After chomping a few nurses – Cyber Elves, that is – Zero met Ciel at the command centre.
"Hey, you're up bright and early."
She shushed him, listening to her comm. link. Red alarms began blaring all over the base.
"Enemies have broken through the front gate! We can't hold them off!" a guard screamed through the speakers.
"Just like that?" Zero sputtered, "After all those missions? After all I've done to thin the herds?"
"They snuck up on the base while you were dealing with the army! It's the Stealth Unit!" Ciel cried over the alarms, and began to cry for real, "It's all because of Neo Arcadia! It's their extreme justice, where peace is maintained by force! Reploids are sacrificed for the happiness of humans. It was I who created Neo Arcadia!" she sobbed, "And it was I who regenerated X…"
Zero's jaw dropped.
"You? You must have been six years old at the time!"
"I got the plans off Ebay," she confessed, "I used my parents' credit cards!"
"You resurrected X like me?"
"No. It's different… you are the original, meaning you are exactly like what you used to be… But X is…"
The base shuddered as more of it was bombed.
"Enemies in the engine room!" Cerveau screeched over the intercom, "I can't get the elevator to work!"
"Zero!" Ciel shouted, dashing away her tears, "We have to evacuate everyone with the elevator!"
"I'm on my way!"
He charged past the fallen redheads.
"I will avenge you now, so that you will owe me nookie later!" he called to them as he ran for the elevator shaft. They stirred, groaned, and muttered that they'd prefer death. Falling down the shaft to the engineering floor, Zero beheaded a heavy-arm Pantheon guarding the entrance to Cerveau's lab. The scientist was trembling in the corner, surrounded by shock-stick Pantheons.
"Well, well, well. I thought you were a genius, but look at you, cowering from zombies."
"Just help me and I'll forget the pogo incident!"
After they were in pieces, Cerveau got the elevator running again. A soldier hailed them on the intercom:
"The engineering room is now clear, but the enemy is concentrated around our energy crystal storage. They might be making off with our supplies!"
Zero ordered Cerveau to send the elevator for Ciel and the evacuees, preferring to wall-kick up the shaft. Just outside the storage room, Zero saw something small and white lying on the ground. He bent to pick it up.
"Alouette's doll."
A heavy-arm Pantheon charged towards him. Zero held out one hand and caught the big arm, stopping the charge cold.
"WHERE IS SHE?"
He smashed the Pantheon like so much rubbish against the wall, using the dislocated arm to score a homerun with another Pantheon's head. He stalked towards the storage facility, the little rabbit held gently in one hand while his other hand crushed metal. Striding through the door, he saw a ridiculous combat model.
"I am Hanumachine, apprentice of Phantom. I will retire you for the glory of the Stealth Unit!"
"Your 'unit' is slag."
Zero looked past the monkey, and there was Alouette, scrunched into the corner beside the energy crystal containers, trying to make herself as small as possible.
"Alouette, switch off your visual and audio sensors until I touch your shoulder."
She obeyed. Hanumachine chattered, twirling his bo staff.
"So, the legendary warrior has a soft spot.
Zero knelt and placed the bunny doll upon the floor.
"You might say that."
He began walking towards Hanumachine, cracking his knuckles.
"But you're not going to feel it."
Alouette reactivated sight and sound when she felt Zero's hand on her shoulder. She stared at the room. Two monkey arms and two monkey legs where sticking out of the walls they had been pounded into. The torso was nailed to the floor by the bo staff. She assumed the red mush with bits of metal poking out had been the head.
"Are you undamaged?"
Zero was covered in circulatory fluid, especially one heel that still had bits of metal stuck to it. He picked up Alouette and gave her back the bunny doll, carrying her outside where it was not so red.
888
After washing up Zero regrouped with Ciel at the command centre.
"Zero… even though you've held off Neo Arcadia and its Guardians, we'll never be safe as long as X is around."
"You made Neo Arcadia, correct? Then you have the coordinates to where X is."
"Yes, but their Trans-Server security…"
Their deus-ex-machina floated into view:
"I'VE CRACKED THE SECURITY SYSTEM OF THE TRANS SERVER… I'M SORRY THAT IT TOOK SO LONG… BUT NOW YOU CAN ENTER NEO ARCADIA WHENEVER YOU WANT."
"You… you're the one who gave the Z-Saber to me."
"NOW GO. TERMINATE THAT COPY OF ME."
Zero stared at the blue core.
"X…"
It cut him off with a command:
"TERMINATE WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE."
After it flew away, Zero did something Ciel had never seen him do before: he relaxed. He dropped his tense stance, cracked his neck a few times, and stretched a bit.
"I was waiting for that," he said in a matter-of-fact tone. His eyes melted to a soft shade of blue. Ciel noticed, but instead ventured, "You were waiting for the security to be cracked?"
