Disclaimer: I don't own Rockman or anything related to it except various products, so please don't sue and deprive a customer of money to buy things like DMC4 from you with, Capcom.

Part two/?. This bit's mostly foreshadowing and explanation of how some things are/will be in this AU/how important X is. They vastly understate his importance to that society in the games, since they're focused on combat and most of X's power is just the opposite.

The remake of RMX1… I stole bits from it, but there were several things I don't like about it and the way they made Vile a Gary Stu was one of them. I already had some ideas of him that were based on the original version and random fan stuff I found interesting, so I went with that. After fitting them into this AU.

This chapter is a little dark. Of course, I don't know why I'm warning you about that. The games make this look like sunshine and daisies.

Later, the three people who had been involved in Zero's initial capture and treatment met to discuss what had happened and why X's words had been such a trigger.

"I don't think he came to me just because I was the only person I could find that he was friends with and felt safe around." There was more to it then that. "I kept reassuring him that he was safe and asking if he was scared, and there was some level of… Not fear per se, but worry, there. It wasn't himself he was worried about. If telling him that he wouldn't be able to be controlled again now that he was sentient was able to make Zero's OS reactivate and his old one go dormant, that would have happened even before I called."

"Do you have any idea what caused it?" That was something they needed to know, Dr. Cain suspected. "His original OS wasn't shut down. As you said, it went dormant. Zero's in medical right now, and as of when I gave up I had no idea of how to disable it again. If it wakes again, and it can, Zero's personality will be pushed under again and we would be looking at a repeat of this."

"Will that be so bad? The first time it was reactivated, he stayed put and just kept looking around at all the observers. Sigma and I were there. The key phrase wasn't the part about the control method being useless, the part that he 'tuned in' to and then turned off was that we were safe. While we were there and he could see we were safe the first time he was fine. When we weren't there he went looking. I think he came to be because, well, Zero is well aware I'm far less able to look after myself than you, Sigma." X smiled at his son ruefully.

"Don't be so hard on yourself. Zero may have amazed even me with how excellent he is at training others despite his aversion to people, but you've only been training a month. Megaman may," and Sigma thought this part was probably highly embroidered, "have been upgraded with super-powered ancient technology and just headed out to fight, but you're training to capture alive. Capturing people alive is harder then just blowing them up with powerful weapons. According to Zero's reports you're at the level of a normal trainee six months in. For someone who came in having only used his buster once, years ago, to get performance data on it, you're doing incredibly well."

Sigma, as the leader of the Irregular Hunters, gave lectures like this to underlings all the time. They had act professional now, and that meant not presuming on family relationships, but it was still a little embarrassing for X to get a lecture from one of his 'personal' children. Had it really been so long since he had lectured Sigma, Rho, and Ceta about not climbing all over the mechanaloid prototypes while they were in recharge?

Sigma seemed to feel the switch from X as father figure and expert medic to X as rookie in need of experienced guidance was also a mental 180 and returned to the topic. "As for Zero being protective of us, that's possible. If I did rescue him from what I speculated about, that might have made his… feral self think of me as an ally." Feral sounded so much better than the usual words. Sigma had been one of the two children X had been most hopeful would follow in his footsteps. He had, in a way, although not as expected. The training in logical thought that X had subtly given the young boy had helped produce a fantastic strategist.

He couldn't help being proud of Sigma, he just wished that Sigma hadn't needed to decide to dedicate his life to fixing the mistakes of others. Although really, he had been too active for the lab. Too proactive to just work, wait, and hope for a way to bring change instead of doing it himself. "You're his best friend, X. Interpreting his behavior as protective makes a lot of sense." Sigma would know about protectiveness.

"I agree, it fits the evidence we have." Dr. Cain therefore didn't see much point in talking about it anymore until they got new evidence. "I took a look at his hair. I'd dismissed it as ornamental when he was brought in. That could have very well ended up as a fatal mistake. There are at least twelve strand types there, and we haven't checked every one yet. Let alone the subtypes. Some of them can reconfigure themselves: I'm betting those are the monofilaments responsible for the breakout, but I can't trigger the change."

"Monofilaments?" It was so very X that the only person this made him worry about was Zero.

"It looks like it's incredibly difficult for it to happen by accident since I can't do it by trying to, thank goodness. And I found the taser types. It's not just electricity: that's just one subtype. I have no idea about most of the rest. A large amount are highly varying sensor types, but of what? And then there's a strand type that seems to do nothing but store various things, including sugar. I can't figure out what on earth that would be used for."

