Megaman X: Elysium Rising

Mission 3: Defend MHHQ

Chapter 11: Blitz, part 2

By Genoscythe

"Commander! Commander, are you alright? Can you hear me?" Captain Deckard called, shaking the bullet-riddled body of Commander Hector. The lion slowly wheeled his arms across the burnt red sand, but his sluggish awakening abruptly sped up as his eyes flew open. He sat upright, oblivious to the pain shooting through his abdomen.

"Slimy traitorous son of a bitch," he snarled, simultaneously spitting blood from his mouth. Deckard, who had been leaning over his fallen Commander, now righted himself and motioned toward a tower of junk several dunes away.

"The Mavs are heading for HQ. They left their jammer behind, but we found it and Gaff's disabling it as we speak," he explained, though his voice quavered slightly. He had never seen Hector so feral before. It occurred to him that his leader might be going Maverick.

"Shit. How long?" Hector asked.

"How long have you been out, or how long until the jammer is down?"

"Both."

"About twenty minutes. At the speed they were going, the Mavs have probably hit the HQ by now."

"Malakai?"

"Nobody saw him. The jammer's almost down, though, so we should be able to make it back any minute. Once we fight off the Mavs, we can check the IT logs and find out where Mal went."

Hector just huffed, stood, and flexed his mangled arms. They still had full range of movement, so he shut down his pain receptors and began checking the rest of his armor. The two hoses on either side of his ribs had been ruptured, and the coolant for his variable camouflage system was leaking down his legs. That was fine. He wasn't going to bother with stealth anymore.

"Jammer gone," Gaff said via comm link. "Permission to get the hell outta here?"

Hector was gone in a beam of yellow light before the field engineer could finish his query.

"...granted," Deckard answered instead. "Back to base, everyone. Get ready to take the fight to the Mavs." This earned the Captain a round of affirmative grunts and cries, and he could sense the spirit returning to the battered remains of his team. The survivors of the 9th Ranger Division teleported away, leaving over half of their unit to rust in the bloody desert sands.

Zero had warned Axl about situations like these. Thunder Raven was going to ask that Axl leave them so he and X could have an old-fashioned duel, and X was going to go along with it because, in Zero's words, he could 'be kind of a sentimental moron sometimes.' Well, Axl wasn't going to let that happen now. Wherever that cannon was pointed, he couldn't let the Mavericks fire it, and there was no way he was going to leave it up to a one-on-one grudge match to decide the fate of the Mavericks' target.

Right on cue, Thunder Raven spread his wings and declared "This is a fight between me and my brother's murderer. Remove yourself from our presence, Hunter."

"Not a chance!" Axl yelled, raising his pistols and firing a quick barrage at the statuesque Maverick. Thunder Raven merely twirled his spear and disintegrated the shots with a wave of electricity.

"Axl..." X murmured.

"If you insist on getting in our way, I will fire the cannon right now," Raven told him, flipping open his left gauntlet and revealing a small control panel.

"I had a feeling," X said through gritted his teeth. He turned to face Axl. "Leave us, Axl."

"No! This thing can't be ready to fire yet! He's bluffing!"

"Do you want to take that chance?" X asked. Raven tapped his spear on the ground impatiently.

"You can't be serious," Axl moaned, letting his arms fall to his sides.

"Don't worry about me. Find Zero and try to contain the Mavericks in the cave," X ordered. Axl didn't move. "Now, Axl!" he barked, and the ebony Hunter was shocked into compliance by his serene commander's outburst. He slowly stepped backward and ducked out through the hole in the wall, and when X was certain Axl wouldn't be coming back, he whirled back around to come face to face with Thunder Raven.

"Bravo. You're not afraid to face me alone," Raven goaded.

"Why are you so determined to kill me in a fair fight?" X asked.

"I already told you that you killed my brother. What more reason do I need?" Raven asked. X examined the Maverick.

"I'm not sure I understand."

