X had indeed done the smart thing and gotten ready, Omega was pleased to see. "All this won't mean anything if you don't do your best. You're your father's son, aren't you? Apologist, making excuses for everything they do." He flowed gracefully into a ready position, then considered his choice of weapon. "Modern piece of crap… Still, maybe melee has its advantages. It's more fun to give them a sporting chance, or to at least let them think they have one. Still, saying I share his weaknesses? I think I'll toss this." The beam saber went clattering into a corner. "And show you what I can really do. It's been too long already. Time to finish this."
Seeing X's slight grimace, he laughed. "What, hoping we'd have the same fighting style? Sorry to disappoint. He only picked up the beam saber because he admired Sigma. Or, to be precise, the facsimile of Sigma the virus posed as before revealing itself. It was so very devastating when he realized he'd 'killed' his personal hero in the moment of his 'rescue.'" Omega laughed, readying his buster. "Come on, then."
They still stood there for a few moments, studying the other, watching for openings, the slight change in readiness level or some other signal that would give them a clue to when the other would move and how. "Buying time: how very pointless," Omega murmured, and fired.
The fight quickly became dodge and counter-dodge, maneuvering. Omega noted that X was trying to get in close, possibly having gotten the impression Omega's disdain for melee meant he was relatively unskilled at it. "You think getting in close will help?"
X said nothing in response: good. A fight, Zero had dinned into his head, was not the time to hold a conversation. X should have gotten the hint, though. When he came in range (into Omega's parlor), the saber wasn't necessary, not with his secret weapon.
His hair moved, trapping X's limbs, and he laughed. "I know everything Zero does, and I have tricks of my own. Stop fighting like a rookie." He released X… and got the buster whose charge X had managed to hide fired right at his heart, where X knew Zero's main processor was. And something else.
He fell to his knees. "He was right, that fool was right, I should have just sliced you into scrap…" He looked up, grinning. "You won't be so lucky next time. I lost to my own damn overconfidence." Then his fusion containment failed, despite all the safety features. The safety measures that had been taken out so perfectly.
He shouldn't have underestimated X. He was, after all, a master of reploid design, although not android.
A pity the blast only singed the one who caused it.
Or perhaps not, as since Sigma had been expecting Omega to be the main event X ended up relatively undamaged, but still damaged enough to require medical care. "How are you, X?"
"Almost as good as new. How soon do you think I can get out there? The virus is still up there… I'm needed." So cute, so sad, so vulnerable in that bed.
"I think it would be better if you stayed here a little longer." He sat down on the bedside. "What with everything that's happened. A few more days won't make a difference." X seemed to have noticed something was off even before Omega added that, "Nothing will."
"Lifesaver?" X scooted back in the bed. He knew a maverick when one revealed themselves that clearly.
"Not at the moment. Although he's been a maverick since he was assigned this post. His help in pushing Zero over the edge is very much appreciated by the others. They were getting tired of waiting, and reminding Zero of me, making him think of it, and rubbing his nose in it accelerated my awakening. After all, he had to be kept from blowing our cover." Omega tapped a button and X found himself tied down. "Potential maverick restraints. Without your armor you haven't a prayer of breaking them. I really should kill you now." He touched X's head.
"Omega."
"You really can't do threatening. And you don't want me to see you as a threat. Threats get neutralized. Hissing kittens are just too cute." He pet X's hair a bit.
"I thought it would take you six months to come back."
"No, just six months to build me a decent body. You should know how it works by now, X," he chided him.
"You're insane."
"What brought that on? The fact I'm teasing you instead of killing you when I should know better by now?" Clearly the answer to that was yes. "I do have you at my mercy. But then, when don't I." That smile sent a very pretty shiver down X's spine. "Do you want me to kill you? You asked Zero to, you know."
Seeing the horror, he just had to reassure him that, "Oh, I'm not going to infect you. Not this time, anyway. It's going to take some time to design a virus that will get around your personality's strong areas, and in fact it might not be possible until I kill all the humans, infect everyone else, and you have no more reason to fight, no one left to save. I think I'll offer you a different choice right now."
"What?"
"Should I remove Lifesaver now that I've blown his cover or leave him here? Those are my two options, but your two options are: tell everyone about Lifesaver and know that whoever replaces him will just be a walking, talking, target for infection, or don't and know that the person taking care of everyone is already a maverick. He never infected anyone: his entire role was to wake me up, but now? Well, now." Omega kept petting X. "You're so very cute when you're morally conflicted."
"Cute?" So creepy…
"Your eyes get all wide and you look so very helpless. Like a little lost kitten, and I just want to pick you up, take you home with me, and give you something to make it all better." He looked him up and down. "So very tempting… I'll wait until I have a body with systems that actually work. I want to feel it when I take the last of your innocence."
X gasped in shock.
"Zero was in love with you. Did you know that? He worked very hard to keep you from finding out, so that you could be strong when you would need to be. And X?" he bent down to whisper in the ear that exposed itself as X tried to twist away from him. "I'm not Zero." He bit X's earlobe, just gently, and X banged his head against Omega's host's to force him to let go. "I think I'll just take this one with me, actually. If you were to decide to cover it up, then they wouldn't have any reason to look at the security tapes of our little chat."
