Chapter 12: "Doppler Fortress"
Depthcharge's systems were just starting to return from medical stasis. He wasn't fully comprehending his surroundings yet, but audio receptors were online. A familiar and welcome voice was speaking.
"I-is it really okay to disturb him?"
Another familiar voice answered. "The med-techs confirmed he's safe and stable. He'll be very happy to see you."
Depthcharge wanted to smile, and he wasn't even fully cogent of it.
Soft, human hands touched his arm. This woke him up more rapidly, sensor systems re-calibrating, subsystems rebooting to full activity.
His optics flicked on, and he glanced down to gape a bit at Jessica.
She was smiling through her worry, and her eyes were avoiding concerned glances to the massive repair-plate holding his torso together in the interim for his internal repairs to finish.
"Jessica, how...?" His voice was still somewhat weak, apparently needing some of those internal repairs.
She patted his arm again as X slipped away through the door behind her. "One of your coworkers reached out to me, let me know you were alive, but really hurt, and that I could visit. I had to come." Her eyes were damp.
Depthcharge's expression softened, both sympathetic and deeply grateful. "...Thank you so much, but you really didn't have to. I know it's a far trip now."
Jessica shook her head, but tears were starting to pour down her face. "You're all the family I've got now." She glanced down to fight a sob.
Depthcharge was only surprised for a moment, then softly lifted his massive arm with her hands so one of his fingers to gently touch against her cheek. The digit was far too large to try to rub her tears away, but he could make contact.
Jessica lifted one hand around, and rested it inside his palm. "You're really going to be okay?"
He nodded. "Main benefit of being a Reploid. Worst case scenario, they have to give me a new frame. Personality processor and main memory drive are just fine."
Jessica pouted. "I-I've heard stories about core overloads, and system shocks damaging the..."
She trailed meekly as he smiled again, and used his fingers to gently curl around her hand as much as he could.
"You're right, those are possible, but I'm safe now. Truly."
Jessica sniffed, nodded, and then actually climbed up enough to hug him around the neck. He brought his other arm around to return the hug as best he could.
"I was so scared once he told me..." she rasped, her voice strained with tears.
Depthcharge closed his optics. "Sorry to worry you, Jessica."
She slowly eased back, partially kneeling on his repair pod, and rested a hand over his chest-plate. "You're still sure about this? This is what makes you happy?"
Depthcharge started to answer, but his words died before emitting. They shared an intent gaze, Jessica waiting for him to decide his answer, and also realizing he was caught somehow.
At last, he managed, "I-I want to keep you safe..."
Jessica sniffed, swallowed, and showed a stronger smile as she reached up to caress his face this time. "...Just keep that processor open to new ways of doing that, please?"
He subtly nodded.
Jessica cleared her throat, and eased down onto her feet somewhat awkwardly. "Ahem, so. You're still repairing for a while, right?"
Depthcharge cycled his respirator, nodding, and sat a little more upright. "Likely for at least a day more, I should think."
Jessica showed off a little datapad from her coat. "I could read to you?"
He paused, startled by the offer, and then smiled happily. "Please..."
X leaned against the railing on the roof of HQ, arms folded. He raised his head to watch Zero step out onto the roof, and briskly move to join him.
"Now that things are slightly less insane," Zero began, then turned more firm, "I get that we disagree on some fundamentals, X, but you can't keep running off solo like that!" He jerked a finger back to the horizon. "We're here to help each other! Otherwise, we wouldn't have a small ARMY doing this work!"
X straightened, lowered his arms, and replied, "This entire war is my responsibility. I have superior tools, whether I deserve them or not. It was a team effort to stop the carrier. I knew I could handle Crush... Who should be nearly recovered, right?"
Zero groaned, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "X, yes, he will be, but you're missing the whole point. Sooner or later, you're going to bite off more than you can chew, and you'll hurt a LOT of people who care about you or look up to you!"
"I'm doing everything I can to avoid that scenario."
"NO, YOU'RE NOT!" Zero roared back in exasperated fury. He jabbed a finger at X's chest. "If you don't want to hurt the people you care about, ACCEPT THEIR HELP!"
"I accept all the help I can justify, Zero."
Zero clenched his fists near his head for a moment to avoid exploding too much further. "...X, we could have stopped Crush faster, together."
"Possibly. It would also raise the chance that Crush himself would be dead."
Zero slackened his frame. "Did you really put your life even MORE on the line for the sake someone already lost to the infection?"
"Just like I would for anyone being attacked, any victim, Zero. That's why I don't reach out to you. You'll cut a threat down faster than you'll help the threat heal. Perhaps necessary at times, but I haven't viewed it that way yet."
Zero narrowed his eyes. "Do you really think my devotion to ending the virus is any less than yours?"
X shook his head. "I'm afraid it's exactly as intense as mine, Zero... and you'll kill for it. That's an unacceptable level of risk to me."
Zero groaned, but did calm. "...I really hope you learn better before something terrible happens, X."
They both jerked as an alert resounded through comms and HQ itself.
Signas' voice came through a beat later, "All Hunters, high alert! Seismic activity is off the charts in the heart of Doppler Town!"
The terrain cracked and tore, geysers of dust and gravel suddenly flying upward, spanning a couple of kilometers in every direction. No part of Doppler Town was unaffected, and that was before the broken ground churned upward from something rising beneath it.