"You killed Wind Crowrang in a fair fight, and he was twice the reploid I was. He was so far beyond my abilities that our creator considered me a failure and put me in storage while Crowrang was sold to the Red Alert Syndicate. Now, I want to prove how much motivation can affect the outcome of a battle. This cavern will be your tomb, X."

"Enough. I know I can't change your mind, so let's get this over with quickly," X said softly. Raven's wings beat the ground, and he launched into the air as X silently charged his buster at his side. Raven whirled his spear in the air, long tendrils of electricity coursing through the weapon. He seemed to be oblivious to the energy bomb building in X's buster, so when the Maverick thrust his spear out, X whipped off a fully-charged blast before Thunder Raven could react. To X's surprise, the thunderbolt he let loose from his spear pierced X's buster shot, and the ball of prismatic energy dissipated completely before it reached its destination. X nearly forgot to throw himself out of the way as the electric projectile arced onward and grounded itself in the cavern bedrock.

Thunder Raven watched X crouching on the floor, and his eyes took on a crimson glow as they narrowed into vicious slits.

"Redemption," he said.

Marx's thoughts were obliterated the moment he activated the boosters on his new ride chaser, which was problematic considering he experienced this moment of euphoria in the middle of a warzone. He nearly careened into a Komodo ride armor defending the entrance to the hangar bay as soon as he soared up the ramp, but he swerved around it as tiny jets underneath the Zephyr's airfoils fired off with prescient timing, guiding him around the tall, slender Komodo and keeping him from spinning out of control in the process.

He was now faced with a scalding orange sunset and a desolate plain filled to the brim with clashing reploids. Behind the foot soldier melee, two rows of siege tanks sat pumping green plasma blasts into the side of Maverick Hunter Headquarters, and the combatants closest to the building were in danger of being crushed by falling debris. In order to avoid such a fate, Marx pushed harder on the accelerator and noticed gleefully that he was previously running at only half capacity.

Kicking the Zephyr up to full power threw him nose-first into a Maverick with a heavy machine gun, but the speed and shape of the ride chaser merely scooped the reploid up and over its slanted chassis, forcing Marx to duck as the Maverick spun over him. He was flying straight for another enemy, and he decided to bank right so as not to damage the chaser unnecessarily. The Zephyr rolled sideways for an instant, and the force of the anti-grav lifters knocked the Maverick off his feet before it swung upright again.

A focused beam from an energy cannon swept across his path, and Marx's world came back into focus. This was a battlefield. He was a Maverick Hunter now, and people were counting on him to repel the Maverick assault. Nephtis was counting on him, whether she was going to admit it or not. He pulled out his pistol and began firing at anyone with glowing red eyes and patchwork armor, guiding the ride chaser between combatants with his free hand. His shots didn't always connect, but at least two reploids went down in a spray of gunfire from his machine pistol.

And I don't really care, he noticed. I can't care right now. He rocketed past a Maverick with a beam saber about to finish off a fallen Hunter, and he fired a burst into the back of the Maverick's head that tore his homemade helmet to pieces.

I just killed a reploid, Marx realized. No, that's not right. I saved a reploid. Feeling somewhat better about this, Marx scanned the fray until he saw the Maverick with the energy cannon who had almost shot him down. He stood more than a head taller than most of the other infantry, and he was almost buried beneath a citadel of purple armor. He trudged through the battlefield with a huge beam weapon cradled in his cannonball-sized fists, blasting ride chasers and clubbing Hunters to death with the hexagonal butt of his weapon.

Marx switched on the Zephyr's boosters again, and he launched himself at the Maverick juggernaut. The reploid turned toward him as he approached, lifting his beam cannon for the killing blow. Marx leaned around the chaser, now lifting diagonally off the ground from the thrust of its boosters, and let loose a volley from his pistol that shredded the Maverick's right arm. His aim faltered as he pulled the trigger, and the incandescent wave of energy ripped through the earth instead of the Zephyr.

