MegaMan NT Warrior (Rockman) Fan Fiction ❯ Reploid Half ❯ Chapter 1 ( Chapter 1 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Summary: When a young human's life is nearly destroyed by the third Maverick outbreak, he is given a new chance thanks to reploid technologies. What happens when another uprising occurs?

Author's Note: This is my first full Mega Man X-style fic ever, despite my 'The Making of X'. It'll take place beginning at X3, and during X4, and don't expect it to get much higher than X5 (since I've never really had the chance to play anything after that one). Anything that goes beyond those games will likely be made up or take only elements from the other games that come after it (like Command Mission). Reviews are appreciated, Flames are less useful. I'll warn you now that when the main character isn't involved, I'm going to be using third-person perspective. When the main character is in use, the story will be in first person.

---

It was so damned bright out. The sun was shining down rather bright onto the city. It had been a wonderful day so far, having come to the city in order to meet up with his friends on a non-schoolday. I was heading into the city to meet up with my friends at an arcade, to try my hand there at playing a few of the newer games that had come out recently. Damned city-trax, I thought to myself as we stopped again. It always took so long to get into the city from the suburbs thanks to the amount of people who used the main line train.

I looked about the train car and smiled a little bit as I saw a couple of reploids hanging out in the back of the car. They were the garden-variety humanoid reploids, fortunately- the kind that didn't go maverick very often. Judging from their gear, it was obvious that they were civilians, and I sighed softly. I'd never met a Maverick Hunter before, though I'd seen reports and TV specials on certain ones. Like Mega Man X, and Zero. They were legendary hunters, though Reploids in general had been around for only a short amount of time. I'd even settle with meeting a C-class hunter sometime, I thought, even as I shrugged a little bit. Better not to worry about it, of course.

"Arik!" I heard from behind me. My name came from a heavily accented voice, and as I turned, my mind raced through the possible people that that particular voice could belong to. The voice had been accented by a japanese dialect, and I smiled a little as I came across a match even as I saw the girl whose voice had called out to me. It was Ayumi, a reploid from Japan that had left that country just before the infamous virus scare had caused some of the best Maverick Hunters a few years back to go maverick. She had dark brown hair that was very nearly the color of chocolate that swept down to her knees- it wasn't much surprise to me when I peeked over her shoulder to see at least one of the reploids at the end of the train checking her out.

"Hi Ayumi. What are you up to today?" I asked her, and she just came up to me and smiled as she took hold of a rung beside me. She was about my height, a little taller even, and we both swayed a little as the train started moving along again. She looked out the window to her left for a moment before looking back to me, still smiling. What was on that reploid mind of hers, I wondered, as I waited for her answer.

"Not a whole lot. Going shopping with some friends. What about you?" she asked me. She went to the same school I did, actually, learning english as a second language. She was almost finished with her english course as well. Some wondered why she didn't just purchase a language program and install it, but she'd told me something when I had been asked to help her with her english from time to time. She said that she wanted to actually learn it, not just have it programmed in like her core functions. Something about making the language easier to understand and remember, too.

"Headin' to the arcade in town, actually. The guys and I are going to play a few games, and then I better get back home to study, study, study." I replied, watching her brown-tinted optics. They were really eyes, of course... Reploids these days were much more advanced than the basic ones that had been built only a few years ago, and she'd managed to obtain newer and newer upgrades for herself to let herself blend in as a human. I'd seen her original pair of eyes, and to compare them with the ones she had now would be an injustice to her. The original eyes she had had were nice, but these looked much more human-like.

"Oh? Anything I can help you with, maybe?" she asked me, referring to the studying that I needed to be doing. I wasn't that great a student- got mostly C's and B's, with an A in there somewhere once in a while. I could do the basics of math, of course, very easily, and I was good at history and english. But science was something that was almost like a foreign language to me. And that was, unfortunately, what I needed to study the most at this point. "What about science?" she asked, and I winced as she hit the nail on the head. Damn! I heard her giggle as I opened my eyes and I shook my head slowly.

