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Chapter 32: Ghiotte Summit or Bust!

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"Roll, there's been a change of plans," Teisel exclaimed into Aero's cell phone. While he'd been suiting up for the impending dig in his own room, his boss had packed a suitcase for Aero with a few changes of clothes and her laptop. At the last minute, Max had grabbed her old pictures of the Bright Bats and stowed them away in his jacket pocket before the two of them slipped back out into the city.

They briskly walked uphill as Teisel spoke. His goggles and the evening darkness still kept him moderately disguised. "Russell's out. I'm going in his place. Max is here with Aero's stuff and the cards. We need you to fly him up there so he can activate the elevator. Meet you at the Wasteland Gate?"

"I'm on my way," Roll replied. "Hang on, you two!"

To their surprise, she swung by in the Flutter and dropped a ladder from the front hatch to allow Max and Teisel entry. They met her in the bridge, where she was busily calibrating her spotting equipment. "Aero's going to be using Gramps's old bedroom for now," she told Max. "She's back on Volnutt Island at the lab, but you can put her bag in there in the meantime. It's the tan door at the end of the hall. We'll let you know when we get to the generator. Teisel, you stay here. I need to fly this ship to the auxiliary tower so we can get things running in there. In the meantime, let's get you hooked up to the spotting rig."

"Is that why you took the Flutter?" Teisel asked as Max headed back out into the hall.

"It sure is," Roll confirmed as she affixed a microchip to the collar of Teisel's digging suit. "The equipment here is top of the line, so I'll be able to spot for you all the way from Volnutt Island once we get the generator running! If there are really police officers in the city looking for you guys, it's probably a better idea to take the Volnutt Island entrance...but don't worry, Teisel! I haven't lost a signal in years, and with technology advancing so quickly, I can spot from anywhere in the Klickelan ruin network!"

"That's...uh...reassuring." Teisel replied as she handed him a wireless earpiece, turned to the control panel, and started adjusting the settings.

"...Teisel?" Roll suddenly asked.

"Hm?"

Roll pursed her lips in deep thought. "Listen...I'm sorry to have to put you up to doing this for me," she sighed. "I can see now why it upset you when I first asked."

"Better late than never, I suppose," Teisel replied.

"I can't take back what I said or fix what happened to your family," she continued, "but I can upgrade your weapons all the way and reinforce their construction, since I didn't develop them to start with...no offense if Grill put them together or anything. And I'm, uh, I'm willing to do it for free. It's not something I'd normally do, but...since you're going out of your way to help me out..."

"Well, uh, thanks, Roll." Teisel replied. "That's...unexpected, coming from you, but I'll take it."

"Great!" Roll exclaimed with a genuinely relieved smile. "Come on, then, I'll get everything set up so you can start digging right away!"

When Roll gave Max the okay to disembark, he burst out the door and onto the top of the piping where Aero had picked up Teisel and Russell the last time Teisel had been underground. Those pipes had looked a lot less precarious from the inside of a Drache. Now that he was standing on them himself with the wind threatening to throw off his balance at any given moment, it felt much more dangerous hanging around up there. At least all three card keys were safely in his pants pocket.

He slid down into the hole that Aero's drone had carved out, thankful that his metabolism hadn't caught up with him yet. Russell and Teisel were both pretty big guys, so there was no way Max ran any risk of getting stuck. For a brief moment, he imagined the two of them pacing around, waiting for him to come to the rescue, and he felt a twinge of guilt flare up for making them wait as long as they did. He shook it off and made a beeline for the control panel, resisting the urge to check out the one door leading to the rest of the ruins.

"Not now, Max. You just narrowly avoided getting arrested for exploring the ruins without a license." he reminded himself out loud as he reached into his pocket, pulled out the keys, and inserted them into the three card slots. "You can't let yourself get distracted with so much on the line!"

Immediately, the entire room lit up. "Insertion of Ignition Drive Cards complete. The elevator to the launch site is now operational."

