Phase 18: The Floating Mausoleum, Part Three

The Wrath of Olympus

South China Sea

SKYLIGHT, this is VICTOR-3 requesting IMMEDIATE SUPPRESSION MISSION, DANGER CLOSE, over.

VICTOR-3, SKYLIGHT, immediate suppression, danger close, out.

SKYLIGHT, Target Grid in motion, SCC 6 dot 232407, 110 dot 264793. Altitude 389 kilometers. Transfer Denial System, Grid 26, Cluster 2. Call contact.

VICTOR-3, SKYLIGHT calls contact: Target Grid in motion, SCC 6 dot 232407, 110 dot 264793. Altitude 389 kilometers, Tango Delta Sierra Golf 26 Charlie 2. Time on Target, five minutes, three-seven seconds. Burn commenced. Authenticate: Whiskey, Tango, Oscar.

SKYLIGHT, VICTOR-3, I authenticate: Alfa, Oscar, Tango.

Message to observer: immediate suppression mission, Target Alpha One, grid in motion. One gun in effect, one round plasmic, danger close. Be advised, non-mission secondaries inside designated—

Target Alpha One, one gun in effect, one round plasmic. Send it.

SKYLIGHT copies all, starting the clock.

Signas

He found himself fighting the urge to remind his Hunters of things they were well aware of under the guise of encouragement. No one deployed to the vessel needed to be told to 'hold the line', the growing piles of dead machine humanoids showed where that line was being firmly held. There was no need to call for his sharpshooters to rain fire on specific targets, the regular, rhythmic reports of magnetically accelerated rounds slicing through the rainstorm was proof enough they were putting in the work.

And so Signas remained silent, hunkered behind a stack of armored supply crates, containing the very real shakes that coursed through his frame. His mentors and examiners back in the GDC told him this was all natural, human-like behavior for a reploid, as inconvenient as it could feel in the moment.

What mattered, they told him, was how he would respond under duress.

To his right was one Lucid Foxwisp, a feraloid melee combat specialist who did not often find herself on the front lines of a shootout. Her mono-molecular wires were intended for more subtle uses in darker, quieter places.

She looked at Signas, panting as her auto-repair systems continued failing to address the gaping holes in her armor, nodding slowly at him. He offered a tight-lipped grin in response. Another mass of charged plasma welled up inside the buster pistol gripped in his left hand.

Wordlessly, they rose together, just as two humanoid Mavericks vaulted over from the other side of their shared cover. With a wave of her hands, a half-dozen loops of wire removed the head of the first hostile. Snatching the second Maverick out of the air by its neck with his free hand, Signas jammed his buster pistol into the machine's face before firing, blowing a cavernous, molten hole through the top of its skull. The shot traveled onward, ripping off the arm of one of the six more Mavericks that were behind the first pair.

He let the twitching corpse fall to the ground, reaching for his beam rapier as mag rounds cracked overhead, fragging another Maverick as his blade came to life. Lucid gracefully somersaulted through the air, ultra-thin wires weaving through the rain as they sheared another Maverick in half. Another leapt at her just as she landed on her feet, orange beam sabers dragging along the hull behind it—

And Signas was there, accelerating forward with everything he had, rapier singing as it plunged through the Maverick's head. He drove the enemy into the deck, water splashing up around them from the impact.

That's fifteen.

Buster fire chipped away parts of his chest plating. He pushed himself off of the dead Maverick as damage alerts spread across his vision. Something struck him hard in the belly, dropping him to his knees, crying out in surprise through clenched teeth. Gamely, he raised the buster pistol at the enemy, offering a token of further unfocused resistance. The remaining Mavericks of this group began to fall back, Signas' poorly aimed buster fire and support from his snipers keeping them unable to leverage the full weight of their own firepower upon him.

The situation, he thought, is still under control.

Lucid was immediately at his side, yanking him harshly back towards the piece of real estate they'd both decided was theirs to protect.

"I'm gonna to tell everyone what I saw you do, sir," she called out, flinching from incoming fire as she practically threw him back behind concealment. "Saved my ass, you did! Took a grenade right to the stomach, lucked out on a dud!" She crashed next to him with a wild-eyed expression, offering a high-five. "Lets do all that again with less of you getting shot up, yeah?"

His high-five was clearly less impressive than his saber work, and Lucid rolled her eyes at her commander. Then it was back to business.

"They're pushin' up again, bossman," she said, peeking over the crate once more, then ducking just as a buster shot twisted through the air where her head had been. "Same group but reinforced, think they know you're important. Ten this time, maybe more. Ready?"

"Let us remind them how expensive I am, then," Signas said, assuming a low crouch. "Our sharpshooters will thin this group out, and then we move in."

"Amen to that, sir. Hey, are we gonna have that Network access again soon? I've got people on the ass-end of this AO I wanna coordinate with, and signal flares aren't cutting it in this weather."

"Someone is working on it," Signas said with hopeful confidence.

Ricardo

A combination of luck and skill had allowed Maverick Hunter Gavin to pluck him out of the path of immediate harm, but there hadn't been time for conversation between them. The fight had already come to the ship's deck, and Gavin had all but shoved Ricardo into the arms of a technician who was badly under-prepared for human casualties.

They'd ripped off his punctured armored vest to discover a thin, jagged piece of shrapnel that had found purchase in his back, just below the vest's rear plate carrier. It was the ugliest of a dozen such injuries all along his body, the rest were "cosmetic, mostly." Nothing that would interfere with his ability to do his job. But the piece in his back would have proven problematic under the right circumstances; it had to come out now.

He hadn't felt it until after the doc removed it from him.

Afterwards, they cleaned him up the best they could, then followed it up with a coagulant patch and an injection of the only surviving vials of painkilling-stimulant cocktail from his own supplies. Unfortunately for him and the rest of his non-reploid comrades, if there were any still alive, the Hunters had packed light when it came to human-viable first aid. He was to report to medical personnel immediately if he developed vision loss or physical weakness, given a slap on the back, and sent on his way.

The advice was mostly a formality. The 'doc' didn't seem convinced there would be anyone to report to in the next ten minutes.

Despite the fighting raging only several hundred feet away, this was the most relaxed he'd felt since waking up that morning. The drugs coursing through him were quick to do their job, dulling some senses, heightening others.

He'd been allowed to collapse ass first onto the deck behind a stack of supply containers, watching while Gavin was fussed over by a pair of technicians. The rain seemed to intensify, and the gusts felt like they were going to be enough to lift him entirely off the sub and into the sea. But the injections kept him feeling warm, almost too warm, especially around the patches and somewhere deep within, his heart drumming rapidly away.

Focus.

Rechecking the straps of his armor and utility webbing was second nature. Finding nothing amiss, he checked his rifle, unseating the magazine, then re-seating it, trying to listen for the click, the hiss, and the whine as the weapon's capacitors came to life. Simple, easily repeatable tasks. His way of clawing for normality as buster fire and mag-weapons popped off around him.

He was wondering how much longer his luck would hold out when something exploded somewhere inside the triage area. It was back to the races.

Nike

Zero Omega was, in her estimation, the most fascinating of all the targets discussed in the weeks and months leading up to present.

She watched him pull himself upright, looking far from his best, having survived so much just to get to this point. There was footage for nearly all of it, and it was impressive. Under any other circumstances, she would have agreed with Hecatonchire that it was suicidal to approach him even in this state. Everything she'd gleaned from MHHQ's own servers suggested that all this was nothing compared to what he'd survived in the past.

For all intents and purposes, Mega Man X and Zero Omega were old technology. There were machines today that were built to be faster and more lethal. The years preceding X's discovery were filled with drones that could do what humans couldn't in and out of combat, were more heavily armed and armored than even the toughest of reploids today. And now there were machines like her and Hecatonchire, built for very specific purposes by governments who saw the value in having such capabilities on tap. Built for the things the vast majority of Hunters were only modified for, and were ultimately worse at.

But somehow, as she closed the distance between herself and the Red Demon, she knew that Zero was more like her than he would be willing, or perhaps able, to admit. She was curious to learn more, and for the first time in what felt like decades, she had the bandwidth to indulge that curiosity.

Her thermal-optical camouflage melted away, and she appeared before the Crimson Hunter as he sprinted down the corridor in pursuit of Kindle. He slid to a halt, sparks spraying up around his boots, giving her a seemingly dismissive once over, muscles still tensed to propel him around her to continue the chase. But then his eyes narrowed, and he slipped into a defensive posture. Priorities had shifted.

"You subverted that reploid," Zero grunted. "Turned him on his own."

She answered his accusation by raising the vibroblade in her left hand to chest level, pointing the tip at the Hunter's forehead. He smiled at that, reaching tiredly for the saber plugged into the charging rack on his back. Something inside his body hissed, and the breaches in his frame began to seal themselves.

