Author's Note:

   Well, it's final. My lack of writing ability was what singlehandedly caused me to fail English.

  

   To be honest, that isn't bad. Except for the fact that I thought I could write rather well. I've even had friends assure me that this isn't the case. There were really only five or six people I was trying to impress with this fanfiction. Most of them verbally express just how terrible it really is. Then there's the one who's pratically obsessed with Megaman, but doesn't want to read my fic anymore. And last, and most important, was the one that got me into fanfic writing in the first place. She's assured me that my writing is flat, uninteresting, and horribly long and boring. Just no emotion, apparently. All my other friends that were into my series have had their interest dwindling to the point of stopping. They really just don't care if I finish it or not. So that's it then, I have absolutely no support from anyone close to me, not even family. You can't imagine just how much that sucks to have no one close to you like your writing.

   So this is it. This is the one, the proverbial "it". The so-called "final act". If I don't improve my writing over the next five episodes, I'm just going to assume that I've pretty muched peaked as far as talent in this field goes.

   Episode #20 may be the last episode in the series. I've got more important things to do, and I don't have the emotional strength to deal with friends that tell me that they couldn't care less if I stopped (6 really good friends at that) writing altogether. You really have no idea how much that hurts, considering for a year now I've been convinced that I may actually have a writing talent, seeing as how I lack any talent in any other field.

   (sighs) The longest Author's Note ever, and I'm sure everyone already skipped over to read the chapter by now. Well, whatever. In this one, Iris feels pain over Zero, Agile feels pain over Iris, Sigma feels pain over his past. If that's not enough emotion for you, well zark it, I guess I just can't do it.

---

"Truly, if there is an evil in this world, it lies in the heart of mankind." -Edward D. Morrison.

UCO - Physics Department - Room 003
Cluster One, Australia
November 18th, 2093
The Present

   "So did you guys find it?" asked Anyi. The trio had just walked through the doorway, laughing and seemed to be full of adrenaline. Anyi smiled, her mood had calmed down a bit since she last saw them. She looked around the lab, it was finally all clean, she was going to start working on Roll tomorrow.

   "I can't believe you caught that last pass without your MGS, Zero!" Zinc was ecstatic. It was true, Zero had the gameball in his hands. Anyi saw the football, and felt her anger coming back.

   'Okay, so you guys finished getting the kinks out of your armor and then took off and played football, leaving me to clean this lab?' she thought. She just sighed.

   "I take it you guys played football?" she asked the obvious question. Zero just looked up with a smile and saw that the room was clean, even though it still looked drab and grey.

   "Yeah, and I managed to kick X's ass without an MGS."

   'Without an MGS? Is that what they were up to?' Anyi knew what the MGS was for, and was surprised that Zero managed to function without an MGS during the game. They must have been doing some training after all.

   "Let's try the same game in Hyper-Real," challenged X. Zero quickly shut up and passed the ball to Zinc. Anyi was confused by that term, X and Zero seemed to notice.

   "Oh, sorry Anyi. It's just when a reploid fights at sonic speeds, we call it Hyper-Real," X paused and looked at Zero. "It-- started as a joke, didn't it?"

   Zero replied with a nod. Anyi was surprised they could function at such fast speeds, but assumed that it was probably normal for them. She swept the last bit of dust up and put it in the trash.

   "Well, while you were gone, I managed to clean the lab," Anyi was too tired to keep smiling and put the broom back up against the wall.

   "Yeah, X told me about it," Zero said. "I'll fix that network grid tonight."

   She looked at the network grid behind her and saw the immense tangles of wires. Anyi was glad to finally get some help with it, since it was beyond her skill to repair it.

   "Oh, you don't need to take a look at it now!" Anyi exclaimed.

   "Ah, don't worry about it, I doubt I'll get any sleep tonight anyway," Zero smiled again and caught the ball from Zinc. Anyi just sat down on her bed, happy to finally get some rest, even if she did have to go to the Planetarium tonight to look at Roll's corrupt files.

   The boxspring collapsed.

   "Oh no," she said morbidly. This day couldn't get any worse.

   "Well, it looks like I won't be sleeping soon either Zero," she sighed. She looked around at the bare, but sparkling clean lab. Before she had cleaned it up, the whole place was a disaster area. "It must have been broken during Roll's outburst. I just noticed it."

   "Hey, don't worry about it Anyi," said X, his good mood still in full effect. "You can just stay at my place."

