Chapter 41: Broken Halo

            Four mechaniloid tanks and three humanoid Mavericks guarded the passageway leading to Cyber Peacock's lair. All had been waiting in tense suspense for the Hunter challengers who were supposedly coming their way. Not a single one was ready for Mega Man X's onslaught.

            The champion Hunter, adorned by his imposing Fourth Armor, didn't see his challengers any sooner than they saw him, but he didn't do any waiting before his armor switched to a black and yellow coloration and he fired a Lightning Web right in the middle of the tank cluster, gumming them up for a few seconds. His armor switched back to normal and he leapt over the mass of mechaniloids, landing in the middle of the three stunned Mavericks and bringing his buster up at one. He fired a single shot at low power, which for X wasn't all that low. The Maverick let out a cry and grabbed at his arm, jumping back into a wall. X, without missing a beat, sprang towards another Maverick and caught him in the gut with a boot. The Maverick slumped to the floor. The third Maverick just dropped his gun and ran. X turned to the other two outgunned Mavericks and merely raised an eyebrow. They fled in terror. X let them go. He saw no need to kill the grunts. He'd save his anger for the big wigs.

            Unfortunately the drone mechaniloids could not be reached by reason. The Lightning Web wore off and one of the tanks managed to turn and get off a shot, which exploded into the wall to X's right. Diving away from the shrapnel, X began charging a shot while switching his armor to a black and purple color combo. He rushed the tiny tanks again and leapt over their heads. When he landed he turned sharply and unleashed his charged Twin Slasher, creating a storm of lavender energy blades that tore into the targets like a hurricane. And speaking of hurricanes, X thought as his armor changed yet again, this time to green, it was time for him to get one brewing. Two tanks had taken the full brunt of the Twin Slasher attack and were now offline. The other two were still clinging to life and were lining up shots at the nimble, seasoned soldier. X shook his head and leapt right back over the enemy, and when he landed he extended his hands and from them sprang two orbs of windy green energies. The Double Cyclone carried both tanks into the air. X performed yet another weapon switch and his armor became blazing red in color. He stepped forward so that he was directly underneath one of the tanks and he pumped his fist in the air. The Rising Fire, a burning plasma laced blast, tunneled into and through the levitating machine, toasting it. That left the one, and X handled it with much less flair. He let the disgruntled mechaniloid fall to the ground and snapped his foot out, kicking the rotating upper turret section. It spun around like a broken doll's head, and that was the end of that.

            X's Fourth Armor returned to its original alabaster and gold coloration and the Hunter allowed himself a smug smile at how quickly he'd dispatched Seraph Castle's "defenses". His next target, he knew, would not be so easy to dispatch. The Hunter resumed his walk towards the distant gate leading to what he presumed was Kujacker's hideout. In his mind he began going over his strategy.

            The first time X encountered Peacock, in cyberspace, he'd made short work of the bird. Cyber had pulled a vanishing act that X quickly conquered. Then the bird had turned to his homing lasers, and those had nearly turned the tables. X only came through by sending a Soul Body in front of him. The lasers had locked onto the phony X, leaving the real one free to race unhindered to where Cyber was hovering dumbfounded and fire a single point blank shot that ate through the Maverick's meager armor and dropped him lifelessly to the ground. Cyber had reappeared in Final Weapon, but X suspected that it was a "Drone Clone" Sigma built to keep him busy, since he was pretty sure he'd vanquished the real Peacock the first time around. That second fight hadn't been much different from the first. X used his Soul Body right off the bat, and learned that if it collided with Peacock something in the Soul Body makeup made the Maverick's teleportation systems go haywire, immobilizing the bird and leaving him open for an attack.

            Those were the first two battles, but now Cyber Peacock was back again, and he had probably learned from his past mistakes. X suspected that if his enemy tried anything funny it would come from the lair itself rather than from the Maverick. Peacock couldn't support massive weapons, and would probably rely on a trap of some sort. Well, X had survived lots of traps, and he had eight special weapons ready for action, including Peacock's bane, the Soul Body. It was a remarkable weapon. It generated a clone of X comprised entirely of a rainbow of colored energies that exploded violently into anything they touched. It was a heavy drain on X's weapon energies, but in certain cases it was worth it.

            He was at the gate. There were no cameras or other defenses. X pressed his hand to the gate…but no, he didn't, because it opened before his hand ever made contact. Looks like I'm invited, X thought as he entered the chamber. But of course. Peacock would be wanting revenge, and revenge only, otherwise he would have already fled. This was a direct, personal challenge that had nothing to do with the Mavericks. And X was just fine with that.

            The gate hissed shut behind X and he found himself inside…darkness. Grand. His infrared sensors came online, but to his confusion he locked onto nothing. The room was empty. Then X remembered that Peacock liked to hover in Limbo.

            Cyber Peacock had always been equipped with a short-range teleporter, much like Magna Centipede and Boomer Kuwangner, but Peacock had one decidedly different attribute to his teleporter that the others lacked. That attribute was a device that allowed Peacock's warping molecules to hover in stasis…temporary nonexistence, in a way. Cyber Peacock could be inside a room without ever really being in it: his "soul" was there but it could not be seen by the naked eye nor tracked by infrared, since it gave off no heat. On the same token Peacock could take no physical action, since he had no physical form. As long as he was in this state he could not attack X, and that was a relief.

            X wandered slowly into the center of the chamber while his CPU worked overtime. It combined data from X's mental map of Seraph Castle with the readings X was taking inside the room itself to present to X an image of what the room looked like with the lights on. Able to navigate without error, X looked around and got his bearings. The floor was sinking, he noticed, and that was because…the walls were roundly indented to give the chamber a spherical effect. What could that signify?

            "Mega Man X," a voice said out of a clear sky.

            X stiffened and quickly scanned the room for signs of life. There were none. And yet… "Cyber Peacock."

            "We meet again," Kujacker's voice said. "How do you like my new base of operations? It's much more easily accessible than Cyberspace, wouldn't you say?"

            "Well I wouldn't know," X replied conversationally, silently charging his arm cannon. "I can't see much of it."

            "Then let me risk a little light," Peacock replied, and a dim ceiling light came on that illuminated the room in a faint purple glow, something X found overly dramatic…and nevertheless chilling. The room was indeed spherical, but that wasn't its only interesting aspect. Small green orbs were embedded in the upper centers of each of the four walls—the room was in truth a square, but a very round square, meaning the corners had been rounded to create more of a spherical flow and the indents in the floor, ceiling, and four walls created the domed effect. Also there was a rather large computer mainframe sitting in the corner…and X knew how much Peacock loved computers.

            Without so much as a blink, X raised his charged cannon and sent the huge blast flying towards the computer. It exploded in a cloud of flames and bits and pieces were scattered across the room.

            "…Well that wasn't very nice," Peacock's voice rasped after a few moments of silence.

            "I don't have time to waste with you," X stated flatly. "If you want a fight, come get it. If not then bugger off and let me deal with things that are actually important."

            "Point taken, X, and that is precisely why I'm stalling. You know how much I love to annoy you."

            "I didn't, but I do now." X began another silent buster charge. "I hear you've been busy inside our Headquarters."

            "Indeed!" The Maverick was pleased with the turn in the conversation. "Scythe was very useful. A Maverick after my own heart. Very into computers, he was."

            "Scythe?" The name didn't ring a bell.

            "I wouldn't expect you to remember." The voice carried the essence of a shrug. "Anyway, he made it very easy for Gallagher to accomplish its mission."

            "Gallagher? Is that the name of the floating washtub you sent after us?"

            "That it is! And now that both Buzzbombs have flown, you'll be returning home to a very different Megacity 5!"

            The blood drained from X's face. "What are you talking about?"

            "They're gone, X!" Peacock roared with laughter. "They're all gone!"

            "Who's gone?" X allowed his apprehension to get the better of his judgment.

            "All of them. The first bomb took out the HQ. The second landed right in the middle of Zion's returning party," Peacock lied. "The Mavericks now own your precious city, and all your buddies paid the price for their betrayal of our species!"

            "You bastard!" X frothed, though something inside him warned him not to take the bird too seriously. He had no way of knowing what had really happened in Megacity 5, and taking a Maverick's word was probably not the best idea…especially one that wanted to weaken his judgment before a showdown. "Something tells me, Peacock, that you don't care much about the betrayal of your species."

            "You're right again," Peacock conceded casually. "The Reploid race can rot for all I care. I'm here for a different reason."

            "To kill me," X finished. "So let's get this over with."

            "To kill you," Peacock allowed. "But you don't know why."

            "Nor do I care."

            "Ah, but you should." Peacock's voice boomed louder than it should have been able to. It resonated throughout the hollowed out room and even sent a chill down X's spine. There was something…strange about that voice. "If you don't find out soon, it'll be the death of this planet."

            "Now what are you blathering about?" X's impatience was finally tempered by a bit of curiosity.

            "It's easier for me to show you," the Maverick replied. The air in front of X began to shimmer, and out from nowhere sprang two energy images of X's foe, one green and one pink. They merged together and solidified into the form of Cyber Peacock, complete with his majestic green bladed feathers extended and his ornate, colorful armor…plus a mysterious V-strip of new black titanium on his torso.

            "Interesting makeover," X commented dryly. "Is there a point?"

            "Behold," Peacock said, just as blandly. He held out a hand…and from it sprang a thick beam of energy. X deftly sidestepped it and frowned at his attacker, but something prompted him to look to the right where the energy had passed him…and at that point there really was nothing left to do but watch. The energy bolt had rebounded, and was coming right back at him.

            "Jesus!" X exclaimed and jumped back, but he got nowhere before the energy slammed into him. He fell back…due to his own surprise. His body was wracked…with a tingly feeling. "What…what the hell?"

            Peacock was laughing it up. "What do you think? A homing laser without the targeting device. And one very frightened Mega Man X!"

            "Grow up!" X shouted, not quite able to believe what had just happened. "No, just…just die!" And with that he released the charged burst he'd been saving for the Maverick. It struck Peacock square in the chest and the flash of light briefly illuminated the room. Peacock let out a strangled, strangely scratchy cry, and vanished in a blur of dissipating pixels.

            X, on his feet, blinked at the sight in confusion. "What in the world?" he wondered aloud. A shimmer of energies behind him answered his question.

            "Oh boy!" Peacock was laughing even more. "You sure have some interesting looks on your face, X, I'll tell you that!"

            "You…" Some nerve in X's brain twitched, and as an experiment he brought up his gun and fired a normal shot that struck Peacock in the stomach. The bird grunted and shimmered, but was otherwise unharmed. "You're a holograph…?"

            "Are you surprised?" Cyber Peacock said with a grim, beaky smile. He pressed his hands together and three more images appeared at different parts of the room. X blinked once and found himself staring at four Cyber Peacocks, each looking at him with that same killing glare. "I've taken a lesson from Split Mushroom. Actually I took it long ago, when you defeated me with his Soul Body. I've learned from my mistakes."

            And he had. There was no way the Soul Body would attract all attacks from all four Peacocks. X couldn't use that strategy again. So, he decided to try another. "I've never heard of a lethal holograph before."

            On cue, each Peacock extended an arm and those beams of white light sprang from each one. They arched around X, who was weaving nimbly though the storm though mindful of each beam following him. The Peacocks were floating around the room, making it difficult for X to pull off a shot. More and more streaks of light were flying towards X, and his body was tingling enough to let him know that some of them were hitting.

            The next thing he knew, he was flat on his back and a searing pain filled his body, resonating from his back. He let out a choked groan of pain and struggled to lift himself to his feet while checking the energy drained by the attack…it was staggering. One of those lasers had been real…the real Cyber Peacock was there somewhere…and he was more powerful than ever.

            He was also laughing. "How did you like that, X?" all four birds asked wickedly. "It's amazing what a few upgrades can do to a Reploid, isn't it?"

            "Where did you get that power?" X asked incredulously.

            "What, can you think of no one else in this building who had such power?"

            X didn't make the connection. "Stop beating around the bush…!"

            "It's how I survived the fourth uprising," Peacock explained patiently. "I'm surprised you can't make the connection."

            "You didn't survive," X pointed out. "I killed you. Twice!"

            "No, X," Peacock said slowly as all four of him began gathering an orb of green energies in their hands. "You never killed me. And you only even fought me once." The room was more green than purple now, due to the light emitting from Peacock's unholy energy orbs. "You vanquished me in Cyberspace, but I never actually passed away. I was saved from death."

            "By who?" X asked, tensing for whatever the new attack might be.

            Green lightning flared as the balls of energy became charged to dangerous levels. "Ares," the Maverick answered the Hunter, and after that single word all hell broke lose.

            Each orb of energy grew into a pillar of energy—green sparkling supercharged energy. Each pillar slowly began taking itself down by sending fragments of themselves out as high voltage homing torpedoes. In two seconds the room was full of them. X would never remember much, but he did remember running…and running and running and running, all around the room, until finally it was like he hit an invisible wall. It seemed like all the energy in the world smashed into him, and he screamed in sudden pain as his world went green.

            X's next conscious thought was that he had never felt so wasted in his life. He absently ran a systems check, and found to his confusion that his armor was for the most part intact…but his internal energy had been devastated. In shock, X drained one of his two Sub-Tanks, restoring his energy but not his equilibrium. He got very slowly to his feet, his world a big blur, and the image he focused on was not four but one Cyber Peacock hovering in the distance.

