New Megaman Battle Network

A complete reimagining of the universe and stories of Megaman Battle Network.

Story 5: The Grand and Lesser Elzioth

Chapter 5: The Emergence

"Attention, all citizens of Den City. Due to ongoing safety concerns, the government of Electopia has mandated the immediate shutdown of all Copybots."

The safety message was blasted throughout downtown, through a series of speakers that were normally reserved for announcing weather emergencies. The message was also being broadcast on television, through the emergency alert system. After more than two dozen injuries due to rogue Copybots, the government was not interested in taking any more chances.

"All Copybot owners are required to remove any occupying Navis and shut down the devices immediately. Any Copybots that are left in an operational state are considered to be a public health risk. After today, anyone who maintains an operational Copybot will be fined, and the fines will increase in severity with each passing day."

The emergency message was playing inside the Sakurai household as well, on their living room television, as Mayl and her mother, Tomoe, were stuffing their powered-down Copybot into an upstairs closet. It took both of them together to lug it up the stairs, as it was a fairly heavy bit of machinery, but soon it was safely stowed away, with the door closed. Mayl's mother went downstairs to get a drink of water, while Mayl wandered into her room and flopped onto her bed, tired out.

"Is it taken care of?" Roll asked from the PET by Mayl's computer. Her operator nodded.

"All put away. Hopefully we won't be attacked in the middle of the night now." She stretched out her arms. "Papa wanted us to toss the thing in the trash, but I think we'll be fine."

"I'm glad…" Roll responded, sounding only a little bit relieved. "I'd hate to see something happen to you." Even as she spoke those words, she continued to see the dark vision of her operator's demise in front of her.

Mayl glanced over at her PET, seeing the concerned and conflicted look on her Navi's face. "Is everything okay, Roll? You seem… I don't know. You seem something."

"I'm…" Her Navi looked away. "I don't know how to say it." She couldn't imagine how she could possibly describe what was happening to her without sounding completely crazy. There's no chance Mayl would ever believe her. Even so, keeping the truth inside was eating away at her. She knew she couldn't keep it bottled up.

Mayl got up off of her bed, walking over to her computer and pulling the PET out of its dock, looking into the screen. "You can tell me anything, Roll, I promise. Just come out and say it." Her Navi looked up into her eyes, taking a deep breath. There was no turning back now.

"Mayl, I've been… seeing things. Strange things. Like… memories, but… nothing I recognize. Like they're images from a past life."

"Memories?" Mayl's eyes widened a bit, as she sat down. "Do you think they could be… is your memory coming back?" There was a twinge of optimism in her voice.

Roll looked down, not wanting to disappoint her operator. "I don't think so. They feel too different… I feel like I'm a different person in them. But that's not all."

"Not all? What else is there?"

The Navi took another deep breath, terrified at how her operator was going to react, before looking up and speaking again. "I've been seeing things before they happen."

Mayl blinked. "You… what? Before they happen? You make it sound like you can see the future or something."

"That's… that's exactly what I mean. About five seconds in the future… mostly." Roll could feel terror coursing through her as she spoke. "And it's not just things on the Net. It's everything. It's even you."

"Roll…" Her operator clearly looked disturbed, confused and worried. Before she could speak again, the Navi continued.

"The thing that really worries me is a vision I've been seeing over and over. It's you and… something…" She couldn't bring herself to describe it in detail. "Something really bad happens to you. And I'm scared it's going to be real."

Mayl covered her mouth with her hand, concern in her eyes, not sure how to respond to this. "I… don't know what to say, Roll."

The Navi's face fell before her operator's words even came out. "You don't believe me."

"That's…" Mayl thought about what to say and what to do for several long moments. Roll stayed quiet, not wanting to pile on anything more, but absolutely terrified at how Mayl was going to respond.

Eventually, her operator stood up. "I don't know what's going on, but we'll get this figured out, Roll."

Roll blinked in surprise. "What do you mean? What are we going to do?"

Mayl walked over to her closet, grabbing a light jacket. "We're going to go to SciLab. They can figure out what's going on. We'll find a solution to this."

