Disclaimer: All characters belong to Capcom. Blind, Dr. Asaki, Aesculapius, and other random people thrown in, unfortunately, belong to me. Blind only belongs to me until the very end, where his 'secret identity' is revealed and I must return him to his proper owners. Damn him.

I'm not making money off of this; it's for entertainment only. Dedicated to the few who have been reading since the beginning, in its wee, tiny existence and to those who... who... um.... ^_^;;; yeah.

...More people are still reading the old version than they are this one....Wait, is that supposed to tell me something? ;.; *sniff* *feeling very unloved* Spread my Word, people!

Chapter 4



This wasn't him. This wasn't how he was supposed to expressed negative emotions. He was strong, fearless. Hell, he bordered on cruel and demanding of pain and blood. He was invincible, unchallenged, and unthreatened by any alien force.

Yet, Aesclad continued to pace.

X was to his side, deep in an irreversible stasis coma. The type only a machine can recover from on its own volition; the CPU was in control, and no worldly medic could ever hope to make it forcedly awaken without consequences. And it worried the pale-blonde deep into his nerves.

They were alone, just him and the shell. Once Shaman's theory held up, he stole the smaller body away faster than a rattler could strike its prey. Shaman is the sanest, looped as a mantra in Aesclad's mind; he needed to convince himself Shaman wouldn't do anything rash. Like split their new plaything down the middle and pick him apart.

If Aesculapius didn't, the medical officer would've rushed after him, in a crazed frame to protect. ..But doing so left X alone, and all sorts of vultures wandered the Pit; he feared for X's safety down here.

His internal clock ticked away, as the minutes passed with drudging agony of a man stranded in the desert. He wanted to scream in frustration, choke and die, or even tempt himself into self-asphyxiation. All the white and sterility of the Pit, the anxiousness of Shaman's actions, X's state..... Oh, he dare not leave to face the bigger and more lethal fish who wore the reds and golds of sunset, stalking the outer doors of the inclined plane. He felt suicidal within the Pit, but he also had a reputation to hold.

Dying at Zero's hands was no way for the Devil's Touch to meet the ethereal maker.

Wake up, you stupid bastard! he mentally shrilled, wishing to damnation that he could trade in his practice for a mere ounce of telepathic ability. Wake up wake up wake UP! WAKE! Rise! Sit stand run! Do /something/! Twitch! Convulse! Masturbate, I don't care WHICH, just pleeeaaase! Open your eyes so I can go find Shaman and that new Twilight Zone reject of his!

However, with the blonde's fury escalating internally, he would never have guessed what X was experiencing on his own, locked deep inside the recesses of his head. No, there was no hint and no clue, on the surface of reality that anything but a stasis was in effect.

~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~

just a Dream, just an ordinary Dream

~Where am I?

He was floating, held suspended above, below, and between abysses. It wasn't a void however. No, all sorts of colors spiralled across the nothingness, like celestial clouds that enclosed galaxies. It was beyond enthralling, yet he couldn't bring himself to care.

//You're in a memory.\\

His eyes widened at the interruption. Frantically, he looked around, trying to twist his head in every direction at once, feeling as though he'll spot the body of the voice sooner than not at all.

~Who are you?!

Nothing replied. He struggled, against what, he wasn't sure. He couldn't tell if his was on his back, on his stomach, standing upright or upside-down, or at some odd angle, let alone tell if he was actually moving when his legs and arms flailed.

//I'm merely a creation.\\

~What's going on?!

as I wake in bed

The scene changed abruptly as it had to start with, and he suddenly found himself on his back-- ah, direction-- looking up at his dorm ceiling; he recognized the crack in one of the tiles. He didn't dwell on it, however, and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of his bed. A hand behind him kept him from getting to his feet.

//I'd rather you sit and listen.\\

He nearly jumped out of his skin at the butterfly touch and the voiceless command. His posterior nearly found itself on the floor in fright, but managed to hold it together as he took in the invader of his mind.

She was drop-dead-gorgeous, a beauty that couldn't be human, an immortal that couldn't be machine. Blonde hair that symbolized wilderness tamed, cat-shaped eyes ensnaring piercing lapis-lazuli irises, petit body wrung with curves that was left undefined by gender standards. Wet-dream material of the highest caliber.

~I'm listening.

And she sat down on the opposite edge of the bed, legs crossed and leaning in to close some distance between them.

//Everything you are about to hear is a pre-recorded circuit inserted into your memory before your activation. All that you say and do is the indication of the program's settings.\\

~A Stick-file?