Like some titan of old, a new structure tore itself free of the earth, smooth-sloped towers shattering terrain out around a central super-structure. Soon it towered over the entirety of Doppler Town, heavily armored security gates the last portion of it to break surface level around its edges.
And shortly thereafter, swarms of mechaniloids began to pour out, from the tower itself, and all the perimeter gates as they spread open.
In all but an instant, full war had broken out.
There was no time to do otherwise. Storms of teleportation fields crashed down to earth all around the expanding rush of mechaniloids, and the entire Hunter force came charging forward to meet them.
A rainbow of plasma blasts, flames, ice, missiles, torpedoes stormed between the two armies, the air and ground ripping apart in fresh explosions and shrapnel. X, Zero, Colonel, Airstrike, Inferno, Shimmer, Deepfreeze, Overload, Blizzard Buffalo, Volt Catfish, Quickman, Barrel, Gravity Beetle, Tunnel Rhino, Tripwire, Cadis, Spikesaw, Snapvice, Turbo, Acid Seahorse, Pyrostrike, Blast Squirrel, Mapteron, Warp Turtle, Neon Tiger, and Blast Hornet were all engaged instantly, immediately unleashing all their firepower with every other Hunter present.
Dr. Cain watched the feed from his private lab, his face almost cold, but tears trickling down his face as his hands clenched onto his cane.
The computer beeped, and he touched the comm without looking at it.
"Doctor, this disaster is on your head. If we'd moved forward with the Repliforce initiative when we wanted to, this would be under control in minutes."
Cain slowly drew his eyes to focus on Councilor Teagan. "Fighting fire with fire just gets you burned, Councilor, but I recognize my failure here. I... will implement the anti-virus."
"You'd better, or your authority over the Maverick Hunters is done."
And the comm winked off.
Dr. Cain exhaled slowly, and then changed the comm line. "Commander Signas."
"Yes, sir?" Signas' voice was controlled distraction with the madness he was confirming orders for.
"The Council has spoken. The anti-virus has to be deployed."
Signas knew from X, but narrowed his optics at the comm for a moment. "...Anti-virus?"
Dr. Cain nodded. "I can apply it to a weapon system immediately, but our base defenses are too far from Doppler Town."
"If we have such a thing, why haven't we implemented it before?"
"Because it kills the host, Signas. This disaster is out of my hands, now..."
Signas nodded subtly. At least Dr. Cain admitted it. Then Signas changed comm channels. "...All Hunters, a lethal anti-virus is ready at HQ. I need someone who can take it to the fight. This is a direct order from the Council."
X glanced down as he dashed through a geyser of exploded rock, the X-Hunters present all pausing subtly as they heard it. Colonel smiled grimly up at the enemy tower, ready to watch it fall, but Zero was the one who suddenly twisted away from the fight.
"This is Zero! Returning to base for weapon pick-up! I need a tele-field!"
X clenched his fists, and then dashed further toward the tower... away from Zero.
Signas grimaced as he looked over the battle from the holodisplay. "There's just too many mechaniloids! They must've stockpiled them since the beginning for this swarm."
Iris, Dex, and Alia were scrambling to keep up with all the tactical updates pouring into HQ from the battle.
Iris blinked at one feed, and then looked across to the others. "There's power building inside the facility!"
Alia snapped over to that feed as well. "...Slagging—She's right, Signas, we can't ignore that!"
Dex heard they were handling it, and kept on feeding updates to the various units out there.
Signas pulled up the data Iris and Alia confirmed, his lips firmly etching deeper into a frown. "...All units, can anyone see an opening to punch through?"
Various negatives responded, including Blizzard Buffalo specifically calling out, "We can barely avoid getting scrapped, Commander! It's an effective delaying tactic!"
Despite how calm and quiet the next comm comment was, it was somehow expected... and a bit heartbreaking for Alia.
X simply said, "I'll get inside, hold the line."
Amidst the battle, Shimmer flickered between several mechaniloids, slicing their servos as he looked off to X's position. Airstrike swirled into a barrage amidst the air forces, then as he swept away from the smoke, he found X on the ground with his optics. All of the X-Hunters did, locked in battle just to stop a war from pouring out toward civilian cities, each looked to X in that brief moment.
And X started to glow over with absorbed power, his weapon systems flicking and cycling rapidly. Buzz-saw blades flew free, swarms of torpedoes, waves of plasma cutters, chain-grapples yanking him further along. He was practically lashing himself or dashing through a hole of fraying metal and exploding cores.
Finally, he reached the closest bay doors, now tightly sealed, and his colors reverted as he started to twist and leap toward them in the same motion. One buster fired, leaving a swirling mass of reactive plasma, and he back-hand swept the other into it... firing again.
The shockwave pulsed out through most of the battle, along with a blinding pink-white blaze. Just as optics could recover, all that could be seen was X's form vanishing into the darkness beyond flash-molten metal that used to be a massive door.
X bolted into what had to be some kind of refinery or processing facility at the base of the new tower. Perhaps it was just a giant mechaniloid factory, and this was the waste processor. Almost immediately, missile-walkers and chain-walkers were charging in from various platforms and conveyors.
Thruster-blasting full force, X started to streak across the facility, his colors snapping and flipped as he fired off spin-blades, parasite-bombs, magnetic mines, and homing torpedoes from quick, sharp lashes of his arms.
