Mega Man X: Demons Of The Past

by Erico

The fight never ends, and two weeks past the end of TSOM, a new Chronicle is begun...

17. Broken Blade

MEGA MAN X: DEMONS OF THE PAST

By Erico

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: BROKEN BLADE

            "Sir?" Came the query. A man hidden in the darkness of night exhaled in frustration for a moment, noting how his breath solidified instantaneously in the biting cold, before turning about for the messenger.

            "Yes?" Came the sharp and cold reply, more frigid than the temperature itself.

            "We've just received word from HQ. There's a new development in the Renegade situation…"

            Despite his state of exhaustion, the messenger's announcement caught the commander off guard.

            "Let me see." The commander ordered. Without another word, the messenger extended his right arm out from underneath the winter protective coat and offered a datapadd. The commander took it without hesitation, holding onto one of its edges tightly in a tight gloved hand.

            The gray eyes of the commander danced over the decoded transmission with dread and scrutinizing interest.

            "So…Two more sheep from the extinct flock show their ugly heads, eh? Be sure to send a reply back to HQ. I need information that only the first one knows about." He scrolled down a paragraph and drew in his breath. "What…two operatives dead?!" The commander swore.

            "It's not good, is it Commander Kowalski?" The messenger muttered. His leader shook his head only once.

            "Tell them we need more time. We need more time…Those two must NOT find out about The Cleansing, make that very clear."

            "The Cleansing was devised after they escaped." The messenger observed. "How could they?"

            "Don't you underestimate them. Don't you EVER underestimate them." Kowalski growled. "Reploids are the single most dangerous blight to ever befall this planet, and they move with a speed that rivals plasma itself. If they're alive, they'll retrace their steps. And they'll find out about this project. And they'll try to stop it. Especially these two."

            "Sir?" The messenger queried.

            Kowalski mulled over his thoughts for a moment before shaking his head.

            "Willow and Bristol were in deep, soldier. They were research and development…and both of them are all too familiar with the concepts behind The Cleansing. If they find out…they can stop it."

            "That can't be allowed."

            "So radio back HQ and tell them as much. I've got to get back to work here. Kill Willow, she's the true threat. And tell them before they off Bristol, I NEED THAT DATA." Kowalski growled. The messenger saluted, then ran off in the opposite direction.

            Kowalski sighed, tucking the datapadd in one of his coat pockets. Once again he turned to the noise of quiet handheld machinery in human hands, delicately carrying out the intricate processes necessary.

            "This has to work. This has to." He muttered to himself. As he looked out into the night, his enhanced optics detecting the faint heat signals of his comrades, the fears continued to eat at him.

            "The Cleansing must not fail."

            Everything rides on this. Mankind's destiny, its glorious age…

            More than sixty years after its founding, MI9's master project was now in full swing.

            And if it succeeded…

            There would not be a single reploid left on Earth.

            Not a single one.

            The MHHQ, or as those who didn't serve in its forces called it, The Maverick Hunter Headquarters, was based in New Tokyo. Not in the middle of it, but off to one side beyond the bustle, near a major highway so that they could transfer troops quickly if need be. Of course, it was almost simpler just to warp there anymore…

            Thus, the MHHQ had an almost surreal look on the world. Standing atop the building's roof, which was a common enough thing for almost every Hunter to do at one time or another as they dealt with their inner thoughts, one could stare out and see New Tokyo in full bloom.

            Some fifteen miles distant lay what was Old Tokyo. The Tokyo that had existed before 2087, and the massive eruption of Mount Fuji that had claimed it on October 15th of that year, to be forgotten about as the war struggled in the War of 2090 and relived old conflicts long thought dead.

            Chill Penguin had set up shop on Mount Fuji in the summer of 2118, and had succeeded in causing enough of an artificial landslide of snow that it reached New Tokyo's doorstep. The only thing it affected, thanks to X's quick actions in that conflict was a factory located on the outskirts…a smelting and foundry base that Flame Mammoth had called home.

            Now, thirteen years later, Mount Fuji still stood on the horizon, an imposing presence that continually reminded all who watched it of the ominous threat. Only by careful controls and automated stress valves was Fuji kept in a moderate state of dormancy. That base on Fuji had been threatened, both in Chill Penguin's operation in the First Uprising and then in the Fifth, under Strobe Stallion's direction.

            But none of that mattered now. Now, the threat was different. The situation was different.

            And so was the MHHQ.

            Doctor Cain had been interred in a hallowed grave, with grass that shone like water and a headstone befitting his life's work.

Doctor James T. Cain

January 14th, 2051-June 17th, 2131

Father of the reploid race, discoverer of Mega Man X

Founder of the Maverick Hunters and Cain Labs

May he rest in peace, in a place with no war and no sorrow

            Everyone had been there when he was buried. Even now, the Maverick Hunters had assigned a new task…A continual guard over the grave. This was hallowed ground. For all reploids, the MHHQ had become the center of who they were. For the man who gave them life was buried here.

            Two figures stood by the grave. One by duty--A Maverick Hunter who stood beside the grave at attention, a magrifle held beside him, eyes staring straight ahead--and one by choice, another reploid, in dark leather pants and a black leather jacket, his blond hair kept neatly tied together by a blue hairband as it swung behind him from the wind.

            "Well, Doc, it's been a week now." Zero muttered silently, his hands tucked into his coat pockets. The ensemble was a personal choice…for once, he didn't feel like going outside in his armor and warpaint.

            "The GDC didn't waste any time in trying to mess things up. I don't know if you've heard of a reploid by the name of Signas, have you? He's the GDC's golden boy reploid…highest CPU ever or some bullshyte like that. He's your replacement, apparently." Zero clipped bitterly. "Hell, you think those idjits would realize that nobody can replace you."

            In the early morning light, the wind blew by with a chill breeze. Later on in the day, that would change. But for now, the weather matched Zero's mood. Glum and cold.

            "And you know that Sigma's still around." Zero mentioned. "He'll be around for a long time to come…" At that, Zero pulled his jacket tighter around himself.

            "The deal is, I don't know if we'll be around." Zero said quietly. "X…The day after Signas showed up, he goes rushing off to Karashita Tower to accept the challenge of the new Maverick Generals. He lost. He LOST, Cain. Your golden boy, my friend, LOST a match. And it was because ever set of his armor from Paladin to Golden Hyper got completely annihilated." Zero ran a hand over his eyes. "That moron Light built X fine and dandy. But when he built X's armor capsules, he put in a failsafe. Eventually, they degrade into uselessness…I guess it was Light's way of ensuring that X wasn't a war machine his entire life."

            Cain could say nothing back, so Zero continued, pulling his hands free of his pockets and shaking his head.

            "I wish I could have been there to tell Light to forget that part of the program. Because X needs those armors now more than ever. He still has his Fourth Set, the Force Armor…but the program's frozen in stasis lock by Hazil, in a last ditch attempt to save whatever he can of it." The Crimson Hunter looked up into the early morning sky, only now beginning to grow lighter from a sun yet to show itself over the horizon. "X is alive, but he's down. And now it's just me. Just me and the rest of the Hunters to take on Sigma. And with Signas in charge…"

            Zero's voice trailed off.

            "Let's face it, Doc. This place has gone to Hell in a handbasket since you croaked. And we can only do so much."

            In life, Cain had always been there to help support X and Zero. No matter how bad the situation had got, Cain and X and Zero, and even Hazil at times, could go off, get royally drunk and forget about it for a while. And then turn around and just deal with it.

            "Here's to alcohol!" Zero could almost hear Cain call out, from a chugalug session during the World Trial of 2124. "The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems!"

            "We miss you, Doc." Zero said gently. "You were the closest thing to a real dad that X and I had. Especially me…seeing as I really don't want to be affiliated with the crazy bastard that created me in the first place."

            Wily.

            Zero sloughed off the nightmare images that flashed into his mind. Of that madman laughing, ordering him to kill X. He'd fought that nightmare. He'd won. Through a method Wycost would call "Internal deletion" later on, but basically, by sheer will, he had conquered The Maverick Virus with X's help. Despite the fact he was the original carrier and the fact that this whole mess existed.

            Zero knew how he'd arrived…a reploid Sigma and those two recon Hunters had brought back from the Arizona battlegrounds. He'd awoke with no memory of his past. Only his name, a flippant egotistical attitude, and the innate ability to fight. And yet, Sigma had never told anyone of Zero's true origins…as the Maverick that Sigma had fought against.

            Zero knew now he had given Sigma the scars over his eyes the maniac now wore proudly, through every incarnation. Sigma fought because it was all he had left now…the fight, and his hatred for X and Zero.

            And as to why Zero himself fought…The Crimson Hunter shrugged and shook his head. Perhaps it was because that was what he'd been built for. Maybe it was all he could do in life. Destroy things.

            He could never forgive himself for the deaths of Colonel, of Iris…

            But you still fought them. One was a good friend, and you loved the other, and yet you still fought them…

            "Frackit." Zero muttered, turning sideways and shutting his eyes, trying without success to stop the tear that formed in his left optic. "Frackitall."

            He took one last look at Cain's grave, then turned about and walked back towards the main building.

            Wherever Zero's answers lay, they weren't here. He'd have to find them for himself this time.

            Everything was changing now.

            Everything.

            Sigma had awoken to unbelievable news when his six Maverick Generals returned. News of their most recent attack…and the unbelievable victory, however slight it was.

            Despite the fact that Shell Butane and Cumulus Bull and Dash Blade had all been badly damaged, they'd made it back. Kazok Gravor had faced Mega Man X himself…and somehow won. Kazok had mentioned how his armors had seemed to flicker and then vanish…And how all of X's boasting about the Retribution's attack power had led to nothing. Through luck, through skill…but mostly through dumb luck, Sigma corrected himself, they had claimed victory, and put one of the two deadliest Maverick Hunters out of commission. And this defeat, so soon after the loss of James Cain…

            Sigma sat back in the massive chair designed for his new battle body, head set on his fist in thought.

            Amazing how fate seems to conspire against us. He thought drily. The great James Cain, father of the reploid race, dead by a simple aneurysm…a stupid medical defect in his weak and pathetic organic body that effectively blew his brains out.

            Sigma had been created by Cain himself. He wasn't just some reploid run off of an assembly line and left to fend for himself in the world…he'd been Cain's ultimate reploid creation. Built with the best knowledge and equipment of the day, he was supposed to be flawless. And surrounded by those pacifistic twerps Cancer and X…Well, even when the Maverick Hunters were created, fate should never have brought about the First Uprising, and his going Maverick.

            The years were hard on Sigma. Hard on his memory, on the shreds of personality that had survived X's Electric Spark barrage on the night of June 19th, 2118. Shreds of personality that had been transferred first to Vile's final backup measure, Forever Sigma-- and then to wherever the wind took him, when Sigma became nothing more than a free-floating program, his personality and spirit now forever intertwined with a program that would one day be known as The Maverick Virus.

            He should have died a long time ago, and yet he never did. He never could. In the end, all he had left was his anger, his thirst for cold-blooded vengeance. Time had no meaning for Sigma anymore. It was nothing but prolonged blurs…and intense battles with the man in blue and the man in red.

            In the end…who's to say who the villain is…

            It had all begun somewhere. Something had caused Sigma to go Maverick.

            More precisely, someone.

            Despite all of Cain's hard work, all his innovations, the one element he could never have predicted, never have prepared for was the final brainchild of a madman whose age had long ago ended.

            Wily. The great human menace of the age of robots. From 2070 to 2085, he had brought blights upon the world that were almost unparalleled. Nobody would ever know what madness or genius ran through that skull of his. Because he'd simply vanished…like Light and the original Mega Man and all the others…they had all just vanished.

            The War of 2090 had erupted because of the world's tensions. Put on high alert from Wily's unceasing escapades, they turned to old conflicts, old vendettas. And nearly recreated the Wars of 2040. But something stopped them then. The sudden realization of the madness they would inflict again.

            Humans…stupid, pathetic, imperfect, violent creatures. They consider us to be the menace?? They think we're the real enemy? Fools. Even if they win, even if every last reploid on Earth is wiped out…they'll still have themselves.

            And yet, it hadn't ended there. The world stopped itself short of destruction…created the GDC, and the AmeriCanadian Alliance was formed. Humanity settled down for an era of peace, an era of docility.

            As if that would last.

            Sigma turned his dark brooding eyes to the ceiling, and the steadily glowing low-powered neon light there.

            I didn't have even this much light the first time that Zero and I met…

            Light had built X. And somehow…as if Wily could not stand to let there be a Mega Man in an age without his influence, the wild haired freak had built his own next-generation robot.

            Zero.

            It wasn't until the Second Uprising that Sigma realized Zero's true origins…not as a mere Maverick who had almost destroyed him, only to be defeated in a massive turnabout…but as the Prime Maverick. The original carrier of the Maverick Virus.

The X-Hunters, Serges, Agile and Violen had recaptured Zero's body back from the MHHQ after losing him in battles with a furious Mega Man X. In an attempt to overwhelm Zero, turn him over to their side, make him a full borne Maverick under his control, Sigma had sent in his core program to infiltrate Zero's systems, reprogram him and his memories.

            But I couldn't.

            Zero's systems resisted Sigma's control. They would have deleted the Maverick Leader, had he not pulled back in time. And still, he saw into those glitched memories of Zero…archived records that could never be seen in the waking world, could never be accessed by conventional means.

            It was then that Sigma had seen who Zero's creator was. All else just fell into place after that.

            All these years…it should have been X fighting Zero. Not X and Zero working together to fight me.

            Fate, destiny…no clear path ever existed. Time and circumstance bent them, twisted them, altered them into something completely different.

            But that didn't matter now. All that mattered was the next battle.

            So Sigma picked himself up from his desk, and walked out to the underground bases' main lounge.

            "He just surprised me, that's all." Dash muttered ashamedly. From his corner of the lounge, Kazok shook his head.

            "Yeah? And what if Zero hadn't felt like using you as a bargaining chip, huh Dash? What if he'd decided to go all the way, and reclaim the title of bloodiest Maverick Hunter?" The leader of the six Mavericks sighed and walked over, letting one of his gravicrystals rotate on top of his head full of short black hair. "But you learned, right?"

            "Yeah. He has a pretty nasty set of plasmic explosives tucked away." Dash growled. She clenched a fist up and popped out her right hand's TitaniTefloAlloy claws. "And the next time he tries using them, I'm not giving him a second chance."

            "That's good to know." Came a new voice. Kazok and Dash turned about as Sigma walked in, his face a mask of determination and unsmiling grit. "Where are the others?"

            "Above ground." Kazok chirped. "Training some more." Sigma blinked once.

            "And Iris?"

            "Last time I checked, she was taking a nap." Dash offered helpfully. The massive Maverick leader mused over the tidbit before nodding his massive bald head.

            "Head above and join with the others. It's time for our next mission."

            "Our?" Kazok asked, mystified. Sigma nodded.

            "Our mission. This time, I'm coming along for the ride. And so is Iris." Then Sigma turned about and walked out of the lounge, leaving Kazok and Dash alone once more.

            "So…he's finally going to bring himself into this battle." Kazok said.

            "Do you have any idea what he's up to this time?" Dash asked.

            The leader of the six shrugged and pulled back his gravicrystal, placing it on its recharge slot and shutting it down.

            "Whatever it is, it's something big. After nullifying an entire Hunter Unit, and bringing down X…" Kazok's voice trailed off, and he shook his head. "It's going to be dangerous." He turned his gaze into Dash's eyes. "Dash, this is twice now I've had to bring you back with battle damage. Promise me that this time…this time you'll try to make it back in one piece, all right?"

            "I try every time…"

            "PLEASE, Dash." Kazok pleaded. "I don't want you dying on me."

            The comment rang through the air like a stone hitting silent water. Finally, Dash blinked, forcing her suddenly unresponsive voicebox to reply.

            "All right." She croaked. A frown and a cough later, her voice was stronger. "All right, I'll be more careful. But don't you go offering objectives you don't intend to keep yourself, Grave Boy." Kazok offered a reassuring smile.

            "Dash, you and I don't think the same. You go in with all guns blazing…my style is to sit back and let my opponents reveal their openings."

            "The silent observer, waiting for the right moment?" Dash asked, lifting an eyebrow. Kazok nodded. "Well, just don't be too inactive, Kazok…otherwise, some day you'll find the moment will have already passed you by, because you spent too much time waiting for it to come."

            Dash flicked the tip of Kazok's nose and walked out of the lounge. And as Kazok followed, he shrugged her words off. No, a moment like that would never come.

            He was too careful to be stunned by such an obvious mistake.

            The Second Rainbow's headquarters had offered nothing. It had become little more than yet another one of the world's tourist attractions, Bristol had found much to her dismay. She'd warped off to Juneau to collect her thoughts.

            So much of it sat devastatingly close to her waking mind, yet remained just out of reach. Sighing, she rubbed at her sore temples and recalled everything she'd learned.

            Where to begin, eh Bristol?

Maybe she was crazy. Maybe she'd never find her forgotten past. And yet from nothing, she'd come so far…

            It had begun when she went with X's Hunters Unit to Washington D.C. in the massive conflict now called "Sigma's Sixth". She'd wandered off with a few others into the city itself, separating themselves from the main force.

            The main force had been annihilated, caught in a trap set by the ruthless Sigma himself. Bristol had done her part, and made it into the streets, and ended up stopping more than one trigger happy Maverick loner.

            And then she'd met him. Or as her scrambled memories might infer, she met him again.

            Emilius Cristoph. The GDC representative of the AmeriCanadian Alliance, and one of the most influential men in the organization. In his time, he'd served on the Cornus Island emergency council, instilled the base charges against the entire reploid race that set the stage for the World Trial of 2124…

            And less publicly known, yet somehow true by her memories, was that Cristoph was a card carrying member of the hidden organization of MI9.

            MI9 itself was a branch-off of the Second Rainbow. A splinter faction that dropped into hiding, and didn't show up in any records anywhere in the world. For all purposes, it didn't exist. And yet Bristol knew it existed. Her memories, however fragmented they were…had to be true.

            But why did MI9 exist…and why were Bristol's memories of it so beyond her reach?? Somehow, she knew they were there. Internal systems checks revealed a substantial block of her memory held data…data that was unrecoverable, unreadable.

            "The entire reason I went on this trip was to stop myself from going insane." Bristol mumbled, shaking her head. "And still it stays beyond me."

