MEGA MAN X: DEMONS OF THE PAST
By Erico
CHAPTER EIGHT: FOR ALLAH AND COUNTRY
They were warriors without names…
Deprived of even that level of recognition, they were merely assigned serial numbers. If that did anything, it caused them to work more as a team, to completely ignore their individuality.
But it did have a degrading effect on their intelligence as well, AN-78 thought bitterly. The commanders of the Jihad strike units were somewhat narrow-minded about that.
AN-78 and his fellow comrades in arms were reploids…yet they were being handled as little more than robots.
Move here, attack this, report back to base, drop into stasis…endless commands, devoid of all emotion aside from perhaps a slight twinge here and there of disgust. They were merely the arms, left out of the main loop.
But it was the only life that they knew. What else they knew was that their superiors were rather radical followers of Islam, in opposition to the Jewish people in Israel. The battle had begun hundreds of years ago, and yet it still continued.
AN-78 pondered at times just why the humans were so fickle about the petty differences of religion when the world needed them to do so much more useful things.
But he never wondered aloud, none of them did. To do that would be to invite punishment…Questioning authority, questioning the reason for their purpose in life brought a swift end to life.
AN-78's dull eyes stared around the hangar of their specific base, looking at all the equipment they had. Low level hovercraft, new generation Landchasers and their subsidiaries…there were even transports capable of carrying 'Mechs, should the mission require it.
He was a member of the Islamic Jihad, a violent and vicious group at war with the Israelis. He did not choose to be so, he did not share the views that kept the conflict going.
It was the life he had been given.
"AN-78!!" Came the sharp outburst. The reploid's eyes narrowed down at the report, and he calmly stood up from where he sat, lowering his hands down to his side and making his eyes stare straight ahead.
That did little good…he could still make out the disgusting features of his commander, Lieutenant Oman Herrzan through his peripheral vision as the overweight and ripe human trotted…more like waddled, towards him.
"AN-78, what are you doing here??" The reploid's throat went dry, an answer failing to come to his rescue. They were strict here, and his superiors just might well ignore any acts of violence Herrzan gave him…
"He's with me sir." Came a calm voice. AN-78 relaxed a little as a fellow comrade of his came up to Herrzan and himself.
"Oh, is he now AN-23?" Herrzan growled menacingly. AN-23, a reploid with stone brown armor and bluish highlights came closer, easily dwarfing the portly human in size. But his calm gray eyes didn't waver in the slightest as he stared directly at Herrzan.
"Yes sir. AN-78 is down here to help me take out the Landchasers for a test drive. They've recently undergone an engine upgrade, and we need to ascertain what adjustments still need to be made."
The human gave the both of them an icy stare as if he didn't believe them, but he finally sighed in disgust and walked off.
AN-78 rubbed his own desert orange and fire red armor with a gloved hand, sighing in relief.
"Thanks for the save, Tertrus." AN-23, or as he was known only to the other reploids in this messed up assembly, Tertrus gave a brief shake of his head.
"Just watch yourself, AN-78." He said quietly, but sharply. "If any humans listen in on us talking like that, we're gonna be in serious trouble." He jerked a thumb towards two Landchaser cycles sitting in a stationary holding position. "Now come on. If we don't take these things for a spin like I said we were, Herrzan's gonna have both our hides."
The two reploids quickly hopped onto the Landchasers, then shot out of the low lying hangar and into the blazing sun of the midday…
Free as the wind in the desert they served as.
They were known as the Desert Wind, officially. That was the only name their superiors in this conflict had given them.
Tertrus finally keyed up his bike comm and sent a transmission to AN-78.
"Bastion, you gotta keep on your toes more. Inaction will cost you, especially here. They expect blind obedience and limited intelligence. You gotta give them that."
"I know, I know…" AN-78, or Bastion muttered, keying in his own cycle comm and readjusting his helmet. "But this job really bites."
"I know it does." Tertrus grumbled. "But what else can we do?"
"We could escape." Bastion offered hopefully.
The airwaves were silent for a very long moment after that.
Bastion was called Bastion for a very specific reason among the warriors of the Desert Wind.
In battle, he dropped into a state of mind that made him deadly to the extreme. While inexperienced, he nonetheless had reflexes and intuition that made him as deadly as a whole team of warriors…a bastion of warriors, as it were.
That was why he had his name. Tertrus had a weakness for the longstanding puzzle game Tetris...the name was self-explanatory.
Bastion wondered if that last statement was overstepping the bounds.
"Not today, hotshot." Tertrus finally called back. "Not today."
Tertrus revved up his Landchaser and shot ahead of Bastion as he popped it into a wheelie.
Bastion's eyes were aloof again…
But they were sharp now, out here when he could actually display signs that he was better than the drones the Islamic commanders wished they could be.
"But some day, Tertrus…" Bastion vowed quietly.
The wind whipped by his face, kicking grains of sand into his cheeks, yet not making the warrior wince. He'd long since become inured to the ways of the desert.
"Some day…"
Bastion had to blink his eyes for a few moments before that vision went away.
And then he finally remembered where he was.
Not somewhere in the Middle East, hidden in an underground bunker with the sandstorms howling overhead.
