Author's Note: I realized that I didn't have the three astrick symbols that signified the scene changes. So when I tried to put them back in during a QuickEdit segment, I had to reload my chapter after losing the indent on one of my paragraphs. I'll probably come up with a different scene changing symbol when I'm revising my earlier chapters.
3 - Framed
Treble walks up to Rock, whimpering and nudging him until he stirred, lifting his head toward him.
"Treble...?" he groaned. Rock pushes himself to his hands and knees. A slight pain caused him to wince as he placed a hand on the right side of his face and pulled it back to see it covered in fluid, "So much for reasoning with a maverick." He blinks, getting up and looking around, "Zero?" Treble blinks and looks around as well, "He's gone!" he looks at the hilt of his beam saber sticking out of the holster on his back as Violen's words ran through his mind, frowns, then looks at Treble, "Come on, we're going after them!" Treble looks at him, growling confused, "The only way we know how." He saw his eyes widen and take a step back, "Even I hate doing this, but we don't have much of a choice."
Treble eyed the floor, growling slightly before jumping towards Rock, dematerializing into a mass of sparks until it entered his body, causing a bright glow to surround him, slowly forming into his Chimera armor. The minute the glowing fades, a piercing pain forces him to the ground as he grabs the right side of his head. The schematics to the fusion adaptor popped up with the word "Disabled" flashing in front of it.
"Fusion adaptor damaged during attack," a computerized voice on his helmet part said, "Adaptor's shield had been disabled and is in need of immediate repairs. Until repaired, any further damage to the Chimera armor will result in immediate shut down to protect wearer's condition. Checking for armor damage...." the adaptor schematics dropped down and the Chimera's structure popped up, the helmet part flashing white, "Head injury has increased damage to Chimera head part and is decreasing wearer's life energy by 1% per hour. Defusion is necessary to prevent further loss of energy."
"Dammit!" Rock growled, "I knew I should've brought an extra E-Can before we left!" he watched as the schematics to the armor dropped down and a map of the world appeared in its place, a flashing Chimera symbol moved along the map, "There you are. If anyone's going to retrieve ProtoX's parts, it's going to be me!" with that, he crouches to the ground and jumps off, the boosters on the bottom of his feet explodes with fire, sending him into the air.
Agile slams Zero against the wall with his red beam saber, grinning as he watches him slide from the dent in to a sitting position on the floor.
"You are a fool to interfere with family issues," he snickered, "You should have left the retrieving to X. But our new master as a special interest in you. If we bring you to him, he would be greatly pleased."
"I don't know who this 'new master' is," Zero said, reaching for his Z-Saber, "but I won't let him control me!"
"Oh, but it appears you should. You see, Zero. There is something about you that is far different than any common reploid. Once everyone hears about that difference, you would be hated just like the Chimera...even by your best friends."
"I could care less which side I was originally on. The path I choose is my own and no one is going to take that away from me! Not even a scumbag like you!"
"Is that so? Well, I'd like to see someone try and stop us 30 feet in the air."
As if he got his wish, the overhead windows shattered, getting Agile's attention as he turned to see where the noise came from and instead got a C-Boomerang flying straight into him, shoving him into a wall away from Zero. The blonde Hunter follows the C-Boomerang as it did a U-turn, whacking Agile with each spin and flying back towards its thrower, his eyes widened when he saw the Chimera land on the glass shards and catch it a second later.
'Crap!' Zero grumbled, increasing the grip of his yet-to-be- unsheathed Z-Saber, 'As if things weren't bad enough already!'
"The Chimera!?" Agile yelped, "Why are you here!?"
"I'm here to clean up the mess I made," the Chimera said, strapping the C-Boomerang onto his back and pointing to Agile, "Now hand over my brother's parts or you'll be the first X-Hunter to experience what it's like to be torn in three and scattered across the landscape!"
Zero's eyes grew wider when the Chimera said that, 'Did...did he say brother!?'