"You know me too well, Ayumi." I told her, sighing softly. Of course she'd remember my grades from last semester in science, because she'd helped me then, too. Not to mention that memory of hers was literally picture perfect. Reploids had it so easy when it came to schooling! "Yeah, science is exactly what I need to study. First though, I gotta... hm?" I trailed off, seeing her look up at the ceiling of the train car. "What's up?" I asked... no pun intended, of course. She looked kind of serious as she seemed to be looking beyond the ceiling, from the way that she glared at the metal covering above. I looked up as well, but of course I couldn't see or hear anything other than the hum of the magnetics beneath the train that drove us along the magnetic rail that was taking everyone into town.

"I hear something flying above. A reploid, I think?" Ayumi said, and then she shrugged as she looked back to me. I wasn't sure what to think about that... until I remembered that it was against the law for reploids to fly over populated areas low enough for others to be affected by their speed. Some were easily able to fly at speeds well over the speed of sound while in the air, after all, and flying low over populated areas could cause glass to break and even destroy unfortified structures by accident. I shrugged a little... and then I blinked as even I could feel something coursing beneath my feet. The magnetic hum was different... almost a shrill whistle, really. The car itself almost seemed to be lifting from the track, and I felt a hand on my shoulder as I could feel myself lift somewhat from the floor of the car.

"What the hell is this?" I asked Ayumi, who just looked at me and shook her head slowly. She didn't know, but obviously she could tell more than I could. There was a cry from someone that was sitting near the window, and everyone turned to gaze out of it. There was a large reploid, an animal-like one... a beetle, maybe? Sure looked like one. It was charging along near the train, energy coursing along its body as it flew. The black 'void' along its body, for it didn't seem to have anything but electricity coursing in it, began to grow as it sped even faster past the train, leaving behind a wake of smoke as its body forced its way through the air. The air rippled in front of the windows... and then I blinked in surprise as the rippling effect grew larger and larger. I couldn't help it as I saw the rippling seem to get closer and closer... "Oh, shit!"

"Everyone, get down!" Someone from the back yelled, and I couldn't help it as I felt a pair of arms around my waist. Cold arms, no less, and I found Ayumi clutching me closer to her. Quite to my surprise, no less. "Hey... Ayumi?" I asked, and then the entire car began to go back and forth as the rippling air consumed the car itself. The rocking got worse and worse as the train began to make some sort of shrill whistling sound from underneath the cars. She looked at me as she managed to keep her feet on the floor... but I was nearly forced to my knees as the rocking got even more violent.

"I think the train's about to go off the rail..." she told me, and I felt her arms move about my waist tighter than before. Strangely enough, though I felt a twinge of pain, it didn't feel that bad... and then there was a scream from ahead, near the front of the train, as the train finally jolted, the whistling stopped now. The weight of the entire car shifted and then the people on the right side of the train began to move to the left side quickly as the weight of the entire car began to drop everyone to the right anyway. Ayumi and I were standing still though- she must have some sort of magnetic connectors on her feet that allow her to stay on the floor, I thought somewhere among the panic that was filling my head.

And then it happened. There was a scraping sound of metal on metal as the magnetic lifters of the car cut out and then the car slammed onto the magnetic rail. The weight had already shifted too much, however, and there was a lifting along the left side that dropped the right side of the car down onto the rail... and then off again. I couldn't help but yell in surprise as I felt Ayumi's connectors cut off as well, and we slammed down onto the people on the right side of the car. All around us were human and reploid bodies, each and everyone of them panicking and screaming. I was no exception, of course, and I couldn't help but wonder just why that had happened.

And then I was lifted away from Ayumi's grasp as the car fell off the rail itself, still moving forward and down as a result of gravity. The car's automatic safety protocols engaged, air bags and foam rubber exploding from the sides to cover the windows and the sides of the car to provide a safer landing surface. That, however, was the least of my worries as we fell down towards the buildings beneath the rail system.

---

It was 8:00 at night when the news came on that day, and there was very little good to be said for the area that this took place in. A new Maverick outbreak had taken place in Dopplertown, and eight Reploids that had been following the Doppler reploid, instrumental in creating the Doppler Anti-Virus program, had become infected with the Sigma Virus itself- the very virus that Doppler had been attempting to create a vaccine for. Eight areas around Doppler town had been taken over, and there had been widespread destruction as a result of a reploid known as Gravity Beetle. That Maverick had wound up destroying an entire city, as well as the transportation systems that had led from the city to the different locations that the mavericks had taken over. Over 30,000 humans were dead, a little less than twice that number injured, and almost 2,000 in critical condition. Many of the humans that had died were in buildings or in the magnetic trains that had been derailed by Gravity Beetle's attack.

