Part 37: On the merits of Percussive Therapy.

Cold days and warm blankets and pillows: The real ultimate enemy of a LP!



It's phone!



Baryl calls to declare the obvious. Lan's Navi, partner, and brother MegaMan has been kidnapped by Nebula. Really, this situation can't get any worse. The usual law of RPGs, namely the protagonist angsting during a crisis, is in full effect, so Baryl's called him for a pep-talk at the harbor behind SciLab.



Okay, I've made fun of this game's writing before, but I'll take it back for now. That's...pretty damned sad, really. None of the NPCs you can talk to know about MegaMan's capture, and one can only imagine how Haruka would take her husband and son being kidnapped by Nebula.

The way to the harbor is right next to the old man who gave us the DarkSword chip.



Talking to Baryl and addressing Lan's depression can wait, there's a messload of power waiting for us! Most importantly, the DarkLance chip this woman coughs up after a 10-question quiz. Those who have played the game before can probably imagine my cackling.



There's also a Hide and Seek minigame/sidequest we can start off by talking to this guy. I forget what the reward is for finding him 5 times, but I remember it being good.



Time to get this particularly memorable cutscene underway. Baryl waxes philosophic about the sea for a while, before breaking the news:



Blink animation, your timing is as always impeccable. Considering that the main gimmick of the game is operating other Navis, this shouldn't be too surprising. Lan is fully expected to continue serving the team, and with good reason.

That said, bear with me here. I brought this up before when we first met Baryl, but seriously, his art style bugs the heck out of me whenever I look at his mugshot. It's so much less stylized and anime-like compared to the cartoony look of everyone else, the inconsistency is getting pretty grating. I'm not complaining, in fact, I'd prefer if more of the game was given his sort of appearance, but he stands out like a sore thumb.



Lan objects to this, not because it would involve operating another Navi, but because it would involve being the operator of someone besides MegaMan. Remember the ending of MMBN3? Dusk's earlier goading of Lan into saying that he could operate any other Navi just as well as MegaMan echoes ironically.



A rare moment of recognition. Lan is agreed to be indisputably the best operator of the whole team, hands down, and up until this point, MegaMan's been considered the 'power' member of the team, despite my own playing disputing that.

And now for the my favorite cutscene moment in the series.



The game's sad theme swells up, as Lan begins a heartrending monologue about how important MegaMan is to him...



Until Baryl says "fuck that" and shuts Lan up via a right hook!



If only it had actually been on-screen, but at least we see the result. In Team ProtoMan, Chaud gets the fist to his face, and I think we can all agree that both versions of this cutscene are very satisfying.



Baryl's rational argument rings clear, particularly when he mentions that some people have their lives even worse than Lan's at this point. At least Lan is in a position where he can do something about Nebula.



Baryl makes his exit as Lan's vertebrae slide back into place.



More games need instances of Percussive Therapy, I say. Evil organization got you down? JAB TO THE EYE! Girlfriend left you? UPPERCUT TO THE JAW! Broken heart? BROKEN CLAVICLE! Death in the family? KNUCKLES IN THE TEETH!

It's like whacking an appliance to make it work applied to social behaviour! Look how effective it was on Lan!



Lan passes his PET over, but we're told that when we get MegaMan back, as this is not a question of 'if', but 'when', we must return this special Navi to Baryl.



Percussive Therapy, Baryl being awesome, Lan getting punched. How can we make this any better?



LIKE THIS!



Comes complete with atrocious 3D model and all the little bling and glitz you could ask for, even the little scrolling "MegaMan" text being replaced with "Colonel".

More importantly, I now have that deep, rich, sexy Scottish voice replacing MegaMan's horrible surfer dude one.

Stupid Sexy Colonel!



Er. Right, back to business. _{So...manly...} End Area 2 is next on the agenda, so we're heading out for there next. _{Must...resist...voice...}



Presumably because having 2 Colonels would overload the PET with testosterone, we need to reconfigure the Party Battle System first, swapping out the image data of Colonel for ShadowMan.

I'm playing as a trio of Colonel, the genocidal ShadowMan, and the gallant KnightMan. I honestly can't find a way to improve this situation. "Fuck YES" doesn't really do this justice.



Well, not having a stupid fetch quest would improve things, admittedly.



This is almost as stupid and arbitrary as the tournament scenarios in 4 were. Baryl is literally at SciLab for starters, but no, we can't just have the gate unlocked for us, we need to haul ass to SciLab area and find an NPC.



Before that, though, there's a DarkMeteor chip for the taking back at the harbor.



More S-code chips, MORE S-CODE CHIPS! Never enough S-code chips!



MORE!



Part of the reason for that little diversion with the DarkMeteors chip was out of frustration. The thing is, there's a SciLab4 area. That's where the NPC we get the key to the gate is at. We've never been there before, and I actually forgot it even existed until I spoke with an NPC who mentioned it.