Agile laughed as he got up, "You conniving little brat! You expect me to believe that you, the one responsible for ProtoX's death in the first place, would even think of coming here, expecting him to forgive you?" he raises his beam saber towards his face in the same manner a knight would when ready to attack, "I will be honored to rip you limb from limb until the only thing keeping you alive is the back up generator in your head!" with that, he charges towards the Chimera, swinging his blade as he closes in only to see him jump to the side.
The Chimera tries to retaliate by swinging his C-Blade towards Agile who jumps back and comes at him with his beam saber in the air, swinging it down on him but hit the ground as he jumps back. Relentlessly, Agile came at the Chimera with sword swings, seeing him dodge like wind until at one point where he drops to a kneeling position and catches the oncoming blade between the curved ends of his C-Blade, grunting as the pressure increases, his right eye squeezed shut by the pain of his inner wound.
The schematics popped up again, the head part now flashing red, "Aggressive maneuvers increasing damage to Chimera Head part. Deactivation is required to prevent permanent damage to fusion adaptor."
'No!' the Chimera thought to himself, 'If I deactivate my helmet in front of Zero, I'll lose more than my brother's trust!'
"You don't look to well, Chimera," Agile said, grinning, "Why don't you give up this feeble attempt to survive and let me give you a swift ending!"
"F-Forget it!" the Chimera growled, turning his attention back to Agile, "ProtoX is my brother and there is no way in hell I'm going to let you destroy me!" he shoved Agile back and lunged at him, swinging his right C-Blade toward him as he brought his beam saber up for defense.
Zero watches as the two continued to clash blades, lost in confusion, 'This doesn't make sense! Why would the Chimera....' he mentally trails off, seeing the Chimera constantly grab the right side of his head while using his left C-Blade to knock Agile's beam blade away, 'Wait! His head! That's the same area Rock got hit in earlier! But...that means...!'
The Chimera drops back to his kneeling position, covering the right side of his head. Agile was starting to get bored.
"Pathetic," he snorts, "I heard the Chimera fought better than this!" the Chimera looks up at him with one painful eye, "But after battling you, you're nothing more than a pushover!"
"Sh-Shut up!" the Chimera yells as he sprang towards Agile and swung his left C-Blade diagonally across him. His anger turns to shock when he saw the sliced image suddenly waver and vanish.
"Looking for someone?" came a voice. The Chimera whipped around to see a neon streak fly into his face, leaving a deep dent in his mask. The impact sent him skidding on his back until he stopped near the center of the room. The schematics of the armor popped up again as the flashing helmet part faded to black and the beeping stopped.
"Chimera head part has exceeded 100%," the computerized voice said, "Chimera head part will now deactivate to prevent permanent damage to adaptor."
"NO!" the Chimera screamed as his helmet flashed and vanished, revealing Rock's head. Zero's mouth hung open in shock.
"R-Rock?" he stuttered. Agile looked at him confused.
"Rock, you say?" he walks over to the fallen vigilante and stoops over, seeing Rock's head instead of a masked helmet laying on the floor eyes shut, "Hmm.... Green ribbon, black and brown hair." He grins, "Why, I'll be. You must be that other brother Violen left behind," he slams his foot on Rock's throat, hearing him bite back the urge to scream in pain, "Our new master has no interest in you, which means we can dispose of you however we want. And seeing that you are the Chimera, I'm sure X wouldn't mind if we end your life miserably."
"Then finish it already!" Rock groaned, "I'll probably end up dead no matter what I do now."
"Lost your will to fight? That's not the Chimera we were supposed to fear," Agile began to snicker, "Then again. Since you're identity is about to be revealed to every human and reploid in the world, I guess it's only natural that you'd wanna quick death instead of a long and painful torture, both emotional and physical. If you were lucky, X would've kept you behind bars with bodyguards that would enjoy hitting you with an electro-rod every hour." He switched the blade around and held it over Rock's head with both hands, "But I can make it less painful and short just by driving my blade through your forehead." Agile raised the blade over his head and sent it toward Rock's head only to have it knocked out of his hands by a different blade, the jolt almost yanking him forward.
