Part XIII: The Past Revealed
Echo turned around again. They'd been falling for a good five minutes now, not having gone anywhere, really, and she was getting annoyed.
"When is this gonna end?" she asked.
Zero, arms folded, looked over to her. "You realize what that Maverick was?"
"Yeah," she replied. "Big and dangerous."
"No. I meant who it was."
"I dunno. One of the brainchildren of the Maverick central command, maybe?"
X was growing suspicious. "It was..."
"O Inary."
Echo crossed her arms. "And what does that mean to me?"
"You ever hear of a Maverick called Bit?"
Echo nodded, eyes expressing the type of infamous recognition that Bit had.
"Well, he really wasn't just a typical Maverick. Unlike the others, even his partner Byte, Bit had the ability to change form. He only had one other-the O Inary. It was based on a previous joint design that was intended to allow him and Byte to join into one Maverick, which would be called Godkarmachine. Of course, since Byte was destroyed by X during the Doppler Crisis and Doppler, or rather, Sigma, had anticipated that. For that reason, they designed Bit with the capacity to use the form independently, with no need for Byte. That's the O Inary."
"I see. So that means that Bit returned?"
"I'm not sure. Bit wasn't a water Maverick. He may have been modified. But by who?"
X's eyes narrowed. "Sigma."
Blitz spun around to face him, a complicated trick since he was falling.
"But I thought that the Sigma Virus was destroyed!?"
Zero shook his head. "Far from it. After I freed X here from Sigma's grasp following the Extermination Plot's disintegration, he tried to escape. I locked him in a vacuum containment cylinder and left him. As far as I know, all Maverick activity is caused by that virus, so he must have been released. I didn't take the time to hide him where he couldn't be found. X was in need of immediate repair, and I wasn't thinking forward."
Blitz nodded. "So that's why all these Mavericks have been popping up? Sigma's back, and he's brought Bit with him?"
X looked down, checking the shaft for a second before replying.
"I don't think so. At least, not entirely. It was O Inary we were fighting, but it took an enormous amount of energy for Bit to transfer to that form. It may be that for the moment, Sigma was able to separate the two forms so O Inary could be used while repairs were being made to Bit. As I can recall, he was heavily damaged after I fought him. Almost to the point of total scrap. I thought he didn't survive, but maybe part of his memory circuits could be reactivated."
"Which could explain why he couldn't talk," Zero continued.
"Yeah. O Inary had a really inhuman voice. Not like a reploid at all. Almost as if he wasn't quite a robot when he assumed that form."
"Okay," Echo said, thinking to herself that X had flipped while making sure she wasn't about to smash into the ground and not have to worry about Bit or O Inary or whatever that thing was.
"When is this shaft gonna stop?" Blitz asked, glancing up and then down. The hole in the pavement made by O Inary was caved in by debris, so all of them had to run when they hit bottom(if they hit without breaking any legs) so they wouldn't get flattened by the concrete. An impact at the speed that stuff was going, and from the height it was falling would make X and Zero into metal pancakes in no time flat.
Trying to lighten the mood, Alia spoke up.
"So what do you think ever happened to Dr. Light's original robots? You know, Rock, Proto, Roll...the ones X is most closely related to."
"They couldn't have survived the fall," both X and Zero said in unison, then looked at each other.
"Where did that come from?" X asked, glancing at his red plated friend.
"I dunno. How did I know that?"
Iris and Signas were looking at them like they finally had snapped when X noticed the floor of the shaft coming up.
"Uh, guys, I think we'd better use our magnetic boot functions to slow our descent now. The ground's comin' up real fast."
All of them got over to a far wall, using the magnetic boosters in their feet to slide down the shaft slower than they'd been falling. X calculated that they'd lost enough speed to safely land by falling, and signaled them all to let go of the wall in order to dodge to pieces of debris now showering them.
"All right, everyone, now swing over!" he yelled, throwing himself into the room below and away from the shaft. Zero, Iris, Alia, Signas, Echo, and Blitz soon joined him.
"Now get to cover!" Zero yelled, throwing himself behind a nearby computer terminal. The others took similar shelter as the concrete exploded on impact with the shaft floor, throwing dust and rocks everywhere.
After the smoke cleared, Zero stood up.
"So where are we?" he asked, looking around. It was very dimly lit, but it appeared to be a lab of some sort.
Echo snapped her fingers. "Of course! I read about these. Years before Arcadia was built, Dr. Light had the city's architects construct massive underground automated control chambers. We must be in one of them."
"But how do we get outta here?" he specified, hands on his hips.
X scanned the concrete. "Unless we wanna blast through about fourteen feet of solid compacted asphalt, we gotta find some other way."
Zero sighed, glancing to Echo.
"You can light up these areas, right?"
"Yeah."
Powering up her light cannon for the second time that week, Echo ejected the glowing plasma ball from her arm, illuminating the entire room. It was massive, with several computer terminals and from what X and the others could see, the bodies of robots that had been trapped here like they were now.
"Well, let's find out how to get outta here!" Zero said, rummaging through some of the old computer mainframes to try to find a layout.
Alia had just begun to search when X and Zero heard a scream come from her area. Iris followed up with a similar scream several seconds later, from across the room. Blitz and Echo arrived before X and Zero, and both of them had a surprised and horrified expression on their faces when the latter two got to them.