"No. I was waiting for direction."
888
"Tell me again how all those missions before didn't give you a sense of direction."
"Well," Zero responded while hopping around the marble columns, "As you told me after I finished them all, you'll never be safe as long as X is around. Those missions were superfluous; totally unnecessary."
"You saved more than a dozen reploids, and found almost all the Cyber Elves! Although, you did eat the latter…"
"Anything electronic can be remade. It does not matter if a reploid dies; they can be rebuilt. You resurrected me, remember?"
"Yes, but humans take death personally."
"What a pity! I could have been finding ways to enter Neo Arcadia instead of tossing energy crystals into the air."
"You really don't think much of your own kind, do you?"
Zero paused, pulling his saber from the remains of a gun turret.
"Ciel, did 'my kind' make the world a better place?"
"Your technology…"
"Killed more humans than your nuclear bomb."
"…"
Zero resumed stabbing the mechaniloid vermin infesting the Neo Arcadia Shrine.
"Why did your eyes turn blue after that Cyber Elf left?"
"My eyes change colour?"
"History records show that your eyes have shifted colour from black to green to blue and back to black again."
"Ciel, why do you look at all my history files?"
"I like to research the last hope of the human race, that's all."
"Maybe my eyes are moonstones."
"I'm not familiar with the term."
"Moonstones change colour with your mood. Humans put them on rings. The fad died out around the twentieth century."
"I'd love to have a moonstone ring…"
"Okay, I'll gouge one of my eyes out."
"Eww. Don't be gross."
"It's not like I need two eyes. I just have the extra one to appear human."
"What about peripheral vision?"
"Please. My hair is made of fiber optic threads. I have millions of eyes."
"Okay… too much information…"
"Hello, what have we here?"
Two purple reploids were suspended in the middle of a temple.
"That looks awfully familiar."
"They should. They're clones of the Maverick, Vile, who has been involved with the reploid wars since the beginning. You and X killed him several times."
"Ah, and now they're two of him. Lovely... I suppose they'll come alive any moment and…"
To his misfortune, the statues took the words right out of his mouth. Grumbling about karma biting him in the ass, Zero unleashed the wrath of his pogo stick as the Vile clones flew around the room. It was simple… he just hopped on their backs until he punctured their jetpacks and they came crashing down onto the spiky floor. After more generic mechaniloids he encountered a clown with three arms, each wielding a beam saber that curved like a scimitar.
"As if my day couldn't get any weirder…" Zero sighed, and resolved to smash the thing with lightning. It went down in an embarrassingly short space of time. Another run past disappearing platforms (physically impossible, but fun) and Zero finally engaged the boss of the area.
"I am Herculious Anchortus."
"Would it KILL you guys to pick an English name? That's pronounceable?"
The Hercules beetle anthropomorph clicked its pincers.
"Our wild appearance and confusing names strike fear into the hearts of our enemies!"
"What about Phantom? He has a decent name! He gets it! The rest of you are friggin' Latin buffs!"
The beetle thing clicked with menace.
"I serve Harpuia! She likes Latin and she's cute!"
"Uh… she's a he."
"What?"
"Harpuia is male."
Herculious turned from purple to gray.
"You mean all this time…"
Zero nodded and grinned at his stupefied horror.
"Oh yeah. You can burn your porn collection and boil your dick now."
"This is so EMBARASSING! I'ma KILL you!"
"Bring it, queer eyes. You already told me your weakness."
Ice laid the Sage low, so ice laid the follower lower.
"Gimme a break. At least Harpuia flew."
"Please kill me and erase my shame!"
"Sure, but you know you're gonna come back in the end."
"Damn it!" Herculious cried, and died testily.
888
Neo Arcadia Tower was so uneventful thanks to Totten's magical spike removal technology that Zero looked at the big blobby thing guarding the area and drawled, "You're too big to be a slug. Get lost."
After dicing the thing into its component slimes, Ciel was waiting for him on the other side of the shutter, wringing her hands.
"I'm so sorry, Zero."
"What is it this time, little miss angst?"
"It was I who created the duplication of X. The real X's body had been destroyed during the war, and it would take a lot of time to make a new one because he was so unique. It was easier to create a clone, but the values of right and wrong that I programmed into him became horribly, horribly warped by his sense of justice into extremism."
She was trembling when Zero laid his hands on her shoulders.
"It's not your fault. You did it because you thought it would be good for everyone. Please leave everything to me now."
She looked into his eyes that glowed serene blue. When she spoke, she spoke without fear.
"You are so beautiful in every way."
Tears ran down her pale cheeks. She let him wipe them with one gentle finger, and lift her chin.
He kissed her.