"Sorry to drive a wedge between your promise," said a voice, "but even if X didn't care about his brother, I'm not going to stand around here and watch him die!"
"Wassa...!?" He looks to the right to see the nozzle of Zero's Z- Buster almost touching his nose, yelps and yanks it back, "Y-You've gotta be kidding me! He's a murderer! Why're you saving him!?"
"Even if he is, he wouldn't have done it on purpose," Zero moved his Z-Buster closer to Agile's face, "Now get your filthy boosters off my pupil's throat or you'll be experiencing what it's like to feel burning plasma through my buster!" Agile shuddered some more before his expression turned from startled to grinning.
"It doesn't matter if you do believe he's innocent," he snickered, "You won't be living long enough to report it!"
"What do you mean?" Zero seethed. Agile's grin widened as he stepped away from him and Rock.
"We were hoping you and the Chimera would get involved in this battle. So we rigged this part of the ship to self-destruct the minute our escape saucer detaches from it." Zero's eyes widened, "You will be the second casualty in the Chimera's deadly path towards being the most dangerous maverick on the planet!"
"You bastard! You mean to tell me the evidence we saw on the CD was a hoax!?"
"You've got it! We plan on keeping X and the Chimera at each other's throats by killing all of his closest friends trying to interfere with the next phase of our plan, and pin them on the Chimera. I was going to tell X who the Chimera really is, but since you wouldn't let me do that, I will enjoy seeing him suffer as X's rage grows closer and closer to tracking him down and tearing him apart before he finds out who he is." Zero snarled, his Z-Buster throttling, "But you should be lucky! Once we get rid of X and his would-be brother, we'll fish your rusted, torn parts from the ocean and turn you back to who you really are!" he bursts out laughing as Zero's snarl grew louder, "This...this is too much! X killing someone who's innocent only to gain two more enemies who once were his beloved friends! The blue bomber will be so shot down, he'll want you and ProtoX to end his suffering without even so much as putting up a fight!"
"Damn...you!" he fired a charged blast only to see it sail through Agile's afterimage as it wavered into smoke, the real McCoy appearing near the door of the room.
"I hope you have a good sleep at the bottom of the ocean, Zero. 'Cause when you wake up, you will enjoy the life you were meant to follow." He grins again and walks through the door.
"Come back here!" Zero ran towards the door only to see the next door that led to the cockpit slam shut. The walls attached to the body of the mother ship to the escape saucer disconnected, sending it falling towards the ocean.
Once the cockpit had disappeared, the outside air began sucking out anything that wasn't bolted to the floor. Zero struggled to keep his grounding, gripping both sides of the door as he hair flew out in front of him. He could feel his feet begin to drag towards the edge of the floor as he turned his head towards Rock who's still on his back, fighting to stay conscious as the suction slowly started to pull him towards the doorway. He took one hand off the doorway and tried to reach for Rock in hopes of grabbing him and jumping out before the ship began to explode. But before he could reach for Rock's C-Blade, the back end of the ship exploded. Zero looks up to see a wall of fire close in on them.
The X-Hunters looked out the windows as the body of the mother ship began riddling with explosions before hitting the ocean and ending with a huge splash that signified it's complete self-destruction. Agile and Serges grin.
"Those poor fools," Agile snickers, "It's a shame Zero won't be around long enough to see what his pupil will be going through."
"I still think we should've just taken Zero instead of having to go down into the ocean and dig his parts out," Violen grumbled.
"But the Chimera isn't some off the shelf reploid," Serges said, "Even if we did decide to take Zero and claim he's dead, the Chimera would have recovered long enough to hunt us down and rescue him. Then Zero would have broken the news to X and he would no longer hunt the Chimera down for personal revenge."