Marx could tell the attack had barely slowed the juggernaut down, and he began to panic as he saw that there was no room for him to turn around for another pass. The Maverick would surely blow him to pieces if he tried to attack again, so he went for an opening between combatants and hoped to put as many bodies between himself and the juggernaut as possible. However, the melee was thinning out, and his only option was to push the Zephyr as fast as it could go and get out of the Maverick's range. As he soon realized, though, this tactic would put him right in the middle of the line of siege tanks he was fast approaching. Beyond the howling war machines, he could just make out a huge multi-tiered vehicle silhouetted by the sun. It looked like a mobile fortress. Lucky me.

Kale, the Maverick juggernaut, was oblivious to everything around him but the fading speck of gold in the distance. Kale hated Maverick Hunters, he hated ride chasers even more, and he had never in his life suffered an injury without exacting brutal retribution. To that end, he raised his beam cannon again, fighting through the pain in his arm, half-blind with rage. This time would be no different. The scrawny Hunter in the oversized armor would burn, and then Kale would find the remains and grind them into the dust. Kale was not a very creative Maverick, but he had a zest for violence and mayhem that left most of his comrades in awe, and if Marx had known whose wrath he had just incurred, he would not have even considered turning around for another pass.

The navy blue reploid was speeding toward the Maverick tank line, and Kale had a perfectly clear shot at his back. He squeezed the trigger, and pale yellow energy began to collect in the mouth of his beam cannon. Suddenly, a white beam of light slashed through the Maverick's torso, and he was ripped in half as an Adion ride chaser, boosting with its ion blade unsheathed, tore through him.

Without a second thought, Nephtis deactivated the blade and killed the boost, lowering the chaser back to horizontal and leaving the juggernaut lying split down the middle on the barren ground. Her oil-black hair lashed at her face, and the hulking Maverick's blood trickled between the fingers of her bare left hand, but she didn't notice. Her prototype – and that idiot mercenary – were just up ahead, weaving between the rows of siege tanks and dodging fire from their defensive turrets. Nephtis knew that the Zephyr was fast enough to outrun the targeting systems on those tanks, and she could only hope that Marx knew it as well.

The pulse cannon on her chaser was burnt out after thirty years of service, but she had to do something to distract those turrets, so she wrung as much power as she could from the chaser's engine and flung herself into the Maverick's tank line. It wouldn't be enough to outrun their targeting systems, but it would give them something else to shoot at, and that was all she needed.

On the twelfth floor of Maverick Hunter Headquarters, an amber beam dropped through the ceiling and materialized into a smoldering Commander Hector. The IT recall had deposited him in the 9th Division barracks, but it was almost unrecognizable. The far end of the hallway had taken a hit from an artillery blast, and what was once a window wall had been enlarged into a blackened hole that consumed two of his Hunters' rooms.

Hector turned at the sound of approaching footsteps, and an engineer with a fire extinguisher ran up to the ragged lion.

"Commander Hector!" the engineer called. "Thank creation you're back. There's a Maverick army out there, and Signas wants all Hunters – "

"Get me Durandal," Hector interrupted.

"Sorry, sir? Get you..."

"Durandal."

"You mean the ECHO rifle?"

"Get it for me," Hector said, jaw clamped shut so tight that only his vibrating lips revealed any visible sign of speech. Without another word, the engineer scurried down the hall toward the elevators, heading for the armory. Hector walked up to the edge of the hole blown out of his barracks, and a long-range visor popped down from the utility brace around his head. He began to search the battlefield below him for the Maverick leader and, with any luck, that traitorous scumbag Malakai.

Thunder Raven swept down from the air like a giant black claw. He stabbed with his spear, but X ducked and slammed his shoulder into the Maverick's chest. Raven fell back and landed hard on the ground, but as X fired his buster he rolled over and shot into the air once more. X's buster swept upward and fired at Raven. The Maverick leader spun his spear, pouring forth electricity and creating an iridescent barrier that dissolved every one of his shots on contact. Raven stopped, and X lowered his buster, keeping a wary eye on the Maverick as he discreetly tried charging his weapon again.

