ZERO NETWORK TRANSMISSION
Rockman Zero/Rockman Battle Network
Authored by The Several

Author's Notes: I'm going to be serious and level with all readers right now. First of all, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for reading and continuing to read ZNT. It's because of you that I enjoy writing and continue to write. Know that I WILL finish ZNT, regardless of any circumstances come what may.

Second, as I'm sure you've all noticed by now, it has been more than FOUR YEARS since my last update. I won't lead anyone around and give any specific dates on when the next chapter will be up, and I cannot make any promises at how long it will take. I will, however, promise that I'll try to avoid the discrepancy between chapters being THAT long. You'll see another chapter this year, maybe more. Hopefully more.

I know that sounds rather disheartening, but please understand that while writing this, I am also trying to write professionally as well as pursue my art hobby - aside from work, personal life, and others (also I'm not rich). But again, please know that I WILL finish ZNT no matter what it takes. This story has been a part of my life too, starting back when I was still in highschool in 2006. It has been more than TEN years since we began, and during those years I've lived and improved myself with this story. ZNT is a huge and personal part of my life as a writer.

Hopefully you can all understand. With that said, let's get on with the show.

X blinked. His systems rebooted his optic data as the scenery around him was eventually processed and rendered as images. He felt as if he had just woken from a long dream.

Unlike other netnavis, X felt the unusual side-effects of being 'more human,' thanks to his unusual creation. Though he could not tire, he felt the fatigue — the meaning of stress — of fighting, of thinking, of working for long periods of time. Thus, he felt groggy, and maybe even a little sore, after sleeping. Not that any of this mattered to him at the moment.

X couldn't tell how long he was asleep for. Then he realized he couldn't tell much of anything. Not his creator, not his purpose for creation, not his overall functions. X had lost his memory.

"...Not all of it, it seems," he told himself aloud, brining to mind what he was, and what his kind's general purpose was meant for — along with other random tidbits of information. "I'm a netnavi. Good, I seem to still remember that. I wonder who my owner is? Fork goes on the left, dogs are preferred pets for human beings. Huh."

X looked around and realized he was in a battletop — the general device where netnavis were 'jacked' into to inhabit a virtual cyberspace and perform functions. From a quick scan of the device, X found out it wasn't plugged in and had been running on an emergency battery backup.

Without instructions or a netop to command him, he wasn't sure how much power he'd be able to possess to look around and outside his current location. Though the battletop wasn't plugged in to a power source, it was connected to a myriad of other unknown devices around the room. Before he knew it, however, he had already beamed himself out, transferring wirelessly into the nearest cyberspace-compatible device. A lightswitch of all things.

X attempted to flip the switch, examining whether such powers were within his protocol or not. Unaware of his origins, X successfully and easily activates it, but no light comes on. Wherever he was at the moment, electricity was no longer a viable service.

"I seem to have a huge yet unspecific range of utilities at my disposal," he told himself. "Was I a repair assistant netnavi? Or perhaps a library data archive?"

X looked at the battletop in the center of the unlit room and closed his eyes. "I can probably transfer all the backup battery from that device to power this facility, but..."

X wondered if, despite his ability to do so, was he allowed to utilize so much power without human consent? He was just a netnavi, an assistant to mankind. What if he had just overreacted and the facility's power failure was but a momentary situation? Would his netop be angry with him? What if this was a test, for him to see if he would overstep his boundaries?

And what about the battletop, the place he woke up in? To transfer all its remaining backup energy to the rest of the facility would mean there was no going back — he could no longer return and wait for his netop in it, as it would no longer have the power to run. If he made the wrong choice, he could get stuck — or worse.

X opened his eyes as he raised his right hand. All at once, energy flowed from the battletop to the connector tubes and finally to the surrounding devices in the rest of the room. Though the emergency battery of the battletop could last for years, energy transfer and running multiple devices for an entire facility would lessen it to a mere few days at most. One by one, the room's devices lit up, revealing the rest of the facility for X to visually process.

It was a small room with one exit door, open to the rest of the facility. Only the battletop was its main core unit, a variety of smaller computers set up around it for analytical use. Outside the open door was a hallway with a number of other doors, all open. The sign 'SCILab' was printed along the wall, though barely readable.

The walls were covered in grime and dust. Walls were opened, charred black near the broken sections. The doors were rusted and falling apart.

