FOUR. THE TAKEOVER.
It was perhaps the single most surprising event in our lives. Albert Wily’s robot, Bass, discovered his creator dead of unknown cause.
More than anything, it was bizarre. After more than seven years of amusing antics, the Author had declared the comic strip finished. All could live out the rest of their lives in peace, he said. At this, he departed forever.
So to have one of his selected “characters” suddenly expire— something he had never allowed to happen before— was patently absurd. But if that was a shock, what happened next was even more so.
Who could have predicted that Albert Wily’s oldest friend had spent the last few years regretting that he had not chosen the same evil path? Who could have foreseen that this solitary event would cause the man to snap? How could we have known that this mysterious figure would appear from nowhere, destroying everything we held dear?
What happened thereafter was a massacre the like of which we have not seen since. Some might object to my calling it a massacre, as few of the deaths involved were human. But the sheer brutality of what the man styling himself Daraku did cannot be argued with.
Not only did Daraku destroy all robots at the Light laboratory with a robotic army of his own, but he also hunted down anyone who could possibly pose a threat to him. The ninja squad of Edward the Destroyer, for instance, was swiftly taken out of commission. Only the cybernetic warriors Mynd escaped the purge- though rumor has reached me they perished at a later date.
That Thomas Light should have survived at all was nothing short of miraculous. Only the bold heroism of his robots, who were determined not to let their “father” perish, saved him. As it was, he barely managed to make his way to the home of Mikhail Cossack, who fortunately, was living nearby at the time, before collapsing of his many wounds.
Because Nate and Chadling were living at Light Labs at the time, Daraku had to come up with a way to deal with them. The end result of this conundrum was the most deadly weapon Daraku ever created.
All Demons are essentially made of metal. Loose particles of metal with a single mind, yes, but metal all the same. Therefore it is possible to melt them, so long as sufficient heat is applied.
Not that Demons are particularly vulnerable to fire. Indeed, a well-designed Demon can withstand heat far better than a human can. But when blasted by temperatures greater than 5000 degrees...a Demon will collapse into a pile of molten metal. Naturally, this sludge will resemble a Demon at rest...but it will no longer move, communicate, or think. The Demon is dead, and because all its circuits have been destroyed, its consciousness cannot be recovered.
This is the only known way to completely destroy a Demon—excepting, of course, a compete reduction of temperature to nearly absolute zero, which might have a similar effect. Despite much effort invested in the subject, we have not discovered a way to completely overcome this weakness, though we have worked to increase Demon resistance to such ploys.
At any rate, this is the method Daraku employed against Nate and Chadling, and it aided him in his massacre. After that was done, he turned to the next item on his list—conquest.
It had long been Wily’s dream to control the world, but he never did. Yet Daraku was determined to do it in Wily’s name. Unfortunately, with all the old heroes dead, there was no one to oppose Daraku...
...So when Daraku executed a coup against every major government, power fell easily into his hands.
Dr. Light, recovering, and Dr. Cossack, quickly sent out messages to a number of their old contacts. Their goal—to create an secret society of scientists who would work to overthrow this tyrant.
This is where Dr. Vinue, Dr. Oppin, Dr. Solaris, and I myself enter the story. For we were the ones who heeded the call, and joined them in their new, underground base.
Our plan was this: We would create warriors to fight against Daraku.