Chapter 18 - Binding Darkness
X anticipates Rush's pounce. He catches him mid air and turns him over, belly up; to hold him like a baby. Rush licks X's face with his little short tail wagging at speeds the human eye cant keep up with. X pretends to drop Rush, then catches him quickly; making Rush turn over , hop down; and then stand up on his hind legs to rest his front paws on X's chest. X pets his head and Rush lets out a bark.
X - You been good?
Rush - Rufffs..
X - Zero! You'll never believe what I saw bout the old man in my head earlier! You won't believe it. Come here! Ill share the memory with you.
Zero pushes past Wily and Serges and walks toward X.
Zero - What about the old man?
X places his hand on Zero's chest and his hand starts to glow. Zero's head gem starts blinking. Then , Zero looks in awe of something ; then , a huge smile, followed by a single tear from his right eye and now a serious look. X finishes the replay of the two Blues creation scenes he was shown from Rockman so far and removes his hand. X looks at Zeros face and shows concern.
X - Are you ok?
Zero - Thank you for that X.
Zero turns to walk back to the group but walks past them.
Wily - Heading back to base? We will see you there..
Zero puts up his hand to wave in acknowledgement with his back still turned away.
X - Albert is he ok?
Albert Wily - I'm not sure. What did you show him? He seemed pretty affected by it.
X - A memory from the past, about you.
Albert - Oh? which one?
X - The one where you sang some blues song to a little red robot in your lab and where you argued about the role of robots in society to Dr. Light.
Albert - Ah. The very moment when I lost control of my own will and the very moment where I had the most control over my own will and chose to shortcut a problem that would ultimately kill the first sentient robot and...
Alberts voice trails off in a stutter...then it cuts out completely. He clears his throat and trys to speak again.
Albert - I considered him my son, at that time. Once I knew he had emotions and he smiled at me for the first time, I somehow fell in love with the little guy right away. As if, id been waiting on something capable of loving me back all my life and suddenly his smile was proof that something was willing to try. All that mattered was that I keep him safe. I drank to celebrate but in my moment of triumph I sidestepped the power regulators... side stepped..the...power...
Albert turns his back , slumping his shoulders and his head droops down, his hair even seems to droop down with him.
Albert - I think , I'll follow Zero back to base and do some thinking of my own...
Serges - Fascinating stuff. I don't suppose you'd mind showing me that memory as well?
X - I don't see why not, but...don't you already have these memory's? Your just a copy of Wily before he was cured of his madness. Even if you were cured of the maverick virus wouldn't you know all this?
Serges - Seems some things got lost when I was cured. I guess if a part of me was infected and it merged too much with pieces of my program, those program pieces would be lost with the virus when it was removed.
What X does not realize is that Serges is lying. His memory pieces are all intact. He knows exactly what hes talking about when referring to Blues and the argument with Light. Its an argument he secretly still believes in. Wily was right the entire time, even if he changed his mind now, even though Serges is cured from the virus, a darkness still resides in his machine body. A craving for power. Serges feels something inside him compelling him to get X to share this memory.
X - Here it is.
X touches Serges chest and his hands starts to glow...
Everything around X goes white...he can hear someone laughing...its...Serges..
X sees that they are back at the base in the forest outside Den City where Zero and the others are waiting for them. Its a small doctors office area in the far corner of the base where he sees Serges and Wily alone.
Serges - Albert , how is this possible? I thought Light cured you.
Albert - I guess thats why its called a mystery illness.
Serges - Its no damn mystery Albert. We both know you caught it in the Amazon ruins back when you were young and into archeology instead of robotics. You knew something was wrong but you let it go because you could tell you were getting smarter alongside the madness. You enjoyed it. You had more energy in the body than ever, like you were 7yrs old again. It took years for your mind to actually degrade to the point of murderous insanity but not before it granted you an IQ of 300.
Albert - You have no idea what I carry around with me everyday because of the things I've done. It seems I'm also going to finally pay for those crimes. Its coming back. I can feel it. Its like I can feel darkness in me, swelling up from nowhere again.
Serges - If you hadn't been playing with that other worldly dark energy...