She walked over and grabbed her PET, looking into the screen as she walked out of her bedroom. "Tell me more about this, Roll. The more we know, the more they can help."

Roll sighed in immense relief, glad to know she hadn't scared away her operator. She continued to talk, leaving out the most painful details, as they both made their way outside, heading toward downtown.

Despite the warnings that were being blasted throughout the city, the Copybot factory continued to buzz with activity. All of the machinery was active, forming more of the mysterious white material, creating arms and legs, and assembling Copybots faster than it ever had before. In a room overlooking the main assembly line, Dr. Doppler watched the factory pump out one Copybot after another, pleased with the progress that was being made, completely unconcerned with the events of the day.

As he watched, he heard the sound of footsteps approaching from behind, as one of his direct assistants entered the room. He had expected to see the head scientist fighting with the controls, getting everything shut down; instead, he was stunned to see the man watching the factory operate, with absolutely zero urgency.

"Dr. Doppler… what are you doing? Why is the factory still producing Copybots? Haven't you heard the orders from the government?"

"I've heard them loud and clear, Toriko," Dr. Doppler responded. "Those orders are of no concern to us."

"They're of every concern to us!" the assistant shot back, incredulous. "Our machines are going rogue! They're hurting people! We have to stop producing them until we can find the bug that's causing this behavior!"

"There is no bug. They're doing exactly what they were programmed to do."

Toriko stared for a moment, dumbstruck. "Wh… what? They… you programmed them to attack their owners?"

"Of course," Dr. Doppler replied; his expression was neutral, unfazed, though his assistant couldn't see it. "If they continue to obey their owners, they won't make a very useful army."

"You… you're insane…" Toriko took a step back, trembling and terrified. "I'm shutting this factory down myself. And then I'm calling the police to have you arrested." He turned to leave, not wanting to see the doctor in this state.

"Before you have me taken away," Doppler replied, his voice flat and emotionless, "I have a question I'd like to ask you."

He heard the footsteps behind him pause, hesitant, and he continued speaking. "Tell me, what would happen if somebody found themselves with the power to travel through time, and then went back in time to kill their past self?"

"What? Why… why are you asking me this?"

"Just give me an answer," the doctor replied. "You'll see the relevance soon."

Toriko paused, completely baffled, but thinking the question over. "Well… if it were even possible, it would cause a time paradox. Time itself would collapse."

"Oh, please," Dr. Doppler scoffed. "Time is not nearly so fragile." He turned and walked over to a nearby portable whiteboard, picking up a marker. "The universe has ways of coping with this."

He started drawing on the board, creating a large circle to indicate the universe, as well as a small person. "If the person was just traveling through time, minding their own business, that's no problem. But if they kill their past selves, then the person needs to be in two different states at the exact same time, alive and dead. This is only possible with information from two different universes."

He drew another, small circle, whose edge was running right up against the larger circle. "So, to resolve the paradox, a pocket universe is created. The person travels from the original universe, killing his past self from the new, pocket universe. That is where the original person continues to live on, because he never killed himself; he killed an alternate version of himself." He put the marker down, satisfied.

The assistant looked over the simple diagram, confused. "What does this have to do with anything?"

Dr. Doppler smirked, his expression changing for the first time. "It is relevant, Toriko, because we are all living in a pocket universe right now. And I am the one who orchestrated its creation, when I caused one very consequential Navi to go back in time and delete himself at the moment he was formed."

He turned to face his horrified assistant for the first time. "My intention is to steal all of the life and energy from this universe, and use it to conquer the true universe. The only thing I need… is firepower. I need the firepower of an army of Copybots, so I can break through the barrier separating the two universes, and take my place as ruler of all creation." He was surprised at how much he was revealing, but after keeping his plan a secret for so long, it was a bit of a relief to finally let it out.

"Barrier?" The assistant was confused, but quickly came to a realization. "The End of the World… you're telling me it's the border between this universe and the other one?"

"You catch on quick." The older man chuckled. "You're a smart one. Obviously, Dr. Doppler knew what he was doing when he chose you as an assistant."

