Author's Note: I apologize for any headaches and confusion this chapter may cause. I will explain some of it below if it is difficult for you to understand. Fanfiction .net does not support the formatting I wanted for this next little bit and I couldn't figure out how to make it better.

WARNING: There is some swearing. 'Cause Wily.

SYSTEMS BOOTING . . . .

SCANNING SYSTEMS . . .

ERROR: 21XX BLACK_ ARMOR UNAVAILABLE. . .

ERROR: 21XX ABSOLUTE_ZERO_ARMOR UNAVAILABLE. . .

ERROR: 23XX LIGHT_WEIGHT_TITANIUM_FIBER_ARMOR UNAVAILABLE. . .

UNIT FUNCTIONALITY: 95% . . .

DEFAULT ARMOR EMPLOYED. . . .

ERROR: THRUSTERS MISSING

DASH FUNCTION UNABLE TO BE ENGAGED . . .

UNIT FUNCTIONALITY: 75% . . .

SYSTEMS LIKELY TO BE DAMAGED MORE . . .

BEGIN RESTORING DASH FUNCTION?

Y/N?

Y

DASH FUNCTION IN PROCESS . . . .

ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETION: 12 HOURS . . .

ERROR: ARMOR ENHANCEMENTS MISSING

SYSTEMS MORE SUSCEPTIBLE TO DAMAGE . . .

UNIT FUNCTIONALITY: 55% . . .

SYSTEM DURABILITY LESS THAN 50% . . .

BEGIN RESTORING ARMOR ENHANCEMENTS?

Y/N?

Y

ARMOR ENHANCEMENTS IN PROGRESS . . .

ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETION: 24 HOURS . . .

ERROR: BATTERY CAPACITY LOW

UNABLE TO SUPPORT DASH FUNCTION . . .

UNABLE TO SUPPORT HIGH ENERGY FUNCTIONS . . .

UNIT FUNCTIONALITY: 30% . . .

UNIT LIKELY TO RUN LOW ON BATTERY . . .

UPGRADE BATTERY?

Y/N?

Y

BATTERY UPGRADE IN PROGRESS . . .

ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETION: 10 HOURS . . .

ERROR: EMP_RESISTER MISSING . . .

SYSTEMS SUSCEPTIBLE TO EMP BLASTS

UNIT FUNCTIONALITY: 25% . . .

SYSTEMS SUSCEPTIBLE TO EMP BLASTS

RESTORE EMP_RESISTER?

Y/N?

Y

RESTORING EMP_ RESISTOR. . .

ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETION: 1 HOURS . . .

ERROR: UNABLE TO FIND Z_SABER . . .

UNIT FUNCTIONALITY: 10% . . .

ONLY WEAPON AVAILABLE: Z_BUSTER . . .

DEFAULT WEAPON: Z_SABER . . .

DEFAULT WEAPON CHANGED TO Z_BUSTER. . .

UNIT FUNCTIONALITY: 15%. . . .

ERROR: UNIT MISSING THE FOLLOWING LOW LEVEL ENHANCEMENTS . . .

HIGH SPEED JOINTS . . .

GRAVITY LOCK SOLES . . .

SIGNAL JAMMER . . .

NIGHT VISION OPTICS . . .

TARGET SCANNER . . .

SIGNAL SCANNER . . .

NAVIGATOR LINK. . .

COMMAND_LINE("pause"):

LIST PAUSED . . .

UNIT FUNCTIONALITY: 5%. . . .

RESTORE ALL LOW LEVEL ENHANCEMENTS?

Y/N?

Y

ENHANCEMENT RESTORATION IN PROGRESS. . .

ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETION: 48 HOURS . . .

NO OTHER MISSING SYSTEMS. . .

TOTAL ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETION: 95 HOURS

ERROR: RAW MATERIALS LOW

SOME RESTORATION PLACED ON STANDBY . . .

MEMORY STABLE . . .

NO MISSING DATA FILES . . .

CORE STABLE . . .

SYSTEMS SCAN COMPLETE . . .

ERROR: NOT ALL SYSTEMS ENGAGED. . .

RESTORATION IN PROGRESS. . .

RAW MATERIALS LOW . . .

SOME RESTORATIONS PLACED ON STANDBY . . .

CONTINUE BOOTING SYSTEMS?

Y/N?
Y

SYSTEMS BOOTING. . .

