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Part 4/? I really should leave you hanging longer. Especially as I have a midterm on Wednesday. Sadly, it's hard to study MSEs and all the other ANOVAy-things when you're resisting the urge to fly across the country to bitchslap someone. Or strangle. Whichever.

Being looked at by Kilroy like that, seeing Kilroy decide not only not to say something but to actually keep it hidden instead of broadcasting it by other means (you know what I mean? Wink wink nudge nudge) was so very odd, and X really had enough oddness to deal with right then, between Zero's other half and the tabloids and Rho's tendency to find underhanded methods of getting back at people like saying cruel things deliberately to see the hurt in their eyes having made him do something so terrible it made X worry about having failed as a parent… "So, about your 'Master?'"

"Yeah," and Kilroy went right back to normal. Well, normal for Kilroy. Emotional one-eighties weren't normal for most people. It was that Kilroy's rapid expression changes had always been acts, sure, but X had assumed the cheerful manipulativeness was the baseline. He chided himself for thinking that. Kilroy wasn't a shallow person; of course he had emotions other than his usual happiness that weren't masks. "It turns out he's the scientist guy in question. Found that out when I went to visit. Should have figured it out 'cause Lament's pretty similar to what he was going by when I met him. Of course, I've changed mine too. Only I did it to ditch the whole criminal record instead of dodge paparazzi."

Okay, and that was a bombshell, despite the cheerful offhand tone. "You have a criminal record and you work in IRHQ security?" Bwah?

"Shhh!" Kilroy even held a finger to his lips. "They don't know that." Cheerful semi-smirk: some joke here that X wasn't getting.

"So who does?" Had there even been reploid criminals when Kilroy joined? 'Criminal record…' he'd been in music? Kilroy rarely outright lied, but perhaps it had been a mistake to encourage him so much. X appreciated the thought, of course. Kilroy was trying to distract him from Zero's predicament and the shock value of that statement and the puzzle it presented was doing a good job of it.

"A friend of yours." Literally true, but there was a trick to it. Come on, guess.

Well, there wasn't really much else to do until he got there. "Sigma?"

"No."

"Dr. Cain?" Those were family, not friends, but Kilroy was having X guess instead of dropping hints to draw out the interaction.

"Nope. Have you seen Spaceballs?" Okay, now that was a hint.

"My… uncle's cousin's something's something's… college roommate?" The end was right, but X wasn't sure about the rest. He realized sadly that he didn't even know if he had any uncles or aunts. Dr. Light's children had been the only ones to become legend.

"No, but it's rather complicated."

"Just tell me you're not with the Irregulars." There weren't many reploids with actual criminal records that weren't Irregulars. Perhaps Kilroy had been ahead of the curve? Rho had been the obvious choice for a friend of X's who would hide Kilroy's past, but it was too obvious. Not to mention that Kilroy had implied security in specific hadn't known that.

"They've decided to call themselves the Mavericks now," Kilroy cheerfully pointed out.

Even Sigma hadn't known that as of last night. "The Mavericks, then." And I'm not asking anymore.

"It is utterly impossible for me to ever become a Maverick." Kilroy overacted his dismissal of X's worried. "But," oh dear, that smile, "my builder was rather heavily involved early on."

"Your builder?" X knew Kilroy had a brother, but their builder had never come up. Odd, given how much Kilroy talked about everything under the sun.

"The reason I have a criminal record." Oh. "He's dead now. He may have dedicated his life to helping us be treated like actual people, but in the end he was only human."

"I'm sorry." Kilroy's last sentence demolished X's impression that Kilroy's builder had been the same as Zero's: a person who viewed reploids as worthless things and made them do terrible things. Early on… Early on, there had been some struggle for reploids to gain equal rights. Some activists had actually ended up in quite a bit of trouble for things that would have been considered admirable non-violent protest in a human, although the fact that Kilroy was… There had been some break-ins, files being released… X really couldn't see him as involved in the Silence protests.

