Disclaimer:
I do not now nor have ever owned Rockman/Megaman X or any of its characters. However, Tanya, and the members of the 17th and 0th units were created by me. Please do not steal my ideas. Thank you.
Important:
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
IT'S 2005!!
This chapter is PG and MSPX8. See chapter 10 for explanation.
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Reploid Anatomy 101 – Interlude, the Second
Alternate Uses
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As Rockman X slipped between two much taller, and larger, reploid revelers he had to carefully balance the glasses he was carrying. The crowd was so thick in here that it was hard to take even a single step without bumping, or being bumped, by someone else.
"Ah, excuse me… Sorry… Pardon me…" After much twisting and maneuvering, X finally found himself in a pocket of clear space around a potted fern and breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn't spilled anything yet.
"There you are!" a familiar voice cried over the loud dance beat music playing in the background, as a hand clapped down onto his shoulder. X jumped and the liquid in the glasses sloshed dangerously close to the edges.
"Aah! Zero! Be careful would you! I don't want to spill." X turned to face his friend with a small frown.
"Oh. Heh. Sorry. Didn't notice you were carrying." Zero grinned at him. "But, Axl and I've been looking for you. Where have you been, anyway?"
"Trying to grab some drinks before the bar runs out." X explained as he lifted the two glasses in his hands for emphasis.
Zero cocked an eyebrow and grinned. "Didn't realize you were a two fisted drinker."
X flushed. "I'm not!"
"Oh?"
"If you must know, only one is for me."
"Really? How thoughtful! You got me a drink! C'mere you!" Zero grinned and slung his arm around X's shoulders, reaching up with his other hand to ruffle his hair.
"Gah! Cut that out!" X shrugged off Zero's arm and ducked under his ruffling hand. "It's not for you!"
"Oh ho! I get it." Zero grinned and nudged X's side. "For a lady, eh?"
"Not like that, you nut. For your information, Alia wanted something to propose a toast with, but didn't know where the drinks were. So I said I'd get her one."
Zero grinned. "Well, what are you doing over here? I just left Alia over by the couches. It's rude to keep a lady waiting, you know." Zero pointed in a direction tangent to where X had been headed.
X blinked and glanced around before looking up to the ceiling of the Hunter HQ main lobby to try to get his bearings. "Ah jeez. I swear, every Hunter and their cousin must be packed in here. It's a wonder I'm not more turned around." X shook his head ruefully.
"And that my friend, is why we have a little something called GPS. Never go to a big party without it." Zero grinned. "Now come on. Alia's waiting, and Axl was headed that way too."
X sighed and activated his GPS targeting system, linking into the satellite network to pinpoint his location in the building. He turned to face the right direction and sighed again as he regarded the daunting task of maneuvering through the tightly packed mass of bodies that eddied and swirled with currents of motion around them. Zero glanced from his resigned expression to the wall of people and grinned.
"All right! Make way! Coming through!" Zero practically bellowed as he gave X a shove forward before passing him and taking point. X shot him an appalled look that was completely ignored as Zero barreled into the crowd ahead of him. "Watch it! Careful there! Guy on a mission here!"
X groaned and shook his head. However, he was not one to allow an opportunity like this to pass by and slipped into Zero's disturbed wake, apologizing profusely as he went.
In a fraction of the time it had taken X to get from the drink bar to the fern planter where he'd encountered Zero, they found themselves arriving at a cluster of couches near a handful of palm trees in planters.
Alia, wearing a knee-length red dress, sat on one of the three couches beside Tanya, who was wearing a dark green blouse and a black ankle length skirt with a slit up the side. On the adjacent couch, Amber sat between Vixen and Todd. Dyne, Snake, and Tag took up the couch across from Alia and Tanya. Each of the three guys was wearing one of the black top hats that were being circulated throughout the party. Axl, in a dark blue shirt, black slacks, and party top hat, was perched on the arm of the girls' sofa. There was an empty seat left between him and Alia.
"Hey! Look what I found!" Zero grinned brightly as he gestured grandly to X as he came up beside him. "He followed me home. Can I keep him?"
"Moron." X shoved him lightly out of the way as he stepped between the couch Alia and Tanya sat on, and the low table in the center of the couch cluster. Zero grinned cheekily as he hopped up onto the arm of the couch beside Tanya.