Albert - I know! I'm responsible for everything! I know!
Serges - Who would have thought that dark energy would possess you and merge with your brain virus to create the worlds first human/machine transmissible virus. The Maverick Virus, the Zero Virus, the Sigma Virus. The true identity all along was in your brain! The Wily Virus! Some other form of this virus still remains in you Albert. It seems to be acting more like a normal virus and is killing your brain functions slowly. With a little time though, I can cure you. You can probably cure yourself with a little time of your own.
Albert - I , I cant. I wont ever manipulate a virus on purpose again.
After Wily was cured by Light before his death and after years of study, they determined it was his work with the dark energy that allowed the virus in his own brain to mutate into something transferable to machines and computer networks. Once Wily was cured he admitted to Light that he had in fact, found the virus in his own brain but had no intention of treating it, thinking it was possibly responsible for some of his breakthrough moments. Not wanting to risk even one ounce of power, he left it alone and instead used its viral dna as a host for the dark energy to assimilate. Viruses after all, are labeled evil by almost any intelligent life form. They are not of course. They are so far removed from sentient life that they are effectively neutral which means, it cannot defend against the dark energy and it cannot amplify it either. It was Wilys perfect solution to taming dark energy. A life form without the capacity for good nor evil and yet functions like a life form with unyielding will for its own survival. Exactly what he wanted to harness in his masterpiece, Zero.
Serges- You think if your precious Zero knew just how much suffering and madness went into his creation , that he would be able to live with himself? Do you really have the nerve to take pride in the fact that Zero's mind didn't break with the limiters off and X's did? I wonder just how tough your masterpieces psyche really is...
Albert - You sound dangerously close to the old you...Serges.
Serges - Its just that morbid curiosity you know all too well. That's all.. I love the boy too you know..
Serges - Are you saying though, that you will let yourself die rather than be cured by me or yourself?
Albert - No, I'm not sure what to do yet... but for the time being I'm not doing anything until I figure out how to tell the others.
Serges - You just tell them...
Albert - Not yet...but soon.
Serges - Listen to me Albert... dark energy somehow , has awakened some dormant virus proteins in your brain and revived the disease. The problem this time, is that the area of your brain that has been infected has moved to another part of the brain. The medulla. You will have trouble breathing and his heart rhythms will become erratic until something fails.
Albert - There is dark energy here in this dimension?
Serges - According to my readings , yes. And this is the reason your being affected. In fact, the readings suggest the source is close by. Within 100 kilometers. If we don't find a way home soon, you could die before we even find another way to cure you. We could also try increasing the distance between you and the source. It may buy us some time. You don't have much of it though, so I'll give you 3 days at the most. By then, I will tell them myself.
Albert - agreed.
X wakes up in the bed where Rockman sleeps. He is inside his room again. The walls are painted differently this time. The clouds are rain clouds this time. The cars and bots and superheroes are all crashed, broken, and depicted as dead, in pools of blood or with their clothes and capes torn and shredded.
X - What's going on?
Rockman peers his head out from a closet door ...
Rockman - X...hide...hide under the covers and don't move...no matter what.
Rockman shuts the closet door behind him and X can see his figure behind the slotted wooden panels , crouch down , with his hands wrapped around his knees. He's shaking. This prompts X to listen to his big brothers words and hide under the covers.
From a distance X can hear and feel the footsteps of something that weighs at least a ton. Its coming one step at a time, closer to the bedroom where they are hiding. X feels terror rising up from within him. He feels an instinct to fight suddenly. He remembers he has a buster and can fight on par with anything. Before he throws off the covers and charges outside the room to face the terror , a link is established with Rockman in the closet.
Rockman - NO! DONT! You'll kill us both!
X feels what Rockman is feeling as well as what he is thinking. He understands everything. What is outside that room is nothing short of pure evil itself. It will possess the body of the most powerful reploid and lay waste to all his friends, this world, their world, and who knows how many more.
Rockman - I cant believe this...how did this happen? How did it get in here?
X - I don't know. Did you see the memory of Serges and Wily just now?