"Snacking? You'd be amazed what people bring along to capture missions. Stakeouts can get really boring." Reploids used fusion power, although they sometimes needed supplemental sources if they used up reserves doing things like repairing combat damage. Sugar did contain hydrogen, but the 'caloric value' of it was less than that of air, let alone water. "In the old days Ceta used to bring lollipops so the newbies had something to focus on besides worrying."

It really was wonderful that they could remember things like that now. Still, X had to return to the topic. "The only thing I can think of that reploids would need molecules with carbon to oxygen bonds for would be nanites." Nanites might be tiny machines, and most people didn't associate 'organic molecules' with machines, but the key word there was tiny. The reason those molecules were associated with living things, or at least the possibility of them, was that they were very amazingly suited for so many things on that level that it was hard to imagine life arising that didn't make use of them, or at minimum evolve into doing so. Life on earth had theoretically descended from spontaneously arising organic molecules that did things because of the way random chance structured them. They were just that good at it.

"I thought of those possibilities. Sigma, while reploids have two taste bud sets, one for 'useful' intake and one for 'human-style' intake, this is a blend of things that would taste wonderful to one and terrible to the other." X wasn't the only one who had lost a potential protégée. It was even worse for Cain because he'd lost his son as well as his grandson to the rescue side of the hunters, and Pi, well… They just couldn't share a lab without driving each other insane, so he'd gone to a university instead of being trained by his grandfather. "And X, why would he want nanite material reserves in his hair?"

"Perhaps he could use his hair to place large amounts of specialized nanites on areas needing repair that his internal systems are having difficulty with?" Sigma spoke up, again, intrigued. When you'd founded a semi-para-military group to bring insane people in alive to get medical help, you could always use better first aid.

"He doesn't have the delivery setup you'd want for that. There are gaps along the strand that can be entered, but no internal setup for creating nanites. Gaps to be entered by nanites already in his hair to get materials to make more. Hair care nanites." Eureka. "That explains so much. I had long hair before it became far too much trouble to deal with on digs. It just amazed me that Zero can let it flop around like that without having to constantly stop to brush out tangles."

Since Sigma had short hair even before he'd chosen this path and gotten a redesign into a body type more suited to combat, "I've never had to deal with that, but several of Vava's staff have raided his rooms trying to figure out what shampoo he uses and only found standard issue." 'Staff' as opposed to troops. Sigma might be stuck with general by now, but that didn't mean he liked the new military rankings they'd had to adopt. "They seem to think he's hiding his supply of some incredibly exclusive brand to keep it from being stolen."

"Really?" X asked, amazed. People thought Zero would go to the trouble of selecting a rare and unknown shampoo when he hadn't even gotten an armor redesign despite the bad memories?

"Have you met Vava? He used to be the restraining influence there. Apparently pranks are the norm for Special Ops types. They're good practice in an environment where mistakes aren't fatal." Sigma seemed to think X was surprised by the lack of professionalism sneaking into someone's quarters showed. X, however, had raised several children and was used to this sort of thing. The fact that he'd only built and raised a fraction of them didn't mean that he didn't consider all reploids his children. Although thank goodness that most of them were more mature than Theta. Blue hair dye so that he matched his armor indeed.

"Vava is the one who was designed to look like the bounty hunter in those movies, right?" Another thing the old guard were fighting against tooth and nail was the idea of uniforms.

"It's actually custom armor. His main cover identity was a huge fan."

X's father senses were tingling. "What's wrong?" Sigma might be above him in the Hunter chain of command, but he still was X's baby.

"He's been acting erratically since 'Vile's' cover was blown. It's not just that he always wears the armor when he's really a Han Solo fan." Sigma himself loved that series, although he didn't have a favorite character as such. "It's the whole persona. He can't seem to keep from slipping into it. Everyone's trying to help him break out of it when it happens, keep it from happening again and cover up for him, but it keeps getting worse and at some point he's going to slip far enough to do something I can't pretend I didn't notice." He shook his head sadly. "I've been visiting him when I could: the founding Hunters have to stick together with the organization's numbers exploding like this, and I think it helps, but I don't know what else I can do."

"I wish I could help you." Dr. Cain already knew even though X didn't? He had been that out of the loop since what happened? At least they were letting him know now, letting him be burdened with others' cares again. "I've checked his systems several times and can't find any problems that I know of. Nothing's degenerating over time, and his mental state is… If it were a factory defect it should have shown up long before now. My best guess is that this is a psychological problem specific to reploids. It's similar to some case studies that were published, but since you're such a new race there really isn't much that's been established as effective treatment yet."

