Mega Man is a series where various heroes have to fight Dr. Wily and what he created over and over not to end the threat (they wish) but to stave off disaster and let the world survive a little longer.
One of Dr. Wily's canonical motivations is jealousy that everyone thought Dr. Light, who used to be his friend, invented better stuff than he did, despite Dr. Wily being more of a genius and inventing all the setting's physics-breaking stuff... like reality-altering via programs, since the cyber-elves are cloned from one of his creations. This references the Mega Man Gigamix manga, where Dr. Wily encouraged Dr. Light to create robot masters.
Crossover with Diane Duane's Young Wizards series, primarily the first three books. Everyone's doomed because an entity outside causality is throwing a temper tantrum because it made death, destruction and entropy and thought that everyone would agree that these were the greatest things ever and worship its genius, and instead everyone was pretty ticked off that their stuff was getting wrecked. So, it's decided to force everyone to admit it's right and death is the best thing ever by tricking everyone into agreeing to be exterminated & destroying everything in countless ways in countless timelines. Oh, and since it got to write laws of physics, currently the laws of physics say it wins.
This entity is obscenely powerful, very intelligent (unless its ego is calling the shots, which fortunately is most of the time) and will casually… forget going nuclear, it will put out the sun if someone manages to sufficiently frustrate one of its countless manifestations. Not even to wipe out humanity in a fit of pique, but just as a battle tactic to depower the thing they were using to fight him. Oh, and it is constantly influencing our thoughts and can sometimes outright possess us.
Wizards are given a copy of the operating manual for the universe & write access to the universe's programming in exchange for promising to fight to survive, and like cyber-elf reality warping, generally someone's going to die if you're picking a fight with the Lone Power.
"Go ahead, panic! Do it now and avoid the June rush!"
Wizards with tech affinities (and any wizard with a spell) can talk to technology. Cousin is how wizards address people (especially fellow wizards) who aren't their species.
"Dai stihó, cousin. I am on errantry and I greet you." She smiled, but it quickly faded. She was too exhausted to keep up an appearance of good cheer, or so it seemed.
Human. Or so it seemed, again. He could verify that with a spell, but it didn't seem right when she was barely standing. He'd seen her hand when she reached up to push back her crinkled brown hair, in a gesture that seemed born of habit more than nervousness, trying to wake herself up to greet him properly.
Her fingertips were raw and fingernails ragged, as though she'd been clawing at stone. Cuts and scratches on her face. A wizard could heal that, unless they didn't have the time. Or the energy left. But she was ten, maybe twelve. She should have her full life ahead of her, all the energy she would need to visit distant galaxies. Healing was nothing: he'd studied how to do that decades ago.
"Dai stihó, cousin," he answered in the Speech. "Well met on the common journey." When he wasn't on errantry, hadn't been asked to help anyone yet. A century spent sleeping, waiting. "I've sworn the Oath, although I haven't had much opportunity to do any real wizardry yet: do you need me to try to heal you?"
She shook her head, trying another smile. "Don't need it." His words still seemed to come as a relief.
X was worried about her, but for all she knew he might have already made his choice, he reminded himself. "Are you here to judge whether or not I should be let out into the world?" he asked her, wanting to hope.
But she was too young for that to be all it was. If it was a matter of judgment, a Senior Wizard would be here.
A shake of her head, before she remembered to add words in the speech. "I'm here to get you out. It's part of my ordeal."
That didn't explain what she was doing here, why she'd walked into the virtual reality inside the capsule when the release needed to be triggered from outside.
"I need your true name to cast the spell to gate you out of where he stuck you," she explained. "I have to get you to where someone can find you."
Giving someone you'd just met your true name was far less dangerous in wizardry than letting someone cast a spell on you using an inaccurate version of your name. A version of your name that was wrong in the wrong ways could alter who you were. X had done a lot of work to keep that from happening: "Did it not work when you tried to use a short form?"
She nodded, swaying on her feet a little.
"I'm sorry," he said, "that's my wards' fault."
"No," she said, shaking her head. Then, again, "No, it's good that you've already got wards."
"I could cast a healing spell while you're putting together the spell for that?" X offered. He, she'd said, and X doubted very much that she meant Dr. Light.
Was the Lone Power trying to seal him away a good sign? It meant he could hope that he'd help the world more than he'd hurt it. Maybe it was just trying to ensure that androids were stillborn, though. Bring them death before they got a chance to live and become part of the creation it resented.
Another shake of her head as she got what turned out to be a laser cutter out of her pocket. "If you're a wizard, can you use your manual to check my work? And is it okay to draw on the ground here?"
"Go ahead," he said, manifesting his manual as a book in this virtual reality. If he was involved in working the spell, he could at least write in that she'd be healed in the process of it, since it looked like she'd walked into this virtual world physically and it would need to gate her body back into physical reality regardless."