Not AN-78. Not a member of the Desert Wind. Not even the Desert Fire, the name that he found out later he had been given by the Israeli forces he was always ordered to hunt down.
He was in his room at the Maverick Hunter Headquarters in New Tokyo, lying back on his bunk.
He was Bastion, Commander of the 21st Maverick Hunter Unit. He didn't fight now because two opposing religious groups of humans had long since given up on peace talks and had regressed to all out war. He fought because of a group of reploids whose ambitions were to destroy the world as it was known, to eliminate all of humanity and to create a world under the iron hand of Sigma
And as Bristol, the now missing love of his life had told him…
He was now the Desert Angel.
"Lights." He muttered. Instantly, his room lights kicked on, though slowly so that he wouldn't be blinking insanely at the brightness. He got up from his cot and walked over to his window, pushing aside the white curtains and staring out into the night.
New Tokyo was always brightly lit at night, and the MHHQ was only about three quarters of a mile distant from it on one of the main highways.
Countless Hunters had most likely found themselves in this situation, staring out of their room's window and towards the spectacle of wonder.
Or they could stare at the stars instead. Bastion had the glorious ability with his Flight Armor to go high into the air, beyond the glare of Tokyo's lights so that he could see the stars at their full strength, hindered only by the atmosphere that made them twinkle.
His Flight Armor…
Bastion turned away from the window and plodded over to his desk, collapsing into the chair and looking at a framed picture of Bristol he kept laying beside the desk lamp.
The picture had been taken during the whirlwind of activity that had begun with Bristol's discovery in the New Denver warzone and ended with her departure just after 'Sigma's Sixth.'
And during that time, Bastion had fallen in love with her…and she'd fallen in love with him.
His Flight Armor, a design she had called the "Angel's Advantage" had become almost her parting gift. Primarily her idea, she had turned to the aid of Hazil, and more surprisingly, J.K. Horn, the enigmatic founder of the now disbanded URFAWP to actually make the design work.
He'd been crushed at first during those opening weeks…unable to even perform in battle as well as he should have. It took a visit from Doan, and a long talk to straighten him out.
The hurt was still there…to be separated from the one you loved more than anyone else was always painful. But Wycost was following her…Bristol would be safe, and she would return.
When she was ready…when she finally had her head screwed on straight about who she was and where she was going.
So Bastion moved on. Bristol never left his mind, but it didn't weigh as heavily now as it did. He would live, and she would live.
And when time and fate were ready, they would be together. Bastion grunted with that reassurance and picked himself up, walking out of his room and into the circular corridors that were the MHHQ's passageways.
Julius Kinnian Horn…that was his true name. A weird sort, he'd gone beyond just one name. He actually gave himself a full name…first, middle, last, like humans did.
He'd worked for the opposing side of that conflict Bastion had been born into before he joined with the Hunters.
Bastion still had some bad blood towards Horn, as most likely the scientist did towards him. But they'd left on familiar terms.
The real enemy now was Sigma…not each other. Their own differences, as grievous as they were, would have to wait.
And perhaps, Bastion had thought countless times before, Horn hoped that time could cause their wounds to heal so that they wouldn't be foes.
Stranger things had happened in his lifetime, Bastion realized. And stranger things still would.
"Who wants ice cream?" Bastion said aloud. He let his mouth quirk up into a smile as he made his way towards the cafeteria.
"I do, of course."
"X, I'll be frank with you."
"You're never anything but, doc." X grumbled to Hazil. The gray haired medical reploid frowned for a moment before continuing, walking over next to X and handing him a datapadd.
"I assume you're aware of why your armor sets are degrading?"
"My dad didn't want me to continually have the capacity to be an agent of destruction." Mega Man X restated. "They all have a set amount of time to them according to how powerful they are…And all of them are beginning to degrade."
"Brilliant. Daddy wanted his boy to not be off to war 24/7." Hazil grumbled. "If I ever got myself to a time machine, I'd go back and tell him to reverse that decision. Because obviously, you can't help the fact you're still stuck in this mess. And frankly, those armor sets give you an edge that's all too crucial."
X's eyes dimmed a bit. He wasn't looking forward to the concept of going into something armorless. Zero could get away with it, he was half of a melee warrior already, but X…
X was a much different matter. He didn't have a constant edge. The moments where he shone were the moments he absolutely needed to, the life and death moments that accompanied dangerous times.
"Well, what can we do about it?" X asked his doctor calmly. "Is there any way to stop the degradation, or slow it down at least?" Hazil clucked his tongue with a little dismay.
"Stop it, no. Slow it, that really depends on how good of a genius you have on this project. As it is, X, I can state the following; your first three armor sets are so close to gone that slowing their rate down is a useless effort." Hazil tapped on his own datapadd, sighing in dismay. "The fourth set is the only one in any shape to be partially preserved."
"So what are you going to do?" X queried, realizing he was beginning to ask a lot of questions very quickly.
Hazil blinked his eyes a few more times, then shrugged.
"You remember that Horn character?" X's eyes went dark.
"I don't think any of us can forget that name." Truth be told, the name J.K. Horn was almost scorned nowadays, for creating an organization of reploids whose goal was a good one, but was far too inviting for Maverick intervention.
