When last we left our heroes, they had successfully fought off an attack by Sigma's presumably few remaining soldiers. X returned to Signas' office and Alia retreated towards X's rooms for reasons not yet fully disclosed. Zero is presumably still playing battlefield medic. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to anyone but himself, Gate escaped the maze around the brig with a sizable dose of freaky otherworldly help. Dr. Light's location and current activity are unknown. As usual.

You get the recap because I took forever to post this chapter and I don't want anyone to get confused. I'll remove it in a month or so, or whenever I get around to it. I'm finally authorized to work more than 20 hrs/week at the college, so don't be surprised by long delays.

As always, I thank my wife and MungoJerry my beta reader for their invaluable contributions. Enjoy.

Chapter 7: in which Gate lives up to his name.

Oddly, Alia wasn't in the command room for my debriefing. I had expected Signas to keep her around so she could hear any new information about my status. After all, she was assigned as my personal spotter on missions; even with our new relationship aside, she needed to know whether I felt up to continuing normal duties. As I gave my report to the stoic general, I wondered where she had hurried off to so quickly.

"Well, it sounds to me like you're fully operational for the moment." Signas sighed. "But if even your system's self-analysis came up normal, we still have no leads on what made you pass out in the first place."

He hesitated after this comment, an uncertain expression crossing his features, and I came out of my personal musings enough to notice. "General, did something else come to mind?"

After another moment, he spoke, his eyes fixed in the distance. "There was something. Did you hear yet that Zero fell unconscious at the same time you did last week?"

"I gathered as much, yes. That worries me a lot more than simply passing out by myself, incidentally."

"There was one other thing that happened at about the same time. Dr. Gate, the researcher working on interdimensional travel, was involved in the disappearance of two guard reploids and taken into custody under suspicion of infection. We haven't been able to hold his trial yet and we never did find the missing guards."

I frowned. "Who were they?"

"Private Sporkachev Glykowsky and Corporal Blue Rider. They apprehended Dr. Gate for suspicious behavior and called for backup before disappearing from HQ. There were no signs of weapons fire or teleportation in the hallway, no other witnesses of the event, and no answers from Dr. Gate about what happened. We locked him up in the brig until the situation calmed down enough for more investigation, although now I guess we won't need to bother. There were no survivors from the battle among the prisoners, correct?"

I blinked and checked through the files my wife had given me when she sent me to the brig area. "Wait, Gate was in the brig when the attack happened? I thought Alia included his file by mistake." I winced as I realized how stupid that assumption had been, even if other things had distracted my attention. I should at least have asked her for clarification.

Signas frowned, his brows drawing together almost imperceptibly. "Are you saying you and Zero didn't encounter him?"

"No, we didn't, and the cells were empty when we checked. We had eyes on the hole in the brig since it opened up, and the way to the rest of the compound still had fully functioning traps set up. Only someone who knew the most recent layout of the area could have survived getting through. Has anyone from Squad Eight checked the intact part of the outer brig area for bodies yet?"

"No, the internal monitoring system for that area went offline during the battle. That means a manual check is the only way." He frowned more deeply. "We lost several combat members of Squad Eight during the first attack a few days ago. Of the survivors, we lost another two in the attack today. That leaves only Lieutenant Pro Tem and Private Red Tiger, and the battle just ended. I imagine they're still figuring out what to do next." Signas paused and sent out an order over the comlink. "They say they'll look into it, but Pro Tem has to get repairs first. He was damaged during the action today."

I nodded. "Squad Eight has a standing rule not to let anyone go into the trap maze alone. Even someone who knows what's in there can make a mistake."

"Yes, so I've heard. Dr. Gate would have been safer in his cell." Signas shook his head. "I still don't know what could have happened with those guards. At one point I thought Gate might have used his wormhole technology to send them away, but your reports indicate his technology requires the use of both a handheld device and a heavy installation in his lab. There's no way he could have operated any machinery with those handcuffs on regardless."

I nodded again. "It just doesn't add up, does it? Then again, sir, you were a private investigator before you became a Hunter. I'm sure you can figure out what's happened, General Signas."

His mouth twitched in what could have been a smile if he had let it happen. "I mostly investigated cases of adultery and cybersurveilance, not missing persons."

