She waited. Ominous footsteps resounded from behind the purple garage doors, so she hid just beside them. The cloaked figure swept into the room without noticing her.

"Who in the seven viral hells designed this stage? Spikes, platforms, pits; what, are they trying to kill me on my way here?"

"Sigma!" her mind screamed, but her mouth did not, because Siggy had a reputation for disliking the homo-sapiens species.

"What do we have here? Lovers in embrace?"

"Space off, Sigma."

Zero, the stronger of the two at the moment, grunted while rediscovering his feet. Removing the green saber from his chest, he activated his own in dual-wielding stance; one held horizontal for defense, the other vertical for attack. The Virus Aura was gone; sanity ruled him.

"You think two sabers will stop me, when you have that kind of wound?"

"I did it before. I can do it again. You will always be defeated, no matter what you try."

Sigma's hands began blazing with ball-lightning. Their light glinted off his cruel smirking face.

"Proud words. Now die!"

The crossed sabers absorbed the brunt; he skidded meters backward from the impact, leaving X prone. Residual energies flowed through his arms and electrified his badly damaged core, causing him to spit up circulatory fluid.

"A hero, eh? How about your partner?"

"Don't hurt X!"

"My dear 'Maverick' Hunter, I don't intend to hurt. I intend to kill!"

He charged nova energy in his hands to wipe the unconscious blue Hunter out of existence, but Zero, as he had done before in the first war, intervened.

"NO! Thus far and no farther!"

He dashed through the air with a yell, sabers sizzling in their downward arc to counter Sigma's deadly hands. The Maverick Master flung the energies upward at him instead, just as Zero intended. Blocking again, he sustained secondary damage again, and landed between the two.

"Ah, Sigma, always looking out for Number One. You could have killed him then and there, and only suffered the loss of your arms as a result."

Sigma snarled.

"Damn you and your sacrificial nature. You were meant to follow ME!"

Zero laughed low in his throat.

"No, Sigma. I think you were meant to follow… me."

"You arrogant…!"

"Me arrogant? Shut up, Sigma. I know you met my maker. I heard his voice whispering in my head ever since the shuttle crash."

His smile was ironic with the truth.

"I'm impressed. You went through all this trouble, destroying the Earth, just to awaken me? My maker used you, Sigma, so that I would inherit the Earth!"

"You're too good to do that."

"That's right. I don't want to inherit the Earth."

He raised his sabers.

"I just want to destroy you!"

Hannah watched them go at it, bitter rivals pitted against each other by a machinist who had died decades ago. Sigma's charged-up hands blocked the sabers, but with twice the attack power and the driving determination to protect his friend, Zero slashed through Sigma's defense and left a burning X upon the Maverick's chest.

"You won't get rid of that without a new body," the Red Ripper taunted. Sigma bellowed with frustration and teleported away. Zero wiped red from his mouth.

"Ugh. I feel all sorts of discombobulated."

"Zeroooo!"

Hannah pounced and hugged him from behind.

"Don't die again!"

Incredibly, he managed a smile.

"Oh, hey, forgot you were there."

Carrying her on his back, he nudged X in the ribs.

"I saved your ass, you can wake up now."

With reluctance, he did, smiling.

"You're all right!"

Zero sputtered, flecking circulatory fluid on his knees as he stooped, overcome by the critical damage at last. X tilted his head to access the comm. link.

"X to base. Three to beam up."

888

Hannah gnawed Reeses Pieces© while Alia called the human's sister, Sarah.

"She's all right? Yay! I had to hide the jeep and tell mom and dad that she went back to campus!"

"I'll be home, er, eventually."

"What? Get yer lazy bum back to Pennsylvania!"

"But I want to see if X and Zero are okay."

"You played the video game already; you know what happens next! Stop procrastinating!"

"Hey, that's my job. I'll be back, uh, soon."

"You had better…" Click. Hannah sighed and resumed gnawing, hiding the rest of it in her jeans. She left the command centre, checked the You Are Here map and took the turbolift to Maintenance. Douglas was monitoring X and Zero.

"Ye gods, there's more viruses and spyware on you two than Kazaa."