Of course, those same critics in the world were the ones who had believed much like the rest of them that Sigma had finally bought it after the Fifth Uprising. And Sigma didn't give a damn about the GDC or the Hunters or URFAWP or anyone else in the world…The only people he concerned himself with was X and Zero.
And he just kept coming. And coming.
And that made X's armor situation all the more dire.
"I'm gonna give Horn a call…see if he has any ideas." Hazil said quickly.
"Well, call me if anything new pops up." X said quietly. He walked out of the Medical Bay and walked through the halls towards the one place that would still be at maximum functionality this time of night.
As he pushed through into the cafeteria, he found he wasn't alone.
"Morning, Bastion." X waved towards his associate.
The Desert Angel stopped his spoonful of ice cream on its trip to his mouth, then let his eyes glaze over as he checked his internal chronometer.
Blinking back to reality, he grinned at X.
"Yeah…I guess it is." X walked over to Bastion's table and plopped down, sitting motionless for a few moments before reaching for the electronic menu on the table and punching in his own selection. "While I'm here…" X mumbled.
The command was sent to the cafeteria's food replicators along with the rank of the Hunter who had ordered it, and thus was instantly obeyed.
A few seconds later, a robotic 'floater tray' as it was known carried X's order out.
Bastion gave it a quizzical stare for a while.
"Hot fudge sundae with dinosaur shaped sprinkles??" X offered only the smallest of smiles.
"Why mess with a classic?" He dug into his mess of dessert, and for a while, that was the end of their conversation.
Finally, the both of them pushed their now empty bowls away from them to the middle of the table and sighed in contentment.
"There's times I'm glad I'm a reploid." Bastion said blithely, rubbing his belly. "This is definitely one of them. I don't gain weight, and it still tastes good."
"Yeah, I suppose." X replied, staring up at the ceiling. Bastion decided to change the subject.
"So what's the news with Hazil and your armor sets?"
"Not good…it's out of his league. He's calling in J.K. Horn."
"HORN!?" Bastion exclaimed. X lowered his gaze towards Bastion and nodded slowly.
"Yes, J.K. Horn, the same Horn who worked for the opposite side of that stupid conflict you had yourself embedded in before you joined the Hunters." X rolled his eyes. "Honestly, you gotta learn to put that behind you. He's a rather brilliant engineer, and if anyone can offer even a shred of hope towards the betterment of my situation, I'm not one to refuse it. Neither of you came out of that conflict smelling like a rose, Bastion." X shook his head. "None of us are innocent here."
He jerked a thumb towards himself and shrugged sadly.
"Not even me." Bastion waved a gloved hand.
"Aah, innocent is such a useless term anymore. You're either working for positive or negative goals. That's the only distinction we have." He shrugged and picked himself up.
"I'm gonna go get some late night training in one of the holographic sims. See you later, boss."
Bastion walked off, as screwy an oddball as any in the MHHQ. X blinked his eyes a few times before harrumphing.
"Well, I don't have anywhere to go."
And he felt a slight pang of sadness run through him as he realized it applied not only to location, but his lot in life.
Bristol was beginning to become far more than aggravated.
To use a blunt term, she was pissed.
Calming herself down so she wouldn't slice a building or something else to ribbons with her beam saber and become labeled a Maverick, she walked over to a nearby bench and sat down, readjusting her long blue overcoat.
For mere reasons of anonymity, she was dressed in normal street clothes. The most unordinary feature left she couldn't remove was the size of her boots, capable of dual air dash. Luckily, a holographic emitter transformed them into more humanlike dimensions, so as long as she was careful what she kicked, no one was the wiser.
The sky above was already full of sunlight, not a cloud anywhere and the humidity beginning to become humanly uncomfortable.
Even for Bristol, it was beginning to get a little aggravating, so the British speaking reploid calmly pulled her overcoat off and folded it over her arm.
She leaned back against the high durability plastic of the bench and sighed in exhaustion, leaning up and staring into the bright blue sky above.
New York had changed a lot over the years, much like its population, much like the world.
Change was the only constant that the inhabitants of Earth were assured of. And somewhere, Bristol's life had changed.
She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out the locket with the picture of Bastion in it. She popped it open, smiling at the inside of it.
The feeling of missing him hadn't gone away any…but the pain had dulled itself.
"I'll come back, Bastion." Bristol said quietly. "I'll come back for you."
Just as soon as she had a grip on who the devil she was.
But her quest as it were, had dried up.
Cristoph's E-Mails had brought her here to New York, where the servers they'd been sent through…not once or twice, but ALWAYS…were located. And the servers weren't public either. They were hidden, confidential, and totally undiscoverable.
It all didn't add up. Bristol's efforts were grinding to a halt…a very agonizing halt when she considered that the answers she was looking for were dancing on the edge of her mind, but refused to reveal themselves.
Suddenly, a blur of a figure shot past, a hand blurring outwards and clutching onto her locket, pulling it from her surprised and unprepared loose grasp.
Bristol's attention snapped back to reality, her eyes now burning into the confident and cocky street thief, blazing down the street on miniature rocket powered skates.
