MegaMan NT Warrior (Rockman) Fan Fiction ❯ Shooting Stars and Reploid Arms ❯ Chapter 2

Iniora: Does anybody want to kill me yet? No? Well, good. Here's chapter two.

 

PS: As the plot begins to take some kind of shape within the confusion of the confines of my mind, I have a few disclaimers to add. Stargate might get a little TWT (Timeline, What Timeline?), but I will strive to avoid that. Rockman X is AU set about a month or two after the end of X8. I have added notes on definitions of different things for the benefit of those readers who have never played Rockman/Megaman.

 

“Blah” will be telepathic/radio transmissions.

 

 

Shooting Stars and Reploid Arms

 

Can Sometimes Save You Headaches

 

 

“Zero, I have to know. What exactly did you put in my record?”

 

Ten minutes and several breathing sessions later, X was very, very sorry he'd asked.

 

Zero had taken an extreme liberty with his pacifistic nature. X had been molded from the commander of the 17th Maverick Hunter Unit to the head medic of a small hospital outside of Maples, Kansas (which appeared to be the name of the town they had landed in) which had recently folded from the rising cost of medical coverage. It also turned out he graduated fifth in his medical class at the local high school mainly because of the number of times he had to patch up broken want-ah-be football players such as Zero and Axl. Never mind the fact Axl had been enrolled in drama as well, along with several other melodramatic sports, one of which included a permanent spot in the detention hall for pranks.

 

Zero had also taken the time to fill in Axl about his new roll. He was now signed on as a translator of ten different languages, several of which included Russian, Sioux, Japanese, Chinese, Korean -

 

“But I don't like North Korea or China!”

 

“That's because they're as stubborn as you.”

 

“Hey!” -

 

And Vietnamese, just to name a few. He was also listed as the self-proclaimed King of Drama even though he could never get up the nerve to act in front of anyone other than his friends

 

“And this brings us to my file,” Zero snickered. He tapped the computer screen teasingly. “I've got gun licenses for ten different firearms, a hunting license, and fishing license, have a black belt from five different studies of martial arts, and a waver to carry a concealed sword.”

 

“They still have those?” Axl blinked, staring at his mentor blankly.

 

“Yep.”

 

X, in the mean time, was still having a mental argument with himself on whether or not he should waste the energy on strangling the leader of Unit Zero. He finally decided sometime later not to.

 

“Tell me one more time, Zero!” Axl's voice whined from the main room of their two-room apartment.

 

“Alright, alright,” X could hear the slight laugh in his friend's voice hidden under the fake bravado of annoyance. “So, the First Maverick War was when X was promoted to Commander of the 17th Hunter Unit...”

 

*

 

Colonel Jack O'Neill was not having a very good day. Janet had yet to find the time between sleeping, eating, and trying to keep patients alive to fill out the paperwork to return him to active duty. General Hammond had recently informed him that two ex Boy Scouts with very unusual records and one medic, who had graduated fifth in his medical class at a little known high school in some backcountry town he'd never even heard of, were soon going to be joining the SGC. They had relatively no military service, even though one of them had a rare little slip of paper saying he could carry around katanas and kodachis in his back pocket.

 

Well... kodachis, yeah. Katanas were really, really hard to hide in a back pocket, seeing as they normally ran the length of the wielder's arm. Now that he was thinking about it, so were kodachis, seeing as they were crosses between katanas and daggers, so they'd make quite an interesting bulge and...

 

But back on the point of why Jack was having a bad day.

 

He and his team, Teal'c included, were going to be the royal escorts for the Diner Trio. All three of whom were currently walking towards him like astronauts, the sun at their back, their steps in near perfect unisons, and their attitudes showing as clear as crystal in every act they made.

 

A boy about the age of nineteen with a bounce in his step to match was on the far left end of their line. Wild, orange hair was sticking out the front opening of his backwards white and blue baseball cap, while even more hair was spilling out behind it, reaching about his mid back in length. Emerald eyes flashed in all directions, taking in the guards at the entrance, the supply truck as it was checked by the MPs before departing the checkpoint. With his casual dress of a white and blue t-shirt and off-yellow dirty pants, Jack was pretty sure you could drop him in any American city and lose him in an instant, even with his hair and unusual cross-shaped well hidden scar. He mentally tagged the boy as a possible candidate for Black Ops training.

