"We're here, Roll."
The girl-bot looked around, mildly confused. They were standing there in a hospital. Or at least it sort of looked like it. Everything was bending and waving strangely, only giving vague impressions of the things included in a house of healing. To make it worse, things looked all strange and pixelated. It was sort of like looking at images through an old, crackling TV screen and underwater at the same time.
"What is this place?" Roll asked. "Is this more of the In-Between world?"
"Yeah, but it's closer to your world." GrimMoody affirmed. "This is the place where you're going to say the magic words that will reverse time and enable you to stop the Maverick War from ever happening."
"Right! I'm ready!" an enthused Roll exclaimed. "Er, magic?"
"Yeah, magic. Now close your eyes and repeat after me. 'Rock, take the right elevator'."
The housekeeper blinked, her innocent blue eyes pinched in doubt. "That's it? No incantations or anything?"
"Pssht. Don't question my magic. It's magic! I'm the dang author and you'll do as I say. Now go on."
Roll nodded, weirded out by the author. She had trusted GrimMoody this far, so there was no point in stopping here. If there was anything that Roll didn't want, it was to go back to the other future and await what "Dr. K" had planned for her. Being stranded in the In-Between didn't seem like much fun either, so she took a deep breath and pressed her eyelids down firmly, speaking as if the words she had to say were a lot more dramatic than they really were.
"Rock...take the right elevator."
"What? Huh? What was that?"
A small but heroic robot in blue armor turned around, searching for the source of the mysterious words. They didn't seem to come from anywhere in particular, but they were so quiet that it had to have come from somewhere close. Mega Man walked a bit up and down the hall. There was no one there.
"Funny...that sounded sort of like Roll." Mega shook his head. "I need to get my auditory receivers checked. Oh well."
The blue bomber returned to the elevators. He got there just in time to see the left elevator doors close and the elevator pass him by. Shrugging a little, Mega Man just pushed the down button again. He was a patient robot. The next elevator would come soon. He let himself have a look back at Dr. Cain's room. He had just checked on the villain to make sure he was okay and that he wasn't going to be a problem in the future. The poor human was badly hurt by the explosion of his lab. The final battle Dr. Cain had caused didn't end well for him. Mega Man hoped that Cain would learn his lesson and never try to operate instant death spikes again. It wasn't a good idea to try and fill an entire room with them.
"Alright, I just have to file some papers with the nurses downstairs and I'm all set!" Mega Man said outloud, a little more happily than he felt. The papers were for Dr. Light's last stay in the hospital, and it was hard for Rock to think of that time, raw as it was in his mind. But he shook it off. He was going to have to go on living well without his creator to honor Dr. Light's memory. He was up for the task.
The right elevator opened, and out stepped two bizarre figures. One of them was an older man with bushy grey hair and a beard, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses. The other was a man whose awkward body was covered by a large, brown trenchcoat and a hat that didn't settle completely on his head. The popped up collar of the coat covered his face. At the sight of Mega Man, both of the figures froze.
"Hm?" Mega Man was confused. "Can I help you with something?"
"Uh...no, we are fine, thank you." The older man said with a thick Austrian accent. "We're just visiting someone. It is so amazing to get to see a hero like you!"
"Aw, shucks." Mega laughed. "Well, if you'll excuse me, I've got some business downstairs."
The second person held the elevator doors open for Mega Man, and the blue bomber quickly scuttled in before the doors closed on him.
"Thanks!"
"No problem!"
The others walked away, and the doors began to close. At the very last second, Mega Man put out his hand again to stop them. He just knew that he'd heard those two voices before. Who could they be? Mega Man figured it wouldn't hurt to ask. He tried to remember where he met them.
Maybe it was at that one press conference, or at a carnival or something. The older guy sounds a lot like the man at the ring toss...
He went down the hall, following their footsteps back to the rooms. They were heading for Dr. Cain's room, and that left even Mega Man suspicious. He didn't know that Dr. Cain had any friends (his police report said otherwise), so he guessed that the pair might be his accomplices. Trying to thing the best of things, Mega Man hoped that they were some distant relatives. It would be nice for Dr. Cain to not be alone. In any case, the pair reached Dr. Cain's room before Rock did, so Rock just listened at the door.
Waking and looking up at the surprising guests, Nikola croaked weakly, "What do you want?"
"Hello there! How are you feeling?"
"Like crap. Go away."
"You're hardly polite. I really think you should be in this situation."