Raven dove backward, making a full somersault and smashing into X with his shoulder with such speed that the Hunter had no time to release his charged shot. The maverick grabbed X and tossed him into the rock wall, but before the impact X placed his palms out, facing the wall. When he hit, the wall climbing program was already active and his hands stuck fast to the wall. As Thunder Raven dashed forth with his spear thrust outward, X flipped the rest of his body into the air and narrowly avoided the electrified spear that rent apart the wall below him. Coiled on the wall, X launched himself down at Thunder Raven and slammed him into the ground.

X raised his buster to the Maverick's head, but Raven's arm shot up and knocked the weapon away. With his other hand, he generated a ball of electricity and launched it into X's chest, causing the Maverick Hunter to fly back into the wall. Raven, picking up his spear, flew into the air once again. He is strong...I have to finish this now and let my brother rest in peace, Raven thought to himself as he watched the azure Hunter below. X was charging his buster, tensed to dodge any sudden attacks. Raven was equally prepared, and his eyes glinted with malice. Their stare down continued without relent, neither one willing to make the first move.

X finally gave in, and he fired off his muffled charge shot. However, the shot exploded in mid-air as Raven's spear flew through the bolt and carried on toward the 17th Commander. X caught it a moment before it impaled him, but an immense wave of electricity surged from the spear through his systems, and he dropped it immediately. Even still, the damage had been done and X involuntarily fell to his knees. Raven slowly hovered down to the ground to stand before the crippled hunter.

"What an incredible image," the Maverick began. "The forefather of all reploids, an ancient, obsolete machine that has fought and succeeded for so long on conviction alone. Here, I have proof that it is not the design, but the will, which decides the victor." Raven lashed out with a clawed hand and grabbed X by the helmet, holding him up to stare into Raven's glimmering red eyes. "I've known it all along! And now, I can give my brother his redemption." X wanted to protest, but he could barely move any of his limbs and even attempting so was horribly painful. Struggling valiantly, he opened his mouth.

"You're...making the same mistake...that Vile did..." Blue sparks danced about X's mouth as he spoke.

"I'm not making any mistakes!" Raven barked angrily.

"You're underestimating me..." X choked out. Suddenly, Raven began to caw madly.

"I'm not underestimating you! I know full well how dangerous you can be, but this time, your conviction has met its match."

"You're making another...mistake," X said, more forcefully this time. Raven silently beckoned for him to elaborate. "You're far too cocky," X finished, and with an anguished roar his fist shot out and smashed into Raven's chest, sending the Maverick tumbling to the ground. Struggling to keep his buster steady, X brought forth the last of his energy and fired at the prone Maverick. Then, something unexpected happened. Through the mysteries of X's design, the electricity binding his systems was drawn and absorbed into the power surge in his buster, and when he fired, the bolt was magnified several times over. It leapt out of his buster as a streak of blue lightning, tossing him backward from the recoil.

When X once again got his bearings, he stood up easily. It felt as if firing his buster had drained away all the pain and helplessness he had felt only a moment ago. Standing up as if he had been asleep for ages, he noticed a strange sound in the air, like the sound of someone being strangled. Then, the noise grew into a gargling cackle, and then a cruel laugh. X swept his eyes across the ground to find Thunder Raven, lying in a pool of blood with his lower torso missing and his arm gauntlet open. The Maverick stared at X with weary eyes as he reached over to the panel that was open on his gauntlet, and all at once X knew what he was doing.

"The cannon!" he cried, running at the cackling maverick. He was nearly a foot away when Raven's clawed finger touched the panel and his entire gauntlet began emitting a red light.

"If I can't redeem him here...I'll redeem him elsewhere..." Raven coughed. "There is nothing you can do..." X looked to the prone Maverick, then to the huge electric generator that was quickly increasing its electrical charge. With a roar, he fired at the generator, but the shot barely scathed the machine's armor. Desperately, he clambered up a small ladder on the generator's side and rushed to the control console he had seen before. "I told you...once I activate the cannon, it can't...be stopped."

