Steel Nightmare Chapter Three- Deepening

Detective Marlow transferred the data X provided him with to a new folder titled 'Sept 14, 2152', and shook his head. Nothing seemed to have advanced much, in his opinion, since the first Labor Bot had been released in 2019. Sure, weapons and defense and even medical technologies had thrived, but the advent of intelligent robots had driven any other technological considerations so deep into the ground that only a mole could get at them. A mole on crack, he thought with a wry grin.

Take the famous reploid standing a few feet away, for example. Marlow didn't like him; it wasn't anything personal. He knew the history of X, like any other human on Earth. But meeting him in person felt no different than meeting any other mechanoid. There was a natural distrust wrapped around his mind of such things.

"I have a couple more questions for you, X," Marlow said, jotting down his question with a pen on a small notebook. X turned to face Marlow, and immediately felt his temper rise to a dangerous level. He didn't like this detective, not a bit. It wasn't anything personal; he was just too much of an anachronism for comfort. The man had arrived in an early-20th century sedan, the kind with no autopilot. Everything about the vehicle was manually operated, except for a gps system to navigate by. He used an old writing implement and notebook instead of a datapad for notation. And a minor detail, but telling to X's deep-ray analysis scanners; the man shaved with an old manual razor, instead of an Auto-Groomer.

Old world and new world met in a front that could spiral into a tornado under the right circumstances. These were not such, but close enough to keep everyone else on the scene well away from the human and the reploid.

"Ask, then," X said, clearly exasperated.

"How well did you know Mr. Fellows?"

"Not well at all," X said evenly, eyes on Marlow's hand as he scribbled on the pad. "I recall seeing him at the desk frequently."

"Mr. X, Mr. Fellows had been working here as a doorman and desk clerk for nine years. You mean to tell me you didn't know him at least a little bit?"

"Not to be rude, but he hardly registers in my memory banks," X huffed. "I've usually been too busy to notice him. Until recently, I rarely even made use of my apartment."

"So, you don't know if anyone might've wanted to harm him?"

"No, I don't. I know only his name, the fact that he worked the desk, and that he was apparently killed in a horrible fashion."

"You can say that again," chimed in the middle-aged medical examiner. Of course, middle-aged nowadays meant mid-to-late sixties; the average human life expectancy in 2152 was 140 to 150 years. "The shallow slashes came first, then the stab wounds to the major nerves. The bleeding from his throat finished him off, but he took a few minutes to die. My scanner says he bled out before he could drown on his own blood, but only by a minute or so. This man died badly."

X and Marlow looked each other in the eyes silently for a moment. Whoever had done this had been absolutely ruthless. Both men were now wondering who could possibly be so cruel, and how they had managed to disable the cameras in the lobby before killing Andrew Fellows.

When detective Marlow left, he had a sneaking suspicion a Maverick was finally active again, and that X and his organization had dropped the ball.

X, watching the detective leave, suspected the humans had a new psychotic on their hands, and that they had been the ones to mess things up. Each man was wrong, and only time would tell them how.

X tried not to think about the scene down in the lobby, but even as he pulled up his personal archives, his mind wandered back to the body. Fellows had been butchered, that much was plain. That such meticulous wounds had been delivered in a frenzy was out of range, though. He realized that now.

Each slash and stab had been crippling and clean. His own on-board analysis programs told him each wound had been delivered in less than a second. The whole attack had lasted maybe ten seconds.

No human was that fast, even with two knives.

So, a bot. A malfunctioning service bot, perhaps, but only the soldier-class ones would know how to wield weapons like that. Soldier-class bots all stayed on their assigned bases, though. Even malfunctioning ones could not leave their assigned zones.

Worker bots didn't have enough finesse for this either, he thought. That left only one possibility for X; a Maverick. There were over six-thousand reploids in Central City. Any one of them could have gone rogue. But of those six-thousand, only five-hundred were combat-readied. Of those, three-hundred and twelve were Hunters.

The remainder worked for law enforcement agencies. X shook his head, deciding to leave that trail go for the time being. He wasn't a cop. Until the local authorities could confirm the presence of a Maverick, he would not get involved.

So X used his home console to enter the restricted zone coordinates from Veris's gathered reports. The system immediately spat back information files, and he opened the first three.

The first one said 'Bubble Man Zone', and what followed was a description of a kind of half-submerged operations base. At the end of the report, the words "Wily Campaign 2. Summarily defeated by Megaman. Closed off for eventual recovery.'

X blinked numbly at the screen. He moved on to the second report. 'Gemini Man Zone', ending with "Wily Campaign 3. Summarily defeated by Megaman and Rush. Closed off for condemnation and recovery." The third one was the same, but for "Crystal Man Zone".

