You're In the Wrong Place

Folks, if you're looking for new, free fiction material, you're in the wrong place!

As I mentioned a short while back, this blog is, for the most part, about to go dark. Well, gray, as it were. To get started reading the new Amelia City horror short, 'The Pen is Not Mightier', head on over here:


http://calkinsstoryteller.com/the-pen-is-not-mightier-part-i/


I realize the link might not work as a 'click and go', but you can copy and paste it into your address bar and get started down another shadow and blood-drenched road through the maddened realm known as Amelia City!

Cheers!

Steel Nightmare Chapter 25 and Epilogue- Our Predecessors, Ourselves

Hephaestus wished for just a moment that Paladin had taken the chance to kill X. His right-hand man might have been fatally wounded in the process, but at least X would no longer be a factor.

Hephaestus had badly underestimated Paladin's combat prowess before X's arrival on the island. Knowing now that he could have been rid of X and carried on Wily's work himself, the crimson-and-white mechanoid shook his head and grumbled.

No time for that now, though. He readied his weapons and defensive systems, and gripped his round saw blade. A flick of his left hand dismissed the hovering holo-monitors, and the whir of the elevator system drummed from beyond the throne room.

There had been another repair station chamber accessible as X dragged himself and his arm off of the elevator from the rear of Paladin's chamber. It was a small bay, attached to a large display chamber, in which stood various models of completed cyborgs.

The repairs had been excruciating. The final station hadn't even attempted to put him into a standby mode, pulling and cutting and reinserting and soldering without pause. His right arm was snapped back into its anchor mounts without the slightest pause once new mounts were riveted into place.

It was akin to complete body reconstruction surgery on a human without the benefit of any anesthetic.

After sitting on the only chair in the room for half an hour to recover from the pain and discomfort of the repairs, X headed into the display room. Most of the scale model units shown were crude, basic things, all tending towards a combative nature. But the model near the blast door standing opposite the elevator entryway was different.

A tall, blonde male with a brush cut, this last cyborg appeared to be wearing some kind of purple bodysuit, a bulky thing with silver lines along the arms and legs. An index card sat next to it, like all of the others, proclaiming it the 'Powerhouse Combat Set'. Unlike all the others, whose designers were listed as Dr. Wily, this one said 'Hephaestus' next to the prompt 'Designed By'.

It was dated a month earlier. "Busy boy," X commented, grasping the handle of the blast door and spinning the wheel. Inside stood a throne room as the door swung inward, and up on a raised platform, on his throne of fused bones, resided Hephestus himself.

X's first thought when he entered was, He's even larger here than in the holograms. Looking like a cross of Metal Man's original design and Zero, the crimson and white mechanoid rose regally from his seat, which sank on a hidden lift into the floor.

"X," Hephaestus intoned, saw blade held up to his left shoulder, ready to be thrown.

"Hephaestus. I have questions."

"I thought you might," said the mechanoid, lowering its weapon slowly. "Please, proceed."

"I just saw your latest," X said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. "If you have a working design, why aren't you making them?"

"Ah, yes, the Powerhouse. Well, I can't build any of the superior designs yet. My production facilities didn't have the necessary energy to get the job done. The engines at the plant require nuclear energy."

"We would have detected unknown nuclear activity," X interrupted.

"If we were enriching our own material, yes, you would have. That's why I needed to steal those warheads."

"Wait, what? Then, the missile threat?"

"A ruse, largely. Oh, I would have launched a few, to show you I was serious, but by now all of those warheads have been transferred to the production plant for use as fuel cells to power the systems." X shook his head, incredulous.

"Wait, then why draw me here?"

"Hopefully to recruit you to my cause, to make you see that the perfect balance of man and machine, the true cyborg, is mankind's future. To help you see that they cannot evolve any further without the help of Dr. Wily's vision, the harmony of combining soul and spark! And failing that, to keep you out of the way," Hephaestus said, the furor and passion draining from his voice. "With Zero on the moon and you occupied here, the first Powerhouse units should be completed well before anyone even notices a problem."

"The other Hunters will find your plant and level it," X snarled.

"Not with Paladin defending it," Hephaestus countered with a sneer in his tone. "You know firsthand how potent he is. Your Hunters don't stand a chance."

X began charging his cannon, slowly taking a combat-ready stance. "Mankind isn't ready to take up Wily's way. There's no reason to try to force them into it."

"We must," Hephaestus roared, bringing the saw blade up. "The ignorant masses who refuse the change are not worthy of knowing the bliss of Wily's perfection! If they resist, they deserve to perish!"

Blast and blade flew, missing one another by scant inches. The Mega Buster Shot was easily absorbed by Hephaestus's own powerful kinetic shields, while his whirring saw blade cut through X's and tore a shallow gash in his left side.

X dashed backwards as Hephaestus followed up with a downward strike from an energy blade of emerald force. A copy of the Z-Saber in all but color, the weapon cut easily into the floor, tearing up a large chunk of the floor as he removed the blade, holding it out to his side.

X fired three rapid shots, each deflected by the green saber. Walking backwards, he continued firing on the larger bot, a single shot for each step he took. Hephaestus stood in place, keeping the flat of the energy blade facing X, twitching it only slightly to either side to absorb all of X's shots.

On the fifth such shot, Hephaestus switched his grip and batted the energy bullet back at X, who successfully dashed aside from the reflected shot. However, as he dashed, so too did the larger mechanoid, and Hephaestus brought his saber around in a savage cross-body slash.

The edge of the saber caught X along the right side of his chest, cutting a quarter of an inch deep. His audio receptors on the right flared up from the blade's energy signature, further rocking his stumbling steps. Hephaestus wheeled around and stabbed out, but X shifted all of his kinetic shielding to his right arm and used it to clash against the saber, batting it aside.

Hephaestus step-kicked out at X, but the smaller reploid ducked down and pushed inward, shoving his cannon into the other bot's gut and firing four rapid shots. Hephaestus was blown back, his shields hammered aside and the last two shots hitting him clean.

His armor was scorched, but still intact. X jumped back, launching a Needler before landing. He turned to run as Hephaestus shrieked in a mix of rage and pain. X risked a look back over his shoulder, a grin starting to curl his lip.

The grin died when he saw the other bot chasing after, still roaring as sliver-like needles pelted him from above. No pain would impede him. As X turned in mid-stride, shooting a Spark Gap, Hephaestus hurled himself through the air, activating his boot thrusters as his fists aimed out at X.

The result was Hephaestus landing a twisting downward punch to X's forehead that cracked part of his helmet off and threw him back a dozen yards to the floor. X groaned as he sat up, Hephestus already recovering and opening a panel on his own left shoulder. A snub-nosed missile popped out, launching at X as the reploid made to gain his feet.

