Chapter Eight: Assassination Night Gredam surveyed the landscape like a hawk, daring any enemy to appear. He wasn’t high enough that he could see all the way around the quarry, but he could see enough of all the entrances to know if anyone was using them. Sigma and Grizzly Slash were wrapping up their business, so they wouldn’t be there much longer, but Gredam still was nervous. The vehicles that they’d taken for Hunter transports had vanished off radar and the scout who’d reported them to Gredam could see them no more. So, they were either nothing to worry about or the Hunters had both a cloaking device to fool radars and a hiding place that put the transports completely out of sight. Gredam found himself believing the second option. Byte stood high on a ramp that led up to the cluster of giant jagged rocks where Malevex lay in wait with his sniper rifle. Bit was patrolling the area around Sigma and Grizzly, and Teytha was moving around the entire quarry, never in one place for very long. Aside from the four soldiers who clustered around Sigma, the nine others they’d brought with them were crouched in strategic positions around the quarry. It was, Gredam knew, the most sophisticated Maverick planning that had taken place in years, and he couldn’t help but wonder if the army would have triumphed in the past had they taken such pains. Sigma and Grizzly were shaking hands now; the deal was made. Gredam rubbed his temple with his left hand, wondering to himself. Where were the Hunters? Vulcan sprinted through the short grass around the quarry, heading for a hill far from any of the entrances. If the Mavericks were waiting for them, they’d be keeping a close eye on all the entrances, so it was a better idea to invade from some other position. He knew that the rest of his group was going through the north entrance, but he had been sent ahead, of course, and his mission was different from theirs. For a while, anyway. He reached the quarry without incident, carefully scaling a hill of gravel and peering over the top inconspicuously. To his relief, he did see Mavericks, but none were around his immediate position. He clutched his assault rifle-equipped with a long distance sight-to his chest and looked for a suitable place to set up his sniper’s nest. He couldn’t do it from right here, because his only foot support was the rocky hill. He spotted a cluster of large rocks far below him and, making sure there was no one looking at him, he slid down the gravel hill towards it. His silver armor blended well with the gray color of the stone, and he landed without much noise or incident. Whatever troops he could see patrolling the edge of the quarry were well positioned, but hadn’t come past this area yet. He huddled within the rocks, realizing that they hid him extremely well. He also realized that his nest was extremely close to Sigma, who was bidding farewell to a giant grizzly bear. He was very, very low in the quarry, he realized. Vulcan didn’t know it fully at the time, but Lady Luck had placed extreme blessings upon him. He’d approached the quarry and scaled the hill at times when the patrolling Mavericks had passed the area and wouldn’t be back for a while, and his hiding spot would keep him invisible to them when they did pass. He’d also picked the spot closest to Sigma, and he could see the north entrance where Sol, Delates, Raust, Gamma, Gustav, and Torque should be approaching. Vulcan armed his rifle and centered on Sigma. His hand trembled slightly at the concept of the target he had sighted. He could pull the trigger right now, he reasoned, and possibly finish the job alone, however to fire when his comrades had not yet moved in would be suicide, and besides that he was not confident at all that he could hit Sigma now. He was still riled up from the nervousness of his invasion, and if he shot and missed, their cover would be blown and Sigma would probably escape. So instead, the Hunter tried to calm himself, making note of the other Mavericks hanging around. He recognized the Maverick called Bit, but there was no one else of interest. He kept focus on Sigma and waited. Rykov carried his chaingun as he marched swiftly towards the east entrance with Kyre and Hawkins, two other fairly large Reploids who were helping him supply what firepower the Hunters would need. X and Zero had been tagging along for a while, but both had now gone off towards the north entrance to oversee the first attack. It wouldn’t be long now. The trio reached the east entrance and surveyed the area. Hawkins hoisted a bazooka-like weapon over his right shoulder and flickered his glances towards Rykov and Kyre. Kyre just