X wondered, briefly, how many more times he was going to wind up on a maintenance slab being patched up before he was just killed. Captain Swing's enormous frame, along with the exo-armor he'd hastily thrown on prior to heading down to the VR lab, had spared X from far worse damage from the blast itself. Part of the ceiling of the seventh floor falling on him, however, had done its own share.
Swing Gollit had been badly damaged along his back and legs, but the exo-armor had saved his life. Only five large pieces of shrapnel had pierced him, the majority of the scrap and heat absorbed by the extra equipment. Those three inches of grade-2 transteel worn over his upper body had spared him from oblivion.
Captain Swing would be out of commission for a while, though. His locomotor drive had been fried, and the pistons and cables of his knees, ankles, hip joints and prehensile tail had all been scorched or broken. His weapons and targeting boards, located in his upper back, had melted inside his body. Careful extraction and replacement was needed.
Swing's life force battery had been drained to twenty-seven percent. X, by comparison, had gotten off light, losing only twelve percent life force, ten of that from the falling slab of concrete in the hallway's ceiling.
The damage had gone further than them, however. The assassin's blade explosive had decimated the VR mainframe and the floor directly under Shinobi. A communications room sat on the sixth floor under it, and the eight humans and five Hunters working within had been killed by the blast and flames. Numerous other injuries were sustained throughout the base due to the building's trembling.
"I will now be accessing your power distribution box," the maintenance bot working on X said. He lay face-down on the table, wincing as the bot's manipulators twitched around inside of his body. "There appears to be a short in wire forty-three. Replacing."
X let out a short bark of pain as the bot clumsily yanked the bad wire free. A minute later, a new wire was being pressed into place, and the pain made X want to squirm. Yet he held still, grinding his false teeth together.
"If the commander is uncomfortable, deactivation of the tactile program is recommended," the bot said.
"No. Keep going." The bot did as instructed, finishing up ten minutes later by putting a new back plate in place and beeping.
"Your repairs are complete, sir." X rolled himself over and sat up, trying to think of what he could do to prepare himself for the next assault. This Hephaestus seemed intent upon keeping the pressure on X and the Hunters Organization. He obviously had operational capacity to strike anywhere in the world, at any time. If killing humans were his only aim, he would be waging war on multiple fronts, like Sigma had, and Wily before him.
But no, X thought as he left the medical bay and started on his way out of Hunter HQ. No, the sequence of this enemy's thoughts were narrow, focused. Widespread warfare might yet come, but the conflicts thus far spoke of a building of tensions, an unknown and likely sinister arrangement of carefully manipulated factors. Unlike Wily and Sigma before him, X suspected that Hephaestus had something even more terrifying than these attacks going on behind the scenes.
And he had no way of guessing what that might be.
Detective Marlow gritted his teeth and accepted that nobody else was going to help him with his investigation. His commanding officer had ordered him to leave it in the hands of the Hunters Organization, and when the captain had taken away all of the papers Marlow had printed out for the file he'd been compiling, he heard the nail in the coffin.
So, he'd have to do his digging on his own time. This didn't distress him overmuch. He had resources, spare time off the clock, and an appreciation for history, all factors he needed to proceed. Now all he needed was an idea of where to begin.
In the small home office he kept at the back of his home, Marlow pulled open a file cabinet drawer and took out the copies of the papers his captain had stripped him of. Marlow believed in backing up everything, both digital and hard copy. Sure, it took up more space, but time saved was more important to him.
Veris had abruptly stopped helping him compile his robot and reploid attack history. This had been Marlow's first impression, his initial indication, that he would soon be on his own. The following day, he read about the attack in Minnesota, and his captain pulled the three officers Marlow had been using for the investigation into the murder at X's apartment building.
The captain's reasoning had been simple; Maverick problems were the jurisdiction of the Hunters, not his already-undermanned department. "Bad enough the reploids have basically become the majority in my city," the captain had groused. "They can deal with their own."
Marlow had quickly become obsessed with the Maverick attacks and investigation. The Hunters had been less than forthcoming when he requested information, adding to his inquisitive fever. And now, as he sat in his office, the radio turned to a local talk station, the dj announced that the previous night, an attack had been made on the Hunters' headquarters building itself. Marlow now knew where to go with his personal inquiries. He would go in person, and start asking some questions.
He would soon have yet another run-in with the legendary Maverick Hunter, X.
X stopped by the front duty desk on the ground floor of the headquarters, leaning over top of it to spy Briett behind her monitors. The small, female reploid, fashioned on the likeness of a cat-girl anime character from the early 21st century, had a cord going from her large, feline left ear unit to one of the small computer terminals. X waved a hand in front of her, and with a flinch she rolled back in her chair. She then breathed a sigh of relief and smiled up at him.
"Commander! You startled me!"
"Thought it might be fun," he replied amiably. "Briett, if captain Swing's status changes, send me a secure message update, could you?"