"You know, it's quite possible that was exactly the way he wanted to go. And he had brain cancer anyway." Cancers of all sorts were quite common, due to the radiation and the chemical weapon residue and the biological weapons that kept being turned up… Dr. Cain had an unusual nerve disorder. Human lifespans were increasing now that reploids were helping, since they were unaffected by things that poisoned them, but Kilroy's acceptance of his father's death wasn't unusual. A human older than thirty was on borrowed time. Dr. Cain… he'd taken a lot of damage, combing through ruins to find something to help his fellows. "Char was more upset about it. Vowed vengeance, that whole thing."

So it had been murder, and by an irregular. So, someone who had helped Kilroy learn to project himself as harmless enough to fit into the hunters where he could keep helping reploidkind was researching irregulars in the company of someone who wanted an excuse to fight them? And… Oh, this was Kilroy. "So there's some secret agent gathering reploids with experience in shadowy stuff and a grudge against the Mavericks who's keeping an eye on me through you because I'm a key symbol in this struggle?"

"Ah, you guessed it!" Kilroy clapped again, although he seemed cheered by something else as well. "You make him sound so cold, though. He acts like it, but he's great with small children, animals, and mechanaloids."

"I'm sure. You know, I was informed by Sigma last night that he also thinks I'm the person who's going to bring an end to this conflict. Dr. Cain is counting on me." X wished he hadn't said that.

"Tough luck." Anyone else would have expressed their confidence that of course X could do it, but this was the other way Kilroy got all the gossip. He wasn't just bored, nosy, and all over the place: although he rarely shut up long enough for people to vent at him, he knew what was going on with you anyway and knew what to say.

Now, though, he was looking around the gardens, showily tuning X out though Kilroy never missed anything. He didn't let people rant at him often because if they weren't going to let him have some input they might as well complain to a wall that wasn't listening and wouldn't have its time wasted, but this was clearly an invitation to be X's wall. "I don't know if becoming a hunter was the right idea." He really, really wouldn't have said that to anyone else. They would have seized the opening, but Kilroy just nodded in that 'I'm not actually listening, but I'll pretend that I am' way, which normally would have meant he was bored but Kilroy made it excruciatingly obvious when he was bored.

"I thought I should be the one to fight because, let's face it, I was built by Dr. Light. We… They still can't even fully analyze my systems, let alone equal them. So, I've got a huge advantage over my opponents, and who should be out there, me, or someone with a tenth the shielding?"

"Um-hum." Polite not-listening noise, but here it meant he was and he understood.

X really needed that. "The thing is, I'm blue. So when people think of me fighting, who springs to mind? The greatest hero of all time. He saved the world how many times, and there's no proof, but everyone knows he died stopping the cataclysm from wiping out the rest of humanity. They expect me to be Megaman, they need me to be Megaman, and I'm not. I feel like I'm giving them false hope, and I'm afraid that if they trust in me they won't try to find their own ways to help, and then if I fail…"

"Lot of pressure." Still looking out to the side, apparently at a volleyball court without players, as his pace increased so X wouldn't have to look at his face and be reminded that this was a person, one of his children, he was saying this to when he really shouldn't.

"I don't want to fight. I want to be back in our lab trying to find ways to design better reploids so there won't have to be anymore Irregulars, or Mavericks, or whatever they call themselves." He wanted it so much.

"If not you, who else?" That was a quote of some kind: Kilroy wasn't saying that X, despite his failures, was the best one with hope of finding out something everyone, including him had missed for years. No, he had hit the nail exactly on the head.

"I should say the Hunters. I helped build Sigma, Rho, and Theta." Three of them, when there had been four. "They're the best out there." Now. "The problem with that is, I helped build them." My children, my own children. "I know the weak points in the design, all the things we wanted to do but couldn't. They're far more experienced than me. But I can take more." All the knowledge, all the skill, all the drive, and yet: "You know the blast that killed Ceta? I would have survived that. I would have been hurt, but not enough I couldn't keep fighting. But it was her there," my baby, "not me. And it was overkill." Melted fragments, some so mingled with other wreckage that they couldn't identify what had once been over half of the body he had so carefully, but not carefully enough…

"You don't want to hurt people, especially not family, but you're the one with the best odds of surviving and it needs to be done?" Kilroy summarized, leaning against the wall of what seemed to be Zero's building and looking at X as he caught up.