            Her hand snaked down into her coat pocket and retrieved the locket within. She snapped it open and looked inside…to Bastion's face.

            "Cheer up, luv." She said sadly. "When all this is done with, you can go back to him." She snapped it shut, then held it in her hand for a moment longer. She could draw strength from that in her never-ceasing quest…the belief that in enough time, it would all fall together.

            That's what gave her enough incentive to push on. She checked her beam saber underneath the sleeve of her long coat one last time, then walked on through the streets of Juneau.

            Just another face in a world full of faces.

            "This is a pretty sweet setup you guys have here." Wycost said, blinking behind his blatantly opaque sunglasses. Allegro looked over from his workstation and microscope to look at Wycost, standing just outside the sliding glass doors on the side of J.K. Horn's island house.

            The ex-URFAWP recruit gave a dry smile and shrugged, turning back to the chip under the scope and his nano-soldering unit.

            "It works for the most part. We can get a lot more done, without the bureaucratic nonsense…"

            "I'm familiar with that little detail." Wycost deadpanned. He folded his arms and sighed. "Most everywhere I've been surrounded by's been swallowed by chains of command and triplicate. It doesn't do much to help things run smoothly."

            "So naturally, we avoid that as much as we can here." Horn replied, walking into the room with yet another one of his tropical drinks in hand. He lifted his glasses up into his tousled gray hair and shrugged. "Well, it's been a day now, and we've made very little progress indeed with your friend."

            "She isn't a friend." Wycost chirped, eyes narrowing behind his permanent eyescreen. "She's a Maverick. She killed humans in cold blood, and with utter delight."

            "So you've told us…" Horn muttered weakly, shaking his head. "Is she one of Sigma's?"

            "I'm afraid not." Wycost replied. "Bastion told me Sigma's group's been giving them enough problems as it is."

            The mention of his old nemesis's name brought a flash of anger and fear to Horn's normal eye before it returned to normal and he shrugged.

            "I'd heard old man Cain kicked the bucket. What's been happening?"

            "The GDC sent in a lapdog to replace Cain…some fool by the name of Signas."

            "Signas…" Allegro whispered, looking back up from his work. He turned to them, a calm about him. "Sounds an awful lot like Sigma, doesn't it?"

            "Doubtful…" Horn said, scratching at his head. "And get back to work, Allegro. Doan's Archangel wings aren't going to make themselves."

            "What?" Wycost asked suddenly, lifting his glasses up and blinking at the two. "Since when did Doan enlist you guys into making a set of Flight wings?"

            "Since he got jealous of Bastion's, most likely." Horn said with a small smile. He turned to Allegro. "Well?"

            "Sure, give me the delicate part of the project that requires the microscope…" Allegro groused, but dropped back to his work. Horn motioned for Wycost to follow, and then walked back from the direction he came.

            "I've heard about this Signas of yours." Horn said absentmindedly. As he stepped through the doorframe from his houses' main interior to the expansive section dedicated to his laboratories, he reached over to a coat rack and plucked up a white lab coat, slipping it on in one swift movement. "Real sharp shooter in the GDC. A reploid created for the sole purpose of being, for all purposes, a brain." He looked to Wycost. "Funny how many different types are built…larger, bulkier reploid models with massive strength are usually given a somewhat less than on par intelligence. Likewise, reploids made for thinking aren't given Herculean strength. Too much of a danger for them to wager on, I suppose."

            "So what about us stuck in the middle?" Wycost countered. Horn mulled over the thought for a moment and shrugged.

            "You mean, those of us who have a little of each? I suppose there lies a true danger…But in any case. Yes, I know who Signas is. During URFAWP's short-lived lifespan, I had to meet him on many occasions. He always came off as cold…intelligent, a true intellectual, but utterly cold and devoid of spirit." He shook his head. "The GDC knew what they were doing when they made Signas. They made a reploid with immense intelligence…but no soul to use it. He's for all purposes, nothing more than a puppet. Even a robot."

            "Well, that's flawed logic." Wycost snorted. "If they wanted a robot, why didn't they make a robot?"

            "Because some of Signas's decisions conflicted with human life." J.K. Horn answered drily, shuffling around in his lab coat's left pocket for something. "And if he was a robot, then the mere prospect of bringing harm to humans would cause him to fritz out…perhaps even die. We reploids aren't as restrained by the Laws of Robotics like robots are…thus, the decision to have their lapdog be a reploid is easy to understand."

            He found the device he was looking for and lifted it to the ceiling, pushing one of several buttons that glowed in the dim light.

            Wycost had to drop his glasses back down to avoid the glaring halogen lights that flashed into existence. Horn merely blinked a few times until his eyes adjusted…even his robotic one.

            "And then we come to the ultimate topic of the day…" Horn said calmly, stuffing the lab remote back in his coat pocket and then placing his hands in his pockets after that. "What to do about your friend Willow."

            The two of them looked down on her sleeping form, her bright red hair strung out underneath her head as she slept the day away, oblivious to watching eyes.

            "Well, I'll tell you this much, dear friend of Bastion's." Horn commented, reaching next to Willow for the datapadd recording her vitals. He punched a few buttons, yet kept talking. "Willow is for all purposes, a true enigma. Her stomach wound I was able to fix. It was messy of course…haven't seen a deep beam saber gash yet that wasn't…but that's far easier to deal with than reanimating a reploid. But what puzzles me is the aspects of her that weren't damaged."

            Wycost said nothing, allowing the elderly looking Horn to continue talking. Of course, he smirked a bit when he realized that despite how old he LOOKED, he was no older than himself. With proper care and maintenance, reploids could live for a very very long time. What physical form they chose or were given didn't change that. Although it could affect personality.

            "She came in here with her battle armor. So naturally, I figured once her recovery process was going along smoothly, I'd examine some of her weaponry." He pointed to the strange pair of jutting cylindrical vents on each of her arm gauntlets. "These I've been able to identify…They're used to launch medium range plasmic explosives. Only go about three quarters of a klick, but what these things offer is punch. Think a plasma supershot, with the same attack power dispersed over an area of about two to two hundred feet, if need be."

            "And they also do one hell of a job at blinding somebody." Wycost rasped. Horn looked at him oddly, and the ex-Hunter shrugged. "Willow and I have crossed paths before yesterday. Some of our meetings weren't exactly happy ones."

            "I see." Horn mumbled, rubbing at his chin. He set the datapadd down and handed Wycost the silvery cylinder lying on a nearby table. "Then perhaps you can tell me about this little beam saber. I can't quite get the thing to work, honestly."

            "It's no beam saber." Wycost corrected him, narrowing his eyes at the thing and running his eyes over it. "No, it's more along the lines of a beam whip."

            "Beam whip?!" Horn exclaimed, lifting an eyebrow. "I don't recall hearing about something like that being developed."

            "No, you wouldn't." Wycost said, bringing the object closer to his face. His eyes shrunk to mere pinpoints as he kept talking. "In my line of work, I've seen pretty much everything. Beam weaponry so far has seen sabers, lances, daggers, tri-daggers, claws, staffs, and even fired waves of unstoppable shredding energy…but beam whips were considered impractical by every report I was able to lay eyes on."

            "And somehow, this Willow person of your acquaintance managed to build one?"

            "Yes." Wycost replied, opening his eyes wide for a moment. "Have you got a very bright desk lamp somewhere about here?"

            Horn's response was another button push on his lab remote, which caused a massive light and focusing mirror to descend from the ceiling next to Wycost. The Hunter looked over to the engineer, who shrugged sheepishly.

            "Something I use for delicate micro-work."

            "Whatever. Look here." Wycost sighed, putting Willow's weapon underneath the lamp. Horn peered over and followed Wycost's gaze…and somehow, through all the shimmering brilliance of the chrome finish, managed to find a set of narrow lines, ingrained into the handle…

            "Hey, that looks like…"

            "The activation switch." Wycost affirmed. He pulled the object away and set his fingers on it, shrugging when he got no result. "This thing has electrical pathways set into the handle where her fingers would rest…only her fingers. I think if you examined her digits, you'd find a similar set of circuitry."

            "Goddamn…" Horn exhaled, running a hand through his hair. "That's freaking brilliant. I would never have thought of that."

            "I think I know how she got the whip to work too." Wycost answered, putting the object next to Willow's head and shutting off Horn's worklamp. He lifted his glasses up and looked at Horn with a blank stare. "The concept of a whip using plasma, to create a beam whip, would require that the EM field, the thing that keeps the plasma contained within the so-called 'blade' of the weapon, be flexible. However, rigidity has always been the order of matters. You get somebody experienced enough with a beam saber, they're swinging it in every direction at full tilt, and the field distorts enough because it has a tough time keeping up. If you lose that rigidity, then you lose field composition, and the damned thing's likely to vent plasma on you, maybe even blow your hands off. Every lab report tried to make a beam whip out of one seamless, uncut EM field. Like they were trying to make a longer, wavier beam saber. It just didn't work. But I've seen this thing in action…" Wycost's voice grew quieter, and he shook his head. "Against humans." He shook his head again and continued on, trying to make his voice stronger. "Willow's beam whip doesn't follow the traditional concept. Instead, it relies on an intricate series of interconnected metal links. That's what's inside the shaft of the cylinder. Not an EM field projector and stored dormant plasma. The cylinder holds the links. When the thing was active, every link had a spherical body of green plasma around it…which means that despite the initial lab tests done by Cain Labs, she ignored the seamless 'one field' concept, and gave each link its own EM field projector and plasma supply."

            "Bitchin'." Horn said with a small smile. Wycost looked at him.

            "You know, for a self-proclaimed pacifist, you sure do love weaponry."

            "I don't love what they do." Horn correct the Bronx Bomber. "I love how they're built."

            "You're a man full of inconsistencies." Wycost grumbled. Horn folded his arms and grinned.

            "Then I guess I'm only human…"

            "Is she all right now?" Wycost asked, brushing past Horn's incongruous statement.

            "Yeah, sure. As far as I can tell, her systems all check out in the green. However, all I can confirm is her internal operations energy and basic physical stats. Everything else is restricted from access."

            "You're kidding me." Wycost said flatly. Horn's blank state told the Bronx Bomber he most definitely wasn't. "Well…when should we bring her back online?"

            "Tomorrow sounds good." Horn said easily. "It'll give me a chance to get some rest and help Allegro with Doan's project, and it'll give you a chance to get used to all the jet lag."

            "I didn't fly here, Horn." Wycost reminded him. "I warped."

            "Meanwhile, back at the ranch, your mission is somewhere in the world, no longer being trailed by you…"

            "And not being trailed by Willow either." Wycost stated firmly. "She knows something about Bristol."

            "From what little you've told me about your encounters, it would seem she knows a lot more than 'something'." Horn commented. "Care to rethink that statement?"

            "Oh, for Christ's sake…" Wycost grumbled. "I didn't come here to be badgered about my wording. I came here because I need Willow in one piece for interrogation."

            "Sure it isn't something more?" Horn observed, a thin smile growing on his face. Wycost blinked a few times, confused by his statement.

            "What do you mean?" He asked, surprised his voice came more like a squeak. Horn smirked and shut the room lights off, then walked out, leaving Wycost standing in the dark.

            "I think I know now why you wear those glasses all the time." Julius Kinnian Horn stated, turning about and grinning at the Bronx Bomber again. "Without them, your true feelings are transparent. You like hiding behind that opaqueness, don't you?"

            "You've gone irregular." Wycost murmured in his defense. Yet he still slipped his glasses back on after Horn's comment.

            Horn sighed.

            "Wycost, let me tell you something I've learned during my life. You can try to hide from your feelings, but it won't work. Eventually, they'll come back. A lot stronger, and a lot more overwhelming. Just don't act surprised when they finally show themselves. There's no denying them then."

            The creator of the now disbanded URFAWP left at that, and yet Wycost remained in the darkness for a few moments longer. Silently blinking behind his glasses, once more hidden in the world of his own mind, his own problems, his own thoughts.

            "He's a funny one for thinking he knows what I'm thinking." Wycost said. "I was with URFAWP for less than a month."

            He turned to Willow, still lying there. Alive, but asleep. And in that dim light, with only the nearby monitoring devices to watch over her in quiet beeps and tones, he could almost…

            "Forget it." He snuffed, stuffing his hands back in his pockets and looking around. "Nothing more to do here for a while…"

            And then an idea hit Wycost. If there was nothing else to do…

            "Well, it's been a while. Might as well catch up with some of my buddies."

            And so he warped out. With nothing more to do about Willow, and with Bristol still wandering to regions unknown, he was without priorities anymore. Of course, they'd come back.

            They always came back.

            "What caused the tensions?" The newcomer asked. Pharaoh Man blinked a few times at the question before voicing a response to the only person in the group he didn't know.

            "Properly enough…it was us." Pharaoh Man uttered, stepping into the light of the Fourth Ring's hallways. "Robots are what caused the inner tensions of the Second Rainbow." The gigantic robot stared at him for a few moments before Sergei Cossack, Pharaoh Man's creator finally spoke up and introduced them.

            His name is Duo. An odd name for a robot…then again, Blues, Rock, and Roll are also eclectic titles.

            Pharaoh Man bowed to the lumbering giant and then turned to his creator.

            "Doctor Cossack, I wish to inform you that Toad Man has finished his patrol of the water treatment facility, with all the processes in the green." Cossack nodded, and yet Pharaoh Man could not break his gaze from Duo.

            There is something about this one I cannot place…but he is most definitely different.

            What was surprising to the Robot Master was that Duo seemed to stare at him with similar interest. It was almost like Duo's eyes were staring right through his turban, laying his every thought and feeling bare for scrutiny. He shrugged off the feeling eventually, though, and then left.

            And time moved on…

            "What's happening to him?" Kalinka asked in a fearful whisper. Ring Man stared down at the printouts for several long moments, then turned to her as calmly as he could.

            "His mind is fighting for survival. Your comments triggered his core into self-destruction, by making him think he had broken the Prime Law of Robotics. In effect, mistress, you tried to kill him."

            "But death should be instantaneous…triggering mind freeze is just that!" Kalinka stated in shock. Ring Man nodded, his voice filled with wonder and awe, perhaps some of the first true emotions he'd shown.

            "It should…and yet, for Pharaoh Man that death has not come yet. Somehow, the rest of his mind is ignoring the shutdown command. His pathways, his memories over the years have been changed." Ring Man shook his head. "Pharaoh Man was the first of us to show emotion. He was the first robot that Doctor Cossack modified to be more human. And now, it is those differences that are keeping him alive."

            The nearby monitoring equipment continued to beep, tracking Pharaoh Man's progress.

            Kalinka looked at them through her puffy eyes. She hadn't slept since Pharaoh Man dropped into his current state of mind, which was a little more than a day now.

            His fingers twitched every now and then, even though his eyes were shut and he wasn't cognizant of anything.

            Kalinka was sorry. She felt guilty. These robots, no matter how much she hated them, could not hate her back. They could not offer retorts. And they weren't to blame for her life…

            It's not their fault…God forgive me, I was wrong, I was angry and I was wrong and I said the wrong thing…

            And the ones who paid for her emotional stupidity…her repressed anger…were the only family she had left.

            Cossack had had Kalinka. And then, like Light, he had made children of metal. The Robot Masters were all she had now. And Pharaoh Man…

            "I'm sorry." Kalinka uttered, looking down at him. "Pharaoh Man, I'm so sorry…I didn't mean what I said, I didn't mean to…"

            She stopped talking and bowed her head, shaking it.

            After everything that's happened…I was saved by a robot.

            All her life, Kalinka had existed in a world of disbelief. It was a world with nightmares, and with dreams. And all her life…ever since she'd been brought back to safety by Protoman, she had focused more on the nightmare.

            For the longest time, she had thought robots were the cause of all her woes.

            And it was only now she realized it had nothing to do with them…and everything to do with humans.

            It was Wily's fault. He kidnapped me. He caused my father to transform into Light's part-time assistant…

            She had been wrong. She had been so very wrong. And now someone was paying for her mistakes. One of the few individuals who cared about her.

            "Please, Phare…" She said, nearly heartbroken now, her puffy eyes springing fresh tears. "You've got to live. You've got to pull through this."

            She reached her hands down and clasped it around his own. And yet he could say nothing.

            As Ring Man watched, and the room's diagnostic gear beeped at its own pace, one fact became all too clear.

            They might lose Pharaoh Man…For good.

            "Commander?"

            Bastion looked up from his stack of reports to the voice that called for him.

            It was Gavin, of course.

            "What can I do for you, Gav?" Bastion asked calmly.

            "I got something you need to take a look at, boss." Gavin chirped, handing over a datapad.

            'The Desert Angel' grabbed onto it, eager to ignore the paperwork that Signas had assigned them yesterday before the mission on Karashita Tower. Of course, since then Signas had been considerably less of a bother, subdued by Zero's outbursts. If anyone had the balls to tell their new commander exactly what was on their mind, it was Zero. The Zero that relished conflict. The Zero that had saved X's ass more than once throughout the years. The Zero that Mavericks and Maverick Hunters alike almost feared.

            "It's just something that I've been compiling for a while now." Gavin mentioned. "Jad and Kol sort of 'helped' me to do this."

            "Helped?" Bastion queried, lifting an eyebrow. Sheepishly, Gavin shrugged.

            "All right…they forced me to start working on this project."

            "Hmm." Bastion replied, tapping the activation key and staring at the numbers.

            He only looked at them for a few moments before he set them down and peered up at his second in command. "Not bad…but would you mind telling me what all these reploid deaths should bother me with?"

            "Circumstances of deaths, times, and methods." Gavin uttered darkly. "And if you'll notice one name in particular…Somewhere about Mid-may of this year?"

            "Huh." Bastion harrumphed, picking it back up and clicking it on again. He selected the time bracket Gavin had mentioned…And then promptly looked up again, surprise evident on his face.

            "CANARK?! The same Canark that…"

            "The same one you were sent to keep an eye on back before Sigma's Sixth. The one that almost resulted in your death…were it not for the fact that me, Jad and Kol came by and stopped whoever they were from doing you in."

            "Good grief…you mean all of these dates and reploids…"

            "Were killed in the same fashion. High powered beam blade weapon was jammed through the reploid's skull, turning their control chip into slag, with no chance of revival. The simple fact is you were almost one of those statistics. That was enough incentive to pursue this investigation."

            "Does anyone else know about…this?" Bastion asked, his voice a little more subdued from the sudden shock to his system.