X looked across the console, and saw large red 'Executive Override' stamps scrawled across every screen. He was locked out of the system. The generator whined and toiled its way toward critical mass, and a chill flushed all the adrenal-energy warmth out of X's body. The realization that Thunder Raven was right all along crept into X's metaphorical heart, and he stared down at the console as his hands began to tremble out of control. "What's...the target?" X asked in a quavering voice.

"Fool..." Thunder Raven croaked. "The rats' nest. Maverick Hunter Headquarters..."

"No!" X yelled, his numbed hands coming to life in a flurry of motion. He jumped from the generator and landed before the dying Maverick. "Stop it!" he cried. "If you want redemption, shut this cannon down!"

"You don't understand...what this means to me, X," Raven coughed, and a tear rolled down his eye. X was momentarily stunned – he didn't know combat reploids were capable of producing tears. "I am now worthy, brother..."

A massive electrical surge burst out of Thunder Raven's remains, firing bolts out of his eyes and mouth that traveled all the way to the far corners of the ceiling, until the blackened husk moved no more. Shakily, X tapped his comm link. "Zero, get out of the tunnel. The cannon is about to fire."

"I know, damn it," Zero sighed. "The thing's discharging like crazy. We got out as fast as we could, but we still lost a few Hunters."

"The target is HQ. We've got to warn the – " X's voice was knocked out of him as the cave suddenly shook so violently that large boulders were dislodged from the ceiling above. X was thrown to the ground as the entire mountain rumbled with apocalyptic intensity. Above the grinding of pulverized stone, a deafening roar filled the cave, and once it subsided the quake went with it. X stood up to the sounds of panicked cries and curses pouring in through his comm link, most prominently those of Zero.

"X...HQ, it's...shit, just get out here!" Zero said to him. Silently, X ran out of the room and down the crumbling hallway, through the tunnel where the thunder cannon sat smoldering, and out into the open air where the 17th and Special Unit 0 were staring out into the distance. He followed their gazes, and he was forced to bite back a sorrowful gasp.

"So...this is what redemption looks like to you," X murmured to himself. The others didn't hear him.

Marx wove through a fine net of laser fire as the tiny defensive turrets lining the Mavericks' siege tanks opened up on him, and the Zephyr continued to amaze him as its reaction time seemed, occasionally, to be better than his own reflexes. He didn't turn back to rejoin the fray, and he didn't bother to try and destroy any of the siege tanks surrounding him – he wanted to cut the Maverick invasion off at the head. He had his eyes set on the mobile fortress looming before him, layered like a miniature ziggurat with guns and ECM equipment jutting out at odd angles. The tuning fork-shaped plasma launcher from a siege tank had been attached to its back, rising like a scorpion's tail against the boiling hemisphere of sunset.

Rookie Hunter Division... Marx scoffed. We'll see about that. He cleared the tank line, and nothing stood between him and the fortress but a few dozen yards of barren desert. I must be out of my mind.

Marx decided to put his workmanship to the test, and he thumbed on the Zephyr's pulse cannons. Nothing happened. Upon closer inspection, the panels covering the pulse cannons rattled a bit, straining to open in spite of his poor installation job, but that was all. He saw his options dwindling as quickly as the distance to the mobile fortress was, so he slammed on the brakes and pulled to the right. The chaser sputtered, rolled sideways, and dug its airfoils into the ground as it lost altitude.

Marx kicked the accelerator, and the Zephyr flared to life just as it was about to skid into the wedged front bumper of the fortress, blasting to the side and hooking around the vehicle's left hover tread. Turrets on the fortress's lower level began to track him, firing quick bursts of energy all around him.

"Marx!" A raspy voice yelled over the cacophony of battle. Marx glanced at the top level of the fortress as he swung around the back, and he caught a glimpse of Vulcan Stinger, his former employer, riding unevenly on the fortress's uppermost platform.

