Author's Note: Hey all, it's Nu Mou Sage, reemerging in the fan fiction circle after years of silence. I'm sorry to say this isn't my Digimon x Code Lyoko story Tale of Two Computerized Worlds. Digimon has lost some of its luster after the last few seasons and feels less impressive than it did in its golden days. In addition, I have not finished watching Code Lyoko, which I intend to complete at some point, though I'm not sure when or how exactly. I've moved on to newer ideas and this one is largely inspired from the recent and awesome Project X Zone, a fantastic crossover RPG that is just oozing with fanservice. You'll need to have some familiarity with that game's story and also have knowledge when it comes to the Tales of and Mega Man X games if you want to read this. Without further ado, I introduce the first chapter of Tales of x Mega Man X (that reads Tales of Cross Mega Man X in case you were wondering).
Prologue I: "Our Roads Clash Again"
Terca Lumireis, the world of Tales of Vesperia, in the Erealumen Crystallands...
"Sir, we've discovered something!" A knight yelled to his commanding officer as the survey team continued to unearth their strange discovery.
"What have you located?"
"I thought it was a blastia at first glance, but looking at it again, it's not like any blastia I've ever seen before."
The commanding officer climbed down into the excavation pit and took note of the object for himself. Examining it, the item indeed resembled no blastia he had ever seen the likes of before. It was not any make of Hermes model nor it was one that could conveniently fit in one's pocket. Satisfied with his present understanding of it, he turned to another of the knights.
"Inform Captain Scifo at once! Tell him to bring Rita Mordio with him."
"Sir!" The knight saluted before heading off. The officer looked back at it and wondered what indeed it was that his team had found.
Within the hour, Captain Flynn Scifo of the Imperial Knights and Rita of Brave Vesperia arrived at the survey spot in the Erealumen Crystallands at the behest of the survey team.
"Captain, Miss Mordio. Knight Officer Joshua Krim, at your service." The commanding officer saluted to them.
"What did you need us to look at? Your messenger claimed the object in question is not a blastia in any way shape or form." Flynn said with his usual friendly voice.
"Yes Captain. It is...difficult to describe. It resembles one of the crystals here in the cavern, but it's also different in a number of ways. We were hoping Miss Mordio would give us her opinion on the object."
"Is that all right with you, Rita?" The blonde-haired knight captain turned to the fifteen year old genius mage of Aspio.
"Yeah sure, I don't have any other projects I'm currently working on at the moment anyway. I don't mind having a look at it." Her tone was that of one who was nonplussed and possibly bored. Following the events of the Adephagos being defeated, she had been working day and night on various smaller projects. Of course, given her dedication to such things, she had finished them with little difficulty and needed something new to stimulate her intellect.
"Very well, this way." He guided the two of them to the excavation pit, and after they had all climbed down into its depths, he showed them the mysterious object. By that time, the team had been able to clear away more of the dirt and rocks surrounding the object, leaving a slightly more clear view to observers.
For a full two minutes, Flynn and Rita were in absolute awe of it. The large object was indeed like nothing they had ever laid eyes on. While it certainly outwardly resembled one of the cavern's lavender-blue crystals, it also had features not like anything seen before. Unlike the rest of the structures, the object was almost like a coffin in its shape and form. Encased within the crystal coffin itself was a round, spherical metallic device. Its top hemisphere was midnight blue while its lower hemisphere was white, and its center was dominated by a red "eye" where its equator would be if the object was a globe, but it wasn't like any model of their planet Flynn and Rita had ever seen before. The eye looked to be some sort of glass orb with a strange reflection that defied the basic rules of lighting.
"Just what is this?" Rita said, completely and utterly astonished for the umpteenth time in her life. In the past, things like witnessing Estelle's mystic arte for the first time or the descent of Adephagos made her drop her jaw. This was another shocker to add to her list of surprises.
"For some reason, something about its design seems oddly familiar to me. Where have I seen it?" Flynn mused aloud as he put his hand to his chin in thought. He couldn't shake the feeling he had seen such a device before from somewhere.
"You seriously have seen something like this before?" Rita turned to him and made her staple incredulous face, the expression she usually put on when she was having a great deal of trouble believing a person.
"Yes, but I can't remember from where." Flynn kept pondering and still couldn't come up with an answer.