Rockman - I don't know what your talking about...be quiet now! It's about to enter the room. I have no idea what its powers are inside my own room but if we are totally quiet and still he wont notice us in here.
X - How are you so sure?
Rockman - shhhh he's coming!
The massive creature pounds on the door in a way that would scare anyone. It forces X under the covers and Rockman to hide his face...
Rockman forgets to sever his link with X. X can hear everything Rockman is thinking. He cannot yet feel what he feels but he's pretty much thinking that he cant be too far away from the total terror that Rock is feeling. Its so intense that it somehow makes X feel stronger. As if, by contrast, he's not nearly that scared and so maybe, hes not as scared as he really thought.
X -Maybe its just Rock's fear that is showing me my own. My own fear, that I had not called to the surface, but allowed it to manifest from believing that it exists in another person. A mirror then. Im starting to understand who I am a little bit more.
Rockman bursts out of the closet suddenly.
Rock - That's it! I remember now! I remember how I held on to my sense of justice, even when I made horrible mistakes. X! Your right! I remember that I was never really afraid. I was always afraid of what others may feel. Pain. I was terrified of witnessing pain, and death. Each one, each time...it feels as if my soul shatters and when I put myself together again , after weeks, there is always a piece missing. Then, again. And again. And AGAIN! Its not me. Its just, a world I cannot accept. I wont accept! That's why I chose to fight! I... was .. I was ANGRY! This world cannot be, ANY MORE!
Rock throws back the covers to the bed. X has the exact look of a kid that's been caught during hide and seek.
Rock - Come on! Hold the door with me! We can hold it back! I can build things here. So can you. Even outside the door you can! Come on! Fight with me X!
X can feel not only the courage from the link but the determination that feels familiar. This wellspring of surety that gives him a sense of being. It is if a God had come down and told him of all the things to be and why things were. Certain questions he was pursuing with all his heart now seemed irrelevant. He was strong. They are all weak. They will ALL DIE. He must not allow that. Nothing else matters...
X kicks up out of bed and rushes the door just in time to catch it from bursting open. Rock is only a millisecond behind him. Four blue reploid hands frantically push at the center of the door in X's mind. Black and purple energy fragments get squished in-between the door frame and the door as it forces shut with a satisfying clicking sound, indicating a fully closed and secure door. Rock slides his hands across to twist the lock on the knob. Then he runs around to the window with the dead bots piled up and shuts the blinds and closes another set of cloth curtains and ties a rope around it.
Rock - This will hold us for a few hours. X we are not out of the woods yet.
X - Yes we are. We are at another Wily's compound in cyberspace. Well, I mean, When I left the cyberspace compound I was in reality again but whatever they call it jack in or plug in. The compound in reality resembles the one in cyberspace also. Its strange how things are built here.
Rock - No, its a figure of speech X. I mean ...we are still in danger.
X practically ignores the sentence.
X - You mentioned I can change things outside? How?
Rock - Just use your imagination but be careful how you use it. Be careful what you allow yourself to think. No daydreaming , so to speak. Not here.
X - I think , I understand.
X concentrates and forms a camera just outside the room door to see what's going on.
A dark energy creature that looks humanoid but also reploid walks around in a manner that you would think suggests he intends to buy the place and live here. He's testing the comfort of the chairs and the sofas in the living area and opening the fridge to see what's inside. He is not aware of the new camera spying on him yet.
X - Rock, come look.
X creates a computer and matching desk area next to the bed so Rock can see the camera feed.
Rock sees what the creature is doing.
Rock - How did he get in here? That's dark energy X. Its the most dangerous thing in the universe. What's worse, that doesn't look like a fragment either. Its the source core. I thought Duo destroyed it. Another thing. This guy does not resemble the original source core we fought and destroyed. He looks like a human with a few reploid features. The guy we fought was most defiantly reploid with a few human features. What does this mean? Is this is different source? Or is he the real source? A copy? It doesn't matter. X , listen. We have to do something. The only thing I can think of is to do something that Duo did for me when we beat this thing inside me the first time. Think of all your best memory's. Think of the time in your life when you were the most happy and hold on to that feeling. Then go out there and bottle it up. Then we can somehow , together, later, figure out how to expel it or destroy it. I cannot do it. Conjuring up any of my best memorys just links them to my worst memorys of losing the people involved in my best memorys. A painful , vicious cycle that would only make our defeat certain out there.