shrugged and almost stepped forward for a closer look, but Rykov stopped him. “I see something…” Rykov explained, crouching and looking to where a small patch of ground had been unearthed and patched together clumsily. In fact, there were several “lumps” in the ground, and it aroused Rykov’s suspicion. He analyzed the situation and frowned, a slightly pale tint coming to his face. “Something wrong?” Kyre’s gruff voice asked. “Are these…” Rykov chewed on the word unpleasantly before saying it, “…mines?” Krysta and Alia moved like cats through the quarry, drawing little attention from the troops, who were now very concerned about getting out of the quarry above all else, seeing as Sigma had concluded his meeting with Grizzly Slash. They were moving gradually inward, probably to merge with their leader and lead him out of the quarry. “I count thirteen generics,” Alia said to X via wirephone. X replied with a grunt and Alia continued. “There’s this one guy with camouflage armor and a wicked big rifle, and I think at one point I saw a woman walking around with two lightsabers. They acted as though they were the leadership. Bit and Byte are also here, but I think that’s all.” Krysta scanned the area from their makeshift hiding spot. It wasn’t a very good one, though Alia had thought it was, and Krysta was beginning to realize it. Sigma turned from Grizzly and started to walk away, as did the bear. One of the elite soldiers heading down to meet Sigma turned and cast one last glance behind him, making eye contact with Krysta quite by accident. Alia was still talking to X, so she didn’t see the reaction on Krysta’s face when the elite, raising his rifle, not only saw Krysta sitting there watching him but also Alia. Since Alia was speaking into a radio, and possibly alerting other Hunter troops, the elite deemed her the greater of the two evils and fired his weapon her way. Krysta opened her mouth to warn Alia, she tried to get up and push Alia out of the way, but her body didn’t work fast enough. The shot took Alia in the stomach, shredding a neat hole in her and pushing her back hard against the wall she’d been leaning against while communicating. She rebounded off the rock, eyes wide in surprise, midsection spurting blood, and pitched over the ledge on which they were hiding to fall down towards the Mavericks below. Krysta was horrified, but not paralyzed, and leapt to the side before the elite’s second shot, a bit worse off in the aim department, exploded into the rocks where she’d been sitting. She slipped briefly in Alia’s blood, grimacing, and rolled down the rocks towards her fallen comrade, drawing the pistol issued to her before the mission, figuring it’d be better than the small axe she carried on her back at this range. There wasn’t much else she could think of to do. “Shit,” Zero breathed, listening to all the Maverick chatter growing louder and more frantic. If they weren’t on edge before, they were now. “Something’s gotta happen, now.” X raised his arm cannon, fully prepared to charge in there and bring Sigma down himself. As it turned out, he wouldn’t have to. Vulcan swore violently. Sigma had begun to move as soon as he’d seen Alia’s body fall from the opposite end of the quarry. The sniper took a deep breath and locked on to his target, moonlight gleaming off the barrel of his rifle. The glare of another sniper rifle was not something Malevex could easily miss. He noted it and smirked coldly. So many targets, so little time. He was, in fact, running out of time. The glare from the other rifle met his eyes again, and he glared right back. He took a deep breath of his own and took aim. Something inside him made him shudder briefly, and he knew, he just knew, that this one wasn’t going to go off well. He was going to miss. The two rounds screamed through the air like little meteors. One slammed into the ground near Bit’s foot, tearing up a large portion of the rocky earth and startling the golden Maverick more than a little, but otherwise proving harmless. The other exploded Commander Sigma’s head and dropped the rest of his body to the ground in a crumpled heap. There had been brief silence when Alia had been shot, and no one knew if the silence that followed this one was longer or shorter, but everyone would agree what followed it was nothing short of pandemonium. “GO!” X bellowed, firing a blast towards the startled Bit. The Maverick whirled around in confusion, once again unharmed, but now angry. Before he got a chance to fire back, Byte did it for him. The brute detonated his mines as Sol’s group passed through the north entrance. The entire stretch of low cut gravel exploded in a