X didn't even have to go through the rest of the reports to figure out what he thought might be going on. Instead, he shut down his archive system, looked out of his window to the darkened city, and decided it was time to finally have a talk with his predecessor.

"Time to see you, Megaman," he whispered.

"You must submit to weapons lockdown, sir," the camouflaged, tank-like reploid said sternly. An exact twin of the heavy mechanoid stood to X's left, a giant turret cannon on its shoulder aimed squarely at his head. "There are no exceptions," the first one was saying.

X had expected high security at the Light Complex, but this seemed ridiculous. He and Zero were the senior most Hunters, for God'd sakes! Why would either of them cause trouble? With a sigh, he held out his left arm. The first heavy-duty reploid clamped a silvery ring device on it, and turned a key on the top, pulling it out.

"Sorry, sir. It's policy," the big man said in a humbled, almost ashamed, tone.

"It's okay," said X gently. "You're doing your duty. I commend you both." Even the silent twin looked away at that, and the meshed gates slid silently open for him. X stalked quickly inside the building.

The entrance chamber was a sprawling museum of sorts to Dr. Light and his achievements, the last of which was the design and initial stages of building Megaman X. X looked at the schematics of himself on a holographic display, and shuddered. He'd been so underpowered at first, it was a wonder he wasn't dead.

Curiously, there was no such display for Zero. X made a mental note of this, then passed into a long, narrow corridor filled on either side with enlarged photos of his predecessor, Megaman. Originally a young man in a mechanized suit, Rock had been forced to be fused into the suit over the course of his third and fourth campaigns against Dr. Wily, due to injuries sustained in battles. The last photo on the right before the hallway ended in a set of imposing black metal doors showed a weary Rock lying on a surgical table.

Under the framed photo was a digital reader, which X scanned through. It was a report/essay written by Dr. Light, talking about the very final procedure Rock had, the transfer of his brain and spinal cord into a brand new suit after his sixth campaign against Wily. Light delved into the philosophical throughout the paper, which was a rare departure for the esteemed roboticist.

Yet the project had paved the way for the advent of the reploid race. Shortly after Rock's eighth war against Wily and his robots, Light discovered in the wreckage of a recovered Robot Master something he called 'The Spark', a form of energy previously unidentified. In essence, Thomas Light had discovered the artificial soul of all sentient mechanoids.

A cult-like group of human scientists began studying spark phenomena shortly after Light's death in 2055. Reploids began making their appearance throughout the world three years later.

X shook off these thoughts and pushed through the black doors into a surprisingly normal-sized lounge of some sort. There were three plush leather couches in the center of the room, arranged in an incomplete square. Dominating the left wall was an enormous flat screen monitor. X felt a floor panel click under his feet as he looked right, spotting an open bathroom and a small dining area.

The screen on his left flickered to life, showing a maintenance chamber. Standing in the middle of the screen, tall and pale blue, was a smiling Megaman. Speakers hidden around the room crackled to life. "Well, I was starting to think you'd never visit," Megaman said with a smirk. X stared in wide wonder at the screen, squaring himself to face his predecessor.

"Sir, it is an honor," X said, snapping off a smart salute. Megaman returned the gesture.

"Have a seat," Megaman said, and X did, directly across from him. "So, I imagine you have a lot of questions."

"I'm sorry, I do, but it's taking me a moment to get used to this. Um, how are you in there? Your brain was organic."

"Dr. Light was able to use a brain scan to copy my thoughts and brainwave activity," Megaman said. "He then installed a miniature scanner in my helmet to record everything. I'm Rock, but I'm also not. My organic brain died back in 2061."

"Oh," said X quietly. "Then, your personality?"

"Dr. Tenkian, chairman of the Spark Research Council, was able to find what he called a 'Blank Spark' to install into this network. I have a spark, same as you."

"Ah, I see. This is all very confusing," X admitted.

"Tell me about it," Megaman replied wryly. "So, what did you want to know?"

"Okay, I suppose my first question is this; when you defeated Wily's Robot Masters, how did you absorb their weapon programs?" There was a pause as the scene on the monitor changed. Megaman was suddenly standing in a large power generator room, on the left side of the screen. Duct work and power panels lay broken, live wires slapping about everywhere. On the right side of the screen, crouched down, was a wounded robot with a stylized lightning bolt for a faceplate; Elecman.

Megaman's voice spoke from the speakers. "The program operation wasn't difficult. When I fired the final shot," Megaman said, as his representation on-screen fired a white power bullet at Elecman. The spheroid struck, and Elecman was thrown back, clouds of smoke and bits and pieces of metal frame flying apart. "My cannon immediately turned back into a hand. Then, the absorbing program began running."