"COME BACK HERE!!" Bristol howled angrily, snapping up from the bench and running after the fool at full tilt.
The confident human turned about for a brief moment, then twisted his head back to stare ahead of him as he shot onwards.
Bristol's blood was boiling now as that cocky and foolish human teenage boy, probably just some small time thief, charged onwards. Everyone they passed by stared…but no one offered a hand.
So this is what the world is like outside of the Hunter's narrow existence…The world has degraded so much that no one gives a damn about anyone else's problems aside from their own.
Bristol realized through her bitter rage, that that locket would only be returned to her if she made the effort.
And fortunately enough, she felt like making it. For something this important, she'd be damned if she didn't.
In one swift and fluid motion, she unfurled her blue overcoat and jammed her arms through the sleeves, putting it back on once more and saving her the trouble of carrying extra baggage in one arm. She was used to making daring maneuvers wearing this coat…
More people were staring now at the thief and the pursuer as they tore their way through the streets, the thief with his rocket skates gradually pulling away.
"Not today, you urchin." Bristol growled lowly. "You aren't pulling a grab today."
The holographic field around her dash boots quivered and distorted as they began to snort powerful flames of synthesized fuel, a combination of hydrogen and oxygen that was easily replaced by dash thruster technology.
Now more people were gawking at the thief's pursuer…
Bristol arced up into the air in an overwhelmingly powerful dash jump, her blue overcoat ruffling behind her almost like a cape, providing drag, but overall, nothing too severe. Her eyes burned into the thief, and she slowly watched the distance between them begin to close.
Her upwards momentum began to drop off, and Bristol triggered her second burst of thrusters, the coat now ruffling behind her as she shot overhead of the thief like a female superman.
She dropped back to the concrete sidewalk below, turning about and standing tall and tense as the thief approached.
His eyes boggled in disbelief for a long moment before he realized that his victim had not only somehow managed to catch up with him, but he was now far too late to stop a collision.
But it never came…The thief never did slam into Bristol, because she stepped aside at the last moment with humanly impossible speed, sticking her right arm straight out at a height of the base of his neck.
The human crashed flat on his back, stunned and clotheslined by a smooth maneuver he could have never predicted of a victim.
Before the dark spots rolling in his eyes had blurred away, he found himself being hoisted up by the scruff of his shirt by the seemingly weak and harmless female with the blond hair and its pink highlights.
"Give it back." She hissed, her rage seething beneath the beautiful, but now also taut and deadly exterior.
Dazedly, the thief did the only thing he was capable of that involved her locket…
He weakly tried to lift his arm up, to drop it into the outstretched hand.
His muscles gave out a few inches beyond, yet still the female's hand snapped down and clutched onto it, pulling it back and dropping the adolescent male.
Bristol calmly slipped the locket back into her pants pocket, glowering at the youth for a few more moments before shaking her head.
"Let this be a lesson to you, you little sod." She said acidly, her accent unmistakable now. "Leave the thievery behind you and find a real job."
The male blinked a few times up at the blond haired woman, then collapsed onto the ground from exhaustion.
Bristol turned about and walked on, ignoring the stunned stares that followed her.
Well, perhaps us reploids are more useful to the human race than they'd like to think, Bristol thought drily, her ungloved hands stuffed loosely into her blue overcoat's exterior pockets.
If anything, we can stop their children from being arrested on charges of petty larceny.
Kazok Gravor grunted in dismay as Dash Blade whipped an outstretched talon of plasma energy towards him, looking for the winning strike.
"Not that easy!!" He countered, instantly sending a mental command through his body.
The tiny transmitter embedded in his belt absorbed the order and passed it on through narrow beam transmission to the black hexagonal crystals stretched about his body, not connected by tether, wire, or armor…but by a mere field of gravitational energy.
Instantly, Kazok swerved away, suspended slightly above ground by the gravitational field. The slash of plasma energy passed on, dissipating into the air harmlessly.
Some distance away, Shell Butane and Cumulus Bull watched from the vantage point of the spectator's world.
The somewhat bulky, yet heavily protected turtle type reploid harrumphed, his eyes looking on from atop the long snout and beak that emerged from his shell, appropriately a deep green with jagged slashes of red flames adorning the edges as mere art.
"Well, this is definitely interesting to see, eh?" He tilted his gaze away from the two combatants to stare at his associate.
Whereas Shell Butane stood of short, stocky stature, Cumulus Bull stood tall, not nearly as much as Sigma, but close enough to put the turtle Maverick ill at ease.
Blowing a cloud of exhaust from his own animalian snout, the bull Maverick offered a sound that did little to offer his view. His powerful horns however, seemed to quiver with the slight activation of his power, the ability to create ionic disturbances in the low atmosphere and call forth blistering thunderclouds he could control.
A long, whiplike tail quivered behind him, dangling down from his modestly assembled leggings, almost down to the TitaniTefloAlloy edged hooves that served as his feet. His hands however, were as human and as gloved as any other's.