            "Impressive," the bird said in awe. "That should have killed you."

            "Where…" X rasped, grabbing onto the wall for support. "How…?"

            "Would you like to know?" Peacock sneered. He began to levitate higher. "You left me for dead that first time, X, but Ares found me before the Reaper did."

            "Ares…" Something finally clicked in X's head. "Bit and Byte…!"

            "Yes," Peacock agreed with something of a condescending tone. "But Bit and Byte were not as fortunate as I. Ares came to all three of us at the brink of death…it's what he does. He can communicate with any sufficiently weakened Reploid he wants…within his range, that is, and I'm not about to tell you what that is. Once they accepted him into their minds, Ares accelerated the brothers' internal programs, most importantly their battle and self-repair systems, turning them into monsters who could hold more power than they had been designed to hold, and who could inflict devastating damage upon whoever they encountered. If there hadn't been so many of you, Godkarmachine would have won the day."

            "Don't get so cocky," X said, recovering his breath. "Accelerated power doesn't mean accelerated brains…or even better weaponry. I knew how they fought and I would have exploited their patterns to defeat them again."

            "Yes," Peacock agreed. "But do you know how I fight now?" X didn't and the Maverick knew it. "Bit and Byte were converted right here, shortly after you fought them that very first time. But I was converted during the fourth uprising, long ago. I pledged my allegiance and received incredible power in return."

            "Power for what?"

            Peacock's voice dropped a few decibels. "The power to create war." He let X rankle before continuing. "Ares is the very essence of war…it is his only purpose. If the world is not at war, then he is not doing his job."

            "What are you talking about?" X asked incredulously. "You think there's a guiding hand behind war?"

            "I know it! I'm living proof!" The Maverick fixed X with a piercing stare. "Ares revealed his plan to me, and it's genius. He has his four generals, but he is calling on any others who show promise. I left Sigma behind and created a Drone Clone of myself to send to Final Weapon…just so you wouldn't notice any difference in the regular routine. In the meantime I went to the hidden base of operations, and there Ares himself presented to me the armor I wear today, and with it the upgraded weapons systems I'm using on you."

            "And your nifty holograph program?"

            "That I came up with on my own. They're all computer generated, and designed to throw you off, and they're doing a very good job. I figured you would invade this fortress in the end, and it seemed like the perfect place to wait for you. I've waited years to have this battle, X…the battle where you first taste the power Ares brings to the table!"

            "What's so important about me?" X asked, fully recovered and starting to circle the blabbing Maverick.

            "You should know!" Kujacker shook his head. "You are the very essence of peace. It's all you live for, ending the wars and making everyone safe and happy. Ares will have none of that. You must be destroyed in order for Ares's plan to continue."

            "Then you're my assassin?" X asked with deliberate skepticism.

            "Yes! I am the first of many. For even if you defeat me, no one lasts forever. But don't worry," Peacock promised. "You won't prevail here. I've gone through every situation in my head. I've had the time!"

            "There's no substitute for the real thing," X pointed out, changing his arm cannon program to the 4-shot system and charging.

            "Indeed." Peacock warped away and reappeared with four others so X wouldn't know which was real. "It's time, X! Let's get this show on the road!"

            X needed no further encouragement. He raised his cannon and fired one charged blast at an enemy. It shorted out, but another one took its place a second later. Damn. X would have to be faster.

            The Peacocks began firing homing lasers as X charged his cannon back up to full. X, playing on a hunch, turned his infrared back on and looked for the laser giving off the most heat—oh boy! He threw himself to the ground just as it passed overhead and exploded into the wall behind him. Another laser took its place…many of them, as Cyber was shooting as fast as he could. X got up and raced right at the real laser, sidestepping at the last minute and firing a shot at the Peacock nearest him. It shorted out. X whirled and fired his second blast. Another clone died. The third shot went off…another died. And finally the fourth blast flew towards the true, startled and defenseless Peacock, striking him in the chest and throwing off his own equilibrium.

            "Not bad!" the Maverick complimented X as he warped away. "But I've got more tricks where that came from!" Four new Peacocks reappeared, and X prepared another attack, but something was different. The birds were…gathering together? Yes, they were all clustered, and their tail feathers were glowing as the green electricity sparked in between the blades like they were tasers. Something big was about to happen. "Eat this, Hunter!" Peacock shouted, and X could swear he heard a different voice intermingled.

            But X was already moving. As so often happened he was just acting, not thinking. He never even checked his Nova Strike meter…somehow he just knew it was full. It seemed like a horrifying gamble to him later on, but at the moment he just did it without considering anything. The wings on the back of his armor opened and the flaming white plasma erupted around his body as he sped towards the cluster of Mavericks with a great cry. The invincible body crash attack plowed right through the Mavericks just before they could unleash their killer lightning storm. He struck every single one at once, and when the energies died around X the heavy breathing Hunter turned sharply to behold…

            …Nothing. There was nothing there. But that didn't last long, and four new images appeared…but they were strikingly different. No longer did Peacock appear flawless and confident, but he was now charred and somewhat devastated.

            "How?" X gasped. "How could you survive a direct Nova Strike hit?"

"I'm no weakling like the brothers were, X!" Peacock declared. "I am a true emissary of Ares!" He broke off with a rattling cough. "Damn you!" he swore in a scratchy voice. "You think you've got it all figured out, don't you?"

"I do," X replied coolly, recovering. His buster snapped back up into action and he loosed shots rapidly at the birds, who quickly counterattacked with last minute spurts of speed and their own white lasers. X again used his infrared to track the real lasers. He was hitting the enemies, and they were shorting out, but they reappeared as fast as lightning, and X realized that this couldn't go on forever. He began looking around the room for something he could use. He noted the curves in the wall, the ruined computer, the green orbs—

            The orbs! Acting purely on this hunch X enacted the greatest irony of his time thus far in Seraph Castle—the Aiming Laser. His armor turned to a purple hue and he focused on the orb he was running to. The birds didn't notice a thing and kept firing their lasers, and a second later X fired his. A targeting grid was focused on the orb and the Aiming Laser went right up to it with no chance of error. X held the beam steady for a second, which was all it took for the orb to explode in a shower of glass and sparks.

            "No!" the horrified Cyber Peacocks gasped…and one of the four clones shorted out. It was quickly replaced, but X had a good idea why—there were four enemies and one of them had to be the real Peacock, meaning there were three clones and four orbs…now there were three and three. X targeted another orb while Peacock was stunned by the irony of his own weapon being used against him. That orb shattered and a Cyber Peacock shorted out forever.

            "Damn you!" Peacock raged, gathering his remaining clones and charging their tail feathers for the electrical storm that would fry X to death. Expecting this X raced towards the Maverick again even though he had no Nova Strike charge ready. Peacock didn't know this, though, and in apprehension he warped away just before X approached. The Hunter quickly turned and locked onto another orb. A second later another Peacock vanished. There were two left.

            "You son of a bitch!" they shouted, and opted to just unleash a continual flow of lasers. X raced past them all, though the feeling of superheated lasers was coming closer and closer. X did NOT want to be hit again. Realizing their folly, the two Peacocks started gathering greenish energies to them just as X locked onto the final orb. A brief race began, and just as the energy orbs sparked with an overabundance of green lightning the final glass orb shattered. One Peacock remained…

            And one green energy storm filled the room.

            X forced himself to focus. He watched the spurts of energy that erupted from the green pillar and dodged them with greater ease now that there was only one pillar to worry about. He leapt nimbly from side to side; he air dashed, he pivoted; and all the while he took potshots at the rapidly hovering Peacock. Then, Kujacker pointed his hands at X and not one but two energy lasers flew out. X jerked to the right with a start but a bolt of green energy struck him in the chest and slammed him against the wall just as the lasers impacted the wall directly above him, bathing his world in intense white light. X hobbled away from the wall, again wracked with pain but not terribly depleted as far as generator power went.

            He then noticed that there was no sign of Cyber Peacock.

            X frowned in heavy breathed suspicion and began charging his weapon. He heard nothing and he saw nothing, except for the sparking portions of the walls where the holoprojector orbs had been earlier. Then he felt the air behind him shift ever so very slightly, and he surged forward with a quick burst from his dash boots.

            A second later and he would have been dead. Cyber Peacock sped into frenzied existence, his feather blades poised to slice X in half, but he wound up parting thin air. His head snapped up and cried out in futile hate as X leveled his head and buster at him, smiled, and fired the charged Aiming Laser.

            The thick, broad, concentrated laser beam exploded from X's buster like a huge, lightweight lightsaber. X swept the beam effortlessly into and through Peacock, parting him at the waist and slashing again vertically. The Maverick's generator exploded as he gave one final, agonized wail…

            And X was thrown against the wall, more winded by the explosion than ever before in his life. There was no way Peacock's generator should have had that much explosive power. Something else had to have…

            "Your power…"

            The voice came from nowhere and immediately X's spine went rigid. He forced himself to his senses and shook his head to clear the cobwebs, but still saw only a blur.

            "Your power is…remarkable!"

            "Where are you?" X asked, and to his annoyance his voice quavered.

            "I am everywhere," the voice said at length. It was a big, booming baritone, more commanding than anything X had ever heard, even from Sigma. "I am everywhere there is a Reploid to embody me."

            "And you are…?"

            "War, X. The essence you spoke of earlier."

            X stood bolt upright and the cobwebs vanished completely. "Ares!"

            "You can call me that if you wish. Everyone else does."

            "What are you up to?"

            "War, X," Ares explained patiently. His voice came from every corner of the room. It was as though the chamber itself were speaking to X. "Didn't Kujacker explain it to you?"

            "He rattled off something about a maniac who wanted to perpetuate war in the world."

            "That would be me." The voice chuckled mirthlessly. "But is it really so maniacal?"

            "Who are you supposed to be? Some relic of Sigma?"

            "War, X." Ares was most definitely smirking. "And don't confuse me with anything Sigma could produce. I am beyond his power."

            "You don't expect me to believe you're some spirit," X said adamantly. "You really think you're the War God?"

            "Why couldn't I be? Why the skepticism?"

            "That's foolish," X pointed out. "The ancient Greek religion is dead."

            "And why is that?"

            "Because…because people no longer believe in it! Why do you think?"

            "There are many aspects of history that are unrecorded," Ares offered his counterpoint. "Just because no one remembers them…just because no one believes in them…doesn't mean they didn't happen. Or look at a modern example. There are still those out there who believe a Jew named Jesus was the son of 'God'. But what happens if the religion suddenly falls into obscurity? Is this Christ no longer the Son of God, just because no one chooses to think so? The whole concept of a religion is that the deities are almighty. How can mere humans strip them of their status? How can you 'kill' a religion?"

            "You're not helping yourself. In effect what you're really saying that religion is just a convenient manifestation of the human mind."

            "Well, wouldn't you agree?"

            "No, I would not." X smiled with deliberate innocence. "How would you know? Have you ever been to the other side?"

            Ares for once was forced to rethink his position. "Even if such afterlives and deities exist for flesh and blood humans, with their so-called 'souls', it holds no effect for Reploids."

            "How would you know?" X asked again. "Have you ever been to the other side? And if you're so against the whole religion thing, how can you be the War God?"

            "Did you really think I was?" They were both quiet for a while. "No, X, I am as much a Reploid as Kujacker was, only I'm very different as far as power goes. My sole mission is to perpetuate war, and I've got a bottomless bucket of tricks to aid my purpose."

            "Why?" X had to know. "Why would anyone live for such a thing? What can you possibly get out of it?"

            "Why does it matter?" Again there was silence before Ares continued. "I must congratulate you on your victory. But don't get overly cocky."

            "Why not? I came out on top of your fair haired boy…err, bird."

            "Oh, please." Ares laughed. "Kujacker was nothing more than a test. I hadn't placed much faith in him as an assassin." At X's slight confusion Ares explained. "Cyber Peacock had the brains, but not the brawn. I had originally intended to use him as a soldier based throughout the cyber networks that he'd previously trafficked in, but all he could think about was revenge. So, I granted him this new task, which was to find you and gauge your combat abilities…much as he'd done in Cyberspace that first time for Sigma."

            "But he didn't say anything about that," X pointed out.

            "That's because he didn't know about it. Kujacker was never meant to be a combatant. I allowed him to think that he was my chosen one…my first assassin. I sent him to Seraph Castle where I knew you would someday arrive, and I allowed him to develop his new battle strategy while putting his talents to use for Sigma, which he continued to do till this day."

            "Sigma's dead," X pointed out.

            "Is he?" Now that really unsettled X, but Ares didn't allow any more questions. "Kujacker was certainly capable of destroying you, and I would have been perfectly content if he had. But since I expected you to pull a victory out of your ass—as you did with Godkarmachine—I was gauging your abilities through Kujacker while you two fought. I must say, X, you are as deadly as the rumors go. All the more reason you must be destroyed."

            "Why kill me? So long as I'm around, Sigma will return to continue his wars."