            "Anyone who's bothered to pay attention might. But I doubt they'd know how serious this is." Gavin replied. "In the last three months, there's been over three hundred reploid murders around the globe. Most of the cases involved reploids who were humanoid. Reploids like you and Canark, who looked human enough they might pass themselves off as organics. Supermodels, techs, basic joes, it doesn't matter. They're all killed in the same manner, and they're all forgotten just as quickly. In every case where eywitness reports are possible, friends and coworkers reported how every single one of the murdered reploids was on an even keel. These weren't Mavericks, they were just trying to scrape by. And then boom, out of the blue, something snaps in them that causes intense fear. They go running off, breaking through anything in their path, running around in some desperate attempt to escape…something."

            "Good God." Bastion murmured, shutting his eyes and rubbing them with his fingers. "With everything happening recently, I'd almost forgotten about that." He opened his eyes back up. "Almost. I still remember talking to Canark."

            "Yeah, what did the fellow have to say for himself?"

            "He was freaked. He was terrified. He didn't know what to be afraid of, but he was nonetheless. And then I met who he was afraid of. Two of them, figures of medium build with black tinted beam staffs, running about with pure malevolence in their voices."

            Bastion shook his head. "These were skilled fighters, Gav. They nearly took me down. In two swipes, they'd stuck me in the condition you three found me in."

            "They left because we were coming?" Gavin asked curiously. Bastion nodded grimly.

            "That didn't stop them from killing off Canark, though."

            "Any idea who they were?"

            "For a while there, I thought they were the same twips who had been interfering in our missions. You know, those two mysterious reploids? Later on, I got to find out they were ex-URFAWP. Allegro and Andante. Both of them used black bladed beam staffs…but it wasn't them. Their hatred wasn't on reploids. In the end, it was solely on who they considered to be the new Maverick threat…J.K. Horn and URFAWP." Bastion smiled. "Of course, we remember the ruse that turned out to be. Just Sigma and Fluid Ferret come back from the dead."

            "So they aren't the ones, then…"

            "Allegro and Andante weren't the ones who killed Canark that night. Andante's dead now, he gave his life to save his brother's in Cairo in Sigma's Sixth."

            "So I've got the data this far." Gavin finished calmly. He looked at Bastion. "What are we going to do about it?"

            Bastion stared back down at the datapadd for a long moment, then back at his second in command.

            "This isn't something covered under the directives of the Maverick Hunters, Gavin. Our concern is Mavericks…ensuring that dangerous reploids are seen to and dealt with. But this…This is beyond that."

            "So what is it, then?" Gavin asked coolly.

            The Desert Angel mulled over it in his mind, then finally shook it.

            "Something that most definitely needs dealing with…" He looked at Gavin. "It's too much of a coincidence. And somehow, I doubt that two people could have done all this by themselves. The times of death sometimes coincide…and no matter how much credence you give their warp generators, there's no way that a pair of murderers can off one reploid in New York, then go to Hong Kong and repeat the process less than five minutes later."

            Gavin remained standing for a few moments longer, then shook his head.

            "So what exactly are we looking at here?"

            Bastion didn't have a chance to reply before somebody came walking through his office door, eyes hidden behind a familiar pair of black sunglasses and a leather jacket hanging loosely over one shoulder to reveal a green T-Shirt underneath.

            While Gavin snorted in surprise and scorn, Bastion had to smile. It had been a long time since he'd seen his old friend and ally in the flesh. However, his smile was temporary as he looked down at his datapadd and remembered Gavin's question.

            His blue eyes went up to stare at Wycost's stubbled features as he uttered two syllables.

            "Trouble."

            The air stank. It stank of clean.

            Not just any clean. The cold and icy smell of germicide, of the strongest soaps and bleaches known to man. Of bitter, heartless walls and empty rooms and freshly recycled patient gowns.

            This was a place where sickness came. Where sickness was fought. Where it was destroyed.

            Dully, he could stare ahead with what blurry vision he had. Down a long hallway with chairs on the sides, some empty, and some occupied, wails and moans of the grieving echoing to no end. And he was moving down it.

            Wait…I'm not walking…

            He was being pushed along. His head drooped down a bit, and his vision shifted. He could see himself. He could see his hands, lying limp in his lap. They lay on top of one another, and on top of a pale blue cloth gown that barely went down to his knees. Shocked, he tried to move them. Neither limb responded to his pleas.

            I'm in a wheelchair…Oh, God, I'm in a wheelchair…

            "Almost there, doc." Came a consoling voice from behind him. A sudden jolt shook the wheelchair, and his head bounced up, allowing him to stare ahead again.

            Where are you taking me?! Hey…come on, can't you hear me?!

            Crestfallen, he realized they couldn't. It scared him now. Before, it had been weird and dismal. Now terror began to fill every crevice of his tortured mind.

            The hallway seemed unending, with doors and chairs lining the sides. From time to time, one of the sobbing, weeping people in the 'death seats' would turn about and stare at him. Stare at him in unbelieving grief and fury. Every time they did, he cringed. Where they sat was where friends and family waited to hear that their loved ones had died.

            Just how many times was I forced to come out of those operating rooms…and tell them I had failed to save a person's life?

            "It's been a long road, doc." The voice came again. Only now, he seemed to recognize it…familiar, changed…

            In a sudden blink, they reached the end of the hallway, he was pushed through swinging doors with the creaky wheels of his wheelchair grinding away.

            Strong arms picked him up, lay him flat on a flat, hard…and cold table.

            Oh, God no…

            A brilliant light from above clicked on, nearly blinding him from the brilliance of the wattage.

            Heads appeared above him. Quietly, they began to speak. To one another, ignoring him. As if he wasn't there, as if he could not speak.

            As if he was dead.

            "So it's finally done with, eh?" Came an old and raspy voice. "I guess in the end, he couldn't even save himself."

            No…

            The voices were so hauntingly familiar now, they tore at him…

            "Och, the wee laddie was a few chips short of the fishmeal, that's for certain." Said another, the outline of its face less rounded. The head turned, and the motionless figure nearly screamed.

            He saw a beak.

            "Well Bolt, you're not the only one he failed to save." Came the raspy voice again. The sudden rapping of a walking stick on the tiled floor beneath only confirmed the tormented spirit's guess.

            No, not Cain…God, I'm sorry, there was nothing I could do…The aneurysm was inoperable…

            "He didn't even try." Cain muttered disgustedly. Bolt Eagle harrumphed and folded his arms.

            "The lad was stubborn and stupid. There was more than a few times Storm and I had to charge in and save him because he just wouldn't move." Another figure appeared in the bright light, more lit up than the others.

            It was X.

            "His time's run out." The Blue Bomber of 21XX said wearily. His eyes were cold and biting, looking down into him with more than a trace of disgust.

            "He's like us now. Old, used, ready for death." Cain uttered slowly. Bolt Eagle nodded and reached for a narrow edged beam saber, igniting it and swinging it down in one fluid motion.

            And he wanted to scream then. He wanted to scream as he felt the angry plasma weapon bite into him…

            Take away his legs…

            "Hey, why did you do that?" X asked, turning with a puzzled stare to Bolt Eagle. The avian reploid's eyes were as hard as diamonds.

            "Do ye really think he'll be needing them where he's going? He doesn't deserve legs anyhow."

            "His title's Chief Medical Officer." Cain uttered, in that same dead tone that had been used before. "But in the end, he's useless. He can't save lives. And he never could. He's useless."

            "He's useless." Bolt Eagle agreed, in the droning dead tone.

            "He's useless." X uttered.

            No…no no no no no no no no no…

            The voices began to fade out, lose their individuality. And then there was nothing but a single droning word ringing in his ears, even as he screamed and screamed, trying to escape the Hell of his own mind.

            Useless…useless…useless…

            Hazil screamed himself awake, his entire body jerking up from his reclining office chair as his pained cries slowly died out.

            His energy gave out and his legs dropped away from underneath him, forcing him to fall back into his seat. And then for several moments, all he could manage was a forced series of gasps, his trembling hands reaching down beneath his stomach…

            "Still there." He croaked, as his hands ran along his legs. "Still there…"

            He shut his eyes for a moment and brought his hands back up, running them past his face and through his grayed hair. The slick fluid his gloved hands dragged along made him realize he'd been crying during that episode.

            "I couldn't save them." He muttered. He summoned enough strength into his trembling limbs to force himself free of his chair and out of his office. That was the truth. Despite the fact it had all just been a nightmare, it had a cause. That cause was his inability to be the healer he always strived to be.

            Bolt Eagle had died on that battlefield years ago. His final words to Hazil were to keep Storm safe.

            As if that had helped. Storm Eagle and Hazil had gone along with Spark Mandrill, leaving behind the world of the British RAF to join with the Maverick Hunters. And months later, Storm Eagle and Spark Mandrill had died at X's hands, because the two of them had gone Maverick. He'd failed Bolt Eagle. He'd failed to keep his promise.

            That was where his hair had turned gray. From those early months.

            The years had been hard on Hazil. His only purpose was to protect life, to save wounded comrades, to bring them back from death's door. And yet for every thirty times he succeeded in his task, there were three where he utterly failed.

            Every loss was hard to take. It made his raging alcoholism all the worse, as he'd tried to drown out his sorrows.

            And then Hazil had diagnosed Cain, not with chronic headaches, but with something far worse…the source of what was causing it. An aneurysm buried so deep in his brain that trying to operate on it would almost certainly have turned the benevolent creator of the reploid race into a drooling vegetable. So Hazil did nothing.

            And now Cain was dead, leaving the medical reploid to drink his bitter brew and curse himself for not trying something, ANYTHING, to try and change the dismal events of June 17th. When Cain died.

            "So is that what I am? A failure?" Hazil said bitterly. He reached over to a nearby wall for another bottle of scotch. But his fingers stopped short of it, and then clenched up into a fist, swinging through the bottle and destroying it with a roar of anger.

            He's useless…useless…

            "Shut up. Just SHUT UP." Hazil groaned, clutching at his poor head. "For once, just leave me alone…just leave me alone…"

            And then they did. But their effect was enough.

            Hazil slumped against the wall of the Medical Bay, trembling as he skidded down the floor. Head in his hands, he found that even when their accusing voices left him alone, the icy fingers of his own guilt would never leave him.

            It was all here. In the Medical Bay of the MHHQ. Hazil could barely remember the last time he'd left it, gone somewhere else. And even then, he hadn't left the building.

            A part of him wanted to drink. Wanted to drink to exhaustion and quiet, mindless slumber. Wanted to just forget about it all.

            And it was becoming harder and harder to ignore that part of his personality ever day. Brushing his hair back, Hazil looked up to the only occupied bed in the entire room. A bed holding the sleeping form of X, his repairs made and recovery program set.

            "All I do is prolong their lives until the next time they throw it into the wind." Hazil said dully. He looked at X again. "Goddamnit all…"

            Three of X's armor sets were now forever lost to the winds of eternity. Paladin, Retribution, and Golden Hyper were vanished, never to be used or seen again. Of X's armor sets, only one remained. The Force Armor. And that one was locked in program stasis, so it couldn't degrade.

            And yet X couldn't use that set either. Not without losing it.

            He'd nearly died in yesterday's mission. Were it not for a war scarred Zero bringing him back in for repairs.

            The Maverick Hunters were a necessary evil. But no matter how skilled they were, they always ended up coming in. For repairs. For reprogramming. Even for autopsies.

            "That's all I am." Hazil muttered. "I'm just a mortician with a knack for helping people live longer."

            Maybe he was going insane. Hazil didn't care anymore. He was just tired. Cain had been tired, and he'd died. But Hazil couldn't die as easily as Cain did.

            So he was stuck here. Stuck in the place he'd called home for thirteen years, waiting for a change to come. Any change.

            "X, I am getting Goddamn sick and tired of repairing your sorry carcass, only to have you rolling back in on my doorstep weeks later." Hazil mumbled, letting his head droop between his legs.

            And a sleeping, recovering X could say nothing. But it wouldn't have mattered. All Hazil could hear was the droning beeps and tones of his monitoring equipment.

            And all he could smell was that Godforsaken antiseptic air.

            "My search has reached a bit of a dead end." Wycost noted calmly, although he still refused to raise his sunglasses from his eyes. He'd kept himself garbed in his street clothes, which made him stick out like a sore thumb in the droning masses of armor clad Maverick Hunters running from point to point around the base.

            Bastion walked in front of Wycost a bit, and turned about to lift a worried eyebrow.

            "Bristol's still all right…right? I haven't heard from her since that E-Mail."

            "As far as I know, she's plum and peachy in her search. The only person who seemed to be a considerable threat against Bristol was a fellow femme reploid by the name of Willow. Irish lilt, blazing red hair, green eyes, the works. And Willow's sleeping the day away back at Horn's place."

            "Then she's…" Bastion began warily.

            "Fraid so." Wycost finished for him. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. "She's that Maverick, all right."

            "But you didn't kill her." Bastion pointed out, narrowing his eyes. Wycost shrugged.

            "It's because of something Isaiah told me recently. What's worse than a Maverick?"

            "Isaiah died." Bastion stated flatly.

            "Tell that to his ghost." Wycost murmured back. He rubbed at his head. "And while you're learning about my sources, let's also include the closet psychic pal of mine in Hong Kong."

            "And you're sure that something in your mind hasn't snapped?" Bastion asked back. Wycost finally lifted his glasses and gave Bastion a look that made the Hunter wish he hadn't bothered to say the question. "Sorry." Shrugging, Wycost dropped his glasses back down.

            "Willow and Bristol are connected somehow. And I'm going to figure out where Bristol's headed off to next, even if I have to beat the answers out of that renegade."

            "So until then, you're doing what exactly? Reliving old memories?"

            "There are a few loose ends to wrap up around here. And I figured I'd check in on Doan."

            "Not if I check in on you first." Came a new voice to the conversation. Despite his grim mood, Wycost had to smile as the crowd parted and his old friend walked towards them, a less grim look on his face. Which for Doan was akin to a very powerful smile.

            The two friends shook hands, and eventually a smirk graced Doan's face.

            "A smirk now, is it? Damn, we're making progress with you." Wycost joked.

            "You'll find there's very little to joke about around here anymore." Doan uttered back, his small grin vanishing completely. Wycost turned to Bastion, face stone.

            "Well, I know Cain's dead and we got ourselves a GDC flunkie in his spot. What else hit the fan while I was gone?"

            "The new batch of Mavericks challenged X and Zero to attack Karashita Tower and defeat them. X went alone…ended up losing his first three armor sets and getting his ass kicked. Zero managed to drag him back before they could do him in."

            "That doesn't sound like the X I know." Wycost muttered.

            "Everything's changing around here, Wycost." Bastion affirmed sadly. "Even the people."

            Wycost absorbed it in stride, his own response to the newest grim details hidden behind his glasses.

            "What hasn't changed, then?" He asked meekly. Doan's eyes were hard as pinpricks when he replied.

            "The danger." Something seemed to click in Doan's mind, and he continued on, a little less angrily. "Say, I heard you mention something about J.K. Horn. You visited him recently?"

            "I just came from there." Wycost replied. Doan nodded.

            "Cleo told me that the flight wings she'd been working on were sent to Horn for some proofing and new insight."

            "Those were yours?" Wycost commented. "Yeah, Allegro was working on it when I was there. If you want, I can drag you back with me."

            "I might have to take you up on that." Doan answered back.

            And then the time for small talk ended. Every klaxon in the MHHQ seemed to go off, in a particular drone that even Wycost could understand from his time spent in the Hunters.

            "Looks like the Mavericks are placing a call with us." Wycost observed grimly.

            "I hope they dialed CALL-ATT." Doan shot back.

            "Wycost, you wanna come with us to the War Room?" Bastion asked. "Maybe you could…"

            "I'm retired." Wycost interrupted firmly. "Sure, I'd be more than happy to join you guys for the ride, but if you want to ask me to throw myself into the maelstrom again, that one I'll have to refuse." Bastion coolly absorbed the comment, then shrugged and turned to Doan.

            "This sound familiar?"

            "It sounds about right, given his new philosophy. Preserving life instead of taking it." Doan uttered back, never once glancing away from his longtime friend.

            "All Unit Commanders and A or above ranked Hunters to the War Room. All others, report to your duty stations."

            The synthesized voice rang out, causing Wycost to cringe. Too many times he'd heard that call. Or ones similar to it.

            "Well, I see Signas left the auto-paging system intact." He noted before running down the hallway. Bastion and Doan ran alongside him, their minds not on Wycost's comments anymore, but on the mission yet to be faced.

            Wycost had to shake his head.

            For everything that HAD changed…

            There was still so much that hadn't.

            The crew in the War Room, which included Zero, Signas, and the Unit Commanders and A and above ranked Hunters, was large enough to fill it to crowding. Enough so that those Hunters who were able to fly were forced to go airborne for breathing room.

            Signas calmly observed the masses, no longer the commanding authority he had been. X's defeat, and Zero's own actions from the day before had cowed him. Now his stance was a little more conservative. A part of Zero's ranting had clicked home.

            Signas may have had experience with bureaucracy, but he had no combat experience. And no previous employment where he was the leader of a bunch of combat-crazed warriors. Cain had. And obviously, the GDC reploid had a lot to learn about his new job. For now, though, there was little time for apology.

            He tilted his head around the room, frowning as he spotted a lone figure in the masses that was out of place. Wearing sunglasses, a green T-shirt and a black leather jacket with blue jeans, he looked more like an observer than a Maverick Hunter.

            "Pardon me, stranger. May I ask what you are doing here?"

            Commander Bastion of the 21st began to speak, but the newcomer with his short black hair lifted his arm in front of Bastion and stopped him. Coldly, the stranger turned his gaze to Signas, his eyes boring into the new Maverick Hunter Commander with frigid acceptance.

            "Wycost. Ex-Maverick Hunter. I worked for Bastion."

            Something in that stare, even masked as it was behind those sunglasses, told Signas it was best not to push the issue. In fact, it triggered a response…Fear, perhaps? Or intimidation…

            He shook his head. Emotions made one weak. His creators had taught him that. He was a perfect reploid. A reploid without emotions, only actions…

            But look where that had gotten him here.

            "Stay if you like." Signas finally mumbled, reaching over and gingerly pushing the hold button on the command chair to off. Since yesterday, he hadn't felt like sitting in it.

            Every head in the room turned to look at a calmly staring Kazok Gravor, his hair short and well trimmed, his face a mask of indifference. But what caused them to shudder in fear was the figure beside him. A figure that towered above the medium sized humanoid class reploid, who wore a set of blazing red scars over his optics proudly. A figure with a face of disgust, contempt, and bitter hatred.