As mechaniloids began to explode all around him, his sensors revved up, and he started to map the area as he rushed.
A path up seemed to be the only real option from this area, so he angled slightly, and did a flying arc-jump over another cluster of mechaniloids and spike-mashing pits. Several maces and volleys of missiles swirled and rushed after him, forcing X to twirl and arc his body with surprising grace between them before he slammed down to a landing and fired off Triad Thunder. A shield and weapon in one, it blew the weapons apart and sent a surge-wave back out.
With smoking or molten heaps in his wake, X leapt up to the wall of the upward path, probably a refuse chute of some kind, and started to wall-kick his way up, churning his boots into the bulkheads before dash-blasting to the opposite wall, and up he went.
His boots slammed more firmly into the bulkhead several meters up, and he braced for a second, staring at the wall suspiciously.
And then the wall started to ram him toward the opposite side.
X growled, and accelerated his thrusters, rocketing himself upward... only to see another section of wall smashing toward him from the other side.
He full-power blasted himself to meet it, then all-but ran up the vertical surface pressing him into itself.
Just flipping over the lip of that crusher, his eyes snapped to one side and saw the next segment crushing in at him again.
"I'll give you credit for persistence!" he shouted in frustration before pressing one hand into the on-rushing crusher, using it to side-roll himself up with a twisted-leg booster blast to spin himself all the faster.
At last, he flew up into open air, and barely slammed down to his feet as the last section crushed to the wall. Cycling his respirator for a beat, X looked around, found a large path on one side, and started running for it.
Zero looked down at his saber in Dr. Cain's lab. "So this will hit anything with the anti-virus?"
Dr. Cain nodded. "It uses the beam saber as a direct interface. As long as you cut into part of the signal network of the target body or system, it will add the anti-virus code."
Zero twirled the handle, and holstered it at his shoulder again. "Suppose I should say thanks, Doc. Now I gotta go save X from his own guilt complex."
Dr. Cain didn't try to halt Zero's quick twist and burst out of the lab. He just bowed his head, tightening his closed eyes. "...I never should have made it..."
Outside the Doppler Tower, war continued to rage. Tunnel Rhino and Barrel churned through some swarms, while Grizzly Slash and Storm Owl covered their flanks. Airstrike, Blast Squirrel, and Wing Pegasus formed a squadron, and twirled and swept through swathes of mechaniloids trying to crush down on the land forces.
Shimmer, Quickman, and Pyrostrike set up platoons of mechaniloids with distractions, and then tore through them to empty out the ranks. They still needed support from everywhere else, and often it was Tripwire, Cadis, and Web Spider firing off blockading shots or weapons to hold the line for a moment while the others regrouped.
Overload sent a surge through a cluster of the robots, Volt Catfish pulled the charged further out into another group, and Magma Dragoon smashed down between them, trailing flames form his claws and laughing with the thrill of battle.
Inferno spread waves of fire out to either side, while Deepfreeze and Blizzard Buffalo charged under his flames to flash-freeze the targets, causing many of them to explode from thermal shock.
Blast Hornet, Gravity Beetle, and Neon Tiger tore entire ranks apart with their bots, gravity waves, and energy claws, but quickly became surrounded themselves. Mapteron and Warp Turtle sent out magnetic explosives and system-warping waves to keep the pressure off them when possible.
Snapvice, Spikesaw, and Turbo grabbed, tore, and blitzed through dozens of other robots.
Acid Seahorse was perhaps the most directly effective. His acid-sprays turned the area around himself into a deathfield, and he just kept pushing it closer and closer to the tower, treading smoothly through the acrid air shimmering his form.
X started to skid to a halt at a sphere-lock door, but it snapped open as he approached. X deadpanned a bit, and started to build energy before he ran through.
The first thing he realized, as lights snapped on down a cavernous hall beyond, was the serrated spikes that comprised the entire roof. "...Subtle."
Ground-quaking stomps followed, and X focused down onto a huge mechaniloid, larger than an armored walker. It was bipedal, barely, with most of the 'body' functioning as a fang-toothed maw, with a 'pilot' mechaniloid rigged into the back portion.
And just as the maw opened to fire a large plasma cannon inside it, the roof started to shudder-crush down several feet.
X thruster-blasted himself to full speed, diving between the hulk's legs as the roof crashed down again. He skidded onto his back, and fired into the rear of the hulk with a plasma-blast the size of his body. It hit, but did little to melt through the hulk's armor, and it started to turn to fire after him.
With the roof crashing down yet again, X rolled backwards to his feet, and his colors flipped to greens and yellows before he spin-snapped like a top, firing acid-globules with both arms.
As the acid smacked into the hulk, X blasted himself backward with his boots, toward the end of the trap-hall.
The cannon in the hulk's mouth corroded down, as did part of its 'face', and when it finally fired, the explosion went off still inside it's teeth, tearing the whole mechanism to junk and smoke.
X twisted to keep dashing forward toward the exit, but the roof accelerated, too, starting to rush down him like a factory crusher.
Then X heard distant, muffled tearing and shearing sounds. The roof lurched, shuddering, and he kept dash-striding to the exit, leg by leg, until he skidded out of the roof's reach... and finally watched it crash down with a thunderous shake through most of the facility.
