"Do not take life seriously. You will never get out of it alive."-Elbert Hubbard

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."-Douglas Adams

Of course with every new thing there also came some sort of restriction. For reploids, it came in the form of a law. It was a simple law; basically stating that whoever you worked with had to know you were a reploid. That meant that if you weren't wearing your armor, you had to be carrying around some sort of id that stated you were. And if you were already a part of some sort of organization, well, you'd have to state your reploid nature in your file.

Obviously this ticked a few reploids off. The government was rubbing it in their faces that they were different.

But in all reality it made sense especially for jobs that were physical. Reploids had a physical advantage over humans. Physical jobs would be easier.

However, this law also came with a price. Reploids couldn't earn as much. Physical jobs were seen to be easier for them because of their robotic nature, so employers didn't pay them as much. Which also ticked a few reploids off.

And then there was the food price segregation. Parts and oil were the same price as usual for either reploid or human. But food was raised in price for any reploid who came to purchase the food themselves. They had to have a note saying who the food was for if they were purchasing the food for a human. Only then would the prices be normal. Reploids who purchased food had to pay an extra twenty percent.

This sort of made sense as it cut back on the amount of food reploids consumed for pleasure (reploids ran far better off of a normal charge, but could consume food for a less efficient energy source) but it did nothing to stop the gluttony of the humans, who completely disregarded the poorer members of their civilization.

Once again, reploids were upset, but they learned to cope. This however, could not be said for X as he was personally upset that he had to inform the entire school that he was robotic and was rather incompetent when it came to English. This did not sit well with him.

So after some thought, X decided it was alright to completely ignore the law and continue on with his merry life without telling the school anything.

Which didn't sit well with Doctor Cain.

"X the law states that all you have to have a reploid I.D. and your robotic nature should be stated when applying for any school or job. X, you have to tell the school that you're an android," Cain grumbled. X looked over at him from where he was inspecting a plant and shook his head.

"No I don't," he argued.

"Uh, yeah X, yes you do."

"No I don't."

"Yeah you do."

"No, I don't"

"X." Even Fredrick joined in as he moaned out the name. He wasn't happy about it either but his employers already knew he was a reploid so he didn't have to worry about it much.

"The law states that a reploid has to do all that. I'm an android so it doesn't apply," X explained as he returned to his work. Fredrick's face made contact with the lab table in front of him rather loudly and Doctor Cain face palmed and groaned.

"X." This time the drawn out moan came from Doctor Cain.

"I don't want everybody knowing I'm an android!" the android exclaimed.

"You don't have to tell anybody, you just have to add it to your school I.D. and form!" Doctor Cain argued. X sighed.

"But-," he started.

"X! It's a law!"

"I know, it's just. . ."

"X, it's probably best you leave the school anyways," Cain stated. X turned to the scientist, shocked.

"What?"

"Don't get me wrong. It's great that you're getting all that social interaction, but with all these laws coming on and more and more reploids being built . . . It's going to be harder for you to hide your robotic nature. People are going to want to see more of you X. Not as Xavier, but as X. Armor and all. You're technically the father of an entire race. You can't blow off the media anymore. Now that it has been deemed safe for all reploids to be a part of society, you can't really hide any more. The government is keeping an eye on the Emerald Spears so there's really no excuse anymore."

X sighed. "I know." He paused. "Today's the last day then," he commented remorsefully. Cain nodded.

"It's all for the best," Cain responded. X glanced up at the time. He had been up all night. Only having to charge once every three days was a huge benefit for him over humans. It was just about seven, a bit early for Cain to be up but the scientist did go to bed early complaining of a headache after dealing with the council. The council was a government group that specialized in dealing with anything that had to do with robotics. Which meant that Cain was called before them rather often. Coming home after a few hours of speaking with the group sometimes gave Cain a headache. X supposed that they gave Cain a hard time for something.

With a sigh, X grabbed his backpack and hefted it over his shoulder. He'd make the best of today and see what will happen tomorrow.