            "Sigma is a dying despot," Ares said flatly. "His influence is fading, along with his personal power. With each defeat he grows less and less able to restore himself. Unless something very significant happens, this will almost certainly be his final rebellion. I, on the other hand, am perfectly capable of launching my own attacks from the shadows for a very long time. You, X, are the face of peace. I am the face of war. We can never coexist! One of us must be snuffed out…it is the way the world works. Unless I kill you first, you will eventually find and eradicate me."

            "I'm glad you figured that out," X said. He even clapped his hands. "I owe you a cookie."

            "Laugh while you can," Ares said scathingly. "The time will come soon, X, when the true meaning of 'war' will knock on your door. Kujacker was strong in the end, but he was nothing compared to Nova, Geode, Polar and Ultimus. But that's enough about them. You'll meet them face to face soon enough."

            "I can't wait," X said blandly. "If that will be all, Ares, I think I've had quite enough of you."

            "Of course!" Ares said cheerfully. "I wish you luck, X. Mortar lies just ahead. You can get the real status of Megacity 5 from him."

            "I'll be sure to remember that," X said frostily.

            "Till we meet again, X." Ares bid him that foreboding farewell, and X turned and walked as briskly out the exit gate as he could. His body shivered, and try as he might he could not shake the thought. He knew it was stupid, he knew it was impossible, but it had still happened…

            During Ares's final, booming words…the very room itself had been glaring at X.

            It was safe.

            Commander Sigma breathed a sigh of relief as he left the sealed freight elevator. His Weapon hadn't been touched by any of the Hunter intruders. He might need it, he remembered.

            But he wouldn't need it now. All he was doing, the Maverick King thought as he double-checked the functionality of his lightsaber, was dispatching a few unruly Hunters who thought they could bring Seraph Castle down to the ground. Well, they'd soon learn differently.

            "Diavus, report," Sigma spoke into his communicator.

            "Diavus here, sir," the Maverick replied in a somewhat nervous voice. "We're approaching the foundation."

            "You'll meet them soon," Sigma told him after scanning the Seraph Castle mainframe. Every network in the castle was linked to his CPU, since every network in the building was actually infected with the Maverick Virus. "They're on their way now. I've activated the automated defenses," he told him, doing so. "How ready are you?"

            "Very ready," Diavus assured him. "Gerritt and I have secured Kangaroo ride armors, and Kismet and Loader are very capable on foot."

            "Yes, I'm quite aware. You have nothing to fear from X. He's on this floor, dueling Cyber Peacock as we speak."

            "How's it going?" Diavus asked out of turn.

            "It's indecisive so far," Sigma said briskly. "Don't worry about it. Concentrate on your own mission. You have five Hunters coming to meet you, and there's the four of you plus Android."

            "Is Android operational?"

            "Yes." Sigma thought a while. "It'll be waiting at the foundation level. When they try to plant their bombs, Android will come at them. I'd let them fight it out before moving in, otherwise you might box the Android in, and that will limit its usefulness. Come into the battle yourselves if it looks like Android isn't going to make it alone."

            "Yes sir." Diavus continued on in an even shakier manner. "Sir…what if we aren't able to stop them? How…how will we alert the rest of the base if…?"

            "I'll know if you fail." The tone of his voice suggested that Diavus better already be dead if he failed, if he knew what was good for him. "I'll meet you shortly. I have one last thing to take care of." The underling gulped and broke contact, leaving Sigma alone with his thoughts.

            "You get more interesting every day," said a voice in the Maverick's head.

            "Shut up," Sigma said aloud, striding pointedly to his destination.

            "Don't give me orders." The voice wasn't a voice at all, in the sense that it made no distinctive sound that Sigma could pick up on. He just knew what it was saying. It was easy, after all…he'd been living with it for years, and he had long since learned its bedside manner, or lack thereof.

            "Shut up," Sigma said again.

            "You're losing your commander's pride more and more with each passing day," the Maverick Virus mocked him. "A real commander would never threaten his troops like you just did."

            "Shut up," Sigma said again.

            "Maybe," the Virus hoped, "you're finally going to inch over that line I've been waiting for you to inch over?"

            "Shut up," Sigma said again. Neither of them ever tired of this. The Shut Up Game was a crucial part of Sigma's day, and he wouldn't be complete without it.

            "Give it up, Sigma!" the Virus sulked. The very humanness of the Virus used to continually impress Sigma, but now he'd gotten used to it and it passed without a thought. "You've had you chance. Four of them, if I remember correctly. When are you just going to give in to me? I need a host!" the Virus whined. "I need a real host, one without a bloody mind of its own."

            "Shut up," Sigma said cheerily, breezing through a manned gate and inadvertently terrifying a recruit who'd been about to salute him.

            "Come on!" the Virus whined even more. "There's been all this planning and all the bloodshed is happening away from us. How long are you going to keep us cooped up here in dire boredom? Am I going to have to go Kaiser on you again?"

            "That wouldn't help you much," Sigma said, tiring of the Shut Up Game. "There's no giant body laying around. Hold you horses, will you?" Not once did he think it was foolish to be talking to himself like this. The Virus transcended all realms of sanity anyway. "We'll be heading into combat soon enough. If those Hunters are as good as I think they are, Diavus will need our help to bring them down."

            "Hehehehe…" the Virus cackled mercilessly. "Blood, Sigma, there better be blood!"

            "There will be blood," Sigma promised, tiredly.

            "Lots of it!" the Virus pressed. "You know I like blood. I need it. It's pretty."

            "Shut up," Sigma said again. He'd come up with many a name for the Virus. Some mornings it was Githgarzad, when Sigma was very groggy and couldn't think of anything better. His favorite was Zeeberdoink. There was just something perfect about it. The Virus hated that name, though, and gave Sigma migraines whenever he brought it up. Sigma was past sanity and even past insanity, but he managed it rather well. He maintained his alternate self while preserving his own identity—something the Virus loathed—and was able to personally continue his quests for revolution. However Sigma had noticed a gradual decline in his powers lately. It was as though his personal identity was taking a backseat to the whims of the virus, something that scared him more than he would ever admit. In truth the real him would never threaten his soldiers with death as punishment for failure, and the real him would never even consider what he was about to do to The Team…the group that had served him with more loyalty than anyone had in years.

"Don't tell me you feel sorry for them," the Virus mocked. "They're just pawns. They always were. First they belonged to Virdelko and Kitao, and then to Chartreuse, but Chartreuse gave them to you. He practically gift wrapped them for you!"

            "Shut up!"

            "Nah. I think I'll continue." The Virus snickered to itself. "You know it's plausible, Sigma. You know it's the best way to go about things. Can you imagine how fiercely the assassins will fight after one of their own faces the reaper's scythe?"

            "It's a dirty trick," Sigma confessed. "It's the dirtiest trick of all."

            "It is evil," the Virus agreed. "It is evil, and you do it! Because you must, after all. You must kill X, and they will do it for you once the proper buttons are pushed. Even X is no match for the rage you will invoke in The Team. You see? You're becoming more like me every day."

Sigma moaned at that. He had to have some time to recover his personal strength if he meant to fight the Virus any further, and he figured that X and Zero weren't about to give him that time. Nevertheless, it was always easy to appease the Virus by engaging in combat, and soon Sigma would be able to fulfill that promise.

            "You're on the right track, as usual," the Virus praised him.

            "Shut up," Sigma said again.

            The elevator doors opened and Delates's crew was introduced to carnage.

            Acrystos was the first one out. With her energy pistol she fired round after round of paralyzing shots, dropping three of the Maverick sentries before her into unconscious paralysis. The mechaniloid tanks were less eager to submit. The energy surges from the scout's gun merely paralyzed their motor skills, but their cannons were leveled at the elevator to begin with.

            Cort leapt out of the elevator clear over Acrystos's head as the shells began impacting the walls. Flipping in midair he brought out his pistols and began unloading them into two of the three tanks, striking the turrets without fail. By now everyone had bailed from the smoking, wasted elevator. Tyclammel came up with his Gatlin gun arm cannon and launched a rapid fire spray of mini missiles that tore the tanks to shreds while they were busy locking onto Cort, who landed behind them with his coat flipping back like a cape and pressed both of his pistols on the back of the third tank's turret and fired at point blank, terminating that tank's program.

            By the time Delates stood up to dust himself off there was nothing left for him to do. Glumly he lowered his beam saber and scanned the area for further threats. Finding none he turned to tell Acrystos to look ahead but she was already doing so, vanishing into the gloom before them to do her job. "Okay," Delates said to Lyon, the demolitions expert. "What do we do now?"

            "We hit the bottom levels from this floor," the silver/gold Lyon replied easily. "I'll plant my charges while you guys hold off whatever's coming. Then we leave."

            "Hey boss," Tyclammel was asking, pointing to the three stunned sentries. "What do we do with them?"

            Two minutes later the three sentries had been dragged into the ruined elevator and the doors slammed shut. Delates didn't know if they'd be able to get out once the walls came a-tumblin' down, but he didn't want them coming up from behind so he didn't rightly care at the moment.

            "You guys," Acrystos's voice came up on the communicator. "I've found a chamber leading down. We're gonna have to bust through."

            "Any contacts?" Delates asked her.

            "No, not yet," the scout replied. "But I think you guys'd better hurry anyway. Something doesn't seem—" An explosion cut her off. "Shit!"

            "Acrystos?" Delates snapped bolt upright. "What's happening?"

            "Shit, shit, shit…" Acrystos repeated frantically, and it sounded like she was firing her weapon. "Get her!" said a female voice Delates didn't recognize. "Hurry!" Acrystos's voice shouted. "Hurry before—aah!" The transmission ended.

            For a while Unit 0 was quiet. Then Cort ejected the cartridges of both pistols and replaced them with fresh ones. "Why are we standing around?" he asked in his unflappably calm tone. Delates had no answer and a second later all the Hunters were careening down the hallways, throwing caution to the wind, their booster thrusters all on full power.

            The room Acrystos found was right in front of them on the path. Expecting the worst, the Hunters sped into the chamber—a large, undecorated room with a square steel panel in the floor that probably led down to the foundation level and two other hallways leading out, and a balcony level near the ceiling where they beheld…

            "Hold it right there!" the female voice growled down at them, adding a feline hiss at the end.

            Delates's head snapped up to see a white tiger Maverick with her already bloody claws pressed to Acrystos's throat. Acrystos couldn't even look at them. She was being pulled back by her hair and was struggling with all her force against the stronger Maverick, trying to pry the claws off her throat but only provoking Kismet into digging those claws into her hostage's neck lightly as a warning that always sent a shudder through the captive's body and eased her struggles for a while. How someone as stealthy as Acrystos had managed to get herself captured was a mystery to Delates, but that was obviously the case. The Huntress had bleeding slash marks in her right side where the tigress must have gotten her. Then Delates made the connection—this had to be an ambush. The Mavericks had known they were coming, and Acrystos had been unlucky enough to blunder alone into a room full of Mavericks who were bound to see her somehow, no matter how good a spy she was.

            The other Hunters were noticing the same thing. Gradually Delates began to notice forms in the shadows, hiding on the room's upper balconies. He turned on his infrared and made out shapes in the hallways leading into the chamber. Yes, it was an ambush…but at least they knew that. It might turn out pretty rough for Acrystos though, the squadron commander thought with a severe pang of guilt.

            The Huntress herself was beginning to show signs of her desperation. She'd all but given up resistance, mostly due to Kismet's little throat-cuttings and the fact that the Maverick had an arm wrapped firmly around the Huntress's waist, cruelly teasing Acrystos's side wounds with her razor sharp claws. At the sound of her comrades' arrival, though, Acrystos had regained some life, and Kismet was having more trouble holding her still.

            Cort holstered his pistols in his belt and stepped slowly forward. "Take it easy," he said coolly when Kismet visibly tensed. "You obviously want something."

            "Aren't you the bright one?" Kismet seethed, drawing her claws tight against Acrystos's side, evoking a little yelp from the helpless but nevertheless enraged captive. "I've been waiting a long time to get even with you Hunters."

            "It seems everyone has," Cort said with a bland smile, running a hand through his silver hair. His cold blue eyes had adopted a sort of conciliatory warmth and all his movements were slow, so as not to startle Kismet. Delates and the others began to be aware of movement in the upper rafters and balconies, and also in the hallways. If Cort noticed this or not he gave no indication, and instead maintained eye contact with Kismet. "What's your sob story?"

            The tigress laughed. "Your pet humans killed a friend of mine. His name was Fang." As they spoke the other Hunters took baby steps, getting into position and each picking an infrared target in the shadows.

            "It's too bad for him," Cort offered. "Shouldn't have been breaking the law."

            "The law!" Kismet spat. "Listen to you talking about law. It's you guys who are the lawless." She stopped and smiled cruelly. "But at least we captured your commander in the process."

            Everyone bristled except Cort, who remained collected. "So," he said, still conversational. "You were part of the team that captured Zero in the Sub-City."

            "Right." The tigress's toothy grin faded. "I don't know if he's been killed yet. But at least he'll get to look forward to seeing you when his time comes."

            "That's a bad idea," Cort pointed out, very quickly. "What's going to happen to you when you kill her?" That made Kismet stop and think before dragging her claws across Acrystos's throat, as she'd planned to. "You'll die, that's what. And then your friends here will die."

            Kismet's uncertainty died at that. So, the Hunters knew they were being set up…time to give the Mavericks their cue, then. There was no use wasting any more time. "Then I'll join Fang and the others."