"Guess that bit's done," Max remarked with a shrug as he did an about-face and scrambled back out to the Flutter. He made sure not to dawdle out on the pipes. The last thing he wanted to do was slip and fall to his death when they were so close to the prize.

The weapons prep didn't take long at all, and before Teisel could say "Klicke Lafonica," the Bright Bats and the Sparks-Casketts had wished him well and sent him on his way, down into the freelance Volnutt Island gate just like back in the good old days.

As Teisel rode the elevator with Data perched on his shoulder chattering something incomprehensible in his ear, the gravity of the situation finally hit him. He was about to embark on a mission that Russell had deemed way out of his league, all so he could give his sister's rival the one thing he wished he could have had to himself. If Aero's safety didn't depend so much on his success, there was a good chance he might have panicked and shouted for Roll to abort the mission.

"Teisel, you seem awfully quiet," Roll noted as the elevator lurched to a stop and he stepped into the all-too-familiar sub-aquatic corridor leading to Klickelan. "Is something wrong?"

Teisel shook his head and gazed down the tunnel at the pipes circulating water through numerous turbines and powering the ruin itself. It had been so long since the last time he'd dropped by, but the place looked just like it did ten years earlier, right down to the puddles scattered about. "I just wish I could've spent a little more time with the rest of the gang before coming down here."

"Don't worry," Roll cheerfully reassured him over the communications system. "You'll get to see them all again and say goodbye to Aero when you get back!"

Teisel shoved aside the foreboding sensation that threatened to overtake him right there, before he even had a chance to go head-to-head with any of the miniature electric Midosu floating around the tunnel. "Yeah, I guess you're right. I can't let myself get worked up over nothing."

"That's the spirit, Teisel!" Roll exclaimed. "Now watch out, we've got Reaverbots up ahead. I don't think they've noticed you. You should be able to take them all down in one hit without getting shocked if you can sneak up on them."

Unfortunately, Roll's voice was just loud enough for the closest electric, robotic jellyfish to take note. A quick pair of beeps suddenly assaulted Teisel through his earpiece, and he nearly jumped ten feet in the air with his jump springs. "WHAT THE HECK WAS THAT!?" he shouted. He drew his blades as three more sets of beeps registered.

"Oh no!" Roll groaned as Teisel got jolted with a paralyzing burst of static the second his swords came into contact with the floating menaces. "It's a small group of Reaverbots, and it looks like they've noticed you!"

"That's not what I meant!" Teisel roared. He fumbled around in vain trying to move his swords before his assailants could close in on them, but they knocked him to the ground and sent Data flying. The monkey didn't stick around. He scurried down the hall and left Teisel in the dust. "I know what a Reaverbot looks like, Roll! I'm talking about that grating buzzer that's been ringing in my ears since we started fighting! Is there any way to turn it off?"

"That's the Reaverbot alert buzzer," Roll explained. "It's a standard feature in most spotting equipment. It lets you know when a Reaverbot's noticed your presence."

"Fine, but can you shut it OFF?!" Teisel demanded as the paralysis wore off and he decimated the little bots with one swipe.

Roll hemmed and hawed a bit before responding. "Well, Mega Man never really had a problem with it, so I've never looked into trying to have it disabled. I don't know if it's such a good idea to shut it down. You never know when you might need it."

"Thanks to that stupid buzzer, I've already lost your monkey and taken a few hits," Teisel grumbled. He picked up the scattered refractor shards and squinted down the corridor for any sign of Data. The little guy was nowhere in sight. "I really think that thing was designed with gunners in mind..."

"I wouldn't worry about Data," Roll reassured him. "He always used to run ahead of Mega Man whenever he went underground. I bet he'll be waiting for you at the elevator once you get there!"

Teisel clenched his teeth in frustration and pressed onward. He didn't have the time to argue with Roll over a sound effect. He hadn't even made it to Klickelan Island yet, and they didn't have a moment to lose.

