ADVER MAN II: CYBER MAN – RISE TO POWER
Prologue Briefing: S.T.A.R.T. (Story Telling Articulates Recent Times)
The year is still 200X, and the Cyber World has once again begun an era of turmoil. In the short time following the deletion of Adver Man, the remnants of the world's Net Mafias have organized themselves into small and fiercely loyal cells. The newest group formed in these recent months calls itself the Royal Three, a group based in the beautiful beachside coastline of Aron City in Amerope.
Our story begins with the delivery of a great power to the first of the Royal Three, a Navi so strong it is believed to be even greater than Adver Man himself. His abilities fall upon an unlikely new hero, a lazy but high-ranking Net Criminal named Chin, a brash and somewhat stupid rebel. Unlike most Net Battlers, he doesn't want to be the best or most skilled with the best and most advanced technology; all he wants to do is live a modest life and ride his custom motorcycle. Unfortunately, to afford it, he had to do many duties for Royal Three's leader, who even now goads him into carrying out the group's work.
The second member of this group is a young teenage girl named Lumine Royal, the daughter of the Royal Three's leader. She commands the Net Navi Blind.EXE. This Navi is a mysteriously charismatic nine-tailed fox with moth wings wearing a purple kimono, whose weapon of choice is a Chinese harp she uses to summon forth weapons and even virii. All villainy aside, Lumine is a pleasant, kind, somewhat shy girl who enjoys strategy games and even dabbles in certain forms of modern dancing.
Finally, there is the criminal mastermind leader, Dr. Royal, the half-brother of Dr. Regal. He is an easily excited and somewhat inept criminal lord who just can't resist buying the latest and greatest technology. He commands a virus program known as Prometheus.EXE. Due to his belief that fashion trends are corny and overrated, he sticks fiercely to his usual attire: khakis, a white undershirt with an aloha shirt worn over it untucked, tennis shoes, a glass eye, a short beard, a moustache, and hair usually kept long. Don't judge Royal by looks alone. He may seem slightly inept, but he is not. He is COMPLETELY inept. But fearing his retaliation, no member of the Royal Three informs him of his faults, and so Dr. Royal exists as a human tragedy.
The group is known as the Royal Three because…well…at this point, the group only has three members. Total. Being an absolute spendaholic, Royal spent too much money on new technology to even worry about buying the loyalty of new minions, goons, and human shields. The group is off to a rough start, but then again, underdogs have gone on to achieve great success.
And this is where our story begins.
OPERATION 1: S.P.A.M.B.O.T. (Sadistic Promotional Advertising Messenger Becomes Obedient Trainee)
Four o' clock AM in Aron City...what a time to get up in the morning. Chin had the complete lack of foresight to drink coffee before he went to bed, and so he had become excessively jittery that night. Two shots of Espresso, downed straight up after halting a conspiracy by a rival gang to get rid of Dr. Royal. What a time for caffeine.
He grudgingly made his way over to the refrigerator in order to find something, anything to eat and make himself feel tired and relaxed again. The Espresso danced around in his stomach and pounded the insides of his head as he pulled open the refrigerator door to find…
"…Cheetos?" Chin thought to himself as he pulled out a bag of stale orange goodness. "Anything's better than nothing…although when did Royal start buying THESE? I thought that senile old bag preferred Doritos. Anything that ends in –tos, I guess…"
"Unnnhhhh…" moaned a female voice behind him. Chin turned in the direction of the voice and saw his female partner-in-crime, dressed in her teddy-bear jammies.
"What are you doing up at this hour?" Chin asked as he raised an eyebrow.
"That's MY question," Lumine replied, rubbing her scalp and groaning. "Anyway...we got anything in there besides coffee and alcohol? I'm so thirsty..."
"I'll ask the questions around here…what are WE doing up at this hour?" yawned Royal as he walked out from the shadows dramatically…and then un-dramatically tripped and fell flat on his face. It was an irony that this clumsy wonder of a man had not yet broken his glass eye.
