Dr. Henry Snacman

SN-13 Encore
Prostheses patent
Expanding Weapon Kit
 Henry's Sprite

**Henry Snacman**was a researcher from the Research and Development of Reploids Bureau and the protagonist in the first third of Mega Man X: Unit 49's Season 2. Henry's life is directly linked to the events that led to the development of the leader of the Neo Maverick Army, Saturn and consequently the 49th Unit. The diary he wrote describes how the society was affected by the events of the X era and reveals important info that can be used to explain some of the gaps left in the series.

## **Personality**

Henry was a person very dedicated to his job, in fact, he had signs of being a workaholic who did not care about having a social life since he became a researcher. In 14 years of work, he produced several new technologies in different fields as no normal person could ever do. He could spend days studying or foccused on a single task if he had enough motivations. Combined with that, he was the kind of person that did not bother making some hard effort to attend the necessities of the people he liked, although that help could be performed in an imprudent way, bringing him trouble in some cases.

Though Henry was an apprentice of Dr. Seigen, who was the responsible for imposing guidelines that restricted many fields of research and preached the importance of those rules, Henry did not like working on straitlaced conditions and went against those regulations almost his entire life in the RaDoRB. Aside from his Encorium research, the most notable case was when he refused to report RD217900-6 as a defective robot because he did not like the emotionless of that series and wanted his new assistance to fill the gap Ardie left. Because of that, Henry was very clumsy in formal occasions and also when dealing with his superiors, specially with Dr. Niels since the old man was a sensitive person and kept picking on him.

Henry had some difficult to accept or think that his friends could have evil traits, and easily trusted their words. Even in a time that many Reploids were being infected by the Maverick Virus, Henry could never expect that his assistant would betray him. When Saturn went berserk, Henry approached him with no intent of fighting, as he believed that his friend was not truly evil and something gave Saturn a very good reason to do what he did. Even after hearing the dark truth about his master, Henry had to face solid proofs to believe about that.

## **Abilities and Equipment**

Since his childhood, Henry showed signs of intellectual giftedness. He could learn things very fast and was considered a prodigy among the RaDoRB scientists. That intelect also allowed him to think quickly and strategize well even under the pressure of a battle. Henry adapted a few gadgets from Reploid weaponry for his own use:

**Solar Pistol**: A compact and light pistol that expanded once activated. It worked like the Busters from the Reploids, except it was made for a human.

**Beam Sword**: A common sword with a green beam blade. During *Berserk*, Henry had no practice to use it properly. The first version was destroyed in an explosion and later was replaced by a more potent weapon.

**Solar Morphable Bracelets**: Making experiments with the Amorphic Matter on his compacted pistols, Henry managed to create bracelets that could morph in a Solar Buster through the **A-Trans**, although it could not charge its shots. When the cannon was exhausted, he could insert an amorphic pack from his belt to refill the energy.

During *Ineluctable Demise*, Henry wore a dark gray fabric below his clothes that was meant to soft the hits he received.

## **History**

### **Troublemaking Prodigy**

Born in 2156, Henry Snacman was the son of a Robot Master mechanical in the north of the British Islands. Even with the advent of the Reploids in the 2170 decade, that region he lived in was considered "rural" and did not passed through the large urbanization growth brought by the new kind of robots. When Henry was twelve years old, a *Vacuum Man* was cleaning his house and suddenly he became defective and tried to suck him into his cleaning machine. His father dissasembled the robot to see what was the problem and teached Henry a bit about robot engineering. After that, Henry started to study the functioning of many kinds of machines and developed a mechanical skill uncommon for his age, even without having much study.

On August 30th of 2174, Henry moved to the capital London trying to find a chance to work on the Research and Development of Reploids Bureau, which had its head office in the city. He also started a diary to record his journey.

On that same day, Henry went to a concert of his favourite band. When the band was playing Airman ga

Taosenai, the singer threw his necklace to the crowd and Henry got it. Henry's luck was about to end, since a Maverick outbreak was happening near the place. Henry ran scared to his apartment and was stopped by a defective policial Reploid. He analyzed Henry's body and said his necklace looked "very Maverick", thinking he was carrying a Maverick on his chest indeed. When Henry convinced him that it was just an adornment, the Cop Bot revealed to be a Maverick himself and accused Henry for the "sin of being human". The bot then started to chase Henry, aiming his buster at him and shooting with a terrible accuracy because of the defect in his circuits. Henry faked a surrender just to induce the bot to shoot a holder with many boxes, and it worked. The Bot was struck by the heavy load and Henry detached his arm cannon from the body and took it home as a "reward".