X awoke in an abandoned facility, where no signs of intelligent life had entered for years.

ZERO NETWORK TRANSMISSION
Origins Arc, Part 3
Chapter XXV: Reawakening

"This place is... abandoned," X stated, moving from one cyberspace to another, transferring between devices that ran on the last remaining energies of battery backup. "A lot of sensitive files are still here, though almost completely unreadable. A lot of salvageable computers too. Why would they abandon such a valuable location with its secrets still intact?"

'And why am I... one of those things that have been abandoned?'

X made his way to the farthest inhabitable cyberspace: a security light at the end of the main floor, right outside the outermost wall. From there, he opened a viewpoint to the real world, and looked at the world as a human would see it.

X gasped. This former 'SCILab' institution was nothing but a husk, a broken building surrounded by plantlife that had grown from within and without. The building stood near the sea, a desolate area kilometers away from the city center and was connected to it only by a lone highway some distance away. Remains of a parking lot was covered in weeds and broken tiles, and whatever road that led to the building can no longer be seen.

Worse still, was that there were no cyberspace locations even remotely close enough for him to transfer to in order to reach civilization. He was stuck. The long-forgotten facility would be where he would wait until the power died and he ceased to be along with the rest of its secrets – deliberately forgotten by history.

For days, X stayed and watched as the sun came up and down the horizon, unsure of what to do. Whatever netop he may have had when the facility was running had either forgotten him or had since passed away. Whatever his original purpose was had been lost with the facility. Now, his life is his own, and for a netnavi that meant very little.

"If I ever get out of here, I should find a new netop," X thought to himself sadly, but knew his chances were dim. Whatever cars that passed by in the nearby road were just a smidge too far for him to transfer wirelessly to, and even then they were few and far between.

A few ringing bells startled whatever deep thoughts he'd had that day, however. A bike that was normally not allowed on that road narrowly missed colliding with a car going in the opposite direction. The bike swerved, hitting the railing walls on the side of the highway, slowing down for a few moments. That accident put the bike and its rider just close enough for him to transfer to, and finally leave the area.

X scanned the rider and came up with a lucky find: the young man owned a PErsonal Terminal that was unoccupied by its own netnavi. The moment the opportunity showed itself, however briefly, X used his abilities to perform a wireless dive and succesfully transferred to the device.

He felt happiness at first, but was instantly overcome with confusion, and then doubt. He had no idea what was in store from here on out. With no memory and no purpose, this human was his only guide to the world beyond.

With a quick scan, X transferred the data inside the PET into his memory bank, and would soon greet the surprised human when he opened his device and learned of his newly-arrived netnavi. "Lan Hikari, huh? What an unusual name."

Unbeknownst to him, his new 'owner' had just come from school, having left the premises at the correct time for the first in a very long time. Very often, the young man skipped classes he didn't like, preferring to spend his time in the arcades or practicing his skills with the customized rollerblades he carried in his backpack. It was only when he went to school from start to finish as he should would he take this highway shortcut, unknowingly bypassing the now-defunct SCILab premises down by the shore beside the highway.

More than twenty minutes passed before the bike slowed down and came to a complete halt. Though he could not see it, X had arrived at the home of the Hikari Family in the town of ACDC. After getting off the bike and running up to his room, Lan carelessly threw his backpack into his bed, along with X and the PET inside it.

The sudden toss surprised him, felt even from within the device, and not knowing his own capabilities he let out a slight yelp that surprised the young man so much he nearly jumped out of his own underwear.

"What... What was that?" Lan said as he turned to the source of the sound: his backpack. Slowly, he crept up to it, picking up a clothes hanger from the floor and poking it as if to see if it was alive. "Is there something there?"

For a moment, there was silence. As Lan got closer, a voice suddenly spoke up, "My apologies. I did not realize you had heard my surprise."

"GAH!" Lan gasped once again, jumping back. "Are you a ghost? Zombie? Demon? Living homework come back to haunt me!? Tell me if I'm close!"

"...I'm quite sure I am not any of those, nor are any of those very likely to be in your pack. Perhaps the last one," X remarked matter-of-factly. "If your PErsonal Terminal is any indication, you have not been doing any of your homework on a regular basis."

"...What are you?" Lan said, finally close enough to the backpack to look into it, searching for the source of the disembodied voice. "Some kind of ghost teacher come to make me change my ways?"