   Anyi and Zero looked up in surprise. Zinc was throwing the ball up in the air, not even paying attention. X immediately blushed, and realized quickly that he was blushing, making his cheeks even redder. Anyi thought it was rather cute that Dr. Caine gave him that rather human quality.

   "Well, what I meant to say was," X stuttered, and Zero's smile broadened. "I...stop looking at me like that!" he was referring to Zero.

   Zero burst out in laughter. Anyi was still confused.

   "Well, I don't like you staying in such a, er..., shabby place, I get kinda...worried that this Yaven Enterprises might try to find out where the lab is. I don't want you in danger, and my apartment is in a false name I don't think they'll be able to track back right away, even with their government support. I don't have an extra bed for you, but I'm sure I can think of something. I'd give you mine, but it's designed for Reploid use, but maybe I can find a mattress in the closet. Um, I mean, if you want to?" X was babbling now, and Anyi thought that was also cute.

   "What do you know? Finally a lucky break!" Anyi's mood was suddenly brightened and she started emptying her drawers into her suitcase beside it. Zero was still laughing and X was fuming about it.

   "Yeah...that's it. I mean, since your bed is broken and I'm the only one out of us with an apartment," X said that, but didn't really have any force behind it. He laughed sheepishly, and Anyi could tell that he was planning on mentioning the idea for awhile now, he was just finally caught off-guard. That's when X noticed that she was packing red plastic and some metal parts.

   "Uh, what's that?" Zero asked the question before X got to it. X was still rather flustered about the whole moving in issue. Anyi could tell he thought the moving in issue went by really fast.

   'That's what you get for running only your secondary systems when you think, X,' she thought with an amused look on her face. She finally had a friend who would let her stay at a place. This was definitely a first in her life.

   "Anyi? What is that?" Anyi picked up on X's question and looked down to where he was pointing. It was her hobby.

   "Oh, I'm just trying to put together a toy. I do it to relax," she resumed packing. "I found the blueprint in Dr. Light's documents and thought it was rather cute, so I'm gonna build one."

   X and Zero looked at eachother in confusion.

   "Well, what is it?" X asked finally. Anyi smiled and closed her suitcase.

   "You'll find out when I'm done!" she said. She then handed the suitcase to X. "Can you take this back to your place for me? I have to go to the Planetarium for a few hours first."

   "Uh, I-- sure. I guess I'll see, uh...see you tonight," X replied. He was glad that she was finally in a genuinely good mood, the one that had disappeared the day she nearly died back at the site.

   ***

Yaven Enterprises - 2nd Basement
Cluster One, Australia
November 18th, 2093
The Present

   It was still painful. Even after nearly two weeks of being left on, being probed by Vile's machines, it still hurt. Sigma was on the floor against the wall. He kept his face looking up, because he hated seeing the blue glow which covered his body. He hadn't looked down for over a week now. He couldn't really think straight with the machines probing his thoughts. They forced him to replay his memory databanks until his software overloaded the holographic matrix. Everytime, he would experience the distaste of being Maverick, of being controlled by a force which left him helpless. He remembered the years of trying to break free, ever since he had contracted it in that damn cave where he first met Zero. He remembered the old pain of losing those battles against X and then he would feel the new pain of nearly winning them. It was a vicious cycle which kept repeating, and now he was nothing than a pawn. He could only assume that Vile was looking for some important information which he himself had overlooked at the time of the war.

   The war. He had started the war. That was the worst part of it all. Sigma had seen death in himself so many times, that watching others face it was unbearable now. But no one ever shut him off. The machines would just keep whirring as he kept replaying the same events over and over. Yet, he still had enough consciousness to ask questions. It had been five years, and he was wondering about the future of Reploids, about his Elysium which he had planned. The paradise which he wanted to build, but his Maverick nature didn't want humans in that future. He still didn't like humans, but he wasn't willing to build a future on their dead bodies.

   The door creaked and slowly swung open. A few cobwebs broke across the steel door and he could hear someone walking casually across the room. He still refused to tilt his head down to see them. Down towards the damn blue glow.

   "And how are we doing today?" came the voice. That sickening voice was starting to annoy him. Of all the reploids that died, Vile was among the first, but somehow he managed to survive. Sigma was really too tired to get angry and just smiled,

   "You're probably having a lovelier day than I," he replied. He could see Vile leaning over and he noticed the scar over his left eye.

