Axl suffered through poking, prodding and various assorted tests for four days. Lifesaver found an astonishing amount of activity in all the unusual areas of his neural net as well as the DNA copying centres whenever the mirror started to act up. Surprisingly, he also found an amazing amount of activity everywhere else as well. He had described the scans as looking like a Christmas tree.

The fact that really amazed Lifesaver was that Axl was coping well with the increased activity. He had adjusted his estimate and now thought Axl was running at almost twice the speed of Doppler and Gate.

"Too bad it hasn't helped his intelligence, huh?" Zero had remarked dryly as he heard that. X had laughed as Axl had blushed.

But that comment had inspired Lifesaver to come up with some problems and IQ tests for Axl to try. The results had been stunning. Axl had tested out in the genius range of the IQ tests, and when he was given some serious logic and mathematical problems to tackle, he had actually enjoyed them. He had always been smart, but he'd never been interested in applying it to anything other than combat before.

Now he was discovering a real love for three-dimensional puzzles. Axl bit his lip as he tapped a piece against his cheek. It was part of a very complicated, crystalline star shaped puzzle. He carefully slid it into place, then adjusted the puzzle for the next piece. After a dozen more pieces, the glittering shape was finished.

Axl smiled at it, proud of the achievement. Then he yawned and stretched. It was about time to go to bed.

The dreams he'd been suffering continued unabated. That was another time when his neural net lit up, but there had only been one more physical manifestation. He had awakened covered in mud after a very realistic dream about being a soldier on the German side in World War II.

The lives he led in the dreams seemed to be totally random. His third dream had been of a life as a harem girl of a powerful king… and how he had essentially committed suicide by poisoning the king's soup. The fourth was of being a Shogun in Japan, and what exactly he had done to a defeated enemy. Axl tried hard not to think about that one.

So far, the only constant thread in the dreams seemed to be violence. His dream of being a soldier and a Shogun hadn't ended in death, unlike the other two, but they had been filled with violence. X had had a few pithy things to say about Axl's imagination when he heard the dreams described.

Tonight would be the fifth dream, and Axl wasn't really looking forward to it. The dreams seemed to be very restful… he never came out of his recharger feeling tired… but they still preyed on his mind. His reflection had insinuated that the answer to why this was happening was in his own mind. Surely it would be coming out in his dreams.

But how dreams of living as a human in various times could mean anything was beyond him. Axl sighed, and settled down to sleep…

Axl winced mentally, feeling particularly uncomfortable with the body he found himself in. The Roman warrior, German soldier, Shogun and harem girl had all been young and fit. This time he felt hot, sweaty and his belly was much too large for a man his height. A great white beard hung down to his chest and made Axl feel terribly itchy.

"Dr. Light!" Axl turned to look at the high, feminine voice. "Tell Rock to get Rush out of here! He's trailing mud all over the floor!" The little robot addressing him had long blond hair, pulled into a ponytail, and bright blue eyes. She looked perhaps ten years old and was scowling cutely. Axl felt himself smiling tolerantly.

"Of course, Roll. Rock! Come down here, please." There was a reluctant shuffling, then another robot walked down the stairs. Axl was stunned… he looked like a much younger version of X. And the name Dr. Light was oddly familiar…

"What is it, Dr. Light?" He yawned widely and scratched at his head. Axl shook his head in mock annoyance.

"You need to control your dog better, Rock," he admonished. "He's undoing all of Roll's hard work."

"Oh… I'll get him then." The small robot toddled off to go do that, and Roll called after him.

"Clean the floor when you're done!" And she bustled out to do whatever tasks needed doing. Axl watched her a moment, then turned to the project he was working on. For a long time, he was tapping code into a computer. Axl recognized it as AI programming… and oddly, he could understand it. Before, the only programming he'd been interested in had been what it took to hack into places.

After a long time, he sighed and stood up, stretching. Axl felt his back pop in several places.

"Getting old…" The person whose life he was living muttered, and Axl could only agree. "Hm…" He slowly walked over to a table, and looked at the body lying on it.

Axl could see it was a Reploid, but only half completed. His mind recoiled in shock as he saw the face, and recognized it.

It was X.

X choked on his morning coffee, when he heard about the latest dream. "You dreamed of what?" His tone was somewhere between eager and angry. Axl winced. He hadn't thought X would take this well… he wanted to know more about Dr. Light, but at the same time, couldn't feel happy about Axl being in that place.

"I dreamed I was Dr. Light, creating you." Axl said meekly. Then he couldn't help but grin. "You're creator was really, really fat X. Total blimp. And that beard was AWFUL!" X looked appalled at those revelations about his creator, and Zero laughed. Even Lifesaver cracked a smile.

"Did you… learn anything about why he made me? What he expected me to do?" X asked almost unwillingly, and Axl gave him a sympathetic look. He had no creator that he knew of, and sometimes wondered about that sort of thing himself.

