A/N: Wow! I've finally broken the 1000 views barrier! Ironically, my Code Geass fanfiction did the same thing this week, but – whatever! Thanks to all the readers out there, and I hope I've made you smile!

Important Note about omakes: In the last chapter, I included an omake that seems to have thrown several people for a loop. Just to be clear – Biowulf is not allied with Ship, Van Kleiss is alive, and Breach…well, she's probably an international criminal. A short definition: Omakes are irrelevant (and irreverent) tangents included by the author for the purpose of humor. They are not to be taken seriously, and yes, you'll probably see some more later.

Sorry if this bored you, but there were some people who got a bit mixed up. My fault, really. Anyway, on to the story!

xxXxx

A few minutes earlier,
Providence Headquarters

Six was left staring at his phone in confusion. The call to White hadn't gone through for some reason. All he'd managed to get was an airheaded woman looping the same phrase: We're sorry, but the number you have dialed is currently unavailable. We're sorry, but the number you have dialed…

The ninja simply couldn't understand what was the matter with his connection. Even if one of the hubs was down, the Providence network had several independent towers to prevent exactly this type of communication breakdown. The only person capable of such an impressively coordinated failure was…oh. Well, if the kid was involved, it was no wonder everything was shot up so efficiently. But why would he do something that ridiculous?

After some quick thinking, Six came to the conclusion that BoBo must have cannibalized the communication systems for the party. That would certainly explain where the disco ball and laser show had come from. Rex seemed to have disabled the intercom screens as well – no doubt to keep Six away from the chimp's Grand Finale. Contacting White through them wasn't an option.

Rex must have disabled the communications himself – with his nanites, it'd be a piece of cake. Besides, it wouldn't have been the first time…The young fool. Doesn't he know how risky shutting down all the comm systems is? Case in point: my current predicament.

When Six, scraping the bottom of the barrel for ways to alert White, punched the fire alarm, he wasn't really hoping for much. True to how the rest of his day had been going, a few red lights flashed pitifully, whirling weakly on the ceiling. However, the keening wail that was supposed to accompany the lights was conspicuously absent. The sprinklers in that section went on, but Six knew that the sprinkler systems were separate for each region – fires were fairly common, and when an experiment went wrong the whole building didn't want to get soaked.

Six cursed his luck silently. The dratted chimp must have re-wired the whole sound system for his blasted music – the primate had even cut the alarm system for his blasted tunes. I need a remote communication panel – now, where to find one…

The nearest fixed wireless com-link with White's office was on the other side of the building, and Hunter and Gatlocke were in the middle somewhere. Six didn't have many other options to call for reinforcements, and he knew it perfectly well. Guess that means it's up to me again...

He started running down the hall, followed closely by Evan. Having shared a cell block with the two escapees for quite a while, Evan had no illusions regarding the strength and intensity possessed by Hunter Cain. If those psychos are on the roam, people could get hurt.

The duo ran silently down the twisted paths, working their way steadily towards Rex. Six was painfully aware that Hunter's main target at the moment was Rex, and the ninja's main priority right now was ensuring that the teen was safe from the convict.

Evan followed in Six's footsteps closely for a while, mirroring the ninja's every step. About halfway through the halls, however, he could feel something happening to him. He couldn't explain it exactly, it just seemed like there was some sort of code messing with his body. He didn't understand it himself – the sensation felt both foreign and native to his body at the same time, as though his very body were fighting with itself.

His head started pounding, and the blood rushing past his ears made him giddy. Everything he looked at seemed to be taking on a blush of crimson, and (although he couldn't see it), his retina was turning red as it was flooded by blood. His tendons corded on his arms as his muscles tensed involuntarily, spasming as the programming of his nanites was accessed.

What's…going…on…?

His thinking abilities were being stifled, and the thrill of the hunt was overtaking him. From a distance, as though through a dark red curtain, he could see his body and, to a certain extent, influence it, but he felt as though someone – or something – else were in the driving seat. I've felt this before…but when was that? What's happening?

And what are these infernal voices saying?

Six continued running, unaware of the struggle taking place in the man running behind him. He noticed, however, when Evan slowed down and fell back several paces. He definitely noticed, moreover, when Evan stopped completely and bent over in half, breathing heavily.