X fired out of instinct. Had he been thinking more clearly, he would have just run or rolled aside. The missile exploded on impact with his energy bullet, heat, flames and shrapnel sleeting out at him. His kinetic shields, already low, were wiped out and dozens of small gouges, scrapes and scorch marks peppered his transteel armor. Only a few holes went through to his interior, and the heat from the blast was playing hell with his mobility boards, but X managed to get up and stumble out of the smoke in time to avoid another attack by Hephaestus, another missile launched where he'd been lying on the floor.

X charged his cannon and fired blindly into the black cloud. A crashing sound accompanied a shout from Hephaestus, and through the clearing smoke, X could see he'd landed a blind-siding shot. Plates of metal armor flew as the other bot rolled away, his saber lying inactive where he'd been shot.

X dash-leapt to the weapon, and no sooner scooped it up then a knee rocketed at his face. The blow sent him skyward, and as he fell, still clutching the saber in his right hand, another kick in the side hurled him away.

His mobility drive had been crushed by the second kick. The entire right side of his torso from armpit to hip had been completely smashed in. X felt his systems crying out; 'not again', they seemed to say. He groaned, trying to stand, and that was when Hephaestus came up behind him and lifted him around the waist with his huge, powerful arms.

Hephaestus was squeezing with all of his might, and X howled, thrashing in agony from his already mauled right side. "I will KILL you," Hephaestus was shrieking, applying still more pressure on the legendary Maverick Hunter's battered body. "For the glory of Wily, I will kill you!"

X's eyes locked then onto the saber for a moment. In that briefest space of time, he recalled a conversation he'd had once with Zero. The blade-wielding warrior, who he called brother, had been telling him about an ancient ritual tied to the weapon his own saber was based upon, the wakizashi. In feudal Japan, Zero said, samurai who had been dishonored would stab themselves in the gut with this blade, killing themselves, but regaining their honor by doing so.

So X did just that, thumbing the button on the saber, using the adjustable beam selector (like the one on Zero's weapon) and committing the initial stab of hari-kiri. The blade carved a vicious path through his body, barely missing vital boards and wires and servos.

Hephaestus, whose face was pressed right against X's back in the lethal bearhug, wasn't so lucky. The blade, which X had narrowed to the size of a normal sword, plunged easily into Hephaestus's rounded face plate, tearing through the armoring, the optics, and ripping through his central processing unit. The blade punched out the back of his own helmet-like head by an inch. As X deactivated the weapon, he fell with a grunt from Hephaestus's limp arms.

X staggered up to his feet, holding his gut. He turned toward Hephaestus, who spasmed as he dropped to his knees. The compartment on his own belly dropped open, spilling out five more saw blades. X took one in hand, and as Hephaestus's optics flickered back online for a few moments, looking up at him, X smiled.

"In the name, of Doctor, Light," X said, grabbing the top of Hephaestus's head and swinging the saw blade through his neck. The head cut away clean, clenched in X's left hand as the body dropped to the floor.

X dropped next, not ten seconds later.

Epilogue

X came to a fuzzy form of consciousness just long enough to realize he was being carried. He blinked up at the simian face of Swing Gollit, who offered him a grim smile. He tried to speak, but nothing came out.

"When the big guy back there died, the energy barrier that had been keeping us out dropped. We managed to pick up the human survivors on the beach, though most of them are not exactly the most desirable sorts."

"He, phae, stus," X managed.

"Yeah, we're bringing him along, what's left of him. We'd have Doc Veris examine him, if that were still an option, but it ain't. Doc's a rogue element. Caught him on surveillance in your office wasting that cop friend of yours, Marlow. Veris is a cyborg, turns out. And the leader of the Cult of Wily."

X heard all of this, but nothing else as he slipped into the ether.

Waking up again, but this time X didn't feel any of the pain of his prior awakening. He'd been repaired, and the first face he now saw belonged to Zero. "Hello, brother," the crimson reploid said with a gentle smile. "Glad to see you're back."

X had been in a stand-by state for seven days, it turned out. His entire body had been repaired after thirteen hours of extensive work, including a complete overhaul of his tactile nervous wiring. His motor function boards had been almost entirely pulverized. Rotors and pistons in all of his joints had been battered and bent out of shape. His targeting system had been burnt out, and his life force energy had been reduced to eight percent. He'd only ever been closer to death once before.

Yet despite his full repairs and recovery, his spark had remained away, keeping his systems in a state of standby. X couldn't recall what had happened to him during that time spent as a wandering spirit. He suspected it had been something important, though, something he would have to call back to.

During his comatose state, several strange power signatures had been picked up on global sensor systems, but they had been brief and had disappeared entirely after only three days. X knew what that meant, but the Hunters' systems hadn't been able to pin down a source.

All of the nuclear launch sites had been abandoned after the death of Hephaestus, the warheads unaccounted for. This news put every human government on edge, but nobody did anything rash, thankfully.

X had watched security footage from his own hidden office camera after being briefed by Zero about all of this. Sure enough, there was Dr. Veris, using a cybernetic arm blaster to turn Jasper Marlow's head into so much meat paste. X had forgotten all about the little spy camera he'd installed on his desk. It was shaped like an original Megaman head, a novelty item meant to give the impression that X had a sense of humor.

There was nothing humorous here.

X held a meeting with Zero, Axl, Swing Gollit, and Triclaw the day after he was cleared to return to duty. During that meeting, he told them about Hephaestus's plans, taking special care to warn them about Paladin. When they heard he had a Buster Cannon of his own, all four reploids shook their heads.

There would be trouble ahead.

X dismissed them, though Zero stayed behind. Standing next to one another, the two reploids stared out over the city, each one wondering when the next attack would come.

Each wondered if the Hunters would be ready for all-out war.

And each knew the humans were not.

To be continued...

-Fin-

Steel Nightmare 24- Defender of the Realm

X brought himself under control with a concerted effort. He hadn't intended to be quite so primal with his foe, but after tearing Orbous's arm off, every bit of frustration, anger, despair and hatred he had been holding in since arriving at the Manor came flooding out. The lifeless thing on the floor had not been the source of that rage, but X had little room for mercy or regret at this stage.

X staggered toward the elevator at the far end of the chamber. When he stepped onto the platform, it automatically shut and began its descent. X let his mind wander as he was carried slowly down to the next level, where he would resume his battle.

He hoped he would get through the Manor without losing himself.

Paladin felt no tears, but he sobbed aloud at the sight of Orbous lying lifeless on the monitor, smashed apart by X. The green mechanoid had been his closest friend, really his only friend, since reawakening. The master called him friend, but the term held no truth to it in that instance. The lord of the realm had no friends among subordinates; a knight served a master, not a friend.