It's a maze of moving walkways, how welcoming!



Finally, a DarkChip acquired on the actual internet. Yeah, you can get all of these extremely quickly, I've got 10/12 right now. The other two aren't going to show up for a while though, which is a shame. DarkPlus and DarkCircle won't finish up the collection until nearly the end of the story.



That said, not only do we have a stupid fetch quest, this asshole has the gall to decide he needs to test our power.



I think I impressed him sufficiently, what about you?



Yeah.



Welcome to End Area! This convoluted area is an utter pain in the ass to navigate, with multiple routes that look alike, one-way conveyors, and looping paths that criss-cross confoundingly.



Whirly: They move around in circular paths when possible, similar to the Lark enemies from 4, and rush at us in another circular pattern similar to the Boomer virus' attacks. They move slowly, they don't attack often, and at this point, I have more than enough firepower to kill them almost immediately in any given fight. Not a threat by any stretch of the imagination.



Seriously, I hate navigating End Area, especially because we're going to have to do so many more times before the late game finally opens up a shortcut past all of this crap.



We're approaching End Area 2, the site of the next Liberation Mission. You know what that means.



Time for an arbitrary obstacle that our next teammate will get us past. What is it this time, a trapdoor? A crushing weight trap? Some dark-prefixed version thereof?



_Oh. Dark MegaMan.



Fuck!



I kind of like his personality. Dark MegaMan doesn't hesitate to mock everybody and cruelly taunt Lan about their old bond he's thrown away. See, Regal, this is villainy done correctly. And let's hope that Dark MegaMan is less of a pussbag than MegaMDS was, let's face it, operating Team Colonel, our group of very badassed Navis against Dark MegaMan is going to be awesome.



Or we could take him out here rather than wait around stupidly. Colonel, can you do any wrong?



Lan is, understandably though, vehemently against deleting MegaMan, even if he's been tainted by Nebula.



Not helping things is MegaMan not only revealing that he's still in there, but also insisting that he be destroyed before being fully taken over.



This reveals that Dark MegaMan is a separate entity essentially possessing MegaMan as opposed to MegaMan's own self being corrupted. I suppose it split off from MegaMan and took him over rather than Dark MegaMan being MegaMan himself. If that makes sense.



Ugh. A trio of mooks intervene.



Colonel is, thankfully, fully aware of how much of a joke this is. HeelNavis are weaklings no matter which game they're in.



The counter-argument, a Zerg rush, is surprisingly persuasive. Still though, come on, I could totally take that. Hell, remember Tetsu's scenario?



Lan, I'm happy that you've finally developed brain cells that can effectively process the idea of jacking-out, but come on!



The justification, however, is a bit mollifying. Yes, we could handle that number of mooks if we had MegaMan. We don't. Baryl even admits that Colonel, KnightMan, and ShadowMan could probably break through, but they'd be forced to go through with the Liberation Mission right then and there before reinforcements could arrive, and then they'd be up against Dark MegaMan in a weakened state. In short, tactical suicide.

Yes, it's...it's a justified in-story reason that requires no rationalization about what's happening. It brings a tear to the eye.



Blatant foreshadowing follows. But it's the welcome sort. We're going to be getting an ally with serious firepower, the kind of strength to wipe out a legion of small fry in one blow and then continue on unimpeded.



On a completely unrelated _{yeah fucking right} note, Lan has a special mission now.



On the Queen Bohemia, the ship currently docked in the SciLab harbor, a company by the silly name of Ubercorp is hosting a party.



Ubercorp's boosting system is going to be on auction at the party. Why do we care?



Yeah. Nebula is going to be after that thing for certain. Unfortunately, no, we don't get to obtain the program ourselves. And let's face it, despite all the improvements this game has made, it probably wouldn't have an in-game effect.



The only problem is that the party is by invitation only. And obviously, only important political figures and heads of business are going to be invited. How is Lan going to get in?



God dammit, DTDS, you were doing so well!



Baryl ends the conversation by asking if Lan could really bring himself to delete MegaMan if the Liberation Mission came to it. After a hesitant pause, Lan admits that if MegaMan has really been taken over, yes, he could.



Anyway, time for Princess Pride to endear herself to me some more. In Team ProtoMan, Tesla, being the head of Gauss Magnets after her father was imprisoned, provides the invite.

You'd think that Yuuichiro or someone from SciLab would have gotten an invitation as well, but hey, this is already convenient.



Many thanks, m'lady! Pride isn't particularly fond of parties and social gatherings. What's funny is that she asks curiously why Lan is even asking about it, and he calls it "work" without even bringing up Baryl or Nebula. Pride is just that nice, we don't even have to go through a fetch quest or anything.



The next day arrives, and nope, we're not going to get going just yet, because a cluster of cutscenes and the next dungeon await us!