Mega Man VI
Chapter Six: Into the Jungle
In stark contrast to the freezing temperatures and snow covered mountains of the weather station, Mega Man now found himself in a humid, tropical climate where the only color in front of him was green. Pushing the thick coverings of vines and tree branches out of the way as he walked forward, a clearing, uh… sort of opened up after traveling only a few meters, but the path ahead was still ridiculously overgrown. Green leaves, green bushes, green grass, thankfully at least the sky was blue, what little of it was visible within the canopy of leaves high up above, but it wasn't the sky that the blue robot had been sent all the way to Brazil to see… it was the building right in front of him.
Sticking out from within the foliage as if it were technology's very own attempt to defy nature, the Gigante Verde Farming Complex was not exactly what he expected when Dr. Light described it as a vertical farming center. Instead of the one single tower reaching up into the trees that Mega Man had imagined, this place was more like a series of much shorter towers, but all connected together like a pocket full of pens in order to create one big interconnected fortress filled with… oh who even knew what? Was it possible that the place was so overgrown because Plant Man was in there all by himself sort of like Blizzard Man had been? Or was it more likely that a facility designed to end world hunger would have a bit bigger budget for staff?
After teleporting back to the Japanese lab after dealing with the winterized robot, Mega Man showed the copied data to both the older scientist and Dr. Cossack for study, seeming to be a bit less compatible with the blue robot's systems than was usually the case. As had been suspected, since these latest robots hadn't been created by either Dr. Light or Dr. Wily, Mega Man hadn't been able to do much more than just that, copy the data. The scans of the defeated Blizzard Man yielded some kind of temperature altering device designed to cool the local area down to freezing temperatures, but when Mega Man tried to test out the new weapon, his arm cannon began to spark and build up energy as if it were going to explode.
"Look at these energy readings, Comrade Thomas." Dr. Cossack had observed, pointing to the monitors. "The input/output reactions between Rock's reactor core and the new weapon are unstable, cycling between giving too much and too little energy."
"Yes, a very curious problem." The older scientist had replied. "We are going to have to construct some kind of adapter that will balance the energy, or else Rock will not be able to use any of the defeated robot's weapons… an ability he must have in order to stop Mr. X."
Neither of the two scientists knew how long the construction of this energy balancer would take, and there had been no immediate response from the reclusive billionaire in reaction to the weather station being lost, so it was decided that the mission would continue. Mega Man wanted to go after Tomahawk Man in order to eliminate the threat of that old nuclear base, but without secondary weapons or the improvement to Rush finished yet, the blue robot facing down one of the tougher combat models was quite out of the question. No, it was decided that another guerilla strike was needed, since each of the captured robots was holding part of the world hostage, and that strike was going against Plant Man… with Roll as his operator for the time being.
His sister had been his radio contact before, and with the two scientists working on the various problems, someone had to study the maps and relay information, beginning with everything that was known about the farming complex. At last report the place was operating at full capacity, producing metric tons of fruit and vegetables, along with plenty of security systems in place to protect the plants themselves. After all, this wasn't some defunct weather station in the middle of frozen nowhere, it was a brand new experimental facility, but beyond that and a basic layout of the internal floorplans, there wasn't much more to go on.
"That's it, that's all you can tell me?" Mega Man asked, looking at the partially hidden building in front of him. "There's gotta be more, Roll, I can't even see the front door."
"Hey, I was designed for housework, I'm doing my best." His sister's voice replied. "According to the map, the main entrance is on the south side of the facility, right in the center, so… I don't know, chop away the plants until you find the door."
Not really chopping the branches, more like just pushing them out of the way and then stepping through, which resulted in a few instances of a random branch smacking the visor of his helmet when it snapped back, the blue robot managed to find… a metal wall. A solid structure in front of him, and surrounded by nothing but green, Mega Man had no choice but to simply feel along the wall, sometimes struggling to keep within visual distance of it because of how dense the plants were. He almost started shooting at them to simply burn away the foliage in his path, but then the blue robot realized that the enemy would be alerted to his position, so instead he just kept going.
When the entrance finally revealed itself, with Mega Man imagining some kind of roof hatch or maybe a secret passageway altogether, he was disappointed to find a set of glass double doors, one of the windows cracking because of a thick branch pushing against it, laong with a small sign in the corner that simply said PUSH. The cracked window pane finally gave up the ghost as he pushed the other door, startling the blue robot to the point where he jumped a little as the window became a hundred small fragments on the tile floor, and then he stepped through to find himself inside of some kind of entrance hall or maybe waiting room. There were brochures in a little stand on top of a long abandoned receptionist's desk, each providing a lot of useless information about the facility… except for one item that was quite useful.