            "Will you doom the others to death?" Cort asked, his voice rising.

            "Watch me!" Kismet snarled, determined to prove herself before this prick. She shifted Acrystos's madly struggling form to the right, to make it easier to drag her claws left across the Huntress's neck. There was nothing Acrystos could do to stop it.

            Cort transformed from a Reploid into a whirling dervish of black and silver. With speed that was almost unheard of even for Reploids he whipped his black coat to the side and drew a pistol with his left hand. His left arm snapped outward at Kismet's left side, slightly exposed due to her shifting of Acrystos, and Cort's gun barrel exploded once. Every Hunter held their breath as the adaman bullet shot through the air and breezed not a hair past Acrystos's cheek and tore into and through Kismet's left shoulder. She let out a feral shriek and her arm dropped, and that was all the blessings Acrystos needed. The Aegis agent twisted like a snake and pummeled her elbow repeatedly in the tigress's gut, foiling the rest of her hold. Then Acrystos spun around while reaching for the energy daggers Kismet had foolishly left on her person.

            The action had started all around the room. Cort spun to the right and with maddening skill shot an advancing Maverick through the forehead. He then fired two shots down the hall the Maverick had emerged from, and someone screamed. Tyclammel dove hard to the left and waited for a target to appear. Lyon's bazooka was ready to fire. Delates was keeping an eye on Acrystos, prepared to dash in if anything happened, but the Huntress was handling herself very well.

            The Maverick sentries didn't come out any more. Instead new vanguards approached…a raccoon Maverick and a humanoid in sleek black armor, both of them inside giant Kangaroo class ride armors.

            The Kangaroo armor was one of the more brutal, in-your-face types of mechas out there. It was a blandly decorated mecha with two key details: the massive mace claws that served as its fists. Gerritt, who until five minutes ago had been unfamiliar with any ride armors, managed to surge forth and attack. His right mace arm flew out of its socket and shot towards Tyclammel, who barely dodged in time and managed to counterattack with a spray of little missiles from his rapid-fire arm cannon. Each missile exploded uselessly against the mace arm, which was still hovering in the air and spinning rapidly, another function of the Kangaroo attack. The mace returned to its arm socket via a chain that dragged it back at Gerritt's command. Delates rushed Gerritt, hoping to take advantage of the ride armor's recovery period, but Diavus rushed forth in his own mecha, cutting the Hunter off with a sharp elbow from the machine's massive arm. Delates staggered back but dodged before Diavus got a mace shot off at him. Diavus, a much more experienced pilot, recovered and planned his next move.

            As for Kismet, she never really had much of a chance. Acrystos, who prided herself on surviving the most hostile atmospheres alone, had been stricken with a growing rage at allowing herself to be captured, and she focused her rage on her former captor. Kismet hissed, spraying blood from her lips as she felt the effects of Cort's remarkable shot, and her eyes went wild. The Maverick in her took over and she went into a frenzy, diving at Acrystos and tearing wildly at the Huntress. Acrystos met her with eyes of equal madness and lunged forward, her energy daggers flashing towards her opponent in rapid streaks that mangled Kismet's claws as she tried to defend herself.

            "Damn you!" the tigress roared, lunging towards Acrystos with her jaws wide open.

            "Just die," Acrystos seethed, and quick as lightning dropped a dagger and produced her stun pistol. Kismet had just enough time to twist her face up in surprise before her body went rigid in an electrical cage. Acrystos continued forward and drove her other blade into Kismet's chest, rupturing her generator. The Huntress kicked the Maverick tigress away just before her torso exploded, splattering scraps and coolant on the nearby walls. Acrystos holstered her pistol and picked up her fallen dagger, twisting away from a stream of gunfire from another Maverick foot soldier and leaping off the balcony she'd been held hostage on. Delates threw her a quick look of approval, but that was all the time they had before Diavus parted them by surging his Kangaroo their way.

            "This is child's play," Cort observed to himself, spinning away from the rifle fire that had threatened Acrystos. He brought both pistols up to bear, but then the craziest thing happened—a heavy weight crushed him from above. Flat on his face, Cort grunted in surprise as whatever was on top of him leapt off, crushing him further in the process. It didn't make sense until he looked up and saw a Maverick modeled after a cricket.

            "Nice try, John Wayne," Loader hissed. "But your games won't work with me."

            Cort didn't answer. Instead he forced himself to his feet, perhaps the most painful act of his life, and his body groaned in protest. It was a good move, however, as the Maverick soldier on the balcony unloaded his assault rifle on the spot where Cort had been laying. Loader laughed aloud in his raspy bug voice and leapt hard at the Hunter. Maddeningly accurate, Loader knocked Cort clear off his feet once more, though this time as he fell the Hunter curled into a ball while holding his right arm out towards the Maverick. He fired off three shots before his somersault was complete, and though he still landed on the ground he recovered much easier. None of his shots had struck anything, but Loader was sufficiently unsettled by them that he was stalling. It didn't much matter, though, because the Maverick on the balcony and another Maverick who'd crept out of a shady hallway were both leveling their weapons at Cort. There was no way they would miss. In desperation, even as he was standing back up Cort tore his coat off and flung it around and up, cluttering up the Mavericks' line of fire. Unable to focus on an actual target the Mavericks just started shooting. Cort took a hit in the leg and a hit in the side, but they weren't bad wounds. They stung like hell, but he could live with them, and he was just glad he hadn't been hit in an arm. He'd rather limp than be unable to shoot.

            The Maverick on the balcony realigned his shots. He'd been focusing only on Cort all this long while. While the silver haired Hunter considered what in the hell to do next—he had a Maverick to his left, a Maverick to his right, and now Loader springing right at him—a bulky projectile streaked through the air towards the suddenly horrified Maverick on the balcony. The shot wasn't accurate but that hardly mattered with bazookas. The explosion tore that section of the balcony to bits, and the Maverick with it. Cort immediately dove hard to the now safe left while extending a pistol to the right, firing two adaman bullets through the storm of the Maverick's lasers, killing the target but receiving more minor wounds himself. Loader passed right by him, and Cort had the chance to look up and see Lyon smiling as he rearmed his bazooka, its barrel still smoking.

            Gerritt was more comfortable with his ride armor now. He joined Diavus in cornering Delates and Acrystos, sending his mace arms out frequently, and perhaps too frequently. He didn't notice the Hunters exchanging glances, and so didn't expect it when they both dove to opposite directions and ran around the ride armors. Gerritt pulled off a speedy but awkward turn just in time to make eye contact with the cut up but still frenzied Acrystos as she approached.

            "Oh, my god!" the raccoon breathed as he recognized the woman from the radar base.

            Acrystos stopped dead in her tracks. "It's you!" she gasped, staring at the Reploid who'd shot Damia. Then her eyes glowed with rage again, rage that if anything was now amplified. "You should have died when you had the chance, you bastard! Now I'm gonna make you regret living!"

            "I should have died?" Gerritt raged right back, trying to mask his fear as he threw the Kangaroo into full battle mode. "I should have died?! You killed them all! You killed everyone at that base, and you enjoyed it!" Kangaroo's gauntlet narrowly skimmed past Acrystos, whose daggers flared uselessly against the nearly indestructible maces. "Your commander was having a ball on that machine gun, mowing down my friends! You're the monster! You should die!"

            But Acrystos had no such plans. She'd sacrificed more for the Hunters than she'd ever imagined when she'd joined, and she prided herself on her effectiveness, a sentiment that probably came from her stellar performance as an Aegis special agent working with Castle during the Repliforce insurgence. Together they'd infiltrated Web Spider's jungle hideaway and sabotaged his Phalanx cannon to buy time for X, who would invade later. They'd cooperated to infiltrate DELTA, a Repliforce infantry camp rumored to be impenetrable in the early phases of the war. They'd crept aboard Storm Owl's massive floating wall of airships, sabotaging the mothership Impervious and lowering defenses so that the main guns could bring the aerial unit down. And finally, they'd sabotaged some of the Repliforce escape shuttles at the Spaceport, where Repliforce order collapsed as soon as Zero killed Colonel. A vengeful Repliforce Major had activated the Spaceport missiles—used to intercept disabled craft that might crash somewhere in the city—and turned them on the Hunter HQ. Castle had stopped the Major while Acrystos kept the Major's guards busy. That was their crowning achievement. Throughout it all Acrystos had never gone easy on herself for failing at anything, and she'd definitely failed her commander when Gerritt shot her. Damia was as important to her as Castle was and she'd be damned if she was going to let this stupid raccoon get the better of her…not after what he'd done.

            Gerritt spun around and with a cry of vengeance unleashed both mace gauntlets at Acrystos. She threw herself to the ground and let them pass overhead. Then she snapped to her feet with a cry of her own and slashed an energy blade clear through the adamantine chain that connected Gerritt's right gauntlet to the Kangaroo arm socket. The sudden loss of weight threw the Kangaroo sharply to the left. Surprised, Gerritt quickly retracted the other mace while trying to dash out of the way of further harm, but this only threw him further off balance. Acrystos was about to take advantage of this when someone bellowed her name. It was Lyon.

            Acrystos threw herself hard to the right as Lyon's bazooka shell sped past her. It exploded into the bewildered Gerritt's mecha and completely destroyed whatever balance the machine had left. The battered ride armor fell hard on its side, spilling Gerritt out of the rider's compartment. The raccoon was stunned, but not for long. Knowing what had to await him if he just sat there he sprang to his feet and ran for the cover of the shaded halls he'd entered from, abandoning his useless Kangaroo.

            Diavus was giving Delates a much harder time. The skillful pilot made the bulky Kangaroo perform evasive measures that bewildered even Delates, also a skilled pilot.

            "It's no use, Hunters!" Diavus was shouting, trying to encourage his floundering comrades. "Just give it up and let's skip all this crap and get right to the point!"

            "Now you're talking," Delates smiled and pointed his charged arm cannon at Diavus in the pilot's seat. Diavus glowered and sped to the right just as the blast slammed into the Kangaroo's torso. The machine sparked but easily withstood the blast. Still glowering, Diavus dashed at Delates while shooting out a gauntlet. The projectile wrapped around the Hunter's position as Diavus continued his turn, and Delates might have been screwed if the back of Diavus's ride armor hadn't suddenly exploded.

            "I was wondering when that would go off," Lyon mused loudly, referring to the mine he must have slapped on the Kangaroo's back while Diavus was occupied. The demolitions expert then went back to lining up his bazooka at a different target, which at the time happened to be Gerritt's Kangaroo.

            "Damn," Diavus said as Gerritt was ejected from his cockpit. Things weren't going so well. They'd lost two ride armors and they'd lost Kismet entirely, along with all the other Mavericks they'd gotten to come with them on this suicide mission. And there was still no sign of Sigma! Where in the hell was that son of a bitch, while the soldiers who were doing his bidding were getting slaughtered? Intending to buy time for Gerritt, who was running madly for the shadows, Diavus prepared his Kangaroo to tackle the Hunters that now outnumbered him, if only for a little while.

            Every shot Cort fired at Loader missed the high hopping Maverick, much to the gunman's chagrin. "You're just as bad as your boss was!" Loader was taunting him. "For all his fame Zero was a piece of cake to capture!"

            "So you were a part of that crowd too," Cort stated, dodging the cricket as he tried to come down and smash him with his powerful legs. "I'll send you to meet your friend, then."

            "Doubtful, Hunter!" Loader sneered right back and prepared another jump. He was right, because it wasn't Cort who attacked him. Delates abandoned Diavus and raced towards Loader's back, his sword drawn. The cricket realized that something was up the second Delates leapt on his back, just as Loader jumped. The two of them rocketed high into the air, much too high for Delates's liking, but the Hunter forced himself to ignore the height and his boot thrusters flared to life, carrying them through the air towards the Hunter's target. "You bastard!" Loader rasped as he fought futilely. They were descending now. On the ground, Diavus charged towards Acrystos, Tyclammel and Lyon and sent a gauntlet at the former two. He struck Tyclammel in the chest but it was only the tip of a mace spike that made contact, and Tyclammel just staggered back a few steps, his planned missile salvo ruined. Diavus completed his dash and the ride armor took a second to recover. Loader pulled his feet in to kick the Hunter off him, but a second before the Maverick could get off his attack the Hunter did the same thing first, and kicked the cricket into a nearby wall as he careened himself down hard towards the remaining ride armor, his sword pointing down. His lightsaber crashed into the back of Diavus's ride armor with Delates, and the Hunter dragged a vertical line deep through the machine's damaged back armor and cleaving a gash in the right side of Diavus's lower back. The Maverick yelped in pain and surprise, but kept enough wits to eject himself from the dying ride armor, which flared and began to violently short circuit even as Delates dashed away from it.

            Diavus staggered towards the hallways Gerritt had fled into, feeling much like a whipped dog. Their ambush had failed…completely and miserably. On the other side of the room a suddenly frightened Loader made quick leaps across the room to another hallway and disappeared also.

            Cort and Tyclammel had their weapons leveled towards the hallway but Delates stopped them with a wave of his hand. "We have a mission to complete," the tired leader said.