"Sorry. Over here," X said with a heightened voice. As the child picked up and opened his PET, X bowed down and showed his image on the screen. "Forgot to introduce myself. My name is X. EXE. I am your new netnavi."

Lan was silent for a moment, looking at his device with a face of disbelief. His expression was short-lived, however, as he simply shrugged and threw his PET back into his pack as careless as he always did.

"H-Hey! Are you not surprised? I thought you'd have more questions than that."

"Not really," Lan said as he lied down on his bed and picked up a comic book to read. "Dad tends to do things like these. Gives me a lot of weird surprises, being a scientist and all. But you already knew that, having read my stuff. So what did he want this time?"

"I'm afraid I can't speak for your father. Nor for myself," X said, reading through Lan's PET in mere seconds to come across the name 'Yuichiro Hikari'. "I don't believe I have anything to do with your father's surprises, nor your father in general. I believe this meeting is purely coincidental."

"Coinky-what?" Lan said, looking at his pack where the PET was.

"I'm afraid I have no idea who I am, who built me, or what I was created for," X explained. "I awoke in an abandoned facility marked 'SCILab' by the coast, and merely transferred to your PErsonal Terminal as you passed by. I required your device to find out about myself, and about the world I have forgotten."

"Hm. That's a cool backstory," Lan said with a pout, finally deciding to take the PET out of his back and open it so that X could see out of the device. "That's way cooler than some random thing dad likes to give me as an experiment."

"If... you say so."

"I learned a lot of stuff from my dad's experiments," Lan continued. "Not a lot of netnavis can do what you do. So if I had to guess... you were never meant to be a netnavi for netops. You're probably a SOLO netnavi."

"A... solo netnavi?"

Lan nodded. "They're completely autonomous netnavis that can utilize all their abilities without the aid of a netop. They usually move from one device to another to perform functions, rather than sticking to one place. Some are mercenaries, I suppose, but many are just autonomous to defend or perform a specific function without a netop present."

Mercenaries, X repeated in his head. That didn't sound like a word he wanted to be.

"Judging from what you just DID though," Lan continued, "I think you're the solo-iest netnavi I've seen. All the previous ones I've seen all at least have a primary programming function to even remotely function... but you say you just did whatever you want, and you don't know WHY or HOW?"

"I suppose."

"Dude, that's weird," Lan remarked. "You're acting more like a human than a netnavi. And if that's the case, maybe you should find a job?"

"A... job? For netnavis?"

"Sure, those exist," Lan nodded. "When solo netnavis meant for a specific function lose their primary device for any reason, usually they try to fulfill the same function in a different device. Like when a car netnavi moves to a bus netnavi when the car stops working. That sort of thing."

"I... guess I can do that," X thought with a pout, crossing his arms. "It WOULD be nice to have a primary programming. To have a purpose."

"Yeah, whatever you just said," Lan said, getting up and picking up his PET to see the netnavi inside. "Have you thought about what kind of work you'd like to have?"

"I'm not sure," X said sadly. "But I think... maybe... I want to protect people. People like you. And others. I remember doing something like that..."

"Hrm. Pretty vague, but THAT's what the Internet is for!" Lan said as he accessed the web explorer on his device. He typed key words on a search browser for something similar to what X wanted, and hit a few matches. "Hm. Well, there's group that's getting pretty big right now. 'Irregular Hunters', they call themselves. They move from device to device through the cyberspace, deleting viruses and directing people during emergencies. Sound like your cup of tea?"

"I'm afraid I do not require such liquid sustenance, nor can I obtain them due to my limited presence in the real world as a being made entirely of data. However, that proposition does sound-"

"OH FOR THE LOVE OF can you please stop talking like that?" Lan exclaimed, rubbing and shaking his head left and right. "For a super solo navi, you sure sound more robotic than most things not gifted with artificial intelligence."

"Er, my apologies?"

"NO," Lan said, pointing at him. "Just say 'sorry'. None of this 'my apologies' junk. You sound like a butler."

"Perhaps you are correct," X thought for a moment. "If I am to apply myself with the rest of this regular humand society, I must learn to speak the vocabulary of all involved."

"...R-ight, that thing you said," Lan said, merely shrugging.

"Very well, I shall simply copy your vocabulary."

"Wow, that is a TERRIBLE IDEA," Lan said, waving his hands away. "I am not role model material. Also, that's all kinds of creepy."

