Unwelcome Homecoming

As Zero teleported in with the others, his battle senses immediately picked up that something was wrong. The others all felt it too.

"What's wrong here?" Roll asked out loud.

"It's too quiet, something seems out of place, and it's entirely too dark. Light does usually keep the lights down, but not this low." X replied. "Wait a minute. Where's Light at? He's usually given us some type of welcome by this time. This can't be good." X looked over at Zero as a snarl came from his friend's lips, and was taken aback by the sheer amount of red that seemed to be sliding behind the solid blues of Zero's eyes. "This can't be good. Last time I saw a look like that was when it was the original Zero, just after he'd lost Iris."

"To hell with Light," Zero said abruptly. "Where is Crystal?" The room was suddenly lit very brightly by the glow of the Z-saber. The room was a wreck. The monitors were still intact somehow, but nearly everything else that hadn't been retracted or bolted down was destroyed. Roll gasped audibly while X and Zero both merely drew very deep breaths. Zero used a mental command to slide his visor down, something he'd nearly forgotten about since he'd been fighting nothing but past foes lately. He set it to scan for traces of blood. The scan came up negative. As he switched it to scan for Reploid traces he noticed Zenton over in the corner.

The converted human definitely looked a little worse for wear. Zero could see several of the pieces of his armor were broken, and some cuts and burns even went down to his real body.

"Zen, what happened here?" Zero asked as he kneeled in front of his friend.

"Heh...I guess you could say that we got our asses kicked." Zenton replied somewhat shakily. Gimme just a second." Zenton stood and walked over to a wall, and slammed his fist into a spot. The wall itself slid away to reveal Alia huddled back into a small corner, crying slowly. X rushed into get a hold of her.

"Alright, there's Alia, what happened to Signas, Tor, and Crystal? And why the hell is Light offline?" Zero asked.

"Tor and Signas, I'm fairly sure are dead. I'll have to go check the entrance, but that's where they were headed, and since the Mavericks came in here not too shortly after that, I can only assume the worst. They took Crys though.I don't know why, but for some reason, they just grabbed her and teleported out. I'm still not sure why Light's offline, I remember him and Crystal arguing about something right before he suddenly went offline."

"Alright. Crystal's fine, or at least she was before she left this room. Since I can be sure of that, and with that in mind, let's see if we can find out how to get Light back online. Why don't you go see what happened to Tor and Signas, Zen? You might want to see if maybe some of your magic can heal up some of that damage too, until we can get Light back online." Zero's eyes seemed to calm down a bit.X watched and though he couldn't find the red sliding around like he usually could, Zero's eyes seemed to somehow have turned more of a purple. Zenton had walked out the doorway, still slowed down, but able to move.

"Is the rage gone that quickly? It can't be. Or did he just somehow focus it? I've never seen any Reploid's eyes do that. I know that our eyes do shift colors to match our moods, but for some reason his just scare me when he starts doing this." X thought to himself as he continued to help look for a hidden switch or something to bring Light back up. "Alia, there weren't any hidden areas in the base containing the doc's back-up files or anything were there?"

"No, X. Light's system is built into the very walls of the complex. That's part of the reason why he can be anywhere in the building. I'm just trying to remember if I saw any sort of power switch in any of the diagrams. So far, I'm not coming up with anything." Alia replied, searching near her own station for anything.

As they all continued looking, suddenly the lights and everything finally kicked on.

"Alright, who touched what?" Zenton burst out, as he walked back in.

"Unfortunately, Zenton, the Mavericks touched a good deal more than I would have preferred." Suddenly Dr. Light's voice rang once more from the walls. "They overwhelmed my perimeter defenses and destroyed every auto-cannon I could get aimed at them."

"Why didn't you see it coming, Doc?" Zero asked. "And what the hell was up with the power outage?"

"You can thank Crystal for that. I was reluctant to use the timed restart myself, but she thought it would be for the best. We really didn't have any more options."

"What about the field you used against X when he first came here after I first went out?"

"It didn't work for some reason. Sigma must've been logging X's systems when he came here that first time. That's the only thing I can think of. I'd been using it the entire time they were coming through the halls, but it wasn't even slowing them down. When we realized that, Crystal started putting in the commands for the timed restart and wouldn't even budge on that decision. So unfortunately, I have no clue as to what they've done or where they've taken her." Light spoke as his face slowly reappeared on the main monitor, the other stations booting back up as well.

