Part 8: *Shattering glass sound effect.*

A month passes after Lan's encounter with Higsby, StoneMan, and the innermost depths of the internet.



It's Saturday, so Lan at first protests being woken up before this little reminder. What new events await Lan today?



Something as conventional as the water being out, that's what. Apparently, there's no such thing as cereal, Pop-Tarts, eggs, toast, etc. in the MMBN universe.



On the walk to school, it turns out that Mayl didn't have water either. Well, they are next door neighbors, so a utility issue is liable to affect both.



Aaaaand the school pond is empty as well. This bodes poorly.



More positive news is that I can break the game even more horribly in a matter of minutes. If the last update was me murdering the game, this one is going to be mutilating the corpse.



Class gets triggered when you talk to Yai to find out that some kid in the other 5th grade class has gone missing.



It figures that in the age of emails and mass communication the teacher waits until everyone is present to tell them class is cancelled.



She also mentions that everything that has water of any sort has been stolen. Things take a turn for the suspicious.



Speaking of suspicious, there seems to be someone locked inside this car. But more importantly, what's this "Higsby's" building?



Not the picture of Vile in the background. Higsby opened a chip shop! He is instantly redeemed for the school incident. Higsby will be the go-to chip shop guy for the majority of the series.



You can also fight NumberMan and his upgraded versions at will in this machine.



Suffice to say, NumberMan does not stand a chance after we've plumbed the depths of the internet.



However, the best prize of all are the Chip Traders.



Put 3 or 10 chips in, and get a random chip back. Sounds fair, right?

Well, Capcom kind of forgot to make the game autosave when you use these things. So while I'm using savestates for the sake of expediency, you can still pull off what I'm about to.



A metric fuckton of savescumming ensues, netting me absolutely broken chips that I have no right to have until way after I've beaten the game. It's so beautiful.



Oh what the fuck!? This chip ISN'T EVEN IN THE GAME NORMALLY! You had to attend a promotional event to get it... I suspect that the full library cheat code I used is to blame.



I'll take two of these...



And one of these. After about half an hour, my folder is overflowing with overpowered batshit chips, and the overall structure is an F-O-K tricode folder. I would dearly have loved to engineer things into a F-U-C-K setup, but alas.

As you can probably imagine, Capcom fixed the whole "not autosaving" issue in every subsequent game.



A Waterworks employee? Hey, that's right, the Waterworks was part of the Government Complex! The obvious course of action is to head there.



Once you do so, Yai shoots off an email that reveals that the missing student was kidnapped. Concerning, but surely it couldn't be relevant to the situation at hand.



It turns out Ms. Mari wasn't kidding. All the drinks everywhere are flat-out gone.



Naturally, Lan isn't the only one to think of heading to the Waterworks. Complainers have poured in, much to the dismay of the staff.



A brilliant and exemplary mother.



Anyway, the appropriate flag we need to set to make the game continue is talking to this guy, which triggers a small cutscene.



Sounds important, and naturally, we'll be getting an explanation what an Official is in a second or two.



For now though, Jerkwad McAsshole here condescends to Lan. It's worth noting that Jerkwad is younger than Lan. Yes, we'll find out his real name in a while, bear with me.



They're basically the equivalent to Interpol, as MMBN2 later shows.



Anyway, we have to check out the Waterworks. Problem is, we need an ID card like Jerkwad has to access it. Where could we possibly get an ID card?



Yoink! Wait, why does a computer scientist need a lab coat? Navi design must involve SCIENCE! rather than boring old conventional science.



Now in the Waterworks proper, time to poke around and ask what the problem is.



This is Dr. Froid, the guy in charge of Waterworks management. So naturally, he's the guy to ask. Naturally, he's also the only NPC around with a unique sprite, so there's always that measure of importance to guide the player.



Lan's just here to tell him about the issue, which surely he has to know about by now. As if the proto-angry mob downstairs wasn't hint enough, but Lan's thick like that.



Fortunately, it's just a bug. A temporary issue, that's all.



Totally nothing to do with WWW, no sir.



He invites Lan to poke around, might as well make the most of an infiltration after all.



Once you've satisfied yourself by collecting the various items, jacking into whatever you can, and the usual exploratory usual stuff, MegaMan gets suspicious when you try to leave.



First of all, that "Official Netbattler" guy seemed pretty abrasive for an enforcer of the peace. And why would a guy like him come to investigate something that's a 'confirmed' bug?



More damningly, the disappearance of everything drinkable indicates that someone is behind this incident.



The obvious solution is to continue sneaking into government facilities. We just need a place to hide out!



The solution is, as usual, Yuuichiro's Lab. Lan paces around and the scene fades to black to denote time passing.



It's a Saturday, so some number of hours later, everyone's gone home.



Checking the door that leads back to the computer room, it turns out we can't check anything out in there due to it being ostensibly locked after hours.



However...



You can barely go 10 feet in this series without finding something that fits that criteria.



That'll do.



However, trying to Jack-In triggers a cutscene instead where Lan gets interrupted mid Jack-In.



Another unique sprite NPC catches Lan in the act. Reasonably suspicious, she asks what it is Lan's up to.



"In an otherwise secure government area that's only accessible to the staff..." Nobody said Lan was good at lying.



Still, she buys it, and tells Lan to go home.



The minute she leaves, it's time for business to proceed as usual.



The music is pretty chill too.



I'd call this more than just some random bug, wouldn't you?



That Official Netbattler guy's seeming more and more suspicious by the minute. For now, the dungeon gimmick is good old slippery ice floors, and I don't even need to explain that.



In the second area, we meet up with someone I'm sure fans of the original series have been wondering about.



Clearly a WWW agent!



Or not. He takes offense to that accusation, although the sword swipe isn't a mark in his favor.



If you haven't guessed by the sunglasses "visor" and color scheme, this here is ProtoMan.EXE. Who oddly enough also has some Zero elements in his Navi redesign, as you can see by the sword and hair.



This is supposed to be "Lord Chaud", but translation issues tend to plague the MMBN series. Especially the fourth game, jesus. Whether they would have been corrected in the Operate Shooting Star remake is unknown, as that game never left Japan.



Chaud (pronounced "chowed") asks what Lan is even doing here. Really, he has no right to be in a government system. But hey, we're the protagonist! It makes sense that the Officials would exist to combat cybercrime, but again...we play the protagonist, so meddling anyway is our agenda.



Despite providing his full name, Chaud is referred to by his last name for the rest of the series. I don't think the word "Eugene" ever appears again. Fun fact, the (absolutely terrible) translation of the Anime of this series, MegaMan NT Warrior, gave him the name Chaud Blaze. Not only did they mutate his last name into his first, they succumbed to "slap a cool-sounding word into it" name syndrome.

I could devote an entire update to the cartoon and why the translation of it is god-awful, but I'll save that for an update where I have nothing else to talk about.



And this is Capcom mixing up the mugshots mid-conversation!



Again, Chaud really doesn't help himself not look evil due to being such a prick.



Lan even calls him out on how much of a dick he is. Frequently, at that, Chaud is one of the few people who can reliably piss Lan off.



To be fair, Chaud would provoke that sort of reaction in anybody.



Anyway, continuing o-OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE. This water pathway is impassable, and it isn't normally here.

Why am I so consistently unable to play games without provoking some sort of anti-cheat measure? Anybody got a walk-through-walls code? I looked around and couldn't find one. Worst case scenario, I'll replay the game up until now. Either way:

We are now experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by...