Prologue

FIRST LAW: A robot must not harm, or through inaction cause harm to come, to a human being.

SECOND LAW: A robot must obey a human being unless doing so contradicts the First Law.

THIRD LAW: A robot must act to preserve its own existence unless doing so contradicts the First and/or Second Law.

Hey. If you've looked through this series of stuff before, then I'm sure by now this is going to look awfully familiar and you'll probably just want to skip past it. I know I sure wish I could-all right, all right, put the golf club down, Roll. I'm doing it. Ahem… however, if you're just starting here without looking at past accounts, then a little basic preliminary history is probably in order. That's my job-well, for the next five minutes, anyways. After that I'm sticking with mystery man and undercover agent. Pays better. My name's Blues Light, sometimes known as Proto Man. First of the Light siblings… and, for that matter, first Robot Master ever to be created. I'm hoping you already know what a Robot Master is, but I suppose I'd better go over that just to make sure. Time to start pulling out more dates than a history teacher.

Let's start in 2040. The Third World War. Humanity being IDIOTS. Not that the first two weren't bad enough, but this time they REALLY did it. Nuclear everything, everywhere. Ol' Momma Earth nearly keeled over then and there, but at the last moment, everybody suddenly remembered that they had brains after all and ceased fire. And it WAS the last moment; right at first, it looked like they were screwed anyways. So every nation on the planet gathered their greatest geniuses, threw them together and charged them with saving them from the doom they had created. The name of this group was the Second Rainbow, and despite Murphy's Law, they succeeded. Earth was brought back from the brink of doom. While the story of the Rainbow by itself is surely fascinating, we're going to zero on two members in specific. Dr. Thomas Light and Dr. Albert Wily, two prominent robotocists and close friends. Together, they did what nobody thought possible; create a humanoid robot with nearly-human intelligence. A robot capable of surpassing other robots, of controlling them, of filling the missing link between man and machine, bound only by the three Laws of Robotics. Me. Blues. And at first, it was well and good; the Rainbow eventually dissolved, but I stuck with Dad and Uncle Al, as I came to think of Light and Wily. Unfortunately, life just can't be that nice.

Looking back now, I can pinpoint the one spot where everything went to hell, where the world was fated to suffer again. The teleporter accident. An invention we were testing that would transport matter at impossible speeds by breaking its particles apart, beaming them at the speed of light, and reforming them again at the destination point. And something went wrong. Our experimental teleporter went haywire, and me and Al Wily were both caught in it. One day I'm hanging with a pair of elderly bachelors and finding my place in life, the next I'm blasted across the globe and stranded in the middle of the African Congo, with my sense of direction shot. Took me years to get back, and while I was out there, the world was going through hell. Oh, not right away; some time passed, and Light and Wily made more Robot Masters. Eight of them. At this point, a distinction became apparent between two types of RM. Six of the new guys were what became the norm; somewhat less intelligent and less human, usually mass produced models like these six were under the Lighttech company name. The other two made here, however, were like me. A pair of siblings named Rock and Roll. I'm sure you're groaning now, especially when you throw me into the mix. Pretty soon, though, nobody was laughing at all.

See, we soon found out one major flaw in teleporters. They couldn't be used by humans. At all. Something about the process, about being split apart into particles and reassembled, did a real number on their brains. And Wily was the living proof. The guy I knew as my Uncle Al was cynical as hell, but still a good guy. But after his brain damage from the teleporter accident progressed, he was replaced by a murderous madman who reprogrammed the six Lighttech mass-produced models of Robot Master as well as thouands of lesser robots into an army, meant to conquer the world for him. The first Robot Rebellion, as they came to be called. Human soldiers couldn't match the robot hordes; only one thing could. A better robot. My brother, Rock, volunteered to be upgraded into a warrior machine, and taking the name Mega Man, went out to stop Wily's rampage. All six Robot Masters fell before him, and he went on to Wily's stronghold, the first Skull Fortress. There he found creations of Wily's even more nightmarish, including the madman's first Advanced Robot Master of his own, a hologram-cloaked servant named Doc Man. Despite Doc Man's tricks, Mega Man demolished him, beating him within an inch of his life and only stopping at the last second out of pity… a decision he would later regret. At the time, though, he only had eyes for Wily, and in the end he brought the madman down and packed him away in prison.

Now, I don't know what the penal system is like for you now, but back in this day and age… well, it sucks. Normally I'm all for the idea of totally repealing the death penalty, but Wily should have been some kind of exception. As it turned out, just the opposite happened; he was sprung on parole and put under watch with some kind of new medicine that was supposed to cure his insanity. Didn't take. First chance he got, he took parts from every piece of technology he could reach, built himself a teleporter and vamoosed, returning all too soon with eight more Robot Masters of his own design and a second attempt at world domination. Things progressed pretty much the same way as before, and Mega Man locked him up once more. Now I'm sure you're thinking "But Blues, there's no WAY they could have been stupid enough to let him out AGAIN, right?" Hate to break it to you, but there is a way, and it happened. At least it wasn't entirely their fault. Doc Man, Wily's mutilated "son", and the only Advanced RM he had ever built, had survived the first Rebellion, but at a price; the damage to his body was nowhere near what was done to his brain. He was even more cuckoo than his dad, and he only wanted one thing. The heads of the man who had abandoned him and the robot who defeated him. Wily and Mega Man.