//Virtually.\\

~So everything I say has been programmed on the chip to serve as a forced memory?

//Yes.\\

~Even what I just said?

//Yes.\\

~And that?

//Yes.\\

~And /that/?

//Yes.\\

She was beginning to sound annoyed.

~What about--

//Yes!\\

He fell silent. She began.

//This recording is to inform you of your current situation, following the remote impulse of the triggered incident, namely: the completion of your bio-signature realigning itself.\\

~My bio-signature?

He put a hand to his bare chest, questioning visually.

//Exactly.\\

She literally floated back onto her feet, as though she were a serene ghost... Well, she was, technically, if this was a Stick-file, but he still couldn't help but be in awe of her ease.

//Since you're here, it means you passed out into stasis. And that activated this. ....What made you black-out, can you tell me?\\

~You told me why. My bio-signature realigned.

//But -why-?\\

He opened his mouth... but closed it, trying to remember...remember... He choked as the memory hit him like a solid punch to the gut.

~That boy!

and that boy, that ordinary boy

Images of the prone blue corpse came unbidden behind her, highlighting her body in the most painfully blissful ways.

//You know what this means.\\

~....Rockman.

//Truths come in so many packages. Yes, he is Rockman, your previous identity. ...The you of another lifetime.\\

~How...? Why?!

//I wish I could tell you, but it's not in the program. Your memory banks were cleaned of any residual Rck.exe files, making you and him entirely different people....with the same heart, as it were. ........Protect him, X. A messenger of God will soon treat you to the answers, if you do not figure them out for yourself when the time is right.\\

~Why--...why?

Her eyes softened and she shook her head, hair shaking like a beautiful mane of a proud lion.

//Again, I cannot say. ...The file's about ready to end. Prepare to re-enter consciousness.\\

She turned around and began to fade through the wall.

~Hey, wait!

She looked over her shoulder.

//Yes?\\

~Who are you? What's your name?

Slowly, she smiled and turned back around, one eye closed and wagging a finger slyly.

//You'll find out in time. Until then, remember your objective.\\

She pushed the same finger to her lips and offered a kiss to the air. Sparks sprung to life from it, engulfing him--

was it all in my head?

~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~

Aesclad leaped a mile when X shot up in the corner of his eye, nearly setting the twittering doctor's off his balance and crashing into a cart to his right. By the time he got himself calmed down, X was already off his table, looking around the cubicle. "Where is he?"

"Well," grumbled the blonde sourly, trying to shake the jump out of his tortured nerves, "no 'good morning, doctor, how was your hour and a half wondering if I'd ever wake up?' The nerve you have."

X narrowed his eyes dangerously. "Don't play around, Aesclad. I need to find him."

Aesculapius scowled, matching and surpassing X's own expression, except X wasn't phased in the least. Well..shite. "Shaman's got him. Don't know where, dunno what for. What's the rush anyway?" A blonde eyebrow arched high. "You faint at the sight of him, now you're like an obsessed man."

The latter of his words went unheard; X had already began stalking out into the open of the Pit without another acknowledgment toward the medic. Aesclad fumed and hurried after him, latching onto his arm before X began his blind search of the underground basement.

"What the hell's gotten into you?!"

X didn't respond, but asked his own question instead. "Which way did Shaman go?"

A vein popped on Aesculapius' forehead. He's not listening. "How should I know?" he ground out. "I'm not his nanny."

"He took him alone?"

"Did I say, 'Shaman and company'? No, I said, 'Shaman'!" Aesclad planted himself firmly in X's path, holding him still by the shoulders and secretly praying this wasn't the day X snaps and goes primordial on the entire Pit. "I want answers from you."

"Later." And with that, X pried Aesclad's hands off his person and slipped around him, and headed in the most random direction possible to pick. In Aesclad's point-of-view, that is. From X's, it was an entirely different outlook.

A heavy pulse swelled in his chest, rising and falling like a compass needle. As a compass was pulled toward its North, X felt a lure reeling him toward a blind destination. This so-called destination dragged him to the other side of the Pit, through the core and out the other side, to a corridor tucked into a vacant corner. But it wasn't really a corner, and with ten or so zombie-eyed doctors crowding around one door in general, it wasn't truly vacant. They pawed at the steel, lost and wanting of whatever was on the other side of it. And X knew exactly what was on the other side.

Shaman.

Quite frankly, the brunette did not care an ounce about the Pit-dwellers, as he shoved them all aside with little force. They were slow to get back to their feet, clawing and flailing like overturned turtles, and X rapped his knuckles sternly against the metal, as if this was only a housecall. "Open up, Shaman! I know you're in there."