Zero leapt out, feet-first, from an access hatch above the spike-roof, on the same side as X now, and dropped down to a crouch in front of the paler Reploid, just sheathing his saber.
"So how exactly were you getting out of that one without help?" Zero dryly challenged.
X blinked, and slowly stood straighter. "Wasn't sure yet. Thank you..." His eyes drifted to Zero's hilt.
Zero nodded a bit. "Yeah, I'm packing the Cain Anti-Virus, but I haven't spotted any Mavericks to hit with it yet. I'll go up, see if I can find the controls for the army to slow it down. You coming with, or heading for the power-source below?"
X exhaled, letting his systems revert to normal for a beat. "Seems like we're more likely to stop this war at one battle, if we split up."
"...Yeah, can't fault that logic. If you die, I'm going to bring you back just to say I told you so."
X smirked a bit. "Likewise."
"Well you didn't last time."
X blinked at the morbid humor from the normally stoic Hunter, and then watched Zero smirk, wink, and dash off toward another maintenance hatch.
X found himself smiling, but then remembered what was going on, and turned grim again. He twisted, and dashed deeper.
X realized he was on an incline of strangely smooth metal, and then looked up to see a gap in the ceiling suddenly shift around glinting spikes. He had to abruptly rip upward with a blast of his thrusters to avoid the massive spike-ball that crash-clanged down and tumbled down through where he'd been running.
As he landed, the entire cavernous chamber around him iluminated in a wave of snapping power, and it was clear he was in the middle of a killing field once again. Dozens of openings in the roof poured spike-balls down onto the constantly sloping flooring, crashing down into deep pits with grinding mashers at the bottom.
X frowned, and then started to blitz along, leaping, twisting, juking around crashing metal, constantly moving toward the far end, where another path lay waiting.
"Honestly, these would need to be much faster to actually catch me, and I know you know that," he muttered to himself and the virus both as he rushed along.
"So it's just here in case the Hunters got this deep en masse?"
At length, with a final flipping twist and flash of thrusters, he crashed to his haunches past the smashing field. It didn't take long for him to reach another sphere-lock door, and, as before, it snapped open for him.
X sighed, took a moment to ease his systems, refocus them, and then marched into the hall beyond.
The next door snapped open predictably, and he looked up into a fairly large, but by comparison to the rest of the place, rather claustrophobic chamber.
And his eyes settled on Bit and Byte at the far side, Byte smiling snidely, Bit presumably feeling the same emotion in his plated face.
X kept his hands loose for the moment. "Again? Didn't we cover this?"
Bit clenched a fist. "You had help, Megaman, and this time? We've got the help."
Byte smirked more obviously, and spread his arms out, fists clenched.
Bit suddenly shouted. "CHECK OUT THESE UPGRADES!"
X jerked, shielding his eyes from a blinding discharge of light from the two Mavericks.
His sensors adapted faster than most others could, and he squinted in confusion at the resulting... gestalt.
Now a single body, Bit and Byte were only recognizeable by the coloration of their plating. Byte's body had formed into a centaur-like heavy lower half, armored and clawed, while Bit's was elevated into an almost gothic symbol with a golden arc behind him and a wolfish head atop a humanoid torso.
The gestalt grinned, and spoke in a hybrid voice of the two that comprised it, "We're going to tear you apart and send you to Doppler in pieces!"
X tilted his head slowly, his sensors revving up to max, his eyes unfocusing. Different wavelengths and sensor-pings rushed out faster than most systems could even process, feeding back to X's processors just as quick.
His eyes refocused, and he looked up into the gestalt's face. "Not bad upgrades. I'll give you one last chance to stand down. You don't have to suffer."
The unified maverick roared, and charged at X with a purple beam-saber erupting out of its right hand, swiping down with sizzling power.
X leaned almost leisurely, though his eyes were rigidly focused. The blade warmed the air against his plating from cheek to foot. Bit-Byte reached to punch at him across their own arm, the limb actually firing off like a projectile to plow into X's head.
However, X twisted and folded, avoiding the floating limb. Taking the risk, X revved his sensors up to near maximum, and rushed in to plant his hand on the gestalt's stomach, then flip around behind it, hands pressing to different contact points.
Bit-Byte snapped around at the waist, sword swiping and unleashing a wave of plasma from it this time. X flung his limbs out to let the wave pass under him, and his caught sight of plasma orbs charging up near the 'hips' of Byte's frame.
With a quick tuck and roll, X dove off from the gestalt's body, and the two plasma orbs flew off, clearing tracking him at high speed. X accelerated into full flickering speed as his sensors dialed down, skating sparks around the flooring with Bit-Byte stomping into the center, tracking him for the next strike.
Too much armor in the lower body for much of anything to get through, even though the alloy would be weak to flash freezing. The upper body is fast, but has the anchor point. Where's the processor...
His systems still compiling data from his quick contact-point scans, X kept blitzing around, the orbs finally exploding in his wake as they overcorrected, and another flying fist and sword-wave crashed into the floor and wall just ahead of him.
As X high-speed side-flipped past the attacks, his sensors mapped out the processors at last. Bit's was in the chest, Byte's between the forelegs. And high-sensitivity scanners in the head to target those weapons. If they overloaded... That'll do.
