Living the Lycanthroptic Lifestyle
New York was recovering from the various affects of the recent Repliforce attacks. As part of such, new high-rise towers were being placed into town. The foundations for these monsters went far deeper than ever before, but they were better armored against assault. Still, reploid-human relations were doing quite well, since the last attack was caused by a military force primarily. So, a generally mixed crew, with reploid foreman even, was busy digging out the basement levels.
"Hey, Surge, you might want to get over here?" The foreman, busy looking at plans, noticed two of his workers, with construction versions of Chimeras, having stopped working. Surge had been intended for underwater construction work, and resembled a giant grouper, equipped with plasma welders and thick armor to withstand pressure. Unfortunately, he wasn't the most agile reploid on land, and it took him a few minutes to get over.
By that time, the two workers had managed to clear a bit of mud off the irregular-shaped object they had found. Surge whistled in surprise, "Some sort of old robot? The city archeologist said this used to be the river bottom 40 years ago." The others nodded. New York had a lot of history, and the city had hired scientists to help take care of any artifacts found while digging. This tended to slow down the process a little, but the city was doing surprisingly well tax-wise, and paid off on the delays, especially when they could seize the land for major finds and run tours through the area.
Surge examined the pit closely. The Chimera had taken a giant scoop out of the bottom, and apparently dragged the mud-streaked, wait, two mud-streaked robots clear. One was rather black under the dark grey mud, and the other was pretty much brown, and seemed a lighter build. It was hard to tell, with them all tangled up. Surge opened up a phone to contact the city. Basically, the rest of the day was shot, especially since this was an amazingly intact find.
Bebop and Jazz had spent the time basically sleeping, which had unexpected consequences. While random, active data sectors connecting created odd dream-like images in the low-power state, no one had intended a robot to sleep for that long, especially with a support animal attached, meaning their programming was in contact. This wouldn't have done a lot except for a few traces of the Virus's corruption left.
With a bit of the Maverick Virus left, though the parts that were left had come through the variable weapon grid, and were the more combat related options of the Virus, with less of the mindlessness. This hunt for better fighting ability tied its way through Jazz and Bebop's central programming, carrying along traces of Staff and Rhythm's personality matrices as well, leaving the two sentients with a slightly modified self-image that their auto-repair systems had taken to heart.
Then there were the slight changes to the old 'fight and flight' reflex. These became evident upon the two's exposure to air again, having been unable to free themselves of the weight of mud after their damage had been repaired. Air flowed in as the two took sudden deep gasping breaths, restoring full fuel supply to the fusion reactors at the robot's cores. The reploids in the area, naturally jumped back in shock, and moved behind the Chimera tank to peer in surprise at the zombie robots. Blinking, the two stood up, and hissed in surprise at the same time.
They weren't quite in the same bodies they had been shot down in. The support units looked similar, and they still had the same color, but their stance had become a little more hunched over. The claws from the support animals' legs had been lengthened, and as Jazz found out by experimentation, retractable, leaving the former small claws from the support animals. Looking at each other in surprise, their eyes had vertical-slit pupils, and tiny fangs stuck out the sides of their mouth.
Jazz shook her head, trying to regain her balance after being in stasis for, actually, she wasn't sure how long. "Um, Bebop, do you remember upgrades being part of the sleep procedure?" Bebop was looking over himself in surprise, and shook his head.
Bebop then said, "Well, we were out a little longer than it should have taken. I guess we got dug up, hey! Thanks guys!" Bebop called to the mechanicals he saw hiding behind the large... thing in front of him.
"Do you think they're Dr. Wiley's or something?" whispered one of the workers to Surge.
"I don't know. They don't have forehead gems, I don't think they're reploids, but call in some Hunters anyway,"said Surge referring to Light using the old helmet designs for his prototypes. Surge peeked out at the two, who were mainly staring around in confusion. Surge shrugged, and walked out towards them. If they were dangerous, he figured his armor would last long enough to get him to safety and call in the hunters. "Um, hello, can I help you?" he called, and why were you buried under a ton of mud?