And then blue white flames shot from his feet, rocketing the Hunter at his prey. Nike stepped forward to join him, lashing out with the vibroblade for his eyes. The action played out in slow motion as she scanned the environment around them, trying to find the electronic gaps in his armor. Microseconds passed, and she came to the realization that there was nothing to find.

No radio traffic she could 'ride' into a subsystem, no data links to exploit.

Back in real time, he caught her arm as the blade kissed the side of his head, the humming edge carving away a shallow red gash. She thought for it, and her reactor sang, pumping power into her limbs just as Zero brought his saber into play. She allowed herself to move into the strike, catching his saber arm with her free hand, and was immediately forced to her knees, the floor beneath her buckling under the increased contact pressure. A twist of his wrist would end her.

Lighting off her own dash system, she brought both knees into his face, somersaulting back as the Hunter tumbled away. She twisted in mid-air, hearing his saber cycle-up, hearing it burn through the air for her.

Internal Operations Energy at 97%. Surface damage, REAR-TORSO.

She landed on her feet, watching as Zero recovered with just as much ease. Her auto-repair system went into triage to address the burns to the synthskin across her spine, just above the waist. A step forward, maybe less, and he would have cleaved her in half.

Zero rushed in once more, body nearly hugging the floor, saber blade tracing an arc for her legs. Nike leapt at him, planting both feet into his back before kicking away with another dash-assisted boost. Snarling, he contorted himself to swipe at her as she rocketed away—

Internal Operations Energy at 90%. Damage sustained, , upper thigh. Thermal burn-through detected, endoskeleton, . Mobility unaffected.

She allowed her momentum to carry her forward through another graceful flip, forcing herself to spin around to try and keep her eyes on him. Zero had recovered from his unexpected face-plant, already sprinting at her, the beam saber glowing bright as he dragged the plasma through the floor behind him. He was twenty feet away when the holster built into her right leg snapped open. Ten feet away when she pulled the plasma pistol free. Six feet, when the first shots from her weapon were deflected, the blade turning bright blue as coils of electricity wrapped around it.

Nike countered the anticipated thrust, dropping her pistol and stepping into the attack before he could bring the blade into position. Fingers sinking through the black material covering his left arm's synthskin, she gripped onto him with all the strength she could muster, spinning with him once before throwing him into a wall. Zero gasped, having expected a different outcome. The beam saber slipped from his fingers, blade still crackling with power as it sank half way into the floor before shutting down.

Opening.

Dash thrusters alight, Nike crashed shoulder first into the Hunter, the wall behind him crumpling from the impact, pinning him in place. She twirled the vibroblade into a reverse grip, aiming for the triangular pattern on his forehead, barely hidden by his hair.

But Zero denied her the kill, moving just out of the arc of the blade, the blade sinking through the wall paneling next to his head. Zero's dash system went into action, and Nika clamped one hand firmly around his throat, clinging to him as they rocketed down the corridor, the blade tracing a white-hot streak through the wall as she tried to force it through his head. The pair crashed hard into another bulkhead, and Zero was momentarily stunned, barely stopping the blade by grabbing onto her forearm as it came within inches of his skull.

Nike tightened her grip around his neck, trying to drag his head into the knife's blade while also bringing the knife closer. Loud, hydraulic hisses issued from both bodies as strength dueled against strength.

"Shhhhhh…"

Zero's hold of her wrist was impossible to wrench away from, his brute strength enough to slow the inexorable advance of her knife. Not enough to stop it entirely, his artificial musculature straining as it competed with hers, trying to hold off the inevitable.

"Shhhhhhhhhhhh..." Nike urged, readjusting her grip on the weapon, guiding the blade to his forehead level.

Something in her shoulders tore, artificial muscle fibers giving way as he pushed away from the wall, forcing her back several feet. Rearing back, she brought her forehead against his with everything she could muster. The impact was a cannon shot echoing through the corridor, LED lighting flickering around them sympathetically. The glow behind his eyes faded, and for an instant, so did his resistance.

And then something clattered onto the floor, prompting her to glance downward. Three small spheroids wobbled between her feet, azure light emitting from seams in their shells, tapping innocuously against one of her armored boots. She could feel her wrist begin to bend at an impossible angle as Zero strengthened his grasp. His grin bore perfect teeth.

She let go of the knife, then let go of Zero's neck, using that hand to retrieve her weapon as it fell through the air. With a single stroke, she severed her right arm at the elbow, launching herself away from Hunter with a firm kick to the head, just as a fan of brightly burning plasma consumed everything around her. The world slowed once more to a crawl, her mind processing dozens of projectile vectors that had spilled forth from the grenades, as though they'd been calculated to cage her in and deny her escape.

The shock-wave was enough to carry her to relative safety, away from what should have been a smoldering, molten crater of metal and Hunter. But as she righted herself to land on her feet, she saw Zero Omega was impossibly on the advance, parts of his own armor white hot as stray plasma globules splashed off of him. Each step forward rattled the loosened wall and ceiling panels around him. Somehow, he'd escaped his own trap relatively unscathed.

Directed energy weapon. He can control the detonation, somehow, without wireless communications to his devices— No. Programmed, through direct contact before release.

A formation of small, dagger-like constructs faded into view behind her, spreading like wings before spiraling at the Hunter, each 'feather' a high-frequency cutter. Zero never slowed, never relented, using part of her arm and his own fists to turn aside each blade as they slashed at him. As the remaining drones circled around to continue their assault, Zero leaned forward to evade a feather aimed at his back of his head, snatching his beam saber off the ground. With a shout, he corkscrewed into the air, the beam saber alight once more. The remaining drones fell in halves in his wake. Throughout the display, he never took his eyes off Nike, accelerating at the Maverick with repeated bursts from his dash system.

Superb.

Still sliding in reverse, Nike felt herself trembling with excitement, even as Internal Operations Energy at 74 percent flashed in the corner of her HUD.

X

He'd fought literal assassins, feraloids converted by choice or by program into walking mass casualty incidents. He'd faced down military-grade mechaniloids. Traitorous Hunters, some more heavily armed than the likes of Vile. There'd been soldiers among the Repliforce, and they were hardly the first of their kind to proudly declare that war was their purpose.

But this was a different kind of Maverick, a different kind of soldier.

Hecatonchire apparently had enough ammunition to slag almost everything that could have counted for cover, shredding ride armor and critical support struts throughout the entire space with distressing ease. But there was no hint of madness behind the destruction. It was all part of a disciplined effort to kill his targets as quickly as possible, while acknowledging and reacting to the fact that his targets were aggressively refusing to be killed.

Nothing fancy about it, nothing to suggest they were trying to pour a little bit of their inner selves into every motion. No taunting of his opponents, no declarations of superiority or justifications of a cause. It was purely mechanical, form following function. The Maverick did not see Mega Man X or Erebus as living things, as people. Where the combat was taking place was of no interest or consequence. The world to them was little more than calculations of vectors to process in order to solve a constantly changing physics problem.

X had managed to break visual contact with the enemy, vaulting up towards one of the upper level scaffolds. Despite their inability to communicate wirelessly, Erebus had proven damn good at offering his own two cents into the fray when X needed the distraction. He'd tried to return the favor when possible. It kept both relatively safe, with minimal damage. It also kept them firmly under the control of the Maverick, unable to break him of his chosen tactics.

Having once allowed close combat with X, Hecatonchire now warded off similar approaches from almost any direction, his massive frame capable of turning with unreal speed and precision to bring his cannons to bear. And each time, hundreds of rounds would shatter more ride armors, melting away what little protection and concealment that remained.

He smartly alternated weapons, reloading one as necessary, keeping the other ready as his excess arms handled the delicate task at hand with speed and precision. He'd intercepted charged plasma with a storm of kinetic slugs, rending apart the magnetic bottling fields before they could touch him. And when his enemies made themselves scarce, he calmly stood in place and scanned his surroundings, micro-missile racks deployed and waiting for targets.

The scaffolding protested under his weight, whining as metal bent. X forced himself to remain as still as possible, while keeping one eye locked firmly on the Maverick below.

Hecatonchire did not react to the sound, maintaining silent vigil on the last known position of Erebus: a mass of collapsed Ride Armors and bulkhead, possibly granting access to another part of the ship. Smoke puffed from the Maverick's shoulder racks, wisps of smoke corkscrewing at some unseen threat. A trio of rapid detonations hurled debris across the entire hangar, even reaching X's chosen scaffold.

Now.

The clamor masked his buster's warm up, the now-familiar heat in his heart and arm building in perfect synchronicity. Motes of yellow light rose from the weapon, built-in safeties kicking into action to limit the charge.

And then Hecatonchire pivoted in place, auto-cannon barrels rising up towards X. More puffs of smoke from his shoulders.

Hesitating and adjusting his aim, X cut loose just as the first missile broke apart the scaffold to his left. Assisted by his dash system, X raced up the now steep incline, scrambling to reach a more stable section. More explosions happened around him, peppering him with shrapnel, threatening to throw him off balance. But he kept running, jetting forward when his thrusters allowed.

