A/N: This is my first fanfic. It is rated PG-13 for swearing, violence, and disturbing scenes. This fic will focus on mainly Axl, so if you hate Axl, this is not your fic. Pairings are: XxAlia, ZeroxIris (past), and one sided LayerxZero. Also, this takes place after X8, so there are spoilers. Anyway, enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own anything associated with Mega Man X. Capcom does. :(
Shadows of my soul
Chapter 1: After
Red. Like blood. Axl opened his eyes and looked around. He was standing on a rooftop, which was covered in blood. He looked down at himself, and saw that he was covered in blood as well. Shocked, he stepped backward and hit the side of the rooftop. Cautiously, he looked over the side. "What the hell?" he said. There, covering the streets of Megaopolis, were thousands of mutilated bodies, both human and reploid. They stared up at him, asking why he didn't save them. The bodies then began to flow together as a red river. Swirling into a red vortex, Axl noticed a face beginning to form in the blood…
"Ahhhh!" screamed Axl, bolting out of bed. Panting heavily, he wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and looked over at the clock on his desk. "5:46 a.m., joy." he said while rubbing his temples. It had been a little over a month since the battle on the moon against Sigma and Lumine, and since then things had been quiet at Hunters H.Q. Oh sure, there was the occasional mop-up of Maverick new generation reploids and several (false) sightings of Vile, but the only thing really disturbing the peace was his nightmares. "It's always the same dream." he thought to himself as he got out of bed and left his room. Since it was so early in the morning he decided to head down to the archive room and brush up on some history. Zero had planed a test that day on the forth Maverick War and Axl was not going to fail it. As he headed towards the room his thoughts drifted back to the battle on the moon.
(Flashback)
X, Zero, and Axl watched as Lumine screamed in agony and fell to the ground, defeated.
"Unbelievable…" he said "To think that someone like me would be defeated by a pathetic prototype and some old models." Slowly, Lumine tried to get on his feet but an Axl bullet to the shoulder kept him in a kneeling, almost prayer like stance.
"Give up Lumine, its over. There's no need to continue fighting." said X holding on to the hope that somehow Lumine would see the light and stop his insane scheme.
"Don't bother, X. You can't reason with Mavericks." said Zero, not even trying to hide the disgust in his voice.
"Heh, you really don't have a clue about this do you? You'll soon find out that this is far beyond your ability to stop. Soon… very soon we reploids will assume our rightful place as rulers of the new world!" cried Lumine.
At this point Axl heard enough of Lumine's ramblings and was about to say it to the white reploids face when suddenly the sensors in his eyes showed that Lumine was no longer among the living. The young reploid began towards walk towards the Maverick's corpse, just to be sure. After all, Red had summed it up perfectly when he said "Sensors fail, eyes don't." Axl stopped dead in his tracks as the body of Lumine began to shake violently. Without any warning a purple-black tentacle erupted from a crack in Lumine's armour, smashing into the blue crystal on Axl's head. After that everything went black.
The next thing Axl was aware of was slowly coming to in one of the H.Q.'s medical bays. "Ugh, my head. What happened?" he grunted.
"Oh, good to see your awake." said a voice that Axl recognized as coming from Lifesaver, one of the Hunters' medical officers, and one of the leading experts on the various Maverick viruses. "How are you feeling?"
"Honestly, like crap." said Axl, rubbing the blue gem on his helmet and giving a small smile.
"Heh, heh. You never cease to amaze me." chuckled the reploid. "As for what happened, after you Lumine hit with that tentacle thing, Zero and X blew him straight to the scrap heap. Alia, Layer, and Pallette then teleported the three of you here and you were entrusted to my care. I repaired your damages, checked your copy chip, ran some virus scans…" Lifesaver paused as he saw a look of fear cross the teenage Hunter's face. "Don't worry; all tests show that you are 100 virus free. Anyway, you've been out for the while so I was starting to worry, but now it seems your fine now."
(End flashback)
However, Axl had been having constant nightmares since then. Lifesaver had told him it was probably caused by post-battle stress and said that the nightmares would go away in time. "That was almost three weeks ago." Axl thought as he snapped back to reality. He looked around and saw that his feet had carried him right to the archive room. Axl brought up the time on his optic sensors, "6: oo a.m. sharp. That gives me a good hour to study before breakfast." He took in a deep breath, exhaled, and walked into the archive room. "Well, better get started."
A/N: Hi! I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of Shadows of my soul. As I said in the first notes, this fic is mainly about Axl, but I will also have some focus on X and Zero. Also, (before I get any flames about it) I did rewrite the ending of X8. This is not the official ending. Well, that's about all I want to cover. Please review! See ya!
Next chapter: Just another day
