X was about to finish his fourth battle with an old Robot Master in the VR when he came out of the simulator with a jolt. His emergency comm station in the VR chamber was blaring like a klaxon.
Launching himself out of the VR pod, X stood over the commlink panel and connected. On screen, a lizard-like silver reploid stood clenching his teeth in a compact command room. "Commander X! We have a situation!"
"Where," X asked.
"New York City," the other bot, lieutenant Silvertongue, barked quickly. "We picked it up on our human comm intercepts. There's some kind of assault vehicle wreaking havok out there. I tried to get a hold of Scorcher, he's in charge of two other Hunters there, but he and his men aren't responding!"
"Did you try a direct linkjack?"
"We did. All indications are that the three of them are incapable of responding," Silvertongue replied. "Sir, my team is off shore recovering three Coast Guard ships that disappeared two hours ago. I'm the only one here in Jersey right now! I need backup!"
"Stay right where you are, lieutenant," X snapped. "I'm coming!" X raced from the VR chamber in HQ's first floor to the main transporter room, a vaulted room in the bowels of the complex. One of the technicians, a small, wiry man-like reploid named Hoffer looked up from his controls as X burst in.
"C-commander," he stammered. "Where are you going?"
"New York City," X said, stepping up onto the transporter pad. "Get me as close to the hangar our men were using as their operations center as you can." Hoffer nodded, checking through a list of coordinates in New York.
"Got it," he said after a few moments. "Right on top of a shipping dock. Do you want a vis-rep first?"
"Display on screen three." Hoffer punched up several commands, and a nearby monitor sprang to life. The scene was a bird's eye view of the loading dock, which looked now like the ruins of a battlefield. Fires raged unchecked, and bodies, both human and mechanoid, were scattered everywhere. Blood and pulverized organs, oils and machine fluids, stained the concrete red and black.
X only gave Hoffer a nod, and ten seconds later, he flashed out of existence.
X rematerialized just outside of the loading bay where the Man Drone had come ashore, the reek of oil and smoke forcing him to shut off his olfactory receptors. X quickly picked his way through the rubble, finding the lifeless bodies of Scorcher and Keen Shotburst. There was no sign of Bang Hurricane.
Something pelted into his back plate, three somethings. Bullets, X thought as he wheeled around. What he saw before him defied good sense. A human stood thirty yards away, legs apart, an ancient machine rifle clutched in his hands. He was wearing the tattered remains of a military uniform, and his head lay cocked to one side, lying obscenely on one shoulder.
There was no bio-life signature coming from the human. There were, X noticed, numerous mechanical signals coming off of him, though. X used his onboard magnifiers, looking into the human's eyes; there appeared to be a faint red electronic glow behind them. The eyes themselves were hollow, colored glass. Traces of the original eye tissue could still be seen, though barely.
This wasn't a human being; this was a corpse filled with machinery. As X fired three rapid shots from his Buster Cannon, punching holes through the dessicated meat, he could see thin wires and bands of steel falling apart, the supports fold up as the construct fell over in a heap.
X walked slowly over to the corpse. He rolled it over roughly with a flick of his foot, struggling not to cry out at what he saw. This human had likely been dead already when the back of his skull had been pried open, the brain removed and the electronic circuits and small, simple control box implanted. Thin transteel struts and copper wire had been used to move the corpse like a puppet.
"It's an abomination," he rasped. No sooner had he said this than he heard sirens in the middle distance, followed by more machine gun fire, and the roar of a tank cannon. Something exploded northwest of his position. X dashed toward the sound of screams and battle.
The loading dock he'd arrived at was bordered by a long row of open-fronted warehouses, and scores of panicked humans came surging through them, fleeing the carnage. X pressed toward them, intent on questioning someone, anyone, who looked even remotely in control of their emotions. As he neared the closest warehouse, one such human, wearing an NYPD uniform and clutching a bleeding hole in his right shoulder, came directly toward him through another wave of civilians.
"You're X," the officer shouted above the screaming, gibbering throng.
"I am. What's happening? Where is it?"
"Back there, on 6th Street," the cop grunted, coming to a stop directly in front of X, who towered over him. "My whole precinct just about got wasted! That thing is a nasty piece of hardware, and those soldiers? They ain't human!"
"I'm aware of that," X said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. "I've already met one."
"Aren't there three more of you around? I know I've seen them out here on my patrols."
"Dead," X said heavily. "Caught offguard. I'll handle this situation. You need to get medical attention." X swept around the man and headed off for the enemy.