"Great! You found him!" Axl grinned as he twisted on his perch to face X and Zero.
X handed one of the glasses to Alia. "Here, Alia. Sorry it took so long."
"It's okay. You made it back with time to spare." Alia smiled up at him as she accepted the glass.
"So," X straightened up and turned to Axl, "why were you looking for me?"
"Didn't you hear?" Dyne asked. "We're not going to have the finale this time. Can you believe that?"
"Yeah," Snake added. "Signas cancelled at the last minute because of the storm." He gestured to the glass windows that made up the outer wall of the lobby. The night sky beyond, and the storm clouds that covered it, could barely be seen through the driving streaks of rain. Snake shook his head. "What a time for the weather control system to have a spastic malfunction."
"I'd blame mavericks, but I can't think of any that would be petty enough to hack the system just to rain out our party." Tag shook his head.
"Yeah, I heard. It's a shame. We hired a crack team this year to put things together. But, what can you do? This storm isn't going to let up until at least morning, according to the report the weather system supervisor sent us. It's just not a priority tonight, it's not doing any real harm." X shrugged as he sat down on the couch beside Alia.
"Ah! But that's where you're wrong, X. You see, I had an idea." Axl grinned.
X raised an eyebrow at the younger reploid. "Really?"
"Yup, just wait till you hear it." Axl grinned.
"I'm all ears. What were you thinking?"
"Well, since we can't do anything outside because of the storm, I was thinking we should have it inside this year."
"You're kidding."
"Huh? No. I'm serious."
"You want to have it inside. As in, in the lobby?"
"Awesome! That's a great idea!" Dyne grinned.
"Yup! What do you think, X? Will you do it?"
"Axl, we can't just… Wait… what do you mean 'will I do it?'"
"Well, of course we're not going to use the normal stuff. Can you imagine the chaos having the real thing inside would cause? So, I was thinking, you could, you know… put on your gauntlets and make with the sparklies." Axl grinned.
"Axl," X sighed in exasperation, "don't you think my opening fire, even straight up into the air, would cause even more chaos and panic? Half the people here are probably drunk enough to think there's an attack."
"Not like that, X. I meant with your flower power."
"My…?" X paused and shook his head. "Axl, regardless of how it looks, it's still a weapon. You know that." X sighed.
"Aw, come on X. It's not like anybody will get hurt. You can set the power especially low. It won't even tickle if someone gets hit." Zero chimed in.
"That's not the point. It's not a toy, you know."
"We know. But, you gotta admit, it would be cool." Axl grinned. "Come on, X. Please. Zero's right. With the maximum power level set low enough, it'll just be an awesome light show."
X frowned at Axl and Zero. "Then why don't you just use yours if you're so confident."
"Because mine isn't nearly so pretty." Axl grinned impishly.
X scowled and crossed his arms over his chest.
"Plus, a big honkin laser light shaft can't exactly be mistaken for anything except an attack." Zero added with a smirk.
"Come on, X. It won't hurt to fire off a couple of extra-low powered shots. Besides, it just isn't the same unless something goes boom." Dyne grinned cajolingly across at him.
"You can drop the power to harmless levels, right, X?" Tanya asked as she leaned around Alia. "I'd actually kind of like to see it. Not every day you get to see something like that, you know."
"Well, yes, I can, but…"
Tanya leaned back and surreptitiously eyed X from the corner of her half lidded eyes. Time to bring out the big guns. "You know, Alia and I were really disappointed that the show was cancelled. Ally was really looking forward to it."
X blinked. "You were?"
"W-well yeah." Alia flushed slightly and shot Tanya a look, which went ignored. "But that's okay. I mean, it's not anything I haven't seen before, you know."
"Aw don't be so modest. You love the displays. You were really looking forward to seeing this years'."
"Ah, no, it's okay, really. I mean… If X doesn't want to…" Alia flushed as she replied.
X frowned slightly, then sighed and shook his head. "No, it's okay. Zero's right, I can drop the power output to harmless levels. It would just be a light show like Axl said. And, honestly, I was going to miss the display myself." X glanced over at Axl. "But, you owe me for this Axl. Don't expect this every year."
