X, Zero, and Dr. Cain all sat around a table in one of the smaller breifing
rooms.
"I think we should give her a chance." Stated X. "The message, and the way she acted, leads me to believe that she is no danger to us. Not once did she even suspect I was trying to trick her- like a Reploid first activated. Tabula rasa."
Zero shook his head. "But someone removed some of her memory- possibly most of it. Maybe there's a hidden program lurking in there, waiting to restore it- and that memory could contain a killer program."
"I doubt it." Replied X. "After all, she seemed to recognise the voice as that of her father."
"That could just be part of the plan."
"I doubt it. It certainly doesn't fit any of the methods the Mavericks have used in the past. Even when Sigma hid behind the Repliforce, there wasn't anything hardly so subtle."
"Exactly, X." Zero slapped the table lightly. "THAT's why we should be on the lookout for something like this. They would know we weren't going to suspect it, because they've never done this before."
Cain, looking skeptical, finally spoke up. "Yes, but all evidence points to Mavericks as being more of the 'shoot first, ask questions later' type. Besides, it's way too much difficulty to go to in order to just attack us with a single reploid. Even if she was highly skilled. From their point of view, it would probably be a waste of limited resources. Additionally, she isn't even on file. That means they would have had to build her themselves. The Mavericks have never relied on building and training new reploids- they always abduct existing ones."
"I guess you have a point, but I still think we should be careful."
X shook his head. "I'm not saying we shouldn't be careful. I'm just saying we shouldn't be that suspicious. Maybe keep her with one of our better Hunters at all times, just in case, until she's proven herself. That suit both of you?"
Zero nodded. "It's not what I would like, but I guess it'll do."
"I like that idea as well." Piped in Cain. "We'll go with that. Incidentally, given the message, I'm inclined to put her in your unit as soon as possible, X."
Zero shook his head. "No can do. The 17th is something of an elite unit. She'd have to prove to be very good in basic training in order to get in there."
X nodded. "I have to agree with Zero on this one. Maybe we should just train her until she is good enough, then put her in?"
Cain harrumphed. "That could take a while. What if the two of you trained her yourselves? You know you're the best we've got, and the most experienced at teaching rookies."
Zero smirked. "I like that." Thoughts of his saber training courses ran through his head. She'd get the hardest class he could give her. Then again, every class was the hardest, when Zero was teaching. He somewhat enjoyed the nickname- 'Instructor From Jedi Hell' a few of the trainees had called him.
X smiled much less evilly than Zero was. "I agree. Sounds good to me."
Cain smiled as well. "So, we're agreed. On to your last mission, X…"
Kimiko was looking at herself in the mirror. Once X had gone off to 'consult with the others', she had decided she might as well familiarise herself with her new body. It certainly was different.
She was a bit short compared to an adult human. Five feet zero inches, her internal voice supplied. This left her noticeably shorter than X. Her long, brown hair hung behind her in a braid, loose at the top, but the braiding itself was secure, tied off just below her waist, the last bit of hair reaching her hip height. Her eyes, strangely enough, were a deep maroon color. She had a broad face, matched by a short, but also broad nose. Her general facial shape suggested that, were she human, she would have been of Pilipino descent. Memory served to tell her that her new body shape was definitely that of an adult female, but not overemphasized. Her Dash Boots were in a simple grass green color, what she could see of them, anyways.
She reached up and brushed at a stray lock of hair that hung down over the bridge of her nose, and turned to reexamine her surroundings. The room had the strange thing she'd woken up on, a couple of stools, padded, and a small, square, folding table.
She walked over to the strange object. It resembled a bed, padded surface and a pillow, but the outside looked more like some sort of a capsule. It was attached to the wall behind the head of it, too, and tilted at a roughly forty-degree angle.
She turned about and sat on it, carefully smoothing her skirt so it didn't expose the backs of her legs. It was an old habit, she realized, but she still had no clue where it came from.