Far below, the auto-cannons whirred to life and belched fire.

X ran until he had no more scaffolding to follow, and everything behind him was little more than metal splinters. He leapt as far as he could, trying to reach the far bulkhead, arms pinwheeling as he flew across the gap. Tracers followed, threatening to overtake him.

And then stopped as Hecatonchire once again shifted his attention to another part of the hangar. Now gripping onto an LED lamp fixture built into the wall, X managed to get another look at his threat. One weapon, and part of one of the arms that held it, lay steaming in the water pooled on the hangar deck, two of the three rotary barrels still spinning in place uselessly. A stream of fading plasma embers marked where Erebus had launched his surprise attack, the American sprinting over and around fallen ride armors, trying to find concealment

With the same eerie precision, the Maverick sighted his remaining guns onto the fleeing target—and then whirled around to look directly at X, the various ports for still active missile pods along his body snapping open. X let himself freefall towards the ground as another hail of anti-material rounds shattered his former perch. Still firing, the Maverick swept the roaring guns downwards, trying to catch the Hunter in mid-air. X boosted out of the line of fire, taking aim with his buster and building another charge.

A swarm of micro-missiles shrieked away from the Maverick's body, wreathing the hangar in thick vapor trails. He hit the ground running, and was immediately kicked airborne again as the missiles found the floor and wall just behind him. He was flung hard into a toppled ride armor, momentarily disoriented as he flopped over the dead machine into ankle-high water with a tremendous splash. Another emergency acceleration got him upright and over another mech. Reaching relatively open ground, he broke into a full sprint. The safeties for his buster kicked in again, amber lights flashing around the barrel.

Craning his neck to the left, he managed to catch sight of canisters launching away from the Maverick's legs, billowing clouds of gray smoke and thin strips of metal in every direction.

Crap!

Trying to follow the dwindling silhouette of the Maverick, X cut the buster loose, boiling away a tunnel through the smoke into the distance. Something exploded on the other side of the hangar, but all X could make out was a dulled orange flash that was quickly swallowed away by the expanding fog.

Visibility dwindling, X slid feet first into cover, trying to place the leg of a ride armor between him and where he thought the Maverick was. But even the sound of their repulsor lifts was dulled in the smoke, and eventually faded away entirely.

The first of the metal strips began to stick to X's soaked armor. Static lined the edges of his vision, a high-pitched whine growing in his audio pick-ups. Within seconds, he was all but blind to the world around him.

Erebus

Thermals are out, the Vanguard captain thought grimly, switching between vision modes. The smoke canisters themselves, even partially submerged in the water on the deck, were almost white hot, water boiling around them. The obscurant they spewed was enough to cast a nearly impenetrable red and orange pall over everything on X's side of the hangar. Back in regular vision, the smoke rolled through the air at him, blinding him to everything beyond a dozen feet away. Motion detection called out dozens of possible targets.

Targeting drones in the smoke, maybe. They find us, or we kill them, he'll know where we are either way.

Sliding behind another fallen ride armor, Erberus offered the hangar around him one last pulse from his sensors, trying to build a more accurate internal map of the space around him. Rain water from the ceiling gap between the massive bay doors splashed off of his armor, draining into cracks in the frame. The radar pulse returned nothing of value. As the clouds finally reached him, the first strips of metallic chaff began to fall around his position.

If he had communications with Lenneth, she would doubtlessly be telling him that he should have remained on the transport long enough to get his arm reattached. He looked up towards the ceiling, unable to actually see it now, save for the flash of lightning from the storm overhead. The distinct reports from the transport's artillery pounded through the ship's hull.

Unable to establish network connection.

Thanks, I know.

Proximity warning.

Huh.

The saber in his left hand flashed out for an instant, and it was only after it started to cut through the drone that he saw it. The optical camouflage broke down around the point of contact like the skin of an orange peeling back to reveal the nutritious contents beneath. A thin, circular construct with a small sensor package suspended beneath the repulsor ring fell in halves to the deck. A light plasma emitter to one side of the cameras and laser designators sputtered a single, sad pip of energy that burned out shortly after passing by Erebus' head.

And then he was moving again towards the nearest wall as another torrent armor piercing slugs carved through the smoke and armor around him, one blasting apart the stump of his right arm, another gouging away the rest of the shoulder. A near miss popped the beam saber out of his hand, the synthskin burning away from the unleashed plasma. He flattened himself against the ground, dash thrusters ablaze as the barrage swept overhead.

Proximity warning.

Upright again, he leapt twenty feet into the air, crashing awkwardly against the bulkhead. Craning his head around, he spotted the dark silhouette of the Maverick behind the artificial fog, highlighted by his remaining auto-cannons chattering away, tracers walking up the wall towards Erebus. His eyes darted about, a desperate and unsuccessful attempt to spot the second drone.

Something flashed deep inside the fog, and a blue plasma bolt boiled away a swath of the clouds, striking the Maverick center of mass. It was enough to force him off balance, the gun freely chewing away through the hangar ceiling.

Good shooting, X.

With another thrust-assist, Erebus began leaping from gantry to gantry, swinging from support I-beams, working his way across the hangar to the gap in the ceiling. With only a dozen meters to spare, he made one last dive forward, lighting crackling in the skies above as he twisted himself around to face it. His hand converted to its buster form, unleashing a single emerald bolt into the winds.

Lenneth

The transport felt more responsive now, with all of its cargo now deployed and fully three quarters of its munitions expended. It had proven decisive in giving the Hunters on the deck some reprieve from the swarm of hostiles, but it was not enough to stop them completely.

Unable to loiter in place due to some of the enemy's more creative anti-aircraft efforts, she flew figure-eights at varying altitudes. Close enough for her support fires to do good work without being affected by the storm, but far enough to provide some protection from return fire. The Hunters were left to contend with those that survived her wrath and that of the sharpshooters, and she could do nothing for those in CQB.

Without communications, Lenneth had to rely entirely on what the transport's eyes were showing her, and the occasional emergency flare that shot up from a beleaguered Hunter. They were quickly whipped away and doused by the storm. She had no way to know how many such cries for help she'd missed, only that occasionally, she would see the flash of a reactor going critical, and the super heated craters in the deck that were left behind.

It was her fifty-first pass across the bow of the ship, when something bright green flashed past the cockpit. Her reaction was instantaneous, rolling the transport to the right, trying to bring more of her camera sensors into play to see what had missed her. One of the dorsal cams caught glimpse of the threat burning out a thousand feet above.

Buster fire, single shot, no source identified.

Her mind traced dozens of possible vectors, settling on three 'most probable' sources. She was already plotting her next pass over the ship, ignoring the fact that it would take her far away from where the worst of the fighting was on the deck. She could see tracers ripping through the deck plates as the transport came around, shuddering through the hard turn.

Lenneth's new course would take her over what was the forward hangar bays of the ship. More tracers burned across her flightpath, but seemed unfocused. Not directly targeted at her, but at something else within the vessel. And then she saw a second green lance shoot up from submarine, followed by a smattering of yellow flashes.

She thought for speed, and the transport vibrated around her as the remaining engines spooled up to meet her demands.

You have got to stop asking for so much with so little.

Ricardo

"I'm putting you with our snipers in the superstructure!" Gavin was shouting as he yanked Ricardo off his feet and back into the air. "You see 'em there?"

"Not really?"

"Well I see 'em and that's where you're going!"

The acceleration was enough to gray out his vision, and the sudden halt at the top of the climb turned everything red. He could feel his wounds through the painkillers now.

"Hey there, Gav, fancy seeing you here!" one reploid called out, followed by multiple mag-rifle reports. "Hold up, izzat the freakin' boy you pulled outta there?!"

"The one and only!" Gavin expertly maneuvered himself over the makeshift sniper nest, depositing his squirming cargo unceremoniously next to a pair the sharpshooters. "You listen to Guernica no matter what!"

"That'd be me—" drawled a third Hunter, somewhere behind Ricardo. They helped him upright, and pulled the rifle away from the magnetic grips on his armor. "A Mark 90, huh? Big stick for a human..."

"He says you run, you run!" Gavin shouted, the engines of his flight pack winding back up. "These're good people, they got your back. Nice meetin' you pal, good luck!" Snapping off a hurried salute, Gavin spun back to face the battlefield unfolding across the submarine's forward decks, and was off like a shot. Unpleasant sparks and smoke trailed in his wake.

He's hurting, too.

"Wakarimasu-ka? You understand me?" Forced to turn around, Ricardo was now face to face with this Guernica.

"Yeah—"

"Okay, cool," Guernica brought the big rifle to his shoulder and took a quick sweep downrange, grinning as he did. His armor was clearly battered by the day's events, but still retained a shiny, sickly green appearance. Like Gavin, and almost every other combat machine Ricardo had encountered today, if there was something wrong with him physically, he wasn't about to show it affecting him in any way.

