Part 3

"Axl!" Despite what they'd just seen and heard, X cried out to his friend.

Lumine looked at him derisively. "You're not dealing with the prototype any more. I'm in control now." He slowly levitated into the air, and aimed a very familiar gun at them. "But I think there's an appealing irony in using his weapon to dispose of you, his former allies." He opened fire on them.

X and Zero both jumped back as the blasts peppered the floor. X returned fire, but his plasma bursts shot harmlessly past, missing Lumine by inches. "Axl! Can you hear me?"

Zero knew that X was holding back on purpose, still hoping to save their friend. He was fairly sure it was a waste of time. From what he could see, Axl was lost, and Lumine needed to be taken down. He leapt upward, slashing at the new-gen Maverick, but the hovering Lumine dodged his swing. Zero ducked to the side as Lumine shot at them again, then jumped at him from a different angle.

Again, Lumine adjusted his position, but Zero was expecting that this time. He jumped again, pushing off from the air, and struck at his enemy. This time, Lumine barely got out of the way in time, and Zero's saber carved a shallow gash through his outer armor. It wasn't serious damage, but Lumine was angered by it. Glaring, he rose higher into the air, and a glowing aura of energy gathered around him, then condensed into a dense white beam that shot toward his enemies below.

X and Zero both leapt up the wall as the beam seared the floor beneath them. "You won't escape!" Lumine vowed, as he adjusted his aim. The energy beam burned its way up the wall and ceiling, as the two Hunters jumped to either side. Then a large portion of the damaged ceiling and wall collapsed around them.

Zero managed to avoid the falling debris as he dropped neatly down to the floor again. Turning, he saw that the pile of rubble behind him nearly divided the small building's interior in two—and that X was on the other side, trying to free a pinned leg, even as Lumine drifted down before him, Axl's gun ready in his hand.

Just as Lumine came to a stop in front of him, smirking, X yanked his leg free, standing and raising his buster in one fluid motion. For a second, they were both poised to shoot the other. Then X slowly lowered his buster again. "Axl, if you're still there, I don't want to hurt you. You need to fight back against him."

"X, don't be stupid! Kill him!" Zero yelled, but X ignored him. He stared steadily at his opponent. Lumine, looking furious, started to back away, as his hand began to tighten on the trigger of Axl's gun. Suddenly, X reached out and grabbed his shoulders. He was stronger than Lumine, and easily held him in close quarters, but the Maverick's hands were still free, and he was now aiming the gun at X's body at point-blank range.

"You have to take back control, Axl. Can you hear me?"

"X, what are you doing?!" Zero tried to scramble up over the fallen debris, but it shifted under his weight, sending him sliding back to the floor. Desperately, he started slashing his way through it, but he would never reach them in time. "He'll kill you! Finish him, now!"

"No," X insisted. "Axl, it's up to you to stop him now. Are you going to let Lumine fire that gun? Are you going to let him kill me, with your hand? Axl!"

"You fool," Lumine said scornfully, and he tried to pull the trigger. His finger didn't move. Lumine stared down at it. "What?" Then he cried out in shock as a bloom of light seemed to well up from within. X was forced to let go as the form in front of him blazed with energy.

It fell to the floor, writhing, a shape that seemed partly Axl's, partly Lumine's, almost impossible to make out properly through the white surge of energy and light.


In the middle of the storm, Axl struggled furiously with Lumine. "I won't let you hurt X! I won't let you hurt any of my friends!"

"You can't defeat me!" Lumine tried to fight back against Axl's sudden fury. "I am destined to rule this universe. I can't be stopped!"

"You're not ruling anything, and you won't hurt anybody else! This is my body, and my life, so get out!" Axl's determination tore through Lumine's ambitions, and through his shocked protests, until there was nothing left of them—or of him. Finally, finally, there was no one in his mind but himself.

Axl slowly opened his eyes. He saw X and Zero standing over him, looking down in concern. X softly called his name. "It's okay." Axl smiled faintly up at them. "He's gone." Then his eyes drifted closed again, and Axl sank, exhausted, into darkness.


Axl wasn't sure how much time had passed when he awoke again. Looking around, he saw that he was in the repair bay. He wryly noted to himself that this scenario felt rather familiar. This time, though, it was both X and Zero that appeared to stand at his side.

"Hey, guys."

"Axl. How are you feeling?" X asked softly.

Axl considered. "I feel perfectly fine now. Pretty sure that creep really is gone for good."

Zero nodded. "Good to know."

"Yeah. Hey, X." Axl looked at his friend seriously. "Thanks for not giving up on me. I don't think I could have gotten the better of him without your help."

X smiled at him faintly. "I don't give up on my friends. And I'm glad it worked."

Neither said anything about the fact that Zero had given up on him, but no one had forgotten it. "I'm happy that you're still with us, too," Zero assured him. "But if you hadn't been…"

"Hey, I know," Axl said quickly. "I don't blame you or anything. You were doing what you thought you had to. I get it."

A moment of silence was broken by the arrival of a medic. "Axl. We've done a thorough scan, and there doesn't appear to be anything left of Lumine's personality. However, his presence does seem to have left some minor but possibly permanent programming alterations."

"Like what?" Axl asked apprehensively.

"Nothing that should affect your mental state," the medic assured him. "But the workings of some systems, such as your shape-changing ability, have been slightly adjusted—bringing them in line with Lumine's own level of capability, I believe."

"Really?" Axl considered. "He was more advanced than I was. So, really, that's like an upgrade, isn't it?" Slowly, he grinned. "That's actually pretty cool. Kind of a reward for getting through all this mess."

"I guess that's a good way to look at it," Zero said with a shrug.

Again, X smiled faintly. Axl always had been optimistic, and he had come to value that about him. "It's good to have you back."


It was after they'd left the repair bay that Zero took X aside to talk in private. "What were you thinking back there?! I'm glad that Axl wasn't lost after all, but for all we knew, he could have been. Were you trying to get yourself killed?"

"I was trying to save him. You know that. I did what I felt was right."

X wasn't apologizing, Zero noted. He had a strong feeling that, once upon a time, he would have done. "And what if it hadn't worked? What if there really hadn't been anything left of Axl himself?"

X sighed. "Then I guess Lumine would have killed me. But I still feel it was worth that risk."

"X." Zero sighed too, and shook his head. "You got lucky this time. Next time, you might not."

"I know," X said, an edge to his voice. "There've been plenty of times, far too many times, that a friend was lost past recall."

Zero nodded. "I've had to take down targets that used to be comrades, too," he reminded him. "I know as well as you do bad it can be. And I'm just as grateful that this time was different. But X," he looked at him grimly, "you can't count on an exception, just because you want it that badly. If someday, again, you find yourself facing a Maverick that used to be… someone you were that close to, and you hold back, it will probably get you killed. I want your promise that you'll pull the trigger."

"And not even try anything else?"

"If that's what it takes to not die, yes!"

"No, Zero," X said softly. "I won't make a promise like that. Because I couldn't give up so easily, without at least trying."

He walked away, and Zero stared after him in frustration. X's compassion was probably one of his greatest assets, and usually, Zero wouldn't have changed it for the world, but sometimes, he also feared it was his greatest weakness, and would get him killed some day. Unfortunately, Zero suspected that it was far more likely X could be faced with such a situation again than his friend imagined.