With Splash Woman's Laser Trident weapon uploaded, Mega Man reached the end of the tunnel and found his way to the fortress itself. It proved to be almost classic Wily in design, complete with the skull in front...which immediately told Mega Man that this was some sort of frame up. Wily would never use one of Vinyl's projects in a world takeover attempt without her, and Vinyl would never let the fortress be without her neon horseshoe symbol if she were a major player. Of course, knowing it was a frame up didn't tell Mega Man who was actually behind it...and beyond that, he still needed to shut it all down.
First, of course, he actually needed to make it into the Fortress, and the approach had several deep pits separating the platforms he had to leap across, with sentry spheres popping up out of the pits to shoot at him, while bird bots dropped rocks towards him. Once again, Mega Man did his best to avoid destroying the bots trying to shoot him, so they could continue to work once the situation was fixed.
Once he began climbing the outside of the fortress towards an entrance, he found large propeller platforms that could only be activated with the Tornado Blow weapon, which caused a great deal of wind to blow upward. While this did drain a good amount of weapon energy, he was able to find energy cores along the path to restore it.
Once past the platforms, he encountered new bots that looked like Guts Man on tank treads, only much smaller and carrying a shield. A few shots caused them to drop the shields so they could be damaged, and Mega Man was unfortunately forced to destroy them, as they were blocking paths completely.
As Mega Man climbed, he noticed the weather turning stormy, with lightning flashing amongst the clouds. He began to worry about what was happening with the incomplete weather systems of the planet without Tornado Man guiding them. He just hoped that Gravity Man had found a way to adjust, and it wasn't straining him too much. He continued to worry about this even as he battled another copy of the dragon bot he'd faced in the Geothermal center Magma Man had controlled.
Once past the dragon, Mega Man had to time jumps past lava being launched from one tube to another directly above him, using Rush to spring him up when he had a clear path. Other familiar obstacles littered the path in new combinations, but Mega Man already knew how to deal with each, and was able to continue climbing upward with ease, now inside the building itself.
Finally reaching a guardian chamber, Mega Man found four face-shaped turrets guarded by spike balls that slowly made their way towards him, which he could push back with buster shots. As he shot, the turrets also shot the spike balls, trying to push them towards him. If the spike ball reached the turret, they would explode and be replaced by another as the spike ball returned to the center of the passage. If the spike ball reached Mega Man's end of the tunnel, it would return to the middle and the turret would start firing shots that phased through the walls, locked onto Mega Man. This would end when the turret was destroyed.
After destroying enough turrets, new ones stopped coming, and eventually Mega Man managed to destroy the last turret. He paused then, taking a few breaths to prepare himself mentally for the next challenge. "Whoever designed this place has been studying my tactics," he murmured softly. "I'm going to have to be careful..."
The next segment of the fortress proved to be far more roundabout, twisting and turning up and down as Mega Man made his way deeper inside. Thankfully, there were several opportunities to use his abilities to take various shortcuts past the more complicated segments, allowing him to conserve his strength for deeper in.
The major obstacle that Mega Man encountered as he continued were projector enemies that would fly into the room and generate holographic platforms that were indistinguishable from those Mega Man needed to jump across, save he would pass right through them. Thankfully, Mega Man countered this by taking a literal mental snapshot of platform positions before the projectors did their work.
After dealing with another flower mini-guardian on a clock set of platforms, Mega Man dropped into an underwater sector, dealing once more with octopus-in-pot robots. At this point, Mega Man decided he was free to blast his way through, as this fortress certainly wasn't part of Vinyl's plans for the planet.
Several solid blocks filled various paths through the water, but Mega Man discovered they could be destroyed with a single shot of Laser Trident...making it, in his mind, one of the more useful sub weapons this trip, as it could also be fired the most before it ran out of power. It allowed him to make his way past most other obstacles as he made his way back out of the water.
Once out of the water, he had time to dry off before he reached the next Fortress Guardian. The Guardian itself, right at first, looked like the tail of a giant mechanical fish, which fired trios of homing missiles at him out of a hatch near the 'tail fluke'. The hatch itself proved to be the only vulnerable point, which exploded after he managed to land enough shots.
The Guardian then moved more towards him as he rushed forward, revealing what looked like a floating sub design in blue and yellow. It hovered above Mega Man, had a spiked bottom, and two hatches that dropped fish-shaped bots onto the ground to either side of him to charge at him as the vehicle moved up and down. Mega Man managed to deal with it by timing his jumps to shoot the hatches without impacting the spiked bottom...though he messed up a couple of times. Thankfully, the spikes only caused damage rather than frying his circuits as most of these spike traps would if he made contact with them.