"We're trading. You can have mine." Satisfied with his new acquisition, the reploid unplugged his own rifle off his back and thrust it into Ricardo's chest. "This'll do ya nicely, less recoil, you'll hit things, trust me."

"An M-20? That's fair but—"

"Awright kiddo, let's not hang out with the rest of the crew in one place. You'll be with me, two decks lower. Nice an' concealed, good LOS. You jackasses good up here?"

"We're doin' just fine, ya fake southern bastard, take yer boy an' get ye gone then!" The 'Scottish' machine waved back at his fellow shooter without looking with one hand, the rifle in his other barking twice. "Down, gimme the next—"

Chuckling, Guernica walked briskly over to a hole near the back of the now open-air room. "Okay, so this place was prolly command an' control for these Mavs before we came a' callin', some kinda maintenance bed was at the center next to this breach here. That's where we're goin', you follow after me and do what I do." With a lopsided grin at Ricardo, Guernica hopped into the open gap, immediately swallowed by the darkness belowdecks. After several seconds, a bright light flashed up from two decks further below, and the shooter called up to his new human.

"Awright so come straight down, tuck in your arms and legs as much as you can, make like a knife, okay?"

Shit… "Okay, I hear you!"

"And keep that weapon pointed up and away from anyone, yeah? I'll catch you on the way down."

The hell am I doing… he asked himself again. In for a penny, in for two broken legs.

Deep breath. Another breath. Something hissed past him and into the bulkhead directly in front of him, punching a football-sized hole clean through it. The two reploids behind him cheered at the near miss.

It was enough to convince him to make the jump then and there. As he fell, he could feel something tugging at his uniform, cutting into fabric and the kevlar-composite straps he was all but wrapped in. But Guernica was good to his word, snatching Ricardo out of the air with one hand grabbing onto his vests armor plate carrier, almost a meter to spare before his feet crashed into the floor.

"Are the stairs out?" he gasped as he was planted onto his shaking legs.

"Naw, just a lot faster this way." Guernica's expression was barely visible in the surprisingly low light, but Ricardo could hear the grin plastered on his face. "Hohkay buddy, you up for some shooting?"

"Barely feel anything."

"Any shakes, feeling lightheaded?"

"No."

"Right on. Set up by me, you get full LOS on that porthole there."

"Copy."

"Good sport. One more thing—" Guernica jabbed a small cable into the scope of the rifle he'd traded to Ricardo, then inserted the other end into a port on his helmet. "This warcrime of yours'll shoot through the walls, and I bet it won't even compromise the ballistics of the slugs much of a much. I'll use the targeting data you provide and adjust my fire accordingly. It'll let us stay spread out some."

Planting himself where Guernica ordered him, Ricardo appreciated the chance to sit down once again, and worked on zeroing his new scope. Guernica took his place to the right of the human, and fiddled with the Mark 90.

"This thing yours?" Ricardo asked. "It's in great shape."

"Naw, mine's lost at sea, that's just a backup piece. Is this one yours?"

"Courtesy of the US military."

"Prolly the nicest thing they'll ever do for either of us," Guernica sighed with real reverence.

"Rules of engagement?"

"Put holes in 'em, whatever they are. Clean kills, mind the occasional friendlies. Near as I can tell, we got nobody on deck in front of the FOB and a few defensive positions, only idiots like Gav who think flying ain't just for backasswards polycraft or birds. Breathe, kiddo."

"I'm breathing." Ricardo worked on shedding his armor, then tossed the webbing filled with spare magazines at Guernica. "That's all I got for ya."

"It'll do." Guernica handed over his own combat webbing, and the pair immediately set about organizing their spare magazines for quick access. Through the hole in the roof, the distinct hisss-CRACK of magrifles cycling increased in tempo.

The rifle hummed and shifted in Ricardo's grip as he shouldered it and took his first look through the scope. Sensors built into the weapon scanned his eye, how he was holding the rifle, and made adjustments as necessary.

"Good feed on your scope." Guernica mumbled, shouldering his own weapon "I'll start sendin' 'em when you do. Don't call 'em out, just center 'em, pull, next. Center, pull, next."

With another deep breath to fight off the tension, Ricardo centered onto his first victim.

Humanoid, almost Hilde's height, black body suit, heavily armored. He trained with men and women who looked no different when geared up. His own fatigues, a dark "police blue", looked no less black thanks to the rain.

The rifle bucked up and to the right with the first shot. As he re-centered, what was left of the target's head slipped out of view, an ugly purple blot sprayed across the deck, marking the kill.

Ricardo twitched as Guernica's appropriated Mark 90 interjected, the report and the penetration of the round through the bulkhead almost deafening. The next target he found was already split in half by the Hunter's shot, straight through the reactor block. The ensuing detonation sent pieces of the Maverick and three of its comrades in every direction.

Jesus.

"Keep 'em coming, boy," Guernica mumbled to himself, barely audible over the persistent ringing in Ricardo's ears.

Hesitating to recheck his ear protection, and finding to his dismay that it was definitely in still in place, Ricardo found his next target.

Center, pull— and another Maverick died, head split wide open, artificial brain reduced to steaming molten metal as power distribution systems overloaded, the resulting arc flash forcing the scope to darken automatically to protect Ricardo's vision.

Center, pull—

Then the next. And the next. Eventually, the world was little more than the ringing, and the seemingly underwater blasts of Guernica's shooting, gouging away larger and larger holes in the bulkhead, letting in more light and rain from the outside. But they kept firing, hoping it would be enough even as the Hunters at the front were forced to retreat foot by foot.

Center, pull, next.

Center, pull, next.

Center, pull, next.

On his third magazine, seven rounds in, he finally missed a shot. The room suddenly pitched hard to Ricardo's left, and the roar of jet engines could still be heard over the persistent ringing in his ears. As he took up the scope once more to find the target he missed, he saw dozens of the featureless black helmets all staring directly at his position.

Yeah, I see you too. His next shot took the Maverick's head off.

Erebus

The straining jet engines passed by once more, unaccompanied by support fire from Lenneth. Disappointing, but hardly unexpected.

Seated behind a dead ride armor, he took a moment to mentally pat himself on the back. Aside from his missing arm, he was mostly still in once piece. If there was such thing as a finite supply of luck, he'd yet to run dry.

The smoke and chaff clouds had started to dissipate, thanks to the increased amounts of rain falling into the hangar. His oculars and internal sensors could finally get a better idea of what was around him beyond a meter. He could make the outline of Maverick itself now, hear the struggling repulsorlifts keeping him aloft. He could see the drones, losing count past a dozen. The enemy knew that his targets were going to regain more and more of their vision as time passed, and he was clearly pulling the drones back in an effort to preserve them.

He was unable to see it in complete detail, but he could hear X and Hecatonchires continuing to exchange sporadic fire, the growl of the Mark 17 buster, followed by plasma output, met with the droning roar of autocannons. Tracers and buster shots cast bright orange or blue lights through the vanishing clouds, burning them away.

The Hunter seemingly eschewed the tactics that years of experience and government standards had blessed Erebus with. X was defiantly outside of protective cover, leveraging his natural agility and honed skills against the Maverick's, growing bolder as visibility improved. He rushed the living artillery platform to bait out defensive responses, darted away from counterfires and the occasional melee swipe the enemy committed when he was too close to center his guns on.

Deliberately testing the enemy for weaknesses, seeking patterns to exploit.

Scrambling from one piece of cover to the next, Erebus allowed the drama to continue without his direct intervention. Despite his apparent disadvantage against a singularly aggressive opponent, Hecatonchire had demonstrated near-precognitive ability to identify and respond to threats outside of his primary fields of vision; there were still plenty of surveillance drones flitting about, at least ten by Erebus' personal count.

Something has to give, eventually.

Leaping out from his piece of cover, Erebus put one down with a charged plasma bolt. Instantly, every drone in the room pivoted in place to target him, followed by a swarm of micro-missiles rippling free from half of the Maverick's exposed armament pods.

Erebus watched with clinical detachment has the missile swarm fanned out, some arcing high before nosing over to dive at him. Others took wild flight paths that skimmed just over the debris strewn about the hangar to his flanks. His HUD was alive with vector calculations for each warhead, satisfied that none intersected with his own even as he dashed away in reverse.

And then a temperature warning flashed across his vision. In the distance beyond the oncoming missiles, water vaporized in a straight line directly at Erebus, the deck of the hanger bowing under the intense heat wave, overtaking the missiles coming at him head on and sending them spinning out of control.

The world slowed to a crawl as he tried to analyze the new threat, and he could see parts of his metal boots sloughing away from heat. His dash system failed a fraction of a second later. The missiles to his flanks popped up, then dove back down at him.

Skipping off the ground stripped him of almost all his momentum. Rolling back onto his feet, Erebus sprayed his buster at the remaining missiles, cutting their numbers down. Twelve vectors now firmly intersected with his, but he kept firing. Ten vectors remained. Then six—

Hecatonchire

The armor plates for his chest-mounted thermal emitters snapped shut just as Erebus' sailed lifelessly away from the cluster of proximity-fuse detonations. Mega Man X shouted for his comrade, unleashing the largest plasma bolt the Maverick had observed up to this point in the combat. The drones' ample warning allowed him to slide out of the shot's path.