After Teisel trekked down the tunnel for what felt like hours and tried in vain to sneak up behind Reaverbots only for Roll's buzzer to alert them to his presence, he finally reached the gateway into the Klickelan ruin proper. "Teisel, there should be a big door right in front of you," Roll reported. "It's not far from your current position."

"What kind of idiot have you been spotting for this whole time?!" Teisel shouted. "You know I've been through here dozens of times back when we had the Donner Wels! It's just a straight line! If I'd needed directions to get from the island gate all the way over here, you'd be in BIG trouble getting me to the main tower!"

"I'm sorry, Teisel," Roll replied. "I just don't want you to run into any unpleasant surprises along the way."

"I'm glad you've finally started thinking along those lines, Roll, but I'm sure the presence of that door wasn't going to completely ruin this trip." Teisel glibly responded as he opened the door and almost got run over by a group of Horokko. As he sidestepped the assault, cringing as that buzzer bombarded his eardrums yet again, he added, "A heads up about the Reaverbots behind it might have been nice, though."

Back up on the surface, Aero and Max sat on the edge of the dock and watched the lights from the remaining police cars patrol Teomo City from across the water. "I guess there's no turning back now," Aero said.

"I still can't believe you stayed as long as you did," Max replied. He leaned on a pylon and stared off into the distance. "If it were me, I'd have been on the first ship out of here the minute my folks let me go."

Aero shrugged. "Hopping on a ship and leaving behind everything you know is harder in practice than it is in theory," she admitted. "If I'd left back then, I'd have never had you guys around to help me back on my feet."

"...Do you think you're going to be alright out there?"

"Come on, Max," Aero gave him a playful shove. "You know me. I'll be fine."

Max didn't laugh it off with her. "You sure about that? I know it's been seven years, but...I dunno, you still don't seem like you're over it. Or like you're back to normal."

"Max," Aero responded after a moment of careful deliberation, "I hate to have to tell you this, but there are some things out there in the world that change people forever once they've happened. You can't go back to being the person you were before. You just have to adapt. I may not be that cheerful, friendly, optimistic little girl I was before my parents kicked me out, but for better or worse, I can function out there. If anything happens, Roll and Art should be able to handle it, so don't worry about me, alright?"

"Alright," Max conceded. He reached into his jacket and pulled out Aero's old pictures. "Of course, if you still want to take these off my hands, you're welcome to 'em."

Aero's jaw dropped a bit as she realized what Max had brought along with him. "I can't believe you grabbed these when you got my stuff," she exclaimed as she snapped up the picture of the whole gang, Barrett and Tinker included, posing together.

"I can't believe you kept them up on your bulletin board all this time!" Max retorted with a grin. "Of course, now that you tell me I can't expect you to get over all that stuff that happened to you with your parents, it makes a little more sense that you'd hold onto Barrett for this long..."

She studied the pictures for a while. Then, just when Max thought she was about to put them in her pocket, she tossed the whole set into the bay and grinned back. "You know what? Now that you mention it, maybe it's time to take some new pictures. You know, while the five of us are all still together to take them."

Max gaped in shock as he watched the photographs drift around in the water. "Hey! I thought you'd at least want to hold onto those after I went to all that trouble..."

"To what?" Aero snickered. "Take them off my bulletin board and put them in your pocket?"

"I, uh...you make it sound so insignificant, Aero!"

"It's all good. If anything, it's helping me move on from feeling sorry for myself because Barrett thought...well, you know. You were there. At least it reminded me that I should probably take a new set of pictures." Aero explained. "None of us look like that anymore. I looked really stupid with pink hair, and now we know Teisel exists."

"Well, when he comes back, we'll all have to take a group picture, then." Max declared. He let his gaze drift off toward Ghiotte Summit, which loomed over Klickelan Island almost imperceptibly in the dark of the night. "We are definitely long overdue for one."

