Returning to Light's Lab, Mega Man saw Dr. Light approaching with yet another alert about one of the Wub Masters, but Mega Man held up his hand to stall him. "Dad..." he began. "Is it just me...or do the Wub Masters seem...even more eclectic than Wily's Robot Masters normally do?"
"Eclectic?" Tom asked, surprised.
"Normally, they all seem to follow some sort of theme, or serve some sort of purpose together," Mega Man explained. "Either that, or there's a common pattern of design. It all seems to follow some sort of a plan, even if it's odd. But Vinyl's..." Mega Man shook his head. "They mesh in ones or twos...but overall, there's no pattern, no matching theme. It's...it's like she tossed a whole bunch of ideas into a hat and then pulled eight out at random, not caring about the result..."
Dr. Light scratched his chin. "Well...I suppose you could be right..."
"How many more Wub Masters do you have a bead on?" Mega Man asked.
"We know there are three more active," Dr. Light replied. "But we've only got a lock on the activities of two. We can't track the third yet..."
"Of the two, which would you say is stranger?"
Surprised by the qualifier, Dr. Light analyzed the two available profiles. "...I'd say the one that's taken over the mall," Dr. Light replied.
"The mall?" Mega Man asked, shocked. "Okay, this bot I've got to see!" Turning, he raced out to the mall.
Reaching the mall, Mega Man was surprised to find that, in addition to the usual Mets and other 'assistance' bots that normally raced around various locations to help people, the place seemed to be infested with rabid take-out boxes that threw their contents at him before attempting to dive bomb him once they were empty. "Well, I'm pretty sure I know where to look for the Wub Master, then," Mega Man murmured after blasting several of them. He ran up to the nearest mall directory. "Now...where's the food court?" he murmured, looking it over.
Unfortunately, the robots had done quite a bit of damage to the mall, which the directory didn't account for. As a result, Mega Man found himself coming to several dead ends where he was confronted by everything from a rogue vending machine to a mad clothing rack. As he progressed, Mega Man became more and more convinced that this entire effort on Vinyl's part wasn't as well thought out as it had first appeared. It seemed less like a carefully crafted plan and more and more like trying to build off of an idea and a location once selected. Definitely more slapdash than Wily's usual approach.
Eventually, Mega Man found his way to the food court, only to find the place covered in food, oil spills, grease, and...other things he didn't want to think about. Standing in the middle of it was a humanoid robot wearing a stained chef's apron and hat, its entire body so covered in filth that nothing beyond that could be made out. "You're the...Wub Master?" Mega Man gagged, trying not to think about what he'd be fighting in.
"Aye, that be me," the robot replied, its accent thick but undecipherable. "VWM-007, Bad Chef. But ye can call me Stinky."
"...Bad Chef is right..." Mega Man mumbled. "This place is a mess! What are you thinking, trying to serve food here? It's a breeding ground for sickness!"
"Precisely!" Bad Chef proclaimed proudly. "Those who eat here will be winnowed through! The strong will survive while the weak sicken and die, as nature intended, and humanity will be stronger for it! Those weak gutted pansies like the 'Health Department' should go back to their clean little homes and lives, only to die when the sickness comes!" Scooping up a handful of food laying around, he licked it. "Ah, ye can taste the salmonella!"
"...you're sick!" Mega Man gagged.
"And yer dead!" Bad Chef proclaimed, rocketing forward on a blast of fire that seemed to emerge from his ass.
Mega Man dodged desperately, doing his best to manage his charge so he didn't use the Skull Blast. The last thing he wanted to do here was get knocked back into one of these piles of filth. He did notice that the grease and oils spills burst into flames when Bad Chef passed over them, and that he took damage from the flames. A plan began to form in Mega Man's mind, especially once he saw that the flaming charge was Bad Chef's only attack aside from throwing food.
As he evaded to the side of one charge, he turned away from Bad Chef. "This is going to suck..." he murmured, before opening fire with the Skull Blast. Slamming into Bad Chef, he caused him to re-angle into one of the filthier food stands, causing it to explode.
"Not bad!" Bad Chef barked out as he climbed out from the rubble. "Maybe yer tougher than ya look! But ya ain't beaten me yet!"
"Yes I have," Mega Man muttered. "I turned off the pilot lights but turned on all the gas burners in that kitchen before knocking you in." With that, Mega Man leapt behind a concrete planter.
Bad Chef turned towards the kitchen as he smoldered. "Oh f-"
As Mega Man climbed out of the wreckage that had covered him, he stared at the crater where Bad Chef had been destroyed. Glancing at his arm, he saw the readout regarding the Master Weapon he'd gotten. "'It Burns!'?" he murmured, only to burst into laughter. "I get it now!" he laughed out. Turning to a nearby camera, he flashed a thumbs up. "Enjoying the show, Vinyl?" he called out. "I know you're watching! And Wily, turn your safe search on! She's only 12!" Chuckling, he turned to go. "All this just to mess with my head...and every one designed to push me to my limits physically and mentally...but be incapable of killing me! Vinyl, there is a limit to messing with a friend's head!"
Albert blinked as he turned from the screen to his equine daughter. "Is it true?" he asked, shocked. "Did you really design them to be incapable of destroying him?"
"Of course!" Vinyl replied. "If one of them did, all the work on the others would go to waste!"
"And...where did you get the ideas for these?"
"4chan!" Vinyl proclaimed proudly. "They had the best ideas...even if some of them didn't make sense. I liked the potty humor ones better, but the polls said the sex ones were better." She frowned, scratching her chin. "That's how Da Bomb and Love Machine got selected...but what do those have to do with sex?" As Albert groaned, she asked one last question. "What is sex, anyway? Grown up humans sure seem to be obsessed with it..."
Protoman quickly held a pillow between Wily's head and the wall as he began to rhythmically bang against it.