Whoo, I have no idea what possessed me to write this fic but I have had it in mind for a while. It's been a long time since I was obsessed with the Megaman X/Zero/ZX series but I find myself being drawn over to it again.
And then the idea of a Hetalia and Megaman Zero hit me.
Yup.
Hetalia.
And for those who have read my Hetalia fics, you should have a good idea of who my main character will in this one-shot. So here I go!
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Megaman or Hetalia merchandise or anything associated with them. I do, however, own the concept of my version of OC!Philippines post Elf-Wars. Also, I changed Philia's name. So she is now Clara Maria De la Cruz!
Ghost of the Past
Ugh. Anita was right when she had said that Clara should start taking better care of herself, even if the latter was beginning to make a break through in whatever project she was working on.
Right now, Clara was trying to figure out if her plan of growing vegetation within an underground green house would work out. It was an idea that she had been working on for a little over a week.
In the greenhouse plan she was going to have Anita propose for her, the amount of water and light the vegetation would receive could be easily controlled not by the weather but by people. Not to mention that it would be protected from the harsh climate outside of Neo Arcadia as well as Maverick attacks.
It was late and even though everyone else had gone home for the night, Clara was the only one who had remained in the lab working on the project. The only things keeping her company was the noise of her writing on an electronic pad and the dim light of the lamp on her desk she used to see the pad. Stifling a yawn, she continued on with her work, relentlessly running various ideas in her mind to try and improve the greenhouse plan.
Her head ached, her eyes fought hard to stay open, her stomach gnawed at her and even though she knew she should quit for the day and get some food and rest she still continued on.
Like someone who was driven by obsession. Probably similar to how Doctor Frederich Weil decided that all reploids in the world should be forcefully put under the control of one single reploid to prevent a second Maverick War from occurring. Ironically, passing the plan (dubbed Project Elpis) had resulted in the worst destruction and loss of life that the world had ever faced within its history. And that was saying something since Clara's kind had been around for a long time.
The Elf Wars.
So great the devastation that even she and the other personifications of countries who had survived many wars before the aforementioned one were still haunted by the carnage and destruction that would forever be burned into their memories over seventy years later.
And Clara Maria Isabella Carriedo Fernandez De la Cruz just so happened to be the personification of the Philippines.
Or was it former? Did her house still exist? That was why she was still a living immortal being of some sort, right? And if her house no longer existed, there was the possibility that she was still alive because some of her people had managed to survive.
That question had bothered her for a long time and it was maddening trying to figure out why she was still alive.
A smile lit Clara's face as she finally figured out the solution to the problem that had been bothering her for three hours. Though it was such a simple problem that she should have been able to solve it when everyone else around her earlier was going home.
Maybe she should really stop pushing herself like this, Clara mused as she rubbed the right side of her head to dull the throbbing. It helped, but not all that much as the consequences of her all nighters and unhealthy eating habits started to come down on her.
But before she could allow herself to crash, there was still something she had to. Something she should have dealt with several days ago but had been too damned focused on her research to care.
Closing her eyes, Clara willed herself to speak out loud. It had been a long time since her throat had healed, but she found that even after all these years, she had difficulty speaking out loud unless she was really ticked off. So for the most part she communicated either through her electronic note pad or by smacking them hard on the head.
"I know you're there." Her voice was quiet, but level and even and could easily be heard in the almost empty room. "You've been watching me for days now. Any particular reason why I've caught your interest?"
Ignoring the feeling of being watched was an incredibly dumb thing to do since it usually meant that you were someone's target. And not in a good way either. But Clara was exhausted and couldn't bring herself to care any more. The only thing she cared about these days was making life for everyone else better, hence the driven obsession to work on project after project relentlessly regardless of how worried her co-workers were when it came to how far she was pushing herself.
Silence followed after her statement and then she heard the foot fall of footsteps coming towards her.
Clara stood up and turned in her seat to face the unknown person who had been watching her for about an hour. When they stepped out of the shadows, Clara's eyes widened and she unconsciously took a step back when the person came into view.
Because standing in front of her was a figure wearing a crimson sleeveless jacket with gold trimming that nearly touched the floor. The coat was open to reveal a light blue dress underneath. And wearing those clothes was...
Her.
Or rather, her past self. The Clara standing in front of her was one of the commanders involved in the Elf Wars who had sided with X against Weil and his insane plan to enslave all the reploids on the planet. She still had long glossy black hair that reached more than half way down her back and an expression on her face that was less world weary, less tired, less cynical towards humans and their tendency to have to be in control of everything...
