With this post I introduce a new category, In the Thunderlight, where I shed a little bit of light on my interests that most of you don’t know much about. What I’ll try to cover are the kinds of things I might reference often; please feel free to ask questions, if you have them.

My first Thunderlight examination shall be MegaMan Battle Network. MMBN, as I shall now refer to it, is a series of Gameboy Advance video games based off of the MegaMan phenomonon I’m sure pretty much none of you konw about. In MMBN, the premise is that society has advanced to a network-reliant stage, where nearly everything is electronic and connected to the Internet. Everyone also has a wonderful PDA-like device called a PErsonal Terminal or a PET. Almost everyone has a brilliant programming wonder called a NetNavigator - Navi for short.

Navis are incredibly complex AIs that have the ability to think and feel, with the capacity for personality and moral knowledge. They are as good as humans, only they exist on the Cyber plane, whereas their human operators exist in the “Real World”. Navis are used to make PET functions automatic - they’ll open your email and read it to you, take your phone calls, remind you of things you need to remember, and all sorts of things - as well as their primary use, an Internet surfing program that can delete attacking viruses and interact with other programs.

It’s easiest, however, to think of a Navi as a Cyber-human.

The main characters are Lan Hikari and MegaMan, his Navi, who (spoilers) is actually a Navi created from the DNA of Lan’s dead twin brother, Hub (end spoilers). I will not waste my time and kindness trying to say Lan is “not that bright”: he’s incredibly dense and downright idiotic at times. MegaMan is often much more relaxed and intelligent.

Some other important characters are Mayl/Roll, Chaud/Protoman, Baryl/Colonel, Bass/Forte, and my own personal creations, Kayle and CommandoMan.

Mayl is Lan’s “best friend” who is, at the end of all six games, consistently trying to make him understand she wants to be his girlfriend. (I cannot possibly imagine why.) Her Navi is Roll. Neither of them are all that brave or powerful, but they’re bright, and good friends.

Chaud is an Official, which is like a member of the government. He is actually a bit younger than Lan (by a year, so in MMBN6, he’s 14 or so), but is far more mature, cool, and calculating than Lan ever could be. Chaud is also rather cold and introverted, but opens up after MMBN5 when he and Lan end up working together for an extended time, and they finish the series good friends rather than bitter rivals. Chaud’s Navi, Protoman, is one of my favorite Navis in the entire series. ProtoMan is all business, deadly serious, focused on his work and all but emotionless. He is a speed and sword master, and recognized as one of the most powerful Navis known to the world. If you’re a criminal and you hear ProtoMan is after you, you should first be honored, then run like hell.

Baryl is a mysterious Netopian man (that’s a foreign country - in the original Japanese version, the country’s name is Amerioupe, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence), who has a military background. He is also a cool, calculating tactician, who is single-minded in his mission, whatever that may be. He only shows up late in the series. His Navi, Colonel, is a bit like ProtoMan - slower, more tactical, but also bears a powerful sword arm, with the addition of a cannon and some excellent versatility power.

Bass is the English/American name of the next character, but the Japanese name, Forte, is far cooler. (Bass is not pronounced like the fish. I wish it was, that would be tolerable.)
Forte is a mysterious Navi who hails from the beginning of the great network society, when the internet became mysteriously self-aware and destroyed all appliances connected to it. Forte was mistakenly blamed and nearly deleted by his human creators. From that incident he gained an extreme hatred of the human race, and seeks every opportunity to destroy them. Forte does not appear in the MMBN main storyline much, but he is in every game nonetheless, as a secret boss. In battle, his trademark weapon is his busters, which have the power to obliterate quite a mass of enemies; his other attacks change game-to-game, but Earth Break - a burst of energy that has more power than the entire Net exploding - and Darkness Overload - similar to Earth Break, only in a wider area - are common.
Forte is apparently given such a high role because of his history in the earlier MegaMan series.

Kayle is my own personal addition to the MMBN world. He’s like Chaud’s kinder counterpart, which is in turn a lot like me - quiet, reserved, but not particularly cold or unfriendly. CommandoMan is, likewise, an edit of ProtoMan. He’s not restricted to the sword; he has various other weapons to choose from as well. Versatility, the ability to have no weakness, is his business. He has pretty much no emotion save humor and remains quiet most of the time, willing to keep to himself and do as he is told. Because everyone creates a being that is better than everyone else’s, I tend to put CommandoMan’s power level somewhere near Forte’s… but you probably don’t care about that so much anyway.

The Thunderlight is fading but lightning does have echoes. If you’ve got questions, leave ‘em, and I might come along to answer.