To the core! None saw him coming, for the Chameleon was active. He ghosted through the shutters to Area X, the final showdown.

"You can stop playing hide and seek. I can see you."

Zero shook it off, stepping into the light.

"I am impressed. So you are the pirate copy of X."

He was thin, lank in his casual blue business suit with red trimming. His red eyes bored into Zero's dark ones.

"Join me, Zero. As you are a copy of the original Zero, I am a copy of the original X. Zero obeyed X, and so you will obey me."

"Wrong. Ciel told me that I am the original, and I follow no-one."

"Impossible. Your body is different, like mine. Your eyes are not the same, like mine. We share a common mother – Ciel. You will come to think of me as your brother."

Zero held out the Z-Saber in challenge to Copy X. The latter twitched, peering closer. Looming in the background… were his optical sensors malfunctioning? The wrathful ghost of X was glaring at him.

"I already have a brother," Zero uttered, his eyes shining blue. Copy X twitched again.

"You're funny. We end this."

Copy X transformed into Omega X, an Ultimate Armour rip-off with spikes jutting out everywhere. He charged his cannon and Zero charged his sword. They clashed again and again, Omega X always coming out the worse despite his tri-elemental assault. After sustaining heavy damage, Omega X gathered energy in his body and a column of light radiated out of him, knocking back Zero. The damage to his armour was almost fully restored!

"Good grief! You are a pirate copy; you use hacks!"

"I do not hack!"

"God modder!" Zero hooted.

"Charlatan!" Omega X yelled.

"Noob!" Zero hollered. Omega X gasped.

"How dare you!"

But the end result was the same. The healing did not make a difference. Zero avoided all his attacks easily. They were not subtle, what with the charging before every ranged attack and the obvious bodily motions heralding each physical attack.

"Too weak. Was the original X this weak?"

"Wha… what!"

"I may have lost my memory, but my body seems to remember… that the original X was mightier than you."

"Silence. Now you will feel my true power!"

"Does this mean you're going to become ten times bigger and turn red?"

Omega X leaped into the air, glowing for a few seconds while rainbow lights scattered everywhere and his body morphed. He transformed into Seraph mode, a huge floating main body boasting six wings.

"Oh, I forgot this was the age of angel-winged last bosses... wait… this isn't an RPG! Although I am a tad androgynous…"

"Silence, mortal!" Seraph X boomed. Giant columns with a spike on either end fell from the sky and crushed the floor on either side of Seraph X with Zero in the middle, limiting Zero's movement space as the floor fell away leaving a bottomless pit on either side of the small platform.

"Very good. Will you now destroy the world to spite me?"

"Die!"

Searing laser beams caught the tiny platform aflame, but Zero just hopped and clung to the a floating column, smacking the main body with icy charges.

"Ice defeats fire! Or electricity! Or… something."

"Grraaah!"

Seraph X emitted his halo, which fell from above and almost ensnared Zero, but by that time the flames had died away and Zero was able to rush to the opposite column and resume his minty fresh saber blasts. Following the predictable pattern of flames, haloes and laser beams in general, Zero brought down the six-winged angel. His wings and body shattered, Copy X lay there in pieces, half of his head missing, exposing the cheap electronics underneath while his one remaining eye burned red as he spoke.

"I was supposed to be the perfect copy… I was supposed to be… a hero…"

"I just remembered something. He was not as naïve as you are. That's what made him a hero."

"I'll never forgive you. I'll take you with me…"

As the light faded from his eye a red alert was sounded throughout Area X.

"THE FINAL DEFENSE LINE HAS BEEN DESTROYED. SELF-DESTRUCTION MODE ACTIVATED IN AREA X. ALL DANGEROUS ELEMENTS ARE TO BE ELIMINATED."

"It's time to go…" Zero rightly assumed, and ran like hell.

888

For no discernible reason, Zero ended up in the desert. How he managed to reach there when Area X had been at the core of an entire city, unless the explosion had caught and flung him hundreds of miles outside of said city, is unknown. He was facedown in the sand, his auto repair functions whirring like mad. The blue core Cyber Elf descended beside him, and projected a hologram of a cool blue X wearing an even cooler lab coat.

"Since you disappeared I've been fighting this war alone against an uncountable number of Mavericks for nearly a hundred years… battle after battle… so painful and so sad… But the hardest part was when I discovered that I no longer cared about fighting enemies… I'll leave this world to you… Please allow me… to rest in peace… for a while… I'm sorry, Zero."

Zero spat out sand and rolled onto his side. He nodded to the hologram.

"You are a synthetic human. You look after your own interests. I never look after my own interests; I always followed someone like Ciel, like you. No robot could stop caring about a cause they believe in, but you were created for peace, not war. You have always been more than a robot to me, X. Your very humanness motivates me to sacrifice all for you. That's why we're the best partners."

Zero got to his feet, rubbing sand from his eyes.

"I'll do what you want. When an enemy appears, I'll terminate it!"

Millions of Pantheons appeared before his eyes. Without the Guardians to lead them, without a hero to command them, Neo Arcadia's army had arrived. Zero dusted off his clothes and muttered, "Well, shit."

END