"This is ridiculous. What if Zero's body is too damaged to repair?"
"Then we will rebuild him." Came a voice. The X-Hunters turned towards a purplish glow coming from the huge ceiling light in the center of the cockpit.
"R-Rebuild him?" Agile asks.
"I only want Zero's control chip! Without it, we won't be able to awaken his true self! We will build another body that is stronger than the last. And then the world will know the true terror of the robots. Now come. We must begin the next faze of our plan."
The escape saucer turns and flies away from the metal debris as they rose to the surface.
X ran into the command center after getting a call from Dr. Cain, "Dr. Cain! What is it!?"
Dr. Cain turns to X, shaking everywhere, "Oh, dear, X. We're getting an unknown message on our screen!" X ran up to the monitor as an image began to form through the snowstorm.
"Hello, Mega Man X! Remember us?" came a voice from the monitor. X's eyes widened at the familiarity of the voice.
"You! But...I destroyed you three weeks ago!" X seethed.
"A funny thing," said another voice, preferably Violen, "Zero said the same thing when he saw us again."
"While we're on the subject," said a third, "Remember when we forced to you to fight us for Zero's parts? It was so exciting that we've decided to do it again. This time, with your oldest brother's parts!"
"Oldest...?" X's eyes widened even more, "You don't mean ProtoX!"
"You guessed right," the first voice said, "Unlike you, we risked the cold waters of the night to retrieve your brother's parts. If you want him to believe you actually care about him, I suggest you come after us and get his parts back before he believes that you no longer care about him!"
"X, don't forget that you aren't alone in this one," Dr. Cain said, looking at X, "Now that we have Zero back, your chances of finding and collecting ProtoX's parts are almost even." He then lowers his voice, "it would be exact...IF you decide to let Rock help you out just this once."
"Forget it!" X snapped, causing Dr. Cain to flinch, "My brother's happy to see him dead! What makes you think he'd want to waste his precious time helping me recover them!?" The X-Hunters laughed.
"You'd wish you have!" Violen said.
"Why's that?" X demanded.
"Oh, I guess you haven't heard," Agile says, "I'm afraid you're on your own X. It appears that Zero tried to get ProtoX's parts before you, but the Chimera got involved with his own plans of resurrecting ProtoX." X's eyes twitched in rage, "What a fight those two got in. Zero was no match for the Chimera. And just like that," he snaps his fingers...or...that's what X had assumed from the barely clear snowstorm, "without a care in the world, he just severed something on the ship and takes off as it was exploding."
Dr. Cain looked at X to see his face twisted into rage so bad it would have given Sigma nightmares for a year if he ever decided to push his emotions to the next level.
"That...Chimera...." X snarled, "He'll pay for this!" Dr. Cain turns back to the monitor.
"Then you'd better hurry and get ProtoX's parts back before he does," Serge says, "Or the Chimera will make sure that you get the most miserable experience of your life." The X-Hunters laughed before the snowstorm blipped out. X's snarl grew louder as he began to tense up.
"Why did you do it...?" Dr. Cain looked at X again and jumped startled when he slammed his fist against edge of the console, "Dammit, Zero! You've only been alive for three weeks! Why do you keep interfering with my problems!?"
"X, he's just trying to help," Dr. Cain said, "Even if he knows it's none of his business, he feels that it's his duty as a Hunter to do what is right!"
"At what cost!?" X said, glaring at Dr. Cain, "Zero died because of me, don't you get it!? He should have known by now that if something that revolves around me goes too far that he needs to let me handle it!"
"But you need to understand that you can't just handle things by yourself! You need to let other people help you through your problems, whether their dangerous or not!"
"Letting them help me through emotional times is one thing! But when it comes to a point where it involves them risking their lives to help me, I take all the grief! I won't let anyone else die for my sake! I'll handle the problem on my own!"
