I have been tinkering with this chapter for quite awhile, and I'm still not quite happy with it. Feedback would be very much appreciated. I'm having a bit of trouble writing X in this in general, because X in X series is, well, a certain way, and this is an X who has lost the luxury of being nice and thinking about others and all those hallmarks of his character. So it's a bit of OOC Is Serious Business, since what I'm trying to do here is show that he is Not Well. And still wanting to save the world, but he sealed himself away in the first place because he was aware that one of the biggest dangers to it now was himself.

A broken hero...

Speaking of which, I'm aware that there are some people who aren't fans of non-het relationships that are reading this (which I find quite flattering and do appreciate and such), so since thoughts on one of those were pretty central to this chapter, I tried to keep them, well, non-sexual, and fitting into the general aura of fucked-upness. Of course, on the flipside, the opinions of characters (especially villians) aren't necessarily those of the author (who totally ships those two, because respect & trust are sexier than sex).

Also, trying to figure out how to adapt some of the lyrics in Misha's version of Exec_Purger into a system notification while maintaining the badassery of the most awesome antivirus ever. Ah, Ar Tonelico. 1, anyway - don't get me started on 3, although some of the music's good. Invincible viruses trying to wipe out humanity that can't be killed because attacking them in the real world does absolutely nothing? There's a hymn for that.

The sight reminded him of the passage about how the lamb would lie down with the lion, but this world was far from paradise. He would admit (at least to himself) that it made sense for a lamb to rest near a lion when the lion wouldn't eat it: it kept other predators away. Especially when the lion had somehow gotten its wires crossed and decided to protect the young, tender, tasty meal.

Still, while that was part of why something like this had happened in the past, the only possible explanation for the current situation was that the lamb was suicidal.

It was one thing for a lion tamer to stick their head in the lion's mouth while everything was under control. It was another thing to do it when the lion was asleep, and they could die if it so much as yawned.

He had to wonder if the idiot knew how much danger he was in, and if he would care. The reason (coughexcusecough) he was doing this was obvious: the two energy types generated waveforms in frequencies that would either react in interesting and explosive ways or dampen each other. The idiot was effectively using his out-of-body-experience as a signal jammer, in order to keep Zero from showing up on Weil's radar. It wouldn't have fooled his technology: it would have fooled Duo's, and certainly Weil's. Even when the idiot left, if he left, Zero's energies would have been reduced and scrambled enough that it would take some time for them to become noticeable in the background noise. Between the virus and Weil's baby elves the planet was already effectively irradiated with this energy.

This was why Weil hadn't already detected the dark elf, but if X stayed here for too long instead of going back there to dampen her, Weil would be able to detect her again. The background noise wouldn't be a problem: Weil knew her exact personal signature, and his equipment would be looking for it specifically.

He might have to do something if it came to that. Not that he cared if Neo Arcadia was destroyed and all but one of its inhabitants slaughtered… Well, to be precise, he did care, but while he was all for the idea he could only take so much of people whining about what monsters they were and how this was all their fault when clearly someone else deserved the credit. The Dark Elf still blamed herself for the Elf Wars, and he found that so very tiresome.

Regardless, the Dark Elf was designed to make her impossible to hide from Weil (Weil was an idiot), while Dr. Wily had built some damn stealth capability into his greatest creation. Not that there was much left of those systems, when the body was one he'd created for something completely different. Then there was Axl's wish for his body to evolve into something that would let Zero survive without the virus and Zero's own desire to change, combined with Dr. Light's hibernation concept (without the alleged ethical simulations), which was just a handful of the things that had screwed everything up.

When he looked at this mess as though it was an interesting alien relic or something he'd just found, he could acknowledge that it was fairly interesting and there was probably a lot he could do with some of the concepts here and the ways they were developed.

When he looked at this as what remained of his greatest creation, he felt like he wanted to… Beat his head against the wall? Facepalm to hide his face so he didn't have to see this mess and cringe? Get drunk?

In the old days, seeing a failure like this would have outraged him and revitalized him, inspired him to build something that didn't have these flaws, do it right this time, but…

He hated to admit it, but he seemed to have the same problem that had eventually driven Dr. Light's remnant AI to suicide (oh, it was a heroic enough sacrifice, but the death wish had been there) and driven 'Master X' from Neo Arcadia.

Master X. Master. All his hard work, and it was one of Dr. Light's creations that had taken over the world while his own alternated between trying to protect people he was supposed to kill and angsting. If only he could figure out where he'd gone wrong: he was so sure he'd solved the problem when he built this one, and then it had turned out like this. He didn't want to just keep building failures. Zero, Axl, Lumine… Bah.

The definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over, performing the experiment, analyzing the data, and then ignoring that result. Denial. Delusion. Refusal to face reality. A waste of time and effort that could be spent trying to find another way to accomplish the desired result.

The person he'd been when he was human would have despised his weak-minded remnant. Give up? Think there might be something he couldn't do? Never. Lack of persistence wasn't how he'd developed all his technologies. Genius was mostly perspiration, not just inspiration.

Still, inspiration was an ingredient, and it was hard to feel inspired anymore.

Jaded. That might be the word. After all this time, after the reasons this had started in the first place were dead and dust, it was hard to keep giving a damn.

He'd read the Red Fairy Book and other collections as a kid: he'd read half the library. It had seemed very stupid, to him, for dragons to kidnap princesses. Well, perhaps they'd been after the jewelry and brightly-colored clothes, like magpies, and the princess had come with it, but if they'd been after food there was certainly better and less troublesome out in the fields. Still, silk wouldn't last very long in a dragon's nest: they built their nests out of metal. So if they were going to steal humans for materials, wouldn't a knight in shining armor have been a more logical target than a princess? More metal. If they were after companionship, a human wearing armor would also be far less breakable and more competent than a usual princess, although there were some quite unusual and intelligent ones in the real fairy tales.

Maybe that was why Zero had decided he wanted to keep Sigma, X and Colonel. Iris seemed to break the pattern at first, but there'd been some metal in her after all.

It was certainly why X had become so dependent on Zero, over the decades.

Zero didn't break easily. Zero endured. Zero was someone that kept him company that could survive all the danger this put him in, because X's friends were targets.

When everyone else you had known was dead, when you had lived so much longer than those around you, it was hard not to get attached to the only other person around who had known you back then. The only reminder of the world you'd known, the person you used to be.

Maybe there was some truth in the idea that people defined themselves by other people. Without Zero, X, Dr. Light's hope, the one who didn't want to kill and all that various rubbish had begun to cease to be himself.

What was the point of being Dr. Wily without Dr. Light? X had been a second Dr. Light, at first: someone building children, a new race. Then he'd been a second Megaman. But now?

Was he really so defined by his enemies?

X's enemy had been the virus, a thing that twisted people, good people. Zero, his destined enemy, had been a reminder that those were still good people in there. That it didn't have to be this way, that he didn't want to kill them. He wanted to save them.

Then the virus had been defeated, Zero had gone to sleep and X's next enemy was Dr. Weil.

Then Neo Arcadia itself, built of wreckage and broken souls scrabbling for survival and clawing at each other. All the worst of human and reploid nature.

It honestly made him glad he'd never succeeded in conquering the world. Watching X deal with that bullshit had almost killed any desire on his part to ever do it. And he couldn't even gloat about how Dr. Light's hope was fading, not when there wasn't anyone left to gloat to.

X wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

X despised him. He didn't hate him, he despised him. Otherwise, perhaps trying to kill him might have given X something to fight for, a reason to keep going in order to spite him, but honestly, X didn't care enough to fight him. Not when there were real problems, not the whining of a petty old ghost.

Not when X didn't even have the will to tackle those real problems anymore.

He knew X couldn't be awake, otherwise he would have opened his eyes and told Wily to get the hell out of Zero's systems. He might even have tried to force the issue. Been able to fight if it was for Zero.

Yet here X was, putting himself in a position where Zero might accidently kill him and never even know it. With just a flex of the power Wily had built him with. Just shifting in his sleep. X could be crushed, and that weakness should make him gloat. He should be glad that finally Zero would kill X. That after all these years, one of his creations would triumph over Dr. Light's.

Ah, there. It made him raise the projected memory of an eyebrow to see those energies start to curl around X. If he was a romantic idiot he might think of it as an embrace, but it was probably more of a subconscious, animal reaction. Trying to engulf the irritant, like how oysters made pearls. Or perhaps swallowing him, although X was probably indigestible. Those energies might float in there, sapped and unable to wake up, like a fly in amber.

X might even like that idea. To be with Zero for eternity, or at least until the heat-death of the universe finished off even Dr. Wily's immortal creation, unless Zero found a way to kill himself. To sleep, like he had in the capsule, without having to remember everything he'd seen, or think dark thoughts. No more killing. No more having to face what he had become, and force himself to refrain from killing, knowing that people would die because of his inaction but even more would die if he acted.

The fool Lightbot wasn't just sleeping: he was smiling in his sleep. If he was aware at all, he probably thought that curl of negative energy was affection instead of cilia. The claws and tentacles of an upgraded and weaponized alien organism, cold and pitiless. When awake, it was able to fake it. It wanted to pretend it was better than that. That he wouldn't hurt X. Asleep? Unthinking, the way X was right now?