maelstrom of fire, tossing soldiers this way and that. Delates, who was mostly through, was thrown into the air and landed hard on his rear, but was otherwise unharmed. Sol, however, went down in the flames and shrapnel almost instantly, along with Raust, Gustav, and a few others. A horrified look clenched Delates’s features, but it quickly melted away into rage, and he shot to his feet, brandishing his weapon. Delates himself was a sniper, but he was equally suited to direct invasion, which was what Zero had needed him to do in this case. Zero himself was not in good shape. Seeing quite a number of his troops go down immediately did not bode well for the commander, and X had to smack him on the shoulder to snap him out of it. “I didn’t even think about mines,” Zero said breathlessly. “Me neither,” X shook his head, “But there’s no time to worry about it. Come on, before these guys get away!” Zero nodded and watched X rush into the battle. He had a different target, though. Standing on the top of a nearby ramp of gravel, leading up to some large, spiky rocks, was the giant Byte who now chucked mines into the crowds of advancing Hunters. That was the bastard who’d just burned a bunch of Zero’s soldiers, and he wasn’t about to let the Maverick get away with it. Zero brandished his saber and raced up the ramp towards Byte, who took nervous notice of the advancing Hunter but met Zero’s charge with one of his own. This worried Zero more than a little, since Byte was considerably huge and there was not much room to maneuver here. Nevertheless, Zero managed to feint and leap backwards at the last minute. Byte’s charge broke off in a clumsy halt, and Zero took the opportunity to dart back in and drag his sword across the Maverick’s torso. Byte let out a bellow but kept coming, forcing himself into Zero and landing a massive fist in the Hunter’s chest. Zero flew backward and landed hard, but when he pulled himself to his feet Byte was running away. It became obvious that all Byte had been doing was buying time for his comrades, and now it was time for him to get out of there. Rykov quite frankly saw no need for heavy weaponry, and so just ran after any Mavericks he saw. They had retreated frantically, but still had kept good form. Only three of the enemy had been killed besides Sigma, and Rykov really wondered if they’d take any more down at all. These guys moved with more skill than anyone expected the Mavericks to do, like there was some new strict training regimen. Whatever it was, Rykov figured most of the killing was over. He fired only occasionally, and none of his shots hit, since the targets were sparse. The enemy was doing its fair share of resistance, too, and had excellent shots. Rykov and Kyre had left Hawkins behind with a shot up leg, and many other Hunters had been taken by Byte’s mines. Rykov had saved his allies that problem by identifying the mines early on and moving to a safer location, but shrapnel had still cleaved a decent gash in his arm and scarred Kyre’s face. Most of the Maverick targets were retreating towards the south exit, one of the few that hadn’t been devastated by mines. Rykov headed that way, noticing that most of the Hunters were closing in on the same position. Krysta was surprised she’d made it through the wave of attacks. She’d gone straight for Alia, determined to protect the wounded Huntress until reinforcements poured in. When Sigma had gone down, she’d been quite relieved to have the attention lifted from her, and managed to drag Alia behind some rubble and fortify the position with her pistol. It was never really a battle, she decided. It was a hunt. The Mavericks had begun their retreat as soon as Sigma was shot, since they were hopelessly outnumbered. They fled now to the south part of the quarry, though some were still covering for their comrades. She saw Byte limping past while clutching a saber wound in his torso, and actually took a shot at him but missed. Byte thankfully paid no mind to it and kept running. Bit had sprinted past far earlier and was leading the troops towards the exit. However, a small unit of Hunters would be waiting for the Mavericks there, hopefully ready to surprise them with an ambush. The Mavericks were firing back, however. She saw some of her fellow rookies firing insanely at the Mavericks, missing every time yet still believing that they were accomplishing something. Anything to be heroes, right? All they were doing was creating a hazard for their friends, and too many of those had died in this short time. As if to prove her point, she turned to the right just in time to see something she could have done without. The cocky