Zero sat on a park bench, chewing on part of her food ration and thinking about her plans for the future. Her food ration was broken into smaller packets, each labeled to tell her what they generally tasted like. The taste was good, but the consistency was monotonous, chewy and a little rubbery. The packets, unwrapped, looked like nothing more than blocks of tofu but they were actually a far more advanced synthetic. Most people of her day hated rations like this, although everyone ate them at least a few times a week. She smiled wistfully as she remembered how her children had complained, and how sick and tired they had been of her lecture about how good they had it and her stories about the one hundred and one ways to prepare a dish of rats.

Zero suddenly stopped eating, staring down at the ration block in its bright blue wrapping. Completely recycleable wrapping, like everything else in her time. Items were built with recycling in mind, and everything was reused, when at all possible. She bit her lip sharply, wanting to feel the pain.

She was in the past. There was no way she would see her children, or her society, ever again. She hadn't liked modern society. It seemed like she had been left behind, somewhere along the way. Like an aged hippy who just couldn't get with the corporate culture, she'd been forced to muddle along in a place that loved her but had no use for her. Everyone was happy, but sometimes, she felt like society had lost its soul. Everything was… pleasant. The artwork was pleasant; the sculptures were pleasant, even work was wonderfully pleasant. But the angst, the nihilism, the rage and hard edged nerves that had driven Zero to be the best warrior to ever live had died under the weight of all that pleasantness. Oh, there were still malcontents, but their gripes seemed so petty to Zero. None of them complained about their pastel existence… no, they were mostly the fools too lazy to do even the pleasant work society required of them. Some were adventure junkies, but seemed to have no thought at all for the deeper meaning of things. Zero had tried to associate with them, hoping the spirit she loved would be there, but had finally given up in disgust. Societies misfits didn't understand her any better than polite society.

Now she was gone from that time and place, back to a rawer, younger time. There would be angst, nihilism, enthusiasm and rage aplenty now. She would have a point, a purpose. If she could help her younger self defeat Sigma and get ready for the aliens early, how much better the Earth would fare! And hopefully, she could prevent the whole idiotic Dark Elf debacle. Maybe X could be spared…

Yet, part of her wanted to go home. Back to 31XX. Not for societies sake and not her own, but for her children. Zero had engendered several children as a man, and bore them as a woman. The fact that she had begun existence as a Reploid didn't matter. The new race didn't really have a name, but she supposed humans and Reploids of this time would call them cyborgs. A true, perfect fusion of man and machine, capable of reproducing with each other by a combination of classic human cells and nanities to build the Reploid components into the child in the womb. It wasn't really that much of a step in logic, when you got down to it. Reploids already had quasi-organic parts. Why not real organics?

But that was a digression from her original thought. She was going to miss her children. Two of them were estranged from her, by their own choice. One was a successful executive who considered her famous, eccentric father an embarrassment to be avoided at all costs. The other was narcissistic in the extreme. Zero's lips compressed to a line as she thought about him. The break had been as much her doing as his… she couldn't bear to be around someone so subtly destructive. Eventually, she was sure he'd be forced into counseling and mental therapy. So far, he had managed to slip by under societies radar, but that wouldn't last forever. Her other three children were a mixed bag, but good kids. One was a doctor, and he didn't have much time to spend with her, but they always had a very pleasant time when they did get together. Usually, they spent it playing Scrabble. Of her other two children, one was an accountant and the other worked at a carpet recycling plant. Neither one had gotten very far, but they were both happy and healthy, if more than a bit dull. And the grandkids were just adorable, even if they were mostly grown. What was embarrassing in a parent was cool in a grandparent, and they always loved hearing a good war story. Zero sighed, and rubbed her face for a moment. She was going to miss her grandchildren more than anything in the world…

She finally took another bite out of her ration, chewing it slowly. This ration tasted almost exactly like pork ribs in barbecue sauce, one of her favorites. It even had the 'Axl-tried-to-barbecue-and-burnt-the-edges' flavor she particularly liked. Barbecue wasn't barbecue unless you could taste some charcoal.