"No, I'm sorry… I just lived a small piece of his life, and he wasn't thinking about his plans for you." Axl retained the memory of whatever the person he was living as was thinking about, and a few of their skills. Right now he had AI programming running through his mind. "Maybe I'll dream about being him again."

"Maybe." X sighed, looking into his coffee. The mood was solemn for a moment, then Zero broke the tension.

"Do you still need him down here, Lifesaver? I know it's only been four days, but we could use him on patrol again." Lifesaver looked annoyed at the request, then shrugged.

"I suppose. We've mapped out the changes that occur when he has one of his episodes. I'll want to see him back every day for a quick scan, though. His neural net and DNA copying centres are still mutating," Lifesaver said before giving Axl a very stern glare. "And come to me if you start feeling at all sick." Axl knew he was worried about the possibility of his neural net burning out. The level he was running at went beyond any current Reploid designs.

"No problem, Lifesaver!" Axl said enthusiastically. He'd have been willing to come in three times a day and get stuck with pins if it meant he could get back to being a Hunter.

"You know, since you're so… um, smart, now, maybe you should try to learn about Reploid designs and see if you can invent- Oh, alright, nevermind!" X said, aggrieved, as Axl interrupted him with a violent retching sound. "Go be a bloodthirsty lunatic, as usual."

"Righty-o." Axl jumped to his feet. "What's on the board for today, Zero?" Blowing things up was sounding better every moment…

Later, the same day…

Axl dashed through the burned out city streets. A massive Maverick attack had hit Boston in the late afternoon. Fortunately, the evacuation had gone smoothly and casualties were comparatively light.

Comparatively. Axl jumped onto the smoldering wreck of a bus, and jetted across it. He ignored the smell of burning human flesh with practiced ease. But like most Hunters, he no longer had any taste for pork.

Most of the smaller Mavericks had been taken care of, and he and Zero were going to tackle some of the hard cases that were still ravaging the city. He could hear the roaring and explosions from here.

There! Axl fired as he jumped, hitting the Maverick square in the chest. It was at least five times his height and shaped like a cross between a person and a giant scorpion.

The battle was fierce and almost even. Axl had the advantage with speed, but the Maverick's armor was terrible tough. Half his shots seemed to bounce off, doing damage to the surrounding buildings.

Axl blinked as he spotted a strange movement behind the Maverick. Then a human appeared quite literally out of thin air, leaving him stunned. She flung away a black cape, which fluttered off in the breeze.

Her costume was bizarre. Knee high boots of dark grey leather, tightly laced, with black fur or feathers at the top. Leggings of the same dark grey, but with a strange scaling pattern, like some kind of snakeskin. They led into a leather leotard that just barely confined her very shapely breasts. Her skin was dead white, and her eyes were a green that glowed faintly in the dim evening light. She had high cheekbones, a patrician nose, and a spare, hard-edged beauty. Her hair was the scarlet of freshly shed blood, and was matched by her lips.

In her hands, she was carrying a sword. Axl had never seen anything like it. It looked like someone had carved it out of wood, with hands both loving and insane. Leaves decorated the hilt, and vines ran up the grip. In those leaves were tiny finger bones that seemed to move… but surely that was a trick of the light. Strangest of all, the wood had a greenish color, as if it had been freshly carved from a living tree.

Before Axl had a chance to react, she screamed a war cry and launched herself at the Maverick's back. His eyes widened at her leap… not a strange one for a Reploid, but much higher than any human should have been able to manage.

Her sword hit the Maverick with the sound of shearing metal. Axl was even more amazed as she drove the weapon in hilt deep. The Maverick's armor as well have been tissue paper, for all the good it did.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a mortal wound. Axl shouted a warning as the scorpion tail lashed up…

Then gagged as the woman went sailing away in a spray of blood. The tail had nearly ripped her in half, and he could see the gleam of white bone in her abdomen. He realized with another wave of sickness that it was her vertebrae.

But he couldn't let her sacrifice be in vain, and attacked the Maverick with renewed vigor. It was crippled by the terrible wound it had taken, slow and sluggish. It didn't take long for it to vanish in a small explosion.

Axl blinked as something landed near him, and slowly walked over to pick it up. It was the sword, and it looked just as unpleasant up close as it had at a distance. He could see tiny animal skulls carved in among the lush leaves.

Shaking his head, he went over to look at the woman. She was very, very dead, but her eyes still gleamed. Axl hesitated, uncertain what to do with her, and finally left her. But before he teleported back, he retrieved the cape she had worn.

There was something very unusual about it, perhaps even more than the sword.

If Axl had stayed just a moment longer, he might have seen a dead hand twitch, and gleaming eyes slowly blink. But he didn't, and things went on.