Stop dilly-dallying, you stupid shit.
There are killer motherfucker robots out wanting to tear you and everyone around you a new asshole.
Run and find someplace safe.
And while you are at it, tell us your name.

Oh give me a break. "Monster"? He rallied you cowards to fight against the one who has kept you in the darkness, killed his brother in exchange for a chance for you to be free and yet, you betray him. And he's the monster? He fought for your freedom, a fight you wouldn't fight for yourselves, and when he tried to prove a point, you let him down. What a monster!
Go on, live the rest of your oppressed little life in this damned city, under the watchful eye of Wily and his robots, under the constant fear of making the wrong move and ending your existence, knowing you never really stood up yourself.
You are the dead.

Fuck yes the protomen.

You stay at Dr. Light's lab the rest of the night. Roll doesn't make it.

reported for ruining a good album

>>212626

win

<i> Should I continue? If I'm not welcome, I'll be on my way. I'm sorry I can't art. </i>

> I knock on the screen of the navi strapped to my arm. New messages? The wireless network should be down, even my clearance shouldn't override this.

There is a squat, four story building to one side of the road with a fire escape bolted to one side. By now, scans will have ID'd everyone in the crowd, some apartments will be ransacked, some disappeared. No point in going home again, not tonight. I clamber onto a dumpster and then onto the rusted metal. It creeks like a banshee as I scramble up the side. If there is power inside, I can get to the network and see if I've been blacklisted. Like I'll know what to do if I am.

On the fourth floor, I spot a light, a little red LED on the window facing the street. It rotates around, then I glance underneath it. Laying across the ground is the glossy green outline of a sniper's armor watching through a scope. Its auto-spotter turns around again, it doesn't see me.

>Against my better instincts, I tap out replies to what must be virus messages onto my navi.

>>212587
Alright, I found somewhere to hide. Its already occupied. What now?
Name? Io.

>>212590
Shut up. What were we supposed to do? We already got ourselves killed. And Light's new monster just killed Protoman, again, and abandoned us to die.

>>212598
I wish I could believe there was more than one Protoman.

>HurrDurr let's hijack a text quest.

Even if it's a text quest, there's no reason to be a gigantic faggot about it.

>>212651
>text quest
>NOT a reason to be a gigantic faggot

Apparently, you have been misinformed.

>>212654

No good sir, you have been misinformed.

If you want to shit all over a quest, keep it on IRC or /questdis/. Trolling the actual quest threads is not to be tolerated.

Last warning.

>>212644
What's blacklisting?

Questers, be a little nicer to this man. He is trying to start a quest, although it does spit in our nastlagic childhood megaman memories.

Give him a chance, or at least stop insulting him.

>>212644
Don't you have a navi? Jack in to one of the bots and commandeer it.

Cautiously continuing, but if this isn't appreciated, just report and delete or ban me with my apologies for the offense.

>>212656
I can check my reg code against Wily's records. If I'm on the blacklist, then I'm out of a job, can't get food from the dispensers, or go home. Oh, and they might pick me up for reassignment elsewhere. There are plenty of people without codes at all, the kids born on the streets and such.

I duck under the window as the auto-spotter sweeps past again, doing a poor job of watching the sniper's back. The fire escape still goes up onto the roof.

>>212668
That sounds suicidal. Heh, why not.

The auto-spotter passes over head once more and I roll into the room. There's carpet, albeit burnt, on the floor. The sniper doesn't have ears, parabolic microphones to listen in to targets, but nothing to hear me approach from behind. I unclip the cord from my navi and attach it to the port on the back of the sniper's "neck", pardon the vulgarity. The jack is steel with a stamped W on it.

On my navi, I get picture-in-picture of the snipers scope. I run a quick override, the auto-spotter's laser light glides right past me. Now that I'm logged in. Its aim is trained two blocks down, into another window, tracing a silhouette behind a curtain. It won't fire without my order.

if the bot wants the person dead then we want them alive. see if you can shut it down.

See if you can't commandeer the Sniperbot and start taking potshots at Wily's robots.

>>212791
Simpler idea. Have it ding the mission complete flag then continue with its duties with one small change: the next time it sees the person running this shithole, kill them.

Suggestion 2010/07/27(Tue)02:28 No. 212797 ID: e1d940
File 128022292770.png - (68.31KB , 400x400 , sniper.png )

>>212677
Crappy art of panel depiction drawn in ten minutes at 4AM to spite people who hate text quests. Art is not by author and may not be canon or accurate but is just what I pictured at the time. My eye hurts. I'm going to bed.

cancel the attack or whatever. it looks like it may be dr light. and if you are near him then you are protected by his robot as well.

