Heart of Titanium
by Moonraker One
Author's note: This fanfiction is a reimagining of the Mega Man X series in the style of the Iron Man movie.
CHAPTER ONE
From the depths of unconsciousness a young man found himself woken from his own abyss by the sudden realization that he'd been out. In the frantic few moments right after his awakening, in the tumultuous chaos of his own emotions and the struggle to comprehend what currently was going on, he shoved a blanket off his body and hastily assessed his situation. The rocky surroundings and poor lighting told him he was in a cave, and that he had been taken there by hostile forces. The heaviness on his chest told him more of the tale. He clamored to tear his shirt off, and saw a relatively large metallic object directly over his heart, attached into his chest and connected via some large wires to a car battery. "The hell is...?" he shouted, his high-pitched voice carrying through the cave.
"Shh," a voice gently calmed. He looked over and saw a forties-ish man with little hair and darker colored skin symbolic of his ethnicity. He turned to his fellow inmate. "That's an artificial pacemaker—rather well built for his fast I had to make it, might I add—that's attached to a vehicle battery. It's keeping your heart beating. You took a nasty shot from that plasma bomb, and the energy passed through your protective armor." He turned back to continue working on something.
He looked around. "Where are we?"
"The Ten Rings," the man replied. "They captured and brought us here. They made me work for them, or else I won't see my family again." He turned his attention to his friend. "You, I'm particularly fascinated by. You're one of a few to survive a phenomenon that happens a lot in these parts. People getting hit by energy from plasma weapons, if it hits the chest, it isn't an immediate kill. It slowly kills the heart's ability to regulate its beats. They're dead without knowing it. I managed to save you in time." He put his pencils down. "My name is Yensen."
"Rockford Light. But you can call me Rock," Rock introduced.
The circumstances that led to his present situation began about twenty-four hours prior. A gambling hall saw Rock throwing dice at a craps table. The spectators cheered his unusual string of good luck as he collected yet another group of chips. "I might just clear you guys out," he said, brushing his raven-colored hair back. His face looked much younger than he actually was—he was in his very early thirties as his face looked almost fourteen. The fact that he stood only a hundred and sixty centimeters tall—just under five foot three inches—and had a skinny frame of forty-seven kilograms, didn't much help. A hand grabbed his shoulder and caused him to look over. "Ah, Zero, why am I not surprised?"
"It's time to go," Zero shot back, "and if you miss this one, I swear they'll have my name on a list of court martials. I can see it now; 'Zachary Wily,' standing before a group of army commanders ready to put my ass to the fire." He pushed his friend away from the table. "You can't keep this attitude up, Rock."
"Tell me, Zero, how do they allow that long blonde hair in the army?"
Zero was not impressed by the attempt. "Stop changing the subject, Rock. You've got a plane to catch."
Rock rolled his eyes underneath his sunglasses. "Sheesh. Lighten up. You act like those robots my company builds." He climbed into the limo and from there, it led to a military base where he would take a plane to a very important place in the desert. An area where no civilians lived would be the sight for the latest energy weapon developed by Light Enterprises. While in the limo, he looked at his bodyguard in the front seat. "Hey, make sure you keep paparazzi out of the mansion while I'm gone, won't you, Axl?"
"You got it, sir," Axl replied.
The next major step along the way was the military escort to the site. Dozens of vehicles belonging to some of the top military brass as well as private security firms all waited for the last Humvee to arrive. At least twenty-five crates lay stacked on top of each other, which contained the weapons systems prior to unpacking and assembly. It had been assembled on site to display the portability and ease of use. Each part of the weapon had the company logo emblazoned on it.
