X and Iris

X jumped. He landed behind Frost Walrus with a clank and started to fire rapidly. He wasn't going to let this Maverick win. Frost Walrus got up and turned facing Mega Man X. With a blast of icy breath the Maverick created a huge ice block, three times larger than X himself! With a mighty punch from the huge Frost Walrus, the ice block shattered into ten large, spiky, blocks, some of which hit X. Mega Man X groaned and looked at his health. He was very, very low and by the looks of it so was Frost Walrus.

"Good, now were evenly matched!" Frost Walrus said as he laughed. X smiled and inserted Magma Dragoon's weapon.

"Not exactly!" With a mighty rush, X ran forward and shot a fiery blast strait into Frost Walrus' head, melting his tusks. There were several explosions, but X didn't care. He was used to explosions after beating so many Mavericks in his past. There was a big boom and a small chip appeared in front of X. It was Frost Walrus' weapon. X smiled and teleported to the Maverick Hunter Base. He had a meeting with Zero to attend to.

X hit the floor with a small metallic clink making his assistant Double jump and drop some items he was carrying. X smiled and helped pick up the items.

"Thanks X," he said.

"Anytime," X replied as he hurried down a corridor to the meeting room. X and Zero had to discuss their new tactic to beating the Mavericks. There were only two left: Storm Owl and Cyber Peacock.

As X spotted the door to the Meeting Room he could have sworn he heard a small voice off in the distance. Thinking it was just another Maverick Hunter, X continued toward the door when the voice came yet again.

X stopped. The voice sounded different this time, it didn't even really sound like a voice, it sounded like a sob. X looked around.

A small hologram of a clock was on the wall to X's right. It said 11:50 AM. I still have five minutes until the meeting, why not go and see what the problem is,X thought as he backed away from the door.

X started to walk down the corridor, ready to investigate the sound. Every step X took the sounds seemed to get louder. Quite a few times X would have to backtrack to an area to see if he took a correct turn. Finally X seemed to have found the room where the mysterious person was in. It was the old storage room where all the old equipment was kept.

"Who could be in here?" X asked himself as he walked through the door. The moment his metallic footsteps and the closing of the door sounded the sobs stopped immediately. "Weird," X thought as he walked forwards slowly.

The room was filled with old weapons and items of no use now. Old laser guns were scattered on the floor, scrap metal was hidden away in boxes, Dr. Cain's old equipment was stored in a small corner all to himself and X even found an old revolver locked away in a dusty glass case. The room was amazing to X. Everything was so old which amazed him.

X walked further into the room and found some old blueprints. They looked like blueprints of some of the first reploids to be built by Dr. Cain himself! Wow, X thought in amazement. It's as if I went back in time, all this stuff is so-

X never got to finish his thoughts for a something moved out of the shadows behind X. X quickly turned around, his X Buster raised high, but it was too late. The repliod or whatever it was gone in a flash.

"Wait! Come back!" X yelled as he bolted after the thing.

He was running at his full speed trying to catch whatever was sobbing in this area. X couldn't let it get away. It could have been a Maverick hiding in the storage area or part of the Repliforce trying to infiltrate the base. X ran past boxes and boxes piled high in the air. They passed him in a flash. X had stopped running, but he had started to dash. He just couldn't let whoever was in here slip from under his grasp. X continued to dash left and right, up and down and suddenly there was a crash from his right. An empty box had fallen down and had opened a space X hadn't seen before. It was the upper-left corner of the room. The corner was dark and once X walked in he was instantly blinded.

A scrape of metal came from his right and X turned, but saw nothing through the darkness. "Who's there?" He said. He steadied his buster and started to swing it through the air madly. Something or someone was here, waiting for him.

Suddenly and idea popped into X's mechanical head. Smiling through the darkness, X charged his buster. Small bubbles of light started to grow around him, soon becoming brighter and brighter until it lit up the whole area. There was a gasp behind X and he quickly turned.

It was Iris. She was standing in the corner looking very frightened. "Iris," X said as he continued to hold his charged buster. He aimed it away from Iris and continued to say, "What are you doing down here, why were you crying?"

She didn't say anything, but in a matter of minutes tears started to fill up in her eyes and she clamped onto X. "Oh X, I didn't know it was you. You scared me so much. I thought you were Zero!"

X was taken aback. "Zero!" he said. "Why are you scared of Zero?"

She didn't say anything, but she continued to cry.

"Come on, let's get out of this corner."

Together the two made their way out of the corner and sat on two boxes filled with metal. X was very confused and he needed to get some answers. He quietly turned off his charged shot and looked into Iris' eyes. Very gently he asked once more, "Why are you afraid of Zero, Iris?" Iris continued to cry, but slowly stopped and looked down at the ground. X was patient. He didn't want to make her more upset then she already was. Slowly and suddenly she answered.