 

The middle of the Diner Trio seemed to be the middle aged one. He was laid-back in his movements, his streaming ankle-length pure blond hair kept back out of the way by a simple blue thin holder kept time with his loose bounce. A military issue duffle bag was casually resting over his shoulder, held in place by his loose grip on the bag's handles. Red seemed to be his predominate color, seeing as he wore a plain red t-shirt and red jeans. His ice blue eyes observed him and his team casually, stopping for only a moment at Teal'c, widening for something around half a second, before returning to looking like normal, almost board eyes. Jack took a careful note about the fluid way he walked. He would have put money on the fact blond boy was their swordsman.

 

The last one of the Trio was kind of short, and looked more like a boy just reaching his twenties than a man of the humble age of thirty-five. He had short brown hair which liked to go everywhere but down. When he thought about it hard enough, Jack could almost see the resemblance between this member of the Trio's hair and Daniel's after his archeologist had worn his combat helmet for too long. This guy had a liking for blue: blue jeans, blue tank top, blue tennis shoes even. His eyes, though, were what caught Jack's interest. They were a solid amber green and were just as hard as the stones their color was named after.

 

The civilian in him fought down an involuntary shiver. This guy had eyes that screamed “I can kill you and not bat an eyelash about it”, but it was a controlled kind of look. Like he wouldn't do it unless Jack decided to get stupid enough to go between him and whatever he was after.

 

It was the killer who extended his hand in greeting.

 

“Hi.” His voice was warm and friendly. Just like a cat just before he gets up and eats you...

 

Jack forced a smile on his face, taking the offered hand. “Hi. You must be the new boys. The guys Hammond got from the diner?”

 

“That's us!” the youth piped in. He draped himself over the blond as if to include him in the statement. The blond casually shrugged him off, leaving him to fall flat face down on the dirt.

 

SG-1 stood staring at them blankly. Even Teal'c was giving them his trademark one-eyebrow raise of disbelieve.

 

These are the guys the General wants? Samantha Carter, scientist extraordinaire, blinked in the back of her mind. The Trio was attentive in the elevator. Even the young orange-haired goofball was listening - though not necessarily hanging on- to every thing Jack and Daniel were telling them. What could he have seen them do to make him want to pull almost every trick he had to get them clearance?

 

But she hadn't noticed the goofball taking in every last detail. Noting quickly where every possible exit was, where every guard was posted, every emergency exit marking and alert button they passed. She never noticed the slight giggle from the orange haired teen was meaning something more along the lines of figured out how to make an exit than that of excitement. And the boy really did mean make an exit, as in blow up a wall or three with a couple of well-placed C-4 packs.

 

Teal'c, however, was quickly coming to the conclusion that, of all three, the young boy was the most dangerous. He had caught every last subtle shift of eyes, every last innocent gesture meant to allow him a clearer view of possible escape routes.

 

The boy locked his eyes with Teal'c, nodded slightly, smiled, and winked at him, before bouncing on the blonde again, laughing. “Are we there yet?”

 

The former First Prime of Apothus fought back a blink. The child had just signaled the fact he knew Teal'c knew what he was doing... and that he didn't care.

 

Daniel's relative impression of the group as a whole, especially the long haired blond, was that they were all relatively nice, normal guys, who just happened to catch the eye of a certain talent agent going by the name of General Gorge Hammond. The blond and he had quickly worked into a debate on their way down about different archeological backgrounds and histories on several cultures of earth.

 

Daniel paused for a moment, laughing. “I guess you're going to be the new translator?”

 

“Nah,” the blonde had smiled. He ducked another grab by the boy, this time grabbing him be the collar of his shirt. “He is.”

 

“Uh....Hi...” the orange-haired boy waved slightly, looking almost exactly like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

 

“Hi.” Daniel blinked. The blonde allowed orange to slip through. Orange stuck his tongue out at blonde before redirecting his bounce towards their silent brown-haired companion, who was still listening like a statue to Jack. “...Gods help me if I have to tutor him...”

 

Blonde just laughed.

 

*

 

Axl sighed, plopping down on his own bed. For once in his life, he wasn't being forced to share quarters with anyone. Not with X. Not with Zero. Not with some recruit who was going to get killed as soon as Sigma got board again.

 

“Axl?”

 

Axl laughed both aloud and within his mind. “I'm fine, X. Just soaking in the fact they gave me my own room!” Axl could almost feel X wince at the boy's near shout.

 

“That was stupid,” Zero's voice shot in next. Axl pouted. Zero's answer was to laugh. “You know, X, when we get back to HQ, we really have to have a talk with Signas. Compared to Hammond's office, we've got closets.”

