Legend Of Zelda Fan Fiction / Mega Man Fan Fiction ❯ Gatecrash ❯ Chapter 24: Karma ( Chapter 24 )

Chapter 24: Karma

Mega Man closed the door on another room, having finished another puzzle. It was taking all his ingenuity to make it through this dungeon, needing to see ahead, solving problems, navigating thorough unusual hallways and rooms fraught with perils and traps. Only the keen mind could take this temple, only a courageous mind would try.

And still he hadn't been able to find the decent exit. Surely there had to be a way out of this forsaken place. The purpose behind all these traps and pitfalls was meant to lead somewhere. Something of value was at the other end of the dungeon. Mega Man just hoped it was the door.

This room was just a simple hallway leading to another door at the end of it. For some reason, Mega Man sensed something ominous beyond the door. Of course, for a robot to have an intuitive sense was ludicrous, but somehow Mega Man felt it, maybe because of all the small hallways that led to robot masters, it was just an established sense of foreboding in his recognized patterns.

It was, however, the only way to go from here. So he proceeded to the door and tried to open it. Unusually, it was locked. The door had a keyhole though, meaning it could be unlocked. Mega Man took out the key he had snatched earlier from the treasure box and inserted it into the hole, thankful he was observant enough to notice it before. The key fit and he opened the door. He entered the room, looking around. There were actually tables and chairs in here and... moblins.

A ton of moblins.

The four gaping wide eyes of the cyclops' closed in on Link.

"Guys, can't we just talk about this?"

The monsters continued approaching him.

"No? Guess we have trouble seeing eye to eye!"

Mustering his strength he flipped backward over one and spun around, striking it with his sword. The sword clanged loudly against the rock hard covering as Link cursed his stupidity. The surface armor would be invulnerable to any of his weapons. One of the cyclops slowly rolled over, knocking the sword out of the way and punched him in the chest, bashing him across the room. Link grunted as he fell against the stone as two of the fiends lowered their heads and charged him. Link opened his eyes in surprise and dived out as they butted heads with the wall.

"You guys mean business," he said to the tough opponents. Another monster approached him and swung his arm down in a chop. Link dodged out of the way and swiped his sword along his midriff, creating an eerie scraping sound. It had no effect on the rock monster who continued thrusting his fists out at him. Link tried to stab his sword into the eye - the vulnerable point - as quick as he could before the others could gang up on him. But the statue blocked every thrust Link tried to make with its stone arms, not even scratching the surface. Link had never fought an enemy so adept at battling, it was beginning to wear him out.

"Just... let me..." Link grunted as he parried with the cyclops, being methodically pushed backwards by his advances. Finally, the monster grabbed the blade with his bare hand as Link stopped stunned by the quickness of it. It looked at the blade oddly for a second, then yanked it out of Link's hands, throwing it far from Link's reach.

Link scrambled away from the monster and dug in his backpack for something else to use. Bottles, no. Magic powder, no. Lantern, no. Magic rods, no, he had used up all his magic. Dammit, why was all his useless stuff on top. He truly needed a bow and arrow to defeat them properly. Or some ranged weapon would do. He finally found the boomerang and grasped in his hand. Backed up to a raise on the wall he threw it at the nearest cyclops, hitting him square in the eye. The monster grunted softly and flailed his arms in the air. His large eyelid furrowed and he came sadistically closer to the hero. He tried chucking it at another one, who stopped for a second and then kept his pace. It was doing nothing but angering them.

Link frantically searched in his backpack, looking for anything else that would help him. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a flying fist coming at him. He narrowly dodged it just as it hit the wall, creating spider-cracks. Link tried running down the wall, but another fist smacked the wall right in front of him. Link had his back to the wall as the cyclops began closing in.

Suddenly the wall across the room burst open in a cloud of dust and debris spilled out. Everyone turned to see what had happened, why the wall collapsed spontaneously.

An unseen pair of hands holding a bow and nocked arrow rose up from the dust. The arrow released and flew through the air into one of the cyclops' eye. It groaned loudly as it tried to pull out the arrow embedded in his huge orb. The hands rapidly fired more arrows, each one aimed true and hit true. Link took the chance to roll away and grab his idle sword while the monsters tried to regroup. He shuffled over to the cloud of dust and saw Zelda emerge from the cloud.

"Zelda!" he exclaimed.

"Surprised?" she said with a smile. She turned to the monsters and pulled out four more arrows from the quiver on her back. "Here's looking at you, kid."

She switched her grip on the bow to horizontal and fired. The four arrows hit the cyclops at the same time, knocking them over and defeating them in a puff of smoke.

"Boy, am I glad to see you," Link said. "How in the world did you find me?"

"Fairies like to gossip, did you ever notice that?" she smiled.

"They never said much to me," Link said.

"They told me you went to the magic shop, so I went there, and the fairies there told me you jumped in the river, so then I went to the Zora domain and the fairies there told me you jumped in the waterway to the lost woods, so I came here and the fairies said you jumped down a pit. I swear they must have some sort of news network," she said as she shook her head.

"Wow, nice timing. Please tell me you have a magic potion. I'm out."

Zelda fetched a bottle from her bag and handed it to him. He began to drink the green liquid eagerly.

"Noktwor is dead," she stated simply.

"What?" he said as he wiped his mouth.

"We found him in the basement. He was having a secret meeting with some members of the thieves guild and a man in black. We bet that's who he was working for."

"The man in black?"

She nodded, "I think he could have been a sorcerer or something, I felt a very evil aura from him, but I didn't get to look at his face."