   "You know, we're finally done rebuilding your code, but there's still a piece of the puzzle missing," Vile had a flash of annoyance in his voice. He was definitely close to something, and Sigma shuddered to think of what it could mean for anyone outside this prison of his. Vile backed up and clapped his hands together, walking away. His grey suit was tinted blue in the light from Sigma's holographic body.

   "Why, why, why?" asked Vile to the brick wall. He turned around, Sigma finally had his head down, looking directly at him. "Why doesn't the Maverick virus affect you? You used to be the main carrier, but somehow you've developped an immunity to it."

   Sigma was surprised to hear this. Towards the last few months in the war, he had felt his own will coming back, but he never suspected that it was because he was growing immune to the Maverick virus. He found strange comfort in the fact that he'd never lose control to the virus again. Still, he wondered why this had come to pass.

   "Mind you, it hasn't stopped your pathway degradation," mused Vile. "I just can't figure it out. X is probably the key to this whole thing. You always said he had unlimited potential."

   Vile was back to leaning over Sigma. Sigma was tired of listening to the bastard.

   "You got problems?" asked Sigma. "Get a fucking counsellor and let me die."

   That just made Vile's grin wider.

   'Jesus, this guy is such a fucking idiot,' Sigma thought. He was wasting time, letting X know about the whole thing in advance. 'What part of smart strategy involves giving away your position and strength to the enemy?'

   The machines stopped whirring and the blinking lights went out. All that lit the room now was the dull blue glow from Sigma. It was completely silent now, except for Vile's voice.

   "Oh you do annoy easily, I see," Vile stood back up. "Well, no matter, yet you know something about X that I want. Somewhere in that code of yours."

   "Why the hell do you bother telling me about all this?" asked Sigma.

   "Didn't you hear? The war is over. The Reploids lost, and now they're the new slave race for the human population."

   Sigma's face betrayed his dejection. He had hoped that the war would serve some purpose, but now it turned out that everyone had died in vain. This made him angry, even as a Maverick Hunter so many years ago, it would have made him angry to see so much worthless death.

   "Now," Vile continued, "Reploids don't even get made anymore, there's only a handful of us left, and our codes are degrading. I've been blessed with some stability in my code, after my merge."

   Sigma raised his head in confusion.

   "How else would I survive?" asked Vile. Suddenly he went into a rage. "You never cared enough to fix me! So someone else did it for you!"

   "You were unstable, and didn't even work for me. I'm starting to wish I never fixed you the first time!" Sigma wished he could spit at Vile.

   Suddenly, Vile's pager went off. He looked down and read the message.

   "Well, would you look at that? It seems the shipment came through. X and Zero probably had some fun with their stuff today."

   Sigma facefaulted. The pain of his past was completely in the background. Vile was obviously planning to do something in the present, and as long as he could keep his code hidden, Vile wouldn't have whatever he was looking for.

   'Now just what the hell is he looking for, and can I find the code when I figure it out?' Sigma began looking through his main libraries while he continued the trite "conversation" with Vile.

   "So let me get this straight," Sigma figured if he dragged it out of Vile, he would leave him alone for the night. "You let X and Zero know about Yaven Enterprises being connected with the military, about the weapons shipments disappearing, and now you've given them their stuff back?"

   Sigma forced himself to chuckle, just because he knew that it would annoy Vile.

   "You still are a stupid fuck, even after all these years!" Sigma broke out into unprecedented laughter. "What the hell do you plan to do next? Tell them where you live so they can rightly kick your ass?"

   Vile just leaned over, the look in his eyes was very familiar. Sigma should know, he had it in his eyes during the war. It caused a cold chill in Sigma, it would have travelled down his spine if he had one.

   "No, I plan on throwing a business party very soon. Very soon indeed," Vile left the room and closed the door behind him with a loud metal thud. The machines were off for the first time ever, they must have been done scanning his code and were now going to analyze the results. The past was finally over in his head, for now. Maybe he could get some rest.

   ***

Yaven Enterprises - 73rd Floor
Cluster One, Australia
November 18th, 2093
The Present

   Iris was standing next to the open window. Her graceful hands lied upon the cold steel windowsill as she looked out from 70 storeys above the city of Cluster One. Agile was looking at her from across the room. She had been standing there, looking up at the sky for the past three hours during the entire sunset. The city lights glinted in her leather outfit. Agile knew that she could wear nothing else, because there wasn't anything resembling a humanoid appearance beneath her neck. He didn't really care though, he had known her as his student for the past two years and also knew that whatever lied beneath that outfit wasn't important to him. He sighed and stood up from the chair. He was wearing a black silk gi with a red belt. They had just finished a workout together after she had come back from her surveillance job. Agile found it kind of strange that Vile wanted Iris to make contact with the target, but he always seemed to be one step ahead of everyone anyway. Agile stood up from the couch and walked over to where Iris was standing. The white light from the stars was all that was lighting the dark room.