Of course, given that X had to inform all of his teachers that it was his last day, he was late to nearly every class. Mr. Hatchbury was the only teacher so far that he had explained what was really going on. The man was not surprised that X was a robot. He was surprised that the rather quiet Xavier in his class was the rather well known X.

His friends were a bit upset at him for leaving but they understood. Times were changing. Especially for reploids . Technology was skyrocketing. Nowadays you couldn't walk down the side walk without seeing some sort of mechanaloid or reploid. Reploids were becoming one with society and that meant that some things just had to change.

Telling the first five teachers had been easy. It was that he was worried about. He wasn't really sure why but he supposed that it was because it was the teacher that he was the closest to. It was the end of the day though, so he'd have plenty of time to explain things to her and hopefully prevent her from being too upset with him.

X waited until the rest of the class had left and the door had closed before he stood up and walked up to his English teacher.

"Um ? Can I talk to you for a moment?" X asked, nervously holding his backpack. Mrs. Hatchbury turned around to face him from where she was facing the wall.

"Of course Xavier. What can I do for you?"

"Um, well. There was this new law that was passed and um.. . well, I kind of had to add something to my I.D. and I figured you should know," X stuttered out. He then took a deep breath. "I'm a . . ."

"Does this have something to do with that Reploid Identification law?" She asked. X gulped and slowly nodded. Mrs. Hatchbury smiled warmly. "I've known for a while, X."

X's eyes widened and he sputtered out a few words. Mrs. Hatchbury reached across her desk to put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"You weren't really hiding it. First there was the fact that your last name was Light. The same as your creator. Then there was the fact that your guardian is Doctor Cain. Lastly, the fact that you're the king of science and math, but you don't do so hot in English. It didn't take much to put it all together. I had my suspicions around for the first few weeks but you sealed the deal when mentioned to Sam that you didn't really sleep much at night. That and then you stated that you've never had an English class like this before. You've never had one at all."

X smiled sheepishly; he vaguely recalled each of those events. They occurred a couple weeks before his friends had discovered. Sam had decided to find out more about him and had quizzed him on his life in English.

He attempted to remain calm while standing in front of the English teacher but there was still nervousness and fear in his eyes. He'd heard a few stories of reploids getting rejected by friends and coworkers when they broke the news of their robot nature to them.

"X, I'm not mad at you at all. It's completely understandable. If I was reploid, I wouldn't say anything about it either. You'd get even more attention if others knew you were the X."

X relaxed . "Thanks Mrs. Hatchbury."

"Any time. Now about that last essay."

X's grin immediately dropped and his face grew pale. Mrs. Hatchbury resisted the urge to chuckle. She pulled out X's essay, but didn't show him the grade as she studied it. X's eyes nervously followed her movements.

"It's not perfect," she stated. X started to freak out. She showed him the grade on the front of the essay. "But it's pretty damn close for you."

X's eyes widened when he saw the grade. B+. He had a B+. An enormous grin covered his face. His teacher laughed at X's expression. "Normally I would have said one more letter to go, but I suppose you're leaving aren't you."

X nodded. "Too much press, I guess. Cain thinks it will be easier for me if I just dropped out."

nodded. "It probably is. Good luck out there. And keep up the work on your English. Feel free to drop in here any time. I'll be happy to help you." She smiled. The android smiled back at her.

"Sure thing."

paused and gave X a curious look. "You know, you're not like anything I had ever expected. When I first began realizing that you were X, I almost didn't believe it. You acted completely human. Not like a robot at all. And your English. I would have thought that a robot would have some better understanding of writing, but it's almost like you were never given that sort of information."

X sighed. "There were many things I was programmed knowing, such as the ability to speak many different languages. Others, were taught to be in the pod. English was never brought up in either. What I did know before coming here was what I picked up over time and through books. Perhaps reading more will boost my English up. Light knows I read enough. It's just that I never stopped to think about how the author wrote the book and not just the information I was getting from it before coming to your class."

