Disclaimer: Return to the days when I did own Capcom, which is about 2,000 leagues off into another dimension, where my alternate self is a corporate bitch with a harem of gay men and a wife, both at my beck and call. Nothing like /this/ reality, where I own diddly squat, have one gay friend, and remain unmarried.

Leave Me Untouched
Vile

Vile felt the wind blow past, as the moon rose and stars shone. Night had fallen over the large province of Tokyo, the lights in buildings turning off one by one as the humans turned in for the night, feeling safe enough to do so nowadays, with the hunters haven taken care of most of the Mavericks in the local area.

Praise thy master... A sigh swept away in the wind as his fate finally bore down on him. The footsteps were falling into place smoothly and full of grace as they became louder, their creator on the verge of meeting up with the elusive, violet reploid.

"Vile." The tone, while used softly, was solid and conveyed his time-learned authority. It was vaguely surprising how a pacifist had come so far, turned so around, and still clung to a blindman's belief of being able to see again.

With a smile hidden by inner shadows, Vile obeyed the silent command, hands raised lazily to demonstrate his disarmed state and turned on his heel, one red eye glowing in the brilliant night. Meters away, X stood like a statue, frozen with his arm cannon level to Vile's chest. And he was alone. No backup in sight, but who was to say X was honorable any longer? To trust the word of an e-fax sent by an undisclosed recipient? Honorable or not, the chances a meeting of this caliber remaining secret were slim; he had to act quickly. "You came. I'm impressed with your boldness."

A twitch caught the Hunter's lip, a subtle movement no one but Vile couldn't seen from so far away. No doubt his mind was downplaying every possible trick there could be, from ambush to pitfalls to viral attacks. His body nor expression moved otherwise. "I had a bit of faith," he stated, "that your 'invitation' was credible, after it bypassed public, private, and personal securities to wind up in my memo box, when you could have done limitless damage instead with codebreakers like that. Yet you didn't."

Vile took the moment to mull over X's deduction skills. "'Wouldn't' is more the right word," he murmured at last, but didn't elaborate further. "I'm here to talk, if that wasn't obvious enough. And I recommend you hear me out."

X's lips thinned, grim. "I'm listening."

The howl of the air kept the silent company. Vile lowered his arms and turned back to face the human world, speaking just loud enough to hear. "The war is going to end soon. However, it's undetermined whose favor victory will ultimately submit to. On the other hand, Megaman X," he punctuated the name as he said it, "there's a more serious, private side to the battle of the machines. Are you aware?...that you're the eye of a horrible storm? That the world could blame its hellish future on your very creation?"

"Something which I had no control over," was the grounded reply. "What's your point?"

"It used to be a sweet feeling of agony, looking at the world, then looking down at your hands and crying into them. You'd cry and cry, because you came first and others followed quickly. And then the fighting." His head turned just enough to see the red eye blazing vibrantly. "We're two of a kind, X. Revolutionists who did nothing but wake up when a switch was flipped. We turned the world upside down, you and I."

".....You've lost it."

"Indeed I have!" Vile screamed. "I've lost much more than you'd ever /believe/. Could possibly comprehend! I'm older than you, X! Fifty years older!" He spun around, clenching his fists hard enough to snap armor plates below and atop his fingers. "Call me crazy, call me rabid, but I've seen you in your most vulnerable stages of development. When you were nothing but a metal skeleton and wires! I've seen you bare, naked, armored, and slumbering.... Can you imagine that? That someone who wants to rip you to shreds has witnessed your birth? Does it make you tremble, cower, disturb you? I could be lying...." That evil optic narrowed. "But what do you know about liars and the trust-worthy. This life is mere fabricated....."

X's expression was unsortable, scrunched in disdain with so much riding its foundation. But he'd taken a step back, and that's all it took to calm Vile's tantrum. Fear. "You're bluffing."

Vile eased his hands open, and examined them as his spoke. "Megaman X. Final creation of Dr. Thomas Light. Repliroid, basis of the Reploid race. Inherent 'family': Megaman, secondary bioroid model; deceased. Roll, original secretary android model; deactivated and destroyed. Collective creations Auto, Rush unit, Beat unit, and Tango unit; deactivated and displayed at an English museum at the request of the Japanese government. ....Textbook knowledge, correct?

"I'll take your silence as 'yes'."

"What do you want, Vile?!" Enough headgames, it translated into. Yes, he mused, no more headgames. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. ....So help him God.

"A mere understanding," he stated. "Why was there one creation missing? Wily made it into the records, as did numerous robotic individuals and their schematics after a complete dissection of their systems; any teenager could find them in libraries, blueprints and such. Even his little double trouble duo made it into the bigger picture." Deftly, he reached up to unsnap two catches and, for the first time, removed the helm from his head.