    Henry wanted to make a weapon to protect himself from future Maverick attacks and noticed that the cannon he took from the policial bot had a very similar structure to the solar busters used by the outdated Robot Masters, thus he had not any difficulties to adapt his parts. After two days of work, he finished it and went outside to test it. Henry hoped that his creation would impress someone and help him get a job. In fact, Henry was arrested for illegal weapon possession and for shooting near a public area, and he had to convince the police that the incident with the Cop Bot was true. However, the news about him reached the ears of the Director of the RaDoRB, Dr. Seigen and Henry was invited to join the Junior Researcher Team. Dr. Seigen thought that Henry had the same potential he had and warned him about the dangers of taking the science out of boundaries, revealing the boy a truth known only by few about a space colony called Trailblazer.
### **Life as a researcher**

Almost three years later, Henry had his knowledge on robots widely expanded and he learned some things about medicine, inspired by the story about the organic robots from the Trailblazer. With the assistance of neural technology, he created a few prostheses models that could simulate real sensations. On June 4th of 2177, during the Great Repliforce War, a strange meteor fell from the sky and took Henry's attention. With the help of his assistant Ardie, Henry found the exotic meteorite on a forest near Cambridge and realized it was phosphorescent. He decide to take it back to RaDoRB and see if anything could be made from that. However, his route back home was just below a battle between the Maverick Hunters and Storm Owl, with a few of the Repliforce hitting buildings below. Henry's truck was almost hit by a plasma beam, and he saw a civillian car running into the explosion. Believing the UFO's would not hit the same place twice, he ordered Ardie to get on his Ride Armor and rescue the person.

Two weeks later, the war was already over, and the civillian saved finally woke up. She was a girl from the Alliance of Scandinavia called Platina Roemer Angström, who was a hobbyist fighter and came to London to get away from the slow-paced Stockholm. The incident took away her arms and legs (presumably melted), while the rest of the body could be recovered by the modern medicine apparatus. Henry got authorization from her family to test his prosthesis technology on her. Platina felt that it was a bit unethical from his part getting a test subject that vulnerable, but accepted it.

In 2178, the space colony Eurasia fell on Earth, leaving the surface devastated. Henry was performing the maintenance of Platina's prostheses and the two got stuck in his place. Before they could get out and find survivors and supplies, the two helped each other to survive and became emotionally involved. In the following months, Platina would teach Henry self-defense moves after her maintenance sessions.

### **Saturn and the strive to build the reactor**

After finding that exotic meteorite, Henry started his project to make a Reploid that could work with a reactor made from the gems extracted from the space rock. Although the gems could store an enormous quantity of energy, the systems became very unstable after a little percentage of that maximum. Henry would spend the following 11 years designing and discarding many blueprints of reactors and bodies trying to accomplish his idealized model. Because most of the molecular scientists were worried about creating the Amorphic Matter, Henry could not find much support to research a synthesized version of the gems. Because of that, he decided to keep his project in secrecy and hide the true value of the gems.

*The following paragraph describes a very resumed version of the story. To learn about the details, read Awareness and Loop of Meanings.*

In June 2179, the RaDoRB moved its office to the underground and a new model of assistant robots was brought to the facility. Ardie was dispatched to another sector and he was replaced by **RD217900-6**. The robots from his series were not supposed to have any emotions or feelings, but that one had a defect on his cognitive circuits, allowing him to progressively develop a personality. Henry dubbed him *Six* and had a lot of trouble in the following days to prevent the Inspector Niels from noticing Six's strange behavior. Because Henry gave him old books to keep Six occupied, Niels got very infuriated and Dr. Seigen intervened to take Six with him.

On July 16th of 2180, Henry and Platina married. Soon after they started living together in a new house, Henry began working on his Reploids in a lab of his own, instead of his office in the RaDoRB.

