Jump 3 MMBN: The Jump - Battle Network 3


Once again months have passed.  How many?  I can’t rightly say, but things certainly can’t stay peaceful here for long if this trend keeps up.  It all started with the N1 Grand Prix Preliminaries. 


A competition between Navi seemed like a nice distraction from running an underground organization so I entered.  As with the license tests I took months ago it was a cakewalk to get through.  MegaMan and the others also heard about, and joined the N1.  When they asked me what I’d do about an operator I simply told them I had my ways.  Once everyone got through the preliminaries I was invited to a chat Yai decided to host, and decided I could join them.  Once the chat was over it was brought to everyone’s attention that Dex had left his homework disk at the school.  Everyone decided to help him out, so I took refuge in Lan’s PET like I had before and joined them as they attempted to enter the school at night.

The gate was obviously locked, so I volunteered to go unlock it for them.  MegaMan decided to accompany me and together we got it open with no trouble.  After the operators scrounged around for Dex’s disk Lan ended up finding it and giving it to him.  As we were leaving noises could be heard from the teacher’s lounge which was strange because not even the maintenance staff was here.  An unknown voice said something about obtaining the first TetraCode and everyone but Lan charged in to confront the burglar.  FlashMan uses the screen from a laptop to hypnotize the three of them and they ran off believing they were animals.  After finding a parasol to block the hypno-light Lan jacked MegaMan and myself into the laptop.


Inside the principals laptop it was completely dark.  Lan had to turn the actual lights in the school on in order to grant us visibility.  I thought it was a stupid design choice myself, but kept that to myself as we made our way through the laptop.  There were some barriers we had to find keycards for but it didn’t take us long.  When we got to the end we found the perpetrator Navi, FlashMan.  I felt a slight connection with him since we’re both elec element Navis, but like with ElecMan the feeling didn’t stop me from kicking his but with MegaMan. Before he was completely beat he did…something to MegaMan and myself.  We weren’t sure what at the time, but I stayed with Lan at his father’s insistence for the time being.

Once we discovered that there was something wrong with us, Lan decided to take us to go see his father to fix the issue.  When Lan tried to board the Metro it was blocked by a little kid wanting to see his brother who he claimed is the number one netbattler in town.  Since Lan obviously didn’t have a brother and I was just a Navi (and didn’t even technically live in the ACDC part of the net) we figured the mystery brother was probably Dex.  Checking the school for Dex we discovered it really is him and his brother (Chisao) came from the other side of the world to see him.  He wanted to see his brother’s skills in action so Dex had no choice but to battle Lan and MegaMan.  All I’ll say is that he didn’t win.

With the Metro finally open we went to the SciLab.  Unfortunately Dr. Hikari was in a meeting, but he let Lan know that he’s give him a sub PET to use while he fixed his actual one.  When we got back to ACDC the guy that told Lan about the N1 let him know that the second round of the preliminaries were about to begin.  He gave us passes to SciLab square and left.  We jacked in to the net and took on the second round with gusto.  Finding it easy we went to jack out when all of a sudden our connection to Lan was forcibly cut.  This was bad for MegaMan because he relied on Lan for battle chips.  I was used to being on my own, so we made it back to manually jack out without incident.  Lan’s father came home that night and promised to figure out what was wrong and gave Lan a sub PET in the meantime.

The next day Lan’s class was having a field trip to Yoka and Lan as always, overslept.  Luckily the class hadn’t left yet and he made it in time.  I would have preferred to be out on the net searching for information about the TetraCodes, but whatever FlashMan did to me was too big of a risk to leave unfixed.  After a day of enjoying what Yoka had to offer Lan’s father sent an email with programs to fix myself and MegaMan, as well as a Navi Customizer for Lan and MegaMan.  Once I had my freedom back I chose to explore the net in Yoka while MegaMan and Lan slept.  I came back after discovering nothing in the area surrounding the Inn and slept through most of the following morning.


I was awoken in the middle of the crisis.  The animals were running wild and the cause was the zookeeper doing something to make them go berserk through a radio tower or something.  I wasn’t in the mood for it honestly.  I joined MegaMan in searching for a solution to the problem in the ZooComp.  There were animal programs and viruses we had to match up to progress like some weird puzzle… Anyway we managed to make it to the zoo keeper’s Navi, BeastMan.  He had some speed to him, not on QuickMan’s level, but still decently fast.  MegaMan and I were faster though, and beat him together with relative ease.


A little after the zoo incident the next round of the prelims were being held. Naturally I got through them without issue, as did MegaMan and some others I recognized. 

The next day however, was another incident.  A new brand of dishwasher called the Bubblewash was all the rage and many people had bought one.  However, they were nothing more than a way for WWW to spread more chaos again.  The machines trapped the users in bubbles that would explode after a certain amount of time, and Lan’s friend Mayl and their teacher Ms. Mari had gotten caught up in it as well.  For the most part I didn’t do anything to help solve the incident, being in the UnderNet as I was.  I took the time to gather information and found that WWW were the ones who were after the TetraCodes. 


The next phase of the N1 was underway, I kept to myself and got through it as quickly as possible.  I made arrangements for some random hacker to be my faux operator and took refuge in an unfamiliar PET as we made our way to the Beach area.  As we waited for the next phase to begin I took the time to challenge some of the competition to more friendly battles before the real fights would begin.  Most of them were forgettable, but KingMan stood out and the battle we had was enough to remind me that I should be enjoying the tournament.  I heard MegaMan later battled him and also won.