Changing his body and his name did not divest Paladin of his central essence, his spark, and that spark had been the definition of a knight of the realm. His old body had been fitted perfectly to his essential nature, and that nature had not changed.

"I am Paladin, but I am Knight Man, as well," he rasped, sniffling away snot that didn't exist. He rose from the monitor station in his battle chamber, drawing out his mace and readying his energy catapult shoulder weapon. "I will serve my master."

Soon, he would face down a clearly wrathful Megaman X. He would not waver from his master's commands, but he would also not waver from his own code. A true knight never did.

When the freight elevator slid open, X thrust his charged cannon outward. However, there was nothing to shoot at. The elevator had opened on a sort of grand feasting hall, reminiscent of tales of medieval lore. A long, beautiful oak table dominated the center of the rough stone chamber, ringed by chairs and laden with food.

Well, not real food. Approaching for a closer look, X could see that the plates were all small hologram projectors affixed to the table. Still, the roaring fireplace to the left of the room felt warm enough when he sauntered over to it. He supposed that would help with the atmosphere.

Wary of setting off more traps, X looked at the doors leading out of the room, one directly across from the elevator, one on the left wall and one on the right. He had options, it seemed. Following instinct, X went to the left door and grasped the handle, pulling it open.

The room on the other side of the door was decorated lavishly with tapestries, rich rugs, a pair of fainting couches and a four poster bed. It screamed Victorian, similar to the authentic medieval feast hall but slightly more modern and tasteful.

X saw nothing else of value in the room, and so he backed away. Turning his attention to the other side door of the hall, the Maverick Hunter methodically plodded over, charged cannon still held at the ready. When he pulled open this room, he found himself looking into an armory, weapons racks and armor and shield displays along three of the walls.

A quick analysis told him that this arrangement would make a great deal of sense for the old Robot Master who'd been known as Knight Man. Thinking on that, X wondered at the total count of Hephaestus's felled minions.

"Titan, at Target Field," X mused. "Shinobi, at headquarters. Twim, at the old factory. Then the ghoul, Caretaker, and the spider, Orbous. Now whoever Knight Man's become. What about the other two," he whispered. "There's always eight."

Silence answered him alone. He looked up and around the room, spotting a shield that looked to have a perfect circle in its center. X used a quick optic scan, detecting the camera behind the shield. He offered it a lopsided grin. "There's two missing from these festivities, Hephaestus. Wily always had Megaman fight eight Robot Masters, except for the very first campaign. Hell, even Sigma used eight top-ranking Mavericks during his wars, a perfect emulation. You screwed something up, didn't you?"

But again there came no reply from anywhere. It seemed he wouldn't be getting a rise out of Hephaestus. He had hoped to rope the mechanoid into another conversation, maybe discover some hint of what was coming ahead of him.

X backed out of the doorway and stalked to the doors opposite the freight elevator. He took a moment to collect himself before proceeding, lowering his head, and letting his spark whisper to him.

Hephaestus admired Paladin's courage. There would be no bots assaulting X before his encounter with the former Knight Man. There would be no traps sprung on the reploid either, as per Paladin's request. Instead, X would be contending with a foe who not only knew his style, but who held immense homefield advantage and an arsenal that could rival X's own.

Paladin had been in his level not ten minutes when he contacted his master with the request. He had not been in contact since, though Hephaestus could see on one of his floating holo-monitors the hulking mechanoid standing in the long hallway X stood just outside of, his energy catapult loaded and ready.

Hephaestus watched in high anticipation.

X drew the door open, the authentic wooden creak admirable. Or rather, it would have been, had the opening door not been tailed immediately by a large energy sphere rocketing at his chest. The blow struck, exploding on impact, throwing X unceremoniously up and then down through the feasting table.

The shot had crippled his kinetic shields and brought his life force down to eighty-three percent. A hole had been blasted, an inch in diameter, over his left pectoral area, granting him a look in at his shield generator box. Luckily, the shot hadn't destroyed it.

That's no combat drone, X thought, groaning as he tried to climb up out of the debris. As he gained unsure footing, he looked up, in time to see a menacing knight-like figure looming over him, swinging a tri-pronged mace down at his head. X leaned forward and took the blow on the shoulder, painful but survivable as the shoulder plating dented in.

The enemy bot fairly leaped back away, dashing backwards down the elegantly adorned hallway he'd been standing in, lying in wait. X got up again, more slowly but ready for anything.

"What's your name," X called out, aiming his cannon and charging it at the knight.

"I am Paladin," the other bot replied, its voice a throaty growl. He shifted his feet, electrified mace held behind him at the ready. "And I will hold you here, Megaman X." X fired the charged shot, which dissipated in a flare against a blue translucent energy shield that sprang forth from Paladin's forearm. The larger bot was shoved back, his metal feet digging a groove in the stone floor, but he was otherwise unharmed.

Paladin moved his arm aside and lobbed another catapult shot, which X deftly slid forward under. The shot hit the freight elevator doors and blew them apart in a hellish cacophony of shrieking metal and wires. X fired two rapid standard shots, but Paladin already had his shield in place. The shots were absorbed effortlessly.

X took up an evasive stance as Paladin charged, mace held out to the side as he screamed a war cry. X changed his cannon over to the Rolling Mine and fired it as he leapt aside of the mace's downward swing. The mine struck Paladin on the foot and exploded, but the heavyset warrior barely budged an inch.

I'm in trouble, X thought dimly, switching to the Spark Gap Attack. He fired into the floor as Paladin turned toward him, but the massively armored bot just planted his forearm against the floor and kicked on his shield, which absorbed the electrical current. X felt at a loss as he dashed to the right and into the long hallway.

Paladin gave chase, reaching out with his left hand and palming X's face. With a heave and grunt, he rammed the reploid's head back against a bust of Dr. Wily, smashing it apart. X dropped to the floor, but he managed to kick Paladin's legs out from under him and fire the Spark Gap directly into Paladin's back.

The bigger bot twitched and screamed for a moment or two, but was already getting to his feet when X started scrambling away, firing his cannon's standard shots repeatedly. Paladin managed to bring his shield up after three shots hit home on his chest, gut and right arm.

Paladin then snarled, "You're not the only one with a Buster Cannon here, X!" To X's shock and confusion, Paladin's left hand dropped into his bulky forearm, and the mechanoid shot a block of ice at X's legs. The blow did no damage, but X saw trapping ice immediately go up around his legs and feet to the knees. He was trying to pull free when Paladin rammed into his face with the mace, sending X flying back.

