Gravity Circuit: Part 12: Ark - Entrance (The Truth of Nega)
2After defeating the 8 Rebel Circuit and claiming their sources, Kernel suddenly went beserk, attack the HQ, and left towards that mysterious Ark, with Nega in hot pursuit.
With Pat taking charge of HQ now, Kai felt that he needed to head towards this Ark on his own to follow after Kernel and see what's really going on...
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This stage first takes place outside, and you'll have to make a long stride towards the Ark, itself, with the rest of this stage and this game taking place in there.
In Mega Man fashion, these last stages feel like a final exam of sorts, bringing back all sorts of enemies, hazards and gimmicks from the 8 Rebel Circuit stages.
Indoors, there is still a secret area in this level but it's not through breaking through a cracked wall, but rather sliding in through an otherwise-deadly pipe.
But you won't really get to know how secret this spot is meant to be until AFTER you beat this game...
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Eventually, Kai ends up running into Nega, who was chasing after the berserk Kernel.
What was he really doing here...? What was he up to...? This really felt suspicious...? He went on about how he recognizes Kai's body, even as his memory was still missing...
And that's when Nega finally ditched his cloak... and revealed to Kai who he REALLY is...
He's... He's HIM! The original Gravity Circuit! Or... at the very least... the first Gravity Circuit to fight the Virus Army all those years ago...!
Here's the backstory of why the Gravity Circuit is called just what it is:
This Circuit is constantly searching for a host body to wield it. If a bot is destroyed, the Gravity Circuit will either try to reassemble the destroyed body as much as it can, find a new body, or create a new body from old parts.
In other words, the "Gravity" in "Gravity Circuit" refers to how it's always trying to "Gravitate" towards a host worthy of wielding it, or have the necessary parts gravitate towards itself to create the new body.
All those years ago, Nega was severly damaged from his fight against the Virus Army. It was enough to put him out of commission, but not destroy his body completely.
Without enough energy to unleash the Copy Command, the Gravity Circuit that Nega wielded decided to move on from him and gain a new body. A nameless bot was passing by at JUST the right time when this happened, leading him to become the new Gravity Circuit. This is how Kai came to be the current one.
However, because of the lack of the Copy Command, the Gravity Circuit didn't carryover its memories of Nega being its host. As such, Nega remembered everything, but Kai remembered nothing.
(This explains how Nega knew so much of each of the Rebel Circuits as you beat them, and how even they must've known that the Gravity Circuit that fought them wasn't the same one that they fought alongside in the past...)
Even then, by the time the Virus Army returned later, both Kai & Nega were reawakened around the same time to respond to it. Something, or rather someone else... was responsible for this... Someone even deeper within the Ark, itself. The source of the entire Virus Army as they knew it...
At present, before Nega could allow Kai to fight this greater enemy, he wanted to test his skills - the same skills he had for himself to pass down to him this whole time - to see if he was capable of standing up to this greater enemy.
Time for a battle of Past and Present Gravity Circuits!
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You fight Nega like you'd fight the other Rebel Circuits. It's just that now he's gonna be using some of your own moves against you! He can even give himself Enhancement Chips!
And then, when you think you've beaten him, he gains a Second Wind and refill one whole health bar. This is when he starts unleashing some of your/his Burst Techniques! He also has an extra move where he can pick up blocks from the ground and throw them at you!
You beat Nega this time, and then you've finally won!
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This defeat breaks Nega's visor, showing even more of how he was Kai's predecessor of the Gravity Circuit.
Although Nega was beaten, this won't destroy him. Nonetheless, he now say Kai as worthy of taking on the greater enemy that lied deeper inside the Ark.
But for now, it was time to return to Guardian Corp HQ to refresh before marching onward.
Kai catches Pat up on his progress. He hasn't seen Kernel again, as he's already gone further inside the Ark, but it may not be too late to catch up on him at this point.
Coming back to HQ, I get the rest of Nurse's Enhancements, but now I need to get enough Bits to get the rest of the Burst Techniques she has from Nega.
The windows show that the sky keeps changing as you go through more of these Ark levels. Things are getting more dire, and the bookworm bots suspect more and more that the Ark is even more significant to everything that's transpired in this game's story than it already let on...