I was looking through the chapters of Garden I'd already written (yes, when I should have been doing NaNo, but I'm slightly ahead percentage-wise, so sue me), and saw that I had quite a few chapters that took place during the position between the retelling of X 1-5 series plot and the retelling of X 7-Elf Wars plot. I figured I could post those as sort of a self-contained transition arc even if I haven't done more of the actual plot than Dr. Weil giving Lumine the virus and Lumine deciding to use Red Alert as the new Sigma/for his experiment trying to figure out how the thing works in order to hurt Axl. (Due to X being more respected in this universe, Lumine's a bit jealous about not being the prototype, which is just made worse by his evolution/new ones are better canon ideology.)
Disclaimer: I don't own Megaman, X or otherwise, or any related properties. No infringement intended or money made, please don't sue.
Theatrics made everything easier, which was why they were left sprawled out on the ground, drained and semi-injured.
Omega had switched over to the shiny new body so Zero could have the one he'd been in for years, with all its unique wear and tear. It would be more work to have to explain why he was suddenly as good as new on top of everything else. Sure, Dr. Wily had given him very good self-repair systems, but even leaving out the changes X and Dr. Cain had made so that he worked despite all the bugs, any reploid's body got sort of worn in after awhile.
"Sigma said that when we rebuilt his body for combat he had to tweak his settings all over again. Dr. Cain said that it sounded like breaking in a pair of new shoes." Even after Omega had left, X still hadn't come down from Cloud 9. "Of course I'm happy. I missed him, even though I never had a chance to get to know him. The virus he gave me: it was full of his hopes for me, just like my body and name are Dr. Light's hope and love made metal."
"You don't hate Dr. Light?" Omega had figured out how to keep their databases and thoughts from mingling together, but Zero had still picked up a lot of information while they hadn't been completely separate.
"Of course not." X smiled ruefully. "Would you mind talking like this? No one's ever been able to answer before." X could send them his thoughts, and try to read their feelings, but poking around in someone's head wasn't the same as talking. It had always felt too one-sided, like he was imposing or prying instead of sharing, even if they didn't mind.
"If you want." Words were easy, but how was he supposed to program emotions into a message when he wasn't quite sure how he felt himself?
"You don't have to write a program, Zero. It should come more naturally to you than me. Of course, that might be the problem." X would have leaned up to pat Zero's shoulder reassuringly if he'd been able. The sentiment still came across. "It's harder to figure out something the simpler it is, sometimes. And you've spent your life unable to do this, so it might be something you aren't trying because you know it doesn't work. You always wanted to be able to reach out, didn't you? Did you imagine what it would be like?" Had Zero tried to reach out and failed? "Think of the difference between thinking about moving your arm and just moving it."
Zero lowered his arm to X's forehead carefully, and when his hand touched padding the motion sort of continued, not trying to accomplish anything in specific but just touching, nanites mingling together as though they were hand in hand. Just reaching out, just sharing how he felt, knowing the other would be able to understand without Zero having to try to put into clumsy words or binary.
"That's it." X had known Zero could do it. "How do you feel?"
"Like I should feel…" He'd just been a mask, all along. He'd thought that the real enemy was him, yes, but coming face to face with that fact? He wasn't real, it should bother him, but it didn't. Because Omega didn't care, and if Zero got depressed about reality that would make X sad.
Which would defeat the entire purpose of Zero continuing to… fake existing in the first place.
What difference was there between being a mask and being a puppet?
He should want to be real, but he didn't have that option. He was just part of Omega, and Omega was real, and hence couldn't care about Zero's dilemma. "Like I should feel violated. But I don't. I'm happy. Did everyone else know, all along?" About the virus that bound them all together (except him, until now), about X's plans, about everything.
X shook his head. "There wasn't any reason to worry them, and I didn't want to abuse my power. Especially when it wasn't my power in the first place." It was rightfully Omega's. "I only gave a few commands, like not attacking humans even though they're scary."
"How are humans scary?" They squished easily. "I never understood that." Even though newbuilts were inexperienced, he would have thought that the fear that they might have a life-threatening bug would have trumped any possible fear of the people with the equipment to fix things if they did.
