And then Lan did something the game was never designed for. He tapped the .
WARNING: OPERATOR INPUT OVERRIDE ACTIVE SELECT NAVI: [ROCKMAN.EXE]
Lan looked at his stinging arm. Rockman’s icon on the PET was smiling—not the default sprite, but a genuine, tired, affectionate smile.
The note attached read: "For Yuichiro. A fragment of the 'Synchro Chip' project. Do not load. The title key bypasses the operator simulation layer. It enables something we couldn't balance: Full Real Operation."
He copied the file to his PET’s root directory while Rockman EXE 4.5 was running. The screen flickered. The usual title screen—with its rotating 3D model of Rockman—shattered like glass. In its place, stark white letters appeared against a black void:
The game didn't start a tournament. Instead, his PET’s cooling fans roared. The screen turned into a live, first-person perspective—Rockman’s eyes. Lan saw the inside of his own room from the other side of the screen . He saw himself, frozen mid-reach for a soda, staring back.