"Even if you were to get ProtoX's parts back by yourself, it won't do us any good," X looks at Dr. Cain as if he was insane, "We need his control chip in order to reactivate him. Without it, he's nothing but another reploid with a different mind. But our Hunters have gone down into the ocean where he was killed and came back empty handed."
"Those X-Hunters probably have it!" X raised his throttling fist, "I'll force the information out of them if I have to! But I'm not about to lose another close friend!" with that, he turns and storms out before Dr. Cain could stop him.
Zero groaned and opened his eyes, his vision slowly focusing on what was in front of him. He blinks, when he realized he was still alive and in one piece, aside from the slight burns he felt on parts of his right shoulder and legs. At first he thought he had washed up on short, until he felt his lower body and his arms dangling under a wet substance and his hair brushing against them. He lifts his head to find his chest sticking out of the ocean along with the debris of the ship that was said to have exploded, taking him and Rock with it. He didn't know how he survived. The last thing he remembered before he passed out was the wall of fire coming towards them before he felt something slam into his mid-section and throw him out of the exploding ship before everything went black. His emergency floatation device must survived the blast long enough to kick on the moment he blacked out. He didn't know how long he had been floating along the debris, but he was sure it was at least over an hour or two.
Zero struggled to shut his floatation device off, almost causing him to sink until he began swinging his arms and legs back and forth to keep his head above water. He looked around the salty, debris covered waters until he caught something sticking out of the water that wasn't parts of the ship. He swam towards the unknown object to find Rock barely sticking out of the water by his head and left shoulder, unconscious. His back, while unidentifiable by the near cloudiness and wavering of the water, was burnt and nearly melted, the tail of his lab coat shredded to ribbons, which hinted that he tried to pull him out, but as a result, took the full force of the explosion.
Zero placed a hand on Rock's shoulder in an attempt to move him when he heard him groan and open his eyes slightly, turning to where he was being touched.
"Z-Zero!?" he yelps, eyes wide open as he stumbles back a few inches, grabbing his lower back and wincing. Zero was shocked before he put his hand back on Rock's shoulder.
"I'll take you to Robot Rescue," he said, "they'll...."
"I can't!" Rock yelled, knocking Zero's hand off his shoulder, "Not like this! They'll never help me!"
"I'll try and talk to them. I'm sure they'll understand."
"What about X?" Zero blinked in confusion, "The X-Hunters may have already sent out the news by now. If he finds out I'm the Chimera, there's no telling what he'll do to me." He sighs and pulls a remote out of the water, "I wish I didn't have to do this now." He pressed a button on the remote, causing a vibration that shook the ocean around him and Zero.
An object began to rise out of the ocean. Zero stuck his arm in front of him as water began to fall onto him the more the object rose. Once the water stopped vibrating, he moved his arm away to see the mouth of a huge cave sticking out of the water. The rusted, slightly decayed Chinese Dragon symbol above it was all too familiar to him.
"But...I thought Sigma destroyed that hideout a month ago," Zero said in shock.
"It wasn't completely destroyed," Rock said, which slowly started to slur, "I managed to fix it and turn it into our own hideout away from those I care about."
"'Our'? Who else is with you?" Zero asked, but didn't get a response, "Rock?" he turns around to see him up to his forehead in water and sinking further. Panicked, he swam up to Rock and pulled his head out of the water by his arm, "Hey! Stay with me, Rock!" Rock forced his eyes open slightly and looked at Zero.
"I can...I can barely move my legs...." he mumbled. Zero placed a hand on Rock's chest.
"Something's draining your energy. And it's not the ocean," he said. He took Rock's arm and slung it around the back of his neck and brings him into the cave, pushing him onto the edge of the walkway before pulling himself out.
Once Rock gained enough strength to move, he got up and started dragging his feet toward the inside of the cave. Once inside, his burnt and melted Chimera armor glowed. Zero walked in behind him in time to see Treble leap out of Rock, both dropping to the floor, Treble on his stomach, Rock in a kneeling position.