Finishing her ration, she frowned at the wrapper, then shrugged and threw it into a trashcan. It wasn't recyclable with current technology and she wasn't going to hang onto it for the hundreds of years it would take for that technology to come around. She grinned to herself, imagining the pained expressions her children would have worn. Throwing away something recyclable! The indecency of it!

She crossed her legs, and tried to think of a solution for her main problem. Money. Cash. Filthy Lucre. She had none of it, and her credit chips wouldn't have worked even if she had them. Which she didn't, the wardens kept them in sealed lockers. So what was she going to do for money? She tried to list her assets and skills, and came up blank. Her main skill was killing things. Zero also made a pretty fair salesperson, which was the job she usually held down when she was trying to fit in. But here and now, she didn't have any ID to prove she was either human or Reploid, so getting a job might be a bit of a challenge. One asset was her body, but… no. Just no. She was not stripping, even as a man. It was out of the question.

A thought came to her, and she snapped her fingers. Bounty hunting, of course! In this day and age, it was possible for private citizens to put out bounties on convicted criminals, provided they were under a sentence of death. Sometimes, the government did too, especially for notorious Mavericks. And of course, the Mavericks would pay bounties, but she wasn't going to work for Sigma. It might take some time and effort to get back into the groove of hunting Mavericks, but she had a weeks worth of rations. They could last two, if she tried to make them stretch.

Bouncing to her feet, Zero went to check the listings in the post office. If she recalled correctly, that was where she would find the wanted posters.

"What do you MEAN I need two pieces of ID?" She snarled over the counter at the human who was refusing to process her bounty. "I don't have any damn ID!" She leaned over the severed Reploid head of the Maverick she had hunted down. He wasn't anyone important, but three human families had identified him as the source of their pain and put a bounty on his head. Fair enough, since he'd undoubtedly killed their relatives.

"Then you'll have to get some, ma'am," the young man said with admirable calm. "Even a library card will do."

"I can't get a library card without a drivers license!" Zero raged. "And I don't have one!" He didn't say anything, but she could read the answer in his face. Not my problem. With a disgusted growl, she took the head and shoved it back in her bag.

"I hate all bureaucracy," Zero muttered as she stormed out. "Curse all bureaucrats. May their hair fall out, and then their teeth. May their children be incontinent unto the fourth generation. May…" The grumbled curses went on, as Zero tried to figure out where the worst part of town was. There was really only one solution to her problem, and that was false ID's. But they would want payment first, and that meant…

Zero casually joined a lineup to enter a movie theater, behind a woman with a large blue handbag slung casually over one shoulder. From most normal pickpockets, she would have been safe. From a delicate, partly organic tendril extending from Zero's wrist, she was not. Sixty dollars later, Zero walked away. That wasn't much, and she'd hit several other people before she was done, but she'd left the woman's ID and credit cards. As such thefts went, it would be painful, but not nearly as bad as if she'd just outright stolen the purse. Zero didn't like being a thief, but there wasn't much choice.

Raiding five other people in quick succession gave her nearly three hundred dollars. A Reploid nearly caught her at it, and Zero decided she had enough. If not, she could start trying again.

"Hey, miss! You want your windshield scrubbed?" That query threw Zero off guard, and she gave the old man who had asked the hairy eyeball.

"I'm not in a car." She pointed out.

"Window scrubbed?" Zero stared at him, then remembered… a lot of mental disorders were improperly understood, back in 21XX. This man was probably senile, or maybe schizophrenic or just an addict. Whatever, he wasn't playing with a full deck. She shrugged, and handed him a dollar bill. "Thankee miss."

"No problem." She kept walking until things started to look distinctly seedy. There were pawn shops, XXX video stores… yes, this was definitely the part of town Zero wanted. But how exactly did you find someone who made illegal documents, anyway? Her answer came when a young man tried to accost her.

"Hey, hot mamma! You lookin' for a fun time?" She gave him a disgusted look. He couldn't be over fifteen, and two boys behind him were laughing at them both. His buddies, she assumed. She was about to walk away, then hesitated. If this kid had any real connections, he might know…

"No. But tell me what I want, and maybe you can have a good time," she said, flashing a twenty at him, then making it disappear. The kid looked puzzled.

"What you want, hot thing?" Zero let that slide, although she did entertain a few thoughts involving her fist and his face.