The first alley he could fit down between warehouses stood echoing before him, his heavy metal feet crunching already-broken pavement as he ran. The sounds of fighting escalated. He recognized the audio signature of a soldier bot's energy rifle, followed by staccato beats of a chaingun. It sounded like the cannon Vile used to keep mounted to his shoulder all those years ago.
As X came out onto 4th Street, he could see a path of destruction left in the wake of the tank. People had been shot, burned, and cut apart all up and down the street. He tried to keep his composure at the sight of a blood-blackened stuffed dog lying in the street.
Rage coursed through his circuitry. Whatever Maverick was piloting the tank, causing this carnage, he would do to them what the original Megaman had done to Skull Man. He would rip their head off with his bare hands.
X caught sight of a billowing cloud of smoke between buildings as he pressed forward. Another crack of a cannon shot roared, followed by the smash of glass and ignition of fire from an explosion. Looking up and to the right, he could see an apartment building leaning at a crazed angle from midway up. As he watched, the upper half sheared away, plummeting out of sight behind the buildings on 4th Street.
More casualties, more innocent lives lost. X ran as fast as he could, barreling into another alley. In another fifty yards, he would come out on 6th Street, hopefully in time to catch the tank before it caused any more damage.
As he came within twenty yards of the alley mouth, his path was blocked by a surge of escaping New Yorkers, all wide-eyed and mewling like terrified animals. X tried to turn sideways to move through them, but his large frame only made them all push and jostle harder. He looked over their heads, and saw two more of the human-machine soldiers step into the mouth of the alley, weapons raised. The left one held an old M-16 rifle, the right one, a flamethrower.
"Get d-," he managed before the warning became useless. Bullets sprayed, joined with a writhing serpent of fire. The packed-in bodies between the soldiers and X shrieked, cursed, hollered to a God X did not believe in as they were torn apart or set ablaze, their faces dripping as their flesh melted right before his eyes.
A three-round burst of bullets thudded ineffectively against his chest plate. The nearest flaming victim tried to hold himself up against X's side, clawing for help, sliding off from bloody skin peeling away from his fingertips. Stripes ran down X's side and legs. The Maverick Hunter charged, then leveled his cannon over the heads of the humans who knelt or lay sprawled in their dying, and fired a single Mega Buster Shot.
The hybrid soldiers flew apart. Like the first one, they'd carried no bio-life signatures. He strode stiff-legged through the muck of human corpses, trying to avoid stepping on them, but in the end he had no choice.
As X walked out onto the sidewalk of 6th Street, he saw the tank-like vehicle down the street to the left. Two thick clamping armatures were extended from its sides, one holding up a crumpled police car, the other smashing a helpless heavyset man against the pavement over and over again. X could see the pulverized legs flopping as the man was lifted up again, wailing like a banshee. The human was as good as dead.
X fired a single standard shot at the tank, which he could see was covered with blood. A kinetic shield glimmered blue as the shot connected, but light scorching appeared on the bloody armor plating. The turret began to turn toward him then, the clamp arms hurling the squad car and maimed human both through the windows of a flanking office building.
The edge of a pilot window came into view, and X's scanners detected both a mechanoid signature and a human bio-signature inside of the assault vehicle. The window was almost opaque, obscuring his view of the pilot. Did the Maverick inside have a hostage? A prisoner? He didn't know, but after so many humans had already been killed, he knew he had to try and find out. If the human inside were a victim, at least he could save them.
The turret finished its rotation, now turned toward X. The Maverick Hunter activated one of his eight auxiliary weapons programs; an invisible bubble surrounded him, a defensive barrier that would reflect projectile weapons back to their source. Using his auxiliary power battery to maintain the shield, X then loaded what he'd dubbed his Spark Gap Attack.
As he tensed, ready for the inevitable attack, speakers crackled to life from the tank. "Ah, X. So good of you to join us," said a smooth, cultured voice over the speakers. X's audio receptors analyzed the voice, and identified it only as a mechanoid, sub-type unknown. "What do you think of my Man Drone? Quite an efficient killing machine, isn't it?"
"Name yourself, Maverick," X shouted. The unseen enemy chortled derisively in response.
"Maverick? Oh, my dear boy, I'm no Maverick. They lack imagination, unlike I. No, I am not a foe so easily classified, X. Much like you, I am different, a step above the rest. My friends can attest to that."
"Wow, a sociopath with friends," X taunted. "Call the folks at Guiness."
"How droll," the unseen man replied, unimpressed. "I, am Hephaestus. You will need not bother wondering why all of this is happening, X. You will be dead long before you can even begin to grasp my designs."