"What the...!?" Zero murmured in shock, "What on earth did you just do?"
"It's a fusion adaptor," Rock said, putting his hand on Treble's head, seeing his eyes squeezed shut from the lack of energy, "Treble's the last robot on earth who can handle the adaptor." He gets up and walks over to crate full of E-Cans, taking two out. He walks back to Treble and pours the contents of one of the cans into his mouth until his eyes shot back open and got up, shaking himself like an ordinary dog after getting wet.
"Wait a minute," Zero said as Rock sat on a stool near the giant computer, sipping his E-Can, "If there was such a thing as fusing reploids to become stronger, how come Dr. Cain never mentioned it before?"
"Because he doesn't even know it exists," Zero raised an eyebrow, "during the time Sigma was still head of the Maverick Hunters, Dr. Cain had been creating things from the blueprints he retrieved from Dr. Light's lab. One of them was the blueprint to the latest fusion adaptor, the Chimera armor. Anyone who wore it would be able to move, fight and fly faster than a fighter jet. I was afraid of what would happen if Dr. Cain created the adaptor for Sigma even with his change in behavior, so I stole the blueprint and installed it into Treble, believing I could control that power." Rock turns around and brings up Treble's schematics on the huge monitor, the fusion adaptors he currently has installed, "But after what happened three weeks ago, I'm not so sure I can trust myself with it anymore."
"What do you mean?"
Rock looked down, "I didn't know what got over me, but when I saw ProtoX die in front of me, I completely lost control of myself and tore the tower apart like a maniac." He gets up and walks over to the construction table, picking up a welder, "After that, I was afraid I'd hurt my friends if something like that ever happened again."
Zero looks at Rock a while before he turned back to the monitor and noticed two more adaptors installed into Treble, "What's with the other adaptors?" Rock turned his head towards him, the welder sealing the slice on the right side of his head.
"Well, to be honest, Treble isn't really my dog," Rock said, "We used to be enemies a long time ago until each of us lost someone we cared about. He wanted me to keep the adaptor as a memento so he wouldn't forget him each day." Treble looked at the "Super Bass" adaptor, his mouth curved into a sorrowful frown. Zero continued to stare at the adaptor some more.
"What about the one next to the Chimera armor?"
Rock snapped his head up, looking at Zero, "What?" he walks over to the monitor, seeing the initials "NSZ" flashing between "Super Bass" and "Chimera", "I didn't see that there before. I counted two last time I checked Treble." He looks at Treble, "I remember his creator rambling about him being some kind of last resort against me. Maybe that adaptor has to do with that last resort."
Zero stares at the flashing adaptor some more. He couldn't help but feel as though it belonged to him. In fact, every time he looked at Treble, he felt as though he was meant to be his long before Rock "interfered". He shook his head and headed over to the crate to get an E- Can and noticed a chip sealed behind a glass case on a file cabinet behind it. He noticed the words "PX" written on the surface.
"Is...Is that ProtoX's control chip?" he asked, taking the case off the top of the file cabinet, "I thought the X-Hunters had all of ProtoX"s parts."
"They didn't," Rock said, looking at Zero, "Just before the tower exploded, I managed to detach his control chip. If ProtoX's parts were recovered or he was rebuilt, I was going to hand the chip over to Dr. Cain."
A maniacal laughter got their attention as they turned to a small monitor near the computer console where a snowstorm broke its way onto the screen, a familiar silhouette appearing in between it's wavering fuzziness.
"What a whacked out hideaway you've created," the voice said, "It could use a major make-over."
"Oh, come on!" Rock snarled, running over to the monitor, "Don't you ever die!?"
