After parting with Mr. Mach Lan and Iris return to Cyber Academy to show Mick and Tab that they're all right. Typically, Mick tries to declare that he was only concerned for Iris, but Lan sees right through him. The two of them leave, but not before Tab thanks Iris for repelling the Green Town robots earlier, prompting an inner “huh?” from Lan. He starts to ask Iris who or what she is again but quickly backs off. Okay, this isn't really funny now, there's not even an excuse of imminent danger to put this off anymore! Fortunately we're pretty much at the endgame right now, so we won't have to wait too long for thins information to come to light. At least Iris is nice about it. She mentions that Lan is her first friend and then goes on her way to wherever she goes when she's not helping out in her enigmatic way.
Mick and Tab are hanging around the plaza in Central Town, wondering if the expo is still going to be on after everything that happened with the WWW. Right on cue festive music starts to play and a parade of Copybot Navis proceed through town, assuring the citizens that the expo will be held as scheduled and that Cyber City will not bow in the face of fear. Spirits lifted, everyone decides to go home.
Continuing to speak of the expo, upon returning home Lan gets an email from its planning committee, inviting him and anyone he may wish to invite to a special preview of the expo site in one week. Lan says that it's about time something good happened, but Megaman does find the timing to be a little bit suspect. Lan says that he's just being paranoid after everything that's happened. But how does one explain the loud cry of a bird that Megaman hears that night...?
The next day after school is when Lan decides to go around inviting all of his friends, including the group back in ACDC. Lan's Cyber City friends aren't hard to find. Mick's in Lan's classroom, and Iris is in the foyer. Surprisingly enough she agrees to go, albeit in her usual ellipses-studded manner. Tab is at Aster Land as usual, but he's not at the counter. Annoyingly enough we won't be able to buy any chips from him again until we reach the game's point-of-no-return as he'll be tied up by the plot up until then.
Inviting the people from Den City is a matter of sending Megaman to ACDC Area and talking to each of their Navis. Protoman's there too, but he declines the invitation as he and Chaud are rightfully suspicious of anything Cain was involved in. At least their declination is much more polite than the Okuden Valley one (even though Chaud was never actually invited then in the first place...).
Now that that's taken care of, it's time to take on a few more jobs that just appeared before the endgame fully kicks in.
Job 24: Do Something!
A woman in Seaside Town wants help deleting viruses that are infecting the fryer at the fish stick shop. All the viruses are the special version of Kettles from Heatman's side-mission, and since we have Heat Cross at our disposal this goes by very quickly. Our reward is an HP Memory.
Job 25: Want to Meet Daughter
The client happens to be a Punk Navi at the Sky Town homepage. He says that despite his looks he's a reformed criminal, and that he wants to see his daughter, as they've been apart for ten years. Whenever Navis in this series refer to each other as family members like this, I always just assume that they're projecting their operators' relationships. All he knows is that at one point she was studying the environment, which is a hint to go to Green Area. The daughter's at, surprise surprise, the grove of trees in Green Area 2. She wants nothing to do with her father at first but eventually agrees to meet. Heading back to the Sky Town homepage we see the reunion, but the father mentions that his former associates are out to get him. There are two thugs hanging out outside the Sky Area 1 homepage teleporter, and after we beat them the father hands us a Spreader 3 R.
Job 26: Not Enough Members
A Navi inside of one of the school blackboards says that he's the president of the Jazz Club. By president, he means only member, since for some reason jazz isn't popular at Cyber Academy. To make it more popular, he wants to start a band of musical viruses, and so wants the chips Fanfare Z, Discord, S, and Timpani T, all of which are dropped by the Trumpy virus family, and we get a Regular UP 2 in exchange. Given the effects of those chips, I wouldn't be surprised if Cyber Academy outright bans jazz in the very near future.
Job 27: Track the Criminal
It's time to break out our fedoras and help a Seaside Town detective investigate some stolen corporate data. He's spotted the alleged culprit by the fountain in the square, and has Lan talk to him to see if he's suspicious. The guy turns out to be rather surly, but gives away nothing to suggest he's a criminal. Since it looks like the stakeout is going to last a little longer, Lan's apprenticeship goes the expected direction and the detective asks him to get some coffee from the vending machines by the Lev Bus station. When we return it seems that our bumbling detective lost sight of the suspect. Bravo.
What we're supposed to do is go through the door sitting next to the fish stick shop, where the Copybot we used during Diveman's scenario was. This is the first time in the game that it's passable, and the player is liable only to discover this by accident. It leads to the opposite end of the aquarium control room, and the suspect is there at a console by the wall. He says he already sent his Navi in with the stolen data, so we have to send Megaman in after it. The console connects to the upper level of Central Area 2 that has been inaccessible the whole game. There we find and beat down the criminal Navi and retrieve the data. The detective arrests the criminal in the real world, and we're given the base Navi chips for Roll, Colonel, and Protoman (spoiler: we can fight Protoman later) all in the handy-dandy * code. Protoman's chip is the same as ever: a Wide Sword attack to all enemies.
The next job, #28, is a two-star job but it's going to have to be put on the backburner for now because, for some inane reason, one of the things it has you get can only be gotten postgame. Since you can't back out of jobs once accepted I have to skip over it for now.
Job 29: Official Request
We have to go all the way out to the observation console in the Sky Town ops room for this job. Inside, a Net Policeman puts us through a boss rush consisting of image data for the base forms of all of the WWW Navis save Colonel. The point is to gather combat data, and our reward is another set of chips in * code: Area Grab, Anti-Navi, and Anti-Recovery.
With that, I've done all currently-available jobs save for the one that's currently impossible. Now then, it's time to send Lan to bed, and next time we shall begin the Battle Network series's final chapter!
Soundtrack
- Parade!
- This short track is also used for the expo site when we get there.
