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Part 2: In A Bad Light
After enjoying dinner, Lan decides to head online to meet up with Yai and pals.
If you check the kitchen, you get the information that Haruka has been learning how to make new types of cake, having made a chocolate sponge cake tonight.
Online, NPCs have new dialogue now. This Mr. Prog mentions new types of viruses, but thus far there isn't anything in ACDC Area aside from the standard Mettaurs, Canodumbs, and Bunnies.
Seems that activity died down after the N1 event ended, though one of these nerds has still been looking for the True and False answers this whole time. Amazing.
There sure are a lot of green Normal Navis around.
Aw...
Yai's PC now has a duck wallpaper instead of her face.
Which is less creepy, but still kind of weird in a way.
After speaking to everyone, there's an hour time skip and everyone prepares to turn in for the night.
Mayl, however, realizes that Lan probably didn't do his homework in all of the excitement.
Given that Lan is the son of the head scientist at SciLab, though, he's not too worried about it.
Dex, however, forgot his floppy at school. Woops.
Lan teases Dex that he should get ready to scrub some toilets,
but the group eventually decides to sneak into the school and get it back.
Dex isn't too thrilled at the idea of possibly running into a ghost.
Dex is unable to resist being taunted by Lan's smug, mid-blink mugshot and so everyone heads to the school.
MegaMan is still worried that Lan won't finish his own homework in the process, though.
Well, technically he's not lying to Haruka...
Music: N/A
This is the only time in the series we see ACDC at night. The lack of music just makes the ambiance all the more unsettling.
A few NPCs are out and about, but these two are just making small talk.
Working overtime really stinks, though; especially when your co-workers don't even bother to tell anyone they're not coming in.
Higsby? No, wait, that was two games ago...
A custom sprite character suddenly showing up, huh?
I'm sure he's not up to anything unsavory.
As it turns out, though, the school gate is locked via the internet. So Lan and MegaMan go to deal with that.
There seems to be a bit of unrest over something. But what?
There's a brief scare when the program unlocks that the Navi awakened, but he's actually still asleep.
Mayl also sends an email shortly after the gate opens.
Curious.
Everyone's bullying Dex about being too afraid to head down the hallways, but notably they're all waiting for Lan to lead before doing anything.
There's a brief segment where Dex can't find his disk and flashes back to three places he may have left it. Since Mayl and Yai check out the other two, I checked the third first and found it immediately.
Well, that resolves that.
Nah, I'm sure it was nothing.
It's definitely nothing!
Alright, maybe it's something.
The kids vacillate on whether or not it's a ghost, a teacher, or a burglar. For whatever reason, the possibility of the latter scares them less than the idea that it's a ghost.
Then again, I guess a ghost would be scarier.
There's not really a whole lot to say about this bit. There's rattling, it's coming from the teacher's lounge, the kids are scared/eager, etc.
Here's some fun facts about ACDC Elementary.
And some kind of weird statue given by a shady antiques dealer.
...Miyu?
Inside of this server are four Mr. Progs grading tests. Yai got a 100%, Dex a 15%, and Mayl an 85%. Presumably the last Mr. Prog is grading Lan's, though we don't get to see the score.
Despite letting Lan go first into the teacher's lounge, the rest of the group feels bold enough to enter the principal's office to confront the ghost/teacher/burglar, who claims to have gotten a TetraCode.
Music: Incident Occurrence
Meet Rei Seiko, a person who is surprisingly not that bearded guy from before!
Either way, he plans on murdering the kids.
It might just be me, but I'm reading this as Yai being unimpressed.
Lan enters to try and protect his friends, and his name comes out.
It seems the secret Asian man is intrigued at the prospect of Lan being who he thinks he is, though, because apparently he'll get a big promotion if he murders him.
That, at least, seems to get the rest of the kids to take things a bit more seriously.
However, Rei seems nonplussed by their talk of friendship.
Please don't say whee...
Erm, excuse me, I got a momentary chill thinking about... another Navi we'll see a while from now.
FlashMan proceeds to unleash a beam of light at the cast. Fortunately, Dex is standing in front of Lan and is bigger than him, so he protects Lan from the ray.
Um.
I, uh...
I don't think this qualifies as murder.
FlashMan states that his Hypno Flash is unbreakable unless he's deleted, which is actually a pretty scary ability. Or, at least, it would be if he actually used it in a scary way here. As it stands, it comes across more goofy than anything.
That swan hypnosis is a pretty exotic torture method, though. I wouldn't be surprised if someone else copied that 200 years down the line. Hypothetically speaking.
Lan takes the opportunity to escape, and Rei lets him leave. It doesn't really matter, since he got what he came for.
He then takes the opportunity to escape while leaving FlashMan behind.
Lan goes about checking on his friends to see what he can do for them.
In actuality, this is just the game's excuse for giving you the Roll chip. If it looks weak, that's just because the game is counting it as multiple hits of 20 damage. A few chips are presented that way and it was very misleading to my childhood self, causing me to miss out on some of the really overpowered Navi chips.
