Part 11: Harbinger of Hell.

Mayl is quite happy to have been saved by Lan. Remember when I said she's the token love interest/damsel in distress?



At least MegaMan makes it funny by teasing Lan like an older brother would.



You can practically hear Mayl fangirl squealing about having been saved by Lan.



I don't think Lan ever gets it over the course of any of the games. Minus an instance where we get a peek at the future.



Roll and MegaMan are quick to seize the opportunity to continue making fun of Lan. And all was well.



Wily, needless to say, is furious that Madd screwed up so badly.



For some reason, he has a bit of a stutter in this game.



Wily's got a more narrow set of goals in MMBN1 than the original series. He just wants to take out DenCity for now.



Count Zap is going to be responsible for the worst dungeon in the entire Battle Network series, so credit to him for doing a good job at being evil.



Some amount of time later...



Woo, party! At least things begin on a high note.



And Lan's mom Haruka is going to be coming along as well.



Off we go to tell Haruka about this.



The Official Mailing List notes that the Autodrive incident was resolved by some civilian, and is quite impressed. Notice that Froid also sent us a message, he has something neat to give Lan.



WWW gave it to him when they kidnapped his son, telling him that he could use anything needed to accomplish his tasks. Now we can open the skull doors across the Internet!



This is Masa the fish dealer, and Sal's competitor for the lunch market at the Government Complex.



He also has a NetBattle for us. SharkMan I remember was pretty tough for me as a kid due to the decoys he uses, but his attack pattern is pretty simple and easy to understand nowadays. Still, Masa has a digital shark at his disposal, and that's pretty cool.



Rather than expanding the internet and allowing for complete game-breaking shenanigans like defeating Sal and WoodMan, we just get an HPMemory for beating SharkMan.



Back on track, it's party time.



Haruka, being a woman, is going to take a while to get dressed up and ready, so Lan decides to go on ahead.



By the way, last time I mentioned how obvious the existence of Program Advances was, a couple people took offense. The games take it for granted that you know about them by this point, so I'm just saying that maybe some people who complain about the difficulty of the games just need to look around more. P.A.s are pretty hard to miss.

And for those who protest "But I was young at the time!", well, I was 10 in 2001. Stuff it.



Chauderhead is being a dick as usual when we arrive in SciLab. It's one of those "talk to everyone around to trigger the movement of time" situations. I will remind the readers that Chaud is younger than Lan.



Honestly, these sorts of scenes are a lot funnier when you realize that Chaud is probably a head shorter than Lan and has to look up to glare at him.



*Whimper.*



Yuuichiro and Haruka arrive, so the game automatically takes us to the Restaurant floor, which is stated be basement level 30. This is the Government Complex after all.




What's weird about this little detail is that DenCity was said by an NPC to be powered by hydroelectric generation. That's what the Power Plant runs on, to be environmentally friendly. The reason that people don't generally burn garbage for fuel is that it releases all sorts of nasty crap into the air.



Even stranger is that a line of PETs made from recycled plastic bottles is being advertised at the party.



Anyway, family bonding time! Lan will never be a brooding antihero because he has a loving and supporting family.



Yuuichiro mentions that he's been wanting to talk to Lan about something related to MegaMan and how he created him.



Buuuut he gets called away for something important at the lab.



The only other thing to do is talk to all the NPCs present to get time moving.





It's worth it only for this amusing exchange.



Why are you even here!? Who would invite you to a party!?



Here's the speaker for the eveni-yuh oh.



It's almost a running gag of sorts in this series that villains are terrible
at naming things related to their plans.



Count Zap's outfit is covered in light bulbs, so he glows in the dark rather well. Anyway, since we're 30 floors below ground level, a power outage means that the air vents have stopped pumping air down.



Count Zap presumably has an escape route, or this would be entirely absurd.



*Moan.*



Lan's eyes adjust somehow to the complete absence of light, and he's off. Thankfully, this chute doesn't lead to an incinerator or garbage basher, just to the power plant floor.



After a bit of wandering, Lan tries to jack-in and start the impending trainwreck only to be stopped. It's a nice harbinger of what's to come when you get THIS message upon trying to start something.



Since the power is out on the real world, the computer controlling the generator (which presumably only has just enough power to function at the lowest level so ElecMan can control things) can't supply electricity to MegaMan.



And this means that MegaMan won't be able to heal automatically after battle. This would become a standard feature for the rest of the series.

Problem 1: Those games had items that let you heal yourself between battles if you needed it.

Problem 2: The viruses in this game are balanced to assume that no matter how much damage you take, you'll be at full HP the next battle.



We're off to a great start, and let me tell you that this is the LEAST obnoxious gimmick this dungeon has.



MegaMan is optimistic and confident, however, that Lan can handle this situation. Besides, what other choice do we have? Everyone down here will suffocate if we don't do anything.



*Sob.*