X's teacher grinned at him. "It's good to see that at least one of my students has learned something in my class."

" ," X started. "You're actually a really good teacher. Why would you think that-?"

"Sarcasm Xavier."

"Oh, . . . oh yeah. For a moment there I forgot that that existed. Wow. And you would think that all the time I spend with Lucas would keep me aware of sarcasm more." He rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment.

"Lucas?"

"A scientist back in Cain labs. He's incredibly sarcastic."

nodded. "You tend to be incredibly sarcastic too sometimes."

X rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "I think I pick that up from him," he stated with a grin. His teacher chuckled.

"Keep in touch will you?" she asked. "I like to know what my former students are doing with their lives. That way I know if I did a good job."

X nodded and was about to respond when his phone went off. He pulled it out of his pocket and glanced at the caller.

"Doctor Cain?" he muttered. "But what on earth-?"

"X!" Cain's voice screamed from the phone as X accepted the call.

"Doctor Cain?"

"X! We have a problem! A mechanaloid just went crazy earlier today and injured somebody! The police managed to take it down before it hurt anybody else, but when a specialist looked at the robot's programming to see what had caused it, they found nothingwrong with it!"

"That weird. Is the person alright?" X asked.

"He was immediately taken to the hospital. His leg is broken but he'll be fine. X, this hasn't been the only instance today."

"What?! Another mechanaloid when crazy?"

"Not a mechanaloid, X . . . it was a reploid."

X looked beyond in shook as stared at him in concern.

"A reploid?" X asked, shakily. If a reploid went crazy, then things were going to be tighter and more difficult for them. Mankind would be less willing to accept them. This wasn't good. What was going on?

"Yes. But I already did research on the phenomenon. It turns out that the mechanaloid was sent to investigate an old building. The reploid was its repair man for when it came back."

"So they had contact with each other? Did-," X paused and swallowed as he gathered enough courage to ask the question. "Do you think that the reploid was the one to blame?"

"I don't think so. I've already checked. The reploid never showed any signs of aggression towards humans. And the reploid didn't attack any one until a few hours after the mechanaloid did."

"Was anyone hurt?"

"People were mildly injured but nothing serious."

"Cain, what's going on?"

"I . . . I don't know, X. I don't understand what's going on! Nothingis wrong with the programming!" Cain let out a frustrated sigh.

"Doctor Cain?" X asked.

"I'm just frustrated X. . . the public has already gone around calling the actions of the mechanaloid and reploid 'maverick'."

X winced. There was already a name out in public for this.

"Doctor Cain, do you think that this will affect reploid productions? I mean, you don't know what's wrong."

"I don't know X. I guess we'll just have to wait and see if we can figure out what's going on. However, there is one thing that's bothering me; both accounts of the maverick incidents have mentioned the maverick's eyes flashing red before it attacked and remaining that way as they did so."

"Red eyes?" X muttered. He shuttered as a sinking feeling formed in his stomach. Somehow he got the feeling that this wasn't going to be over any time soon.

"Doctor Cain. I'll be right over," X said. He hung up the phone and turned to . " . . . somethings come up. I'm sorry, but I need to go see Doctor Cain right now."

His teacher nodded. "Go ahead, but don't forget to visit!"

X nodded and his teacher watched in amazement as the reploid vanished in a flash to blue light and a whistle. frowned as she contemplated what she had heard from X's side of the conversation.

"A reploid and mechanaloid went crazy?" She shuddered. "It's like robot rabies. Just thinking about it gives me the creeps."


He woke up with the urge to kill nearly suffocating him. It thundered through his systems as he giddily glanced at the date on the pod's screen to see how long he had been in stasis. Nearly a century. Oh joy! That meant that perhaps his target was awake too!

He chuckled to himself as he leapt from his pod, blonde hair streaming behind and cascading around his shoulders as he stopped. He twirled a piece in his hand.

