Okay so before anyone gets confused, let's get this straight: I did not like MEGA MAN X6. I thought the game was horribly thrown together and had the least sensible plot of any game in the series...at least since they'd decided to make the plot an open book. This made me incredibly angry, because X5 was perhaps my favorite game since X2...and I expected it to get a respectable follow up.

The end result of my anger was years of marination on an odd question. What would have been a satisfying X6 for me?

The answer, eventually...is this story. Although, it would have been one heck of a plot to cover before the game started...some Metal Gear solid style backstory setup in quick video clips or something.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoy speculating about how interesting this would be.

Mega Man X6: Absolute Zero
Prologue

Clank. Clank. Clank.

The sound was distant. Hollow. It didn't approach or retreat...it was simply there.

Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the low light, scanning the room for the source of the sound. The room was humongous, but metallic debris was strewn all over. His eyes widened as the light source seemed to move, throwing his point of reference off. When the room finally stopped spinning, he focused on the sound, homing in on its location once more.

It seemed forever before he realized he was listening to his own feet, plodding forward without his conscious thought. In fact, he only recognized it when they stopped. Suddenly, the room pitched at an odd angle, and his eyes were looking at the dark ground. Chaos cluttered his mind as he attempted to figure out what was going on...was this a dream? A vision?

No. He just couldn't feel anything. Something was very wrong.

Slowly, memories came back. Yes...there was a reason for this mess. He had just lost to X and Zero...again. A part of him raged as he realized that he couldn't remember how many times that had happened. Another part wondered what had happened to his mental faculties...because he never lost count of that number. It seemingly defined his existence; it testified to his eternal struggle with them. And, he would never forgive himself if -- on the day of his final victory -- he was forced to gloat about defeating them on the (n+1)th try...

Good grief, why couldn't he focus?

Memory continued to come online. Slowly, the picture of a space colony entered his mind...

Damn.

Apparently, that hadn't been his best plan. He certainly had given his all to the hope of having Zero return to his side. He faintly remembered wanting that return...that...reunion...with Zero. But the memory seemed so distant, such a hint of what it should have been. It was as if the part of him that cared about it was missing right now. All he knew was that Zero was gone forever.

Hmm...gone forever. He assumed that meant dead, but the words were in his memory with no further explanation.

Why the hell was his program so disorganized?! Did the colony attack do this?

That had to be it, he realized. He must've exerted himself far more in creating that viral colony than he'd originally thought. Considering how closely integrated his program was with the virus, that was quite possible. He'd split his "soul" too thin, and this was his penalty for it.

More memories came back, and he suddenly remembered a history he hadn't realized he was missing.

Panic streaked across his mind. Just how close had he come to losing...himself? Close enough to not even miss his identity.

With that, everything changed. The noise that had been streaming through his mind was immediately forced away by focused thought. Enough of this...

Sigma consciously searched for his legs and arms, and slowly felt a connection form between his conscious mind and some sort of body. It was moments like these that made him hate X and Zero...moments where he was forced to reconnect to this world. It was as if he had died, been rejected in Heaven, and been reincarnated while the gods delayed judgement on him. It made him hate the gods too...either they should force him to stay dead, or they should let him win. Sigma concentrated, searching for a change, and he began to feel the coursing of power through his servos...

His servos.

Something laughed, and Sigma became aware of the new, gruffer voice he possessed. This body wasn't his...it was just something the virus had randomly taken over when he'd lost. It was the same situation as always, he told himself. He was always a little disoriented and confused after...setbacks. True, it had never been that bad, but it changed nothing. He would fashion himself a proper body soon enough...and this bulky husk would be no more. No matter the reason the angry gods had done so, he'd been given another chance to topple the Hunters.

Yet, as he tried to get up and felt his brain struggle to get the commands out, Sigma wondered how many more chances he would have...

It had been a good while since humanity had seen the sun.

The chaos of man's sudden exile from the surface of the planet...the growing sense of betrayal by its own creations as the reason for departure was announced...the ever-apparent dependency on those creations to save their planet...all of them were having a profound effect on the psyche of the whole species. Combine that with the dark, damp, and cold caves that tortured their bodies as they attempted to survive, and time seemed to crawl for nearly everyone.

Dr. Cain was one of those whose sense of time was failing him, but he figured that was because he was one of the oldest men alive, and this was the longest he'd ever spent indoors. If you could call an underground cave indoors, that is. Without a sun to watch set or weather patterns and plant life to reveal the changing of seasons, a year could have passed, and few would have been able to detect its passing. On the other hand, Cain was also fortunate enough to have a working watch and know that it had only been the longest month of his life.

Sigma's last attack had proven to be his most effective, though not in the way that he'd likely hoped. In each of his previous attacks, he had done significant damage to Maverick Hunter, but the human race had been kept mostly out of harm's way. It was perhaps the greatest credit to Maverick Hunter that could be given: that no humans had been lost, even in the worst stages of the Maverick conflict. The situations had been contained as best they possibly could be, and Sigma's effect on humanity was the same as that of a rumored terrorist who the government was carefully watching. That is, there was a guarded confidence among the nations that everything was under control.

Sigma finally broke that confidence this time.

Infecting the Eurasia space colony with his viral code and crashing it into Earth had caused mass panic across the planet. As X boldly faced off with Zero and Sigma, the rest of Maverick Hunter began to realize just how extreme the repercussions of the crash would be to the Earth's landscape. Even though they had used the Enigma Cannon on the giant colony, it still held together, but Zero's crash attack had split the colony into manageable enough pieces for the Earth to survive impact. That didn't mean that the mass of debris wasn't still formidable, however.

