Part 41: The dread builds.

ACDC3, 4th of the square areas, looking at the route to Oran. Yup, this is the place.



Open the center, and there we go! The OldKey reacted to the area, and here's a door that leads somewhere. Woo?



The game builds up to whatever's in here, that's for sure.



It even makes a "Hey, get your crap sorted and save before entering!" point. Sorry to burst any bubbles, but what's in there isn't exactly a threat. Sure, though, we can't leave it for the few minutes this situation will take, but really. Compared to what's coming up next update, this is a joke.



A dark tunnel leads to quite a surprise hidden here.



It's ACDC Town!



Nope. This is what's referred to as a VisionBurst later on. It fits into the plot in a rather odd way. But hey, MegaMan's in ACDC Town!



A digital copy thereof, actually. It's...a novelty, really. I'll hold off on fully commenting on this until it becomes clear what the heck is actually going on.



This isn't "just" a digital copy of ACDC Town, it's ACDC Town at the time Lan and Hub were born!



Right, that's enough exposition. For one thing, I kind of like the small bit of consistency here. Remember the room inside of Alpha at the end of MMBN3? It had the same orange-ish sepia tone as well.

Removing the nostalgia goggles...Let's assume this was set up 12-ish years prior to the game, since Lan's in 6th grade and would be about that old. For one thing, it's amazing that the whole Lan and Hub thing stayed a secret until MMBN1, given that everybody in the entire town seemed to know about the birth of twins.

Secondly, it's real nice to see that Moore's law has been chucked out the window entirely. The air conditioner computer having the clue to the location of the OldKey was bad enough, but you seriously mean to tell me that the creator of the internet intended for things to be unchanged enough that the clues would even point to the right location? Not helping matters is the fact that the internet changes every single game, so what the hell do we say about that? Gosh, good thing the internet happened to be formatted in exactly the correct way this in-game month, right everybody?



On top of that, the entire layout of ACDC Town changed in 4. This is where ACDC Elementary School should be, not Yai's mansion! But no, it's apparently not just a renovation thing from 3 to 4, now it's a full-blown retcon. Joy!



And looking around the area, here's Gow. Who endears himself to me immediately by playing barking sound clips for a solid 10 fucking seconds. I get the damned point, Capcom! Lan comments on what an ugly-looking dog Gow is, triggering another 5 seconds of barking. How nice.



To actually get the story moving, it's the standard "Talk to all the NPCs in the area" bit at work. Yes, there are virus encounters here, but no new viruses to show off. Everything gets mowed down by the massive firepower at my disposal at this point anyway, the average battle time is about one and a half seconds.



Scrub Brush, anyone? Augh, no, damn you, MMBN4 tournament scenarios, get back into the repressed depths! I want to forget about you!



Yeah, VisionBurst ACDC is neat and all, but not very informative. We've met Gow, that's about it, and we already knew he existed by talking to Haruka.



As we head to leave, however...



Good question. You know, just picture some highly-trafficked web page having a link to something like this hidden in the HTML. How long do you think it would go undiscovered? It could be done, you know, buried between the lines of code, commented out:

People'd find it pretty damn quick.



And what any of this has to do with the plot is anyone's guess at this point. You'd be amazed how silly it ends up being, but the answer won't come for a good while.



Actually, it's precisely your time, Lan. Although, let's be fair, MegaMan and Lan have no damned idea what this is at all. Time for some extermination!



Yeah, given how small the area is, expect this to go by quick. Your welcome.



The Nebula HeelNavi squad, surprisingly, has some pretty dickish viruses. If I were playing any of the other games in the series and were at a similar point in them, this would be difficult. But MMBN5, especially DTDS, is just packed to the brim with completely absurd firepower.

I mean, look at this one custom screen! I have DarkInvis, LeaderRaid, and FullCust. This is enough to pretty much kill anything up to the postgame! I actually went and made a somewhat nerfed alphabet soup folder in case I decided that all challenge in the game had been nullified and bosses weren't any fun. It's not in use, but it exists and gets occasional upkeep just in case.



I'm actually killing things so hard and so fast I wind up having a hard time showing some things off! The Handy viruses have a new trick up their, er, lack-of-sleeves. "Dummy Bombs" with Xs in place of the countdown will harmlessly fizzle out if you leave them alone, but if you mistake them for the normal TimeBombs, they'll explode upon being damaged.



Here's the last of the squad. Straightforward, ain't you?



Even Lan and MegaMan don't really see how this has resulted in anything that could be called progress. You know what that means, time to be interrupted by something to set the plot on track!



There we go, right on schedule. If these games are one thing, they're predictable. Seriously, some of my favorite comments in the thread are the ones by people unfamiliar with the games who realize all the recurring trends and snark at them just as well as I've been. To test you, the readers, try and guess who's coming through the door:

A: Colonel, because we always have NPCs following us.
B: A revived ShadeMan, because that fucker never goes away.
C: NumberMan, because this chapter keeps bringing him back clumsily.
D: Someone we haven't met before, because now's as good a time as any.
E: A likable character from a previous game, becau-hahaha, no.