In X's mind, it was taking too long for Shaman to answer him, and was about to repeat himself before the door cracked open. An eerie yellow eye set on pearl met his own, and Shaman visibly sagged in relief. In an eyebat, the margay reploid flung the door open, grabbed X by the collar of his armor to pull him inside, and slammed the metal barrier shut once again. Just in time to prevent the recovered scientists from storming the entrance.

The contained space, unlike most of the Pit, wasn't hypethral, with a ceiling made of the same sheet-metal that covered the rest of the room; one of the few work areas that dug itself into the ground like a prairie home. X scoffed, managing to fend off an oncoming bout of claustrophobia, the exact opposite feeling one should be getting in the Pit. "Lemme guess. Your office away from your office?"

Shaman frowned and adjusted the glasses on his muzzle. "You need to calm down, X. Your anger and confusion has more consequences than you think."

"It's more anger than confusion, doc," he growled. "I /know/ what's going on with me, thank you. But really, I'd like it.../very much/ if you'd spin me a tale about what is GOING ON!"

A twinge of fright pricked X from the inside, but forced it down; he didn't take any time to wonder just -where- it came from.

Shaman's tail revealed what emotions he didn't wear on his face, and the hesitant, twitch-ish motions gave away the feline's guilt. "We probably should have informed you once it happened, but at the time, we had no idea."

"I'm all ears," came the more-than-irritated grumble.

"Ms. Osameru's surveillance team detected five abnormalities one half of a mile above the city, and from each, one metal object fell to earth. ...The proper teams were dispatched, but three of the sites were bare when they got there. The /craters/ were there, obviously, but no sign of our UFOs. The other two..." He trailed off to clear his throat and loosen the collar of his coat. "The other two were occupied, both knocked unconscious; we're not sure if they were conscious during the fall or not. They could have been out after going through...whatever the abnormality happened to be, or could have blacked out from the impact."

X's expression melted some, submitting to a new puzzlement. "Two? You recovered two? ...Wait." He paused to look away and run a hand through his hair. "I remember; this is familiar. Aesclad. He, um, he told me something like that, right before this mess. What else was recovered?"

Shaman gestured to the drawn curtain near the back, across from the long-legged table that served as a desk. "If you can quench your fire with water, my friend, I'll let you--"

He was cut off by a noise suspiciously sounding like a muffled sob, and both reploids looked hard at the corner where it came from. Nothing followed, but it what was X seemed to need. Nothing was left of his tempered fury, and instead, a somber guilt took its place. Slowly, like any faster would startle something that could actually see him, X approached the shade and gently opened it to his sight.

What he saw was a heartbreaking the making, the face he last saw before succumbing to the dark streaked with tears, half hidden behind drawn-up knees. But those large, blue eyes were on -him-, hurt and dazed and pained. In addition, there was an oddity dashed in the jumble: a sense of recognition. And when the child spoke, it could-- and would-- crush a heart of stone or ice. "...How can you be so mad?"

X closed his eyes and teethed at his lip, as even more self-loathing guilt pummeled him hard. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "This just isn't my day for good graces. Can you forgive me, Rock?"

The boy gave a mighty sniffle, and rubbed at his eyes. "Um, how did you know my name?"

"....." X cast an exasperated look at Shaman. "How long has he been up and what have you been telling him?"

The margay didn't bat an eye. "He's been awake for the last fifteen minutes, and I've been explaining to him about why he's feeling a rage that isn't his."

Oh bush bunnies. X coughed. "You didn't even tell him where and /when/ he is?"

"Never hinted at such a thing," Shaman replied. "But now, /you have/. It's all yours."

The doctor barely flinched at the withering glare X shot him with, but did react with a lifted eyebrow when he mumbled, "Don't expect a holiday bonus this year."

A pounding on the door interrupted the room, and a watered-down cry of, "X?! Shaman?? You in there??!"

"Aesculapius," Shaman stated. "Do we let him in?"

"He's buried just as deeply as we are," X said, sighing. "Do the honors?"

"Gladly." In the same method used on X, the flaxed-haired reploid was yanked inside, the door closing on his tail; any slower and crawling fingers would have been caught in the jam. "We're going to have an awful time getting around our army of the living dead out there."

"Yah think?!" Aesclad huffed, desperate to straighten out his locks. "You're lucky I was even able to find you. If it wasn't for the modern Resident Evil walk-ons, I would've spent the rest of this week and next trying to find-- well hello." Aesclad blinked at the owlish Rock. "It's our new pet, all live and kicking. You kinda took him a little fast there, Shaman."