When he hit the floor, three artificial teeth came out of X's mouth. He could feel the synthskin shrinking from the scorching the mace's electrodes caused on the right side of his face. His life force tank had been reduced to sixty-two percent.

X was, in short, getting his ass kicked.

The legendary Maverick Hunter got up onto his hands and knees and activated the Frost Shield, bringing it up just in time to stop another ice-based shot from Paladin. The larger mechanoid brought his left arm back and holstered his mace on his hip, bracing his cannon as he took aim at X, who slogged backwards down the hallway.

X tumbled aside from a pair of shots, vaulting up over a third and returning fire. His shot struck true, spinning Paladin aside from the impact. X then launched a Needler, then began cycling through his systems as Paladin ducked under his energy shield, pinned by the hail of needles.

X came up with a quick combination, having a moment to think. He launched another Needler, then a Rolling Mine while the Needler was still airborne, and finally he fired a rebounding laser beam that ricocheted off of the walls in diagonals toward Paladin.

The optics visor of the helmet-headed bot flashed bright yellow as he tried to crab walk away from the approaching Rolling Mine. As the second Needler took up its barrage, though, Paladin was pushed downward, and the Rolling Mine and bouncing laser struck simultaneously.

There was a scream of pain along with the concussion and blinding flash of the explosion. X stared into the rolling smoke, heard Paladin groaning and moving around. A moment later, a Mega Buster Shot came roaring out of the smoke, catching X on the right shoulder, blowing him backward in a daze of hellish agony, his body spinning in air.

X managed to sit up almost right away, and he saw his ruined right arm lying a few feet away. Past the limb, staggering out of the smoke, came Paladin. His left leg was a wreck, hanging poorly by a pair of cables. A fist-sized hole smoldered in his chest from the laser, and half a dozen needles stuck out of his head. Sparks burst from the shield projector on his forearm.

I'm going to die here, X thought bleakly. I'm going to be killed by a clone of my own weapon. But Paladin wasn't aiming at X. His left arm instead had the hand unit out, and was clutching a small red device.

"X," Paladin rasped, bringing the device up. "If we meet again, I am going to kill you." Without waiting for X to reply, Paladin clicked a button on the device, and he disappeared in a streak of dark energy.

X slumped down to the floor, multiple system alerts clamouring for his attention. He dragged himself to his severed arm, picked it up, and hauled himself, growling, to his feet. The reploid then followed the hallway to its gated end, slipping into Paladin's combat chamber. It had been modeled after a medieval tournament grounds, but X was only dimly aware of this.

He only paid attention to the crimson line painted on the artificial turf that led him to a repair chamber. Once over the threshold and in view of the repair bots standing at the ready, X let his fatigue and pain carry him down, into blissful darkness.

The last thing he saw as he was laid on a table, staring up at the reflective ceiling panels, was himself. His mouth, chin and right cheek were all gone, revealing the jagged metal-covered skull casing beneath.

He tried to laugh, and passed out

Steel Nightmare Chapter 23- Noise and Silence

X watched as three more saw blades poked up out of the narrow lane and buzzed along towards the end of their slots, a few feet ahead of him. The ceiling was low, the walls only three feet apart, and from the doorway he stood in, there were no alternative routes.

He couldn't well avoid all three of the blades when finally moved forward. Cramming himself to one side, he would be struck by at least one of the blades.

X fired a shot at the right-hand blade, which slowed down for a moment before speeding right back up and lurching forward to catch up to the other two spinning disks. X shot it again, this time with a Mega Buster Shot, but the effect was the same.

He leaned against the doorway and considered his brief observations. A quick calculation later, he pushed himself upright and readied his cannon. When the three saw blades trawled back to the opposite end, pausing to reverse direction, X shot the one on the right and stepped forward two paces.

As the blade regained its speed and started to accelerate to match the line of the other two, X shot it again. The pause put a few more feet between the right saw and its partners, and X stepped closer again. One last shot, and he had enough room to comfortably step up and to the left, clear of the third blade's path and with the first two behind him.

X dashed ahead to a 90 degree intersection in the corridor, and found himself looking down another stretch of floor with three moving saw blades. The track was a little shorter this time, though. His margin of error would, as such, be smaller.

Yet the timing trick worked out once more, and this time his turn was to the left. As he came around the corner, X was struck in the head by an energy shot, thrown back and down by the blow. His kinetic shielding held, and he quickly rolled back out of the way of another shot.

He'd caught a glimpse of that third stretch of corridor. Three more floor-crawling blades, and halfway down the track, an energy shot turret aimed in his direction. With his cannon on his left arm, he'd have to expose at least part of himself in order to fire at the turret.

"Damn," he muttered. He charged the cannon, took a deep breath, then quickly dashed out and fired at the turret. The Mega Buster Shot took its target, but X still got hit by an energy projectile. He stumbled back, his shielding gone and four percent life force drained.

The saw blades were easy enough to work around, as he had the first two sets. When X got to the next corner, he quickly darted a look around it.

What he'd seen in that quick peek confused him. The next walkway led a hundred yards down to a narrow gate out of the chamber. There were no blade tracks, no turrets, and no bots barring the way. Something didn't pan out.

X took another quick peek, but he saw the same thing the second time round. He didn't trust it; this level had been laden with and centered around various types of traps. Nothing was as simple as it seemed.

Using the fact that the corridor turned right from him now, X wrapped his cannon arm around the corner and fired a Rolling Mine. He heard it moving along, rolling at an even pace, undeterred.

At the count of twelve, he heard a 'clack' followed by the rushing whoof of flames. The Rolling Mine detonated. X fired another one, this time watching it go. Some fifteen paces in by his stride, the ball weighed down a pressure plate, which activated flamethrowers in the walls, which caused it to explode.

X came around the corner and walked slowly up the final corridor. He stopped a few feet shy of where the Rolling Mine had hit the pressure plate. X looked down, saw that the plate was about three feet long, an easy jump for him.

X landed on the other side of the pressure plating on one foot, swinging the other foot ahead, cutting across a laser sensor's path. "Uh-oh," he managed, just before a long steel 'I' beam swooped down and smashed into his abdomen, sending him crashing back against the head of the corridor.

The ram had chipped away six percent of his life force. With a snarl X returned to the pressure plate and jumped over, holding himself still. He aimed his cannon low at the laser sensor, easily destroying it. As soon as it burst apart, a ceiling-mounted turret swung down, but X had anticipated such a problem. Leaning his head back, he reached up with his right hand and tore the turret right out of its socket, throwing it down the hallway.

The legendary Maverick Hunter followed after the skidding weapon, halting when its weight activated another pressure plate. The righthand wall rammed against the left wall in a five-foot segment, smashing the turret flat.

