Megaman X: Elysium Rising
Final Mission: Delete the Maverick Virus
Chapter 39: The X Factor
By Genoscythe
AN: A lot of shockingly improbable things have happened since September 14, 2006, almost exactly four years ago today. A relatively young black man was elected in an office previously dominated by eccentric old white men, a film starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Ludgren, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger somehow came out boring, and Genoscythe finished another chapter of Elysium Rising. Who the hell could've predicted that one? I certainly didn't, but I think the guilt over leaving this story unfinished has been piling up over the years, and now I'd rather just buckle down and finish the thing rather than continue to live with the shame. At the very least, I can make another effort. We're close. I don't know if anybody from the old days still cares, or if anybody still wants to read Megaman X fanfiction at all (after all, it's been even longer since the last X game was released than it took for me to finish this chapter), but just in case someone does, here's Megaman X: Elysium Rising chapter 39. Enjoy.
"X…" It was the most soothing voice X had ever heard, and to his surprise, it wasn't Alia's.
"Who…?" X tried to open his eyes, but they steadfastly refused. However, even with his eyes closed he could see a faint blue shimmering amidst the darkness.
"Our struggle has come full circle," the weathered voice mused, and X was able to pinpoint the source as somewhere inside his head.
"What do you mean? Why can't I open my eyes?" X groaned, trying to move and predictably finding his limbs locked. It was then that he realized he wasn't actually talking, but thinking the words.
"We need to talk, and I would like you to not be distracted," the voice asserted, and confused as X was he began to understand.
"Dad?"
The crystalline light focused into the shape of a stout old man. "Hello, X. It has been awhile."
"Is it true?" X jumped in immediately. He had longed for this conversation, and the list of questions in his head were begging to be answered. "The Elysians gave you the knowledge to build reploids?"
Dr. Light's avatar chuckled. "No, no. I scrapped that design immediately."
X felt his heart soar. One of the burdens that had been weighing him down was the notion that Dr. Light wasn't truly responsible for his creation. The thought that Elysium wasn't omnipotent did much to boost his morale. "So you knew it was them?"
Dr. Light's brow furrowed. "I did not. But your original design was alien – cycloptic, very much like these Reaverbots you've been fighting. You were a fleshless, bloodless machine. An incredibly advanced machine, but still…it wasn't what I had in mind for the future of the robot race."
"So I was just another Reaverbot to them. They wanted me to be a tool," X concluded grimly.
"Yes, but the Elysians are still using you as one. They have played on your heartstrings and you have been dancing accordingly."
"Father…" Before X could explain himself, Dr. Light plowed on.
"Please hear me out, X. It shames me to think that you believe I am reprimanding you for being too kind. No, X, that is by far your greatest quality. The Elysians told you that you were to be sacrificed, and it actually galvanized you! My son, kindness can never be faulted."
"Then what is it?" X asked. "What did I do wrong?"
"Nothing that you could have changed," Light told him reassuringly. "But this is as far as Genoscythe's plan extends – you are, if I may, an X factor. And you are not alone. The others have survived. Selene and Axl are still in disguise, Alia has barricaded herself in the command room, and Marx and Nephtis have been rebuilt as Elysians."
"What?" X gasped. "Marx and Nephtis are alive?"
"And traversing the bowels of Elysium, him as a Purifier and her as a Mother unit."
"That's great!" X felt within him the sensation of old – everything was clear-cut again. He knew who he was fighting, and he knew who was on his side. "Wait, what about Zero?"
The image of Dr. Light turned away.
"Dad, what about Zero?"
"I don't know."
"You know about everybody else!"
Dr. Light sighed. "I don't know which way Zero will turn. He's on the edge – he may give in to the virus or he may be able to fight it off. I don't want to be pessimistic, but it appears that he does not have much time before he must make a decision."
"He's fought it off in the past," X argued.
"But he has never been able to conquer it, and all this time the virus has been building up strength. His dam may yet break. Keep in mind, you could clash with him again."
"What can I do to stop it?"