"I had to. You saw how fast the vultures were ready to pick at him."

"I was kind of afraid it'd gotten to you too. Bio-signatures realigning? Big business and Nobel Peace Prize or some shit if it's proven."

"Hardly."

"Both of you!" X jerked his head at Rock. "Some other time, okay?"

Their verbal submission to X's demand came to a sudden stop midway, as a vicious snarl cut through the air with every intention to maim. Aesculapius started with a yipe and threw himself to the other side of the room, and Shaman flew to Rock's counter, with Rock twisting around to peer over the side no one could see behind; Shaman echoed him.

The growling didn't stop, and a titanium net-cage's bars began to rattle, with metal banging against metal. As if to say, 'I want out'. Rock reached behind it with one hand, and it was when his said, "Koinu! Shizuka ni naru, onegai." is when X couldn't take it.

With an irate exhale, he too poked his head to look where that were, saying, "You can't tell me a 'puppy' would g--oh my god that's Gospel."

The violet and white lupinoid was bound at the feet by shackles, like a wild pig hung on a stick for nomads to carry. His muzzle was also bound, adding to his annoyance, and the reason he was thrashing. This wolf was angry and trying to desperately save face from any more humiliation. But with Rock in view, he began to calm down; a familiar face among alien surroundings seemed to do wonders, and Rock cooed at him, telling Gospel it was alright. ....How /Rock/ knew it was alright was beyond them.

While X shot an incredulous look of shock, Shaman gave X a pointed one in return. "You were told there were two. What else did you expect?"

The hunter didn't answer, his mind churning at a sick and twisted speed, trying as hard as he could to swallow all the information that crashed down upon him. Gospel was here, Rock was here....




This is real.




X wanted to cry, to retch, to scream and tear out his hair. Instead, he merely watched Rock-- with Shaman's assistance-- slowly release Gospel from his metallic tethers. Then, he straightened up and graced the self-isolating Aesclad with an expression the doctor couldn't clearly read, before his eyes rolled up into his head and succumbed to a darkness not unlike from earlier.

His body didn't even hit the floor.

~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~

In all the world's history and unhistory, nothing has been more elusive than the passage of that history. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, and millenniums; all lost in the moments is takes to snap one's fingers. Man has spent all His recent life trying to preserve history. Preserve time itself, because He's only barely grasped the concept that time is irreversible, that history is all we have, for without events to reflect on, Man can never truly learn. Nor would His story carry on for generations, a tale to spin when someone will finally listen to it. And laugh at all His silly endeavors.

Time has been described as the intangible fourth dimension, one element in life that no creature can breach, let alone master. It flows in the speed of infinity, swifter than light, and as non-existent and consuming as space. It's truly the last frontier for the egotism of Man to attempt in conquering, as He's already camped Himself in the close quarters of space.

So, if that's true.....who exactly just beat Him to the punch?

~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~ :: ~

Tears. Tears were falling into his eyes. Cold beads of water, falling onto him, trickling down his face in tiny rivers. He could see space, see endlessly, see all the colors of black and--

X

The noises that weren't noises, only soundless words popping up so often, why couldn't they just stop?

XXWAKEUPX

He heard the first time! What do you--



"--want??"

Two pairs of blue eyes were hovering over him to either side, hazily surrounded in gold, with grey as a third pair framed in sunlight directly above.

"It's about time, you /idiot/!! Do you have ANY idea how worried I was?! Of course not!! You were too busy sleeping, you god damn basta-phn!"

Alia effectively shoved her hand over Zero's mouth, muffling his would-be curses. "You have no right to yell at him."

"Affell ff aye vntu oo shpit bick!"

"And it's language like that that will not only get you kicked out of the medical wing," supplied Aesclad, "but on probation. Shame on you, Zero; with your record, I assumed you knew /how/ to handle women."

X made a soft noise that wasn't quite a laugh, and not quite a snort; he heard them talking and watched them act, and spoke up in reflex, not entirely with it yet. "When's the last time he handled one anyway?"

He didn't see Zero's jaw drop, with Aesclad now blocking his peripheral vision, but he could observe Alia as she, apparently, began working a crank in her mind, putting what X said to thought. "He's got a point. When /was/ the last time you had sex?"

"That is hardly your business!"

The blue-eyed ones bantered, and Aesculapius took full advantage of their distraction as he fused over checking X's receptions. "You fainted," he whispered. "I'm not surprised; Shaman said it was a delayed reaction and I agree with him. Feeling light-headed? Nauseous?"

