Mega Man Cross
Chapter 17
"The Second Dragon"
By MEGAMANX411
X and company went back and boarded the boat, ready to face their next challenge. As Zero laid back in his chair, he let outa content sigh.
"Man..kind of feels like our hunting days, eh X?" Zero asked.
X shrugged his shoulders. Even though he didn't really care for his profession, he did admit that returning home to his life is something he wanted rather badly. What they were doing now was kind of similar to their previous assignments as hunters, but it still wasn't the same.
"I suppose you could say that...but we should stay serious about this matter," X replied.
Alia, in the meantime, was in the process of looking up the next destination. A map was brought up depicting the islands once again.
"Well, the closest to us as of now would probably be Mount Pyre. I'm assuming because it's a volcano, there will probably be a fire-oriented dragon there," Alia reasoned.
"Let's get going," X muttered, looking out the window as he spoke.
The boat soon came to Mount Pyre, and the group began to scour the area for any signs of the dragon. They each explored around the volcano first, but saw no signs of the dragon whatsoever. So they decided to enter. Because they had already explored the area once before, they reasoned that it shouldn't be too hard to find a dragon. A creature as big as that couldn't possibly hide very well.
As they searched the area, it struck them as odd that no one could catch sight of the dragon. Dragons were usually depicted as large..so the fact that it wasn't seen after this long may have meant something was wrong.
"Do you really think we would have missed it the last time we were here?" Zero asked, looking around.
"Yeah..we were here once before, you think you would notice something like a dragon," Alia added.
"Do ya think we're lookin' in the wrong place?" Kid asked, clutching one of her daggers.
X shook his head in response. He believed what they were looking for was indeed here, he just reasoned that they couldn't see it yet.
"I don't think the data's false...I just think we're going about this all wrong.." X muttered.
A slight crunching sound was heard, like the sound of a person walking. X quickly brandished his buster, wheeled himself around, and aimed at the source of the noise. When X realized what he was looking at, his eyes widened with disbelief. It looked like a dragon..at least, to a degree. It was incredibly small though, and would probably fit the bill better as a gigantic lizard.
"Wait, wait, wait...you aren't serious? This is the dragon?" Zero asked, sounding both shocked and disappointed.
The little dragon reploid flashed a vicious smile, and lunged itself at Zero. The crimson hunter anticipated the attack and smashed the dragon to the ground before it could come close enough to latch onto him. The dragon groveled a bit, rubbed its head, and then stood back up.
"This fight's not worth it.." Zero muttered, putting his saber away.
The dragon flashed a wicked smile again, and a wave of uneasiness came over everyone. If Zero could beat the dragon so easily..why did it act so confident still? It was rather perpexling, to say the least. X kept his buster steady and Kid kept her daggers ready for use. Alia was standing behind X with her own buster ready, and Norris had his pistol ready to fire at any time.
The dragon reploid began to flex, and suddenly, it's body began to transform. It instantly grew in size to immense proportions. Unlike the previous dragon, this one kept a somewhat humanoid build and walked on its hind legs, but it still had a dragon-like figure. It grew to about 20 feet tall or so, and it's red wings stretched out further and further. The massive reploid roared, and the group instantly knew why the dragon was smiling earlier.
X let out a buster shot, which clipped the dragon in the wing. The reploid shrieked, doubled back, and then opened its huge jaw to let out a stream of fire. X nimby rolled to the side to avoid being burnt, but the attack still made him quite nervous. X shot a glance over at the others to see if they were ok, and then struggled back to his feet.
The dragon then tried to stomp down on X with its massive form, but X was dodging every attack. Zero, seeing his friend in trouble, launched himself in the air and grabbed onto the dragon's head. The only thing was, the dragon's body was so hot that doing so gave Zero a burning sensation. Despite that, he brought his saber down and stabbed the dragon in the eye. Kid, following up on Zero's lead, threw a dagger and took out the dragon's other eye.
The dragon reared its head back and then let out another blast of fire. Norris quickly leaped over at Kid to knock her out of the way, and Korcha remained at the sidelines so he wasn't in the line of fire. Zero managed to get out of the way in time because he was right beside the dragon. But someone wasn't able to-Alia.
"Alia!" X shouted.
X quickly thrust himself in front of Alia, and the burning attack hit him directly. X let out a scream of agony, but stood his ground. The fires were going harmless by Alia because of X's barricade.
"X, don't!" Alia shouted, reaching out to him.
As the blast subsided, X stumbled around in a daze and finally fell to the ground. Alia gritted her teeth angrily and charged her buster. She decided to employ a technique that she had learned from X awhile ago, one that would indeed be effective in subduing this monster.
"Hyper Cannon!"
Alia let loose a barrage of charged buster blasts from her arm cannon. The massive energy balls ripped through the dragon's body and left several holes in it. The dragon twitched and began to fall backwards. It struck the ground with incredible force and a cloud of dust was brought up as it did so. Alia breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that it was over. A single bead of sweat trickled down her face and she was breathing heavily.
Zero was completely stunned at this turn of events. He had never seen Alia fight like that before. He never really saw her angry all that often for that matter. He just stood there, speechless for a moment, before rushing over to X. Alia was there as well, clutching X close. She tucked his head to her chest and a tear streamed down her cheek.
Zero reached out his hand to try and console Alia, but he retracted it. He thought it may be better to not get involved. Kid stood beside Zero, and looked equally worried. A look of shock was on her face, but when she looked over at Zero, the crimson hunter just shook his head to signal to her that she should let Alia handle it. Korcha wasn't really in a position to say anything either, and Norris quickly broke out his medical supplies.
"G-guess..I overdid...the whole protection thing a bit," X wheezed, waking up.
Alia forced a meek smile as she saw X's eyes open, but she just held him closer. X didn't say anything else, he knew what he had done, and he would have done it again. Alia knew that X would protect her...and she also knew that she would protect him. Norris quickly broke out the medical supplies to help, but he let Alia administer it. She was more experienced, after all.
As Alia brought X back to the boat, Zero looked forward with a determined gaze. He then looked over to notice that Kid was looking rather down. He bent down beside her.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"I was jus' wondering...if X would have done the same for me if I were in trouble," Kid muttered, lowering her head.
Even though she admitted that she wanted to be friends with Alia, Kid did realize that Alia took far more of X's attention. Since she showed up, X didn't pay much mind to Kid. Zero just smirked and patted Kid's head.
"I'll save you if you're in trouble. You can count on me," Zero muttered, acting like a father figure.
Kid just smiled back at Zero beacuse of his kind gesture. Zero wasn't usually the one to show such emotion on occasion, especially after what happened with Iris, but Kid did admit that Zero did seem to be acting like a father or big brother to her. Korcha then tried to impress Kid with his own promise of protection, but Kid just shrugged it off, which made Zero chuckle and Korcha whine.
"Well...that's two down. Four left," Norris announced, taking his seat at the helm.
"But what about X?" Kid asked.
"He'll be ok..." Alia muttered, walking forward. "He's just resting for the time being. He'll be ready by the time we get to our destination."
"That's just like X, heh..." Zero muttered, shaking his head. "We'll let him sleep. But we should already start moving towards the next island."