Jazz said, "Um, maybe? Do you know how we could get to Dr. Light? He'd probably be willing to help me, right?" Bebop nodded abstractly, still running a system diagnostic, figuring out what on Earth had happened, and Jazz continued, "I think our auto-repair system got a little confused. I didn't use to have claws," Jazz's eyes widened, "Or the ability to charge special weapons, or even use them in adapter mode! That's a hell of an improvement! Bebop, do you have this?"
Bebop blinked, and did a search, "Yeah. Wow, maybe we got a transmission or something to our repair circuits?"
Surge coughed, breaking into the discussion, "Um, did you mean Dr. Thomas Light?"
Bebop said, "Yeah. Is there another one where robots are involved?" He paused, and then said, "You know, you're pretty well programmed to draw a conclusion that quickly. Who was your designer?"
Jazz interrupted, "And where I can get one of those giant walkers?" her eyes shone at the damage potential.
Surge paused, "Um, actually, you could say my designer was Dr. Light, but he's been dead for more than thirty years." The two turned and stared, before breaking into laughter. Surge asked, "I mean, how else could X have come out, and gotten his circuits scanned and copied? I mean, you guys do know history, right?" Surge wondered to himself, what's with these guys, acting as if he's alive?
Bebop sat down at that, "X was activated?" he said weakly. Jazz looked at him quizzically, and Bebop explained, "X was the 'final' version of my circuits, though I'm copied from his designs. Dr. Light was checking out the decision-making capability, though he did his best to hard-wire a bunch of code. But, for the final version, X was going to have total ability to make decisions, but Dr. Light needed to check X for the rules of robotics. X was sealed in a capsule before I was even started on construction." Bebop pointed at a Met, busy cutting away dirt with its plasma beam to its little preprogrammed mind's content, and sighed in relief, "Hah! A Metool, thought you could fool me, but I doubt you'd be using the same little guys forty years from now!"
Surge chuckled, "Actually, that's a Metool Mark-17." Bebop groaned, beaten again as he noticed little improvements to the machine, and Surge continued, "That's a pretty good story, but no one knows what happened after X was placed in the capsule to Dr. Light. Wiley did his final attack and that."
Jazz said weakly, "Fa- Dr. Wiley's really dead as well?" Jazz sat down in astonishment.
Surge blinked in surprise, and said more kindly, "Oh, I'm sorry." If these two aren't lying through their teeth, these are reploids, built by Light! This is an amazing discovery, and, Surge had to admit in honesty, It'll be my name next to the discovery!
Jazz seemed shaken, and so Bebop asked, "Do you have a hose around here or something? I'd like to try and get some of this sludge off me. Come on Jazz," Bebop ordered, and Jazz, jerked up and followed, like she was in a trance. Then Bebop froze in astonishment, and Jazz bumped into her friend, before seeming to come out of it. To Jazz's wordless question, he said, shaken, "I can't disengage the Adapter, it's like Staff is gone! His programming...some of its gone or corrupted. He got integrated into my system permanently!" Bebop then broke down into tears. He was the one who had gotten attacked in midair, and now, he had killed off his pet, unintentional or otherwise, apparently the one thing he had of his creator and father figure, besides X, who he had no idea about the personality or history of.
Jazz, pretending to be a pillar of strength, admittedly a shaken one, as she said, "Ah, there's probably just a little gunk into the system. Right, okay, so disconnect, Rhythm!" Nothing. "Oh sweet god in heaven. Rhythm, disconnect." Jazz did a quick diagnostic as nothing happened. Bebop had been right, Rhythm was in with Jazz, at least as far as systems and programs went, and now was effectively a portion of Jazz herself.