X finally formed his busters, energy starting to pour over his body. He dodged, flickered, and flipped around a fresh rocket-punch, then a sword blast, and finally the gestalt shoulder-charging the wall in frustration.
Rolling tight to his feet, X snapped one buster up toward Bit-Byte's head as it roared at him, and he fired. The high-power, but focused blast slammed into the face-plating, forcing the entire gestalt to stumble back several crashing paces.
Just as they started to recover, another blast punched through the steam and smoke of the previous shot, flash-melting more of the face-plating off.
"It's NOT POSSIBLE!" they roared, the sword vanishing as their arms snapped out. "You can't just keep getting stronger! THERE HAS TO BE A LIMIT!"
And then both arms fired off like missiles, the air rippling from the force of their departure, the damaged wolf-face glaring in deep rage
X faced down that furious visage with calm, perhaps grim focus, and just as the two hands were flying close to tear him in half, he folded down into a full speed dash, all but leaving an after-image for the hands to pass through.
Bit-Byte gawked in a timeless moment as X appeared on their chest, one buster point-blank to the snout, and the Reploid's expression hard with focus.
One more power-pulsing blast sent X leaping back as the gestalt's body crashed away, headless, the body twitching and writhing as overloaded sensor paths ripped through its entire structure.
At last, the body slumped down, smoking, completely limp.
X pulled a small device from his torso containment. "Marker, encode for secure pick-up once jamming effect ends."
An affirmative beep responded, and X threw the device onto the wrecked body, where it magnetically locked.
X then turned, looking to the back wall as it started to split apart... revealing a lift rising up.
"...Round 2," X muttered, and ran for the lift.
What waited for him was troubling. X stepped off the lift to look out through a ruined, massive window, then along the damaged, dented bulkheads leading on through another cavernous section of the base.
Even more, there seemed to be wreckage of turrets in some of the walls. X readied one buster, and started to move forward more cautiously. Hunters wouldn't have done this, not without being forced to, and there were no other Reploid bodies present here.
X touched his audio-receptor, but got a burst of static. Still jammed.
At last, metal legs tinked and clacked further on, and X quickly focused to see crab-like, blue mechaniloid walkers. They weren't huge, but their claws were already charging orbs of plasma as they marched toward him.
X started to rush forward, his colors flipping to purples and grays before he started firing off Triad-Thunder drones. He became a rushing storm of electrical power, with lightning strikes wrenching out to the walls every few seconds.
All of the crab-turrets were blown apart in short order, but just as X saw a path upward again, shear vertical walls, he also spotted giant maces flying at him once again.
The Triad-Thunder storm didn't affect the maces, but his spin-flip carried him through them easily.
Lacking the time to properly charge his systems, X's colors snapped red, and he fired off twin spinning-blade rotors, crimson and silver. They tore the mace-walker apart just as X landed at the base of the vertical path.
Looking up, X frowned in fresh confusion. The walls were spiked, clearly to avoid his climb, but there seemed to be repair-mechaniloids, built like snails, slowly crawling along the spikes to repair breaches in the bulkhead beneath them.
Looking down and around again, X spotted some of the damage closer by, and stepped over to examine it. His hand brushed along the warped surface. "...Four heavy driver spikes on some kind of drive piston, or close to it. Why would Doppler wreck his own facility?"
Motor-whirring made X look up quickly, and he saw propeller-flying missile-launcher mechaniloids descending to attack him. With a quick flick of his optics, X assessed the painful spikes, the repair-bots, and the fliers descending toward him.
Both X-Busters flicked active, and X snapped his arms up, firing pin-point burst-shots up into the sides of the ascent. As the first missiles fired and rushed down at him, X dashed to one side, wall-rammed himself back up... and landed right on the blown-off shell of one of the repair-bots.
Keeping both arms ready, but not charged, X looked up at the fliers starting to swarm toward him, and he thruster-blasted off the one bot. Twisting and flipped once again, his busters fired single bolts at each flyer, knocking them off course, disrupting their weapons, or just blowing off a blade of their propellers... allowing him to land higher up and opposite, on a new repair-bot.
And so he kept it up. A dash flip across, bolts flying out in precise directions, some fliers crashing down in flames, others knocked too off-course to reliably fire at him. Again, and again... until finally he crashed down to his haunches above and out of the ascent entirely.
Outside the Doppler Fortress, it seemed the Hunters had finally turned the tide. Airstrike swept down with blasting missiles to join Inferno and Shimmer as they finally broke through enough to see the base of the fortress again.
"Unit 14 starting to close on target!" Inferno roared into the comms over the battle. "Does anyone need help pushing?"
Barrel churned up through several mace walkers, just before Tunnel Rhino tore the next rank apart with a full-body charge.
"Unit 53 here! We're getting close, too!" Barrel returned, just as Gravity Beetle and Quickman issued a combined strike, gravity waves lifting dozens of mechaniloids up, only to be cut apart as a flicker passed by.
Quickman looked up at the end of his rush to see the fortress clear as well. He smiled with his optics.
Tripwire snapped his tethers through another rank of mechaniloids, then dragged them together with a slam, just in time for Spikesaw to tear through one half of them with a tremendous sweep of one arm, and Snapvice dancing along the other half, his crushing grippers tearing them to pieces.
All three of them jerked to twist toward a set of mace-walkers that were just firing weapons at them... only for all three to get lanced through the cores by plasma blasts from further back.
