Categories > Games > Zelda > Gatecrash

Chapter 60: For Everlasting Peace
The giant mech flexed his arms downward, as if he was moving for the first time, stretching out his mammoth torso to emphasize his size. He hunched down to the three of them and red missile points protruded out of the shoulder mounted cannons.
"Look out!" Roll shouted.
Small air-to-ground missiles fired out with high-pitched whines, sailing up and down erratically with jet streams gusting out. Roll, Mega Man, and Link scattered around, as the rockets chased them. They exploded in mid-air and on the ground all around them. Link skidded along the ground to a stop, crumpled into a ball, and held his shield over him like a turtle. The two robots weaved and dodged the incoming fire. The darting projectiles swooped around like attacking birds. Roll took the initiative and started shooting at the swooping missiles. After two misses she hit one and it exploded harmlessly away from anyone. Mega Man got the idea and shot his cannon as well, pelting the area with minor explosions. Link's shell was protecting him from the shrapnel, and Mega Man ran over to him to protect further, acting as a sort of plasma cannon turret defense.
While her brother did that, Roll took the chance to activate her scanning visor. Green plastic poked out around the earpieces of her helmet and wrapped around her eyes. The neon lime grid immediately went to work, using x-rays, power emissions, and component breakdown to analyze the structural weak points and strong points of the gigantic beast they were fighting. Lines of data filtered into her visual cortex.
Mega Man took out the last missile, just before it was about to attack Link from the side. "Come on," he said to him, and scooted back to the middle. Link pulled off his shield and stood up, reorienting himself.
The tremendous robot brought up its boulder-like fist and slammed it down into the ground with all the fury of an earthquake. The impact drove out giant shockwave tremors, causing all three of them to lose their footing and land flat on their backs. They slowly started to stand back up, struggling against the loss of balance and perspective. Wily sent out a trio of large plasma balls out from the cannons set in his waist, one heading for each of them. Roll and Mega Man jumped out of the path, away from Link, too far to help him.
"Link!" Mega Man shouted.
The Hylian saw it coming, knew it was too late to avoid the impact. Instinctively, he rolled to the side, only managing to make it on his stomach before the plasma hit. Fortunately, the ball impacted the shield on his back and deflected off into the darkness. Link scrambled to his feet and held his defense at the ready, recognizing he was going to need it a lot more than he usually did.
Roll's internal computers finished the analysis and fed her the results. "Mega Man! The head! The head is the vulnerable point!" she shouted and pointed over the roar of the robot's engine and thrashing.
Mega Man looked up at the towering behemoth. Its head was like a bowl set on a coffee table to an ant. His shots would be so inaccurate, they would never hit. Nonetheless he tried firing anyway. A set of three plasma globs burst out of his arm cannon and flew up where they were absorbed undamagingly by the armor.
"I can't hit it!" Mega Man said, trying to backpedal. "It's too far. I can't get a line-to-sight. His body's in the way." He tried jumping up and firing, changing the angle. The plasma shots were closer, but the armored torso absorbed the brunt of the energy.
It stepped forward, advancing on the little mice at its feet. Two shoulder-turrets fired an alternating pelting of laser blasts like machine guns, the chambers resiling back each time. The three cut around and ducked the blasts. Link stayed stationary, holding his shield in front of him for protection. He hadn't done anything during this fight, and it frustrated him. No way would either his ice rod or fire rod make an impact on that sort of tank. It would be like one man trying to fight a castle. An actual, moving castle.
Mega Man bounded up and down like a leap frog, trying to catch the Wily-bot's head as it swooped around, but it never reached low enough to get a clean shot. It was too far up and too small for his tiny arm cannon. He needed more elevation if he was going to be able to take out the head.
Roll strafed left and right, firing alternate shots from her laser pistols. They were weaker than Rock's shots and having even less of an impact. She could see the puddles of light dissipating on the armor. And she couldn't hit the head either, its mammoth body was doing a good job of protecting it. She could see it, but the angle she was at wouldn't yield a clear shot unless she was yards away, and their only advantage right now was that they were so underfoot he couldn't fire shots down at them accurately.
The mecha switched to a more physical attack, pulled back its fist and took a giant swing with its blocky spiked arm, sweeping the floor. Mega Man and Roll jumped to avoid the swiping strike. Link rolled along at the floor, barely escaping the arm by pure luck as it lifted up from the arc of the swing.
This wasn't going to do at all. Link was a sitting duck, trying to avoid the crushing blows of the humanoid robot. And Mega Man was already weak from his fight before. Auto repair systems had fixed his mobility so he looked fine, but his generator had to be close to going critical. It couldn't take too many more of the shots Wily was delivering. She looked down at the twin pistols in her hands.
"Sorry, guys," she said to her guns. With fire in her eyes, she looked up at Wily's head, judging the distance and trajectory she needed.
"Rock!" she called out. She glanced at her brother, then back up at the head. "Get ready." She held up her guns.
Mega Man glanced back and forth between the guns and the head, realizing what she was going to do. He nodded once and took a huge jump back to get some distance, aiming his arm cannon. Desperate times called for desperate measures, including sacrifices. "Go!" he shouted.
With all her strength, Roll swung back her arms and threw both guns up into the air. They flew straight up at Wily's helmeted head, spinning end over end, and reached an apex just at its eye level.
Mega Man fired one shot with his cannon. The plasma globule zipped up straight and crashed into Roll's guns, causing one to blow up, followed in a chain reaction by the other. Fire swelled up like a bulbous balloon, erupting in a mighty explosion engulfing the mass of Wily's head and part of his upper body, shrouding it in fiery smoke.
The three of them held their hands above their head, sheltering from the falling embers of the blast spiraling down like tiny asteroids. A large creaking metal sound resonated as the mecha returned to an upright position and stopped moving. The echo of the explosion faded away, leaving eerie silence.
"Did it work?" Roll asked, staring up at the motionless robot. Her eyes darted back and forth, looking for a sign.
The giant head of Wily's robot suddenly hit the floor like a tossed rock behind them. Roll squeaked out in fright, whipping around and stumbling back a foot.
"Yep, it worked," Mega Man said, equally startled.
