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This had to be done. They had to stop the killings before they ever started. It was obvious who needed to leave. Peace just couldn't be had until they were taken out. There was just no way around it. It had to be done. It had to be done. It had to be done.

Of course this guy didn't keep his door locked. But that certainly didn't mean that knocking was the most polite thing to do right now. Not when he only had minutes to live, if that.

And of course he had a bomb in his hands. A small one, not really much larger than a baseball if one had to guess. Why did he have to move it around as if it were a toy?

"What are you doing with that?"

Vile looked up, mostly uninterested, before returning to his fiddling.

"Don't get your panties in a twist- it's just a smoke bomb. Not even a super concentrated one either. Cocktails are one thing, taking the chance on rigging real bombs here is another."

"But you would try?"

Vile looked up again to give a hard stare.

"What's it to you?" he questioned. "Gonna police me in this lawless confine? Yeah right."

For this, his intruder seemed to hesitate. Vile cocked an eyebrow from under his helmet.

"You really think you're going to police me, are you?"

"I'm not taking any chances." was all his assailant said before lunging at him.

Vile just barely missed the blow, uttering out a single "Christ." as he further scrambled out of the way. After he had regained his composure, he laughed.

"You thought this was going to be easy?!" Vile cackled. "This is my room, asshole. I go in and out on my own terms!"

Before his intruder could further react, Vile tossed the smoke bomb at his feet. The bomb exploded over the room- albeit not reaching very high overall. It was still enough for Vile to duck under the clouds while his intruder coughed, barely able to keep track of his shadow.

"Gotcha!" Vile shouted as he leapt from the fog, tackling his intruder from behind. Both of them fell to the ground in a loud thump. Vile refused to let go of his intruder's neck, causing them to flail around from lack of air.

"Isn't this just stupid?" Vile hissed as the two wrestled. "Even if I manage to get the upper hand, I'd be blamed even when you're the Maverick!"

"I'm not a Maverick!" his assailant hollered. They slammed Vile as hard as they could into the ground- the impact caused Vile's helmet to connect at an odd angle at his neck. With him temporarily paralyzed, his intruder was able to get him off and reach for their weapon again.

"Cheap shot." Vile grumbled as he managed to get up again. "Come and face me like a real-"

He was cut off- his assailant had plunged their knife right between his lungs.

"Die." they said to him. "Die and stay dead so the rest of us can exist peacefully!"

Vile could do nothing but watch as his murderer plunged the knife even further. They pushed down so hard that he fell back onto the floor. Crumbled like an aborted fetus, Vile watched his own blood crept away from him.

In his final breaths, Vile gasped, "We… were all Maverick… when we opened our eyes… here…" and after that, his body finally went still.

It had to be done.

It had to be done.

Now they could all live in peace.

. . .

It was easy to find who would become the early risers, and who would always take breakfast late. Zero got up the earliest of all. He was the only one in the cafeteria when X -the second to arrive- came in.

"Good morning." X greeted as he took a spot near Zero.

"Morning." came the toneless answer back.

"Did you already eat? I can get something for you when I go back there."

"No thanks."

"Right…"

X looked down at his hands. Zero kept to himself. That was good to know.

"About what Aero said about your name yesterday," X then said, after failing for a moment to stop himself, "I think your name means that you are able to grow. Positive or negative, you have the potential to do whichever you want. And if there's a path you don't feel comfortable with, you can easily change it. I think that's pretty cool."

Zero looked to X. His expression didn't immediately look like anger, but it didn't feel rather understanding or empathetic either. The corner of Zero's mouth twitched as he considered telling X something. It appeared to be from quite a bit of effort, but he took the plunge anyway.

"Do you think there's something weird about Aero?"

X's heart jolted. "What do you mean?" he asked.

Zero looked away from X. His eyes trained to the door like he expected her to come through at any moment.

"She's hiding something," he said. "You can see it in the way she smirks."

"How… often does she smirk?" X then wondered- a casual thought entered his head of how often Zero must look at Aero to notice a detail like that.

"Every time she looks at me."

Well, that certainly answered that .

"Are you sure it isn't a genuine smile? Maybe she likes you."

Zero grimaced at the idea. X looked over to him, then an idea came that made X smile.

"She is pretty cute though, don't you think?" he asked, nudging Zero a bit. "Maybe you'd like each other more if you just talked."

Zero's face distorted even more. "Manic pixie dream girls with short pink hair aren't my type."

"I thought her hair was more of a red."

"I've been calling it strawberry-red myself." Axl playfully chimed in. Already almost to the table, he took a seat across from Zero and X without any invitation. "And her eyes? A perfect chocolate."

"You stare at her often?" Zero asked with a snide smirk.

"Just as often as you do, apparently." Axl quickly shot back- even giving Zero finger guns to accentuate his cheekiness. Zero's face immediately went to one of disgust. The change was so quick that both Axl and X couldn't hold back their laughter.

"You three sure seem to be in good spirits with a Maverick running around."

The boys looked up to see Aero coming toward them. She had a grin on her face too, as if she knew they had been talking about her.

"None so sweet as yourself, my lovely Breezy." Axl chuckled.

"Breezy." Aero repeated with a scoff. "Alright. I wish I had a caffeine addiction instead of a rooibos one. I think I'd need it today. You boys want a cup while I'm at it?"

