Tsukasa: This is a re-posting of a fic from my main profile on this one. A couple of reasons for this would be:
A, Almost all my video game stuff is here anyway and
B, I felt like it
B isn't a good reason, but there you go. Reminder from Chapter 1: I will be posting up through chapter four in one go as I already have the X arc written.
Project X
Disclaimer: Mega Man and Everything else I reference belong to Capcom and their various owners (two that I can name off the top of my head being Disney and Takeuchi). However, I own Xavier (well mostly), Zack (who I hope won't end up a Gary Stu), Dr. Tsukina Light, my villains, and Xavier's family
Chapter 2: Lost
After Xavier succumbed to unconsciousness Tsukina looked to Thomas.
"How could you join such a shady group? How Thomas!" she said angrily gesturing at him. She smoothed some white hairs back into her fraying bun. She looked like someone's grandmother, not a renowned surgeon. She was wearing white scrubs while Thomas was wearing a lab coat.
"I was upset over the loss of Rock, Roll and Blues. I don't care if you never considered them alive, because they were alive to me! Do you know how it hurt to only see Tristan on his birthday and on one holiday a year? Once my robots glitched and developed personalities beyond their programs I used them to fill the gap Tristan left. To me they were Tristan's younger siblings. I wasn't thinking clearly and with the loss of my lab I needed a job to keep a float." he said. "This is entirely my fault, but please do not continually remind me of that."
Tsukina's piercing gaze softened a bit, looking at her ex-husband.
"I never got over you, you know. I never stopped loving you, but your career and my career couldn't co-exist, I felt like Tristan and I were second fiddle to your and Wily's robotics company." she said. "I just cannot stand how you let machines get in the way of real life!"
"So it's back to that!" said Thomas. Their team arrived and they readied themselves for this unpleasant procedure. Neither would ever forgive themselves for cracking so easily, but it would have been far worse to have had an innocent's blood on their hands.
'May God forgive me,' thought Thomas as they prepared to begin.
'Forgive me,' thought Tsukina.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Zack Watson knocked on the door of the Prosper residence, Xavier hadn't been in school that day. He brushed his long blonde hair from his blue eyes. He heard shuffling and saw a drunk-as-a-skunk Charles Prosper answer the door.
'At this hour?' thought Zack.
"Wha yo' wan?" he slurred.
"Where's Xavier?" asked Zack: He knew what Charles did and had threatened the man on occasion, his response was not very reassuring,
"He didun come HIC! home." he said before slamming the door in Zack's face.
'Didn't come home? Not good!' Zack raced to his bike and began to peddle as fast as he could to the nearest graveyard, his car having been totaled recently. He arrived at the cemetery and hopped off, rolling his bike alongside himself to where, if Xavier were here, his friend would be.
There were two tombstones an older one that read:
AXL CHRISTOPHER PROSPER
19XCIV-200X
Beloved Son and Brother
Zack tried not to think about the sad circumstances involving the first but was especially saddened by the second which read:
ALIA ISABELLA PROSPER
20IX-20XX
Beloved Daughter and Sister
Only eleven and she died. This showed there was no justice in the world anymore. Xavier wasn't there. He would have run to Zack's house if he had run away and he hadn't. Xavier was missing!
'Be rational, there are two other places he could be holed up at. Crap! Curfew!' thought Zack. He was going to have to resume his search for his friend the next day. If only he hadn't totaled his car, he could have checked out the other places that very day.
'Xavier's fine, he's not in any trouble,' Zack kept repeating this mantra as he biked home.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Xavier awoke stiff and sore on a hard metal floor that was frigid to his cheeks and hands. On the upside he was wearing clothing this time. He sat up and he felt, extra heavy. He looked down to see he was wearing a skin tight bodysuit made of strange spandex-rubbery material. It was slate gray. He checked himself over for any changes to himself only to find his wild black hair much shorter, and a metal plate embedded into his skin on the back of his neck. He looked to see holes in his sleeves where two other such plates were visible. He located two more near his bare feet. He found two more by twisting, and ignoring the pain: One near the base of his spine, and one on his right shoulder.
'What are these things?' he wondered. He heard the door open and sprung to attack when he saw it was Tsukina Light being escorted in at gun point.
"Try anything and we'll kill her." said the guard. Xavier stood still, the threat working on him as it had both doctors the day before. She checked him over,
"He's fully healed." she said in shock. "Any stiffness or soreness?"
"When I woke up." said Xavier, "What did you do to me?" Tsukina looked down.
"We, Thomas and I were-," she began but a guard grabbed her.
"Project X is doing well?" asked the bass from yesterday.