"No, m'fine. Where's Rock?"

"Shaman's got both him and Gospel locked up in a board room. And before you ask, we have to keep Gospel loose. We discovered caging him only makes him violent, and even if we put him in the top security cells, he'd probably hurt himself. And it seems..." He trailed off for a minute, removing something-- a towelette-- from X's forehead, and finally looked him in the eye. "Strangely, despite being on extremes, Gospel refuses to leave Rock's side and domesticates himself in Rock's company, listening to his commands and such. Very curious behavior....for a machine specifically designed for one robot and one robot only."

Pause. "Forte."

"Exactly." Aesclad leaned back and took X's hand to help him sit up. "Shaman's called Signas so we can talk about it, once you're ready. ....And neither Signas nor they," he gestured to Zero and Alia with a cock of his head, "have any idea about Rock's existence, so...easy on the bombshell if it comes to it, kay?"

Not 'if', X mused tiredly, still feeling the grogginess from his second nap of the night. 'When'. It's all a matter of 'when'. When they ask, when Rock'll need his full-blown explanation, when Rock discovers he's merely a mini-version of myself, currently. ...But those eyes.

How can a hero have those eyes?

X closed his eyes, took a breath, and opened them again. "Let's go."

Upon re-emerging into their world, the first thing Dynamo had to say was, "Whoa. Headrush."

Vlade greeted him with a vague wave, not even turning away from the giant monitor. "Fancy seeing you again," he said in an offhand manner.

"Well, y'know, just makin' sure we're all set for part two of this jihad thing." He leapt to the ground and landed with a heavy thud onto his feet, casually saddling up to Vlade's side after a moment's recovery time. "Because if this thing fucks up, I ain't getting the finger pointed at me. So, what's Aster doing?"

"Stuff."

Dynamo raised an eyebrow and cocked his chin to the occupied seat before them. "You can't say 'stuff' when he's hooked up to the network like that. Come on, what's the old bucket of bolts got him doing?"

Vlade shrugged a shoulder. "I haven't the slightest. He called up, said, 'Asterlite, give me a recon job and targeted positions.' Obviously, Aster knows what that means, 'cause he went in there without a word and has /been/ there for the last ten minutes."

"Huh. ...'Ey." Dynamo frowned, and in an afterthought, started removing his helmet as he spoke. "How'd your job go? Nothing went wrong, right?"

"Smooth as silk, not a hitch in the plan." Beneath his mask, Vlade made a half-smile; it was all for himself. "I even got to see the machine. Man, it's huge. It looked like a giant blender with wings or something, and the wings were still slowing down too. Very ingenious."

"If you're calling a human work 'ingenious', then you /must've/ been impressed." Idly, Dynamo pushed his hair back over his shoulder with a sweep. "You've never say that, anymore, not since--"

"Yeah, I know," Vlade cut in. "It's just that this might actually /work/ with her magic and their premonitions. The time shifter is a symbol that we /can/ trust their word, and now that our past has caught onto us, moreso then ever...we can believe there's a chance to live."

".....Really believe that?"

Pause.

"Sorta. I'm still trying to convince myself. It's working, though. It's just really hard to put faith in a guy who's older than yourself by several years and had made some radical predictions, right up to the end."

Dynamo snickered. "Yet you have no problem about a human living for almost a hundred years, looking like she did when...'That' happened, or any other crazy shit we can do that physics can't explain for crap?

"Nope."

"Hopeless."

"Yup."

"Coffee?"

"Sure."

The sound that rang through the chamber echoed from wall to wall in a volleyball fashion, soon falling into the quiet of wicked nothingness. Metal moved over leather, five silver fingers on the cover on a time-seen book caressing its newly found power, to turn the pages of ancient foretelling beneath the bindings of wood and parchment.

It would be his victory, said one Voice from hell.

It would be his righteous doom, said Another from heaven.

He heard neither, but Knew that his army would be perfect in a short days' time. Because the pages never told him wrong. And he could not deny the oracles messages, even when he did not wonder how it was done.

Sigma was he....and he would not fail. Because the Book would say so in due time.

Huh, this day's never gonna end, is it? Last four chapters, started in the evening, now it's past midnight. Nope, never gonna end. Never...ever... It's like this story. Exactly...like this story. And wow, what in the world did I throw you?! *mock gasp* Horrors!

It took my dear 14th review to make me move along faster. Danke RC2. :D You served your community well. *salute*

Koinu = puppy
Shizuka ni naru, onegai = Calm down, please (I hope; it's hard trying to figure out what you're given in a book)