"Have you been tested for DISEASES?"

"I didn't ask your opinion, X."

"Then don't give one."

The teddy-bear cute engineer pressed a button to deliver a neural shock to the blue Hunter who convulsed and swore.

"The hell was that!"

"Manners."

"Hi, guys," Hannah announced herself, leaving delicious crumbs on the floor as she padded around the biotech restoration pods.

"These heal y'all?"
"Saved our lives," Zero corrected, opening his eyes, "They boost our auto-repair systems along with supplying parts we lost."

"Considering how many times you've been put back together, you're a junk robot," X snickered. Douglas shocked him again.

"Be nice to the invalid."

"I am not an invalid!" Zero yelled.

"Are too."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Okay, I'm leaving."

Reeses in hand, she wandered off to determine if the place had a holodeck.

888

"Your shenanigans cost us a base of operations."

"You are all manipulators!"

They had Sigma's loquacious head on a platter.

"Considering you committed genocide to eliminate our company, you are in no position to defame us."

His red eyes swiveled at the Ray-Bans peering intently at him.

"You must be disbanded, disorganized at this point! All my spies, all my research indicated that base was the nerve centre!"

"Are you familiar with the concept of misdirection? What self-respecting company keeps its employees in the know of its internal operations?"

That intelligent, rounded head gawped, "You gave false information since the beginning?"

"After five successful video games releases of wars you coordinated, you must admit, we are very efficient."

Another suit added with smug satisfaction, "Sales are up, profits are climbing, and this is only one of our franchises."

"Damn you! I am more than a moneymaker for humans!"

"On the contrary, you are doing what we programmed you for: a warmonger without peer."

A Ray-Ban leaned closer to Sigma.

"War is profitable when we control it."

The suits looked at each other to confer.

"There is still an anomaly to be dealt with."

"Yes: Megaman X and Zero, who are not of our creation."

"Although we did sponsor Light and Wily, the programming is less predictable."

A suit held up a white rectangle of A4 paper to read.

"As Wily was Light's assistant and learnt much of his programming, I conjecture that Zero is of these same specifications: possessing the ability to think for himself and make his own decisions, and, if he were to rebel, that nothing of Earth could stop him."

"To ensure there is another war, we must maintain the expected program. They must not suspect, lest they interfere."

"Restore Sigma to battle-ready status. Perform a memory-wipe."

Sigma grumbled, "Do I have a say in this?"

"No."

888

Mattrex and Axle the Red laid in wait somewhere along the Final Stage. Crouched together, they were perched in a high place above the normal range of vision.

"See, scouts reported them coming this way. If we jump them together, we can take 'em!" the dinosaur rumbled. Axle flicked back a rose petal.

"We're supposed to be in the transporter rooms with the others, not planning an ambush."

"But they didn't even visit my stage!" Mattrex whined, "I didn't get to show them my moves!"

"Pshaw. I'm glad they didn't disturb mine. I happen to like my privacy with no Hunters blocking my sunlight."

"I hear footsteps! On the count of three… THREE!"

Mattrex's scales took on flame. Axel lashed his whip out to full spiky length. They dropped down.

And froze.

"RUN AWAY!"

Mattrex found a bottomless pit to make friends with. Axel, after tripping over his whip, followed. X and Zero hopped over their fading screams.

"You'd think they never saw armour before."

888

After deactivating the six remaining Boss teleporter pods with short-range EMP charges (kudos to Douglas and his oodles of spare time between world crises), the duo came across appearing and disappearing blocks set in midair.

"I can't believe this," X laughed, "A trick all the way from my counterpart's days!"

"He had a dog that transformed into a jet. Why can't we get pets like that?"

"Plagiarism or something. Between your double jump and my wings, we don't need help, anyway."

Zero stood back to gesture.

"Then you first, you're the pioneer."

"Pfft."

On the other side, they found a purple garage door.

"I bet you twenty credits there is an UNNECESSARILY LENGTHY CORRIDOR behind this," Zero said.

"What makes you think that?"

"Call it déjà vu."

Zero later spent the twenty credits on Clairol©. The dead end was a lesson in history.