Dr. Light whipped back, determination glowing from his blurred face. "The only thing you can do right now is find Nephtis and Marx. I believe they are just now testing the limits of their new abilities."
Marx insisted on taking the lead, ostensibly because he was the one wearing armor. Nephtis would have been annoyed, but such an emotion couldn't compete with her relief at being alive again. Marx could play the tough guy all he wanted; she was satisfied just breathing again.
Of course, it was hard to relax knowing what she did about the factions of Elysium. How the Omegas, who were supposedly on their side, were actually infected with the Genocide Virus, progenitor of the Maverick virus, and intent on purging humanity. How the Alphas were merely trying to give them a fresh start. And now it seemed that the Omegas had won, thanks to a certain Megaman X.
"Turn left," Nephtis commanded, and Marx dutifully obeyed.
"So, where are we going? Y'know, since you just said all of Elysium is out to get us," he pointed out.
"We're going to the one person who isn't out to get us, and she's probably worse off than we are," she answered. "It's Alia. She's locked in the Omegas' command center, and they're sending Reaverbots to kill her."
You're almost there, Alia's thoughts fed directly into Nephtis's. But so are they.
While communicating with both Marx and Alia, she tried to listen in on the enemy's transmissions and found that it was surprisingly easy to do all three of these things at once. However, the Elysians seemed to be speaking in code, which was disturbing because that meant they knew she was eavesdropping.
"The Elysians keep talking about 'chameleons'," Nephtis told Marx and Alia. "That's the only word I can understand."
Same here. I think they're talking about Selene and Axl, Alia suggested.
"I was hoping that would be obviou – Marxlookout!"
Marx jumped back, pushing her protectively behind him. He could not see the Reaverbots marching around the corner, but Nephtis could feel them just as she felt her own limbs shaking.
"What?" he hissed quietly.
"Just because I don't have any armor or weapons doesn't mean I can't defend myself," she snapped, ignoring his question.
"Oh, come on. I know how tough you are, but you're going a little too far to prove it to yourself."
Nephtis sighed, closing her eyes. In spite of the tense situation, Marx felt a chill run up his neck at the sensation of her breath on his skin. Before he could stop her, she slipped out from behind him just as a row of Reaverbots turned the next corner. Marx raised his buster, but Nephtis held it down.
"What are you doing?" he cried, but she did not hear. Nephtis felt each Reaverbot, and the Reaverbots seemed to know it. They stood at attention, with their buster arms lowered and their shields put aside. She raised her arm, and they whipped off passable salutes with their busters.
"I told you, I can take care of myself," Nephtis insisted.
"Did you just…give us a fighting chance?" Marx asked, awestruck. The Reaverbots bowed in reply.
"It's like moving a finger. They're a part of me," she explained wistfully.
"Cool. Maybe this little finger puppet army of yours can help us rescue Alia," he suggested, dry appreciation in his voice. Nephtis smiled, and turned the formation of machines around with a twitch of her thoughts.
"I knew this body couldn't be completely useless."
"Can it take over other Reaverbots?"
Nephtis swept her arms back and forth experimentally, as if reaching out to feel for the presence of other minions. "Nope. At least, none of the ones farther away. The Mother unit in charge of these Reaverbots is on the other side of Elysium. It looks like they get harder to command the more distant they are, and it doesn't help that she's half-crazy."
"Are they all like that?" said Marx.
"No," Nephtis replied as they continued toward the command center. "Some of them are completely crazy."
Nephtis? They're at the door! Alia mentally cried out.
"Shit," she replied, taking off at a sprint past her new minions. Marx eyed the handful of docile Reaverbots warily before following suit. He expected the machines to turn on him any second – how did they know this wasn't an Elysian trap? Both Marx and Nephtis had already been taking their new bodies for granted, and perhaps they weren't as strong as they thought.
As Marx turned the last corner, he found it to be quite the opposite. Nephtis stood, tensed, in front of another row of Reaverbots. Their barrel-shaped bodies and battering-ram arms hovered just as motionless as she did. When it was clear that the Reaverbots weren't a threat, Nephtis relaxed, and the siege machines parted before her on cue.
