Thirteen Times Zero - Chapter 4

X arrived in Maverick Hunter Central Command, only to discover that Zero was not there. He checked the recovery room as well, where he ran into a smaller reploid who told him that Zero had left his pod quite a while ago. He had, in fact, left the facility entirely. Without telling anyone. In the middle of a crisis. Again.

"Dammit, Zero!" X swore, with a few more choice words that made the reploid he was talking to blush. So, Zero was out. That was fine. He could deal with that later.

Dr. Cain had been rushed to the medical wing. X was headed there also. The first step of taking over HQ was finding out what had happened to their old boss, and why he was out of commission. From there, his next job was to find out what was going on with Repliforce. Fortunately for convenience, but unfortunately for his plans, things got shuffled up a bit when Repliforce came to find him first.

"X! Just the man I wanted to see." The voice was familiar, but X couldn't quite place it. He'd heard it before, but probably over an intercom or something. It was disproportionately commanding.

"Hello," he said back. "Well, here I-" He turned to face the reploid who had addressed him, and stopped. He knew who this was.

Colonel. The reploid specially commissioned to be second-in-command of the Repliforce. And, of course, if Colonel was here, his sister Iris couldn't be far behind.

"Hello, Colonel," he said, more stiffly. "How's the Repliforce doing?" Ok, maybe a little too casual for an inquiry about a military operation. But he still didn't agree with the very idea of Repliforce, and probably never would. Militarizing the Hunters' operations could only end badly, he kept saying, though no one ever seemed to listen to him, except maybe Zero, who didn't care about any of the reploids' politics as long as he still got to kill things. Honestly, how did X end up with these people?

"Oh, we're fine. Everything's fine," said Colonel amiably. "We're almost fully assembled. We'll be able to begin operations in a few weeks. Maybe sooner if we get the go-ahead from Dr. Cain." Dr. Cain- the same Dr. Cain who was, for the moment, thoroughly incapacitated. So, news of the doctor's accident hadn't made it to the Repliforce just yet.

"Oh. Right," said X. "Is Iris here, too?" His brain-gears were turning. With Dr. Cain out of commission, he himself was left in charge of the Maverick Hunters. General and Colonel would therefore need him to sign off on any escalation of forces.

"Yes, of course. She went to see Zero," Colonel said. X was distracted.

"Oh. He's not here. He's out hunting." How easy would it be for him to just say no? Would the Repliforce know he was deliberately obstructing? It would be terribly easy to just say that he didn't feel up to making that kind of decision without Dr. Cain's knowledge. That would give him a few more days to convince the man to end the mobilization completely.

"Out hunting? Really? Well, soon you all won't have to work as hard- the Repliforce will be able to take care of the Maverick threat," Colonel declared confidently. He was clearly in no rush. X nodded along despite himself. He still hadn't mentioned that Dr. Cain had collapsed, had been rushed to the medical wing, and was no doubt thoroughly unconscious. If Colonel went all the way to Dr. Cain's office and found out he wasn't there, he'd know that X had deliberately decided not to mention it. He had to say something.

"Why don't we walk together? I'm actually on my way to see Dr. Cain right now. He's in the medical wing," he suggested. Hopefully Colonel hadn't noticed that Maverick Hunter HQ was in the middle of a total breakdown crisis. He seemed to have just arrived.

"Really! Did something happen?" he asked, apparently genuinely concerned. Had he really not noticed? That seemed too good to be true.

"I don't know yet," X answered, somewhat truthfully. "I just got the message asking me to come meet him in the hospital wing. It's lucky I ran into you!" His cheer rang entirely false. X had absolutely no poker face to speak of, a serious handicap that would become even more debilitating were he put in charge of running a whole organization of people and reploids. Which technically, he already had been.

Well, shit.

