Author's note: while most of the sketches here take place in "the good times", between X2 and X3, this sketch takes place after X3 to heighten the humor. We'll return to our regularly scheduled nonsense next time.
No matter how hard your life has been, someone will remain convinced they've had it harder.
Happy Veterans Day/Armistice Day.

"Thank you all for attending the opening ceremony!"

The enthusiasm in the voice was, if Iron Iguana had to guess, probably a little forced. It was still complimentary, though, and, given the purpose of the ceremony, it did make Iron feel nice.

It dulled the pain a bit. The pain never really went away, these days. Not completely. He could turn pain sensitivity down, of course, but never disable it. Disabling pain altogether meant you missed signals you really ought to heed. Pain, however unpleasant it might be, was a survival mechanism.

Then again… especially given the purpose of this place… maybe that wasn't needed anymore?

How novel.

"…And a special round of applause for our first inductees!"

Inductee. So that was the word they were using. Huh.

He couldn't stay grouchy, not when people were clapping for him. He found it a little embarrassing, all things considered, but even that drained the grumpiness. He gave a half-hearted wave of acknowledgement. The other reploids around him gave similar gestures.

"These brave Hunters have done more than anyone could be expected to do. They've fought on through trials few others can imagine! Each one is a genuine hero. They've done their parts—they've done enough. That's why the Office of Reploid Relations, working with the Commander of the Maverick Hunters, has decided that their service is complete…"

Iron resisted the urge to snort. "Genuine hero", huh? That wasn't why he was here. If heroism alone let you pay off your construction, X and Zero would have retired ages ago. They were still in the thick of things. Then again, they would be…

Iron felt a twinge, and turned pain sensitivity down to the minimum setting. Those twinges would never go away, they'd told him. There comes a point where you just can't keep repairing something. Eventually things can't go back to the way they were. Parts might be interchangeable, sure, but some things couldn't be replaced without cost, and other things couldn't be fully replaced at all.

This wasn't retirement. This was a medical discharge. Iron, and the others here, had been wrung out as Hunters. They had been shot up and welded together one too many times. They had nothing left to give.

The humans, somehow, had found enough decency not to scrap them. Iron gave a wry grin at himself. Okay, that was a little too melodramatic. Things like that didn't happen, definitely not to Hunters. (People were applauding again. Apparently it was a good speech, or something.) Maybe, after years of seeing only humans' backs as they ran away from the danger he was running towards, he was just a little cynical about humanity.

They weren't being cynical about him. Not today, at least. He opened up a bit, allowed himself to appreciate the well-wishes.

Soon the unbearable ceremony was over, and the first class of Hunters was being escorted into a reception area. There, they were served refreshments- "refreshments" in this case being a selection of somewhat more exotic metals in a nanite slurry. It wasn't unlike an upscale E-tank, except that it lacked the bonus power packs E-tanks came with. Without them, a reploid's systems had to expend effort to "digest" the goodies—which made them function as a mild depressant.

All of which is to say that Iron was feeling rather pleased with the world as he looked at his fellow retirees.

Iron knew all of them, and most of them well. Sitting down at his table, though, was a relative stranger. "Hey," he said curiously, "aren't you Tom? Longshot Tom?"

"That's me," said the reploid. He looked like a blurred outline of a reploid, as if none of his outsides were quite the right shape. Like he was bent or dented everywhere. Iron wondered if it was his self-repair system itself that was beyond repair. "And you're… Leaping Lizard?"

Iron shook his head. "Iron Iguana. Leaping Lizard died in an ambush over a year ago."

"Did he? Shame." He grimaced. "They blend together sometimes... hey, at least I didn't call you Sting Chameleon!"

Iron ingested a bit of slurry to avoid answering. No one appreciated association with Mavericks, even as a joke.

"Say…" said Tom, "…what tours did you do?"

"What, to get hurt this bad?" said Iron.

"Yeah."

Iron considered. "Sure you wanna hear? It's a little grisly, an' this is a kinda… cheerful event."

"Like we could separate the two."

"Fair enough." Iron gathered himself. "Well, I was a Hunter before the First War. I was at the old Maverick Hunter HQ on that day. Armor Armadillo was cleaning out our floor. I took a direct hit from one of his rolling spins, but it knocked me far enough away that he lost track of me. Mangled most of my systems, though—couldn't even walk. I played dead while his cleanup crew followed behind—bad as I was hurt, it wasn't hard to be convincing. After they declared the area clear I crawled for the fire escape. I knew I wouldn't be able to escape that way, so I had to wait. When Zero came tearing through the place, it caused enough of a distraction that I was able to crawl through some of the flames and out of the building to cover.

"During the Second War, near the end, right as we were pinpointing their base location, the Mavericks hit us at Hunter Base. When they blew through the perimeter, we established a secondary barricade. It… wasn't much of a barricade, especially to that Violen guy. His spike ball went straight through it, into me, and smashed me to the wall. Then Serges started flinging explosives around… it dumped that part of the floor, and I went down with it. Of course, all three of those freaks could clear the gap, and I was out of the fight, and they were on the clock and couldn't come back around to finish me off, so I survived.

"Then, in the Third War, we sent out that expeditionary force to Doppler Town—but Doppler hit us first, and our best Hunters were out of the base already. The rest of us schmucks rallied to the defense of Hunter Base. I've never seen so many Bee Bladers. I took pieces of it, like the rest of us, but it wasn't until the wall came down that we were really hurt. Cost us Mace and a bunch of other good Hunters; I didn't quite get enough of it to be out of the fight.

"Then Maoh the Giant showed up. I thought I was dead for sure—not because he was gonna kill me, but because he was smashing through the rubble and I thought he'd step on me. Not quite. X got there first and blew the thing's head off. It fell backwards, away from the base… and on to me.

"After that, the techs declared that you can't overhaul micro-fractures throughout the entirety of someone's internal structure, and the third instance of devastating blunt-force trauma was a bit too much to repair. So here I am."

Tom appeared to be digesting this. He took a swig of his refreshment, slammed it down on the table, and sneered at Iron, "So. All garrison duty, huh?"