"Just when I think I'm better than you at something..." Marx muttered, spinning the barrel of his now-superfluous buster. The tan woman flashed him a wry grin, and they walked up to the pocked doorway side by side. It slid open – laboriously, due to the Reaverbots' remodeling job – with a wave of Nephtis's hand.
"Ham sandwich!" Alia shrieked, poised on the other side of the door and clutching Darius in her outstretched hands. He warbled pleasantly at the sight of his owners, even though one of Alia's fingers was obscuring his right eye.
"Hi, Alia," Marx said.
"Ham...sandwich?" she repeated, lowering the metool and straightening her posture.
"Good thing we opened that door instead of your new fanclub, huh?" he asked, walking past her and patting her on the shoulder.
Nephtis filed in after him, and leaned in toward Alia's ear as she scooped Darius out of her stricken fingers. "I'm partial to turkey, actually."
"I knew it," Alia said. "I knew I screwed that up somehow."
"Like Marx said, you got lucky this time. So did we."
Alia leaned out of the doorway and scanned the growing mob of Reaverbots condensing in the hall. "Yeah. This time."
"If I had to take a guess, I'd say you can do it too," Marx said, now hunched over the main security console.
"Do what?" Alia asked.
"Control the Reaverbots," Nephtis answered. "It's quite easy. You spend most of your time telling people what to do anyway, so you should be better at it than I am."
Marx glanced up from the console for a brief moment, but he did a double take when he saw what was happening through the open doorway. "Akila? Is there some reason you're clogging the hall with pet 'bots?"
Nephtis turned around and followed the trail of Marx's gaze. The Reaverbot assembly was almost too thick to see through, and all types had gathered outside the Hunters' control room. Marx hadn't put much thought into his fan club remark, but at the moment, they really did give the impression of waiting for autographs.
"That's not me," she murmured. Alia, however, gave them both a sheepish shrug.
"You're right, it is easy. I didn't even realize I was doing it."
"Did you just...win the war for us?" Marx asked, even more cowed than before. Alia diverted her attention from the Reaverbot army and joined him at the console.
"Before we talk about winning anything, we need to find X and the others," she said. "We don't have much time. Eden has all the cards now, and once we're in orbit, he can begin the Carbon Re-initialization Program."
"Once it starts, how much time do we have?"
"Twenty minutes before the pylons are aligned and the wipers are running," Nephtis put in.
"Wipers? Why do you two know so much more about this than I do?"
"The vaporization beam emitters on the pylons. They're designed to wipe out any nearby Carbons," Alia answered.
"And because we're Mother units, while you, my love, are just a lowly Purifier." Nephtis followed up by playfully biting his neck, under pretense of getting a closer look at the monitors.
"So it's because you're women."
"Yes," Alia said.
"Exactly," Nephtis emphasized.
"I guess I got the short end of the deal with all the armor and weapons and junk."
"It looks that way," Alia said.
"Undoubtedly," Nephtis agreed.
"Fantastic."
Sigma paced Eden's control chamber, occasionally stopping to lean out of the hole blasted in the wall and gazing at the artificial sky projected above them. Purifier Delta hung motionless in his cradle of wires, seemingly unaware of the hulking Maverick's existence. This bothered Sigma, so he attempted to rectify the situation.
"When will we be in orbit?"
"We'll get there when we get there," Delta replied instantaneously. "And this is not a road trip, so if you ask again, I will have you thrown out of that nice, neat hole you helped make for Megaman X."
"Forgive my impatience," Sigma began, smirking. "It's just that I've waited a century for this moment, and I find it difficult to wait any longer."
"Don't talk to me about centuries, Sigma. You have no concept of time until you've made it through your first millennium."
Sigma's grin flipped, and he turned his back on Eden. "I expected more co-operation from you, Eden. We're on the same page, after all. Your plan for wiping out the human race? I suggested the same thing to the old Eden before you contacted me."