Ta-daaaa.



Wait, shit, what?! NumberMan and Higsby, Nebula agents? It can't be!



It all makes sense! The huge number of DarkChips at and around the shop, the shady, inexplicable behaviour over the last update!



It's worse than I thought, that's trademark Nebula stupidity and self-defeatism! Revealing one's allegiance, thus spoiling any further abilities to spy on the group or investigate the VisionBurst without suspicion? And then just leaving once that footbullet has been taken care of? It's...It's true.

Let's investigate the store, quick!



YOU FIENDS!



Baryl tells Lan he's done good work. Nothing left to do today but go home and rest, though.



But before that, remember that Mystery Data we couldn't open as Colonel? Here we go, and yup, it's an HPMemory. Unlike all previous games, I will be going for all of them. You see, the postgame dungeon, like MMBN3, has various doors that only open if you've accomplished some specific objective, and one of them is having all the HPMemory upgrades. So, in the interest of completion, and in case something good is behind that door, I'm nabbing all of them.



Heading to bed, we cut to NumberMan, gloating over his plan. Wait, that's Ms. Mari's Navi.



MegaMan teleports in.

IMPOSTER! That absolutely cannot be MegaMan!



Opening fire on Ms. Mari's Navi doesn't detract from the point. MegaMan teleported into the area. That's obviously not him, MegaMan has to walk everywhere, unlike every other Navi in the entire fucking world!



So, an imposter MegaMan attacked them while Lan and the real MegaMan were asleep. Yeah, you can probably understand what's going on now. If you can't, well...I could when I first played the game...



Waking up the next day, plot advancement has occurred!



Ah, MMBN, so predictable. Would it really be that hard to at least space the exposition out and provide it out of order before involving it in the storyline? This is another reason why I felt as though the MMBN games were getting kiddier and kiddier with each new installment. It's not even railroading, this is hand-holding.

MMBN2, 3, and even 4 had moments of foreshadowing, though they likewise also had this same sort of "This is X! *Ten minutes later* Y is happening at/with X!" linearity. Just not as much of it. I'm just grouchy and stubborn, though, take this with a grain of salt. I'll be just as nitpicky with 6 when I can be.



Arriving at the communication antenna, MegaMan has no success fixing things here.



God dammit, it's just like breaking into ParkArea2 again! No, look, I can explain, and if you battle me, I'm going to whup your sorry-



This surprises me every time. Rather than attack us in any way, the NPC actually listens to the explanation that we were just trying to fix things. However, he corrects us, as this thing just broadcasts signals, the problem is in the GargoyleComp at GargCastle. GargComp may have a funny name, but oh lord am I not looking forward to this.



Shit! I was going to stock up on NetMerchant-supplied HPMemorys, but because of the network interference, they've all cleared out! Seriously, I do not pay attention or any regard to my max HP most of the time, you know this upcoming dungeon is bad if I feel the need to take a precaution like this. But go figure, the one time I actually feel motivated...



GargCastle is locked down with various protective systems. The first is the holographic samurai. He needs KatanaData, ArmorData, and HelmetData to be complete, opening the door.



Fortunately, we don't have to go far or try very hard to get those makeshift keys. Each of the display sets of stuff nearby has one item you can Jack-In to and acquire the respective data from.



Thing is, we need to prove that we're real men and prove ourselves worthy in a trial of combat for each!



And because each of them has a new type of virus, the three fights for the samurai data will be seeing more attention than they would normally.

Eleogre: I, er, killed this guy before he could attack with two consecutive TankCannon blasts out of habit, so I'm going purely off memory here. These floating oni heads drift around fairly harmlessly, before stopping in place to generate a line of electricity down MegaMan's column that remains in place for a few seconds. Their entire schtick is limiting the amount of space you have to move, so they'd be dangerous if they could survive.



One down, two to go. Time for ArmorData.



NinJoy: The old Snapper viruses from MMBN2 make a comeback! With a new name, as usual...They've developed a new attack pattern, however. They'll remain stationary until attacked, then teleport to a panel diagonal to the one MegaMan's...okay, it's not different from MMBN2 at all. This time, instead of using Kunai attacks, however, they use MoonBlades, which hit in a full circle around them. Yeah, they're functionally identical to Snappers.

On the plus side, the MoonBlade chips are handy. Not in S-code, so no main folder use for you, but the one obtained from this fight goes into the alphabet soup Folder2.



Time for HelmetData.



Zomon: The old Swordy viruses are gone, perhaps they mutated into the Bladia DarkGuardians and these guys. Zomons are very similar to Swordys. They'll use AreaGrab, but these samurai are quicker than their old counterparts. Instead of advancing forwards panel by panel, Zomons will drift up and down their columns, and when they line up with MegaMan, they'll rush up to the front of the area and make a Longsword-Widesword double slash attack.



That's all three 'keys', so we can move onwards now!



To this.