The very first thing the faux sergeant told X after being instructed over the phone to tell the reploid everything, was that the NSA only monitored a handful of the old Robot Master facilities and sites. "There's nuclear missile silos under a couple of them, and five top secret DOD facilities that Wily just took over back in the day," he told X. "The DOD gave the NSA jurisdiction over those zones. They're monitored a lot more closely than the others, which are mostly being recovered finally."
X felt a rush of relief at all of this. No grand conspiracy here, at least, not one he had to worry about. Just human governments being secretive, and that was about as normal as the sky being blue. He could handle this.
However, a new problem presented itself with the news of Skull Man's compound having been atop a nuclear silo. If the Maverick who'd killed Torque had done so in order to get inside, there could be trouble. Armed with a nuclear missile, the unknown reploid could do a lot of damage, especially if only one human government knew about its existence.
Realizing all of this, he suspected the reason he'd been cleared to enter was so the United States Department of Defense could scapegoat the Hunters in case the Maverick succeeded in whatever he was planning.
X felt like a fool.
"I'm going in there," X said to the agent in charge, who pulled out a small control switch from his BDUs and pushed a button. The gates opened wide, revealing clearly a painted concrete path to the blocky structure of Skull Man's old zone. "Tell your superiors not to worry. X has everything under control."
He thought he caught a look of guilt in the agent's eyes on his way past.
The doors had been nearly rusted shut, but X shoved them open with a grunt and heave. Inside, the first chamber was a long corridor covered in dusty old plastic reproductions of human bones. His scanners told him most of the corridor had been untouched for over a century.
However, a single set of tread tracks terminated at a transporter pad twenty meters to his left. Someone had been in here, someone or something mechanical. The transporter was an old Wily model, used only for non-organic material. It looked to be on its last legs, but X's deep range scanners told him there was still a little charge left in the device.
Not that he could operate it, though. His internal security drives would negate the device as unrecognized and unwelcome. He wondered if the old mechanoids of Megaman's time had been nearly as sophisticated in design. "Probably not," he muttered to no one.
X marched down the corridor, finding a steel hanging ladder at the end in front of a solid wall. Rather than traverse it, he opened up his cannon, charged it to full power, and blasted a hole right through. Cement and metal flew out, along with sparks and smoke. Something rumbled around him, and X thought he might have blown out a main support structure. "Taking the ladders from here on," he said, walking carefully through the rubble.
On the other side of the hole stood a tall, perfectly square room. Scraps of metal lay everywhere, as well as more of those plastic bones. In the center of the room lay the remains of some sort of giant skeletal cyclops. Half of its head had been blown off, and blaster holes stood in stark contrast along its chest and legs.
"Megaman," X muttered, staring at the construct. "How did you fight things like this, being so small?" X was about to walk past to the bent gate door opposite when an alarm shot through his system. He jumped back quickly to the hole he'd made, as one of the mechanical giant's arms rose shakily from the ground. Plastic bones and debris clattered to the ground as the bot slowly rose to a sitting position. Its lone, baleful eye shone with a virulent purple light.
X started to charge his cannon, but the slow-moving giant lashed out with one of its damaged legs, kicking X and sending him against the wall beside his entrance hole. He yelped as pain ran through his back. The kick itself hadn't done any damage, but his back armor was thinner than the front of his body. He landed in a crouch, cannon charge continuing.
"All right, you heap of scrap," he snarled. "Let's do this!" With a shout, X stood tall and fired the Buster Shot at the cyclops. Its entire upper body and head disintegrated, and the shot dissipated after slamming into the bent gate, knocking it over with a heavy clang.
X walked past the remains, stopping for a moment to stomp on the eye unit that had flown out when the Buster Shot struck.
X walked along another long, high-ceilinged chamber, piles of wreckage everywhere. This, he surmised, was where reclamation crews deposited the waste, scrap and rubble before pulling out upon discovery of the nuclear facility underground. Among the piles, X stopped, looking down at a chunk of familiar blue armor, and the shattered remains of Skull Man.
The scrap of armor looked badly singed, blown off during the original Blue Bomber's fight with the Robot Master. X examined it closely; it was old harsteel, the base material that would later be refined to make transteel. He smirked, marveling that this used to be the top standard. Tucking the scrap away in a sliding leg hatch, X turned his attention to the Skull Man remains.
The head unit, styled after a cartoon rendition of a human skull, was battered badly. Part of the neck cable hung limp from the bottom. X might have simply moved on, but for a single observation. There were scorch marks in the cable, but not from any blaster weapon; they came from the cable, which was torn.
X carefully picked up the head, noticing four deep indentations on the right side of the face plating, and one under the chin shelf. Staring in shock, X felt himself go numb. "You ripped his head off," he rasped to himself. "Dear God, Rock, you ripped his head off."
Every account of the original Megaman's exploits had been clean, clinical, efficient. Never had X read anything to indicate that his predecessor was capable of such savagery.
X let the head roll off of his fingers, clunking to the ground.
The nuclear silo had been partially excavated, X saw as he stood on the edge of the chamber where Megaman and Skull Man had pitched their fatal encounter. He stared down at the ramp leading into the facility, and wondered, momentarily, why Wily hadn't just threatened to use the nuke.
Wily's campaigns of terror had always focused on building Robot Masters in an effort to dominate and enslave the human race. He could well have used a few nuclear warheads to accomplish much the same result, and at a fraction of the cost in money, time and materials. But then, mad scientists were supposed to be inscrutable, weren't they?
X shook his head. There was no sign of anything having been tampered with here. The Skull Man ruins had been unmolested, meaning his Maverick had come here specifically to kill Torque. X didn't like that idea, as it left him with no motive to work off of.
Still, there were all those other restricted zones that had been reported as having strange comings and goings. He opened the command panel on his right arm, keying in his return code to be brought back to his apartment building's rooftop. Whatever was going on, he couldn't investigate it alone.
Detective Jasper Marlow of Central City's Homicide Division looked over his notes in the living room of a plushly adorned apartment. He lived well, though he never made it too obvious. Marlow indulged in his tastes for old world culture largely by way of buying and selling stocks, something he seemed to have a real knack for.
He didn't need to work as a cop, hadn't needed to for a few years now. He was what one might refer to as a 'quiet millionaire', never one to brag or boast about his financial prowess or standing. He did his job because he loved it, and with the cost of many of his old world relics, he'd run out of money well before retirement age without a job.
The television, an early-21st century model flat screen LCD unit, belched out noise from a game of blast ball, a reploid sport that had been gaining popularity over the last couple of decades. It wasn't much different than football, but allowed for the use of non-lethal weapons against the ball carrier and took place on a five-hundred yard field.
With the game droning on unwatched, Marlow tried to make sense of the murder of the deskman at X's apartment building. He'd not handed over everything he knew to the legendary Maverick Hunter X. No, he'd made certain to keep one thing back, a detail that even his own crime scene technicians had overlooked.
While he'd been first viewing the twisted, mangled corpse, dust had sifted down onto his shoulder from the ceiling. Looking up slowly, Jasper Marlow had felt his blood turn to ice in his veins, his eyes locking on more particles of dust drifting down, shaken from movement just behind the vent grille.
Someone had been watching him, someone with enough murderous skill and intent to leave a man butchered in under half a minute.
At the time, he'd wanted to assume it was a reploid or bot, but couldn't discount the idea that the killer was human. Looking over his notes, he still couldn't say with any certainty which it was.
Setting his pen down, Jasper rubbed his temples, deciding that a bath and a nap were in order. He was halfway to the bathroom when the explosion rocked the building.