X activated his thrusters and swiftly hovered past the pressure plate, landing before the gate. He pressed a nearby green button, and the gate slid open, revealing another narrow, empty corridor, one doorway on the left halfway down, and a sensor gate at the end.

He was about to face another of Hephaestus's minions.

Orbous had known X would make it to him relatively intact. The reploid was now a scant one-hundred yards away. Only a sliding gate stood between them now. Orbous had been watching X throughout the level, and his hopes had been reduced to ashes.

He was going to die.

Of all eight of the mechanoids Hephaestus had revived, Orbous had been the least aggressive, but the most intelligent. At least, he thought so. He should have been more valued by the master, kept safe from the depredations of direct combat. Why had he not been given an escape, like Paladin?

Orbous checked his weapon's settings once again, hoping it would at least be over with quickly.

X came out of the maintenance chamber and once again performed a system sweep of            

his internal programming. Once again there were unfamiliar lines of code present, each one  quarantined and then eliminated from his system.

X readied his cannon, approaching the gate with a clear mind. Whatever happened now, he knew he still had at least one more floor to clear before his collision with Hephaestus. Their confrontation would likely be massive, and he did not expect to come away from it unscathed.

X stepped onto a pressure plate before the gate, and it swiftly slid upward into the ceiling. The room revealed beyond was an enormous cube with scores of video monitors on the left and right walls. Standing sixty yards away was a tall, stout green mechanoid with a man-like body and a spider's head, replete with pincers and multi-faceted eyes. The mechanoid had a wrist-mounted blaster, held against the opposing shoulder in a ready stance.

The mechanoid stood silently, its pincers slowly shutting and opening in anticipation. X stepped forth into the room, and the gate slid shut behind him. The monitors on both sides of the room flickered and changed until X saw Hephaestus on his throne, every monitor on each wall used to form a composite.

"Orbous," Hephaestus boomed over the hidden speakers in the ceiling. "You have served me well, my friend. The Hunter before you now has withstood every challenge put before him. Now you stand in his way. Fear not, Orbous. You have seen him fight; use your knowledge now."

X quickly fired a single shot, but the mechanoid, Orbous, dodged aside from the energy pellet with ease. X fired three successive shots, but the semi-arachnid bot ducked the first, jumped the second, and pirouetted aside from the third.

In Orbous's mind, a cold, steel trap had been sprung. He knew X's patterns, his behaviors. The emotions that had threatened to choke his mind were cleared away, leaving only a predator's logic. He fired his blaster four times in rapid succession, watching X dash aside the first three, the fourth catching him low on the left leg and tripping him up. Orbous's scanners indicated that X's kinetic shields were reduced to seventy percent from the single shot that landed.

Orbous hadn't just been watching X's actions on the monitors, the green mechanoid realized. His scanner and analysis systems had been clocking every internal adjustment the legendary Maverick Hunter made, automatically creating defensive and counter-attack subroutines to use in this combat.

As X switched to the Spark Gap weapon, Orbous's back slid a small panel open, firing a thread of diamond-filament wire to the ceiling. His body rose up several inches as X flooded the floor with electricity, and Orbous fired several more shots.

Two hits, and X was flung back, rolling away from the impact. Orbous's scanners informed him the reploid's kinetic shields were now down. As X started to get up, Orbous launched himself through the air, detaching his web line and firing out another to the left.

As X raised his arm cannon to fire, Orbous yanked himself hard to the side on his fresh line, avoiding the shot by scant inches while his right leg whipped up into X's face. The impact rocked both of them, but Orbous severed his web line and was ready seconds before X.

Leaning forward, Orbous fired a jet of the webbing wire at X's cannon arm, looping around the weapon and hauling toward himself with all of his strength. X fell to the floor with a shout of alarm. Taking advantage of the moment, Orbous fired a connected line of web-wire at the ceiling, effectively locking X's weapon arm in place.

X, meanwhile, was in a state of fury. He had expected a reasonably quick and easy fight, but this bot wasn't giving him any openings. It seemed as though this Orbous fellow kept one or two steps ahead of him at all times. And as X struggled to free his arm from the wire-web, the spider-headed bot shot him four more times, laying X flat.

He was down to eighty percent life force, and his chest and left shoulder plating was now scorched and denting inward.

X tried using the Flamethrower on the wire, but to no avail. Orbous came swooping in for another melee attack, but this time X was ready for him. The Maverick Hunter launched a savage punch to the center of Orbous's face, and X felt something break. Roaring in pain, Orbous flailed back, his left mouth pincer falling off with a clatter.

X then activated the Frost Shield. He felt the web-wire turn brittle as the ice covered it, and with a yank he freed the cannon. Orbous leapt away, displaying superior leg strength in clearing half of the chamber in a single bound. X snarled, firing several rapid shots, all dodged. Orbous wasn't faster than him; he simply knew X's strike patterns, it seemed.

X had a revelation then. Every enemy he'd faced within the Manor thus far had been gunned down. With a wicked grin he deactivated the cannon, bringing his left hand unit back into place as he charged at Orbous.

Orbous began shooting wildly at X, who dashed, rolled and jumped over the shots. When X was in reach, he grabbed Orbous by the weapon arm and hauled hard to the left, lifting Orbous off the floor and hurling him away. The green mechanoid managed to fire a wire line at the ceiling, however, stopping himself from a collision with the wall.

But the line hung too low, and as Orbous refocused his attention on X, the Hunter came dashing upward, delivering a hammering hook punch to Orbous's head. The arachnid bot fell to the floor, dazed and wounded. X packed a lot of power into a single punch.

From his back, Orbous fired up at X, but the reploid had snap-rolled away already. As Orbous got to one knee, X came in from the right, swooping around behind Orbous and latching onto the green mechanoid's wrist. X hauled upward, planting one foot on Orbous's neck and pulling with every ounce of strength he had.

Pain crashed like thunder through Orbous as X ripped the arm with the attached blaster off of his body. Sparks and wires flapped about, Orbous shrieking in horror and agony as X proceeded to beat him over the head with his own arm. Each blow brought a primitive grunt of effort from the reploid, and soon Orbous's neat, orderly thoughts became a hodgepodge of survival panic.

Trying to skitter away, Orbous yelped when X grabbed his left ankle and planted one foot against his ass. With a burst of full-powered thrusters and a Herculean pull, X ripped Orbous's leg off, leaving him limbless on the left side of his body.

What came after that, for Orbous, was a series of dull impacts, and then darkness, as X stomped on his head repeatedly.

"Dear gods," Hephaestus muttered, watching as X committed to the brutality of the last few stomps he delivered to Orbous's crushed head. It seemed X had reached a breaking point. Either that, or he'd realized that ranged combat wasn't a viable solution to Orbous. Perhaps a bit of both, he mused.