X frowned thoughtfully again, giving Zero that familiar searching look. Then he smiled brightly despite his exhaustion. "If Omega didn't tell you, I don't think I should. It's a wonderful sign, though."
"What do you mean?"
"You are part of Omega, and you don't think they're a threat, then maybe he really does believe that we can give them a chance."
"Is that what you want?" Really?
Of course. "Weren't you listening?"
"It's just… this is a virus. Sigma made a couple new forms of it this war, remember. The maverick virus makes people no longer themselves, makes them killers. That's how everyone thinks that it works. You've been infected all this time, and that's horrifying."
X shook his head. "I don't mind, Zero. And that's another good sign."
"What?"
"People who aren't worried about abusing their power and hurting people can't be trusted with it. You, Omega, don't want to hurt us, don't want to destroy our selves. I knew that was how he was, all along. From the virus he made for me. It's a gentle thing. As though even when he wasn't there, he was protecting me. That's part of why the warning and the fear it inspires aren't that big a deal. We all know that we're safe, and we are. The virus, Omega, can bring us back, just like the other virus made Sigma come back. It doesn't matter that humans can kill us when we know we will be fine. That's part of why the other virus was so terrifying to them, because it wasn't the same sort of threat. It was something that really could destroy them. After all, even if they were brought back the way Sigma was, they wouldn't be themselves any more than the things we fought were Sigma. True death." Unless Omega could fix them.
"He made you love him." And Zero was frankly creeped out by the fact that he personally didn't mind the idea. The thought of forcing someone to love you should be a repulsive one, but he was just happy that love applied to him as well. Even though he should be jealous, even though he should want to be sure that X loved him for being Zero. That their years together should mean more than programming.
"It is better to be feared than loved," X quoted. "He had to rule me or kill me. And I'm not afraid of him."
Zero's response to that was incredulousness. Zero doubted he knew all of Omega's capabilities, but currently he had control, or could have control whenever he wanted it, of every single living reploid. Who wouldn't be afraid of someone who could crush all hope of resistance like a grape?
"I know him. I've known him for a century, I knew him before I opened my eyes for the first time. He could have done anything to me, anything at all, and he didn't abuse that power at all. Everything he did to me was for my sake. Fear is fear of the unknown, and I know that he won't hurt me." X stretched a bit, and Zero could feel him querying the current status of his systems, as they tried to replace the nanites that enabled full function. "Just like you."
How could X not love him? How could Zero not love X, when he said things like that, when he believed in him like that?
So Zero sat there, finally giving himself permission to enjoy these feelings, the way he had half-mindlessly when he'd just been Omega's hand puppet. This wasn't freedom and never would be, but X was safe and happy and that was what mattered.
That was the purpose of his current existence, and he didn't care about anything else.
He couldn't.
X closed his eyes after awhile, listening, then nodded. "The atmospheric virus has already fallen apart, and Omega is doing a good job making the cures look like nothing but reinstallations of the original operating system nanites. Signas is probably going to decide that it's worth the risk to send hunters into the field to try to recover us soon enough. Or I could see if I could find and deactivate the teleport shield and signal jammers."
"Can't Omega just check their memory banks and tell you where they are?"
"And what if they're someplace I wouldn't have been able to find them, especially exhausted by finally managing to get Sigma to hold still long enough?" For X to try to hack his systems and override the virus with his own 'uncorrupted' version of those nanites and programs. It had been theoretically possible, all these years, for X to cure Sigma. Since they didn't understand how the virus worked, X (who did) could say that he'd followed Sigma's link to the other mavericks, the one that made them rebuild him, to order their systems to copy what he'd done to Sigma's. "Things don't always seem more realistic if they're real, since a good story is more logical than real life, with all that random chance and serendipity, but I don't want to push our luck."
Just replacing the nanites hadn't been enough to restore Sigma's sanity. The longer they'd been infected, the harder it would be. Omega was going to focus on the mavericks who were still alive, and generally younger, first.