 

“But he also has more paperwork.” There was a pause, like a calm wind before the storm, “And he also has the NID to try and filter through.”

 

A feeling of rage swept from the section of the link which was Zero's domain. “X?”

 

Calm filtered from X's segment. “Get in line, Zero.”

 

Axl listened to his two heroes as they swapped idle conversation about Hammond and his flagship team. This was the first time, ever, that the curse which had spawned from the fear awoken deep within him by the Eighth Maverick War was actually coming in handy.

 

*

 

Zero slowly kicked himself over the wall, taking a seat next to Axl. The young Reploid was facing towards HQ, looking away from the warmth of the setting sun. It would be so easy for him to simply lean back and fall, to keep the world safe from him, to stop himself from going Maverick. He was the prototype, after all. If New Generation Reploids built from his design had the lethal flaw, then there was no need to even say he might have it - he knew he had it.

 

“I'm going to go Maverick.” It wasn't even a question.

 

Even hours, months, quite possibly even years later, Axl would still never know exactly what happened next. All he could remember was a flash of red, blond, and emerald, and he had his back against a nearby wall with Zero's beam saber burning a new hole next to him.

 

Nothing was said for a good solid minute. He stared at him, his eyes wide and frightened like a scared child just waking up from a nightmare, while Zero's topaz stones were burning into him like a fire of titanium, a mix of anger, frustration, suppressed rage, and the hesitation to kill. Zero growled, pulling both himself and his beam saber away, and allowing Axl to slowly sink against the cold hardness of Maverick Hunter HQ's steal balcony. He ran his fingers across his temple as if to pull hair out of his eyes.

 

“Damn it, Axl! You are not going to go Maverick.”

 

“You can't be sure of that. Nobody can be... Not even me!” It was the very thing which scared him the most. The fact he might succumb, not to a virus, but to the very programming which made him the best espionage agent the Hunters had at their disposal. The fact he might not even be able to detect the fact he was slipping closer and closer to becoming a Maverick until it was too late; until it came to the point he wouldn't care.

 

Axl pulled his knees towards his chest, wrapped his arms around them, buried his head, and sobbed. Memories began to play through his mind of the happier times he had had being with Red. Of the adventures on Gigas island; of his conversations with Spider; of his high esteem of Redips, who took over for Signas when the Hunter Commander needed his long overdue vacation.

 

Of the betrayal when Red said he'd stop at nothing to take him back. Of watching Red die as Red Alert HQ was buried in the rubble of its auto-destruct. Of finding his body while X and Zero were dealing with Sigma; of taking his DNA core and merging it with his own for the few moments he needed to catch Sigma off-guard. Of watching, as Spider sacrificed himself to blow open a hole just big enough for one Reploid to crawl through one at a time, and even then just barely making it to safety before the base exploded. Of Redips first killing R, then taking over Gigas city, then declaring X of all Reploids Maverick; then the killer of all as he revealed himself to be none other than Spider. Spider!

 

“You're not like them, Axl.” Zero's voice snapped him from his reprieve. “You are not going to go fuckin' Maverick on me.”

 

“What if I can't...?”

 

“You are NOT going to go fucking Maverick!!”

 

Zero's shout echoed both outside his mind and within. Axl had frozen stiff, his eyes locking themselves in Zero's. His generator skipped a pulse when his mind felt something whirl inside of it. Some kind of rage and anger, the likes of which he had never felt before, was swirling in a back corner of his mind, settling there and festering like a plague. It was mixed with alien thoughts and memories - something about a girl whose twin had become Maverick and he... He had been forced to kill her.

 

“I'm not going to lose another person I care about to this damn fuckin' virus.”

 

“They've been talking a long time. Maybe I should...?”

 

It was another mind whispering now. Another alien feeling of calm, controlled fear and slowly building feelings of worry filtering in from another alien source. This one, though, was more recognizable. After all, there was only one person he knew of who had such fond memories of what the old archeologist Dr. Cain was like on the rare occasion he was sober.

 

“...X...”

 

X was through the nearby door in a human heartbeat. He stopped, looking down at Axl, before looking back at Zero, who was also looking blankly at X. Both Class S Hunters turned to stare wide-eyed at the very frightened and very skittish looking orange haired boy.

 

“I know I heard him call me. His internal com system's not on and the door does not have an intercom. Zero didn't send any kind of signal and...” X's mind stopped right where it was. Axl was staring at him, wide eyes locked in cool, controlling sapphire blues.