"It's not like any of the machines in Ghasfarost and its not like anything in Tarqaron either. It seems...ahead of even those in its design." The genius mage of Aspio was honestly stumped. She couldn't even begin to guess what the object was, let alone what it was intended for. She wanted to immediately start examining it and figuring out just what it was exactly the survey team had found.
"The object seems to be quite large and, judging from its indent, heavy too. It would be difficult to move out of the cavern without some kind of additional manpower. Do we have any troops in reserve at the castle, Captain?"
"I've sent out several platoons on reconnaissance missions. Taking it back to Zaphias would be easy with Ba'ul's help, but getting it out of the cavern is a different story."
"Perhaps we could..." Before Joshua Krim could finish his suggestion, Rita let out a startled cry and alerted everyone's attention to her.
"Rita, what happened?" Flynn asked as he went to her side.
"I don't know! I just bent down to get a closer look at it and it started reacting. I didn't touch it or anything!" She exclaimed.
The spherical object in the coffin-like crystal began emitting a strange low humming sound, which quickly amplified to a whirring like that of a windmill's blades spinning at two hundred miles per hour. The glass eye on the center of the sphere seemed to be looking at the two of them, as if it were alive. In just that instant, white light began to emanate from the crystal itself, slowly growing in brightness until it was absolutely blinding to everyone in the cavern.
"What's it doing?!" One of the knights exclaimed. The light grew so gigantic in width that it encompassed the cavern and its occupants. When the grand illumination cleared, everyone was either flat on their back or collapsed to their knees, groaning from the shock. That is, everyone except for those missing.
"Captain Scifo! Miss Mordio! Where are they?" Joshua yelled. "Captain! Miss Mordio!" Turning around, he looked frantically for them...and no trace of them could be found. They had vanished completely.
Earth, the year 21XX, Abel City...
Alia's computer console suddenly sparked to life as it detected a large energy reading in the Energen Mines where Crystal Snail had once caused trouble back during the second Maverick uprising. Layer and Pallette took notice of the reading as well and were equally as surprised as their colleague.
"What is this? A sudden spike of power in the Energen Mine? How can that be? And this reading, it's too high for any normal deposit of crystals." Alia said as she quickly analyzed the signal.
"What I find strange is why there's any activity there at all. That place was shut down after X defeated Crystal Snail, so why are we suddenly picking up a huge reading like this? It's completely ridiculous that energen could produce numbers in this range." Layer said in her usual calm and cool tone.
"I remember Dr. Cain saying the energen that Tunnel Rhino had been digging up during the Doppler Maverick incident could power a city for an entire year. The energy in this reading could make the whole planet run for ten years without rest!" Pallette exclaimed.
"We should send someone to check it out. This may not have anything to do with any known current problems, but maybe someone has figured out how to harness energen to even more insane levels than Doppler had." Alia remarked.
"And this someone may not have the best intentions in mind for it." Layer said, as she put out an APB to all Maverick Hunters in the vicinity of the mining area.
"Maverick Hunter Base, this is X. I'm heading to the area now with Zero. This has me worried." The reply came in half a minute as the familiar voice of the legendary blue armored hero came in loud and clear over the channel. The navigators looked to each other, knowing this particular incident was personal for him. The confrontation with Crystal Snail was very painful for him, in a number of ways.
"Understood. Just in case, we'll send backup to your location. We currently haven't identified any possible causes for this strange upsurge of energy." Alia responded.
"Affirmative." Zero, the legendary S-rank Maverick Hunter, said as the communication ended.
Energen Crystal Mine...
Parking their Ride Chasers just outside the entrance, the two Maverick Hunters entered the closed off area with their scanners on full alert. X had pondered just what, or even who, could trigger such a massive scale of energy. The energen within the place itself could only produce energy that was standard operation capacity; there was no possible way for it to be as powerful as Pallette described. As he and Zero wandered further in past the numerous crystallized walls and structures around them, he couldn't help but think back to that unfortunate battle with Crystal Snail. It was a battle that never left his memory, for it was one of many personal scars he carried in his heart.
The snail-based Reploid was a tormented soul, bitter about his own physical appearance, thinking he was nothing but an ugly creature. Of particular note during that incident, Snail was infatuated with the Magna Quartz, a small spherical machine encased in a massive energen quartz crystal. He caressed and worshipped it, calling it the very symbol of eternal beauty, and thought that even an "ugly thing" such as himself could one day achieve such radiance. When X had destroyed Magna Quartz due to its hostile actions, Crystal Snail was beside himself with anguish and suffering. He had intended to utterly annihilate X, to make him understand the agony he felt when he lost his precious friend. The Maverick Hunter did understand, but he was unable to tell Snail due to having been frozen by his opponent's Crystal Hunter, a devious weapon that can both literally freeze a target as well as cause an entire area's functional activity to slow down to, appropriately enough, a snail's pace.