Of course, that sentence made me think of only one thing, and my brain leapt to the topic long before his. I kept my expression carefully blank while an awkward look grew slowly on Signas' face. "Is there something more you'd like to ask me, General?"

The atmosphere got even more awkward. "I'm not sure how to approach this, Commander X…"

I nodded sagely. "Don't worry. You can ask me."

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Commander, I've heard Alia's explanation of the new upgrades. There are a number of issues to work through…" The black-armored reploid trailed off, then pursed his lips. "What's the nature of your relationship with her now?"

I considered this a moment. "Happily married, sir."

Signas frowned. "You know the law—"

"—states that artificial intelligences cannot legally marry humans. Stevensen vs. Claymore Robotics, A.D. 2145. Neither Alia nor I are human, so that legal precedent doesn't apply."

He frowned more deeply. "What about Helbrecht vs. Drake? They established—"

"—that a free reploid cannot acquire an indentured reploid by way of marriage. Creative, though, how Ice Drake thought of freeing his little sister that way." Grinning foolishly, I took off my helmet to run a hand through my hair. "The issue of marriage between two free, functionally gendered artificial intelligences has never been precisely addressed, although I'll admit the outlook is a bit daunting. I'll have to talk to my lawyer before we decide to go public."

Signas nodded, staring distantly at a point somewhere past my left ear. "I should have expected you'd think this through. Did Dr. Light write out a marriage certificate, then?"

"No, I don't think he ever had that kind of legal authority. We do have it on audio record that he gave her to me as my wife, but in court, the better case will be to argue that we qualify as 'man' and 'woman' just as stated in that constitutional amendment and that binding us in marriage will serve the stated purposes of the arrangement."

"And those are?"

I opened my mouth to answer when a message came over the comlink. It was Alia's voice. "Dear, are you done meeting with Signas yet? You're needed in your office."

"Be right there, honey," I spoke aloud and waggled my eyebrows at Signas. "General, I think this'll have to wait. My wifey wants me."

The big black-armored reploid looked more uncomfortable than ever. "I hope your duties won't suffer as a result of all this."

Already at the door, I looked back over my shoulder at him and smiled. "Don't worry. Change is coming, but it's a good change for once. I'll make sure of it."

The resulting twitch of Signas' heavy eyebrows struck me as almost plaintive. "Will you?"

I nodded, a thought occurring to me. My next words came out with gentle confidence. "Yessir. Alia and I both. We'll make sure everything turns out all right."

Warmth suffused my body at the idea. I smiled at the general, stepped into the hallway, and let the door slide shut behind me.

Someday, despite all that's happened since then, I'm sure Alia and I will make it right.

Someday.

GXGXG

I successfully returned to the lab unharmed and unseen. Sanctuary at last! Freedom from the dogs that pursued me!

The influence of the Voice brought Multi-Dimensional Interface designs back to my mind. Surprisingly, and pleasantly, I hadn't yet experienced any side effects from the intense communication with the Voice that guided me safely out of the prison maze; the nerve endings near my actuators and joints relayed up an unusual sensation of burning, but nothing else. How odd.

I nodded at the helpful, if unprecedented, circumstance and pulled on a spare lab coat before moving to the autoforge in the back of my laboratory. With modifications of my own design, it held all the necessary equipment for producing as many as a dozen more of the MDI's I used to send away those guards before my imprisonment.

I didn't want to make more of those MDI's, though. I had come up with a better one in prison. Empty jail cells had a way of focusing the mind, I had discovered.

Nearly an hour passed as I labored to finish the new design and code it into the autoforge. Assuming my numeric approximations of the integration hadn't thrown off the result, I could safely conclude my gate to subspace had already formed with the banishment of those reploid guards a week ago. I finally had the power to summon allies from other worlds; I needed only to send an equal number of sacrifices into the void. Then, later, with enough sacrifices…

But no, I had more to worry about before that day. Other problems reared their repulsive, scaly heads, like a hydra rising from the sewage boiling up from my rotten world. To wit: Sigma and the Hunters had been killing reploids for decades. Their furious attacks on reason and sanity had troublesome implications for my continued research. I had best destroy them all before they caused me any further problems.