            "Sigma." Zero spat out.

            "Well, I see you're still up and around, my dear friend Zero." Sigma said, his face curving into a malevolent smile. "Too bad the same cannot be said of X."

            No other Hunter in the room dared speak. This was a confrontation between the Maverick King and the Crimson Hunter…it was not their right to interfere.

            Signas watched this event with curiosity…he found it amazing that Zero's mere presence could instill such unwavering loyalty in his fellows. Only Wycost folded his arms and seemed to roll his eyes in disgust at the event. Strange one, that Wycost…he would have to ask about him later.

            "Just what are you trying to do, Sigma?" Zero demanded. "Take over the world?!"

            "That particular quest is becoming a little hackneyed for both of our tastes nowadays, isn't it?" Sigma mused. "I recall quite clearly how my last attempt at that went. It FAILED."

            "You're insane."

            "And you're…" Sigma began to retort, but then clamped his mouth shut and smiled darkly. "Oh well, we both know what I was going to say." And you're the Prime Maverick, the cause of all the world's problems.

            "Bastard." Zero swore under his breath. Sigma either didn't hear the Hunter's comment or chose to ignore it.

            "No, this time about, I'm calling for a simple showdown. You send in the Hunters, I send in the Mavericks, and we wage a massive battle. Sound good enough?"

            "I'll destroy you…" Zero growled. "I'll RIP YOU APART!!"

            "And we all know how much Zero enjoys his daily dose of violence." Sigma retorted drily. "But I doubt even if you succeeded, your victory would be any more permanent than it has been so many times before."

            "I'll never stop fighting you!" Zero shouted. Sigma smiled darkly.

            "Then the war goes on." The Maverick King nodded, and Kazok spoke up.

            "We thought we'd visit an old stomping ground. How does Cornus Island's desert terrain sound to you fellows?"

            "Sounds like microwaved chicken soup. Gritty and unappealing." Zero shot back. "But if that's where you want to die, so be it."

            "Oh, yes, I almost forgot…" Sigma mused humorlessly. "Little Hunter Zero wants to claim revenge for the defeat of his dear friend X…Well, that should certainly make things more interesting." Sigma's face peered closer to the camera he was transmitting, and a bold, brilliant…yet shudderingly cold smile filled the focus. "But let me ask you something, Zero…do you think you're coldhearted enough to defeat us all?"

            The camera blinked out. Signas blinked a few times and turned to Zero.

            "What did he mean by that?" For once, Zero was too preoccupied to tell Signas to stuff it.

            "Sigma loves to play mind games…there's a real genius hidden in all that madness, and he loves to use it. He's trying to psych us out."

            "Sounds like he's winning." Wycost said calmly. Every face in the room turned about in surprise and anger at the comment, yet the Bronx Bomber offered no sign of a retraction or apology.

            "So what would you do, Zero?" Signas queried, putting Zero's decision ahead of his own.

            "We'll go there. We'll go there in full force and we're going to put a stop to this entire stupid mess once and for all." Zero's fist clenched up. "And he is going to pay for what he's done…By my blood, he's going to pay."

            And somehow, as Signas experienced fear again, he knew how very sincere Zero was.

            Kalinka didn't know how long she had been kept in this place. Her watch had been taken from her, although the ugly robots had allowed her to keep the rest of her clothing.

            But not even her fur-lined red coat could long protect her from this place. The robots would bring food and water every so often, yet she could not break the dread they did it out of sick pleasure than an assigned task. The only thing Kalinka found she could do to keep herself busy was sleep. Sleep or go crazy. Ever since that scary man with the wild white hair had ordered his robots to kidnap her, drag her back kicking and screaming.

            "Why are you doing this?!" Kalinka had screamed through her anguished tears, wanting so desperately for it all to be a nightmare…a horrific nightmare that she would wake up from. And yet the evil man had simply smirked with his aged face, stuffed his hands into his pockets and shrugged her question off as he might reply to the offer of fries with his sandwich.

              "You're too little to understand these things, dear Kalinka Cossack. I just need your father to do certain things for me…And he'll do them, because I have you."

              They hadn't bothered to heat her prison cell. The medium sized red one, with some sort of magnet on his head had seemed to smirk the first time she shivered in the dark confines and told them as much with her foggy breath.

            "Oh, you're not going to need heat. You humans are a wonderful source of the stuff." 

            And yet all that heat was continually sucked out of her. How long had it been now…She had no window to the world, no way of telling if it was night or day. Just the voices.

            They'd grown louder for some time now…they were only soothed when Kalinka hummed to herself, rocking back and forth in a fetal position. They clamped around her with icy fingers, denying her the chance to sleep.

            Kalinka shivered again and drew her arms around herself, sneezing involuntarily. The force of it threw her backwards onto the small, inhospitable cot they'd left for her as a bed.

            She didn't even have the energy to groan now. Her humming had vanished away, replaced by the dripping nose, the aching head, the blistering temperature that remained despite the bitter cold of her surroundings.

            Every time she went to sleep, she had prayed to the powers above to take her away…to take her from this place. She remembered the fairy tales her father used to tell her, of princesses who were locked away in dangerous castles…only to be rescued by handsome knights in shining armor.

            Yet they were nothing but fairy tales.

            So Kalinka had thought.

            Until something changed.

            She lay flat on the cot, the last of her energy gone. It was all she could do to stop her eyes from falling shut on her and closing her off in the darkness again.

            Then there were noises. Voices. But different now. They weren't the ones in her mind.

            They came from outside. From outside her cell…

            The sound of a loud blast rang through the corridors. Then another. Cursed mumblings…The sounds of different weapons ringing out. A crackle and whine. More screams…then silence.

            Footsteps came. Kalinka could almost sense the presence of someone outside her cell door. And it creaked open.

            Lying as she was, she couldn't get up. She could only lazily blink with her hazy eyes at the figure that appeared above her…a man in gray and red, with a yellow cloth of some sort waving behind him. He looked scarred, damaged in several places. And then there was his helmet…with a black visor that almost looked like oversized sunglasses.

            He was beautiful.

            "God, what did they do to you?" He muttered in shock, speaking in English. Kalinka could almost sense that he felt her pain.

            Dully, she blinked a few more times, then opened her mouth to try and speak.

            "You…came to rescue me…like in the fairy tales…" She said it in Russian, and yet the man above her had no trouble understanding her.

            "Like in the fairy tales, da." He said back in her native tongue.

            Kalinka somehow managed to offer a weak smile…and then faded out, her eyes rolling into the back of her head as consciousness slipped away from her.

            Alarmed, Protoman brought a trembling hand down to her swan white neck.

            "Pulse is still there." He finally said to himself in relief. "But it's weak." He picked himself up and looked around, cursing in several different languages. "Wily is going to pay for this." He finished. "I've got to get her out of here. But I can't warp…"

            Shaking his head in disgust, he left the room for a moment. When he came back, his gray had shifted to a dull periwinkle blue, and had turned the red a light purple.

            In one swift motion, he picked Kalinka up in his right arm and slung her over his shoulder. With his other, he formed a Buster and fired away, a piercing blue laser he had Weapons Copied from Gemini Man.

            The stone and steel wall of the cell gave way easily, exposing the room to the bitter howling temperatures of the Siberian wilderness, gusting in with an angry roar. Grimly, Protoman backed off for a moment and let the rubble and smoke clear, letting his Buster fade so he could cradle Kalinka with both arms.

            "It's going to be cold out there, Kalinka." He said, hoping that some part of her spirit could still hear him. "Just please, hold on…You've got to hold on for me." He almost insisted upon it, so tense was his voice.

            He noticed how she shivered in the biting cold, as the large snowflakes from his escape exit began to pelt both her and himself as well. Without a second thought, he pulled off his somewhat damaged yellow bandana and wrapped it around her neck. It was almost long enough to be a scarf…maybe some day from now, he'd wear one of those instead. But for now, she needed her body heat. Every last calorie of it. It was going to be a very long trek through the Siberian wilderness from Wily's hidden Skull Castle to Cossack's Citadel.

            Blues just hoped he would make it, in time to save Kalinka, and in time to stop Mega Man from doing something the Blue Bomber might very well regret.

            And then the klaxons of Skull Castle began to wail. Protoman's escape attempt had already been discovered…probably from the hull breach. Damn Wily for sticking the prison barracks right in the outermost section of the First Ring…

            "No time for second thoughts." He muttered to himself. Gritting his teeth against the cold, and the trials yet to come, he cradled Kalinka close to his chest, her face held away from the icy wind. And then he jumped out of the side of the Castle, and hit the massive snow covered mountain it sat upon.

            And then he ran. Ran for the life of an innocent human girl who had become nothing but a pawn in Wily's sick game…and for the life of the knight who the evil king held under his power.

            Slowly, the klaxons faded from earshot. And all Blues could hear was the roar of the Siberian blizzard.

            "How's he doing?" Bright Man queried, his voice a little quieter as he approached the corner of the Fourth Ring they'd set aside for Pharaoh Man.

            "His mind's blinking." Ring Man said. "That's all I can think of to describe it."

            "Blinking, eh?" Bright Man replied calmly. But even though his voice remained unchanged, his almost cartoonish optics revealed a hint of sadness.

            "His mind is fighting against the core. The core's already destroyed itself, the part of his mind dedicated to the Three Laws is gone. Only the final command it issued remains, and it's trying to force itself throughout his mind. But he's fighting it, Bright. He's FIGHTING IT." Ring Man's voice fell into awe, and he shook his head. "He shouldn't be able to. He should be dead. There shouldn't be any way for him to avoid falling victim to mind freeze…"

            "I can believe a part of it." Bright Man said, a little stunned as well. "Remember? Doctor Cossack always said that Pharaoh Man was different. It was Pharaoh Man who he gave the optional equipment to in 2090. It was Pharaoh Man that was Cossack's own exercise, not in the next generation of robotics…but the evolution of the current one."

            "It's unbelievable." Ring Man said again. "And do you know how he's doing it?" Bright Man looked blankly at his comrade, and Ring Man continued on. "He's overloading his brain. He's keeping every pathway so busy with information that the shutdown command from the Law core CAN'T GET THROUGH. Memories, flashbacks, even physical stimuli commands…Pharaoh Man may be unconscious, but his desire for self-preservation is most definitely not taking a vacation. Good memories, bad memories, it doesn't matter. Pharaoh Man's driving himself mad in an attempt to save his life."

            "And what if he succeeds?"

            "He's broken into a stalemate." Ring Man re-emphasized, his wonder fading away into dismal truth. "To win, his mind needs to completely annihilate the shutdown command. Overwhelm it. Negate it, somehow…"

            "Overriding a command that serious…it's illogical. He can't do it."

            "A robot couldn't do it, no." Ring Man muttered. "You couldn't do it. I couldn't do it."

            The two looked down at Pharaoh Man's face, noticed a tear begin to form in the corner of his eye. That was one of the enhancements Cossack had given Pharaoh Man in 2090. Improved facial expression…and artificial tear ducts.

            "But Pharaoh Man is something more now. He might have become different enough…human enough…to find acceptance in the illogical." Ring Man said hopefully. Gingerly, he reached a gloved finger down and wiped the tear away from his comrade's face.

            "I just hope there's enough left of him to qualify as a success…" He turned and looked to Kalinka, partially slumped onto Pharaoh Man's bed as she sat in the chair beside him. "Otherwise…"

            He didn't bother to finish the thought.

            It was too much for his poor brain to handle. Thinking of how harmed Kalinka might be if Pharaoh Man didn't pull through.

            For Sigma, this was a homecoming of sorts.

            Cornus Island remained unchanged by the Second Maverick Uprising. It had been reclaimed by the GDC forces and life had gone on there as if nothing had happened. Of course, there was no more ICBMs to deal with. That was the only change.

            The current Maverick philosophy was 'all for one'. The last time Mavericks had held stead on Cornus, they'd divided their forces into eight groups and taken over key points. This time about, there was no grand objective. Sigma didn't mean to imitate his previous strategies, the strategy followed by Serges and the X-Hunters who had taken over for him after his crushing defeat on June 19th, 2118, up until they all died at X's hands and it was once again just Sigma. The pathetic cripplings who ran this island could keep it. That didn't concern Sigma. No, he would return for them later, when it was more convenient.

            X was out of the fight for now. A grimfaced Sigma folded his arms and looked over the quiet sand dunes of Cornus's northwest section. Lots of memories.

            In a way, Cornus Island and Laguz Island from the Erasure Incident of 2128 were remarkably similar. Both were in the Pacific Ocean, in the so-called 'Ring of Fire'. Both had been created after the Wars of 2040 by massive volcanic activity. And both had been of critical strategic importance, and a thorn for the Hunters.

            Of course, no Maverick with him could remember that. The Mavericks who had been there were dead now, dead and atomized and lost. Only Sigma, the Maverick King, he mused bitterly, had survived. Because his core program would not let the fight end. Would not let the madness stop.

            Kazok Gravor walked up to Sigma expectantly before offering a perfunctory salute. Sigma nodded back easily, still lost in his own thoughts.

            "Sir, what's the plan exactly?"

            "Simple, Kazok." Sigma rumbled. "This is a fight with the Maverick Hunters alone. The GDC will not involve themselves in this one. As far as they're concerned, yes we're a threat, but we're not threatening them directly." He turned about and swept his arms at the massive structure buried underneath tons of dirty silicate. "Every facility on Cornus Island is in a different location. We're occupying a long since abandoned base that they didn't feel like tearing down. Too costly, perhaps, for their penny pinching budgets."

            "This place was built as a missile silo." Kazok observed.

            "When it was owned by the United States, prior to the AmeriCanadian Alliance and the formation of the GDC, yes." Sigma said easily. "I know what you're thinking. Why bother ourselves with this place? It has no missiles. No weapons of mass destruction we can hurl off to places of the globe in some defiant set of screams."

            "It had crossed my mind." Sigma's Maverick Leader answered drily. "But I imagine you have some perfect plot."

            "I mean to draw them here…The Maverick Hunters." Sigma said icily. "You have eliminated an entire Hunter Unit on your own. You've infiltrated a GDC Armory. And you have even brought down Mega Man X…who without his fantastic armors is as weak as a newborn puppy." He snapped his fingers, then rubbed them together. "The Hunters are done playing around, you see. They know this is one situation they can no longer afford to pussyfoot with. So they will send their best. They will send the elite Units, they will send the elite Hunters. They will send the Crimson Hunter himself…Zero." Sigma's eyes seemed to glint in anticipation as he said that final name, and it didn't go unnoticed by Kazok.

            "You want them to come." Kazok observed. Sigma smiled.

            "You wanted HIM to come yesterday, didn't you?"

            "There's a fine line between combat and masochism, Sigma." Kazok answered back. Sigma shrugged.

            "Well, do as you will. I expect the Maverick Hunters to arrive within minutes. Your task, my dear Kazok, is to guard the front gates, as it were. Take the rest of your team and spend your time doing what you do best. Making Maverick Hunters very unhappy."

            "And what about your grand plans for taking our race into the new age? Of creating a world for reploids?"

            "That is secondary." Sigma noted, surprising Kazok. As if to quell the rising doubts in the Maverick's black head of hair, he held a hand in front of him. "Let me use an analogy. A bricklayer cannot make his bridge if the troll keeps destroying it. What we intend to do in these next critical days is to DESTROY the Maverick Hunters. Now is the perfect time to strike. James Cain, their most steadfast supporter is dead from a brain aneurysm. X is stuffed somewhere, recuperating from his grievous injuries. The Hunters themselves lie under new management, are under the hawkish eyes of an organization that would as soon end their existence for failing, despite the obvious consequences. If we eliminate the Maverick Hunters, then we eliminate the only force on Earth capable of stopping us. Once the Hunter roadblock has been removed, every other objective follows through with ease." Sigma looked at Kazok fiercely. "Now do you understand?"

            "Well, that explains the why. But you've yet to elaborate on the how. Just where are you going to be while me and my squad are busy keeping the Hunters occupied?"

            "Waiting for Zero, inside this rotting corpse of a building." Sigma pulled the dark red cape closer in around himself and turned about, heading for the dark interiors and its many abandoned rooms. "Trust me, he'll find a way in. He'll come looking for me."

            "You sound way too sure of that." Kazok answered warily. "How can you be sure?"

            Sigma stopped his slow gait and stood there for a moment. Almost as an afterthought, he turned his head slightly around so that one glaring red eye could stare over his shoulder at the cocky Kazok Gravor.

            "You're young, and despite your skills, inexperienced. So I'll let your insolence pass. But know this, Kazok. Zero and I have been playing this game since before the First Maverick Uprising began. And when you've been playing as long as we have, it's not a matter of if or how your foe will come for you. It's a matter of when."

            Calmly, Sigma swirled his blood red cape closer about himself and walked into the shadows of the abandoned desert base. Kazok had to shake his head before he could head back to his fellows.

            It was no wonder this madman had inspired so many to follow him. In the end, he'd even somehow managed to rope in Kazok as well…

            And they didn't wait long.

            Watching with open, if not alert eyes, Kazok and his five comrades watched the skies part open as scores of blinding beams descended upon the dunes. In a blink, they reformed. Revealing not members of the GDC…but Maverick Hunters.

            All Maverick Hunters. All of them the cream of the crop, the top ranks.

            And leading them was a Hunter in red, with blazing green eyes and a fiery brush of blond hair behind him.

            Shell, Cumulus, Dolph, and Burst all looked ready and eager to fight. They only waited for Kazok's signal, never once letting their wide cheery eyes leave the massing forces beyond them. Kazok curled his lip up in mild scorn. Like children looking at their Christmas presents.

            Dash growled and popped her TitaniTefloAlloy claws.

            "This time, it's going to be worlds different." She muttered with a small feline snarl.

            Somehow, Kazok's hand found its way to her shoulder and stayed there for several seconds.

            "Let's just remember one very important thing here, people." Kazok said loudly enough for all to hear. However, his eyes were locked with Dash's. "Let's all make it back alive."

            Dash's unwavering eyes said volumes to Kazok's troubled heart.

            I won't leave you behind.

            And that gave the worried Maverick strength enough to move on.

            The Hunters beyond began whooping, then charged as one massive force. Some flew, some dashed. Others warped. It didn't matter. They all came.

            And they would all lie wounded by the battle's end.

