Deep in the underbelly of the Undernet

This mission will actually give you the sense that you're on a mission. Before Lan just happened to be in the right place at the right time, but here you notice he's starting to get more of a sense of responsibility. It's here that for once, it's YOU that does the attacking, not the WWW.

It starts when Lan gets mail from his father about Chaud, who seems like he's been real blue lately. (Hah! The little SOB felt the agony of defeat, and he felt it hard!) It's suggested that you go and "cheer him up" because you're "such good friends", yeah right, but you might as well go looking for him anyway. Before you go though, you might as well check out Higsby's for some new chips on sale, you may also want to take this time to go and fight all your other neutral navis like Wood, Skull, Number, Ice, Guts, and especially Shark and get their V2 and V3 chips. By now it should be pretty easy to get V3s from most of these guys, so you'll have to learn how to "purposefully suck" in able to get a V2. Remeber that a score of 10 or S in battle will likely get you the V3, and a 7-9 will be your target area for the V2. If you're too good to get such low scores, just try missing the target with a chip or two, or getting hit by one attack, or just dragging the battle out a little while longer. Remember that by now you'll be able to fight these guys as often as you want, so there'll be nothing wrong with a bit of Trial and Error. The only problem should be Sharkman, he moves a lot faster in his later versions, so getting a V2 from him will require a lot of skill at this point, while getting a V3 will require a lot of skill and a bit of luck.

When you do get to the Sci-lab, talk to the scientist closest to the lobby entrance, he'll inform you you've just been on a wild goose chase and Chaud is now in Dentown, great. So haul your butt over to Central Dentown and go to the north corner to see him interrogating an innocent young woman about being a WWW operative, rather amusing actually. He won't show any more of a pleasant disposition, but at least you'll get info on the mysterious undernet.

So what to do now? Mega Man gives some helpful advice:

Lan: Yeah! Of course!....who?

Basically this narrows it down to either Higsby or Froid, and damn I wish I didn't choose Froid first, another wild goose chase. So go back to Higsby's and tak to him, make sure you talk to him from behind the counter though, talking from in front just makes you buy something. (what an effective salesman.) He'll give you the Hig memo, which will let you get into the undernet server level 3. Hopefully you already bookmarked @Miyu, so you can take a shortcut through her computer. Use this map to get to the red arrow. Use the Hig memo to get through, but you have a bit of a bug battle to get through first.

Bug Battle: Iron Shielder and blue Hogans
HP= Iron Shielder=250 Hogans=80
Speed= enemies don't move, but you'll have to be light on your feet to dodge the bombs.
Movement= Howitzers stationed in corners, Iron Shielder in middle

Another pseudo boss battle, it has the music, so I guess I have to include it. Hopefully you'll get lucky and draw a good widespread summon that you can use to get rid of those Howitzers as soon as they open their mouths, the Iron Shielder may take a couple of turns to get rid of, remember that the iron shield won't protect him from everything. If you use attacks that stop at the first panel they hit, like Cannons or Towers, then you won't hit him very easily, strong attacks will make him raise the shield (as in above his head so you can hit him), but you want attacks to get him without needing to get the shield up. Attacks from the Spreader family, skockwave family, and thrown projectiles like bombs and Quake are great for this.

Once you get through, you'll get another mail from Higsby, apparently there was something he didn't tell you, you need more memos to get all the way through, so you'll have to jack out now and go on another wild goose chase. (This mission is full of them.)

The first guy to look for is the one that's always walking around in the Sci-Lab lobby going "Hmmm, HMMM", he'll give you the Lab Memo and info on the other two former WWW operatives. You actually have to find them in order too. You're targets are a beautiful young woman and an old man...great, that just narrows it down to 50% of the population. You can go around asking all the young women and old men you come to, and some of them will give you clearer directions on your search, but to clear things up, your first target is Ms. Yuri, who can be found in the Summer School in Block 4 of Dentown, the other one is the Guy in ACDC who tells you what town you're in, he can be found between Lan's house and Dex's. The two former operatives act very interested in your navi too, I'm not sure, but you probably have to be at a certain level and have a good chip collection to qualify for their help. Hopefully you would already be strong enough to have made it this far, otherwise you may have to dig through the Net for powerups before you continue.

Once you've got all the memos, head back to the Undernet, and simply follow your way through the areas with the help of these maps: Undernet Level 3, Undernet Level 2, Undernet Level 1 and Undernet Level S. When you get to the end, you'll be greeted by Bombman EXE.

WWW Virus Battle: Bombman EXE
HP= 800
Speed= slow
Movement= random teleport

This guy is, as Lan says, "not too bright", he's not too hard either. Throughout the battle he'll have 3 bombs laid out in his area. Most of the time he'll just stand in place making a good target, he'll eventually decide to attack though, and kick one of his bombs onto your area, the bomb will flash and exlode and...well, I guess people can actually misspell his name as "Bomberman" with good reason now, because his bomb explosions send explosive waves in the vertical and horizontal directions, like a crossbomb except the blast goes on farther than just one panel. Later on he'll make a futile attempt to tip the scales with an extra attack, Mine1. Needless to say, dodging shouldn't be much of a problem, neither is aiming. Just pay attention and you should get through this battle flawlessly.

But just when you thought you won, Bomb uses his only attack with an effect, a self destruct that destroys the path to the WWW server. At least you get @WWW out of this. With the Net closed off, all you can do is jack out and run crying to yer daddy. But seriously, your next step is to go talk to Dad, and let him find the WWW location with the adress. But where could you possibly find him?...What? He's in his LAB?!? I thought that place was abandoned! :P

With all that out of the way, there's nothing left to do but go home and turn in for the day. Sleep well, because it seems Wily has finished the Life Virus, and tomorrow is going to be the biggest challenge of all.