Chapter 10 - Reinforcements on All Ends
Alpha ran on ahead of Bread Man, who walked slowly along behind him, his fingers entwined against the back of his head, his eyes staring off into the sky. Alpha swiftly climbed up on to a lamp post, staring down the street in silence, which brought tears to Bread Man's eyes.
"Brendan... Umm.. What's big.. Purple.. And makes BIG cracks in the road?"
"... Do I even want to know?" Bread Man glanced up at Alpha, who was trying to squint farther down the road.
He leaped from the lamp post and landed beside his partner, his azure saber activating at his side. He nodded up at his taller companion, he morphed his hand into a bigger than normal buster. They readied themselves for this new threat.
"Okay, Alpha.. You need to put your game face on," Bread Man instructed, aiming his buster carefully in front of him, slitting one eye to get a better angle. Alpha let his eyes widen to the size of dish saucers, his jaw falling open, drool trickling down on to the ground in front of him, "Alp-.. Dammit Alpha! Not your VIDEO GAME face! Your SERIOUS face! Stop screwing around!" Alpha quickly shut his mouth and gave an innocent grin, "Oops, sorry."
Enzan leaned against a wall, yawning loudly as he slumped his entire form into the steel structure. He closed his eyes as another wave of sleep rode over him. He slid down the wall and sat down on the floor, 32 laughing lightly in the control room. Enzan lifted his hand to the ear piece, clicking it off and falling into a slightly deep sleep.
The steel door clicked lightly, every two to three seconds, another tink landing on the door. Steam collected on the seams of the doorway, the door sliding upward, steam covering the entirety of the door. A silhouette appeared in the door, stepping out from the shadows of the darkness. The door slid closed behind him, the steam slowly beginning to clear, red armor flashing in the dim light of the underground corridor. A pair of dark shades gleamed slightly as the light licked across them. He hefted up a mighty shield and set off down the hallway away from the door, the lights flickering off as he passed.
"We've got Crushers, too!"
Bread Man leaped backward, firing off twin shots from his buster. The first shot ricocheted off the spiked bottom of one of the Crushers, blowing apart a chunk of the sidewalk. But the other blast was clean, and blew the Crusher apart. Alpha leaped into the air, screaming out, "BAKA SLASHER!" cleaving his saber up through spikes and core, ripping the Crusher in two, the explosion lurching him backward slightly. He landed and spun on one foot, switching his free hand into his buster, "BAKA BUSTER!" Multiple shots of plasma raining from the end of his buster, tearing through multiple Crushers at once.
32 slammed his hands down against the computer console, snarling angrily at the screen before him, "Dammit!" He sighed heavily and set his head down against the keyboard, breathing in and out slowly, calming himself. He lifted his head and stared at the screen, X's schematics displayed on the screen. He tapped a few keys lightly, letting different calculations be put into the design of X's design, he was rewarded with a beep and a red flashing light.
"Why doesn't anything work.." 32 typed in another calculation, receiving the same answer, "No matter how hard I try.. X's design will always be flawed."
Alpha tripped over himself, falling to the ground. Fortunately, his fall got him out of the way of a Crusher's spiked bottom. The device slamming into the ground where Alpha had just been. Bread Man cut the Crusher's spike free and filled the smaller Reploid's face with plasma. The explosion not big enough to effect either Hunter. Alpha got to his feet, grinning over at Bread Man, who shook his head and fired off a round of plasma at the incoming Quaker.
"We got big purple Reploids!" Alpha called out, laughing lightly.
Bread Man's saber flashed quickly across the terrain, the crimson blade tearing through the Quaker's single arm, ripping through metallic cords and sockets, the Reploid-sized arm dropping to the earth with a shattering sound, tearing tendrils into the earth. Alpha, who had just yelled out, "BAKA SLASHER!" swung his sword through the Quaker's head, ripping it from it's shoulders and sending it toppling across the earth. He leaped from the purple shoulders of the Quaker; all three parts exploding simultaneously, shrouding the two Hunters in smog.
"Good work, Alpha. But no time to dawdle. We need to find that warehouse. If 32 is right, there might be more Hunters there." The two Hunters went running down the road, Alpha adding a skip to his step as they went.
The red Reploid stood over the small human boy sitting against the wall. He set his shield down in front of the human, a dark smirk on his face as he knelt down and turned the flashlight off.
