This is a thank-you fic for NHOrus, who requested something omakeish and nicely cracky post-Definition.
I tried to make this a crackfic. I failed. I failed so hard.
I may transfer this over to the mainfic: I'll consider it when/if I ever get around to writing the sequel.
Priority codes were priority codes: even if X had transferred root control over Neo Arcadia to X Arc, an video call request from him tagged with the requirement that it be viewed with all present on the main screen in the family quarters still cut through the chaff of constant messages, administrative and otherwise, the Guardians received.
It was X Arc who took on the task of contacting the Four Guardians to coordinate everyone's schedules and see when he could take the call, all excited that they would get to see their father again, the way he got to see Ciel again when he went with her to awaken Zero.
Perhaps he should have realized that the fact he was the one contacting everyone meant they weren't already contacting each other. Shouldn't Master X's children have wanted to expedite their reunion with their father?
When he finally got home (he couldn't rush: Master X did not rush) and saw Phantom put his head in his hand and groan when he saw him, that was when he realized something wasn't right. Fefnir's "Well, we're all here, should we get this over with?" confirmed it.
"What's wrong?" X Arc asked.
"Under my nose in Neo Arcadia all this time," Phantom said glumly. "He didn't rub it in before, but that was only because it worked to his advantage. What that means for my ability to protect the city, protect everyone… And if the Special Operations Commander finds out…"
"We could have used that space station," Harpuia said, wings twitching outwards before he pulled them in again, trying to at least appear composed. As it was, they still didn't have the budget for the General responsible for aerospace to build the kind of base up there which would make it much easier to sweep areas of earth orbit for dangerous debris and allow more satellite construction. Point defense lasers could only do so much, not to mention the energy expenditure involved.
"Yes, but…" X Arc hesitated before saying, "The space station Dr. Wily built?" Ciel wasn't, well, she wasn't a booby trap sort of person until Weil's mechanaloids stole her notes, but she'd come up with some nasty ones that Phantom and the Zan'ei liked very much, since Ciel sent her designs to be used for the good of Neo Arcadia. What could a legendary scientist do? (A lot of people might say that Ciel was a legendary scientist, but it felt a little strange for him to say that about her, since she was his builder and he certainly wasn't anything like Master X or Zero, even if they'd had lots of siblings the way Ciel was building other creations. So perhaps someday she might… It felt a little like blasphemy to think that anyone might build anything like Master X and Zero.)
Harpuia looked unimpressed. "If his evil traps are anything like that Petty Chip…"
"A note," Fefnir growled, interrupting.
Was it the thought of seeing their father again that made the Guardians act, well, just a little like (X Arc didn't like to think it of them, but it was still true) newbuilts? Perhaps they were getting the complaining out of their way so it didn't mar the reunion, X Arc told himself.
"He just left us a note. No warning, no explanation, no extra codes or anything that would make it easier for us to take over what he used to do-"
"What are you complaining about?" Leviathan said. "Every time we tried to hand you one of the jobs X used to do, you pretended incompetence until I got stuck with it, or Harpuia did."
"You're the ones who can figure out the systems!" He was a reploid, not a hybrid robot master. "I didn't have time for programming classes and whatever!" To try to figure out what he needed to do to do the stuff X used to organize. "You were always saying 'do this, Fefnir, you didn't try to make Phantom…"
"Between searching for Master X and dealing with the civil unrest and borderline panic that began when news of Master X's disappearance leaked, Phantom was in no position to take on extra duties back then," Harpuia said sternly. "And the Jin'en aren't trained for police work. We may be a military dictatorship, but that doesn't mean we can act like one outside of emergencies, and the entire point was to keep our father going AWOL from looking like an emergency." Triggering even more widespread panic. "Neo Arcadia couldn't afford the appearance of martial law or some panicked newbuilt drawing on their training for convoy attacks," shoot, "dealing with an aggressive crowd. Or worse, Elf War veterans."