"Then I shall copy you within reason."

"...Wow, you know what? Go ahead, do whatever you want," Lan said, sighing. "The more I listen to your overly-worded speech, the bigger a headache I'm getting."

"Very w-I mean... affirmative."

"Nope. Not even close to sounding like me."

"If you'll forgive me asking, Sir Hikari-"

"Lan. Calling me by my first name is the first rule."

"-Sir Lan-"

"Without the sir."

"Lan, if I may: according to your data, a lot of your classmates have personal netnavis. I have a Roll. EXE registered in this device belonging to a Miss Mayl, your classmate, who you seem to have quite a number of pictures of-"

"H-Hey, stop poking through my stuff! And that's a private folder, lay off!"

"Why do you not have a netnavi?"

Lan suddenly stopped for a second, then shrugged before lying down and simply stared at his ceiling. "I dunno... I never really thought about it before, but... I guess... it just didn't feel... right yet." He suddenly got up to X's surprise and stood on his bed, looking around and stretched from side to side. "A lot of my friends have special netnavis. Personalized ones. I thought about getting one too, even came up with my design and name and everything! But..."

Lan jumped down to the floor and slowly walked to look at the window as X looked on. "It felt like I was building a friend. They had their own personalities of course, ones that would never abandon or betray you and be everything you like, but... I dunno, it still felt different from what I think I want. Maybe. I don't even know what I'm talking about really."

"You wanted a netnavi that would grow on you as a friend, not one that you grew yourself. Even if that netnavi doesn't always agree with you."

Lan looked back as X tried to summarize his feelings, and then he smiled. "Yeah. Something that would feel like how my own friends are now. I never chose them. Sometimes, I see my buddy Dex and say I don't even WANT em. But argument or fighting or not, I always regret that thought. Always."

"I think I understand, though I can't say for sure if I have ever felt that way," X nodded as he crossed his arms. "I will try this 'Irregular Hunters' business. If it means I can protect humans like yourselves and other netnavis, then maybe not only will I find my new purpose but also remember my old one as well."

"That's the spirit," Lan said. "And I AM curious to know where you came from. I've heard of netnavi 'amnesia' before when netnavis forget their original programming due to viruses, bugs, or reprogramming... but I don't think I've ever seen one TRY to actively find out what their past was. Whoever programmed you did a pretty amazing job at making you very human."

"Do humans often suffer from this 'amnesia' as well? And do they actively try to figure out their past?"

"Uh, no. No, of c-That'd be freakin' terrible if we kept having amnesia," Lan shook his head before ending with a laugh. "But humans have had a long history. Netnavi technology is relatively new, but in the future netnavis will also have their own long history. And like ours, it... won't be filled with only good things. If anything, it'll be filled with all the bad things that've happened. But as much as we want to forget about them, we can't. We shouldn't. Because learning from those mistakes will prevent us from repeating old ones, even though we keep making new ones."

"One should learn from the past," Lan continued, "to create a better future."

"...I understand," X said, recording their entire conversation and committed it to memory. "It seems I was wrong. Your grades may say otherwise, but you are clearly wise in other ways."

"I... think that was a compliment?"

"Indee-Yes, it is," X nodded with a smile. "Now. Let us do more research on this 'Irregular Hunters' business. I want to able to try this new role to the best of my abilities."

"Now we're talkin'," Lan smiled as he looked back to his PET's web browser. "We've looked through an overview already, but it seems they've been getting big and actually taking in quite a variety of jobs..."

"Virus-busting. Emergency Redirection. Fighting Irregulars. Specialty Backups. it seems they do it all," X looked, starting to get a little worried. "I hope that whatever abilities I possess, it will not be combat that I will specialize in..."

"AAAAGHHHHH!" X screamed as he jumped out of the way of a cannon blast just in time that erupted almost directly beneath him.

He fell and rolled across the cyberspace floor, just spaces away from his defensive target: one of the ACDC Hospital cyberspace stabilizers, as Seal Cannon viruses moved closer and closer towards him.

If the cyberspace stabilizer went down, it would affect the real-world as well - as the stabilizer managed certain areas of the cyberspace in the hospital. If it was destroyed, surgery netnavis and hospital devices alike would lose function in areas of the hospital, causing unfathomable chaos and maybe even death to the humans in admission.