"No need to waste the batteries like that."
He got back to his feet, slid his hand into the notch at the back of the shield, hefted it back up. The red Reploid turned and slowly made his way back to the room with the silver doorway. The door opened the same way as before, with an unnecessary amount of steam. The Reploid walked through the door, which closed behind him latching shut, the hinges on the sides disappearing into the wall, as to make the door look as if it cannot be opened in anyway.
32 was getting extremely frustrated. Not only was every calculation he put into the computer to correct the flaw designs on X's armor not working, but Enzan had fallen asleep on the job. He shook his head and entered a few more calculations into the computer, each rewarding him with an erroneous beep and a flashing red of the screen. He slammed his hand into the console.
"Damn you Dr. Light! You and your stupid robot!"
32 stared into his hands for a moment, thinking carefully. He then lifted his head quickly. He tapped on the computer, bringing up a split screen of X without the Light Armor and then him with it. The design flaws were completely corrected when X was in the Light Armor.
"That's why! Dr. Light set it up so that X would be completely flawless under his armor. He was supposed to be that way. Well.. Time to fix that."
32 set about transferring the calculations from X with the Light Armor on to X without the Light Armor. X's design began to change and reform itself on the screen as each calculation was entered. In the end, both of the designs were completely the same, but X was now going to start out completely flawless, instead of having to work himself up to that point.
32 kicked the floor slightly, rolling the chair over to the monitor containing Axl's data. Though being a Reploid, 32 yawned loudly. He checked his chronometer and blinked a few times, the time didn't seem right, but it had to be.
'I've really been up five hundred hours? I need to recharge.. Axl. You'll have to wait until tomorrow.'
32 pushed the chair out away from the computer and walked out of his miniature laboratory. He walked down the hallway a few yards, stopping at a doorway slightly taller than he. He tapped in his passcode and entered the room. Within the room was a cooling unit containing nothing but Energy Capsules, and a Recharge Pod. 32 set one foot on the side of the pod and the green paneling slid open. He stepped up inside of the massive unit and the paneling closed behind. He shut himself down and the lights dimmed in the room, a soft green glow illuminating the room.
Bread Man and Alpha had been running for three days straight, at the least. They had gone from the western most side of the city, where the ruins of the old Maverick Hunter base was located, to the eastern most side of the city, where there was even less human activity. Apparently, the west and east sides of this particular city were considering the playground to gang fights and other illegal activities.
Bread Man grabbed Alpha by the shoulders and lifted him up to the window, letting him look inside the grime covered rectangle. He scrubbed his hand over it, revealing a big enough clean area to look through. He gazed into the factory, whispering down to Bread Man, "Are you sure this is the right one?" Bread Man acknowledged his answer with a nod. Alpha leaped from his position atop Bread Man's shoulders.
"We need to go inside. There are too many boxes by the window to be able to see anything clearly. If there really are some Stasis Pods in there, we have to get a closer look."
Alpha walked around the corner, morphing his hand into a buster, Bread Man following suit. The two slipped into the warehouse as silently as Reploids could. Bread Man took the west side, motioning for Alpha to take the east. He swept through the entire warehouse slowly, gazing around for a pair of twin Stasis Pods of the same size and color.
"I don't see anything, Alpha. How about you?"
"I think I got something."
Bread Man ran over to Alpha's position on the opposite side of the warehouse. He cut straight through the middle. The two hunters stood in front of two blue pods with jade paneling. The one on the right contained a dark armored hunter, with red trim. Bread Man noted that it reminded him a lot of the Shadow Armor that X used to wear. Alpha grabbed a towel sitting on a nearby box and rubbed it over the other pod, revealing a Reploid that looked distinctly like Zero, but his armor was blue, and his long hair was red instead of yellow.
"We found them, Bread Man."
"Yea.. Mr. Death and Franco. The two Hunters that joined during the Repliforce years. That was such a long time ago. I hope they still have their memories intact, I doubt 32 will want to reprogram all of that information back into them."
Bread Man and Alpha both leaned down in front of the two pods, inserting passcodes into the twin pods. The code to Franco's pod was the exact opposite of what Mr. Death's was. As the panels accepted the passcodes as the correct ones. Bread Man and Alpha stood back up and stepped back away from the pods, the two Reploids inside activating right before their eyes.
"Awaken Elcazor, you've been reborn."