Earthquakes shook the land, and major cities fell, crushed beneath sections of the space colony. As buildings collapsed and the planet shuddered, dust and debris clouded the air. Maverick Hunter immediately shifted its efforts away from finding Sigma (and unfortunately, Zero with him) and towards damage control. The hunters sent teams into the major cities hit by the crashes to salvage and rescue people stuck in the rubble. Signas, after seeing the readouts of just how much dust and dirt were in the air, quickly made the order to move all organisms possible underground. "Those with natural lungs that do not have filtration systems should get clear of this air," Signas said, "as it contains a large amount of dust and irritants that will do serious damage with prolonged exposure."

And so humanity went into ancient caves and bunkers while its creations, the Reploids, made every effort to repair the cities and make the air breathable again. Since Dr. Cain couldn't go up to the surface, Signas took it upon himself to lead the effort. After X's recovery, he was quick to join the team.

In the meantime, the human race sat, survived, and struggled with the shock of the situation. Dr. Cain, for one, had taken up smoking like a burning building. It wasn't a habit he had developed previously...it was just something to do to calm his nerves. As he enjoyed an evening cigar in an antique rocking chair, he smirked. If X were here now, the doctor mused, he'd likely have chided Cain into quitting before he ever started. Dr. Cain exhaled lighty, watching the smoke billow from his mouth. It was a good thing X wasn't here.

Truth was, he preferred this method of wasting his life away to the method Congress and the world's governments were taking. Apparently, they had too much time to just sit around doing nothing. They had to get together and debate about what kind of nothing to do. The world's government couldn't shut down and wait idly...even when the world they normally governed was likewise temporarily shut down. Instead, they demanded action.

The nations of the world had found a cause worth working together for, it seemed. A week into their stay in the underground, the World Congress requested Dr. Cain look into the possibility of extending Reploid armor and abilities to humans. The human race, they declared, was sick of standing by idly and watching the Reploids defend them. It was time for them to defend themselves.

At first glance, it had sounded like a great idea to Dr. Cain. Maverick Hunter's ranks would be bolstered with the strength of the best of the human race. It gave them the explicit support of the World Congress as the front line of humanity's defense. And, it gave them the opportunity to do something he'd been desiring to do, anyway. For a while now, Dr. Cain had been tinkering with the idea of what a human combat suit would entail. Now, he would have the chance to turn his notes into actual machinery. It would be an interesting process, and Cain had been sure it would be fully productive and good for Maverick Hunter.

But Dr. Cain had more time to think than he had ever had in his life. Now, he wasn't so sure. After all, this was quite unprecedented, and he wondered what the consequences would be. How would Reploids and humans interact when they were on the battlefield together? He hadn't really considered a Reploid response to this movement...and he certainly hadn't considered X's. Oh dear. Would this be looked at as humans offering support...or would they think humanity was accusing them of failure and taking the role of the Hunters?

Time also reminded him of what humanity was capable of. Would a human ever turn Maverick? That concept was, of course, a silly one. A human couldn't be infected by Sigma's viral code, so of course he couldn't turn Maverick. But, give the right human power and the right Reploid contact with him, and anything was possible. Humans didn't need a virus to corrupt them. And a human turning would be much more dangerous and much less detectable...he wouldn't have the erratic, aggressive behavior of a Maverick to tip everyone off.

And now that they had made their first step into the arena, how much more influence would the World Congress seek when oil wasn't the only liquid spilled in the Maverick War?

No...now he didn't like it all. But it wasn't his call...he had gotten Reploids their rights, but he was no leader in society anymore. As respect for him rose with the Reploids, so it fell with the humans. Now, he was certain, the Congress only remembered that he was the creator of the creatures that had forced everyone underground. Arguing with Congress on a very bored World stage was the last thing he wanted to do with his off time. He would do what they asked of him.

Twee-deet!

Dr. Cain heard a sharp beep and felt his arm begin to vibrate. Quickly, he flipped a switch on his belt and expelled the cigar smoke from his lungs. "Speak." Something in his mind registered that his voice sounded raspier.

A familiar voice shot through the speaker on Dr. Cain's belt. "Doc, it's X. Just thought I'd let you be the first to know...the surface air levels are tolerable for human life again. We're going to keep working for three more days so that they can be more than just tolerable. Then we'll let everyone back up."

The voice in the device at Dr. Cain's waist grew silent, as did the doctor himself. Anyone who had seen his face would have noticed a look of acceptance cross it, but no one was in the room. Without a word, he tossed his cigar nonchalantly onto the floor, then replied. "Excellent. Keep me posted on any changes...otherwise I'll see you in three days."

"Roger that. X, over and out."

"Cain out." He flipped the switch back down, and rose from the rocking chair. Smashing the cigar with his foot as he passed, Dr. Cain exited his temporary bedroom. Things would pick up soon, he knew. The time for lollygagging was over; he needed to live to see this chaos through.

I can't say how often I'll work on this, but what I have in my head is an interesting alternative to the crap that happened in the latter half of the X series...

My Naruto fics come first because that is my joy and that series has much more powerful (compelling) characters than this one to work with. I still love the X series, however, and this is my first time attempting to write anything for it. I don't think I've even read any X fics...

As such, I'd appreciate it a bunch if you'd read and review, especially as I get further into attempting to portray X's character. That'll be the real fun...