X watched as Megaman stalked up to the downed Robot Master, opening a panel on his arm. He pulled out a connection cord, and pried open the side of Elecman's head unit. He plugged the cord in, and flashed twice with a red energy. "The cannon adapted the Robot Master's attack into a form I could use."

X contemplated the image before him as it began to fade, replaced by the previous view with one exception. Megaman was now seated in a tall-backed leather chair. "That's a little different than my own cannon. Mine absorbs latent energy from Mavericks' weapons systems throughout battle and reconfigures it to mimic their attacks."

"I know," said Megaman. "I have access to all but a dozen or so systems in the Hunter Organization. Those ones I can't get into employ some extremely potent defense setups. I can similarly access any civilian or external network if they're open and running defenses I can work through. There are plenty that I can't, and I don't do it often. But I do get bored in here sometimes."

"Are you aware of time passing?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes," Megaman said with a sigh, folding his arms over his chest. "I frequently turn off the internal clock on my primary drive so that I don't get antsy or bored. Now, anything else?"

X looked away for a minute, organizing his thoughts. He lined up several questions in his mind, then proceeded. "Do you know about the murder in my building earlier tonight?"

"Yes. Detective Marlow has already filed his initial report. He suspects a Maverick is on the prowl."

"Okay," said X. "Do you have access to the building's video surveillance logs?"

"Yes," said Megaman. There was a pause, then the screen flickered a moment before settling back to normal. "Sorry, I was retrieving the files for view and analysis."

"Good. Is there any sign of who cut the surveillance feed," X asked. He noticed a moment before, when the screen first came back on after the flicker, a small glitch in the lower-right portion of the screen. It had flashed by in milliseconds, but X knew what he'd seen.

It had been part of a file folder icon, and X had caught sight of the word 'Project' in the title. He would ruminate on that later.

"There is no visual trace of who cut the footage," Megaman said. "However, system readings from the building's security network show that a service panel along the roof was manually unlocked and opened. There's a trace of an access cable being disconnected in the basement core fifteen minutes later."

X blinked rapidly at this information. "Anything else?"

"Yes," said Megaman. "According to the logs, that maintenance panel didn't close again until after detective Marlow had left the scene. Footage from the street lamp across the road shows him leaving, and five minutes later, the access panel closed."

"Then the killer was still there," X breathed. "He was watching us."

"That does seem likely," said Megaman. Another flicker from the screen. X caught sight of the file folder in the bottom right corner of the screen this time; 'Omega Project'. Again, he filed this away for later consideration. "Listen, I'll soon have to go into a sweep mode to check for anomalies. I'm sure you've noticed some issues already with this interface."

"I did," said X evenly. "I didn't want to point it out. Thought it might be rude."

"That's never stopped you before, has it, X?" X grinned guiltily and shook his head. "I can take one last question. Anything you want." X thought for a moment, and decided to indulge one of his most recent curiosities.

"Megaman, I was designed by Dr. Light. Who was Zero first designed by?"

"Ah, yes, I've only been asked that by one other reploid, Zero himself. He visited just before heading to Moon Base 2."

"And?"

"Zero was initially designed by Dr. Franklin Reginald Wily, X." X gasped, staring wide-eyed at the monitor as it began to fade to black. "Your reaction to this information is about the same as Zero's was. Sorry if I've upset you."

And then the screen was dark, and X was left in silence.

Steel Nightmare Chapter 2- Brotherhood

When Knight Man next came to the bleary state of semi-consciousness he'd experienced earlier, panic rammed him, a charging bull in foaming fury. Full wakefulness now, his sole battered optic trying desperately to find something familiar. Nothing.

He saw all around him an engineering laboratory, much like the one in which he'd been constructed in the first place. His spark had been installed early on; Dr. Wily had let Knight Man see most of his own body assembled.

Knight Man recalled thinking something had been very wrong with Dr. Wily in the last three or four days of his construction. It was as though the old man had begun to slowly unwind, only feigning interest when in truth there was no soul left in his work.

Knight Man had seen it, and had trembled. He felt certain now that the lack of attention on his creator's part had contributed to his eventual defeat at the hands of Megaman.

An error made in a lab much like this one, he thought. His battered optic roved, but otherwise Knight Man couldn't change his perspective. His head turned to one side, he could only hope he wasn't alone.

He made to speak, and heard his own voice coming not from his helmeted head unit, but rather, from a speaker somewhere behind him. "Hello?" No response, at first, and then a nearby whoosh of a pneumatic door opening. "Hello?"