X suddenly shows panic.
Rock! I lost my memorys prior to about 6 months ago! I woke up in a city reduced to rubble! My first memory is losing this little girl and vaporizing her dead body rather than bear the sight of it all mangled up! This is very bad! If you don't do something for us we will both be used to murder everyone!
Rock - I cant! Everyone is dead! Its all I see when I close my eyes! There is no way I can face that evil thing! I know!
Rock throws all of his mental energy and desperation for survival at creating things to block that door and window. He creates steel plating, titanium plating, and some kind of imaginative theoretical plating that is indestructible in Rocks mind. He hurls it all at the door and melts all of it into a puddle that covers the entire door and door jam in a single perfect rectangle sheet of hybrid metals. Now cooled from liquid into its permanent solid state.
Rock then puts his hand up to the air in front of the window and squeezes his fingers as if he's pinching the window down to a smaller size and it works. The window squeezes down to the size of a dime. Rock puts a piece of his new metal over it.
Rock - I bet that will buy us a week or so!
X - Really? Tell me. Where is our body ? I touched Serge's to share my memory and ended up here. We are at the lab or in an area outside Wily's compound jack in point. We don't know when or if they can wake me without any help just like before. Then you will alone with that thing and what will happen if it gets just you and not me?
Rock - I have no real idea but I can tell you this, It will probably be able to roam through your systems as freely as I can, INCLUDING , those backup files that only I have access too. For emergency's like, a system reset. Remember?
X - Did you erase my memorys?
Rock - Yes. You came in here and asked for it and I refused. For 10 years...
X - What changed your mind?
Rock - You lost everything and everyone, again. It seemed logical actually, given that the whole point of my reset into YOU in the first place was to keep the past from happening again. But there you were. Broken again. No Zero. No followers. No one to save. You failed. X. You were just going to sit by a scrap yard and literally wait for eons , alone, until you eventually malfunctioned of something. I sensed it in you. When you asked, I thought time would heal your wounds. But year after year , you sat there. I tried to talk to you and guide you and the only thing you kept asking me was, can you bring them back? When I always said no, you always went silent again. For another year, X. The same day, the same time each year you asked me. You asked me the same two questions. Will you reset me? Can you bring them back?... I am not so sure anymore X. Im not so sure that neither you nor I can be saved. Much less save anyone else. Now, we harbor a threat in our body that could wipe out all life in both our dimensions.
X - What about a reset!? Will that destroy the Dark Energy?
Rock sits down on the bed to think.
Rock - Maybe. Only if... ... no. I am not...he's not... no...not yet.
X - What is it? You know how to win? Tell me!
Rock - A reset would work only if we merged our programs in a way that we would not live separately again for the rest of our lives. We would be neither Rock nor X but a randomized combination of the two. My processes run inside your quantum network but they are made, as you can see, of a super computer code that was ahead of its time but its not as sophisticated as yours X. If we merged you would most defiantly be downgraded and then likely inherit some bugs that will need working out. A quantum network that could potentially be fragmented or unbalanced. Its such a risk. We might become invalid or shut down completely. However, no matter the result of the merge, we can reset afterward and erase the dark energy and it may even be able to repair the bugs or errors that happen from the merging.
X - what choice to we have?
Rock - Well, we can still try to fight it. Using positive memorys and willpower. But if we lose...we lose everything and everyone. All over again... This way, the chance of success is over 90 percent. This plan is a 30% chance at best. What will it be X? I do not believe I should give an opinion one way or the other on this. I know my will is at stake but I also understand what Light's intentions were when he made you and what his last instructions to me were. I will not fail my father again. Make your choice X...
X - ...Let's...
X - No...
X - Merge with me Rock...no... Aniki...
Rock - Take my hand...one last time...and X...thank you.
X takes Rocks hand and they both start to glow white. They burst apart into fragments of blue and white code and swirl around the room. Building blocks and Legos fly around and bounce off the walls. The bed sheets are thrown off and sent swirling about. X pops out of the swirling energy ball. Everything suddenly drops out of the air at once in the room.
