Disclaimer: Megaman/Rockman X is owned by Capcom.
Authors notes: the second installment! I may as well get this out of the way now. I'm going to try to update this frequently. I'm posting up chapters the minute I finish them, so if there's ever a long amount of time between the release of two chapters, I'm either suffering from laziness, writers block, or just unable to get to my computer (a situation which I know will occur Monday through Wednesday). When school starts up in a week, I'll have to slow down on my updates for school work, so please bear with me! Also, action may become the next genre in the story. "Cookies" if you read this straight through without skipping about.
PS: Didn't get "cookies" for reading the AN? You still have a chance! If you can name the popular comedic skit being referenced in this chapter, you get "cookies"! (Disclaimer: it belongs to The Frantics)
"Alright students." The teacher of Class Two-A announced. "I am your teacher this year. As you already know my name is Forte. I don't expect anyone to refer to me as mister, and I won't allow anyone to use honorifics. As much as it may look like it, were not mimicking a century old animation concept." He was supplied with blank stares around the class, as well as a couple of mumbles.
"There's no way this is gonna teach us anything." One of the students mumbled.
Forte slammed his hands down on the students desk. "And may I ask what your name is?" the aggravated teacher ground his palm into the wood.
The student stood up. He was tall and lean, with broad shoulders and red hair. "Double." He replied coolly, crossing his arms.
"And what was your question?" Forte sounded and looked calm, but he emanated an angry aura.
"I simply wish to know," Double brought his arms to his side. "How does this program teach us anything, Forte Sensei." At the end of this sentence Double blinked, and opened his eyes outside the now shattered window of the second story classroom, and found himself plummeting to the ground in mere seconds. The rest of the class, only looked at Forte in shock and awe, who had thrown a student out the window.
"I said no honorifics." He shouted down to the discombobulated Double, who had gotten back on his feet and was vainly stumbling for a wall. "Now, to answer his question, your going to be put into the position of a last century high school human, and exposed to the pressure and emotions that such humans were exposed to. This is no simulation" Forte gestured outside the new exit. "This is a real town. You will be given your own apartment, allowed to search for a job, or use whatever other skills you have in life. You will be freely given the right to choose your own actions for the whole school year, at the end of which, we will evaluate your actions, and determine weather you pass or not, and if you should or shouldn't repeat a year at school. Under normal circumstances, you will need to pass four years to get into actual society, but some special cases are allowed to skip years of the program. It's not normal, but it's not uncommon either, so don't be surprised if you lose a classmate over night." By now Double was climbing back in the window. "Understand now Double?"
"But I-" Double lifted his legs through the window.
"Get in your seat now, or it's back through the window." In a split second, the battered reploid had made it back to his seat.
The rest of the day had gone by quickly. Zero had all of his classes (aside from gym which he took with Slash Beast, I mean, lets face it, the guy can run at like two hundred miles per hour) with Forte. There wasn't anything difficult about the school itself. I guess the hard parts come after class. Zero concluded. Along with double, there were other members of his class that he found particularly interesting. First was a reploid that wore a purple helmet with his uniform named vile. He seemed intimidating, but a conclusion couldn't be come to after one glance. Along with a, 'ahem', self proclaimed "womanizer" who called himself Dynamo, as well as some purple haired feminine boy who's name Zero kept forgetting. Of course at the front of these was Iris, who seemed to have a certain fondness of Zero.
The bell rang and Forte dismissed the students to go to their homes or to explore town for the rest of the night. As Zero was packing his belongings, a loud crash could be heard outside the room. Like all the other students, Zero was keen to investigate.
In the hallway, two freshmen were being beaten by a five man group of sophomores and juniors. One of the older ones saw this as an opportunity to hammer his ideals into the freshmen. "Listen up now freshmen." The burly reploid began. "Now that you're here, that makes you the bottom of the food chain." He began kicking the downed reploid in the ribs. "If you don't listen to us upper classmen, there will be discipline." He raised his foot again to take another kick when another power intervened.
Behind the burly delinquent, now holding his foot up in the air, was another well built reploid wearing a black and white army hat with two cross swords. The boy was a male student and looked to be just sprouting a beard. "You shouldn't abuse your authority." The boy's eyes were filled with righteous fury.
"Colonel." The delinquent identified the freshman's savior as he cursed under his breath.