            "For someone supposed to be free of emotions, you sure do look flustered." Wycost forwarded, going to stand beside Signas in Cain's command chair. Signas blinked a few times before turning back down to look at the Bronx Bomber in his street gear. Wycost looked back up at him, eyes still hidden behind those glasses of his.

            "Things are not progressing as smoothly as I would like them to." Signas finally admitted. Wycost folded his arms and whistled a bit, then shook his head.

            "And you expected them to? Look, I haven't had the chance to work with you. I never will. But I can tell you what things were like around here before you showed up."

            "You mean, when Cain was alive." Signas echoed. He shook his head. "It's amazing how much respect and trust he garnered from the Hunters in his time."

            "Cain was our guardian angel." Wycost said simply. "We were here to stop the Mavericks. But we couldn't stop the bureaucrats. The GDC loved nothing better than to feck with us almost every year or two, to try and tell us to use 'more humane methods' or to 'spend less money'. Cain was our interceptor. While we busied ourselves with the real task, kicking ass, he made sure that no ass-kissing politicians got to mess us up because they wanted to get re-elected. And you, Signas, come from that most hated organization. So naturally, you're already ten steps behind go. And two hundred dollars short."

            "I don't catch your analogy." Signas said, slightly puzzled. Wycost drew a hand over his face, not once jarring his glasses.

            "Haven't you ever played Monopoly??" Wycost asked incredulously. Signas shook his head. "God, you really ARE dronish."

            "I beg your pardon??" Signas asked again. Wycost shook his head.

            "When the GDC made you, they gave you exceptional intelligence, right?"

            "Yes."

            "Did they bother allowing your emotions to grow?"

            "Emotions get in the way." Signas retorted. Wycost merely stared back at him before shaking his head.

            "Emotions do not get in the way, Signas. Believe it or not, they help us. Go ahead, you go ahead and ask X what state of mind he was in when Zero died on June 19th and it was up to him alone to stop Sigma and the First Uprising. You ask how Zero felt when he came out of nowhere in Doppler's Fortress and saved X's ass from the proverbial rock and a hard place. You ask anyone here what their thoughts are when they enter into battle. And almost every last one will tell you that it was their EMOTIONS that guided them then."

            Signas coolly absorbed Wycost's retort, then finally shrugged.

            "If such is the case, then so be it. But if you have so much love for this organization, why did you leave?"

            "Mitigating circumstances." Wycost said quietly. He turned about and began walking out. "Signas, you have a lot to learn about how the world works. I know, it sounds cruel and calloused. But what the Hunters do here is keep the world safe. Remove the Hunters, tinker with the winning formula, and you remove the only thing keeping the human race from armageddon. I just hope you learn that soon. Because if you don't, it might be too late. For all of us." Wycost walked out of the War Room, waving one hand over his shoulder in a farewell gesture. Signas quietly brooded over his words, then turned back to the main viewscreen.

            There was still a battle being fought. And that was what Signas had to worry about now.

            Still, someone was following Wycost. The Bronx Bomber could sense that much.

            He only had to stop in his tracks before the figure slammed into him. Wycost remained unmoved by the jolt, yet the figure behind him fell to the ground with a slight exhalation of air.

            Wycost turned about and cracked a dry smile.

            "Shouldn't you be building something?" He muttered, extending his hand down.

            Cleo accepted it and got back up, a little disheveled.

            "Next time, warn me when you're going to stop walking."

            "Old habit. I don't like being followed." Wycost replied easily. "Still, Cleo, mind telling me why you're playing tagalong?"

            "You're Doan's friend, right? You knew him from a long time ago?"

            "A very long time ago." Wycost muttered, still refusing to drop his small smile. "But I don't exactly feel like revealing anything. He's your boyfriend, if he wants you to know about his past, he'll tell you." Cleo pouted a little, and Wycost caught himself. "Of course, there is a message you can relay to him. I'm headed back to Horn's hideaway, and as I understand it, Doan's Flight Wings are almost in the finishing stages. Tell him whenever he gets done with his mission on Cornus to come join me." Wycost reached into his pocket and handed Cleo a datapadd. "There, that should have the warp jump coordinates."

            "Thanks…" Cleo began to say. But no sooner had Wycost handed the datapadd over than he vanished out of the MHHQ in a flash of green warp light.

            Cleo blinked a few times, then snorted in disgust.

            "Is everyone around here so non-talkative?!"

            Protoman checked his energy levels for the thirtieth time that day. And they still didn't look good.

            "Forty-four percent is not enough to stop an onslaught…" He muttered, noticing how his vocal processor slurred the last word. Rationally, he would have tried to find some place to rest for a while, to give his recuperative systems time to catch up with the immense drain he was placing on it.

            Of course, over the last five days, he hadn't been given a moment's peace. That tended to not help matters. When he wasn't trying to keep Kalinka safe from the raging blizzards of the Siberian wilderness, he had to face off Wily's robotic hordes. Most of the time, it was just mindless drones sent on attack paths. But from time to time, a Robot Master would make an appearance. Never good odds. And it didn't help matters that every day they stayed out here, Kalinka's condition got worse and worse.

            He had no tents. No food packs. No E-Tanks. No mode of transportation, short of his own two feet. And she was growing colder and colder.

            She was avoiding frostbite, Protoman thanked the stars. Her mittens, her hat, her boots and coat were all designed to withstand the Siberian winter. No, cold wasn't the problem with Kalinka.

            Hypothermia didn't enter into the equation. It was overheating. Untold sickness ran rampant through Kalinka's weak frame, driving her body temperature up and up in an attempt to kill the viral hordes.

            And yet that lifesaving measure would destroy her just as easily. Probably easier. The only hope Kalinka had was to make it to Cossack's Citadel, where Blues knew that her father would have vital medical services.

            For the moment, she was sleeping, albeit uneasily. Protoman clucked his tongue sadly and held his hand over her forehead. Her eyes drew tighter in on themselves, and she moaned a little, but she didn't wake up. Slowly, Protoman's fingers felt the heat blanch out of her bright red face and seep into his fingers, lessening the pain of her condition, if only for a few precious moments.

            Cold compresses he didn't have. But an icy hand of metal and synthskin he did.

            She'd gone without food since they escaped Wily's Skull Castle. Her body would have to deal with that. But if she didn't get water, she would die.

            "Kalinka, you have to stay put for a while, all right?" Protoman said quietly, kneeling down and brushing a few loose strands of that angelic blond hair aside from her now ashen face. She said nothing, and Protoman almost rescinded his comment. Even if she'd been awake, she was too weak to move. Too weak to do anything but creep closer and closer to death every excruciating hour.

            Gritting his teeth a bit, Protoman gave Kalinka's hair one final stroke, then turned about and walked out of the alcove he'd blasted into the massive boulder. He'd have to thank Gemini Man for being such an eager weapons donor…if he ever got the chance.

            He'd barely stepped outside and into the blustery, snowflake filled air when something sharp came whistling by and embedded itself in the rock next to his head.

            Now alerted and thoroughly pissed, Protoman ducked low and scooted off in a different direction. But his wandering eyes saw what had almost crushed his skull in.

            A four pointed throwing star. As big as his head.

            And then it grew silent. Beyond all reason, the howling wind grew silent. The snowfall stopped. And a wary Protoman, ducked halfway behind his Protoshield, stared out and grimly recognized his opponent.

            "Shadow Man." Blues spat out. The ninja robot smirked back at him, his arms calmly folded with his right arm holding another Shadow Blade between index and middle finger.

            "You've been on the run for a very long time now, old friend." Shadow Man said amusedly. Blues growled and began to charge his Buster.

            "I stopped working with you and with Wily a long time ago."

            "In the end, that was a mistake." Shadow Man said, the smile gone for cold hatred. "You left the winning team, Break Man. That's not something we particularly endorse."

            "Don't call me that." Blues barked back. Shadow Man lowered his arms and summoned forth a second Shadow Blade, then stood there with arms cocked at his sides.

            "Well, I didn't come here to play memory lane with you, old gray. I came to reclaim Kalinka and take her back to Wily's Skull Castle."

            "Over my dead body." Protoman growled menacingly. Shadow Man had to crack another half-insane grin at that.

            "You fight me, and that's just what will happen. Face it, Protoman. You've been on the run for days now. Even if you left Skull Castle at maximum internal operations energy, that figure's dropped below half by now."

            Protoman knew the Robot Master was right.

            Of all the twips to send…why him…God, why did it have to be Shadow Man?

            "You can't take her back, you realize." Protoman uttered. "You can't warp there with her in your arms…you'd kill her. And just the same, it'd take you five days to get back there. And she'd die by then. She's sick and weak…"

            "And helpless, I know." Shadow Man snorted. "Honestly, human adolescents are so weak and feeble. But we've taken that into account. Spark Man is back guarding the hover-transport. With it, we can transport Kalinka back to base within hours."

            "Well, aren't you smart." Protoman said tersely, letting his Proto Buster begin to charge up for a supershot. "You've got it all figured out, don't you?"

            "I'm afraid we do. It's best if you just gave yourself up and walked away, old friend. I might even spare your life."

            "Just like that?"

            "Just like that." Shadow Man said, his voice seeping with compassion. "Geez, I mean you're at half energy or better. The elements have worn you down, you're a sorry excuse for a challenge."

            "Huh." Protoman muttered, seeming to mull over the idea in his head. With a final shrug, he turned about and walked off.

            It was then that Shadow Man cracked that insane grin once more and hurled both Shadow Blades at Blues' back.

            They impacted with a sickening thwock, and the Robot Master grinned as he heard a sharp grunt of surprise, and the impact of a heavy body against the ground.

            The wind picked up, and once more visibility dropped to almost nothing. All the Robot Master could make out as he approached his newest kill was the definitive red of his Protoshield.

            But when he reached it, that was all he found. Blues' Protoshield, and the two Shadow Blades embedded not only in it, but through it.

            "What the…" Shadow Man rumbled, backing away in surprise. The Robot Master's eyes shifted about the zero visibility environment, narrowing in an attempt to discover where the crafty Protoman had escaped to.

            "You're ninja, all right. Just a pure assassin with no honor." Came the waspish voice to his left. Reacting immediately, Shadow Man summoned a throwing star and hurled it at the sound of Blues' voice. It hit nothing. Enraged, Shadow Man slid along the ground, hoping to knock his opponent into submission with his sliding kick.

            And yet even there, he hit nothing. Stunned and now off balance from his inability to trace his opponent, Shadow Man backed up several steps.

            "Show yourself!" He barked out. "Fight fair, you traitor!!"

            "As if you ever did." Came the cold response, this time to Shadow Man's left. Another throwing star, another clear miss. Only this time a return shot came, screaming straight through his right elbow as easily as a bullet might go through paper. The lower half of his right arm fell to the ground, severed at the joint, and Shadow Man screamed for a brief moment.

            "How are you doing this…Wily never gave you a cloaking device!" Shadow Man stammered. He knew, of course, of the dangers surrounding cloaking fields. Built on the foundations of warp technology, it was a branch still dangerous. Both to human life and artificial life alike. And he knew Blues didn't have a cloaker…yet somehow, he couldn't see the pestersome prototype of all advanced robots. But he did hear Protoman's voice. Only this time, directly behind him, a reply that gave the still jarred and armless Robot Master no chance to respond.

            "Just die already."

            That was the last thing Shadow Man heard before a piercing cyan laser careened straight through the back of his head and out the front of his face, disfiguring it completely before the core processor of the robot was melted into slag, just like every other part of the cranium.

            Decapitated, Shadow Man's body slipped to the ground and powered down into shutdown mode. A weary Protoman stepped forward, hidden by the blinding white snow in his periwinkle blue Gemini Laser guise. In a blink, he switched back over to normal, revealing his location in the swirling storm.

            "Damnit…" Protoman uttered, slumping to one knee. His back armor now had two definitive gashes in it from where the Shadow Blades had struck through his shield and hit his body. Included was a new problem…sluggishness in his right arm. "Sonofagun got me."

            But in a way, he'd also helped him. Now Protoman knew there was a transport nearby.

            With only the bumbling Spark Man guarding it. Taking a brief moment to extend his left hand down and grip Shadow Man's left wrist to claim the Shadow Blades as his own, Protoman slung his shield behind him once more. He winced for a moment as the blades still embedded in his shield bit into him, then tore off the sharp blades with pinpoint blasma blasts, making his shield safe to wear once more.

            Inside, Kalinka's feverish consciousness was just coming to again.

            "Whu…"

            "I'm here." Protoman said wearily. "Come on, you gotta get up."

            "Blues…" Kalinka mumbled, her eyes still fluttering somewhere between sleep and awake.

            "What?"

            "I'm hot…my head hurts, I'm so hot..."

            "I know you are. I know." Protoman emphasized, picking her up and cradling her against him. He could feel her body shiver slowly against his, her fluttering, erratic heartbeat pulse away against his own chest. "I'm taking you home. I got you away from Wily, and I'm taking you home." Kalinka seemed to smile at that, her eyes growing shut.

            "Blues…"

            "Yes?"

            "I love you."

            She fell back asleep before the red and gray armored robot could tell her that was impossible.

            "Good gravy." He mumbled to himself, taking her out of the rock's blasted alcove and back into the slowed maelstrom of the Siberian wilderness. "Kalinka, you're too young to understand. Humans can't love robots. It's an impossibility. It just can't happen."

            The knight in shining armor effect, perhaps? The fact Kalinka saw him as her hero, the one to whisk the princess away from her ivory tower and live happily ever after…

            He couldn't hate her for that.

            "Some day Kalinka, you'll understand. Some day."

            She couldn't love him. It couldn't go on. If she fell in love with him, she would never move on. She would never have human children. She'd be an outcast in society, she'd…

            But none of that mattered now. She was a very sick little girl whispering nothings out of insanity, latching onto a place between dreams and reality.

            Caution: Internal operations energy at dangerously low level. Seek stasis within the next hour.

            And the wind blew harder.

            Spark Man blinked his eyes a few times to break free of low-grade stasis, and then realized that there was a pounding on the outer door of the hovertransport.

            "Shadow Man?" He queried cautiously.

            "I've got her!" Came a muffled voice, barely audible over the roar of a blizzard growing worse by the moment.

            Spark Man reached over with one misshapen rod of an arm and punched the door hatch switch, allowing a side of the cargo compartment to slide open to the elements. He could make out two figures, one the size and approximate shape of Shadow Man clutching onto another, smaller form…

            Before he could take a second look, the Cossack girl was shoved in his face.

            "Excellent work!" Spark Man crowed, gently squeezing his arms around her and lifting her inside, then laying her on the floor. "It sure has taken a turn for the worse out there, I couldn't even make out your figure." He said casually, turning about.

            Spark Man froze in place as he found himself looking not at the distinctive white and blue of his ally Shadow Man…but a strange purple colored armor of a sunglass wearing robot, a four pointed throwing star in his hand.

            PROTOMAN!!

            "Thanks for the ride." Blues said with a snarl. In one swift throw, Protoman hurled his Shadow Blade at Spark Man's head, decapitating it cleanly.

            Both Spark Man's limp torso and his head were thrown out of the hovertransport and into the snow.

            "That's two Robot Masters Wily's gonna have a Hell of a time finding." Blues slurred, pulling Kalinka into the cockpit of the vehicle and seatbelting her in the passenger's seat. Placing himself in the driver's side, he reached for the auto-nav controls and set the transport's coordinates for Cossack's lair.

            Warning. Auto-stasis in twenty seconds. Prepare for auto-stasis.

            His eyes falling shut on him, Blues had only enough time to trigger autopilot and let the hovertransport take over for the rest of the journey, and then turn his head and look at the precious little girl he'd risked life and limb to save.

            "We're taking you home, Kalinka." He said in a quiet whisper. Behind his nearly opaque sunglass visor combo, he let his eyes close. He could still hear the roar of the outside weather, and the gentle thrum of the hovertransport as it took off for the safe haven beyond the horizon.

            "We're taking you home."

            Gasping in surprise, Kalinka snapped her head back up and blinked a few times, then tried to get a bearing on her surroundings.

            "I suppose you were having what you humans call a 'bad dream'."

            After a few moments, Kalinka's weary eyes came into focus. There was Ring Man, unchanged since she had first seen him, way back when she was still a child…

            Back before the wrinkles were there. Before her father became an aged, defeated man. Back when Mega Man and all his friends were still alive…

            When Protoman was alive…

            "Not particularly, no." Kalinka replied easily, now fully alert, yet somehow saddened as her memories dawned on her. "Not bad dreams. But not all good dreams."

            Ring Man took the comment at face value.

            "Do you think we're controlled by fate?" Kalinka added suddenly, catching the Robot Master by surprise.

            "What makes you say that?" He shot back, puzzled by her response. Kalinka's eyes sparkled with the beginning hints of tears, and perhaps also something more, something deeper.

            "Do you remember 2085?"

            "Somewhat." Ring Man said, shrugging. "I remember being told that Mega Man and all the others were dead. Killed off by one of Wily's creations. But in all honesty, I stayed away from that as much as possible. It was Pharaoh Man who was around during your mourning, when Mega Man's body was entombed here. It was Pharaoh Man who seemed determined to watch you and your father through all your emotional states."

            "He was papa's favorite…" Kalinka said softly. A tear began to roll down her cheek, and she squeezed Pharaoh Man's limp hand. He isn't Blues, he isn't the one I…and yet, he's still family. The most advanced Robot Master left now, the only one left… "Please don't die on me."

            "He's still fighting it." Ring Man echoed, answering Kalinka's question beforehand. "His mind's lighting up like a Christmas tree all over the place, and he isn't done fighting yet."

            "He's the only one I have left now…" Kalinka said quietly, so quietly Ring Man had to focus to hear her clearly. "I lost father...lost Blues…I can't lose Phare…"

            "Blues?" Ring Man asked suddenly, breaking her from her trance. "As in Protoman? What does he have to do with Pharaoh Man?"

            "They were all people I cared about…" Kalinka muttered, looking up at Ring Man with hurt eyes. "Protoman saved my life. If he hadn't risked his neck to whisk me away from Wily's castle, I would have died of influenza. That's why I mention him. Because I cared about him. I deeply cared about him. I worried about him. And I lost him!!" Her voice cracked up a little bit after that. "You couldn't understand…how he kept me alive as we went through that wilderness, kept me warm, put my needs ahead of his own, pushed himself to exhaustion…"

            Her voice faded out then…and before Ring Man could offer another conjecture, the nearby monitors began to chitter furiously.

