Protomen - the Comm ~ View topic - Act II, the second half: an alternative interpretation

Joined: 15 Jan 2008 Posts: 557 Location: Michigan

I owe thanks to Sparx 1, who, back in April, posted something to this effect in the "Stuff you just figured out" thread.
I like to think that DRN-005 and I fleshed out the concept a bit more through a late-night chat. SLIGHTLY edited for clarity.

Lasergoose
Someone proposed the rather horrifying idea that Joe is completely, utterly tanked throughout his entire story arc on Act II.
DRN-005
Ohh yes, I've heard this. And personally I think it's how it is.
Random guy, in a bar; ranting to some woman he doesn't know like he knows her. Pulls her in for a kiss, stagers out, gets on a motorcycle and weaves all over the damned place
"Thith cithy doethn't... doethn't... um... know whatth comin'. It doethn't... feel the heat..."
Lasergoose
Yelling "I'm breaking out of here tonight! I'mma ... I'mma gonna find out what'sh wrong wi'this place and tear it down!"
Then: speeds as fast as possible on his motorcycle toward the abandoned part of town. Drunk.
DRN-005
Yep
Wrecks it; not 'cause the as-drunk-as-he-is Light stumbled out, no. He crashes 'cause he's fuckin' drunk
Lasergoose
Then picks a fight with a literal killing machine that has the entire city paralyzed with fear, ARMED WITH A LEAD PIPE.
After ranting at it for five minutes, of course.
DRN-005
Just yelling incoherently at it for a while.
Lasergoose
this theory is sounding more likely with every word.
DRN-005
Keep Quiet is just what Joe was ~trying~ to say to the (Sniper). It wasn't coming out near that sensical at the time
And when Light comes over to finish it off, saying it was his monster and thus he had to kill it, he missed about four times, almost fell over once and then finally happened to hit it in the arm and considered it good enough as shorting out wires was actually what killed the beast
Lasergoose
So, we're adding to this theory that Light was also hanging out with his friends Jim Bean and Sam Adams that night?
DRN-005
Damn straight, and invited them both over for a dinner of roast Wild Turkey and Grey Goose
Lasergoose
Wait, that's Joe stuff. This is Light we're talking about.
He was drinking straight rubbing alcohol by now.
DRN-005
Nah.
I like to think Light was gulping down mouth wash at this point
Lasergoose
You can't go blind if you inject it straight into your veins, he figured. Probably.
DRN-005
"This vintage of Listerine is the best I've ever tasted"
Lasergoose
The man was a roboticist and a programmer; I'm sure biology and chemistry weren't his strong suits.
DRN-005
And if they were he'd be distilling his own by this point
Probably actually did take a stab at that.
"Mmm, the first stuff that comes out of it is the best!"
Ya see, that's a joke. You never drink the first batch that comes out a distiler; it's the wrong type of alceehol. It will poison ya
Lasergoose
So, the two hideously drunk individuals stumble up about 20 stories, pumping that toxin even further into their already addled grey matter.
Then Joe looks out the window, and is all like, "It's like...like my veins are all filled with gas, and I'm on fire! I'm gonna...burn everything!"
DRN-005
"LETSH BLOW IT UP!"
"What?"
"Fuck I... I don't... know... THE TELEVISHION"
"YEAH"
Lasergoose
And Light then roots around for that C-4 he bought off some I-ranian fella down the street - traded 'im for truck parts and some "Dr Light's Original Robot-distilled Hooch"
DRN-005
He almost bungled the sale, though. God damn spiders were crawling all over himself again and he had to quickly turn the sale from two bottles of his own hootch to just one as he gulped down his medicine
Lasergoose
Dr. Light needses his medicine.
DRN-005
It helpsh him cope... cope... with hish failuresh. Helpsh him forgetsh that... that... yeah that! It helpsh him ferget that! Now gitdafugoutmahface.
Lasergoose
So, 45 hilariously inept moments later, Joe is seated on the bike again, wearing a carelessly-removed chunk of a robot's head as a helmet.
DRN-005
And yeah, he isn't even wearing the head as a helmet. The head is just kinda... duct taped to his head, too. Clumsily, obstructs part of his vision, but with how piss-drunk he is seeing isn't going to help his driving anyways
Lasergoose
That's true. Might be distracting.
There's c-4 duct-taped to Joe
And c-4 duct taped to the bike.
And Joe's also duct-taped to the bike, but no time to worry about that now because IT'S TIME TO LIGHT UP THE NIGHT! FIRES AND ... AND EMBERSH ... AND HEAT AND STUFFFF!
VVVRRRRROOOOOOOMMMM!!!!
...
So when Joe yells "VVVRRRRROOOOOOOMMMM!!!" the second time, he still doesn't realize that he's not moving.
DRN-005
In fact he's coasting backwards
Lasergoose
To be fair, Light also doesn't realize this for a minute or two.
DRN-005
Yeah. Mostly 'cause he's passed out by now
That man sure does love his poultries. So long as they're just brand names for booze
Lasergoose
He comes to just long enough to hand Joe the keys and tell him to "Drive reshponshibllllllgrrrggggg" *thump"
DRN-005
Luckily, after several minutes of Joe trying to get the damn key in the ignition (and once missing and stabbing Light in the belly button) he finally drives off just in time to not have the unsteady Light pass right back out and fall on him and bike and causing everything to blow up
Lasergoose
I misread that and thought you ended the story early.
DRN-005
Nah
Lasergoose
So, Joe's just cruising at a relaxing 120 mph in a 35 mph zone, trying to see around the duct tape and bits of scrap metal that are his "helmet," all the while rocking out to an 80s power ballad he's basically writing in his head as he goes along, stealing heavily from White Snake, Meat Loaf, Aerosmith and Dashboard Confessional (he's very drunk, if we haven't mentioned that yet.)
Finally, he focuses on his target:
"There'sh that bashtard's headquarters!" he thinks, aiming directly for the local Girl Scouts of America office.
DRN-005