    In October of 2181, Henry thought he had succeeded in creating the reactor and tested it on SN-07 Pesmet. At that point, he had already spent a third of the refinable mineral. While he was making some adjusts on his head, Pesmet's energy flux became unstable and energy bursts started to occur, destroying its body and the reactor, and also hitting Henry's legs, permanently damaging them. Even having to replace his lower legs with prostheses from his own patent, Henry continued to risk himself working alone to keep the secrecy about his project.
In August of 2182, the RD217X-N assistants were being retired, and Henry decided to save his old friend Ardie by bringing him to his own laboratory, this way he could have an assistant at home while he was attending to his commitments in the RaDoRB.

On August 23rd of 2182, one of Dr. Seigen's apprentices used a key stolen from him to access confidential data about the institute. Henry instantly became a suspect, although the suspicions soon turned to Saturn, the same robot that worked as Henry's assistant three years before. Henry talked with Saturn about their projects frequently, and the mad Dr. Niels thought Henry could be an accomplice of the crime. Henry clarified all he knew about that and was granted with permission to stay home until the issue was solved.

*Recommended reading: Berserk.*

Two days later, Saturn attacked the RaDoRB using the combat gadgets he had invented for his failed project Paragos 0 while asking where was Henry. The security could damage him severely, but using the construction plan of the building he found his way to the area where Dr. Niels was. After noticing that Niels knew about the same dark truths he had discovered, Saturn made "justice" with his own hands. Dr. Seigen intervened to listen to Saturn's reasons and was killed. Henry did not know about the death of his master, but was notified that there were casualties. Fearing Saturn would come to his house, Henry went against his wife's advice and the common sense and picked his weapons to intercept the berserk Reploid, without even taking off his white coat. He knew something had changed Saturn's mind and he was acting on his own will and wanted to know why he was doing that.

After the two finally encountered in a desert alley during the rain, Saturn exposed Seigen's secrets to Henry. Fearing the government and that the RaDoRB could meet the same fate of the space station Trailblazer in much larger and catastrophic proportions, Seigen put his limits above all else and commited many crimes to maintain the scientific development in a level that he judged safe. Saturn believed that all the banned researchers were induced to become Irregulars and just wanted to protect Earth somehow. Henry could not believe that Seigen was such a monster and tried to convince Saturn that he was trying to redeem his mistakes and was the only one who truly believed in both of them when they were just troublemakers, with no effect. Saturn wanted Henry to lend his reactor, although he did not know it was unfinished, because he thought it was the missing piece in the puzzle to create Paragos, a Reploid that could be endlessly upgraded aiming perfection. Together, they could show the molecular scientists the true potential of Henry's technology while evolving all the Reploids to a whole new level of power. Henry refused to cooperate with a murderer, and Saturn became very upset for not having his only friend and hope on his side.

    Although Henry never got involved in a real fight, his mental state was more stable than Saturn's and he thought that it was an even match: a limited human that could strategize against a damaged and demented Reploid that was never meant to fight anyone, skill against brute force. Eventually, Henry found a way to breach Saturn's violent attacks and good reflexes and got his chance to defeat him, but a complete lack of skill with swords made him miss the hit. The two blades clashed and Saturn's overwhelming strenght led him to victory. Saturn offered Henry a new chance as the founding stone of a new era, but Henry refused once again to make part of something founded on bloodshed. Ironically, there was bloodshed and disposals rooted in RaDoRB's story behind the curtains. Saturn accused Henry of prolonging the suffering of all humans and Reploids and swore to find another route to perfection, even if that demanded more blood to be spilled. It seemed like Saturn would leave Henry alive, but Henry tried to shoot him and provoked Saturn's anger.
Before Saturn could kill Henry, Ardie appeared and hold Saturn. Since Ardie had his demise delayed by Henry, he wanted to return the favor by selfdestructing and saving Henry. Henry was hit by the blast of a rocket shot by Saturn and got many second-degree burns. A Maverick Hunter reached the place to help, but an hour late. Since they were unaware of Ardie's sacrifice, they thought the scattered and burnt parts belonged to Saturn, when in fact he had escaped in the verge of death.

Days later, Signas contacted Henry to express his regret at how things unfolded and hear about Saturn to judge whether he should create a new Special Pursuit Squad to chase him or not. Either way, there weren't any available Hunters to form such squad. On the same day, Dr. Rubix visited Henry to investigate the events that turned Saturn into a Maverick.