Harrier, who had came into battle with his guns blazing and his enthusiasm skyrocketing, was confronting a lithe female Maverick who extended a machine pistol his way. The Maverick had crept out of nowhere, perhaps to bring up the rear or give aid to a Maverick who still hadn’t begun to run away. She leveled her weapon at Harrier and before the sapphire Hunter could react he was riddled with lasers. The Maverick dropped the Hunter like a sack of bricks and looked around for her next victim. Though Harrier had never been her favorite person, seeing him shot down right in front of her urged Krysta to take action. She ran towards the female Maverick, firing her pistol wildly. Her shots missed, but they alarmed the Maverick, who acknowledged Krysta by leveling her machine pistol at the Huntress. Some primal instinct in Krysta took hold and she dropped her pistol and took hold of the axe strapped to her back. She whipped her weapon of choice into her hands and held the broad blades up in front of her chest and face just as a hail of the Maverick’s gunfire slammed into it. Both the sight of the axe and the way it had been used impressed the Maverick assassin, and she replaced the machine pistol and whipped out two lightsabers. Krysta recognized her now as the one she and Alia had reported to X earlier. As distance between the two closed, the Maverick looked past Krysta and apparently saw something more important. She leapt clear over Krysta’s head and sprinted off towards where Zero had confronted Byte earlier. Krysta almost turned to follow, but she realized that at the rate her enemy was sprinting, she’d never catch up. That and the ground before her erupted as it was hit by a round of plasma from some assault rifle. Her head snapped towards the source of the shot, one of Sigma’s elite guards. He swore, and decided he had better luck running towards the rest of his comrades at the south exit. Krysta took off after him, noting that most of the Hunters were indeed congregating there. She passed Harrier with a grimace, idly wondering what would become of her other comrades. Vulcan had leapt out of his nest a long time ago, and he’d taken down an elite guard shortly after. He was elated, and charged into battle with high spirits. Since there were barely ten of the enemy, kills were hard to come by, and he had to admit that he wanted even more of them. He sprinted towards the south exit, where most of the Hunters were chasing the Mavericks. Along the way he met up with Kyre, who had fallen behind from Rykov, largely due to his big build. “Good to see you alive,” Kyre stated simply. “Likewise,” Vulcan nodded, increasing his pace. It was a good thing he did. Seconds later a round from some unseen sniper took Kyre through the chest, spilling the warrior onto the ground in a bloody heap. Vulcan rolled to the side immediately, and when the roll finished he sprang up off the ground towards the direction from which he’d begun his roll. As he’d expected, the sniper fired towards where he finished his roll, so his leap had saved him. He glanced back at Kyre, who was still alive and waving him on. His sprints became faster and he wove in different directions, making his path of travel unpredictable in case the sniper decided to shoot after him some more. X met him as he closed in on the south exit. “I’ve been looking for you!” the champion Hunter said as he rapped Vulcan on the back, “That was an excellent shot!” “What do you mean, sir?” Vulcan asked over the din of shouting soldiers and gunfire. “You’re the only sniper we were using,” X stated as they ran, “What do you think I mean? When you nailed Sigma!” “I didn’t hit Sigma,” Vulcan protested. “What…?” X said in a lower tone, thinking he’d misheard. “It wasn’t me, sir!” Vulcan said, louder, “Sigma started moving as soon as Alia was shot down! I didn’t realize it when I chose my nest, but its location put a large rock hill in between me and one of Sigma’s possible exit routes. When the shooting started he turned and went down that path, putting him out of my line of fire! My shot was aimed at Bit; I thought I could at least take out one of the major leaders! I missed him, though.” X frowned gloriously, slowing his sprint for just a few seconds. “Then who…? Who killed Sigma?” Malevex smiled thinly. He hadn’t missed, after all. Who he had missed, though, was that second sniper as he ran away. He’d taken the Hunter sniper’s friend down, and a few others at that, but that one had used impressive evasion tactics that he just hadn’t expected from what he thought to be under trained warriors. But he’d taken down the target that counted, and now it was time to get out of