The common method of housing Reploids ever since their conception was to put 30 or so capsules in a circular room, said capsules meant to replenish any energy they lost during the day and to let their systems perform vital maintenance that would be easier if they weren't conscious. Unless you were really rich and had your own solar energy generator inside your house, or could deal with the strain of your non Energen based power source not being in the sky for 12 hours, this was it. This was all you could afford. If you had the cash to dole out a Recharge Capsule or two, you had the cash to buy Reploids in bulk, and the 30 capsules in a circle formation was the cheapest setup to house the bots.

Unlike many of his metal contemporaries however, Mega Man X was that rich. Well to say he was rich was an understatement. Wealthy also looked a bit weak when you looked at his bank account. The bot, to put it modern terms, was fucking loaded. The amount of Zenny he had in his chest's digital wallet was enough to pay for the Maverick Hunter's entire munitions and power bills six times over, and if the laws preventing Reploids from putting money into military or government organizations hadn't passed, then X would have been gladly penniless. All he could do was pay to maintain 's old living quarters, and that was it, and even then he didn't need to spend the money to do it. The bot was a hero,a legend! He could've gotten people to do it for free!

Shame the legend never really matched reality for some people. Officially Mega Man X was a Human-Type Reploid based on a peach-skinned Caucasian male that was the only robot to legally and rightfully bear the title of Mega Man. His cyan undersuit and thick blue armor displayed his lineage clear as day, and the red Power Crystal on his forehead combined with the cyan ridges on the front of his helmet gave him what some would call a permanently angry look. That was great and all when you saw him on TV or online fighting the good fight, and you can imagine him being a tall, imposing robot, saving humanity and Reploid alike from the tyranny of the Mavericks.

If you ever asked him for his opinion on the matter, he would say without a doubt he wished he was that tall. He was 5'2" and looked like a 14 year old boy, and he could tell you from experience that it was a major punch in the gut for those meeting him in person. And when you took into account the simplicity of his design and his height, he looked even more childish compared to the powerhouse bots being built today. A typical Reploid of the modern era was very busy in their design compared to the ancient robots of yesteryear. They had multiple vents visible on their person, like for example a female Reploid whose skirt doubled as them, in order for them to cool down their internal systems faster. X had none of those.

Typical Reploid powerhouses required numerous Power Gems on their person to facilitate the usage of their abilities, and X's simplistic, two tone armor often gave enemy and ally alike reason to think that he was incredibly weak. He didn't even have a single vent on him, for god's sake! OH but they were wrong…and they learned very fast why.

What many didn't understand was that X wasn't poorly built, everyone else was, he was just built to be incredibly, unrealistically efficient. And like many killers of the innocent that faced him in the past, they were going to learn to never judge a bot by their chassis.

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{CURRENT TIME: 9:24 A.M. UNIT 17 CAPSULE SCAN COMPLETE. UNLOCKING RESTRAINING BOLTS.} The automated alert announced over the intercom in a monotone, genderless voice. {17TH UNIT HAS BEEN CLEARED FOR ACTIVE DUTY.}

The capsule doors slid open, and while the Reploids in them were slowly booting up, they just bought online a few days ago after all, With a loud yawn, X used his large hands, an indicative feature of the Reploid race, to grip the sides of his bed in order to lift himself up. The 5'2 hero stood up with a yawn, the cables plugged into his back detaching one by one. As his optics came online, the ports on his back quickly snapped shut, hiding away his inner workings.

With another yawn, X rubbed his eyes. It was a needless motion, as he was already aware of his surroundings the second his OS booted up, but mental exhaustion was a thing he was very much susceptible to. Any other Reploid would just close their eyes, open up a file, and go into Sleep Mode for a couple seconds, and their exhaustion and boredom would be gone. Mega Man X was not like most Reploids, however. Then again, he wasn't a Reploid at all. Not that many people knew that, and X planned to keep it that way.

'Today's the day.' He thought as his combat subroutines activated and put themselves on standby. Grogginess was another thing other robots didn't have the 'luxury' of experiencing. The only time they could experience something similar is if their internal batteries were around 10% or lower, but unlike him, they had an easy fix: go into Sleep Mode, take an hour or two off inside a Capsule, and go on their merry way.