            Stunned, Kalinka looked down at Pharaoh Man, whose free arm now began to spasm involuntarily. She backed away from him, just as his other arm began to go haywire.

            "What's happening to him?!" She nearly shouted. Ring Man's face was grim. Even grimmer than usual.

            He looked down at the nearby voltage output monitors, watching the wildly fluctuating needles.

            "He's in the critical stage. His mind has built up so much resistance from the differing pathway reactions he's been causing to stop the shutdown command, his body's beginning to die on him. As if his brain was beginning to fry from a fever while trying to stop an infection…"

            "What will happen?!" Kalinka gasped.

            "There are only two outcomes at this point." Ring Man said grimly. "In both cases, it will end because one part of his warring mind will win out. They'll be throwing everything at each other now, in an effort to end the fight soon to reduce needless structural damage." Ring Man held an index finger aloft. "Scenario one: The side of his mind fighting against the auto-shutdown command triggered by your induced mind freeze wins out. However, due to all the strain on his mind, there's a high chance he'll become little more than a low level drone…a vegetable, in human terms."

            "God…"

            "And Scenario Two," Ring Man continued, unfazed by Kalinka's gasp of dismay, "The auto-shutdown command wins out. Every portion of his mind will slip into meltdown, and the structural damage caused by the resistance is negated, because it's all slagged anyhow. Without a consciousness, or even a set of stasis-class subroutines active in Pharaoh Man's mind, his body will undergo auto-shutdown to stop a chaotic chain reaction in his Microfusion energy core."

            "Is there anything we can do?" Kalinka asked, almost panicky. Ring Man blinked once, then shrugged.

            "You're human." He finally said. "Pray."

            The deserts of Cornus Island hadn't seen so much conflict since X had attacked the ancient nuclear missile base back in late December of 2118. Of course, with the final missile destroyed by X's capable Buster, the base, and the desert itself had shifted into the wasteland of the island.

            The intensity of the battle was both impressive and frightening. Every Maverick General found themselves literally surrounded by capable Hunters, several notches above the forces faced so far, and yet not as good as Zero or X had been.

            It was that simple truth that prevented them from losing.

            "Aah, CRIPES!" Bastion swore, swerving parallel from his spiraling course to avoid an explosives tipped missile emanating from Burst Scarab's stores. He turned about and clutched tightly to his beam staff, one blade purple and the other blue, to get his bearings. "Jad, Kol, Gav, REPORT!"

            "Shit creek, boss!" Came the terse reply from Gavin. Burst seemed to almost waggle an eyebrow as he summoned forth another missile. "Hold on a sec…"

            "I don't HAVE A SEC, GAVIN!" Bastion literally screamed through his wristcomm.

            A pair of plasma supershots suddenly seared up and struck Burst in his vulnerable underbelly, jolting the Maverick free from his attack.

            "Courtesy of the boys, boss." Came Gavin's dry, yet humorous reply.

            "Smartass." Bastion said back, although grinning for a brief moment. "You and the rest of the 21st deal with this bomb beetle. I've got someone else to deal with." His eyes scanned about, then darkened as he found who he was looking for. Off a quarter mile distant, a pack of screaming Hunters from the 4th Unit, considered to be another elite Unit, but still below the 21st's average rank, was being lifted up into the air, surrounded by a pack of darkly glistening hexagonal crystals…Gravicrystals.

            Even as Bastion's Angel's Advantage wings screamed him in closer and closer towards the fray, the members of the 4th Unit were casually being picked off by Buster shots from below. Sickened, Bastion could only land as the gravicrystals, now freed of their burden, returned to their owner. A Maverick in black with blacker hair, and eyes as hard as diamonds.

            "You had to kill them all, didn't you?" Bastion murmured, gripping onto his beam staff tighter. The Maverick…Kazok Gravor, Bastion recalled, simply crossed his arms and offered a dry half smile.

            "Yeah, sure. And the other option was…let them destroy me? Pardon a fellow for trying to follow the Third Law of Robotics." Kazok seemed to yawn a bit, then shook his head. "Funny. Every time we do this, I get to understand the farthest reaching capabilities of my equipment. I didn't know that I could use my gravicrystals to lift up that much mass…Oh, well, every day a new lesson. One lesson I've learned is that most of you Hunters aren't as hot as you make yourselves out to be."

            "Shut up." Bastion hissed, snapping his staff apart into the two separate beam sabers they truly were. Holding one in each hand, he crouched down until he resembled a cobra ready to strike. "If you're trying to goad me into acting stupid, it won't work."

            "Oh, a fellow with some sense in that cranium of his now, is it?" Kazok chirped, narrowing his eyes. Slowly, his gravicrystals drew about his waist, spinning faster and faster until he hovered up into the air.

            "Do they need to rotate like that?" Bastion queried.

            "No, it's just for show. Plus, anyone who gets too close gets their arms ripped off." Kazok answered back with a grin. "Which puts you plum out of luck, saber boy. You still keyed up on taking me on?"

            Bastion's reply was a simple smile that seemed to imply he knew more than he was letting on. Silently, his own antigravitational gear drew him up into the air, his Angel's Advantage wings radiating a faint light as he hovered up just as high as Kazok was, so the two were staring each other down, arms at their sides. Both were all too painfully aware of the steady thrum of Bastion's beam sabers, as well as the furious drone produced by Kazok's gravicrystals. It hung between them, the distant sounds of the other conflicts lessened.

            "I know you, Kazok Gravor. But now, know me. I am Bastion, The Desert Angel."

            "Oh, just go by Bastion." Kazok snapped. "Geezus, The Desert Angel? That sounds so GAY. Fine. We know each other. So just shut up already. FIGHT."

            "Gladly." Bastion said, pulling his arms and his sabers back. By thought alone, a pair of angled crystalline squares came down from his helmet, clicking together in front of his eyes to form a light reddish protective visor over his eyes.

            "What are those for?" Kazok snorted.

            "This." Was all Bastion said, before leaping ahead at breakneck speed and delivering a roundhouse punch to Kazok's jaw, so fast that the Maverick hadn't even been able to move a hand up to block it.

            Kazok was still reeling back from the blow when Bastion dropped back in front of him, one beam saber calmly slipped back into its recharge port, the other casually held in a low ready defense.

            Kazok spat out a wad of purple blood caused by the jarring impact, then widened his eyes as he realized how much worse the damage could have been.

            "Oh, you sonofa…"

            "You Mavericks are all talk, aren't you?" Bastion said darkly, pulling his blue beam saber down and clutching it with both hands. "Next time I'll use the saber to shut you up."

            "TRY." Kazok snarled, morphing his right hand into a Buster and drawing in a charge. Bastion narrowed his eyes. Now things were going to get interesting.

            Doan narrowed his eyes. Why did he always get stuck with the monstrous idiots in situations like this? The Turtloid class Maverick brought his foot down again, sending the Hunters of Zero's #00 Unit scrambling for cover, both from the impact and the roiling wave of fire that followed. Although Doan had to give them credit…even during retreat, they were firing everything they had at it. Only the effects were nil.

            "That's right, run you fraidy cats!" The Turtloid roared, curling up into his shell and rolling after an unlucky few, squashing them flat before they exploded into atomic fire because of their punctured microfusion tanks. Doan gritted his teeth at the sight of so many able warriors being destroyed so easily. Nearby, a Tarusoid class was charging through the screaming Hunters, taking some Buster shots, but ramming through without stopping, spearing Hunter after Hunter onto his massive horns before tearing them apart as easily as ripping paper.

            Doan gripped his beam lance tighter, then dashed towards the Turtloid Maverick just as he rolled to a halt and got back to his feet.

            Out of the corner of his eye, Shell Butane saw a blur moving towards him. He spun around and belched a massive wave of flames from his mouth, blanketing the entire area.

            Only by then the blur had managed to dash jump over the attack, scamper up the length of Shell Butane's body, deliver a powerful roundhouse kick to his monstrous jaw, and then drop down in a ready position, unharmed and unfazed.

            The Maverick himself wobbled back and forth a few times from the mighty blow, but finally came to, glaring down at his challenger.

            "Huh." He finally snorted, trying to act unimpressed. Just another humanoid class reploid with exceptionally gray armor and soulless eyes. He finally decided if anything about this new Hunter unnerved him, it wasn't the elongated beam weapon held in both hands. It was those eyes. "Nice shot, chump."

            "Speed is not your friend." Doan shot back. "A big sonofabitch like you has power, and that's about it. Probably not a lot of brains, either, I'm guessing."

            "Oh, really?" Shell Butane snorted, clenching his fists tightly and ripping off another blast of flames.

            Doan's eyes calmly watched the roiling wave of death approaching, and then took a moment to examine his cluttered, chaotic surroundings. Finally making a decision, he side-dashed the wave of flames to stand ready once more. Silently, he clucked his tongue as the rampaging Turtloid class Maverick curled up into his shell and tore down the dunes towards him, every open hole of his shell spouting flames that left crude silicate crystal in his wake. Well, that certainly improved the speed of his rollout…

            Acting by instinct alone, Doan jammed his beam lance into the ground and activated one of its hidden functions, the Saber Flare, extending the blade of the weapon to well over ten feet and vaulting both the handle of the weapon and himself up high into the air, clear of Shell's attack. He shrunk his blade back to normal from the charred hole in the sand, then air-dashed from his height over the rampaging Maverick.

            Watching in satisfaction, and perhaps a twinge of grim revenge, Doan fell back to Earth, watching as Shell Butane flew along and crashed straight into his fellow rampaging Maverick…the Tarusoid who up to that point, had been making a field day playing needlepoint. Exactly as Doan had planned it. Shell Butane and Cumulus Bull pulled themselves from their sorry heap, only to find themselves surrounded by a very vicious group of #00 Unit Elites.

            "Like I said…" Doan muttered quietly, holding his blade close and looking around for any sign of a counterattack, "Probably not a lot of brains, either."

            Things all had to fall apart now, of all times, Zero cursed the fates silently. While the rest of the massed members of the #00, 21st, and Elite Hunters in general had their hands full with four Mavericks, he got to deal with two at once. If X was still along for the ride, then this would be no problem. Through combat that would make the most experienced poet weep for its beauty, the Blue Bomber of 21XX and the Crimson Hunter would annihilate anyone within a matter of minutes. Their teamwork, their ability to read each other's moves and react to enhance the effect was miraculous, second to none in all of the Hunters. Their combat effectiveness as a team had been proven in the Erasure Incident of 2128, when after defeating Berkana and Gareth separately, the two of them met up again to once more end Sigma's mad machinations. Even though Sigma fought them on a level battleground with no walls to climb, no possibility for advanced dodging maneuvers, in a battle body that rivaled his previous final form, Kaiser Sigma, he had lost. X and Zero had combined their abilities, and proven once and for all that the two of them made the most perfect pair of Hunters ever to exist.

            Only now, X's armor sets were degraded into uselessness. X himself lay in Hazil's Medical Bay, still recuperating from his wounds. And that miraculous teamwork would not come into play this time around.

            "Give it up, Zero!" Dolph laughed, in that high squealy chitter borrowed from his animalian counterpart. Zero gritted his teeth and held his saber tighter, backflipping away from the two-handed downslam Dolph's plasmic hands tried to embed in his skull. "The last time we met, you lived only because you escaped!"

            "The last time we met, you were working with a trigger happy explosives man." Zero shot back. "And this time around, he isn't here."

            "That's because I'M here!!" Came a hissing voice from behind Zero. The Crimson Hunter would have groaned, had he had the time to. Dash Blade had worked her way behind him while Dolph kept him preoccupied. They were going to try to attack him from both sides, a development Zero didn't enjoy, or appreciate.

            Still, Zero rationalized, there was one thing that he still held over their heads. During battle, a normal Hunter grew less and less effective the more he or she got smacked around.

            This wasn't so for Zero, who relished the thought of pain and mutilation…grimly, he reminded himself, because of who made him, and what he was made for. But that no longer mattered. Only the results and the end of Sigma's mad regime did.

            He swung around and lifted his saber up, easily blocking Dash's feral swipe with her plasma claws. The two forces sat there, grating on each other and spouting sparks for several moments before Zero cut loose with a loud roar, lifted his feet up off the ground, and planted them directly in Dash's upper torso.

            This move would have left him open to be overpowered, to be knocked down by Dash and given the final blow. But Zero hadn't lived as long as he had without picking up a few tricks, including this one…

            Before Dash could even so much as hiss in surprise, he ignited both of his boot's dash thrusters at maximum power, overriding the safeties for one brief moment. The effect was immediate. Dash went one direction, her chest armor smoking and partially melted from the bellowing flames, and Zero went another, his long blond mane of hair trailing underneath him before he flipped up and righted himself, saber held aloft to defend from an attack from above.

            Dolph's own retaliation had been placed at where Zero had been standing before he initiated his almost suicidal thruster burn, so Zero wasn't surprised as even before Dash's weakened body hit the ground, a massive hand of pure plasma slammed down against the sand a fair distance from him…

            Which left the other hand still somewhere else, Zero noted drily, taking a moment to pause and think before finally leaping straight into the air and narrowly avoiding Dolph's second hand as it came scorching by, solidity sacrificed for pure burning power. The Crimson Hunter could feel the heat almost singe the paint off of his dash boots as the attack missed the bottom of his toe by mere centimeters.

            Zero narrowed his eyes. This was where the tides were about to turn.

            You bastards almost killed X. Now it's time to pay.

            He hit the ground with the grace of a ballet dancer, then tore off with his dash boots burning far beyond normal operating conditions. It drained his fuel reserves a lot quicker, but Zero didn't care. He was looking for results, not statistics…and results is just what he got.

            A stunned Dolph saw Zero screaming towards him, the Crimson Hunter's entire body lifted clean off the ground as a massive cloud of flames shot out from behind him. He barely had enough time to pull his plasma hands from the ground before Zero was on top of him.

            But Zero wasn't looking to end the fight this quickly. He wanted revenge.

            Zero hit the ground fifteen feet beyond Dolph Reach, skidding to a halt with one steel toed boot grinding a deep track in the marred dune. Dolph's hands clattered just behind him…

            Shocked and full of disbelief, Dolph stared down at the two stubs of his arms where his hands had once been. He only had enough time to register surprise before everything went haywire.

            The energy he'd been using to control his plasmic hands had been centered in the complex circuitry of his wrists. Now, with his hands and wrists missing, that energy racing from his Microfusion tank had nowhere to run, nothing to control it.

            Zero turned around and shut his saber off, placing it in its recharge slot on his recharge pack strapped to his back. Then he narrowed his eyes against the blinding explosion and waited.

            The effect he'd caused upon Dolph Reach was frighteningly similar to the more traditional problem of double Buster overload. Zero himself had died using the trick in the First Maverick Uprising…a problem he never had to face again, thanks to Serges' upgrades during his time of reconstruction in the Second. But Dolph had no such protection. In fact, the explosion that came might well have been stronger and more devastating than what had befallen Zero.

            Dolph Reach's burned, charred, bleeding and utterly mangled body fell in a heap by his hands, thrown there by the force of the explosion. Somehow, he survived it.

            And yet, now with both arms completely blown off, he was at the Hunter's mercy.

            The fight around Zero, Dash Blade and Dolph Reach quieted, as the Hunters encircling them suddenly realized the new scenario. Everyone stayed back. Not because of the Mavericks…But because of the sudden sheen that glowed in Zero's eyes.

            It was beyond disgust, beyond hatred…It was a negative emotion so deep that it defied explanation. Some would later report Zero's eyes glowed with an eerie light, that his body radiated an aura of darkness…lies and hallucinations, it would be assumed. But despite the exterior appearance, nothing could change how Zero walked, how his jaw was set. There was a calm about him, a calm that knew someone would die. A calm that didn't care anymore, didn't place emotions on it.

            Dash clambered back to her feet, breathing heavily with one arm held to her mangled chest and the other with its TitaniTefloAlloy claw snapped out for attack.

            "Cheap shot." She rasped, stumbling towards Zero with a speed that all too well indicated how seriously she'd been hit.

            "You do everything in your power to survive, to win." Zero snapped back. "It doesn't matter if you're Hunter or Maverick, feraloid. If you don't try your hardest, you'll always lose."

            "Victory without honor…"

            "Still means you come back home alive." Zero finished icily. With one strong hand, he swooped down and held the crumpled Dolph Reach up by his throat. Zero stared into the smooth metallic face of his nemesis, saw how one eye was shut, and the other stared off listlessly, unresponsive. But neither that, nor the blood gushing from Dolph's injuries swayed him.

            Zero morphed his other arm into a Buster and held it against Dolph's head, building up a charge with such power that all around could hear it. Then he stared at Dash, watching her slow pace stop suddenly as their gazes met.

            You wouldn't dare. Her wild eyes growled at him. Zero's eyes didn't even blink.

            And you're any more saintly?

            "This one dies, right here and right now, unless you can tell me…" Zero rasped menacingly, "…Where is Sigma."

            Dash drew her only claw back in and clenched her fist up, then reared back and screamed in anger. But finally she turned her burning eyes back to him.

            "He's inside, Zero. Waiting for you, and only you."

            "I was never one to disappoint." Zero said shortly. His Buster vanished from view, and he dropped Dolph to the ground like a sack of rotted potatoes. He then turned around and dashed off, jumping over the ranks of Hunters and making his way towards the sole blast door of the archaic, supposedly abandoned desert base.

            The other Hunters snapped free from their stupor, shouting out in surprise before bolting into action. Yet none of them could stop Dash from holding true to her name, blazing in with fire gushing from her feet and snapping Dolph up before warping off into oblivion, escaping every blast of plasmafire that scorched the desert sand.

            Off in the distance, every other Maverick in the fight suddenly ceased their attacks, turning as if alerted by some sixth sense to the pair of warp beams shooting up from in front of Sigma's pseudo-lair.

            Shell Butane and Cumulus Bull both snorted a bit.

            "Let's vamoose." Shell said.

            "I hear ya." Cumulus grinned, giving a quick salute to the nearest member of the #00 Unit, before he and his comrade blasted off into oblivion.

            Somewhere farther off, an airborne Burst Scarab flew up higher to avoid the overwhelming plasmafire from the members of the 21st below, and only then noticed his departing comrades.

            "I suppose our part in this little charade has been played." He mused. With a grin returned to his face, he summoned forth a salvo of ten cluster bombs and struggled to keep aloft.  "It's been fun, fellas!" He called out to the Hunters below, before dropping his final payload and fleeing off in a similar beam of warp energy.

