It was always hard to tell if Zero usually chose to be annoyed, or if he just woke up that way. Today was a different matter altogether. The news brought back the instinct to kill with the force of a tidal wave. The edge of his sight was as red as his armor as he stormed to the programming room. There was always something to hate about her, and this pushed that over the cliff.

There was no knocking on the door before he entered. He barely even gave them time to know he was there.

"Aero Lillian Sephira!" Zero screamed as he thundered through the room. He forced her seat to turn around so quickly that she nearly fell out of it. It was a short miracle that the chair didn't break right then and there.

Bewildered at first, Aero's face changed into a more neutral look when she saw Zero was there.

"Hello." she greeted with a toneless voice.

Zero gripped the chair tighter. "You!"

Aero blinked. "Me." she agreed. "Are we going to have an actual conversation today, or are you just going to act like a zombie? It's a shame X managed to get your voice module back from the X Hunters."

"Don't act like you don't know!" Zero demanded as he gave the chair a hard shake. "If we weren't in Maverick Hunter HQ, I'd-!"

"What would you do?" Aero challenged as she got up. At full height, Zero was a good head taller than her. It was like watching a little sister stand up to her football player of a brother. "If this about that data Middy and I are working on, I'd like you to know that someone is keen on sabotaging it. I assume you didn't get that memo?"

"I don't care who wrote it! All that information is false and incredibly derogatory. I assume you didn't get that memo?"

"Of course. I already got that spiel this morning. One more strike and they're kicking me out."

"If it were up to me, you would have packed up and left before this was ever a problem."

Aero scoffed, pairing it with a neat roll of her eyes. "Right." she even mused. "Because me being here is distracting X, right? He can't exercise that little bit of human in him because he's going to be a big shot S-Class Hunter someday. Right? We can't have silly human emotions in a Re- oh wait, that's what Reploids are, aren't they? Human emotions in a strong robotic body. Weird how they're not allowed to show it."

Zero fists clenched. He was so close punching her. The Reploid that was teaching her was gone now (when he left, Zero hadn't been paying attention), so what was stopping him? A good swing to her left temple would take her out for a few hours. Maybe a day or two. There wouldn't even be that much blood either depending on the angle.

"Besides," Aero callously said as she casually made more distance between him and her, "I thought it was pretty clever, actually. The string of intimacy that overrode my original data was rather informative. I never would have guessed that brown haired and green eyed Reploids were your type. It's no wonder you're so clingy with-"

"Shut it!" Zero demanded, lunging at Aero a second after.

A genuine yelp escaped her lips in time with someone out shouting, "Zero!" before they got in between the two. Both had to take a moment of astonishment to see it was X. The blue bomber was facing the red legend with a look of fear and plea. Meanwhile, Middy was carefully slipping back into the room looking quite nervous as well. He tried to move close to Aero, in case they needed to leave quickly.

"Zero, please listen to reason." X told his friend. "I know you're mad at Aero-"

"You think?!"

"But someone is tampering with the data Aero is coauthoring."

"Which is what I told him!"

"She isn't completely at fault. Just trust me on this. Please? Until we have other evidence, at least?"

There was still a fire in Zero's eyes as he looked at X. After a few more moments, he finally broke. He looked away from his friend with a heavy sigh of defeat.

"Fine." Zero grumbled.

"Oh sure, you listen to X." Aero then hissed under her breath.

"Aero." X snapped- it had a bit more force than what he had intended, but it got the point out. Aero made the gesture of zipping her lip almost immediately after. X let out a heavy sigh of his own before returning his attention to Zero.

"One more day." he promised. "Just give them one more day."

Zero didn't say anything. Instead he turned on his heel and left. X watched him with a heavy heart. He turned to Aero, who Middy had softly talking to to make sure Zero hadn't hurt her. They looked over when they realized he was staring.

"One more day." he softly reminded them before leaving as well.

. . .

It was kind of amusing how Maverick Hunter HQ's cafeteria wasn't one of its most deserted areas. Aero was the only human there, though. She absently swung her lunch bag back and forth as she found a place to sit. Finding a place to be alone wasn't that hard. It felt better to be alone anyway. What she didn't know what that Techno had followed her into the cafeteria. He waited until she had found a place to sit before taking one opposite.

He didn't bother to give her any time for a greeting before saying, "Heard Zero tried to kill you this morning."

"Yep." Aero nonchalantly agreed. "Usually he tries around sundown; it festers during the day, you see. So this was a pleasant surprise."

"Guess it makes you hate all Reploids, huh? With the way he acts toward you."