"Yeah." It sounded so very different when Kilroy summed up than when his family had, all saying it wasn't his fault when he'd built her, wasn't his responsibility (his own child, his own children!)…

"If I didn't know better, I'd be mistaking you for Megaman too."

Thinking it wasn't a foolish decision was one thing, but that was really going too far, even though Kilroy was just sort of pursing his lips as if in thought, nodding, like the flower he'd told X the meanings of. This, though, was just, "What part of that is like Megaman?"

At first Kilroy's tone was chiding, "Like Megaman, nothing," and X thought he was finally going to have his words mocked like he deserved to have Kilroy mock them. Then there was a smile that grew from slight fondness to utter wickedness. "Like the person under the helmet, everything. Ninja vanish!"

X blinked at the spot Kilroy had been a moment ago. "That is an utterly unfair way to get the last word." That wasn't a teleport: no odd light effects from what still had physicists scratching their heads. Cloaking took a bit to engage, too and he'd been looking right at him. There and gone.

There was no response, and that was just as amazing. "Wow. You actually are capable of being silent." That was a little… insulting, X realized after saying it, to imply he was a brainless chatterbox when he was anything but, or that he'd been outright lying. Still, X was a bit in shock over being compared to Megaman for something he had done instead of just for his color and name and Kilroy was probably snickering over getting a reaction like that out of him, so an apology was certainly unneeded.

Not to mention that they were here and Kilroy had implied that Zero was… X knocked on Zero's door: yes, this was the number on the card. "Zero!"

No response. "Zero, I know you're in there! Get ready, because I have the door override and I will use it! Five, four, three, two…" There was now an eye in the peephole, according to X's advanced optics. "Hello, Zero." Good Zero. Yes, X had still got it.

"Go away." Not in the mood for your cheerfulness!

"What on earth are you feeling guilty about? If anything, that should have reduced your guilt level."

"Causing HQ to panic is supposed to make me feel better?" It wasn't just the concept that made no sense: it was the fact that X was scolding him. Was this really X?

"The fact that you didn't kill anyone should have. Think, Zero." Yes, this is Dr. X, not the rookie who doesn't know what he's doing and was trying to cheer you up because helping someone was what he needed and he didn't feel any right to tell another how to deal with their guilt when he couldn't handle his own. "Sigma's even more convinced now that you saved his life. You know he thinks it was that thing on your helmet that made you kill those people, and it was only you fighting it that let him destroy it! Now, you were in a very similar situation, and what happens? You didn't kill any of the people who threatened you. Instead you found me and made sure Sigma and I were safe."

"So there's actual evidence now that it wasn't me." Zero's voice was far too dull.

"Yes."

A pause, as Zero sighed. "I would really like to believe that."

"So we run more tests until we have enough information to find out who built you and put that thing there so we can put him on trial."

"I don't want to do that again. I don't remember, so they had me watch the tape. I was acting like a cat." That was not the issue at all: it was whining, and X refused to humor him.

"I'd say it was more like a lion." Yes, Zero, the exact species is more important than your objections.

"X, I could have chopped your head off with my damn hair!" Now, that was a roar: Zero was angry now, and at the real issue.

"Well, it's not like you're a tame lion." X half-smiled, though he didn't see Zero's eye anymore. "Tell me you haven't cut off your mane."

"Now, there's an idea." Zero leaned against the door with a thump, voice dull again now.

"Zero, don't. It's a very nice mane." Teasing kindness now, real affection for his child: in the dark but not alone. "I like non-lethal weaponry. I like that you used it." That's why I'm not worried.

"X, that's why…" Zero's head thumped against the door. "You have no sense of self-preservation." Now here was his teacher, lecturing his student. "You had the head of a killing machine running on instinct in your lap."

