mayl. I'm glad we could become better friends too." Was this all she as worried about? Haruka thought about how nervous she could be over some of the littlest things...

"Good. Then you can help me with this... situation I'm having... that is, if you don't mind? Roll isn't here, so it's just you and me."

"No, I don't mind at all. I'll always be here to help you. I promised you, remember?"

"Okay..." Mayl looked uneasy for a couple of moments as she seemed to be collecting words to say. "I went to see the doctor today... don't give me that look, I told you nothing was wrong... it's just... he told me..."

"Yes?"

"Haruka, I'm pregnant."

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Yes, I know you saw this coming. Not like I care much, since there's more to the story than simply this . As for the virus, yes, I intended to name it Iloveyou. I figured a bit of fourth wall irony wouldn't hurt, as long as it didn't mess with the flow of the story. Speaking of which, is the flow okay? I'm usually very technical when it comes to my writing, so I'm not really sure if I'm conveying the emotion I need to from the characters. If I'm not, please tell me how I can improve, 'kay? I hope you like the story so far anyway.