She sat there for a full six minutes, getting progressively more bored, and idly inspecting her fingernails. Finally, Kimiko looked around, and exclaimed,
"What am I supposed to do here anyway? This is so boring!"
Silence answered her, and she sighed. Giving in to the dullness, she stretched out in the bedlike-thing, and went to stasis.
Kimiko.
Yes, Otoosan?
Come here for a moment.
What is it, Otoosan?
I want to show you something. Here, look at this picture.
Hey, look, 'Toosan! There you are!
(amused) Yes, I am. But look at the other people in this picture.
Who are they?
They were my friends.
Were?
Yes… they're dead now. (sadly) The last one died a couple of years ago.
Oh….. Does that make you sad, Otoosan?
Hai, Kimiko-chan, it makes me very sad. They were very special people.
But… these aren't all people.
Not exactly, no. But they were all special all the same.
That doggy looks funny.
(Amused) I suppose he does, Kimiko-chan, I suppose he does.
X warped in. Looking around, he saw Kimiko in the stasis capsule, apparently taking a bit of a 'nap'. He walked over and looked down at her, smiling slightly. He reflected that that was probably what he would have done in this room with nothing to do, too. Carefully, he reached out and shook her by the shoulder.
Kimiko half-awoke, and muttered something in indistinct Japanese about a dog.
X blinked. "Beg pardon?"
Kimiko sat up. "Ano… sorry. Just a… dream, I think. Yes, a dream."
X nodded. "Okay then. Well, I don't get to welcome you to the Maverick Hunters… yet."
Kimiko quirked up one eyebrow.
"You need training first." X continued. "That is, if you want to join."
"Well, Ecksu-san, Otoosan said in the message to help you, and if you are a Maverick Hunter, then I'd probably have to be one to help you, right?"
X nodded. "Okay, then. Here's a chip that ought to remove those blocks we installed. That'll let you shift to your armor, and use your Dash Boots, Buster, and Warp systems."
He held out a chip with his left hand, similar to the memory chip he had given her before.
Kimiko raised her right hand, the synthskin parting again, and took the chip with the other hand, slotting it into the socket.
1 Run external memory chip program 'Block Dissolver' Y/N
Yes.
Run time two minutes. Please wait.
"So…" Began Kimiko. "Tell me about the Maverick Hunters, Ecksu-san."
X nodded. "Sure. I guess, to explain, I'll have to go way back to the beginning. It all started with a writer by the name of Isaac Asimov. He wrote science fiction in the 20th century. To keep all his robots in line, he created a set of ingrained morals that were supposedly active in all the robots. There were three of them. The first law was that a robot must never harm a human, nor allow a human to come to harm through inaction. The second law was that a robot must never disobey a direct order from a human. The final law was that a robot must not allow itself to come to harm nor inflict harm upon itself, unless doing so would cause a human to come to harm, or require that the robot ignore a very strong order. These were called the Laws of Robotics."
Kimiko nodded.
"Eventually," X continued, "A man named Thomas Light, the man who built me, by the way, built a robot called Protoman. Protoman was more advanced than other robots. Where most robots had a specific set of clauses, like 'when X, then Y' that gave them strict actions to follow, Protoman was able to make decisions on his own about things. He was allowed to develop his own set of responses to things. There was a laboratory accident later, and he disappeared, but that's beside the point. The point is that Protoman was the next step up from the earlier robots. He still had all three Laws of Robotics, though."
Program concluded. Please remove memory chip.
Kimiko, still listening to X, removed the chip from the back of her hand, the synthskin once again presenting an unbroken surface to the world.
X spoke on, noting that the block removal program was done. "Much later on, Dr. Thomas Light was able to construct me. I am the prototype for the reploids who are out and about in the world today. The difference between us and higher robots like Protoman is that we are like humans in every way. We start out with no ingrained responses, but the three Laws are still there. However, since we are able to think for ourselves, at some point in our lives we become able to modify the last two Laws of Robotics, and are able to break or bend them based on a judgement call. A Maverick is a robot who has broken the First Law, particularly through intentionally causing physical harm to a human. Long story short, the Maverick Hunters is a group created to, well, hunt and destroy Maverick reploids."