"Kazok has been assigned to be our leader…however, Dash Blade shows perhaps the greatest promise among us for going solo." Cumulus turned back to the fight. "Her style is pure frenzy…unpredictable, up close and personal…she doesn't let up, and that's far unnerving. From what Sigma has told us, past Maverick Generals always left some flaw in their attack pattern that X and Zero could exploit." Cumulus smiled grimly. "Too bad for them we don't follow that ideal."
"We train to be perfect." Shell Butane echoed. "And that's precisely what we'll be when we're done."
The two left it at that, content to stare towards the two almost evenly matched opponents that fought in the dismal environment of Greenland's open expanses.
Kazok opened fire, hurling blast after blast of menacing plasma towards Dash.
The female feraloid, with burning brown eyes, a smallish snout and nose, perfectly shaped cat ears, and a slim body designed for aerobatics, gymnastics, all encased in an armor setup of bright neon pink and deep blood red colorations was proving to be adept, to say the least.
Disengaging her wrist sabers, she began to backflip away from Kazok's widespread and unfocused attack pattern, exploding dips of sublimated steam tracing after her as the plasma missed her and hit only the ice floes. Even in June, Greenland remained a chilly region in places.
Kazok's gaze was firm and unyielding as he followed after her, continuing to fire burst after burst of plasma after her fast fading form. He grimaced inwardly…The feraloid was quick, and speed seemed to be her best ally.
From what he'd been able to gauge so far, Dash Blade's true power didn't lie in long range combat, but rather, close quarters like the Maverick Hunter Zero. At that range, her speed became menacing, and her plasma beam claws menacing. If those failed, Sigma had also given her a backup set of eight inch long slicers embedded in her arms. Constructed of TitaniTefloAlloy, they were considered a last resort measure…but Sigma had given them to her nonetheless.
This stood in direct opposition to Kazok Gravor, whose gravitational pods allowed him to remain airborne as he fired down on a foe from above. He could go higher…much higher, in fact, and much faster if he wanted, but he was taking it slow for now. Kazok, with his semi-menacing X-Buster had been built for the long range scenario…the guns at twenty paces at high noon, if the old west term fit.
His ebony polished armor absorbed the sunlight instead of reflecting it, only the barest hint of glare offered from the sheeny curves and ridges of high strength metal. Adorned on his chest was a circle breastplate that extended from what would be above his navel to the base of his neck, with a pair of triangular shaped arrows arranged bottom to bottom…
Decoration, mainly…but they also gave an extra layer of protection to his chest compartment and the Six Heart Tanks and one Sub-Tank within.
"Blast it woman, hold still and take your beating!!" Kazok growled menacingly.
And surprisingly…the female Maverick General known as Dash Blade did just that.
Her last backflip was a huge one, taking her to a 90 degree angle askew from Kazok, offering him not a full body shot, but merely a side angle. Her left hand snapped out, and a pair of claws, shining angrily, flashed into view.
Kazok harrumphed and released the level two shot from his Buster he had ready. The 'green sizzler' as it was known, flew on towards Dash Blade at impressive speed.
Far too late did Kazok realize it was not her plasma fueled wrist sabers Dash had activated, but her left arm's three TitaniTefloAlloy beauties, snapping free from the underside of the wrist gauntlet as opposed to the topside of her somewhat more orthodox slashing weaponry.
The shot was easily deflected as she snapped her arm up, providing a thinly edged wall that when twisted sideways only the fewest of degrees, presented a target for the plasma that refused it any gainway.
Kazok reacted too late…Dash was living up to her name, hurtling towards him at the max velocity that her dash thrusters could offer, her right arm's wrist saber claws already out and hissing with their fury.
Crying out, Kazok redirected one of the gravitational pods to break free from his field of suspension. His position quivered for the barest of moments while the remaining pods adapted to fill the void the one had left.
Under its own power, but Kazok's direction, the obsidian shaded gem snapped towards Dash Blade in an effort to quell her assault.
It did little more than jar her slightly askew and bring her arms away from an immediate menacing pose.
Dash Blade and Kazok Gravor collided in midair, both of their weapons systems deactivating upon impact from a sudden loss of focus. Without his gravitational field to suspend him in midair, Kazok dropped towards the glacier below, Dash Blade atop of him.
Their hands intertwined, arms flexing against one another as the feraloid and human type reploid found themselves rolling atop the ice field not in a contest of plasma gun against plasma blade, or TitaniTefloAlloy claw to gravitational suspension field…
But the most age old tradition of fighting, hand to hand, no weapons…
Neither was able to gain any leeway on the other, both so evenly matched in pure physical strength that as they rolled about, their legs interlocked so neither could begin kicking, their arms tied together at the hands to prevent a flurry of punches and faceslaps, it looked almost comical.
The two were hopelessly connected now, neither able to offer the slightest edge of an attack or a deflection.
"It seems…we've dropped into a stalemate…" Kazok grunted, his brow already beginning to show beads of sweat as his body activated the thermal reduction measures to rid his skull of the heat it was producing.
Dash Blade prowwed at him angrily for several more seconds before finally sighing in resignation.
"So it would seem, Kazok." Both stopped their struggling, but when they did, it was Dash Blade who lay atop Kazok, and not the other way around.