Luckily, as stated before, he's really fucking plastered and somehow completely misses what he is aiming for by a mile, and drives straight through the glass doors of Wily's tower
Lasergoose
naturally.
DRN-005
In between being really drunk and his bleeding it takes a while for him to finally get up the stairs. Like... 45 minutes worth, and that's only half way to where he ends up getting to
Security was called and got there, but a bleeding and very drunk man with explosives crudely taped all around him is kind of a tricky situation to handle
Lasergoose
he's dangerously close to becoming more sober at this point, too, which could endanger the mission.
So he knocks back some of the "reserves" Light gave him.
DRN-005
Yeah
Including an extra bottle he swiped from Light when he was not looking, that a now sobering and DTing furiously Light discovers in his favorite ditch along side the road and curses Joe's name
Lasergoose
"Climb...Climb to the tooooop of the world...And when you staaaaand tall, you will see...."
Joe sings, breathlessly, between swigs, as he nears the top of the tower.
Then he forgets the rest of the words, and starts over.
Six times.
DRN-005
He gets up there, stumbles around for a few seconds; passes out for half a minute or so. Wakes up and looks over and sees the guards closing in on him...
Takes the metal flask he swiped from Light, tries to break it to use it like a broken bottle weapon, fails...
Lasergoose
There's really only one way this can go, of course.
DRN-005
Yep.
Stumbles and falls while trying to run at them, falls on the C4 and BOOM
Lasergoose
The entire top of the tower explodes like a pinata at a birthday party hosted by Satan, with little bits of not-quite-unidentifiable-enough debris raining down on the gawkers that have, let's face it, been paying attention ever since Joe ran his first red light back there.
DRN-005
Especially since, for a drunk man with absolutely no cordination, it was awfully impressive how he was able to drop trou and moon them while driving at four times the speed limit and weaving back and forth
Lasergoose
Now, at this point, Joe is what people in the medical profession would call "dead."
But to be fair, people in the medical profession would have taken one look at Joe's blood alcohol level seven miles ago and declared him "embalmed."
So, Joe's brain chemistry, now entirely alcohol based, is balanced enough that on his way down, he's able to compose the last lines of his song based on extremely current events.
"And when you fall, you will fall from a height most meeeeen will neeeevverrrrr reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaccccchhhhh-"
thud
Only, not just "thud."
because again, his blood at this point could fuel a Hummer.
So he actually goes more like spl-FWOOOOSH
DRN-005
Yeah. I mean really, he was more explosive than the C4
Lasergoose
very much so.
His leather jacket actually becomes a nearly-edible torso-shaped steak.
with not much inside of it.
DRN-005
Yeah.
Meanwhile, Light up in his appartment that he randomly remembers because his blood alcohol level finally dropped beneath the "lethal" levels, finally comes to grasp at what he just helped transpire after witnessing the explosion in the street and seeing the robots head into the streets en masse
Lasergoose
I like to imagine his thoughts at this point, as the hangover sets in like a third-degree grease burn on his consciousness, are something like, "Okay...there was a kid on a bike...and...something about a helmet...I think...it feels like my head's...exploding...Exploding...EXPLOD--
"oh please God no"
DRN-005
And before any regret hits him, he wonders where the shit that they were drinking at the time could be found again because lordy, he's sobering up quick and he is ~not~ liking what he is seeing
After it all sinks in, and he sees it only made things worse, he starts going all depressed again; for once in his life in the past 20 years over the current situation and ~not~ from a lack of alcohol, starts trying to find a rope and a chair to hang himself with. He wants out
I'd say "Luckily he found that letter of Emily's in time!" if not for the fact he only found that after rubbing his ass after, trying to stand on this old rickety chair, it breaks sending him flying backwards into an old TV stand.
For once him falling down and into something is the fault of the object itself, and not his drunken unsteadiness or DT-shaking-ness
Lasergoose
Yes.
DRN-005
He reads the letter, and with tearful eyes, he knows what he must do now.
And after a flush of the toliet to take care of the only actual food he's eaten in a while after it came back up from all that drinking, he realised he has something ~else~ he must do now and starts to sketch out the plans for Proto Man while cracking himself open a new 24 pack of Jack Daniels
It has several false starts, and days later after sobering up he throws out all the sketches he couldn't make out what the Hell he was going for and the ones where he drew obscenely large genitles on the blueprints that seemed just so darned funny at the time
Lasergoose
And this is all the more horrifying when you realize that Jack Daniels is not beer, it's whisky.
And he buys them in 24-packs.
wait...is whiskey sold in 24-packs?
DRN-005
Well he has to have a well ballanced breakfast
It is for him, apparently
Lasergoose
he orders it direct, as part of a deal they have to keep him too drunk to market his stuff, which is the only known substance to actually be 201 proof.
Well, we're straying into Act I territory now, but I think it's safe to say that the next time Light was anything resembling conscious and lucid, he had built Proto Man.
Maybe he took a 12-step program, to try and be a better dad.
Or maybe he just drank some more.
It's hard to say.
But one thing is for certain:
Joe did NOT pay for anything he drank that night. And that's the most valuable gift of all.
DRN-005
Either way, it took (Light) twelve years to build something that fell apart, so there ya go
And amen