"The good doctor verified he was fully healed. The enhanced healing the old fool mentioned kicked in, Commander." said the guard to a man who looked like an evil, overly bulked GI Joe.
'So it's this 'Commander's' idea.' thought Xavier fixing his anger towards that man.
"My name's Xavier." said Xavier defiantly.
"You will answer to whatever name I see fit to give you, cyborg!" snapped the 'Commander.'
'Cyborg?' thought Xavier as he was dragged out of the room. He began struggling, winning actually until a guard zapped him with electricity.
"Enough, cyborg!" said the guard.
Xavier was thrown into a large room before the doors were sealed behind him.
"Listen and listen well Cyborg X, you will not defy me. If you do I shall not only punish you but I also punish the good doctor and her ex-husband." Xavier had a decision to make, be selfish and get everyone hurt or comply.
'Dr. Light and Dr. Light are the only two in this whole place who give a damn about me.' he thought resignedly, how he began to hate the Commander.
"Good, now Cyborg X, you will show me how well your new parts work, assume your battle mode!"
'Battle mode?'
"Visualize your self changing!" said Dr. Thomas Light.
'Changing into what?' wondered Xavier. He closed his eyes. 'Battle Mode? What would it even look like? Think, who did the robotic part? Dr. Light, duh! Wait, DUH!' He pictured armor like the famous blue bomber's and was rewarded by the pain of all seven of his metal plates heating up.
"AHHHHHHH!" he yelled in pain while dropping to his knees. When he opened his eyes, he saw his body was now encased in blue armor.
'I did it?' he wondered.
"Very good, Cyborg X now let's see you fight!" said the Commander and several doors opened around the arena sized room. From them emerged robots with guns on them.
'Ah crap!'
Xavier found out the hard way he could run very fast. It took getting shot twice before he was able to tap in his enhanced speed. He couldn't run forever.
'Do I have any weapons?' he wondered. He managed to flip, with far more flexibility than he'd previously had, over a robot and punched through its head.
'That's a start-AH!' he'd gotten shot again. 'Now what? Wait, I look like Mega Man, maybe..' he focused on his right forearm and with a yell of pain it became the infamous Mega Buster, his right hand still there, but it had, like Mega Man's, withdrawn into his armor and his armor had enlarged itself. He couldn't figure out how to fire though.
A robot was aiming for his face. On instinct he raised his buster arm at the robot and thought,
'FIRE!' with that his buster formed a blast and fired, the recoil jerking his arm up slightly. Afterwards he figured out how to fire without being on the brink of death. Charge shots came after he'd been distracted and hadn't let out his shot right away. Then it built up and cut a path of destruction through the robots. He was running on pure adrenaline, though the pain from his three bullet wounds wasn't helping. He looked to see if he were bleeding to find that he wasn't: The bullets had impacted hard on his armor but hadn't drawn blood. It was this attention lapse that got him shot in the forehead.
XXXXXX
Zack had ditched school. Hey it was for a very good cause, loyalty was always a good cause. He saw Xavier's mother with her new beau. He knew the snobbish woman wouldn't part with any information nor let her son, whom she'd washed her hands of, stay with her.
"Ms. Chant?" Zack asked. She stopped walking.
"Zack Watson." she said.
"Ms. Chant, your son's missing." said Zack. "I was wondering if you'd seen him."
"I haven't." she said before walking away. Her male companion said,
"You never mentioned you had a kid!" Well at least he had a bonus for himself: The evil ice queen had never liked him whenever he and Xavier were little. Though it might had to have done with-, No. He and his whole family had washed their hands of Grandfa-no, of Albert. Especially his father, to be the son of-, again not thinking of it.
He had two plausible places left to look.
'I have to find him! I have to!' thought Zack. He tried to remember where they had been when he'd last seen Xavier.
'Corner of Cross and Nail.' he remembered. He rushed back and stood remembering. He and Xavier lived on the same street yet he'd taken the long way home. Zack knew why, but that meant someone had to have seen him. Or there might be evidence, the first 48 hours were the most important, or so all the crime dramas he watched said. He looked around and wasn't exactly sure what he was looking for. He had to try though.
'I'd better call the other two places first.' thought Zack pulling out his cell phone.
"Hey, Rico! It's Z, is X there? No? Thanks." he said. He hung up and dialed the arcade both frequented.
"Hey Motoki! It's Z! You seen X? No? Well thanks anyway." Not there either. Zack was about to walk away when something caught his eye. Zack didn't know why it stood out to him, but he walked over to an alleyway. It was the casing for a bullet: An oddly shaped bullet.