"Psychological problem?" X tried to think. "Oh. Heteromensa?"

Sigma, on the other hand, had no idea what Cain was talking about. He explained, "The reason reploids have absolute free will is that they aren't bound by programming or instinct. They can alter their minds as they please, although they can only do so if they truly want to. New reploids do this constantly as they learn who they are and what they want to be. Your father, on the other hand, does so rarely and usually only small changes." Usually. Being here, talking about Zero's mental issues and now Vile's: they were skirting the edges and X wondered if this was somewhat of a test. Dr. Cain didn't think that way but Sigma the strategist did. He wouldn't have let the conversation dwell on Vava's changes, something so close to the delicate issue of X's own recent changes, unless he had a good reason.

"Oh. So heteromensa's the technical term for Vava having to act like his cover persona for so long and establish those behavior patterns so firmly that without a proper resolution he can't delete them? Vile's cover was blown. Vile wasn't able to do the job the persona was created for because Vava wasn't able to do a good enough job of being Vile. Vava," how to put this? "He's terribly guilty over what happened. On some level he wants to be Vile again, to do a better job of being Vile, to be enough like him they couldn't have told the difference and known to feed him false information. Everyone's trying to remind him of who he is and that he's a worthwhile person to be, but I think he's deleting everything that makes him Vava. Unless we can stop it I don't think there'll be anyone left in there but Vile very soon." Sigma rubbed his bald head. "She wouldn't have wanted that."

Oh. That was the point he was making.

"If they're that hazardous to mental health on top of all the other hazards, I think I might have to put a stop to undercover operations altogether." And there was the subject change.

"I noticed I'd been receiving less information lately. What's the problem?"

"Um, should I be here?" X asked. "I thought I was only here to discuss Zero." I'm not the co-head of the medical department anymore. I'm only a trainee. I don't have the clearance for this and I don't belong here. Not anymore.

Sigma gave him a look, a commanding officer to trainee look. "I seriously doubt you're a security risk. You've chosen to fight to protect people. The best way to do that is to keep the fight from happening at all, or at least know how to end it as quickly and painlessly as possible. I assigned you here for the entire meeting. Your job right now, Trainee Light, is to watch and learn, unless you do have anything to contribute."

"Yes, sir." X's smile was wry. He considered using Sigma's own title, but that was going a little too far. General had just been a semi-irritating nickname when X and Cain had moved the lab here to fix captured irregulars. Now, he was having to become an actual general.

"As terrible as his situation is, Vava is one of the lucky ones. At first, they just tried to kill undercover agents they discovered, and usually weren't that good at it, due to the insanity that caused them to not accept help." The Irregular Hunters had been founded to drag those whose factory defects were so destabilizing that they refused treatment out of paranoia, inability to understand what was going on, or whatever before they died of some physical defect or their insanity caused them to do something irrational enough to kill them. If they weren't going to fight to avoid capture then the Hunters didn't need to be called in. Zero was simply the most effective at doing so they'd encountered.

"In the really old days, Irregulars were customs like Zero, attempts to improve on reploid design that went wrong: dangerous, but working solo and too irrational to pose a serious threat. Then we had the large increases from factory owners cutting corners, like not using high-precision... You did get groups from that, and often there were some among them rational enough to avoid notice: that was when criminals started getting involved. Usually one of the first corners cut was the library database. Irrationality, dislike of the world, lack of knowledge of basic logic… Reploid crime is low because of 'enlightened self-interest:' things that are considered wrong by most people are usually bad decisions to make for some actual reason. Those irregular bands were ripe for the picking, and that didn't help public perception of reploids."

Sigma, the genius strategist who had to fight the crimes they committed, wished those fellow reploids hadn't been built that way. They were making his species look stupid. "That was when traps started to be laid. Criminals are fundamentally irrational, or they would realize how bad a decision it is to become a criminal, but they tend to be cunning despite not being wise. I still don't know how they spotted him…" In any case, "There's another group getting involved now. Ideologists."

"What?" Cain apparently hadn't know about this either.