"This is a sad sight. You've become just another body in the horde rising up against us," he said. Marx continued to drive past the vehicle, heading for the cliff that ran along Neo Tokyo Island's southern coast.

"What happened to your ideals, Marx?" Stinger berated him, and Marx could feel the mobile fortress backing up after him. "Did they buy you out? Sooth the pain with cold hard credits?"

Marx reached the cliff face, and he circled around. The mobile fortress hovered toward him at a steady clip, bringing its rear turrets to bear and simultaneously exposing the power conduit linking the added plasma launcher to the fortress's core. Marx hit the boost one last time, and the Zephyr rushed to meet the glowing conduit on the back of the oversized tank. The turrets opened up on him, and he threw himself off the side of the chaser, crashing and rolling along the ground as the Zephyr sped like the flaming arrow it appeared to be into the hull of the mobile fortress.

The world tumbled wildly for a few moments, but when his momentum finally died out, Marx was presented with an image of towering green fire, raging and billowing out of the ruined fortress. Pieces of the vehicle rained down around him, and a saffron wing sliced through the air to bury itself in the ground next to Marx's head.

But he had done it. The invasion commander was dead, and their forces would soon fall into disarray. In any event, the entire Maverick Hunter organization was streaming onto the battlefield by now, and a pair of Hunters in Komodo ride armor had fought their way to the tank line, where they ripped at the vehicles with their brand new high-dexterity suits. One Hunter lifted his Komodo's leg and kicked the plasma launcher off the top of a tank, and the other punched through a tank's outer hull and set off the flash beam cannon on its wrist, frying the crew and blasting the war machine in half.

Marx thought he was safe, since the edge of the cliff was devoid of infantry and the tanks were all preoccupied with the 8th Armored Division, so it came as a complete surprise when the dirt behind him exploded and what felt like a vise clamped down on the back of his head.

"Let's see how many Maverick Hunters I can bring with me to Hell," Vulcan Stinger hissed in Marx's ear, and the clamp on his helmet began to tighten at a torturous pace.

Twelve floors above them, Hector watched the battle unblinking, scouring the fray for Malakai. His attention was diverted for a moment by a gout of green plasma fire from the clifftop beyond the Maverick tank line. One of the tanks had apparently backfired, and he would have resumed his search for the traitor if he hadn't caught a glimpse of Vulcan Stinger clawing himself out of the wreckage and diving into the dirt.

"Commander, I got the ECH – ah, Durandal," the engineer called, running up behind the ranger. Hector held out his hand in lieu of turning around, and the engineer began to feed him the External Callodyne High-powered Ordnance rifle, which proved difficult as the cream-colored weapon was nearly seven feet long and Hector insisted on holding it in one hand. When his fingers finally met the handle, he abruptly grabbed the cylindrical barrel with his other hand and dropped to one knee, packing the custom-built stock against his quarter-sphere shoulder pad.

The ECHO rifle, or Durandal as Hector had affectionately named it, was a prototype on loan from Callodyne External Ordnance, one of the largest handheld weapons manufacturers in the new world. It was an attempt to combine an anti-tank rifle with a sniper rifle, and the result was an unwieldy miniature Enigma cannon capable of destroying almost any target at any range in a single shot before melting down and spending three weeks in the repair bay. It also had the potential to seriously damage its operator, and almost every time it was tested, the subject ended up being repaired right next to the rifle. In the words of Callodyne's chief researcher, it was "the most impractical weapon ever to make it past the drawing board," and the 9th Commander loved it for the novelty value, although he would never admit it.

Hector keyed on the rifle's main generator with his thumb, and concentric circles expanded out of the barrel to hover and spin at increasing speed. Since Durandal transmitted its telemetry directly to Hector's brain, he continued to use his visor to aim, as the rifle's design prohibited the use of a scope. A Maverick Hunter in dark blue armor stood behind the remains of Stinger's burning tank, but as Hector watched, Stinger emerged from the dust behind him and fastened his improvised tail onto the Hunter's blocky helmet.

