Part 34: Internet Flame War.

I think I am looking forward to updating more and more now.





Gee, I wonder who. Yes, this is your biggest hint as to where FlashMan is located, I believe.

Epilepsy??


We're in ACDC CyberSquare, so let's respond to that anonymous mail from the last update.







Bruce Lee! Represent!



It's the Navi, never the person controlling the Navi. Solo Navis Master Race

To be fair, you are using MegaMan. Let's see you do this with a standard navi.





He's our new friend!!



Oh look, random NPC dude agrees with me. Can we not help Match anymore?

Hey now, who are you gonna trust? This random guy you just met, or the guy you've known for years as I think the guy who tried to set your mum on fire?



Not only that, but he didn't shower. He's smelly.

Ummm yeah, it's like Pokemon. Fire-types don't like water.





Next update? NAAAAAAHHHH.



Every update!! We're making a lot of new friends this game. First Mr Match, now this guy who says Mr Match is some sort of... suspicious character??







"mended his ways"

I can only assume those quotes are for emphasis.





Oh right, we gotta visit Sick Kid McTake-My-Fucking-Chip Guy.

Man, you are really bad at spelling. I've never seen anybody write "BEST FRIEND" in so many letters.



You were knocked out 5 minutes ago.

Kids, amirite??





Evidentally, demanding my chip back is actually good medicine.

Dr Giver! Though to be fair you also fought a tree. Is that something doctors do? I can only imagine so.







Oooo, maybe I'll let you trade me this, then. I WANNA OPEN UP ITS SECRETS.







Note: we never get to see this party, but given what happens at the end of this story, I would have very much liked to see the interaction that would take place between Lan and Mamoru.

And we never saw Mamoru again after this game.

As far as I can remember.

Quick, everybody go play MMBN4 to double-check!









The fuck?





Wait, you mean you came down all the way here, presumably on your lunch break to ask Lan a favor? You couldn't just e-mail or call him? You were doing that last update! How did you know Lan would be here anyway? There was that NPC that mentioned Mamoru wanted to visit, but Match shouldn't actually know that, right?

IT'S BECAUSE WE'RE FRIENDS NOW? I guess? Maybe Mr Match can't work emails too good.






And instead of asking any of the staff, you track down Lan to ask him. What?

Because we're friends! Also I'd assume because everybody at SciLab except Lan's dad is incompetent. We all know this.





Exactly! You were paid to do this, mother fucker! You figure it out! Why do we gotta do shit for free, and especially for you?

Ha, exploiting children.





Get the fuck off Lan's back. This is YOUR job! And if you can't do it, how the fuck do you expect Lan to?







Of course, Lan is a kid and is easily susceptible to this kind of manipulation.

Lan's also more guillible/stupid than most.



You should just leave then.

No, steal his chips, then leave. No wait that'll make him say way worse things to you, I bet.





Oh, Match was listening in on the commendation, hence why he knew about Lan's visit.

Not suspicious at all! Ever! Hi Mr Match!!





No shit.

Well at least somebody here is smarter than a box of hair.



You could just, you know, ignore him.

Pffft whaaaaat? I don't think that's like, a thing you can do. Generally, ever.


But first, I have to cash in Mamoru's payment.



Sweet. But wait, Mamoru has a code like this? He's a sickly kid, how the fuck did he get permission to enter the hospital's servers.

He's there all the time, I'm sure he didn't like... steal it, or anything underhanded like that.



YES! Pink is probably the most common color, so this opens up our possibilities.

Moral of the story: always give away crap chips to sickly children.



Would you look at that, the warp leads to inside Hospital Comp 3



Bad reward, but the SpinPink on its own more than made up for the IceBall M. This has been a productive trade.

Annddddd I guess we should play errand boy once more.

Haha, just once more? That's not very MMBN of you.



Okay, okay, fine, we'll do your fucking tasks, Match.

...his mugshot doesn't always look this... evil, right?



Seems legit.

Certainly doesn't seem like something that's ever set anything on fire befor-



OH! GREAT! YEAAAAAHHH!

Oh. Nevermind.



This is sooooo dumb, how do I begin to convey this?



With pictures of Mr Progs?





Mr Progs: More guillible than Lan



Echy, you realize he's going to die, right?

I- wait what?







He's beginning to overheat now. Perfect. When in doubt, kill Mr. Progs.

NOOoooooooooo



That was all? You couldn't get your Navi to do this for you, Match? It was just a fucking delivery job.

