The Megaman War:
Part 1 - Whistle in the Wind

By Hadrian (Hardman) Howell

Chapter 3: Successful Test

Only a few of the lab technicians noticed when the conga line of security guards with boxes came into the lab and places them off to one corner. Reggae immediately went to see his senior scientist about it, completely forgetting about Dr. Wily’s orders about not bothering him.

“Er, sir? Some men just dropped off a whole lot of unlabeled boxes, sir...” Reggae said as he poked his head into the office.

“Vat are you babbling about?” Dr. Wily said, shoving something out of Reggae’s sight. “Vat could possibly... boxes?”

“Er, yes sir...”

In an almost childlike way, Albert Wily clapped his hands together and almost jumped out of his chair. “Gazzer some of ze boyz and have them bring ze boxes in here. I’m going to ze mess to grab mein lunch break. Vould you care for anyzing, Reg?”

It took Reggae’s somewhat dull mind to realize Dr. Wily was offering him food. “Er, I could do with a club sandwich, sir.”

“Vunderful! Get ze boxes into mein office and expand ze valls if need be. I’ll be back in about half an hour, und I’m taking ze schematics vith me...”

“Schematics? For what, sir? We’ve got all the plans for this project on the big monitor in the middle of the room, remember?” Reggae told him, checking behind him to insure that the 56" plasma monitor was still there and still displaying the plans.

“Oh, of course,” Dr. Wily said, remembering himself, “Zis is chust a side projekt, you see?” He swept by the confused dread locked man with an armload of papers and a pen stuck behind his ear. “Now get to vork! I vant ze boxes in mein office and at least ein more sections complete upon mein return!” He slammed the steel door behind him. Over the ring of the metal-on-metal collision, though, Reggae could SWEAR he heard his boss... whistling?

He shrugged the disturbing though off and got a few of the larger lab technicians to help him drag the deceptively heavy boxes into the ‘office.’

Rock stirred inside the Diagnosis Chamber. Odd lights flashed across his vision and an eerie hum filled his ears. He shook his head and felt the weight of a helmet. Catching glimpses of himself in the occasional green light, he could make out the outline of the Armor he was now wearing. It felt much lighter than it should have, given its bulk and apparent durability, but Rock almost felt like he could jump higher than he ever could before, despite the armor’s bulk...

He put a hand on the side of the capsule, feeling the cold steel even through the thick gloves of the gauntlet. Despite the thickness of the jumpsuit that covered most of his body, he didn’t feel warm, either, even in this confined space. Even in the face of the occasional ache in his arms and legs, or the now few and far between pulses of pain that only sent mere tremors through his mind, Rock felt incredible. He felt almost like he could do anything... he couldn’t remember feeling like this ever before...

Of course, his coherent memory was of the time he was floating in that odd blue liquid... anything before that was... WAS there anything before that? He seemed to think there SHOULD be, but every time he thought about it for more than a few seconds, his head started to pound again. He sat there in the dark, bored out of his mind, watching the occasional flashing green light.

He ran over his situation in his mind. Stuck, somewhere dark, alone, with no idea where he was or even WHO he was... He contemplated escape, but thought better of it when he remembered he had no where to escape to. Whoever else was here hadn’t... fatally injured him yet, and from the snatches of the conversation that he remembered with the obscured figure, he figured that he wouldn’t come to much harm in their hands.

So thinking, Rock easily dozed off to sleep under the watchful blink of the green light as the Diagnosis Tank continued to analyze him and tell Dr. Light things Rock had already discovered...

The Chief of Staff barged into the Situation Room, the President a full step behind him. The whole room stood from their seats as the President entered, and sat down as he did.

“Where are we with Siberia?” The President asked.

Leonard spoke first. “Sir, recovery operations are being hampered by the Siberian Government, who are demanding public answers as to our troops... presence there.” He fell silent, waiting for the next verbal stab he knew he’d suffer for this mistake.