That was thoroughly enjoyable to read,haha xD

This is now canon

Joined: 02 Dec 2008 Posts: 2196 Location: The City

The Protomen need to read this.

Joined: 16 Oct 2009 Posts: 103 Location: Somewhere

Wow...this is almost the same as when someone told me to think about beards when I listened to Father of Death.

BEST
EVER

Wait I thought that already was canon...

Joined: 30 Jan 2010 Posts: 243

That "I am, I am, I am ready" makes so more sense now, it's a drunken stutter.

But yeah, I'm getting the image of a heroic Joe singing Breaking Out with quick cuts of a Drunk Joe drunkenly shouting the lyrics.

Actually, this offers some fairly solid alternate explanations for events in the first CD as well.

What compelled Light to create Megaman? He did it while he was drunk. Why did he build Megaman with an armcannon? Because he was drunk. Unrest in the House of Light? It's what happens when he comes home drunk. Why don't we hear from Light after The Will of One? Because after having his second son run away to fight, he got drunk. Why did Protoman join Wily in the first place? Because Light was always drunk.

If I recall Light was drunk through pretty much all of the Bob and George comic.

Joined: 04 Oct 2008 Posts: 96 Location: Virginia.

BEST. IDEA. EVER. Also, I loved when you guys were typing as if you were drunk as well. Laughing

Also, Bob And George. LOVED that comic.

Joined: 29 Jul 2006 Posts: 243

Joined: 14 Jul 2009 Posts: 50

Wow... I'm out of town for just three days and I come back to find one of my observations started a whole thread! XD

I'm pretty sure Beards Going Nowhere had something to do with alcohol as well... I just haven't figured out what...

"Don't give up! Don't give in! Without a beer you will never win!"

Joined: 02 Dec 2008 Posts: 2196 Location: The City