Now, only he and Paladin remained.

Steel Nightmare Chapter 22- Watchful

Orbous watched on his own monitors the last flicker of life flow out of Caretaker. Now only he and Paladin remained standing. It made a certain sense, when he thought about it. The ghoul-like bot had served his function in the master's plans, so he was now done. Orbous himself would be next.

Of course, the arachnid-headed green mechanoid didn't have the benefit of cyborg warriors at his side. When X showed up, the former Crystal Man would be entirely on his own. Not that he couldn't handle it.

All of them had watched X's VR training sessions. All of them knew what he was capable of. But only Orbous specialized in analysis, among them all. Only he could effectively use the knowledge they'd gleaned to its utmost. Thrash had been the only one to come close to understanding what that meant, and his impatience and ego had gotten him killed.

Poseidon wouldn't have even stood as long as Caretaker, had he not been murdered by Thrash, and that was a fact. Orbous calculated that X would not have even reached Caretaker if Thrash and Poseidon had been around for X's arrival.

But he could be wrong. After all, he'd already seen some unexpected maneuvers from the reploid, and adapting his defensive responses accordingly would be a challenge. Still, he had the whole level to wait yet.

X was making use of the maintenance chamber again before going through the exit gate in Caretaker's showdown chamber, a smart move on X's part. Orbous's level of the compound was filled to the brim with combat bots of all kinds, as well as floor traps, sensor-based traps, system disruptors and hologram projectors.

And X had no choice but to face them next. The elevators he had access to now would only carry him to Orbous's level.

Orbous watched the monitors, pincers clacking in anticipation.

This is a war, X thought, a war I do not want. But I will fight, because I must. It's what I was designed for, to fight, to protect the human race, and my own. I did not seek this war.

As gruff as he'd been with humans in general over the last few years, X had never hated them, not as a species. He hated Mavericks, yes, but they weren't a species either. And whatever Hephaestus and his kin called themselves, they were essentially robots that weren't quite standard bots and not quite reploids either. They weren't cyborgs, for that matter.

But oh, he'd come to hate them, too, just as much as the Mavericks. Hephaestus was cruel, twisted, and as mad as a hatter. Perhaps that was the unifying factor, he thought. Wily? Madman. Sigma? Madman. Hephaestus? Paint him with buckets of philosophy and he would still be nothing more than a madman.

So, X thought as the repairs were completed, it's madmen I find myself hateful of in the end. All of the ones who don't question the orders of madmen are just as bad themselves. X took a minute to test his internal systems, clearing out a couple of extraneous bugs he detected in his software, likely tacked on by the foreign system for record-keeping purposes.

He didn't want anything in his programming that belonged to Hephaestus.

X returned to the faux cemetery, which was now lit like daytime. "Not really all that funny," he muttered, stalking past the cyborg corpses. Caretaker, he noticed, looked a lot smaller under the brighter lights, frailer somehow. That one, he thought, that one was truly insane.

The exit gate ratcheted open when he stepped on a pressure plate a few feet in front of it. Beyond was a large freight elevator platform, a control box on the right side. X stepped over to it, and saw that there were several levels to select, yet all but one had been blacked out; level 'O'.

"So many options," X said, looking up into the shaft above. Yes, he thought, I can see drop ports. This elevator will begin to descend, and bots will drop down to try and attack me by surprise. Well, we'll see about that. X switched his cannon to the Spark Gap, the turned and hit the 'O' button.

The gate shut, shaft lights turned on, and the elevator began its steady descent. X watched the platform's floor, and when he saw half a dozen shadows starting to spread, he fired the Spark Gap downward. No sooner did the giant mechanical spiders hit the platform than they were electrocuted and dropped prone to the surface. X fired another shot at each wall of the shaft, and eight more of the oversized arachnids thumped lifelessly onto the elevator.

A minute later the elevator came to a halt, and another gate rose on a vast chamber of green steel panels and what appeared to be mounds of metal shaped like miniature towers. Robotic ants half his size began clambering out of the holes fronting these, and X set to work attacking them.

Though they came in waves of four or five, it only took X a couple of minutes to destroy them and their deployment turrets. He stalked toward a gap in the floor midway across the room, peering down. The gap went down about fifteen feet, and stretched from one end of the chamber to the other width-wise.

The gap was only about eight feet across. He could easily dash-jump it. X took a few measured steps back, giving himself room to maneuver. He kicked on his dash thrusters, braced his lead foot, and hurled himself forward.

When he was halfway across the gap, the tractor beam in the ceiling locked him in place, then threw him back. He flew several dozen feet, tumbling as he hit the floor. He sprang up, shook his head, and looked to the ceiling in time to see a long, narrow white device fold up and roll back to its position over the gap in the room.

A section of the floor to his left flipped over, revealing small explosive packets. X rolled away, but when he got back up, he saw that they hadn't detonated. They were covered by another bubble of orange energy. He didn't know quite what to make of that.

Behind him, another panel flipped over. X moved toward the gap again, and looked over his shoulder to find that several more floor panels were now covered in explosives.

"Oh, fun," he groused. X prepared to dash jump again, aiming his cannon skyward. This time, as he jumped, he fired up, but his shot was just wide of the tractor beam device.

This time when he landed, he was blasted almost up to the ceiling. He came back down in a trail of smoke with a "Hmmmph!" His kinetic shielding was down entirely, and he'd suffered first-level scorching on most of his back. His life force energy only took a four percent drop, but if he didn't wait for his kinetic shields to recover, another blast could well do significant damage.

X sat up and looked around. One of the deployment turrets he'd destroyed had been on the other side of the gap, and he stared at it now, wondering how those ants had gotten over towards him. "The tractor beam wouldn't target them," he reasoned aloud.

X changed tack, firing one of the Needler shots up over the gap. Sure enough, the tractor beam engaged, tossing the Needler ball back out over another set of explosives. It bounced harmlessly off of the orange shielding, however.

X stood up and walked carefully over to where one of the ant-bots lay in a heap. He kicked it over onto its back and examined it slowly, until his eyes locked onto its legs.

"Bingo," he said, reaching down and snapping off two of the legs. Powerful magnetic plates were screw-mounted onto the ants' legs, allowing them to resist the pull of the tractor beam. X used all of his strength to bend the leg poles to wrap around his feet, and then ventured to the edge of the gap.

He floated one foot out and quickly angled his leg down. He repeated this with the other leg, and felt the pull of the beam on him. But he held in place firmly, walking down into the gap ever so slowly, then across and up the other side. When he cleared the gap, the tractor beam shut down, and the large double doors leading forward swung open.