"Oh, hey, colour-coded capsules that happen to be thirty feet high," X patted the stasis pod he had first awoken from years ago. Their fronts were smashed; broken glass was scattered all around them.

"Cat's in the cradle," Zero smiled.

"Sigma, you shouldn't have," X cooed. Completely superficial, vast purple wings outstretched, Sigma glowered.

"They're to remind you of your mutually fractured origins… and life."

"Well, shit, look who's talking about broken lives," Zero guffawed, drawing his now purple saber, "At least I only died once!"

"Someone always dies when we clash," X stroked his bladed arm cannon, "History repeats itself."

Roaring, Sigma flung his mantle of radiant wings at them. Shredding them apart, feathers fell in drifts around the black and white of Zero's Ultimate Armour. X spread his wings and took flight. This was not the soft blue aura of Falcon. This was the unstoppable fury of Nova. Sigma, as they say, was caught between a rock and a hard place.

"UNGH!"

Golden sparks cascading off the deep indigo of his Ultimate Armour, X kicked off the wall to perform yet another Novastrike, blazing through Sigma as though the Maverick was dust in the wind. Before losing consciousness, Sigma was dimly aware of stumbling toward the Hunter whose hair was now the colour of starlight.

"You will learn to accept it, Sigma."

Zero's slashes numbered one to twenty within five seconds. Structural integrity weak from two successive novae, Sigma's styling tuxedo shell collapsed under the Z-Saber assault. Prodding the slag, Zero nodded.

"Here comes his second form, right about… now."

Rumble. Rumble. Tremor. FWOOM.

Sigma's face and disembodied gauntlets were even bigger than the statue he'd first emerged from in this game.

"RAWR! SIGMA SMASH!"

"Float like a butterfly…" Zero somersaulted over the swooping fists that bonked together.

"Sting like a bee," X executed a vertical Novastrike, riding flame to uppercut the colossal head off its shoulders.

"GARRRR!" Siggy roared while his cranium bounced along the floor. His flying fists banged around the room before exploding from lack of control. X and Zero crossed arms to perform a Riverdance in celebration.

"YARRRR!"

"Eh?"

"SELF DESTRUCT INITIATED, BITCHES!"

"Douglas, beam us up!" X shouted. Zero drew his blade and started dashing towards the shuddering, grinning bomb.

"No use! He's jamming the signal! We have to…"

(Insert obligatory explosion sound here)

888

"Zero. Zero? Zero!"

"That's my name, don't wear it out."

"Oh, by the motherboard, you look awful."

"Same as it was in the first war. No legs, no auto repair; no service."

X cradled his paraplegic friend.

"Why are your legs destroyed from these self-destruct explosions, anyway?"

"Bad habit. I'll go to counseling for it."

"I'll get us home."

He called Douglas, but there was still jamming.

"Why the hell…"

"RAWR!"

"Oh, snap."

FSHOOM! Bright light filled the area. X made gurgling noises and slumped over. Both he and Zero now had a neat, round hole through their chests, through which a small dog could fit.

"You're very persistent… Sigma!" Zero laughed, arm cannon collecting energy.

"Tee hee."

Zero's Buster finished off the skinless skull.

"And I thought… that peashooter of yours couldn't kill a cockroach," X gasped, rolling over to gaze at the blackness of the chamber. Zero coughed up crimson.

"Sort of lost… use… when I focused on my s-saber…"

Consciousness was proving a strain on his already mangled body. While his systems slipped into stasis, Zero seized the moment to give some good old-fashioned farewell wishes.

"X… you've been protecting this world before me…"

Above his laboured breathing, the azure Hunter listened to the weakening voice.

"I have… died… so that you might live, because…" he coughed, clutching X's shoulder, "You can do more good than I can…"

A wistful, even sentimental smile creased that paling face of the Red Ripper.

"You shouldn't die, ever. You should l-live…"

His head dropped to the side.

"And if you don't, I'll kick your ass out of heaven… so you go back."

The easy exhalation of death echoed through the capsules that gave them birth. X wasn't designed to cry. But he went through the motions.