"I can't force people into mandatory retirement when that means disarming them!" It was one thing to have traumatized veterans keep their weapons when they were surrounded by heavily armored infantry with their own weapons, another to be toting plasma in among Neo Arcadia's fragile unarmored inhabitants and fragile infrastructure. Some of the Elf War survivors wanted to put everything connected to violence behind them, keep it as far away from them as possible, while some couldn't bear the thought of being helpless. "All of you had me taking your shell-shock cases," because the Zan'ei required a cool head, older model flyers burned too much energy for the Rekku to want to keep them around unless they were very, very good and the Meikai did underwater missions, where a part wearing out due to age could be fatal, "and do you know what it did to them, that Master X was gone?! And I had the people fleeing Neo Arcadia before it collapsed, and the scum preying on them! I did not have the time to learn computer science from the ground up when I had budding warlords to put down, and screw you and your newbuilts and your panicking masses of unarmed civilians: where did you get off saying I wasn't making public appearances when I was out with my troops twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four and you were the ones who wanted me to lock myself in a room studying like I had something to hide, or the Guardians were covering up that we were making secret plans for the fall of Neo Arcadia!"
"And this would be why I suggested using you to impersonate Master X," X Arc heard Phantom say quietly when the ninja appeared out of stealth next to the door behind him. "We were simply not capable of finding the time to handle our own duties, take over Master X's duties, dealing with the additional problems caused by civil unrest and appearing serene, confident and often enough to reassure the populace and keep the civil unrest from growing as rumors spread. There were limits to how much we could delegate without the ability to give our officers new authority to access secured systems, and transferring important duties to people less trusted by the public would have been another reminder that Master X was gone, and he would not be returning soon if ever, if we Guardians were trying to take over his duties."
"Um, excuse me?" X Arc raised his voice a little, looking past the three of them. He could see why Phantom moved away from the others. The floor was made of temperature-resistant ceramic alloy tiles. The table wasn't.
Fefnir held the sagging metal up so it would cool in the proper position. He and Leviathan could just pull out of battle mode: Harpuia had to walk over to the beam next to the balcony door, put there so he could earth the charge he'd accumulated from using his abilities when he came in from patrol.
That table had handprints on it even when X Arc first came here. He wondered if it was Master X who put it there, so there would be some visible sign and consequence of any of them losing their tempers. They wouldn't do it with humans or unarmored reploids around, and it was only the five of them here, but if they developed bad habits than what if they forgot about bystanders?
"What he told you about his reasons," Harpuia said shortly, dusting off his gloves. "Abandoning the world, and us 'for our own good,' or the world's own good. He's going to want to tell us how well we've done, thinking that's evidence his irresponsible decision was the right one."
Figuring out what to say to people to get them to calm down and be able to work together was much of X Arc's job, but he stood there unable to think of anything. This was Master X, and…
"Don't worry about it," Leviathan told him. "If this is a professional call, we'll handle it professionally. If he's making a family call, then he's X: he knows what he's getting himself into. That would be why he talked to you, not any of us, and why he's put it off this long."
"A great believer in 'expressing our honest feelings instead of unhealthy emotional repression,'" Harpuia said, clearly remembering prior conversations about that and feeling that X was about to get some karma for those times he'd tried to get Harpuia to come back out of his shell out after the start of the Elf Wars and Harpuia had had no intention of doing so. "When he was never honest with us about his feelings during the Elf Wars. Giving us platitudes and empty encouragement when he was so convinced we were all going to die or go Maverick, as though we were suddenly utterly unreliable, nothing but emotional liabilities…"
X Arc could have pointed out that it was understandable X felt that way, after losing so many people to the Maverick Wars, but the Guardians knew that. They were the ones who explained that to him to begin with.
He didn't want them to yell at Master X, but if that was what they needed to do to get it off their chests and be a family again…
"Too much honesty isn't going to get him back here, where we can yell at him properly," Leviathan pointed out to Harpuia. Both of them turned to look at Fefnir.
"Could we?" Phantom gestured at the screen.
When looking at each other showed no objections to getting this over with, either Harpuia or Leviathan must have hooked into the screen to accept the call without voice commands.
They'd replaced Master X's body in Sanctum Yggdrasil after the battle with Omega and Dr. Wily, but Master X looked just the way he had when he appeared in X Arc's mind during that battle, instead of the cyber-elf form he'd taken on Ragnarock when he didn't want his identity known. To them. He'd told Lark, but not Leviathan, and even though he'd done that because he needed Lark's body it still felt sad to X Arc.