Before X removed the magnetic plates from his feet, he peered ahead. "Oh, what fun," he groaned.

"Not exactly what I expected you to do, X," Hephaestus said, watching the monitor. "You are far more adaptable than records alone would imply." For the first time since X had arrived, the mechanoid once called Metal Man wondered if perhaps he'd grossly underestimated X.

He wondered if Paladin would escape in time to carry on his work.

The chamber X was now looking at had a single grated walkway, suspended over a trench of molten metal. Swooping through the tunnel-like chamber at oddly spaced intervals were enormous pendulum blades, back and forth, back and forth. And the coup de grace? He could just make out little green laser sensors at ankle-height on either side of those pendulum slots.

This, he decided, would possibly be trouble. But X wasn't racing against a clock. He had the time to figure things out. The heat from the molten material caked everything in a hellish rusty red glow, but he could tell from the swoop of the side of the tunnel that the pool was shallow. Good sign there.

The pendulums weren't encased in any of the orange barrier force, and that was probably also a good thing. X activated a Rolling Mine and fired it out. As it closed on the first walkway gap, it hit the green laser and was pushed by a concentrated burst of thrusters mounted to the grated walkway's underside forward. It was sliced neatly in two.

X tried the Spark Gap, but the laser sensor's rigging absorbed the electricity without any notable problem. X took a few steps toward the sensor, knelt down, and activated the Frost Shield. Within a few moments, the entire section of walkway was covered in ice. X jumped up and down on the walkway, and the sensor rigging fell off into the molten chute below.

"One problem down," he muttered to himself. The pendulum appeared to be fixed to a beam leading up into a wide shaft, too dark to see up into. X couldn't risk a blind shot up there; he had no way of knowing what additional trouble he might get himself into if the pendulum suddenly came down.

But, he thought, I should be able to stop it. He switched to the Spark Gap, and as the blade came by, he fired at it. The electricity ran up the beam, and he heard a satisfying groan from the motor that swung the pendulum.

Over the course of forty minutes he repeated the process six more times, clearing the chamber without incident.

Orbous was on the verge of panic. This was not the sort of methodology he'd come to expect from X's history and the VR sessions. X was a warrior, a brute savage in a high-tech body! Why had he suddenly turned thoughtful and cautious?

If the reploid continued on in this fashion, mindful of his environment, disabling traps and passing them by with minimal harm, then Orbous would be slain in a hurry. He wasn't designed to be a combat specialist. Like Caretaker, Orbous could fight well enough against lesser opponents, but against the more capable Hunters or X, he didn't stand a chance.

There were still several rooms between he and X. Perhaps, he mused, I'll get lucky and he'll make a mistake.

X reacted out of sheer instinct, falling over backwards and firing straight up into the underbelly of the enormous mechanical wasp as it passed overhead. When he'd opened the man-sized door leading on from the pendulum tunnel, he felt a tripwire snap against the door, and the fall and shot came without a thought.

Suspended from a vaulted ceiling in the center of an enormous room modeled on some sort of flowered field, there hung a huge metal wasps' nest, a dozen or so warrior wasps crawling about its cratered surface.

X sat up, cannon arm held out, but he did not otherwise move. The wasps paid him no mind at the moment, making their slow, lazy circuits into and out of the hive. He considered charging a Mega Buster Shot and firing it up to the thin beam holding the nest in place, but something in the air under the nest caught his eye.

Four thin tripwires hung just below the nest, each one leading off to segmented panels in the walls that would drop open if the wires were broken. He attempted to use his x-ray vision filter, but much of the panelling had been altered to resist such efforts.

Not all of it, though. A series of tunnels under the floor of the room snaked about, and X could see dozens of those giant mechanical spiders laying in wait, the kind he'd destroyed on the freight elevator.

So, if the nest came down, the room would flood with the spiders and whatever wasps didn't die in the crash of the nest. If he tried to dash his way through, he would be swarmed from above by wasp bots. There would be no avoiding a fight.

"But it doesn't have to be on their terms," X muttered. He switched his targeting to sniper mode, zooming in on one of the tripwires. He kept it in focus and slowly stepped back onto the last grated walkway in the pendulum tunnel.

When he was barely able to line up his shot, X fired. One of the tripwires snapped, and he heard the barrier panel fall away with a thud. Immediately he launched two Rolling Mines and put up the Frost Shield.

Two explosions rocked the ground seconds later, and ten seconds later the first of the spiders came trammeling through the doorway at him. It froze almost solid within a few feet of him, and X reached out with his hands and grasped its two foremost legs, twisting at the hips and tossing it over the side of the walkway into the molten chute.

It barely twitched as it melted. The next eight suffered the same fate, and none of the wasps made a move to come out and interfere.

Slow but steady, X thought with a grin, preparing to repeat the process.

"Patterns will be the death of me," Orbous groaned, watching on the monitor as X dispatched the last of the spiders. The green mechanoid had no direct control over the combat drones, all of which, being simple machines at their core, behaved within preprogrammed parameters. There was no getting around the fact that a thoughtful X could dispatch most of the drones with no problem.

Orbous watched helplessly as X fired a Mega Buster Shot upward, bringing the hive crashing down. He then crouched in the doorway and held a steady flamethrower stream towards the few surviving wasps, all of which perished before reaching him.

Only three rooms remained until X arrived in the gate corridor.

X walked around the felled nest, giving it a wide berth in case any of the wasps inside were still functional and trying to crawl out. The door to the next chamber was another man-sized portal, and he kicked it open and dashed to the right, weapon at the ready.

Nothing came flying out. Instead, X peeked around the corner to find a small round chamber, a strange sphinx statue dominating the center. On the other side of the statue was another door, this one covered in an energy barrier. The statue stood on a raised pedestal, the front of which was a blank touchscreen.

X stepped into the room, and the door slammed shut behind him. A force barrier went up over it, locking him in. The sphinx's mouth grated up and down as a booming voice rang out. "Behold, I am the sphinx, and this is my challenge, X! Ready yourself to answer my riddles, or suffer the consequences."

"Well, this should be interesting," X mused aloud.

"Prepare for my first riddle! X, I am the beginning of my kind, yet not the first slain. Of great power and strength, yet naught could I do from afar. Who am I?"

X thought about that, cycling through his internal database. He stared up at the sphinx, which bore the mark of Dr. Wily on its chest. X smiled.

"You are Guts Man," X replied.

"Correct! Three more correct answers, and you may move on. Now, are you ready?"

"I am."

"Useless by most means, the ultimate power in the end. The weakness of close range, the oddity of function. What am I?" X blinked rapidly, confounded by the prompt. What was useless but an ultimate power? Not a who, a what. X considered all of the weapons of the Robot Masters, but found that he could think only of most of the shield weapons Megaman had adapted over the years. None was what he'd consider an ultimate power.

