X twitched as the repair bot pulled the damaged audio receptor from the right side of his head. Beneath the blue plated helmet, X's head was a dome of silver-coated transteel, modeled on the human skull. The repair bot's tweezer-like gripper came slowly out of a hole shaped almost like an ear, the smouldering receptor pinched tight.
A video conference screen hovered above X as he lay on the repair bed, Zero on screen. Behind the blonde-haired reploid was a room full of human engineers, most of them engaged in their work. "You weren't kidding," Zero said, responding to X's comment that the mechanoid called Titan had done a number on him. "You say he only hit you a couple of times?"
"Yeah. His body was brought back here for analysis. They'll be starting on that soon. Dr. Veris has been pulled from his current assignment to assist."
"Good call," Zero replied. "He knows what he's doing. Listen, X, I'm stuck up here until the facility is finished. You know that. Why are you telling me all of this?"
"In case I get scrapped."
"Not gonna happen, brother."
"There'll be more," X said, ignoring Zero's unusual display of bravado. Usually, the swordsman was the dark and brooding one of the pair. "If they're anything like this Titan guy, I'm in for a rough patch."
"What makes you think there are more coming?"
"There always is, Zero. There's always more. X out," he said, cutting off further discussion. He needed Zero to realize the extent of the threat on Earth, the severity of these attacks. Sigma and his Mavericks had killed plenty of humans in their time, but this felt different. With Sigma, the goal had been domination, possibly enslavement. Whoever the new enemy was, they didn't care about taking over. They cared only for destruction and chaos.
Dr. Wily had tried to dominate in his day, and he'd been beaten, time and again. Sigma tried the same, with new tactics and methods, but the result was no different. Mad men both, they failed because of the efforts of the Blue Bomber, the original and the new. Their ideologies held that they were better, superior, to the rest of the world. Their defeats had shown them different.
This new foe, however, would likely change his strategy, adapt it. X couldn't say how, but he knew this to be true. This Hephaestus, whoever he was, had a plan, and he would use it like a guideline instead of a blueprint. That would leave X guessing, jumping at shadows.
Now what he had to do was get his repairs done, and do some research. Titan, and Hephaestus, he thought. Greek terms, he knew, though he could not recall who or what Hephaestus was. As soon as he could get to a network terminal, he'd find out.
Paladin crushed another training robot's head with his energized mace, then whipped around and kicked the last one to the floor. Frustrated, furious, and at a loss for what else to do, the transteel knight had come to the training facility to familiarize himself with his capabilities.
"Titan should have done the same," he mused aloud, pounding his foot through the last bot's sternum. He pulled his foot out and stood splay-legged, staring off at the flat gray wall of the chamber. His thoughts turned to Poseidon and Shinobi.
They'd been terrified of the item they'd recovered, treating it like a jungle savage might a simple electronic device they thought came from some angry god. Paladin wondered, briefly, if any such ignorant humans remained in the world. If they did, he would advise them to stick to their jungle village. The reality outside was so much dross.
Shinobi had already come to Paladin before the knight-errant had begun his drills, informing him that the ninja would be going on a solo mission of his own. "If all goes well, I'll be back in a couple of days," Shinobi had said.
"And if all doesn't go well?"
"Then farewell," Shinobi replied, darting away. Paladin reviewed the updated version of the plan Hephaestus had transmitted to him, and sure enough, this was a new wrinkle. The timeline had been sped up.
Hephaestus had shown Paladin dozens of contingency plans and backup plans, and every loss had been accommodated for except for two; Caretaker, or Paladin himself, who still knew nothing of the master's plans for him except to act as second-in-command.
Paladin spared a moment to hope for the best for Shinobi before leaving the training facility.
"A true ninja fears nothing," Shinobi said to himself as he moved swiftly through the alleys and side streets of Central City, his movements hidden by his stealth cloaking system. "Not even death."
This was not a difficult notion for him to accept and operate by. As Shadow Man, he'd thought himself dead already. Knowing the likely outcome of this mission, he didn't flinch aside.
The stealth cloaking system was an ingenius piece of engineering, and Shinobi marveled again at his master's talent and skill. Whoever Hephaestus was, he was a man to be reckoned with, to be admired. Every one of his brother had been gifted with a unique capability, matched to suit their original design and compliment their current bodies.
Titan had been enhanced with tremendous strength, though Shinobi and the others now saw that he hadn't taken advantage of it well enough. His drawback for sheer might had come at the cost of good judgement. Shinobi's stealth system could not continue to function properly if he drew his weapons. Poseidon's burst missile hatches were slow to close, which would leave him temporarily vulnerable. Orbous's ability to command bots nearby rendered him unable to use his own weapons and defense systems until he relinquished command. Thrash's hyper-speed engines gave him swiftness but little control. Paladin seemed more than capable of leading, but was emotional on a human scale.
Twim was afflicted with two personalities in a single body.
And as for Caretaker? He had the mind and manner of a cruel, twisted child. Of them all, Shinobi worried about Caretaker the most. Hephaestus had said that Caretaker's spark was corrupted, tainted, but that such a thing was useful for the master's plans. If Hephaestus could keep Caretaker in check, all to the good. Then again, if he could, what did that say about his own sanity?
