The Mega Man: Legend

Ch. 34 Flash Bang

I walked through the empty hall as the voice from the strange intercom continued to speak.

"Yes, we're here with the first ever edition of 'Trial by Combat'! Today's contestant, you know him, you may or may not loathe him, the mighty Mega Man!"

Cheesy edited fanfare played, making me wonder whether or not I had an audio disable function.

"The contestant will face off against a number of intense trials in this brightly lit labyrinth, and if he manages to survive, he will face off against the host, yours truly, Flash Man."

I stopped and looked around. Nothing nearby, just a long hallway of brightly lit stones.

"But we can make this more interesting, can't we? And what would be better than a little incentive to make this quick? Allow me to introduce the timer. I'm thinking, oh...20 minutes. That's how much time Mega Man has to get to the end and defeat me. Otherwise, we've already got robots ready at Light labs to destroy the building, and your poor, pitiful friends waiting innocently without a-" He suddenly stopped, and began coughing violently. "My apologies, everyone. We're...experiencing some technical...stupid vocal processors..." He continued to cough, now louder and more frequently.

There was a pause as he continued to hack as he moved away from the microphone. I waited for a moment, before his voice returned, just a little more serious this time. "But seriously, the clock's ticking. You should probably run."

I quickly raised my pace to a jog, hurrying to the end of the hallway, where it dropped down into a lower tunnel and upper tunnel, the upper one being guarded by a circular robot with a cannon on one arm. It stuck its cannon out, and a shot was fired, traveling in a low arc across the gap. I jumped over it as it approached my legs, then fired a quick series of shots, which destroyed it quickly.

"That's just one of the challenges our competitor will be facing today! Tick-tock!"

I ignored him as well as I could, hurrying through the halls. After I reached a small jump up to the next tunnel, two more shots fell at steep descent into the area. I froze and kept myself still, as more shots followed. When it finally seemed like they had to reload or something, I jumped up and hurried without pausing. I hopped up a series of outcroppings made to be something like stairs, then hurried to the edge of a short hallway.

There was nowhere to go from here. It ended abruptly, only leading to a straight downward drop. As I took precious seconds to figure out what to do, a bright light flashed from the wall on the other side of the pit. It was a large, cheesy, light up arrow pointing down.

I took a glance down, sighed, and jumped.

"Yes, the path now splits. Straight down becomes down one way or down another. What you'll find on any given path: who knows? That's what makes it fun."

I groaned, having survived the jump, and hurried down one path, continuing as I tried not to let the disorienting light patterns throw me off. I came across another circle robot, which fired a few shots at me. I took one as it caught me off guard, but I quickly responded with a number of my own to destroy it. I continued down another intimidating straight down descent, and landed in a small hole. As I stepped up out, I noticed something. I walked over to sort of wall that extended downward from the ceiling above, and looked through a small space just big enough for me to walk through.

I was met with a sight that almost made me wet my pants. (and I am aware that, as a robot, that is impossible.)

A massive machine walked around, looking uncomfortably similar to a giant pair of pants. At its top was a humanoid robot apparently piloting it. It's head resembled a motorcycle helmet, with a lone red eye in the center of the visor. It looked down at me, and began directing the machine in my direction, forcing me to drop back to safety.