"I want someone who can sell me a driver's license. You know, so I can buy beer and get into clubs."

"You shitting me?" He said suspiciously. "You don't look like no kid. You some kinda cop?" Zero's eyes hardened at that question.

"You know what I have in this bag?" She said, making the kid frown in puzzlement.

"No, hot mamma, watchu got?"

"A severed head," she said. As they looked at her in disbelief, she reached in and pulled it out, making them gasp. "Now, where do I get false ID?" She could almost see the kid doing some rapid calculations. The head was a Reploid, so she was probably a Reploid, even if she didn't look like one. She certainly wasn't a cop. She probably wasn't a Maverick, but on the other hand, she was the one with a head in a bag. The kid finally factored in everything and decided on the side of self-preservation.

"Hey, I dunno for sure right? But there's this place…" She nodded, taking his directions, then flipped out the twenty. He grabbed it and quickly walked away, his buddies following. Zero turned away, walking towards the street he'd mentioned.

Things went pretty smoothly at the false ID place. The guy who ran it took one long, hard look at her and apparently decided that whatever she was, she wasn't a cop, because he was obliging. He did clean her out of most of her money, but she walked out with a very well done driver's license in only a half hour.

With that in hand, she visited a library and signed up for a card, getting her second piece of ID. Fortunately, when Zero went back to the collection office a different person was on duty. It might have been odd, if she had suddenly given the guy from earlier the ID… although she was pretty sure he wouldn't have cared. The girl now at the desk was obliging enough, when she had the two ID cards.

"So that's twenty thousand dollars. Just sign here… how would you prefer to be paid? We have money order, check or direct deposit."

"Check, please." She would go cash that at a bank at the earliest opportunity, and start an account. Carrying around 20K in cash was out of the question. No place Zero was likely to go would take thousand dollar bills, and 20K in fifties would be obscenely bulky.

Zero smiled to herself, as she walked. Now that she had money, she could do what she'd been dying to do for ages… really cut loose and enjoy herself. The future had plenty of sybaritic amusements, of course. But they frowned on the wild extremes she went to, and all the broken furniture that inevitably resulted. Here, things were different.

It was going to be a very fun week.

"Ohhh" Axl looked at himself in a mirror, enchanted despite himself. This was the most curious piece of DNA he'd ever used. X and Zero were both watching, and Axl grinned, deliberately bouncing up and down. A part of his… her anatomy followed the movement, to Zero's delight and X's extreme embarrassment.

"Axl, stop that!" X snapped, trying to stop his blushing.

"He can keep doing it as far as I'm concerned," Zero put in with a grin.

The form Axl was wearing seemed to be a very strange combination of his own DNA, X, Zero, Spider, Cinnamon and Marino. His hair was the usual orange color, but instead of spikes, it was long and hung to his waist in a flowing stream. His eyes had changed from green to a dark red, Spiders eyes. His body armor vaguely resembled Marino, complete with free flowing boobs, but his helmet was taken from X. The armor color was white and blue, probably from Cinnamon's influence. Axl had tested everything out, and he could heal a bit.

He could also use Spider's cards, X's buster, Zero's sabre and Marino's speed. Not quite at the levels of the originals, but close. The only downside that he could see to this DNA conglomerate was that it was very female. If he wanted all the good stuff, he had to endure the chest and hips. Axl was uncomfortably aware that with the long flowing hair and feminized figure, he made an extremely cute girl.

But it was worth it. Axl twirled on his feet, snap kicking the empty air. He'd never been able to use Zero's and X's DNA properly before. It always caused errors in his system… but this combination seemed to clear all that up. It was wonderful, powerful, it was-

"Ohhh, look at THAT Marino!" Axl's eyes widened as he heard Cinnamon behind him. "I didn't know we had someone new! Hello, miss, who are-" Cinnamon stopped speaking as she looked into Axl's face. "…Axl?" A titter ran through the room, as Marino stared in surprise… then grinned very, very evilly.

"He's cute, isn't he? But… I think he needs to learn how to put on makeup!"

"M-Makeup?" Axl choked out as Cinnamon squeed and grabbed his arm.

"And a kimono! Let's put him in a kimono, Marino!"

"And make him try on some lingerie?" Zero asked hopefully, but was ignored.