            "Yes we do," Lyon agreed, strapping his bazooka to his back while Cort and Tyclammel kept watch on the hallways with their infrared sensors to make sure no one would try to snipe Lyon while he set the charges that would blow open the steel gate in the floor leading to the foundation level.

            "Are you alright?" Delates asked Acrystos once he was sure that the others were handling the situation.

            The Huntress was crouched down on one knee, breathing heavily as though there weren't enough air in the world. The fire in her eyes had faded and she was slowly coming back to reality, and reality sucked. She'd fed her fire off energy that had been endless while in her frenzy, but now she was paying for that benefit via this sick and breathless state of being. "Give me a minute," she managed, setting her deactivated daggers on the floor and using a hand as further support. Delates sheathed his lightsaber and crouched down next to her, his arm cannon activated as he glanced for further threats but also glanced at his comrade's wounds. "They're just scratches," Acrystos assured him.

            "You sure?" Delates asked, touching her side below the nasty looking wounds Kismet had inflicted while torturing her captive to pass the time.

            "My energy isn't low or anything," she assured him. "It just hurts."

            "Take it easy," he advised unnecessarily, and that's what she did until she recovered enough of her breath that she could stand up slowly.

            "Ever do that before?" she had to ask him.

            "What?" Delates asked, helping her to her feet.

            "That frenzy…" Acrystos seemed awed by it. "That trance…"

            "It's been called the Maverick Trance," Delates said with a thin smile. "Mavs are the ones who experience it most frequently, mostly because their hostility levels are so high due to that blasted Virus."

            "I'm no Maverick," she said forcefully. "But I am prone to that rage…in the Spaceport I went totally berserk on Major Mondo's guards. Killed 'em all with simple energy daggers, just like that tigress. Castle found me seething after he killed Mondo, and he had to actually subdue me."

            "PMS," Delates quipped, earning a punch in the arm.

            "Seriously." Her voice dropped. "Do you think it's anything serious?"

            The emerald Hunter shook his head confidently. "You're just as soldier, Crys. That's all there is to it. You were born to fight, and you do it well. It's a good thing, too. If those soldiers had been able to reinforce Major Mondo he might have killed Castle, and then the Hunter HQ might have been vaporized by missiles."

            "But the same thing is happening now," she pointed out, deflating.

            "That's what we're here to stop," Lyon broke in, stepping back from the steel gate. "I suggest you all take cover. This is gonna be a big one."

            Diavus leaned hard against the wall and sucked in breath after breath, trying to calm himself down. How in the hell had it all fallen apart? Both Kangaroos deactivated…himself wounded…Kismet DEAD…all he had now was Loader and Gerritt, and Gerritt wasn't the best at head on combat. Actually it was only Loader who would be of any use, Diavus realized glumly. His own back wound was too serious for him to be able to fight effectively with a sword. But that, he thought, was what Crosshair was for. The sniper rifle, disassembled into pieces kept on his belt, had been with him since birth. He was as adept at firing Crosshair as he was at breathing. They could make a second strike, and reinforce Android, which was waiting below. Damn it, Diavus thought, THAT was where the battle should have happened, but the Hunters had been coming too fast! Without Android as reinforcement they had been seriously disadvantaged.

            A thundering explosion distracted his attention. "Damn," he moaned. The Hunters were going to the foundation.

            Zero was beginning to wonder when the darkness would end when all of a sudden it did. A faint beam of light penetrated the shadows of the ventilation shaft and the Hunter crawled as quietly as he could towards it. It was coming in through a grate in the ceiling…the Hunter imagined he could kick his way through it and descend to the room below.

            But first he decided to do a bit of reconnaissance. The light was extremely faint and came from the center of the room—Zero's shaft was in the corner along the right wall. Directly below him he could see nothing but more darkness. He wondered if it was even a room. But yes, it had to be a room, because he could make out the floor from the faint light. He turned on his infrared and did a scan of the area below him. At first he saw nothing, but then he picked up on a life form almost directly below him. It was humanoid, and rather svelte…and female, he noted at last. No, he thought, it couldn't already be—

            He put too much weight on the grate and it gave in. Seraph Castle was not big on maintenance. He was unable to restrain a yelp as he fell out of the ventilation shaft, making all the noise in the world, and flopped like a fish out of water onto the hard floor below him. The wind was knocked out of him and he lay there stunned for a brief few seconds.

            Teytha had been ready for an intruder from the gateway, but not from above. As such she whirled in shock at the sound of the shaft collapsing and then she leapt back in deeper shock as something big and heavy crashed down not two inches from the toes of her boots. She, too, was stunned for a brief few seconds. She was stunned further when the faint light revealed that her opponent had glimmering golden hair and red armor, and was not at all the blue armored warrior she'd been expecting.

            Zero lurched to his feet as quickly as he could and made eye contact with Teytha of Terrornova. Without saying a word the assassin's two blades came to life, each pulsating with red energies. The conventional "rod" lightsaber was menacing enough, but the ornate gold one with the scimitar blade was even nastier. The light from the swords illuminated her blue eyes, which were now as cold as an Antarctic wind. The Maverick Hunter unconsciously activated Surge's green lightsaber, hoping to Christ it would avail him against this enemy, who he remembered from X's description was an absolute demon when it came to speedy swordplay.

            There were no words that could be said. There was nothing Teytha wanted to say anyway, and she tensed to get the battle started and over with as soon as possible. Zero didn't want that. He had no desire to fight this woman. But he had no choice, he realized, seeing the look in Teytha's eyes. No matter what he did, he was always left with one choice…to kill.

            Teytha sped towards him with a hiss and slashed both sabers his way at once, one high and one low. Zero brought his saber up from the ground to strike her low sword and carry through to the high one, but the nimble Maverick stopped slashing horizontally and came up and down vertically, knocking Zero's rising sword astray. She kept going with her feet and kicked herself off Zero's chest, rocketing herself away from a counterattack and unsettling Zero terribly. When the Hunter looked up all he could see was two flickering red blades moving at cheetah speed throughout the shadows.

            This isn't so bad, he told himself, keeping himself moving. He watched the glowing sabers in the distance and tried to follow them. And then all of a sudden things went completely to hell.

            Teytha came at him seemingly from nowhere, like a bat from hell. She even left a trail of fire behind her. Oh, Zero realized, too late. She had accelerators in her boots. Great! Even more speed for her when she needed it! Zero brought his saber up to stop the first blow…

            …And oh God, it was wild from that point on.

            The assassin's breath hissed out from her lips as she sped around Zero and took the "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" strategy to the extreme. Zero spun to the left, to the right, to the bottom left, to the top right, to the bottom right—no, it was to the TOP right—

            Too late. He reeled in pain as the scimitar saber ate into his shoulder armor and sent a burning feeling throughout his body. Teytha gave him a little victorious laugh and tried to stab the other sword through Zero's chest. He foiled her by dropping to the floor and employing his own leg thrusters just as he reached out and grabbed Teytha by an ankle. They were both dragged across the floor when Zero's thrusters came to life. He let go of her shortly after hitting the ground, mostly from the shock of impact, and quickly scampered to his feet around the same time she did.

            "Damn you," Zero growled at her, nursing his shoulder wound while tensing for further attack. "Knock it off, will ya? We don't need to be doing this!"

            She gave no sign that she heard him, and she darted at him again, approaching like wildfire and attacking in a similar manner. Zero parried high, and low, and to the lower right and upper left at the same time, and then low, high, right, high right and low right, and Jesus Christ he would never defeat her like this and OWCH that hurt! The Hunter sprang back again, this time with a cut on his outer right thigh. Teytha gave him absolutely no quarter, rushing at him with a vengeance and cleaving both of her nasty swords at him with murderous intent. Zero's thrusters flared and with a roar he sped right at her, hoping the direct rush would unsettle her, since she was much weaker physically than he was.

            He had no such luck. Teytha spun hard to the right as soon as she realized what was going on and slammed her scimitar hard into Zero's falling blade. The flare of light filled the room, and when it died both combatants were many steps away from each other. Teytha turned and closed the distance almost immediately, and resumed her campaign of ruthless strikes…all the while uttering not one single word other than her battle cries.

            Zero couldn't remember a time when he'd been so overwhelmed. This girl was absolutely tireless. It seemed like nothing slowed her down. She had no discernable patterns to her attacks and the fact that she had two swords effectively canceled out every strategy that Zero could come up with…except one. Teytha always came in close to attack…she had to. Zero COULD defeat her by pulling off a Rakkouha attack right when she came in to strike. The beams of light would take her by surprise and drop her like a sack of bricks…a very dead sack of bricks. But…was that the kind of victory he wanted?

            You don't have a choice! Logic and Conscience both raged at once. Every one of your special attacks will do her in. And hell, she'll probably even find a way to weather most of them anyway! There's no way out of this one.

            "No!" he protested aloud, though weakly. He sped past her again, but this time stuck out his boot and caught her in the side before she had the time to dodge. Grunting, she staggered sideways but collected herself admirably quickly. "Enough!" Zero bellowed at her. "Dammit Teytha, you're not the one I want to fight!"

            Something flickered in her eyes then, but it died just as quickly as it had been born. She shook her raven-haired head and accelerator-dashed towards him with an even louder battle cry, slashing hard with both weapons. Zero met her with his own barrage. He had to try to get on the offensive…somehow, if he could just damage her, the fight might come to a close…

            Who are you kidding? Logic chided him. She's got mad skills and two lightsabers. You can only hope to hold her off until she gets tired. Where are your skills? Where are those sword maneuvers you used to prevail against your other opponents, like Sigma back in the days when you trained together, or Agile when you were running from the X-Hunters in their base? Hell, where are the skills you used to defend against Colonel, before you decided to blow his ass up?

            Zero answered them by meeting Teytha with a cry of his own and swinging his weapon into full service. He started meeting each of her attacks as they came, even when they came at once. The warrior Zero started taking over, and he let it do so. His mind became focused on the combat at hand, and all his thought became bent on finding ways to strike or defeat his opponent. Teytha instantly realized the change in Zero's demeanor and instinctively became more guarded in her attack structure. She knew his counterattacks were getting stronger and she knew he was going to use his superior strength to knock her off balance, so she played on that. She sent both her swords up weakly towards his chest, and with her speed came the illusion of effort. Zero's counterattack sent both weapons flying backwards, surprising the Hunter and encouraging him to carry through with his attack…just as Teytha pulled off her real attack, and swung both swords right back at him with all the force she could muster.

            The weapons cut into Zero's chest armor and the big Reploid let out an enraged roar as he stumbled past the Maverick, who quickly danced away from her target lest he pull off a counterattack. She didn't dance far enough. Zero pivoted on his heel and thrust Surge's lightsaber out at the Maverick. "Rajingeki!" he shouted, and the saber's blade extended while flaring with white electrical energy. The tip struck Teytha and sent her reeling back with a sharp yelp as tendrils of white painful power snaked around her body.

            "Are you done with this stupid game yet?" Zero asked, much too harshly to accomplish anything.

            The electricity on Teytha's body turned suddenly from white to red, and then Zero got his answer. The electricity gathered on Teytha's fists, and the slender assassin took two steps forward while spinning on the tips of her toes like a top and flung her arms out at Zero. Blasts of red electricity shot out and struck the dumbfounded Hunter dead on, and with a cry of his own he staggered backward, clutching his aching skull with his free hand while the volts burned into his system. Zero then horrified himself when he tripped over his own feet whilst staggering and fell flat on his back. He looked up, stiff from the electricity and further horrified because of it, and saw his would-be killer rushing towards him to strike a killing blow. He barely managed to get his somewhat paralyzed boot thrusters to activate and carry him across the floor away from Teytha just as she swung down at him. Unlike most in that situation, Teytha didn't lose her balance because of swinging with all her force and hitting thin air. Instead, she played right along with the situation and cartwheeled herself forward, springing down at Zero from the air. As the final cords of crimson electricity faded from his equally crimson armor, Zero brought his feet up and extended them into the descending Maverick, sending her flying back the way she'd come.

            Teytha backflipped through the air and landed on her feet, if not somewhat winded. Zero was on his feet as well, shaking his head frantically to clear it of the pain…and of the red haze that Teytha's attack had instigated. It was the same red haze that had guided his sword through Colonel's body and through the crystal that became Iris's life source. It was the same red haze that, if he wasn't careful, would—

            "No!" He stuck his opened hand out at Teytha, pleading for her to stop. "This is a mistake, dammit! It's your boss who's my target! Not you! Don't you get it?" He asked her when she didn't respond, didn't move, didn't even blink. "I don't want you dead!" Dead silence. Teytha's azure eyes narrowed at her enemy as she sucked in breaths to replace the wind Zero had just knocked out of her. She was standing right under the dim white ceiling light, and Zero made out her physical features more easily. Her sparse armor consisted of shoulder epaulets and a thick breastplate to guard her generator, a plate that followed her ribcage down and ended above her stomach. She also wore thin wrist gauntlets and thin, small boots. All the armor was a gleaming alabaster white, and below it was her light blue bodysuit that covered everything else in a slight layer of protection. Her head lacked a helmet, and her shoulder-length black hair wasn't even tied back. It ran as wild and free as the rest of her. A shroud of cold vehemence masked her normally pretty face. It almost made Zero shudder to look at her.

            And then, finally, she said something.

