The Megaman War:
Part 1 - Whistle in the Wind

By Hadrian (Hardman) Howell

Chapter 1: Ready and Unwilling

The CIA agents dragged the now limp body of the unfortunate motorist who’s car had run out of gas on the side of the road into the trunk of their car. If there had been any witnesses out here in the middle of the night, one might think they were watching an old mob movie, as the wise guys dragged the mark back to the godfather, kicking and screaming.

After a two day road trip and several more liberal applications of chloroform, the body was unceremoniously dropped off at the Mountain.

To all it a command and control center was inaccurate. In fact, to call it any one thing was inaccurate. Cheyenne Mountain had always been a long established Command and Control center, as well as being the first place the President would run to in the even of a Nuclear Winter, but over several years, it had become much more. As the years wore on and the people dug deeper beneath the mountain, a small culture all of its own came into existence. Scientists, military masterminds, and every day soldiers populated the near mythic labyrinth that went down three miles below the Earth’s surface. There was no where under the Mountain that you could go without some sort of card, and often you could tell how important or involved someone was by the number of cards they carried. Still more important people would have wide, bloodshot eyes from constant use of retinal scanners, while others would have permanent band aids on their finger tips from constant blood tests. All of this was in the name of security.

Dr. Light’s laboratory, however, was mostly about security. The rest was devoted to mad science. Well, maybe not MAD science, but definitely loony. Maybe it just had a case of the giggles. Thomas Light couldn’t tell anymore. He knew he’d crossed every ethical boundary decades ago and couldn’t look back. What scared him most was that the Suits in the White House kept driving him to plunge deeper into the depths of the near-satanic work he’d found himself doing. In fact, he’d enjoyed working on the armor meant to interact with the System he’d developed, mostly because compared to the System itself, it was refreshingly normal.

In a deceptively clear tube on one wall of his crowded lab, suspended by a series of hooks and wires, was a prototype-mock up of the armor that had been the selling point of his project when he’d originally applied for the grants to research its possibilities. The jumpsuit that was the first layer of the armor was made out of a titanium-laced Kevlar, which made the thick cloth virtually impossible to cut or pierce with conventional means. Secondary layers of reactive armor plates on the chest, shoulder, and fore-limb areas, as well as a helmet with a fully integrated HUD and TAG system, made the complete assembly look like some spaceman’s battle armor, almost like the kind you’d see soldiers going to war with aliens in. The suit was mostly a drab grey, although the secondary layer had a layer of red paint slapped onto it to make it look vaguely interesting to the easily bored or distracted Suits. Presentation was everything, after all, because if your enemies saw how big your guns were, they wouldn’t WANT to go to war...

War... Thomas sighed. That’s what the Suits had decided to use the technology for. Never mind that with the right kind of tuning, the system could allow the millions bound to a wheelchair to walk, as was the original intention. When the Suits heard the technology acted by enhancing the strength of failing muscles , they immediately asked if it would work on a perfectly healthy person. Like a fool, Thomas Light had told them yes, and never saw what was coming until it was too late and he had been sucked beneath the Mountain, an unchained prisoner. Held by grants and the drive for scientific study. He knew what he was doing would damn him to hell for the rest of his life, with no chance of salvation, but he also couldn’t stop the little voice in the back of his head that kept saying “But you don’t go to hell if you don’t die, and if you’re famous or infamous, you’ll never be forgotten, and therefore never die...”

Dr. Light shook himself mentally and looked around. The Suits had told him his new test subject would be here when he was, and they managed it all the time before, so it had to... ah. There.

Thomas Xavier Light approached a flat table upon which lay a... man? Or a teenager? He looked younger than Light would have expected, his wild brown hair splayed against the cool steel of the table. His eyes were closed, and he seemed very relaxed. Whoever had brought him in had probably already taken down all the relevant information Light needed and then put the boy to sleep for the next step. Efficiency, even on the road to hell, was a must.

Turning almost automatically, Dr. Light picked up a clipboard he only had guessed was there, and gave the information on it a cursory glance, occasionally looking to and from the boy on the table.

“Rock Volnutt... No immediate or extended family known, resident of New Detroit. Reason for volunteering... ‘Patriotic Duty.’ Oh, that’s rich...” he chuckled a bit and set the clipboard down. Part of him, a larger part than he’d like to admit, kept asking the same nagging question: “How do we know he volunteered? What if he was kidnaped? I’m already in too deep to back out, and if the government so chooses, they can brand me a madman and end my life, citing this boy as an example of how deep I’d gone into the bowels of my own insanity...”

Thomas Light sighed. It never paid to have a conscious that was an English major when the rest of him was a scientist. Ignoring the protesting voice in the back of his mind, he turned on his stereo, a little louder than normal, and set to work, reapplying the sedatives and sleeping toxins at regular intervals to prevent his subject waking up to the horror of his opened body...

In some other, deeper part of the mountain, several lab technicians ran around, trying like hell to look busy as the project neared completion. One of them, known to the rest of the lab techs as Reggae for his Rastafarian dread locks, approached the aged man sitting in the plush chair in the center of the mayhem.

“Er, excuse me... Dr. Wily, sir?” Reggae began hesitantly.

A thick, nearly suffocating German accent issued forth from the figure in the chair. “Vhat do you need, Reggae?”

Reggae winced. Even his boss had started to use his nickname. That was usually a bad sign. “Well, some of the guys are wondering about the amount of material we have.”

There was a short silence in the hustle and bustle of the laboratory, where several frantic and frazzled would-be scientists worked on mounds of some kind of gelatin at several tables. “Go on.”