He sat in the chair Leviathan had claimed when they were on the station, and there was a cyber-elf on his lap, the central form not visible in the mass of glowing darkness. Even the Mother Elf had a core of blue-white light under the dark power Dr. Weil inflicted on her.
Not dark power, X Arc reminded himself. Master Zero's power.
"I'm glad to see you're all safe," was what he said first.
Wouldn't he know that they were, if he'd send the message for all of them to activate the call, instead of just whoever could answer?
"You still have access to Neo Arcadia's records, before you ask about the city," Harpuia said.
"I would rather not," X said, looking down at his lap. "I'm not certain yet that I trust myself not to interfere, and I know that I can't trust myself once I start interfering. Using the power of this satellite to help restore the planet is still all I can do, I think."
"Should I give you a status report, then?" Harpuia said, expressionless in a way that felt just a little hostile.
"I hadn't intended to ask," X said. "I have no right to ask. I have no right to be concerned for the welfare of Neo Arcadia when I expected you to fail, and fail immediately so something could rise from the ashes before Weil returned… Or not. A military dictatorship is a dangerous thing, when the dictator has lost their conscience. I was elected. You simply took my place." The Guardians in the sense of succession, X Arc literally. "The fact you may have prevented the end of both races by preserving the city's order… Just like how my decision to kill to stop Sigma and then Weil was still choosing to kill, and therefore still wrong, regardless of my reasons. Area Zero has become an agricultural production center eclipsing Neo Arcadia. There are multiple cities now, and military bases that could, and should, become cities. Even a sizable underwater base," Leviathan, "with the water to protect it from orbital attack… You must establish self-sufficient population centers other than Neo Arcadia."
"That is what we've been doing?" Fefnir said. "Foreign Legion HQ has an outskirt area a fourth the size of Neo Arcadia's."
"It's still the military that has the authority."
"There's Dr. Ciel's mobile caravan," X Arc said, "And the Relic Hunter camps that have become more permanent," since there were ancient facilities that made good dig sites and habitations.
"Dr. Ciel's mobile caravan," X pointed out. "Who has authority? And who has authority over those camps?"
"Their founders." Phantom grimaced. "I've already had to develop special teams to investigate abuse of power. Enticement of labor with false promises," and worse. Once someone was out in the wastes, if you took their survival gear and maps and locked it all up, how were they supposed to leave?
"They still worship me," X said, his face just as harsh a mask as Harpuia's. "The idea that the world should have a single ruler, not matter how benevolent a dictator they are, instead of individuals making their voices heard and trying to make the world bend to everyone's wills… I'm sorry that I gave you the city under false pretenses, Arc," X told him, donning a smile for him now. "I hope you didn't exert yourself too much, trying to preserve it for my sake. Because it needs to be destroyed." The smile was gone already. "It needs to become just one city-state among many, with no more authority and no more right to any authority."
Even Fefnir's back had stiffened. He looked shocked. Leviathan's expression was a mix of comprehension and affront, the way she looked when someone told her something she didn't like, or at least in a way she didn't like, but it was true enough she couldn't argue. Phantom was trying and failing to maintain a poker face.
Harpuia was the one who said, "I refuse. Humanity's survival is still precarious enough that even if reploids can be constructed at multiple sites now, we can't lose the legal authority to manage their reproduction and genetic modifications."
"Harpuia," X said calmly, "I will make this simple for you. You will destroy the power that allows you to take the First Law you imposed on yourself and impose it on other people, when people should have the right to choose how to live their own lives, or I will use Ragnarok to destroy Neo Arcadia."
The hiss of an indrawn breath.
"You weren't even in double digits and you wanted to mutilate your mind, Harupia. Patient-doctor confidentiality is one thing, but my father wasn't going to help you figure out how to do that to yourself without running it by your father first. He expected me-wanted me-to refuse to let you consider such a drastic operation, but we are… you were, reploids, not humans. We don't have the same sort of latency period humans do, so a reploid parent shouldn't have any amount of time where they have the legal right to overrule their child's own decisions. If you choose to make your identity that of a robot master, I respect that, but Neo Arcadia was a bad idea from the beginning. Concentrating the world's remaining population in one place, where one failure point could exterminate two species? It was insane, but the situation was such that I had a choice between the insane option and the impossible ones.