Their bodies relaxed from the incredible state of tension they had been forced into…
And yet as Kazok looked up into her slightly bedraggled hairline, long and brown as her eyes, he couldn't help but let his mind drop into a sudden blank.
Aah, wake up Kazok…You're a Maverick, Mavericks don't think about…
"Hey, Kazok?" Dash muttered with slight alarm, climbing off the top of him and backing away a few feet. "Kazok, you all right? It looks like you dropped into mind freeze…" Kazok blinked his eyes a few time, then reluctantly pulled himself to his feet.
"Aah…No, not a mind freeze, Dash." He finally stammered weakly.
And yet, as she looked back at his somewhat sheepish attempt at a straight face…
There was an added coloration to her cheeks that hadn't been there, even during the heat of battle…
"Oh, right." She finally replied in a muted tone, averting her brown eyes from his striking gray ones. Folding her arms, she turned about slightly. "You know, that Buster of yours isn't exactly a true menace weapon yet…you should ask Sigma about upgrading it."
"Yeah, I suppose…" Kazok mumbled, ashamed of the low performance of his supposed main weapon. Dash paused for a moment, then turned about and offered the barest of smiles at him.
"However…that was a real neat trick you pulled at the last second…throwing one of your gravitational pods at me to knock the wind out of my attack."
A compliment, Kazok thought with a sudden surge of pride and elation.
The solid obsidian gems that had fallen deactivated to the ground about them powered back up, silently floating towards Kazok before plugging back into their respective sockets around his waist and the modified energy recharge unit.
Dash Blade sighed for a moment and looked up at the sky.
"It's still a while before nightfall, Mr. Nightshade." She offered amusedly. "Care to have another go at it?"
"Yeah, I suppose." Kazok replied, a small grin of his own forming on the edges of his mouth. "But what's this about Mister Nightshade…??"
His question was silenced as he found a maddened Maverick feraloid yowling at the top of her lungs, hurling herself at him as she once more pursued the hunt.
Oh well, back to the punching bag again…
Kazok dashed out of the way and snapped his crystalline pods out once more, this time not surrounding himself, but letting them float free a slight distance away from him as Dash set herself on a stop, then charged towards his new position.
"Let's try something else new then…" He mused, his grin growing wider every second.
A fair distance away, Shell Butane clicked his tongue and waggled his eyebrows.
"Well, well…They start out in a game of Maverick cat and mouse, and end up taking a roll in the hay…" Cumulus Bull scoffed and gave a light smack to the back of his associate's head.
"Oh, just shut up. Mavericks aren't capable of that emotion. Twisted humor, anger, rage, menacing glee…but not that emotion." Cumulus couldn't even bring himself to say it, the mere reference to it enough to make him spit in disdain.
Absorbing the meager blow with mild disinterest, Shell Butane turned his calculating eyes towards the two strongest combatants of their six and watched once more.
Could Mavericks find the emotion Cumulus Bull couldn't mention, Shell Butane wondered with mild interest?
Could a Maverick find love??
"AN-23 and AN-78, you are outside of your restricted areas!!! Halt and stand down for seizure!!"
The human's megaphone enhanced voice echoed across the night of the Middle Eastern landscape, going out only so far before it was lost in the howling wind that kicked up wave after wave of blinding sand.
A pair of Landchasers sped on through the dune peaked wasteland, their engines spouting angry flames as they pushed on ahead. Behind it approached a malevolently designed hovertransport, generic in all fashions except for the large, rotational heavy plasma turret that laid on a base atop its hood. In the last hour before nightfall, the three craft sped across the dunes, oblivious to almost everything except each other.
The heavy plasma turret atop the hovertransport fired, its superheated blast of gas energy hurtling down towards its intended target at just barely under the speed of sound.
The Landchaser's riders however, were not so inexperienced to be caught off guard by a poorly aimed shot. Both swerved in opposite directions from the burst, and the shot fizzled away harmlessly, turning a three foot wide section of desert into crude glass.
Tertrus turned and keyed in the infared frequency, his Landchaser's communications array calmly turning the tiny laser transmitter towards Bastion's own cycle and sending his message.
"This is definitely not good news for us." Bastion swerved away from another shot and offered a biting retort.
"No kidding." Bastion and Tertrus had planned this escape for months now…
Only two of them, against the entire Jihad forces that were stationed at their base. Perhaps the only bit of good news they had was that made it out twenty klicks before their absence had been noticed. They'd taken two Landchasers out for supposed routine engine testing…but it was when they didn't turn back around that they'd first been issued severe warnings to turn back…and finally, they had dispatched the hovertransport to tag them.
Tertrus and Bastion were all too aware of the positives and negatives that accompanied the Jihad's hovertransports…one of its benefits was a massively powerful overdrive function to its engines that allowed it to boost to insane speeds across the desert terrain for twenty five clicks. Past that, they overheated and had to revert back to normal mode for a very large amount of time.
Which resulted in the hovertransport catching up to them…yet being unable to do more than merely dog behind once it had caught up to them…that and fire round after dangerous round of fire that could utterly destroy them in one blow.
If they let it.
"Blast it, you two!! Give yourselves up and your deaths will be painless!!"