Finally I finished programming the autoforge. My beautiful, brilliant hands grasped hold of the necessary materials and fed them into the machine. Twenty minutes passed as I switched from checking my calculations to watching the machine and back again. Once before, an autoforge's seven-jointed arms had mixed up an order, and I had to scrape carboniferous crustules from the blasted device for a week. Or I would have, if I hadn't sent it to Android Hell instead by way of the incinerator.

After far too long, the autoforge finished the noisy main work of constructing the piece and issued forth a softer whine, the characteristic sound of applying sealant and polish. Only the best quality for my project. I waited expectantly for the machine to finish.

Thanks to the world's greatest fools, however, it was not to be.

XGXGX

Two sets of android footfalls clanked on the metal-tiled floor, moving calm and assuredly amidst the scattered noise of other running and walking feet. A busy eighty minutes had passed since the battle's end but the work of recovery had only begun. Reploids and mechaniloids crossed our path going one way and the other, putting together the broken pieces of Maverick Hunter HQ while two of their leaders saw to one last unresolved concern.

"You do smell weird."

I sniffed my hand again. "I don't think it smells weird. I think it smells, um, wholesome. That's a better word for it."

Zero rolled his eyes. "Yeah, funny. But no. Seriously, X, after this you take a shower. You and your smells are disgusting."

I shrugged. "I was going to shower off before Signas called and told me to gear up for a short mission. I'm always happy to help if you think it's necessary, but I can't say I know why you insisted we go check Dr. Gate's lab instead of sending a couple of rookies."

"What, is Alia upset about having to cut short the honeymoon?" The other Hunter snorted. "Something about all this doesn't add up and I don't want to make any stupid mistakes."

"All right, that's fair enough."

At this point Alia's voice came to us over the comlink. "When you're done with this, husband dearest, we are taking a long vacation together. We have a lot of new technology to familiarize ourselves with."

I blushed and Zero sniggered. "New technology? I don't know, humans have been using it for an awfully long time."

"Not like we have they haven't." Alia's retort fairly dripped with satisfaction.

Zero's face went blank for a long moment while I tried unsuccessfully to hold back embarrassed laughter. After a moment, the other Hunter made a half-hearted effort to dope-slap me, which I took as a signal to quit laughing and walk normally. I managed to gasp out a question. "Are we in the Research and Development wing yet?"

"Yes, dear, you have been for a few minutes now. Gate's door should be up on your right before long."

Zero made a face at Alia's response but said nothing. I noticed that few reploids inhabited this section of MHHQ at the moment; only logical, I supposed, since the most damage had occurred elsewhere. Zero's voice on the comlink interrupted my thoughts.

"Alia, are you sure you can't find any records for the cameras in the hallways between here and the brig at the end of the battle?"

"I've been over every internal surveillance file in this base. Twice. The records we want have been corrupted into nothing but static." Alia's tone reflected no small amount of concern over this state of affairs. "I haven't found a good explanation as to why just yet."

"Real nice." Zero let a breath escape through his teeth. "Whatever. Just let us know if anything useful pops up."

"I don't think he made it through the maze around the brig anyway, Zero," I interjected. "We'll probably find an empty la—"

The other android stopped me with a motion for silence, then tapped his ear and glanced at me significantly.

0X0X0

While X went on about probably's and maybe's, my ears picked up a faint but distinctive whirr from somewhere nearby. I stalked quietly down the hall towards Gate's door, and sure enough, the sound got louder and louder and I determined that it originated from far inside the egghead's lab. I voiced my thoughts over the comlink channel only to keep from giving away our position with sounds. "Recognize that noise?"

He nodded and responded over the comlink in kind. "That's from an autoforge. Gate's unit is specialized for constructing his Multi-Dimensional Interfaces. If it's on, he's probably the one who activated it."

"Wait, he's actually in there? How did he make it out of the brig area in one piece?" Alia came across with a tone of total incredulity. "I've seen whole squads of combat reploids go in there and vanish. Someone like Gate shouldn't stand a chance."

I permitted myself a brief, grim smile. Life had a funny way of proving my instincts right. "He's more dangerous than we thought, then. We'll find that out how he escaped the brig after neutralizing him. After all, a good old-fashioned decapitation should leave his brain intact. Mostly."