"X, I'm not afraid of Zero, I just don't want him to see me like this."

X nodded, but was still confused. Getting ready he asked Iris another question. "Why don't you want Zero to see you like this, if anything I thought he would make you feel better."

Iris started to slowly cry again. Tears were running down her eyes as she said, "No, I'm crying because of Zero and I don't want to talk to him right now."

X still didn't understand and he didn't want to push the subject in Iris' face, but he really wanted to know what was going on so he tried to probe deeper. "Why?" he simply asked.

More tears started to roll down her face and off her cheeks. Suddenly she burst out in tears and buried herself into X's shoulder. X shook his head. He shouldn't have asked, it was between Zero and Iris, but then Iris started to speak between gasps of tears. "Zero and my brother are- are always fighting. They won't stop and I'm afraid- afraid- afraid one of them will be killed by the other. I just want this war to end X, I want this to all go away!"

The two sat there for a long time. X had put his arm around Iris to comfort her while she was crying away onto X's body. X didn't mind. He knew Zero and Iris were having a hard time with their relationship with the war on Repliforce. It was slowly tearing them apart. X didn't want this to happen, but there was nothing he could really do. What was he supposed to do? X knew however the thing that was really killing Iris was Colonel. Her brother and Zero were both battling it out all the time and Iris had strong feelings for them both. It was an odd relationship and X couldn't jump into it.

Or could I? he thought to himself. He looked at Iris sobbing on his shoulder and then thought of Zero. I have to do something, I must!

He knew he had no right to interfere, but the way Iris and Zero were now it was immensely sad to see them at this state. "I'll talk to Zero about fighting your brother," X told Iris who had stopped sobbing and had just begun to cry slow steady drips of tears. She looked up at hit with bloodshot eyes and asked, "What will you say, X?" X wanted to answer, but couldn't. He didn't really know himself what he was going to say. "I'm not sure yet, but I will talk to him Iris, I promise." Iris gave a small smile and slowly started to calm down and rest on X.

Zero waited in the Meeting Room for what seemed like an hour. After seeing the clock Zero noticed he had waited an hour and X still wasn't showing.

"Where in the world could he have gone to?" Zero said to himself angrily as he paced the room. He was starting to get worried. At first he had thought that Frost Walrus might have beaten him, but Double had confirmed that he'd seen X after his mission. Zero sighed and sat back down in the chair at the head of a long table. The whole table was empty, except for himself.

Suddenly the door slid open and in walked X. He looked tired, but at the same time wide-awake.

"Sorry I'm late Zero." X said sitting down next to his red friend.

"Late!" Zero said angrily. "Jesus X, where did you go!?"

X looked down at the ground. He had promised Iris that he wouldn't tell Zero about his and her talk so instead of telling the truth he said, "I shut down for awhile. The fight against Frost Walrus was very tiring. I must have forgotten to set my alarm to activate again. Seriously Zero, I'm really sorry."

Zero nodded and handed X a file with some papers in it. X took the file and looked inside. Some of the papers were about the first Maverick: Storm Owl and the others were about the second Maverick: Cyber Peacock.

"Now," Zero said. "Storm Owl has set off with the Repliforce air ships. Someone's got to follow him before he wrecks some havoc. We probably would have caught him by now it you would have come earlier." X gave Zero a mean look, but he didn't seem to notice. Instead he continued talking. "The second Maverick Cyber Peacock has gone into cyber space and planted a bug. Someone has to destroy him before he can cause any harm with to the system. Any questions?"

Zero looked at X, but X just shook his head and said, "So who do you want to fight." Zero looked the papers and replied, "Well after about an hour of thinking I chose Cyber Peacock. He seems the type of Maverick I would enjoy defeating. I also think that I would be good at jumping from through the cyber areas." X nodded and said, "Well good because I was thinking about Storm Owl. He seems easy enough for me."

"You'll have to be quick to keep up with those ships. You up for that?" X nodded. "Good!" Zero said as he pushed himself up from his chair. "Let's get going."

With that Zero headed for the door, but X stopped him. "Zero," he said as he faced his friend. He wasn't ready to talk about Colonel with him, but he had to for Iris' sake.

"What, X?" Zero said, obviously annoyed for being held up once more.

"Ummm, about Colonel." Zero looked at X strangely and slowly said, "What?" He didn't really want to talk about his rival right now, especially after that battle they had had before. X opened his mouth, but quickly closed it. Once more he opened his mouth, but it automatically closed. I'm not ready for this! X thought desperately. I'm not ready for Zero to get mad at me!

"What!" Zero literally screamed at X.

"Nothing," X said simply. "Nothing."

Zero rolled his eyes and passed X. By the time Mega Man X had gathered his courage to face Zero his red pal was already gone.

"I'm sorry Iris, I failed," X said as he sadly readied himself to teleport to Storm Owl's layer.