Mega Man Battle Network 3: Blue Part #6

Part 6: And That's Terrible.

That's the end of the first day of MMBN3. I think Hatoful Boyfriend, Touhou Mother, and Vietnamese Crystal gave me a bad habit of screenshotting nearly every single line of dialogue. Oh well, being thorough is a virtue, I guess...I'll be happier with the end result of this LP in the long run.

AS LONG AS IT TAKES

Meanwhile, cut to the villains while Lan sleeps, as usual. Rei returns to his enigmatic (until 2 images from now) leader.

Dun dun DUN! Dramatic!

WWW desk? Motley grey clothes? It can only be...

Wily, laughing himself sick. Everything is as it should be in MMBN land!

....that's a hell of a lot of W's. It's good that the WWW holds no pretensions.

Wily's plan in MMBN1 was to collect 4 program doodads and make the LifeVirus. In this one, thanks to the nomenclature of the TetraCodes, we can already see that he's more or less doing the same thing. Progress!

Well, at least his plan doesn't involve trying to crash a plane that he is flying in, while it's in the air. Progess, indeed!

Well, in that there's different characters this time around...yeah?

Dr. Wily likes to think he grows as a person between games. He doesn't, but it's nice that he thinks so.... I guess

Rei won't appear again for quite a while, and you can bet that Burly McBrute over there will be the next villain on the lineup.

He seems like a cool guy.

Wily's cadre of villains in this game is one of the more colorful in the series, but Takeo Inukai here is probably the least interesting of the bunch.

Oh... well, way to contradict me.

And across generational lines,

remains relevant.

...They're like the bizarro-world sailor scouts.

I mentioned this in the MMBN6 LP's concluding scenes, but Wily's arguable defining personality trait is the fact he laughs nigh-constantly. He's a jolly old man, despite being an evil mastermind.

At least he enjoys his work.

The next day, an annoying little brat enters ACDC from the Metroline train service. No trust me, this kid is annoying, and that's by the MMBN NPC standard. Mind you though, he's only really awful in the next game, his involvement in this one is bare bones.

The kid's got moxie. I can respect that.

Beardman is the first to interact with the kid.

Chisao, last name I won't mention yet, pesters him a bit. His insistent terminology that ACDC's #1 NetBattler is his brother causes a bit of confusion among NPCs, because everyone knows that, oh yeah, that's us.

This kid is exactly energetic enough to be Lan's brother. But as far as we know Lan only has one brother, and he's dead, so it doesn't exactly fit, huh?

Beardman moved to the area only recently, so he naturally hasn't the faintest idea.

And besides, he has an appointment nearby. Business calls, so off he goes, leaving Chisao to himself.

"Appointment"... sure. This bearded fellow seems to just be extremely good at getting out of awkward situations! A cool guy.

Fade to Lan wondering where to slack off. Our hero is very productive with his time.

Lan has a very busy schedule of not doing his homework.

Well, that's something to worry about.

Maybe it's just a cyber-cold...

Yeah, this is going to get annoying quick. Problems that Lan can't solve by NetBattling usually involve one course of action.

Yes indeedy, there's one man who's pretty much the solution to all problems! ...maybe we should go visit him sometime.

MegaMan expresses exasperation. You know, if I hadn't ever told readers that these games HAD a blink animation, and that they were just the characters being expressive, I wonder if those unfamiliar with the series would ever catch on.

It's hard to tell sometimes. But when the blink animation's fucking with you it's a little more obvious.

Needless to say, that Shining Browser Crasher is likely the root of this issue. Apparently FlashMan did some circuit-scrambling.

Mirroring real life computer trouble, the issue flickers in and out of relevance, so thankfully MegaMan will never really be impeded from telling the player anything useful.

You wouldn't want to complicate the plot too much. Lan is but a simple boy. And who the fuck knows how computers work?

At any rate, MMBN problem solving is enviably simple. Can you NetBattle it? Yes/no. If no, can Lan's dad solve it? 90% of the time, yup.

And the rest of the time convenient plot-points! It's truly a magical future.

That's never stopped them before, and Lan even notes that they're his kids, so it should be fine!

Pffft. It's not nearly so much fun bothering your dad when he knows you're coming, Mega.

Might as well. Before we head out, though, MegaMan has one last thing to bring up.

Considering the series is founded on the "MegaMan is Lan's dead twin brother made into a Navi" concept, a third sibling would be quite out of nowhere. Although I bet a cursory browse of any fanfict website would turn up such a thing. "A sibling never mentioned before" is a cliche among cliches. Didn't it show up in My Immortal?

Let me just ask DeviantArt about that.

...

...Why did I just do that? I found nothing but regrets.

Needless to say, Lan is rather dumbstruck. Er, poor choice of words there, wait. Stupefi-no, that doesn't work either. Let's go with "surprised".