Tripwire smirked, and Snapvice chuckled while returning, "Nice, Cadis. Unit 61 near the fortress, too!"
Turbo did an excellent impression of Quickman, flickering between various mechaniloids, leaving them to fall apart in his wake. Acid Seahorse brought his melting aura near to the same part of the battle, nodding to Turbo as they started to press forward.
It didn't take long for a gout of flame to break apart the rank ahead of them, followed by a volley of explosives from above further on.
Pyrostrike and Blast Squirrel joined their team-member, and Turbo used the comms, "Unit 76, we're also at the tower!"
Amidst strange waves of slower time and exploding weaponry, Mapteron and Warp Turtle calmly pushed forward at all times, while Neon Tiger and Blast Hornet did strafing rushes all around their perimeter, blowing huge swathes out of the mechaniloid force.
Warp Turtle looked up, then touched his comm, "Unit 27, also at the gates."
Soon it was clear that the entire Hunter line had pressed within charging distance of the fortress itself.
Signas nodded, "All units, be ready to push inside. If we use three or four units per gate, we should provide solid cover for each other."
Alia was quickly checking over unit spread to check formations, while Dex was scanning for any concentrations of mechaniloids that might've slipped through the gap.
It was Iris who paused, staring at her screen in growing alarm. "Signas, sir, stop them!"
Everyone jerked to stare at her.
"Status?" Signas blurted out in confusion.
Iris pointed at her screen while twisting to him desperately. "Power build-up along structural points all over the fortress! Defense weaponry!"
Signas didn't wait for confirmation, he snapped his hands to the comms. "ALL UNITS, belay advance! Find cover and prepare for bombardment! Defense weapons activating on the fortress!"
X got a couple of urgent bursts of static, but not even whole words made it through the jamming now that he was so deep into the fortress's core and upper levels. He knew he had little time before his friends were possibly wiped out, but as he progressed, he found ruined walls, blown-open windows, which allowed him to see massive swaths of red plasma rushing down toward the ground.
Defense cannons. Massive ones.
But even dashing across that chamber, the next dropped him into a dim pit of a room, the walls dented, torn, and some parts even rusted already.
Except for the sphere-lock door beyond. It was clean, and fully powered.
X narrowed his optics, and then flickered to it, letting it snap open for him. Down a short hallway he blasted, and finally rushed out into a massive room. The ceiling was relatively low, only some meters above his head, but the walls were much further out.
And in the crimson flashes of light joining the damaged panels above, X saw the most likely source of all the damage.
A ride-armor suit. It was hulking, armored like a tank at every segment, and instead of hands it had massive ramming presses... with four spikes on the corners.
And manning the monstrous weapon was none other than Vile himself. If a dead visor could sneer, his was.
"X," he drew the syllable out with malicious glee, "so good of you to come! I'm going to enjoy this SO MUCH!"
X started to draw energy in, his fists snapping to busters. "You're psychotic. You put children in danger just to get my attention. I can't tell if you're even infected or not..."
Vile tapped his helmet-like head. "The advantage of skimping on those human-look-a-like faces. No little twitches or tells to worry about. SO!"
Suddenly the suit flexed straighter, and the arms reached up. The simple action made the flooring shake. "Say hello to the ultimate ride armor! The Goliath! I'm going to use it to smash you into scrap, and sweep it into a bucket for Doppler just to shut him up!"
X shivered, caught between the awful memories of death and loss, Jessica and Zero, and his own failure when he murdered Vile before. "Vile! If you stop this, all this pointless war for Doppler, for the infection, I'll go with you. If you won't hurt anyone else, if you stop this idiotic violence, I'll be your prey to kill. Just HELP ME, help the world, like you were always meant to, and you'll get what you want from me!"
Vile did seem to pause mildly, almost looking down his faceplate at X. "...Mm. Interesting. See..." His head tilted down darkly. "I always found you pathetic. I thought that was your weakness, but no... You killed me outright, can't debate the facts. But then I finally realized why I just HATE YOU so much," his voice twisted manically. "You're so powerful, but you won't use it! You put a collar on yourself, and martyr yourself, and KILL YOURSELF for all these useless, whining FOOLS! YOU COULD BE A GOD!"
Vile's cannon on his shoulder snapped up, starting to glow with energy build, as the ride-armor sprouted missiles launchers, and the spike-masher fists drew back with groans of tremendous hydraulic force.
"AND I'M NOT GOING TO LET THAT GO TO WASTE LIKE YOU! At least the virus knows what power is for! Crushing this useless planet flat and reaching for the stars with all your might!"
X slowly tilted his head down, energy resurging over his frame. "...You're not infected. You never were. You really did use the war as an excuse..."
"I TOLD YOU THAT!"
And Vile suddenly blitzed forward, one spike-ram flying out, pods rocketing off the shoulders to come rushing down at X.
The armor was no toy. Doppler had genius to him. X, however, was built, improved, and honed by Dr. Light's work. With his sensors painfully high, X folded under the rushing 'punch', felt the air churned out of its path, and used his boots to blast-rush out of the gargantuan machine's path.
With the missiles rushing down and tracking after him, X's eyes flickered, locking in their paths, and his busters shifted as his colors changed. Homing torpedoes fired off, then parasite-bombs, and finally two magnet-mines.