"Roll, I've found a better map." He said, unfolding a guide for people on a tour of the place. "All right, I'm at the south entrance, and I'm guessing Plant Man will be in the administration section if he's doing this like Blizzard Man."
"Well, you need to be careful if you head that way." His sister's voice replied. "I have a friend who took a tour of that place with her dad once, and she said there were a lot of robots tending to the plants and doing farming. They probably aren't anything more than farming models, but a tool can be just as dangerous as a cannon in some cases."
This was true, since Mega Man had faced construction and deforestation models before, each one incredibly dangerous with their assigned implements. No specific information was on the map about what kind of robots were inside of the three possible paths between himself and the administration area; each one labeled as Irrigation, Farming, and Food Processing. Taking a moment and thinking about it, imagining that there were a lot of engineering robots inside a system for irrigation, as well as plenty of utility models in Food Processing, there were probably less inside the farming section, right? I mean, sure the plants had to be taken care of, but not as much as the other two, right?
In front of the blue robot there were three doors, each occupying a section of the octagon shaped waiting room, and so he pushed open the one in the middle, immediately having to wipe off the front of his helmet visor from the rain that was coming down. No, it wasn't rain, just a shower coming down from sprinkler heads mounted on the rafters way up high in this section, allowing the sun lamps to keep going at the same time. Metal walls surrounded this also octagon shaped, but much larger area, and ahead of Mega Man were sectioned fields of different trees and other food baring plants, each making it hard to see the way forward. The rows of corn were impossible to see through, but there was somewhat of a path through the mango and guava trees, so he went that way.
Suddenly there was movement, something on all fours jumping up just as the blue robot was ducking underneath a branch, then two strong metal legs kicking him in the chest, knocking him down into the dirt and mulch. Scrambling to his feet and then backing away, Mega Man aimed his arm cannon and fired, missing the first time as the shadowy figure dropped down before jumping again, but then hitting it dead center with the second and third shots. The four legged robot burst into flames, put out just as quickly by the falling rain, and allowing him to see that it looked like a giant yellow grasshopper, short legs in front and big legs in back for jumping, but at least it had been easy to destroy.
Not waiting around to see if it had any friends, the blue robot continued on his way, ducking underneath the branches, and watching along the ground for any more of those grasshopper robots, but not really seeing any, aside from some movement in the cornfields that might have been more of them. Maybe it was there to prevent pests from getting in the corn, and the one he destroyed had just wandered out accidently, but suddenly there was a new sound, that of a spinning metal blade, before he found himself being violently pushed forward. The force of the push made Mega Man stumble into one of the larger trees, held in place by his mysterious attacker as the spinning blade sparked against his armor.
There was no way to aim at the attacker from this position, so the blue robot grabbed onto one of the thicker branches, pulling himself to the side so that he could move around the tree and free himself, but not before feeling the sensation of stinging, burning agony from that spinning blade penetrated his armor, tearing into the circuits underneath. This made Mega Man cry out and fall sideways away from the tree, finally allowing him to see his attacker as they separated and he fell down into the mulch again. It had a gyro blade on top like those camera things on the frozen island, but shaped like a large blue beetle with a spinning blade mounted at the end where its mandibles would be.
Slicing through a thick branch that was between them as if it were butter, the flying dog-size insect came right at him again, but Mega Man was able to shoot it in the body with a blast from his arm cannon. Sputtering a little and lurching to the side, the robot was able to recover after a couple seconds and resume the attack, but by this time the blue robot was able to charge up his mega buster. Blam! While the standard shots already did considerable damage to this agricultural machine, the enlarged energy bolt blasted it into pieces, leaving only the gyro still spinning for a second before it was embedded into the nearest tree.
Unfortunately, the flying insect hadn't been the only one to take damage, with little bits of sparks coming out of the hole that had been torn in the center of Mega Man's back armor, making it a bit more difficult for him to get up than expected. Using the tree to help keep his balance, the blue robot struggled to his feet, only to have his vision obscured by what at first looked like snow as it swirled around him. No, the large white flower petals weren't swirling, they were stabbing, the razor sharp petals embedding themselves deeply into the front of Mega Man's armor in a dozen places, including one that got stuck in the helmet visor right between the blue robot's eyes as he fell down again.
"No, do not bother getting up, mi amigo." A new voice laughed. "This will all be over soon, and then you can rest."