"I don't care...I'm heading back to the sack," Chin groaned as he started eating the pack of stale Cheetos, making his way back to his bedroom. "Good night…"
"Good night," Lumine muttered as she made her way back to her room, grabbing a bottle of water and gulping it down as though she had a grudge against the fish it had been taken from.
Chin and Lumine made their way back to their respective bedrooms. As for Royal…he simply stood there, staring into space and trying to remember the reason he was even up to begin with. A few minutes later, a slap of his fist indicated he finally recalled his cause for waking up at this insane hour. He got a cold can of beer from the refrigerator and made his way to the living room, sitting down gleefully in front of his television as it droned the noise that would drone endlessly into the night:
"What are these people running from? They're not! They're running TO the world's toughest competition in town! MXC…Most Extreme Elimination Challenge! Tonight, the Net Saviors take on the Bathroom Attendants! It's the people who make a living fighting evil versus the people who get to clean up after it!"
THAT MORNING…
"Are you sure you want to bestow it upon this person?" Slur asked as she raised an eyebrow.
"There is no point in deciding against this fated choice now!" Duo replied seriously. "Once you lost your bid to give it to Wily against me in Tic-Tac-Toe, we agreed to give Adver Man's data to Chin."
"But…Wily is a more worthy candidate…" Slur replied, somewhat pouting but then stopping as soon as she realized she was being overly dramatic and…gasp…out of character.
"Wily?" Duo asked as he narrowed his eyes. "You're kidding me, right? Surely we cannot risk this power falling into the hands of someone as insane as him."
"Point taken," Slur murmured, slightly defeated but relieved that the right choice had been made after all. "Well then, I'll be back in half an hour."
"I'll have the waffles ready," Duo called after Slur as she emailed herself back to Earth.
GREASY HAWG BREWERY, HEADQUARTERS OF THE ROYAL THREE…
Chin was soundly sleeping in his bed…literally. The mechanical chainsaw chatter of his snores echoed across the streets of Aron City as loudly as the chirps of the morning birds trying to outdo him.
His room was a simple one: white walls with red jagged stripes, a computer desk with the latest Macintosh model sitting atop its hilt, and the mandatory bunny slippers sitting beside his bed. Then, of course, there was an atomic clock hanging in a highly visible position on his wall, so he could still operate in the appropriate time zone. Finally, there was Chin, sleeping like a baby, albeit an extremely loud one.
Suddenly, a loud "DUNNNNN!" could be heard echoing throughout the room, causing the birds outside to shut up and find someone else to disturb. It even caused a minor disruption in Chin's snoring, resulting in him falling out of his bed and waking up involuntarily. This sound was all too familiar by now: the sound of a computer activating, a droning echo signaling the gratuitous electronic entertainment to come. Only in this case…
"Where exactly is that operator?" Slur wondered as she glanced around the room, looking at the clothes randomly and chaotically strewn about the floor, stale Dorito crumbs scattered across the desk, a stereo system still booming "Answer Must Be Somewhere," a disorganized bookshelf…
"I'm starting to wonder how anyone can even live here…" Slur thought to herself as she continued examining the room and wondering if tornadoes really existed indoors. "What kind of person actually inhabits a place like this?"
"BOO," Chin said in monotone as he thrust his face in front of the screen while brushing his teeth, after which Slur emitted a little yelp and fell backwards, her face blue with shock. Witnessing this, Chin made a slight smirk and continued, again in monotone, "Hey, you're kinda cute. For a Net Navi, anyway."
"You're even freakier than the last person I gave something like this to…" Slur huffed between heavy breaths, thinking back to the days of Kenishiro.
"Oh, you mean THAT dude," Chin shrugged. "Mrrrfff mfrmfrrrff mrrf."
"Pardon?"
"What I mean is," Chin continued as he removed his toothbrush from his mouth, "I remember that dude. The ad guy, right? I have to thank you for doing me a public service. No more telemarketing…the world is a better place without it."