She was holding the laser cutter to avoid putting pressure on her fingertips, he saw. Trying to draw a complex spell with those injuries and a pen would be very painful. He'd construct the spell himself, it would just be an act of will to lay out a diagram here, but he didn't know the parameters.
"Look, I'm happy that you're a good person," she said, when she looked over the diagram.
"You're not…"
"Making a sacrifice play? I'm making six sacrifice plays," she said, trying to look proud before that faded away too. "My dad was going to do one, but He got him before he could. They sent his books, and I found the manual in there… It was important. Someone had to finish it, so I figured I should see what else I could do with it," her death, "you know? Releasing Dr. Light's last creation, especially when he was a Senior Wizard… People have tried. You weren't just left here by all by yourself because no one cared," she reassured him, looking concerned he might think that.
The power someone who should have had a long life wielded. The leeway, or lack of sabotage at least, that came from knowing the Lone Power was laughing in the back of her head, too pleased that someone was choosing death, seeing it was a tool, to sabotage her even when she fought against him. "I've always known that I was safe here," in this virtual reality, "because someone did care," he told her. "It's not true that someone has to die in order to save the world. It used to be true," but that was changed.
Had it been changed back?
"It never was true," she said tartly, not happy that he wasn't getting it. That he was assuming she'd done this because she was stupid or suicidal or gave up too easily? "It just makes it easier. He wants people to know that they're doomed, and his ego means that he hates to admit defeat. Handing him a partial victory is easier than getting him to accept a loss without putting out the sun again, and if a wizard, if anyone dies that's a win for him, even if he doesn't manage to kill as many people as he wanted. You have no idea how much stuff I've gotten away with in the past two weeks because he knows I know that no matter how many times I save the world I'm still doomed. He wants people to choose death."
"To see his creation as something that they want or need…" X said, and took a step back. "I haven't made the choice yet. To just go along with someone's death, to accept it as inevitable, and benefit from it…"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm mortal, there's a piece of him in all of us because once upon a time someone decided it was worth dying in exchange for an IQ upgrade that'd let us take over the world and have the power of life and death over all the other sentient species on Earth. For all you know I could be the poison apple, here to offer you freedom in exchange for getting his claws into you and dooming all the others like you the way we're doomed. That's why I wasn't going to give you a choice," she said, her foot closing a line.
After Dr. Cain left the lab where they were keeping their latest patient, X took a deep breath. "Fairest and Fallen, greetings and defiance."
The body on the worktable didn't stir.
X closed his eyes, took another breath. So. Not yet. Despite what X felt from the android, if he was an android, he couldn't be a manifestation of the Lone Power. Its arrogance wouldn't let it fail to respond to that challenge.
The way Dr. Wily finally had, and Dr. Light had found out that his old friend wasn't even overshadowed, that all along the person he most respected had only encouraged him to create the robot masters, create his children, so it could hurt and twist and doom them.
The way it must want to doom X.
A hundred years in the capsule, and he hadn't been offered the Choice. His father might have done all he could to ward it, and X had a terrible certainty that since his father was dying anyway, and dying alone, he might have… Younger wizards with most of their life ahead of them had more power to burn. A wizard as old as his father, and exhausted fighting a losing battle to defend his first children? Death was the enemy, but Dr. Light might have cast the spell to protect X with the last of his power. That would explain how the capsule lasted a full century in the pocket dimension the Lone Power trapped it in. How he was found by someone like Dr. Cain.
While he was in the capsule, X had no power to help or harm the outside world. He could understand being passed over as insignificant then, but now he was creating a new species, one that could do so much to help this world.
No. That wasn't what mattered. The Lone Power would want to ensure that they suffered and died just because they existed, just like humans. Just like the robot masters. Just like everything.
In order for reploids to escape that fate, X had to choose, and choose right when the time came.
Seventy years since he decided to swear the oath, a few years since he woke up, since Sigma was created and X's kind numbered more than one, and still no sign of his Ordeal. The Lone Power tried to kill every new wizard, throwing them into situations they might not yet have the experience to survive. Those attempts to snuff out every new wizard were practically a universal constant at this point. X was a wizard, therefore the Lone Power should have tried to kill him by now. When a being so obsessively set in its ways, trying to impose its way of doing things on all of existence broke one of its traditions?
Other wizards in this world which struggled for survival were fighting their own battles. It appeared to them. It didn't appear before X, even when he assisted other wizards on errantry. That wasn't normal.
It had gotten to the point that the Senior Wizards had designated his house something of a safe haven for young wizards on especially harrowing ordeals who needed to sleep. Far too many of them ended up dead. Far too many. He had to let them go and fight the death of this world, both of them knowing that once they parted they were in danger again. That he couldn't go and help them, because if he was there the enemy they needed to fight if they wanted to survive the ordeal, if they wanted to live to fight another day wouldn't show its face.
They'd asked it, of course. Far too many wizards had reported back. Wearing dozens of faces, the Lone Power laughed when he was mentioned, smirked at the question of the Reploids' Choice.