Shinobi shook his head roughly, darting across the street into the mouth of another alley. These were not the thoughts he should be having at the moment. He should be focused on the mission; nothing else mattered.
Launching himself in a full-speed running leap, the ninja mechanoid cleared another street, this one littered with traffic and civilians utterly unaware of his presence. One more street over and he leaped again, this time using retractable climbing spikes in his palms to latch onto the front of a building.
A flicker warbled over his stealth cloak, making him appear as a wavery dark spot on the wall, should anyone bother to look. Nobody did, though, and Shinobi simply climbed up the building's front until he was next to a window he wanted to enter.
Now came the really tricky part. The mechanoid had to deactivate his cloak completely for the next minute or so if he were to gain access to the building. If any of the reploids patrolling the area spotted him, he was as good as dead, his mission a failure. If he failed, his master's plans would be thrown into total disarray.
Shinobi turned his head this way and that, scanning the area for potential problems. After a minute, he spotted a patrolling guard making a path along the front of the building, his pace slow and measured. It was fully six minutes before the reploid was around one end of the building and out of sight.
Shinobi powered up a small device stored in his left forearm, and let the stealth cloak system shut down. He popped open his forearm, took the device out, pressed it flat against the wall under the window. There came a soft 'clack' from the window, and Shinobi quickly eased it open, slipping inside. Once in, he retrieved the device, turned it off, and eased the window shut. He put the magnetic lock pick back in his arm, reactivated the stealth cloak, and quietly moved down the hallway.
His target would soon be in his sights.
Dr. Veris sat up quickly, awakened by the sound of his own snoring. Muzzy, sleep-filled mind lurching back to consciousness, he pressed his hands to his eyes and groaned.
He'd been working on this dead mechanoid for nine hours now, and had only made marginal progress. The material used in its manufacture had easily been identified as grade-3 transteel, but various internal components and chipsets eluded his ability to analyze.
The level of sophistication involved in the mechanoid called Titan spoke of an engineer with skill and knowledge to rival any of the men and women responsible for the construction of reploids. There were hints of old Wily engineering present as well, and this baffled Veris.
One problem he faced was the clamps. Throughout the body's interior, several small black boxes had been anchored down by silvery clamps of an unknown material. Veris had exhausted every tool he had at his disposal to cut the clamps away, but short of gutting core chip boards that might still retain valuable programming information, he'd run out of options.
His own lack of familiarity with the bot's overall design posed the other main problem. Veris didn't know where to begin trying to harvest chip boards. Afraid of losing any information, he'd tried running remote diagnostics of any and all sorts, but thus far the coding he'd retrieved was garbled nonsense.
It was at moments like these he regretted his chosen field of study at university.
Stretching his arms wide, Veris yawned and rose to brew another pot of coffee and use the bathroom. He prepped the small coffee maker, then stepped into the little restroom attached to his work lab.
As he flushed the toilet, he felt a stirring, a warning, stealing into his mind. Instinct cried out that he should leave the Hunters HQ, that he needed to run and not look back. Instinct, he thought, is the one thing every human possesses that almost no reploid or bot can have.
Instinct existed for the sake of survival. Veris flushed the toilet and hurried out into the lab. Sensing the headlong rush of some unknown calamity, he grabbed his gear kit, hoisted it over his shoulder, and pelted for the elevator.
It took Dr. Veris only eleven minutes to get from the second sub-level workstation to the street. Had he ignored that urge to flee, or tempered it long enough to simply stay put in the sublevel, things might have turned out much differently.
Shinobi waited just long enough for the human to leave Titan alone, then darted unseen into the lab. All of the database terminals throughout the Hunter HQ required a login key, and whenever someone left a workstation, Shinobi watched them log off of the system. He didn't have time enough to spy out someone's login key and then hope for them to leave.
The human working an analysis on his fallen comrade, however, had left without logging off of his terminal. Shinobi had access. Using the keyboard, he quickly navigated through the archived records that Dr. Veris had access to. Surprisingly, that turned out to be more than Shinobi would have thought.
Access to the VR database lay behind several layers of other functions, but Shinobi found them and downloaded the information the master had requested, immediately transmitting it via the installed silent comms system he and his kin had been reconstructed with. As soon as the last bits of data were away, Shinobi exited the lab.
Now he had to get to the main VR chamber undetected. Not a problem, he thought. Deftly weaving and sliding past numerous Hunters in the corridors and hallways, Shinobi made his way to the seventh floor of the Hunters main HQ.
The main VR lab door required an ID scan. Having no way of duplicating this, Shinobi had devised his method of entry before even leaving the master's compound. This is it, he thought. This is where I make my stand.
"In the name of master Hephaestus," he whispered, deactivating the stealth cloak.
The internal emergency klaxons blared like banshees, but X wasn't in the least bit surprised this time. He suspected his mysterious nemesis would eventually send someone inside the base.
