Braving the Unknown
By: Megaraptor the Scribe

Disclaimer: MegaMan X/Rockman X is the property of Capcom and Keiji Inafune. This is a purely derivative work, and I do not seek to profit from it. This work is mine and mine alone.

This story acts on the presumption that Command Mission is in continuity with the rest of the MegaMan X series, and that it follows after MegaMan X8. I realize the former is said to take place in the year 22XX rather than 21XX, so assume that X8 took place before the turn of the century and that Command Mission occurred after it.

Axl grit his teeth as the scanning field washed over his body, moving from down from his head to his toes. The beam of light even made his circuits tingle, not just the touch receptors on his artificial skin. But there was more on the young reploid's mind at the moment than a simple sensation... a fact that became all the more stressing to him as the equipment finished its reading.

Axl sat up quickly in the alcove. "Well, Pallette? What does it say?"

A young female reploid, with brightly colored armor, wearing a lab coat and glasses sat at the console controlling the equipment. Like Axl, she appeared to be rather young, but unlike him, she was clearly not designed for combat.

Pallette sighed. "The scanner register is clean, Axl," she said, in her typically high voice. "I don't detect any abnormalities in your system whatsoever, just like the last seven times I did this. And let's not forget the 10 diagnostics I ran, and all of what we did yesterday..."

Axl frowned, slumping back into the device. He had come to her hoping to find some kind of answer... At this point, anything he might have found out, good or bad, would have relieved him; at least that way he would know what was or wasn't wrong with him. He couldn't exactly take this to X or Zero because this wasn't their field of expertise, and Alia, she'd worry about him too much to be of any real help. He didn't exactly know Layer or any of the other technicians that well, so... that left Pallette. She was the only one left that he knew was intelligent enough to be trusted with this task, and what's more, she seemed to be somewhat empathetic when he first came to her.

"There has to be something, Pallette!" he said. "Run it again, and if that doesn't work, we'll do another diagnostic, and-!"

Pallette frowned, removing her glasses. "Axl," she said, interrupting him, "I'm not doing anymore scans or diagnostics."

Axl's eyes widened. "What! Why not!" he demanded, standing up.

Pallette looked at him firmly, crossing her arms. "I'm not doing anything until you tell me what's bothering you," she stated. "You've been like this ever since you and the others got back from Giga City. I'm your friend, Axl, and I deserve to know... That is, at least if you plan to keep asking for my help."

Axl frowned, bringing a hand to his forehead. Rubbing it, he looked down at the floor and started pacing. "That's... it's a bit complicated, Pallette..."

Pallette sighed. "Is it really?" she asked him. "It's because of Redips, isn't it?"

Axl sighed as he sunk into one of the room's chairs, his gaze still fixed on the floor. "It's not just that," he said, sullenly. "It's because of everything that's happened, from the time Red died, to that whole thing with the Next Gens, and then the deal in Giga City."

Pallette nodded empathetically. "I can't blame you," she said, her voice going from firm to soft. "You've been through a lot, more than any reploid should have to. But that doesn't explain why you need my help..."

"Don't you see, Pallette?" he cried out, as though something had suddenly snapped. "The Next Gens! Lumine! Redips! They all went bad! And they were just like me! Sure, maybe they were more advanced, and maybe they had Sigma's data when I didn't, but there's still the possibility that I could become just like them! I need to know if that's going to happen, before... before it's too late!"

Axl suddenly stopped talking, as he felt Pallette's hand rest on his shoulder. He looked up, to see her staring down at him, a distressed look on her face.

"Axl," she said, "please, for the sake of yourself and your friends, stop doing this to yourself..."

Axl blinked. "But Pallette... I... they..." he stammered.

Pallette moved away from him, sitting down in another chair beside him. "Axl, what is it that Lumine told you that Next Generation reploids had the ability to do?" she asked him.

Axl blinked. "He said that they had the ability to go Maverick at will," he said, "because they had Sigma's data in their copy chips..."

Pallette nodded. "But Axl," she said, "did you ever stop to think about how odd that was? Reploids are built with free will... we all have the ability to become Mavericks if we desire to. It's just that so many of us became too quick to blame it on a virus or some other external cause, that eventually, we stopped thinking that our own flaws as individuals could drive us to go Maverick."

Axl looked at her, baffled. "So, then why did Lumine-"

Pallette turned to him. "The Next Gen Reploids' copy chips all had Sigma's data on them, didn't they? In a way, you could say they were victims, Axl. From the day they were created, he was influencing their minds... But that wasn't the case with you, was it?"

Axl frowned, bowing his head. "No... when I met Sigma, he said that I wasn't like the other Next Generation reploids. That I didn't have his data..."

Pallette nodded. "And the truth is, he was right," she said. "And I know I wasn't a member of the Maverick Hunters when you first joined, but I know that you left Red Alert because you didn't want to be used. Axl, the difference between you and Lumine and Redips is that you've always tried to do the right thing."

She continued. "And what's more, even if there's something inside you that'll try and cause you to be like them, all the scans and diagnostics in the world aren't going to detect it. And even if it did, what then? It just won't go away. It'll come down to your strength as a person, Axl, and your ability to fight it."

Axl looked up at her, a look of both surprise and enlightenment on his face. Pallette smiled back at him..

"... And Axl, I have faith that you'll be able to overcome any challenge that comes your way."

Axl just stared at her, letting her words sink in. After several moments, a sheepish, though uncertain, smile appeared on his face. "Th-thanks, Pallette," he said, looking back down at the floor.

Pallette smiled at him, placing her hand on his. "Hey, that's what friends are for, right?"

Axl nodded. For that moment, all of his fears seemed to drift away.

"Yeah," he replied. "That's what friends are for."

AUTHOR'S NOTE - And there you have it. I've been wanting to do something like this for sometime, but only recently got the inspiration to actually take the plunge and do it.

I don't have much to say here, except that I hope I wrote Pallette's character well enough here. I know she's the "little girl" among the new navigators, but I don't necessarily think that means that she should be written as totally naive. At the very least, the goal here was to write a story with these two bonding as friends, so SOMEONE had to be giving the advice.

On that note, I cannot stress enough that this is not a romance fic. It's a "friendship" one. And I'll be honest, while I enjoy X/Alia and Zero/Layer, I think that Pallette/Axl would be a little too phoned in (all three Class S Hunters end up with one of the Navigators? Uh...). I personally think that if you're going to explore any kind of parallel between them, it's better to do so by looking at them as friends.

But that's just me. All in all, I hope you enjoyed this little piece of work.