"Oh, of course, sir! Is there anything else?"
"No. Well, yes. If Zero makes contact to check in, patch him through to me via interlink." Briett nodded and tapped a few keys on her console, then grabbed a dial.
"Interlink exchange code?"
"Gamma-One-Six," X said. He patted the desk top, turned about, and headed out of the building, nearly colliding with detective Marlow, who came to a stop an inch away, huffing and puffing. "Detective?"
“Ah," wheeze, "just the guy," wheeze, "I was hoping to see." Marlow stood hunched, hands on his hips, trying to look up at X.
"Who you need to see is a doctor," X quipped in a low voice. "I doubt it's healthy for you to be breathing so hard."
"Had to park three streets over, ran the whole way. Had a feeling I needed to hurry," Marlow said, already regaining control of his breathing and heart rate. "Listen, I heard there was an attack here last night."
"There was," X said, making to walk away. "Nothing to worry yourself over. Hunters' problems, not civilian."
"Is it tied to my murder?" X stopped, blinking rapidly. The weapons Shinobi had used, the way he'd carved into the first Hunters to face him, he thought. The assassin could well be the one who killed not only Torque, but the doorman to his building too.
"I think the mechanoid from last night was your suspect, yes."
"Good. It's a start."
"A start? For what?"
"Walk with me and I'll explain."
Jasper Marlow, X quickly learned, was a brilliant man, quite likely to be considered by many to be overqualified as a policeman. But Jasper, raised by his grandmother and influenced by her appreciation of learning and history, had always kept her counsel about his quick-wittedness. "Shine a little," she'd tell him, "but never so bright that everybody sees it. Some folks don't take kindly to knowing someone's smarter than them."
So young Jasper had excelled in school, but never at the top. He always threw himself off just a little, enough to be third or fourth best at everything, so far as anybody could see. A smart boy and bright young man, but not overly so.
Ever drawn to facts, history, and the idea that knowing more truth would be ideal some day, he'd been drawn to the study of law and history. Both dealt with facts, and in history, those who broke the law were often viewed as villains, and those who made and followed laws as heroes.
His study of history showed him new truths in high school and college. People once deemed heroes could be seen in truth to be tyrants, warping the law to make themselves so. Why? Because the full truth rarely could be brought to everybody's attention. Always there was someone who could gain through lies and twists of the law.
He wanted to be part of the system, so that he could help the truth be pure. Criminals who did what they did out of greed, real villains, could be tracked, arrested, and tried. With evidence and truth, they could be punished. Similarly, when Jasper occasionally discovered that someone broke the law for a noble reason, he could look for truths to help them at trial. This he always did quietly, unnoticed.
All of this he relayed in short accounts to X as they walked to his car and drove to his home. Riding in the vehicle was awkward for X, who had to put the passenger seat down just to fit inside comfortably.
When they got to his apartment, Marlow then told X of his obsession with old world life. The truth, he told X, was rooted in what came before the moment. In the past, what was true could not be changed, could not be altered. Lies of the present could only hide those truths.
Dr. Wily, he said, had indeed been a villain, but there was more to his background than what was in official records. For starters, Marlow said, Wily was not far off from Dr. Thomas Light's work in the field of robotics. The two men had worked together for years in labs and engineering stations all over the world, the closest of friends.
But Dr. Wily began courting weapons manufacturers and military outfits, furthering his research into the field of combat robotics. Light, meanwhile, stayed the path of productive design. He arrived at the creation of a mechanized suit for his lab assistant, Rock. Working from that base design, he constructed fully autonomous robots with specific functions, the first six Robot Masters.
Only when Wily convinced the Robot Masters that they were superior to humans did Light realize his mistake. The rest was, well, history. "Or so everybody thinks," Marlow said, pouring himself another cup of coffee and sitting down on the plush leather recliner in his living room. "You see, Light knew of Wily's schemes. He had a mole in Wily's little organization, so he designed the Buster Cannon for Rock, for Megaman. It was calibrated to damage the Robot Masters and all of the lesser bots that Wily had been constructing."
"In other words, Dr. Light knew the rebellion was coming."
"Yes."
"Then why let it happen?"
"So that Megaman could fix his mistake by destroying the Robot Masters. Light was convinced that Wily would be incarcerated indefinitely, or executed. He didn't imagine the older man would have enough drones left to break him out of jail. You see, Wily played the long game, Light played the short. He was too focused on going back to his good works. He should have ordered Rock to kill Dr. Wily, but you and I both know that at that time, neither of them had it in them to commit cold-blooded murder."
"I figured not," said X. "So where are you going with all of this?"
"Patience is another lesson history tries to teach us, X," Marlow said sardonically. "I'll try to speed it up, though, for your sake. Wily gets out, and he immediately starts designing and building all these new Robot Masters. Not just his first eight, mind you, but about two dozen of them."