"Congratulations."
"There's only one part of the plan I want cleared up," Sigma said, deflecting the sarcasm and staring again at the motionless Elysian. "Will the Carbon Re-initialization Program damage the planet, or will it only target humans?"
"Sigma, please. I need to concentrate on the tasks at hand, not indulge your Oedipus complex."
"What did you say?" Sigma barked, taking two menacing steps forward. "I think you have your terms confused."
"I know exactly what an Oedipus complex is, and I know you have it bad. You want to murder your father so you can be with your mother. Your father, in this case, is Humanity, for creating you on a conceptual level. Your mother, the Earth, supplied her bountiful raw materials – neosteel, copper, energen – and, with the help of your father's vision, birthed the entire reploid race. Now, at the moment, Mother Earth is completely in love with Humanity, although there are signs of domestic abuse around. She'll never love you as long as Humanity is there, despite all the wars and environmental degradation going on. She'll say she just fell down the stairs. She bumped her head on a cabinet. She won't admit that it's a bad relationship. Which leaves you, the dutiful son, the task of vaporizing your father and giving your mother the treatment you think she deserves."
"You know nothing about my motives," Sigma growled, though he was more shaken than he wanted to let on.
"And you understand metaphor almost as poorly as you understand time," Delta chided. "But fear not, Oedipus. There will still be enough of your planet left for you to plow once the Genocide Program is complete."
"You're sick," Sigma spat.
"Hey, you're the one with the complex. I'm just putting it into words."
Before Sigma could retort, the main entrance opened and Tempest swept up to the Maverick leader's shadow. Stealth Claw had entered with him, but he chose to post himself by the door to facilitate a quick exit.
"I've been meaning to speak with you, Tempest," Delta said.
"Read my mind, huh?" Tempest replied, clicking his mandibles. "I still get to go first."
"I have a feeling we both want to discuss the same thing."
Tempest lifted one of his incongruous arms, welded messily to the stump of his left arm and the socket of his right. Not only was his right arm shorter than the left, it dangled uselessly at his side. While reports on the outlaw had often described his methods as surgical, Tempest turned out to be terrible at real surgery.
"It occurs to me that your killer instincts would fit well in a Reaverbot's body," Delta told him.
"I was just gonna ask for better arms."
"You would rather have the body. Trust me."
"Is this one of those 'looks-like-a-choice-but-really-isn't' kind of deals?" Tempest rubbed his jagged chin with twitching, unresponsive fingers. "I like my body."
"Yeah, this is one of those deals," Delta said with finality. "When not under direct control from a Mother unit, Reaverbots tend to become feral. I want to see what we can do with a fully sentient Reaverbot."
"And you're making me the guinea pig?"
"There's not much else I can do with you." If Delta's face had been visible, Tempest was sure he could have seen a smile there. It enraged him, but the truth put a damper on his fury. There wasn't much else he could do, in his current state. Even if Delta weren't protected by a force field, Tempest could barely get his left hand to stop jittering long enough to strangle the smug bastard with it.
"Okay," the criminal said. "But I'd better be a goddamn terror after this. I'm serious. I want biblical amounts of destruction at my fingertips."
"I knew you had the right mind for the job."
"And I want the bitch that took away my arms in the first place."
"Good, because that's exactly what we need you to take care of for us."
"Why haven't you dealt with them already?" Sigma snarled. "I thought the Maverick Hunters trusted you."
"Most of them are no longer Maverick Hunters. They've been reborn as Elysians, and I thought it would be just as easy to spread my influence to them as it was to the rest of Elysium."
"But it wasn't," he said.
"No, and before you ask, I don't know why. Something is preventing me from influencing their – "
"Just say infecting," Sigma cut in. "No need for pretensions. You are carrying a computer virus, and they're immune."
"Fine," Delta snapped. "They're immune to the Genocide Virus, but they can still access our hive mind. They know what's happened."