He kicked X's ankle, hard. There was a reason androids were so heavily armored there: it was an important part of the body. This wasn't human anatomy, but he'd still be alerted to damage there.

It did startle him, X's eyes did flash open, but he calmed again in a way that was insulting. As good as saying, 'Oh, it's only you.' Someone he didn't care about. Not next to Zero, not when he was next to Zero, even if only in spirit, after so long.

"Get up before you die." When they'd met before, X had worn armor. War had resumed, and X's mental avatar still wore a robe. Went unarmored. Yet more proof that even on the subconscious level, X didn't care about protecting himself anymore. Didn't care about staying alive: and X's nonreaction proved that. He didn't even care enough about Wily's claim there was a threat to his life to ask for details. "How do you think Zero would feel, when I congratulated him on finally killing you?"

That made him raise his head a little.

"Get up," Wily ordered. "Stop using a killer's mind as a pillow." What an idiot.

"I… I don't want to," X said softly. He knew he should. By his clock, he should have gone back hours ago, to check on Phantom and make sure Aurora was holding up alright. The poor cyber elf's sacrifice had already suppressed Zero's energies: X should only have stayed long enough to reinforce that. "I know that I need to, but I don't want to." He had to do what he could, without killing, without letting himself become as cold and cruel a creature as this ghost that just didn't care about human and reploid lives, didn't care what the virus it created did to them. He had to, it was his duty, they were his children…

But Dr. Light had wanted his creation to be able to follow its hopes, live out its dreams, live free. Live the life X wanted to have.

And he wanted to stay here.

With the only friend he had left. The only person that didn't look up to him, that didn't make demands of him. The one who was willing to protect him, instead of expecting him to protect them.

He wanted to rest.

His eyes began to drift shut.

Wily bent down, grabbed his shin, and hurled him away from Zero. In the real world, a human would have had a very hard time throwing even an unarmored reploid like that. He would have wrenched his shoulder out of its socket or something.

It took X a moment to orient himself, to metaphorically get to his feet. "…Thank you," he said, although there was absolutely no gratitude in it, only an acknowledgement.

"You were using your will and energies to block his." Of course it had sapped his willpower. X had half-accidently retrofitted himself with an equivalent to Zero's abilities, then later he'd honed them based on what had been discovered about Zero and elf abilities, but he hadn't been built for this and wasn't anywhere near Zero's level. Especially when he was like this, just a pale shadow of the hunter that had been strong and strong-willed enough to fight beside Zero as an equal. Just trying to limit Zero had drained him dry: he was no match for Dr. Wily's creation on this level. "I'd ask if you were rational again," but when had he ever been?

X took a step forward, naked longing appearing in his green eyes, and Wily knew X wasn't looking at him. He half-turned around to see more cilia reaching out, a reaction to the thing they'd reacted to disappearing. Was the threat gone/was the morsel still in range to be caught and eaten?

And X was probably convinced that Zero's dreaming mind was reaching out for him. Missed him, even in his sleep, even though he'd only been peeled away from Zero's side a few seconds ago. X missed Zero that desperately, after all.

X stopped himself after that initial step, surprisingly. He stood there, wanting to reach out, wanting to return to Zero's partially-unsheathed claws, and, honestly, if Wily's enemy wanted to kill himself, or wanted to reduce himself to the level of a peripheral system, just another tool of Wily's greatest creation, who was he to say no? When he was the one who had come up with the concept of using this substance's native capabilities to reduce androids to that level, to allow his creation to shape and rule a world? Be worthy of the title messiah, a king with the power of a god?

X didn't worship Zero, but he still couldn't tear himself away. The alleged cyber-elf's aura wavered, trembling with the force of his emotions. Quite a pretty visual effect.

He wished he knew how he felt about that, other than the aesthetic appreciation. The captured princess, the hero broken, stripped of his armor and reduced to this.

He should be enjoying this, and yet it was just… disturbing. "Don't come back until you've figured out a way to passively keep him from scrambling your mind. By accident." Although Zero already made X's feelings keep him from thinking clearly. Wily wanted no credit for how that had come about. He'd been absolutely enraged when he found out. Zero crushing on opposite-sex clone of the Lightbot was one thing: pathetic, but infectable. Once Repliforce had escaped out of sortie range of earth, Sigma would have infected them, and then Iris could have been used to tempt Zero. If Zero had to have feelings, at least feelings for Iris would have been useful feelings, ones that could be used to put him back on the proper path once she went maverick.