"Good, because if he had anything to do with Blue Rider and Sparky's disappearance, I want every detail on how it happened and where we can find them now." The other reploid spoke over the comlink in clipped tones. "I've called for the rest of the 17th Unit to come as quickly as they can. I don't see any reason to risk sending you two in without any backup."

"Wait. What if we're all wrong and his only crime is escaping the brig?" X broke in with an agitated tenor to his voice. "I'm not comfortable opening fire on a potentially innocent reploid."

I responded over the comlink in a carefully level tone. "He broke out of brig during an attack on HQ and made it all the way out of the maze of deathtraps on his own. Even if that is all he's done, it makes him a dangerous criminal; use of lethal force is totally legitimate."

Somehow, someway, I kept a straight face through that entire load of BS. Gate, you son of a gun, thank you for finally giving me a reason to beat you senseless.

X peered at me suspiciously; I struggled even harder not to smile. Alia broke in right on time, saving me from the Blue Bomber's gaze attack.

"Don't worry, dear. If this is the Gate we know, he'll curl up in a corner the minute you two break in. The backup will be there momentarily just in case of any problems."

My face broke in an evil grin. Go on, Gate, I thought. Be a problem. I won't be mad. I'll just put you in the hospital for a while. You'll like that, right? A nice looooong stay in the infirmary…

At this point the grinding drone from inside Gate's laboratory gave way to a thin whine. My saber hand twitched. X gave me a worried look and I spoke up on the comlink again, body tingling with anticipation.

"Honeyhair, he's finishing up in there. Whatever unit he's working can't be good things for us, either. We're going in. Got it?"

A moment passed before she responded. I backed away from Gate's door and eyed the red lettering of his name over the top. X knelt to one side of the door with both busters charging, his newest set of armor gleaming white and gold in the light. His wife finally spoke.

"All right, go ahead. The others will arrive shortly."

A grin split my face at the other blonde's "permission" and I lit up both dash jets to rush that door headlong.

About time we get this party started, Red Ripper style.

G0G0G

The Voice reached out to me in a sudden, piercing hiss. In its ancient language it warned me of the danger lurking outside, and my eyes widened in desperation. My hands fumbled for the autoforge's emergency stop and ripped open its mechanical door before the parts had ceased their useless motion. Could they not see? I needed that MDI!

At the very moment I dragged the Multi-Dimensional Interface from inside, the door to my laboratory exploded from its hinges and clattered noisily to the floor. I whirled with the machine in hand, ready for one last, desperate measure.

I gasped as the door burst in, but despite my fear, I found my fingers engaging the controls for my device. I had to win. With the gate to subspace already open, I had only to send an enemy away to gain an ally from the Voice.

0G0G0

Crunch! The plain steel panel crumpled on impact with my heavy frame. My dash jets carried us both into the room with a furious hiss of escaping plasma; I curled and turned in mid-air to dash right before Gate's presumable first attack had a chance to connect. The egghead wouldn't even finish peeing his pants from surprise before I moved in for the knockout, but still, no reason to take chan—

Gate's metal door clattered to the floor and vanished without a trace.

"Back me up, he's armed! It's some kind of ranged disintegration weapon!" I yelled to X and Alia over the comlink. Meanwhile, I whirled and zigzagged across the crowded floor to the back of the lab. Gate pointed some kind of metal box at me and pressed a trigger.

By the time he did, I had already ducked underneath a handy workbench. Boss-level red armor plating or not, I didn't want to get hit with a weapon that made things vanish. At least X and I had checked the idiot's lab ourselves and instead of sending a couple of raw recruits like Signas wanted to do.

Plasma screamed in from the doorway and blew holes in the lab. Gate screamed and I knew X had hit home. The stupid scientist reploid didn't even have any armor to begin with! I didn't know how he expected to bring us down, even with that weird new weapon.

In spite of all that, my grin popped right back into place. Against all odds, and for all that he acted like a grade A wussyface most of the time, Gate had stepped up and shown some guts. He granted my wish for a fight after all.