Smoke fluttered from the horns of its helmet, and prevalent damage marked its face. The eyes were empty gray now, and it looked like a ruin of a knight from ancient times that had eroded and fallen. Link dropped his shield, drawing his eyes from Wily's head back up to the robot. The smoke had cleared and the decapitated body's leaned forward. At first he thought it was going to fall on them, but the torso tucked back into itself halfway through and folded up into a square. The knees bent, and dropped to the floor. The torso settled on the ground as well. Now it was in the position of an inchworm with is arms spread out. Then it flattened out completely on the ground, spread-eagle.
"You disrespectful whelps," came Wily's voice from points unknown. "I'll crush you all."
The arms suddenly cracked apart, right down the middle, and spread even further apart. The legs did so as well, pulling up closer to the torso, bending in places a human form wouldn't be able to achieve, reaching up to the sides of the trunk The appendages, now eight of them, spaced out evenly, and pushed against the ground, bending in two new different joints unlike before, lifting the body up off the ground. The breast plate on the bottom slid out from under the belly, moving towards them, then back up and around to protect its back, or what was now its top. Where the head had been, now revealed two sets of bulbous red empty arachnid eyes. Two long pincer mandibles projected from the sides of the head. Wily's robot had just changed into a humongous spider-bot, with eight deadly mechanical legs.
Mega Man, Roll, and Link looked aghast.
"You fools," Wily said. "Did you think I'd put my brain permanently inside a robot four stories tall? That's not very convenient, is it? I'd never limit myself to one form..." He lifted one leg and slammed it down into the ground, shaking the arena. "When I can have it all!"
The spider-robot dashed in and out quickly, clicking its eight legs on the metal ground in conjunction, just like a real arachnid on a larger scale. It was able to dart back and forth on its jointed legs, and take fake swipes at the three of them with its taloned front leg. Red lasers fired out from its eyes, peppering the ground. Link and the others jumped in the air to avoid them, and continued moving erratically to prevent being targeted.
Mega Man looked at the spider's repulsive face, interleaved with eyes everywhere, and saw a blue crystal shaped like a crescent moon on its side, protruding out from the forehead.
"Rock," Roll called out. She had already run an analysis the instant Wily spoke. "The vulnerable point-"
"I know!" he shouted back. "You don't have to tell me!" he smiled back. The glint of that crystal was just too familiar. The power gems gave life to many of Wily's complex robots. It was the only way he could get something that large, that powerful, and that complicated off the ground without loading it down with a bulky and cumbersome power source. The disadvantage of using the crystals, though, was that they had to be exposed in order for them to generate the necessary energy, and often exposed in an obvious place That left a neat little targeting point for Mega Man.
Roll dropped back, seeing as now she was rather useless without her guns, except for her visor information. She could hardly believe Wily had made the spider's body surface area so small that he could hardly miss. Mega Man took position at the front, picked up his arm cannon and aimed.
"Oh, no, you don't," Wily boomed. With a snap movement, his right front leg reached out and picked up Link, enclosing him in its razor sharp three-pronged claws. Link's arms were pinned to his side and he struggled futily to free himself, grunting with anger. The arm brought him up to cover the crystal.
"Not this time," Wily said.
The thin mandible pincers jutting out from the sides of the spider's face reached across and grabbed Link's wrists as the claw released him, holding him pinned up, spread out like a hide being tanned, completely blocking the crystal.
Mega Man side-stepped around, trying to get a clear shot at the crystal, keeping his arm cannon and his eyes trained on his target. The spider moved with him, matching his movement step for eight-legged step, keeping Link in his direct line of fire at all times. The human was spread out across nearly the length of his face, so he couldn't strike anywhere without hitting him.
"Try it now," Wily laughed.
Mega Man's furrowed brows, loaded with determination, faded back to an expression of desperation. With his impotent arm cannon still up, he turned to Roll, who was wondering why he was just standing there, not firing his arm cannon.
"Doesn't he have any other weak points?" Mega Man pleaded. He glanced back and forth between the spider and Roll, fear in his eyes. "Any unarmored joints? Open areas? Anything to scan?"
Roll shook her head. "It's the crystal. Just shoot!"
Wily laughed crazily, changing his position erratically, bobbing his head up and down, left and right. "Why don't you shoot, Mega Man? Are you chicken? Ha, ha, ha. Lost your nerve? Come on, shoot me. Shoot me!"
Mega Man gritted his teeth. His eyes turned wide with realization at what had finally happened. Wily knew very well why he couldn't shoot him. Any roboticist would know why he couldn't shoot at him, and he cursed himself for not foreseeing this, for bringing Link into this whole cursed mess. He'd finally found an impenetrable defense, an unbeatable strategy.
"I can't! I can't do it!"
"What?" she asked. "Why?"
"You know why! I can't hit him. I can't fire without the risk of hitting him. I can't risk hitting Link."
"Then free him! Shoot the pincer arms!"
"I can't! They're too close. One misplaced shot could melt his hand. I can't risk it! I can't do it!" Why wasn't she understanding what he meant? She knew what the consequences to himself would be if his programming recognized that he had harmed a human.
"Yes, you can, Rock."
"No, I can't."
"Yes! ... you can," she replied with a sad, serious expression.
Why was she being so vehement that he could? She knew about what would happen, didn't she? Was there something going on here she was trying to say? Mega Man made a quick search through his programming to find out if his suspicions were true. Nothing.
Nothing?
Another search. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. There was nothing there. There should have been something. Where it should have been there was nothing there. There was nothing preventing him from doing what he had to do. He was without the laws. He could harm.
He looked up at Roll, stunned. She bit her lip. Then he knew. She had it too. Or rather, didn't have it. Everything he believed about how robots should act, and the rules they should follow had been based on his personality alone. There was nothing preventing him from operating on his own, from disobeying orders, from acting without guidance. Mega Man didn't know why neither of them had the laws installed, why Dr. Light had done this. The repercussions of what he realized he was overwhelming him. This was too much for him to bear, too much for him to think about right now.
"Why?" he asked weakly. A simple one word question, encapsulating all he was thinking.
"Because you're more than just a robot," Roll answered.
Mega Man looked back up against Link, struggling against the shackles of his captor. This was no time for thinking. This was time for action. Dr. Light had said, every once in a while, great fortunate opportunities come, and it would be a shame to waste them.
Mega Man raised his arm cannon once more, aiming it squarely at Link. He reached down inside himself to his arm cannon and made some adjustments to its mechanics, fine tuning the blast, flattening it, concentrating the energy from a spherical glob to a precision beam. Mega Man was going to have to be more accurate than he had ever been with this. Too many shots with this configuration would result in his cannon burning out. If he had to shoot at Link, he had to keep it down to as few shots as possible. He had to take out that pincer with one hit. Aim small, miss small.
