The twins' return to Hunter Base was chaotic, to say the least. Any sort of elation at the fact was quickly squashed with one look at the two boys.
Zack hadn't met X's eyes when he quickly, carefully took his brother's unconscious body off his hands. In fact, he didn't so much as look at any of the girls, new or old, that tried to talk to him.
Even indirectly, though, it was easy to catch the aura of guilt and shame just radiating off of him.
Unfortunately for him, he wouldn't have the luxury of shrinking away again. Not when the world was at stake.
-000-
With help from the two new girls, his communicator was tinkered around with until a direct connection between Black and the Base could be established.
"Hunters, are you receiving?"
"Reading you loud and clear," the taller, princess-like one said. "Layer here. Speak on."
After introductions were made, information was swapped between the parties. Much of it was known to Zack, like how the old man had hacked his comms to get in touch with him and attempt to learn more about Lucien's plot.
One thing was that while Black had been toiling away in his own isolated lab, the Maverick had employed an army of reploids and had been building an airship specially made to deploy some kind of signal.
For what, it wasn't hard to guess.
Of course, Black couldn't take the risk of constant communication with him, otherwise Lucien's scientists would've caught on eventually. That was where Zack would come in...not that he really had a choice.
"Zack?" It was Layer who interjected. "If you don't mind me asking, how did it feel...having him control you like that?"
Everyone had expected the teenager to balk at the mere idea of an explanation, but he actually was quite forthcoming about it.
"Like a prisoner in my own body. I could hear outside, but not much else." He forced himself to look down at his occupied hands. "It's only because of him that I was able to come back at all." He looked at Layer suspiciously. "Why?"
She exchanged a look with the other girls that was subtle, but just visible enough to be caught. "Collecting information, nothing more."
He raised an eyebrow at this but didn't say anything. He had enough to think about.
"Not much different than what he did to me," Black chimed in. "Of course, he preferred for me to FEEL it whenever he took control. A sadist if I've ever seen one..."
He had gone on to explain the specifics of his daughters' involvement, as far as he knew.
The scientist couldn't see the Hunters' expressions darken.
"Does that mean that you were the one that got Ruby and her sister to team up on Zack and take him away?" London asked, voice growing dangerous.
"That wasn't me, actually. That was Lucien. He has more complete control of them and can make them act completely without their knowledge. He'd said himself that he used them to monitor you all for any weaknesses he could exploit."
...and I just made myself an easy target, the boy in question muttered to himself as he remembered the outburst that led him to isolate himself and get caught in the first place. His attention perked back up as the old man continued to speak.
"His original plan, however, had involved whittling down Cody until he broke, allowing Lucien to go for his opportunity."
It turned out that even for the bad guy, he was simply a backup plan for his brother. Second fiddle, as usual. A shield.
X, who'd been silently taking in what had been said since he'd returned from dropping off his protege, finally voiced his concern. "There's something I don't get, Black. Why go after them?"
"That's just it. They happened to be convenient substitutes...for you and Zero."
The blonde swordsman huffed. "It always comes down to us, doesn't it?"
"Can you really blame him or the scientific community? You're both anomalies from a hundred years ago, one of which serves as the foundation for all of this!"
"Wouldn't be the first time," Axl muttered boredly.
It was then that Bailey decided to speak up. "Wait a minute. We know a lot more about who we're fighting against, but not a whole lot about you. What's your stake in all of this?"
A silence settled over the room. One deep and long enough for the navigators to wonder whether or not the feed cut out. Just as Layer was about to start running checks…
"I…made him. Partially, at least."
Zack and Bailey, having realized where this was going by now, weren't all that surprised. X and Zero looked annoyed yet unsurprised as well.
The real shock, however, was Palette. The childlike blonde was furious, seemingly on the verge of tears.
"You… You killed them... You made me… YOU KILLED—"
Layer had to restrain her friend as she lashed out physically. As the shorter twin watched this the question that had been on Zack's mind reasserted itself with force.