"Ah, you're coming round," said the gravelly voice of the man calling himself Hephaestus. "That's excellent, truly! Don't try to move or access your diagnostics; you're in the process of being transferred to a new body."

"What," Knight Man said, and now his voice sounded like it was coming from about the right place. There was a stutter in his vision, and suddenly, he found himself looking down at Hephaestus, who stood at a massive control console, looking up at Knight Man.

"You are presently loaded mostly into my Spark Transference Unit, a computer system I designed in order to allow for the transfer of all hard disk data and the spark itself to a new frame," Hephaestus said. He reminded Knight Man of someone, another Robot Master, but one that came before his time. But this thought was shunted roughly aside as the notion of what Hephaestus was suggesting sunk in

"What you are describing should be impossible," Knight Man said. He tried to turn his view, but once again found he could not. "Why can't I see what I want to?"

"Your optics are currently slaved to the cameras above the monitor of this workstation," the crimson and white mechanoid replied evenly. "I apologize for the disorientation. In a few minutes, your perspective will change again. There will be a minute or so of pain. I cannot change that, and for that, my friend, I am most sorry."

Knight Man pondered this for a moment. He realized now that his head was but an image displayed on a monitor screen. His spark, his very essence, was still in the wrecked heap that was his original body. He wondered for a moment if the mechanoid calling himself Hephaestus had undergone a similar transformation at some point.

No use in wondering, he thought. The darkness and world-rending pain chased this thought like a belligerent gorilla through the jungle of his being a moment later.

Lances pierced him from all sides, followed by the heaving crush of axes and the searing lash of swords about his body. Knight Man could feel the agony assail him in a dozen guises, but he could feel the weight of his mace in his hand. Yes, he thought, my mace, with which I can beat back this nightmare. My mace, with which I can fight through!

Carried through on this thought, he envisioned himself in his mangled body, one-armed, beating back hordes of imps and demons as they clawed for him. A faint blue light began to shine from his eyes, soon engulfing his body, and with a savage roar, the vision went purest white.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the world began taking shape again before his optics. With a start he realized he had two working optics again, seeing quite clearly through a window port. He was standing in a charging tube, or something similar. He felt oddly potent, more powerful than ever before.

Hephaestus was ten yards away, his left side facing Knight Man. But that lasted only a moment. The screen he'd been looking at now showed bars of sliding readings and text data. The red and white mechanoid turned to face Knight Man, and approached. His eyes held joy and excitement.

There was a rush of air, and then gravity kicked in. Knight Man felt heavy, but when the door swung open to the right, the Robot Master stepped out of the stasis pod and took a wobbling stance of readiness.

"Ah, you should see yourself," said Hephaestus. He scampered off, wheeling a full length mirror over in front of Knight Man, who could only stare in wonder at his new body.

He looked like a futuristic suit of demonic plate armor, tinged dark blue and purple. His optics were hidden behind a face grille on a horned helmet. He looked, in short, like an unholy horror. On his left hip was a huge mace with three prongs on its head.

Knight Man took up the weapon and held it aloft, watching electricity spark and ripple between the prongs.

"What do you think," asked Hephaestus.

"I think it is most wondrous," the Robot Master said, shocked by the demonic snarl that was his voice. "I can never thank you properly, except to now swear my fealty to you, as would any knight proper."

"Knight? No, my friend. You are no longer Knight Man."

"No?" Knight Man tried to raise an eyebrow, felt his helmet mimic the attempt. "Then who am I now?"

"Paladin," Hephaestus said, and the Robot Master nodded. It was well, he thought. All was well.

There came then a host of tests in an adjoining chamber, to help the mechanoid formerly known as Knight Man get used to his new body and its inherent abilities. Using holographic projectors, Hephaestus sat in a small control booth and made the test chamber look like a war-torn battlefield swarming with soldier-like robots.

The first new ability Paladin used was an energy shield, which projected in a curved wall of purple light when he held his left arm up in a shield-bearer's stance. Activating the shield took only a moment's thought. The only restriction, Hephaestus told him as mock bullets rebounded off of the shield, was that the shield followed the movement of his arm always when it was on.

"No different than my old shield, then," Paladin replied. He pivoted swiftly on his front heel, swinging his right arm out in a broad arc. The mace in his hand smashed into the hologram of a soldier bot, which fell apart to the ground. The impacts on shield and weapon felt quite real. "How is it these holograms have weight when I fight them?"

"Receptor falsifiers," the crimson and white mechanoid said behind his protective booth wall. "I'm feeding tactile input directly to your sensory systems via relay signals. If they hit you, you'll feel it and your system will respond. Not to worry, though; it's perfectly safe."