"What's going on? Alia, are you okay?" X asked, upon which Alia pointed at the nearby body of a robot.
"Looks like we found the answer to our question," she said, trying to steady herself against a terminal.
"Huh?" X said, then looked around to where the body was.
"Oh my..." he began, trailing off in awe. Zero looked next, and his mouth dropped.
Lying on the floor of the chamber was a blue robot, armored similarly to X, and possessing an arm cannon very akin to the one X had fixed to his hand. The robot's bushy brown hair had been covered with enough dust to cause emphysema, but some quick vacuuming on Echo's part had taken care of most of it. Nearby was the body of a robotic dog, cat, and bird, along with a female robot in a red and black dress.
"I can't believe it," X said, astonished. "I always thought they'd been destroyed, not trapped like this."
Iris, calmed down a little by the initial jolt, called Zero over to her.
"What is it, Iris?" he asked, coming over to her. She immediately embraced him, digging her face into his chest to shield her eyes.
He looked down to the body lying there. It's black armor had been coated with five hundred years of dust and soot, and the purple braces holding his drooped wings on had found a way of keeping clean, but only for a short time. Nearby, another robot, visored and holding a shield, was sprawled out on the floor, helmet cracked and exposing the shaggy mane of brown hair he also owned.
"Here's the others, guys," Zero said, calling over to X and Alia. Signas, Echo, and Blitz had decided to take a moment to digest all of this new information, sitting down in the chairs for the terminal operators of long before their times.
"What happened? How did they get down here? And why are we the only ones that found them?"
You are not the only ones to find them, a voice came from the nearest screen. It was glowing, and had startled Alia so badly that she fainted.
"Dr. Light? Is that you?" X asked, walking to the computer.
Yes, X, it's me. I have been able to live unaffected by the events you and your friends had to live through because I've been trapped inside this computer system.
"What? I thought all those capsules that you left behind just contained holograms."
"No, X. I was actually talking to you just as I am talking to you now. Before you can remember, the lab where you were being built was attacked. Luckily, you were finished just before the attack began, and defended yourself, but your attempt to save me ended in my getting trapped in the computer systems I myself had created."
"Who would attack your lab? Why would they do that?"
Dr. Light's transparent, blue-tinted face struggled to say the next words. "Dr. Wily, my former colleague, had gone insane and tried to destroy Rock and Proto on many occasions. He even kidnapped me and blamed everything on Proto once. In any case, I had designed a new system for a neural net, and somehow Wily managed to get hold of the plans. He had already designed a robot that was to be so powerful that it could easily destroy Rock, Proto, and Bass, his rebelliant equivalent to Rock, and implemented my designs, modified slightly to fit his robot properly, to create your friend Zero.
X glanced back to Zero. His partner's eyes were wide in shock, not realizing the extent of his past.
"X, there's more. Zero, you didn't trust Wily from the start, but he used a neuralizer to disable your ability to make decisions like X. He sent you to kill me and take my plans, but X was able to defend that from happening entirely. The malfunction from your brain being subjected to it led to you doing away with Wily yourself. Rock, Proto, and Bass were fighting each other when you arrived at the battleground. X came to fight you off, but in the end, you made the street collapse into a maintenance shaft, and caved in the shaft with a building. They were able to dodge the impact just as you did, but the dust content quickly infiltrated their systems and deactivated them. You sought shelter in the mountains to repair yourself, and X returned to the lab. I sealed X in the capsule, which erased his memory. I'm not sure what happened to you, Zero, but I'm sure X can explain that part. I know this is a lot to deal with, but I have a very important favor to ask of you."
"What is it, Dr. Light?" X said, looking to everyone else in the room.
A sphere of energy materialized in a nearby cultivation tube. Dr. Light pointed to the ball of light.
"Use this to reactivate Rock, Proto, Roll, Bass, and their animal companions. They may not be up-to-date by today's robotic standards, but I believe I can help to fix that problem. They can help you to defeat the Sigma Virus once and for all."
Zero nodded. "How do we use it?"
"Fortunately, Zero, I've designed it so that the only one that can use it is you. I'm afraid that Bass' machinery would not be responsive if X used the activation sphere. That's why I chose to configure it for your makeup. Since many of the systems you possess are in Bass, and in a way are derivatives of my work, you can fully revive everyone here. Simply take it in your hands and it will do the rest."
With that, Dr. Light's hologram disappeared, leaving Zero looking at the energy ball.
"Go ahead, man," X said, patting Zero on the back. The red Hunter grasped the sphere in both hands, and instantly was powered on with energy. He could feel the information contained in the energy's packets reach his circuitry, reconfiguring him and retrieving his lost memories. The streams of energy made his eyes glow white, and began flowing around the room, restoring X's memories of 20XX as well. When the energy touched the bodies on the floor, it was as if lightning had struck. Their armor cleaned itself off, as well as the internal circuitry that had been clogged by years of dust exposure, and their eyes began to glow the same white as Zero's. Soon, the light had dulled back down to the simple amount Echo's cannon had made, and the sphere returned to the containment tube, where it dissipated.
X and Zero glanced around the room, seeing the bodies of their ancestors begin to move, life given to them once again. Bass' purple armor patches began to separate from him, and reformed into a wolf-like robot, lying next to him on the floor. Then, something happened and the chamber was gone.