The spider-bot dodged and weaved, keeping the target shifting around. To Wily's surprise, Mega Man fired.
The shot hit just below Link's arm, creating a smoldering black scorch mark with a wisp of smoke emitting. Mega Man fired again. The fine-tuned shot banged against the metal above Link's hand. Another miss. That stupid robot was twisting and moving in and out, even shifting Link in front of the face, moving as randomly as possible.
One shot. All I need is one.
He fired again.
The plasma beam left Mega Man's arm cannon and collided with the pincer arm right at Link's wrist. The thin arm vaporized with the squeal of metal, mimicking the high squeak of an animal, and dropped away lifeless. Link fell to the side, being held up by one hand over the spider's face, still partially obscuring the crystal. But he was free, and that was all he needed.
Link stabilized his swinging by setting his feet up against the capturing rod, and grabbed something out of his knapsack at his waist. A bomb, his last one, came into has palm. He shoved it into the crystal, held in place by the cradle shape. Knowing his hostage just became useless, the pincer arm threw Link away out onto the floor without warning.
Link landed on the floor roughly below the spider's head and scrambled out of the way, grabbing his bow and arrow out of his holding bag as he rolled. Trying to get to his feet to get out from under the arachnid's range, he twisted his body around and nocked an arrow at the same time. He lost his balance and fell on his back, but he had the bow out in front of him and aimed.
"This one's for Zelda!" he shouted and released.
The arrow flew up, heading straight for the crystal and collided with the armor of the bomb. The detonation created an erupting outburst, shattering the crystal. Blue bits of glass spattered the ground, raining down like snow.
Thick smoke puffed out of the spider's face. It tried to step forward, but its leg buckled, unable to catch the easy ground, and slid out from under him, the body teetering from side-to-side. The other legs tried to stabilize but the energy drained away fast. The legs collapsed and the body of the spider with it. The whole of the contraption plopped onto the floor with a loud metallic clattering.
Mega Man and Roll ran up to Link, pulling him up and out of the range of shrapnel. They stood together, looking at the spider's defeated form. Its legs whirred as the energy was drained and flattened out. The armored back split down the middle and fell off on either side. An ever-present humming drained away at the same time as the red lighted eyes did.
"I'd say its been squashed," Roll beamed.
"Phew," Link said.
Suddenly, the legs of the spider fired out with ringing pops of hydraulic pressure being released. Wires and cords separated, springing out taut. The connections between the legs and the body separated. The thick cylinder that was the trunk of the spider screeched horribly as it slowly turned up on its end, showing a red occult symbol painted on that resembled an eye, gazing ahead to nothingness.
"Aw, it's never that easy," Link shouted with aggravation.
The crimson pupil of the eye flashed on and off, beating like a heart. The core body rose into the air as the light flashed faster and faster. In an instant, the cylinder disappeared, vanished into the night. Link snapped his head back, shocked.
"Bwa ha ha ha ha ha," came an empty voice in the darkness, ethereally echoing.
"What happened?" Link said as Mega Man stepped away from the two of them, looking up at the darkness.
"He's still out there," he muttered. "Somewhere."
As quick as it disappeared, it reappeared behind Mega Man's view, fading in from the cloak. Link pointed and shouted an alert, causing Mega Man to quick spin around just in time to see a volley of purple fireballs launch out from the eye of the core. The fireballs spiraled outward like a funnel, with comet trails tapering away. Link quick ducked under his shield, where two of them collided and diffused. The rest fanned outward. Mega Man and Roll, with no cover, were both hit with the plasma energy, causing a brief electrical discharge of their power levels. They grimaced in pain as they absorbed the fire, recoiling back. As Mega Man recovered enough to bring back his plasma cannon out, the core disappeared again.
Link dropped his shield. "What is going on?"
Mega Man sighed, "Great, not the pod thing again."
"He's done this before?" Roll asked, stupefied.
Mega Man nodded, his eyes darting around for the next appearance. "It's his new 'thing'."
The pod reappeared again, far away in a corner of the room. Plasma balls ejected from the origin point and percolated away. The distance was far enough that Mega Man and Roll were able to dodge the widely spaced plasma, and Link brought up his shield.
Mega Man waved his arm cannon around, trying to track where it might next appear from, but it was useless. Every ounce of darkness looked the same as the next. Another appearance from the left, a showering of fireballs, and disappearing. Mega Man was able to avoid the blow, but Roll wasn't.
"Roll!" Link shouted, holding out his hand for her, even though she was across the room. She took the full force of the blow, shorting out, flashing with electricity, and ended up on her back. Her brother helped her to her feet. Neither of his friends could take much more of this, and it was frustrating him beyond no end.
"Come on out, Wily. Fight for real! Quit hiding behind the darkness."
As if in answer, Wily silently materialize directly above Link's head, unbeknownst to him.
"Look out!" Mega Man shouted too late. The red eye emitted the spiraling circle of violet death. One headed straight for Link's head. Out of some unnamable instinct he fired his arm cannon at the incoming comet, just as Link turned around. The plasma shot went out fast as light, collided with the purple sphere, and deflected it away. It flew outward, away from Link's face and any harm. The robot core vanished.
"Whoa," Mega Man said as he skidded to a stop. "That's never happened before." Plasma wasn't solid so it shouldn't have caused any sort of deflection when two came in contact. He realized his arm cannon was still configured for a high yield shot. That might have caused the reaction.
Link jumped up, excited. "Mega Man, reflect them back. When he appears-"
"What?"
The core came into view, malevolent flashing its blood red heartbeat.. Link ceased speaking and ducked under his shield. Like rhythm, the volley of plasma fanned outward.
Mega Man fired at a plasma orb heading his way. The two shots crashed into each other, causing the trajectory of Wily's ammunition to shift back at an angle, fly up and collide with the red eye. It flashed with electricity, indicating a direct hit.
Mega Man pumped his fist in the air. "Yes, it worked. Everyone gather up!" He rushed into the middle of the arena to get the best view of the next showing.
"There's something very familiar about all this," Link said to himself as he rushed back to his side.
The three of them huddled together again, making one target, rather than three. Roll turned on her visor, trying to scan for its appearance. Maybe there was some clue that would indicate... wait.