"Actually, Doc, I hate to break it to you, but we do have a way to keep track of where they've taken her." Alia broke in, quickly taking her seat at her station. "I put a subdermal chip in her when I gave her that shot to put her to sleep when Zero was fighting in the inferno. It's tuned to the old radio frequencies, so it'll be harder for the Mavericks to even notice it being there, and we should still be able to use the satellite systems to pick up on it. Unfortunately I wasn't able to program it with enough proficiency to do more than track it."

"That's perfectly alright, Alia," Zero said, coming up behind her. "All I need is a location. Beyond that, I could care less, because the moment I get to her, if she's not unharmed, then someone else will bleed for whatever they've done." Zero's eyes were now a much more vibrant purple than what X had noted previously.

"Heaven help any Maverick to get in his way. His emotions are under such close control that they almost don't exist." X thought to himself as he watched Light's monitor for the position of Crystal's locator.

It took the satellite system several hours of searching to finally pick up the faint signal.

"Well this isn't good," Alia muttered to herself as she finally pinpointed it. "It should've been much stronger than that."

"You have to count in for the fact that they've probably taken her inside their base, Alia." X commented from just behind her. "Depending on how big Sigma's base is this time, there could be a lot of walls in the way. I know there've always been plenty before, and his bases were actually pretty small. Now that he's managed to attain his 'rule' over the humans, I'm guessing that his ego has probably gotten the better of him."

"Just get me a lock onto a position with a few miles of it, and then get me beamed out of here." Zero interrupted from behind them. "I don't care how many walls he has in my way."

"There it is, setting you down one and a half miles away from the signal." Alia commented just before Zero turned into a beam.

"You don't think anything will happen to him, do you?" Roll asked, having come up to where Zero had just been standing.

"Something already did, Roll." X replied. "They took Crystal from him. And I don't even think the gates of Hell itself are going to stop him from getting her back. For a short while there, his eyes were just like the original Zero's. Solid blue, but if you watched, you could see streaks of red that seemed to slide behind the blue. Then they changed. Zero used to be a package of rage kept under very loose control. If he wasn't a Hunter, he would've been a Maverick more than likely. That same look was always in his eyes. But it's almost as if this time, he somehow focused that rage, his eyes this time, they didn't have the red sliding around. It's as if he somehow just absorbed it, or focused it on whatever he's thinking of. Usually when a Maverick gets that mad, their eyes go solid red. But his didn't. They went to more of a purple. To be honest, that scares me just a bit."

"So you think he'll be okay?" Alia asked from her seat.

"No, I don't. Zero's probably going to kill anyone that gets between him and Crystal, but I've got a really bad feeling about this. Roll and I are going to go in after him. Set us down at the same place you set him down at, we'll follow him in, keep him from being attacked from behind, I hope. Zenton, while we're gone, you might want to go get Toronto and Signas, bring them back in here, or at least whatever's left of them, have Light start working on rebuilding them." X's face became deadly serious just before him and Roll beamed out.

"You can do that?" Zenton muttered.

"Yes, I can, Zenton. I've rebuilt both Zero and X several times. They'll be severely disoriented, but they can be brought back online. It's another advantage that Reploids have over humans." Light replied as the injured Reploid began to walk for the door.

"Alright, then, I guess I'll go drag what's left of them back in here."

Author's Notes:

Sorry for not getting back to everyone a bit sooner. Been a bit busy lately.

To those of you thinking Matrix, I hadn't realized that I'd made it sound like that before...woops! XD Though I do see where you all got that now that it's been pointed out. . But ehh, no human batteries here.

MHP, Dragon Man, sorry, but I won't be bringing Proto into this per se. I have a bit of an idea how to work him in, but it involves altering/piecing together bits of Mega Man history. Or more specifically non-history. Damn Capcom for creating the huge plot hole between the Mega Man and X series. Does much yelling and griping

D&SM: I've yet to see anything to point out to me that Mega and X are two completely seperate robots. Until I do, I'm gonna hold to my opinion that X is Mega rebuilt.

Thanks for the reviews and compliments, hope you all end up enjoying where this story is headed.