Over 200 Reploids had been destroyed as well as a result of the attack, and well more than twice that number were badly injured from the attacks. Many had died trying to save human lives that had been trapped in rubble or were otherwise very likely to die as a result of impact. But the worst news of all was that many of the Maverick Hunter units were destroyed from within, by a hunter that had been infected by the Sigma Virus inserting a line of code into the recharge capsules forcing the occupants to remain inside them unless the correct password was given, or else the code would order an overload charge into the Maverick Hunter's microfusion power plant.

Only a few Hunters remain, the reporter assured. Commander Mega Man X, the original reploid himself, and Commander Zero had cleared their base of the mavericks and their mechaniloid subordinates. Now, under the direction of the injured Doctor Cain, both Maverick Hunters are already on their way to deal with the recent outbreak. An industrial area had been taken over by a Reploid in a Robot Ride Armor suit, and has since been having the factory produce new Mechaniloids. A pair of reploids, respectively reported to be named Bit and Byte, who were once Doppler's aides have gone missing.

The hospitals are completely packed tonight, as are the reploid repair shops and facilities that are not under Doppler's control, the reporter continued. More than half a dozen hospitals outside the city had become overnight hotels for many of the victims of Gravity Beetle's attack, and at least a dozen repair shops were being kept under strict guard by the remaining Maverick Hunters that remain in active service. But, the reporter added, this may well only be the beginning.

---

"What have we here, hm?" a doctor asked as an ambulance came up to the doors of the nearly over-packed hospital. There was a momentary exchange of data between the reploid that had been driving and the doctor, and the response was immediate. "Okay, get the three in critical condition in here quick. Take the rest to a clinic to check 'em out." he told them. The driver nodded, and the EMTs immediately opened the back doors of the ambulance. Three humans were taken out on stretchers quickly, one young man and two older women.

The young man seemed to be in the worst shape of the three, the doctor saw. The information provided by the driver had told him that much of the young man's body had been badly hurt. His arms were practically crushed from the tops of the shoulders on down. His right hand was salvageable, but getting the nerves to be repaired... that was very difficult. The legs could be saved as well, but both were extremely traumatized. He'd lost a lot of blood, but the bloodflow had at least been stopped. His head seemed to be fine, at least, and he was living mostly off of a respirator. There was no word on how badly damaged his lungs actually were yet, as that ambulance wasn't equipped with the most up to date scanning systems yet.

"Get them into the emergency rooms, now! Prepare the surgery room for the boy here. Get Lifesaver in here, we'll need his expertise on this one." he told his communication channels, and there was an affirmative tapping sound on each end as his orders were sent out. The boy had apparantly been saved by a reploid called Ayumi, from the report. The picture taken of her at the time had placed her into a category four out of five in terms of attractiveness, even among reploids. She'd been rather damaged as well, and had taken much of the impact off of the human boy at her own expense.

The doctor sighed and shook his head. There wasn't much that any hospital could do for the boy other than amputating the arms and reinforcing the bones in his legs with some sort of supporting mechanisms. Unfortunately, such procedure was exceptionally expensive for anyone, including the richest of all humans that still lived in this day and age. The few who could were those who were in the governments of the world or those who held patents over certain technological advancements. This kid definitely didn't fit that category.

The doctor immediately went back to the front desk of the emergency center and sat down, setting his arm into the arm rest so that he immediately dialed up the internet. He closed his eyes and began to access the relevant files on the different people that had just come in. The older women were covered by their medical aid as provided by the government, but the boy... Let's see, he thought, pulling up his file. Name, Arik Silwat. Age 18, still in high school. Hazel eyes, dark green hair that was kept cut short. After a moment looking into the young man's file, there was a nagging message in the back of his mind. Accessing the file after making sure it was clean, it was more information on the boy's vital conditions.