"Here, let's get you two cleaned up," murmured Surge, feeling a bit worried. He'd seen a few acquaintances suffer from similar moods, right before they went Maverick. Not the Virus kind, but when they felt humanity had constrained them to the point they felt violence was the only answer. The problem, while understandable under human prejudice in some cases with REAL bigots, was that reploids power was feared sufficiently the only response was to wipe the individual's personality clean, and these two spoke of events that even the famed X was unsure of. That meant, that from an archeological standpoint, they were invaluable. From a emotional standpoint, Surge didn't want to see anyone memory wiped.
One of the workers called over, "Sir, the Hunters have arrived via teleport to the top level of our excavations. Local branch could send only a couple of rookies, but Tokyo Headquarters said they were sending X and Zero, they're interested in this era of robots."
Jazz, mutely being hosed off, brightened, "Oh, Zero is here too, with X? I guess free will really does exist!" laughed Jazz, though more to get her mind off what she had killed through her own carelessness.
"You know about the Maverick Hunter commanders?" asked Surge, after he explained a little about the Hunters history and Reploids. Anything to get them out of a depressive cycle.
Jazz laughed nervously, "Well, not technically, no. I know something about them, but I don't know them, per se. I mean, they were under construction when we were activated... do you hear weapons fire?" Jazz asked in concern. Bebop looked up to, feeling a sensation he had felt, to his mind, only recently before: the pounding and excitement of battle, and one look at Jazz showed she felt it too, evidently stronger than usual.
Surge cocked his head, and if he was human his face would pale. "That sounds like plasma fire! What's going on?" Surge and the two workmen started to run forward towards the elevator, followed by the lesser machines in the area. The door opened, and three Hunters, one humanoid, the others more animal models, stepped out, but they had the usual Hunter symbol crossed out, with one of Sigma's symbols marked crudely in its place." The three opened fire with a bizarre barrage of energy beams. Surge survived the initial barrage easily due to his armor, but his workers didn't. Surge grabbed the phone from the blasted apart remains of his colleague as he ducked behind a low set of rubble. Jazz and Bebop had dropped down at the first energy blast. Surge hit the panic button on the phone, calling local authorities, "The hunters we got sent! They've gone Maverick!" Surge screamed in fear.
The three hunters were relatively new, and had been exposed to the Virus under unexpected circumstances. Now they had been reborn under the horrible influences. One, a humanoid model done up in black and whites similar to lightning, was now simply calling himself Smasher. He had a standard buster model.
Another one was busy searching for targets to reprogram. He was done up in greens and greys, grey being the main color, and resembled a humanoid dolphin. He had a set of energy blasts and could shoot metal strands resembling seaweed to stop and hold prey. Afterwards, if they were Reploid, he would expose them to the Virus, otherwise, they could reprogram them for Troops later. He now called himself Tangler Orca.
The final one resembled a rhino, right down to a large horn from which he could shoot force blasts, and was painted in a bright colorful collage of colors, which he promised himself even through the madness he'd change to something less cheerful and more bloodthirsty. Right now he was calling himself Sledgehammer Rhino, but he was thinking of changing it.
Regardless, two old-model fighters locked on him as their target, due to his color scheme reminding them of an error long ago. "All in favor of taking Hawaiian-shirt boy down?" asked Jazz. Rhino roared and charged Bebop responded by switching to his Terra Bomb weapon, pleased to see it still operational, and lobbing a grenade at the massed set of hunters, behind Rhino. The grenade exploded, sending shrapnel into all the hunters. Surge ducked down farther.
There weren't thoughts about why the Hunters were doing it, or the reasons behind growing Maverick. They saw an opportunity to right an old wrong, and at least start balancing the scales on some deaths.
Smasher grunted, "Rhino, these two are some antique wardroids. Handle them please. There aren't enough humans on this level to do any good." Rhino grunted, feeling like a good fight. Orca grabbed Surge in his seaweed chains, and then started dragging him to the elevator. Surge wasn't strong enough, built to operate in the neutral buoyancy environment of the water, to break through the chains, and screamed in terror at the thought of losing himself to the Virus as he was hauled forward.