Colonel and X walked the rest of the way to the hospital wing in relative silence, with Colonel intermittently jabbering on about how General had wanted to come but decided to stay at the space station and so on. X didn't agree with the space station, either, but given that Maverick Hunter HQ wasn't quite large enough to handle General's massive hulk of a form, he didn't at all mind the leader having sent Colonel in his place.

They reached the hospital wing far too quickly. The medic-bots were running around in a flurry of crazed and panicky activity. Just from outside, it was abundantly clear that Dr. Cain had not come down here for some kind of check-up and lollipops.

"What is this!? What happened!?" Colonel thundered at the closest reploid he could grab.

"O-oh! Colonel! Uh, Dr. Cain collapsed, sir. Condition critical!" the reploid squeaked before rushing back off to grab some something-or-other. X wasn't terribly familiar with the inner workings of the hospital wing.

"Oh my God!" X said dully, trying his best to work up some of the panic he'd been feeling not ten minutes before, before he'd realized that he'd need to be confronting the Repliforce much earlier than anticipated. He'd hoped that they'd stay at their base, minding their own business, until Dr. Cain made a full recovery. But of course, once you have a standing army, they start agitating to go out and do something. Exactly what X had been afraid of.

After a moment, X and Colonel were ushered into the office of Lifesaver, the head of the hospital wing. The gruff reploid gestured for them to sit down, and when neither reploid seemed inclined to do so, he rolled right into the explanations.

"Dr. Cain went into cardiac arrest. We have managed to re-start his heart, but he will be kept under total supervision for at least seventy-two hours. We have not yet determined if surgery will be necessary," he explained, in a flat monotone that sounded rather like the reading of a will. X nodded along to talk of the specifics of hearts and other organs that he didn't have. Colonel was silent. Lifesaver finally finished, and looked at X expectantly.

"Well. I know you're giving him the best care, and I hope for a speedy recovery. Please keep me posted," he said formally. Everything was formal with Lifesaver.

"Yes, sir," he said. The room was somber. Life and mortality were not familiar to Reploids. After all, if one were to malfunction, it could always be rebuilt. But Dr. Cain… his memories could be backed up, records could be kept, but once he was dead, he was gone forever. Had Zero bothered to be there to support him, he would probably call X an idiot and accuse him of being a total sap. Control the controllables, he'd say. Yeah.

Unfortunately, Lifesaver seemed ready to make his day even worse.

"With Dr. Cain incapacitated, you are now in charge of Maverick Hunter Headquarters," he said blandly. X knew that, sort of academically, but hearing it out loud brought crashing down to earth that a wild militarist was standing right next to him, eager to get he himself to sign off on a dramatic military escalation.

"Oh. Yes. Yes I am," he said lamely. He could feel Colonel's eyes boring into him. He couldn't deal with this right now. Fortunately, he was saved by a call. Unfortunately, it was from Double, who he'd left in charge of supervising their new prisoner.

"Hi, Double," he said.

"Oh my God! X! You have to help me-" X quickly turned down the volume on his receiver, but he was sure that everyone in the room could hear what Double was saying, anyway. "-went crazy- destroyed the entire lab- collapsed- don't know what's going on- please help-"

"Ok, Double. I'll be right there," he said tiredly. Well, at least manhandling down a rogue Reploid wasn't talking to Colonel. He had that to be thankful for, right?

Right?

Zero hissed angrily as he dragged the reploid's unconscious and very, very heavy body across the desert towards the Hunter base. He was two wire-snaps away from just blowing him the fuck up, but he knew he was important. He knew that this fellow was important because his armor matched exactly the armor of the mysterious reploid they'd found earlier that day, down to every last nut and bolt. The likeness was hidden a bit by how mangled the new guy had gotten in their fight, but hey, Maverick Hunter Zero apologized to no one.

He wasn't looking too good either, of course. His left eye was fiddling and the gash on his belly was leaking more fluids than he would have liked. His opponent had put up a much stronger fight than he'd expected. Really, he was lucky that the reploid's Energen reserves had run out when they did. He wasn't built to go the distance, that was for sure. But that wasn't the part of his make-up that had Zero concerned.