Kimiko nodded slowly. "So… It's kind of like parents, the Three Laws."
X looked puzzled. "Beg pardon?"
Kimiko held up one hand, palm up. "When a child first starts out, they follow rules because their parents tell them to. Eventually, they outgrow those rules, particularly when they learn the reasons behind them. At this point, they no longer need those rules, because they are capable of using good judgement instead. So a Maverick is a reploid who has outgrown the First Law, and made a conscious decision counter to their good judgement, or due to a personal lack of it, particularly given that there is an organization that will then hunt down and destroy them."
Dr. Cain, standing in the observation room with Zero and Arnie, blinked. "Hey, that makes a lot of sense!"
Zero nodded. "She's sharp."
X looked at Kimiko thoughtfully for a moment. "You know," He replied, "I hadn't thought of it like that. Actually, that makes me feel a good deal better. Thank you."
Kimiko shrugged. "Everyone thinks about things differently. Anyways, now that the blocks are removed, how do we get out of here?"
"Oh." X answered. "Can you access your Warp system?"
Kimiko nodded.
"Good. See that mirror? Try warping to a point roughly five feet past it."
Kimiko nodded again, then dissolved into a beam of green and purple light, which shot up through the ceiling. X stood thinking a moment more, then followed her in a blaze of dual blue.
Wa ha! Chapter four already!
I'm speeding up on this one. Dunno. Just kinda got the urge to write more of this.
So, Kimiko finally leaves 'The Room'. Wonder what the MHHQ denizens will think of this?
And, what sort of combat ability will she display? Will she show any at all?
Will I ever stop asking questions in the notes at the ends of my fanfics?
Probably not, but you could always hope.
Till next time, Ja ne!
"I don't take it as an insult because that is a bad thing to be that you called me. I take it as an insult that you intended to insult me and you are also saying that what you called me is a bad thing."
-Me.
"I think we should give her a chance." Stated X. "The message, and the way she acted, leads me to believe that she is no danger to us. Not once did she even suspect I was trying to trick her- like a Reploid first activated. Tabula rasa."
Zero shook his head. "But someone removed some of her memory- possibly most of it. Maybe there's a hidden program lurking in there, waiting to restore it- and that memory could contain a killer program."
"I doubt it." Replied X. "After all, she seemed to recognise the voice as that of her father."
"That could just be part of the plan."
"I doubt it. It certainly doesn't fit any of the methods the Mavericks have used in the past. Even when Sigma hid behind the Repliforce, there wasn't anything hardly so subtle."
"Exactly, X." Zero slapped the table lightly. "THAT's why we should be on the lookout for something like this. They would know we weren't going to suspect it, because they've never done this before."
Cain, looking skeptical, finally spoke up. "Yes, but all evidence points to Mavericks as being more of the 'shoot first, ask questions later' type. Besides, it's way too much difficulty to go to in order to just attack us with a single reploid. Even if she was highly skilled. From their point of view, it would probably be a waste of limited resources. Additionally, she isn't even on file. That means they would have had to build her themselves. The Mavericks have never relied on building and training new reploids- they always abduct existing ones."
"I guess you have a point, but I still think we should be careful."
X shook his head. "I'm not saying we shouldn't be careful. I'm just saying we shouldn't be that suspicious. Maybe keep her with one of our better Hunters at all times, just in case, until she's proven herself. That suit both of you?"
Zero nodded. "It's not what I would like, but I guess it'll do."
"I like that idea as well." Piped in Cain. "We'll go with that. Incidentally, given the message, I'm inclined to put her in your unit as soon as possible, X."
Zero shook his head. "No can do. The 17th is something of an elite unit. She'd have to prove to be very good in basic training in order to get in there."
X nodded. "I have to agree with Zero on this one. Maybe we should just train her until she is good enough, then put her in?"