Bebop, responding to new instincts of battle and old thoughts of protection, growled at the challenge and shot forward to cut the chains, claws extending. Rhino responded with a kinetic blast from his horn that shot Bebop slamming into a newly poured support. His systems flashed a damage report in the corner, "Shields at 43 percent?" whispered Bebop in astonishment. He didn't think it was possible to do that kind of damage in a single hit.
Jazz yelled when she saw Bebop fly into and let loose with a charged blast. Six missiles slammed into Rhino driving him backwards. She didn't expect that to be enough, so she switched to her version of Earth Man's weapon systems, her color changing to tan. Rhino didn't deem the color change important, and shot her with the kinetic blast. Jazz was better prepared for it, and even though her internals howled under the punishment, Jazz managed to fire her jets and keep the situation under control. She then cupper her hands together and put them in an old Street Fighter style fighting stance. An energy blast, the power of Rhino's horn amplified by her own energy, was launched from the Terra Burst weapon system. A tan beam of energy picked Rhino up, but only moved him a few feet.
Rhino gloated, "I thought so. Weapons technology hasn't moved quite a bit forward in this time period, but defenses and shield strength have gone through the roof. You may be able to dish it out, but you can't take it. Now, it's time to mash you two slowly into pieces."
Meanwhile, Surge was quivering in fear on the elevator. The idea of the virus, taking all your rationality and reason and making you something else terrified all Reploids. Now, these two were just going to do that to him, and make him something he wasn't. The elevator gave a cheerful ding as it reached ground level. As the doors slid open, the deadly red form of Zero, leader of Unit 0 itself, and Megaman X, wearing his fourth set of armor, stood waiting, saber and buster primed. "Hello boys, forget about us?" said Zero with a cocky grin. The Mavericks froze for a moment before lunging to attack.
Bebop had recovered himself by now, and wasn't quite sure what to do, but what was once Staff had an idea. Bebop rushed forward, charging his weapon system to his most powerful blast. Even though he had improved weapon systems available by Rhythm's systems tying in better with his variable weapon grid, so he could charge the Terra Bomb up into a volley of explosives, Rhino's thick hide made explosives unattractive. But, Bebop's lasers were working quickly.
Bebop feathered his jets to sidestep another blast aimed his way, and then ducked down and started to skid. Rhino smiled and activated a nasty pair of mini beam sabers, mounted on his wrists. Bebop was prepared for that sort of eventuality, though. Once he had a good slide going, he fired his jets again on his back to boost his power, effectively shrieking along the ground at a good clip. As the amazed Rhino watched, Bebop slid under, and delivered a set of four purple-colored overcharged particle streams into Rhino right as he slid in between the legs.
Though Reploids weren't built to suffer like that, even the male models, it wasn't exactly a heavily armored location due to the necessity of mobility and the fact it was darn near impossible to hit. If Bebop had dash thrusters, he'd never have made it, and, as it was, made a partial mess of his jet system. Still, Rhino was lifted into the air by the force of the blow as the X-ray lasers cut through the armor and shielding there to shred the sub-tank Rhino had come with. The energy purged itself through vents on his upper arms, but the damage was done, and Rhino went into emergency stasis as his fusion reactor went into emergency shutdown.
Bebop stood up, huffing. On the other side, Jazz's color faded back to the browns and reds of her Adapter, well, now permanent armored form. She had a nasty scorch mark across her chest, and probably a dent under it, but she was intact. Bebop's wings looked a bit ragged and compressed, and he probably had a similar dent on his chest and back from that kinetic lance. Bebop shook himself. What he had done was out of character, an attack that would work, but you had to have exactly perfect position and timing, and Bebop probably wouldn't have risked it, once. Now it seemed perfectly natural. Bebop gave a mental shrug, he'd have to think about it later, but he felt a rough idea of what had happened, probably connected to his current urge to purr.