Not good, it had been decided. Though he was stabilized, chances of his returning to a normal life were at about ten percent, if not less than that. His left lung had been punctured in several areas and had begun filling up with blood almost as soon as he was taken off of the ambulance. He had a concussion, and who knew what kind of mental damage might have occured to a human from a wreck such as that one. His family had already been notified, but there was no answer from them yet. It was quite likely that they'd been killed in the attack... the doctor cross-referenced his parents. Both worked at a Reploid repair shop in the downtown area of the city.

There had been no reported human survivors from the middle of the city. Perhaps it was because the city had been laid to waste, all the buildings had imploded due to that Maverick's special weapon system over gravity. There was nothing left other than a large crater and wasteland as a result of Gravity Beetle's attack. With a sigh, the reploid doctor opened his eyes as he let his sensors return to normal. His optics adjusted almost immediately to the level of light that was in the emergency center as he realized that he'd read several reports much like that one so far today, and had come up with many instances of coming up with them himself, too.

This was the fifty-third one today, he thought to himself, though by far this kid was the worst off physically. The others could at least survive with prosthetics, but this one would need almost an entirely new body. His heart had taken no damage save for trauma, his mind was at least stable, and his right lung was in decent repair. Other than that, he thought to himself, he's worse off than that ancient human daredevil. What did he do... oh yes, jumped off of high places on a motorcycle and attempted to land. It worked... sometimes. The name escaped him, though. Damned defragmentation utilities.

The doctor turned to one of the aides as he lifted his arm from the armrest and shook his head slowly. "Give the boy that was just brought in treatment R-01Beta. I'll be making the reports and such for the remainder of the night, okay?" he told the aide, and the nurse nodded before going off to the treatment room where the boy had been admitted into. This was going to cost more than the proverbial 'arm and a leg', the doctor thought, but it was the only real way that the boy would have a life after his life was saved. The only problem was how the boy was possibly going to be able to pay for it, even with help from his family's remaining funds. Certainly, his parents must have had their own bank accounts and saved money, but it was very doubtful that they had enough in the bank to pay for the treatment that their son was about to receive.

Ah well, he told himself. Best figured out when the kid could make his own decisions again- after the operation. With that, he set his arm in the armrest again and resigned his systems to getting the paperwork done on getting the parts that were going to be required for the patient.

---
One week later
---

"Alright, so how's our patient this today, hm?" the doctor asked the comatose man that lay on the bed. Strangely enough, there was only a slight groan to answer him, and the reploid chuckled softly as he hooked himself into the machine that was keeping track of Arik's progress. Already, he'd had some new parts connected to his body. He had new arms attached already, and they'd already been tested with the new system that had been 'installed' for him. The body was about the same size as his old one, with a few inches added on in height of course. He was hidden beneath a blanket, more for comfort concerns for any who bothered looking in than to provide heat for the boy who was still under heavy sedation.

"Doctor?" came a voice from beyond the room, and the doctor looked over to the entrance to see a female reploid. It took only a second to reference the female's visage with ones that he knew already and determined that she was one he didn't know, but had seen before. He nodded to her and then looked to the boy that was lying on the bed. Only a very small part of his body was left as a human's, as so much of his body had been unrecoverable. Wait... hadn't Arik been saved by a female reploid, according to his report? Yes, he had been, and it took a second longer to obtain that information. Well, she could be allowed in.

"Yes? Oh, you were the one they found with this boy after the train crash." the doctor replied, and she nodded. He smiled a little and motioned for her to come on into the room. "How can I help you today?" he asked her, and she just smiled a little as she walked towards the bed. She'd heard that her friend had been taken to an intensive care unit after the accident, but she hadn't learned just what had fully happened to him. It was that curosity that brought her here today... That and concern, of course.

"Um... is Arik okay? Why hasn't he been released yet?" Ayumi asked, and the doctor shook his head slowly. She looked over to Arik's face, about the only portion of his body peeking out from the blanket that was covering him, and smiled a little bit. There were several tubes that happened to be snaking towards the table from a generator, and she blinked in surprise. Strangely enough, her optics seemed to be telling her something that she knew couldn't be the case, if her friend was simply being kept here to be watched over right now.