The Klickelan Island ruin hub appeared to be eerily deserted. It was to be expected, since it was well past midnight by the time Teisel reached the place, but seeing it so devoid of human life didn't sit well with him at all. The only movements down there seemed to be coming from the hundreds of Reaverbots scattered around the massive blue chamber. The sight of so many creepy glowing red eyes in the darkness sent a shiver up his spine.

"Okay Roll," he gulped. "Now I think I'm going to need directions."

"According to the map, you're currently standing in the central hub that connects every ruin entrance on Klickelan Island together," Roll reported.

"Directions, Roll!" Teisel reiterated in frustration. "I know what this room does, I just need to know which of the fifty billion tunnels in it leads to Ghiotte Summit!" When four Reaverbot alert buzzers went off in his ear, he resisted the urge to grab his earpiece and stomp on it until it broke, at the expense of being skewered by a bunch of Miroc. Annoying as it might have seemed at the moment, Roll still hadn't told him how to get where he needed to be. While he sliced the oncoming Reaverbots in half as they lunged in his direction, he added, "And so help me if you mention that there might be a Reaverbot nearby..."

"Wow, you're really on top of things!" Roll exclaimed with more than a hint of timidity in her normally confident tone. "Mega Man always seemed to need the extra help with keeping track of everything underground, but I guess I could give you the benefit of the doubt and stick with basic directions."

"I'd appreciate it," Teisel finished as he scooped up the disproportionately large refractor shards that tumbled out of the severed Mirocs.

Unfortunately, no amount of streamlining could fix the fact that Roll had never attempted to access the main tower, nor could it prevent her from getting Teisel lost in the caves and tunnels underground. "I'm pretty sure we just came in through this door. There's even an open treasure chest right there on the map," Roll urged.

"Not all of us have the luxury of always being the first person to explore a ruin," Teisel grumbled. He plodded onward to where a pair of Golbesh blocked his path. He barely winced at that annoying alarm as he ducked under their flamethrowers and lunged in for the kill the second the fire dissipated. He sliced straight through their shielding. That free upgrade really paid off. "You can tell from those Reaverbot signals you keep getting that we haven't been through here yet."

"You know they respawn every so often, right?" Roll defended herself.

Teisel groaned. He picked up his winnings and checked to make sure the shielding on his armor was still intact. "Get Max in here," he ordered. "I can't think straight with your ceaseless blabbering!"

"It's nearly three in the morning, Teisel!" Roll exclaimed as she glanced out at the lab through the Flutter's window. The lights were out, and there was no sign of activity in the building. "He's probably fast asleep by now."

"Max has been here before," Teisel insisted. "He's even been here on foot! He went underground to get Russell from the main tower. He knows exactly how to get there, AND he doesn't take me for a complete idiot!"

Roll swallowed the urge to retort back with a scathing, impatient tirade and stood up. "Fine, but you're going to have to stay right where you are until I get him. We've wasted too much time as it is, and the last thing we need is for you to get us even more lost!"

Teisel gulped as he felt his heart reflexively start to pound underneath his armor, but he knew she was right. Wandering off without someone manning the helm back on the surface was probably a bad idea. "Hurry back, alright?" he uttered, hoping she'd be able to read the uncertainty in his tone and hadn't already run off.

Max clung to his blanket as he snoozed away on the living room couch, with Pic curled up on the floor nearby. "Yes, I'll take the blueberry muffin," he mumbled out loud.

Before he even realized it, he was being poked and prodded back into consciousness by an intruder. "Max! Max, wake up!"

He couldn't quite place the voice, but whoever it was seemed to have a sense of urgency about her. When the events of the previous night caught up with him and he remembered that half of his gang was wanted for various felony charges, his eyes popped open and he hastily pulled himself up into a sitting position. He squinted in the dark at the mechanic standing next to him. "Roll...? What's wrong? The cops aren't on their way, are they?"