"He's probably the one who tried to kill me in the middle of the night."

Zelda nodded. "That's why I had to find you as soon as I could."

"Well, I think they've also got another member. That old woman who gave me shelter just betrayed me, locked me in this room with the monsters to kill me. She said to try and spill as much blood as I could."

"You can't trust anyone these days. Where's Mega Man?"

"Mega Man!" Link exclaimed, suddenly feeling stupid for forgetting his friend. "We've got to find him. He's down here somewhere, he's probably lost, if he hasn't already fallen in a trap. Come on!"

"Eep," Mega Man uttered.

The moblins roared in battle rage and picked up their arms - spears, swords, clubs, maces, and whatever else was lying around, including chairs. There had to be more than fifty moblins running at him right now. Mega Man took up his Mega Buster and fired a plasma shot at the closest one. He disappeared as the blast shot through him.

He continued blasting the moblins one by one as they came towards him. In the back, a moblin soldier stood on a pedestal, holding a flat pink crystal in one hand and waving his other hand over it while mumbling some sort of incantation. With a shout, he threw the crystal over the crowd of moblins scattered throughout the room. The crystal exploded in a shower of pink sparkles, falling like a slow rain of stars over the crowd. The moblins stopped attacking and waited for the shower to envelop them completely, looking up as if suddenly distracted by the shiny objects. Mega Man ceased as well, wondering what sort of strange effect this was.

Suddenly, the moblins roared again and restarted their assault. Mega Man fired a double shot at a moblin with a club, but the plasma bullets absorbed into a glowing shell that suddenly popped up around him, distributing away as tendrils of lightning.

"Oh no," Mega Man said. He started charging up his shot, wishing his charge would go faster. One of the monsters plowed up the steps in the midst of this. Mega Man kicked him in the head with his large boot, knocking him backwards into the crowd. Apparently, the shields only blocked his plasma shots. He released the charged blast on the fallen moblin. The energy fizzled out on the shield with no effect.

"Where did you guys get these things?"

Two moblins charged Mega Man with swords. Mega Man held up his hands and caught them in the air. Jumping up he kicked both of them in the stomach, propelling them backwards. The end result was Mega Man falling on his back, hitting the edge of the stair harshly.

Opening his eyes from his fall, he saw an axe swinging down from above on his face. He quick rolled to the side just as the blade hit stone. Spinning upright, he stepped back

"Let's try this, then." Mega Man accessed his inventory and switched weapons to the Thunder Beam. His color washed from blue to green-gray. He fired the cannon and a massive wave of electricity shot out in multiple directions. The moblins recoiled from the blows, some were knocked out by direct hits, others endured the hit and kept coming. Mega Man darted his buster back and forth, rapidly firing shots of the Thunder Beam at the enemies, barely keeping them off his toes.

"Arrgh, why won't you die?" He said as he fired point blank range at the moblins. Some of the weaker ones began vaporizing as they were supposed to when defeated. Finally, their shields were starting to lose energy from the powerful blast.

Mega Man fired shot after shot. Suddenly, nothing. He tried again. Nothing came out of his arm cannon. He had run out of energy for his Thunder Beam. The color of his armor automatically switched back to normal blue, as the moblins realized he had stopped firing. Mega Man's only recourse was hand-to-hand combat, something he was not programmed for. His entire life he had spent fighting with his arm cannon, firing energy blasts as the robots did. His back was to the corner though, and desperate times called for trying to remember all the martial arts he had seen in his life.

He stepped back and assumed a battle stance. "All right, you wanna fight. Let's fight," he said as he held up his hands in a boxer stance.

The moblins came at him in a circle, jangling their metal weapons. He started by side-kicking the moblin nearest him in the gut. The monster fell backwards as Mega Man advanced forward and rapidly punched one to his left in the face with a series of quick jabs. A flail swung around him from behind, wrapping around his neck, the spiked ball bashing against his helmet. Mega Man held onto the chain clasped around his neck as he was lifted off the ground by the beast. Using his strength, the robot broke the chain, and stomped on the beasts foot. He howled in pain as Mega Man elbowed him in the stomach and flipped his massive girth over his shoulder. He tumbled into the crowd of moblins, knocking some of them back.

From his side, a monster jabbed forward with his sword, slicing across Mega Man's belly. Mega Man's eyes burst open in shock, time seemed to freeze for an instant. His armor had never been penetrated before, the spell must have made their weapons harder as well. Fortunately the injury had only scratched the surface of his protective covering, causing only a scar.

Mega Man spun around and roundhouse kicked the offending moblin square in the jaw. The disorientation from the hit encouraged the moblins to become more aggressive. A gigantic spiked club came down on him. He moved to the side, but the bludgeon succeeded in hitting his right shoulder, causing a massive jostling of his internal servos. A red warning flashed in his head, telling him the processing power flow to his arm shot down to 25. Mega Man noticed this as he tried to block away an incoming spear, his left hand succeeded in knocking it away, while the right was trying to catch up.

A moblin took advantage of his exposed body and sliced his halberd clean through his backside. Frayed metal edges splayed outward as the sparks of friction flew. Mega Man arched his back in pain as he felt wires severed and chips damaged. Systems rerouted to try and compensate for the damage, but he was never meant to have to deal with internal physical injuries. His central CPU began showing massive errors and his body had enough trouble trying to correct them and keep normal tasks going, let alone trying to defend himself. Mega Man fell to his knees and suddenly felt very tired.

The end had come sooner than he expected.

Next Chapter: Man Down