Here we go again with the reviewer replies...
Star Holder Commander: Hey! What happened to the stream of ideas that will come in handy for the epilogue (and other BN fics)? Last chappie your idea was awesome! Must...have...more... XD
Rose Kitsune.EXE: Lan saying 'curry' like Homer says 'donuts'... It wouldn't have the same effect - you can't eat curry with just your hands, after all (But maybe Lan and/or Homer could!). :D By the way, why'd you call my OC Chris-chan? Wouldn't that mean he's a girl...?
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"And I thought you were my friend!"
Lan's eyes were burning with a roaring brown fire as Dex helped him to his feet. My anger dissipated as I saw my Net Op – okay, former Net Op – so hurt. In felt guilty as he swung himself up onto his roller blades, started toward me, fell, got up again, and resumed skating forward. He stared at me, eyes locked on my nose - but, alas, my extra three centimetres didn't really help much on Lan's part. I held out my hands and took a step backward, the sign of peace.
"Whoa, Lan." I bit my lip and glanced around nervously as he came toward me, Dex and Maylu's figures faintly blurred in the background. "Watch." His arm was still hanging at his side like an abandoned sock puppet; in one sure movement I grabbed it by his wrist and pressed one finger down, right below the knuckle.
Lan stood staring at me for a few seconds, then I saw shock replace anger as a tiny shimmering sparkle flickered around his whole arm, leaving shining white rings wherever it went. It touched here, it tapped there, and it must have been so amazing for Dex, who was watching from behind us. His were eyes so wide it seemed to make his mohawk stand up. Maylu - well, she just looked shocked and incredibly happy. (She made me think of Roll somehow. It was actually a pleasant feeling...)
"It's almost like a Recover chip." Lan rubbed his arm, reflecting about something, then glanced up. "Oh. Right." He blushed. "Sorry. For getting mad at my own NetNavi."
"No problemo, amigo," I laughed in my fake Spanish accent. "After all, you're younger than me. You have a right to be a little dumb."
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Five minutes later, and Dex was still laughing. 'I'm smarter and more handsome than you.' He echoed these words of three minutes past. "That's the funniest thing I ever heard in my life."
Lan shot a glare in my direction. I grinned evilly.
A short while later, Maylu left for her fuchsia-coloured house, which was a this point a large red-violet dot on the horizon. Dex and I bade her goodbye, but Lan was still fuming. We set off again, this time detouring around the park so that we would end up right in front of Dex's yellow house, which - ironically enough - squatted down right beside the subway station.
I felt guilt toward my former Net Op so, a few minutes later, I slowed my gait until he was right next to me. His arms were crossed, his eyes were burning with a furious flame, his face was shadowed, and he was staring at me in a most hostile and, I must add, incredibly annoying way.
"Lan," I said quietly, my head bowed. In addition to feeling really guilty, I felt rejected; I could feel his eyes on my neck. "I...um...I'm not sure I'm sorry, but I am feeling incredibly guilty right now..."
"That's all right," he replied, cool as you please, with the quickest of mood changes. I looked up, surprised. "You can annoy me in the worst way ever possible... Just let me chase you first."
Now he looked crazily insane, evil, even. "Uh, Lan? I thought I was faster than you?" I stuttered in a small, tiny voice.
"Give you one hint, Jack," he whispered furiously, his eyebrows slanting together and his brown eyes gleaming. He muttered something into my ear.
"Run!"
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It was quite a while later when returned to Lan's house. I was considerably out of breath and my former Operator even more, but he had somehow managed to catch me, twice, by the ankles. Both times, I had managed to run off into the sunset, but Lan being who he was... Well, let's just say my legs were on fire and my ankles were even worse.
"Mom!" Lan called when we walked through the door. I immediately sought refuge by bounding up the stairs as quickly and quietly as I could, hoping that a short stay in his bedroom would soothe my aching legs. "You know, right?"
There was something to do with the sight of Lan's short, pretty mother, appearing from the kitchen, her brown eyes akindle. She was wiping her hands on a dish towel and looked up as he approached. "Of course I know," she replied with a smug grin. "No stopping mothers."
I paused suddenly and leaned over the hallway railing, watching as she passed them with the biggest of cheesy, gloating grins. I now knew where Lan had gotten his craziness from.
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My aching legs were still pounding when Lan ascended to his room a few minutes later. One hand was on his PET; I knew he wanted to jack me in, maybe run crazily around the Internet, but I couldn't let him."Sorry," I muttered, wincing, as I got up from his bed. "I think this pain is gonna follow me through the Internet - if I actually want to go."
"Really?" Lan dared question my authority just then, sliding, almost, a smooth orange and white figure, over to his dresser, which he then proceeded to lean against, arms crossed. "I think you'll be OK, Mega Man.EXE?" He held the blue PET up temptingly, invitingly.
