Megaman X: Elysium Rising
Chapter 7: An Unknown Source
By Genoscythe
When Alia had said she wanted to take the test further, X hadn't been expecting it would go this far. He was currently latched onto the side of MHHQ, crawling up the crystal blue building like a spider. "Hey X, are you still doing okay out there?" Alia asked him on his comm link. The holographic scarf on his back whipped about in the chill night air, simulating a real one down to the movements.
"I'm fine," he muttered through gritted teeth. The strong winds weren't making the trek any easier for X, and the wall climbing program required more dexterity than he expected. With his old armor, he had been able to repeatedly kick off of vertical surfaces and scale them with some help from his boosters, but the new program gave him greater control over his movements. It was slower, but it would be far more useful in combat and navigating difficult terrain. Looking down, he could see that he was more than halfway up to the communications tower. "Where are you now?" he asked through his comm link.
"Just made it to the 17th's quarters," was the reply. X made a deal with Alia that if he was going to scale the outside of the HQ, then she would have to take the stairs. She had reluctantly conceded. 17th, huh? I'm way ahead, X thought. Another part of the deal was that whoever made it there last would have to tell the winner a personal secret. X had initially suggested that the loser had to pay the MHHQ bar tab for the entire 17th division, but she wanted to raise the stakes a little. It seemed to him like she wanted him to win, though. He had a bad feeling about what she apparently wanted to tell him, but there was nothing he could do to change her mind. He was through playing mind games with her.
As X acclimated to the new wall climbing method, he picked up speed, and in no time at all he found himself climbing diagonally, heading straight for the HQ's rooftop. He pulled himself up the cylindrical relay tower and over the railing onto the observation deck. When he sat down to catch a breath, he saw Douglas leaning against the railing, looking with his perpetually curious stare at X and his new armor.
"Hello, Commander X! What are you doing here?"
"I was – "
"That is a fascinating armor! I've never seen it before. What's it like?"
"Well, I – "
"Are those energen crystals? Why so many? This must have been an expensive project."
"So I hear. Look, I was just – "
"Why wasn't I notified?" Douglas snapped, now pacing about the observation deck in an excited fervor. "I could have cut the expense considerably. Four extra crystals are unnecessary. This looks like Alia's work. She never applies practical solutions to her problems, and in any case, Dr. Light wouldn't have left something this wasteful behind."
"It works, doesn't it?" X shot back, feeling defensive of Alia's elaborate gift.
"Hah! A human child can build something that works. I'm only impressed by technical finesse and ingenuity. This is brutish," Douglas concluded, inching toward the Maverick Hunter. "I'd like to do a closer inspection."
"After all that, you want a closer inspection?" X asked. Without replying, Douglas reached out and grabbed X's buster arm, which he had forgotten to protect. "Hey, I didn't say you could do one," he pointed out.
"I just want to make sure Alia's got your circuits connected properly, at least," he grumbled, swatting away X's free hand and fumbling with a panel on his gauntlet.
"We already tested it, but thanks anyway," X said, jerking his arm out of Douglas's reach. The mechanic grumbled inaudibly and turned around to pace back and forth next to the panel he had been working on when X arrived. The uncomfortable silence that ensued was cut mercifully short by Alia, whose rippling golden locks and luminous blue eyes peeked once over the lip of the observation deck's access ladder before she swung her whole body up over the edge. She's probably checking to make sure I got here first, X noted.
"Oh. Looks like you've won, X," she said, with a faintly victorious smile. X shrugged and folded his arms over his new chestplate.
"Alia! What took you so long? Without Commander X here to entertain me, I would have gone back inside by now!" the pudgy reploid fussed, even though they both knew that Douglas would probably spend the rest of the night in the relay tower, whether Alia showed up or not. She sighed and cast a discreet glance at X before walking up to the mechanic.
"What do you need me to do?" she asked.
"I want you to reach that panel for me," Douglas said, motioning at a square cut into the ceiling of the observation deck. It was too high for him to reach.
"Douglas, did you call me up here just so I could open a panel for you?" she huffed, voice rising with every word. X couldn't recall ever seeing Alia so angry before.
"Well, that's a fine place to start," he replied. "I want to get at the scatter wave transmitter, because I suspect it – "
"No. No, you don't get to legitimize this request by...y-you brought me all the way up here because you couldn't reach the panel?"
"I may need your assistance afterward," Douglas pointed out.
"We have a stepladder here somewhere!" she yelled. X had never heard her yell, either. Then again, he knew little about her working relationship with Douglas, so it was possible that neither of these developments were new. "Or a janitor. Somebody. Why me?"
There was definitely some history involved that X had missed out on.
"You could use the experience, my dear. Now, do you want to get to the bottom of this mystery, or not?"
Alia's outburst was halted by her sense of duty, as Douglas knew it would be, but she gave him a long, simmering glare before she reached up and unlatched the panel.
"Would you like a boost?" she seethed.