"He'll be so pretty… c'mon!" Axl shouted an incoherent protest as the two girls dragged him out of the repair bay. X only shook his head… he wasn't getting involved with this… and Zero followed curiously. He was still hoping to catch a glimpse of Axl in lingerie.

As it happened, no lingerie was forthcoming, but Marino and Cinnamon did force Axl out to model a kimono for them. Armor removed and face painted… the scars outlined with gold… Axl really did look adorable. The kimono was Marino's, green silk with pink cherry blossoms and swallows. It fit Axl's new DNA form like a glove, and Zero grinned. It was easy to see whose DNA had come out on top when it came to his body.

"Argh… Zero, help me!" Axl tried to squirm away from Marino, who had a firm grip on the scruff of his neck. "Aggh!" He abruptly shifted back to his normal form… which made everyone laugh.

"You DO realize how ridiculous you look now?" Zero said with a grin, and Axl glanced in a mirror… then whined in horror. His spiky hair, abruptly deflated kimono and painted face made him look idiotic. He hesitated, then changed back, still trying to wiggle away from Marino.

"What should we do next, Marino?" Cinnamon said brightly, and hugged Axl, who turned brick red. "We're just having fun Axl You'll do this for us, won't you?"

"Uh uh… sure." Axl stammered, overcome with Cinnamon's cuteness. Zero ogled the scene… until Marino lightly smacked him. She could guess what he was thinking, and it involved lesbian porn.

"Well, next, I was thinking we could put him in some of my skirts and jeans." Marino said with a grin. "Then… swimsuits!"

"What? Noooo!" Axl was dragged back into the change room to the sound of feminine giggling, and Zero grinned. This was going to be a very entertaining evening.

At a Maverick Fortress...

Zero watched a Maverick walk by on his patrol, and smiled in pleasure. She was clinging to the ceiling above him, and there was little chance he would see her… the chameleon power she was using saw to that. It was a joy to finally use her abilities to their full extent again.

She had taken the peace bond off her abilities earlier in the day. In the future, she needed to keep her military abilities inactive at almost all times. The instant she activated them, she radiated a powerful energy signature that the police of her time easily picked up. If she did that in a city, Zero would suddenly be deluged by very polite inquiries as to whatever could be wrong? Explaining that she was just having fun climbing a building would be accepted with equally polite silence, but she could hear the underlying message about her sanity. And activating her abilities had another downside. When they were peace bonded, legally, her combat model status didn't matter. When they were active, though, things that would be regarded as mischief for a civilian became more serious. It was like the difference between simple assault and assault with a deadly weapon. When her peace bond was off, Zero was a walking, talking, deadly weapon.

Zero had always been very careful not to abuse her powers, in that future time. She had been allowed to keep her DNA copying center, her armor and everything else because she was the great hero of the final war. But if Zero started using them for crime, there was every possibility someone would have reconsidered. Having her powers taken away would have been worse than neutering… Zero was sure she would never have been able to bear it. So they had stayed safely under peace bond, letting her use only simple applications.

Now, though, things were different. She slowly crept along the ceiling, taking care to make no sound and not to move too swiftly. The chameleon cloak was a great thing, but it wasn't outright invisibility. She DID have an invisibility power, but it drained energy at an appalling rate. Everything was a trade-off.

Zero could have blown right into the Maverick base, in a frontal assault. A few rounds of bounty hunting had given her a feel for how powerful the Reploids of this time were, and they were even more fragile than she had thought. She'd lived through the changes, but they had been so gradual she hadn't realized how immense the gulf over a thousand years really was. Having it shoved into her face was rather disconcerting. Still, if she'd taken the base in a frontal assault, her real quarry might have escaped. That was unacceptable.

Rage, raw and red as lava, welled up in her throat. How she despised the man she was hunting tonight. She hated him more than Sigma, even. After a while, Sigma had seemed more like a force of nature than anything Reploid, and at least Sigma believed in what he was doing, even if he was a lunatic. The cretin she was seeking now wasn't mad, wasn't infected, and believed in nothing but himself and his own glory. He was just beginning his career, now, with the Mavericks. After Sigma was dead, he would remake himself and become respectable for a time… until he backstabbed everyone in the world. So much suffering, and all for one mans love of power. How she despised him.

