She met him on his way to sick bay.

"What happened?"

"He got away, Hannah."

"You have to follow him!"

"Not yet. He's using extreme speed."

"What's that?"

He explained.

"So you're going for the Shadow Armour?"

"Yes. An enhanced saber will give me the edge, pun intended."

"You have three pieces. The last is in the volcano."

"I didn't see it; only a high ledge. That means I'll have to complete that dumb Blade Armour just so I can use its Mach Dash! I told Dad that getting all four parts to use it was a bad idea! It takes all the fun out of finding them!"

"Hold on. You visited Metal Shark's stage, so the Nightmare effect has transferred to Blaze Phoenix's area. Use the big flying metal blocks as a lift. After that, go for the shellfish and then the flea."

X hugged Hannah.

"I think I love you."

Lifesaver and his cronies snickered. She reddened.

"You can't possibly make this any more awkward, can you?"

"Nope!"

"My heart belongs to Zero!"

"Don't care."

"You can let go of me now."

"Don't wanna!"

"Just don't start…"

X purred.

"…that. Someone get him off me!"

888

Sheldon poked around his command centre. There were many screens filled with static today.

"Perimeter sensors have been knocked out. What's going on out there?"

"Sir! There's a… aaggghhh!"

"What? Report!"

White noise. Faced with an extenuating circumstance (i.e. possible intruder) he began to be absent minded, talking to himself.

"Don't be ridiculous. How could anything knock out sensors they can't even see?"

Sheldon paced the room. More screens were snowed in by the unknown factor running around his institute.

"I have spikes and laser beam puzzles everywhere! How is that… thing just rushing from room to room like they're not there?"

"Sir it's a BLARGHHH!"

Gurgling noises. Sheldon threw up his short arms in despair.

"Someone set us up the-!"

"NINJA!"

"HUH?"

But it was too late. A wide beam saber slash lopped off his torso, dicing him to bits as he fell. The last thing that passed through his positronic brain was nameless, gaping terror.

888

Hunter HQ was busy as usual, meaning that Alia was doing all the work while Signas lounged in his command chair and Hannah entertained herself with their holographic projector. Signas turned to the comm. operative.

"Alia, I want your opinion on…"

"NINJA!"

A black silhouette dropped into their midst!

"OH MY GOD, THEY CAME BACK!" Hannah screeched, wildly swinging her saber.
"Z'OH MY GOD!" X yelped, clinging to the ceiling. Signas and Alia were out of their chairs and glaring at him.

"X! Is that you?"

"No, I'm Ryu Hayabusa. Of course it's me! I got my Shadow Armour!"

"Recent bad exposure to ninjas," Signas apologized, subduing Hannah's beam saber frenzy by snatching the thing from her paws. She gave up and collapsed in a chair.

"You weren't supposed to get the Shadow Armour before the Blade Armour!"

"This isn't a video game! On an unrelated note, I can throw shuriken!"

To prove his point, the ebony-clad Hunter shot three of them into their midst, nearly removing limbs.

"Gah! Look, just get out of here! Don't you have to deal with Gate and/or Zero?" Alia yelled.

"Yeah, but I just got the third piece of the Blade Armour from Shield Sheldon's place! I want the last part!" X whined, dropping from the ceiling onto his feet. Signas gave a thumbs-up now that he had a good view of the Shadow Armour.

"I agree, that does make you look cooler. It even has a mouth guard to make your face look less goofy."

"What? To heck with you, I'm going!"

"Isn't he supposed to be cooler?" Hannah asked. Alia snorted a laugh.

"Bling bling aids and abets brain rot."

888

"By the way, X, there's a giant robot on the rampage named Illumina."

"The ultimate weapon from Final Fantasy 6 is here?"

"No! A huge, shiny monster that shoot beams from its eyes!"

And so did X cross the stage belonging to Infinity Mijinon, also known as Flea. The barriers Illumina brought up quickly fell to the Crescent Blade Slash.

"I can't use any Investigator weapons with this armour, but it sure makes up for it!"

"Yeah, yeah, just rescue those reploids!"

For some inexplicable reason, said reploids were floating in midair.

"Alia, how do they do that?"

"How did Cloud's hair and clothing survive that massive explosion at the end of Advent Children? Were they also infused with JENOVA's cells and irradiated with Mako?"

"What? That's not relevant!"

"It still bothers me!"

"Ugh. Forget I asked."

Breaking the fourth wall aside, X knocked down another barrier and Illumina exploded in the background.

"Okay, first question. Why do robots four hundred feet tall place their power source in easy-to-hit places?"

"In the fourth war, only General's head was vulnerable."

"So Illumina's dumb?"

"She was driven crazy by something. Anyway, hop through that portal."

"H'buh? She?"

"Illumina is… was, female."

X smacked his forehead.

"I could have had a tea party with her instead."

"…"

"Another question. How the hell do these portals even exist, just floating around?"