"Arik here took a nasty spill, as well you know, miss. He was badly hurt and... are you a friend of his?" he asked the girl, and Ayumi nodded slightly as she stepped closer to the bed that her friend was lying upon. She looked up to the doctor, who waited for a moment- he would need some sort of information from her as to how she knew him, she figured, and then shrugged slightly.

"He's a classmate of mine. We were on the train going into town when that Reploid attacked the city. I had to go in for repairs, so I lost track of where Arik was sent to. I'm glad I managed to find him, but I was told to wait 'til today to actually come in and visit." She replied, to which the doctor nodded again. So, this was the girl he had spoken to last weak, shortly after they had begun working upon Arik's new body. She looked to the cables... power cables, obviously, since they were hooked to a generator. "Power cables? Was he really so badly hurt that he needed prosthetics?" she asked, and the doctor looked kinda sheepish as he nodded.

"Well... To tell the truth, miss, we had to replace almost his entire body. We did try to keep the replacements as close in specifications as his original body was, of course, and on the outside the only change is that he's a few inches taller now. The rest is basically the same, but he'll never be human again. There was simply too much damage for him to live at all well otherwise. I'm sorry." the doctor replied, and the shocked look on the female reploid's face was not at all surprising. He'd had to do this sort of a recovery for humans on occassion before, but only very rarely. "The success of such an operation requires full mental cooperation on the part of the human, I should tell you. If he mentally rejects his new body and the signals that the link requires, he may never fully have control over his new body, despite the fact that he'll have to abide by the rules of sleep charging and such."

Ayumi nodded slightly. As shocking as this was to her, she couldn't help but to wonder how Arik would react to a new body. A week ago, she'd been just a friend of his, a schoolmate. Now? He didn't even have his parents anymore, according to the information she'd had to take for him. His other friends, the ones who lived in the city and had been there to meet him that day? They too had been killed by Gravity Beetle. Damn that Maverick! She'd have to get a new job, too. Not to mention a new place to live. So did Arik. The area surrounding the city that had been destroyed had taken heavy damage, after all. "Well, I don't know what I can do to help, but I'll do anything I can to help out, Doctor."

The doctor nodded and smiled a little. He'd just received a message from the reploid who had managed to tie the new body's systems in with Arik's nervous system that he was going to come by for the last calibration tests and alignment of all the central systems in the new body. "Well, maybe you could stick around... Lifesaver will be coming by to finish with the little tweaking of Arik's internal systems, and then I think we'll be ready to take him off of the medication and let him wake up." he said, and Ayumi nodded slightly.

I won't leave here until he's awake, she told herself mentally as she smiled a little. "Is there someplace that I can wait at while you and this Lifesaver wake him up, doctor?" she asked, and the doctor smiled slightly before giving her another nod. Much more of that, and he'd probably need his neck adjusted to keep his head on straight, she thought, and the reploid very nearly giggled as she hid her wide smile beneath her hand. The doctor saw this and shrugged slightly before telling her that she could wait over on a chair in the room or outside of it if she wanted. With that information in mind, Ayumi walked over to the chair inside the room, against the wall, and had herself a seat.

---

It was about ten minutes later when the reploid showed up. His entire body was dressed in white, and he wore a helmet that had a microscanner and magnifier on it. Obviously, he had worked as a field medic at one time, but was at this time working here as a professor for the reploids and humans working at the hospital. The two doctors talked for a moment, and Ayumi watched on as the two began their work on her friend. They turned him over onto his chest, and she couldn't help but wonder as she heard the soft thud of covered metal on the bed just how her friend would take this news when he would awake soon.

I hope Arik remembers me, she told herself, as she watched the two men open up a panel on her friend's back. Soon, their fingers were inside, and the white clothed reploid flipped the microscanner down over his eye and closed the other one as their work began. I hope he remembers anything, actually. It'll be difficult enough to help him through this transition, she thought, as she closed her eyes and just listened to the two working upon her friend.

Inside the inner workings of a reploid body, sensitive work was being done. The sedatives were till in use to keep their patient from feeling any pain from the work being done. And if they weren't very careful with what they were doing, the connection that had tenatively been made between the synaptic cortex and the patient's brain could very well be severed. The changes that had been made to his motor skills had at least been mostly realized, though the true test would need to wait until after the kid had woken up.