He wished it was that easy for him. Shame that wasn't the case anymore. He lumbered out of the capsule and onto the smooth metal floor as the rest of the Reploids in the room slowly rose up from their resting places, as stiff and inhuman as any other Newbuilt. X, by contrast, looked like a slovenly drunk.

For the Newbuilts, this was their first day away from home, fresh out of the factory, gift wrapped to the Maverick Hunters, with X having free reign to do with them as he desired, whether it be as bodies on a battlefield, or as a chair or table; they have no choice.

Luckily for them he wasn't that type of bot, as many former 17th Unit troops could tell you. In reality, it was a once in a lifetime chance, for the Blue Bomber to flex his waning political power, that basically gave these, for lack of a better word, infants with guns, their freedom, something X delightfully took advantage of whenever the government overseers were hard up enough to bribe. Shame he couldn't even do that anymore.

Despite the fact that they were only 6 days old, their AI's were quick to adapt to their new life, and they were quickly getting used to the customs of the civilians they were going to interact with if they lived and emulating human-like speech and patterns to better acclimate to civilian life should they choose to do so. God he hoped they did, they were too young for this. You'd think they would come fresh out of the metaphorical box with that knowledge pre-installed into them, or maybe have the basic Human Animation Preset ready to load up a moment's notice, but that wasn't the case, not with the current council. X was just lucky they didn't blow up from overheating like the last batch. The poor children that had to witness that were probably traumatized.

Thankfully these bots were built properly, and didn't seem to suffer from a Neural Delay like the last few. They were very quick on the uptake, probably because they were expected to do their job instead of being walking talking targets, and that meant X didn't have to waste time playing parent for the 44th time in a row. Caring for five human children was enough, and watching twenty metal ones short circuit or fry their brains was a bridge too far.

"Coffee.." X grumbled, feeling the gazes of the Newbuilts on his back as they lined up at the door, awaiting his orders. Thankfully he already had their schedules pre-written the day before during initiation, and as he wandered towards the communication room, he uploaded the data to their helmets. He heard them salute and shout 'SIR YES SIR!' and their heavy footsteps left the room as the door closed.

There was once a time that X thought that emulating human behavior would be living up to his creator's vision for him, that doing so would show humans that he was just like them. Four wars and 10s of millions of deaths later, he just wished he could turn those off.

…This coffee wasn't doing anything. With a grumble, X exited his barracks and crushed the Styrofoam cup in his giant hand and put it in the trash outside. Being that his AI was meant to emulate human mannerisms, a necessity to give his sentience a grounding mechanism for him to lose any undesirable traits that were consistent in burgeoning AI, such as fragments of hard unshakeable logic dictating parts of every action he took for example, it was remarkably easy for him to blend into human society all those years ago, non removable armor notwithstanding, back when he felt like the teenager he saw every time he looked in the mirror.

Doctor Cain, as well as many of the Maverick Hunter human brass in the early days of the organization, before they stopped caring about the endless fighting, often told him that keeping your humanity in their line of work was tougher than the killing. Once you started, it got easier and easier. But by contrast, it becomes harder and harder to care about the lives you snuff out.

And unfortunately for X, he found that he cared too much in his long career of mass murder. He also found that it was much better to care. Better to care and have a soul than to be a monster and have none.

Getting out of the elevator, he found himself on the first floor of the Hunter Base. which was also filled to the brim with humans, countless refugees that he managed to save 8 years back.

He saluted and waved to the various humans that passed him by, his mind completely checked out as he walked into the nearest elevator and headed down. The fact that the words 'oh god they're still alive?' didn't cross his mind filled him with far more relief than it should have, given the company the Hunters were forced to keep. The fact that those words rarely crossed his mind during these semi peaceful times should have been an incredible weight off his shoulders, but with what they're going to do today, he felt like those words were going to come back to the forefront of his mind. Unlike a Maverick, Yōma rarely leave enough of their victims to bring home to their families.

He couldn't get PTSD in the way humans could, but he could *definitely* tell you he had problems with paranoia.

"Why yes, you're very paranoid. It's good to be paranoid in this day and age." It took an incredible amount of restraint for X not to form his Buster in front of all these civilians. The woman behind him gently put a hand on his shoulder, her tone neutral, but the aura she gave off was anything but. "Let's talk."

"Reki…" X kept his face neutral as he walked to the elevator, the woman following him as he closed the door and pressed up. "How did you get in here?"