here. He rose from his rocky nest, looking around the battlefield. He saw Gredam’s big form near the south exit, where they were all running, and he couldn’t see Teytha anywhere, so he imagined she was over there. Time for him to sneak out. He turned to make sure the coast was clear, but of course it wasn’t. Still standing on the ledge leading up to the sniper’s nest, watching Byte run away and trying to find a new target, the stunned Zero was recovering from the blow to his chest when he and Malevex made eye contact. Instant, bone-chilling recognition passed through both of them and left both paralyzed, one because of shock and the other very much because of fear. Unable to find any words suitable for a war cry, Zero just charged up the ledge towards the man who’d killed Mea with a feral roar, saber poised to rip the Maverick limb from limb. Malevex, realizing his sniper rifle would do him scant amount of good at this range, cast it to the side and drew his own lightsaber, meeting Zero’s hateful gaze with a confidence he certainly did not feel. Though he was somewhat of an expert in special ops, Malevex was not too enthusiastic about a hand-to-hand battle with one of the most powerful Reploids in the world.   Their sabers exploded into each other with a hideous sizzling clang, and the rage behind Zero’s attack gave his the power needed to overpower Malevex’s. Zero proceeded into a series of fast, furious swipes that, to his great surprise, Malevex had no problem parrying. The Maverick countered each of Zero’s slashes, but could not attack for himself, because if he took his mind of his counterstrikes for a second, Zero would cleave the life out of him instantly. Zero kept the attacks coming out of fury, and Malevex kept parrying out of sheer will to survive, until finally Malevex dropped to the ground and swept his legs out towards his opponent’s. Somewhat blinded by his own fury, Zero didn’t see it coming, and had his feet swept out from under him. Before the exhausted Maverick could attack him, however, Zero sprang back to his feet and surprised his enemy with a hard slash that ripped into Malevex’s midsection. It was just what a human would call a flesh wound, but Zero wasn’t done. He came at his briefly stunned enemy with a shoulder charge, spilling the Maverick heavily onto the ground and sending Malevex’s lightsaber clattering across stones, far from his grounded form. Zero glared at the Maverick with a look that should have killed him, wordlessly conveying that he’d been waiting a very long time for this. Malevex just glared back defiantly, figuring if he was going to go out, he might as well go out strong. It didn’t happen quite like that, however. As Zero raised his sword for the final blow, Teytha darted up behind him and brought one of her sabers down into the shoulder of Zero’s sword arm. The Hunter cried out in more shock than pain, and whirled towards his new enemy, extending his foot as he did so. It shot out with lightning speed, burying itself in Teytha’s stomach and expelling all air from her lungs. She flew a good five feet backwards and landed in a winded heap, stunned. As soon as he’d turned to face Teytha, however, Zero knew he’d made a big error. He turned back to Malevex, hoping against hope, but he was of course too late. The very brief distraction Teytha had caused was more than long enough for Malevex to retrieve his pistol from its holster and level the powerful weapon at Zero’s chest. The Hunter threw himself desperately towards the right, and the last minute dodge meant that Malevex’s shot burrowed all the way through his heavily armored lower left leg instead of chewing its way through his chest. Zero gave a single bark of pain, but it grew into a sudden roar when the leg he had chosen to land on became the one that had been shot. It gave out from under him and he pitched further to the side, rolling off the ledge they had been fighting on and plummeting down to the bottom of the quarry. Malevex pulled himself to his feet, grabbed his saber, and raced over to Teytha, who was gingerly massaging her stomach. He pulled her to her feet, since she was still regaining the breath and the energy needed to do the job herself, and they helped each other down the opposite side of the ledge, leaving a different way than the other Mavericks were. Normally, they may have stuck around to finish Zero off, but some Hunters were coming to help Zero, and they didn’t really have the time to mess with them. Teytha didn’t remember much about the escape, but she did remember that Malevex was very pale during most of it. When everyone got to the south exit of the 12th district quarry, things