: LET ME TELL YOU MORE ABOUT MY BATTLE NETWORK FANFICTION. His name is Xanthoryk Hikari, and he's Lan's little brother, but not a twin, so he can't synch with MegaMan. So he became a lone badass wolf person mecha pilot! His Navi's Apollo.EXE is like MegaMan with areals and is like a knight, except he uses fire a lot! And he has a trenchcoat at age 8! Cuz he's a child prodigy is the thing. But he inherited dragon warrior dna from ancient times, the king of dragons! so he rides a motorcycle and goes where the world needs him in secret. His body weight is 98% muscle, since he works out all the time by bench-pressing his motorcycle.

You laugh, but that's 100% better than the things I found... I've... seen such sights...

I have way too much fun with those sort of made-up side tangents, so pulling myself away from that...

Hey, as long as one of us is having fun _{jesus wept...}

Before we get moving, let's go refight FlashMan to nab his chip.

He's right over here in ACDC 3, next to the Square.

Needless to say, things are slow due to him having 500 HP, but after 600 HP spread across two FlashMen, nothing but trivial.

This game does Navi refights a little differently. The standard "Navi ghost somewhere fixed on the Net" applies for the V2/Alpha fights, but V3 fights are mixed up. The Navi's V3 can be found as a random encounter, yes, but not in the same area as where you fought the V2. Instead, it'll show up in an area relevant to that Navi, and not always on the Cyberworld proper or without fulfilling a special condition. FlashMan straightforwardly is a random encounter in ACDC 2 from now on because that's where the gate controls were for the school. Others aren't so simple. A subsequent boss' V3 will only appear if you have a certain item, and another one only shows up when you have low HP.

Jsut in case you weren't having enough fun with the V3 fights in previous games.

I think my chip collection is being a little offensive. FlashMan's chip is wonderfully overpowered, meanwhile, in its simplicity. It does 50 damage to the entire field via a flash of light. This elec-element attack paralyzes, and will pierce Invis effects. Where the real asinine factor comes in is that you can have multiple copies of it (depending on circumstances and the use of more than one version of the chip) in your folder, easily chain them into other paralyzing attacks, and most of all IceStage returns from MMBN2, doubling all damage done with elec attacks.

Incidentally, FlashMan's chip is the first MegaChip in the series. Starting with MMBN3, chips fall into 3 categories, give or take in a given game: Standard, Mega, and Giga, usually with Secret as a 4th category consisting of NaviChips from the other version of a game's exclusive boss fights. While limits were previously placed on NaviChips only in MMBN1 and 2, from MMBN3 onward, some chips (such as Muramasa or Guardian from MMBN2) are considered too powerful to be used willy-nilly in your folder with 4 copies. You can only have 5 MegaChips in your folder under normal circumstances, though the game gives you many ways to circumvent that and increase the limit. Giga chips are limited to one and one only, though there's a very limited few ways to increase that to 2.

FlashMan's chip is very simple, very nice, and super fun for embarrassing some bosses with. I like it very much!

Arriving at Chisao, who has taken up a blockade of the train service until someone finds his older sibling, he quickly refutes the idea that Lan is his brother. Amusingly, there's a businessman NPC nearby who complains he can't use the train. Chisao is the smallest character in the entire series, I'm pretty sure, even shorter than Yai by a few pixels. So why this is an issue at all is perplexing. Apparently they're a very polite cast of characters!

You can't leave a lost little kid alone! Even if you're clearly not going to help them, I guess.

Mayl quickly asserts that Lan holds that title. Chisao doesn't buy it.

Most people in the series don't recognise Lan as being pretty much the greatest Netbattler ever who also defeated the WWW and Gospel. It's just usually less... blunt, than this.

Absurdly, when MegaMan suggests the obvious solution of just asking, this is Chisao's response, and a free one-way ticket onto the Characters I Hate steam train. My unconscious mind looks like an old Popeye cartoon.

I'm sure I don't know what you mean. Chisao's just got spunk.

Lan snarks a bit, rather annoyed that he's expected to do everything around here. A quick death glare from Mayl, however, and he grudgingly agrees.

As if Lan's not the one who does all the work around here anyway though. Face your destiny, Lan!

So, we're off to find this nebulous character. The NPCs around town give you a myriad of hints that make it very obvious you need to go find Dex, as only he'd brag about having that title despite it rightfully belonging to Lan.

He is the only friend you haven't seen today, so there's the biggest hint right there.

Dex, currently in detention, is excited to hear that Chisao, whom he namedrops, has arrived. Lan starts to express irritation about that whole "#1 NetBattler" thing, but I promise you the sweetest payback imaginable for that one.

Hey now, who hasn't tried to convince their younger brother that they're the best Netbattler around?