When in doubt, always implicate an idiot kid.





Lan! Your fucking brain should be going off right now! Oh wait, nevermind.

His... what?



Like, seriously, the Program is doing all the work, all you need to do is have your Navi hand the data over! Why would a professional have trouble with this!? Lan, don't you see when something isn't right!?

Like I said, all SciLab staff are useless. Except for Lan's dad.



Even MegaMan can't handle the data!

To be fair, you do have a WoodStyle at the moment.







Mr. Progs have no say. He's as good as gone.

Oh my god a hot drink vending machine. Those things are the GREATEST. Yeah this is totally on the level, it'll be fine!

_{Mr Prog will be fine, right???}







Bye bye, Mr. Prog.

SEE YOU AGAIN SOON MR PROG







MegaMan, do you not see this shit? I mean, c'mon, the Program is saying it's too much!

He's talking about delicious coffee



It's fine everything's fine.



Here we go again.





Lan, PLEASE! Something should tell you that installing programs into your own father's computer is HIGHLY suspicious. Why does anything need to be installed there? Just let your Dad do it.

Hey now, Yuuichiro's a busy man probably. IT'S FINE





Yes, these KeyItems references all the Navis Match had throughout the series.

I did not notice that!





Just shove it inside you and die already. I want out of this nonsense.



Hey man, ain't no need to take it out on the Mr Prog.





Who needs security to reject unwanted programs? Nobody, that's who.

Securit... what?? WHAT THE HELL IS IT SECURITY?







Keep a tally of Dead Progs.

Zero. They're all fine, if slightly on-fire.







He's gonna melt into the floor, you realize.

HE'S. FINE.







You've been a cunt.

That's why you two would make such great friends!

haha I kid, I kid.





Gimme! I need that to complete my library!



Don't listen to him! Give it to meeeeee!

Use reverse psychology!







At least his chips are good.

See, he ain't so bad, right?



And Lan skates off.



OH LOOK, AS SOON AS WE TURN OUR BACKS.

He's just, um, happy we did such a good... job...?



Yeaaaah, they're all screwed.

SUCH A GOOD JOB







That can't sound good.





Yes, it is necessary to make a whole machine hot to heat hot drinks. Who needs failsafes, not SciLab!

What the hell is a failsafe



Christ! The Prog must have melted by now. And look, it's shooting fire! How the fuck does that work?

THIS IS HOW SCIENCE WORKS I'm pretty sure we've seen this in a previous game. It just works like that.



There's a wavy effect going on to simulate a heatwave.







You deserve to be killed if your system is this easy to fuck up. I mean, heat from the computer? Really?

Ladies and gentlemen, the foremost scientific minds in the country!





I'm surprised a wall of flames hasn't surrounded them by now.

Me too, actually. That'd be about standard for the series.





Good riddance at this point.

And nothing of value was lost.







Wait, how did it suddenly get that hot without someone mentioning that when it got to around 95 degrees? Unless they have been in there for a while and it's hard to show that with timeskips.

Assuming that's Fahrenheit, that's almost 50 degrees Celsius. Which is around as hot as central Australia got last summer. Haha suckers.



From where? It has a mouth to spit flame out of?





Ther's a red flicker effect going on in this cutscene to simulate SciLab's alarm.







Yeah man, you got a wife and kid, you can't just recklessly stay, you know.

Yuuichiro is all about staying recklessly at work and pretending he doesn't have a wife and son!







You keep your backup data in SciLab as well?

ARE YOU GUYS FUCKING RETAR--

Wait, I won't ask questions we all know the answer to.

haha on-site backups, these guys are hilarious. Though honestly I'm surprised they even got backups at all, what with the rest of their everything being poorly-planned and insecure.







I guess you don't have a family either. Could this be a Japan cultural honor sort of thing? I'm willing to bet it is. But where's the honor in leaving your family without a father? Kind of a serious question, actually.

WORK IS MOST IMPORTANT

WORK UNTIL YOU DIE

THEN CONTINUE WORKING





All the NPCs are helping! It's a party, now.

Aw yeah, party in SciLab and everyone's invited.



Go, go, NPCs!

I guess I was wrong when I said literally everybody at SciLab except for Yuuichiro is incompetent.



And it fades out.



Emergency e-mail notification.

I assume it's so late because they do their emergency notifications through their in-house mail server, which was on fire.







Oh, it's a full-blown fire now?





Fuck, man.

Electrical fires, not very fun? Hmm.