I maneuvered around the workbench and leapt over another piece of machinery, saber drawn and flashing in at the enemy. I took in the scene in mid-air: Gate lay in a pool of burning internal fluids, his torso a twisted wreck from X's attack. His right hand groped blindly for the box he used as a weapon, which had fallen half a meter away, just outside his scrawny reach. I angled my fall with a burst of dash jets and brought down the Z-Saber for the final blow.

My body slammed into a solid wall of steel. I rolled off to the side and landed on my feet, firing off a few shots with the Z-Buster to keep Gate distracted, and saw what had stopped my attack. A bulwark of glittering dark metal stood directly in the path of my downward swipe. Something else seemed off about it, too, but my quick glance didn't tell me what.

Without warning, a giant tentacle of tooth-edged machinery leapt from the floor and grabbed for my waist. I reacted with a quick dash back and a jump, but the tentacle stretched like a rubber band and caught my leg at the ankle. Another tentacle sprouted from the wall and grabbed at my right hand to stop my Z-Saber's counterattack. I flinched away from it just in time to keep control of the weapon and the other tentacle yanked hard on my leg, jerking me suddenly across the floor.

Wicked purple plasma shot in all directions. Screams rent the air, both X's and Gate's: fury from the Maverick and pain from the Blue Bomber. Somehow, the weakling scientist had returned fire on X and actually wounded him through his Fourth armor. I heaved with my abdominals to curl forward and cut away the tentacle grabbing at my leg. Another wide slash, and the other tentacle and two more like it fell convulsing to the floor. The danged things kept coming out of nowhere!

Finally, fighting through the smoke and flames springing up around the room, I spotted Gate. There he lay, still twitching and bleeding, his arms holding that blasted little box. I fired off a fully charged shot from the Z-Buster and zigzagged across the floor to cut him in half. As expected, a wall of dark material popped up and absorbed the blast from my ranged attack. I dodged around it and cut away a pair of tentacles to reach Gate.

But **** it all, I never made it. Not then, not ever.

Gate beat the world's most powerful machine with nothing but a stupid metal box.

X0X0X

Zero shoulder-rushed his way through the door and into the room with a quick burst of dash jets. The moment he called for support, I popped around the corner and fired off a brace of charged shots with the Fourth armor enhancement. They hit; Dr. Gate fell with a gaping wound in his side and one leg scorched beyond usefulness. Indirect hits to prevent damage to the power core, but more than destructive enough to give my friend an opening.

Zero sprang over a piece of furniture with saber drawn and ready for a killing blow. It was all over.

Then, out of thin air, a structure of black metal sprang into existence two inches from Zero's face. I fired my other two charged shots at Gate, who had pointed a strange little box in my direction. The flashes of plasma disappeared without a trace.

The metal door Zero had busted in was gone too, and I had witnessed Gate summon up a contorted piece of metal to protect himself. My gut wrenched once I realized the implications. If Gate had a system for making things disappear and reappear in a form that suited him…

I sprinted further into the room as my Fourth armor gauntlets regained their charge. Another few seconds and I'd have another four full-power shots ready to go. At the moment, though, I wished I had a better shield weapon than Bubble Crab's in case—

—searingly hot flashes of purple plasma flew at me from every direction. At the last instant I tried to dodge, but the attacks came from the worst possible angles with no forewarning whatsoever. My world went white with pain as three of the blasts caught me at once. By the time I regained control of my senses, my pain responses had cut off as my mind focused completely on the battle.

An enormous, hideous, toothy maw dropped from the ceiling like a guillotine. I scrambled away as fast as arms, legs, and dash jets could take me, but the monstrous open mouth still grazed my body. More horrifying still, the dropping mouth didn't stop when it hit the floor, but dove through it like a fish into the water. On the way, the monster's hook-shaped teeth scraped across the Fourth armor and nearly wrenched my leg from its socket; only the incredible hardness of Dr. Light's custom materials kept the monster's fangs from puncturing the armor and dragging me along for the ride.

On the other side of the room Zero similarly struggled for his life. Tentacles erupted from the walls, floor and ceiling and reached for him with serrated edges. I leapt to my feet and moved with quiet speed towards the spot I'd seen Gate last, my buster reaching maximum charge once again. Even as I spotted the researcher amidst the wreckage and flames, I heard running feet and voices in the hallway outside. The cavalry Alia promised had arrived.