Cain harrumphed. "That could take a while. What if the two of you trained her yourselves? You know you're the best we've got, and the most experienced at teaching rookies."
Zero smirked. "I like that." Thoughts of his saber training courses ran through his head. She'd get the hardest class he could give her. Then again, every class was the hardest, when Zero was teaching. He somewhat enjoyed the nickname- 'Instructor From Jedi Hell' a few of the trainees had called him.
X smiled much less evilly than Zero was. "I agree. Sounds good to me."
Cain smiled as well. "So, we're agreed. On to your last mission, X…"
Kimiko was looking at herself in the mirror. Once X had gone off to 'consult with the others', she had decided she might as well familiarise herself with her new body. It certainly was different.
She was a bit short compared to an adult human. Five feet zero inches, her internal voice supplied. This left her noticeably shorter than X. Her long, brown hair hung behind her in a braid, loose at the top, but the braiding itself was secure, tied off just below her waist, the last bit of hair reaching her hip height. Her eyes, strangely enough, were a deep maroon color. She had a broad face, matched by a short, but also broad nose. Her general facial shape suggested that, were she human, she would have been of Pilipino descent. Memory served to tell her that her new body shape was definitely that of an adult female, but not overemphasized. Her Dash Boots were in a simple grass green color, what she could see of them, anyways.
She reached up and brushed at a stray lock of hair that hung down over the bridge of her nose, and turned to reexamine her surroundings. The room had the strange thing she'd woken up on, a couple of stools, padded, and a small, square, folding table.
She walked over to the strange object. It resembled a bed, padded surface and a pillow, but the outside looked more like some sort of a capsule. It was attached to the wall behind the head of it, too, and tilted at a roughly forty-degree angle.
She turned about and sat on it, carefully smoothing her skirt so it didn't expose the backs of her legs. It was an old habit, she realized, but she still had no clue where it came from.
She sat there for a full six minutes, getting progressively more bored, and idly inspecting her fingernails. Finally, Kimiko looked around, and exclaimed,
"What am I supposed to do here anyway? This is so boring!"
Silence answered her, and she sighed. Giving in to the dullness, she stretched out in the bedlike-thing, and went to stasis.
Kimiko.
Yes, Otoosan?
Come here for a moment.
What is it, Otoosan?
I want to show you something. Here, look at this picture.
Hey, look, 'Toosan! There you are!
(amused) Yes, I am. But look at the other people in this picture.
Who are they?
They were my friends.
Were?
Yes… they're dead now. (sadly) The last one died a couple of years ago.
Oh….. Does that make you sad, Otoosan?
Hai, Kimiko-chan, it makes me very sad. They were very special people.
But… these aren't all people.
Not exactly, no. But they were all special all the same.
That doggy looks funny.
(Amused) I suppose he does, Kimiko-chan, I suppose he does.
X warped in. Looking around, he saw Kimiko in the stasis capsule, apparently taking a bit of a 'nap'. He walked over and looked down at her, smiling slightly. He reflected that that was probably what he would have done in this room with nothing to do, too. Carefully, he reached out and shook her by the shoulder.
Kimiko half-awoke, and muttered something in indistinct Japanese about a dog.
X blinked. "Beg pardon?"
Kimiko sat up. "Ano… sorry. Just a… dream, I think. Yes, a dream."
X nodded. "Okay then. Well, I don't get to welcome you to the Maverick Hunters… yet."
Kimiko quirked up one eyebrow.
"You need training first." X continued. "That is, if you want to join."
"Well, Ecksu-san, Otoosan said in the message to help you, and if you are a Maverick Hunter, then I'd probably have to be one to help you, right?"
X nodded. "Okay, then. Here's a chip that ought to remove those blocks we installed. That'll let you shift to your armor, and use your Dash Boots, Buster, and Warp systems."
He held out a chip with his left hand, similar to the memory chip he had given her before.
Kimiko raised her right hand, the synthskin parting again, and took the chip with the other hand, slotting it into the socket.