"Well, give me a killer new body, and I can take care of that for you," Tempest interjected, tapping his foot impatiently. He had gotten used to the idea of being a Reaverbot, mostly because he enjoyed the name and all its deathly connotations.
"I can do better than that," the new Eden told him. "You. Reploid by the door."
Stealth Claw's ears swiveled forward, and he pushed off of the wall he had been leaning against.
"What is it? Sir?" he asked, unsure where he stood in the Elysium hierarchy, or even what their leaders liked to be called.
"You're no good to me in your current form. I'm giving you a Reaverbot body as well."
"It's not like mine, is it?" Tempest asked.
"You're in no position to feel entitled to anything, outlaw. Is this understood, Reploid by the Door?"
Stealth Claw didn't know what to say. He was so far out of his depth in the Elysian civil war that all he really wanted was to go home. He wanted to be with Mystic. He didn't even care if there were humans around anymore. He would have given anything to feel her buried in his fur again.
Which was why he believed, at first, that the blonde reploid that walked through the doorway next to him was a figment of his desperate imagination. Then, Tread Havoc lumbered in after her, and he concluded that under no circumstances would he want to imagine a schizophrenic two-legged tank in the room with his beloved. It had to be real.
"Mystic," Claw murmured, too shocked by her proximity and her red dress to say more. It was wrinkled and dirty by now, but his weariness and his love for her willed the imperfections out of existence. He felt ready to collapse, either at her feet or anywhere in the vicinity.
"I found her wandering the maintenance halls," Havoc explained. "She's been separated from the Maverick Hunters for some time."
"Pyre Mystic, a spy and protege of one of our late commanders," Sigma told Delta, by way of introduction. "She will make an adequate guinea pig, since she has turned out to be such a useless assassin."
"I what?" Mystic mumbled, gazing achingly at Stealth Claw. She slowly advanced toward him. "Love, what are they talking about?" she asked him, her voice hushed.
"See what I mean?" Sigma said.
"There are plenty of Kamarahan shells for all of you," Delta announced. "Even you, Oedipus."
"Call me that again, and I'll..."
"What? Menace me to death?"
Sigma realized that he had been subconsciously extending one of his clawed gauntlets toward Delta, and the tips of his three machete-sized claws had been burned away by Eden's force field. With a grunt, Sigma took a step back and whipped around to address his minions.
"You heard Eden. You'll be piloting Reaverbot shells until our mission is complete."
"But..." Mystic began, and she gripped Stealth Claw's paw for support. "I'm not cut out for that kinda thing."
"You've never been very good at following orders, so I'll make this simple," Sigma snarled. He approached Mystic and curled his recently-manicured gauntlet around her waist. "Wherever the guards go, you go with them. Whatever they do to you, you let them do it. Otherwise, the rest of your life will be brief and full of agony. Is that simple enough?"
Mystic's eyes lit up with tears, and Claw gave her hand a squeeze. "We'll do it," he said to Sigma.
"You've proven yourself a valuable soldier, Claw," the Maverick leader said. "See that it gets done."
Stealth Claw shot Pyre Mystic a reassuring glance once Sigma turned his back, and the chill in her mechanical limbs started to dissipate. Their bond no longer required words, and the unspoken agreement was that neither of them would be 'piloting' a Kamarahan, nor would the rest of their lives be brief or full of agony. Neither one had a plan, and they knew it, but they had each other, and at the moment, that seemed like enough.
Axl trudged down another empty corridor, propping Selene up with his shoulder as they searched for a familiar face in the endless gray labyrinth.
"How will we know if they're one of ours?" Axl asked his partner.
"We'll know if they try to kill us," she replied. Axl's copy DNA had faded, although Selene's disguise generator, designed to simply project an illusion rather than alter its user's abilities, remained functional. They didn't expect the Alphas to hesitate for long if they saw an enemy reploid dragging a wounded Elysian around, but it was the only meager advantage left up their sleeves.
"You wouldn't happen to remember the way back to the Omegas' side of the island, would you?" Axl asked.