"He's over there!" she turned and pointed up into the sky. Sure enough, Wily appeared there. Her tracker had caught a power emission trail zipping from point to point.
The volley of plasma shot out, Link stepped in front and crouched, holding up his shield to protect the two of them. From behind the Hylian, Mega Man fired two shots at the proper angles. They hit like atoms and deflected away, criss-crossing and hitting the core again. Brilliant light flashed outward and it disappeared. The plasma balls that Mega Man didn't hit diffused harmlessly on Link's shield.
"There!" Roll pointed out. The group turned simultaneously to where she pointed. The orange core materialized, and let forth its array of comets. Link shoved through to bring up his guard, thrusting it out against incoming fire. Mega Man got two again, sending them right back to the enemy.
The core suddenly angled to the side, as if something had gone wrong with its engine, and it was struggling to stay aloft. Tendrils of blue electricity danced over its surface. Flashes of light erupted in the arena, as smoke clouded up from the red eye. It looked like they'd finally done it.
"AAAARRRRRGH!" came Wily's voice. "You little... arrrrgh... I've had enough. I'll take you all down if it's the last thing I do."
The faceplate holding the eye, dropped off like a shed skin, revealing a gigantic cannon filling the entire space of the robot core.
"Enjoy your last thirty seconds of life, Rock."
"That cannon!" Mega Man exclaimed.
"It's got a neutron disruption engine," Roll said, repeating what her scanners told her, "It'll wipe out this entire castle!"
A low hum reverberated in the room, the sound of the cannon charging up. That was what he meant by thirty seconds. Mega Man would never have expected this from Dr. Wily, he always knew the scientist as a coward, one who always ran away as the fortress collapsed around him, once he was peeled away from his robot shell. Now that he had been transformed into that robot shell, maybe he thought there was nothing left to lose any longer.
Link leaned into Mega Man's ear. "Toss me."
Mega Man looked back at him with an incredulous expression. "What?"
"You'll have to toss me. We don't have time for this. Trust me." Link pulled the sword out of his sheath.
Mega Man nodded once, hoping the best would be the result. Without warning, he grabbed the back of Link's tunic, squeezed, and heaved him up in the air like a log.
"What are you doing!" Roll gasped.
Link sailed up like a rocket, wind forcing his eyes to water, hair blowing back against his face. He shot just past the pod, slowing down at the apex of the launch, and landed on top of it on his feet. The curved metal surface provided an unstable platform to land on, and his feet gave out from under him, threatening to drop him the same way he came. With quick thinking he stuck his sword in the metal like a pike and climbed back up on the top of the pod.
"What are you doing?" Wily asked.
Link closed his eyes and concentrated, focusing power into his sword. The metal of the blade gleamed with sparkling light, glowing brighter and brighter. Electricity started to wriggle up and down the shaft of the cutting edge. Thunder boomed in the distance. The crackling sparking of Link's sword overshadowed the overpowering hum of Wily's cannon. The sky darkened. Gray clouds formed over Link's head.
Link held the sword of storms up to the sky, tightening both his hands on the hilt. A thick column of lightning from the clouds struck it, feeding into the blade, giving it life, power.
With an enormous battle cry, Link plunged the sword deep into the pod he was standing on. Electricity from above and below soaked into the sword, giving it more and more light.
Wily's pod began to shake violently, trembling like a bomb about to explode, rocking back and forth. Cracks streaked down the orange armor, gleaming out beams of yellow light. The high-pitched whine of sizzling electricity culminated in a frying sound. Link let go of the hilt and vaulted off the pod, just as the machine cannon exploded in a shower of sparks. Link plummeted back to the ground, his arms and legs spread out like a flying squirrel. Mega Man and Roll saw he was descending and moved to catch him. They brought him in by the arms and pulled him back upright.
Smoke, fire, and lightning, rained down from above. Minor explosions ruptured out of the pod, breaking it apart. In a final rupture, an immeasurable explosion blasted from the core, bathing the three down below in striking heat. Smoke puffed out in all directions. From the cloud, a single body in a white coat dropped out, and landed on the floor on his back.
Groaning in pain, writhing like an upturned bug, he sluggishly moved his aged bones, rotating back onto his stomach. With pain, he opened his eyes, and put his hands on the floor to push himself back up.
Suddenly, a broadsword plunged into the ground in front of him, inches away from his face. The man's eyes opened wide in surprise, looking at the mighty blade embedded in the metal.
The sword yanked up, lifted by Link's hand, who reset his grip and pointed its spiked tip at the man's head.
"Dr. Wily, I presume," he said, glaring down at him. Mega Man and Roll came up behind him as well.
"Dr. Wily?" Roll said. "But your body... your brain..."
"Just a robot shell I manipulated."
"But we saw the blood..."
"A body bag full of ketchup," he uttered. "I couldn't do it. I couldn't make the program work. It was impossible. I tried and tried, but I couldn't figure it out in time. So I did the next best thing."
Mega Man replied, "You made us think you had put your brain inside a robot."
Dr. Wily nodded. "I couldn't follow Dr. Selkirk's schematics." He pounded the ground with his feeble fist. "I couldn't figure out how to make his vision mine."
"You know what you're problem is," Link said. "You never vary your methods, never do anything original. Every time you try to take over the world, you do the same thing."
Roll interjected, "The same disappearing-reappearing pod thing, the same robot masters."
"And every one is just based off of Dr. Light's original six," Mega Man interjected. "How many Guts Man copies have there been? How many Cut Men? Everything you do is stolen. You stole Dr. Selkirk's idea. You stole Dr. Light's designs. You stole Dr. Cossack's daughter even and tried to use him to do the exact same thing. Did you really think I never suspected it was you? Everything you do is stolen off someone else's idea. You could never create an original design. You're just like any other madman. Accurate view of the problem, insane view of the solution."
Mega Man picked up Dr. Wily's hands, and lifted his body up by them as if he weighed nothing. Roll gave him as set of handcuffs she had secured from the robot detainment center. Her brother accepted them gladly.
"Dr. Albert Wily, you are under arrest for various crimes against humanity," he said as he hooked them around his wrists. He went around to his back and shoved him forward. Link and Roll gave each other a knowing wink at a job well done as they led the troop out.
Dr. Wily, his hands bound in chains, rolled his eyes back, peeking at his captor and nemesis from the corner of his eye. "Nothing original, huh?" he snickered to himself. "I'll show you, Mega Man. Just you wait."