"You have thirty seconds," the sphinx intoned. X gripped his head, trying to think. With ten seconds left, he blurted an answer.

"The Top Spin Attack!" It made sense to him. A melee attack, it forced Megaman to get too close to his enemies, yet Wily had overlooked it when designing his final bot of that campaign.

"Correct," the sphinx said. "Two more and you may leave unmolested. Now, the next riddle. Golden treasure within, yet no lock, no lid. Delightful when fresh, dreadful when not. What am I?"

X scoured through his database, but found nothing there of a hint. He tried to connect himself to an external network, but his signal was blocked within the room. He had no guess when the sphinx let out a buzzing sound.

"The answer, X, was an egg." X heard metal sliding against metal. He looked up, and saw a large circular saw blade descend from the ceiling on a transteel armature. The blade began spinning, and the armature rolled along a track toward him.

X began running around the statue, firing back blindly at the armature. Still the blade came, the armature swerving back and forth to evade his shots, until finally the saw bit into his backside, chewing through the kinetic shield and an inch of body plating before disappearing back into the ceiling.

X stopped running, rubbing his wounded ass. "That was unpleasant," he murmured.

"Next question," boomed the sphinx. "I have an eye, but cannot see. A master of style and fashion is me. No clothing worn can ever be, without the presence one barely sees. What am I?"

X cycled through his civilian data and catalogues, combing hundreds of stored literary references in his databank in seconds. Finally, he snapped his fingers.

"A needle!"

"Correct," boomed the sphinx. "One more, and you can go forward. Look to the screen." X watched as a series of small numbers showed up on the screen, one through one-hundred. "Prime the pump, and leave out the core when you do it." X shook his head. What sort of oddity was this? "You have one minute."

Nothing like racing the clock, X thought. He might have been more bleak about this challenge, but the riddle held its own clue. Numbers, he thought. Prime numbers! He began tapping the prime numbers on the screen, and when he had them all highlighted, he reached for a button marked 'enter'.

He stopped himself with twenty seconds remaining. "Leave out the core," he muttered. He looked up at the sphinx, a grin slowly spreading across his face. X reached down and removed the highlight on '51', a number often used as a base when assembling basic robot programming cores. It was the number of actions a standard bot could undertake without fine tuning.

X hit the 'enter' key.

"Correct! You may proceed," the sphinx boomed. The barrier around the door leading on dropped away, and X made his way to it, opening it on another tunnel-like chamber. Three hundred yards long, there were several raised platforms suspended by anti-gravity pods floating about. The floor itself only stretched out about fifty yards, falling away to spiked electrodes lining the rest of the floor.

Dangling down from the high ceiling were several yellow and black spider bots, which climbed up their nylon threads and out of sight. X would have to jump from platform to platform, avoiding the spiders and whatever weapons they employed, as well as any other unseen traps along the way.

Just great, he thought. X had faced several rooms like this one over the years fighting Sigma, his Mavericks employing such pitfalls into their controlled zones. But Hephaestus wasn't Sigma, and his henchmen weren't Mavericks. These foes were far more clever than that.

X had rarely been forced to think so much during his battles against Sigma and his legions. He realized with a start that if he'd taken the time then to think things through, he likely could have carved through Sigma's campaigns with little effort.

He supposed he might have to thank the former Metal Man for reminding him that he was a logical, thinking reploid, not a barbarian. X started toward the first platform, which didn't move, but just hung in place. He jumped up on it, cannon charged and ready for any of the spiders to come out.

As he jumped forward to the next stationary platform, a spider came down almost right in front of him. With a yelp X fired, and the explosion drove him back and all the way to the solid floor, tumbling away. He hadn't expected the spider bots to explode like that; most bots didn't. He'd taken a hammering, but his kinetic shields held, reduced to thirty percent capacity.

If he'd fallen into the electrodes, it would be a different story. He would once again have to out-think his adversaries. X considered his thrusters, but he knew they couldn't sustain him in the air long enough to cross the chamber entirely. He wished suddenly that he'd worn a flight pack to the Manor.

The only option he could think of was to try and goad the spiders into coming down at him so he could destroy them from a distance. However, they seemed to be programmed, if the first one was any indication, to only descend from hiding if he got close.

X could always try to speed his way through, avoiding the spiders altogether and trying to outrun/out-jump their attacks. But he doubted he had the speed for that. His Frost Shield wouldn't freeze them over fast enough in mid-air to render them a non-threat either.

X jumped up onto the first stationary platform, then onto the second one. The first moving platform was on its path away from him at the moment, so X took a look toward the ceiling. Two hatches stood an inch or two open, a mechanical spider laying in wait above.

If he jumped forward, they would fall on him quickly. If he tried to fire a Mega Buster Shot at them in mid-leap, the explosion of hitting them might well throw him past the moving platform down to the electrodes.

For all of his speed, durability, combat efficiency and wit, X was at an impasse. He could think of no way to minimize the risk of injury. The design of the chamber may have appeared simple, but simple setups often provided the fewest methods of traversing them.

X jumped forward as the moving platform drew near, firing a charged Mega Buster Shot overhead. The two mechanical spiders exploded only a foot from their hatches, and the force of the blast came down at X in a wave.

He would have been thrown clear to the electrodes below, but X's right hand snapped out in time to catch the edge of the moving platform. Dangling over the side, X looked down eight or nine feet to the electrodes, watching as they hummed with power. He grunted, hauling himself up onto the platform. His kinetic shields held at twenty-five percent.

He could feasibly wait on the platform while his shields recovered, but he didn't want to waste time. Three more moving platforms hovered between X and solid floor, and he wanted to be through the chamber quickly.

A thought occurred to him as he was readying himself to make a dashing jump. The electrodes on the floor below him would jolt him if he fell, causing sustained, steady damage. Couldn't they do the same to the spider-bots? X left his cannon uncharged, aimed up at another pair of ceiling hatches as he timed his dash-jump.

In mid-air, as the spiders dropped down at him, X shot at the strands of synthetic webbing holding the bots. The lines disintegrated easily, and as he descended toward the moving platform, the spider-bots flailed their legs, falling to the electrodes below where they thrashed about helplessly.

They stopped functioning in less than three seconds, and neither exploded. X repeated the process two more times, and won his way clear to the end of the chamber. A tall gate opened for him as he pushed a green panel next to it, letting him into the next chamber.

Orbous had been watching X carefully all along, trying to find a weakness, an exploitable soft spot. The Maverick Hunter showed none, though, short of occassional impatience. For Orbous, it was time to face facts; he was going to die in just a short bit.