"Uhnn...leave me alone." Dr. Cain attempted to turn away, but moving only pained him. "Ow...who are you guys anyway? You're not the doctors here."
Dr. Wily pulled off his beard and sunglasses with glee, only happy to answer his question. "I think you might recognise me from TV."
"Dr. Wily? You're still alive?" Mega Man had his buster out at once, aiming it at Wily. "That means back to prison with you!"
The evil doctor turned around, brimming with hate as he let out a rather nasty swear. "Mega Man...how? Our disguises were perfect! Cut Man, distract him!"
The trenchcoat and hat fell from Cut Man, for that was indeed who it was, as he cut his way out of the unfitting clothes. "I'll chop you up good, Mega Boy!"
"Whatever all of you do," Dr. Cain groaned, pushing the call nurse button now that Wily wasn't looking. "Could it be somewhere else? You people are loud and I have a headache!"
"Whiner." Wily scoffed, wishing that Mega Man wasn't standing in the doorway. "Well, Mega Man, you can't fight us here without endangering your little prisoner. What's it going to be?"
Nervous, Mega Man looked from face to face, from Wily's evil grin, Cut Man's narrow eyes, and Dr. Cain's aggravated expression. He didn't know what to do. Thinking quickly, he teleported out.
"He's teleported just outside the building." Cut Man reported.
"You get down there and stop him from getting to me!" Wily hissed. "I've got to make a break for the skull capsule."
"Right!"
An orange light went up into the air, and Wily started to run. He crashed into the nurse Dr. Cain had called up, but wasn't delayed more than a second as he just shoved her aside and headed for the stairs. Rushing down them with his mind dizzy from curses and ways he wanted to hurt his enemy, he didn't even notice that he was running straight into Mega Man until it was too late.
"GAH! No! No way!" Wily started with an abrupt temper tantrum. "I had everything planned and ready! I worked too hard for this!"
"Well, you worked hard enough to go to prison for a long time!" Mega Man retorted. "And now that we know you're trying to mess with Dr. Cain, we can nip that plan in the bud right now! Just come quietly, Doctor."
-t-
Outside the hospital, Cut Man hastily looked back and forth. This was the spot that he had traced the blue bomber to, but the heroic robot was nowhere in sight. Cut Man searched in all directions, but the parking lot only held cars and people.
"Augh!" Cut Man exclaimed. "He must have changed his teleport frequency so I'd trace it wrong! Wily's in trouble now!"
That was definitely the truth. Cut Man tried to run back inside the hospital to search for his master, desperately wishing that inward teleports weren't being blocked, but he only made it in time to see Mega Man hauling a firmly handcuffed Wily out the door with one of the hospital's security guards.
"Dang! Okay, well I can at least rescue him so he can get away. Rock might cut me up, but it's for the master!"
That wasn't possible either. At some point Mega Man must have contacted his lab, because there arrived Bass, even as Cut Man was going over his options. Forte argued with Wily for a bit, as was their unique way of saying hello, before an uneasy Mega Man asked him to search for Wily's companion robot.
"Crap!" Cut Man, while not normally cowardly, knew he couldn't take on both robots at once for any amount of time. "I guess Wily does have to go to jail for now. I'll break him out later, but those idiots aren't going to get the skull capsule!"
The timber-bot ran off, going to do just that.
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Author's Notes:
- Dear China. Please allow me to express how scary your elevators are and how unpleasant it is to be smushed in the doors as they close in. Please increase the amount of time your doors stay open, as well as their sensitivity to there being a person in the way. Thank you for the interesting experience, but kindly attempt to change the methods of your elevator producers. Thank you. Sincerely, GrimMoody.
- Alright, just so you guys know, I've done a clean up edit of chapters 6-15 just for the sake of making the story better. Nothing has changed too much, but if you had a reviewer Maverick from chapters 6-10, I've added quotes to them. Now all the reviewer Mavericks should have quotes, and you can check it out if you like.
- Okay guys, I'm going to need a little break. I have started on my next story, and I'm going to be doing a lot of buffering, but I'm not going to post it for a while. I want to get some planning done, as this story suffered a bit from lack of planning. I have a fairly good idea of what I'm going to do next, but I have to balance all of the ideas. I think you're going to get a really good story next. It just might be the best one. Anyway, expect to see that sometime in January. Until then I'll be buffering or being lazy. :D Enjoy this teaser until then.