Next Chapter: Goodbye
Chapter 60: For Everlasting Peace
The giant mech flexed his arms downward, as if he was moving for the first time, stretching out his mammoth torso to emphasize his size. He hunched down to the three of them and red missile points protruded out of the shoulder mounted cannons.
"Look out!" Roll shouted.
Small air-to-ground missiles fired out with high-pitched whines, sailing up and down erratically with jet streams gusting out. Roll, Mega Man, and Link scattered around, as the rockets chased them. They exploded in mid-air and on the ground all around them. Link skidded along the ground to a stop, crumpled into a ball, and held his shield over him like a turtle. The two robots weaved and dodged the incoming fire. The darting projectiles swooped around like attacking birds. Roll took the initiative and started shooting at the swooping missiles. After two misses she hit one and it exploded harmlessly away from anyone. Mega Man got the idea and shot his cannon as well, pelting the area with minor explosions. Link's shell was protecting him from the shrapnel, and Mega Man ran over to him to protect further, acting as a sort of plasma cannon turret defense.
While her brother did that, Roll took the chance to activate her scanning visor. Green plastic poked out around the earpieces of her helmet and wrapped around her eyes. The neon lime grid immediately went to work, using x-rays, power emissions, and component breakdown to analyze the structural weak points and strong points of the gigantic beast they were fighting. Lines of data filtered into her visual cortex.
Mega Man took out the last missile, just before it was about to attack Link from the side. "Come on," he said to him, and scooted back to the middle. Link pulled off his shield and stood up, reorienting himself.
The tremendous robot brought up its boulder-like fist and slammed it down into the ground with all the fury of an earthquake. The impact drove out giant shockwave tremors, causing all three of them to lose their footing and land flat on their backs. They slowly started to stand back up, struggling against the loss of balance and perspective. Wily sent out a trio of large plasma balls out from the cannons set in his waist, one heading for each of them. Roll and Mega Man jumped out of the path, away from Link, too far to help him.
"Link!" Mega Man shouted.
The Hylian saw it coming, knew it was too late to avoid the impact. Instinctively, he rolled to the side, only managing to make it on his stomach before the plasma hit. Fortunately, the ball impacted the shield on his back and deflected off into the darkness. Link scrambled to his feet and held his defense at the ready, recognizing he was going to need it a lot more than he usually did.
Roll's internal computers finished the analysis and fed her the results. "Mega Man! The head! The head is the vulnerable point!" she shouted and pointed over the roar of the robot's engine and thrashing.
Mega Man looked up at the towering behemoth. Its head was like a bowl set on a coffee table to an ant. His shots would be so inaccurate, they would never hit. Nonetheless he tried firing anyway. A set of three plasma globs burst out of his arm cannon and flew up where they were absorbed undamagingly by the armor.
"I can't hit it!" Mega Man said, trying to backpedal. "It's too far. I can't get a line-to-sight. His body's in the way." He tried jumping up and firing, changing the angle. The plasma shots were closer, but the armored torso absorbed the brunt of the energy.
It stepped forward, advancing on the little mice at its feet. Two shoulder-turrets fired an alternating pelting of laser blasts like machine guns, the chambers resiling back each time. The three cut around and ducked the blasts. Link stayed stationary, holding his shield in front of him for protection. He hadn't done anything during this fight, and it frustrated him. No way would either his ice rod or fire rod make an impact on that sort of tank. It would be like one man trying to fight a castle. An actual, moving castle.
Mega Man bounded up and down like a leap frog, trying to catch the Wily-bot's head as it swooped around, but it never reached low enough to get a clean shot. It was too far up and too small for his tiny arm cannon. He needed more elevation if he was going to be able to take out the head.
Roll strafed left and right, firing alternate shots from her laser pistols. They were weaker than Rock's shots and having even less of an impact. She could see the puddles of light dissipating on the armor. And she couldn't hit the head either, its mammoth body was doing a good job of protecting it. She could see it, but the angle she was at wouldn't yield a clear shot unless she was yards away, and their only advantage right now was that they were so underfoot he couldn't fire shots down at them accurately.
The mecha switched to a more physical attack, pulled back its fist and took a giant swing with its blocky spiked arm, sweeping the floor. Mega Man and Roll jumped to avoid the swiping strike. Link rolled along at the floor, barely escaping the arm by pure luck as it lifted up from the arc of the swing.
This wasn't going to do at all. Link was a sitting duck, trying to avoid the crushing blows of the humanoid robot. And Mega Man was already weak from his fight before. Auto repair systems had fixed his mobility so he looked fine, but his generator had to be close to going critical. It couldn't take too many more of the shots Wily was delivering. She looked down at the twin pistols in her hands.
"Sorry, guys," she said to her guns. With fire in her eyes, she looked up at Wily's head, judging the distance and trajectory she needed.
"Rock!" she called out. She glanced at her brother, then back up at the head. "Get ready." She held up her guns.
Mega Man glanced back and forth between the guns and the head, realizing what she was going to do. He nodded once and took a huge jump back to get some distance, aiming his arm cannon. Desperate times called for desperate measures, including sacrifices. "Go!" he shouted.
With all her strength, Roll swung back her arms and threw both guns up into the air. They flew straight up at Wily's helmeted head, spinning end over end, and reached an apex just at its eye level.
Mega Man fired one shot with his cannon. The plasma globule zipped up straight and crashed into Roll's guns, causing one to blow up, followed in a chain reaction by the other. Fire swelled up like a bulbous balloon, erupting in a mighty explosion engulfing the mass of Wily's head and part of his upper body, shrouding it in fiery smoke.
The three of them held their hands above their head, sheltering from the falling embers of the blast spiraling down like tiny asteroids. A large creaking metal sound resonated as the mecha returned to an upright position and stopped moving. The echo of the explosion faded away, leaving eerie silence.
"Did it work?" Roll asked, staring up at the motionless robot. Her eyes darted back and forth, looking for a sign.
The giant head of Wily's robot suddenly hit the floor like a tossed rock behind them. Roll squeaked out in fright, whipping around and stumbling back a foot.
"Yep, it worked," Mega Man said, equally startled.