With the smoke and chaff clouds fading, his remaining onboard sensors could get a proper look at the Hunter, allowing his mind to rapidly to cycle through predictive algorithms. Everything he'd observed and experienced up to this point was matched with reactive defensive and offensive sub-routines. He programmed launch vectors for his remaining missiles, allowed his repulsor drives to carry him exactly three meters backwards to for optimal warhead armament timing.

Any move the Hunter was going to make, or could possibly make based on constant scans of his frame, Hecatonchire had a response for.

But X simply stood his ground statuesque another massive plasma bolt gathering itself within his buster. The Maverick calmly loaded his final box of ammunition into his autocannons, and waited for X to make the first move. Rainwater drizzled in from the gap between the overhead hangar doors, the massive slabs of metal yawning further apart. Neither opponent budged, even as the submarine quaked all around them, artillery pounding rhythmically against the surface deck.

Thermal Array cooldown complete.

Once more, his battered chestplates snapped open, and the air temperature around him spiked dramatically upwards, a low simmer building in the water around him, steam beginning to form. X's knee joints bent slightly, anticipating the oncoming attack, and Hecatonchire's HUD traced dozens of possible evasive actions, highlighting the most probable before discarding the rest. The remains of his drone network fanned out around the hangar, seeking possible escape routes that the Hunter could take that his direct scans missed. Three drones he assigned to the motionless Erebus, watching for any signs of life.

Artillery gouged out chunks of the overhead doors, sending massive support struts and girders crashing down around and between them. Two drones went offline, killed by magnetically accelerated shells that passed through the hangar. Hecatonchire and X held their positions, unfazed by the steel rain.

The Hunter unleashed the charged plasma bolt into the deck between them, water exploding into steam, molten spalling caking the nearest ride armors. Hecatonchire fired a burst from his autocannons through the steam clouds, tracking X with his drones as he sprinted to the right, building another charge as he moved and disappearing behind another damaged ride armor leaning against the bulkhead. A two second burst from the cannons effectively shattered the machine.

No secondaries…

Two missiles whistled off his shoulder racks, plunging into what remained of the ride armor before detonating. Seawater from newly-breached adjacent ballast tanks began to flood into the hangar, then equipment scaffolding collapsed over the breach, slowing the flood to a fast moving stream. It was all more than enough to put down any reploid. For a long moment, silence ruled the hangar.

Then a spear of charged plasma lanced through air, catching Hecatonchires in the left shoulder racks before he could react to the calculations in his brain. His body sagged hard to the right, no longer properly balanced as he commanded the missile racks to purge from his body, just as the fuel cells of the missiles cooked off. The close range detonations threw him off balance in the opposite direction. Cracks spread across the surface of his combat helmet, forcing him to switch secondary sensor complexes on his body as the compound camera arrays failed.

X bolted from another piece of cover several yards from the missile strike. Impossibly unscathed, eyes focused on the Maverick as he sprinted to his next sanctuary.

Target capability exceeding simulations. Optimizing.

Queuing up six missiles from his remaining launchers, he fired two immediately, direct shots that would inevitably miss. The other four were ripple fired with minimal spacing, manually guided through arcs that would be impossible for the Hunter to intercept on his own, much less evade. He would have to—

Pivoting towards the Maverick, X sharply changed course, launching himself at the missiles and closing the distance to such a degree that he was well inside their turn radius. An action Hecatonchire's systems had been unable to predict.

The arm with his fully charged buster was outstretched, aiming directly for Hecatonchire's chest once more just as the armored covers for the thermal weapon slapped shut. Behind X, the missiles that had been manually guided impacted uselessly against the distant bulkhead, explosions tossing more debris into the rest of the hangar, water flooding in through the growing ruptures in the ventral ballast tanks and the pressure hull itself.

A fraction of second passed, and his optics were overloaded by plasma splashing off his pectoral plating. Thermal array disabled scrolled across his HUD, his vision returning as X smashed into him at full speed for the second time in the encounter. The Hunter's shoulder pauldron found purchase between the superheated armor plates, forcing them to buckle inward, partially melting against the array as it sputtered and died.

Loss of Balance Event, repulsor lift system compensating… Failure.

Rather than allow the lifts to assist him into a fall that would leave him fatally vulnerable, Hecatonchire manually disabled the repulsor system. He landed hard on the deck, still upright, knees buckling under his own weight.

X shoved himself away, peppering Hecatonchire with buster fire as the Maverick lunged forward with distressing speed, swinging his remaining autocannon array like a sword.

It was a solid, seemingly decisive blow, striking X clean on the side of his head. The iconic blue helmet shattered at the point of impact. Sent flying, the Hunter skipped off the floor twice before crashing head first into a ride armor thirty yards away, one of the few that remained upright in its storage rack. The machine tipped backwards, the balancing system over-corrected forward, and it collapsed in a heap onto X, effectively pinning him down, rendering him defenseless.

With every step towards the fallen X, Hecatonchires shed pieces of equipment he no longer needed or could use, moving faster as the weight on his body lessened. Vents along his torso opened wide, excess heat pouring free into his surroundings. His remaining autocannons, now damaged beyond repair or usefulness, were tossed aside.

He'd expended almost everything he had, but it didn't matter. Somehow, he'd defeated his own projections and calculations to retire a traitor, and surpass a legend.

X

Alert: Severe cranial trauma detected, head protection breached/no longer present. Motor functions impaired. Alert: weight tolerances exceeded by 226 percent. DAMAGE: armor compromised, multiple points of failure. DAMAGE: R. Clavicle Strut. DAMAGE: L. Occular Complex. Potential program loss warning: seek immediate assistance.

He could feel every step the Maverick took towards him through the floor paneling, half of his face submerged in the floodwater. His left eye, just out of the water, showed static and the occasional image of Hecatonchire's approach.

Get up, Maverick Hunter.

He thought for power, and his body provided. He began to push up from the floor, the ride armor shifting against him as he tried to get upright, tried to pull himself free, tried to at least get one buster aimed at the enemy.

Get up, Son of Thomas Light.

It took everything just to push up from the deck, to look at the Maverick as he resolutely stalked forward. No longer wielding his guns, his missile pods lying in a trail behind him as he advanced, he meant to finish things off intimately.

Caution: reactor exceeding output specifications. Internal Operations Energy at 72 percent and falling. Power distribution failures confirmed.

He kept pushing, even as both arms screamed warnings at him internally, filled his thoughts with the immutable calculus explaining how he could not overcome sheer physics of his predicament. Telling him that it was impossible for him to be supporting himself with just one arm and one leg, even as he did so, defiantly bringing his buster to bear.

Caution: Mark 17 automatic safeties engaged, heat levels critical, Internal Operations Energy unstable, recommend immediate reactor scram and stasis—

DAMNIT!

The hangar tilted hard to port, explosions ringing through the gap in the bay doors mixed with the sound of jet engines, Vanguard's transport making one more pass. The ride armor shifted, forcing X to lower his weapon and brace himself upright with both arms. Smoke billowed as a section of the upper deck collapsed into the hangar, allowing in more of the storm's deluge.

Hecatonchire paused his death march, fighting to stay upright as the vessel settled to starboard, then back to port. Despite his weight, his armored boots scraped against the steel deck. When the ship stabilized, he continued his advance, and it was all the Hunter could do to simply hold himself up and look at the Maverick in the eyes as he removed his helmet.

His face was bland, as generic as any mass production machine. Almost hairless save for a thin brow line. Eyes that betrayed their artificiality. Nothing about him was meant to look natural, friendly, sympathetic. Human on paper, barely passing casual inspection. Nothing like he'd appeared in the surveillance videos aboard SKYLIGHT, nothing like the briefings he'd seen. Nearly expressionless, his lips struggling to form the barest hints of a frown.

After a moment of silence, Hecatonchire raised one of his massive hands towards the beaten Hunter's head, the fingers folding inwards and pulling into his forearm, revealing a plasma buster. The water around him rippled as the weapon issued a deep, basso hum as orange light formed within the emitter. It was so close to his face that X could feel his synthetic skin burning from the residual heat.

Something in the distance exploded, and the light in the buster intensified. And despite everything, X shouted in defiance, trying to force himself out from under the ride armor, unwilling to die knowing that he'd accepted defeat.

Hecatonchire

His first warning of something amiss came from when three of his surveillance drones went offline, costing him a small portion of extended peripheral vision and hearing. He looked up from X just as a large burst of plasma forced him to bring one of his arms to shield his head from a direct hit. But in the instant before the flash of energy exploded against an armored gauntlet, he identified the source, willing his remaining drones to get eyes onto the target.