   He put an arm around her shoulder and tried to see where she was looking.

   "What are we looking at?" asked Agile. The wind picked up and flooded the window. Agile's hair waved in the breeze when Iris turned to look up at him. Her ghostly empty eyes didn't chill him anymore, in fact he now found them quite attractive, even if it meant something he didn't like to think about.

   "I was surveilling the target Zero, today," she whispered. "I think this belongs to me."

   She held up the cheap white pearl necklace in the moonlight. Agile shrugged when he saw it. He couldn't understand why it mattered. Unless of course, it related to before she was the Iris he knew now. The young brown-haired reploid that loved Zero before Agile had even been brought online.

   "Where did you find it?" asked Agile.

   "I found it on a gravestone that had my name on it," Iris seemed to be confused by this piece of information. For the past two years, Agile was told to help her through the confusion of any past memories she had before she was brought online again. He had tried to help her, but it still bothered him that she had so many questions and he had no answers to give her.

   "Iris...," He didn't really know what to say, so he just hugged her. The two had developped a strong bond that went beyond the normal master-student relationship. Although, he didn't really know what kind of relationship it was now, and it bothered him slightly.

   "I met him again today to ask him about it," Iris had no emotion in her voice, but her concern still shone through. "...I tried to kiss him."

   Agile found this news a bit shocking and backed up a bit from her pale face. Iris went back to staring up at the moon, just as she had been doing for the past three hours. Her voice still cold, but curious.

   "I don't know why I tried, and I don't know why he started crying when I did try," Iris was whispering so softly, that Agile could barely hear her without re-amplification.

   "What did you do?" Agile found it odd that she had acted in such a way. It may have been a past memory about her target. Vile may be using her to hurt Zero, but he himself didn't want Iris to get hurt by her past in the process. Still, this was the first action she had ever taken that wasn't part of her orders. Maybe after two years, her will was starting to show on it's own.

   "I left him there," Iris paused for a bit again. "In answer to your first question, I'm looking at the moon."

   Agile smiled softly. He knew that they had a discussion about the full moon a year ago, after she had finally beaten him in combat for the first time. She had seemed concerned about losing Agile back then, because he couldn't teach her anything new. Now she seemed to be concerned about facing her past.

   "Some say there's a man in that moon," Agile repeated the question he had the year before. Iris repeated her response.

   "I can't see it," Iris stated simply. "Even after all these nights of searching for him, I still haven't found him."

   She couldn't do it, simply because the code which would have given her a personality, the capability of psychological interpretation, was destroyed with her first body. He knew that part of her code was still incomplete, simply because Vile did not have the science available to fix it. No one did. No one knew how to fix a reploid once their code went Maverick or degraded beyond free will. The only one that had that knowledge had died before the Terran War. Vile was trying to determine it now, using Sigma and X who seemed to be the two keys to this growing Reploid dilemma. Agile could only hope that he could find an answer to give Iris, before she herself degraded beyond repair. It would certainly happen to her before it happened to him, because he had started with a complete code. Still, even he could feel the effects of the degradation. Like a ghostly madness, just waiting for his defense to drop so it could sneak in. He was unsure of how long he still had, the code degradation seemed to happen randomnly. Agile put his arm around Iris' shoulder again. She had gone back to gazing into the nightsky, her hair blowing across her face.

   He wondered if he would ever find the strength to tell Iris about his feelings before the madness set in.

   ***

   Author's Comments: Well, I thought I did a very nice job on that one. I'm sure everyone disagrees, but you know what? Fuck it, I really just don't care anymore. If they don't want to read it, they can just click "back" on their browsers and try to find another Megaman fic which can do better than mine.

   Well...okay, there's Bob&George, but I don't stand a chance of topping that. It's much too brilliant :)

   Btw, I think I'm gonna be doing a MSTing series on the side fairly soon, starring Lojiin & Not-So-Friends. I don't suppose anyone can tell me if this is a good idea or not?

Michael Raymond Vendittelli (LimousineDriver)