And Paladin felt several white laser bullets hit him then from the right. Flinching from the impact, he turned to face his unseen foe, and froze, fear tearing through his mind. "Megaman," he rasped. The Blue Bomber was much smaller than Paladin, now that he was in his new body, but that mattered not a whit; here stood the bot who'd essentially killed him.

"Remember what he did to you," Hephaestus said quietly through the speakers of the room. The scenery shifted, and Paladin was now back in his throne room. "Remember your rage as he shot you, over and over again. Let the rage be your tool, Paladin."

Paladin closed his optics for a moment, taking a deep breath. He didn't need the oxygen, but his programming allowed for human-like behaviors. He opened his optics, took a defensive stance with the shield held up, and put the mace back in its slot.

His right arm whirred and snapped, changing into a small catapult. A plate on his back slid open, and a high-yield contact explosive was deposited into the catapult's cup on a small segmented swing arm. Then Paladin roared a ghastly war cry, and launched the explosive.

It blew Megaman into a thousand sputtering, blackened pieces. Smoke curled through the air, heavy and cloying, but Paladin paid it no heed. His back plate slid shut, and his arm whirred back into shape.

"A most excellent outcome, my friend," said Hephaestus, shutting down the program. "Come, let us introduce you to your brothers."

Paladin followed his new master through several dozen twisting corridors in a massive complex. Bots worked away everywhere, many of them familiar to the core memories ported from his time as Knight Man; Hard Hats, Sliding Shockers, Green Meanies. All appeared to be engaged in construction and repair work. A fee stood about in small groups, chit-chatting, but these were few and far between, and the ones conversing differed in color from their working look-alikes.

"The ones that talk are the result of years of experimentation," Hephaestus said over his shoulder as he walked ahead of Paladin. "They all have persona programs, which act as artificial sparks."

"So, they are sentient?"

"In a way, yes. They each have a close approximation of individuality. These ones are put in charge of platoons of their bot type."

"That must be useful."

"Indeed. It frees me up to do my real work, you see." Hephaestus stopped at an elevator, and when they entered, he pushed a button marked 'W'.

"Where are we going now?"

"To the level of the complex reserved for you and your kinsmen. I believe one of them is out on a mission right now, but he should be back any time now." The slightly larger mechanoid put a heavy hand on Paladin's shoulder. "You are the last, my friend. All are now gathered. I have been working toward this moment for longer than you could imagine."

As Hephaestus drew his hand back, a question came, unbidden, from Paladin. "Master, what year is this?"

"2152," came the reply. Paladin went stock still; he'd been lying dormant, at death's door, for a hundred and twenty years, roughly. A century had gone by, while he lay in a broken heap, forgotten by the world. Surely his old Master, Dr. Wily, was dead and gone by now.

As the elevator came to a stop, the doors whooshed open, and Paladin followed Hephaestus out into a entrance lounge of some sort. Plush and regal, it had the style of a Persian palace chamber. Across the room from them were a set of black double doors. On the left and right walls, two steel shuttered gates, of the variety that Wily had used to lead in and out of the combat chambers of his Robot Masters.

Paladin pointed to a skull insignia above these gates, each with a yellow 'W' stamped in the forehead. Hephaestus loosed a low chuckle. "Yes, I thought them appropriate. Your kinsmen, my other friends here, were also once Robot Masters. All of you were clinging, just barely, to life. Your sparks had not yet faded. Yet do not misunderstand me," the larger mechanoid said, walking toward the double doors. "You will not recognize any of them at first. They will all have new bodies, like yours, made into perfect machine-men."

"How many of us are there, Master," Paladin asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer. As Hephaestus opened the double doors, revealing a kind of war room dominated by a round table, he chuckled. Seven other mechanoids looked up at them as they stepped inside. One of them was just sitting down.

"Why, eight, Paladin," said Hephaestus. "It's always eight."

Steel Nightmare- Prologue and Chapter 1 (A MegamanX fanfiction)

As mentioned in the earlier post, I'll be posting some fanfiction here, folks.  The first tale of this sort I'll be sharing is one of my first ones, a novel entitled 'Steel Nightmare', a Megaman X tale.  I hope you all enjoy.

Disclaimer

The following is a work of fiction. It is based upon the Megaman and Megaman X video game franchises owned and copyrighted by Capcom. The author of this original work owns no rights to Capcom's source material.

Author's Note:

For fans of Megaman yearning for a darker, nastier story, of which I believe the property not only capable but deserving in an industry which has finally embraced new and grittier tales for old favorites (the video game industry) I hope this finds you well.

Prologue

There had been darkness, nothingness, for a time unknown. It could have been minutes, hours, or years, he didn't know. What he did know was that he was coming back toward consciousness.