Aero made a funny face before disagreeing. "Nah. My relationship with Zero is a special kind of dysfunction. It was doomed from the start, in retrospect. I wouldn't hold his lack of emotion control against other Reploids. I wouldn't for a human. And trust me- I've met far more dangerous humans than Reploids so far."

"More dangerous than Sigma?" Techno snorted. "That's impossible."

"You apparently never learned about the centuries of war humans incited on each other before Reploids came along." Aero calmly replied. The near callousness of it made Techno recoil. Techno gave the human a good look over. At this point, she was carefully taking out her lunch items and not paying too much attention to him.

"Aero," he finally said, "I want you to change my mind about something."

"Oh yeah? About what?"

Techno sat a bit straighter before asking, "What do you think about Reploids?"

That made Aero pause. She blinked for a moment before looking at him.

"Over lunch?"

"When else do we get to talk?"

Aero snorted. She hadn't meant to, but the answer had been a bit too blunt- and true. After she and Middy had finished these past two days, she'd head back out to reception for her grandmother to take her home. She really didn't stick around to brown nose in the Hunters' business. She didn't have a reason to.

And with that, she really started to go over what Techno had asked.

"What do I think about Reploids?" she repeated. Her head tilted a bit from side to side as she considered it. "Well… you might as well ask me what I think about humans. We're all supposed to be the same, right?"

"But we're not."

Aero reclined a bit. "Maybe not yet." she agreed in a rather thoughtful voice. "I think the Maverick Virus needs to be near, if not completely, eradicated first. The only way Mavericks could come about would be because some poor sap got swindled by some bigger bad. Like a cult. But it wouldn't happen for centuries, I think. Feels more realistic that way. It won't happen in our generation, but it will eventually. I can feel it."

"So to you, we're already the same?"

"In a way. Yeah. I guess so."

Techno steepled his fingers together as he thought this over. He supposed it made sense. It's not like that particular stance was too unique either- if it wasn't for overall shape, many humans would have assumed Reploids were just like them. But the implication that humans would one day be on par with Reploids as well?

...Is this the hope Middy saw in Aero?

"I understand now." Techno finally admitted. Aero looked at him with a curious tilt of her head. Before she could ask or wonder anything, Techno told her, "Aero, I'm the one who's been sabotaging your work."

He expected an immediate reaction. He expected her to yell or gasp loud enough to bring all the attention in the cafeteria to them. Instead, Aero opened up her bottle of butterscotch flavored milk and took a rather calm sip. Techno waited for her to finish as even more confusion filled him.

"Why?" Aero then asked. "Why are you telling me this now?"

"You're not mad?" was the dumbfounded answer back.

For this, she only offered a half shrug.

"Maybe I am, maybe I'm not." she said. "Would you have done it if I was a Reploid?"

Techno's resulting flinch was as good as an answer to her.

"If that's the case," she hummed, "I'd like to eat lunch alone. I'm sure there's more than one person you should be talking to than just me right now."

"Right…" Techno dimly agreed before getting up.

The two did not look at each other for the rest of the day.

. . .

He should have stayed silent about the whole thing. No one on the main board was pleased with his insubordination. They decided that he would be placed on probation for the next month or so, along with peer monitoring to make sure he didn't do it again. (What was the name of the Reploid assigned to him now? Zain?) Not that he would do it again. Techno had only wanted to make a point, and he had.

It was also hard to tell just who the board was trying to cater to. There certainly wasn't any apologizes given to Aero over the ordeal, and Techno technically could have faced a more harsh punishment- even when he had plead guilty to it all. It was certainly enough to hush up any controversies before they got out to the public. Would anyone had even cared about a small infraction like that? Techno thought on it, and decided that it wouldn't take much to stir a group of people, Reploid or human, into a fight anymore, so perhaps it was for the best.

Techno couldn't face Middy during all of this. His brother would give a million and one questions that he didn't have an answer for. So many others could simply be answered with, 'Why not?' Not that he could really avoid him forever. It was just easier to delay the inevitable.

The Reploid made his way to the programming room where it all started. He sunk into the chair Aero was using with a heavy sigh.

"How pathetic. All the abilities to hack into whatever you desire, and you do it to bully a human."

Techno jumped with a start. "Who said that?" he questioned as he wildly looked around the room. For all intents and purposes, he was alone. It was when Techno looked down at the terminal to find that it was far from the truth.

"You…!" he sputtered as he stared at the forming image. "You're… you're Sigma!"

The last thing Techno could remember properly was the echo of Sigma's menacing laugh, and the hope that no one would get hurt by what happened next.