Reggae adjusted his collar with one finger and gulped, and then held up a sheaf of papers to hide behind. “Well, we, uh, seem to have an overabundance of our primary conductive material, and it’s a little valuable to let go to waste or anything, sir, and I, personally, was wondering what was going to be done with the excess...” his voice grew weaker as the sentence wore on. His mother always told him he was too honest, and he could almost feel the agitation that poured off the German scientist.

The chair swivelled around, assaulting Reggae’s senses with the visage of Dr. Albert Ezekial Wily. The top of his head was bald, while the rest seemed to play host to a wickedly fanned out and spiked gray shock of hair that looked like he’d been born with it. His mustache was equally brutal in appearance, almost looking like a second set of teeth. The slightly insane smile he wore behind these features did nothing to ease Reggae’s tenseness, nor did the doctor’s tie, which had a rather skeletal motif.

“I belief zat ze phrase you use in zis country iz ‘skimming off ze top,’” Dr. Wily grinned.

Reggae thought for a second before drawing his blank. “I don’t understand...”

Dr. Wily stood up and put an arm around Reggae in a fatherly way, his other hand sweeping before the pair of them as if the German was revealing some fantastic treasure. “My boy, ven you order gold from ze gold despzitory, and zey azk ‘How much vill you be vanting, Herr Vily,’ you do NOT stop at how much you zink you vill need. You ALVAYS take vatever zey are villing to give you, und possibly more so! Do you understand?”

“I guess so, sir, but... what will happen to the rest of the gold?” Reggae asked a tad nervously.

“Don’t vorry about it, mein apprentize. Leave all ze money handling vorries to me! You only need to vorry about getting ze ‘Sticks und Stones,’” Wily nearly spat the name of the project with disgust, “syztem vorking. Vunce zat is done, life vill become little more zen vaiting for ze world to bow prostrate at mein feet.”

Reggae blinked, his mind completely failing to grasp what he was just told. Dr. Wily, unfortunately for Reggae, saw this.

“Is zere any chance you failed to understand me, Herr Reggae?” Dr. Wily asked in a pleasant tone.

“Er...” was all Reggae managed before the outburst he knew would follow.

“ZEN GET YOUR SORRY BEHIND BACK TO VORK!” Dr. Wily shouted above the din of the laboratory.

As Reggae darted back into the crowd of shifting, nervous lab technicians, Dr. Albert wily sat down in his plush chair and picked up the folder the US Government had been kind enough to give him this morning. It detailed his ‘competition,’ a kindly old man by the name of Dr. Thomas Xavier Light. Included in the files were some of the relevant points of his own project. The report was already a mess of blue pen where Dr. Wily had scribbled notes and observations in the margins of the report, criticizing and praising the other scientist at the same time. Although they were working for the same goal, that of an unstoppable battlefield force that was both tactically flexible and incredibly destructive, his own methods had differed greatly from the good Dr. Light’s, who, for all his morals and glowing community service reports, had focused on human test subjects instead of trying to created something totally different.

Dr. Wily went back to scribbling noted, taking in the whole of Dr. Light’s system and making mental adjustments to it. If he could find a way to copy Light’s system and make it work even better, all of his plans would come to fruition that much easier! While his own project would be his mainstay and trademark, stealing another scientist’s ideas was somehow appealing to Wily.

One of the heavy doors of the laboratory clanged open, and four lab technicians wheeled in a cart loaded with gold bars. Dr. Wily chuckled to himself as the various technicians marveled over the new arrival, many of them already contemplating ways to abscond with a bar or two. Looking back at the information he had on Dr. Light’s system, a plan began to form in the German scientist’s head. Perhaps, after his own project was completed, but before he unleashed in on the world, he could find another use for the extra gold and his overeager technicians...

Back on the now much less deserted road, a police car was checking the abandoned and gas-less car for evidence. It had been days since the car’s owner had been seen by his friends, and some of them had gotten worried. Rock had never gone much farther than a couple of miles to get to work and back, and his disappearance had not gone unnoticed. A young blonde girl was with the police, helping them look for clues that weren’t there.

One of them, an officer named Erik, looked up at her from under the car. “I haven’t found anything that might indicate where he went, Ma’am... Are you sure he didn’t walk home or something?”

Roll Casket shook her head. She and Rock had been friends for as long as either of them could remember, and he’s never just leave without telling her. Rock wasn’t the kind of person who wouldn’t call her if he was in trouble, either, so something else had to have happened to him...

Erik stood up, brushing off areas of his uniform. “I have no idea what to tell you ma’am. Maybe he was abducted by aliens, or something, but he sure isn’t here.”

Roll glared at Erik, who missed it completely. “Isn’t there anything else you can do?” she pleaded.

Erik scratched his head. “Well, I suppose I could give the station a heads up. Have the boys keep an eye out for him in case he’s wandering around lost. Alert a couple of the surrounding towns... I make no promises, you understand...”

Roll nodded numbly. “I just want to know if he’s all right...” she managed, her voice trembling.

Erik totally misread this and tried to hug her in a supportive way. He was rewarded for his good intentions with a knee to the groin. Roll walked back to her own car, leaving the squeaking Erik on the ground on the side of the highway. As she drove away, Erik could only think to himself “Yeah... I asked for that, didn’t I?”

Dr. Light had no way of knowing what time it was. There were no windows, and there wasn’t a working clock in his lab. He made a mental note to go out and steal one from some other lab when he was done, and hit the sleep toxin release button again, driving Rock Volnutt deeper into unconsciousness...