"Okay, I think it's time," Rock said, exiting his vehicle in a grand fashion. His dark suit and tie flapped about in the harsh desert wind. He walked past the group and stood in front of his weapon, an eight foot tall metallic mechanism with four missiles attached. "Ladies and gentlemen, the traditional face of warfare has changed considerably since my grandfather first built robots for military purposes. The introduction of energy-based devices and weapons make for very unique situations on the battlefield. My friend Zachary Wily over there, a military officer, is the grandson of Albert Wily, a great scientist who is remembered for causing chaos by turning his creations against civilians. But let's not forget; his creations worked. His machines were excellently built. This missile system is no different." He pressed a few buttons on the display of the computer attached to the missile system. "The Jericho Missile is developed to unleash systematic energy explosions which take out certain targets more than others. Because, after all, a person requires less firepower to eliminate than does a machine." The missiles fired, landing on the mountains hundreds of meters away. Brilliant explosions of multiple color preceded shockwaves that leveled much of the terrain. Anything in its path would've been annihilated. "My grandfather once said, the best weapon is one you never have to fire. I, respectfully disagree with that." He nodded and headed off. "Gentlemen, I think it's time." He headed back to the Humvee.
"You had to bring up my grandfather, didn't you, Rock?" He noticed something. "Hey, Rock, where're you going?"
Rock slid into the vehicle. "This is the fun-vee, Zero, why don't you take the helicopter?" With that, the door closed and the convoy took off. It wasn't but a half hour from that moment that several of the convoy's vehicles exploded, and in the chaos a plasma bolt caught the mid armor of Rockford Light. He checked his shirt, which had blood coming through wounds that had been opened below the armor, but passed out before he could do anything.
Which led to the present. He sat pondering his present circumstance for about ten minutes before the door angrily burst open. Several dark-skinned men with weapons barged in, and one pudgy man in particular began barking orders in a strange language at Rock. Rock turned to Yensen for assistance. "They want you to build the Jericho missile for them," he translated.
"I refuse," Rock instantly replied. "I won't let such destruction get into the hands of terrorists."
"Hey!" Yensen protested. "It's my life on the line too, you know!"
Without understanding his words, The fat man hit Rock in the gut with the butt of a machine gun. Rock would not allow the death toll to rise any higher. Seeing his own company's logo on the weapon that nearly killed him woke him up to the truth. No longer could he be naïve about the weapons he sold to militaries across the world. Of course, at the same time, he wanted to live. Looking down at the device attached to his chest, perhaps there could be another option.
"Fine, I'll make the weapon." Yensen translated for the men, and they immediately ordered them to get moving.
"He says there are plenty of parts outside with which to make the weapon," Yensen translated an angry line from the captors. As the two of them exited the cave, with Rock carrying his battery in his hands, he saw instantly what they meant. Just outside the cave there was a pile of ammunition, and also, the remains of countless androids built by Light Enterprises. He pointed to several of the different components. He wouldn't build the missile system, but rather, a means of escape.
Rock took the corpse of an android that had been blown in half, and took apart the energy cannon attached to its arm. He hastily disassembled it, removing the plasma-generating cores from the cannon and the metallic sphere from its fusion core. A deactivated missile lay on the table nearby and he gently unscrewed the top cover. Carefully sliding out the guidance motherboard and accessing the detonation system behind it, he pulled out two baseball card sized pieces of gray metal. Forming a cup out of the cave rock, he started a fire and melted down the metal. By this point, Yensen's attention had been piqued. "What are you making, Rock?"
"I'm making a plasma reactor," Rock answered. "Typically, androids are powered by fusion reactors. A plasma reactor, however, would be much longer lasting and more efficient. Take this, and when I say so, pour it into here. Be careful, we're only going to get one shot at this." He formed a mold out of some metallic parts, and at his verbal command, Yensen gently poured the liquid into the mold. "Once this cools, we've got the Paladium wiring we need." He pulled apart some solar powered mini vehicles and removed their solar panels. He got some quarter-spheres from thermal weaponry and attached the solar panels to the inside of the sphere sections by chipping away part of the metal and welding it in. The thermal metal required a lot of heat because it was designed to absorb high temperatures before melting. He then welded each of the sphere sections into a whole sphere, slightly smaller than the one extracted from the fusion core.
"The Paladium is cooled, what are we going to do with it?"
"We're going to put this inner sphere in the middle, and string the Paladium wiring around it. Then, we'll put the outer sphere in place, and we'll have the shell created. Then, it's a simple matter of creating two holes; one to inject the hydrogen gas and the other to harness the power." He looked at Yensen. "This will replace the car battery you got for my pacemaker." He started wrapping the wire around the inner sphere and welding it on. "Fusion reactors only get electricity from the actual output energy of the fusion of hydrogen into helium. A plasma reactor uses the light, and the heat, also. Plus, we can use some of the energy to cause the reaction to work in reverse, breaking down the helium back into hydrogen, and using it again. This extends the time between having to replace the hydrogen by quite a long time."