 

Feelings of fear, paranoia, a want of forgiveness, were slowly becoming apparent in his mind. Alien feelings which definitely did not belong to X.

 

“What the hell is going on here? I thought X was supposed to wait...”

 

The second presence in Axl's mind clicked even as it too stopped dead at the pressing feelings beginning to swirl within it.

 

Axl slowly managed to drag his eyes from X to Zero. Zero's eyes met his and watched, almost horrified, as Axl's whimper of “Z-Zero...?” echoed without the boy's lips moving. Zero nodded his head slowly in recognition of the unasked question.

 

“W-What's happening to me...?!” Axl slapped his hands over his ears, burying his head once more as panic and fear set on. Both Class S Hunters exchanged another look.

 

Zero gulped down a dry throat. He took a tentative reach with his mind towards the feelings and thoughts which were apparently Axl's, and pushed thoughts towards thoughts. “Axl?”

 

“I'm a freak of science and nature!” The boy's mind wailed, as he unknowingly pushed fearful thoughts at both of his heroes.

 

“Axl. Calm down. Panicking will not make the situation any better,” X told the boy aloud. He took a slow step towards him, gently reaching his hand out, only to find Axl pulling away from him.

 

“Don't touch me!” Axl reinforced the order with feelings of dread and fear.

 

“Axl!”

 

Axl's eyes found themselves locked back in on Zero's.

 

“Damn it, Axl, calm down!”

 

Rage. Anger. Fear. Calm...calm...

 

“X! Don't just stand there like an idiot!”

 

Calm swamped his mind from two distinctly different sources. One source which always seemed calm and collected, the other tinged with anger and regret. Slowly, it became nearly impossible to tell which thoughts were his and which were another's and, slowly, Axl managed to collect himself.

 

Slowly, realization dawned on all three that, somehow, through Axl, their minds had become interlinked. Slowly, as Axl allowed Zero and X to help him stand up and hobble down towards Lifesaver's medical ward, all three stopped caring weather or not they could hear each other's thoughts.

 

Slowly...

 

“Will you stop daydreaming?”

 

Axl snapped to attention in his new military bed, his eyes bolting open in shock. He quickly looked around the room. It took him a few seconds for the past two weeks to catch up with him and, when they finally did, he released an embarrassed sigh.

 

“Sorry Zero.”

 

Axl felt Zero push the mental command for an internal diagnostics through his mind. The gentle humming of systems answering the call filled Axl's hearing for several seconds, drawing his mind back from the dreams recharge stasis had left him.

 

“Axl?”

 

“He's fine,” Zero answered. Axl flipped over on his side, pulling his hands under his head to serve as a makeshift pillow.

 

“Are you two done babying me?”

 

X mentally rolled his eyes at nearly the same time as Zero did.

 

*

 

Definitions and Notes:

 

Katana: traditional weapon of the ancient samurai warriors

 

Kodachi: a kind of cross-breed weapon, mixed between a dagger and a katana. Those familiar with Rurouni Kenshin will recognize the weapon as the same type Aoshi uses.

 

Reploid: a robot with feelings, emotions, and free will, the same as humans.

 

Dr. Cain: the archeologist who found X; later copied X's design and started the first mass-production of Reploids; he was notorious for always having his head in a bottle of some kind of alcohol.

 

Maverick: a Reploid who turns against humanity, and is bent on complete and total genocide.

 

Maverick Virus: a virus which forces Reploids to become Mavericks.

 

Maverick Hunters: just like the name says; they act as a police force for dealing with Maverick outbreaks. They are lead by Maverick Hunter Commander Signas.

 

Maverick Hunter Unit Zero: the Hunter Unit Axl answers to, under the command of and named after Zero; sort of similar to an odd, laidback division of the Green Berets.

 

Maverick Hunter Unit 17: the flagship unit of the Hunters, similar in ways to SG-1 as they are Signas' first and best line of defense against a Maverick uprising; they were formally under the command of a Reploid named Sigma, before he wet Maverick and started attempting genocide on humanity; currently under the command of X.

 

New Generation Reploids: Reploids with the ability to change shapes and impersonate other Reploids; Axl is the prototype New Generation Reploid. An example of his ability is, if he would let him, to copy X's DNA and actually look exactly like him.

 

Okay. If there are any questions that have yet to be answered, please send them via your reviews or e-mail.