>>212709
>I suppose arguing with a dissenter virus on my navi is fruitless, but your logic baffles me. That's probably just another criminal. Regardless ...

>>212791
>>212792
>I'm in the bot's diagnostic mode right now. There's ICE to gain control. Hang on, I'll see what I can do. Battle routine set.

Execute.

I've made runs on Wily's ICE before, just as training exercises. This is the first time I think I've ever broken it intentionally. Fuck it. I slot a pair of chips and bring down the first firewall. The inner control routines are locked out, brute force won't work here. Reg code might.

I flag the target as eliminated. The sniper's servos engage, it ejects the energy battery from its rifle. The red eye behind its blast shield dims, its body relaxes. On my navi, I see it begin rebooting.

>Alright, in deep enough now that it doesn't matter. It'll take some time for the sniper to set back up. I can try and break through the ice on its inner controls, or get out of here. Unless you have some better idea.

>>212797
Hey man, that's really appreciated! I'll see about investing in a tablet if things go well.

keep on digging into it's controls and see if there is some kind of manual override so you can take control. Not as in manually pilot the bot but to have it follow your orders. A robot sidekick could be useful right now.

See if there is network. Hack every other bot if there is, and say hello to your new army.

yeah use a trojan routine to gain control. by being already there on start up it wont realize your navi is an intruder.

What did... Light's newest monster look like? If he looked kind of like construction equipment, we may have a problem.

>>212883
Snag the battery. Never know when it might be useful.

Sure, break through the ICE. It's dangerous out on the streets after all.

>>212906
> I'm not so sure walking down the street with a robot body guard is exactly subtle. But I'll see what I can do.

>>212912
> I know the basic layout of the snipers, they are all independent, except for central charging hubs at Wily's checkpoints. There's no way I've got the kind of software to jack one of those. Dr. Hikari would.

>>212947
> Did you write this stealth program?

I slam another chip into the drive and abort the snipers boot sequence. They aren't written for an attack like this, and there's little resistance, just a cannon.ice and metool.ice. I download both to secure partitions on my navi. I can delete them later or see if there isn't some more productive use for them if I ever see the lab again. Nevermind.

Alright, new commands are loaded into the snipers routine. It will register my navi's signal as a priority target to defend, and the next time it returns to charge, it will shred its memory banks, so this outing doesn't get noticed. I've got a panic button too, if it doesn't think I'm in danger.

The reboot finishes, the autospotter sweeps the room, right past me again. The sniper sits there, motionless, red sensor array scanning back and forth across the street. The gun is wired into its manipulator, Picture in Picture is clear. There's not much else I can do with this bot, and no where else in this apartment to jack in it seems. I think we should get moving.

Going home seems risky. The lab seems like an even worse idea. On the sniper's map, there's an automat near here, if I was spotted there, I might be able to lure the drones back to this block for this one to take them out. Could go an' extort whoever that was we saved. What say you, revolutionary AI?

>>212953
I didn't get a good look. Everyone who did was at the front of the crowd, and their very dead now. I just saw it get out of Wily's fortress wall. It was blue. Had a helmet. Looked like Protoman.

>>212994
Snagged. I take its combat knife too, although its heavy. Hate to know what it'll do if it has to fight without it, but oh well.

Yeah sure go squeeze the guy for some info. If he's worth a sniper he's probably got something you can use. Why would you just lead a drone to get sniped for no reason though? Save it for when you're in trouble.

I jack out and climb back down the fire escape. I'll take it slow though, if you want to add anything else.

>>213076
>I don't, particularly, but I still need to know if I got ID'd at Wily's fortress. Going home, or to an automat would check my reg code against the blacklist. If I am on it, well, shit get worse.

I have to pause for a moment. One of Wily's telescreens is playing a new video.

Protoman, or his facsimile, is standing on a sound stage of the fortress facade. He holds a flat, cardboard shield "Can't you see? Dr. Wily keeps us safe! He is our hope! I won't let you kill any more, Dr. Light!"

"Dr. Light" and another actor, in blue, stand opposite. Dr. Light slouches, his mouth hanging open. His partner, holds a massive gun in one hand and picks his nose. Dr. Light points a remote at "Protoman." If there is any scenery left to chew, he manages. "HAHA! Foolish Protoman! You can't defend these people, and you can never stop me ... Because I am your FATHER!" He presses something on the remote. Protoman seizes at his heart and collapses.

Dr. Light turns to his hulking guard. "Megaman! ...Kill them all!"