Axl grinned and nodded. "Course not. This is a special circumstance. We'll do things the ordinary way next year."
X nodded and stood up, then paused as Alia caught his forearm. He glanced down at her questioningly.
"X… You sure?"
"Yeah." X smiled slightly down at her. "It's okay."
Alia released his arm as he straightened up and extended his arms out in front of him at waist level as he closed his eyes in concentration. The familiar crackle of teleportation energy arced across his forearms as a white nimbus of energies formed and obscured them from view. An instant later and the nimbus faded away, revealing the red and white of the Icarus gauntlets.
X opened his eyes and glanced over at Axl. "So when exactly did you want me to do this?"
"We've got about five minutes." Axl grinned.
X nodded, "Plenty of time." He closed his eyes and cocked his head slightly to the side as he accessed his internal weapons system controls to alter the power output and activate the proper weapons code. Because he was wearing just the gauntlets, there was no visible change as he activated the appropriate weapons code. It took X another minute to properly adjust the power output level to one percent of normal. At that level, even the charged shot would only be strong enough to cause a tingling sensation, similar to static cling. Once he was done, he opened his eyes.
"All set?" Zero asked.
"Yep, just waiting for my cue." X smiled as he sat down again.
"Awesome!" Axl grinned. "This is going to be great!"
"Just remember, you owe me for this." X added sternly.
"No sweat." Axl grinned.
"We've got two minutes to go. Everyone got their drinks?" Tanya glanced around. In reply, everyone seated on the couches lifted up their glasses except Zero, who suddenly realized he was without.
"Aw man, I was going to get another while looking for X, but I found him too soon."
"You'll never make it to the bar and back in time." Todd shook his head regretfully.
"Unless you used your Dash systems…" Snake put in helpfully.
"Oh no you don't, Zero. Last time you used Dash during a party you knocked at least twenty people down. Signas nearly had kittens." X scowled at him.
"I'd pay to see that." Snake grinned.
"Here, gimme your glass." Axl held out his hand. Zero snagged his empty glass, which he'd left on the table before he'd left to find X, and passed it over. "You can have some of mine to toast with." Axl tipped his own untouched glass over and poured half into Zero's. "There, but don't drink it beforehand." Axl passed it back to Zero.
"Thanks." Zero grinned as he accepted it. Just then a chorus of cheers and shouts rang out across the lobby. Everyone turned their heads to face the inside wall of the lobby where a large vidscreen had been secured between two balconies that overlooked the lobby floor.
The displayed image had shifted from various assorted feeds, live and pre-recorded, from around the planet, to a massive digital clock, counting down. The numbers had just gone into the seconds.
Everyone stood up from the couches and avidly watched the screen as the initial cheers from the surrounding crowd died away. An expectant hush filled the room.
As the count hit ten seconds a new collective shout went up.
"TEN!"
"NINE!"
"EIGHT!"
"SEVEN!"
"SIX!"
"FIVE!"
"FOUR!"
"THREE!"
"TWO!"
"ONE!"
And then the real cheering began as champagne glasses were lifted high in a toast.
"HAPPY NEW YEAR!!"Wild cheering and whooping filled the Hunter's main lobby and echoed off the high ceiling and walls. Explosions of streamer poppers filled the air as confetti was pitched off the higher balcony levels by revelers and tossed into the air by others on the ground. Couples all around kissed and hugged or shared champagne.
Axl leaped up and balanced on the arm of the sofa and whooped, tossing his new years top hat into the air. Todd blushed pink as Amber threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek. Vixen tossed back her head and let loose with a vulpine howl. Dyne and Snake had linked arms and were dancing a jig around each other on the tabletop, waving their top hats over their heads with their free arms. Tag was busy tipping back his glass.
Tanya gave a shriek of surprise as Zero suddenly scooped her off her feet and swung her around in a circle before setting her back down with a grin. "What was that for!" she gasped as she swatted his shoulder.
Zero grinned. "You were the closest girl. Would you prefer a New Year's kiss?"
Tanya laughed. "No thanks, Casanova. A one night's spin is enough for me."