"We've been getting more and more irregulars, and what happened to these newbuilt babies is so terrible that a lot of people agree something needs to be done about it. Some of them join the Hunters, others vote… some of them are joining the irregulars. It used to be nice, helpful people… sometimes they managed to do something for them, but usually if they were willing to listen to people like that they'd have come in to us for treatment. Lately, though, we're getting some people who aren't so nice. That are just as angry as the irregulars are that society let this happen to them. Human society. We've got everything out there from anarchists to racists. Criminals want to commit crimes and get away. These ones want attention, want to strike back just like some of the irregulars do and since they're theoretically rational they can plan. That's why terrorist incidents have been on the rise lately. At first it was just them, now they've got people to plan, and now they're starting to coordinate between groups and get organized. That means getting dangerous. An organized force is never outnumbered by an unorganized one: that's a basic concept. Now that they are one, we hunters a have lost a huge advantage."

Sigma the strategist had even more bad news. "We," he and the other three, "founded the Hunters as a medical rescue group: stopping rampages and saving helpless victims on both sides. Everyone was in favor of that. Now practically all of what we do is anti-terrorism, and even though we're mostly reploids we're starting to be called humanity's attack dogs, or something like that. Historically, this kind of movement has been even harder on 'class traitors' than the actual enemy."

"Is there anything we can do to fix that?" Dr. Cain asked. Hesitantly, he suggested, "I suppose, if it would help… It probably doesn't look good to them for a human to be in charge of treatment. There are some good people at the university, Pi and his fiancée among them. I could retire from the Hunters and allow them to take over here." It wasn't like Dr. Cain didn't have other places begging for him to come there.

"I really don't know. It might even be counterproductive, like an admission of guilt." Sigma rubbed his head again. "Not to mention that you're the best in the field." And the poor reploids the hunters brought in often needed the best.

It really was making it difficult for everyone that X had chosen to fight. If he was still co-head Dr. Cain could have just retired without it being a complete changing of the guard. Also, while there was a reploid there, especially X, people would have been more reassured. Although it was nonsense to distrust Cain like that, so who knew.

Still. There were other doctors. There was no one else like him.

"The situation is changing day by day," Sigma continued, "We need intel to figure out how they think, how to talk to them and who to talk to and we can't get it. One agent walked into a meeting and she swears they jumped her as soon as she closed the door behind her. She might have been nervous and slipped up somehow, but she only got out of there because she had flight capability and they didn't. A lot of them aren't getting out of there. The more they catch, the more nervous every other agent gets and the more mistakes our people make out there the more they catch."

"I hope this isn't true, but as Vava's condition is what it is… Could 'Vile' be selling identities?"

"No." Sigma shook his head. "I put in restrictions on information access as soon as criminals got involved to prevent that sort of thing, and it's been ramped up like crazy since this started. I've had ten people lost when no one but their contact had any idea who they were pretending to be."

"Perhaps there's a weakness in training somewhere that could be fixed?"

"I've got the best people I can going over that with a fine toothed comb." Sigma missed Vava. "At this rate, we're going to lose all personal intel. That leaves intercepted messages, and that's way down. Someone seems to have done their research." Damn it. "Some of the UN people are justifying their funding by trying to see if there's some coded transmissions hidden in atmospheric noise or anything like that, but if they've switched to coded hand-carried messages we're out of luck. You can't search every traveler, especially when you have no idea what to look for. Exchange a list of meanings in advance, and someone giving their girlfriend a rose could mean 'the attack is on for tomorrow.'"

"You look terribly worn out by all this." X shut his mouth. A father could recommend his son take a break for a bit to relax and be able to think more clearly when they went back to work. A trainee should maybe not have even said that. "I'm sorry." He wanted to comfort his son, but…

"If I wasn't already bald, I would be within a week." Sigma shrugged: nothing to apologize for. X's decision was X's decision, and it was better than the first one he'd made after what had forced this change.

"I wish there was something I could do." Oh, there was, wasn't there. X smiled affectionatly: clever boy.

"You are a symbol, X. People listen to you, and you mean what you say. If we do manage to establish that we really are a neutral party, that means battles with these new irregulars that won't have to be fought, and possibly even an opportunity to get them to sit down and negotiate." Sigma had to admit X had caught him, but he was proud of his father for that. He had faith that his father could and would do this, protect his children. Without fighting. If he were to decide to be a spokesman for peace between human and irregular, that meant that fighting the irregulars personally would be counterproductive.

Just like staying in the lab would have been helping without having to fight. X hated the idea of fighting, hated the idea of hurting his children. Sigma was offering him yet another way to save his children's lives without putting himself in danger or having to…

Yet someone had to fight. "I will do what I can."

Dr. Cain wanted to argue, but he'd tried everything before.