Oh, what perfect timing. This was just fantastic. When he doesn't need to hustle, the man moves like lightning; but now that there's an actual emergency, he keels over and starts flopping like a landed fish. I suppose I'd better give him a hand.

Six stopped and approached the trembling man carefully – experience had taught him to approach Evan with caution when the amnesiac was stressed – or, worse, angry. Unsure of what to do, Six looked around haphazardly for anything that could help him handle the trembling and potentially homicidal man currently squeezing his eyes shut and massaging his temples.

Six's spinning eyeballs locked onto a familiar looking stain on a wall a bit farther down the hall, and identified it – they were outside César's lab. Without a second thought, Six hauled Evan through the door.

It was a pretty average sight that greeted his eyes – Meechum was sweeping up some broken glass and mopping up a spill, while at the back Rhodes and César were hollering at the top of their lungs about some reaction or the other.

Rhodes snapped, "And I'm telling you for the last time, the molecules were homochiral before, and now they're all right-handed!" She said this as she waved some passports about wildly, belaboring the hapless César with them.

He weakly blustered in retaliation, saying, "But I'm telling you, they were achiral before! Where did the homochirality come from? These aren't even organic compounds!"

Rhodes opened her mouth for another scathing remark, then caught sight of Six supporting Evan in the doorway. "Oh, hello, Agent Six. Is something the matter with Evan?"

"He's having another episode. I though perhaps one of you could look at him," Six answered, already fully aware of what the answer would be. After all, Evan's fits were common knowledge through Providence, but they were almost impossible to study because of their sheer unpredictability. This, naturally, meant that the geeks in the science department hadn't been able to actually analyze him during one of his episodes, despite their constant attempts to do so.

As expected, César leapt at the opportunity to observe Evan's "reversive state", as the brainiacs had termed his fits. Meechum and Rhodes, however, seemed to disagree with him on the advisability of harboring a super-strong out-of-control man in their lab, and their squabbling soon escalated into a full-on fight.

While the three "experts" argued away, Six scanned the lab for any sort of communication device. Mango smoothie, hyper-electro magnet that could disassemble a tank from a kilometer away, holographic projector, neodymium alloy mini-chiller…there! A radio uplink directly to White's office!

Six snatched the hand-held device and activated it. An image of White sitting at his desk drinking some milk flickered onto the small screen. The festive mood appeared to have affected him as well, as the man was wearing a red tie – quite a departure from his usual monochromatic mode of attire.

"Ah, César–" White began, stopping when he saw Six's serious face on the screen. His forehead wrinkled in confusion momentarily. "Six? What are you doing in César's lab?" White turned serious, setting the cup down abruptly. "Is there a problem?"

I'll say there's a problem, the cynical ninja thought to himself. Out loud, of course, his demeanor was much more professional.

"There's been a prison break." In brief, Six outlined the situation – Hunter had escaped, Evan was having a serious fit, and the alarm systems had been disabled by the wretched chimp. White cursed furiously and pounded his fist on his desk.

"We should have taken care of Hunter a long time ago. Now he's loose and bent on killing Rex, the most important person on the planet at this moment. This is completely unacceptable!" White ranted, repeatedly pounding his table with a clenched fist. He called down a bit as he considered their best plan of action.

"Let's see...Hunter needs to be taken out as quickly as possible. Six!" he barked, making up his mind. "I want you to take Hunter out permanently. I'm authorising you to commander any available operatives and eliminate him immediately," White declared, deciding that neutralization was really the best course of action in the current situation.

While Six agreed with Knight on the urgency of their mission, he couldn't help but be slightly amused upon the fact that White had finally begun seeing Rex as more of a personality than a tool. Considering White's deep-rooted hatred of all things ECO, such a radical shift was especially surprising. The kid gets to all of us, I guess.

Safe in his nanite-free fortress, The White Knight rubbed his forehead, wrinkling the bleached skin momentarily. Why was there always a catastrophe to be averted? Was it really too much to ask the monsters, terrorists and insane biker gangs to just leave him alone for a day? Why couldn't he just have a normal day?

White could barely remember normal: for the last four years, his life had been nothing but Providence – fighting maniacal villains for the fate of the world one minute, and trying to soothe a teenaged boy's injured feelings the next.

And you thought your job was tough.