By killing a prominent psychologist and taking his place using those wonderful holograms of his, Doc Man managed to "cure" Wily's insanity and get him sprung-and thus, vulnerable to murder attempts. This time, though, Wily managed to actually keep up an act of it being for real. Moving back in with the Light family, he joined my dad in creating a robot that would protect the world in case of further disasters; an ultimate peace-keeper known as Gamma. In this noble goal they were joined by four more men in their age group, plus one more. Doc Man, still in disguise. These seven formed the "Gamma Team", and together they began building a mile-high monolith that would be able to stand up to anything in the world. But to do so, they needed a certain recently discovered crystal that revolutionized the capabilities of fusion generators. Energen crystals, only found in eight places known to the world… eight places that shortly came under attack by robot armies, each commanded by Robot Masters from a rival company, Sennet Robotics. No, it wasn't Wily. It was Doc Man, trying to get Mega Man killed in combat. Safer that way, and once Mega was dead he could take out Wily without worrying about running into the robot who had ruined him before.

Sound complicated? It gets worse. This was ALSO the time in which good ol' me finally found his way back home, and who do I run into first but Wily. Remember, he wasn't really cured, just playing along until Gamma was completed, and planning to steal him. When I met the man I knew as "Uncle Al" with no knowledge of the past two Rebellions due to my time in the Congo, he quickly figured out a plan and fabricated a story that got me to working for him under the alias of Break Man and going against both Mega and Doc Man's armies as a mysterious third party. As time went by, though, I began to figure out something was up while at the same time developing a friendship with the blue robot who I had been told was my enemy but who was really my brother. Suffice it to say that all eight Robot Masters were destroyed and Doc Man was forced to reveal himself. That didn't work either, and in the end, Mega Man finally succeeded in chasing him down and finishing him off, this time making sure he was dead. Only problem was, now that Gamma was complete, Wily dropped the ruse and ran off with the machine. With my help, Mega made it inside the third Skull Fortress and faced that monstrosity… and against all logic, despite its overwhelming strength, my little brother brought down the titan. And that's where Murphy's law kicked in again; in the destruction of Skull Fortress III's collapse, Wily was killed. There was nothing we could do, so the First Law of Robotics didn't kick in, and at least the threat was over. Or so it seemed. Returning home, I revealed myself, and with my family reunited we all settled down to a life of peace… for three years. Then reality came back to kick us in the arse once more.

Dr. Sergei Cossack, a genius robotocist only one level below Light and Wily, suddenly reappeared in the public view after quitting his job for Sennet Robotics years ago. With eight Robot Masters and a robot army of his own he seized eight critical points around the world and held the humans there at the time hostage in order to force Mega Man to fight his creations, so he could prove that they were superior. Little bro had no choice but to face this threat, but I had more freedom to sniff around and see what it was that made this smell so bad. And boy, did I strike… well, never mind THAT metaphor. Let's just say all hell broke loose in MY head. Not only was Wily alive, he was forcing Cossack to do the Rebellion by holding his daughter, Kalinka hostage. Except that Wily was so addled, he didn't care that the conditions he was keeping her in would kill her eventually. I couldn't have that, so I broke her out and carried her through the long miles between Skull Fortress IV and Cossack's Castle. Arrived just in time to break up the final fight between Mega and Cossack, and reveal the real bad guy. Mega went and cleaned his clock, but this time Wily escaped afterwards. With him on the loose, we knew a fifth Rebellion would be coming… we just didn't know when. And so I went out into the world once more, journeying wherever the wind took me and keeping my ear to the ground for anything that might warn us.

All right, this is going to be painful for me. Let me just say right now that I was an idiot, and I've taken steps to make sure this is NEVER repeated. While on my travels, I had several incidents with scumbag humans committing anti-robot crimes, culminating with me heading off into the mountains to do some thinking by myself… and these incidents were on worldwide TV, in view of everybody. Guess who said "Hello, opportunity." Yup, Wily. A new lackey of his named Dark Man who used holograms was all he needed to create a fake Proto Man who appeared as the mastermind of the Fifth Rebellion. And he was GOOD; even my family were taken in by the end. When Mega faced "me" down, he decided he couldn't kill his brother, and got his ass kicked soundly-until the REAL me busted in and revealed what was going on. Confident that Mega could whup Dark Man easily now that the truth was out, I headed on ahead to Skull Fortress V. Mistake. Because you see, Dark Man wasn't a new guy at all. He was rebuilt, remodeled, revived from the dead DOC MAN. For once, I'm afraid I don't know what went on between the two of them up there; the only ones who do are themselves. Mega's not talking, and Doc Man's dead once more; all I know is that there was a fight, that ol' Doccy had actually regained his sanity, that they parted on good terms, and that the son of Wily killed himself again, this time making sure he could never be brought back. I went and looked, and believe me, you couldn't get five bucks on E-Bay for the charred remnants of his body now. Skull Fortress V went down just like the others after that, but once again we failed to nab Wily. He got away once more.

And that's where we were a few years later, in 2080-the madman still out there, waiting to no doubt launch a Sixth Rebellion. And so the wheels of fate moved once more. There, I'm done. Now can I have my comic books back already? Geez.