Jazz herself seemed to be rumbling slightly, "Nice move. I don't think I could have pulled it off. Probably would have tried the claws out again," Jazz said in praise, "Now, let's take loud paint here's nifty, nasty weapon, and see what's happening up above." The two quickly placed their hands on the corpse, and did a quick scan for items, virus software ready. The Sigma version of the Maverick Virus tended to be a bit more careful about infecting only the personality matrices to change Reploids into Mavericks, rather than running the whole system into the ground. Luckily, there were no problems, and the two picked out a couple different things.
"Hah! I like this!" Jazz ignited a beam saber from one of her wrist missile launchers. Evidently, they had some serious modularity. "I can do a nifty long-range double slash if I charge it. I'm just going to call it a beam saber, what did you get?"
Bebop paused, and then smiled, "Nifty kinetic beam weapon, and, if I'm reading this right, I can charge it up to form a force field. Plus, it'll be a static force field, at least until it gets breached."
Jazz nodded, "Good idea. It looks like we can't take a lot of damage from these weapons. Ready to take the elevator?" Bebop nodded, and then paused, examining the tank, before using his flight mode like a jet pack to reach the cockpit.
It was definitely an earth mover, and probably too slow to be a weapon (besides, it wouldn't fit in the elevator), but Bebop was relieved to find that like many people, the Chimera operator had been snacking on the job. Bebop tossed down a few energy cartridges, "Drink up. This is a bit better than looting the corpses." Jazz nodded agreement. Besides the slight creepy feelings one got from going through dead mechanicals, these cartridges were typically bigger and had more energy than the temporarily stabilized versions from the last gasp of a robot's systems, drone or reploid.
Partially recharged, the two pressed the buttons for the elevator. When it arrived, they were surprised to see Surge still tied up and quivering in the car. With a slice of her new beam saber, Jazz freed the fish-type Reploid. Surge said, "Thank you so much! I thought I was going to be the Hunters' next target!"
Jazz asked, "Why are you still here, anyway? I figured they'd have taken you and split."
Surge said, "One would think so, but X and Zero from headquarters had wanted to go and see some 'historical robots'. They're possibly the two greatest hunters in the world. I mean, just recently, they stopped Repliforce, which Sigma had taken over, I mentioned Sigma right?" Jazz held up an impatient hand to the stream of consciousness.
"Easy there, guy. I doubt these two need any help, but we'll head up top and make sure they don't come back down," said Jazz. Surge nodded, and eagerly dashed out of the way. He was more than willing to sit tight and avoid combat. The two went into the elevator and hit the button. Jazz muttered as it closed, "You know, if you hadn't smashed some of your thrusters in, we could just fly up."
"Well, excuse me-" the rest of the conversation was cut off by the doors.
"Cute couple," commented Surge, before turning to the civilian model Metools and other drones standing around, along with several Reploids who had cowered on the sidelines during the fight. "All right, back to work people!" he bellowed.
Up top, X was worried. Sigma had been defeated, for at least the time being, just recently. That meant the Virus usually laid low for a while. But, this was the second incident of novice Hunters going maverick. Either some from the last uprising had managed to stay quiet and hidden through the Hunter's recruitment process, which was scary enough, or Sigma was trying to undermine the Maverick Hunters like he had Repliforce, which really worried X, since the paranoia from the idea that any Hunter could be infected would be more dangerous than if every Hunter was infected (then there would at least be a visible enemy.)
Meanwhile, Zero was enjoying himself. Frankly, nothing like a good round of killing reploids to keep his mind off Iris. Nothing like the thrill of battle, though his current opponent was like an X who couldn't fight too well and wasn't wearing any armor and didn't have most of his sub tanks installed. This "Cutter" wasn't exactly the greatest Maverick threat, and Zero made a mental note to chastise whoever was in charge of this Reploid's training.