He was lacking a self-destruct device. Every reploid was built with one- it also had the emergency off switch, you know, in case they all went berserk and stuff. But when Zero had reached inside to shut him down, well, nothing. Just extra wires. That whole core piece, with the self-destruct and the emergency shut-down, was also the main site of Energen production. Was that why he'd lost consciousness so quickly? Without that device, his body couldn't produce enough Energen to sustain itself in a fight?

Dr. Cain would know. He'd be able to fix this reploid, just like he fixed the other one, even if Zero had mauled him a bit. He looked better than quite a few of the other Mavericks Zero had fought, though. He smiled fondly at the memories.

Zero was torn out of his bloody walk down memory lane by a click on his receiver. He was more than a little amazed it was still working, actually. A quick pause and glance told him it was a call from X. He decided to ignore it- he could deal with the lecture later. Readjusting his hold on the mysterious reploid's legs, he went back to walking and dragging.

"You're heavier than you look, you know that?" Zero muttered. The groove in the dirt caused by the reploid's body would have created quite an easy trail to follow, on the off chance that anyone was trying to follow them. Zero did creative things with the entrails of people who tried to follow him.

"Seriously, where the hell did you even come from?" he continued, venting his hot and tired frustrations on his load. "You and your little friend. And why'd you try to tell me my name was Thirteen?" There was no way the newcomer didn't know who he was. Literally everyone in the world knew who he was. It was probably part of the basic programming package for new reploids.

"It's Zero. Maverick Hunter Zero. Got it memorized?" he sneered, pausing to swirl around and kick the unconscious reploid in the side. He didn't respond. His eyes were blank, a flat and unresponsive green. Zero sighed. This particular quarry was more fun awake. Zero crouched down to examine his armor again- the same black, the same style of weapons, the exact same design as the one he'd found before. His eyes moved up to the reploid's slightly mangled shoulder, marked by a finely stylized number VIII. Number Eight.

He paused.

What had been the other reploid's number? He remembered X's even voice- X-I-I-I. Number Thirteen.

The same number that this Eight had addressed him as.

So, they were looking for the reploid that had already been captured. And it looked like there were a one through twelve, and possibly higher numbers, as well. But why would this Eight have thought he was Thirteen? They looked nothing alike. Did he not know what Thirteen looked like? But how could that even be possible- they had matching armor!

The more Zero looked at Eight's ugly, mangled face, the more angry and frustrated he got. He gave the bot another strong kick for good measure. Well, he could give this Eight what he wanted. Bring him back to Maverick Hunter HQ, shack him up with Thirteen, find out who they were and where they came from.

And if they know who I am and where I came from.

With renewed purpose, Zero walked faster. He couldn't have been more than thirty minutes away by this point. The trip out had been much quicker because he teleported, but he couldn't risk teleporting with a reploid this damaged. He needed Eight alive.

Just then, his helmet buzzed a second time, indicating an incoming message. He read through it quickly. Apparently, Iris was at HQ, and she desperately wanted to see him.

On second thought, he wouldn't mind walking a little more slowly.

Zero did not see the large pair of yellow eyes staring at him from a far-off shadow.

Hi, Megaman and Kingdom Hearts fans! This hasn't been updated in about an eternity, and I apolgize for that. I started it while I had way too much free time on my hands, and now I have like five on-going fics all going on together all at once. ;_; Anyway, this fic should have six chapters total, so we're nearing the end. I hope to finish it soon. Then I'd only have four on-going fics all going on together all at once! :D

Also, thank you to PANTHARYA for beta-ing! If you're in this for the KH, you should go read his stories. They're like fabulously comfortable pairs of pants. Go try 'em on! NOOOOW!

Also, writing that last scene made me want to watch Independence Day like WHOA. Please review! :)