X grumbled discontent as he slipped and slid through the ice area.

"Why can't a Maverick set up base in a nice, tropical island? What's the obsession with VOLCANOES AND ICE? Only Sith deal in absolutes!"

Even worse, there were balls of flaming magma falling from the sky, thanks to triggering the Nightmare effect from Phoenix's stage.

"AHH! This make us no sense! Why isn't the ice melting from this? It's madness, madness I tell you!"

He thought about jumping over a chasm until giant blocks of ice came cascading down, falling into the bottomless pit. X looked up and shook his fist.

"Who DOES these things! Did they hire someone to stand off-screen and throw chunks of ice at regular intervals? Why can't they just set land mines, or put up wired fencing like normal people?"

There was an overhanging icy rock at the top of the uphill climb, too high for him to jump, and the slick ice discouraged wall-kicking.

"So this is why Dad made the Blade Armour."

Looking around, he noticed some Maverick wolves breathing their minty fresh breath just downhill. With a skip, hop and jump, he landed on one's back.
"WHOO! RIDE 'EM, COWBOY!"

Startled, the poor wolf scampered uphill, claws digging ice. As it neared the overhang, X dug his heels into its sides. Yelping, the wolf leaped into the air from the pain, and that is when X kicked off its hide and onto the overhang.

"Ahh. Nothing like animal abuse to get you up in the world."

"That wasn't very nice, X."

"Daddy!"

X tackled the hologram, went straight through and got his head stuck in the wall.

"I sometimes wonder if you're doing that on purpose."

"Mmmfff!" pop "But I missed you!"

"I designed a new armour since you don't like the Blade Armour."

"Ooh! Ooh! What is it?"

"Equipped with the skills of a ninja, I named it the Shadow Armour."

X had a joygasm.

"That's the first armour you've given me that actually sounds cool!"
"What, the Ultimate Armour wasn't cool?"

"Everyone has an Ultimate weapon, but not everyone can turn into a ninja!"

"Point taken. With this armour, your mobility will increase a hundredfold. You'll be able to walk, even climb spikes without taking damage. You will jump three times your normal height and be able to stick to ceilings and walls without sliding down. Your X-Buster will be replaced by the tri-shuriken cannon, and upon charging the cannon or using your new Giga Attack, your Beam Saber will perform the almighty Crescent Blade Slash."

X was drooling all over the floor.

"You had me at walking on spikes. Where are the other parts!"

"You know I can't tell you."

"For security purposes. Blah. Well, this is a start!"

The rest of the stage was a blur. X was imagining what he'd look like decked out as a ninja, flipping out and killing stuff.

"You! Maverick Hunter!"

"Huh?"

Blizzard Wolfang was glaring at him.

"You wrecked my ice labyrinth!"

"Oh. Ice. You must be weak to fire."

He wasn't much of a challenge. Due to slippery walls, kicking off them was not expected, so all X had to do was hop over him as he charged, and burn away all his attacks with the Flame Saber he'd stolen from Phoenix. Technically, it was his first Beam Saber Technique, like Zero, but it was more of a projectile attack, in his own style of hitting things a mile away. Wolfang went down, and X continued to have wet daydreams of the Shadow Armour.

888

X stamped through the command centre.

"Zero!"
"What!"

"Is your hair done yet?"

"My… oh! Yeah, it's been done for awhile now."

"IT'S ABOUT TIME! I've been busting my butt through three Investigator stages without you!"

Hannah blinked.

"Uh… you didn't go through Blaze Phoenix's stage without the Falcon Armour, did you?"

"I told Alia to delete that thing!"

"The Giga Attack would have defeated those huge red donut things in, like, one hit each."

X went purple in the face and passed out. Zero poked him with a stick.

"I think you killed him with sheer logic."

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Aren't you going to hunt some Mavericks? Rainy Turtloid's next."

Zero smiled at Hannah who went pink.

"Signas, I want a room for this girl, and her own private lounge. As long as she's here we won't have to second guess our strategy!"

"Uh, that was a one-time thing, because, y'know, Capcom kidnapped me and stuff," Hannah said, scuffing her toes, "But I'd like to stay here! I'd never have to drive anywhere again."

"I don't think so," Alia interjected, "She has a family in America. But we can outfit her with a teleportation device."

"Is that even legal?" Signas inquired.