ALL SYSTEMS ONLINE . . .

Once he had full control of his systems, Zero burst from his pod, breaking through the glass and barely even wincing as the various cords plugged into him ripped out of their sockets. His buster was engaged and pointing at the various inhabitants of the room before his feet touched the ground and his body slid to a stop.

"JESUS CHRIST! SHIT! I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THIS WAS A BAD IDEA!"

The old man that spoke, human, he noted, dove behind a large blue reploid shaped sort of like a fan. He scanned the room, taking note of the presence of over twenty five reploids, each with their own unique design, which meant they were probably more powerful than your average grunt reploid. Some part of him, an old memory file, recognized the units before him, recognized the human. His eyes unfocused slightly and he blinked as he recalled the information.

Not reploids. Robot masters. And the human was his creator. Doctor Albert Wily. And there was Quickman, Flashman, Heatman, Forte, Airman, Gyroman, Metalman, Crashman, Geminiman, Snakeman, the list went on.

He trained his buster in the doctor's direction, to where he saw the white fabric peaking out from beside Airman's arm. Not a lethal shot, but that wasn't his intention.

"How are you still alive?" he asked, beginning to charge his buster slightly.

"I'm still alive because I prepared for shit going down like it did in the castle! No thanks to you!"

"The castle?" he paused, confused, then jerked in understanding as his memory caught up to him. He'd wonder why he remembered his time before a maverick hunter later. He had more pressing matters to deal with now. "No, that's not what I meant. It's 23XX. You should be fifty feet under by now. You're human."

All other members in the robots blinked at him in disbelief.

"It's 20XX," one of the robot masters, Quickman, countered.

Zero narrowed his eyes in confusion.

"That's not . . . No, it's 23XX. I think I would know considering I've witnessed the last three hundred years. Er, I wasn't awake for all of that but point still stands."

For several moments, nobody said a word.

"What the hell?!" the doctor practically shouted after several moments. "You were built eight months ago!"

"What?" Zero's confusion made his form falter and his buster drop from where it was focused on the doctor's arm.

"Doc, what did you do?" Quickman asked, approaching Zero cautiously.

"I didn't do anything! I didn't touch his memory files! Dammit back away from him! I don't feel like rebuilding your body after he goes crazy and breaks your idiotic ass! Or worse, you don't want to end up like Gravityman now do you?"

Zero paused as the name stirred yet another old memory file. "Gravityman?" The memory file hit him like a train as soon as he uttered the name. He paled in horror. "I . . . I crushed his head."

"Yes, you destroyed his I.C., what made Gravity Gravity. Doc has the blueprints and the base programming, but whatever he builds won't be Gravityman," Gyroman hissed.

Wily looked Zero over cautiously. "Gyro! Enough! We'll deal with the past later. Right now, we need to figure out what the hell is wrong with him. Because even though I got rid of what made him evil, he can still choose to be."

Zero's faced scrunched up in concentration and his buster completely lowered before dissipating. Several of the robot masters visibly relaxed at this.

"I don't . . . . I don't understand. All of you should be dead. X . . . X said all of the robot masters were dead. And you," he looked pointedly at Wily, "should be dead as well cause humans don't live three hundred years."

Wily frowned, eyes narrowing in suspicion as Zero mentioned X.

"We just told you," Forte hissed, "Wily finished creating you eight months ago. These hundreds of years you keep mentioning? Yeah, never happened. And there must seriously be something wrong with your head if you believe that such a thing is real."

Zero frowned further. "That's . . . . impossible. The maverick wars, the elf wars, Sigma . . . . hell, Neo Arcadia, surely something rings a bell with any of you?" His voice and words didn't portray the desperation his mind was screaming.

The robot masters shook their heads and Zero started panicking. Not real?!

Wily studied the android carefully. It seemed that there was something wrong with Zero's head. Maybe he did something when he was replacing the code? But that didn't mess with memory files did it? And then it hit him. Zero's mind never really shut down. Not after he'd plugged him into the pod. He thought it was odd, but figured it was just his mind adjusting to the change in programming, which by the way, was a pain in the ass to do because as an android, Zero was not meant to have his code messed with. Wily, however, was not an idiot, and knowing just how well his robots seemed to betray him in some way (mostly Break's fault), built a failsafe just in case.