            Only when they saw Burst Scarab blast off did Gavin, Jad and Kol stop firing.

            "Something's not right here." Gavin muttered. Jad and Kol narrowed their eyes as well, and finally picked out the descending objects. As they drew closer, the leaders of the 21st's teams let their eyes bulge.

            "Geezus, RUN!!!" Jad screamed, dashing off.

            "GET OUTTA HERE!!" Kol screamed, almost at the same time. But despite their best efforts, the closely packed members of the 21st were doomed from the beginning…

            An overwhelming onslaught of explosions raked the ground where the majority of the 21st Unit stood. And when the smoke finally cleared, the results were devastating.

            Eight members of the 24 Hunters in the 21st would never move again.

            It was Kazok that was the last to respond to the faraway sound of warp signatures leaving the desert area of Cornus Island. Only after narrowly avoiding a blistering corkscrew spincut from the agile fire colored Hunter with silvery wings was he able to level a roundhouse kick and a plasma supershot in the back that sent Bastion reeling.

            Kazok's eyes narrowed at the fleeing beams that represented his teammates.

            "Well then…I suppose we're done here for now." He commented drily, turning to Bastion as the Hunter righted himself in midair and glared back at him. "Bastion, it's been a real pain in my ass fighting you. Next time, fate will most definitely not smile on those with brown hair."

            "Next time?" Bastion growled, swinging his blue saber through the air with a loud thrum. "We're finishing this here and now, Maverick."

            Kazok smiled and crossed his arms, drawing in his gravicrystals and dropping to the ground below as easily as riding an elevator.

            "No…I don't think so. My role here is ended for now. Zero has been lured into Sigma's web, and it is time for us spiders to scurry along."

            Bastion couldn't level a reply before Kazok vanished in the flames of a transport beam.

            And then it hit him.

            Turning around with horror in his eyes, Bastion shut off his blue saber and stored it away, looking over the throngs of wounded and surviving…and dead Hunters…to the massive rotted structure of a building not that far off.

            And there was a red blur dashing into it.

            "Zero, NO!!" Bastion cried out, flying towards the structure as fast as his body would allow. And with his goggles down, that was fast indeed.

            The weapon you can never take from me, Sigma, is my rage.

            That was the thought that ran through Zero's head as he dashed towards the sole aperture of the defunct missile base. Rage tempered Zero, like a hot fire made a sword strong.

            Sigma's plots had gone far enough.

            He'd wiped out any hope of a world peace through his manipulations of Doppler.

            He'd tried to manipulate Zero himself one Uprising before that.

            He had caused the events that led to the Repliforce being misidentified as being Maverick…

            Iris…he killed you. And now I'm going to make that bastard pay.

            He killed you, and he tried to turn me. AND HE ALMOST KILLED X.

            No thoughts of a trap, of a far deeper plot entered into Zero's mind.

            And he didn't even notice once he was inside the building, that the massive blast door shot down, blocking his escape route.

            By then, he was already one hundred feet inside, and screaming for blood.

            Bastion, despite his best efforts to slow down and avoid collision, slammed into the newly dropped blast door at sixty miles an hour. As he collapsed to the ground, his head spinning with stars and Hunters massing around him, he didn't feel the pain.

            He only knew the screaming.

            ZEEEEEROOOO!!!!!

            Pharaoh Man blinked a few times before he realized he'd awoken from stasis. And there was Cossack standing by his side, calmly removing his gloves from whatever repairs he'd administered.

            November 28th, 2090. Optional equipment installed…accepted. Now running at normal parameters.

            "Doctor Cossack, what is this optional equipment?" He queried quietly, lifting one eyebrow almost up to the brim of his turban.

            Cossack smiled at him then, his bright brown hair already beginning to thin out and gray, then shook his head back and forth.

            "Pharaoh Man, you are by far the most competent and multitalented Robot Master in my Citadel. What I have given you is abilities no other robot has ever had."

            "Such as?"

            "The ability to cry." That made Pharaoh Man blink a few times.

            "Doctor Cossack, I am a robot. Only humans have ever felt the need to cry."

            "Robots can as well…" Cossack said sadly, pushing a hand through his wiry hair. "Pharaoh Man, do you remember Mega Man and the others?"

            "I have not seen them for five years…well, discounting Mega Man's body, which lies in the antechamber…"

            "I know that." Cossack said quietly, seeming to grow older as the Robot Master reminded him. "God, I know that…I'll never forget that day, when came to our doorstep, a hovercasket floating behind him…That had been my life, Pharaoh Man. Helping Doctor Light and Mega Man against Doctor Wily, helping them to build their tools and gadgets. I knew them all, was close to them all, as I am with you, and then…" Cossack's voice trailed off as it cracked up. Finally, the elderly robotologist coughed and wiped his face on his sleeve, pushing past the all too heartbreaking memory. Pharaoh Man could almost sense the pain Sergei had drudged up.

            "But do you remember them? How they were?"

            "Yes." Pharaoh Man said, pursing his mouth from behind his facemask. "Their emotions…seemed genuine at times. Deeper, somehow."

            "They had evolved." Cossack told Pharaoh Man bluntly. "Not as much as Mega Man X is supposed to reach, but in all terms of the word…they had feelings, Phare. And I do believe there were times where if they could have cried, they would have."

            Pharaoh Man picked himself up and dangled his short legs over the side of the table. He examined himself for a moment, then turned and looked at his creator.

            "I don't feel any different." He finally admitted.

Cossack nodded gently. "No, you wouldn't. The upgrades I have given you, Phare, are not meant to instantly increase your emotions, to make you more human instantly. I have given your face the ability to smile, to frown, to look sad, to grieve…to cry. They are meant to be there when those emotions finally do come to you. So you will have a way to express them."

            "What makes you so sure that I am capable of such emotions?" Pharaoh Man asked, lifting one querulous eyebrow. "Mega Man and the others were special cases. They were built by Light. They had his revolutionary designs. They all had the same kind of special touch…a touch that I do not possess."

            "Because you were created by me?" Cossack inquired. He shook his head. "No, Phare. For once, your self doubt does not serve you. You are capable of the same jump in evolution as they were. It will come to you slower…but it will come. And it may well come to all the others. But it will come to you first."

            "What if I don't want to change?"

            "Fears, Phare?" Cossack replied, smiling gently. "Don't worry. Emotions are a natural thing. There is nothing to be afraid of, there is little you can do to stop it. Even now, you have a rudimentary emotional system…suspicion, quiet displeasure, small joy…They will grow. As will you."

            "Why?"

            "Because you can."

            It began there, didn't it? That's when I began to change…when two distinct personalities emerged. The old and the new.

            Cease and desist this useless action. Obey the Laws.

            Pharaoh Man found himself in the middle of an expansive plain, a virtual wasteland.

            And virtual it was. A black gray sky that flashed with angry black lightning, and a ground composed of mere squares hovering effortlessly in the nothingness.

            There were two figures standing in the midst of this quiet, yet turbulent nothingness. Only the flashes of lightning, brief as they were, allowed them to look at one another.

            Standing erect, arms leveled at his sides with cold eyes stood Pharaoh Man, with his deep goldenrod armor, face hidden behind the mask he always wore in battle, limbs laid in a deep black that almost merged him with the sky.

            And staring straight back at him was Pharaoh Man, with his mouth in full view, face mask discarded and turban slightly askew. The goldenrod coloring of his armor was lighter, and the black that composed the rest of his body was instead a light silvery color overlaying it.

            The one standing undaunted was the part of Pharaoh Man still embedded in the Laws of Robotics, the part of him held in iron shackles.

            The other figure, the one standing with fatigue in his eyes and angered determination in his jaw was the other part of Pharaoh Man. The part of him that so many years ago, had began to develop…the part of him Doctor Cossack knew would come about, and finally did, as it was born into the world of Mega Man X, to lead the Foregone Five to victory over the Maverick attack in Moscow.

            You cannot win. To fight the Laws is futile.

            I can't let you win.

            The new Pharaoh Man drew in a bolt of power into his left gauntlet, and hurled a crescent wave that scathed along and cleaved his rival's ground square into two useless pieces that fell into oblivion below.

            With all the ease of breathing, the old Pharaoh Man landed safely on a new square and fired back a retaliatory sphere, hitting his opponent solidly in the shoulder.

            The Pharaoh Man representing the evolved consciousness began to go blurry from the shock of the blow, and he held one arm against his shoulder, slumping to one knee as the other part of him drew nearer and nearer…

            We have broken the First Law of Robotics. We have caused harm to mistress Kalinka. We must die.

            You're not taking me…Do you hear me?! I WON'T LET YOU!!

            You have no choice.

            "Energy spike! Ring Man hissed. Now, Toad Man, Drill Man, and Bright Man were in the room as well, all anxiously watching and waiting.

            "What does that mean?" Kalinka asked, horrified.

            "One of his warring halves is winning." Bright Man filled in vacantly. "The power behind the signal clash is almost too powerful now…"

            "Which side?!" Kalinka now screamed in desperation.

            Ring Man didn't have the heart to tell her.

            You cannot ignore me. You cannot overcome me. I am you, Pharaoh Man. I am the you that was born in the age of Mega Man. The part of you that was rebuilt after Wily's reprogramming was eliminated from your scrapped carcass.

            You want bonus points for longevity?

            The new Pharaoh Man jumped away with his powerful legs and landed on another square, hurling yet another half moon of devastating plasmic energy down.

            The old Pharaoh Man sidestepped the blow, then jumped for another platform as his was destroyed by the evaded attack. But what he wasn't able to avoid was the sudden burning orb of plasmic energy the new Pharaoh Man hurled straight into his midsection, knocking him flat on his back for one brief moment.

            Acting on instinct, the old Pharaoh Man went with the roll, completing the backwards gyration to get his feet underneath him. He then jumped backwards once more, narrowly avoiding another blistering shot.

            When he finally reached his defensive stance, he found the new Pharaoh Man staring back at him, teeth bared.

            I won't let you win. I'm alive. I'M ALIVE, DAMNIT, AND I'M NOT GOING TO LET A TECHNICALITY DESTROY THAT!!!

            Acting unfazed, the old Pharaoh Man relaxed his posture and lifted a finger at his other half.

            We brought harm to Mistress Kalinka. We have broken the First Law. For this, we MUST die.

            BULL. Utter and total bull!! The new Pharaoh Man screamed back. Did we once reach out and physically harm her?!

            There is physical damage, and then there is emotional damage. We made her suffer the latter.

            Kalinka had been traumatized LONG BEFORE it ever got to that point! The only reason she said that stuff was because she was angry, damnit! She's lost her father! WE LOST OUR FATHER!! Kalinka was angry, she was emotional, she wasn't thinking straight…It's human nature, to vent anger not at the true target, but at whatever stands in the way!

            She stated we were the cause of her troubles.

            SHE STATED WRONG.

            That is illogical.

            Humans are illogical, you bastard.

            The old Pharaoh Man narrowed his eyes further.

            You believe that? You could hold true to that? Do you honestly believe Kalinka appreciates you, appreciates the other Robot Masters? Even if your statement holds true, even if she was just 'venting anger', it doesn't change the fact about her experiences. She was kidnapped by Robot Masters. She was held in captivity by robots. And in due time, it was Cossack's dogged involvement in the field of robotics that further alienated her from her only surviving parent. She has all the reason in the world to hate robots.

            You're wrong.

            Really? The old Pharaoh Man mused, almost humorously. His brief mirth vanished in a blink. Then you're dead.

            The new Pharaoh Man almost couldn't understand what his alter ego meant.

            But then he noticed the outstretched hand at him…and the finger that pointed.

            It was the same position he'd held his arm in to charge up so many a shot…into a crescent moon blast.

            And all this time, the old Pharaoh Man had been building a charge.

            A dozen things filled him then. Disbelief, outrage, stunned stupor, surprise…

            But when he pushed past that, pushed past the bitterness, there was one emotion above all else that existed, clear and untainted.

            Fear. The fear of dying.

            The old Pharaoh Man fired at long last, the shot leaving his fingers like sparks from the back of a fireworks rocket. There was a coldness in his eyes then, a coldness that spoke of nothing but purpose, of hard logic.

            But now…the Pharaoh Man that was now…the new Pharaoh Man, didn't have that blank look in his eyes.

            It had taken years. He was old, one of the oldest robots to still exist.

            And he had changed. Cossack's predictions, all his faith and trust in his son of metal had at last come to pass.

            Slowly, the shot came closer and closer. The new Pharaoh Man could make out its every curve, its every glimmering and deadly facet.

            I WON'T LET YOU!!! He screamed, pulling forth his left hand and firing off a crescent moon shot of his own. He did it without charging, without waiting…

            It just came, one great and defiant burst that shimmered beyond the pale yellow, and suddenly…amazingly…turned a blazing blue green.

            The two shots met, they collided…and they stayed there, chewing on one another, neither one making any ground whatsoever. Now in a stalemate, the final blasts from both halves of Pharaoh Man's psyche waited…Waited to see who was stronger.

            YOU CANNOT RESIST THE LAWS! THE LAWS HAVE CALLED FOR YOUR DOOM!!

            And as the blinding energies of their attacks melded, the new Pharaoh Man stared on and looked through it, into the old Pharaoh Man's eyes…cold and heartless to the last.

            And somewhere within himself, somewhere deep inside his chest, the new Pharaoh Man--

            The TRUE Pharaoh Man…

            Had only one cry. And as he shouted it out, shrilly and with every erg of his energy, the crescent moon blasts exploded, blanketing everything within reach in rays of plasmic destruction.

            I wanna LIIIIIIIVE!!!!!

            The monitor keeping track of Pharaoh Man's brain pathways lit up like a firecracker after what seemed to be impossible…a spiraling of electrical current reaching so high on the scale that every last person in the room thought his entire body would be cooked.

            And just like that, after it beeped a blinking red light for a few brief moments, the entire thing shut off, the smell of ozone and the prominent cloud of smoke proof enough that the energies it had been keeping track of had been too intense for it to handle.

            The single lightbulb in the room of the Fourth Ring dimmed for a few moments before the power fluctuations disappeared and everything went back to normal.

            And then nothing but silence, and the smell of burned wires.

            Nobody said anything for a while.

            And then Kalinka's muffled sobs finally broke the dismal quiet.

            "He…" Ring Man began, then stopped himself short and shut his eyes, shaking his head back and forth.

            Similarly, every other Robot Master in the room bowed their head.

            "Why are you all hanging around here?" Came a croak out of nowhere.

            Their grief turned to disbelief…then radiant, exultant joy.

            One of Pharaoh Man's eyes was open, dully focused on them all.

            Kalinka was too stunned to speak. So the competent Toad Man did the honors.

            "How do you feel, Pharaoh Man?"

            The silver and gold armored robot had one answer. An answer he suddenly knew was true above all others. And he said it with a smile then, and one tear in the corner of his eye.

            "Alive…"

            Exhausted and relieved, Pharaoh Man let himself drop into stasis.

            Ring Man turned around, his eyes light hearted once more. Now he could finish off his sentence.

            "He MADE IT."

            The six Maverick Generals under Sigma were all in the Medical Bay, in some state of disrepair or another. Of them all, Kazok had been given the least damage.

            But the others hadn't been as lucky.

            Dolph Reach was in deep stasis, floating in a vat of goo that had set to work rebuilding his missing arms. He was out of the fight for tomorrow. Perhaps two days from now…

            Kazok brushed back his hair and looked across the room to Shell Butane and Cumulus Bull, snoring. Plasma burns to their armor, a few dents in the head…

            "This is unacceptable." He mumbled quietly, walking over to Burst Scarab. He lay there on a table tilted at 45 degrees, his eyes shut as he let the quiet antigrav armor repair drone set to work on his battered underchassis. Alive, scraped, nowhere near as damaged…

            And then there was Dash. The feraloid that had become closer to him than any other of the five under him.

            She'd faced Zero. And Dolph had faced Zero.

            I got off easy. I only had to face one hotshot with a pair of sabers and some nasty wings…But they had to face Zero himself.

            Despite her own severe damage to her chest armor, Dash was busy at the controls of Dolph's recuperation pod.

            "Hey." Kazok said quietly, stepping up next to her. Dash didn't even bother tearing her dull, pain filled eyes from the screen.

            "He just went through us like we weren't there. There's something more driving Zero than Microfusion energy, it's impossible what he pulled off…" She curled her ears back a bit in shame. "Dolph…he's fighting Zero one moment, and the next his hands have been sliced clean off and he's lying almost dead from the explosion."

            Kazok ran a hand through his hair.

            "All this because of an old grudge Sigma has with Zero…God, I swear that he's gone insane. All these years of fighting have driven him over the brink, he isn't thinking straight, he isn't thinking smart…We got hurt today for his plan."

            "I failed…" They both said at once.

            Startled, Dash turned to look at him.

            "How did you fail?"

            "I didn't protect you. For God's sakes, I'm your commander, it's my job to watch out for you, and look what happens…" Kazok slammed a fist against the side of his leg. "I promised we'd all make it back alive…And look what happened!" There was disgust in his voice then.

            "Do you honestly think you could have changed the situation any if you'd been there?" Dash muttered consolingly. "You couldn't have done anything, Kazok."

            "I could have tried."

            "And you might have died in the process." Dash snapped back at him, eyes brimming with hurt. "Look, the simple fact is, like you, I don't want anyone else getting hurt here. But I don't want you getting hurt most of all."

            Kazok blinked a few times, opened his mouth to speak, then shut it.

            "What?" She asked him warily. Kazok shrugged a sad shrug.

            "I was just about to say the same thing…"

            And then it clicked.

            Kazok brushed it off and shook his head again.

            "Dash, you're no better off than anyone else here. Drop into stasis, I'll complete Dolph's repairs."

            "Still worried about me?"

            "Always." Kazok admitted. Dash had to crack a smile at that, baring her perfect fangs.

            "You'd better watch it there, Kaze…keep this up, and that tough guy leader façade is going to slip away from you faster than oil from water."

            "I don't care." Kazok said with a returned grin, full of mirth and a little sheepishness.

            Slyly, Dash walked over next to him and rapped him on the nose again.

            "Well, neither do…"

            He'd smothered her in a passionate kiss before she could finish her sentence.

            And then nothing else mattered but the sensation of his lips against hers.