"Who says people can't live forever?" Treble hunched over, snarling, "Only those smart enough to keep their brains alive in a hologram will be able to live more than they can last in real life! Phase two of my plan to keep you and your brother at each other's throats has played out perfectly." Rock snarled, throttling his fist, "If you were as smart as you were supposed to have been when you became a warrior, you'd stay away from his mission or he will lose more than one brother!"
"I would rather die than see you pit my brothers against each other for your sick and twisted pleasures!"
"That can easily be arranged," Zero almost thought he saw the shadow look at him, "For it won't just be your baby brother that'll turn against you." Suddenly, the monitor flashed a light so bright it turned the whole room red as a high-pitched flat-line sound echoed throughout the hideout forcing Rock and Treble to covered their ears, unaware of Zero's pupils shrinking as a piercing pain stabbed his head like a knife. His screaming got their attention as they turned to see him drop his E-Can and grab his head, throwing it around, his screaming growing louder.
"Cut it out!" Rock yelled, turning back to the snowstorm in the small monitor, "You can't just control reploid's like that! He's not like you anymore!"
"You are wrong! He is every bit like me! And once I have him back under my control, you won't be considering him your friend anymore!" he finished with a maniacal laughter that began to piss Rock to a boiling point.
"THAT'S ENOUGH!!!" he screamed as he slammed his fist into the monitor, killing the red light and the high-pitched sound and causing Zero to drop to his knees, shaking his nearly dazed head. The maniacal laughter still echoed throughout the cave.
"You can't hide the truth from him forever, Mega Man!" it echoed, "Once Zero has regained his memories, he will want to end this world's suffering my way! And you won't be there to stop him!"
"You're the one who's wrong!" Rock shouted, looking around, "Even if he were to regain his memories, he'd still fight for what is right!" He didn't hear anymore laughter, which confirmed that the evil shadow had completely disappeared. He wasn't sure how much longer he could keep this from Zero before he realizes where his loyalties lie and whether or not he will follow those orders or go against them.
Treble walks up to Zero, whining and nudging him until he took his hands off his head. He looked at Rock who turned from angry to worried.
"Who...who was that?" Zero muttered. Rock just stared upwards before he looked down.
"That...that used to be Treble's creator," he mumbled. Rock felt a bit hesitant when he said it. Should the mysterious fusion adaptor that appeared in Treble's inventory really belong to Zero, it could only be one answer towards some of the burning questions in his head, and whether or not he should truly follow the path he was given, or the path he chose.
When the X-Hunters found out that Zero was still alive, Violen, not being too happy, throw his chain mace against the wall.
"Damn him!" he snarled, "I told you we should've taken him with us! Now our plan is about to be ruined!"
"We must do something," Serges said, "Perhaps we should locate the Chimera's hideout and burn it to the ground!"
"You will do no such thing!" came a voice. The X-Hunters turned to a human-size capsule as a violet glow emitted from it.
"B-But, what about...!?" Agile stuttered.
"Zero is stuck in a predicament he can't solve by himself. He knows that X won't believe a word he says even if it is true. The brat is too enraged by both deaths to think that the Chimera is being framed. So instead of even trying, he'll have no choice but to help the Chimera clear his name and be known as a good vigilante once again."
"But what happens if X is finally convinced that the whole thing with him and ProtoX's death was a hoax?" Violen asks.
"He won't. I will make sure of that...." he finished with a maniacal laughter that made the X-Hunters cringe slightly.
OOC: I ran into a bit of Writer's Block on this chapter, so most of it was made up off the bat. But then I'd probably end up going back and retyping the whole thing with a better scenario near the end of the chapter.
Next Chapter: With the fusion adaptor repaired enough to prevent loss of life energy, Rock sets off the hunt down the X-Hunters and get ProtoX's parts back. But he knows that with X getting involved, having to try and retrieve the parts without getting into a fight with him isn't going to be as easy as he wanted especially when he shows up with a device that may permanently end his quest, and his life, for good. Will Rock be able to rescue ProtoX before his dark secret is revealed?