MEGA MAN X: DEMONS OF THE PAST
By Erico
PROLOGUE
"Two weeks…" She said wistfully. Staring through the hot vapor of her coffee mug, she looked out of the glass window across the street. Her light blue overcoat draped off of her shoulders, and underneath it was a simple ensemble of a blue shirt and khakis. Her blond hair, traced with just a hint of pink highlights dangled behind her head, not a strand looking out of place. Only her eyes betrayed the emotions within her.
She was sad, confused, and feeling incredibly out of it. Like the entire world had shifted into a different shade of reality, just enough to be noticed, while she was stuck in the traditional mode.
Of course, she had been questioning reality lately. After all, what she thought was reality had been shattered. That kind of occurrence does little to leave one optimistic and trusting.
Her fingers were slim and delicate as they grasped around the handle of the ceramic container of hot liquid. Combined with her unusual thinness, she looked as if a gust of wind would blow her off her feet.
Sadly, that was wrong. It would take a hurricane to even unsettle her traction, and the dainty long fingers hid the fact that they could crumble a medium sized skipping stone into gravel.
Of course, this would be impossible for a human. But then again, this woman was not human.
She was a reploid. Like a good number of others in the world, she was the ultimate step between man and machine yet seen. The mind's circuitry of a human, allowing for adaptation, memorization, and most stunning--emotion--combined with superpowerful robotics technology.
Currently, she was at a café in Denver. She had arrived here two weeks ago, searching for some indication to her past.
A month and two weeks ago, the Maverick Hunters Zero and Bastion, along with a joint Strike Unit, had come here to stop a band of self-induced Mavericks who had gotten into a military weapons stockpile.
At the end of that struggle, they had found her in the rubbled wreckage of the town's outskirts. She was battered, bruised, scuffed, jarred, and torn up every other way one could think of. Even more damaging than the physical blows was a realization she had found when the Maverick Hunter's Medical Officer known as Hazil reactivated her out of stasis…
Bristol's memory had been completely wiped. Memory wiping was nothing new for reploids, but never without a good reason. Every reploid who had had their memories wiped was given a record that was broadcast all over the world…Reasons for wiping ranged from disobeying the law in some extreme measure, to killing a person by accident.
Killing a human outright brought one complete death. The destruction of that reploid's Control Chip, the very thing that made them them.
A smaller punishment, memory wiping, was just as severe to a reploid. After all, without knowledge of your past, you really do lose who you are.
Bristol sipped on her dark black drink again.
Another possible cause for a loss of memory in reploids was being rebuilt. But seeing as she was in such a state of disarray, and not discovered in some lab of a kind, that eliminated that. Reconstruction also didn't completely wipe your mind…just the little details.
So that left one final cause. Intense trauma. Emotional, or physical that blew a few circuits in her head. Of course, considering the damage that was likely.
Who knows what kind of Hell she had gone through on that Maverick attack a month and a half ago? Undoubtedly, considering the shape she'd been found in, it had been a terrible struggle.
Bristol sipped down the rest of the mug and placed it down on the table. Within moments, a young human male waiter came by carrying a container of more hot brew.
"Need a refill, miss?" The sandy blond asked with a smile. Bristol smiled back weakly, shaking her head.
"No, I'm all right. How much does it come to?" The waiter put down a charge machine and punched in the TOTAL button. The number flashed on the screen.
"It comes to a dollar thirty five." Bristol nodded. Less than two bucks for something that warmed her up and fought off the chill from the night before.
She calmly pulled out the account card of J.K. Horn and slid it through the machine. When it beeped for a password, Bristol calmly punched in the proper identification, the full name of her monetary provider;
Julius Kinnian. The small tabulator beeped a happy chord and flashed a green light. Bristol put the account card back in her coat's pocket, noting with all seriousness that the pocket zipped itself shut over the precious cargo…
For there was something else in that pocket besides the account card that she had no intention of losing all the way out here.
An engraved silver locket, round as a stone and weighty at three pounds. Its chain was strong enough to resist wear and rust, yet not too fancy. But that was just the outside.
It was what laid inside the locket she kept safe.
The waiter pulled his pocket sized pay machine from the table and smiled at Bristol one last time.
"Thanks for the tip!" Bristol shrugged. So she'd paid an extra ten bucks on the bill. It kept him happy, and she was in somewhat of a good mood after that java.
Bristol picked herself up from the table in the café and walked out of the door, once more surrounded by the sounds of the streets. She flipped her head back one last time to push her hair back, then put her right hand into her pocket. Her left one she let dangle and sway as she walked along.
She was going to hit the road again, it seemed. The search here in Denver had turned up nothing. She was not made here, she didn't live here, and she didn't work here. However she had come to be at Denver when the Mavericks struck was totally beyond all logical sense of reason.
Therefore, her next place of visitation would be Washington D.C.
Perhaps the home of Emilius Cristoph, the now deceased emissary of the AmeriCanadian Alliance would turn up something.
After all, it had been in "Sigma's Sixth" that Bristol had met with the man in his final moments of life. In Washington D.C. itself, actually. She shook her head, feeling the ominous cloud settle over her.
That cloud was a sense of Bristol's muddled past. There had been only glimpses of it…nothing definitive. She couldn't even remember the details. So far, all she had been privy to was pictures of herself and Emilius Cristoph.
He most definitely had known her from before. And even though he was dead, Emilius Cristoph had been an influential man, and had left a large wake in his life and even in his death. Somewhere within all his wanderings, she would almost HAVE to find some indication of where her past and his intersected.
She had an inkling that it had to do with MI9, a name Cristoph had gasped just before giving out to his wounds. But she'd already run net-searches on every search engine within her grasp on that name, and turned up nothing. She was looking down a tunnel of fluorescence and shining a flashlight--in other words, using an obvious method to a glaring puzzler.
And the obvious methods had failed.
Now Bristol knew only diligent detective work would crack her case.
Until she did, she could never be complete. The can of worms had been partially opened--
She had to rip the lid off of it before it exploded.
Bristol knew all too well what she had left behind to do this. But she also knew this was necessary. If she didn't do this, it would eventually drive her mad.
She had to stay sane--whole--for the picture of the man inside her silver locket.
Her left hand clutched at the sealed pocket in her coat, and her eyes dimmed for a moment. The icy grip of fear and madness fell away from her as the image inside of her locket restored calm to her mind.
"Stay with me, Bastion…" Bristol whispered softly. She drew her arms in tighter to her body, like it had grown chilly. Which was impossible--
It was June.
Her eyes regained their clarity, and she lifted her head back up. It was a bit of a walk to the bus stop that would take her to the airport…
Long walks allowed her time to straighten things out.
And for Bristol, one lost reploid in a world where madness had restored itself…
The road was as crooked as it could get.