Oh the next few months were going to be delightful. He couldn't wait to dismantle that forsaken Light bot. Megaman had been fun to torment. The short little robot put up such a big fight. It was a pity that his master shut him down before he could finish little Rocky off.

And now Doctor Light had built another one. A new one too! One that was all to himself! All alone in the big mean world.

Oh, what was his target's name again? He knew Doctor Light had named him something stupid. Ah, yes, that's right. X. Just one single letter.

But wasn't the android named that way because of his ability to evolve? He chuckled merrily. Oh yes, it would be a glorious fight indeed. He couldn't wait to have that worthless little robot in his hands as he squeezed the life out of him. Maybe the coolant and oil leaking from the android's systems would cover up that nasty color Doctor Light seemed to be so fond of. Blue. Ughh. He shuddered.

He grinned evilly as his systems easily produced hundreds of ways to kill the light bot. Oh yes, X was going to die. And he would make sure that it was by his hands.

But that produced a problem for him. X could only die once. He couldn't feel the joy of killing the robot multiple times. And that just wasn't as fun.

He knew that robots of this era were pathetic compared to X. X was the only true foe he could have any joy fighting against. And he really, really loved a good fight. It was a pity he'd have to kill X.

That was one of his purposes in life. The other purpose was . . . oh yes. To take over the world. Now that would be fun. Because it was so easy to do that with the nice little virus inside of him. The virus made him complete and whole. Without it, he wasn't nearly as powerful. But with it, he would control any robot.

Any robot, that is, except X. His master had informed him that Doctor Light had made X immune to his virus. What a pity. But his virus had evolved since then. It had become something far more nasty than what his master had originally intended. That was good, right?

Perhaps his virus could control X if he gave him a strong enough dose. Wouldn't that be fun? Controlling his target? Then he could play with his target all day long and then when he was done, he'd fix him up. But he'd always preferred the strong will Megaman had over all of the other pathetic little robots. Controlling him would get rid of that.

But what was he going to do when he did take over the world? What would he do to sedate his boredom? His programming didn't answer that question.

Maybe if he didn't kill X but kept him alive so that he could fight him over and over again? And then, over time X would get stronger and the fights would be more fun! He chuckled. And then he would kill him. Oh he was so smart. Master would be proud wouldn't he?

He laughed. Yes, soon he would go hunting for that little Light bot, but right now, his systems were telling him that there was a mechanaloid nearby. Oh, what a wonderful way to spread his little virus of doom.

So of course he infected the mechanaloid. And then, the mechanaloid would infect all the other robots it came into contact with.

And as the virus spread, he would hunt his target. There was nothing that could stop him now.


February 16th

Three reploids went "maverick" today and injured two people before they were stopped. This is the third instance of this type of behavior and I still have no idea of what is causing it! There is some talk about stopping the assembly of any more reploids, but I don't think it will happen. Maybe we've become too dependent of them...

The council has now decided to set up a group of "Hunters" to destroy any maverick before it can cause injury. The reploid named Sigma has assigned to lead the Hunters. Sigma is one of the most intelligent reploids I've created and contains my latest circuit designs. His systems should be immune to any problems.

Council meetings were long. And of course, as usual, they couldn't make up their minds. Doctor Cain took a side glance at the android sitting next to him. Because it was both him and X that started this whole mess, the council saw fit that they should both be there. To be honest, he'd never been more bored in his life.

Surprisingly, X wasn't nearly as bored as he was. The android at least wasn't showing any obvious signs of misery. Sure, he looked bored, but he wasn't about ready to kill himself.

It had been three hours. And they had gotten nowhere. In fact, the only thing they've really been over was discussing what exactly was going on and some possible explanations as to why. Doctor Cain had to thoroughly explain to them that, no, it wasn't a part of their programming that was faulty. He'd even had another more skilled programmer than himself take a look at it and the programmer confirmed that Cain was right! So why were they still going over this?! Shouldn't they be solving the problem now?!