"Unnecessary. You can do the inspection for me. Tell me if our scatter wave transmitter has been tampered with."
Alia stood on her toes and began digging through the exposed machinery. It was all foreign to X, but it looked undamaged from his perspective. Several moments passed in relative silence, until Alia rocked back on her heels with confusion adding to the emotions screwing up her pert features.
"It's perfectly fine," she reported.
"I was afraid of that. Do you know what that means?"
"Of course I do. It means that we can still use scatter wave communications."
"And can we?"
"No. But nothing can block scatter waves."
"Nothing that we know of."
"But scatter waves utilize quantum mechanics. They're unstoppable."
"As far as we know, they are unstoppable."
"What are you trying to say?"
"Alia, there are innumerable forces, principles of the universe, concepts far beyond anything we have imagined or will ever imagine," Douglas explained. "And unknowable foes capable of using them against us."
"I think we should exhaust all the more rational possibilities before we start drawing up conspiracy theories," Alia muttered.
"We have exhausted all the rational possibilities."
"What makes you think the Mavericks aren't responsible?"
"Unlikely. They are degenerating noticeably. I doubt their technicians could even work a scatter wave transmitter, much less defy the laws of physics to jam ours."
"This doesn't bring us much closer to fixing the problem, but at least we can narrow down the possibilities," Alia said.
"Indeed. What I need you to do is use the particle detection system in central command and search for any unidentifiable air waves."
"Hasn't someone already tried that?" she groaned, dreading the prospect of more grunt work.
"Interestingly, no. Before, we were looking for a simple explanation, but now it appears we won't find one. We must broaden our search."
"Okay, I'll get to work on it as soon as I can," she said.
"Go right ahead," Douglas replied, motioning to the exit. "I have some more tests to run." Relieved to be free of the manic reploid, Alia turned and swept across the observation deck toward the ladder. However, she stopped and looked back at X.
"You can walk down this time," she told him. "Besides, you have to collect your reward."
Marx couldn't help but feel nervous with Zero practically staring him in the face after the incident the night before. It was now morning, and after a full recharge Marx felt ready to take on the world. Then Zero called him in for a meeting and swiftly put an end to his enthusiasm. On the bright side, he wasn't going to face Zero's wrath alone. Megaman X sat next to him in Special Unit 0's private briefing room, with the blonde hunter standing before them next to his podium. The briefing screens were blank, but for some reason, Zero held an elastic pointer which he periodically bent, perhaps as a method of stress relief.
"Okay, let me make things clear," Zero started, glaring at X. "Without my permission you went back to Marx's cell and took him to yesterday's outbreak at the mall. Did you even think that he would try to escape, or worse, try to attack one of us? It's not like you to jeopardize a mission like that, X."
"You said it yourself, we needed more firepower," X protested.
"Then you should've taken one of your own Hunters. Someone you trust."
"I wanted to give him a chance."
"I gave him a chance! Remember? He turned it down. You didn't think it was a little suspicious that he changed his mind?"
"I can only imagine what kind of 'chance' you gave him. I thought I should try again, only without pulling any knives on him," X said. Marx felt this was going to get out of control.
"Hey, cool down for a second," he said, rising to his feet. "This is gonna get ugly fast, guys."
"Stay out of it!" Zero growled.
"This is about me, isn't it?" Silence ensued. "Why don't we at least hear my point of view before you two start ripping out each others' processors?"
"Fine," the blond hunter conceded.
"Look, you two are getting mad over something that didn't happen. Did I run away? Did I attack any of the good guys? No. Hell, I saved Axl's life!" Once again, all was silent. "I don't know what's got your panties in a knot, Zero, but it's not my fault and it's definitely not X's fault."
"So, where does that leave us?" Zero asked. "What exactly are you, now?"
"I think I'd like to be a Maverick Hunter," Marx said, speaking on reflex alone. His words surprised himself more than they surprised Zero. X merely smiled and bowed his head slightly.
"That's a pretty sudden about-face," the crimson Hunter noted.
"Hey, if you don't want to take me, then don't take me," Marx said. "A lot of things happened yesterday...I dunno, it got me wondering. Ever since my creator died, I've been a drifter. It gets tough, living just to survive. I need to keep making up excuses to justify my existence, and defending humanity is the best one I've come across so far."
Zero caught X's satisfied smile, and it all suddenly clicked for him. The nostalgia, the protective impulses, the disappointment, everything.
"He's like an asshole version of you," Zero said to X.
"If you mean he's an idealist, then yes, I had a feeling," X replied.
"No wonder you've been able to talk him into this," he mused. "And it explains why he pisses me off so much."
X burst out laughing, and Marx felt himself fading from the discussion again.
"I'm serious. I want to be a Hunter," he interjected.
"Oh, I'm sure you do," Zero replied.
"Are you fully aware of what you're agreeing to?" X asked. "You'll be forced to either kill or be killed almost every day, and I won't always be there to do the killing for you."