X had it almost as easy, as he had kept his current weapons for the time being. He had unleashed a Nova Strike or two and had bashed this Orca down. When he had been captured in the tendrils, he used the soul body to have a double start blasting it. The Orca finally collapsed, and X froze it with a modified Frost Tower shot so he could take it back and figure out why a Hunter had gone Maverick. A quick shower of fusion particles meant Zero had finished off his opponent in his own special way: quickly.
The elevator dinged, and Zero and X moved to cover the elevator. Now, when two felinoid-style robots stepped out, hissing a little, guns held ready, the reaction is excusable. X and Zero had just finished going through an uprising, and Sigma's troops were typically-animal form, so on battle instinct, the two opened fire. Well, X opened fire. Zero just ran forward with a battlecry on his lips. In response, Jazz let loose with her new charged attack and a crazed yell. As Zero activated his fairly ordinary dash-saber attack, Jazz ignited twin beam sabers, one from each launcher, and parried with one. Caught by surprise, Zero barely ducked the second, and then Jazz crossed the blades and then swung them clear of each other quickly, hitting Zero with a wave of energy that blasted his shields down a bit. Jazz stood, battle fog clearing, and then quickly put her hands above her head, realizing who she had just hit.
Bebop had been wanting to try out his new weapon, and released the charged version. Bebop started to glow with energy. He was surprised as well when the force field didn't quite live up to expectation, and X's charged shot blasted him back, putting him to near zero on the energy meter. Bebop howled, ready to counter-attack, and leapt forward. X gasped as the real form of the charged attack made itself apparent: Bebop slammed into his victim and struck with claws that were charged with some serious energy, causing explosions with each touch of a clawtip. Once the immediate danger was past, Bebop starting thinking again.
"Oh my god, X! I'm sorry. Dr. Light really wouldn't want this," murmured Bebop in near panic. This had been a lousy day. Bebop held his hands up as well.
Zero and X exchanged a glance in surprise. X, the more communication-oriented of the duo, asked, "Um, are you guys surrendering when you got an advantage? That's not exactly in the usual method of Maverick behavior."
Jazz said, "Zero, didn't Dr. Wiley tell you about me? I'm not a maverick," Jazz paused, considering her recent actions, "Well, not in the sense you guys mean it, recent berserker behavior notwithstanding. I'm your sister, Jazz!" Zero stared back blankly. Jazz muttered, "Uh, oh. Someone wiped his memory banks?"
Bebop, still having the remnants of a kinetic charge, stood still, saying quickly, "Hi, X, I'm on your basic design since Dr. Light wanted a battle version to help Rock out! Except he had me constrained a bit more tightly as a sort of brainwashing but you couldn't have both and the programming didn't take. Then I met Jazz here, not realizing who she was. Then Dr. Wiley attacked, and we beat one robot, but then we got shot down and then things got weird and we got hardwired to our support units," Bebop paused for breath, mainly to cool down his weapons, but also as a mannerism, and then said, "You have no idea what I'm talking about do I?" X shook his head. Dr. Light, he knows father, and father left him lying at the bottom of the river. When father intended my design for peace, he meant it!
X nodded, and said slowly, "Sorry about this, but we'll need to check you over at Headquarters. This is all a little fast, and we don't have restraints handy, at least for things with super-claws. Hang on!" X raised his blaster at the non-protesting reploids in front of him, and froze them from the neck down.
Combined with the shots they had already taken, the freezing triggered their auto-repair, and all Jazz and Bebop saw for the time being was blackness.
To be continued!
Author's notes: Well, they're in the X universe now. Last part was my attempts to bridge continuity. Meanwhile, we've got a couple mysteries to deal with: Are Bebop and Jazz free of the Maverick Virus? Why are Hunters turning Maverick? Will Jazz and Bebop get less silly names?
Notice I started referring to Bebop and Jazz as reploids. Technically, they are the first, since Wiley and Light based them on their designs for X and Zero.
Title comes from the cat-like characteristics imparted to the first reploids by having their brains wired into a reasonably intelligent cat for forty+ years.
