X turned to his former good buddy, Zero. "Why are you doing this, Zero? Don’t you remember me?"

Zero shook his head in what he hoped was a wise manner. "Alas, all too well. Tell me, X, why is it that you should get all the glory when I do all the work?"

"What?" X said incredulously. As he recalled, Zero was nowhere near when he had risked his life saving the entire world. In his opinion, Zero had been as useful as a French poodle when X last defeated the Mavericks.

"It was I who trained you to be who you are today; I gave you the backup without which you would be a rather large paperweight by now. So why should Dr. Cain consider me a non-entity? I bet he was more worried about the glider than myself."

X tried to deny what he said, but found that Zero was unusually insightful about Dr. Cain. "Dr. Cain works for the good of the whole team. He cares about every one of its members. He...he broke down in tears when he saw the glider had returned without you," X said. Well, he did cry when he saw the glider, X thought, trying to justify his outrageous lies. But Zero was a metaphorical lightyear away from being convinced.

"Don't you remember how well we worked together? All the great times we had?" X said, his voice wavering with emotion. "Remember that time when you died saving me and that other time you came back from the dead to save me and probably another time when you saved me? And then the whole HQ had a huge celebration in our honour, but you were too injured to attend, but we saved a piece of cake for you anyway though you couldn't eat it since you can't digest food. Don't you remember that? Aren't you moved by the friendship and comraderie you shared with us and aren't you going to be overcome with emotion and drop your arm by your side and realise your error and apologise for the pain you've cause us?"

Zero's eyes clouded over with memories. He choked back a few words. He lowered his arm. He took a step towards X. He opened his mouth to speak. He said, "try harder."

X decided to use a different argument. "Or would you rather serve the Mavericks? Perhaps you enjoy stooping down to their level of stupidity and obeying their every whim? It must be great fun working for Vile and company."

"Actually, it's not all bad without you nagging and whining all the time. I do what I want and everyone's happy. At least here they acknowledge that I'm not just a dumb soldier, which is more than can be said for a certain good doctor I know."

X was getting upset that Zero understood Dr. Cain so well. "Zero, can’t you see? They’ve completely reprogrammed you to obey their every whim. You’re not yourself. The Mavericks are in total control of your every move."

"You obviously don’t know much about programming. It’s virtually impossible to completely reprogram a reploid’s mind; the basic personality is almost always retained. In other words, all Theta did was free me from your weakling notions of saving mankind. I've never felt more like myself. This is the true Zero you are seeing, saying exactly what I think of you and the world in general. As for the Mavericks, I couldn’t care less about the whole lot of losers. I simply don’t want your presence within a radius of about a thousand billion kilometres around me." Zero added, "and you may quote me on that last bit."

"If there was something you didn’t like, why didn’t you just say so? It would certainly have been easier than to go around blasting everyone to smithereens," X stalled. He had to think fast before Zero decides to attack.

"I take great pleasure in blasting things to smithereens. And I grow weary of this conversation since you are obviously just stalling."

As soon as Zero had finished his last word, the glider began shooting at X. It flew over him a few times, but it's aim was rather poor, probably due to its lack of depth perception. Having only one headlight does that to a vehicle.

The glider finally came in for a dive, and followed up with a volley of shots, forcing X to exercise his gymnastic skills. However, the glider was inexperienced in battle, and was not exactly given top-notch combat programming. Thus, it had trouble recognising X’s complicated pattern of dodging left, then dodging right, then left and right again.

Knowing that he would never get rid of the flying pest in this manner, X decided to run into a nearby tangle of trees and see if the glider was stupid enough to follow him. X had to admit that he failed to be completely surprised when he heard the large thing crashing after him.

Considering the fact that trees seemed to keep stepping in its way and that squirrels seemed to be dropping from the sky, the glider made a fairly good effort of dragging its great horizontal frame through horizontally-challenged gaps in the trees. Still, X had no trouble losing the glider. He climbed into a tree and waited for it to lumber under him. He fell with ease onto the glider, but the landing was not quite as easy and X found himself knocked around a bit before he managed to grasp the glider’s controls.

He wrestled with the glider, madly inflicting thousands of dollars of damage upon its controls. He was only slightly guilty about the satisfaction he was getting from bashing Dr. Cain's favourite creation. Zero could not fire at X for fear of harming the glider, and the glider itself was quickly losing control. When the glider’s monitor had been reduced to a mass of wires, X aimed the whole scrap heap at Zero.

Zero fired at X as the glider came towards him, but X leaped off in time. Zero likewise rolled out of the way. The glider made a giant gash in the post of the McWiener’s sign, then grounded to a halt against a tree.

Zero had a pained expression on his face as he looked at the glider. "You were lucky that time, X," he said, vehemently.

"It’s not luck, my friend," X said, charging up his blaster, "it’s skill."

By now, Zero was too enraged to respond. He drew the light sabre and sprinted towards X. The upgrades Theta had made to his armour increased his speed, and X only had enough time to let loose a shot before running off.

He dashed off into the trees, with Zero slashing them down right behind him. X climbed into a tree and hoped luck was on his side. Unfortunately, his bright blue armour did not blend in very well with the bare branches, and Zero quickly spotted him. Instead of climbing up after X, Zero took the far more direct approach of shooting down the tree. X jumped into another tree, which Zero immediately shot down.

As he leapt from falling tree to doomed tree, X pondered how the environmentalists would react to this. Moreover, he devised a plan.

Zero saw X run out into the open and sped after him. X mentally crossed his fingers and made straight for the McWiener’s sign. As he passed the sign post, he fired at it and was rewarded by the sound of metal falling on metal behind him.

He dared to turn around, and saw that McWiener’s had its revenge on a fast food hater. X grasped Zero’s hand that had survived the crash, and dragged him out. After throwing several large rocks at him to ensure that he was unconscious, X transported the wrecked glider and Zero back to Headquarters.

Onwards to Chapter Twelve
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