Hector could easily obliterate the Maverick leader, but he would also kill the blue Hunter. He decided to give the Hunter ten seconds to move out of the way, and he placed a finger over the trigger in anticipation.

Back on the ground, Marx felt the ushanka-shaped forehead guard on his helmet bend and crack under the pressure from Vulcan Stinger's grip, and his vision was glazing over with static. He reached for his pistol, but Stinger grabbed his arms and locked them behind his back. Marx was sure that he would snap at any second.

Stinger then let out a grunt, and the vise jerked sideways, pulling Marx loosely along with it. He used the reprieve to pull his head out as he fell, rolling and coming up to face the reploid scorpion. To his astonishment, Nephtis lay half-armored on top of Stinger, pinning the squirming Maverick to the ground. She whipped her bare head to glare at Marx, unkempt hair falling over the right side of her face.

"What are you waiting for? Shoot him!" she yelled, but Stinger smashed his forehead against hers and threw her off of him toward the cliff edge. She came to a stop with one leg hanging out into the twilit void.

Stinger got up, training one gatling cannon on Marx and one on Nephtis.

"Another Hunter? You spawn like maggots," he muttered, as his gatling cannons began whirring. Suddenly, a red and orange energy beam as wide as a tree trunk split the sky, seeming to ignite the very fabric of the universe and set it burning. The earth-shaking beam originated from Maverick Hunter Headquarters, and it traveled directly between Nephtis and Marx to end up at the spot where Vulcan Stinger once stood.

The energy beam was gone in an instant, but it left a backwash of heat and wind that briefly pummeled Marx before dissipating into the darkening air. A neat hole had been burned through the ground, and Vulcan Stinger's upper torso lay next to it.

The fingers on Commander Hector's left hand were scorched down to the metal skeleton, but he still disengaged his visor first before letting go of the ECHO rifle's red-hot barrel. The pain receptors in his arms were still off, and he failed to notice that his left glove was bubbling and peeling away as he stood up straight for the first time since his disgrace in the wasteland. Durandal blared familiar warnings that he completely ignored. He knew the coolant was boiling. He knew the charger rings were off balance. He only cared about that damn Maverick Leader, the one Megaman X failed to retire, lying dead on the ground. He was the better Hunter. He could exhale.

"Commander Hector!" the engineer yelled to him. "We have to get to the bomb shelter. HQ's evacuating!"

"Why?" Hector asked as he turned around, and he noticed that the sirens overhead had just become more urgent. "The Mavericks are being routed as we speak. Their leader is dead."

"Don't have time to explain, sir. Come with me!"

Hector paused for only a moment, then he nodded calmly. "Understood." He walked past the engineer, and as he did, he handed him Durandal. The reploid grabbed it without thinking, but since his pain receptors were still active, he immediately screamed and dropped the rifle as smoke rose from his palms. Grumbling under his breath, the engineer grabbed the gun by its relatively cool stock and dragged it after him toward the elevators. He eyed Hector's multitudinous bullet wounds and whistled as the doors began closing.

"Are you okay, Commander?"

"I feel much better," Hector replied.

Back on the ground, Marx was locked in one of the most intense awkward silences he had ever experienced as he and Nephtis stared at each other over the crater made by their unknown savior. She followed me all the way out here, he realized. For what? To watch out for me or her chaser? If it's the chaser, how do I begin to explain why I just rammed it up a tank's ass?

"Marx..." Nephtis began slowly, still propped up on her knees on the edge of the cliff. She opened her mouth to continue, but the cliff rumbled and pitched back toward the sea, cracking along the outline of a chunk loosened by the energy beam's impact. Nephtis was shaken off balance, and she slid over the edge of the cliff, though she managed to dig her unprotected fingers into the dirt.