Smoke fluttered from the horns of its helmet, and prevalent damage marked its face. The eyes were empty gray now, and it looked like a ruin of a knight from ancient times that had eroded and fallen. Link dropped his shield, drawing his eyes from Wily's head back up to the robot. The smoke had cleared and the decapitated body's leaned forward. At first he thought it was going to fall on them, but the torso tucked back into itself halfway through and folded up into a square. The knees bent, and dropped to the floor. The torso settled on the ground as well. Now it was in the position of an inchworm with is arms spread out. Then it flattened out completely on the ground, spread-eagle.
"You disrespectful whelps," came Wily's voice from points unknown. "I'll crush you all."
The arms suddenly cracked apart, right down the middle, and spread even further apart. The legs did so as well, pulling up closer to the torso, bending in places a human form wouldn't be able to achieve, reaching up to the sides of the trunk The appendages, now eight of them, spaced out evenly, and pushed against the ground, bending in two new different joints unlike before, lifting the body up off the ground. The breast plate on the bottom slid out from under the belly, moving towards them, then back up and around to protect its back, or what was now its top. Where the head had been, now revealed two sets of bulbous red empty arachnid eyes. Two long pincer mandibles projected from the sides of the head. Wily's robot had just changed into a humongous spider-bot, with eight deadly mechanical legs.
Mega Man, Roll, and Link looked aghast.
"You fools," Wily said. "Did you think I'd put my brain permanently inside a robot four stories tall? That's not very convenient, is it? I'd never limit myself to one form..." He lifted one leg and slammed it down into the ground, shaking the arena. "When I can have it all!"
The spider-robot dashed in and out quickly, clicking its eight legs on the metal ground in conjunction, just like a real arachnid on a larger scale. It was able to dart back and forth on its jointed legs, and take fake swipes at the three of them with its taloned front leg. Red lasers fired out from its eyes, peppering the ground. Link and the others jumped in the air to avoid them, and continued moving erratically to prevent being targeted.
Mega Man looked at the spider's repulsive face, interleaved with eyes everywhere, and saw a blue crystal shaped like a crescent moon on its side, protruding out from the forehead.
"Rock," Roll called out. She had already run an analysis the instant Wily spoke. "The vulnerable point-"
"I know!" he shouted back. "You don't have to tell me!" he smiled back. The glint of that crystal was just too familiar. The power gems gave life to many of Wily's complex robots. It was the only way he could get something that large, that powerful, and that complicated off the ground without loading it down with a bulky and cumbersome power source. The disadvantage of using the crystals, though, was that they had to be exposed in order for them to generate the necessary energy, and often exposed in an obvious place That left a neat little targeting point for Mega Man.
Roll dropped back, seeing as now she was rather useless without her guns, except for her visor information. She could hardly believe Wily had made the spider's body surface area so small that he could hardly miss. Mega Man took position at the front, picked up his arm cannon and aimed.
"Oh, no, you don't," Wily boomed. With a snap movement, his right front leg reached out and picked up Link, enclosing him in its razor sharp three-pronged claws. Link's arms were pinned to his side and he struggled futily to free himself, grunting with anger. The arm brought him up to cover the crystal.
"Not this time," Wily said.
The thin mandible pincers jutting out from the sides of the spider's face reached across and grabbed Link's wrists as the claw released him, holding him pinned up, spread out like a hide being tanned, completely blocking the crystal.
Mega Man side-stepped around, trying to get a clear shot at the crystal, keeping his arm cannon and his eyes trained on his target. The spider moved with him, matching his movement step for eight-legged step, keeping Link in his direct line of fire at all times. The human was spread out across nearly the length of his face, so he couldn't strike anywhere without hitting him.
"Try it now," Wily laughed.
Mega Man's furrowed brows, loaded with determination, faded back to an expression of desperation. With his impotent arm cannon still up, he turned to Roll, who was wondering why he was just standing there, not firing his arm cannon.
"Doesn't he have any other weak points?" Mega Man pleaded. He glanced back and forth between the spider and Roll, fear in his eyes. "Any unarmored joints? Open areas? Anything to scan?"
Roll shook her head. "It's the crystal. Just shoot!"
Wily laughed crazily, changing his position erratically, bobbing his head up and down, left and right. "Why don't you shoot, Mega Man? Are you chicken? Ha, ha, ha. Lost your nerve? Come on, shoot me. Shoot me!"
Mega Man gritted his teeth. His eyes turned wide with realization at what had finally happened. Wily knew very well why he couldn't shoot him. Any roboticist would know why he couldn't shoot at him, and he cursed himself for not foreseeing this, for bringing Link into this whole cursed mess. He'd finally found an impenetrable defense, an unbeatable strategy.
"I can't! I can't do it!"
"What?" she asked. "Why?"
"You know why! I can't hit him. I can't fire without the risk of hitting him. I can't risk hitting Link."
"Then free him! Shoot the pincer arms!"
"I can't! They're too close. One misplaced shot could melt his hand. I can't risk it! I can't do it!" Why wasn't she understanding what he meant? She knew what the consequences to himself would be if his programming recognized that he had harmed a human.
"Yes, you can, Rock."
"No, I can't."
"Yes! ... you can," she replied with a sad, serious expression.
Why was she being so vehement that he could? She knew about what would happen, didn't she? Was there something going on here she was trying to say? Mega Man made a quick search through his programming to find out if his suspicions were true. Nothing.
Nothing?
Another search. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. There was nothing there. There should have been something. Where it should have been there was nothing there. There was nothing preventing him from doing what he had to do. He was without the laws. He could harm.
He looked up at Roll, stunned. She bit her lip. Then he knew. She had it too. Or rather, didn't have it. Everything he believed about how robots should act, and the rules they should follow had been based on his personality alone. There was nothing preventing him from operating on his own, from disobeying orders, from acting without guidance. Mega Man didn't know why neither of them had the laws installed, why Dr. Light had done this. The repercussions of what he realized he was overwhelming him. This was too much for him to bear, too much for him to think about right now.
"Why?" he asked weakly. A simple one word question, encapsulating all he was thinking.
"Because you're more than just a robot," Roll answered.
Mega Man looked back up against Link, struggling against the shackles of his captor. This was no time for thinking. This was time for action. Dr. Light had said, every once in a while, great fortunate opportunities come, and it would be a shame to waste them.
Mega Man raised his arm cannon once more, aiming it squarely at Link. He reached down inside himself to his arm cannon and made some adjustments to its mechanics, fine tuning the blast, flattening it, concentrating the energy from a spherical glob to a precision beam. Mega Man was going to have to be more accurate than he had ever been with this. Too many shots with this configuration would result in his cannon burning out. If he had to shoot at Link, he had to keep it down to as few shots as possible. He had to take out that pincer with one hit. Aim small, miss small.
