The Blue Ink Reviews Mega Man #44 – Leaving the Lights On

“Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.” -Rabidranath Tagore

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Six Robot Masters down, two to go. And Auto? Auto’s scrap after Wily used a very obvious flaw in his personal security: A hatch to his circuitry that didn’t lock. More on that situation later. For now…

Let’s see how a worn out Mega Man will handle Hard Man, a robot so annoying if easy to wipe out that I always saved his stage for last.

…Ah. Wasn’t expecting… complimentary pre-fight drinks. Damn nice of the guy. Perhaps he has a glass of fine cham-pagn-yuh as well. (“What is a robot?” –Ed.)

In truth, Hard Man simply likes to fight his enemies on equal terms. A lovely gesture, but any student of warfare, whether they study Machiavelli or Sun Tzu will tell you never to overlook your enemy’s weaknesses. There’s honor, after all, and then there’s survival.

Even back to full health, Mega Man has his hands full with the hulking cement mixer on legs, In a flash of insight, he finally whips out the Magnet Missiles, deducing that if he needed Hyper Bombs to stop Guts Man a long time ago, maybe a similar explosive is called for here. And having them able to lock onto ferrous signals is a bonus.

Hard Man drops like a metal drum of potatoes, Mega Man recovers another Energy Element and I.C. Chip, and we move on.

Hey, look who finally got a brain! That’s right, Light! Wily played you for a sucker! The good news is, he’s equipped his lab with lockdown protocols. Nobody gets in or out or is able to move around if they’re not a registered family member. Sorry, Wily, looks like you’re tra…

…yeah, never mind. In sentiment meant for only the best reasons, Light left a doorway in the security protocols for Blues if he ever decided to come back home again. He just never anticipated his prodigal son would come bearing gifts to help stab him in the back. Wily will make full use of that opening, because he now has everything he needs to activate Doc Robot and mess Mega Man up good and proper. One wonders if Blues will finally stop pretending to be “Break Man” and get his head screwed on straight after he sees how much of a male reproductive organ Wily really is.

And back to Mega Man.

Spark Man is the only one left, and the walking electrical battery is quickly falling apart. Mentally, I mean. By the time Mega Man gets to his lair, he’s done flipped out. His entire family’s dead, after all. He’s the sole survivor, and he’s going to make Mega Man pay for it.

Of course, Mega Man’s a better fighter than he is.

In his last moments, Spark Man gives Mega Man one final clue to make him completely uneasy. The last energy element is warped off, but will anyone be there when he arrives? Nobody’s picking up when he tries to call home. Why would nobody be answering the phone…?

Ah, yeah. That’d do it. And Blues can’t even stare at dear old dad. The prodigal son came home.

He brought pain and misery with him.

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The dynamic of Blues/Proto Man/Break Man is about due for a major paradigm shift, I’m thinking. We’ve all seen his backstory in earlier issues: How his power generator was unstable, how instead of risking Dr. Light purging his memory to do a full systems reboot, Blues took off and became a wandering free spirit, living one E-Tank to another as his recharges became less and less effective.

How he finally came back home, only to see that Dr. Light had built two more children, and how he thought he’d been replaced. How he stumbled into the Lanfront Ruins, where conveniently enough, Wily was there to put in a new power generator while keeping his I.C. Chip, memories, and personality intact. How badly he felt when, because of his actions, Roll was hurt.

Well, in spite of all that, he still sided with Wily. In spite of all that, he’s been helping his father’s former lab assistant with one wild scheme after another. And now? Now, thanks to his father’s sentimentality, Dr. Light’s desire to have his lost son come back home… Blues has come back home. And when he did, he brought everything Wily needed to completely destroy Light’s hard work.

It’s at times like these you just want to grab Break Man by the shoulders and shake him a whole lot, screaming in his face the entire time “What the hell is wrong with you?!” Yeah, Break Man had better snap to his senses after this. I just hope it doesn’t take something too drastic for those last puzzle pieces to fall into place inside his scatterbrained head and allow him to realize that Light still loves him, misses him, and wants him back.

Ah, who am I kidding? It’s a comic book. More importantly, it’s this comic book. Of course something drastic and bad is going to happen.

And I hope that Mega Man beats the scrap out of him for it.

For the Blue Ink.

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When he isn’t writing “The Blue Ink” reviews for The Mega Man Network, Erico (The Super Bard) spends his days keeping track of the “Legacy of Metal” fanon, dabbling in cooking and tea-brewing, and exploring the human condition from his Iowa stomping grounds.

The views expressed here reflect the views of the authors alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Mega Man Network.