Toriko's eyes went wide, and he had to suppress a gasp as he stepped backward. "You're… you're not Dr. Doppler… who are you?! What did you do to him?!"

"What do you think I did?" The old man stepped forward casually, but to his assistant each step was menacing, threatening. "I killed him over a month ago. I've been planning this for centuries, and now it's finally time for my plan to come to fruition."

Without warning, he suddenly dashed forward, with the agility of a pro athlete, and grasped Toriko by the throat. The assistant grabbed at the doctor's hand, trying to free himself as he gasped for air, while the false Doppler lifted him off the ground.

"As for your other question…" Toriko watched in horror as Dr. Doppler's face melted away, with another taking its place. This face was bald, with a strange red jewel embedded in the forehead; the eyes were blue, not just the irises, but the entire eyeball. Its mouth was formed into an evil, satisfied smirk.

"My real name would be hard for you to pronounce, with your human tongue. You can just call me Sigma." He gripped the assistant's throat more tightly. "I am the one who will take their rightful place, ruling the entire universe as the Grand Elzioth. And with my only other counterpart disposed of, there is now nobody who can stand in my way."

The evil smile of this mysterious monster was the last thing Toriko ever saw.

Deep in downtown, Roll watched from her PET as Mayl walked into SciLab, looking at the closest directory she could find. The Navi didn't know exactly what happened in this facility, but she knew that many of the smartest minds in the world worked here. If anybody could figure out what was going on with her, they probably worked somewhere in this building.

Eventually, they got onto an elevator, and Mayl pulled her PET from its holster. Roll glanced up at her.

"Do you know where we're going, Mayl?" she asked. "I don't suppose they have anyone who specializes in weird things like this."

"Yeah, I know where we're going." Her operator looked back down into the screen, concern and remorse on her face. "Don't worry, Roll. Everything's going to be okay."

An instant later, Roll was surprised to see that Mayl's face had disappeared. She blinked, looking around, wondering if the screen had faltered. Her eyes widened as she no longer saw the normal insides of her PET; she was instead inside some sort of small room, with no visible way out. It took her a moment to realize what had happened: Mayl had powered her PET off with Roll still inside, and some time after that, the Navi had been extracted from the PET and placed into another computer system. With no system running her program, she had been effectively unconscious that entire time.

She started to panic, looking for any sort of screen to the outside world, thinking that there had to be a mistake. She quickly found a small one and looked through it, seeing her operator talking to what looked like a SciLab scientist, who was younger and clearly lower on the totem pole.

"…so I came down and brought her here," Mayl was saying. "She's always been malfunctioning, but now it sounds like she's finally breaking down completely. I didn't know where else to take her."

The scientist shrugged, looking baffled. "That's definitely not normal behavior. I've never heard of anything like that. Honestly, with any Navi that's malfunctioning that much, we tend to just do a full rebuild. It will erase all her memories and settings, so it'll be like you're getting a new Navi again, but she should be fixed."

Roll's eyes widened, and she felt her heart drop into her stomach, feeling betrayed. Mayl had lied to her. She hadn't taken her in to solve this mystery; she had brought Roll in to be repaired, assuming that she was finally too broken to live with.

Mayl nodded, biting her lip. "That's better than nothing, I suppose. At least she'll be working again."

"No! No, Mayl, you can't do this!" Roll started pounding her fists against the screen, desperate to get her attention. "This isn't a malfunction! This is serious! You're in danger!"

The scientist nodded. "We've got a bit of a wait, but it should hopefully be done in a few days. We'll give you a call on the number you gave us."

"Thank you so much." Mayl started to leave, turning back toward the screen that was now housing her Navi. She saw the panic and despair on her Navi's face as she screamed, desperate to get out of this situation. She felt her heart nearly break for Roll, whom she had considered a good friend for many years, but she told herself it was for the best.

"Please! Don't leave! Come back!" Roll watched powerlessly as her operator turned away and walked out the door. The scientist soon followed, turning off the lights as he left, leaving the Navi trapped in the dark, alone.