What had he missed?
"Hang on a minute. I haven't killed anyone!"
The girl's pained eyes only narrowed at Black's assertion. "You might as well have…"
"Alright. Can somebody please fill me in on what's going on?!"
Even indirectly, though, it was easy to catch the aura of guilt and shame just radiating off of Zack, even as he tried to broach a different subject than what was weighing him down.
Black's horror was equally palpable. "I… I had no idea… What have I done…?"
Zero wasn't interested in beating around the bush. "I don't know, Maverick. Why don't you start explaining already so we can figure out what to do with you."
With a resigned "Fine," Black began his story…
-000-
Mere months prior, Black had merely been just another manufacturer of reploids, some being old-models based off of X's design, and those of the New Generation. Over time, however, there began to be shortages of the latter, perhaps due to latent fears of another uprising like that which happened in the wake of the Orbital Elevator incident.
Despite this, the new technology was not without its upsides: the ability to run cleaner and more efficiently made them a hot commodity in many industries…
...so much so, in fact, that new models were proposed to be made that would command the older ones.
The reploid that would eventually call itself Lucien served as a prototype of sorts for this concept. Able to remotely control and give orders to its underlings, it carried out a similar role to a foreman on a construction site.
It seemed to be performing perfectly as intended until one fateful day…
Black had been riding home after a particularly long day at work, intending to take his two daughters for ice cream as a treat.
One of them, a younger dark-skinned girl with a short pixie cut of red hair, had been particularly insistent that day.
"C'mon Dad! Can't we get moving already?"
The other, a similar looking teen with blue shoulder-length braids, sighed as she looked out the window of their car. "Anything to shut her up…" She paused as she looked around at the ocean of traffic surrounding them. "Hold up. Have we even moved?!"
They hadn't. For over half an hour.
"What's the hold up?!"
Black's shouting was all too soon drowned out by an even louder noise.
It was the answer he'd just been begging for, in the form of a series of explosions from far off in the distance.
The complaining vanished as if it were never there to begin with.
"Dad, what's that…?"
The aging man didn't answer his eldest daughter, instead frantically looking beyond the see of transfixed onlookers cowering in their vehicles for someplace, any place to turn around and flee.
What he saw coming up from the ground was little more than a common mechaniloid meant mainly for mining purposes, and it was…it was headed straight for them!
His mind raced. Where the heck were the Maverick Hunters when you needed them?!
It was nearly impossible to not have heard of the police force responsible for stopping incidents involving rogue robots (to use the outdated term) or their leader, X.
So many platitudes, he'd always thought, and yet the Mavericks just kept on coming…
As that monstrosity loomed ever closer, Black reflexively glanced back at his normally bickering children staring back at him, the youngest one in tears. The oldest asked the question as she protectively cradled her, them both having unbuckled themselves about ten minutes prior.
"A-Are we gonna die…?"
He wouldn't have time to answer as a car that had been flung up by the mech would land on them, saving him the trouble…
-000-
X shivered as he listened. Indeed, it had turned out to be one of the worse Maverick-related incidents in recent memory. Unfortunately, he hadn't even found out until the damage was already done. All three Hunters had been on separate missions at the time, so they had to rely on a small army of lower ranks to rescue the few survivors and investigate the cause.
It had been ruled an accident at the time, though the machine that did the damage was decommissioned and destroyed as a precaution.
"Wait a minute. I'm confused… Aren't you supposed to be…you know, dead?" London asked, trying to take in everything and decide how she felt about it.
"If only," Black mouthed, sighing bitterly.
-000-
Black was incredibly surprised to wake up at all, and even more so when he laid eyes on what he woke up to.
It had been one of the older labs, and by its more rustic appearance, he guessed it to be among the ones meant exclusively for emergency situations like natural disasters.
The first person he took note of, however, was the black-haired reploid with typing away at the console before him.
"Where… Lucien?"