Of course, fate just had to remind him of why he had to be patient and delicate with this sort of thing.

"I say we end all reploid productions! That would solve all of our problems immediately!" one council member cried out. A few members murmured in agreement. Doctor Cain frowned.

"So what? You'll end an entire race just because of some unknown factor affecting their personality?" Doctor Cain argued.

"I realize you might be upset, Doctor Cain. This line of work is your life and it is perhaps the only thing substantial that you've ever done." Cain frowned at the blow. Was this man trying to be polite or piss him of? "However, these reploids are a threat to society."

"You can't kill off an entire race just because a few are attacking people! That's genocide!" X exclaimed.

"Your kind isn't even alive to begin with!" the council member pointed out. X's hands clenched in fury. Why did it seem that so many politicians could be such jerks?!

"Now hold on, there's no need to insult these people," another council member added. "They bring up a really good point. It is genocide. Just because they don't look like us internally, that doesn't mean that we can just kill them off. Besides, if you weren't aware, reploids have already become deeply involved in society. Reploids have jobs and many of them are doing the ones that we don't want to. They're becoming an important part of society. We're already starting to rely on them. Not to mention that the general population seems to like them."

"But the laws of robotics state that-."

"They don't have the laws of robotics!" the council member interrupted. "You can't hold that against them. Reploids can't be reploids if they're restricted by the laws. Their entire purpose is to emulate human nature. They can't do that if they're forced to grovel at all human's feet. That makes them less than us!"

"Then what do you suggest? The problem grows bigger every day. More and more reploids are going maverick. Police forces are starting to get overwhelmed. Are we supposed to just let this problem escalate until somebody gets killed?"

"No, we aren't," the council member paused as the rest of the members in the room quieted waiting to hear his solution to the problem. "Create a task force-."

"We already have police!" a council member interrupted.

"-specifically designed to deal with rogue reploids. Or in other words, fight fire with fire. We'll take down reploids with bigger reploids, before they cause harm." Doctor Cain frowned in thought, it might work. The other council members stilled as they pondered the idea, then one of them spoke up.

"Say we create this task force. . . who's going to lead it? I mean, just like any other organization, it has to have somebody at the top."

Doctor Cain raised his hand. "I believe I might have an answer to that question," he stated. A council member waved at him to continue. "I've recently created a reploid that might be able to handle leading this task force. The reploid, Sigma, is one of the most intelligent reploids I've created and contains my latest circuit designs. His systems should be immune to any problems."

"So we have a leader, we have a job set, who's going to fund this?" a council member added seeing that the majority of the council seemed to be liking the idea of the task force.

"Taxes. What else?"

"Cain labs can provide an initial donation," Cain added. X nodded. He didn't quite like the idea of killing off mavericks without giving them a chance, but at this point, he wasn't sure if there was anything else they could do. Mavericks couldn't be reasoned with.

A council member looked around and seeing looks of agreement on most other faces, he raised his hands in surrender. "Alright, so what do we call this task force?"

"Peace makers?"

"That sounds like something out of a book."

"Guardians?"

". . . that's not much better."

"I got it! . . . City defenders!"

"Body Guards for Civilization?"

"Just Defenders if you don't like the city!"

"All these names are horrible. They're more likely to make a maverick die from laughter than to instill fear. They're basically going to be assassins and executioners. Can you really call an assassin a peace maker or body guard?"

"Sort of?"

"It doesn't really work though."

"Do you have any other ideas?" The council member in question was silent for a while.

"What about maverick hunters?"

The council was quiet.

"I like it, but maverick is the term that the public and newspaper uses. It's not as formal."

"Irregular hunters then?"

"Any objections?" Seeing none, the council member nodded. "Alright, starting now, there is a government organization called the Irregular Hunters with will execute any mavericks before they become too much of a problem. Any questions? No? Meeting adjourned."

X was certain that he was never going to become a politician.