X tapped away at the keyboard of his main terminal, bringing up a view of one of the hallways on the seventh floor. The main VR lab's doors appeared to have been torn away from the wall. Just inside, he could make out the vague shape of a mechanoid's legs in the upper-left corner of the monitor.
He switched to a camera inside the VR chamber, and found himself staring numbly at a mechanoid styled like an ancient ninja warrior, two diamond-like vibro-blades in hand. "Torque," he rasped. "He killed Torque."
A bleeping from one of his other monitors. He flicked a button, and captain Swing came into view. "Sir, we have an intruder in the main VR lab! I'm sending men there now! Can you see him?"
"Yes."
"Do you see those knives of his?"
"I do. Tell your men I want him alive," X snarled, leaning forward. "This one will answer to me personally." X made to get up from his seat, but on the main monitor, he could now see the ninja cutting a swath through half a dozen Hunters, his blades flashing out with deadly speed and skill. He deftly evaded blaster bolts, punches and kicks, making a mockery of the Hunters as he slayed them.
X clicked his link to Swing on again. "Captain, take ten heavies and get them down there to suppress! I want this sonofabitch in a corner! Hold him there until I get downstairs!"
"Roger that! All Hunters, suppressing fire until heavies arrive! Do not engage melee with the intruder!" X began running towards the nearest elevator.
One of the fools had managed to strike him a crushing blow to the left elbow, severely damaging the pump hinge and slowing the arm down. Another had shot off the front half of his right foot as he fell dead. Shinobi had managed to fell twelve of the fools before someone began hollering orders to disengage and suppress over the base's intercom system.
So now he remained just barely covered by one of the VR tubes, the main VR databank only eight feet away from him. If he ran to it, he'd be a clear target, and the armored shell protecting it would not be opened by thrown energy blades. No, as he'd first suspected, he would have to resort to his ace in the hole.
At least he had one.
Tearing the doors off had been the only means of getting inside before some systems technician became aware of the suspicious data download and foreign transmission signal from Veris's workstation lab. Shinobi simply didn't have the leisure of time.
He might still have been able to complete his mission and escape with minimal fighting if the Hunter's base didn't employ total signal lockdown upon a confirmed intruder alert. Because of that, all teleportation technology inside of the building was effectively blocked, including Shinobi's personal transport device.
In the event of intruder alert, every system mainframe also sported a clamping, grade-3 transteel shell that encased it for security. The main VR mainframe was included in that. Simply put, even if they didn't have weapons trained on him, Shinobi's vibro-blades wouldn't cut deep enough into the bulky VR mainframe to cause permanent damage before someone arrived to stop him.
He only had his last resort.
The suppressive fire halted suddenly. "Name yourself," a now-familiar voice called into the room. X, Shinobi thought. It is good.
"I am Shinobi," he replied. "Servant of master Hephaestus." There was some mumbled conversation out in the hallway, followed by a shuffle of feet.
"You're either very brave or very stupid to risk infiltration," X continued. "What are you after?"
"I will say nothing!"
"Then I will have these heavy combat bots enter in waves of four until you are destroyed. These are mindless drones, and we have plenty to spare," X said coldly. "If you wish to live, toss your blades into the open, and come out from behind that pod with your hands held high."
Ah opportunity, Shinobi thought with an internal smile. The master will be most pleased. He pitched the held knives out into view, then his energy blade producer, a small yellow box clipped to his waist. He thrust his hands out into plain view, and slowly stood up, coming in full sight of the doorway.
A giant, ape-like reploid stood in front of X, mostly covering the Blue Bomber from sight. Before the ape stood four of the heavy combat bots. Shinobi performed a quick internal calculation, then smiled to himself.
"Megaman X, I want you to know something," Shinobi said loudly, powering up his ace in the hole.
"What's that," X replied warily.
"I am a shinobi not just in title, but in spirit as well. And a true shinobi does not fear death."
"Then why are you surrendering?"
"A shinobi is trained in the arts of stealth, infiltration, assassination, and deception," Shinobi said, taking slow steps backwards, towards the VR mainframe. "All of these tools he will use in the completion of a mission. Any weapon he possesses exists only to serve the ends of the shinobi's master."
"You mean Hephaestus," X said, leaning around Swing, exposing half of his body. "As for weapons, you don't appear to have any left."
"Yes, my knives are on the floor there," Shinobi said, now leaning back against the mainframe. "But these are not all of my weapons. I still have my assassin's blade."
"What are you talking about," X asked quietly. Swing put an arm out and pushed X back behind him again, and despite X's attempt to step around again, the gorilla reploid was far stronger with one arm than X could push against.
"Assassin's blade. It is the name of the high explosive system networked throughout my body," Shinobi said. Silence fell over the room then as X, Swing, and the four heavy combat bots stared, dumbfounded. "A shinobi completes his missions, even if dying is required."
There issued from Shinobi a high-pitched whine as his back plate fell away, the primary explosive package at point blank range to the VR mainframe. Captain Swing shouted as he spun, shoving X with all of his might down the hall. The explosion destroyed all semblance of order and sensory input, and with a roar of hellfire, X's world went dark once again.
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