"So you're saying he only activated eight of them at a time, in case he was apprehended again," said X.
"Yes. So he tries the whole world domination thing a few more times, gets busted each time, breaks out of prison. It's a pattern by now, and the only new wrinkles are the Mega Buster Cannon, Rush, and Rock having to become more and more enmeshed with the suit because of injuries."
"Okay, I'm following this all so far. So the fifth, sixth and seventh campaigns, when did Wily build those Robot Masters?"
"Right after each escape from jail from the fourth try onward. He was getting old and a little panicky. He needed to make something that would be a surefire answer to Megaman, so he did what came logically. The big problem for Wily, as he saw it, was that he didn't have a versatile parallel to Megaman. Sure, he had Proto Man, but that blew up in his face in the long run, with Proto Man's rebellion. After his seventh campaign, Wily just disappeared. Everybody figured he was dead. But he wasn't. He was working on an answer to Megaman, and he had part of it. He made a copy of the Mega Buster Cannon."
"Impossible!"
"Not really. Think about it. Wily had all kinds of scans and data on Rock by then. It would have been easy to copy the weapon. The rest of the suit could come later, and he even designed a robot to wield it, a bot he called 'Subject Zero'. But he died shortly after building the cannon and starting the automated assembly of the robot."
"How do you know all of this," X asked, his mind reeling. Zero was supposed to have a cannon like Megaman's? What did that mean?
"There's groups of humans out there who worship Wily like some kind of messiah," Marlow said, draining his coffee in a single long pull. "One of them claims to have a journal kept by a servant bot who'd been with Wily since the beginning of his campaigns, a journal left in the ruins of Wily's final compound and smuggled out by this one particular cult."
X just stared ahead, afraid to ask the question now burning in his mind. Fear, however, would not serve him here. "The journal, did it give this servant robot's name?"
"Yeah, it did," Marlow said. "His name was Hephaestus."
He looked into the mirror again, tried not to see what had been meant for him, and shuddered. Another spark had found the body that should have been his, and that was that. He could rail against the truth all he wanted, but doing so changed nothing.
He'd now lived in four bodies throughout his existence. Only this latest one had been by his own design. His first body had been a happy home, one in which he'd felt only the joy of serving his builder, the rush and thrill of trying to do everything Dr. Wily had asked of him.
Then things got murky in Hephaestus's memories. There had been talk of war, of taking over by the master building his own Robot Masters. Things had happened in a blur, and all he could remember from that blur was being asked to help the doctor.
Then, the new body, a change in his spark, his very essence. He had become something awful, hateful of humans, and he delighted in cutting them apart. Yes, there had been a manic glee in the spilling of so much blood.
But then Megaman came. Megaman nearly destroyed him. What little was left of Hephaestus was dragged back to Dr. Wily, who managed to fix Hephaestus and put him into a third body, a copy of the second one. This one was kept hidden, always to be a helper, to aid in the construction of future Robot Masters, as befit his name.
Hephaestus, blacksmith of the gods in Greek mythos. Yes, Wily had appreciated the lessons of history and myth.
Always behind the scenes, Hephaestus grew familiar with Wily's ways, his plans, his campaigns. And ever he saw the flaws, the mistakes, but he said nothing. Wily was old, and would soon enough die on his own. Like all other humans, he was a thing of soft flesh and bone. Hephaestus would have wept, if he could have.
So when the old man finally did die, Hephaestus began making his own plans, his own designs. He started upgrading himself, building labs and workstations in secret around the world, like his creator had. He continued Wily's work, but with the far-sightedness no human could hope for. His spark grew, changed, matured.
Eventually, he'd gone deep into hiding. A new kind of mechanoid was being born, reploids. Hephaestus secretly killed a few and dragged them back to his primary labs for study. Seeing the flaws in their designs, he began constructing a new body for himself.
The body he now sat in, watching the VR records of X in battle. He would learn the Maverick Hunter's tactics, as would Paladin. The others would have little time to study before taking their part in his plans.
Sometimes, he thought, to be better empowered, we must cut away parts of ourselves. Yes, cut them away.
X faced Jasper Marlow and tried to think rationally. "There's almost no bots left from that era," X said quietly. "They weren't designed to stay running forever. This journal, have you read it yourself?"
"No, only the excerpts the cult lets people read on their website. Enough to worry me," Marlow said. "I think your Maverick may be involved with the cult somehow."
"Makes sense, but they're humans, right? I don't have the authority to go snooping into human-specific affairs."
"But I do," said Marlow. "I have a lot of vacation time stacked up. I'll take some, use it to track down the nearest chapter and do some digging. I can report my findings to you, see if we can help each other out." X agreed, giving Marlow his secure comms line signal number.
"If anything matches up, you let me know right away," X said, readying himself to leave. As he departed, he saw something on Jasper Marlow's face that gave him pause.
He saw that Marlow was afraid.
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