"Gee, what a terrific incentive." Bastion growled. He flipped his comm channel on to full bore, so that the hovertransport and his home base could hear him.
"Now listen here!!" Bastion screamed into the comm, the wind whipping by him as he accelerated his Landchaser a bit more to increase the distance between himself and the hovertransport. "For years now, we have worked and slaved under the yoke of servitude you've given to us! YEARS!! But let me make one thing clear, you members of the Jihad…" Bastion turned to Tertrus, who merely stared back at him, waiting for the rest of his answer. Bastion's gaze hardened, and turned back to facing forward.
"THIS IS YOUR FIGHT." Bastion exclaimed tersely. "If you want to continue this wasted conflict because of your STUPID religious differences with the residents of Israel, go right ahead. But from this day forward, you will not use my hand to do your needless destruction. I am my own person, and as much as you try to deprive us of our individuality, you FAIL. It only grows stronger when it is oppressed."
"Goddamn you, AN-78…"
"I AM NOT AN-78!!!" Bastion screamed, slamming his comm off.
The infared signal from Tertrus came in clear enough.
"Well, that's telling them off. I couldn't have said it better myself."
The wind began to pick up as night continued to fall…the sand that had merely brushed the soles of their dash boots now picked up enough to blow past their eyes. Squinting, Tertrus shook his head. "Bastion, there's a storm picking up around here!!"
"I know, Tertrus." The orange and red colored reploid said back to his ally. His eyes glimmered strangely. "The desert is cruel and harsh…and it would claim these fools as soon as us."
Suddenly, the heavy plasma turret atop the hovertransport spun about in a strange fashion.
As Bastion's gaze swiveled around to watch, he couldn't help but let his eyes darken…
"CHRIST, WATCH OUT TERTRUS!! THE CANNON'S SWITCHED TO RAPID FIRE!!"
"Oh, God no…" Tertrus began. His sentence was cut short as the cannon atop the pursuing hovertransport exploded in fire once more, only now the shots came in faster volley.
Tertrus swerved and dodged as best he could…but the improved mode of fire allowed the gunner inside to accurately trace the escapees.
The back end of Tertrus's Landchaser was slagged, and then exploded into flames, causing both the cycle and Tertrus to wobble strangely out of synch and finally crash at maximum speed into a nearby dune.
"TERTRUS!!!" Bastion screamed at the top of his lungs.
And the desert swirled about them…
Bastion found that an unnatural curtain of sand suddenly separated himself and the hovertransport, one that saved him from the same horrifying blaze of fire as Tertrus had suffered.
"Bastion…" The comm circuit wasn't infared anymore, but now small range radio transmissions…not large enough for anyone to hear but Bastion and the hovertransport. "Damnit, Bastion, they got me…"
"Tertrus, just stay put! I'll find you!!" Now the wind was whipping the sand around in a roiling wave…visibility was barely ten feet.
"No time, damn you…" The more experienced reploid wheezed, hacking up what had to be some of his blood. "Find the hovertransport and take it out…It's the only way you can escape."
"Tertrus…"
But no answer came. Through the wailing dim, Bastion's ears picked out an unnatural sound…more than likely an explosion, but he couldn't be sure.
All of Bastion's fury now ignited like it had never done so before…
"DAMN YOU ALL!!!" He screamed over his comm circuit.
I am the Desert Fire…
And they will burn for what they have done here today!!!
His eyes blurred through a haze, Bastion felt like he was running on little more than instinct…
But his instincts proved right enough.
The sandstorm cleared up just enough for him to see that the direction he had turned his Landchaser towards led straight to the hovertransport. Grasping tightly onto the cycle's left throttle bar, he readied his right arm's Buster.
"Go to Hell, you MONSTERS!!" He screamed. Both the nose cannon of his Landchaser and his Buster erupted in horrific rapid fire plasma bursts, until his body was sending him warning messages about his Buster's overheating problem and the bike did the same.
But the hovertransport was caught completely off guard. The shots burrowed into the rear armor of the carrier, melting away at the protective barrier and finally striking at the engines.
The entire hovertransport exploded only a second later as the microfusion powered engines destabilized and took the carrier with it.
The shockwave, however, was enough to jar both Bastion and his Landchaser free of the ground.
Dazed and weakened by his ordeal, Bastion felt his eyes begin to slip shut as his body sent him warning messages about the damage caused by the hovertransport's concussion wave from the explosion and his flashburns…
And then he was falling, falling down and down into darkness, with the howling wind of night and a hazy, scattered sky above the last things his mind could recall before it merely blinked off.
"Hey!" An insistent voice…
"Hey, are you alive there??" This time, a gentle nudge into his side.
The sudden flash of pain that traced up into Bastion's mind and snapped him fully awake with a painful gasp was positive proof enough to the question.
"Whu…??" He began groggily, before realizing his body was still sending him warning messages.
A steady pair of hands pushed him back down before he could stand up.
"Easy there, stranger." The accent was one Bastion couldn't recall ever hearing before…"You've been through Hell."
"Was I alone…" Bastion croaked, his eyes slowly grinding back into focus. He found himself staring into the eyes of a short, stocky man with inquisitive eyes…and an even more inquisitive reploid standing beside him.