As X back-flipped, the Goliath's missile volley exploded in three concentric waves between the different attacks, the magnet-mines yanking the last few together to blow each other up. X skidded back on three limbs, and watched Vile come charging through the smoke of the explosions with the other arm hammering down, as well as a fresh volley of his missiles.
This time, X had to flip-dash to one side more urgently. Too focused on the missiles. Hm. Yeah.
With realization, his colors snapped to yellows and grays before he opened up with both busters using ray-splasher. Lancing pulses of plasma-light suddenly filled the space in front of him, shredding through the volley of missiles, and crashing against the Goliath's armor plates while Vile himself had to duck a few bolts, raising an arm of the suit to block the rest.
Vile growled in stymied rage, then slammed both spike-fists down into the flooring before different sockets opened on the shoulders. Large shells were fired out, but they were too slow to be a direct attack.
X narrowed his eyes, dashed back, and shot a few shells out of the air, but several others landed all around him.
The next instant, they snapped out and expanded, creating barriers, walls embedded in the flooring like some kind of shield device.
Or something to crush X against, as Vile shoulder-charged the ride-armor directly at the small Reploid with another roar of anger.
One of the turrets on the fortress rotated with heavy clanks as crimson power built in its core. Airstrike, Storm Owl, and Wing Pegasus burst apart just before it unleashed a transport-sized blast of plasma down toward the battlefield. It unleashed a wave of heated air almost like a shock-wave that forced their flight mechanisms to stutter a bit in the air. The three fliers opened fire on the cannon in response, but the large weapon was heavily armored and was shrugging off most of the blasts.
The battlefield below was a hellscape of plasma light, smoke, and flying rubble at all times. The entire Hunter combat force was scrambling, diving, dodging. Powerful shields were blasted into overload in single impacts.
Cadis tracked one of the cannons from a perch in some rubble, and fired right down the barrel, only to watch her shot sizzle harmlessly into the building core for the next shot. "Ugh, it's no good! Even a clean barrel-shot doesn't do anything. They recharge so fast!"
Turbo flickered between a few massive explosions, and finally paused to look up from his tense crouch. "Cadis, link to my HUD. I want to try something with your aim."
A faint beep sounded for each of them.
"Done," Cadis confirmed, and started aiming again with an HUD overlay from Turbo's systems prioritizing and marking targets.
Turbo nodded, and then shot forward, starting to juke around explosions, then actually racing right up the side of the fortress, his speed overpowering his weight. He locked his optics toward the cannon that started to track him. "Cadis! I'm going to keep moving at full speed so when it fires it misses, can you time a shot to hit the back of the barrel immediately after its own shot has left the opening?"
Cadis' optics widened, but she quickly started calculations based on her rifle, the air currents, and trying to account for the rushing discharges of weaponry across the gap. "Y-yes! Within 70%. I can't measure everything affecting the shot!"
Turbo didn't respond yet. The cannon fired, Cadis fired, the red plasma scorching along the fortress's surface toward Turbo. He focused down, his systems starting to vent steam as his enhanced servos started to stress. He just passed the heat-wave of the bolt... as he saw a pale bolt from down below lance into the barrel of the cannon.
Cadis' shot ricocheted inside the large barrel, and hit the base charging system before it could flood with fresh plasma.
One of the lenses cracked, then burst apart, and when the jets of plasma cycled into the chamber, it suddenly started gushing power out of the base mechanism, parts of its armor starting to glow from uncontrolled heating.
Turbo shouted in triumph. "You did it, kid!"
The cannon finally blew apart in molten chunks, and Turbo started to race back down.
Signas' voice came over the comms immediately after, "Turbo, Cadis, what's the trick?"
Cadis immediately started tracking for more shots she could land in similar fashion while she answered, "Have to impact the charging mechanism at the back of the barrel before it starts the next cycle, sir! Our fire has to enter the barrel immediately after its blast leaves it!"
Signas looked up in the command center. "Alia, Dex, Iris! I want detailed HUD tracking sent to every Hunter in the field. We need markers for when and where to shoot those things so we stop wasting ammo on their damn armor!"
"Yes, sir!" they chorused.
X boosted himself straight up, barely getting his legs out of the path of Vile's charge in time. Hand-standing off the shoulder turrets of the ride-armor, X flipped off, crashed down to his haunches, and changed his colors to red and gray.
Vile tore straight through the shield wall he'd launched, and twisted around, his own shoulder cannon snapping down to fire toward X early.
X folded down to his right, letting the shot fly over his shoulder, and snapped his arms toward Vile as he fired... spinning blades whirring out into the air like solid discs of cutting edges.
Vile twisted Goliath to block, but even the super-armor's heavy plating was sliced open by the arcing weapons. "You cheating little gnat! Without Dr. Light you'd've been LONG dead!"
X's colors snapped again, dark greens replacing the reds, and he rushed along, flip-jumping over Vile's position, while firing parasite-bombs down at either arm of the ride-armor.
The bombs latched into the torn gaps, and then exploded. Vile roared in frustration as the arms jerked, twitched, and clearly showed signs of failing to register commands. Sputtering motions ruined their accuracy.
"For what it's worth, I agree," X finally replied, his colors turning brighter, nearly neon green. "Dr. Light's designs are pretty much the only reason I've been able to stand up to Mavericks."