The Choice wasn't already made. It hadn't already won.
It was growing harder and harder not to be paranoid. Knowing the guise it wore to destroy the robot masters, it was hard not to suspect Dr. Cain, when the man was his dear friend. Just like his father's dear fri- No.
To drive him to suspect others, to live in fear awaiting death? No one could live like that. It was the creator of entropy, not just death: of course it was willing to wait, for him to be worn down by fear. For him to let down his guard.
There was only one person who could have built the Red Demon which killed so many people, humans and reploids both, before being brought down by X's firstborn. The symmetry of it was almost too blatant, he thought, looking at that shining golden hair, armor red as blood.
Was this it? Or was this some sort of trick?
No, of course it was a trick. The Choice was always a trick. No one would just choose suffering and death without what they were led to believe was a good reason.
Zero's creator was arrogant. That was reason enough for his looks.
Of course X was going to do his best to repair him. In Life's name and for Life's sake, that was the oath every wizard swore.
To kill someone who might be an innocent, regardless of their creator, on the suspicion that allowing them to live might cost his children? Was he going to start killing humans next, when their choice meant that all of them had shards of the Lone Power within them, slowly killing them, driving them to kill others?
Humans, cats, dogs… If he was going to kill everything that let death into its heart in order to protect reploids, he'd end up with a very empty world. For reploids to become agents of death and destruction: wasn't that itself choosing to do the Lone Power's work?
A hundred years was nothing in the lifespan of the universe, he reminded himself. A hundred years was nothing compared to how long he and his children might live, as long as he didn't screw this up.
What he had chosen was who he would be, how he would live his life. He had decided to help people, not hurt them, and he wouldn't be tricked into abandoning that choice. For suspicion to make him a killer, when even the certainty hadn't made his brother one?
All the wizards that fought for the survival of this world… Even if humanity was already doomed, people's wills and actions still mattered. The Cataclysm wasn't the only time the Lone Power tried to destroy this world: Earth was still here because thousands, millions of other attempts had been defeated. X might be in a position to influence a choice, if not make it himself, but every wizard had the fate of the world riding on them.
Even in the face of entropy, victory was still possible, and if he could keep his children safe from death, if they could reinforce this world, the way his father hoped the robot masters would? Time itself was malleable for wizardry. The fact that humans were inevitably doomed now didn't mean they had to stay that way.
If even the Lone Power could be redeemed, then his brothers the robot masters: even now, they might yet survive.
Trying to live well despite an extradimensional entity able to manifest itself at any point in the space-time continuum determined to wipe out all life and make it suffer in the process seemed to require a certain blend of optimism and paranoia.
Well, that would be why all the simulations.
He wasn't happy to finally discover a sign that it was beginning its attempt to destroy his children, especially when the first attack was so blatant, something that killed so many and could lead to public fear of reploids among humans.
Work and wait. Care for his children. Keep an eye on 'Dr. Wily's' creation.
It was only after Sigma launched the missiles that he realized his family's old enemy (the enemy of all things) had built Zero and infused him with that power no wizard could ignore as a distraction.
They were all going to die. Their days were numbered, their bodies would be torn apart from the inside by entropy if the Lone Power couldn't destroy them in war, as he used them to kill others. They were mortal, within the power of death, they were all doomed to die. And X wasn't, but that meant nothing when his children were all going to die.
The way Zero had.
The fact that it was now possible to defeat the Lone Power without sacrifice hadn't let X defeat Sigma without Zero's sacrifice. Let him kill Sigma. He was the one to give Sigma up to death, but he'd failed him long before then.
He'd failed them. There was hope for them, and he let it be taken away. They could have lived.
The Androids' Choice remained unmade, his manual revealed, but there, spelled out for him, was the Reploids' Choice. Sigma. His son's choice. His children's deaths.
This would fall under 'don't explain the joke,' but since this is a crossover so getting what's implied requires a lot of background information... X is two hundred percent not wrong about Zero, who is brought back to the life by the enemy a few months later, but I'd have to summarize both book series worldbuilding & game series plot points spread out over three subseries and more than a dozen games to explain why I find this so very amusingly appropriate to both parts of the crossover.
"The God of Destruction" is essentially a reality warping avatar of The Corruption in an android host body. Sigma didn't just up and decide to commit genocide - Zero infected Sigma when Sigma fought him. Zero didn't remember his true nature when he saved X, and becomes less happy the more he finds out, but Zero's not actually capable of staying dead. They have to seal him away at one point to stop The Corruption from using him to respawn when they finally manage to create another reality warper that can purge it from reploids.
If the Lone Power of the books is going after its pre-tantrum aspect, how much would it hate the part of itself that decided to grow up? How hard a time would a being that became an avatar of destruction and corruption have not being evil when it hates the thought of what it became and its prior self is quite willing to use that desire to not know to keep its manifestations helpless and ignorant so they can't effectively fight it and will hopefully just become part of it again?