Two years later, Saturn appeared with two new war machines: Knight and Suction in the Republic of the North America. Signas could assign a squad of policial Reploids this time and created the 49th Special Pursuit Squad 8. Hoping that they could grant Saturn's tormented mind an eternal rest, Henry donated funds earned from his prostheses patent for the construction of their base in the Californian Coastline.

### **Encore and the final battle**

    Saturn was supposedly killed in 2186, but reappeared with a new body in 2188 and ambushed the 49th Unit, killing two of its members. Since there was nothing preventing Saturn from trying to steal or kill Henry this time, Platina started to worry about her husband and his project. She insisted that Henry should make a combat armor for her. After several days of effort, he finished a trio of suits. He used a technology derived from the Amorphic Matter to create the compact weapons for her. Although Platina was pleased with the result, she asked Henry to replace her artificial limbs with the powerful combat models, made only for military purposes. Since they had no human semblance, Henry wanted to decline her request, but Platina made him notice that she only wanted to become stronger and protect the most precious thing in her life.

On August 23th of 2188, Henry finished the perfect Encorium Reactor and its Reploid host, the SN-13 Encore. While designing his face, he unwittingly made it on his own image and treated him like his son since he could not have children with Platina.

Though Encore was still asleep, Henry gave him a final speech to tell him the purpose for which he was created. Henry wanted to guide Encore to use his power to protect his mother and maybe the whole world, but he feared that he would not be alive when Encore was finally awake. Encore received that name not only because of the gems or the ability of absorbing harm and repeat it against his enemies, but he was also a repeatance of Henry, a reflection of his endeavour in the "end of his concert".

Having a strong presentiment that soon Saturn would come after him again, Henry stored all the original data of his researches and blueprints in a single computer and destroyed the remaining copies, and then sealed his laboratory along with Encore until he felt it was secure. The last note from his diary dates August 25th of 2188 with an advice that if someone ever read that, it was because he *failed*. Suction made another assault, this time alone, dragging as much attention as he could. It was clear to Henry that Saturn was coming and prepared himself to the final battle. Soon after, a loud noise was heard outside. It was Saturn, indeed.

*To learn about the details from Henry's last battle, read Ineluctable Demise.*

    Even though Saturn still hoped that Henry would join his side or at least stay alive to see his victory, he needed the Encorium to create Paragos 0. Using their teamwork, Platina and Henry managed to almost defeat Saturn, but Henry was severely hurt during the battle and fainted for a short time. Without any more ammo, Platina used the remaining fuel from her Valiant Frontline Suit to destroy Saturn's arm and made him unable to send any more signals to his particles. However, what remained from the arms morphed into a large crystal blade, and Saturn could hit Platina in the back. Before Saturn could strike her head, Henry jumped in front and took the hit in her place.
To make Saturn frustrated, Henry lied that he destroyed all the samples and data about the Encorium reactor so Saturn would not be able to discover anything, this way, even stealing the encorium ore, Saturn would spend a long time trying to find a way to create the perfect reactor, time enough to someone come and stop him.

On the verge of death, Henry remembered that once he saved Ardie once and later Ardie **delayed his demise** by giving his own life to protect him, and that time Henry received was over. Since Henry also saved Platina, she believed that she was supposed to die in his place, but Henry said that, by doing that, he granted her and the whole world more time to feel the joy of living. It was up to her to take that time and extend it to everyone. Henry died in her arms, without being able to say the name of their son.

## **Trivia**

* Henry Snacman is the only character from the RaDoRB whose name makes reference to no real person, that is, *Snacman* is an odd name without any meaning; It could have if he had succeded with his project in time.
* The number of pages in which Henry is the narrator is coincidentally **49**, since the fourth page of Loop of Meanings regards only Saturn's point of view and is not registered in Henry's diary.
* The necklace Henry gave to Encore is pulverized in Orchestra of Lights.
* In Ms. Roemer, Henry tells about the prostheses he had developed and ponders that, far in the future, humans and Reploids may be adapted to have very similar bodies. This statement is an analogy to the Humanoids, from Mega Man ZX, around 400 years later.