"I will NOT let that happen!" X exclaimed as he readied his X-Buster, even as weakened and disoriented as he was. He then raised his arm cannon and with a few controlled bursts, four Seal Cannon viruses took a direct hit to their cores and were immediately erased. However, more Cannons still stood and a flock of Condoroids came flying into the area as well.

'Why did I have to be in possession of anti-netnavi/virus programming?' X sighed to himself, referring to his X-Buster cannon as he prepared to fire again. 'So much for wishing I was a simple traffic light operator.'

As he took a few more shots that deleted several viruses, a massive explosion suddenly tore through the area and deleted a large chunk of viruses all at once. X looked up and winced. It was another Hunter that arrived on the scene. One of his superiors, the Hunter solo-netnavi Vile. EXE.

"Hey, X, how long are you going to keep acting like a rookie!?" the purple netnavi said as he prepared his shoulder cannon to fire again. "These are low-level viruses! A B-Rank Hunter should be able to take them no prob, or else you'll disgrace what it means to be an Irregular Hunter!"

With those words, Vile triggered his cannon - the Front Runner - which fired a massive barrage of highly-concentrated energy bombs that rained upon the cyberspace. The bombs exploded upon contact with the surface, each releasing a small uncontrolled force of energy that all but demolished the area. Once the smoke cleared, the viruses had cleared, as well as having leveled most of the cyberspace area into rubble and ruin.

Vile was proud of himself for a moment, then realized X was huddled over near one of his targeted areas, clearly having taken a few shots from his attack. "What the-!? X, what are you doing there!? You were clear from my attack, or did you just dive in to make your superior look bad on purpose!?"

"N-No, sir," X said weakly, as he rolled and fell to the floor on his back, revealing that he had been covering the cyberspace stabilizer with his own body. "I didn't want to risk the stabilizer being destroyed, sir..."

"Guh!... Grrrr, shut up, you rookie!" Vile spat back. "I don't have to take criticism from some pathetic B-Rank Hunter who can't even fulfill a simple mission! You were supposed to be the last line of defence for this area, and yet the viruses almost destroyed their target if I didn't help you! You should be grateful, you maggot!"

X frowned, resigning himself to take that criticism as Vile simply teleported out of the cyberspace and left him lying on the ground. As careless as his superior's actions were, they had been far more effective at both defeating the viruses and protecting the cyberspace than what he had done.

He sighed. It had been six months since he passed the initiation to the Irregular Hunters group. He was quite happy where he had started, simply redirecting humans in the real world out of disaster zones by inhabiting traffic lights and signs to redirect them, or by cleaning up in cyberspace after the higher level Hunters after a massive virus wipe.

But things began to change when X had shown himself suddenly operate an anti-virus weapon he didn't know was on his arm with deadly precision. His sudden actions those few months ago saved a construction site and its workers from certain death, a move which garnered the attention of the higher-ups, who suddenly wanted him tested on the field.

He didn't want to at first, satisfied with the non-violent programming he had been assigned, until he spoke with Lan the very same day. Lan visited his work every so often, checking up on him even on school days, or maybe BECAUSE it was a school day.

'If it means you can help everyone even better, I don't see the harm in trying it out,' were Lan's exact words.

X felt Lan was bound to be wrong someday, even if his own rank disagreed with him. Within only months, he had been promoted from a No-Class Hunter to a C-Rank to a B-Rank.

His current superior seems to disagree with his promotions, even be downright abusive about it. The Special-A Rank solo netnavi, Vile. EXE, who had a terrible reputation as a 'maverick hunter', one who gets the mission done in the most destructive ways.

Was this really where he belonged? With netnavis like Vile?

Blowing up viruses and causing destruction in the name of peace? Could that possibly be a programming he could be happy to stay with?

Those thoughts had been running through his head over and over since his promotion with the Irregulars. And even through those thoughts, he always wondered the same thing he wondered the day he awoke in that abandoned SCILab building.

'Was I abandoned with that lab by mistake... or on purpose?'

Inside the hospital, a man was standing beside a hospital bed, noticing that the problems with the electrical equipment had died down.

"...It seems everything is finally all right in there. The Irregular Hunters have done their job," the man said with a sigh of relief as he held his wife's hand tightly on his own. He had been worried the entire time the sudden virus attack threatened the hospital, his wife having been recently admitted there just earlier that morning.