1 Run external memory chip program 'Block Dissolver' Y/N
Yes.
Run time two minutes. Please wait.
"So…" Began Kimiko. "Tell me about the Maverick Hunters, Ecksu-san."
X nodded. "Sure. I guess, to explain, I'll have to go way back to the beginning. It all started with a writer by the name of Isaac Asimov. He wrote science fiction in the 20th century. To keep all his robots in line, he created a set of ingrained morals that were supposedly active in all the robots. There were three of them. The first law was that a robot must never harm a human, nor allow a human to come to harm through inaction. The second law was that a robot must never disobey a direct order from a human. The final law was that a robot must not allow itself to come to harm nor inflict harm upon itself, unless doing so would cause a human to come to harm, or require that the robot ignore a very strong order. These were called the Laws of Robotics."
Kimiko nodded.
"Eventually," X continued, "A man named Thomas Light, the man who built me, by the way, built a robot called Protoman. Protoman was more advanced than other robots. Where most robots had a specific set of clauses, like 'when X, then Y' that gave them strict actions to follow, Protoman was able to make decisions on his own about things. He was allowed to develop his own set of responses to things. There was a laboratory accident later, and he disappeared, but that's beside the point. The point is that Protoman was the next step up from the earlier robots. He still had all three Laws of Robotics, though."
Program concluded. Please remove memory chip.
Kimiko, still listening to X, removed the chip from the back of her hand, the synthskin once again presenting an unbroken surface to the world.
X spoke on, noting that the block removal program was done. "Much later on, Dr. Thomas Light was able to construct me. I am the prototype for the reploids who are out and about in the world today. The difference between us and higher robots like Protoman is that we are like humans in every way. We start out with no ingrained responses, but the three Laws are still there. However, since we are able to think for ourselves, at some point in our lives we become able to modify the last two Laws of Robotics, and are able to break or bend them based on a judgement call. A Maverick is a robot who has broken the First Law, particularly through intentionally causing physical harm to a human. Long story short, the Maverick Hunters is a group created to, well, hunt and destroy Maverick reploids."
Kimiko nodded slowly. "So… It's kind of like parents, the Three Laws."
X looked puzzled. "Beg pardon?"
Kimiko held up one hand, palm up. "When a child first starts out, they follow rules because their parents tell them to. Eventually, they outgrow those rules, particularly when they learn the reasons behind them. At this point, they no longer need those rules, because they are capable of using good judgement instead. So a Maverick is a reploid who has outgrown the First Law, and made a conscious decision counter to their good judgement, or due to a personal lack of it, particularly given that there is an organization that will then hunt down and destroy them."
Dr. Cain, standing in the observation room with Zero and Arnie, blinked. "Hey, that makes a lot of sense!"
Zero nodded. "She's sharp."
X looked at Kimiko thoughtfully for a moment. "You know," He replied, "I hadn't thought of it like that. Actually, that makes me feel a good deal better. Thank you."
Kimiko shrugged. "Everyone thinks about things differently. Anyways, now that the blocks are removed, how do we get out of here?"
"Oh." X answered. "Can you access your Warp system?"
Kimiko nodded.
"Good. See that mirror? Try warping to a point roughly five feet past it."
Kimiko nodded again, then dissolved into a beam of green and purple light, which shot up through the ceiling. X stood thinking a moment more, then followed her in a blaze of dual blue.
Wa ha! Chapter four already!
I'm speeding up on this one. Dunno. Just kinda got the urge to write more of this.
So, Kimiko finally leaves 'The Room'. Wonder what the MHHQ denizens will think of this?
And, what sort of combat ability will she display? Will she show any at all?
Will I ever stop asking questions in the notes at the ends of my fanfics?
Probably not, but you could always hope.
Till next time, Ja ne!
"I don't take it as an insult because that is a bad thing to be that you called me. I take it as an insult that you intended to insult me and you are also saying that what you called me is a bad thing."
-Me.