With the hatches destroyed, Mega Man made his way to the front of the vehicle, which had what looked like the head of a snub-nosed swordfish, perhaps. Here, the vehicle moved up and down, its mouth opening to fire a charged laser blast at him. Despite the blue white coloring, one accidental contact showed Mega Man that it was in fact a laser blast rather than a sonic disruption blast, as it only drained his shield energy rather than punching a hole straight through him. Thankfully, this end was easy to damage, as Magma Bazooka could be charged to launch a much bigger blast of flames, which tore through the vehicle's shields readily.
As the vehicle finally went down, Mega Man leaned back for another few deep breaths. "Okay...it's not the Wilys doing this...but whoever is isn't too bad at this either..." He made a mental note to look into who, if anyone, had the potential to pull this off once he was back on Earth.
Not knowing my Megaman lore, I'm uncertain who was behind 9. Who could have the resources and the know-how to do this to Vinyl's project?
No one actually answer that, please. I want to be surprised.
It would have to be someone who's against Wily and this whole premise from the get-go, and claims to have a clear understanding of reality but is clearly delusional... Of course, it was me all along!
Be wary, young warrior. The trials ahead may be the most dire you've faced yet. One misstep, and you'll have to do the entire thing over again, Countershade style! MWAHAHAHAHA!!!
Don't falter for a second, dear Mega Man. For if you fail, there won't be any alien robots to inadvertently progress your character arc. MWAHAHAH-See you.
Hmm, so the real villain is pretty good, hopefully Mega Man can prove he's better and clear Vinyl and Wily's names.
7528296 the answer of who is behind all of this is my profile picture.
It's clear that whoever did this has an anti-robot agenda, and doesn't want the first extraterrestrial colony to belong to a country that promotes robot equality. By sabotaging the project, they would push back robot rights. Unfortunately, that could be almost anyone.
Hmmm...Light maybe...no after the Christmas fiasco I doubt he would pull this...Sunstar maybe? Nah...That guy had to actually be activated during the Gameboy games...aka wily's master plan...No I doubt this is someone Megaman lore originally had...not the most lore heavy of series you know...The same guys behind the Gamma project maybe?
7528319 ....you know something...
Another enjoyable chapter. Good job.
7528296 Well, to be fair, the events of every game since 7 in this story have been almost completely different than what happened in the actual games, and this one is no exception. The whole "someone is framing Wily and Vinyl" thing? That's completely new to the story. Thus, only Tatsurou actually knows what's going on. In the actual game, Wily was the villain as per usual.
7528426 Me? Know things? Don't be ridiculous. I never know things, just look at half the comments I post on this site (BOOSH!).
But seriously, your guess is as good as mine. For all we know, it could be a worldwide conspiracy orchestrated by Chest, Plum, and Ripot because they didn't get a role in this series.
I am starting to think that it was either the Old Ones or some of the traditionalists who oppose robot rights.
7528379 Oh sweet Celestia, NO!!!
The only ones I can think of are Kalinka, Mikhael (I think I spelled that wrong.) Dr.Light... and maybe whoever created Web Man. Beyond that, I have no clue.
You know what? Kalinka's old man hasn't gotten any screen-time in a while. It might be him, though I imagine motive would be a convoluted mess.
7528637 I can see it now...
Megaman: But why would you do this?
Mikhail: You didn't take my daughter to prom night last week.
Megaman: I SAID I WAS SORRY!
...I keep hoping for the Starloids to make an appearance, but I know this isn't them. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the platform Megaman games to guess who might be behind this.
7528426 wait a second....I think I guessed it from the other guys comment.
I wonder........ Does this have something to do with Vinyl and Whoopee Cushions.......
7528961 i did
Had to say it.
This villain is good but not good enough by making such a blunder.
7528296 The only ones I can think of with the skill to is almost certainly not the culprit canonically so I'm wondering too.
7528416 It could also be someone from the Archos comics.
Now we get to the heart of things. Looking forward to more.
Keep up the good work. Deus tecum.
...I guess Octavia because least likely candidate is usually it.
7528560 Given Tatsurou doesn't even know about Battle & Chase, highly unlikely, just saying.
7532959 Eh, it's just a cryptic statement that doesn't actually mean anything. Make of it what you will.
7532996 Fair enough.
7530058 Great Scott! Did she get a time machine?!
A rogue Doc Bot?
I just thought about this but if ur still actively doing the Pwny-verse series i would like to see sunset in the kingdomhearts universe with updated to kh3 that would b cool
9234482
Sunset has already been sent to the Star Fox universe. And considering how convoluted KH lore is (which I like to an extent), I don't think he'd consider another pony either.
megaman making his way through the castle, but ya who DID design the castle, as it had to be someone with a similer skillset...