That being said, every time Wily checked in on Zero, his mind was always active, which scared him and was the main reason he hadn't woken him up prior to now because he was terrified of what would happen. There was a moment when Zero's mind went inactive, but close to a month later, and it started back up again. The only reason he chose to do so now was because Zero's mind had been silent for a couple of months and he'd only just recently worked up the courage to activate Zero and try to figure out what was going on.

Knowing Zero's programming the way that he did, Wily knew that there was no way that Zero would willingly allow his mind to be tampered with. So whatever happened in the pod, whatever made his mind active, was something that Zero allowed.

Perhaps then that these memories that Zero seemed to have, his belief that it was really three hundred (three hundred) years in the future, was some sort of elaborate dream his head cooked up for him.

Which, of course, Zero had been dreaming about war.

It didn't quite add up though. Dreams, yes even robot masters were capable in some instances, but there was always some understanding that it wasn't real. Especially when they woke up. Zero, however, couldn't seem to make such distinctions, which bothered Wily, since he knew he'd put the most advanced AI systems he had in Zero. Zero should be smarter, stronger, faster . . . If a robot master wasn't fooled by dreaming, then Zero shouldn't be either. Then again, Zero wasn't designed with the full capabilities of a robot master in mind. Wily had made Zero to be the strongest battle robot he'd ever created and did not want Breakman meddling with his programming. Networking was dangerous with Break around. So while Zero was designed to be smarter, he didn't have the same . . . mental qualities that gave robot masters the edge they had over the network.

No networking capabilities. Well, let him rephrase, Zero could connect to the internet. Could he command it and usurp all levels of hell by doing so? No. Zero wasn't meant to control robots. As much as Wily would have liked to make Zero domineering over the network as well, he wasn't willing to take that risk with Break leering over his shoulder. He'd already made that mistake with Forte. (Wily was still trying to figure out how the hell Break, the first robot master ever built, managed to commandeer his most advanced robot master in networking yet.)

So was Wily going to let Break take control of his greatest intended creation? No, no he was not.

Which meant that Zero was built like an android, like X (Wily curled his lip at the thought of Light's most recent creation. He'd yet to meet the android, but he was certain that X was programmed (or brain washed considering how hard it was to program personalities into androids) to be as sickenly sweet as Megaman). More importantly, Zero was programmed to be more human than any other robot master he'd ever built. And humans had at least some grasp of distinction between dream world and reality.

So no matter which way he looked at it, Zero shouldn't be like this. Which meant that something was wrong.

Wily blamed Light.

Author's Note: I feel the need to explain the little "Unit Functionality" bit above. Zero was built for battle, so it's only natural that his systems will recognize the fact that he is not as strong as he once was and come to the conclusion that he's not as functional as he once was. His systems recognize him as being less and less able to fight the more errors he receives. He can still fight, but he is reduced to what he was like at the very beginning of the X series. I hold the belief that war enhances technology and because of that, X and Zero should be way stronger than what they were in the beginning in order to keep up with the new mavericks. This isn't really apparent in the games. I know there's armor upgrades but that's not entirely what I'm getting at.

The "COMMAND_LINE("pause") is me getting tired of writing errors. Just understand that there's more and it's all just minor little enhancements that have made Zero stronger over the years.

The light_weight_titanium_fiber_armor is me coming up with some way to describe the Megaman Zero armor.

Otherwise, everything else should be pretty self explanatory for that section.

As to why Zero remembers, why he has so many errors, and what's up with Wily's little rant about Breakman? All in due time. If there's something I have not mentioned and you're confused about it, give me a holler. This chapter was a little bit of a stretch as far as understanding what's going on.

Speaking of which, why did I make Zero remember? I didn't feel like being a total jerk to X. He fights for humanity for hundreds of years, loses all of his friends and practically everything he has stood for, and then discovers it was all just a lie, a test. X is understandably depressed and only barely holding on. We'll discuss that next chapter.

There's more to what's going on than what meets the eye. Let's just say that there have been many sly dealings by both known and unknown characters and it's more than just X and Zero that have been lied to. Things will start looking up in the next few chapters and then it'll come crashing down in a moment. I warned you. Strap in tight.

ALSO, still looking for a beta reader. At this point I'd take anybody that has decent knowledge on the Megaman franchise cause things are about to get crazy and I need somebody to tell me when I've gone too far.