Author's note: I subscribe to the theory that Zero has very little empathy. This stems in large part from his Wilybot origins: Wily didn't value that trait much in an absolute sense, and definitely didn't value it in a warbot designed to be the Destroyer of Worlds.
This presents a bit of a paradox. One-on-one combat, in all its varied forms, is based largely on reading your opponent's intentions. Anticipating their actions is a vital way to get an edge, to act earlier, to see through bluffs and feints, to sense vulnerability. You can do this a little bit without empathy—e.g. seeing someone raising their sword over their head—but it gives you almost no margin for error. Given this, Zero would seem to be operating under a fatal handicap.
What saves him? Two things. The less important is an aggressive style that dictates his opponents' actions. Bring your opponent into lethal danger fast enough and you can reduce their choices to zero (heh) before they can choose something surprising. The more important factor: a response time that's just that darn fast.
Think about it. X and Zero are both virtually unbeatable in combat. X manages it by modeling his opponents so completely that he can scope out all their possible actions and anticipate which they'll make, then counter appropriately. Zero is able to approximate that effect with reflexes alone.
You know, in case he wasn't scary enough.
Five hundred games in, Zero found janken-pon more confounding than ever.
He'd gotten more proficient at the mechanics of it. He and X had matched their rhythms so that they no longer needed to say the words; they just shook their hands and went. That sped things up, allowing them to accumulate games in a hurry.
No, it was the results of those games that were driving Zero to distraction.
A game of pure chance should not allow anyone to win consistently. It was unreasonable to expect a pure 50-50 distribution, and it was common for an early leader to maintain a lead in terms of number of games even as their winning percentage decayed. Zero would have had no trouble if X was leading, say, 270-230 or something like that.
Instead, X was winning 372-128, an absurd percentage, and that percentage wasn't moving much.
"Again," Zero demanded.
"This is really the last round," said X. "I mean it this time—I'm due on patrol soon. Best two out of three."
Zero nodded his assent, and focused.
Jan-ken-pon!
Jan-ken-pon!
"I don't understand!" exploded Zero.
"I'm sorry," said X, chasing a short-lived smile off his face. "If I knew this was going to upset you so much I wouldn't have brought it up."
"It's not like that," said Zero, teeth grinding together. "I'm not upset about…"
"About…?"
Zero couldn't find the words. He changed tacks. "Are there any more rules to this game?"
"No," said X.
"And you're sure it's not a reflexes game?"
The corner of X's mouth twitched upwards. "I'm sure."
"Then it's random, right? It's really well-and-truly random. But…" Zero put a hand to his helmet. "…if it's random, I can't be losing this badly!"
X squirmed a little bit. Zero caught this instantly. "What is it?" he demanded.
X looked like he didn't really want to speak, but he did. "It's only really random if you only do it once in a while," he said. "Or if you only do it once, or with different people. Once you start doing a few games with the same person, it's not random anymore. It can't go back to being random, either."
Zero tried to understand this. It went poorly.
X noticed. "I'll try to help you get it. One more game—just one, then I have to go on patrol."
Zero nodded vigorously—anything that could help narrow the lead X had over him. He closed his eyes and reexamined the problem. There was no 'right' solution. Each of the options had equal probabilities of winning and losing. Nothing—augh, it was painful to admit this—nothing Zero could do could make one of the choices better than either of the others. They were all the same. That was why his record should be closing. Maybe that would start now, and X's streak of impossible luck would normalize.
Zero opened his eyes, fixing X with his best "target acquired" stare. "Ready," he said.
Jan. Zero focused intently on X's hand.
Ken. His own hand was tightly clenched.
Pon! A dramatic, flourishing reveal.
And a rush of disbelief and disappointment.
X had chosen rock. He'd won. Again.
"I don't understand," said Zero.
"Here's your hint," X said, smiling. "You always start with scissors."
He turned and walked away. Zero's eyes were pointed in X's direction, but they were unseeing, unfocused. It shouldn't matter what he started with, he thought bitterly. It shouldn't make a difference. The odds were 50/50 no matter what, weren't they?
There was no subtlety, no hidden art to this stupid game; there were no synergies or clever combinations. It was embarrassingly shallow. It was just probability, wasn't it?
Wasn't it?
Zero hardly knew where his feet were taking him. When he came to his senses, he was entering the armory. That made sense. Few things made him feel better than weapons. He could do to feel better.
The door opened.
His saber was in his hand in a moment. He bent into a lunge automatically.
He cut himself off; he had to catch himself, one-handed, while extinguishing his saber.
"What was that about?" said a Hunter nervously. The Hunter had stumbled away and dropped what he'd been doing.
Zero rose again, tried to reassess. The Hunter was stripping and servicing busters. Zero had reacted to the barrel of the buster being raised in his direction when the action had, in fact, been quite innocent.
"You're not actually a threat," Zero said. "I won't kill you."
"Thanks?" said the Hunter, voice quavering.
Zero could almost feel X's voice prodding him. He decided he had to explain. "It looked like you had a weapon pointed in my direction. That's the third most dangerous thing you could have done."
"The third?" said the Hunter. He pushed the buster across the table so it was far away from him. "You nearly killed me over the third most dangerous thing?"
Zero frowned. Explaining himself was hard. "I didn't 'nearly kill you'," he said. "I had at least two more milliseconds to abort the attack before striking you, and one-point-five milliseconds after that to make the attack non-lethal. I thought I reacted quickly."
The Hunter's eyes could hardly be wider.
Zero considered his words. "I reacted quickly to decide not to kill you," he amended.
The Hunter shifted so that the workbench was between him and Zero.
Even Zero could tell this wasn't going well. Try something else… "It's not as if you did the first or second most dangerous things," he hazarded.
"So you might have killed me if I'd done one of those?"
"Yes, of course," said Zero.
The Hunter shrank further. Whoops.
"But you didn't," Zero said clumsily. "And I don't think you would."
"Great," said the Hunter. "Could you… um… move out of the way? So I can go? I need… a maintenance check, yeah, that's it."
Even Zero noticed that people seemed to want to leave his presence unusually quickly. He was about to accede when something else occurred to him. "First, play some janken-pon with me."
The Hunter froze. "Do I have to?"
"I want you to," said Zero. It wasn't exactly 'yes', but it wasn't 'no' either. Zero was proud of himself. "Best two out of three."
Zero cupped his fist in his palm. The Hunter reluctantly mirrored him.
"Jan-ken-pon!"
"Jan-ken-pon!"
The Hunter scrambled backwards, terrified. Zero simply nodded. "Good enough. You can go now." He looked at the table again, and his mood brightened. "I'll clean up this buster," he said, gesturing to the half-stripped weapon on the table.
"Th-thanks," said the Hunter. Zero moved past him; the Hunter scrambled out of the room helter-skelter. He was dumped from Zero's memories moments later.
So, there wasn't anything inherently faulty with Zero and janken-pon. He could win against people other than X. That meant there was something unique to X that made him good at janken-pon.
What could it possibly be?
Zero needed to know. He had to know. He had to play more games; had to gather more information. What techniques was X using, what extra skills did he possess? Or was he, possibly, still riding an incredibly improbable run that would inevitably come to an end?
All Zero knew for sure was that he wanted to play more janken-pon with X. And that justified the top of his "most dangerous things" list.
But X was out. Aggravation. At least that other Hunter had left Zero some weapons to play with.
A slight smile on his face, Zero moved to the buster and began work.