"You are my children and I love you, but no one should have the amount of power to dictate everyone's lives that I was handed and you took from me, good intentions and necessity or no good intentions. It was Dr. Wily who thought that the world needed a ruler, Weil who thought the world needed a God. As long as the power and authority you possess remains intact, someone can take it from you. As long as Neo Arcadia remains the sole example of government on this planet, others will take it as their model. I've given you twenty years to expand your resource base, while I worked on making it possible for the planet to sustain humanity without Neo Arcadia. You can have twenty more, and when I check in on you again, I expect systems of laws that can't just be overruled because the local dictator feels like it.
"If they have to associate me and my legacy with the right to rule this planet, then that had better be a nontransferable right. No one has absolute authority over Neo Arcadia and the world… except Master X." Whose eyes met X Arc's: so that was why he had let X Arc rule, let him continue to shape, to enforce, the legacy and legend of Master X. "If they must worship me, then let taking my place be sacrilege. Lest the heavens rain down destruction upon them."
"…Are you seriously threatening to destroy an entire city with a superweapon if you don't get your way while sitting in an armchair and stroking a small lifeform?" Leviathan demanded. "Goddammit Dad, I get your point! Stop acting like you've gone to the dark side to make us think about how much damage it would do if someone with your level of authority really did go to the dark side. We've seen the real deal."
That made a small smile appear on X's lips. "But Weil deserves to be parodied. There was a comedian in 19XX who said that he wanted to make it impossible for anyone to ever take Hitler and his ideas seriously ever again. People wanting me to favor my reploid children over humanity, those expecting me to kill my children as though that would benefit the race that was here first instead of condemn them to starvation… I asked Zero to kill me, before I went down that road, and in his absence I had to remove myself. City-states, children. While travel is still expensive enough to make transporting an army prohibitively expensive for anyone without all the resources of Neo Arcadia behind them. Let those places develop cultures and opinions and pride of their own, so they refuse to let outsiders tell them what to do. Establish a UN, use your authority and legacy to establish a force that will protect them all, unless they turn to despotism and abuse their citizens. You can have a full generation to make these changes, long enough for this to become the way it's always been and not panic people with sudden change. Or else." His green eyes glanced at Harpuia.
"I know that they're safer without a single failure point… Including myself."
"I know," X said. "But I read up on the Laws. The documentation on how my brothers and sisters dealt with them. After it was already done." Because otherwise, he might have found something there that would make him stop Harpuia despite his desire to respect his children's right to choose their own identities. "I am tired of killing. I am tired of watching people's choices be stolen from them. I won't allow my name to be turned into a weapon that goes on doing that even in my absence." He tilted his head, closing his eyes to hide that the smile didn't reach them. "But, on a happier note, presents! Also wedding gifts," Fefnir, "and preemptive wedding gifts just in case you get married before I see you again, Leviathan. They'll be airdropped the next time this station passes overhead. I hope you have fun with them!"
The call disconnected. Silence reigned for only a moment.
"Well," Fefnir said, letting out a breath. "That was much less bad than I was expecting."
"Retirement," Leviathan said longingly. "In twenty years instead of who knows when. An endgame that will let us get out of this trap," the trap called responsibility, called a world that needed them, "in only twenty years."
That seemed like a very long time to X Arc, but the Guardians were older than him, and X even older.
But… but no one had told anyone else that they loved them, or any of the things that really should happen when family had been apart for so long. He'd wanted to see them happy, X Arc thought, looking down at his hands.
Well, he told himself, people developed secret codes and things that only meant anything each other when they'd known each other a long time? And Master X and his children had known each other a very long time. Maybe they were all less upset than they'd been before the call started because something had just gone over his head?
And it was much better than when he was finally reunited with his builder. No one had mistaken anyone else for an assassin and hit them hard enough to knock them down. They hadn't even wanted to hit him, not really. So maybe next time would go better? When the Guardians didn't have to work anymore and maybe X would be feeling well enough to come visit and hug them…
And maybe make a surprise visit by using his codes to sneak in without alerting them… And maybe get mistaken for an assassin… Arc hunched his shoulders in, trying to suppress his laughter.
He wasn't sure who was first to join in.