In order for this to work, people had to believe that the maverick threat was really over this time. Cures were suspicious, both due to Doppler's vaccine and the simple rule that if something seemed too good to be true, it probably was. An eleventh hour victory, triumph when the fate of the world hung in the balance, made a good story. People would want to believe.
Reploids often didn't live enough to have it shoved in their faces that you didn't always get what you want. That wasn't true for humans, and it was humans who ran the government and would be doing the forensic analysis. It was only practical.
As Repliforce had proven, having heavy weaponry, beam or potential kinetic (like Eurasia) in the hands of people who could be infected was a very, very bad idea (even if they weren't, at the moment…). Let alone government officials who might leak vital information or push defense plans containing fatal flaws. Sure, human leaders were targets for maverick assassination. They didn't always last that long before needing to be replaced, what with being what hunters called squishy (a human could be killed by being near a blast that would only have singed a reploid), but at least everyone else could be pretty sure that they were acting for the benefit of the free world instead of the virus. Although there were always selfish idiots.
People who worried about reploid rights didn't like the idea, but when it came down to it, they lost fewer cities that way. Since reploids didn't want to be infected any more than humans wanted to get squished, they were mostly fine with not being able to run for office and being virus scanned before voting. Virus scanning was expensive, due to the security necessary to make sure the tests weren't tampered with, and the Assembly had figured that since they were passing a law that gave reploids the right to a yearly scan anyway, they should time it to make sure no one could question the reploid vote. Reploids wanting to be able to reassure loved ones that they were clean meant that practically all reploids were voters.
Humans could be broken under torture, and some mavericks took a positive delight in that, so they were still under need to know. After Doppler, while some reploids still researched the virus (it was hard to tell them no, since every bit of information helped and it was their lives at stake), X knew there were several all-human projects running. He was in contact with quite a few of them. Others thought that since X was a public figure and at MHHQ, contacting him had too much risk of exposing their existence and got their current data from other groups or nobody. And then there were the conspiracy theorists, and solo projects…
In a world where good, loyal people could be turned into enemies, paranoia was the better part of survival.
"You told them to hush, but did they hear the whole thing?" And what about the recordings?
"The recording shows that the signal was jammed awhile before then." X knew standard procedure well enough to think of these things. "And that's what they remember, for now. I want to tell them, it's only fair, but it's easier to act if you don't know you're acting. Oh. Right." Zero couldn't act. "I can't change your memories." No one should ever have authority like that over Omega's systems. "I could give you a set of memories, but I don't know if you could use it. It took me ages to figure out how to pull that off."
"You want me to ask Omega to tamper with my memories?"
"I wouldn't ask him to try to make up a scenario. He might have your memories, but there's a difference between data files and actual experience." It wouldn't be realistic. "I wish we could…" X's eyes widened, then he smiled as Zero felt Omega reach through him.
Then he was living the scenario that X had woven, feeling the ground under his boots, coloring it with his expectations and the emotions he would have felt. Reacting with the moves he would have used, trying to find and disable the self-destruct while not getting killed or letting X get killed, trying to slice open Sigma's body to find it without doing enough damage that Sigma would decide that he couldn't win and activate it.
Wanting to tell X to stop, it might be a trap, what if Sigma blew up when X was that close, but he knew X wouldn't listen. X had to try, this had to work…
He felt the change hit him as well, and collapsed with relief as X did from exhaustion.
Everything so real he could taste it, down to his own thoughts and emotions.
But then, all of his thoughts and emotions were fake, weren't they?
The scene stopped being so crystal clear and faded into memory. Became memory, just as real as what had happened. For now, he knew, he could hold them both in memory and knew which was the true one, but when he was talking to someone else he would forget, unless X said it was alright.
He would forget the truth of the first virus. His real nature would change from a dark certainty to something theoretical. Not only that, but it would become something that didn't matter anymore, because he'd been cured as well. Know nothing but victory, an untainted triumph.
The war was over, the world was safe from the horror he had unleashed, and X loved him.
He couldn't wait until they got home and that reality became his.