The darkness behind his eyes seemed less dense, for one. Secondly, a faint pain throbbed in his arms and legs. The green text flashing before his mind's eye told him that his battery reserves were at 34%, though his life force meter read .00015%. He should be dead, by all accounts. Yet death only truly came at absolute zero percent. Then, or if the life spark unit were detached from the main battery and auxiliary for more than an hour.

The mechanoid made a mental effort, the equivalent of a grunting tug, and brought up a diagnostic of his body. Left arm, blown off. Right leg destroyed from the knee joint on down. Main torso unit, mangled. Head unit, cracked in various places. Left optic shattered, balance off 14% in right optic. Audio receptors intact.

This would be fine and dandy to know if he had a way of detaching himself from the pain. But even he felt the roaring fires of agony stoking as he came back around.

Robot Masters knew all manner of pain.

His right optic flickered to life, the chamber around him tilting madly into a hazy focus. The throne room he lay in appeared to be full of rubble, layered in dust and decay. How long had he been down? Why was he now coming back to activation?

Then he saw it, a small floating spheroid, hovering toward him. The gate monitor, he thought. It opened, and must have brought me back around. The metallic ball hovered closer, and now he could make out several tentacle-like appendages snaking off of it.

Stamped in the middle of the plate facing him was a snake wrapped around a needle. A medical bot, he thought. Looks fancy. The hovering bot drew within a few yards of him, and then a small panel slid to one side, a thin blue arc of light spilling out from it. The mechanoid looked to the left slightly to find a flickering blue hologram of another mechanoid standing in midair.

The holographic newcomer was of a sort the damaged Robot Master had never seen. Enormously armored, the other bot had the appearance of a shining medieval crusader. His shoulder plates were heavy and rounded, and his overall stance and affect was somehow regal.

The hologram displayed full color, though, after a flicker. White and red stylized armor, and a narrow optics slit in the head unit. The Robot Master was reminded a little of himself, though this newcomer had a somewhat sleeker overall look. The stranger also looked more menacing.

"Can you hear me," a low, gravelly voice said from the medic bot's speaker, the words in time with the faint rise and fall of a bulbous face covering on the stranger's faceplate.

The damaged Robot Master managed a weak "Yes," in reply, barely audible.

"Good. The medic bot is going to soon be joined by an enclosed transport vessel. It is going to put you inside, so that you can be brought to me. It will maintain your condition, and attempt to alleviate your pains. How are you feeling right now?"

The stranger sounded genuinely intrigued, though his massive arms were folded over his chest. His narrow, slitted eyes stared like a knife into the Robot Master's optic, which chose that moment to flicker, causing the world to appear to flash in and out of existence.

"I, hurt," the damaged mechanoid responded.

"I see. Harvey, lock down his tactile nodes, make him comfortable." One of the segmented steel arms on the medical bot reached out, and even as the damaged Robot Master watched, dumbfounded, it opened a sliding plate on his chest armor and tapped in a sequence that should only have been known to Dr. Wily.

It had been one of many failsafes the sneering old human had implemented when constructing the Robot Masters. They could not shut down their own pain, and Wily himself kept a device on hand to cripple them with a wave of agony if any of them became rebellious.

But they all needed occasional maintenance. Hence, the tactile node and external diagnostic board installed in each Robot Master. He could easily work on them without causing discomfort.

As the medical bot shut down his artificial nerves, the damaged Robot Master went slack. Another failsafe; should anyone deactivate their tactile nodes, the Robot Master would be paralyzed, only able to see, hear and speak.

He felt nothing, though. The stranger spoke up again. "Better?"

"Much. I have very little life force left, and my main battery is now operating at 28%. It has fallen 6 points since awakening."

"Not to worry. The transport is now between the control gates. It will be to you soon. I will speak with you again when you arrive at my facility. And don't worry; Harvey will hook your battery and life force units to chargers inside the transport."

The Robot Master's view changed as his body, what remained of it anyway, was lifted by some kind of grappler and eased into a well-lit mobile maintenance vehicle. The stark white interior smelled of oils and electricity, the muffled burn of ozone.

The medical bot floated into view on his right, and began running cords into various ports on the Robot Master's body. "What is your name," he asked of the stranger, whose holographic display had shrunk and rested now on his open chest plate.

"You may call me Hephaestus," the strange bot replied. "And I already know who you are, Knight Man. We are well met, and about to be even more so." With that, the hologram winked out, and Knight Man began to fade into the darkness of unconsciousness.

His time of disrepair was over.