"I don't even know which direction we're going in right now," Selene muttered. "My compass is malfunctioning."
"Mine, too. I thought it was just me."
"Why hasn't anyone contacted us?" Selene mused. "Genoscythe knows we can't find our way around this place without directions."
"I called X, but he's not responding."
"Do you think they failed?"
"No," Axl said, shaking his head. "Not X."
They arrived at a door and, feeling exposed in the long hallway, Axl pulled it open and they threw themselves inside. The room was dark, but large, flickering blue screens along the high walls provided an ethereal illumination. In the center of the room, a miniature ziggurat pocked with glowing red eyes and matching circuitry rose up to meet the monitors above them. A dark metal sphere hovered at the ziggurat's peak, and to Axl's dismay, it swiveled around to reveal a pointed, cycloptic head jutting from its side.
"Damn it, not again," he muttered. "Can't we get a break?"
The Reaverbot's eye lit up in negative response, and it fired a thin beam that would have sliced through both Selene and Axl had they not pushed off of each other at the last instant. Two pincer-like hands descended from the ceiling, hovering around the Reaverbot's body before launching at the reploids and pinning them to the ground.
Selene screamed as the pincer closed on her wounded chest plate, but the pressure stopped as the door opened again.
"One break, comin' up!" a familiar voice cackled, followed immediately by a rush of hot air and the piercing whine of a laser cannon. Selene felt the Reaverbot's pincer arm go slack, and she shoved it off as quickly as she could. The machine's smoldering body rolled down the steps of the ziggurat, and came to rest in front of their savior.
"I was excited for just a second, there," Axl groaned. "Until I realized it was you, Malakai."
The ropy Elysian lowered his beam rifle and shoved the large Reaverbot away with his foot. "Man, if you only knew how excited you should be to see me instead of, I dunno, anyone else."
"What do you mean?" Selene asked.
"You don't know, do you?" Malakai asked, and Selene noticed for the first time that he wasn't wearing a helmet, and that half of his curtain of black hair had been shaved off. The bare half of his head was lined with cuts and sealed with thumb-sized bolts. "I guess you wouldn't know, or else you would've tried to shoot me by now."
"Wait, first tell us what happened to you," she said.
"Jeez. Too many questions. Can you, possibly, take a chill capsule while I work through these one at a time?"
"Whatever Genoscythe did to you, it obviously hasn't done too much for your personality," she said.
"Funny you should say that," Malakai said, loping casually to the ziggurat and sitting down on the bottom step. "I found a way around that. Reaverbot bashed me in the head, gave me an idea. Escaped from the battle. Did a little self brain surgery. Just thinking about it almost killed me, but I didn't care. I was pissed. I wanted my brain back, or I wanted to die trying."
"So...you're back to your original self?" Axl asked.
"I don't get my insides torn up every time I try to do something Delta doesn't like. That's close enough, right?"
"But you were an Alpha before," Selene pointed out.
"You're about to tell us this is a trap, and we have to come with you or else you'll give us really bad haircuts, right?" Axl said.
"Ordinarily, yeah. But now it's too late. The Alphas lost. Delta's taken over, and he got the whole System as part of the deal. If it weren't for all the shit I scraped out of my head, I'd be in it too."
"X was supposed to take over Eden," Selene interjected.
"Yeah, that was one of the many lies I wasn't allowed to warn you guys about," Malakai grunted. "Now I'm completely cut off, and you're probably the only people here who won't shoot me on sight."
"What happened to X?" Axl asked, terror slowly creeping up his neosteel spine. Genoscythe had betrayed them. X wasn't answering his comm. There weren't many ways to interpret that kind of evidence.
"Damned if I know," Malakai said, and Axl's hopes fell further. "The plan was to kill him after he helped Delta get past Eden's shields. I didn't find out if they went through with it or not."
"Then we have to help him!" the young reploid exclaimed. "If he's still alive, he'll need it."