“What were they doing there in the first place?” The President asked.

At this point, the CIA Director took the ball. “Dey were placed dere accidentally, suh.”

“HOW?”

“Da telepotashun system-“

“Can someone who speaks straight English explain this one, please?” The President cut her off. The Secretary of State cleared his throat.

“Despite all of NASA’s efforts so far, the equipment for accurate Teleportation isn’t quite all ‘up in the air’ yet, sir,” he said, getting an inquisitive ‘go on’ look from the President before continuing. “So far, the coverage area of the Teleportation Web extends to the better part of our own hemisphere and Mexico, with a few select areas in Tokyo and Nagasaki.”

“So how did we INTEND to put them smack dab into the middle east? A fly by?” The Chief of Staff shot into the conversation with his usual venom.

“The Web can SEND someone outside of the coverage area, but there’s a whole lot of guess work involved,” The Secretary of Defense pressed on. “It’s like a deep space artillery shot, and we’ve usually been very successful, but...”

“Our screw ups are public and our successes are private,” The President nodded. “I see. Well, we’ll talk with the Siberian Government and get things straightened out without tipping our hand to Saudi Arabia with regards to Teleportation. What can we expect to see in regards to their reaction if they figure they were the target?” he asked the Chief of Staff.

“You can expect gas to go up another buck, that’s for sure.”

“I’m glad I don’t have to drive for the rest of my life,” the President said, standing up. The assembled men and women stood up virtually as one as the president left the room, leaving the Chief of Staff behind.

“This thing’s going to take some fixing, placement jokes aside,” the Chief of Staff told Leonard, who sighed.

“And it’ll get fixed, and we’ll double check the coordinates next time.”

“You’re damn right,” the Chief of Staff snapped, and then he left.

Dr. Wily sat at his table scribbling on his notebook. With a larger compressor here and here, he could increase this model’s ground speed from 7 mph to 75 mph... not bad. He jotted ‘Quick’ down next to the idea and moved on.

Several such notations covered the front, back, and every page of the notebook, which looked almost abused enough for the EPA to get involved. Notations on the addition of flame throwers to certain models, or a liquid nitrogen gun (the details of which he’d work out later, he was sure) could created an endless variety of specialized units! He even had a basic idea for a model with a large pair of scissors to cut things in half, and a model with an electrical generator... there was even one that took the strength enhancements of the basic Armor a step or eight further...

Of course, all of these ideas couldn’t be combined into a single model. That would be stupid. Spread out the strengths and weaknesses, and all of these would fight together like and unstoppable engine of destruction, each member of a unit with different, clearly defined roles. With a certain amount of brainwashing, they could be working together as efficiently as robots under his own, personal command!

Of course, Thomas Light had been hampered by his unwillingness to experiment on anyone who hadn’t volunteered, but to Dr. Wily’s mad eyes, all of his lab technicians had volunteered...

He started to laugh, softly at first, and then louder, crazier... he couldn’t help it. It was just all so easy! The Government had practically handed themselves over to him on a platter, and they had funded the WHOLE THING! He couldn’t help but laugh now as he realized he could expand his goals. Why stop at bringing America to its knees when he could have the WORLD? His laughter echoed throughout the lunch room, drawing more than a few questioning stares.

He calmed down as he remembered where he was, and lamely rustled some paper. “Er... Zat Dilbert...He is chust too funny, ya?”

Forgetting Reggae’s club sandwich, he made his way back to the office about fifteen minutes ahead of schedule, but didn’t even stop to look at their progress on the original project as he darted into his makeshift office (which was larger now), sat down, laid out the first of his new plans, and began tearing open boxes. A few of them were simply full of untold bunches of the titanium-laced kevlar Dr. Light had used to make the jump suits that were the most basic level of protection for all of his planned creations, while still more were filled with offhand equipment: air compressors of different size, pieces of metal, undeveloped weapons...