X and Rock are one. This is Rockman X. He feels an intense emotional pain. For a moment he considers the reset. The dark energy must be defeated. A reset will kill this thing but it will wipe all our memorys and Lights data, forever. There is no one left to ask. There is only one voice now. Rock feels reborn as his old self through the body and mind of X. To him, its like his systems all got upgraded to the latest Light specs. For X, its as if he had lost his memorys for all his life and has just now got them back. Neither one feels invaded by the other. They both feel as if the body was always their own. With both spirits in harmony the minds fully merge and one consciousness is born from the quantum networks reworking of the core programs.
Rockman X - How can we lose!? There is more than one way to use positive energy!
Rockman X pulls off the plating covering the door and rips the door from its hinges. He boldly struts out into the living area where the Dark Energy being is sitting in a reclining chair watching soap operas with popcorn in a bowl next to the chair on the coffee table.
The being turns his head to see X with a fierce look of determination on his face and he smiles.
X can see his face. It looks like Albert. It looks like Dr. Wily but with a few reploid features.
His eyes turn dark purple and start to glow. The dark energy aura around the beings body is growing and glowing more violently. X starts to feel a little speck of fear and then it triggers a reaction inside him.
X starts to see Auto, playing with Tango and Roll when an explosion suddenly rips through the wall and tears them all to pieces. X looks down to see his own arm missing and starts to scream.
Suddenly Roll walks in and stands over her own busted body. She turns to X and kneels down to comfort him.
Roll - Rock...its not your fault. When you remember me. Do you always remember me this way? Please Rock. Do not ever let yourself remember me like this again. Here... here is the memory...
Rockman X's vision blurs out white again and he is back at Dr Lights house during the time when they were first built. Rock is a simple lab assistant and Roll is cleaning up the kitchen after cooking a delicious meal for Thomas. Rock walks the empty plate of Dr Light back to the kitchen.
Rock - I will get this for you Dr.
Light - Thank you son.
Rock walks into the kitchen.
Rock - Here you go Roll!
Roll - Thank you! You didn't have to, you know. I would have got it. But thank you !
Rock - You are my little sister and no matter what , we are a team. No matter what!
Rockman makes a fist and throws it out as a gesture to his sister.
Roll throws her fist up at his to form a symmetrical pair. They both nod to each other at the same time and Rock turns to walk away. Roll looks over her shoulder at her brother and smiles. A simulated teardrop rolls down Roll's cheek.
Rocks vision returns and he can see the dark energy still sitting in that chair and his little sisters image haunts over him. She looks down at him in the chair but he doesn't notice her. Roll then looks at Rock.
Roll - You see now? Don't you?
Rockman X - Yes...I ... I love you . Roll!
Rockman X tears up...but instead of anger and pain he taps into the love and the memorys of all the times she and Light have warmed each others souls. There are so many. There are so so very many of these moments. X feels a surge of warmth and peace flow through him. He charges his blaster. The dark energy creature leaps up from the chair and starts to cower in the nearest corner it could find. IT is now terrified. Completely terrified.
X looks at the creature cowering in his minds corner and resists an urge to simply blow the creature away in anger. That was the final test. And he passed it. Had he taken all that love energy and hit the creature with a blast of anger, he would have turned all that energy into darkness and grew from it exponentially.
When X does aim his blaster at the creature he closes his eyes. He thinks of the mercy you give a suffering animal and releases his charge. He thinks of Roll, and Light and Blues, and Auto all smiling at him. He misses them terribly but he will not allow himself to associate pain with their smiling faces, ever again...
The dark energy creature is swallowed up by the enormous blue wave of energy. It crashes through the wall into the outside world in X's mind. The blast continues to surge upward into the sky and disappears into the sun that is now shining brightly down.
A large blue explosion turns the sun from yellow to bluish white. All around the scrapyard, reploid body's are repairing themselves and coming back to life. Green trees start to sprout and the wind picks up.
Rockman X opens his eyes.
Albert Wily - Welcome back, son.