The battles were to be held at the mysterious Hades Island, and everyone took the same boat to get there.  It was at this point I realized that I was on national, perhaps even international television.  It made me nervous even though I knew the only challenges would be MegaMan and ProtoMan.  The first test was to weed out some of the less resourceful entrance and find Victory Data.  A fitting name, seeing as there were only a certain amount of them.  Afterwards the actual battles began.  I went up against two no name Navis and joined MegaMan and ProtoMan in advancing. Glyde, MetalMan and GutsMan were all knocked out of the tournament.

As I waited for my match it seemed the enjoyment of a tournament couldn’t last.  WWW had an operator in the tournament the entire time.  Sunyama and DesertMan.  I wasn’t about to endanger the guy who agreed to be my operator, so I let Lan, Chaud, MegaMan and ProtoMan handle the situation as we left.


While I wasn’t there to witness it myself, Lan and MegaMan had a run in with another WWW Navi at the hospital of all places. It seemed that they had befriended a sick boy there with the same disease that Hub had.  Poor thing.  Luckily, he was going to have an operation.  If all went well he’d be cured.  PlantMan had other things in mind however, and the power to the hospital was cut during Mamoru’s operation and things were tense for a while.  But Lan and MegaMan were resourceful as ever and found a way to save the day.  The operation ended up being a success and Mamoru was set to make a full recovery.


Afterwards, Lan ended up being tricked into doing some of WWW’s dirty work for them by Mr. Match, who he believed to have reformed.  There were net fires all over.  I couldn’t do anything but help evacuate some Navis and programs before something happened to them.  Thanks to the Navi Customizer MegaMan was able to put out all the fires and I followed him into the UnderNet.

I chose not to interfere and watched as MegaMan fought and beat FlameMan.  He tried to delete MegaMan but was suddenly interrupted by the arrival of Bass.  He quickly deleted FlameMan in one strike, then set his sights on MegaMan.  I thought the fight would have been less one sided, but Bass’s Life Aura had increased in power.  Megaman couldn’t break through it and was knocked out.  Before he could delete MegaMan as well I rushed in and broke his Aura with his own move.  Bass seemed surprised that I was there, but before we could continue our reunion, Wily of all people called him back after claiming to have gathered all of the TetraCodes.  Bass left without a word and I was left thinking my stars I didn’t have to fight him right then.  I made myself scarce as MegaMan was getting up and watched him leave.  Things were getting much worse.

A while after that I found out that MegaMan was going through the UnderNet rankings, trying to get to S, the rank 1 Navi.  I myself had only met Serenade once befrore, and we fought to a standstill.  I managed to get a really powerful ability from him called “Sonic Boom”.  Limiting myself to rank four, when MegaMan finally found me during his quest I simply gave him the rank.  I had no use for it, hence why I didn’t go and beat numbers two and three.  He was successful in doing whatever it was that he needed to do had to face the Navi DrillMan.  WWW had managed to start awakening Alpha, the prototype of the Internet itself.  There was still time to stop WWW, so I joined Lan and MegaMan once more to put a stop to their plans.


After going through some hoops to get access to the WWW base we left to stop Wily.  We got to have rematches with the WWW Navis we beat earlier, but our friends came to finish them off so we could move on ahead.  The rematches with the WWW Navis proved to be no challenge even if they were synched with their operators.  BeatMan and his operator were strangely absent.  I later found that they had been…taken care of by Wily due to their failure.  Why them only, I’m not sure.  But it helped MagaMan and Lan achieve a Full Synchro again since a Pulse Transmission chair was free.  The details of the final battle are a little lost to me, but in the end, Bass and Wily were absorbed by Alpha and MegaMan and Lan managed to defeat the prototype of the Internet incarnate.  I’m sure it was quite the battle.  Lan and MegaMan got to learn a little about their grandfather as some of his personality data was inside Alpha.  It’s destruction caused the Island to begin self destructing and before the two could Jack out a remnant of Alpha captured them and MegaMan sacrificed himself to save Lan. 



Lan was devastated.  He lost not only his Navi, but his brother as well.  Everyone around him managed to cheer him up a bit and stop him from becoming depressed.  I would have offered to stay with him as a replacement Navi, but something in me knew that it’d never be the right thing to do.  The days of peace returned, and everything was almost normal.  The fact that MegaMan was no longer with us was an ever present fact of life.  During the time between the defeat of Alpha and Lan starting the sixth grade I set out again on a journey to discover what new secrets hid in the Net.  Hidden Navis, the Secret Area and more.  I even got abilities from ProtoMan (The Delta Ray Edge) and GutsMan (A portion of his toughness. Flinching was a thing of the past for me).  To everyone’s surprise however, Lan’s father managed to do the impossible with a little help from his own dad.  MegaMan returned they day Lan begun the sixth grade and it was soon as if he never was gone in the first place.  Bass also resurfaced, albeit with slight memory loss and another increase in power.  I fought him to a standstill once more and found out how he survived.  Some remnants of Gospel had fused with him, submerging his memories until he consumed enough Bug Frags to regain his strength.  His memory returned only after MegaMan and Lan beat him though.  And that was the end of that chapter of my life I this world.

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