got really bad. The Hunters waiting at the south exit to ambush the retreating Mavericks were actually a fairly small force. They figured to come down on the Mavericks when they were coming through the exit itself, but they were unprepared for the kind of skills these Mavericks had been taught. One elite guard caught sight of one of the ambushers before he got to close. He bellowed out a warning, and it started. The Hunters closing in from behind threw caution to the wind and began shooting, and the ambush party came out prematurely. Two elites were dropped quickly, but Bit, Byte, and the others held their ground as they crept through the exit. The remaining elites tossed their frag grenades over the exit at the ambush party, and the effect of this was fairly devastating. Shrapnel shredded several suits of armor and punctured bodies, and in some cases the Hunters grabbed the grenades to hurl them back, but they went off in the hands of their potential throwers. As if that wasn’t enough, Gredam was making use of his grenade launcher. A thick plume of smoke trailed down through the air and landed in the center of a cluster of Hunters. The explosion shattered the formation, and broke the Hunter’s solid advance nicely. Gredam found X among the crowds and launched a second grenade at the Azure Hunter, but it exploded a few feet ahead of X, not doing any real harm to the Hunter’s champion. Once all his Maverick brethren were through the exit, Gredam himself retreated. Krysta was among the first to charge after the Mavericks. The crowd of Hunters that moved with her through the south exit did see Byte stop in his tracks and glance back, but they were too far ahead to make use of the significance of that fact. Others, like Rykov and Vulcan, stopped before they got too much further and bellowed warnings, but they were far too late. Byte detonated the mines he’d sewed in the south exit, and the Hunters in the area flew in random directions, though some unfortunates just disintegrated in the storm of shrapnel that was created by the initial explosion. Vulcan watched Krysta vanish in the fire, and then he and Rykov were being hurtled backwards by the explosion. They both landed and were promptly rained on by a hail of soot and broken gravel and, in some cases, Reploidic blood. Mega Man X was thrown against a rocky wall by the blast and crumpled to his knees shortly after, totally winded. Shrapnel had carved hundreds of little niches into his armor and synthetic skin beneath, and the Hunter’s breath was choked with pain, but he knew his pain was nothing compared to that of some of his comrades. The smoke took a long time to clear, but by the time it did the battle was long over and soldiers from both sides lay in pools of their own blood throughout the 12th district quarry. X sighed heavily, forcing himself to wander the area that the mines had devastated and help look for survivors. Delates of Unit 0 was one of the first to hook up with X and help pull the moaning, half-dead Hunters into a pile. X felt his heart grow heavily with the realities of war, and he knew that once that happened he’d be no good to anyone. He hated war and all aspects of it, combat included, but he couldn’t let his personal feelings interfere with saving lives. Still, guilt stabbed at his spirit. He and Zero had led a very large team of Hunters down here to deal with barely more than ten Mavericks, and in a battle of less than five minutes the Mavericks had killed or incapacitated more than half of their army. Though he knew it was mostly because these Mavericks were better trained than any he had ever come across, he also figured it was his own failure as their leader for not preparing his troops better for this kind of thing. Vulcan coughed violently, getting weakly to his feet and shaking the dust off of his body. Rykov was already up and helped him the rest of the way to his feet. They both started immediately towards the site of that last explosion, where they found their mutual target, Krysta, crumpled up on the ground. She was unconscious and bleeding profusely, but it did look like she had survived. Actually, it wasn’t that surprising. The Reploids could take a lot more punishment than humans could, and the fact that Commander Signas had sent no humans with them this night registered in Vulcan’s brain as a good thing. Everyone who could help was now helping. The battle was over, and even though Sigma, the King of Mavericks, was dead, no one felt joyous in the least. Vulcan and Rykov both carried Krysta over to where X had begun to gather the survivors. Even now medics were pouring into the quarry, and the Hunters had