Chapter 1

X

A whirling thrum of energy filled the air, and in the middle of the domed chamber, a winged, metallic monkey gibbered and raged, throwing electricity-wrapped spears one after another. The source of the humming, seeing the attack coming, snap-rolled left and then right, deftly evading both projectiles in a swirl of powder blue metal.

He stood upright, aimed the open cannon at the end of his left arm, and released the glowing blue-and-yellow vortex of whirring energy held at the ready. The beam erupted forth, a massive blue-yellow ball of energy that looked like a dragon's fireball of destruction.

It sped forth too fast for the monkey-bot to evade. With a spray of parts and crackle of discharged energy, the monkey-bot was destroyed. The energy shot flew the rest of the length of the empty arena, dissipating as it struck the absorbing panels against the opposite wall.

X heaved a sigh. He'd started this training drill with an arena filled with fifty of the mindless monkey-bots. In less than two minutes, all were destroyed. He should have felt satisfied. Instead, he felt weary, and bored.

There had been no Maverick activity for two years. No sign of Sigma, either. He wondered if perhaps he and Zero really had defeated him once and for all then. Not that Mavericks were the only thing for the Hunter Organization to take care of, but they posed the only real challenge. The conflicts of the humans really never amounted to much.

X turned and started stalking towards the exit, bearing himself upright and grinning, so that the few fellow reploids watching his training session wouldn't know what he was thinking. Keep on a happy face, he thought, and plow through the bullshit. Then, sign out and go home, where you can be free to be resigned, X. Only then.

Not that there was much for him at home, either. Home for X, and many reploids like him, was a spartan efficiency apartment, complete with charging station, repair unit and entertainment module. He wanted for nothing; as a Hunter, his room and board was paid for by the organization.

The automatic doors whooshed open as soon as a thin orange light flashed into X's optics from a panel over the door. His optics, also like most reploids, were round and soft in appearance, lending to the humanoid façade and shape of most of his kind. It was hard to imagine that the orbs that let him see were actually hardened plasteel synthetics, wired with all manner of systems throughout his frame.

Smiling faces greeted him as he entered the Staging Room. The training arena's controls and readouts lined the walls in consoles ringing the chamber, each one manned by a standard engineering reploid. Only one human sat in a swivel chair at the right side of the room, and it was this man that X walked over to after thanking the others for their cheerful commentary.

The human sat looking up at X with half-lidded eyes, his narrow, rat-like face betraying little emotion. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. "Not bad, but it doesn't quite compare, does it?" X knew what the raspy-voiced man meant all too well.

"No, not quite, Dr. Veris. Come into my office with me." The pair left the Staging Room, walking through a series of white tile hallways and looping corridors, passing only a few other human and reploid personnel along their way. Maintenance bots and worker drones chirped and beeped at them amiably as they passed, though X and Veris offered only grins and nods in return.

A ride up fourteen floors in an elevator, and then they exited out into a narrow, plushly carpeted hallway. Various painting reproductions and organizational charts and graphs stood on the walls every half-dozen yards or so. When they finally came to a set of double doors marked simply 'X' on the left, the Blue Bomber punched in a key code on a panel next to the right door, and pushed his way into his office.

Flat, dull grey metal tiling on the floor, and across from them, his duty desk with its five monitoring and datastream consoles. Around the room on small pedastals, trophies from campaigns against the Maverick Master, Sigma.

"I see you haven't changed the layout," Veris commented, lighting a fresh cigarette.

"There's no need," X replied, maneuvering around behind his desk. He slid the central viewscreen aside so he could see the middle-aged human in the seat opposite. "Besides, I rarely come here these days. All of the reports are summarized and forwarded to my home console."

"Convenient. You really should try getting a nourishment unit and some taste bud implants. Makes life a little more enticing."

"Cut through the crap, Veris," X snarled, his synthskin brow furrowing. "You only come around when you've got something of interest to tell me. What's going on?"

The human offered a wry smile, tapped ashes on the tile floor. He took a long drag off of the cigarette and dropped it, chuffing out a stream of cerulean smoke. "Easy there, big guy. Just got some interesting data to share, that's all." X tapped the fingers of his left hand on the desk, itching to activate the switch to his Mega Buster Cannon.

He couldn't explain why, even to himself, but he often swayed between liking Veris and wanting to blow his head apart in a shower of brain and bone. The human reminded X of someone, though who, he didn't know.

"Is it something the Hunter HQ should know? Or is this just for me?"

"Just you, for now," Veris said evenly, the smile fading. He reached into one of lower lab coat pockets and produced a palm-sized datapad. "You should take a look at this."

X reached over the desk and took the datapad, looking intently at the screen. It appeared to be a field recovery report from somewhere in the United States, the state of Ohio. The coordinates meant nothing to him, but apparently, human authorities there had seen some kind of old-fashioned robot maintenance vehicle moving around an old restricted zone.