"The Nightmare Effect. It distorts the energy balance of an area, creating fluxes in space-time that enable someone to leap between areas also affected by the Nightmare."

"So the Nightmares form gateways between the areas they invade?"

"It's a theory, and explains why the things come back after we blow them up. The distorted energy also makes weird things happen, like metal blocks appearing out of nowhere, magma raining from the heavens, and total darkness broken by random spotlights. Anymore questions?"

"Who wrote the Book of Love? Where do sea urchins come from? Why do I sound like an eight year old girl?"

"Now you're being silly."

"I'm serious!"

"Just go!"

888

"Hullo, X. You're looking spiffy today."

"Dad! For the first time ever, you're actually easy to get to! Just walk left!"

"I thought you would miss me. You are conditioned to go right in every area."

"Is that the last piece of the Blade Armour?"

"Yes. Did you find Zero?"

"He's still missing. We have no idea what caused him to go Maverick again! After Dynamo recovered, he said Zero just touched a Nightmare Soul, but Zero had collected them every level before…"

"Before what?"

"Before he went to save Hannah! And those Zero Nightmares chased him!"

"What can this mean?"

X frowned.

"I don't think that energy surge before Zero teleported was his virus buffer…"

Dr. Light rubbed his nonexistent chin.

"Odd. Then why didn't he go Maverick immediately?"

"A disease can stay dormant in the host until some catalyst triggers it. Maybe the Nightmare Soul, an offshoot of the Zero Virus, reacted with the Maverick Virus he was unknowingly infected with. The sheer number of viruses must have overwhelmed his buffer and taken root. It's odd, though. Usually it takes control right away. This time it waited for him to find another Nightmare Soul."

"It's a working theory. You'll have to confront him later."

X cracked a wry smile.

"We're rivals forever."

He took the final armour part, rescued some more reploids, and confronted Infinity Mijinon.

"Kyahahaha! I can make infinite clones of myself! Rain destruction on your head! And form huge gobs of gelatin to fill the screen!"

"And I'm a freaking NINJA!"

The latter outdid the former. The Crescent Blade Slash hit a large area in front X, destroying whatever clones and gelatin the Flea could muster. As for destruction raining from the heavens, the speed boost the armour afforded enabled him to dodge and hack the Investigator into submission.

"How can so much power exist in such an ancient machine?" Mijinon complained, echoing the old Maverick, Byte, "We are the new generation! We are born to reign, not be subjugated by the past!"

"If you do not learn from the past," X replied evenly, seeing in his mind's eye the lifelong uprisings he himself had quelled, "The past will return to you."

888

X was subdued upon returning to HQ. He was in his normal armour.

"We thought you'd be a bit happier, what with the Blade and Shadow at your disposal," Signas greeted him.

"Reploids do not learn from the past," X determined, "The first reploid ever created, by myself and Dr. Cain, got up from the table and asked the doctor, 'Shall I aid you in disassembling this older model?' I was nothing but history. We designed them with a computer's technological brain, and technology has no room for the past. The past is something always to be improved upon, to be discarded so that the new will take its place, for the greater good in terms of efficiency and cost."

Alia, Signas and Hannah had nothing to say. So he continued.

"But humans do not look at the greater good in terms of efficiency and cost. Dr. Light designed me to think like them. When I look at reploids, the race I created with Dr. Cain, I don't feel inadequate, or left behind, like the older models do today. I feel pity for them, because they don't understand that the past is of paramount importance to humans, the race they are modeled after."

"Why is the past so important to humans?" Alia asked, and it was not a rhetorical question. She really didn't know.

"It gives us meaning, and purpose," said Hannah, speaking for her race, "Without a past, well, we wouldn't be anything, would we? We have reminders of our past, like parents, and buildings, and books. Unless we had something to work with, we would be awful bored."

"Each generation of reploids does improve upon what the last built," Signas placed her words in context, "But like humans, we go to war because we have… differences."

"Humans have had two world wars in the past century, and many smaller ones going on even now. But reploids have had six world wars within ten years," said X.

"We don't learn," Alia admitted.

"No, you don't," X said with sadness, "But that's why I'm here. I'm the wild card Dr. Light unleashed into this world. Maybe he meant for reploids to be built, maybe he didn't, but we can't change the situation now. We can only make the best of it."

"That's what being human's all about," Hannah smiled. Dynamo chose that moment to trudge into HQ with disgust.

"Well, well, aren't we philosophical today! In case you've forgotten, there are not one, but two madmen loose, which want to destroy life as we know it!"

"I say we let them," X mused, "Maybe after the world's changed, they'll begin to realize their mistakes."

"No, let them realize now, with a few of those famous X-Buster blasts," Dynamo growled, "I know I've had my share. I'm leaving!"

He beamed out. Signas shrugged.

"A thank-you-for-saving-my-life would have sufficed."