The one who had taken on the title as the Crimson Sun Commander because of the colour of her coat, the way her red-brown eyes flashed more red than brown whenever she gave orders to eliminate both reploids who were under Omega's control and cutting down the occasional humans who made it clear that they supported the insane mad man that was Weil by attacking X or anyone who allied themselves with him...
There were to many reasons to list why she could be associated with the colour crimson, the colour of blood, the colour associated with evil.
The girl rubbed her eyes to check if she was still conscious. Seeing that her mirror image was still there even after she had painfully pinched herself, Clara was aware that she was still awake even though her body begged to just crash where she stood at any second and the possible hallucination she was suffering because of her lack of self-preservation.
"You..." Clara's eyes narrowed. There were only two possible beings who could copy her like this. But one of them was MIA so that left... "...Phantom."
Her doppleganger stared back at her, a small frown marring her face before she closed her eyes. The image of the double began dissolving, revealing the tall form of a reploid. A reploid wearing black armor, the design similar to that of the ruler of Neo Arcadia, X, with a red swallow tail cape billowing out behind him. A white mask concealed the top half of his face and the only thing visible from behind the mask was a pair of dark eyes that stared intently back at her in a scrutinizing fashion.
"So it is you." He said. "I didn't think it was possible, but it is you."
General Shadow Phantom. One of the Four Guardians of Neo Arcadia and the leader of the Zan'ei Army. Just as his ninja attire suggested, Phantom specialized in stealth and ninjutsu skills. He could hide in the shadows and could strike so fast that his victims would never know what hit him.
He was the most loyal to X and was therefore his body guard, watching from the shadows and ensnaring those who dared to attack his father and creator.
As well as someone she had been working with, along side with X during the war.
"Shouldn't you be guarding X?" It was night after all and the best time of when an assassin could strike.
"It's Master X." The unsaid 'To you' rang out in the silence between them.
"It doesn't sound right." Clara said, slightly frowning, her voice growing quieter that most people would have to strain their hearing to hear what she was saying. "And I don't see the need to call someone by a title they don't like either."
The being known as X, the original source of the reploid race, hadn't struck her as the type who liked being addressed as 'Master' or any other title that denoted high status by anyone. The title had come from the people who worshiped the ground X walked on after his heroics of stopping Weil and ending the Elf Wars after four painful years had come to light. It was a title that had been forced on to him and one he reluctantly took when he became ruler of Neo Arcadia.
"How are you still alive?" The black ninja eventually asked. "How are you standing in front of me?"
At this point, Clara's voice decided to give out on her and she had to resort to using her electronic note pad to communicate again. Grabbing it off the desk she had been sitting down at, she wrote, "It's only been seventy-six years. Last I checked, humans can live up to a hundred years if they're lucky."
Okay, yes, she was being a smartass but the ninja seriously needed to learn the definition of loosening up. He did not have to go around frowning 24/7 straight, the only thing she ever saw Phantom do these days.
And he honestly wondered why small children trembled in his presence... more so than his fellow Guardians and siblings at least. Unless Fefnir was feeling trigger happy, Harpuia in a particularly foul mood, Leviathan wanting to spear something... forget it. Phantom could frighten the hell out of anyone just by being in the room staring at them in his quiet, unnerving way that suggested that if you dared to step out of line you were dead.
Unsurprisingly, Phantom was staring at Clara in his way that said he was not amused. AT ALL.
"I age well." She wrote into her pad again.
"You look the same as you did when I last saw you. When... Master X last saw you during the..." Phantom choked off before he could mention the Elf Wars. Even he, a battle hardened reploid, could still hardly bring himself to say those two words. "You went... crazy and before anything happened, you were screaming at me to go. To abandon you before you did something that you would regret."
His eyes glared accusingly into hers and Clara could see that he was extremely pissed off.
Which was saying something as Phantom prided himself on being the stoic one.
Clara wanted to reply that she had now had a lot more scars than before the Elf Wars (both physical and mental) but she thought that that would be pushing it. She had seen him lose his temper before and she would prefer to not be kunai'd to the next century if she could help it.
But she didn't blame him. Clara's recollection of the time was a bit fuzzy but there were also parts she remembered as clear as day.
Clara had fought and fought and fought some more but no matter how much her mind and will had bitterly continued to fight metaphorical tooth and nail against it, the madness, suffering and despair of her own people began to overwhelm her. And seeing the streets destroyed and bodies strewn everywhere day after day brought out an insanity that she had buried deep within her long ago was beginning to rise back to the surface, tipping the scale of her mental state from sanity to insanity and pushing her further and further over the edge.