"Get off of the kid." Colonel ordered. The other reploid had a different idea though.
"Everyone get him!" He yelled. "He may be strong but he can't take all of us!"
The brawl began. Everyone stepped back, as well as Zero in the front, and Iris who grabbed onto Zero's arm.
Colonel was indeed quite strong, as well as a master of hand to hand combat. The first move by the delinquents was to close in around Colonel. Before they managed to begin their actual attack however, Colonel managed to nail the reploid farthest to the left with a hard right hook, sending the unfortunate receiver of the blow, through the door to class Two-A, past the oblivious Forte, and out the already shattered window.
Although Colonel dealt the first blow however, the fight was still four to one, hardly equal odds. He now struggled to parry between the well placed blows of the remaining four reploids in the narrow space of the hallway. With lack of maneuverability, he began losing ground. He could not let up his guard to attack and risk massive damage and he couldn't avoid any of the spread out attacks.
Dang it! Colonel thought. If this were just two on one, maybe even three, I could handle myself, but four people is too much. A final punch now broke Colonel's defense. One of the reploids moved in to deliver the finishing blow, but was at that moment, done in by a blonde reload with a long pony tail.
"Boot to the head!" Zero shouted as he jumped to Colonel's side and kicked his attacker in the face, propelling him to the broken classroom window.
"Stupid freshman!" One of the Younger of the brawlers tried to punch Zero in the face, but missed entirely, as Zero quickly sidestepped to the left, and launched his right arm into the reploids stomach, in turn, launching the sophomore through the severely overused window.
Colonel stood up beside Zero and took a fighting stance. The two reploids left, both juniors, seeing the odds were now equal, therefore, not in their favor, did the only plausible thing to do. They made the pile of reploids outside the classroom two bodies larger.
Zero sighed in relief. "Hey, your pretty stro-" he was cut off by Colonel's massive hand enclosing around his neck.
Colonel's eyes were dark and deadly "What were you doing, with my sister." Although it was a question, it was spoken more like a threat. It also didn't help that Colonel was squeezing the life out of Zero's neck at the moment.
"Brother! Stop!" Iris ran up to the two reploids. "I cut myself this morning and-"
Colonel's grip instantly disappeared from Zero's neck. At the same time, his turned from a deadly stare, to a panicked state of babbling. "What happened? Were you hurt! Did you go to the nurse!" and so on and so forth.
After about five minutes of senseless blabber from Colonel's mouth, Iris finally spoke. "Well I ran into Zero and cut myself when I fell, and when I did, Zero gave me a flesh strip to put on it."
Colonel looked back at Zero, who was still rubbing his sore neck. It was then that Colonel got down on his hands and knees in front of Zero. "I apologize for my rudeness."
Zero looked down. "Please don't do that."
Colonel stood up straight again. and wiped his eyes, which were now dripping tears. What's this guy's problem? Zero thought.
"Sorry" Colonel began again. "It's just… Iris means the world to me and I would be devastated if anything happened to her." Colonel stuck out his hand. "I do however believe we have not been properly introduced. My name is Colonel, a junior. Iris and I are twins, but due to some tests she had to undertake after activation, she was unable to come for two years.
Zero raised his eyebrow. "Tests?" he confirmed. "So your some sort of new generation reploid?"
Colonel chuckled. "Sort of. We were originally meant to be one reploid, with the perfect combat programming, as well as perfect appreciation for life. However," Colonel's face turned grim. "The spirit of a warrior understands that at one point you must end your enemy's life. This understanding conflicted with the "perfect appreciation for life", thus causing our data to split into two pieces." Colonel began to smile again. "I the brother, a warrior through and through, and Iris the sister, who was overall the most considerate of others. I was more like an average reploid, but being a prototype, I was still sent here. Iris was kept back two years to test her own combat capabilities, which although she possesses them, her conscious restricts her from using them." Iris nodded in agreement.
"So why are you here Zero?" Colonel threw Zero's question back. "You're pretty strong. Are you a new prototype yourself?" Zero nodded in agreement. Probably best not let them know I'm a former maverick. He thought.
"Wow!" Colonel's face lit up. "That explains quite a bit. Maybe we should spar with each other sometime. We need to go home now, but maybe we'll get to fight sometime!" Zero laughed with Colonel on the way out of the building, and then parted ways with him and Iris.
Zero chuckled to himself. Maybe this year really could be fun.