Now White was in his most aggravating situation yet – Rex had shut off the cameras to the room, blocking him from seeing Bobo's "Grand Finale". His extensive network of Providence-wide communications had also been butchered for the party: that was still raving on heedlessly, just for the record. And while this bureaucratic nightmare was taking place, a homicidal maniac with little-to-no concern for his own personal safety was stalking through the building under everyone's noses! White sighed. Just another day at the office, he thought to himself as he stood up and walked to his suit.

Back at César's lab, Six dropped the phone and planned out his next move. If communications are out for White, that probably means that they're out through the entire building…meaning I've got to take out Hunter by myself.

And Evan, he reminded himself. The man was lying flat on a medical exam table while César and Rhodes took samples from him while monitoring his vitals (Meechum, of course, was maintaining a safe distance).

"Fascinating..." César hummed, checking the readouts from one of his devices. "There appears to be a massive spike in nanite activity at the moment: possibly instigated by his fits. This is the first time I've seen evidence connecting emotions and nanite activation..."

Rhodes cut in here, querying, "Don't you feel that it's possible we've got it backwards?"

"How so?"

She carried on with her theory, postulating, "Maybe his nanites are what's being affected, and that's what's causing his mood swings!"

César considered her idea. "So, you think that there's an outside force that's messing with his nanites?" He considered the idea for a moment before shaking his head. "Now that's just a bit too far-fetched, even for me."

Rhodes agreed. "Yeah, you're right. It was just a crazy thought I had. Forget I said anything."

Rex's brother turned back to his work contentedly, glad to have gotten that out of the way. "In that case, let's give the subject a shot of Nanite-Deactivation Serum version 4.73c, and send him off."

Meechum nodded and typed a command into the (repaired) Sample Collector, beaming with satisfaction when a large syringe was deposited in his hands. "Prepping for shot," he sang out, prepared to inject Evan with the clear fluid inside the vial.

Six, who was growing impatient, cut in here. "How long is this going to take?" he asked, masking the undercurrent of urgency in his voice. Every second wasted here is a second that lets Hunter gets closer to killing Rex...

César, as usual, was completely unperturbed by his surroundings. "We are about to lower his nanite activity significantly for around five minutes, after which he should have mastered his emotions. Of course, this theory assumes that his emotions are what's currently agitating his nanites so much, and that it's not some outside influence causing all this..."

Six had tuned out most of the speech, concluding that anything that didn't help him with Rex was basically useless information at the moment. "Just give him the shot already!"

César nodded to Meechum, who immediately plunged the needle into Evan's bloodstream.

Six watched uneasily as Evan's thrashings slowly died down. He slowly went closer to the former EVO, who appeared to be at least semi-aware at the moment.

'Take any available operatives', he says, Six thought to himself privately. How generous of White. Still, the're was no denying it: Evan was an interesting mystery, and there was no doubt that he had a knack for escaping life-and-death situations with nary a scratch.

"Evan," the ninja called, causing the blond man to start slightly before looking up.

"Yeah, Six?" he answered in a voice that seemed somehow…dead. Six quelled adding unease at the sound mercilessly.

We can worry about his attitude later. "Can you help me catch Hunter and Gatlocke? I need all the help I can get, and I can't contact reinforcements, so you're all I've got."

There was a moment of silence as the European considered his options. "Help stop Hunter, yes? Someone needs to halt him…and he is gunning for Rex…" the man muttered, doing some quick numbers in his head.

Current situational handicap being calculated…finished. Odds of survival under normal circumstances: 98.7%.

Download: 73.81% complete. Chances of loss of conscious bodily control upon download completion: 100.0%. Probability of survival in such an eventuality: Unknown.

Final conclusion: Negative. Remain under medical supervision to prevent another potential episode.

"Sorry, Six. My gut tells me that I will not do well in combat for some reason, so I think it is best if I stand down for now," he said, perfectly blasé. Inside, however, he was a squirming mish-mash of emotions. Download? What is downloading inside of me? And loss of conscious bodily control? What is the meaning of that?

Six, as usual, was unsure of exactly what was happening behind the man's eyes. "So…you're not coming, then?"

Ignoring Six's voice, Evan continued thinking. Could it be…I'm reverting?

Watching Evan wrestle with himself, Six shrugged and turned to leave. He'd thought that this Evan person had been made of sterner stuff than this, but it seemed that he'd been wrong after all. Ah well, couldn't exactly blame the guy for freaking out: from what Six'd seen of the guy, he was a real pacifist who'd never asked for any of this.