"I'm glad," his wife said with a smile, weakened as she lay in the bed after the procedure. "Both the cyberpolice and the netnavis have done their work. I'd like to thank them when I get out of this bed—"

"H-Hey, hold on, honey, you shouldn't stress out yet," the man said worriedly, trying to keep his wife still and on the bed. "After just giving birth and what happened just moments ago, I think our child will have too many things happening on her first day without you stressing out even further."

"Oh Cerveau, relax," his wife smiled. "She'll be a fighter. Just like her mother. She'll come out stronger for today, because of all the sacrifices made to keep her safe." As she turned to him, the door opened with a doctor and a nurse holding a baby in a blanket in her arms.

"Congratulations," the doctor said with a smile as they both stood beside her bed. "The incident didn't seem to have made any problems. Thank your lucky stars. She's a perfectly healthy baby girl."

The nurse then handed the wife her child, whom she then cradles lovingly in her arms with a smile, a few tears of happiness slowly strolling down her face.

"My little baby," she said softly, hugging her newborn child. "My darling little Ciel."

To be continued...

NEXT CHAPTER: X, with encouragement from Lan, tries to continue being a combat-type Irregular Hunter, but X's reluctance to fight has seen his performance suffering. The Special-A Rank Hunter, Vile, wants him demoted and possibly kicked out of the team. Another Special-A Rank Hunter by the name of 'Zero' wants him to stay, seeing something special about the blue netnavi, and wants to test it out the only way he knew how: in a netbattle!

TERMINOLOGY

1. X. EXE - It's been a while, so a refresher: X was the first ever functioning solo netnavi in the world, created by Thomas Hikari (nicknamed 'Doctor Light'). With a core of blackbox technology from the minds of both Light and the ex-scientist Albert Wily (now leader of the terrorist organization World Three), X. EXE possessed what is known as the 'X Factor', the ability for an AI to truly be independent of its creators' orders and ignore the Laws of Robotics. All future netnavis were based on him. After the appearance of World Three, X donned the codename 'Rock Man' and fought the organization in secret. However, that was some time ago, and the events between then and now are currently a mystery.

2. Naming Scheme - This is more of an author's note, but previously, I had named all my netnavis with the naming scheme [NAMEdotEXE], with the 'dot' replaced with an actual period punctuation. However, because of a site update, all of the words with that naming scheme was deleted for some reason, and I was forced to reread and rewrite all the missing ones from all previous chapters. To avoid the problem, I was forced to using a space between the dot and the 'EXE' prefix. So if you've ever wondered why there was a space on their names, well there you go.

3. Irregular Hunters - in this universe, the Irregular Hunters are a group of solo netnavis that have formed a working company for odd jobs, mostly related to data protection and virus elimination. Because they are made of solo netnavis, however, egos tend to butt heads more than often, and the group is known just as much for their ability to get the job done as their reputation for a ruckus. Vile. EXE, in particular, has been known as a 'maverick' netnavi, a reckless type who is as dangerous as he is skilled.

4. Seal Cannon Virus - these are viruses in the shape of a simplified tank, running on only one tractor track with a small body and a cannon above. While easily destroyed, their cannons can devastate wide cyberspace areas in a single shot and are dangerous in large numbers. The 'Seal Cannon' appeared in the first two Mega Man Zero games.

5. Condoroid Virus - these are viruses in the shape of a condor, if the name wasn't a dead giveaway. Like the Seal Cannons, they are easily dispatched by themselves, and thus specialize in swarming tactics and are devastating in huge numbers. A MK2 version and a Vulturon version also exists, which are very similar. The 'Condoroid' appeared in the first two Mega Man Zero games, while the variant 'Vulturon' appeared in ZX Advent.

Author's Note: Once again, I'd like to make a big shoutout to LITERALLY EVERYONE who has PM'ed me in the last four years since the previous update. No joke, that was not sarcasm, I really am grateful. Those messages reminded me of my unfinished business and encouraged me to get my butt moving and get back on this story. Four years since my last update, can you believe it? FOUR YEARS. That's too long for anybody, in my opinion! Hopefully, I will never take such a long haitus again. Again, thank you for still caring for this story that's more than ten years in the making (seriously, I need to get back pronto), and again hopefully I won't break my promise to release more chapters before the year is over. I'd really like to finish this X-Flashback Arc and get back to the plot! And also I'd like to finish this story before it's old enough to vote.