Just propaganda. They really turn it out fast. Hopefully the kids that lost their folks tonight will be put at ease.

There's a lock on the door the sniper was targeting. I jack in, and override it. I ready the knife, and check the link with the hijacked sniper. Its trained on the window again, me silhouette opposite me. I crack the door, and grip the knife, my index finger along the side of the blade.

>Hey, Virus, knife fighting isn't exactly in my forte. Can you pin this guy down for me?

I rush in.

>>213220
We seem to lack the mass to do that, and you've already got the sniper set to defend you.
I don't quite know what you want us to do.

Derp. I screwed up my continuity. You have control of the sniper.

As I rush in a baseball bat slams into the door frame behind me. It cracks, and my assailant turns the steely bat over and comes after me again. I stay low, slam into him with my shoulder. He stands head and shoulders taller than me, I almost recognize him, but in an instant of pause I take a fist to the side of the head and drop my knife.

Backing away from him, I recognize him. I don't have time to punch a command into my navi. If the virus kills him now, its my fault.

Fire all of the lasers!

Energy blasts burn through the curtain, the first blows the door apart behind me. The man in front of me dives away from the window. Another blast destroys a chair. A third very nearly takes off my eyebrows. It buys me enough time to kill the sniper, and dust myself off.

"Dr. Hikari."

"Io." He snarls at me. "What's going on?"

I explain the situation to him. He remains silent, finally he fills me in.

"Your navi doesn't have a virus. It has a consciousness; its part of a project I've been working on. Wily doesn't strictly know about it." Dr. Hikari loads new software onto my navi.

I don't know how I feel about this, Hikari is up to something. But, Dr. Hikari, he's got a wife and a kid. He's not some insane terrorist like Dr. Light. We worked on compiling the software on my navi for hours.

>I'm as lost as you are. But Hikari said to fill you in on anything I can. Ask away, anything about me that you want to know. But I've got one question for you first; what's your name, navi?

This is a bit of a checkpoint here, the end of the intro scene as it were. I've got a couple directions of where this can go in mind, but I don't intend for things to be turgidly linear. So I'm gonna pause and provide what exposition I can here. Thanks for bearing with me!

>>213268
Load us up with weapons and gear, then plot to track down Dr. Light. We need to parse fact from fiction, and Light is the only one with the balls to do anything.
But first, hack through the sniper's protections to tell if your ID is blacklisted.

>>213268

I'm sorry about the lasers, man, but... you gotta understand. All of the lasers! It was beautiful, man *sniff* beautiful...

we don't have. dr light is just the only one with something strong enough to take the fight head on. hikari is fighting from the shadows.

There is now a discussion thread for this quest, I'd like to get an opinion from those of you following this quest before we move forward.

>>213304
>You've got a powerful software suite already. There could be better stuff at the lab. There are a few other navi operators I can think of that have better softs that us though. If you want me to get strapped, we'll need to find someway to find some more suitable kit that a knife made for a bot. I'm working on the blacklist while your program compiles.


>>213351
>Just glad you didn't hit Dr. Hikari. Suppose I wouldn't be so glad if it hadn't been him.

>>213373
Um, did you miss a word in there?
>Dr. Light is nuts, if you ask me. And Dr. Hikari is taking an enormous risk already.

Tracking down Dr. Light won't be a small task. Not now, that's for sure. Propaganda says he runs his own hydroponics farm so he never has to leave his base. Rumor is Dr. Wily lets Dr. Light stay active because he wants him to be the city's boogeyman. I suppose its not entirely unwarranted.

ack, was saying, we don't have a name. i suppose a good one would just geist, a derivative of ghost.

and while Light may be a nut he is a nut with a powerful robot. if you want decent armor you should jack a metool's helmet and use it like a shield.

Dr. Hikari and I end up working the rest of the night on compiling Geist, as this AI wishes to be called. It seems a fitting name. Maybe more so for Dr. Hikari than me, now that's he's been "eliminated" by one of Wily's snipers. He says he's prepared for this, and that he'll go underground, try and get his family out of the city. I hope Wily didn't hit them too.

As the sun crawls above the horizon and outline of the factories on the east side of the city I get a message calling all navi operators to report in. Its good news, or at least news I wouldn't be receiving if I was supposed to be dead too. I buckle Geist to my arm, pull my sleeve over the plastic case as best I can, and pull my hood up. Hikari and I go our separate ways in the morning light. I don't get any sleep on the subway ride into the lab.