Slowly, she made her way through the base, hunting, searching. It wasn't easy. She knew his general location, where the personal quarters were, but nothing specific. She had to carefully open doors, trying not to disturb the occupants. She had a very unpleasant moment at one point, when she opened a door to gasps and sighs. Fortunately, the occupants were too involved in their pleasure to notice her soft interruption. Zero had shut that door very quickly.

Finally, though, she found him. She slipped into the room on silent feet, closing the door behind her and glancing around curiously. The room told her only what she already knew… that the owner loved himself. There were several framed pictures that made him look quite wise, although not as much as later ones would. He was still young, and it showed.

Zero stepped up to the bed, her armor slowly shifting from red to blue. Her red armor actually looked like nothing more than a red fabric jumpsuit, with metal gloves and boots. It had been designed to give maximum protection while facilitating the piloting of Er-ships, so it wasn't as powerful as her time could have made it. Not that it mattered, this far into the past.

She completed her shift, and smiled, pulling a lock of her newly darkened hair forward for inspection. She was using the purest of X's DNA to do this. It wasn't necessary, but it seemed only right, since he was the one who would have suffered the most for this mans greed.

Zero looked down at the sleeping Reploid, and abruptly punched him in the stomach, feeling the metal shatter under the force of the blow. She wanted him conscious, for the end. He awoke with a choked off scream, and stared at her in utter shock. For all his genius at weaseling out of things, this was an assault he could never have foreseen, and she smiled brutally at the horrified confusion on his face. Then she aimed her buster at his face.

"Hello and goodbye, Dr. Weil."

Zero watched, utterly satisfied, as Mavericks tried to put out the flames that had engulfed their base and figure out what had happened.

With Weil dead, she'd seen no reason to bother with further concealment. Blasting her way straight out had been fun, especially when she'd used a DNA conglomerate of several fire based Reploids.

Her DNA copying centres were far more advanced than Axl's, and had the ability to combine the DNA of more than one person into ultimate forms. The greatest of all those forms was the one she called Angelus… it was a conglomerate of every single piece of DNA in her archives, which carried thousands of samples. But Angelus was an energy sink, and she couldn't maintain it for more than ten minutes without severe repercussions. Her usual conglomerates were more selective, between five to ten people in each. The one she had given to Axl was unique in that she hadn't designed it for combat. It was an epitaph to her fallen friends.

Zero sighed. She doubted she'd be able to keep them safe this time anymore than she'd been able to in her own timeline. Yes, she had already destroyed a major threat. But so? In the slightly trite but all too true words of Spider, there was always some damn thing. Her meddling in the timeline only meant there would be a different damn thing.

Spider was going to be interesting. Zero slowly drummed her fingers against her hip, considering him. The Spider she and X had destroyed in Giga city was not actually the real Spider. In her timeline, they'd discovered that a year later when they were pursuing a Maverick near Las Vegas. Spider had been on the same trail, and they'd run into him by accident. That meeting had almost been fatal for the black garbed bounty hunter, to his shocked surprise. Zero still remembered his complete bafflement when she had held him down with a beam sabre at his throat. Axl's furious questions and X's hurt expression had only confused him more.

Luckily for Spider, he'd had solid, incontrovertible proof that he was not the droid they were looking for. The Luxor casino held onto it's security data for a full year, in case of investigation, and they had been more than willing to replay it for X and Zero. Spider had been busy playing poker while they had been fighting his double in Giga city. He'd been winning, too.

Spider had never joined the Hunters, but Zero and Axl had joined him for more than one vacation in Vegas. The friendship had been fun, and had soon graduated to mutual favors. Sometimes, they helped Spider with a bounty, and sometimes he helped out them. Zero winced as she remembered how he had died. It hadn't been nearly as dramatic as his double's faked death in Giga city, but it had been far more real. Just one of those damn things…

Watching the Maverick fortress burn down was getting boring. Zero turned away, and teleported out, to Las Vegas. She had 20K in the bank account and Spider was there. He might not know her yet, but that wouldn't take long to fix, and then he could help her spend it.

Fun wasn't really much fun unless there was someone to be fun with.