"Hang on!" Marx cried, dashing onto the collapsing clifftop. He managed to keep his footing on the slanting surface, but something tripped him as he passed the crater. He tried to step over the object, but it held on and began to drag him backward.

"I don't believe this," he breathed. Vulcan Stinger, legless, tailless, clung to his leg, digging the pincers on his wrists into Marx's boots.

"I'm not going alone," Stinger growled. "Not alone. I am not the failure they said I was."

"Enough is enough, damn it!" Marx said, swinging his leg and throwing Stinger's torso down the clifftop. He plunged past Nephtis, who had nearly pulled herself up over the side, and with a flailing arm succeeded in latching onto her shoulder.

"Shit!" she cried as the struggling Maverick on her back pulled her down again. "Marx, go!" she told him, hanging onto the cliff with one hand and trying to knock her passenger off with the other. "I'm not worth it!"

Marx ran the rest of the distance, even though the chunk of rock was separating from the cliff and tilting more vertical by the second. He dug his feet in to stop himself from sliding over the edge and grabbed her hand between his legs. Kicking with all his strength, he hoisted her up until she had her waist over the side. For a moment, Nephtis wriggled her hand free from Marx's grip and reached behind her, which allowed her to take Vulcan Stinger's head in both hands and give it a vicious twist. The Maverick's neck popped and sparked, then what remained of his body fell slack.

Nephtis shrugged off the limp Maverick and allowed Marx to help her up the rest of the way. The boulder was free of the cliff now, and as they ran up the falling rock, they seemed to be making no progress. It was too far to jump, and they were running out of ground. Before they knew it, the boulder fell out from under them, and they were forced to make a leap of faith.

Marx rerouted all his power to his legs, and for a terrifying instant he couldn't hear or feel anything but the racing thoughts in his head. Not gonna make it, not gonna make it, not gonna make it...

He hit the cliff face with his chest, and he swung his arms over the side before the blow could knock him backward. He rebalanced his energy output and crawled up onto flat ground, something he wasn't sure he would ever experience again.

Marx rolled onto his side, panting, and he saw that Nephtis had done the same.

"I told you – " she started, but he cut her off.

"I don't listen to you when you're right, what makes you think I'm gonna listen to you when you're wrong?" he asked.

Nephtis didn't reply, and he noticed her dusky eyes widen as the full impact of his statement sank in. Achingly, she pushed herself upright and stumbled away from the precipice to survey the battlefield. The rest of the Maverick forces were streaming away from the HQ en masse, and their siege tanks had all been torn apart by the 8th Armored Division.

As Marx walked up behind her, Nephtis bent down to inspect a golden fin buried in the dirt. Marx stopped his approach when he saw what she was looking at, but it was too late. She whirled around, her face livid, hair billowing in wavy tangles, and she shoved him away.

"You idiot! You crashed my prototype!" she screamed.

"No, I stopped that huge freakin' tank," he corrected. "Think positive. I'm trying it out, and it's actually working pretty well."

"Ugh, seggfej!" she spat, waving her ungloved hand dismissively at him.

"That doesn't sound like Arabic," he pointed out, determined to be unfazed by her outburst.

"Hungarian. It means you're a complete asshole."

"How many languages do you know?"

"Thirty, but I know insults in eighty."

"Okay, well, I only know five, so would you just insult me in the languages I can understand? I'm a big boy, no need to soften...the..."

"What?" Nephtis snapped, glancing over her shoulder to see what had frozen Marx's tongue. She turned just in time to catch the giant thunderbolt streaking across the sky as it collided with Maverick Hunter Headquarters. The building stood still for several seconds, coursing with electricity, until explosions began to rip through the HQ at the epicenter. The fireballs expanded until most of the base was gutted, and it swayed on its trembling supports before collapsing inward in a dying cloud of smoke and debris.

"Do you have a foreign curse word for that?" Marx whispered.

"No," Nephtis said.

Mission 3 status: Failed

Maverick Leaders: Unconfirmed

Main Objective: Failed

Secondary Objective: Achieved