Erebus was running directly at him, beaten but not broken, firing everything his reactor could muster at the Maverick. Hecatonchire continued to shield himself until there was a break in the incoming fire. Two more drones went offline, reporting proximity alerts before their transmissions were severed.

Reinforcements?

Something struck the buster he had aimed at X. The Hunter allowed one of his arms to collapse under the weight of the ride armor it was trying and failing to support, batting the weapon side with his own buster from his freed hand. They fired simultaneously, X's shot catching Hecatonchire in the gut and forcing him back a step, while his own shot completely missed the intended target and gouged out a massive chunk of the mecha pinning X down. It was enough to allow him to finally break free.

To Hecatonchire, his focus was divided in three places and climbing. He calculated vectors for both Erebus and X, scrambling away from Hecatonchire in opposite directions as quickly as their battered bodies allowed, hoping to confuse him. He thought the remaining drones to track the two targets, while trying to find a suspected third, converging two on the location where contact had been lost from the others.

Somewhere near the ceiling. No additional contacts.

Target prioritization. X would be first. The damages his legs had sustained made him the slowest target. The recoil from his next buster shot would align the weapon with Erebus. Two shots, two kills. His HUD masked the world in vector calculations, critical objects in motion marked future positions highlighted all within microseconds.

The world slowed to a crawl, buster growling once more as it reached peak power, X centered in a targeting reticle, when something landed hard on his shoulders with enough weight to nearly force him to his knees.

His drones showed him the faint outline of something humanoid standing over, unable to identify who or what they were. They did identify the small, cylindrical hilt of a beam saber, bright orange blade fully extended and aimed for his head.

Calmly, in a world now only perceptible to machines, Hecatonchire focused only on Maverick Hunter X. Even as he felt the blade begin the agonizing journey through his armored skull, firing as he rapidly lost the ability to perceive or control anything at all.

He was able to watch his shot miss, and was able to simulate what victory would have looked and felt like a thousand different ways, the myriad possibilities he could have pursued, until even that was taken from him.

X

His left leg gave out, sending him into the ground face first just as a massive plasma bolt cooked the air only inches away from him, sending alarms through his entire body. He managed to stop his fall with his damaged arm, quickly forcing himself back onto his feet, ready to counterattack. But it was already over.

Hecatonchire fired again, this next shot well off target, melting through a far bulkhead. A third shot, the recoil of his weapon placing it somewhere in the ceiling, debris raining down from the point of impact. His head collapsed in on itself, rivers of molten composites pouring down the sides of his face and neck, burning red hot scars across his body armor as the beam saber plunged deep into it and beyond, the weapon trembling in the tightly clenched hands of a specter that resolved itself into existence from right to left.

Lenneth, Vanguard's second-in-command, knelt atop the Maverick's shoulders, teeth clenched in anger as she drove the blade deeper into the Maverick's body. After allowing the blade several long seconds to work through his internals, she ripped the weapon free and leaped away from the corpse.

Hecatonchire took one last step forward, firing two more shots at nothing, before the fires in the weapon flickered out forever, his arm falling slack. Lenneth rushed back in, plunging the saber through his armor, just below the sternum on the behemoth, super heated focusing lenses melting and flowing freely between the pectoral armor plates. Something inside popped, and with a hydraulic sigh, the dead Maverick slowly sank to his knees. What was left of his head rolled back on the remains of its neck to look up towards the roof. All around them, the dozens of small drones he controlled staggered in mid-air, then crashed to the ground.

Hilde

Program loss imminent. Seek immediate technical assistance. Emergency Reserves primed, COMMIT Y/N?

Kindle.

Kindle, it's me.

Her vision in one eye was badly distorted by a spiderweb of fractures spreading across the lens. She'd long since cleared her HUD of everything save the essentials, not needing to see a constant litany of damage reports scrolling at the edges of her sight when she could feel everything acutely for herself, and know how bad it was. It was impossible to tell where she was within the submarine now, the cauterized artificial nerves on the back of her head a sharp reminder of what she'd physically sacrificed up to this point.

She lay at the end of a trail she'd carved through the floor, a pressure door, two racks of what she believed were local data servers. Somewhere within the destruction she'd painted along the way, she could see her own blood and pieces of herself in the debris.

Okay, Hilde. Stand and die.

Kindle was nowhere to be found, likely seeking the next flanking opportunity. A precisely calculated plan of attack, repeated again and again. A pattern she could follow, but so far had proven unable to halt or counter. The feraloid was orders of magnitude faster, had always been meant for this type of combat in close quarters. Brutal and merciless, all of it now directed onto what he believed was the enemy. It was the training, years of retrofits, and after-market modifications often purchased with her own pay, that allowed Hilde to survive until now.

She could hear him sprinting on all fours somewhere near her, the distinct clawed gallop reverberating through the walls. It was effort just to get back on her feet, enough effort to prompt her to cut off the angry warning reports from the nerve endings throughout her body. The less information she needed to process now, the better.

Always from my blind spots. That's how he liked to work.

The galloping stopped, just as something outside of the server room exploded. Racks of unpowered machines bent and gave way under their own weight as vessel quaked around her.

Temperature spike, my six, high—

She dove forward just as he drilled through the ceiling plates, claws scratching at her back. In mid-roll, she kicked one leg off to her right to fire off a course correcting burst from her dash system. Kindle roared as he crashed head first into a bulkhead, his pursuit halted for a split second.

Sliding backwards from her own momentum, Hilde drew a bead on him with her buster, letting the charge build. Growling, Kindle twisted his head to face her as the plasma charge flashed green. Held onto it, as he charged after her, a trail of molten gashes in the floor behind him. The plasma flared bright blue, and she still held onto it, until he was practically atop her, forcing her to fall backwards. She was almost flat on her back when she fired the dash system, trying to gain some distance, struggling to stabilize her aim.

Reactor, get the reactor, make it count, make it quick, he can be brought back—

The plasma flashed white-hot. Time slowed to a crawl, the tip of her buster leveled at his chest, causing the armor to glow from the directed heat even as he twisted around in the air, a massive clawed hand only inches from its target. Their eyes briefly met.

Hilde fired just as his hand made contact with the side of her head. There was the vague sensation of being thrown through something. Many somethings. Every pain receptor offered a muted report with every impact, until she bounced gracelessly off a toppled server rack, into the roof, and back down to the ground.

Program loss imminent. Seek immediate technical assistance. Emergency Reserves primed, COMMIT Y/N?

Ohmigod COMMITCOMMITCOMMIT—

Unable and unwilling to feel much, she thought herself to her feet, and was pleasantly surprised that her body could to oblige the commands. Warmth flowed from her various injuries, the repair systems. There was an audible hiss from within her chest, excess heat escaping through exposed vents on her back—

Emergency Restoratives Tank expended, program loss averted. Seek immediate technical assistance.

Muscle fibers throughout her body worked through tensing cycles as her reactor spun up, the nanos cutting off leaks and restoring damaged components as best they could. She bounced on the tips of her boots, testing her mobility. She wasn't anywhere close to fresh, but it was better than she'd been.

Enough for another round. Maybe two.

On the other side of the room, staggering to his feet, Kindle kept himself upright with one set of claws dug firmly into the wall next to him. Part of his chest was ripped wide open, exposing his reactor housing. His right arm hung limply at his side, connected by shreds of endo skeleton and synthflesh. What remained of his own emergency tank poured its contents freely down to the floor, a glowing blue contrast to the red flames sputtering from his mane. A clump of her artificial hair melted away from his claws.

"Maverick," he snarled, pushing himself away from the wall, stalking towards her.

He can be brought back, Hilde told herself again, as her left hand dropped toward the beam saber resting within the charging rack at her waist. Tired of waiting, she sprinted forward, hurdling over debris as she closed the gap. His roar sent shockwaves that physically buffeted her, the steel at his feet warping as the fires of his mane boiled the air around him. Leaning forward, Hilde let her dash system carry her the rest of the way, drawing her saber just as Kindle launched himself to meet her.

They were less than a meter apart when her vision was filled with warnings from nearly every direction, and then she knew nothing more.

Zero

Nike had stopped moving, her expression completely blank save for her eyes. Wide, unblinking, crimson light circling artificial irises at maximum dilation.

Zero had beaten her, but over the past few minutes she'd seemingly refused to accept this. She'd fought gracefully at first, then savagely as the damage continued to mount. Inevitably, her systems succumbed to glancing blows of his saber, and the cauterized wound through her chest dripping with coolant meant for her reactor. But even that had failed to take the wind out of her sails. Until she suddenly froze in place.

He'd paid for his victory in kind, his systems warning him about potentially life-threatening faults throughout his body, things that in a different place, in a different state of mind, he would have cared about. Now, standing alone with this Maverick in a half-lit corridor, the tip of a beam saber humming a meter away her neck, he only cared about confirming the kill.

The ship rumbled around him, and he adjusted to maintain his footing. But Nike stayed frozen in place, mouthing silently a single word repeatedly.