Though if Zero thought that ceasing to act like a child would make X start acting like one again, "You weren't running on instinct. The instinct of a killing machine is to kill, especially when people run in and point weapons at it. That's a pretty good indication they're trying to hurt you. Not to mention that you had been attacked by people just like them, in the same armor as them, last time. You had every reason to believe they were your enemies, and instead you thought they were idiots and demonstrated why what they were doing was stupid without hurting them. I was rather reminded of you-you, really."

Zero was silent, wanting to find a way to counter X's argument but not wanting to at the same time, if he even could. "You say it's an animal, that you yourself are a soulless fiend," yes, overdramatic language was wonderful for pointing out when people were taking things too seriously, "and yet you did the right thing. They probably were about to do something stupid, and I was in the line of fire."

X could hear some of Zero's system noises through the door, and he heard the shock that sent through him. Zero had thought of himself as the danger to X. Yet he'd protected him, hadn't he. Like Sigma, even though Zero was probably about to think that it was his fault they were in trouble in the first place and then be even more foolish. "Zero, you listened to me. You snapped out of it when I said the right thing. I'll help you learn how to do this, like you're helping me learn." Listen to me, not to your guilt.

"I think I have to."

"Why is that so bad?" Wasn't it better to become complete than to lock that part of himself away again? It might be a good thing Dr. Cain hadn't been able to. The other Zero wasn't a mad aunt in the attic, or some such thing.

"If it can access what I know, like who you are and that hunters aren't enemies, then it's possible that something might go the other way. Since I woke up this time I've had this, this feeling."

"What feeling?" X let his hand rest on the door: surely Zero could tell it was there.

"Something's going to happen soon. Something's out there, and it… wants something that it would do anything to get without even thinking about it, and it knows it can't have it as long as you block it."

"Can't I just not block it, and then everyone's happy?"

"You can't. Not as long as you're you."

"Is what it wants so bad?"

"It doesn't think so. The, maybe lion is a good word. It just lies there mostly, but… the lion doesn't care about that, really. Just that you're in danger. It doesn't care about anything except that its people are safe and stay put."

"I'm in danger?"

"You in particular. I don't know how many others are too just from the collateral damage of it getting what it wants. No, there are specific others, but… it's not words. Just sort of feelings, and… there are other things it doesn't like. You, though… it feels like destiny. It feels like polar opposites. Order and chaos? Matter and anti-matter?"

"First Cain and Sigma, then the ninja, and now you are telling me that the fate of the world rests on my shoulders. Do you think this thing could be the Irregulars or whatever they're called now?" X leaned against the door, matching Zero's pose. Supporting him as though the door wasn't there.

"Since you're a hunter, and they're your enemies, if it isn't using them already it will be soon." Zero's voice was still so dull, though a hunter should care.

Okay then… "You know how it thinks?"

"I know you, and I know it's the opposite of you."

"I have an evil twin?"

"This is not something to joke about." Good, now he was angry instead of… was that how despair sounded in Zero? "The lion's not scared. I am. Anything capable of fear would be. I'm going to die, X!" Zero wasn't afraid of that, he was just irritated X was joking about it.

"What? No. You're not."

"It, I, know it, like you know one plus one is two! It's fact, X."

"Well, yes, it's called entropy."

A pause as Zero looked that up. "I'm not talking about the heat-death of the universe! Yes, everyone dies eventually, but I mean me specifically, before this is over!"

"Then we need to find out why it thinks that, so we know what to do to change things so that it isn't certain."

"Some things you can't fight, X. Or, maybe you can fight but you can't win, and if you don't accept the facts reality'll break you." Zero's strange tone said that he was right, and it was nice to be able to shut X down even if X didn't accept that he was shut down. Yet he didn't truly like what he was saying or that X couldn't argue with it.

X considered carefully. "Then I'll fight as long as I can for you. I'd fight longer, but you seem like you would be happier if I didn't.'

Zero's head slumped forward away from the wall… No, that wasn't despair that X was willing to give up on him. Yes, X's scanners were so very much cheating. Weapons systems radiating less waste heat, indicating a lower readiness level, if a fractional one, other systems doing their own equivalents of untensing… no horror, no betrayal. Relief. He'd guessed the right thing to say.

X's relief mirrored Zero's, and they stood there like that for a few long moments.