The spider-bot dodged and weaved, keeping the target shifting around. To Wily's surprise, Mega Man fired.
The shot hit just below Link's arm, creating a smoldering black scorch mark with a wisp of smoke emitting. Mega Man fired again. The fine-tuned shot banged against the metal above Link's hand. Another miss. That stupid robot was twisting and moving in and out, even shifting Link in front of the face, moving as randomly as possible.
One shot. All I need is one.
He fired again.
The plasma beam left Mega Man's arm cannon and collided with the pincer arm right at Link's wrist. The thin arm vaporized with the squeal of metal, mimicking the high squeak of an animal, and dropped away lifeless. Link fell to the side, being held up by one hand over the spider's face, still partially obscuring the crystal. But he was free, and that was all he needed.
Link stabilized his swinging by setting his feet up against the capturing rod, and grabbed something out of his knapsack at his waist. A bomb, his last one, came into has palm. He shoved it into the crystal, held in place by the cradle shape. Knowing his hostage just became useless, the pincer arm threw Link away out onto the floor without warning.
Link landed on the floor roughly below the spider's head and scrambled out of the way, grabbing his bow and arrow out of his holding bag as he rolled. Trying to get to his feet to get out from under the arachnid's range, he twisted his body around and nocked an arrow at the same time. He lost his balance and fell on his back, but he had the bow out in front of him and aimed.
"This one's for Zelda!" he shouted and released.
The arrow flew up, heading straight for the crystal and collided with the armor of the bomb. The detonation created an erupting outburst, shattering the crystal. Blue bits of glass spattered the ground, raining down like snow.
Thick smoke puffed out of the spider's face. It tried to step forward, but its leg buckled, unable to catch the easy ground, and slid out from under him, the body teetering from side-to-side. The other legs tried to stabilize but the energy drained away fast. The legs collapsed and the body of the spider with it. The whole of the contraption plopped onto the floor with a loud metallic clattering.
Mega Man and Roll ran up to Link, pulling him up and out of the range of shrapnel. They stood together, looking at the spider's defeated form. Its legs whirred as the energy was drained and flattened out. The armored back split down the middle and fell off on either side. An ever-present humming drained away at the same time as the red lighted eyes did.
"I'd say its been squashed," Roll beamed.
"Phew," Link said.
Suddenly, the legs of the spider fired out with ringing pops of hydraulic pressure being released. Wires and cords separated, springing out taut. The connections between the legs and the body separated. The thick cylinder that was the trunk of the spider screeched horribly as it slowly turned up on its end, showing a red occult symbol painted on that resembled an eye, gazing ahead to nothingness.
"Aw, it's never that easy," Link shouted with aggravation.
The crimson pupil of the eye flashed on and off, beating like a heart. The core body rose into the air as the light flashed faster and faster. In an instant, the cylinder disappeared, vanished into the night. Link snapped his head back, shocked.
"Bwa ha ha ha ha ha," came an empty voice in the darkness, ethereally echoing.
"What happened?" Link said as Mega Man stepped away from the two of them, looking up at the darkness.
"He's still out there," he muttered. "Somewhere."
As quick as it disappeared, it reappeared behind Mega Man's view, fading in from the cloak. Link pointed and shouted an alert, causing Mega Man to quick spin around just in time to see a volley of purple fireballs launch out from the eye of the core. The fireballs spiraled outward like a funnel, with comet trails tapering away. Link quick ducked under his shield, where two of them collided and diffused. The rest fanned outward. Mega Man and Roll, with no cover, were both hit with the plasma energy, causing a brief electrical discharge of their power levels. They grimaced in pain as they absorbed the fire, recoiling back. As Mega Man recovered enough to bring back his plasma cannon out, the core disappeared again.
Link dropped his shield. "What is going on?"
Mega Man sighed, "Great, not the pod thing again."
"He's done this before?" Roll asked, stupefied.
Mega Man nodded, his eyes darting around for the next appearance. "It's his new 'thing'."
The pod reappeared again, far away in a corner of the room. Plasma balls ejected from the origin point and percolated away. The distance was far enough that Mega Man and Roll were able to dodge the widely spaced plasma, and Link brought up his shield.
Mega Man waved his arm cannon around, trying to track where it might next appear from, but it was useless. Every ounce of darkness looked the same as the next. Another appearance from the left, a showering of fireballs, and disappearing. Mega Man was able to avoid the blow, but Roll wasn't.
"Roll!" Link shouted, holding out his hand for her, even though she was across the room. She took the full force of the blow, shorting out, flashing with electricity, and ended up on her back. Her brother helped her to her feet. Neither of his friends could take much more of this, and it was frustrating him beyond no end.
"Come on out, Wily. Fight for real! Quit hiding behind the darkness."
As if in answer, Wily silently materialize directly above Link's head, unbeknownst to him.
"Look out!" Mega Man shouted too late. The red eye emitted the spiraling circle of violet death. One headed straight for Link's head. Out of some unnamable instinct he fired his arm cannon at the incoming comet, just as Link turned around. The plasma shot went out fast as light, collided with the purple sphere, and deflected it away. It flew outward, away from Link's face and any harm. The robot core vanished.
"Whoa," Mega Man said as he skidded to a stop. "That's never happened before." Plasma wasn't solid so it shouldn't have caused any sort of deflection when two came in contact. He realized his arm cannon was still configured for a high yield shot. That might have caused the reaction.
Link jumped up, excited. "Mega Man, reflect them back. When he appears-"
"What?"
The core came into view, malevolent flashing its blood red heartbeat.. Link ceased speaking and ducked under his shield. Like rhythm, the volley of plasma fanned outward.
Mega Man fired at a plasma orb heading his way. The two shots crashed into each other, causing the trajectory of Wily's ammunition to shift back at an angle, fly up and collide with the red eye. It flashed with electricity, indicating a direct hit.
Mega Man pumped his fist in the air. "Yes, it worked. Everyone gather up!" He rushed into the middle of the arena to get the best view of the next showing.
"There's something very familiar about all this," Link said to himself as he rushed back to his side.
The three of them huddled together again, making one target, rather than three. Roll turned on her visor, trying to scan for its appearance. Maybe there was some clue that would indicate... wait.
"He's over there!" she turned and pointed up into the sky. Sure enough, Wily appeared there. Her tracker had caught a power emission trail zipping from point to point.