"In that case, don't leave this room. It's going to get messy, and odds are that people are going to get killed. Better for you if you stay in a safe place," Six said as he turned to go.

As he was just opening the door, though, he heard a faint cry from behind him, weakly calling, "Wait!"

Bemused, the ninja half-turned to see a torn man sitting before him. Evan clutched his head furiously as he thought, arguing within his own head.

He ran the stats by himself one more time. Chances of survival if the mysterious download were unknown, so that was as good as useless. The odds of losing "conscious bodily control" upon the completion of the download had been 100.0%, and Evan knew that whatever a loss of bodily control meant, it was going to happen to him.

And that terrified him.

Unbidden, voices began to surface in his mind – not the mysterious voices streaming out code, but echoes of his friends...

Who'd want to go to a college named Tractor?

I'm Rex Salazar. Rex to my friends.

He's just some guy we bumped into, you know, walking around...

Have you met our newest member, Evan?

He's not just some guy...

You can call me Rex.

Evan's head snapped up. In the end, it turned out that he didn't need to use his special analytic skills to determine what to do, as it was all very simple and boiled down to a few sentences.

Rex is my friend. I am Rex's friend. Rex is in danger. Why am I still standing still?

Six was still standing in the doorway looking at him expectantly. Standing up slowly, Evan turned to face Rex's protector. "I'm coming with you," he declared, walking. For some reason, that simple statement drew a small smile from the normally stoic ninja.

Patting the European on the shoulder, Six turned and led the two of them hurriedly out of the room, leaving the scientists to continue working on unlocking the secrets of the Universe (while conveniently forgetting the necessities of the world around them).

As they sprinted towards the party, Six briefed Evan on their mission. It was fairly simple – they just had to locate Rex and keep him safe. After that, they could worry about raising the alarm and flushing out Hunter Cain. As they approached the party room, the two had to raise their voices to be heard over the ongoing hubbub, discussing plans and strategies to clear the entire building rapidly. Microseconds before they turned the final corner to the main room, Six heard a soft pop, rather like a cork being pulled from a champagne bottle as a tiny packet of lead was sent hurtling at a teenage boy's head.

The green-suited man's well-trained body realized what was happening before his mind could process it, and the agent pulled his blades out and stopped short, halting Evan with a sharply raised elbow.

The pair skidded to a stop milliseconds before a hail of death flattened itself against the wall in front of them.

As Six and Evan narrowly escaped several dozen bullets, their companion projectile was still headed another way – straight towards the Savior of the World.

The bullet that Hunter had fired at Rex floated almost lazily through the air, trailing a thin line of smoke. The bullet made no noise except for a quiet, high-pitched whistle as it sliced through the air. Nothing moved as the hollow point bullet looped down, arrowing towards Rex's forehead.

At that exact moment, on a different continent entirely, a blue wolf was agonizing with himself over a world-altering decision as his eyes danced and clapped before his skull.

Fortunately for our hero, Hunter had dropped his aim approximately half a degree when he'd been disturbed by Six, and the bullet lodged itself neatly in the wall behind Rex (who didn't even notice his narrow brush with death).

The bullet itself, of course, caused a fair amount of ruckus when it landed: shattering a punch bowl on the refreshment table and scaring Dr. Holiday (who had been serving herself a consolation glass when she couldn't find Six) several feet into the air and fairly out of her skin. It also stained her best lab coat. Permanently.

The effects of this were myriad. As wasted as they were (the fez-wearing primate had managed to smuggle a crate of champagne in, for Pete's sake!), everyone in the room knew the sound of a bullet crashing into a wall. Couple that sound with random items breaking around the room, and everybody subconsciously began searching for the threat while groping for cover.

Four years of constant warfare can do strange things to your head, but there's no doubt it comes in handy when you're under enemy fire with no warning whatsoever.

Captain Calan, the first to recover fully from the surprise, rapidly found the corridor that the shot had come from by working out the rough trajectory of the bullet from the point of impact. He correctly concluded that there were hostiles in Providence and ran up the stairs, followed by a squad of soldiers who'd volunteered to take the few rifles in the near vicinity to help him.

Dr. Holiday looked down at her ruined dress in shock for a few moments, before finding her sister and hiding her under a convenient nearby table. Before she could do so, however, matters quickly became a good deal more complicated.