"No, no," Roll reassured him. "It's Teisel. He needs you to spot for him."

"Can't that wait till morning?"

"No, Max, it can't." Roll pleaded. "I'm sorry, but you know we can't afford to wait around. We can't figure out how to get into the main tower, and we're hopelessly lost, but he says you know the way...and I can tell he really likes working with you better. Can you help us?"

As soon as the fact that Roll had probably left Teisel underground unattended registered in his sleep-addled mind, he scrambled to his feet and bolted out the door without even bothering to put on his pants.

The longer Teisel sat on the floor of the ruins hugging his knees to his chest and waiting for somebody—anybody—to guide him out of the mess that Roll had dragged him into, the more anxious he became. Having his spotter run off, even at his own insistence, felt too uncomfortably familiar. "She's coming back. You're safe. You'll be fine." he repeated to himself over and over, as if the act of saying it would be enough to make it so.

"Talking to yourself again, huh, T-Bonne?" he suddenly heard Max nervously joke from out of nowhere amidst the muffled rustling of someone pulling on a pair of headphones. He seemed out of breath, like he'd been running. "You okay down there?"

"Max!" Teisel exclaimed. "You're here!"

"...Did you really think I'd leave you hanging again?" Max asked. Even over the comlink, the concern in his spotter's voice was almost palpable. "I figured if you needed me badly enough to send Roll out to get me in the middle of the night, you guys were probably pretty lost. But yeah. I'm here. Can you get back to the hub from wherever it is you are now?"

Suddenly, Teisel heard Roll's voice pipe up, "Press the green button to your left and you'll bring up the map interface. You should be able to guide him back to the hub from his current position, which is indicated by the flashing blue dot on the..."

"Dang it, Roll, I'm not as dumb as I look!" Max snapped, and Teisel couldn't help but smile as he stood up and glanced over his shoulder, waiting for further instruction. For now, everything was going to be okay. Of course, considering the fact that not even Russell was able to scale the main tower without breaking his legs, all bets were off once they actually reached their destination, but for the moment, Teisel ignored the panicked voice nagging at the back of his mind. He knew Max would make sure that he got where he was supposed to be.

As Teisel gazed up at the broken spiral staircase wrapping around the inside of Ghiotte Summit's main tower, he felt his stomach nearly leap into his throat. "Roll and Grill picked the perfect time to give me double-jump springs," he remarked as he started up the first step.

"Make sure you land as close to the middle of every platform on your way up as you can," Max warned. "There aren't any Reaverbots, but the ground's not stable around the edges. Russell told me that when he fell, he'd landed on a platform and the ground just gave way. Be careful!"

Teisel nodded an affirmation he didn't quite realize Max couldn't hear, and leaped so far over the first gap that he nearly overshot the entire platform. He steadied himself on the other side and made his way up the staircase. Whatever had caused this damage, he was glad he didn't have to be the one to deal with it while it was happening.

Unfortunately, the pieces of intact staircase became smaller and smaller the farther he ascended, and the moment he made it about two thirds of the way up the main tower, he knew he was going to overshoot his intended landing platform entirely. He let out a terrorized scream just as he remembered that he still had that midair jump left in his shoes, and he flailed around trying to grab for the edges of the next decimated chunk of stairwell. Taking a chance on grasping for unstable ground was definitely a safer bet than taking the plunge and hoping the stairway underneath him would break his fall instead of breaking off from the impact. Double jump springs or otherwise, he didn't think he'd be able to make it up again if he didn't manage to leave every platform in one piece.

He barely snagged the edge of the step with his right hand as his spotter demanded to know what had just happened.

"I'm okay, I'm...WOAH!" he shouted as he grasped the platform with his other hand and heard a sickening crunch. With every ounce of strength he had, he hoisted himself up onto the ground just in time for a few inches of the step from which he'd been hanging to snap off and tumble to the fragment of staircase below. It didn't look like much now that he was out of the danger zone, but it would have been enough to put him out of commission for the foreseeable future. "I'm fine, Max," he reassured the spotter with a grin. "I made it."