Seeing X's blush, half shame and half rage, he laughed. "You're going to be mine eventually. You're far too cute to just let die. Everyone might as well get used to the idea." He stood up and stepped away from the bed, then put a finger to his current lips, considering. "No one can touch you but me, remember that. It wasn't Lifesaver that touched you, but if I give him back this body, even that's too much. I'll just build him a new one. See you, X. Sooner than you think." In fact, there was an undercover maverick among the many watching this right now, since X had sent an emergency signal before Omega had even made his suggestion to keep Lifesaver's nature a secret.
He'd had the doors in a sphere around this room locked down, emergency status, so X would think his signal for help hadn't been detected. He didn't unlock them after he self-destructed the medic right in front of X's horrified eyes. After blowing him a kiss.
They needed to think he wasn't aware of the emergency signal. If they knew he was, that gave them a very short list of potential mavericks: few were aware of that precaution, including Lifesaver himself.
X was given his armor and some hot chocolate, as he turned down anything stronger. "Omega's insane."
One of the fools started to say something and, shaking his head, X overrode them. "Obsessive. Irrational when it comes to those obsessions. I've been going over what Zero said. If the century of hibernation is the sole reason I'm immune and he had that time, he should be immune. Zero said it wasn't a matter of fighting the virus, it was fighting himself. No, the theory that he is Dr. Cain's creation is incorrect and he knew it, it was something to hold onto, please just let me finish." That was said to shut down another useless interruption.
"A newbuilt android, therefore, would not be immune. If Omega was a maverick during the cataclysm, then went into hibernation, acquired immunity, and woke up with that much guilt, the desire to destroy the self that did that could very well, in a reploid or android, cause the self-destruction of the personality, resulting in the animalistic 'red demon' irregular of the rampage. Dr. Cain wanted to find out who had built the irregular, so he tried to install replacement systems several times. Every single time we just ended up with another animal, and very fast. Zero's OS was installed after we'd given up and done a memory wipe. These were not separate personalities, these were attempts to replace what we thought at the time were faulty systems. They weren't faulty: it was the memories at fault, not some bug. We just thought it was 'just' the trauma of the rampage. That would have been more than enough to reduce a newbuilt to that state, and Zero was not that unique a case aside from the death toll."
He took a deep drink. "You can install new nanites and new processors in us until doomsday, but as long as something remains we will get our bodies back. That's why I was built. Without those memories or the virus, Zero's personality was therefore the 'real' personality, who Omega would have been without the virus. However, memory forms a basis for behavior patterns. As Zero's memories began to be triggered by what looks like a deliberate effort from the mavericks, Zero had to suppress them or else the guilt would, in fact, have driven him insane yet again and 'unleashed' Omega, who can be referred to as 'Maverick Zero.' While Omega is immune to the virus per se, just like Zero, it was a maverick and contains the behavior patterns to the extent that immunity is irrelevant. Or, it would be if Omega were stable. In our first interaction, it underestimated me but, well, I've seen worse. This time, he appeared to be motivated almost entirely by his obsessions. Irrational and becoming more irrational. I think unless some other factor intervenes we'll be dealing with the 'red demon' very, very soon. That much decay in just a few hours? And this sort of decay is almost always exponential."
As the others started to get their hopes up, X dashed them. "The red demon was not genocidal but just plain homicidal. It killed everything that moved and didn't care how much attention it attracted: it wanted people to come fight it. While a non-intelligent enemy is good, one that will kill everything instead of just humans is not an improvement. Sigma exercised some restraint, he didn't do random massacres. An irrational opponent is unpredictable…" He shook his head. "If he weren't immune the virus would be making him, like Sigma, not feel any guilt. The fact he's cracking like this is evidence of immunity." He took another drink, centering himself on the action.
"If we can pull off a trap," he managed after bracing himself with that. "It's entirely possible I could repeat what I and Dr. Cain did before: erase every memory I can find, install replacement nanites, and produce another 'Zero,' although one who wouldn't remember being Zero anymore than being a maverick. Given the control Omega demonstrates over the virus, it's possible that he could destroy it. The problem is, are the memories of how to do so too closely related to the memories of all the deaths for a 'new' personality to access them without going insane the way Zero did? If there had been any possible way for him to destroy the virus, Zero would have tried. It's possible that either there is no way period or accessing those memories can't be done without the horror driving him into the refuge of insanity. But it might be a chance."
"Clever X," Omega murmured, in the body he was borrowing on the other side of the planet.