            "So I should let you march on through here, is that it?" she asked, with a voice just as cold as her eyes. "I should let you march through here and kill my commander?"

            "Sigma is a murderer," Zero insisted.

            "So are we," Teytha challenged coolly, twirling her swords in her fingertips in an almost casual manner. "I'm a murderer. I killed innocent people all the time. We all killed innocent people, like your friend Mea."

            "That wasn't your choice!"

            "But we did it!" she said in an agonized voice. "Do you know what that's like? In the first months of our lives we had blood on our hands! We were prisoners of the law before and after we were prisoners of the humans, but we survived! Together!" She glared at him. "And now you want me to sell out my comrades?"

            "Is Sigma your comrade?" Zero asked skeptically.

            "He took us in when no one else would!" Her voice cut right into him with its correctness. "He gave us a purpose, a reason to live when all we had were reasons to die! We rooted for him when he broke away from you in the first uprising. We prayed every day that he'd butcher every last Hunter and human. He was a hero! A hero to every oppressed Reploid, and God knows there were more of us oppressed than those of us who were free. Did you ever leave the Hunter camp for an extended time, Zero, in those early days? Of course not! If you had you would have been subject to the brutal prejudices that caused the uprisings. You were pampered because you were a Hunter. The humans needed you. You were one of their fair-haired boys, their prized possessions. They couldn't risk losing you. Unlike Sigma, who saw through the bullshit, you stayed. You stayed under the humans' thumbs while Sigma and the others tried to do something about the humans. You sold out your own race!"

            "To stop GENOCIDE!" Zero raged. "Sigma was and is a madman! The purpose for the revolution should have been about equality, not mass murder! And that's all it was! It was an excuse to kill people Sigma didn't like while elevating his own popularity, a genocidal scheme he justified with some delusion of grandeur. You can't blame the whole for the deeds of the few. That's what the humans needed to learn and still need to learn about Reploids: just because there are some Mavericks doesn't mean that all Reploids are threats to humans. And similarly just because some humans are assholes doesn't mean that all humans want Reploids to be their slaves! Sigma doesn't care about a revolution! I don't know if he ever really did, and even if so it's nothing anymore because all he is now is just a slave to that damned virus!"

            "And without him?" Teytha asked him quietly. "What will happen when Sigma goes away?" The air chilled. The red haze in Zero's eyes changed to a black one. His mind was transported weeks into the past, and he was no longer talking to this assassin but to a different one, a seemingly older one.

            "What will happen when Sigma is finally defeated?" a spectral Mortar asked him. "What will happen when there is no one to organize Reploids into a fighting force? What will happen when the humans no longer need to comfort the Reploids and coax them into being pro-human?" Mortar's brow furrowed. "You and your friends will die, that's what! You're too powerful. Reploids themselves are too powerful. Terrornova will return, Zero. Oh the name will be different, and the people pulling the strings will change, but the concept will remain very much in tact. Do you really think the humans will allow another Sigma to come into the picture?" The specter laughed. "Any Reploids with strength and leadership capabilities will be eliminated, thus removing any possible revolutionary leaders for when the Reploids find themselves suddenly under new restrictive measures."

            "Do you see?" Teytha finished as the specter vanished and Zero came back to the present. "Sigma IS the savior of the Reploids."

            "He is a madman," Zero reiterated, though hoarsely. "He's even stooped to using nukes!"

            "A plan that we employed proudly!" Teytha declared. "That much was personal. We surgically removed the biggest threat to our safety."

            "Icarus?" Zero guessed immediately. "The Megacity flagship?"

            "It's gone," Teytha told him with a haunting smile. "Lost in nuclear fire."

            The red haze returned. It had happened, then. Sigma's Gallagher had reached Megacity 5 and the Buzzbombs had flown. But if Icarus was gone… "What about our headquarters?" Zero asked, managing to stop his voice from quaking.

            Teytha briefly debated lying, but instead just shrugged her shoulders and told him the truth. "The first Buzzbomb hit it, but it failed to detonate. Your house has a big hole in it, but otherwise it's still standing. See?" she said with a sad smile. "I told you we were murderers."

            Every instinct in Zero's body told him to rush forward and cleave this evil girl into bits and pieces, but one little thing stopped him: it was the way Teytha had smiled when she said her last piece. A true Maverick would have absolutely relished the use of nukes on a Hunter establishment. They would have proudly claimed responsibility for eliminating the Hunter threats. But something on Teytha's face and in her eyes told Zero all he needed to know about her disposition, and the blinding red haze subsided a little bit.

            "You don't want a part of this," he stated flatly.

            Teytha took a sudden step backward and blinked. "What?"

            "This isn't what you want," Zero restated, understanding her as he straightened his stance. "You don't want to kill anyone else. You want to go off somewhere and live a quiet life away from all this bullshit."

            "What?" she asked again, though this time her voice was harsh and guarded. "You…how could you even pretend to understand me? You know nothing!"

            "But I do, don't I?" he pressed, sensing her weakness. "You don't want to be the murderer you say you are."

            "Well who the hell does?" she asked quickly.

            "Sigma," Zero answered her even quicker, and the trap closed. Teytha blinked again and fixed him with an incredulous look. "You know I'm right," he said calmly. "The whole theme of his uprisings has always been 'Let's Kill All The Humans And Have A Beer Afterwards!' Killing people is all he lives for. HE wants to be a murderer. It's all he's got left." He moved in for the kill. "You've pledged your loyalty to someone with the complete opposite motives as your own. You're only here because your friends are, and even they don't know what the hell they're doing here."

            Her retort caught in her throat and she stepped back further, shaking her head slowly. "What does it matter?" she finally whispered. Zero's audio circuits picked it up easily. "We had to do this. Without Kitao and Virdelko…and Chartreuse…Terrornova can finally die. We had to stop them…"

            "But did you?" Zero challenged her.

            She couldn't answer. She just kept shaking her head. "You never would understand…" Suddenly she straightened up. Her voice became strong once more and her eyes burned with something that if was not malice was definitely resolution. "I can't sell out my commander."

            "And I can't let him leave this place alive," Zero said right back, feeling everything crash around him.

            Teytha confirmed his fears with another sad smile. "Then we have nothing further to discuss."

            Zero barely had time to dodge before another bolt of red lightning streaked past him. Teytha sprang back into action right away, her swords singing as they clanged into Zero's own. The reluctant Hunter countered every move she threw, though it was getting increasingly harder to do so. He had been so close to talking her out of this, but now…

            He reeled again, a sharp pain now burning into his left side. She'd gotten him again.

            Stop this madness! Logic shouted. She's going to kill you if you don't kill her first! Didn't you hear her? There's no way out of this!

            He's right, Conscience agreed sullenly. She's giving you no quarter. She's fighting for her own principles…and if you want to succeed in your own…if you want to stop Sigma…there's no choice.

            You've got to fight her.

            "DAMN!" he raged aloud with tortured acceptance of his complete inability to change a goddamned thing about himself. The cry was enough to root Teytha to the floor in confused wariness. Zero took quick advantage of the scenario by rocketing towards her with a powerful elbow rush that knocked her silly. His sword flew out towards her, but somehow she parried the blow before falling over. She rebounded immediately and her thrusters carried her across the room away from the suddenly frenzied Hunter.

            Teytha didn't know what the hell had happened to her opponent, but she had a feeling that the Great Swordsman of legend was about to make an appearance. Adopting a new strategy, she activated the generators in her small wrist gauntlets and charged her fists with her innate electrical strength. She dashed back away from Zero, who had closed the distance already much as she had done in the earlier parts of the battle, and then she transformed into a living top. She spun around on her toes…and around, and around, and around, each time throwing an arm out and sending a bolt of red lightning flying at Zero.

            Zero all of a sudden was surrounded by a lot of red. The energy Teytha was throwing could be poetically described as bleeding light. The room itself flashed blood red whenever the energy flew from the Maverick's fists. And to top it off, Zero's mind was just one big red blur now. A streak of energy struck him dead in the center of his chest, and he fell electrocuted to the ground in a big screaming mess of red armor and tattered hair, his body rattling like a tin can as the electrical energies seized him.

            Kill…

            "What…?"

            Destroy…

            "No…"

            Eliminate…

            "No…!"

            Eliminate her!

            "NO!"

            But there was no way out this time. His tortured body exploded with anger, the same anger that had carried him to each and every one of his past victories. He snapped to his feet, determined to stop the pain, determined to stop this Maverick in her tracks. …And yet, there was still something left inside of him that resisted.

            You fool! It was a new voice. Logic and Conscience had both turned against him now. They'd merged into something completely different, something that only wanted one thing: vengeance. You heard her! Lives have been lost because of her. Your friends are DEAD because of her!

            "Stop…"

            "How can you stop?" It wasn't just a voice anymore. It was a person. It was a person in a white lab coat with wild white hair, grinning with his teeth and eyes. "They fired a Buzzbomb, Zero! They fired a nuclear weapon at your allies inside Icarus! They DESTROYED them, Zero!"

            "They weren't allies! Virdelko and Kitao and Chartreuse were all my enemies! They killed Mea and they killed god knows how many others, and they would have killed again!"

            "And what about the HQ, Zero?" Dr. Wily asked smugly. She wanted all of them to die in nuclear fire. She wanted to kill Signas. She wanted to kill Douglas. She wanted to kill Tiberius and Caligula. She even wanted to kill Dr. Cain."

            "Nooo…" That defeated him and he knew it, and it was absolutely agonizing.

            "Yes, Dr. Cain, the best friend the Reploids ever had. Dr. Cain, the man who has been the father I wasn't able to be. Dr. Cain…the only reason you're still sane. She wanted him DEAD! And he may BE dead! Just because there was no nuclear blast doesn't mean that no one died. There's a hole in your house…that's what she said. Cain could be dead…because of HER!"

            "NO!" he shouted aloud, but this time there was no regret in his voice. Only rage. The Hunter Zero had awakened…and now there was blood to be spilled.

            Zero sprang to his feet just as Teytha sent two more bolts of lightning at his prone form. He got up with a roar and slammed his saber into both shots like a baseball bat, actually sending both projectiles back at their point of origin. Teytha was too surprised to do anything about it. She took both blasts and jumped back with a yelp, but other than that she was fine. Her systems were made to withstand electricity, which only made sense since she produced electricity internally as a weapon. That was why she'd been able to shrug off the Rajingeki attack like she had. But it had disabled her long enough for Zero to rush into the area and go on the brutal offensive. Teytha met him with a brilliant and insanely speedy series of parries and thrusts of her own, but Zero handled them all in style with just his single weapon while returning attacks. The flares of conflicting energy lit the dark room up in a way that would have been the death of an epileptic, and when there was finally—FINALLY—a lull, both parties flew back from each other…relatively unscathed.

            "Jesus Christ," Teytha breathed, not thinking twice about invoking the name of the popular human theological figure. She'd managed to hold her own there…but for the first time she was actually tired. She was wearing out, and Zero would realize that very soon. "Stall for time," Sigma's words echoed in her head. Stall… "You don't have to go." Malevex's final plea. But she did have to go. She had to prove to herself that she wasn't just extra baggage. Had she done that? But did it matter? She remembered her own words, her own promise to Malevex that she had to uphold: "I'll come back." Zero had gone into overdrive. If she stayed she would probably die. She was good, and she COULD kill Zero if he presented her with the opportunity, but…how many other Mavericks had thought the same thing, and never found their opportunity?

            Zero came at her again, his sword raised and poised to destroy. She leapt nimbly and easily away from him and sent a bolt of lightning at him that only served to enrage him further, but also locked him in his tracks for a few seconds. She used the opportunity to activate her teleporter. "Strike hard, strike fast, and if all else fails I'll run like hell." That was the plan she'd lived by up till now, and she saw no reason to deviate. She'd struck hard and she'd struck fast, and now it was time to go. Seraph Castle allowed its masters to teleport directly to the main control room. She could link up with Malevex and reinforce him in a final defense, or whatever else Sigma had in mind. She threw Zero one last glare and activated her transporter.

            Nothing happened.

            She blinked back her apprehension and tried it again. Nothing. What in the hell? She looked at the gate to the chamber, the one Zero should have used to come in. "Open," she commanded it by connecting to the castle's neural network. It remained closed. No longer hiding her apprehension, Teytha stood in shock for a few moments as everything crashed down on her at once.

            Cyber Peacock had designed Seraph Castle's internal network to correspond with Sigma's neural program. Sigma could teleport himself to any point within the castle whenever he pleased. He could activate and deactivate the automatic weapons. And he could disable teleportation for anyone inside the base…or freeze gates to prevent them from opening.

            Only he had that power.

            Teytha leapt to the right to dodge another attack from Zero, but she made no attack to counter him. Her body was numb. He'd been right…the son of a bitch Hunter had actually been right. Sigma wasn't a comrade after all. He'd used them from the beginning…not as agents of his revolution but pawns to set up his opponents. And now it was obvious to her what was happening. Sigma had realized that Zero had escaped, if he hadn't been the one to set Zero free in the first place, and the bald traitor had trapped Teytha in a room with him. And like an idiot, she'd played along, spurning Zero when he'd tried to break off the fight and provoking him to this killing rage. Sigma's plan was painfully simple: Teytha had to die. He arranged for her to walk into this deathtrap and now the frenzied Zero would kill her. Her death would of course drive Malevex and Mortar over the edge, and they would unleash the Wrath of God on X and Zero…thus increasing their chances of destroying Sigma's archrivals. All that needed to happen for that killing rage to come out of her comrades was for Teytha to forfeit her life.