"No thanks," they replied with their own levels of certainty. Aero gave another snort before heading off into the kitchen.

Not long after, the rest of the girls entered the cafeteria.

"Have you guys seen Aero this morning?" Alia asked, taking a seat not far from Axl.

"She's in the kitchen making tea," X told her. "Why? Did something happen?"

"We just really want her to join us." Palette said. "I guess it does get a little crowded, but still. We have a lot of fun!"

"She's a weird one, that's for sure." Marino entertained.

On cue, Aero came back out of the kitchen with her freshly steaming tea. She gave it a few careful blows before finally looking up. Everyone was staring at her.

"Good… morning…?" she cautiously said to the others. She was greeted back by a various array of good mornings- which did not help her now careful demeanor at all. For the second day, she took a seat at the farthest side of the table from the others. She refused to look up at them, resuming her controlled tea cooling.

"Looks like we stepped in at a good time." Dynamo noted as he and Spider entered the cafeteria. "Is there something cooking, or do we have to feed ourselves?"

"Talk like that, and you'll be lucky if you get the scraps." Marino snapped.

"Told you that line wouldn't work," Spider snickered. He sat down at the table near Zero, who didn't look bothered at his presence.

Dynamo simply shrugged. "I tried."

Breakfast took place not long after. Everyone ate in such high enough spirits that they didn't quite realize two of them were missing. At least, not until Massimo finally entered the cafeteria.

"What took you so long?" Spider asked, flicking his fork full of sausage back and forth.

"I overslept, I guess." Massimo replied, his voice dull and tired. "Had a hard time going to sleep."

"Been there, done that." Axl agreed with a sage-like nod.

"There's some extras from breakfast if you want some." Alia then offered. "It's nice that Vile is letting us eat first before constructing homemade grenades again."

"Where is Vile?" Cinnamon wondered. "Did you see him on your way here, Massimo?"

Massimo did not answer. Instead he kept a steady walk to the kitchen.

"And here we thought Aero was the weird one…" Zero muttered, giving a small shake of his head.

X shifted a bit in his spot. Something about Massimo felt extremely off today. He had arrived at breakfast pretty early yesterday, and now he was one of the last. Massimo also seemed more reserved than he had been the past two days. Not that they've known each other long, but it was enough to just feel… off.

"I think I've had enough to eat for now," X said to anyone who might be listening, "Tell Massimo he can have my seat."

The few people who had listened gave him a nod. It gave X the encouragement he needed at the moment.

An issue he soon ran into not long after was what he would do now. Everyone was still at breakfast. Maybe he could take a late morning nap? He couldn't say that he was always getting the best sleep either. Thinking on it, X went toward the dorms. If anything, he could rearrange his furniture, or get a light walk in before giving it all up and heading to the entertainment room.

The corridor lining the dorms also felt different. It was the same kind of different that matched how odd Massimo had been during breakfast. A passing thought reminded X that Vile's room came before his. Then his feet slowed to a stop before he was fully aware of it. X stared at Vile's door. It wasn't any different than the other dorm doors. None of them had found the time or resources to really decorate their rooms yet. If they had, X had a feeling that Vile would put up posters of motorcycles, ladies that left nothing to the imagination, and large robot mechs.

X took several steps closer to Vile's door.

"Hey Vile," he loudly said, hoping he'd be heard through the door, "We missed you at breakfast. You wanna go play a game in the entertainment room with me? Everyone else is still eating. We could play for about an hour or so before the others came in. What do you think?"

X waited several minutes, but there wasn't an answer. He considered just leaving Vile alone, however he ended up knocking again.

"Vile? Vile, are you in there?"

X started to knock a bit harder now. A small pit was starting to form in his stomach. As he tried to rationalize why it would take so long for Vile to answer, he noticed that the door was slightly opened. Tilting his head to the side, X got a closer look at the door. The door must have been tight enough to not budge while he knocked. However, it wasn't closed enough to make the lock engage. X looked over the door, feeling his whole stomach go into knots now, as he took a firm grasp on the doorknob and put his weight into forcing the door open.

Sure enough, it opened.

"Vile…?" X carefully hissed as he entered the dorm. "Are you in here? Your door wasn't…"

X didn't have to get far to see the destruction. The desk and dresser were out of place, as if they were used to barricade someone from getting close. The desk's chair had been discarded to the other side of the room. Even the bed looked like someone had jumped on top for safety and never fixed the sheets after.

And in the middle of the room was Vile himself, face down in a puddle of already partially dried blood.

Suffice to say, X screamed. He staggered out of the room before tripping over himself at the doorway.

"X!" three voices called out. The source of said voices, Axl, Aero, and Spider, were at his side in a moment. Axl and Aero had gotten down to his height, while Spider remained standing.

"X, what happened?" Axl asked first.

"You look like you've seen a ghost." Spider noted, tipping his fedora forward a bit.

X looked up at him. He then looked back at Vile's door in shocked silence. It was hard to see Vile's body from here. The blood, on the other hand, had pooled out just enough that it could be seen from where X was. Its near dry texture still hit X harder than seeing Vile himself.

Finally, X managed to croak out, "Vile… Vile is dead."