"Ah, you're awake. Good…"
It didn't take long for the memories of what should've been his last moments to come flooding back to him. "Wha— How?!"
The reploid foreman turned to him with a smile. "How are you still alive, you mean? Why, I saved you, of course."
Something didn't feel right to Black about that statement, or the ever-so-slightly unnerving feeling that smile was giving him...not that he could dwell on that for long, though, as fatherly instinct immediately pulled him into a frenzy.
Where were his girls?!
He leapt off the cot he had awakened on, unwittingly tearing away from the wires that had been holding him down in his frenzy.
"Ruby?! Sapphira?!"
Lucien pointed in the direction of their capsules, hardly interested in the man's panic. They're beside you, human."
The old man stopped cold in front of the capsules, looking at them in awe.
"You... You saved them." He turned to the reploid with a smile of relief. "Thank you, Lucien. I'm forever in your debt!"
The man was too busy trying to open the doors of the machines to hear the reploid mutter confirmation of that fact under his breath.
He watched Black with interest as his enthusiasm slowly began to fade. He shouldn't have been too surprised at how long this was taking.
Organics were always so slow on the upkeep...
"Wait a minute... How on earth do you get these things open? Is it operated by voice command?"
Lucien would walk past him and deliver just that into the speaker. The capsules slowly opened.
"There. It's done, though I must admit that you've saddened me... Not one word about your new...enhancements."
Finally, the manufacturer took a look down at himself.
Instead of the vulnerable human flesh he was used to (or even the Frankenstein-esque patch-up job of burnt skin that might've been expected considering what he'd been rescued from), he saw a sleek, grayish black reploid form.
Wait. He was a Reploid?!
"How...?" The man managed to get out after a period of speechlessness.
"I... have my sources." The simple answer was given with a smirk.
"I had your two girls undergo the same procedure, though there were some...memory issues as a result of the process."
Black knew now for sure that something was off. Nothing official had ever been done on the level of such a radical operation. Sure, the common advanced mechanical prosthetics were one thing, but fully converting human beings into these successors to robots was still completely in "pipe dream" territory, even to the most starry-eyed visionaries.
Immediately, the man rushed to beg the two girls to wake up. Much to his surprise, they did.
He didn't have much time at all to try to remind Ruby and Sapphira who they really were before their apparent savior froze the younger ones in place with a wave of his hand.
"That's enough of that for now. Since I gave you back your family, I need you to do something for me."
There it was. The other shoe had dropped.
"No... Put them back the way they were!"
"Ah, ah, ah..." Lucien wagged his finger at him as if he were a disobedient child. "First, I need your expertise. We're going to show the world just how we've evolved beyond the need for silly little groups like the Maverick Hunters."
"Ridiculous!"
"Oh, really?" He walked back towards the console, pulling up a holographic image. It was of Black looking with contempt on a monitor weeks prior.
He remembered well how he'd felt when he learned that certain Mavericks had held up a Force Metal mine, managing to slaughter nearly every human being there before the calvary of so-called C-Class Hunters to run in and save only a few workers from joining the dead.
He vividly pictured thinking about the supposed tears of a certain soft fool, and how little they had meant in the grand scheme of things.
"The innocents who lost their lives here will be avenged!"
...yeah, right.
"Now, in light of this little refresher," the foreman continued, closing the footage. "What do you truly think? Your hand may be somewhat forced here, but you do get something out of all this aside from those two: vengeance for all of those workers and others like them killed, and X and his Hunters wiped out in favor of a regime who actually cares about innocents."
The reploid held out his hand, which was shaken in kind by the former human.
And that was only the beginning...
-000-
Needless to say, the group as a whole had to process this information, as they hadn't been aware of any of this.
"Clearly, you didn't say a word about all this to 'em..." Zack's voice came out growly, antagonistic, and more...tired than he wanted it to.
He was running on fumes.
Go figure, he thought.