Connection established, Lifesaver thought to himself. Younger humans always were able to adapt more quickly and easily to these kinds of changes, and this particular human seemed to be adapting rather quickly to the new systems. Who knew that he would take to the changes so well, unconsciously? Integrating systems with cerebral and nervous systems. Very careful, now, he told himself, even as his tools did their job. The nanites that were creating the connection were breaking down the genetic encryption of Arik's DNA quickly, and would hopefully soon come up with a match for the patient's nervous system that would allow him to control all of his new bodily functions. He helped with the matching process by simply integrating his own mental processes with the nanites, increasing the processing speed.

There was only so much that a human's genetic sequence could stand with the tampering of it, thanks to science and the inherent instability of their DNA sequence compared to a reploid's systems. But it didn't take long for a sequence match to be made- a 93.284 percent match, no less, he told himself. Not bad... it wouldn't get much better than that, though, not until the kid had a chance to get used to the systems himself, anyway. No human ever did have a synchronization ratio that was much higher than about 97.625%, after all. The reploid control 'brain' would take care of the rest, after all.

"There, that's as good as it's going to get for 'im before he wakes up and gets used to his new body." Lifesaver said, the microscanner flipping back into place on his helmet as he looked to the doctor. The doctor nodded, forced to agree with the more experienced reploid in these matters. "Let's go ahead and activate the body. Our patient will wake up shortly after that once he's off of life support and can feel his own body again." he said. And, let's hope he feels everything as if it's his own body. It's all that could have been done for him, after all, he told himself even as he closed the boy's back panel and made sure it was shut tight before looking to the doctor. "Jumpstart his systems and begin initial boot sequencing."

Ayumi watched on as they two doctors flipped Arik onto his back again and Lifesaver touched a small button in the middle of her friend's new chest. There was a visible shudder as the young man's body came to life, and then there was the flickering of his eyelids. Like how a human would look like while dreaming, Ayumi considered, as she smiled a little bit. That smile faded when she realized that there would be a lot for him to handle. His parents hadn't been found, and were presumed dead as a result of Gravity Beetle's attack on the city, along with so many others. He wasn't even completely himself anymore. And of his friends, only a small few could possibly still be alive.

What a wake up call.

---

It's been pretty dark for a while here. I couldn't really feel any actual heat, but then, there wasn't any real discomfort either. Where am I? There's nothing to see here. Wait... there's a light up ahead. Why's it so dim though? Am I really that far away from it? It was cold. And kinda wet, too. What the hell is this place? Am I dying? No. Not dying. My life hadn't flashed before my eyes yet. Dying was definitely overrated if I had to have my life flash before my eyes. Flash before my eyes? Ack!

I tried to wince and shield my eyes from the- what was that flash of light? Where did it come from? Shit, what was that? The light was a lot brighter now. Am I really dead now?

System online.

What the hell was that?

Booting synaptic intialization.

Say what? That sounded like what a computer system might come up with when attempting to even connect online or something. Am I hearing something other than myself? I know I wouldn't say that kinda thing... but I'm not just hearing it. I could almost feel it, too...

Initialization complete. Synchronization with host commencing.

Host? Synchronizing? Wait a sec...

Wait a sec...

What the hell is going on here?!

What the hell is going on here?!

Synchronization complete.

---

Author's Note: Yeah, just to warn those of you who haven't kept up with my most recent fanfiction (because they aren't in this particular genre), I do have author's notes before and after the fic. I'll also respond to reviews in the next chapter, if I have any by then. What do you guys think? I know that I kept a few things out, like the details as to the 'train wreck' itself after hitting the ground, but I personally think that it would be a minor point compared to the fact that an entire city was wiped off the face of the Earth.

I expect to have more actual cameos later on with reploids from the games, maybe even an appearance by Dr. Cain. I think that X and Zero would be a little busy with the third Maverick outbreak to actually make an appearance yet, but I might find room for other reploids (such as ones from the Repliforce). Again, reviews are appreciated, and flames are less useful. I can't stop ya from makin' them, after all. Suggestions are also taken, but only through e-mail.

I do understand that this may come out as a ‘Gary Stu’-style fic in the beginning. Please pardon the dust, since I will actually be working on making simply a new character in the series, and I don’t want to make it seem like an author-insertion.