"Nobody has to know. It's not like they have the technology to monitor it."

"Okay then. She'll stay here until the war's finished, and then we send her home with her new toy."

She thought she'd lost the spirit of the season, but at that moment, it was Christmas all over again for Hannah.

888

"Oh great. The one stage I do by myself and there's acid rain! Ahh! It burnsss ussss! But somehow my beautiful silken hair withstands it!"

"Get a grip, Zero. There are regenerative pods scattered all over the place because Turtloid's the only reploid who's immune to the rain in this area."

"I thought they were trying to find a way to stop the rain?"

"That was his job, until the Nightmare screwed things up. Now hop to it, before your life drains away."

"Oi!"

Far into the stage, in a terraced area boasting many spikes and bats, Zero noticed a small tunnel lined with spikes top and bottom.

"You can't fit through there. X is smaller than you, so he can do the job."

"I see an armour capsule through there. I agree; let him deal with instant death. After all, it's not my armour."

But Zero was able to dive through a smaller spike tunnel (with the help of his dash boost, of course) and into one of those blue portals. Finding a purple garage door, he gratefully stepped inside and allowed his auto repair function to restore the acid rain damage to his systems. All reploids are outfitted with an auto repair function so that, if damaged, they wouldn't leak to death or explode unless their fusion core took a beating. However, like the human body, major damage requires outside help to repair. For reploids, that was the purpose of restorative pods and life-energy capsules; they gave additional energy to the auto repair function, allowing faster and broader healing. Many speculate that Zero's 'death' after the fifth war was, in fact, a state of suspended animation, during which time his body somehow used materials from his surroundings to grow a new torso and legs. Of course, nobody knows, except Dr. Light and his counterpart, and they're not talking.

Refreshed, Zero walked straight into Hi Max.

"Hello, little Hunter."

Zero looked up, and up some more until he could see the huge Maverick's eyes.

"You do know I've taken down robots ten times your size?"

"So?"

"I'm going to demonstrate why size doesn't matter. Prepare yourself!"

His Z-Saber did no damage to the armour, but a single special attack – namely, the Flame Saber – stunned the larger reploid.

"Okay. One hit stuns him…"

A second hit did nothing. Hi Max booted Zero in the face and took off.

"God, how I hate selective armour!"

After running from some energy spheres he tried a more piercing attack, the Sentsuizan or the Z-Saber version of the Ground Dash. It cut right through the armour, causing Hi Max to flinch.

"Pah. It's only a scratch."

"A scratch is all I need!"

Zero scratched him about thirty more times until Hi Max was too badly damaged to fly.

"Bye Max."

"Master Gate was right… we do need your DNA…"

"What?"

But Hi Max was gone.

"Odd. What's this business with my DNA?"

Turtloid didn't know, either, once Zero finished the rest of the stage.

"Maybe they want to clone you?"

"Tried in the second war; didn't work."

"Oh well. Guess I have to kill you now?"

"You can try."

"Resistance is useless!"
"You look the part, but you're not a Vogon."

Ceiling was too high for his ice move (which required him to stick up there), so Zero resorted to conventional attacks and his usual set of acrobatics to get by.

"Huh? Where'd he go?"

"Up here, ugly."

Standing on Turtloid's shell, he stuck his saber between the neck and shell, braced one foot against the Maverick's thick neck, and wrenched his saber backward, dislodging shell from turtle. Defenseless, a saber strike to the back finished the Investigator off.

"Such strength!" Rainy said in amazement, "How did you get so strong?"

Standing on the displaced shell, Zero sheathed his blade.

"You next generation reploids think you're the most powerful ever. You're all copies of X's design! Nothing can improve on Dr. Light's schematics. Come on, not even Sigma could improve on my design! It would require a human imagination to create anything more powerful than us, and the only two humans with that capability died decades ago."

"Then… all that remains is Gate's plan… for you."

While Rainy exploded, Zero grumbled, "Why don't people idolize X for a change? I don't see Sigma or his cronies plotting things about his body! What makes me so special? I know I'm dead sexy, but, sheesh, it kinda creeps me out…"

And somewhere, Dr. Wily was chuckling. It would not be until Zero had been absent for a hundred years that people would decide, "Oh well, let's try the next best thing!" and copy X. But that is another story, and possibly another parody (don't get your hopes up).