            Suddenly that life returned to her limbs and she began countering Zero with renewed gusto. There was, after all, another way. Her eyes flickered with a slightly mad desperation. She didn't have to die. She looked at the Hunter, who was dumb with his rage. That was her advantage. She could still think. She had her wits about her. She could defeat him by exploiting the rage that had led so many other Mavericks to their deaths. Because, after all, she had to. If someone had to die it would be that crimson bastard! She'd come too far to die now…she had too much to live for! She was briefly depressed again at thought that even if she did kill Zero, Sigma would probably kill her himself to keep his plan moving…but she could deal with that when the time came. She was an assassin, after all, and even Sigma couldn't hold out against a stab from the dark. That bastard would pay…just as soon as she handled this pest. "Malevex…I'll come back. I'll find a way!"

            The part of Zero that was still sane noticed the violent light that appeared in his opponent's eyes. Something had happened to her in this period of seconds, and it didn't look like whatever it was would make his life easier. Zero approached cautiously, trying to figure out what had happened, but Dr. Wily's snarling, cackling, hazy red shadow fell over his eyes again and the wicked doctor's curse corrupted his son just as it had in the battles with Iris and Colonel. There was only one result that would please Wily…Zero would walk out coated with blood and another victory on his charts. And like any son, Zero wanted to please his father.

            Teytha leapt into the air and sped across the sky like a flaming comet. She landed and held her swords out in front of her while her alabaster wrist gauntlets charged up. This time, however, the lightning didn't erupt from her hands, but traveled up her swords to the blades, and all of a sudden she was a feminine Zeus wielding the thunderbolts of destruction. Smiling in an uncharacteristically heartless way she sped toward her opponent like the bolts of lightning she used so effectively, her swords pulsating with uncontrollable red energies. She swung both weapons at the surprised Zero, who jumped back with a cry of pain and alarm. She kept cutting at him, driven past some mental bound by her desperation and desire to live. Again the sane part of Zero reflected that there was something about the situation that stank of Sigma, but Dr. Wily reproached him for it and he fell silent. Whenever Teytha swung her weapons, a curtain of red electricity hung in the air wherever the blades had passed through, and if she stabbed them outward energy flew from the tips at the opponent who was trying desperately to flee from the attacks. With a mighty roar, Zero threw caution to the wind and rushed at Teytha, his sword hanging limply at his side. He cried out "RYUENJIN!" and brought his sword up in a flaming arc.

            Teytha suspected something as soon as she saw the strange way Zero was holding his sword, and was already weaving around the Rising Fire Sword with her maddening agility even before Zero finished crying the attack's name, which also served as the activation code to release the attack's energies. Teytha slashed her charged swords at and into the Hunter's side, causing him to yelp in pain and spin around, kicking out and catching Teytha in the chest. She gasped and fell back, but her gasp turned quickly to a growl and forward she flew, just as Zero spun with a Shippuga. The sword blade caught Teytha's scimitar with a sudden power and tore it from her fingertips. It clattered across the floor into the shadows and its owner was left standing with just her conventional but nevertheless deadly single weapon.

            "Excellent!" Dr. Wily coached his son, the voice echoing through Zero's head and the mental image somehow perfectly matching Wily's actions. "There may be hope for you yet, Zero." Zero grinned victoriously and approached Teytha, who shrugged off the recent development and came at Zero with a surprising vengeance. "Fight!" Wily bellowed. "Strike high! Low! Good! To the right! Left! Upper left! Yes, Zero, this is you! This is what you were born to do! And such a skillful opponent, too! She's even faster than Colonel was. And we showed Colonel the ropes, didn't we?" Wily laughed. Zero was vaguely aware of what was being said, though the majority of his attention was on the fight. Wily twisted his mustache with a forefinger and smiled to himself. "There may be hope for you yet, my son. Even if you won't kill off that annoying blue bugger, at least you can take your place as the greatest fighting force this world has ever seen! You can make your father proud yet. Did I ever tell you how proud of you I've been?"

            Zero flipped into the air and came down with a cry of "HYOURETSZUAN!" Teytha only barely escaped the attack, slashing her sabers once or twice before retreating to another corner of the room. Zero pursued her, enjoying the hunt. Through her own mental haze, Teytha was beginning to realize that she would never win this fight. Zero was coming at her like some kind of undead thing. And you couldn't kill the undead. She was beginning to see what all of Zero's victims eventually saw when they fought him. It was not a genius series of tactics and a rage that was the result of injustices, as it was with X. It was a pure bloodlust. It was Bloodlust that killed Colonel and Iris. Yes, Bloodlust, the hazy red shadow of Dr. Wily that lived on inside his final son. And now Bloodlust was coming for her, she knew. But she would be damned if she gave in without the biggest fight Bloodlust and its bastard host had ever endured.

            "Look at her!" Wily cackled. "She thinks she has a chance!" Zero snickered with him and launched towards his opponent…who countered by jumping right at him. Teytha turned into a whirling dervish of death, her rage at Sigma and Zero and the so-called Bloodlust that controlled the red Hunter all channeled into one devastating combo. Zero for all his skill could not parry it all, and the two combatants fell together, Teytha cleaving for her life and Zero countering for his.

            "Damn," Wily observed once Zero broke away via his thrusters. His son had come out of that one in great pain. Slash marks decorated his armor, but none were terribly deep and they were flesh wounds if anything. But flesh wounds were painful, and that pain was all it needed to drive the Hunter over the final boundary. "Now is your time," Wily realized gleefully. "This is where you finish the battle in one glorious masterstroke. I've seen it time and time again, my son. Now work your magic once more!"

            "NOOOOOOOO!!!!" Using mental strength that might well have caused his neural systems to explode, Zero came screaming through the tunnel of resistance like a freight train speeding out of a tunnel. "I won't let you!"

            "Zero!" Wily snapped. "You failure! Your emotions are getting the better of you AGAIN! Do you mean to call yourself a warrior?"

            "God I hope not!" Zero raged inwardly, weaker than he'd ever felt before. Wily knew it, too.

            "Do you think you can change anything, my son?" Wily shook his head. "I thought that nightmare would show you the folly of your ways. You couldn't save anyone in the past and you will save no one in the future!"

            "Leave me!" Zero felt the walls of Bloodlust closing in on him once more. "You'll kill me…!"

            "Not before your emotions do!" Wily shook his head in disgust. "It amazes me to no end! I'm your FATHER, you big fool! Don't you think I know what's best for you?"

            "You're a monster," Zero insisted as strongly as his mental power allowed, which turned out to be a pitifully weak gesture. "You're nothing but a madman!"

            "SILENCE!" Wily's visage contorted with rage and his voice was shrill with contempt. "First you betrayed me by befriending my archrival. I BUILT YOU to destroy him, and this is the thanks I get?! But I FORGAVE you for that, you ingrate! I put aside the fact that you spat in your father's eye and let his ancient enemy survive! I thought that maybe you would find your path somewhere down the line. But you didn't! You spurned Sigma, but I even forgave you THAT! Then you shaped up," he said, more calmly. "You almost fell victim to Colonel's nobility, but you weren't drawn in by that crap. You destroyed him as well you should have. He was a weak fool anyway." Zero's blood boiled at that but it was nothing compared to what followed. "And Iris…" Wily tsked and shook his head. "You almost really let me down there. Falling in love! What garbage. That would have been the final sin, Zero. But you didn't sink to such a level. You gave that meddler PRECISELY what she deserved!"

            "DAMN YOU!" Zero burst forth with new strength. Back in real life, Teytha had taken note of Zero's sudden schizophrenia and had decided to kill him while he fought with himself. She'd sprinted at him and sent his sword flying up at his throat. Zero just barely deflected the attack, but Teytha launched into a series of combos then, and Wily took the opportunity to displace Zero while his attention was divided.

            "It's a shame, really." The red haze once more became Zero's cage. He struggled but it was all to no avail. Bloodlust snickered at him, its image and voice a combination of Wily's and Sigma's, both figures from his recent nightmare. "You just don't get it, you poor boy. Even when you try your damndest…you still can't do anything but submit to your fate." Bloodlust subdued Zero when Teytha caught him in his already wounded side with the tip of her sword. "Now watch the results of your failure!"

            Teytha was unable to explain it to herself once it had happened. One minute Zero was fighting some internal battle, and the other he completely flipped out, charging her with a vigor she had seen in no Reploid in her life. Despite her own crazy skill she was unable to do anything but retreat, and she realized too late that she was being pushed back into a wall.

            Zero took that opportunity to spring. He jumped forward and kicked himself off of Teytha's chest, and his powerful legs sent Teytha flying backwards into and off the wall. Her saber flew from her hands and landed well beyond her reach, rolling into the shadows at the other corner of the room. She had landed on her hands and knees, and looked up just in time to see Zero air-dash directly towards her, his sword poised to strike down and cleave her torso in half. Her whole world died around her as she heard her lightsaber clatter to the floor. The sound reverberated through her ears as every other sound was blotted out. She heard it rolling across the floor into the shadows, abandoning her just as everyone else had, whether they'd wanted to or not. She'd survived hell and high water, and yet the most unlikely person imaginable had killed her in the end: Sigma, the man who was supposed to be the hero of the Reploid race.

            Zero watched Teytha's head rise and he met her eyes, seeing in them the death of more than just an individual Reploid. He saw the extreme and sudden depression that came with the death of dreams of something within one's grasp. He saw not the death of a body…but the death of a soul. Dr. Wily had rarely been happier.

            Bloodlust's puppet came down and struck the killing blow. It was a strange feeling that came over Zero then. It began with her eyes. Those eyes...they were so familiar. They were the eyes of one helplessly watching death arrive to snatch away the future they'd tried so hard to create, but had ultimately failed to obtain in the end. Where had he seen those eyes before? Oh yes…there was something else…in the eyes…it was…it was a reflection. A reflection of himself. And that's when it all came to him. The eyes, more than anything, were lamenting the fact that Death had arrived in the form of someone who could have been a friend.

            Then, suddenly, Zero noticed that the room was a lot brighter than it should have been. Hadn't there only been that one dim light before? But he could see everything clearly now. The room was sparsely and metallically decorated…and rather messy. There were pieces of scrap scattered all around the stricken combatant…scrap that looked like it belonged to a gargoyle mecha of some sort…NO!

            The triumphant Bloodlust never knew what hit it and it never had a chance in the world. Zero tore through the haze with a fury that even Bloodlust itself could never hope to generate in its puppet. "No!" a horrified Wily had time to shout before Zero shoved him off some edge into some abyss. Zero echoed the cry as he ripped the last of the abomination to shreds, and Bloodlust joined in the cry, only its scream was a death knell.

            "NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!" It had to be the severest, most agonized cry ever to leave the Reploid's lips. He threw himself hard to the right, and it was a while before he remembered why. He landed badly and painfully hard on his right side and rolled over a few times, aggravating his wounds and totally scattering his senses. The Hunter got shakily but sharply to his feet and turned to look behind him with a dread greater than anything he had ever known…

            …But he had nothing to worry about after all. Teytha, white-faced and stiff due to her brush with death, was further stunned by Zero's sudden abortion of the death stroke he seemed determined to administer. Her right shoulder burned from where the blade had actually made contact. Why…? Another smallest fraction of a second and he would have…

            WHO CARES? Something inside the assassin snapped. She jumped to her feet and sprinted towards the nearest weapon—her scimitar. She brandished it and raced back towards the Hunter, her eyes as wild as Zero's had been an instant ago.

            Zero watched her come. His face dripped with perspiration and his eyes were tired and actually teary from self-loathing over what he'd almost done. He threw his sword hard on the ground after deactivating it. No way would he touch that again. He met Teytha's rush with a full bodied one of his own, surprising her by lashing out and gripping her wrist. Her eyes blazed and she kicked the Hunter hard in the stomach, breaking his hold and spilling him backwards.

            Kill her…

            "No," Zero whispered unwaveringly, groaning at the pain in his midsection…but it gave him an idea. All he had to do was wait.

            Teytha rushed him again and swung her weapon hard. Zero ducked under her and grabbed her by her shoulder. Acting quickly he twisted around and flung her body into the wall she'd ricocheted off of earlier. Acting even more quickly he dashed after her and pinned her to the wall by her arms and leaned his legs against hers, preventing any last minute kicking maneuvers. She flailed like a fish out of water and assailed him with head butts and struggling with surprising strength in her limbs. Telling her he wouldn't hurt her would accomplish nothing. He had come literally within a hairbreadth of killing her, after all. Instead he removed a hand from holding her swordless arm long enough to drive it into her stomach with considerable force. The Maverick gasped and would have lurched forward if Zero hadn't been holding her against the wall. But in her mind he was her killer, and she wasn't about to surrender. She tried to move her unguarded hand towards him and shock him with electricity, but he saw it long before he had a chance and gave her vulnerable stomach another punch. This time her knees buckled and she started to slump, but still she fought.

            "Stop this," Zero said as soothingly as he could. "If I wanted to kill you I would have done it already."