"Sigma used to say that sort of thing a lot too. Are you one of his cronies?"
"Hardly. Sigma was good, X. I watched him over the years, and he got better with every campaign. But even he was a limited thing. His potential was blocked by the same limitations every reploid encounters. And you, too, have reached your peak, X. Your days are numbered. Now, if you'll just cooperate with us, we can make that brief time left to you mercifully quick and painless."
The speakers cut off, and X braced for impact. The earth-shaking crack and boom of the cannon thundered, the shell crashing into the reflective barrier. The bubble flashed on impact, and the shell launched back at the tank. The resultant explosion did little damage to the armor, but blew several of the weapons mounted to the exterior off, clattering to the ground.
X aimed him Buster Cannon at the ground and fired the Spark Gap. Electricity pounded through the ground everywhere except under his feet, yellow energy corruscating over the tank. The sound of a human scream, coming from within the tank, forced X to cease the assault.
The tank, however, emitted chattering sounds as it tried to move. Temporarily inert, X thought. Now's my chance! X sprinted forward, and one of the armatures on the tank's left side took a single move from its flank, jerking ineffectively to a stop. X saw an enormous circular saw blade pop out in place of the claw pinchers, but the steel rods were locked down, shorted out by the Spark Gap Attack.
Jumping up on the vehicle, X grinned as several aged rifles crumpled under his feet upon landing. He let his left hand reappear from his cannon port, stepping onto the narrow platform atop the turret. Reaching down, he pounded his fingers into the thinner metal around the access door, and with a grunt and shriek of metal, tore it off. He tossed it aside and dropped down into the pilot box.
The pilot spun around in his seat. If X could have thrown up, he would have. As it was, he stared in horror at the creature in front of him. Tubes and wires ran in and out of the heavyset human before him, the flesh showing signs of infection, a purposeful carelessness evident in the implementation of the mechanical augementations. A squat black metal box with a blinking red light sat on the left side of his neck, a three-tipped clamp piercing the skin and muscle, attached to his spine. The man's left eye twitched and oozed a thick yellow pus, and the mouth and cheek on that side were unnaturally pulled up in a sneer.
Attached to his left arm was a short-barreled weapon. The man opened his mouth, and with a tremulous voice he croaked, "Kill, me." X took an involuntary step backward, and the man's weaponized arm rose. "Please! I can't control myself! Kill me!"
The weapon discharged, two high-velocity rounds punching into X's lower torso. He crashed backward, shocked that the rounds had managed to blow a thumb-sized hole in his armor plating. At point-blank range, even the older weapon had enough power to pass through his shield and a little of his armor. Again the human groaned, rising up out of his chair. "Kill, me!"
X, sitting against the back wall of the pilot box, obliged him. He raised the left arm, cannon port open, and fired a single shot, blowing the man's head into a fine red mist.
Darkness swarmed over X's mind then, and the legendary Maverick Hunter passed out.
It has been said that it is always darkest before the dawn. Titan didn't necessarily think this was so. As he peered around the corner, long-range scanners detecting the killing blow to the Man Drone's enslaved pilot, he thought things were actually looking quite bright.
X's power signature had begun to waver, giving Titan a sense of urgency. If he struck now, hard and fast, he might succeed in destroying X early on in the running. However, Orbous had just contacted him when X was prying the top off of the Man Drone to tell him that several more Hunters were on the way from Central City. The master, Hephaestus, wanted to let Titan decide for himself what to do now.
It was an utterly confusing idea for the giant mechanoid. He'd always followed orders, done what he was told to do. Being granted the choice of what he wanted to do on his own had, until then, been a largely foreign concept. At least, he thought, I know what I want to do.
"Get in one good hit," he muttered, stepping out of the alley near the Man Drone and picking up a battered, bullet-riddled pickup truck, hoisting it over his head. Titan carried it over to the Man Drone, and with a heave, he brought the truck crashing down atop the tank.
This was not the one good hit, no. That came as Titan loaded one of his concussion bombs into the crumpled front seat of the truck, directly over the torn pilot hatch, and set the timer. The hulking mechanoid then lumbered away, activating his teleport return device. When he winked out of New York City, the countdown on the bomb began.
Back at the lair of Hephaestus and his allies, Paladin sat on his throne-like chair, watching on a monitor the replay of the mangled human pilot, taken from a hidden camera inside of the Man Drone.
"Kill, me," the enslaved human begged. Paladin hung his head, and were he able to, he would have wept.
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