Knowing that it wouldn't be long before she went completely berserk and started cutting everything down in her path, ally or enemy, she ordered Phantom and the others to ditch her rather than she waking up one disorienting day to find nothing but death surrounding her.
After they were gone she went into an abandoned building so that they were no witnesses around to see what she was about to do. She then took a gun from a fallen warrior and used it to incapacitate herself as best as she could.
Which was shooting herself in the head at point blank range. The only way to immobile a nation temporarily was to shoot them in the head or in the heart. To kill one, you crushed their hearts completely or destroyed their house and murdered all their citizens. There were probably other ways to kill a nation, but it was uncertain as to what those ways were.
"And when I came back to see if I could find where you had gone, I found your body in an abandoned building. You were dead." The venom in Phantom's voice was impossible to miss unless you were either deaf or close to it.
Fuck.
She was aware that she had a lot of explaining to do at this point but the whole 'I'm back from the dead' thing was going to be harder than the whole 'I don't age' aspect. Though she didn't really die... just went into a state that gave off the impression that she was dead.
Staring straight into Phantom's hurt and angry eyes, Clara eventually gave a long sigh.
"I was probably in a dead like state when you discovered me." She wrote, a wry expression on her face. "But then I got back up several days later to try and isolate myself from others. My kind don't die as easily."
"How is that possible? I saw your body lying on the ground!"
"Easy. I'm not human. I never was and I never said so either." She allowed herself a small smile. "Now do you see why I was made a Commander back then, despite the fact I looked like I was barely out of my adolescence? The higher ups who were against Weil and his precious Project knew what I was and knew that I was capable of being a Commander due to my experience in previous wars and battle. I've lived for a long time. I was around during World War I and was an active participant in World Wars II and III. The Elf Wars could be considered World War IV, but..."
All countries knew how to fight in wars and they all participated in the ones their people were involved in. The only difference between them was the experience and the resources at hand to fight in one.
There was another silence before Phantom broke it again.
"Then what are you?" There was uncertainty in his voice and even though it was barely noticeable, his stance suggested that he was unnerved by Clara's existence. "You are not human, nor are you a reploid. What are you?"
"At the moment, I don't know. I'm not sure if I'm still-" She didn't continue that statement because she had no idea how to end it. "The only answer I can give you to explain my existence is that I am a personification of a country. In specific, I am, was, the personification of the Republic of the Philippines."
A/N: Okay, a crappy ending right there but I had no idea how else to end it and it didn't seem right to continue the story anyways.
Um... Explanation time I guess.
OC!Philippines is one of the few countries who survived Post Elf-Wars. She and around fifteen others (not sure about the numbers). She chose to align with X as she and several of the others knew that Weil's Project Elpis was complete and utter madness, regardless of what their own citizens thought about it. She worked with Phantom until when she was forced to incapacitate herself for the sake of her not going out and killing everything that stood in her way. Shooting herself wasn't the best way to go about it, but she wasn't exactly sane either.
I'll delve into it more in another upcoming story.
And Clara did go insane at one point. I'll give you several hints as to why: Mansion. Alien Monster. Italy. Time Travel.
Have gun guessing what that is!
At that point, she and Phantom had formed a friendship. Not exactly a close one, but a pretty strong one. So it's understandable as to why Phantom is so PO'd at her when he sees her over seventy years after her 'suicide'.
Also, Phantom's copy ability. In my mind, Megaman X7, X8, and CM are canon. So yes, Axl exists and Phantom inherited his copy ability which happens to suit his ninja capabilities really well. An idea I took from Laryna6's The Definition of a Reploid fic. Cause you gotta admit, Phantom having that ability is epic. Also, he and his siblings were born a few years before the Elf Wars, so they were around that time to participate during the war.
And in case you haven't gotten it yet, the war was pretty damned scarring.
Philia, America, Canada, Germany, Prussia, and both Italies sided with X. I'm still trying to come up with the list of who sided with X and who agreed with Weil's idea of the reploids suffering more retribution from the damage that the Maverick Wars caused. Cause you know, after all the destruction the Sigma virus caused, the innocent reploids should suffer more!
Which is where you reviewers can probably help me. I've already mentioned who sided with X, but that's not the entire list. I need help picking out who went with Weil as well. And no, those who agreed with Weil aren't neccessarily evil. They just thought that the judgement should be more severe. So yeah...
So any suggestions... and I better have a good reason as to why they picked the side they did. And remember, those who agreed with Weil aren't bad guys! Just angry at the amount of damage the Maverick Wars caused!