Hecatonchire. Hecatonchire. Hecatonchire. Hecatonchire. Hecatonchire. Hecatonchire. Hecatonchire.

And then her body dissolved into a motes of light, Zero's saber passing through just as they collected into a singular beam that blazed through the corridor ceiling.

"What the hell..."

Ricardo

Cursing under his breath, the sniper finished loading his final magazine. Lenneth's artillery support had suddenly become more aggressive as the swarm of Mavericks tightened their encirclement of the Hunter's on deck. It made the sniping difficult, made him feel inadequate next to Guernica, who was acting every bit the machine he truly was. He seemingly never missed, and if he did, he didn't react to it. The bulkhead he was shooting through had massive, ragged holes torn through it from his first shots, now affording him a clean view of the killing grounds below.

Center, pull, next.

Center, pull, ne-

"Cease fire, cease fire!" Guernica suddenly called out.

Grunting with surprise, Ricardo slowly moved his finger off the trigger, and started pushing the weapon off his shoulder while keeping his latest target still centered on his scope. The Maverick in question, like the last two he'd put down, had been facing in the direction of the sniper nest, but was seemingly frozen in place. As was the Maverick next to it.

He panned the scope across the zone, and found dozens of statuesque Mavericks, all frozen in the middle of the last action they'd taken.

"Are you seeing this?"

"I'm seeing, not believin'..."

Something flashed in his scope, and Ricardo immediately adjusted his aim to try and find it.

"Hey, did you catch that?"

"Warplight," Guernica muttered. "That was warplight. But we have a barrier up, that's suicidal."

"Unless the barrier's down."

"But we'd know if it was, we'd have to—"

The ship rocked once more, sending Ricardo tumbling off of his perch to the floor.

Lenneth

"Maverick Hunter X? Captain Erebus?" Lenneth called out.

"I'm good… somehow." X winced, getting back onto his feet, his internal systems reading off a seemingly endless litany of warnings. "Thanks for that."

"Seems like they didn't disable your thermal-optical camouflage before you were reassigned to me," Erebus grunted, leaning heavily against the ride armor that had pinned X down. He looked to be in terrible shape, but it hadn't been enough to stop him from offering his second-in-command a tired grin. It upset her seeing him like this, again, all at his own volition.

"Well, I've had lessons on how to keep some personal secrets." Lenneth cocked her head to the side, inspecting Erebus' injuries, trying to avoid showing any outward reaction, unable to control the shaking of her tightly clenched fists.

"I'm jealous. How's our transport?"

"Under my direct remote control, still flying."

"With a compromised network?"

"A calculated risk, if you will." She took a hesitant step towards him, reaching out to him before pulling her hand back. "I could not risk direct artillery fire into this hangar, no visual on hostile targets, so I—I gambled."

"So you did see my message."

"I almost didn't, Captain," she said, her voice betraying what her stony expression wouldn't. Shaking her head, she looked away from him even as she approached Erebus. "I almost—"

A detonation reverberated through the hull, and she whirled away, almost thankful to be wrenched away from complex thoughts and into combat preparation. "Microfusion reactor failure, it's close. Multiple failures, far too many sources to pinpoint."

"That's bad," Erebus grunted. "X, can you—"

The starboard side bulkhead blew inwards with fire and seawater. As the shockwave overtook them, Lenneth saw the familiar sight of dozens overloaded fusion reactors in the process of unmaking their seals, somewhere beyond the wall of flames reaching out to her.

Signas

The abrupt silence was the single most unsettling thing he'd ever experienced to date, which overrode the abject relief he'd felt when the plasmafire splashing off of his chosen piece of cover ended.

Lucid Foxwisp was still at his side, badly wounded and very angry about it. She'd lost her deadly mono-wires, reduced to a spare magpistol lent to her by Signas. Only seconds before she had been cursing up a streak as the enemy made one last push that would have overwhelmed the two.

But then, the silence.

As one, the two reploids slowly peaked up from behind their protection. Less then a dozen feet away were five Mavericks, lying still on the deck, eyes open but devoid of the light that had shone within them only moments ago. Around them, the scene was repeated by dozens of Hunters gawking nervously around them at the wave that once threatened to crash down upon them, now frozen in place.

For Signas, his confusion was doubled when every single radio net he'd opened in hopes of gleaning some information from forces deeper in the ship came back online at once. It took him a full three seconds to issue messages for all teams to restore communications discipline immediately. He was receiving data packets from MHHQ, from every network he'd been severed from all at once, an overwhelming amount of information to experience despite having been made for that very purpose.

The electronic jamming has ceased—No. It's been interrupted at the source. A source. I cannot re-establish contact with all units.

"Commander?" Lucid asked. "Hey, you really think we—"

Vanguard's network is still offline, but their transport is still operational. Possible second e-warfare source, focused on them entirely?

"Boss!" Lucid 'nudged' him with a fist to the shoulder, bringing him back into the real world. "I think we did it. We really freakin' did it!" He felt the corners of his mouth curl slowly upwards. Other Hunters in the area seemed to feel the same, the hushed, almost breathless speculation on why the attack had ground to a sudden halt.

Warp Network available, ready for tasking.

That should not be possible—

Signas was the first to see the light pouring from every seam of the nearest disabled Maverick.

Lucid was the first to act, yanking him to the ground and diving down next to him. The ensuing explosion blew apart the supply crates they'd used as a barrier, shrapnel whistling dangerously past their heads or lodging into their armor.

Screaming with frustration, Lucid bolted upright, dragging Signas back as countless more explosions rippled across the submarine deck towards them. Managing to get onto his feet, he sprinted just behind her, trying to remain calm as he accounted for the sheer number of Maverick corpses strewn throughout the makeshift forward operating base, each billowing with light and smoke.

"COMMANDER THEY'RE ALL—"

"JUST KEEP RUNNING," Signas shouted. "ALL HUNTERS DISPERSE DISPERSE DISPERSE, HOSTILE UNITS HAVE BEEN SET TO SELF-DESTRUCT!"

Bright light overloaded his eyes, and for a terrifying moment he felt as though he were in free fall. Another shockwave shoved him into and over Lucid, and the ship listed hard to starboard. Barely able to see, he slid uncontrollably on the deck, stopping only after he dug his fingers into an armored panel warped out of alignment. With his free hand, he caught Lucid by her desperately outstretched hand. Her legs dangled over the side of the ship precariously, and a storm tossed wave washed over them.

"DAMNIT!" she shouted. "YOU BETTER NOT LET ME GO SIGNAS I WILL HAUNT THE WHOLE GODDAMNED MHHQ IF YOU DO, PULL ME UP FOR SHITSSAKE!"

Pressing himself against the deck as best he could, Signas tightened his grip on both the Hunter and the armor panel, wondering if the ship was going to remain afloat at this rate.

Hilde

Internal Operations Energy below safety threshold. Stasis recommended.

Let it ride.

Stasis recommended.

It doesn't matter.

Hilde lay beneath twisted rubble, barely able to sit upright, her buster fizzling instead of providing one last moment of defiance. Something had happened, beyond Kindle's control, beyond her own. Something that changed everything around them. The fires that burned around them were not his own, but whatever had caused them had left her at his mercy.

He towered over her now, claws poised to deliver her to wherever awaited reploids when they died, face obscured by shadow.

She couldn't even speak as her systems prioritized energy into life-saving functions that would preserve who she was even after her body shut down permanently. Not that it would matter. He would crush her skull, her control chip and the brain connected to it, and that would be the end. A grease stain on the boot of a Maverick.

Kindle knelt down next to her, and she did everything she could to try and break free. She shouted with the effort, her voice badly distorted. It meant nothing, it enhanced nothing, but somehow, she hoped that would be enough to give her body the boost it needed. Enough to help her break free and keep fighting.

And then he reached towards her, and effortlessly lifted the largest piece of debris off of her frame and shoved it aside. The energy coursing through her body vanished. She stopped struggling, trying to comprehend what had just happened.

"Hilde?"

Kindle's face was now fully visible, the feraloid's voice quavering, the fire and fury he'd personified was now replaced by confusion. The war around them was seemingly reaching a climax, the ship vibrating from so many internal detonations it was all but crumbling beneath their collective weight. They took in the sight of one another in equal parts horror and relief.

She nodded her head rapidly, mind racing as she pulled herself back to her feet. She tried again and again to speak, but all she could produce was meaningless noise as he casually reached towards a hip holster for his mag-pistol. Methodically, he checked the weapon as best he could with one hand, ensuring that the magazine was properly seated and that a round was chambered. His eyes never broke away from hers as he raised the weapon up to his head.

Kindle, please don't.

With a flick of his thumb, a small red light near the ejection port cover blinked to life, indicating the safety had been disabled. Limping towards him, she shook her head wildly.

You didn't know, Hilde felt herself try to say, her voice garbled and incoherent. Above the roar of flames, the pistol issued a high-pitched whine as his finger tightened around the trigger. Hilde was close enough to reach for the gun, and he easily shoved her away. Despite everything, he was and always had been physically stronger. There'd been nothing that could break him until now.