Except she'd tried to tempt him into abandoning humanity before she was even infected, and fucked that up. Lightbot. Knockoff Lightbot, for that matter. They never helped matters.

It had been pathetic and aggravating, but it had been embarrassing enough that Zero was in the hunters in the first place. It had just become one more indignity to seethe about.

Finding out that Zero had somehow actually ended up in bed with the one remaining actual Lightbot, even if X was only a quarter as effective and half as frustrating as his older brother? That no, he hadn't just been guarding X's rooms recently as part of the duty he'd taken upon himself because of his own issues and what Sigma had said to him when the Sigma virus was still pretending to be General Sigma, X's son and a guardian, just like these four? People had gossiped and claimed they were together for decades: there hadn't been any change in the secondhand intelligence he'd received until they'd been together for months and X had worn Zero down until he was okay with public displays of affection. A kiss on the cheek, a damn kiss on the cheek, and in some of Europe before the cataclysm something like that would have been perfectly normal for people who were just friends, and the damn Lightbot had been so casual about it, so sweet, and… This wasn't Romeo and Juliet! At least in Romeo and Juliet, the two idiots killed themselves and ended the spectators' misery! (And in the process, their families' feud…)

He'd been too enraged to even speak for days, and then it turned out that the whole thing had eventually given Zero the courage to turn himself in.

Wily could have gotten the mavericks to steal him out of containment – Zero was far easier to deal with when he was asleep – but at least, he'd thought, if he was sleeping in a capsule sharing Wily's secrets with those unworthy idiots, he wasn't sleeping with the damn enemy.

It was fortunate for his temper that X didn't acknowledge his words: he just vanished.

Wily knew that it was the reminder that he could come back, that he would be working towards coming back the entire time that had enabled him to go.

Infinite potential. Hope. That was what X was built on, and he'd lost it.

In more ways than one.

So when hope had failed, it would take a force stronger than hope to keep him chained to this world. To restrain a being built on free will who seemed to have a truly powerful death wish. To override that will and bind him.

It had been fascinating to watch that in action, Wily thought, and was a little relieved that he could still find things interesting, still worth observing and figuring out how to convert them into tools, technologies. Means of accomplishing his goals and creating great things.

Maybe Zero's play at being good wasn't as worthless as it seemed. When Wily's virus had failed, and this clearly worked… He shouldn't ignore all this data, after all.

Maybe the last Lightbot and his greatest creation, now his greatest obstacle, really would end up dying because of each other. Ending the feud between their families.

By handing him the victory.

No. He wouldn't accept a victory like that, not after all his hard work. He refused to win because of something so idiotic…

System Alteration Notification -

Infel Phira executes Program: Purger.

You are isolated and kicked from the system by Program: Purger executed by (X_Ansul_ArTonelico connecting via SolFage emulator to the account of) Zero_Ansul_InfelPhira.

Addendum: Zero's mind is not your property. He wants nothing to do with you: leave him alone.

X hadn't added an 'or else.' With X, ever since the seventh maverick war, the unspoken answer to 'or else what' had been, 'or else I'll fucking kill you.' The seventh time he'd fought Wily, X's brother had decided that no matter what happened, Rock didn't want to kill another living person, and so nothing Wily could do had been able to make him. The seventh time he'd fought Sigma, X had admitted that no, there wasn't an alternative to killing the enemies that insisted on standing in his way, no matter what X wanted.

X had paid the price for his brother's nobility, and X had no mercy left.

Wily stood in ordinary cyberspace and fumed. 'Zero was not his property?' Oh, so he and his systems were X's property now, apparently, if Zero had given him the ability to use Zero's account, Zero's own will, to override even his creator's control?

Alright. Screw standards. Screw any philosophical objection to cheap tactics and victories. He was going to strangle that Lightbot himself. It wasn't like it would take more than a minute to get his access back, but it was the principle of the thing, dammit. He was the one that hacked and controlled Lightbots, getting them to fight for him. If X wanted to hack his goddamn system (Zero's soul, same thing), if X was going to convert his creations to X's side, if X was going to fight using Wily's tactics now, then X could see how he liked it when Wily played by what were supposed to be X's rules.

He saved the damn Lightbot's life and the bastard had given him the finger on the way out.

Oh, this meant war.

He was going to kill X and then he was going to kill Zero.

The goddamn brats would suffer more if it was in that order.

(If he had any interest in being fair, he almost might have thanked the fool Lightbot for giving him a new lease on unlife.)

Some of the people I have been having review response and other PM conversations with should understand why I am now grinning evilly.

Partially because the Hijacked by Ganon trope really should be Hijacked by Wily: Wily's done it more times.