The reploid, all silver and gray nodded slowly.
"You were the only one alive out here." Bastion shut his eyes, trying to shut out the sudden hollow achiness that filled his heart.
Tertrus…I'm sorry…
It had been Bastion's idea to escape their damnable existence…he'd dragged Tertrus into it, and now Tertrus was dead, never to revel in the freedom they had struggled so long for.
"Still, it looks like there was quite a battle." The human man, middle aged with a large, oddly shaped hat and leather vest said.
"Jihad forces…trailing me and my friend." Bastion muttered through his stupor.
"JIHAD??!" The man sputtered indignantly. "God damnit, those sonsabitches are still around??!" Bastion offered no response.
The reploid slowly helped him to his feet, looking at a medical scanner in his other hand before looking into Bastion's face.
"You've got some flashburns, some mild concussion damage…but overall, just a lot of sand wedged in places it shouldn't be." The reploid gave a slight grin. "Aah, you look like a survivor. We'll take you back to our home and get you fixed up right."
Bastion blinked his eyes a few times, then nodded slowly. The silvery reploid coughed for a moment.
"Say, I got a question for you. What's your name, stranger?" The Desert Fire, as he had eventually learned in the service that the Israelis called him, offered one response.
It wasn't his serial number…now and forever, he was separated from that life. He'd severed all ties…the Jihad knew him as AN-78…
"My name is Bastion." The orange and red armored reploid muttered at last, pulling off his helmet and dumping the copious amounts of sand that had somehow worked their way underneath his brow.
The human and the reploid stared in wonder for a moment at their newfound associate, and his mottled brown hair. Freed of its imprisonment, it tried to take on a shaggy, yet precise appearance. Bastion calmly snapped his helmet back on and prevented it from doing that.
The human laughed, his belly quivering a bit.
"Yep, I suppose so. My name's Hank Johnson, but all my friends, like Jazzhands here call me Tex." He motioned to the silvery reploid with a jerked thumb.
Bastion frowned for a moment.
"Jazzhands?" He queried softly. The silvery reploid grinned, wiggling his gloved fingers in the now close to midday sun…
Bastion had been out cold all night, and would have remained buried and in stasis without his newfound comrades.
" Actually, my real name is Timothy, but they call me Jazzhands for a reason, Bastion." The reploid guffawed. "Have you ever seen a piano?"
"A what??" Bastion muttered, unwilling to offer even a guess as to what it might be. Jazzhands groaned and drew a hand over his face.
"God, you must have been out in this sun too long. Tex, let's roll this boy home, all right?" The human took off his hat and brushed at his forehead's line of sweat for a moment, then nodded.
"Well, come on Bastion. We gotta get you out of this sun before I roast into a corn fed beefsteak."
Bastion finally blinked his eyes and brought himself out of his memory loop.
"Freeze program…" He uttered hoarsely.
The desert of December 19th, 2118 froze all around him, leaving Bastion standing in the midst of frozen destruction-destruction that back in that actual fight had been little more than a prelude to the Maverick's capture of Cornus Island and the subsequent Second Uprising.
Silently, he cursed himself. He should have known that using this particular holographic run would have triggered memories he would very well like to be without…
Which made him laugh inwardly a bit. Here was Bristol, so distraught about her lost past, she was teetering on the edge of insanity until she rediscovered what exactly only appeared as flashes she could not recognize…
And then there was him. Bastion, the Desert Fire before he'd met Bristol…now the Desert Angel.
Unlike his love, Bastion would very much like to forget his own past. How many innocents had he wiped out because of the orders of his superiors…
And it hadn't been just reploid forces he had been thrown up against…
He had fought and killed HUMANS as well. Many times Bastion had wrestled with the ethical questions of his actions…there'd been times in those early days after his escape during his time with 'Tex' and 'Jazzhands' he had even pondered if he should end his own shameful and bloodstained life.
But in the end, he had found his desire for life was stronger than his guilt…
And he tempered his guilt by joining the Maverick Hunters. As a member of the Jihad, he had been a slave to a violent war that had gone on for hundreds of years, not between two races, one of who would see the other extinct…but just two religious branches of the same species. It was petty, it was stupid…and it was all too human.
As a Hunter, he still brought death. But now, he brought death to those who deserved it. Not innocents.
It was the best Bastion knew what to do…it was what he had grown up doing. And if there were consequences that would come because of his actions, he would face them in due course. And that was the best any of his kind could do.
"End program." He finally muttered. The night sky of December 19th faded into oblivion, and once more Bastion was surrounded by the familiar walls of the holographic training room.
Silently, he deactivated his blue and purple beam sabers, shutting them off before slipping them back into their respective recharging ports atop his armor attachment on his back.
He walked out of the room, at last weary from the day's exertions.
He'd faced his nightmares, he'd relived his bloodied past.
And like so many humans seemed willing to do…
Bastion was ready to move on.
The night sky was the same for all who viewed it. Human and reploid alike.
In the grand picture, the distinctions became far smaller than some would like it.
Bastion harrumphed inwardly as he worked his way to the main hallways and headed towards his room. "This philosophy shit gets too deep for me sometimes."
Too deep for many, it would seem.