"Who died and put you in charge, kid?" Malakai snapped, though his tone was more weary and less acidic than it used to be. "Your first mistake is assuming that X is still alive. Your second mistake is trying to order me around. Your third mistake is thinking that, even if X is alive, we could do anything to help him. Your fourth mistake is trying to order me around."
"I think he's got some brain damage," Selene remarked.
"Maybe you didn't notice, Tiny Tits, but I really hate being ordered around." Malakai got to his feet on wobbly legs, and pointed his beam rifle arm at the door. "We're still in the Security Block. Our best chance right now is to get back to the command center. Even if they've taken Alia, we should still be able to find some of our stuff there."
"Then what?" Axl asked, following Malakai as he walked out the door. The black-clad Elysian looked back at him.
"Then we murder the son of a bitch who tried to order me around."
X woke to find himself slumped against a cracked marble wall in the gardens of Elysium. Somehow, he expected to wake up in Dr. Light's lab, a place he had never seen with his own eyes, yet a place that seemed to be woven into the very fabric of his mind. Part of the feeling came from the sense that Dr. Light was still with him.
"X..." Light's disembodied voice echoed. "I have finished analyzing traces of the computer virus that the Elysians carry. It is just as I hoped."
"You knew about Genoscythe's virus?" X said aloud, then shut his mouth sheepishly despite the fact that he was alone in the garden.
"They wanted me to program it into you, actually," he said, chuckling. "A complex behavior modifier that could transmit to other machines. I didn't know what it meant, but it sounded dangerous to me. I retooled the code into...well, I suppose you could say it became me."
"You're a virus?" X gasped. The warm wave of nostalgia he had been riding seemed like it was about to break.
"No," Dr. Light said with another fatherly chuckle. "But I can transmit copies of myself to other machines. For instance, all of your friends."
"You're in all of them?"
"Yes, I was even transferred along with the minds of your allies when they were turned into Elysians. I installed myself before you all left, as a safety precaution. And, since I know so much about this virus's code, I can protect you from it."
X stood up. Despite all his previous injuries, he felt perfectly limber and refreshed.
"I can also lead you back to your friends, if you are ready."
He gazed at the false sunset burning overhead. "We don't have much time, do we?"
"Hardly any at all, X."
"Then I'm ready."
Mistress Yuna waited patiently at the vault door to the Master's displacement prison as the locks hissed and clicked open one by one. According to Eden, the Master was no longer conflicted over his place in the System, and he was eager to join him in the main tower. However, the Master was having some trouble remembering the way, so it fell upon Yuna to lead him once the vault was open. Mistress Yuna didn't mind. She was just glad the System had been reunified after so many years of conflict.
The displacement prison gave a final shudder, then the vault slid apart. Out of the blinding orange sunlight, a tall, long-haired figure emerged. A blue robe was draped over his crimson armor, and the neat hole burned through the center of the robe occasionally snagged on the corners of his chest plate.
"Welcome back, Master," Yuna said, bowing her head so that she could see nothing but the floor. "I hope you had a pleasant time away from all that unpleasantness."
"Thank you, Yuna," he replied. He reached out, tilting her chin up and paternally stroking her cheek with bloodstained white gloves. "I hear I'm needed at the tower."
"I'll take you there right away, Master," she said, flashing her PR smile and clutching his hand. The vault behind him began to ease shut, but before it did, Yuna caught a glimpse of an empty shell lying on the steps of the Master's temple. It had long, green hair and a gash burnt into its chest. She ignored it and began leading the Master by the hand toward his destiny.
End of Chapter 39
P.S. I will award 500 Genobucks to the first person who can spot the Van Halen reference in this chapter. Also, if you're looking for a good time and you've happened to play the FPS horror F.E.A.R, one of the only two fanfics that I've actually finished (and the only one of those two that I'm actually proud of) is a F.E.A.R. spoof called Origins. I suppose it's not essential to have played the game, but you'll otherwise be kinda lost and you'll miss out on some inside jokes. Anyway, give it a look while you're waiting for the next chapter, since it could very well be another Presidential term before it comes out.