            "No…!" she said from somewhere inside her returning mind. Her eyes were full of fear and mistrust, and despite Zero's efforts the terror filled her once more and she lashed out at his throat. Wincing—less because of her feeble attack than his aversion to hurting her again—he punched her one last time and that was all she could take. She slumped to the floor and he let her, kneeling down at her side to keep her pinned, and he removed her hand from his throat and pressed it back against the wall. She looked as though she were about to cough up blood, as well she should, but somehow she kept it down though her body still shuddered with pain and no small amount of fear. Her eyes stared weakly at him with that same mistrust as she tried hard to recover her breath.

            "It's all right," he told her again, quietly. "I don't want to hurt you…God, that's the last thing I want. I never wanted to." Her expression changed, but not necessarily for the better. She still thought, somewhere in her mind, that he meant to betray her. He was a Hunter, after all, and Hunters had betrayed her all her life, and he after all had nearly killed her not even a minute ago.

            "What are you doing?!" the horrified voice of Dr. Wily screamed faintly, somewhere deep within his rebellious son.

            "Go to Hell," Zero snarled. "And stay there this time. I never want to hear from you again."

            If Teytha heard him she gave no sign of it. "Why…?" she finally croaked.

            Zero sighed. God, could he count the reasons? He could never tell her the major reason…that was his own business. Plus he doubted he could put it into words. "I don't know," he finally admitted. "But I know I can't kill you and live with myself afterwards." He gently shook the arm that still feebly clutched the scimitar. "Please…put out the weapon." She just stared at him, and he couldn't help but pity her. She really, truly couldn't comprehend how she could trust a Maverick Hunter. Was this really what Terrornova had done to them all? Hatred and fear of Hunters at this level was impossible even for most high-ranking Mavericks. "Listen, I'm sorry. I know I said I didn't want to fight, and then I went and…but I never wanted you dead. I don't want any of you to die."

            "Why?" she asked again, her voice stronger but still shaky and uncertain. "Why should we live…? We killed your friends…we even fired nuclear weapons. God!" It was as if the full weight of that had suddenly struck her like a hammer. Her head rolled back and she gazed at the shadowy ceiling. "Why would you ever let us live?"

            Zero sighed slowly, and with that air went all pretenses. "Because I don't think you deserve to die. It's that simple."

            "No, it's not!" she said. "It makes no sense!" She wanted to believe him so badly, he saw. She was looking for any reason to trust him, some reason that would prove to her that he didn't want to capture her and haul her back to the hated Hunter HQ or to some human institution. And he couldn't do that, could he? No…it defied Logic, but Conscience demanded it. Because…

            "I would have done the same thing," Zero admitted painfully.

            And that reached her. "What…?"

            "I would have done exactly what you guys did," Zero elaborated, no longer hating himself for anything he said. If he was a Maverick sympathizer…then so be it. What the great god damned hell did it matter anyway?! He DID see where the Mavericks were coming from, and by GOD there was no reason to label them all monsters. There were some people in these ranks who fought not for genocide but for what they thought was right…and if Zero had been tortured by Thornton, Komanov, Kitao, Virdelko and Chartreuse in his youth then he too would have joined Sigma in half of a heartbeat. He would have relished the thought of sending nukes at the people who'd ruined his life and brutalized his friends. He remembered a story Malevex had told him during his imprisonment involving Teytha tortured by a Surger for failing a mission…a Surger, a device that overloaded electrical units and when used at a safe voltage could be used to force Reploids to suffer the Torments of the Damned with no fear—or in the victim's case hope—of death. "If I had to endure what you all endured, there can't be a question about what I would have done. You were right, Teytha. You were right when you said that I lived in the human's protective shadow. Until I met Mortar weeks ago I had never once questioned who the real enemy was. But now that I know…I'd be a fool to kill you for something I myself am capable of." Just ten minutes ago he would have been afraid to say that aloud…but not anymore. It just didn't matter. Only one thing mattered now.

            "Who is it, Zero?" she asked him, her voice betraying her hope to hear a sensible answer. "Who is…the real enemy?"

            Zero looked her in her sobered eyes and smiled weakly as he himself came to the realization. "All of us." She blinked in confusion, but he continued on. "All of us and the prejudices that drive us to do things like…things like this! We build fortresses and declare genocidal campaigns, or we torture and kill innocents and justify it with some warped personal concept of right and wrong. It's prejudice that's the enemy, Teytha. The humans are prejudiced against Reploids and that prejudice gave birth to the Maverick Uprisings and other injustices…like Terrornova. And everyone suffered for them in one way or another. The Maverick prejudice against humans, on the same token, drives them to commit brutal crimes and atrocities…such as the Sky Lagoon disaster that caused the whole Repliforce fiasco. If those prejudices weren't there…dammit, none of this would have happened! I'd be having a ball somewhere around the world and you'd be with Malevex and the others living some quiet, happy life somewhere. Yes, you may have instigated a nuclear attack…but it was the prejudice and hatred against humans and Hunters that made you do it and I can't hate you for it, because I wouldn't have done any better myself." He looked hard at her face, which was contorted with lingering pain and more than he could ever list in the eyes. "I was right, wasn't I? You never wanted this. All you want is life."

            "Is that so much to ask?" she agreed in a voice no higher than a whisper, almost staring right through him. "It has been so far…"

            "Let me change that," he pleaded. Christ, it all came down to this…he could change everything, he realized, and he COULD save someone, if she would only…

            Teytha thought it over for at least thirty silent seconds. Her eyes searched Zero's futilely for signs of duplicity, but she found nothing. Finally the survivor of Terrornova thumbed the deactivation switch on her scimitar and the blade slid back into its hilt. When Zero made no move to throttle or otherwise betray her she went one step further and rolled the blade away from her. Zero smiled in genuine relief and paid her back by releasing her arms. She wrapped them around her aching midsection and sat back against the wall, still breathing heavily and unsure of what to do next.

            Zero sat down next to her and winced as he examined his own wounds. "You pack quite a punch when you want to."

            "Not as much as you do," she observed blandly, her voice still quiet and lacking power, as she lacked the air to back up her voice. "I'll be feeling your fist in my gut for days." It was an attempt, however feeble, at conversation.

            "Yeah, sorry about that," he said, again genuinely, trying to build some kind of bridge between them. He needed her to trust him if he was going to get anything accomplished. He had a new mission now, and it all hinged on this.

            "How…"

            "Yeah?" he turned to her, his eyes encouraging her to continue.

            "How…" she was still reluctant to proceed. "How do we…defeat it? The prejudice, I mean…? All we've been able to do all these years is increase it."

            "I'm no different," Zero confessed, and that he hated himself for. "The only thing to do is to defeat the source of the prejudice itself."

            "But that'll never happen," she protested.

            "Probably not in our lifetimes," he agreed. That was saying a lot, considering Reploids could live for a very long time indeed. "But all we can do in the meantime is to stop the prejudice from spreading. …That's why I needed to defeat Sigma."

            "Sigma…" She moaned the name and her body slumped even more against the wall.

            "What's wrong?" he asked, vaguely alarmed at her sudden transformation.

            "He…" She looked worse than he'd seen her the whole time. "You were right…"

            "About what…?"

            "Him. He's…he's every bit the monster you said he was."

            "When did this come about?" Zero furrowed his brow in interest.

            "While we were fighting…I tried to…" She shuddered and a new fear took her. She began glancing in apprehension at the shadows that filled the room she herself had chosen as an arena.

            "What is it?" For perhaps the first time a Hunter stood and circled defensively around a Maverick. "What are you afraid of?"

            "Him." She whispered it, and tried to regain some control. "He trapped me in here with you."

            "What?" Zero asked, his own voice a whisper, though he hardly needed the question answered before the whole scenario clicked into place.

            "He wants me dead," she explained quietly.

            "To enrage the others," Zero finished.

            She nodded. "I came here to ambush X…but my plan was to strike and run if I didn't kill him." She felt horrible confessing it and it showed but he didn't appear to hold a single word against her. When she lost enough shame to look him in the eye again she continued. "He locked the gate and disabled my teleportation. He expected you to kill me." She was only stating the obvious because she was too afraid to speak her real worry aloud.

            "You're afraid he'll kill you now himself and pin the blame on me." It was a growl of pure, unrelenting loathing that escaped Zero's lips. His Maverick prisoner shuddered at the sound. Zero could scarcely believe Sigma would sink to such a level. Here he had Teytha, Malevex, Mortar, and Gredam, four of the most devout Mavericks that were left in the world, and he planned to throw them out like bags of trash one by one, playing on their camaraderie and twisting it into a weapon…he was exploiting the love they had for each other, Zero realized, and it all boiled down to that.

            …Just as he'd exploited Zero's love for Iris inside Final Weapon.

            Sigma…Zero thought, and this time the bloodlust was his own doing. You are going DOWN, you son of a bitch! I swear by what's left of my SOUL you will not leave this place alive!!! He turned quickly to Teytha and offered her his hand. She hesitated, and then picked up her deactivated scimitar and accepted his help. He got her to her feet and he walked with her to collect her other sword. He was afraid to leave her alone even for a moment in these shadows lest that King Prick pull a fast one and kill her when he wasn't looking. "This place isn't safe for any of you," he finally stated. He looked her in the eye and made her a promise, something he rarely did anymore. "I'm going to get you all out alive."

            A tiny laugh escaped her lips at the craziness of the statement, because her battered logic wouldn't allow her better sense to fully accept the fact that a Hunter was trying to save her life. "Gredam's…not here." He knew what she meant.

            "Come with me," he said firmly. "Even if Sigma can't kill you, there's nothing stopping him from making the others think you're dead."

            "You mean…" Her breath caught in her throat. "Jesus, no!"

            "You're not licked yet," he reminded her. "But we've got another problem, and I can barely believe it…" He shook his head and finally answered her unspoken question. "It's X."

            "You're right," she breathed. "He…Malevex said he was heading towards Cyber Peacock. If he's beaten him then he'll be heading for Mortar at the first ring's guard chamber."

            "X probably isn't as kindly disposed to you all as I am," Zero sighed at his new predicament and guided Teytha to the gate leading back the way he'd come. "It's almost funny. Usually he's the pacifist and I'M the warmonger."

            "How are you going to get to them?" she asked. "The gate's—"

            "The gate!" Zero laughed and motioned for her to get down. He walked to the gate and slammed his fist into the ground while shouting "RAKKOUHA!" A spray of charged white lasers exploded from the ground and completely blew the gate off its hinges, and most of that part of the wall with it. Zero turned to his Maverick accomplice smugly. "Bet you're glad I didn't use THAT in combat." Her speechlessness was answer enough. "Come on," he said, and they left the would-be deathtrap together. "We've gotta stop X before he does something you and I'll both regret."

            "You're going to stop your friend from killing Mavericks?" It was still too much for Teytha.

            "He's gonna go absolutely berserk when we confront him," he warned her. "He may even think I've switched sides, and God forbid that. I REALLY want to fight HIM. But keep your wits and let me do the talking. Or just talk to Mortar if he won't settle down. We've gotta keep them from destroying each other."

            "Zero…why are you doing this?"

            "Penance." He looked sadly at her. "You have a chance to have something I let slip through my fingers."

            "You mean…" She blinked in surprise and some embarrassment.

            "It's the best feeling in the world," Zero assured her. "And I had it for exactly one minute before I lost it forever in that god damn Final Weapon arena."

            She began to understand at last, and it stopped her in her tracks. "You see yourself in all of this." He nodded. "Then…I…wish you luck." Her voice dropped to something barely above a whisper. "I don't care what Sigma or the others have said about you…you're not a monster. You can't be."

            And there it was, the proof he himself had been looking for. He COULD change. He COULD reverse the course his life had taken. Until now all he had been able to do was destroy. But now he also knew that he was equally capable of preserving. All he had to do to save himself was to save others. Somewhere inside him Bloodlust and Wily died a quiet, whimpering death, and Zero was determined to keep them in Hell this time, where they belonged.

In Teytha he'd seen Iris, the girl who spent her life trying to escape her past and was eventually faced with the destruction of everything she'd worked so hard to create. Granted she was a bit more volatile than Iris had been, Zero thought while feeling the slashes in his armor, but he'd triumphed over her nonetheless, and he had done it without inflicting death or even any serious damage. It was the greatest victory of his life.

            But it couldn't end there. He'd redeemed himself before Iris's ghost, somewhere in that spectral world Wily had just been banished from, and now he had to redeem himself before Colonel, who waited to confront a furious and justice-driven Mega Man X. Mortar had long been Teytha's guardian, as Colonel had been to Iris. Then there was the military side of Colonel, embodied in Gredam, but Gredam's fate was out of his hands for now. To succeed, Zero had to stop not a Maverick, but a fellow Hunter…his best friend. He had to stop X from undoing everything he had just done, because if Mortar died Teytha would die with him. And the same held true for the third party, the wildcard of it all. Because even if Zero managed to triumph over both Colonel and Iris, he still had to triumph over the man that until now he had been unable to master…

            …He had to defeat himself. His own person, embodied in a man in the control center being manipulated by the Maverick King, devoted to his friends but unaware of the pain that devotion could and may soon bring him.

            Hang tight, Malevex, he begged of the final foe. I'll set us both free before this is over.