At All Costs

by Jetfire

[Ruby Spears Fic] There is NO VIRUS. Sigma went maverick on his own. Vile is evil, but sane. And X is willing to destroy everything in his path to stop the Mavericks. What happened? How did things go so wrong? This is the story behind the Ruby Spears episode Mega—X.

1. Author's Note

Author's Note

In 1995, the Ruby Spears Mega Man Cartoon aired an episode in which Vile and Spark Mandrill came back in time to steal something called "Litanium Rods" that are worth billions in the future so they can finance their war on the humans.

In this same episode, Megaman X came back to stop them, but unlike his video game counterpart who was pacifistic, this incarnation of X was a trigger happy hunter who believed that he had to "capture mavericks at all costs."

Fans wondered why this was the case. Did they just not understand the character?

The real answer is quite simple: they didn't care about his character, they just wanted a version of Mega Man who was faster, stronger, tougher, bigger, and more hardcore than Mega Man himself.

But that's not good enough for me. I wanted to ask a deeper question.

"What would make X, a pacifist, go full 'shoot to kill' on his enemies? How bad must things be for a reluctant warrior to be willing to blow up a power plant just to capture two mavericks?"

This fanfic is the result of that speculation.

But for this to make sense, I have to set the table a bit.

First, in the episode, Sigma's name was misspelled as "Cigma," and Reploids were called "Repliroids." These terms will be written accordingly.

Second, this episode came out in 1995. Megaman X3 had not hit American shores yet. This means that we in the West had only seen the X1-X2 Mavericks and we had never heard of the Sigma Virus. It also means that we did not know the motivations or the personalities of the X1-X2 mavericks.

Put simply, this fanfic assumes that there is NO VIRUS, Sigma went maverick on his own, Vile is evil, but sane, and the X1-X2 mavericks have original personalities independent of what we know to be true with the information that came out long after this episode aired.

Expect this fanfic to make "Ruby Spears" versions of the Mavericks (such as Armored Armadillo and Boomer Kuwanger having Gutsman/Cutman archetypes) and very different takes on other characters, such as Zero.

If the Mavericks don't behave as they are outlined on the Megaman Wikias, it is because I tried to imagine how they would have behaved if Ruby Spears had a chance to write them with full creative freedom.

With that in mind, enjoy the show as I answer one question:

"What would make X say 'I must capture mavericks at all costs?'"