"I know," Marx muttered. "But I told you, it's...getting easier. I can't avoid it one way or the other, so I might as well be killing for a good cause."
"I was hoping you'd see it that way," X said.
"I'll set up a holo room session for you later today," Zero told him. "We've gotta see what you can do before we decide what to do with you."
"Should I be getting a bad feeling about this? 'Cause I am."
X reassured him that he would do fine, but Zero just smirked and tossed his elastic pointer in the corner before exiting the briefing room. Marx still took it as a good sign – at least he didn't have any more stress to work off.
Damn that Megaman X! Vulcan Stinger had spent the entire day repairing himself with inferior parts, and to make things worse, Diamond Edge had not contacted him since he had sent her to avenge him. The only thing that made his existence bearable was the thought that the Maverick Hunters still didn't know where their base was. He took the welding torch to his leg once again, joining his own stump to an appendage he severed from one of his underlings. The wide green armor clashed with his spindly golden left leg, and he was fairly certain the new limb was a few inches shorter than the original.
The large, rusted metal door of the base's maintenance bay clanked open, and Stinger watched critically as Diamond Edge limped into the room. She almost immediately collapsed to the floor. What little clothing she had worn was in tatters, and her milky white skin was scored with energy burns. Vulcan Stinger merely continued to watch as she attempted to prop herself up on her elbows.
"You failed," he drawled. His disappointment was tempered by his utter lack of surprise.
"I was...preoccupied. Megaman X caught me off guard," she responded hoarsely.
"That sounds suspiciously like what you planned to do to him," Stinger said, standing up. He tilted distinctly to the right. "Damn. I knew it was too short."
"Well, Stinger? Are you going to be the gentleman and offer to repair me, or are you going to make me beg?" Diamond Edge asked, although as she said the word 'beg,' a long crescent of serrated metal emerged from her wrist.
"I can never tell when you're trying to threaten or seduce me," Stinger replied. "But neither will work. Our supplies are low, and what we have is already in use."
"There must be something left from that reploid you cannibalized," she said, pointing to his new leg with her wrist blade.
"I left his body in the barracks. You're welcome to whatever the others haven't already taken."
"Hmph," Diamond Edge grunted, dragging herself over to a crate and propping herself against it. "You're not half bad, Stinger. Not like some of the bugs I know."
"I always thought Tempest was fond of you."
"He is, in his own way. That's part of the problem," she said. "He'll be interested to find out who I saw on the Maverick Hunters' roster, but I'm still deciding whether or not I'm going to tell him. He might want to 'celebrate' with me."
"Someone from your old syndicate?" Stinger guessed.
"It's complicated."
"Well, if this is your way of asking my opinion, I think he'll find out for himself sooner or later, and he knows you were looking up the Hunters' roster. He won't be happy if you keep this information from him, and I'll have to assume an angry Tempest is worse than a celebratory one."
"You have a point," she said with a shudder. "Let's not talk about him anymore."
"Fine, then. I heard Hail Magnum was planning to lure the Maverick Hunters to the Sky Lagoon yesterday. Did you hear any news?"
"Yes. According to today's paper, Magnum was killed and no Hunters were captured or destroyed. He did, however, manage to wipe out dozens of humans."
"Which is our ultimate goal."
"Of course. I wouldn't call this week a complete failure," Edge said icily. Vulcan Stinger turned his back to her.
"We have to prepare for another attack on the Hunters," he stated.
"What about the lack of long-range communications? Has anyone isolated the source yet?"
"No. It definitely isn't coming from the Maverick Hunters, and it seems to be affecting most of the city's more advanced broadcasting equipment. We've verified that shortwave transmissions and simple radios still work, but other than that, all our signals are being deliberately jammed."
"It'll be difficult to organize our branches."
"I know. We'll have to take more risks like that last disastrous meeting."
"It'll be worth it in the end."
"We can only hope so. There is a branch hiding in the mountains near the remains of Dopplertown, and I hear their leader is a powerful reploid."
"Who is it?"
"Thunder Raven. If we can coordinate an attack with his troops, we stand a chance of dealing a serious blow to the Maverick Hunters."
"How will we send word?"
"We need a runner," Vulcan Stinger said. "I suggest Stealth Claw. He's been spending far too much time idling with your protege, and I believe he needs some time away from her to be reminded of our cause."
"Don't make it sound like she's the one to blame," Edge snapped. "He's had an unhealthy fascination with her ever since he pulled her out of that horrible research facility."
"You're training her to be a slut," Stinger accused. "Claw is a sexually-incompatible combat model. I hardly see how there could be room for debate in this matter."
"He's a big fluffy cat. I'm sure she just sees him as a pet," Edge said.
"Either way, she is still an unnecessary distraction for him, and I'm sending him to the raven. Also, you may want to consider beginning her mission soon."
"I can agree with you on that. I've seen for myself how susceptible Zero is to the female form, and if Mystic does her job, he won't last another week."
"Good. The sooner you bring down that maniac, the safer we'll all be."
End of chapter 7