From what Zero and I have put together since then, they arrived just in time to see us disappear.

AXAXA

I teleported into the hallway with half of X's squad. Wrenching screams, explosions and smoke emanated from Gate's laboratory; my core went cold, then furiously hot as I recognized one of the screams as X's. My telempathy system communicated sudden pain and fear in concert with the noise, further confirming how badly my husband suffered.

My feet carried me halfway to the doorway before I knew I they had moved. The Alia Buster hummed with charged power, ready to deliver a consciousness-ending EMP to the suicidal fool with the nerve to attack my husband.

As I arrived, I saw one last tableau.

Broken machinery and destroyed lab equipment covered the room. Parts of the original walls had disappeared as if carved out with a giant ice cream scoop, while walls of weird black metal rose from ground that had been bare. Fires, no doubt started from plasma and other weapons fire, fed hungrily on anything that could burn.

X had his buster raised and ready to fire, Fourth armor glowing faintly in the smoke filling the room. Scorch marks covered the plating and the filigree on one shoulder had melted completely. A flash of red and gold in the back of the room gave away Zero's presence as well. Hazards and debris blocked any view of their opponent.

And then, abruptly, it all disappeared. Zero, the room, and my dearest Megaman X, all gone. My husband's feelings cut off like a river dropping off a quantum precipice and into the abyss.

For a fraction of a second, Gate and a little grey metal box—an MDI, I recognized—hung motionless at the center of a sphere of near-perfect emptiness. I saw then that he had not survived the battle unscathed; one leg dangled uselessly from the hip, and his torso sported an enormous, burned hole. X had hit him twice with fully charged shots, both glancing blows.

My ears popped with a sudden pressure drop, then popped again as atmospheric pressure returned. The sphere of emptiness reached from one wall to the other, down into the thick concrete foundation and up into the second story of the building. Furniture and papers rained down from the gap like a surrealistic rain.

Gate's wrecked body fell to the bowl-shaped floor with a crack of skull on concrete. I leapt headlong towards him, the Alia Buster crackling with overcharge, and fired an EMP at the weapon's newly enhanced full power. The reflected wave alone disoriented me; Gate's reploid brain likely fused in a dozen places. I landed on the concrete with an awkward roll that brought me next to the evil researcher's unconscious body.

"Where is my husband! Murderer!" I grabbed him by the scorched lapels of his lab coat and shook the reploid like a rag doll. "How dare you kill him! How dare—how…"

The tears came then. Bitter, furious tears streamed from my eyes as the excess of emotion flooded my body's natural responses. I punched the unconscious reploid heavily in the jaw before closing my hands around his throat to throttle him. I became conscious of other reploids around me, X's squad members, and ignored them. Nothing they did could bring my husband back to me. If he was still alive somewhere, if Gate's technology had not dropped him and Zero into a black hole in some other dimension, the secrets for finding their location doubtless lay in Gate's own memory matrix. Until he died, I couldn't be sure he wouldn't delete the files like so many Mavericks deleted their secrets before death.

Oh, and strangling him gave me such a thrill. My fingers crushed Gate's windpipe and continued compressing, bending the metal out of order and tearing the soft, thin plastic of his flesh.

"How dare you…"

"I'll be taking that."

An unfamiliar voice spoke from above me, pitched like a woman's but heavily digitized. A sudden scuffle broke out around me and I glanced up to see one of the ugliest reploids ever designed.

Her body looked like parts from three different machines soldered together into one Frankensteinian abomination. One huge circular yellow eye dominated the right side of her face, while paneling and wires covered the left. She had no mouth. Speakers on her neck emitted the reploid's stilted speech, and a set of four misshapen, spindly arms sprouted from her torso. That was enough. I transmitted an alert and called for more reinforcements over the comlink.

An impact beside me drew my attention. Rockstar had dropped to the ground, head rolling unevenly towards the center of the floor. Further to the side, Rumble Rhino and Sprint Eagle engaged a fighter that moved so fast he blurred. Whirling to face the misshapen reploid again, I released Gate's throat and jumped to my feet, sidearm coming quickly to hand. This monster and her accomplice had something to do with what happened to X and Zero. I pointed at the reploid's eye and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

The one-eyed robot's head snapped back one, two, three times, each of my shots leaving a huge melted divot in her face. Shattered, half-molten bits of glass dripped from the ruined yellow optic. Rather than dodge or block, the junkheap of a reploid took the hits without complaint and fired at the floor with her own weapon.