The volley of plasma shot out, Link stepped in front and crouched, holding up his shield to protect the two of them. From behind the Hylian, Mega Man fired two shots at the proper angles. They hit like atoms and deflected away, criss-crossing and hitting the core again. Brilliant light flashed outward and it disappeared. The plasma balls that Mega Man didn't hit diffused harmlessly on Link's shield.
"There!" Roll pointed out. The group turned simultaneously to where she pointed. The orange core materialized, and let forth its array of comets. Link shoved through to bring up his guard, thrusting it out against incoming fire. Mega Man got two again, sending them right back to the enemy.
The core suddenly angled to the side, as if something had gone wrong with its engine, and it was struggling to stay aloft. Tendrils of blue electricity danced over its surface. Flashes of light erupted in the arena, as smoke clouded up from the red eye. It looked like they'd finally done it.
"AAAARRRRRGH!" came Wily's voice. "You little... arrrrgh... I've had enough. I'll take you all down if it's the last thing I do."
The faceplate holding the eye, dropped off like a shed skin, revealing a gigantic cannon filling the entire space of the robot core.
"Enjoy your last thirty seconds of life, Rock."
"That cannon!" Mega Man exclaimed.
"It's got a neutron disruption engine," Roll said, repeating what her scanners told her, "It'll wipe out this entire castle!"
A low hum reverberated in the room, the sound of the cannon charging up. That was what he meant by thirty seconds. Mega Man would never have expected this from Dr. Wily, he always knew the scientist as a coward, one who always ran away as the fortress collapsed around him, once he was peeled away from his robot shell. Now that he had been transformed into that robot shell, maybe he thought there was nothing left to lose any longer.
Link leaned into Mega Man's ear. "Toss me."
Mega Man looked back at him with an incredulous expression. "What?"
"You'll have to toss me. We don't have time for this. Trust me." Link pulled the sword out of his sheath.
Mega Man nodded once, hoping the best would be the result. Without warning, he grabbed the back of Link's tunic, squeezed, and heaved him up in the air like a log.
"What are you doing!" Roll gasped.
Link sailed up like a rocket, wind forcing his eyes to water, hair blowing back against his face. He shot just past the pod, slowing down at the apex of the launch, and landed on top of it on his feet. The curved metal surface provided an unstable platform to land on, and his feet gave out from under him, threatening to drop him the same way he came. With quick thinking he stuck his sword in the metal like a pike and climbed back up on the top of the pod.
"What are you doing?" Wily asked.
Link closed his eyes and concentrated, focusing power into his sword. The metal of the blade gleamed with sparkling light, glowing brighter and brighter. Electricity started to wriggle up and down the shaft of the cutting edge. Thunder boomed in the distance. The crackling sparking of Link's sword overshadowed the overpowering hum of Wily's cannon. The sky darkened. Gray clouds formed over Link's head.
Link held the sword of storms up to the sky, tightening both his hands on the hilt. A thick column of lightning from the clouds struck it, feeding into the blade, giving it life, power.
With an enormous battle cry, Link plunged the sword deep into the pod he was standing on. Electricity from above and below soaked into the sword, giving it more and more light.
Wily's pod began to shake violently, trembling like a bomb about to explode, rocking back and forth. Cracks streaked down the orange armor, gleaming out beams of yellow light. The high-pitched whine of sizzling electricity culminated in a frying sound. Link let go of the hilt and vaulted off the pod, just as the machine cannon exploded in a shower of sparks. Link plummeted back to the ground, his arms and legs spread out like a flying squirrel. Mega Man and Roll saw he was descending and moved to catch him. They brought him in by the arms and pulled him back upright.
Smoke, fire, and lightning, rained down from above. Minor explosions ruptured out of the pod, breaking it apart. In a final rupture, an immeasurable explosion blasted from the core, bathing the three down below in striking heat. Smoke puffed out in all directions. From the cloud, a single body in a white coat dropped out, and landed on the floor on his back.
Groaning in pain, writhing like an upturned bug, he sluggishly moved his aged bones, rotating back onto his stomach. With pain, he opened his eyes, and put his hands on the floor to push himself back up.
Suddenly, a broadsword plunged into the ground in front of him, inches away from his face. The man's eyes opened wide in surprise, looking at the mighty blade embedded in the metal.
The sword yanked up, lifted by Link's hand, who reset his grip and pointed its spiked tip at the man's head.
"Dr. Wily, I presume," he said, glaring down at him. Mega Man and Roll came up behind him as well.
"Dr. Wily?" Roll said. "But your body... your brain..."
"Just a robot shell I manipulated."
"But we saw the blood..."
"A body bag full of ketchup," he uttered. "I couldn't do it. I couldn't make the program work. It was impossible. I tried and tried, but I couldn't figure it out in time. So I did the next best thing."
Mega Man replied, "You made us think you had put your brain inside a robot."
Dr. Wily nodded. "I couldn't follow Dr. Selkirk's schematics." He pounded the ground with his feeble fist. "I couldn't figure out how to make his vision mine."
"You know what you're problem is," Link said. "You never vary your methods, never do anything original. Every time you try to take over the world, you do the same thing."
Roll interjected, "The same disappearing-reappearing pod thing, the same robot masters."
"And every one is just based off of Dr. Light's original six," Mega Man interjected. "How many Guts Man copies have there been? How many Cut Men? Everything you do is stolen. You stole Dr. Selkirk's idea. You stole Dr. Light's designs. You stole Dr. Cossack's daughter even and tried to use him to do the exact same thing. Did you really think I never suspected it was you? Everything you do is stolen off someone else's idea. You could never create an original design. You're just like any other madman. Accurate view of the problem, insane view of the solution."
Mega Man picked up Dr. Wily's hands, and lifted his body up by them as if he weighed nothing. Roll gave him as set of handcuffs she had secured from the robot detainment center. Her brother accepted them gladly.
"Dr. Albert Wily, you are under arrest for various crimes against humanity," he said as he hooked them around his wrists. He went around to his back and shoved him forward. Link and Roll gave each other a knowing wink at a job well done as they led the troop out.
Dr. Wily, his hands bound in chains, rolled his eyes back, peeking at his captor and nemesis from the corner of his eye. "Nothing original, huh?" he snickered to himself. "I'll show you, Mega Man. Just you wait."
Next Chapter: Goodbye
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