"Do you remember when we first talked about climbing this thing?" Max suddenly asked as Teisel continued making his way upward. "You tried to catch my bedroom door when I tried to shut you out for the night, and I ended up slamming it on your fingers instead! I bet if you tried to stop me from shutting my door now, you'd have no trouble doing it at all. You've come a really long way since back then, you know that?"

Teisel stopped. Even though the elevator was only a few leaps away, Max's words hit him out of nowhere. "Are you kidding?!" he retorted. He felt the lump in his throat from his ten minutes of solitude start to come back for an encore, but he shoved it back down as he felt the ground shift a bit below him. He launched himself back up into the air before the platform could collapse, then poured on the speed and dashed up the last leg of the spiral as he continued the conversation. "I'm still a wreck, and you know it!"

"You aren't looking at the big picture, Teisel," Max insisted. "Sure, you've had tough days. Maybe even a bunch that made you feel like you've slipped right back to where you started out. But I remember what you were really like when we first met. You've got to remember too, right? It was next to impossible to get you off the couch, or even get you to respond when we talked to you. Now you're about to become the first person to explore a part of the ruins that hundreds of diggers have been trying to reach for years! I guess I'm trying to say that I'm glad we got to be friends? I dunno, I just...if Aero's going to be leaving for some other island, who knows how long the rest of us are going to be able to stay together? Grill seems like he's been on the verge of leaving the rider scene entirely and settling into a normal life, and none of us could ever tell what goes on in Pic's head. I don't think I could tell you where we'll all be in another year. The Bright Bats might not even exist."

Teisel reached the top of the stairwell at long, long last. He could spot Data standing in front of the glowing elevator platform, dancing that same old dance of his as if nothing were out of the ordinary. "Max..." he began, but he couldn't find the words to express what he wanted to say. There weren't any words, but he settled for, "Thanks for coming back to spot for me."

When he heard a distinctly feminine giggle in the background, Teisel couldn't help but cringe in embarrassment. "You two are adorable," Roll said. He could picture the amused expression on her face so clearly that it was almost as if she were standing in front of him right there in the ruins. "Seeing a digger and spotter work so well together makes staying up this late worth it! Are you ready to ride the elevator down to the Klicke Lafonica, Teisel?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," Teisel admitted. He was fully convinced that his face was completely flushed from self-consciousness as he rubbed the back of his neck and tried to convince himself that the whole conversation would have been way more embarrassing if Data hadn't been the only eyewitness. "Come on, Data," he said, although he wasn't entirely sure that the little monkey would understand a word he was trying to say. "Let's get going!"

With an excited squeak, Data hopped into his arms, and Teisel suddenly felt himself feel inexplicably warm and fuzzy. "Hey, what's going on here? I don't feel like I've been jumping up a spiral staircase for the last half an hour at all!"

"Data used to heal all of the damage Mega Man would sustain underground," Roll explained. "I never expected him to do the same for you, but it looks like he's full of surprises."

Teisel mustered up a grin and stepped onto the elevator platform. As soon as his weight registered, it began to slowly sink into the central pillar on its own. When a few minutes passed and Teisel still found himself moving down through the colorfully illuminated elevator shaft, he spoke up. "Hey, if you guys are still there, could you...do you think you could keep talking? I...uh...I'd appreciate that."

"Of course," Max replied. "I've got that part covered."

The transmissions fizzled out after thirty minutes. Teisel was sure he and Data were farther underground than anyone could have ever expected any digger to venture. Perhaps those rumors about the Klicke Lafonica being hidden at the center of the planet itself weren't rumors after all. He hugged the robotic monkey to his chest and kept on talking to Data in a desperate attempt to calm his nerves. He wasn't completely sure the little guy understood what he was saying, but it seemed to keep him from losing his composure.