"We've got company." Zero said calmly, snapping X back to the present. There was no time for him to reminisce now. Pointing his X-Buster at a number of enemies, he knew he had to fight once again.
"There are more than I thought there'd be." X muttered. The number of enemies was indeed a bit excessive, numbering to over fifty in just the one room they were in currently. This seemed like it could very well be a case of a Maverick calling the shots. Within seconds, energy shots were exchanged between both sides, resulting in immediate deaths on the enemy side. As robots went down, more began scrambling into the room from further in, replacing their fallen comrades.
"Damn, this is endless! We need to cut off all of this hydra's heads now!" Zero swore. As his attention was focused on the battle in front of him, he did not have time to react to the sudden slashing strike from behind. The S-rank Maverick Hunter let out a pained grunt as X turned to aim his Buster at a new threat...and was taken aback at the sight of the newcomer.
"Speaking of hydras..." X said in a low voice that betrayed his poker face. "You're Amblygonite Hydra, from the 6th Naval Unit!" Towering massively over the Maverick Hunter was a Reploid based on the mythical hydra of Greek myth. His body was massive in size to accommodate his many heads.
"Indeed we are, Maverick Hunter X!" The powerful seven-headed Reploid declared sibilantly. "So have you come to put an end to our Energen mining? What's the problem?" His voice was laced with both venom and sarcasm as each of his various heads snapped in anger at X.
"Yeah, what's the problem?!" This was echoed by Hydra's second head, who seemed tense and high strung.
"Mining operation? Weren't you discharged from the naval unit and put on probation? What are you doing here, Hydra?!"
"We were, but we got bored with our permanent 'shore leave', so we did some research in our spare time and figured if we wanted to build a powerful navy of our own, we'd need a ton of energy...and what better place than Energen central!" The third head rasped almost happily.
"But if you damn Maverick Hunters get in the way, there's no way in hell we'll be able to finish our little project!" This from the fourth head, who seemed quite angry.
"So it's time for you two to go!" The fifth head screamed out insanely as it managed to wrap itself around X and hoist him up.
"Maybe we can use their bodies for the ship's bow! What do you think, Seven?"
"I don't care Six, let's just suck out their energy first and then annihilate them." The seventh head was surprisingly the only calm, rational one, but had no more love for the Maverick Hunters than his brethren did. He just preferred to get things done without too much fanfare.
When the enemy Reploid's seven heads' numerous and deadly fangs were about to sink deeply into X, something quickly shot along the ground toward him. Zero caught sight of it with his advanced optics for barely half a second; it was a blue-colored vacuum wave that furiously shredded the rocky floor behind it as it collided into Amblygonite's leg and knocked him aside, freeing X from his grip.
"That technique. Wasn't that..." Zero steadied himself with his Z-Saber.
"Demon Fang!" A voice shouted as another wave came shooting along, causing many of the enemy units to dodge out of its way to avoid getting hit. One lone human came running into the room from the opening all the hostiles had been using to swarm in. He was someone the Maverick Hunters were quite familiar with; their memories of their multidimensional journey had not left their minds.
"X, Zero, are you two okay?" The familiar face cropped with blonde hair said as he stood confidently with them, sword drawn and shield readied.
Flynn Scifo, of the Imperial Knights?! X said to himself, wondering just what was going on.
"Heh, is it the Portalstone again?" Zero asked to no one in particular as he slowly rose to his feet.
To be continued...
*Well everyone, hope you've enjoyed the first prologue so far. Just to note a few things:
*Tales of Vesperia is not the only Tales game I plan to draw characters from, but they will be first on the list due to some of the cast being involved in Project X Zone.
*Amblygonite Hydra is named for amblygonite, a mineral that is a mix of sodium and lithium; the play on words here is that lithium carbonate is used in treating manic depression and bipolar disorders, which ties in with Hydra's heads and their varying personalities.
*Hydra speaks in a distinct first person style, kind of like a hive mind similar to Venom due to his numerous heads being part of one body.
*The 6th Naval Unit is the same unit Bubble Crab and Wheel Gator were in back in Mega Man X2.