"Of course not," Slur replied, closing her eyes dramatically. "After the chaos that erupted from the defeat of the advertising Navi Adver Man, companies no longer have a medium to advertise their products! He may have been evil, but he was a necessary…are you even listening to me?"
"I'm sorry, wha' now?" Chin asked as he continued brushing his teeth. "Your talk is a little too long-winded for me…"
"Fine," Slur said as she started drawing a few digital pictures, "I'll explain it so that even an idiot like you can understand what I'm saying."
"Fine, go ahead," Chin replied, shrugging obliviously.
Busting out several incredibly poorly drawn, childish stick-figure CG'd pictures, Slur proceeded to explain: "After Adver Man was destroyed, his data would have usually passed over to a realm called the Purgatory Server. Originally, we thought that the world would be better off without an evil as despicable as him…but we were wrong. Chaos and disorder erupted on Earth, and we've been forced to intercept his data on his way to the server."
Chin cringed in response as his left eye twitched.
"After we intercepted his data," Slur continued as she opened another poorly drawn and stupid picture, "we reorganized him into a new Navi. Since his entity has been sent to the Purgatory Server, this new Navi is nothing but data, and therefore needs another Navi to host it. The obvious choice…is you."
"Why me?" Chin asked as he raised an eyebrow. "My Navi is just fine."
"Chin?"
"Yah?"
"…Look at it."
With this, Chin looked down at his standard Navi, a small fuzzy and rectangular thing with beady eyes and a fanged mouth, dancing around like an idiot and screaming, "DUHH DAHH DAHH DUHH!"
"Point taken," Chin shrugged. "But there's one thing I still don't get."
"What is that?" Slur asked, wondering what could have possibly been misunderstood in an explanation as simple as hers.
"…Why the heck do your Photoshop skills suck so badly?"
"DO YOU WANT THE DATA OR NOT?" Slur shrieked.
"Uh, yeah, just a minute. So why does it have to be me?"
"As the potentially most powerful member of this clan, it's up to you to promote order on the Net…and that is why you must command this new Navi and help the Royal Three destroy the remaining clans. You must commit yourself to defending harmony on Earth and in the Cyber World."
"Well, if that's the case, I guess I'm up for it…" Chin murmured, "…although I don't buy into all of this commitment junk. If I do decide to help Dr. Royal or any other such person, it'll be whoever, whenever I want to."
"Fair enough," Slur replied, smiling and nodding her head. "Are you ready to accept the duties of a Net Savior?"
"Eh, sure," Chin shrugged obliviously. "Whatever, just give me the data and I'll decide what needs to be done from there."
"This…this man has to be the most brash and crude person I've ever met…" Slur thought to herself, "…but then again, there's no one else…"
With that, she made a sweeping motion of her arms and in a brilliant flash of light, Chin's new-generation PET suddenly expanded itself into a heavily advanced, highly futuristic device about twice the size of a normal PET.
"Er…" Chin murmured in awe, "…that's pretty cool, but why the new mods?"
"There's no other way to store Cyber Man's data. He IS an incredibly large file, you know."
At that point, Lumine rushed into Chin's room half-dressed, her pajama shirt buttoned halfway down in an unwittingly enticing manner. "Chin, what's going on here? Are my ears deceiving me, or did I just hear a big noise?"
"Lumine," Chin said as he turned to his partner, "meet Slur. She's some cyber servant sent to give me a new Net Navi. She even gave me a whole bunch of neat mods I didn't even have to pay for. That, and she's just about as hot as you are."
SLAP!
Getting up from Chin's steaming heap on the floor, a madly blushing Lumine looked at Chin's PET and squealed, "Oh, he's so CUTE!"
CUTE. Of all the things Chin wanted his new Net Navi to be, it was that one dreaded word…cute. Just the sound of having something like that made his knees weak with thoughts of endless torture and humiliation. Shuddering, he looked at the visual output screen of his new PET…and his eyes met with the strangest Net Navi he had ever seen.
