Disclaimer: MM series belongs to Capcom.
Dr. Cain was busy getting lost in his thoughts. Whenever he needed to think he always went back to the ruins of Dr. Light's laboratory. Despite his age and importance, he refused any assistance or protection of any kind. He idly kicked a rock across the field.
'Dr. Light was certainly the most brilliant man who ever lived, more brilliant than Einstein himself.' Cain was so lost in his thoughts, he stumbled over an outcropping. After steadying himself, he looked backwards and felt his heart skip a beat. The stone had been knocked loose, revealing the glint of metal.
Forgetting his age, Cain kneeled down on the ground and began digging. When Mount St. Helens had erupted and covered Dr. Light's lab, much of it had been separated and moved a ways. There was a very real possibility that what he tripped on was from there. Cain felt some of his youthful energy return to him. After a few minutes, he shakily stood back up. Taking out his phone, he called the nearby digging company that he had first hired when he found X.
"Hello, Joe's contracting."
"Steven, its Dr. Cain."
"Oh, hello Doctor. You need our help again?
"Damn right I do. Get your best men out to Dr. Light's lab."
"You found something?"
"You bet I did." He answered, looking down at the exposed capsule.
After the digging company had successfully extracted the capsule, Cain had it transferred to MHHQ. X and Zero were lounging around when the old man came bursting through the main doors.
"Hey Doc, where's the fire?" Zero asked as Cain raced by.
"Can't talk now, maybe later," he shouted back from down the hall. X and Zero just stared.
"What do you suppose got him that excited X?"
"No clue. He's going to regret it later though."
"How come?"
"After running at that speed, at his age, he's going to have a REAL sore back tonight." Zero chuckled.
"Yeah you're right. I'm gonna kill some time in the training sim. You wanna join me?"
"No, I want to find out what's got Cain in such a good mood."
"Alright, catch you later X." Zero left his friend behind with a dismissive wave over his shoulder.
X turned on his heel and walked towards Cain's lab area.
Cain was busy brushing away the layers of dirt that prevented him from looking into the capsule when he heard a knocking on the door.
"I'm busy, come back later," he absently said. The door opened and someone stepped in.
"I said come back later."
He turned around and saw X standing there.
"Oh, X. For you, I'll make an exception."
"What's that," X asked, walking over to the dirt covered capsule.
"Ah yes, this. Well, yesterday I was walking at Dr. Light's lab remains, I found this. I had the same company I hired when I found you extract this as well."
"What is it?"
"Don't you recognize the shape? It's another capsule." X's eyes widened.
"No way, it can't be."
"I know but it is. Dr. Light built another reploid. Do you want to help me clean it off?"
"Sure!" Cain handed X another brush and they set to work.
The work was long and tedious. Twice X almost broke something. The connection outlets and plugs on the back proved to be the most difficult to clean, due to their necessity to revive the reploid within. Finally, after three hours, the capsule was cleaned and X and Cain got their first look at its passenger. X walked up and put his hand on the plasteel. After staring at him for several seconds he turned to Cain.
"Is it possible that he was the first reploid created by Dr. Light?"
"No, you're still the first X."
"How can you tell?"
"A few various things here and there. If anything, he's the second one." X nodded and turned back to him.
"Well, what are we waiting for? Let's activate him." Dr. Cain shook his head.
"It's too dangerous. Unlike your capsule X, his had no power provided. For all we know, he might no longer be functioning."
"So what do we do? We can't just leave him like this."
"No, we can't. What we're going to do first is hook his capsule back up to a power source. I have the necessary equipment here already. Just give me hand in digging through some old junk, will you?"
X nodded and helped Cain look through all the old stuff he had in his lab. It took a little while, but soon they had all the required connectors and wires. Dr. Cain plugged them into his power generator, fiddled with a few things, and secured all the connections.
"Here goes nothing." He activated the generator. At first nothing happened. Then the panels on the capsule began blinking. X jumped back when one of them sparked for a moment. After a couple more seconds and the capsule was fully back online.
"Now let me run some tests X. This shouldn't take too long." Cain fiddled with his glasses then walked up close to the consoles. He pressed various buttons and studied the readouts.
"So what does say," X eagerly asked.
"Hmmm, this is going to take longer than I thought. If you want, you can go get Zero. He might be interested as well."
"Okay." Just as X had left he heard Cain swear for some reason. Shaking his head, X headed off towards the training sim.
The Crimson Hunter was currently engaged with a high level training program, running through it with his beam saber cutting and buster blazing. He reached a totaled tanker and found himself suddenly surrounded by a quartet of Bee Bladers. He grinned.
"Too easy."
His left arm snapped up and let loose a series of brilliant blue shots into one of the flying mechanical threats. The first Bee Blader was consumed in a fireball while the two open fire with their main cannons. Zero deftly dodged each shot and flipped onto the tanker. The first Blader continued firing its cannons; the other sent off a salvo of missiles. He brought his beam saber around in a quick, fluid movement. The plasma blade sliced each missile in half, the harmless pieces of junk falling to the ground.
Zero morphed his buster back into his arm. Gripping the handle of his weapon with both hands, he screamed and leaped at the second machine. For a moment, there was no sound but the whooshing of the Bee Bladers' props. Then the screeching of metal filled the air as the plasma ate through the inner workings of the holographic enemy.
As Zero fell back towards the pavement, the remaining Bee Blader had locked onto him. He turned to face it but was too late; the next barrage of missiles would slam into him and send him into a world of hurt.
But it didn't come.
The sound of a fully charged blast from a X-Buster ripped through the air, followed shortly by the destruction of the flying mechanism. Zero jerked his head to the source of the shot to see X standing there, left arm in buster mode.
"Never thought I'd see the day when the great Zero gets caught off guard," he said with a grin on his face. Zero harrumphed and slotted his weapon back into its charge unit.
"Meh, it was just a hologram. In real combat I can pick off my enemies as they flee."
X took a deep breath and looked skywards.
"I was just talking with Cain about what he found."
"Really? What was it?"
"You're not going to believe this," he looked straight at his friend, "but it's another capsule from Dr. Light's lab."
Zero's face deadpanned.
"You've got to be joking… they went over that place with a fine tooth comb after they found you." X smirked and shook his head.
"They somehow missed this one. Want to join me for the opening? Or do you want to go back to your training?" Zero laughed.
"Like there was a chance in Hell that I'd miss this."
And with that, X and Zero left the room and headed towards Cain's lab.