"I don't get what's so important about this," X said, setting the datapad down. "Old technology survives sometimes. Not my concern."

"Maybe not, but what would a robot maintenance vehicle from last century be doing in a restricted zone? And why is this area restricted in the first place?"

"Do you know anything more?"

"Not yet," Veris said with a sigh. "I get no answers from the Secured Data Department. Clearance issues. But there's something else. If you scroll through, you'll see there's been nearly twenty similar reports from different restricted zones over the last ten months."

X felt himself getting excited now. A mystery afoot, and one brought straight to him. He picked up the datapad again, scrolling through the reports. He looked up at Veris. "Mind if I download the reports?"

"By all means," Veris said. X tapped a panel on his right forearm, which sprang open to reveal a tiny keypad and cable. He pulled out the cable and hooked it into the datapad, downloading the most recently accessed files. While linked into the device, he noticed a file labeled 'Springer Project', and without letting on, he downloaded this file as well. Afterwards, he loaded a scrubbing program to erase any evidence that the 'Springer Project' file had been touched.

X unhooked the cable and slid the datapad back over to Veris. "I'll dig around in some of my personal archives at home, see if there's any significance in this. Thank you, Dr. Veris."

The human nodded and rose from his seat. As he was leaving, he paused by the door.

"Any word on Zero?"

"Still on Moon Station 2," X replied. "He'll be there until the installation is complete. Four, maybe five more months."

"I see," Veris said. There was something approaching compassion in his voice. "Well, let me know if you find anything out." X nodded, and Veris left, letting the door ease shut behind him. X sat alone at his desk, thinking now about Zero, the crimson warrior who he called 'brother'.

He wondered, as he had since their last communique three weeks earlier, how Zero was doing up there on the moon.

For almost an hour after leaving Hunter HQ, X felt a certainty stealing over him with uncanny patience; the humans were afraid of him. Even though he'd walked this route to his building in Central City a dozen times or more in the last month, he hadn't noticed it before. The look in the eyes o the humans upon whom his gaze fell were glossy with trepidation, uncertainty.

Without Mavericks around for the Hunters to fight, how long until one of their own turned rogue? It had happened to Hunters before. With a precedent for the occurrence, surely the humans had to wonder about the reliability of even their most stalwart defenders.

Thus the greying of X's thoughts and attitude. He had been a truly righteous and noble hero, once. His predecessor, the first Megaman, never came against the vileness of worldly cynicism. No, the original Blue Bomber had been a hero to the bitter end.

That end had come with the transfer of his consciousness to the Light Complex, a scientific research station on the west side of Central City. Megaman the First still existed, though now as an artificial intelligence program linked into all the world's computer networks.

X wondered what that Megaman thought of the world that had come to be, now. He had never visited the Light Complex himself, never spoken with the persona upon whom he had himself been structured and built. He resolved to do just that at some point, and soon.

But first, this mystery brought to him by Veris. X turned left and entered the lobby of his building, eyes sweeping ahead. Nobody manned the desk standing between the elevators and stairwell access doors, but this was not out of the ordinary. Likely the fellow had nipped off on a service call.

X walked over to the left elevator and summoned it with a press of a button, and sniffed. In that single, involuntary action, often done without thinking by reploids, since they never actually had to breath but did so out of habit, his previous apprehension came flooding back.

Something smelled terrible in the lobby, something behind him. X turned around as the elevator dinged and slid open. He reached back and hit the 'hold' button, then slowly approached the lobby desk. The reek was coming from there.

As X stepped up to the side of the desk and looked down, he felt something he'd not experienced in a long time. When he thought back, he realized it had been sixteen years since that feeling had struck him, when he first faced off against the Maverick known as Vile.

The feeling was terrified disgust. Against Vile, that first encounter, he'd been appalled at himself, at his apparent lack of power. Here, his dismay came from the corpse lying behind the desk.

The human manning the desk had been stabbed and slashed along every major artery, from femoral to carotid. Blood pooled round him, and only now did X see the faint spatter of crimson on the lip of the desk. The stench of urine and faeces, spilled in horror or death, nearly overwhelmed him.

The smooth, curved cut along the throat had been powerful enough to cut halfway through the spinal column along the back of the poor man's neck. X tried to emotionally distance himself, activating his optic scanners and sweeping for evidence the authorities might overlook when they arrived. While scanning, he reached out with his hands to the communication console on the desk and pressed the orange button to summon the police.

The button, had he looked, would have been seen to be quite dusty. After all, in a building where the legendary Megaman X resided, who would commit a crime?

X wanted to know just that.