Just when he started to give up on the elevator ever reaching its destination, the wall in front of him seemed to open up into a room so impossibly large, white, and sterile-looking, that for a fraction of a second, he felt like he was back at the bottom of the Kattelox Main Gate with Tron at his side. Against all odds, the ceiling appeared to be open to a sky so blue it looked synthetic, giving him an unobstructed view of what looked like the sun at high noon and some cheerful-looking, fluffy clouds. It couldn't have possibly been real...the sun hadn't already come up, had it? He'd gone far enough underground that even Roll's transmission had cut out. There was no way that sky could have been real. The Ancients sure had some fascinating technology.

There was no shortage of mysterious technology in this room, he soon discovered. He spotted a fairly large, alien-looking cone with a hatch set into it across a footbridge to his right, and a massive, complicated piece of machinery ahead of him that resembled a cross between a pipe organ and an assembly system, with a considerable handful of what looked like stasis pods straight out of a sci-fi anime. It took up almost the entire chamber. This had to be the machine he was looking for...the Klicke Lafonica. A torch-lined path led the way to the device, but Data seemed to need no directions to get where he needed to go. Before Teisel could so much as move, the mechanical monkey squirmed out of his arms and scampered ahead. As he passed each set of torches, they lit up in succession. Teisel wondered if there were some kind of advanced motion detection at play there and followed after the little guy in an awestruck stupor, allowing the automatic door to close behind him and seal off the elevator for the moment.

When Data reached the enormous apparatus, he turned to face away from the machine and inserted his tail into a cylindrical recess along the base. Teisel watched the whole thing light up with a red glow, as if there were lava flowing through its pipes and circulating throughout the machine. "Memory file detected." A mysterious voice not dissimilar to the one he'd heard up in the other tower by the generator echoed throughout the grand hall. "Authorizing...commencing retrieval and upload of backup data. Please stand by for shell preparation."

"...Am I in the way here, or should I go find somewhere to..." Teisel began, but as he looked around, there didn't seem to be anyplace he could hide in the event that the Klicke Lafonica ended up spewing out lava or some other kind of dangerous projectile. He clenched his fists and watched on as pistons rose and fell and steam hissed from the pipes as if the whole structure were about to explode. He briefly wondered what kind of refractor could have possibly powered something so big, but his thoughts were briefly interrupted when one of the pods flipped open to reveal a young man in sleek blue armor. He wore a helmet with a red gem in the center that reminded Teisel of the purple one Roll and Grill had installed in his jump springs.

Despite everything, there was something distinctly off about the guy. Something that rubbed Teisel the wrong way. Maybe it was the unfamiliar attire. Maybe it was the unusually calm expression on his face. Whatever it was, this fellow didn't seem one bit like that inexperienced kid who'd annihilated Tron's machines again and again and again all those years ago.

When Mega Man's eyes met Teisel's, he hopped out and onto the ground. "I never would have expected a Carbon such as yourself to acquire the information necessary to upload my memories to a physical body." he commented. His voice was clear and devoid of any of that teenaged hoarseness that Teisel had grown accustomed to hearing while talking to his old rival. As a matter of fact, the blue kid sounded almost ethereal. Like those strangers who'd shown up when Professor Caskett and Von Bluecher had decided to explore Forbidden Island again. Like the thing that had been lurking in the Main Gate of Kattelox Island.

"You're not the Mega Man that Roll wanted me to revive, are you?" Teisel skeptically asked.

"I'm afraid that I am currently unable to understand what it is that you are trying to ask of me." Mega Man replied, although his expression conveyed none of the confusion that his words seemed to insinuate. "However, I feel obligated to thank you for bringing my peripheral memory storage device to the Klicke Lafonica in order to restore my original form. I have been assigned the designation Mega Man Trigger, Purifier Model First Class. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

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