He's insane, I thought as I stared at my former Net Op. Indeed, his eyes were glowing, his expression was crazily demented, and he triumphantly pumped his PET-hand into the air as I watched. "Trust me."
"It's not that I actually trust you," I told him, cocking my head cheekily to the side as I stared at him, "but I have nothing else to do. And, hopefully, I won't get more hurt than I already am."
"I'm right, of course," Lan assured me, grinning as he shoved the cord of his PET into the port at the side of his PC. "Jack in, Mega Man, power up!"
I materialised easily and with speed, directly onto the 'Net's silver-tiled flooring. I grinned suddenly and rushed into the blackness beyond, my body energised and my limbs renewed as I let my hand transform itself into my handy Mega Buster. It had been a while since I'd done this; the last time had been when I'd been fighting with Proto Man. You had to admit, living between the Internet and Lan's PET was good, though I wanted something more. It was now too normal, too regular. I wanted to just be out there, back in the Real World. Not right away, though - now was the time for a little virusbustin'.
It hadn't begun yet – I was standing, fully fledged, smack-dab in the middle of the Internet's smooth tiling, and wasn't about to let it go to waste. I zinged down from the circular portal set in the floor of the tiles, to the other side of the 'Net, all in the space of approximately three point five seconds. I can imagine what I must've looked like – a bluish, yellow-streaked blur that was nigh-invisible at first sight.
As I ran, I thought I heard one program comment to a standard green Navi, "Wow, look at that guy go."
He had a point: nothing was impossible, nothing was unbeatable, everything was doable, and no challenge was to great for the power of the good side. A somewhat accurate thought at that point, considering -
"Ow!" I muttered, gathering my injured leg from under me and attempting to right myself. I'd tripped over something lunky standing up in the middle of my pathway – no, not lunky, but rather bunched up into a tight little ball. I tried to pull my leg free from the ball-shaped thing, but it clung on, black and dangerous, so much like some demented octopus Navi's tentacles. I tried to shoot at it with my Buster, but to no avail. I looked up into someone's face, a face of one so wicked that it was literally etched in cruelty; I could see the evil embedded in the Navi's eyes and yet never still, always moving, flowing, spreading, suffusing, misting the eyes over so that they were dark and clouded.
It was Bass.
This was not the first time, nor the last, that I had seen him. Bass was one of the most scariest (pardon the grammar) NetNavis out there, a chillingly horrid black figure who haunted the deepest, darkest corners of the Undernet, where the very air slicked back with fear and horror. Actually, I didn't know where he wandered; together with his cruel mad scientist of an Operator, Wily, he was liable to appear in any of the darkest, furthest regions of the Internet. Bass, along with his cohorts, could make himself scarce and pretty much disappear any time he wanted to. So, in other words, I figured he penetrated the invisible barrier that separated the Undernet from the rest of the Internet. It wasn't a normal barrier; rather, it had been created – and was still kept thriving – in the past, on account of the evil that could lurk through its tormenting twists and turns, its dastardly dips and ducks.
"Hello, Mega Man," Bass sneered, holding up his left hand and snapping his fingers so that the bomb-like black thing clutching onto my leg like some explosive parasite floated into his outstretched palm. Despite the fact that his body was shrouded in a tight sable-coloured cloak, he somehow managed to give me his evil, clouded glare, enough so that I felt it boring a hole through my soul. Undefeated, I rose, wobbily but without hesitation, to my feet and stared him right in the eye. My hand was in Buster format; I pushed the blue canon forward ever so slowly, so Bass would know who he was dealing with.
"Bass. How could you." It wasn't a question. I stepped forward, tough, in my element, as the evil Navi would try to down me – sans doute, there was nothing in the world that could stop this guy, as he clearly thought.
He shrugged. "I've watched you, Mega Man.EXE." He looked up suddenly, his face wreathed in a wicked smile. "I've seen everything Chaud Blaze has, and more. And now, because of your horridly meddlesome nature – everyone has different artificial intelligence, and yours happens to be most annoying – you will have to be deleted. Destroyed, in other words, so that evil can make its mark."
Bass grinned dementedly and, yet somehow sanely, tipped his head downward so that his (cough - outrageous - cough) peaked hat threw his face in shadow. Instinctively, I took a step back – at the same time, Bass.EXE, Navi to the criminal genius and mastermind Albert W. Wily, made his mark.
He formed a dark energy ball in his gloved hands, rolling it around like a snowball in the making – not a clinging-on type ball like before, but one so evil that it seemed to be created with flowing, dappled shadows – aimed, steadied, fired. I stood, motionless, my feet having taken root in the ground, as the energy ball came hurtling my way.
I still hadn't moved when it crashed into my crest.
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That last scene is dedicated to Fiinikkusu Akumu. It was in the original copy of this fic, but I may not of posted it otherwise. ;) That's Forte for you, peeps! MUAHAHAHA!