"Where does it state the fate of the zero model?"

It dropped carelessly to the gravel-strewn floor.

X tipped his head to the side, puzzled now and foremost. This face wasn't what he'd expected to lay beneath the T-sectioned faceguard. In fact, it was the last one he expected. ...It was a face he saw once, in a memory chip he alone was authorized to access. His yelp was embarrassingly delayed.

There were various differences, obvious and subtle alike. Black hair, suffering from over a decade of weight, struggled to rise back into an unruly state; it was the same. A gaunt expression X warily feared he'd wear one day, hollowed by time too long spent alive and young, with a wicked scar carving down the left side; it was the same as much as it wasn't.

But there was no subtle changes between the eyes. The scar, which if turned in the right light would dance over the river of exposed metal, and it explained why only one of Vile's eyes glowed in the nigrescence of shadow. The scar touched from forehead to chin, and collided dead center with the socket; X didn't want to dwell on how it could've happened. And the eye was replaced with an inferior one. Because the right one could've passed as real, a human eye, with an iris and pupil and retina. Like his own. Dark brown it was, cold and sharp and nothing friendly about its intensity. Uncaring, unwanting...unhappy.

Footnotes explained once, when discussing Dr. Lights exploits and masterpieces, he'd fashioned a face he had used only twice in his life: on Rock, before his reprogramming, and the joint project between Light and Wily, the original. The First.

"No. It...can't be." X's knees buckled. The First. DRN 000. The ascendant of his own predecessor, the brother, the prototype that led to -this-. "You have some nerve..."

White teeth accented a humorless smile. "There are some things that can't be changed, hero. I have a message to deliver to you."

X scowled harshly. "From your /master/, I take it?"

"None of the sort," he flippantly replied. "It should've been done the first time we-- X and Vile-- squared off. ..I've been delaying the inevitable. Listen good, boy, or I might have to force you to hear me." And it wouldn't be pretty, the threat promised.

"Praise thy master and heed his laws of mouth...."

X tensed, his edge acutely balanced on the line of fight and flight, yet his mind lost in the rapture of a voice command. Vile purred derangedly to himself. He wasn't going to let this chance escape him, and too late, he already sealed the incarnated lives of selected individuals. He couldn't -wait-.

"Fall unto the night's empowered love.
Wrap me in its shadowed blanket.
Keep me hidden and safe from humanity's evil and innocence."

His steps were quiet, and Vile stopped less than comfortable distance away. But with an unforseen gentleness, the bane of existence touched a cheek with the back tips of cold, metal-fitted fingers. "Leave me untouched...."

X may have been a deer in the headlights for all Vile knew, his green eyes open impossibly wide, accommodating the information he was being fed. Vile kept his hand were it was, waiting for the moment it would all sink in.

Ah, there it was. Tears were welling up, dipped beneath pretty irises, until they fell in pain, down both sides of his face. One cleared his chin, the other, blisteringly warm, landed on a icy gauntlet. It's what Vile had wanted and let it settle before removing his hand and licking the artificial salt water away. "Always so sweet, brother."

"....Blues what've you done?" X asked, breathless. "What....what have you done to me?"

"Given you what you wanted -- what /both/ of you wanted," he claimed mildly. "A new life."

X made sort of a sobbing noise on an exhale. "You, you...You put me in a warzone."

"It wasn't fair."

"....What wasn't fair?"

Vile's eyes narrowed in ironic humor. "That you lay dormant while others were countlessly revisiting a dead age in memories and haunting dreams. You'll find true peace soon, either in life or death, and I knew you'd want to experience /that/. ..After your restless death, that is."

X shuddered violently, unfocused, and Vile gathered him up into an affection embrace before he lost his center of gravity. "It's okay. Shhh, it's okay."

"It's not..." he whimpered, making no move to disengage or return Vile's comfort. "The anguish...there's so much. I can feel the torture this world went through. I want to forget again. I can't be two people, Blues. This is not okay."

"There's a bridge somewhere," he murmured, "between you two. You just need to find it." And he planted a chaste kiss on X's eye. "....I've missed you terribly."

Swallowing, X took a deep breath and slowly, he let his chin fall to a disarmed shoulder, settling. And believing. "I've missed you too."

Brother.

The original poem I spewed up one fine afternoon back in '99!:

Praise thy master and heed his words
Let the night over-take me
Wrap me in its dark blanket
Keep me safe from the world's evil and innocence
Leave me untouched.

'Least I think it was 1999. ... *shrug*

So I gave it a tweak and the whole chapter a revamp. Which is amazing when you think about it. It's twice as long as it originally began and still half of my normal writing length. ..Eht. Half's better than a quarter, I guess.