It's not fair. For God's sake, don't—

He fired a single round, the protective control chip crystal on his forehead shattering outward. Kindle collapsed without another word, gone from this world before his head hit the ground.

Erebus

He was completely submerged by seawater, the hangar bay now fully exposed to the ocean's fury. Visibility was almost nil, the water tainted by oil and debris, his helmet lights failing to respond to commands. Something prevented him from moving his remaining arm, but he couldn't see what it was. All he did know was that it was enough to hold him in place, and that he couldn't make it budge no matter how hard he tried push against it with his legs.

With little else to do, Erebus let himself relax and reviewed footage of what he'd seen leading up to this moment in hopes of finding Lenneth, or at least proof that she could have survived. He hadn't been looking at her when the blast hit, and consequently had no ideas about her location or her immediate state.

Not that it means anything. If I'm like this, then she could still be in one piece. X definitely could be.

The idea of Lenneth's continued existence did give him some comfort. It meant that Vanguard, whatever remained of it, would be in the best possible hands.

He remembered a dream he once had.

Reploids technically didn't need sleep, though they could enter a state similar to sleep in biologicals. Consequently, dreams were something of a rarity for most. It was one of two he could remember every last detail for.

He was sinking to the bottom of a training pool, deep in some facility. Where it was located, they were never allowed to know. But he and everyone else were there every thirty days, and run through the same battery of tests and evaluations, physical, psychological, how one factor affected the other, on simulated land, in flight, or in a three hundred foot depth test pool.

He was sinking, until his own sensors indicated that his depth was one thousand feet and still increasing. He remembered looking up, seeing the rest of the team working through their exercises, just above him. But he was sinking. He could feel the pressure as the armor around his frame crumpled inward, but there was nothing he could do. Erebus sank and sank, trying to call to his comrades, but none spared him a glance. He could see himself among them, trudging along the bottom of the simulated reef, preparing to surface.

He allowed himself to relax, tilting away from the vision to dive head first into the dark. In his short life, he'd never felt so certain and comfortable with anything quite like this.

The weight holding his arm down vanished, and he was free. Erebus closed his eyes as the dim light from above rapidly faded. He had no concept of location, of distance from anything. Nothing to reference, only the sense data of water seeping through him, pulling him further and further down to where he could finally rest, and stop caring about things he couldn't prevent.

It wasn't a bad way to go, taking a long vacation out to sea and not coming back. He was so tired.

X's face appeared in the darkness directly in front of him, hooking one arm around his waist, pointing emphatically towards the dim light. Fires ignited at his feet, air bubbles exploding around them as he forced them towards the surface. After a moment of hesitation, Erebus allowed his own dash system to help propel them back towards the surface. As they closed in on salvation, he could not stop himself from feeling almost disappointed by the outcome.

But as they shot out of the water, through a ragged hole in the submarine's hull and crashing heavily into what was left in the hangar, he was relieved to see Lenneth half limp, half sprint over to them both.

"Glad to see you, again," Erebus smirked.

"Don't," Lenneth placed a hand on his shoulder, the one for the missing arm of course, and squeezed as hard as her fingers would allow. "Just… don't."

"Hey Erebus?" X asked. "No more swims like that one, does that sound good to you?"

Zero

The Demon naturally found itself back in its cage under protest, and he was a Hunter again.

The corridors were now twisted and nearly unrecognizable, distinguishing signs and markings all but gone now, but there were other things Zero could follow. There were claw marks belonging to a feraloid. There were saber burns and buster scorch marks, signs of violent struggle that still stood out to him even as fires, fire suppression systems, and emergency lighting all conspired to try and hide it from him.

He'd failed to terminate one Maverick, but there was another, and there was someone still fighting it. He meant to retire the former to save or avenge the latter.

The trail took him through a narrow gap that he was ultimately forced to use his saber on to allow himself to slip though. Eventually, he recognized the remains of the Mavericks he'd put down earlier, most missing their upper bodies entirely, fires consuming what was left.

Reactor failures, but something more. Something meant to burn long and hot. Every one of these things probably has the stuff incorporated into their systems.

Beyond the flames he found more claw marks. These still glowed with residual heat, and he instinctively drew his saber from its charging port. Interspersed among the gouges and slash marks along the floor and walls were the telltale signs of someone fighting back. Magpistol fire had taken out some of the lights, punctured through armored paneling. A beam saber occasionally had left its mark next to the claws, suggesting that the smaller combatant has at least survived up to this point, but had fought a constant retreat. A losing battle.

Eventually, Zero encountered a sealed room, smoke pouring from between two badly damaged emergency shutters that opened and closed part way, thick enough that his saber would take too long to cut through. His own strength proved more than enough to force the shutters apart, and he stepped into another inferno.

Server room of some kind… nothing to salvage now.

"Hilde, you in here?" he shouted.

There were holes in the floor where something had effectively burrowed between decks. Claw marks near these shredded metal burrows told the tale, still hot even after so much time had passed. But there was no sign that a reploid's reactor had gone critical in this confined space, either one of the faceless drones he'd terminated, the feraloid, or Hilde herself. There wouldn't have been a room to enter, otherwise.

Beyond one of the curtains of flames in the room he saw the silhouette of someone massive, lying prone on the ground. There was something else next to it, but he couldn't make out details. He could guess who that was.

"Hey, Hilde! I'm coming through!" he called out again, plunging forward through the fire, raising his forearms up to protect his face.

When he reached the other side, he found her sitting curled up next to a very dead Maverick with a pistol still clutched in hand. She didn't react to his presence, eyes wide and focused on her fallen comrade, rocking slowly back and forth.

Sighing, Zero resheathed his saber, moving to heavily sit down next to her. Communications requests from Signas and many other Hunters filled his mind, but for now he felt that this situation here required his attention. It would have to be enough for them to know he was alive. Others were less fortunate.

"Long day," he offered, glancing over at Hilde. It was the understatement of the year. Every inch of her had suffered some form of damage. A lot of skill, combined with some luck, allowed her to sit where she was, nodding jerkily in agreement. He almost asked how it all went down in the end, to confirm what he'd already guessed, but decided against it. Enough was enough.

Belatedly, the fire suppression system finally went into action, lightly spraying water and fire retardant ineffectually at the conflagration and quickly filling the room with toxic gasses. Nothing that could affect reploids, even if one of them wished otherwise.

"We should probably get out of here." He gave her a hesitant pat on the shoulder. "Can you move on your own?"

"Te-tell me you go-got her," she said, her voice garbled. Damage was affecting her speech, along with something else that no internal diagnostic system could properly diagnose.

"No," he admitted, watching her carefully. "Blinked on out of here. I think we lost the suppression field. I'm… sorry about that, for what it's worth."

She pressed her head against her knees harder, shoulders shaking.

"I ne-need a minute-ute," she said. "Ju-just one more."

He looked at the fires, at Kindle, and then back to Hilde. Giving her shoulder a light nudge, Zero stood up to afford her some desperately needed space. She punched the floor with a fist, hard enough to crack the metal, blood spraying from her clenched fingers. Again, causing the paneling to bow upwards. Again, and for the last time, shattering it completely, her fingers trailing shreds of glove and synthskin as she brought the fist back up one last time, only to let it fall limping back to the floor.

"No more of this," she said darkly. "Thi-this. Is not. Over."

Signas

It took Gavin and two other Hunters to drag Signas and Lucid to safety, the ship groaning under it's own weight as buoyancy began to fail. With the network now fully accessible, it was a simple matter of thought for him to confirm casualties and survivors.

If X and Zero hadn't been among the latter, he wasn't certain that he could have maintained his bearing. As things stood, it took everything he had to not visibly show what he was feeling as the raw data poured in, to not allow the second guessing and the what-ifs and the should-haves overwhelm rational thought.

He spoke to dozens at once, giving orders based on individual situations, trying to reestablish his command authority and a sense of normalcy to his battle-weary subordinates. Re-adjusted his personal network access to stop sending signals to Chrysanthemum, shut off the video feeds of higher orbit satellites showing the expansion of a low-orbit 'shoal zone,' red hot debris whirling madly away from what had been the GDC station, and dozens of transfer denial system satellites.

Twenty miles away to the north-east, the monument to their defeat towered before him.

A column of residual blue light had parted the clouds in a rapidly expanding circle on the horizon, rapidly overtaking the eye of the storm. Lightning arced throughout the skies above, embers of excess plasma spiraling about as peels of concussive thunder rolled over the ship. The seas beneath the spectacle had erupted into a column of steam whipped up by the dying winds.

It was enough to force Signas to take a knee, and watch as one of Nature's most powerful weapons slowly began to unravel under the might of humanity's greatest sword. He'd never felt so much anger, and never had it been so focused on himself.

"All units are to commence expedited recovery procedures and retreat from the combat zone. The Mavericks have SKYLIGHT."