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.