Vile brought the suit around, and used the legs to charge again. "And that's why all we need is your BODY!"
X swiped his arms, snapping off acid shots just before he flickered out to one side. Vile couldn't correct in time, and the acid splashed violently across the legs and lower torso of the ride-armor, turning its own momentum into its death sentence.
Vile sounded more like a beast than a robot as he leapt out of the ride-armor... just before it went critical and blew apart, sending pieces flying across the chamber as shrapnel. Shrapnel that X's deflection shield batted aside with little effort as he looked up to see Vile arcing down toward him, shoulder-cannon revving up.
X snapped one buster up just as the cannon fully locked, his colors going yellow and gold. A storm of Ray-Splasher flew up, several shots colliding with Vile's cannon blasts, others scattering wide, but a few slammed into Vile's plating.
Vile grunted, flipped over himself by the impacts, and crashed down to his haunches. He had to snap around and use his armored back plate to deflect another rush of Ray Splasher aimed at his legs.
"Still trying not to kill me, huh?" Vile snarled as he turned with his cannon.
X was braced and aiming right back some meters away. "I didn't have to kill you last time. With a chance to undo that mistake, I have to try..." His eyes sharpened. "That said, you're an uninfected threat. I can't let you just walk."
Vile hunched in fury. "Who said ANYTHING about walking!?"
The shoulder cannon rocked violently as it fired a rapid volley.
X folded back, twisted, flipped, and dashed out from the exploding plasma blasts... which then somehow converted into fire-waves rushing after him for several meters.
Vile watched X's flawless dodging, his shoulders sinking, but his fists shivering with continued anger. "It just doesn't matter. You're always the superior killing machine with some DELUSION about being a hero."
X frowned. "Choices make someone a killer, not their body."
Vile tilted his head up again. "Speaking from experience?"
Grimly honest, X simply said, "Yes."
Vile reached up... and slowly tore his own shoulder cannon off his body, sparks and hydraulic fluid spraying out before repair systems cut the pumps.
X stared in controlled horror. "What... are you doing?"
Vile made a sound like a satisfied grin. "I had to try, see? All these mods, my rage, I had to try to kill you again, but..." He crushed the cannon in his hand, and then an alert started to blare throughout his ruined section of the fortress, "I always have a fallback."
X looked around rapidly, his sensors spiking to their new max as he tried to figure out what Vile had just triggered. His eyes widened in more urgent panic as he saw the energy systems to the huge cannons outside suddenly flowing with overload surges. It would destroy the cannons outside, but not before a huge cluster-wave of destructive power embraced the entire fortress... and all of the Hunters fighting near it.
And then Vile peeled open his chest plating, revealing his power core pulsing strongly, and his own system buffer and personality drive specifically rigged against it. If his core went critical, they'd be destroyed for certain. His finger tapped on a third device just above his core. "Rigged right into my power core. Only way to stop the explosion is to shut my body down all permanent-like." His voice dipped but grew louder and more animalistic. "SHOW ME THE KILLER IN YOU, X!"
He only had seconds. X detail scanned the construction around Vile's core, and then leaned down into a full-speed dash, his colors starting to change rapidly, his busters reconfiguring in sequence. Vile started to laugh, clearly feeling victorious.
Spin-blades flew out first, two sets. Vile kept laughing even as his arms were cut so deep that the servos failed and went limp, then as the legs were gouged through, dropping him to his knees.
"I'm not trying to dodge!" Vile shouted, still cackling through his pain.
"It's not for dodging."
It was such a quiet, focused voice. Vile refocused in that timeless moment, and watched as X's busters rushed in with pin-point focused plasma jets. Wheel Gator's weapon, combined with Tunnel Rhino's, and shrunk down to surgical precision with techniques from Boom Kuwanger, Crystal Snail, and Magna Centipede.
X precision sliced the buffer, personality drive, and overload device with a twirl of his arms, then kick-flipped into a thruster-blast that shoved himself away and knocked Vile's body flying.
With X still airborne, Vile's body exploded catastrophically, clearly rigged to take the area with him. X rode the shockwave further out, nearly to the wall, and finally flipped down to his feet.
He skidded back, still holding Vile's core components in his arms... as the cannons died down outside. X slowly breathed.
"...The only difference is that I only kill if I must, Vile," X muttered softly, and then put the components into his storage compartments before turning to run further into the fortress.
Author's Note: So, for those that played the game, I always found the 'real' bosses for the Sigma stages to be super lame, and I was never going to sacrifice Zero for the saber-unlock for X either. As a result, I opted to focus on my own play-through style, which uses the 'failed' versions of the Sigma stages. This decision was made very early in production of Chronicle 3, which is why Bit, Byte, and Vile all 'ran off' so early in their various arcs before this.
I used Vile's instability as an excuse to really get into him and add some flavor that's not exactly canon to his methods and thinking. I never got into the manga/texts related to the Megaman X series, only what was in the old game manuals, so I had head-canons (didn't call them that at the time, obviously) for various characters and impetuses which are being expressed through the Chronicles series.
And since I'd felt it worked well in Crush Crawfish's section, once again, the supporting cast has to deal with the real war outside. It feels like a natural way to balance the different plot necessities, and even if it's 'the same trick again', hopefully the plot details themselves make it logical enough to not be annoying. I enjoyed Turbo's turn in the spotlight, too.