"What Zero described as the strings, the compulsions, I'm not so sure about. He made them sound like programming. It's entirely possible that they're the remainders of 'paths' the virus carved into his mind while he was a maverick. He should be able to delete them, the problem is will awareness of them drive him insane enough he can't do it? What he talked about, believing that what 'it' wanted was right? That the virus could be used to end the wars, to not have to die, to keep me safe? Most people… have an easier time with having done horrible things if they were done in a good cause. If Zero had let himself believe that what the virus wanted was good, was right, he probably wouldn't have gone insane. That kind of guilt… and he mentioned that Dr. Wily had what he, at least, believed to have been a legitimate grievance and the belief that the virus was the only way to bring about something, or end some injustice, probably related to… ancient history." Not relevant, even though this was his family under discussion. "He had an excuse to believe that he was a good guy, like the mavericks do, instead of a horrible murderer. If he'd taken it, he'd still be sane. Even Omega doesn't believe Omega is doing the right thing." X finished his mug then, and another one was brought, with extra marshmallows.
"Also, the fact that Zero did genuinely come to care about me made that path seem like it should be there until it was too late. His desire to atone made that other path also seem like something that should be there. If you'd told him to stop caring about me, or to stop helping the hunters? Can you see Zero deleting those personality traits and priorities? So very fundamental, and they were distorted like this… Or were they? When he lost it was when he wanted me to fight it: it wanted to fight me too. Not just fight. Kill. Zero is… He was right when he said he was the conscience, the… he wanted to die, to make the memories stop and to not hurt anyone else. I think Omega does too or he wouldn't be demonstrating such a death wish. Giving away the capability of possession and losing a spy in such a key position in order to hit on me? If Zero is still in there, well, he'd be screaming, but if he weren't he'd be headdesking. He taught me better than that."
"Another good point," Omega had to admit, somewhere else X couldn't hear.
"I asked Zero to promise me once, at the end of the last war, that he would kill me if I ever become a maverick. He couldn't say it, in retrospect he couldn't afford to think about it. He wants me to give him the same mercy that I wanted him to give me." X nodded deeply. No, his head was bowed, eyes closed in mourning. "I won't fail him," he promised when he straightened, opened his eyes. "We'll win. I won't let all the time he bought us have been for nothing."
"So what do we do?"
"Wait for openings, really. But we would need 'his' body for the OS replacement plan, so that would involve waiting six months. Let's see if we can come up with something that will work faster." X couldn't help glancing up: the roof was opaque currently but they all knew of the unbroken clouds of virus that were up there, locking away the light their hearts, and the world's human-supporting ecosystem, needed. "He… if I'm right, he's going to give us openings. Zero's traits, Zero's soul. Zero dedicated himself to the hunters and to me, I suppose. He wants to die, we're the ones who can do it, and as he loses his sanity he's going to just get more obsessed with death, the hunters as the means to it, and me. He might as well be daring me to kill him." That sip was more marshmallow than cocoa. "You heard what he said on the tape. 'Zero loved you, I'm not Zero, I'm the one that killed him.' Trying to provoke me into killing him, that's how he's expressing the fact he… would love me if he were sane."
"Yes," he murmured, crushing the skull of someone he'd been interrogating and tossing the body aside, bored with their begging now, wanting it over.
"The kitten stuff… he can't see me as an enemy. He wants to look after me, keep me safe. Even the, the rape part. No one touches me but him. No one harms me or makes me uncomfortable but him. And notice that even though he could have, he very well could have, he didn't… do anything. Just innuendo, really. So, if no one's harming me but him by his order and he's not harming me either he's protecting me. He'd kill anyone who hurt me, even a little bit. That's what's there under the insanity. Under what the virus carved into his mind while he was a maverick, before he became immune. Written on the pieces of the mind his trauma shattered." X had to take a very deep draught now, and his eyes lingered in the mug.
Omega recognized it too. Zero had gotten it for him ages ago, it was a personalized thing celebrating X's completion of training and graduation to full field hunter status. Normally they had plaques and diplomas for that sort of thing, but Zero had despised useless clutter. Training wasn't useless, a random piece of wood or paper was. Something like that would get hung up on a wall somewhere, but this was something X would actually use, like he would hopefully make use of the knowledge and skills Zero had gone to so much trouble to get into that stubborn head of his.
"I don't think he's going to kill me. The first time he knew how bad it was to hesitate, that he should finish me off, and yet when it came down to it he still acted like Zero. Like it was a training session. I was, well, I was counting on that, really. He gave me advice, a hint that getting close was a bad idea, so I thought that if I did it while he was still in that mode… he lost because of Zero's habits. And when it ended he knew what a mistake he'd made, but this time he didn't even make a token effort to kill me. He knows what a bad idea it is, and yet he's still leaving me alive. That's a sign both that he's irrational and getting worse, and that he doesn't want me dead. He doesn't want to win. He's… letting the virus' habits control him, or he was during the initial fight, because with his mind shattered like that there's… What he's done, it must be so very horrible to remember. So he's not remembering, he's not thinking." X's hands curled around the mug to protect it and what it represented. "Zero's dead, or dying and despairing, and the strings are just jerking what's left of him around. He wants to die, to atone, he wants me to kill him. But Zero thought I couldn't kill him, that there just wasn't any way to."
He raised his eyes from the mug to meet those of his audience. With a calm strength only tempered by sadness, he told them that, "Since he wants it over with, Omega's definitely going to be helping the mavericks."