When Rex saw the squad charging up the stairs, he hesitated for a few moments, then followed them, Punk Busters at the ready. He didn't know what was going on, but he suspected that that punch bowl shattering had been only the beginning of his problems. He sighed. And it was going so well, too…

BoBo, Kenwyn and Noah were similarly affected by the bullet, remaining in stasis for a few more seconds before galvanizing themselves into motion. BoBo slung his perpetually-present blasters off of his shoulders and looked across at Kenwyn, who was struggling to pull a Beretta Nano from her boots, cursing and mumbling as she stumbled about.

When she finally managed to finagle her weapon from her footwear, she straightened herself out. She looked up at BoBo and nodded. Together, they followed after the troops on point, leaving Noah behind to agonize over what to do, torn between discretion and, as it were, valor.

While all this was going on below, Six was dealing with his own problems in the hallway. Hunter Cain was desperate, heavily armed, and fiendishly intelligent. Gatlocke was the same, although he barely counted due to the obvious "insanity factor".

Meanwhile, Six soon found that he had to protect Evan as well, who had collapsed a few seconds earlier and was curled on the floor, mumbling disjointed phrases like "powering up" and "nanites…voices". As far as Six could tell, he was mostly unconscious, but that didn't stop him from being a liability.

Nonetheless, Six was not called "Six" for nothing. It would take a good many more handicaps to seriously worry the sixth most dangerous man on the planet. After a quick series of ripostes and parries, he managed to pin Gatlocke's cape to the wall with one of his blades, effectively disabling for the moment. The henchman lay there prone, cursing sporadically while trying to wrench himself loose.

Hunter Cain, though, was proving to be a more difficult proposition. The man seemed to have an unlimited supply of ammunition, and was preventing Six from getting to close quarters by warding the agent off with the gun barrel itself, which was built like a lead pipe. Six was kept at bay for some time, until Captain Calan's group of hastily armed soldiers came thundering up the passageway behind him.

"Prison break! Men, secure the area. I don' want to see the perps leave this area conscious! Take 'em down!"

Hunter was distracted for a crucial second, and Six decided to take a gamble. Weighing the distance between them, he switched his grip on the pommel and threw his katana like a javelin for the second time that day. The blade spun through the air for a few seconds, before spearing the gun barrel vertically and blocking the bullets' path. Six smirked to himself and moved in, prepared to take the Hunter down by old-fashion force.

There's no way he can take me in hand-to-hand. I have him.

Unfortunately, that's when Evan collapsed and started screaming…

xxXxx

A/N: There really is no suspense here; we all know what's happening to Evan. Anyway, time to answer some reviews:

YellowAngela: Glad you liked the omake! And the mystery of what happened to Rex is solved here, I hope.

FloatingPizza: Thanks! As odd as it may sound, that line played through my own head for quite a while before I got it right. Nice to know it was appreciated!

theWriterunknown: Reference my earlier PM to you. Thanks for the review, and I hope any lingering problems regarding omakes were cleared up!

LilySRichards (yeah, I'm just going to call you that, if that's OK. Sorry…): Wow, people really care about Rex! Don't worry, like I said earlier: I can't kill him, I've actually named my story after him!

And now, a poem in honor of Christmas. It's fairly lengthy, but I liked it: it is modeled on my favorite Christmas song, after all. Have a nice day!

(sing to the tune of "We Three Kings")

(first verse)
We four troops who rule Providence,
Do assert our full dominance.
Primate, soldier, hothead, doctor,
Defend the populace.

(chorus)
Ohh-Ohh, slice them EVOs, dice them fine,
Mince them into dust sublime,
Chain them, free them, kill them, cure them,
Just keep them all supine.

(first verse)
Twin katanas of spinning death,
Green-suit ninja's not out of breath.
Dodging, lunging, leaping, plunging,
Bringing his enemies death.

(chorus)

(second verse)
Chimpanzee who calls the kid "chief",
Mainly there for comic relief.
Primate in action with no sanction,
Hairy yet lovable thief.

(chorus)

(third verse)
She's a doctor with a white vest,
Left at base to keep up the nest.
Trained in science; self-reliant,
Easily one of the best.

(chorus)

(fourth and final verse)
Teenaged drama in human form,
Using fists like a whirling storm.
Punching 'em down while acting the clown,
Refuses to conform.

xxXxx