Dr. Wily couldn’t help but laugh again, and then remembered that he still had one more thing to do before he set some of his lab technicians about the task of building their future equipment. He went back to his desk, brought out a piece of copier paper, on which he drew a perfect square with the help of an old ruler.

He sat back in his chair and contemplated what to do next. He was designing his SYMBOL, now, and though had to be applied to that... In a simple square... he decided to draw a thick circle that hit the borders of the square on every side. He took a long, slow look at it before grinning and drawing a stylized, slightly slanted W over the circle, and erased the parts of the circle covered by the W, making the letter of his last name seem to stand out. He looked at it for a while, held it up, looked at it from a few different angles, and then nodded. He went back to the boxes and began to rummage around again.

A few minutes later, he came back to the draft of the symbol on his desk. And scribbled a small ‘DR’ in the upper left hand corner. A man has to make sure everyone KNOWS he’s a doctor these days, after all. He smiled to himself and called for Reggae.

“Yes sir?”

“Take zis paper to ze metallurgy department, und have zem make a replican at twice zis size,” the German scientist told his assistant calmly.

“Um, sure thing sir. Do you want any particular color?”

“Hmm... A mettalick blue background vith ze sky blue zircle, und vhite lettering.”

Reggae nodded and took the paper reverentially from his boss. “Right away sir!”

Dr. Wily sat down at his desk and smiled to himself. But only for a moment. He stepped out of his office and told the other lab technicians that there was going to be another project in the works, and that they should move all of the original project into one half of the lab while the new project took up the other half. His office became the second half of the lab, and he brought a full two thirds of the other lab technicians in and started them on making the parts listed in his innumerable schematics.

As all of the boys started working on their new instructions, Dr. Wily smiled to himself. “I zink, vunce mein friend Reggae returns, I shall haf to pay Herr Light a visit.”

When Reggae returned no less than half an hour later with a perfect replica of Dr. Wily’s drawing at twice its original size, Dr. Wilt told him to secure the metal panel to the front of his desk for now, and then to follow him to Dr. Light’s laboratory...

Meanwhile, unaware of the visit he was about to receive, Dr. Light snorted himself awake. He checked the timer on the Diagnosis Tank and shook himself into a more alert state when he saw that it had already reached zero. He stumbled to his feet, straightening his lab coat and his unintentional, white beard before he opened the door to the Diagnosis Tank.

As he did, he could hear someone inside stand up. As light filled the chamber, he beheld his creation. Rock had taken to the Armor better than he could have imagined, with the Diagnosis Tank reporting a 100% successful integration. A number Light had never dared THINK he could accomplish with the System in such an early stage of development...

“Well, Rock, how do you feel?” Thomas Light asked, nearly giddy with excitement, his moral dilemma all but forgotten.

“I feel incredible,” Rock said simply, walking out of the Tank on solid legs. He took a few experimental laps around the lab at various speeds, getting a feel for the capabilities he now had. Dr. Light watched him with growing excitement.

“Fantastic,” he managed after a while. “Can you jump?”

Rock looked at the ceiling. In the lab, it was fifteen feet high to accommodate large or bulky equipment. With an unconscious smirk, Rock knew he could touch it without even trying hard. He bunched up his legs and shoved off from the ground, rocketing toward the ceiling a little faster than he’d intended. Almost instinctually, however, he whirled about in the air, hitting the ceiling with his feet instead of his head, allowing his momentum to bunch up his body again before pushing back off toward the ground, this time more gently. Thomas Light’s jaw dropped at this display. Not even his first test subject had managed to be this graceful or coordinated even after a month of testing...

Rock landed easily. “So, tell me... What’s going on around here, anyway?”

Dr Light sighed, his euphoric rush dying with the utterance of Rock’s question. Of course, the boy had a right to know everything, even if he didn’t go willingly into the process...

“Allow me to start by saying thank you for making Project Prometheus a stunning success...” Dr. Light began, his heart weighing heavily.