No one seems to care that I'm in street clothes, or that there's a blood stain on the back of my hoodie, whose blood it is I don't know. The sub's are mostly for other Operators and people that work in the lab, they run right under the fortress into our sterile little cloister. The doors are automatic, the tile is white and polished, the bots here largely stay out of our way. I find a seat in the back of the briefing room and try to keep my eyes open.

The daily briefing starts right on time, Dr. Higsby gives the normal lip service about our objectives, and the necessity of our work.

>I'm sure you've caught on by now, Geist, but I work for Wily. When something goes wrong in his security networks, its my job to correct the problem. Dissenters hijack the network to spread information around the city, we call it the Undernet. Mostly, it's regular crooks that use it to set up deals or hits. Sometimes we find people plotting to do something stupid, or trying to get a story out that conflicts with Wily's version.

Dr. Higsby is downplaying the attack last night, that's certain. He doesn't give out a single order directly related to it, and only mentions Dr. Hikari's "death" at the end of the briefing.

I've got my orders, and three days to investigate it, lax pace, but that's alright with me. The target is a suspected Undernet in the warehouse district. In my cubicle block, I catch a few minutes of sleep as I recharge Geist, I imagine it will be the last chance I get for a few days if I'm gonna track down Dr. Light.

>Okay, Geist, let's get to work. Where should we start?

>>213436

Will try to remember next time. We're not used to being in direct control of weapon systems!

>>214269

Triangulation. That's the only way to track down pirate radio signals. Metal buildings can wreak havoc on that though, and even if you find the source, what you find might just be a repeater. If they're wired in and not on radio you can find where they patched into someone else's network cable. In both situations there may be an alarm to notify them to immediately stop broadcasting and change locations. The repeater itself will be an alarm, warning them when you shut it down. To find their location, you have to monitor the repeater intact and triangulate where the signal to it is coming from, all without activating any proximity alarms like motion sensors and such that might also convince them to cut the feed.

>>214273
Sounds good. I've got you jacked in to a surveillance drone to start running down the signal. What we do with the Undernet site once we pin it down will be another matter.

>You seem to be taking this pretty well. I was a little surprised you didn't tell me to jump Dr. Higsby and shout "For Protoman!" Hang on...

I clamp the screen of my Navi closed.

...some time later...

>Sorry about that Geist, that was Eugene. Have we made any progress on the Undernet?

>>214417

>You seem to be taking this pretty well.

This unit is confused. Was the advice not helpful?

>Have we made any progress on the Undernet?

I don't know, have we?

Error connecting to radio transcievers component not found. Parabolic antenna not found. Dispatching vigilantes to capture Undernet repeater. Vigilantes not found. Requesting access to city blueprints for wiring and telecommunications.

Suggestion 2010/08/04(Wed)21:00 No. 215703 ID: 40a8d3
File 128098081431.jpg - (19.20KB , 640x480 , protomen_quest_pixel_1.jpg )

Thought I'd try something a little different from here out, because of the duality of the partnership between Io and Geist. Whenever Geist has a task in the Net, its up to the you (the AI) what results. If you wish to leave the specifics of a hack to me, you can suggest simply to "complete," "progress," or "complicate" a situation. Also, laughably bad Atari 2600 art that I hope doesn't completely brake theme.

>>214435
>Sorry, I don't know what I was expecting you to say. I suppose Dr. Hikari would have to be crazy to code revolutionary AIs, right? And I'd have to be crazy to be worried about him getting out of town. . . He's an enemy now.

I punch up the network I had set Geist to crack into. No progress, I'm not surprised when I start dialing addresses around the target. Its Antarctica, nothing but ICE and frozen systems. It looks professional, could even be the work of another Operator. But all the monitoring stations are sending back false all-clears.

It takes a while, jury rigging bots from other stations to patrol through the zone and get the information I need. Eventually, Geist and I narrow our search for the Undernet host to a single warehouse on the edge of a polluted canal. I expect that if Geist tries to hack in from the labs, we'll lose the target.

Archives for the warehouse check out, its owned by Wily Corp, stores food, clothing, electronics, housewares and law enforcement explosive collars. Staff of fifty-three humans and ninety bots. Built in 197X, still has a wooden dock from when boats could operate in the canal without corroding their hulls. Satellite map has a roof entrance.

>There's our bad guys. If I had to venture a guess, I'd say drug ring. But I'm tempted to dig a little deeper, and see if we can't pull some info from their Undernet. Feel like taking a little trip?

Behind me, Eugene passes my cube and stops, turning to look in at the bare, white half-walls. "Um...Who are you talking to?"

"What?" I tug on the hem of my skirt nervously and cock an eyebrow at the navi sitting on my desk.