Incidentally, the blue border is new now, signifying that Roll's Battle Chips (as well as other Navi Chips) are now classified as Mega Chips. You can only have five Mega Chips per folder and only one of each. Functionally, this is not a change for Navi Chips, but other chips that are seen as too powerful, like Hero Sword or Sanctuary, might also be tagged as a Mega Chip in order to limit how ridiculous your folder can get.
After checking on Dex, who is running around inside of his classroom, and Yai, who is flapping in the hallway, Lan wonders if there's any way to get around FlashMan's beam.
A way that, perhaps, may have been hamfistedly beaten into your head within the first fifteen minutes of the game.
No. I came to stop you.
Lame comebacks aside, Lan opens the parasol to block FlashMan's Hypno Flash. Of course, he could've always just... entered the room and sidestepped the front of the laptop screen considering the doorway is to the bottom left.
Lan then proceeds to run directly at the screen, with the parasol down, and FlashMan makes no further attempt to hypnotize him. Because of course not.
Music: Blind Mode
The gimmick of the dungeon is that it's dark inside.
Speaking to a Mr. Prog will prompt Lan to try and turn on lights in the real world to activate them in the cyberworld.
In this case, the first area requires you to turn on the lights in 5-B.
Yes, the minor details I pointed out earlier are actually important!
With the lights now on, albeit flickering due to what is presumably FlashMan's interference, MegaMan can now see BMDs that are necessary to pick up to clear the area. This is because some of them are keys to the locked door.
The areas also have some nods to details found in the real world rooms, which is a nice touch.
The next area requires Lan to turn on the lights in the teacher's lounge. There's no penalty for turning on the lights in the wrong area, mind you, aside from needing to go and fight the right light switch.
I think there's only three or four switches on the screens you can go to, anyway. I did mention that the school got a lot of its screens excised in this game and I imagine this opening scenario might be why. Too many rooms might be overwhelming for younger players.
In both areas, some of the BMDs will be viruses, incidentally.
Here we see a new virus, Eleball. It flies around diagonally before spinning electrical orbs around itself when it nears MegaMan.
But never mind that; we've found the big boss.
Music: Showdown
FlashMan taunts MegaMan that there's no way to break the hypnosis without deleting him. So... they decide to do that.
It's probably the most direct boss fight dialogue in the series up to this point. That's pretty much the whole conversation.
Boss Fight: FlashMan
Music: Boss Battle!
FlashMan is the toughest first boss in the series. Don't mistake this for him being difficult; he's a pushover like all of the others. However, he does have a bit more strategy than most first bosses do, trying to paralyze MegaMan before sneaking a quick hit in on him. He also uses AreaGrab to expand his attack range, though I don't believe he does it in his V1 form.
- Neon Light: FlashMan summons an orb of light that moves across the ground, homing in on MegaMan's position as it travels forth. It does not travel past holes.
- Flash Light: FlashMan summons two bulbs on the player's field. After some time, the bulbs will flash and disappear, causing paralysis. This attack pierces Invis, negating it, but cannot pierce Barriers, as it does no damage. The bulbs can be destroyed.
- Spark Arm: FlashMan will move to the front of his area and hit in a widesword-esque fashion, also extending an extra panel forward. He often uses this with Area Steal and Flash Light.
After the battle, Rei is disappointed in FlashMan's loss, asking if he's forgotten the rules of their group.
FlashMan cites "Rule 98", and I marvel at the fact that these already goofy villains manage to harm their menace even more by revealing that they're actually nerds.
What a couple of goobers.
Boss Fight: FlashMan
Music: Boss Battle!
FlashMan i-
Okay, no, that doesn't actually happen.
Can you imagine, though?
FlashMan actually unleashes some big attack from his body as he's deleted.
Rei seems pleased with that and cuts off his connection.
Whatever effect it had seems to be kicking in, MegaMan getting a sense of vertigo before pulling himself together.
Outside, Lan's friends come to, not even realizing that they had been hypnotized until Lan brings it up. At the very least, no one was seriously hurt, so everyone heads home to go to bed.
At the very least, Dex doesn't go home to sleep ASAP and instead invites Lan to battle him in the park.
He also gives Lan his new Security Code out of gratitude.
GutsMan is still GutsMan.
Seeing as he's V1, he doesn't even have his Rocket Guts Punch or Recover 200 from the last game.
Sure you will.
But I'm literally right outside of my house...
And so Lan goes to bed. Without doing his homework.
I assume he was put on toilet duty the next day.
Music: Theme of WWW
Meanwhile, at a different location, Rei speaks with someone offscreen.
The person asks if Rei got "it", and he states that he did indeed.
Oh. Oh dear.
It seems that being blown up by a missile wasn't enough to kill Wily.
Wily states that this time things will be different as the WWW has changed from before.
And, I mean, they haven't really. I'd say his plan is better this time, though. And his henchmen are less moronic, barring one exception.
As Rei leaves, Wily turns to a guy with claw marks on his face, stating that next is his turn.
Inukai states that he will do everything he can to destroy what Wily hates the most. When Wily asks what that is?