"Will this work?"
Rock winked at him. "It'll either work...or we'll blow this whole place to hell. Either way, the weapon stays out of their hands." He took the torch in his hands, and with his protective goggles on, welded the inner sphere inside the outer one. The whole device looked only slightly larger than a baseball. He detached a pressure vent from an empty hydrogen tank, and after drilling a hole in the newly-welded sphere, joined it to the device. The bottom of the sphere had a hole with wires sticking out. The electrical transducer from an old airplane computer system he wired into the paladium. Now, he had a plasma reactor which could be filled with hydrogen, and a way of harnessing and measuring the electrical output. All that was left was to activate it.
"Let's see if this puppy works," Rock hoped. A tank of hydrogen gas he hooked into the intake of the pressure vent, and filled the canister until the mark on the meter stopped short of the red line. "Let's hook this up to a generator and see if we can start the reaction." The primary difficulty with fusion is that an absolutely huge amount of energy would be required to start the reaction. Plus, it couldn't be for very long. It had to be a quick burst of tremendous power to overcome the natural repulsion between atoms of the same element. The good news was, they had at least three generators capable of burst energy on hand, because all androids powered by reactors had burst generators built in. Rock just hoped that at least five of these still functioned. He began hooking up the necessary cables. "We're going to have to pray these generators still have juice in their capacitors. If it works, we'll be in the green." He flipped the switches, and the bars on the sides of the cylindrical generators went from amber to green, then to blue. A second light next to the bars went from black to red, and a mild jolt resounded from the newly-constructed reactor.
"There's electricity coming from your reactor!" Yensen hopefully noted. He looked at the output meter. "Wow, that's enough electricity to power your heart for two hundred lifetimes."
"Or something big for about twenty minutes," Rock added. "Let's get started on getting us out of here. But first, put this thing in my chest." After Yensen implanted the baseball-sized reactor in Rock's chest, the young businessman began gathering together all the energy components he could muster. He had no intention of building a missile system for them, but rather, a clever means of escape. Back home, he'd only gotten a primitive version of this technology done, but he would finish it here, because here it would be in practical use right away. The hours, days, and weeks passed, with him working on his project, and the captors slowly became suspicious that something was not in proper order. As the finishing touches were still a bit away, the slit window of the metal door opened. A loud yelling came through.
Yensen shouted something back at them, but they tried to enter anyway. This would hasten the process of completing the project, as a plastic explosive wired to the door went off the moment they opened it. "Rock, will the machine be done soon? We've got to get out of here!"
"Just a few moments," Rock reassured him.
Yensen grabbed a machine gun. "I'll buy you some time." He dashed off and began firing.
"NO! What're you doing?..!" he yelled, in vain, to stop his friend from performing a suicidal act. Unable to stop him, he looked at the screen attached to his device. "Goddammit, I can't believe he did that." The machine, a teleport core, had only to locate the farthest safe coordinates to project the energy, and they'd arrive safely. If only he could get Yensen to safety. He heard the sounds of gunfire stop and complete silence take over. A few instants later, a large stream of shots could be heard and a man's scream echoed painfully throughout the cave. "YENSEN!" He wanted to leap out of the room and dash after him, but the energy from the core shot forth and overwhelmed his body with a glowing mass of blue light. "I'm sorry, I couldn't save you." A tear shed as his corporeal body vanished from the cave. Not a second later, armed men arrived at the room, only to find a large tank of hydrogen gas attached to a plastic explosive right behind the machine. Their screams lasted only an instant as a massive explosion rocked the nearby surroundings.
He materialized not six hundred meters from where a military search party was looking for him. A few minutes passed before a helicopter descended, and a very familiar face stepped out. "How was the fun-vee?" Zero asked. "Next time, you're riding with me."
"Man, am I glad to see you again," Rock uttered. Weakened, he clamored into the helicopter.