A brightly lit angelic halo, resembling Roll's antennae. Humongous beady red eyes. A red cloak surrounding his entire body, similar to Darkman's cape. And finally, all this horribly adorable cuteness was topped off by an overly compressed, chubby body.
"Chin…" Slur said formally with a polite bow, "…meet your new Asteroid Navi…"
The little curious being greeted its new master by jumping up and down, each time waving its little feet rapidly in mid-air, as though attempting to use them to fly.
"…CYBER MAN.ZIP!"
"Whee! A new master!" Cyber Man squealed gleefully.
"All of that…" Chin yelled desperately to Slur, "…to give me something like THIS?"
"…Don't blame me," Slur shrugged. "I'm just following my master's orders."
With those final words, she disappeared before Chin could file any more complaints, or (gasp) appeal for another Navi. As for Chin himself, he simply stood and stared at his new Navi, completely stupefied, as Lumine made fangirly squeals at Cyber Man.
"Something the matter?" Cyber Man asked with a tilt of his head.
"Uh, noooo…" Chin muttered as he raised an eyebrow. "I just imagined someone a little more powerful…and a little bigger."
"Heehee, don't judge me by looks alone!" Cyber Man squealed…and then jumped up and down some more, making his new operator cringe even harder.
"I think he looks cute!" Lumine said happily. "Blind? What do you think?"
A mysterious blue fox-like navi with a strange lighted visor covering its eyes replied, "He is rather adorable…but doesn't look powerful at first glance. I'll wait until I see him fight to make a final judgment."
"YOU JUST MAY GET YOUR CHANCE!" Dr. Royal screamed as he rushed into the room, nearly inducing heart attacks in everyone but him. "Our first client has called in, and she wants us to complete a task for her!"
"Where is this new mission?" Chin asked seriously, getting straight down to business as always.
"It's based in the small neighborhood of Japantown, bordering the Western coast of Aron City," Dr. Royal replied, scratching his chin and looking off to his left. "Something about a foreign exchange kindergarten teacher named Madoi…humiliating children by forcing them to play in Dance Dance Revolution tournaments during recess hours. Now it's up to us to stop her evil misdeeds, because the client's little sister is in her class, and can't stand for her her to be humiliated in DDR any longer."
Chin and Lumine couldn't say they were surprised; this mundane task was pretty much another day as usual for the Royal Three Crime Syndicate.
"Client name?" Lumine inquired, almost as seriously as Chin.
"Mary Towa, I believe. She commands a Net Navi known as Ring…and I believe the younger sister is named Helen, and she doesn't yet command one of her own."
"I guess we'd better get started," Chin sighed. "This'll be our first chance to see you in action, Cyber Man...I stongly hope you're as good as this advanced PET says you are. After all, Madoi can't be THAT hard of an opponent to fight against, can she?"
"Actually," Dr. Royal moaned as he rubbed the back of his head, "you're not going to fight her in an actual Net Battle. The deal says that in order to stop her…she must be beaten in a DDR competition…with your Navi being the participant. Only then will she stop bullying those kids."
Chin shuddered. Why this, of all things? Of all the possible paths to victory that could have been lit for him, it all came down to the one thing in the world that he was bad at…
…a dancing competition.
MEANWHILE, DEEP IN SPACE...
"Are you sure we made the right decision this time?" Slur asked her gargantuan master uncertainly. "They are a criminal gang, after all..."
"Of course," Duo replied with a slight grin. "But remember, they are headed by Dr. Royal. The one who never allies with anyone. He is brash, arrogant, and the very definition of inept. I looked up his entire history, and can judge his exact personality based on that. He was specifically chosen for this mission because no matter how powerful his reputation...he is still a moron."
"I hope you're right," Slur sighed. "Very well. In order to free the Cyber World from corruption, we will place our faith in that bunch of idiots."
END OF OPERATION