Just then, a loud brief thrum of power, rather like the boom of an explosion, echoed across the room. It was followed immediately by a high-pitched wail, similar to that of a fireworks rocket, which cut through the revelry. Heads all over turned to track a streak of rainbow-hued, sparkling light that rocketed straight up into the air. Even before the first had reached the apex of it's flight, five more followed it up, each in a different trajectory to form a half-arc above the crowd. About 20 feet up, the first reached the apex of its flight and abruptly exploded with a resounding boom into eight similar balls of light, each shot out from the central ring of rainbow light in a different direction. The other five original shots also each exploded into a starburst array.
X mentally adjusted his snap release speed to get a bit more distance per shot. He brought his hands around and up to clap them together above his head. The solar energy coalesced with a loud sharp thrum of rapid power accumulation between his slightly cupped palms into a ball of rainbow light. Then X snapped his hands and arms apart and down to release the ball. The rainbow light shot out in a straight line above his head. He followed that with two more, slightly to either side. These three shots reached nearly thirty feet in height, while the last of the previous round were still fading from view, before exploding in three more starbursts.
A couple more rounds later and X decided to toss in a finale shot. He set the gauntlet's to charge to the maximum he had set it to earlier, which wasn't much at all. Because the power level desired was so low, it took just an instant longer than a normal shot to ready a charged shot. This allowed X to fire off three charged shots in rapid succession.
This time, four starbursts exploded for every original shot fired, resulting in a total of twelve starbursts of rainbow light over the cheering crowd. As X grinned at the sight of his finale and lowered his arms, he felt hands slip around his right elbow. Blinking in surprise he turned to meet Alia's gaze.
"Thank you, X." Alia smiled up at him from where she leaned slightly against his shoulder. "It really is awesome." She smiled as she turned her gaze up to the last of the rapid starbursts.
X laughed slightly and rubbed the back of his head with his left hand. "Yeah. I guess Shining Ray really does make pretty good substitute fireworks."
Alia smiled at him and lightly hugged his arm to her. "Happy New Year, X."
X smiled back. "Happy New Year, Alia."
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The End
Owari
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This chapter was totally unexpected…
I came up with the idea last night, in the car, on the way to a New Year's Party my brother's girlfriend's family was throwing.
Also, blame me for beating Optic Sunflower in X8 and discovering that X's Shining Ray weapon was glorified fireworks…
It does work, when you can hit stuff with it, but it's not as spectacularly destructive looking as Zero's or Axl's flower power weapons.
Zero gets this gigantic laser ray of death from space or something.
Axl gets a laser beam gun (when you hold the button down for rapid fire it looks like an unbroken ray of lasery death).
And X gets a starburst rainbow fireworks display he gets to toss over his head…
Come on, how could I leave that alone on New Years? (Time of massive fireworks bonanzas all across the globe.)
X's bodysuit is the only thing that changes color with the special weapons choice when using his various armors, the solid armor pieces stay their original colors as far as I can tell. (I only have one armor piece to go with the Neutral Armor, which is the Icarus buster.) Only with standard blue armor X does his whole blue armor color shift.
ESPECIALLY SPOILERISH
I'd like to thank Warde for pointing out that I missed some of X's armors from X8 when I wrote that list. So, now he officially also has the Icarus and Hermes, as well as Neutral, in my fics. Er, I still don't know everything they do… Oh well.
I'd also like to note that Dark Mantis was a pushover compared to the Flower Power guy. And Vile was almost a disappointment considering how much hype people give him for being badass. Axl totally owned him with his happy sunshine laser gun.
END SPOILERISH
I'd like to thank Vic Viper as well as Warde for their assistance in trying to help me figure out X's armor color changes better. I'm still working on it. But you both helped clear some thoughts up for me.
You will all be happy to know that I've come up with another idea, and have written the technical side out already. Since this will be chapter 11, this new idea will be chapter 13. 12 is already slated to a previous idea.
Reviewer Responses:
PRIVATE:
I believe X8 came out on December 7th in America. I'm not sure about any other countries.
Actually, I think most reploids, such as X, Zero, and Axl have the jewels in their helmets and not on their actual heads. Sigma seems to have one actually in his forehead though. I'm not really sure why. Maybe it's a fashion statement…
(If you want a serious answer, I'll need more time and thought.)
I'm kind of disregarding the whole MMZ series because I don't like it when X dies…
However, if I was to take a stab at why Zero's body changed so dramatically, I'll also be giving a spoiler for one of the games. (I don't remember which one it was though.)