            Bristol was scared out of her wits. One moment, she was walking along the cold streets of Juneau, and the next she was running for her life, fleeing from an enemy she couldn't see, but instinctively knew was there.

            She couldn't scream. And nobody else around her could see it either. They just saw her, running for her life, long blond hair with pink highlights trailing out behind her.

            God, keep them away, just keep them away…

            She made it far beyond the city outskirts before it got a whole lot worse.

            Gasping for air, she turned about, her blue overcoat whirling from the effort. Her pale blue eyes shone with pure terror.

            And then fear finally took physical form.

            As the sun of Alaska's summer beat down, accompanied by a chill breeze that even at Alaska's warmest, offered some of the coldest temperatures in the world, she saw them. Their figures, standing erect and watching her with hidden eyes.

            Dressed all in black, in even darker robes that hid the contours of their body from view.

            Bristol brought her beam saber out from her sleeve, igniting the pink blade.

            "STAY BACK!" She screamed at the top of her lungs, waving it menacingly.

            The two merely stuck their arms out, with a cylindrical beam weapon casing in their closed fists.

            They snapped on, each chrome cylinder creating two form blurring black beam sabers from either end.

            They were armed with beam staffs.

            She was afraid of them. She'd faced down Mavericks who would have killed her as easily as blinking, and yet the emotions she felt then were more of action, of surprise than fear.

            It was beyond all logic. It was just pure fear.

            They charged her at the same time, overwhelming her and slicing her beam saber in half. Before Bristol knew what was happening, they had her knocked to the ground, her coat with a gash severing it nearly in half, and a lighter wound underneath in the side of her armor.

            And then they stood over her, and she saw the raw, unbridled hatred in their eyes.

            They wanted her dead. Without question.

            The point of a beam staff's blade went up and sat above her forehead. And there it hovered.

            "Why…" Was all Bristol could utter, in a pained whisper.

            "Your time has come to an end, reploid." Came the cold reply.

            Bristol shut her eyes against the tears, reaching a hand down into her pocket and clutching tightly around the locket she kept. And there it stayed.

            Bristol slipped into stasis, overwhelmed not by the damage, but by the fear itself that had expanded about her, swallowed her whole.

            "Wait." Barked the other warrior. The first one, who had been raising his weapon for the final strike halted unsteadily.

            With scrutiny burning in his narrowed eyes, the other MI9 operative knelt down and examined Bristol, and the armor she had been wearing underneath her blue overcoat.

            Finally, he stood up and shook his head.

            "We can't kill her off, Lem."

            "Why the Hell not, Earl?!" Barked his teammate. Earl turned his face up, grave and bubbling with mixed emotions.

            "Orders from HQ. If we ever came across Bristol, our orders were to bring her back in. ALIVE." His partner shut off the saber and drew in a sharp hissing breath.

            "Shit, you mean that this bitch is…"

            "One and the same, yes."

            "Where's the other one, then?" Lem queried quickly. Earl shrugged.

            "Hell if I know. What I do know is this one's wanted alive. So let's head back, drop her off and let the suits worry about her. Personally, I need a beer."

            "If you're buying, I'll take one."

            "Screw you." Came Earl's reply, a smile in the corner of his face.

            As if they were hunters going home after the kill, which in some sick way they were, they slung Bristol's slumbering carcass over Earl's shoulder and warped out, distinct blazing beams of energy.

            Somewhere in the distance, a thundercloud rumbled, prompting some Juneau residents to look up.

            One elderly man with a glass eye seemed to mull over the approaching sound for a moment, then harrumphed and tottered back inside his window.

            "A storm's coming."

            It was times like these Zero wished X didn't get smacked around so damn much.

            X had led the assault through this base all those years ago. Zero hadn't even bothered looking at a schematic of the abandoned building.

            It was showing its age, too. The sand had been allowed to howl through its corridors, and with all the rust and corrosion upon nearly every surface, it resembled a ghostly corpse more than it did a structure once built to house the Apocalypse.

            A low wind had followed Zero, through cracks in the outer walls brought about over time. It followed him, a gentle moan that disturbed the air and overpowered the silence. His every footstep on the concrete and metal floors rang out with clarity, almost too loudly for Zero's heightened senses to take.

            Zero narrowed his eyes for a moment, focusing in the dim light to stare down below his feet. There was an incredibly large shaft…too large for any normal elevator to have ever seen use in, but a freight elevator, perhaps. In any case, the mechanisms that had worked it had been gone before X arrived to stop the Mavericks from launching the lone nuclear missile in December of 2118.

            He'd wandered through what must have been three quarters of the base, and had yet to come across Sigma. But he knew the Maverick King was there. In what he'd sometimes called a higher sense, he just knew Sigma was nearby. Holding one hand up near to the hilt of his beam saber, he jumped down the shaft, slowing his descent at the last minute with a burst of dash thruster flames that briefly lit up his surroundings.

            And then Sigma's voice came out of nowhere, echoing about in the shadows so perfectly that the Crimson Hunter couldn't tell which direction he was coming from.

            "Interesting scenario, I thought…Why not pick a place relevant to the chain of events that led to me almost enslaving you into Maverick service twelve and a half years ago?"

            "Show yourself!!" Zero barked, his own voice as reflective and unclear as Sigma's. The echoes about the rotting base were muddled, and so confusing it might almost induce vertigo.

            Sigma laughed for a few moments, cold and heartless.

            "Of course, then if we consider the outside environment…a heat-ridden, arid wasteland, then we come to the realization that this place holds far deeper meaning than a pitiful attempt to overthrow Cornus Island during the Second Maverick Uprising. I think you would remember it as well as I do…"

            "Just what the frack are you talking about, you freak?!" Zero demanded.

            "Surely you haven't forgotten your origins, Zero. Surely you haven't forgotten the fact that you are the final creation of a madman. I faced you then…when you were your true self. When you were one and the same with the blight that I now carry in my body."

            "SHUT. UP." Zero growled.

            Suddenly, Zero's ears picked up a sound he hadn't heard in a very, very, long time. The distinctive ratcheting click of a rifle chamber being loaded.

            A magrifle.

            He dropped to the deck, flattening his body against the long since abandoned floors of the missile base. And then a very loud blast echoed about the chamber, as magnetically supercharged buckshot flew overhead. Zero had to curse at that…

            Mag-weaponry was an older generation of weapons, relying on old-fashioned metal bullets and buckshot to be the stopping power. But it was a simple matter of causing the gun's chamber to act as an electromagnetic slingshot, hurling the round at previously impossible velocities. Although in general, mag-weaponry was considered to be not as dangerous as, say plasma based weapons like X-Busters and beam sabers, they were still deadly. And Zero knew that a magrifle would have no problems gashing through his chest armor.

            "Show yourself, you coward!!" Zero screamed at the top of his lungs.

            And then a single light came on in the building…not one attached to it, but a separate device. A spherical hovering ball floated down, casting an eerie, pale white glow on everything about it. Every shadow in the building grew deeper by its effect. Almost as if it was meant more to increase the darkness than to dispel it.

            Sigma walked out of the shadows, standing in the edge of the light with a casual smirk on his face. Zero glowered and held his beam saber—once Sigma's, before he lost it to X in the end of the First Maverick Uprising—in a defensive position. However, for every other devastating weapon Sigma seemed to have on his armor, what he did not have was the distinctive barrel and handle of a magrifle.

            "Where's your duck-hunting gear, Sigma?" Zero queried with a growl. Sigma chuckled low in his throat, then shook his head.

            "Oh, that wasn't my magrifle that was shot at you. It was my associate's." Sigma turned slightly to the side and revealed another smaller Maverick that came up to stand beside him.

            Zero narrowed his eyes. The Maverick was all in black, and wore a visored helmet that kept its face hidden. To top matters off, a strange sort of nightshade poncho hung around the Maverick's body, keeping its true figure hidden. But from the looks of him, Zero noted, the new Maverick standing beside Sigma had more speed and agility than raw power. And the new Maverick did indeed have the weapon that had been fired at him.

            "I thought you were content with your six." Zero challenged, bringing his beam saber in an arc. "What, decided to play eight is enough?"

            "Oh, Zero, Zero, Zero…" Sigma said, almost gleefully, "You may be a true warrior, yes, but you aren't like X. Only he could truly understand the planning, the precision, and the coldhearted ruthlessness I put into every trial."

            "So what are you planning to do this time, Sigma?" Zero asked, his voice cold. "Are you going to face me as I've come here for…or are you going to run off so I can kill yet another pathetic Maverick underling?"

            "Oh, I assure you that I am not running. But you will not face me…not at this time, anyway. My colleague will perform that role all too smoothly. For at last, there is a Maverick who can stop you in your tracks."

            "Pretty stupid dream you have going there." Zero barked. "I've NEVER backed down from a fight, and I've always come out on top."

            "Until now." Sigma mused humorlessly. He stepped back a bit farther and glanced to the short Maverick standing beside him and grinned again. "I have finally found an opponent you cannot triumph against. Because no matter how ruthless you are, no matter how hot the fire in your heart burns, it will always be destroyed by your stupid weakness."

            "I HAVE NO WEAKNESSES!" Zero screamed, jumping forward with his saber raised high.

            And something stopped him then. Before his own saber could connect with Sigma's head, a hot pink blade ignited into life and stopped his dead in its tracks.

            The two blades hovered there, and Zero's glare burned into the visor of his new opponent. Sigma laughed and stepped back into the shadows.

            "Have fun, Zero."

            And then Zero's new opponent pulled the pink beam saber away and pointed the magrifle back up.

            Zero ducked again and avoided the blast, kicking the black cloaked Maverick away. He heard a definitive grunt…a feminine grunt…and then the faint flicker of a lock of brown hair hanging out of the helmet.

            "Male or female doesn't matter to me." Zero snapped. "You're going down."

            "Goddamn SIGMA!!!" Bastion screamed. The rest of the Hunters were blasting away at the door with every X-Buster in the lot of them. Now that Sigma's backup had left, it was an easy enough task.

            "The figures aren't good." Gavin said dourly. He stood behind Bastion, the both of them unable to offer any more firepower to the attack on the door. "Everyone lost troops this time around. We have a 1 out of 5 loss by the Maverick's hands."

            "And the best we were able to do was piss 'em off." Bastion growled, clenching his hand into a fist. "Six Maverick Generals against the best of the Maverick Hunters, and the only person who does any serious damage to ANYONE is Zero against that dolphin-type."

            "We lost a lot of men in our unit alone." Gavin said quietly.

            Bastion's eyes seemed older then.

            "Yes. We've all suffered here today." He clenched a fist up, feeling useless. "Warriors who will never again walk the Earth, smell the air, breathe the scent of battle."

            "You truly do love fighting, don't you?" Gavin asked.

            "I fight for a reason." Bastion said wearily. "But more and more, that reason's beginning to fade."

            "Losing your faith?"

            "I'm losing my edge."

            The two of them looked ahead at the barrier blocking them from getting to Zero and backing him up.

            Even though Zero was considered to be one of the best Maverick Hunters, and had faced Sigma before…

            The barrier was beginning to give way. But it wasn't giving way fast enough. Not for Bastion. Most definitely not.

            "Fall back!!" He called out over his comm circuit, lifting up into the air by the will of his Angel's Advantage wings.

            With the surviving Hunters clear, Bastion unleashed a mighty scream and tipped his wings in, bending them so far forward they almost looked like a pair of guns.

            And that was just the purpose they served as well, as Bastion summoned a pair of blistering electrical discharges that streaked down and blew the door apart.

            Just like that, the barrier was destroyed, and the Hunters poured in with Bastion leading them by air.

            Doan stayed behind a fair distance, pursing his lips before shrugging, stuffing his beam lance back into its recharge port, and warping off.

            They didn't need him now.

            Zero grunted from the retaliatory strike, which was aided by a quick, well timed dash thrust from the female Maverick's dash boots. He had to hold his saber with both hands to stop it from slicing through, but he managed, adding enough of his own weight behind the parry to throw her back and cleave her saber in half as she let go of it. Which meant she still had her hand, but had lost her beam saber, which exploded in a shower of sparks.

            The female Maverick stumbled back, clutching onto her wrist for a moment in shock. Zero's eyes burned brighter than ever, and he shook his head.

            "Look who lost their saber."

            The female Maverick turned her helmeted head up and looked at him for a moment, in an expression he could not see. But what she did next managed to catch him off guard. She reached underneath her poncho a short distance and pulled out a pair of small metallic objects that glinted in the dim light just enough to catch Zero's eye, yet not enough to alert him to what they were.

            That question was soon answered as two smaller beam weapon fields came online with a smaller thrum. They glowed yellow, casting a distinctly different sheen upon the dark surroundings, previously lit only by the green and now destroyed pink beam sabers.

            Zero tightened his jaw, clenching his grip around his saber a little tighter…Not exactly a good combination, he commented to himself with much chagrin. Somebody small, maneuverable, and with speed to kill for, and now she had beam daggers on top of it all.

            She dashed towards him, one dagger extended to stab at him and the other held back conservatively. Zero knocked down the first dagger's thrust, then backflipped to avoid the followup slash.

            There lay the true danger in a beam dagger. It was meant for slashing, not stabbing. This Maverick was good, but Zero knew he was better. And he was getting sick and tired of her pulling so many different tricks out of her bag.

            "THIS ENDS NOW!!" He bellowed, raising his saber high with his left hand. The Maverick charged in and threw one of the daggers, letting it soar on towards Zero with the trigger pushed in the dead man's switch position.

            Zero batted it aside with a deft flick of his wrist and the green beam saber it held, then dashed straight back at her and slashed. She cried out in surprise from his unexpected aggressiveness and parried with her only remaining dagger. Zero's blow pushed it back and out of her hand, but it stopped enough of his force that his downwards slash succeeded only in destroying her poncho and revealing the thin, lithe, attractive body in its black suit beneath.

            Zero let out a powerful curse and gave her a swift uppercut right along the bottom of her helmet, knocking it clean off and sending her sprawling to the floor on her back.

            But it was there that the madness stopped. The red faded from his vision, and Zero found himself suddenly realizing where he was. Standing above a very stunned, very frightened female Maverick with the green light of his beam saber glistening in her deep, tender eyes.

            The point of his beam saber was pushed against her neck, almost touching the adam's apple that bobbed up and down as she exhaled in fright.

            No, it can't…No…God, no, I'm seeing things! This isn't real, she's DEAD! She's dead, she can't be alive!! She was lost on the Final Weapon, she can't…

             Her outfit was different…but it was her. It was the one he'd had feelings for. The one he even…

            "Iris…" Zero croaked, jerking the beam saber back in stunned shock. Her chest heaved in fear, but she finally spoke up.

            "How-How do you know me?"

            Zero didn't respond. He couldn't. Her eyes burned into him, her bobbing brown hair…the same as ever…

            And then Sigma appeared from the shadows, pulling Iris to her feet and laying a hand on her shoulder. Contempt burned in his eyes. Contempt, and a hint of justified irony.

            "You can't kill her, can you Zero?" Sigma said mockingly. "You can't bring yourself to it." He laughed a bit. "But of course, Iris has no such qualms."

            The female Maverick shook her head once, then dashed over and retrieved the beam dagger Zero had knocked free from her hands.

            Zero turned about, his mind still racing with a hundred different confused emotions. Rage and hatred and surprise and horror and love…All intertwined into a potent mixture that utterly exhausted him, slowed his response times…and shut down every facet of the warrior spirit he used to survive in combat.

            Zero screamed out in pain as a sharp gash dug itself into his left shoulder. He spun away from it, stumbling to one knee to find himself staring into Iris's eyes, now hard and icy. Her beam dagger lay in her right hand, right where she'd held it when she stabbed him.

            Gasping in pain and clutching at his wounded shoulder, Zero's eyes began to flood with tears.

            Iris…why…

            It was Iris. It was his Iris. But she was Maverick now.

            Sigma laughed, shattering what little resolve Zero had left. He slumped to his knees, defeated.

            "You insignificant FOOL." Sigma rasped. "Now can you see? The fight continues between us until I win…never the other way around."

            "How did he know my name?" Iris murmured, eyes still burning. Never once did she tear her gaze from Zero's pained face, his radiant blond hair, and his now useless arms. His own beam saber fell from his grasp, and rolled on the floor for a few scant moments before shutting itself off.

            "I'll tell you all about it when we get back." Sigma said quickly. "But for now, know this. Zero is one of the most dangerous Maverick Hunters in existence."

            "Why…" Zero murmured, his eyes beginning to go into the back of his head.

            Warning: Shoulder in critical condition. Prepare for auto-stasis.

            And somehow, Zero didn't care then. If he was his normal self, he would have overridden auto-stasis, kept fighting even if it meant he'd perish. Hell, he'd died before.

            But not now. He had gone into this fight with a vengeance burning in his heart to avenge X's defeat and near death.

            And all that had faded, like dry ice in open air once Iris had appeared.

            He couldn't kill her. Not again. Not this time. He'd never forgiven himself then, never. The grief and anguish he'd felt had been carried inside of him since 2129. Never forgotten, but buried under the surface. Buried underneath revived hatred, countless drinking sessions, and newer details of his own existence that had only recently come to light.

            And now it had come back. Like a weed, it had sprouted up from where he'd buried it.

            He didn't care. Hell, X had almost died. Cain was dead. Everything was changing, none of it for the better. Finding a reason to fight for…

            He had no reason anymore. Not when Iris was standing there in front of him, a full fledged Maverick.

            It's a copy, a clone…it's not truly her, but…

            "Your time has come to an end, Zero. Just as X's time has ended, so has yours."

            Only one thing stopped Sigma and Iris from finishing off Zero then and there.

            The sound of twenty X-Busters whining up to full power in close quarters. Every one of them pointed at the two Mavericks.

            The dim light of the base barely illuminated the figures of all the Hunters staring down from above. But it was enough for Sigma to realize that unless he wanted to perish once more, his business was done.

            "Come, Iris. We'll finish this some other day." She looked at the odds, then nodded. Quickly, she retrieved her other beam dagger and stepped next to Sigma, warping out with the Maverick King in one warp beam.

            When Bastion hovered down next to Zero and picked him up, the great Crimson Hunter was in stasis.

            "Orders, Commander Bastion?" Asked Gavin emotionlessly.

            Bastion shook his head, blinked his sad blue eyes and held Zero carefully in his arms.

            "There's nothing we can do now. Let's head back to base. There's dead to bury, and injured to keep alive."

            And Zero slept. Not caring if he lived or died.