Let's roll.

11-year old boys love fire. I keep saying it because it keeps being true.



Never trust that motherfucker EVER again!







Game Over. Although, this has to be one of the more intense dangers in the series if you ask me. Still has stupid writing, but hey, this is kinda relatable.





A problem that cannot be solved by jacking in, unless we could somehow get to the sprinkler system. Fucking Match probably deactivated it. Someone just needs to get it going once more.

I choose to believe this building was never up to code, and has no sprinkler system.

It's either that or Mr Match thought Lan wasn't quite guillible enough to make him break the sprinkler system and did it himself, which seems way less believable.







This guy is just fucking around now. Gotta love it.

I'm beginning to think Mr Match isn't a very good friend...





A guy that only got a month for helping to nearly cause the world's destruction didn't learn his lesson? No wai.

Higsby did.







So yeah, despite my bitching, the true reason was just so Match could be a huge dick and have Lan kill everyone at SciLab. You brilliant guy, you.

Mr Match is possibly the greatest villain ever. "I could do this myself. Or I could totally fuck with Lan."





That's where we disagree. You're the asshole that made the data in the first place.

Lan isn't really smart enough to be considered responsible for anything. Maybe that's why nobody gives him credit for saving the world in the previous games. "Oh, that's just Lan, point him at a problem and he just kind of brute-forces his way through it."



So yeah, anyone down for executing this guy once we catch him?

Nahhhh I say we give him a third chance and see if he wants to hang out with us in MMBN4!







Like I didn't already know.

I'm more interested in knowing how Lan is so guillible. It's like a miracle of nature, only probably the opposite of that.







Damn, I have to say, Mr. Match is the only guy to really fuck with Lan like this. Despite logic, you just know Lan is gonna beat himself up for this.

Mr Match is a terrible friend. I'm sorry I had to say it.





More like just a few areas.







Uh, by the time we get back home to jack in, everyone should be dead.

Do I need to whip out the SCIENCE! sparklee again? I'm sure they'll be fine, like that one time Lan went into that place with all the radiation.



And then the call ends.







No, no, no, no, no, FUCK!

Yeah buddy!



So take it off, asshole.

Real-world solutions to problems??? What?????





There's no reason why the Internet having flames should affect your comp, but even still, just unplug it!

Science!



MegaMan's face mirrors mine, really. Here we go with another EnergyChange segment!

Yayy!!



We have to use water this time. Thankfully, you have far more opportunities to grab water chips, so you should be able to put out all 27 flames with no problem.

Throw that prawn on the barbie!



At least they have cool poses. And no, there are no Wood or Electric variants of this.

It's less fun than using a flame program, though. But I guess that's how we got into this mess! Pro tip: don't fight fire with fire on the internet.



Gonna use SneakRun to avoid scrub encounters while I power through this.

Hmm, that makes this an excellent time to drop more hidden secrets about the game! For that, I let my super secret source explain this. Time for a little lesson in how the game uses SneakRun!


Don't feel bad if you didn't know this, guys. This was only discovered in the community about 2 years ago.

120 HP will be enough to SneakRun the first area in Battle Network 6. Follow that by 180 HP for the first dungeon, 240 for the next Internet area, and then somehow ending up with 420 for the Undernet. This also explains why bosses go around your SneakRun -- their strength number is presumably too high.

Educational Let's Play!

Hooray for learning!




Of course, this doesn't stop viruses inside the flames, mind you. I didn't choose the viruses busting life. The viruses busting life chose me.



WHAT! THE! FUCK! LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!



Haven't I beat your ass enough? I'm the playground bully and FlashMan is the puny little nerd.

I can't tell from his tiny sprite but I can only assume he's wearing big nerd glasses and that's why you pick on him.

That and he's pathetically weak.



Don't you know who I am?



You must not know who I am.



I'm Giver336, bitch!



Sweet. I won't be using it, but that's one less MegaChip I need to get.

FlashMan is a pretty fun chip to use, especially on an IceStage. It can also be incredibly cheap.



Resuming our regularly scheduled program, you can find Aqua chips in some of these flames, so what the game is asking of us is really not all that bad by comparison.

Plus it's the net itself, which is usually more fun to run around in than dungeons.





And that was the last one.

Hooray, progress!





Off to another area.

Hooray, progress!!!





400 Zenny? No, I'm done. Fuck it.


I'm still undefeated. Nothing can stop me, nothing!

I believe you, dude.