Either his body changed because the art style changed and he actually still looks the same, we just view him differently; or, two other possibilities.
The spoiler one is that the body Zero uses in MMZ and onwards is not the original Zero body. It's a copy someone made and either also copied Zero's mind/soul/etc into it or transferred him into it.
The non-spoiler reason is that over the years since X8 and before Zero stuck himself into the time capsule he underwent major reconstructive upgrades. From what I came up with, the body of a reploid can be upgraded and changed according to the reploid's desires, assuming they have the money to pay for the alterations. As long as the neural matrix inside the skull casing remains intact and connected to the generator core, the rest of the systems can be replaced or new ones added on. Total body overhauls are not only expensive, but also contain some risk because it requires removing the neural matrix and plasma generator and re-installing it in another body.
SR71will, ravenf6, shadowneko003I honestly didn't plan out a retribution for the broadcast. Dynamo's kind of the type who gets away with things by being sneaky, underhanded, and running away to snark again another day. I suppose I could try to come up with fitting vengeance…
Oh, and shadowneko003, just in case you aren't being sarcastic when you call him a professor, I just want to clarify that Dynamo is not in any way a professor of anything. He has no PhD or any sort of doctorate, and I doubt he has a college diploma of any kind. I also doubt he has a High School Diploma. (I honestly can't see him getting a certificate of graduation from elementary school either…)
Hayvel, former bringer of DOOM(and apparent master of the understated review)
I went over this a bit in the technical part of chapter 6. You might want to take another look at that.
Essentially, the maverick virus isn't affected by power failures to the neural matrix or memory wipes. Plus, the mavericks in charge don't really care about the whole 'resurrecting is bad because they go crazy' thing.
As for reploid children… They don't grow up in form unless they get major upgrades and overhauls of body size/type. They do grow up mentally, although they would otherwise retain their child body/voice without the upgrades. If you've ever seen 'Interview with a Vampire', there's a little girl in the movie (whose name I don't remember) who is turned into a vampire. She stays a little girl for the rest of her existence, which is (I think) over a hundred years. So a child reploid would kind of be like that, except without the vampirism…
windwingxs:
I don't know that they actually hooked up in the game. In that scene you mention (the only one I've seen so far that potentially implied any such thing) Zero was kind of 'huh? Oh yeah, you exist.' Layer definitely had it bad, but who's to say how many other hunter girls have it bad for him but don't get noticed (or showcased, in this instance)? His tone of voice and choice of words when addressing her didn't really indicate that he liked her as a girlfriend. (To me, at least.) I kind of got the impression he has almost no idea of who she is besides being a new technical spotter.
Rena-chan:
I actually think Palette might be one of the reploids built to look like a child. She has a very young (prepubescent) face, and her body type is also that of a prepubescent, or just beginning puberty, girl. Her chest is almost flat from what I can tell and her curves are not well defined. Only her mental age is much older, so she left whatever child-oriented work she started in and joined the Hunters, wanting to work in a more mature field.
Her voice is still annoying though. And the baby doll face and very flat, and close to the skull, hair is very creepyish.
Yes, Optic Sunflower is a guy. The voice sounds like a nasal woman's voice, though. But X, Axl, and Zero all refer to Optic as 'he.' So maybe he's one of those asexual reploids that decided to be 'male' (despite the femininish voice) that I wrote about in chapter three.
I think they put random animal, plant, scientific, elemental, and technological words in a big hat. Shake it up. And have a trained monkey pull out the pieces and match them up to get the maverick names.
Either that, or they have a guy locked in the corporate basement, chained to a typewriter, who comes up with very bad puns on animal and plant names.
Seizure Monkey – gives off vivid, bright, rapidly changing flashes of colored light that cause epileptic fits in the gamer, allowing the Monkey to easily defeat X, Zero, and Axl by throwing psychedelic-hued banana peels at them…
Ah well, that's all for the replies.
I hope you all enjoyed this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it (from about 2:40 am to nearly 7am… I still enjoyed writing it… I'm weird that way…)
Tell me what you think.
I'm a little sleepy right now, so I'll just finish up with this.
Hope everyone had a happy, and safe New Year's Eve.
Till next time.