What happened next defied my understanding of both weaponry and teleportation. The ground opened up and swallowed the four-armed machine along with Gate's broken form. An orange-rimmed image of the room upstairs lay embedded in the concrete where they had been; then, in another moment it disappeared, leaving the ordinary concrete once again.

Before the portal vanished, though, I heard the reploid's digitized voice once more. "Come on, Tsukishima."

Another two impacts sounded behind me, and I looked back to see the enemy fighter standing by my squad members' sliced-up bodies. The man, apparently named Tsukishima, wore no armor, only a white-collared shirt and clean black slacks held up with black suspenders; his features matched those of a human even more closely than X's did. His right hand gripped a plain-looking metal katana with a bookmark-shaped crosspiece. The look in his eyes threatened death with such cold intensity that I almost hesitated to open fire.

Almost. He held Gate's newest MDI in one hand and I had a husband to recover.

The next three energy pulses from my sidearm sizzled in at the unarmored fighter as fast as the pistol could fire them. He dodged each shot with arrogance written all over his dark-eyed face. I tried my best to predict his next location and lead the shot accordingly, but either he responded too quickly for me to follow or else I misunderstood his attack pattern completely.

My only correct guess came when he jumped for the hole in the ceiling, the place where Gate's last attack had made a chunk of it disappear from existence. As the human-looking fighter leapt through the hole, an EMP from the Alia Buster rippled invisibly through the same spot he occupied. His momentum carried him up out of my line of sight, but with no armor and no detectable electronic countermeasures, the attack had doubtless forced his electronic brain into unconsciousness.

I sent in a code to teleport directly to the room where the fighter had landed, along with a copy of all my data from the battle so far. A moment later I felt a rush of teleportation take me there in a flash of light.

When I looked around, the empty office greeted me like a tomb. Half of its door dangled uselessly from the hinges; the other half lay on the floor, the faux wood cut clean through.

They were gone. They were gone, and they had taken Gate and his secrets with them. My beloved husband, our loud-mouthed friend Zero, and with them the hope of all humanity against Sigma had slipped away like superfluid helium through the bottom of a flask.

I gritted my teeth and sobbed into the uncaring floor, fists clenched so hard my fingernails bit into the skin. Through the grief and the pain, a burning raged through my emotions, stronger and more bitter than any I experienced as a mere reploid.

At that moment, I learned about hatred, but that wasn't all. Not by a long shot. My fists clenched and unclenched and I forced myself to stand. A grim look settled on my face as I finally answered Signas' desperate attempts at communication.

"I'm here, General. Commanders X and Zero are gone and Gate is neutralized. They have his body and one of his MDI's; I'm transmitting as much information as I have in file format. Terminate the invaders with extreme prejudice and bring them to me."

Purplish coolant seeped slowly from the fingernail marks in my palms. Gate's translucent green coolant dripped from where it had splattered onto my armor. I wondered, idly, what color of fluid the invaders used to regulate their temperature; the thought of finding out brought the corpse of a smile to my face.

Because in the moment I learned about hatred, I decided to learn about revenge.

Author's note.

This fiction will take X and Zero to places in the multiverse that no one deserves to go. Humans and reploids alike will fight for their lives in this and many story arcs to follow. Writing the next three chapters alone has given me nightmares involving my own violent death-and I will not say what else. I can only hope the nightmares will cease once I finish.

But, let's get to the point. Many of X and Zero's adventures from here on out will require an M for Mature rating on account of violence to humans (as opposed to very humanlike robots). However, I will try to craft the T-rated chapters in such a way that they stand alone, leaving the M-rated story arcs under their own heading: "X and Zero, SE: The Darker Worlds". Together, the two stories will form my greatest masterpiece to date; to get the full experience, simply read the chapters of the combined story in their appropriate numeric order.

Now that you're all confused and frightened, feel free to enjoy the rest of the story! The first chapter of "X and Zero, SE: The Darker Worlds" is posted already. Go to my profile to find it most easily.

My nightmares are waiting.