His return stateside would be a huge media circus, as it always was whenever the businessman would remind the public of who he was. In this situation, a press conference got hastily thrown together because he had a very important announcement to make. If there's one thing Yensen taught him, it was everything. He would step out of the limo, walk past the crowd of eager masses armed with cameras and enter the building he was familiar with. Stepping onto the podium, he sat down in front of the lectern. "If you please, I'd appreciate if everyone just sat down. It makes it easier for me to relax and adjust to the fact that I'm not dead." Mild laughter came from the comment. "I learned something absolutely vital during my captivity. My grandfather's company has been supplying weapons that have resulted in deaths incalculable. This will stop immediately, and Light Enterprises will from this moment forward, focus primarily on civilian robotics. We can't afford to legitimize the blood on our hands with dollar signs. That is all, thank you." He stood up, ignoring the mountain of commentary and the questions they asked. A business partner of his took the stage and gave a closing statement before meeting him in the power room of the factory.
"Rock, what the hell was that? Are you serious? We can't do this. We build weaponized robotics. It's what we do." He stood a foot taller than his younger business partner, and had a bald head. He had an angry look on his face, primarily because of the fact that he believed his partner had gone insane.
"Sigma, you have to realize, we can't keep wiping blood away with paper money. I learned how important life is in that cave."
"Your grandfather, Rock, was Thomas Xavier Light. His son was my best friend. We built this company from a small robotic assistant manufacturer into the giant it is. Wilson Light and Sigman Stane; people knew our names because we took the little company that could and made it bigger than your grandfather could ever have imagined." He wiped his face. "Now you're putting everything at risk. We're iron mongers, it's what we do."
"No, not anymore. And I think we should look into plasma reactor technology again. And also, look into the Mega Man security project. We can build better androids than we ever could before; we could completely make up for the stock drop of this new direction."
He put his arm around his business partner's shoulders and directed him to the twenty foot tall steel sphere in the middle of the room. "The plasma reactor? That thing's a press gimmick we did to shut the hippies up. It's huge and requires a huge investment of capital, it would never replace standard electricity. And why would we dig up that ancient Mega Man security and defense robot your father built to try and help the police? We all saw how that turned out." He turned to face his friend. "Now, you've got to let me see it."
"Who told you? Pepper, or Zero? Who?"
"Rock..." Sigma protested.
"I'm guessing it was Zero." He took his shirt off, revealing the metal cylinder built into his chest, with the small sphere wired into it.
Sigma began walking away. "We're going to talk about this later, you know, Rock. Get the bugs worked out."
Rock walked into his mansion from there. A very emotional Pepper Potts was waiting for him. "Mister Light," she began.
He wrapped his arms around her. "I'm so glad to be home." He smiled as he hugged her tightly.
"Is there anything I can do for you?"
"I'll be fine for now. I've got work to do." He headed downstairs. A nagging worry had come to him ever since he came back. "Jarvis," he uttered, "I need a check of my heart rate." One of the worker robots came up to him and hooked a lead up to his chest.
"Sir," the male voice answered, "your heart rate is steady, but your volume is down as well as your blood oxygen."
Rock pounded his fist on the desk. "Damn it, I knew it. The plasma bolt is slowly killing my tissue. This reactor can keep my heart beating, but the tissue itself is going to die soon. Jarvis, based on the decline rate, how long do I have?"
"Based on the steady rate of decline, I'd give you three and a half weeks, sir."
Rock thought a moment. "That's long enough. Jarvis, open a new project file. I'm going to construct a reproducible android to replace my current body. Call it, a 'Reploid' if you will. Start scanning materials to find a optical processing unit that can perfectly duplicate human complexity; I'm going to need to download my consciousness and memory as is without complication. Start scanning titanium alloys; I need it to be not much heavier than I am, yet much more durable than common titanium. Put in an order for thermal treated metal—alpha level heat resistance, six double-grade solar panels, some high-stress welding materials, some superconducting wiring, and four tanks of hydrogen gas. Save project on my private hard drive away from prying eyes."
"Project name, sir?"
Rock sat down and thought for a second. "Call it, 'Mega Man X.'"