sent relief squads from the Headquarters. Douglas had been watching the whole event via the satellite camera, and had sent medical care as soon as he’d seen the first mines go off. As they set Krysta down, their eyes locked with those of Commander Archer, who was wrapping up whatever bleeding wounds he could on the fallen Hunters. The thing that was odd about this was that where Archer’s right arm should have been, there was now a bleeding stump that was wrapped with a tight rag to keep all his internal coolant blood from pumping out of him. And yet he was still tearing pieces from a rag he’d brought with him to bind what wounds he could with just his remaining one arm. Both Rykov and Vulcan gained a new respect for their leader at that moment. “You two,” he said at last, “Give me a hand here.” He pushed the large rag towards them, and they immediately set to binding some of Krysta’s most obvious wounds. The medics arrived at their site shortly after, and they took all of them aside for inspection. Vulcan grabbed one of them, a tall, broad Reploid with a face set in blocked metal and a green/white coloration, and insisted that he look at Krysta quickly. The medic, who identified himself as “Lifesaver”, shrugged and obliged. “Your friend will live,” he said when he finished, “Once we get her some help, anyway.” He motioned towards the medical transports that were driving themselves cautiously into the quarry, for fear of more mines. “We’re only here for immediate aid. I’ve stopped the bleeding as much as I can. Get her and all the others I treat to those transports as quickly as possible.” They nodded affirmative, and Rykov, Vulcan, and Lifesaver became a bit of a team for the next hour. Zero, supported by Torque from Unit 5, limped towards X with an agonized expression that just grew worse with each step. A medic came to him at once but they all refused attention until the rest of the Hunters got it first. It was their way of compensating their troops for what they admitted was lax planning on the mission. “You know,” X said hopefully, “Not everyone who was damaged will die. I’ll bet our death toll won’t be high at all.” “Mm…” Zero mumbled, lost in thought. “At least…Sigma’s gone, right?” X hesitated ever so briefly before nodding, wishing he had wood to knock on. “Whoever shot him destroyed his whole head. No way a control chip could survive it.” “What do you mean whoever? We only had one sniper.” “Vulcan claims he didn’t do it. I’ve asked around the survivors, I asked ‘How about Vulcan’s shot, eh?’ And they all agree that it was a great shot.” “I see…you didn’t give any of them the chance to take credit for it, and make themselves a hero. Good one.” “Yes, but they all thought Vulcan did it, and he says he didn’t. Does that mean…it was from their side?” “Hell,” Zero snorted, “Could well have been Grizzly Slash. Has anyone found the bastard yet? No. He snuck away as soon as the attack started.” X nodded, looking around the now bloodstained quarry. God, they had screwed up. He looked back to Zero, and the look on his friend’s face said he shared X’s embarrassment and guilt at the situation, but there was something else, something a lot bigger there. “Are you all right, Zero?” “I…” he stopped, letting his voice drop off. There was something there all right, and it looked like X’s friend was looking a ghost in the eye. “Man,” X pressed, “You really don’t look so good. Is it your wounds…?” “It’s…” Zero shook his head. X always did this. There were plenty of things nowadays that Zero found absolutely torturous to talk about, even though he knew he had to sometimes. X always wanted so genuinely to help him through it, and though he always had a problem with sharing his personal secrets, he was glad to have a friend like X that he felt he could share them with if he had to. His head rose slowly upward to meet X’s gaze and he smiled weakly. “It’s weird,” he said, and that was enough for X to understand. “I’ll talk about it later, okay?” X nodded reply. “Sure…” He hoped he didn’t sound as worried as he felt. The last time he’d seen his friend like this was immediately after the Repliforce war, when he was dealing with the guilt of having killed Iris and Colonel. It suddenly struck him that worried as he should be over his best friend, there were many others here who may need to be worried over just as much if not more. He nodded to Zero and Torque, and headed to where Lifesaver and his fellow medics were working to see if he could get a casualty report. “Uh…” said Zero’s support, “Is there somewhere you want me to help you over to, sir?” Zero turned his head and smiled thanks at Torque. “Yeah. Home.”