He said it loud enough for Black to overhear. "What, exactly did you expect me to say, Zack? Tell them that they have bombs implanted in their heads and he could blow them up along with anyone around them?!"
For once, Zero, of all people, was in disbelief. "You're telling me we had two walking, talking BOMBS in here right under our noses?! How'd they'd get through the Base's sensors?"
The three pairs of questioning looks that naturally followed this question prompted Palette to explain to the teens.
"This place and most Hunter Bases are filled with 'em. Would you believe that you've been stepping on them the whole time?" She paused as the girls and boy present instinctively tensed up. "Relax. They aren't doing anything to you unless you're wired with or carrying anything that the system can pick up, such as viruses or..." she cringed, her voice falling to a whisper. "...a bomb."
The scientist brought everyone back on topic. "That being said, there was another reason why I wanted to contact you. He's not invincible. He does have weaknesses."
"Other than his massive ego?" Zero asked with an eye roll.
Before an answer could be given, a screech and a scream of pain clearly coming from Black could be heard followed by a rushed-sounding Lucien mumbling something.
"That's enough out of you, old fool."
"Lucien! What have you done with him?! For that matter, where are Ruby and Sapphira?!"
Hearing X be the first to speak seemed to get the enemy's attention. "Oh, X! We haven't talked in so long, and yet you pelt me with questions... Interesting."
"We saw each other about a day ago."
"Did we...? It seemed longer. Time flies when you're cementing your new rulership. That being said, to keep you guys from getting bored with all this talking, I've taken the liberty of organizing a little game for you to play, Hunters."
"The only game we're playing here, Maverick, involves me speedrunning slicing you to molten scrap! Where are you?!"
Twisted confidence oozed off of his voice. "If I wanted to deal with you, I'd have to get in line, Zero, right behind your girlfriend and Dear Daddy, of course."
"Daddy?"
"Don't play dumb, Zero. You know exactly who I'm talking about. He's been waiting decades and decades to get you back, after all..."
"Y-You're out of your mind!"
It wasn't hard to see the unease in his tone. Even Zack, barely awake and being kept aloft by sheer willpower at this point, noticed it.
It was London, surprisingly, who came to his defense. "Shut up! Leave him alone!"
"Okay, then," Lucien started with an audible shrug. "Let's move on to you, Ms. Tipton."
Most of the teens' eyes widened. How did he know her last name?
The girl in question's tone was one of total disbelief. It was as if her mind wasn't sure whether to react with fear, disgust, or fury. She trembled. Her head shook in disbelief as if it had a mind of its own.
"You don't know me," She whispered before getting progressively louder until she ended with a horrific scream. "You don't know me! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"
"Did I strike a nerve there, Organic? I only called you by the only thing that gives you any sort of worth back in your world: your last name. Ah, the follies of human class structures..."
It wouldn't be hard to imagine tears streaming down the Asian girl's face, had she been human.
Anger quickly overrode that and was fueling her now. She instinctively took out her crossbow, causing the others to tense up...
"My New World will be free of all of this nonsense. This is why we are perfect!"
"I don't care! I'll… I'll kill you..."
The smirk was evident on the monster's face even without visual evidence.
"Spooky… But seriously, though. It'll be your friends you kill, not me! Enjoy the exercise, Hunters. See you tomorrow, if you survive, that is. I'll have a few more Mavericks waiting for you to keep you entertained until I'm ready to usher in this world's grand finale!"
At Lucien's maniacal laugh, the transmission went dark, and terrifyingly, so too did London's mind.
In her place was a Maverick with familiar red eyes that rounded on them and attacked without delay.
-TBC-
…and the shoe drops on that…or several things, really. I apologize for this chapter having to be a bit of an infodump. Still hope it kept your attention. On another note, It's pretty strange to see (and write) London trying to be threatening on her own, right?
On your way out the door, be sure to ask questions, comment, review and show your support in any way available if you liked what you've read here. Also, keep tabs on this story and profile for more. Goodbye until next time!