Tenchi Muyo Fan Fiction ❯ MegaMan X/Tenchi Muyo ❯ Little Girl Reploid ( Chapter 1 )

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Chapter 1: Little Girl Reploid?
The world formed around her. As cherry blossoms swirled and the breeze danced around the being known as Matrix, she held her hands on her hips, and released a sigh, watching a gorgeous sunset from where she stood. She came here sometimes, to escape the world; in a way, to escape from herself. Normally, she was alone here.
It was a rare event for anyone else to occupy this little space she thought as her own, but tonight was one of those occasions. She spied a girl, blue of hair, pink eyes, sporting an anguished look. She held her head in her hands, trying to stop the tide of tears that escaped from her eyes. Before Matrix could talk, the girl asked, "We'll be friends forever, right?" Matrix nodded without thinking, not really knowing what to think.
The girl vanished as if she'd never been, as loose cherry blossoms churned where she once stood, the wind and petals erasing any trace the girl had even existed. Around her, the world doubled in her vision, the crackling of static loud in her ears. The sunset she had been watching disappeared, as everything in her environment went black, collapsing into a single white dot before her.
Matrix watched in fear and confusion as the world rebooted; she found herself in a lab, a scene of horrible destruction. The cherry blossoms were gone. The girl was gone. The grass under her feet was gone. What her eyes now found, was shattered glass, being pulled downward, obeying gravity, as if time had suddenly just decided to start after being on pause.
As the broken glass collided to the ground with a sound of a thousand tiny bells, she found a reploid with a blue armour and a buster, covered with dust, slightly off to her side. With a shocked face look upon his face, the mystery man stammered aloud, "W-wha, you're awake!"
Taking her new environment in with a quick scan of her surroundings, she spied the capsule coloured the same as her armour. She began to understand that she wasn't really watching that sunset. It wasn't real. It was a dream, a dream available only to those who weren't born of flesh and blood, but of metal, gears, and science. She thought to herself, as she shook off the remnants of sleep, "Was that girl really just a dream?" The sound of footsteps was drawing nearer.
Another reploid in red armour, resplendent with blond hair and a saber, screamed the name, "X!". He spun around, trying to locate the one whose name he called. "X! I've found a survivor!" He moved about quickly, excited by his find. "A survivor?'', Matrix asked, looking around, "Where?" She surveyed the damage around her, straining to locate any sign of life. "Who are you? What happened here?" asked X, his blue armour reflecting only a small amount of light as he neared, answering his comrade's call. "My name is Matrix. You probably know more than I what happened here." She continued to look around her, trying to make sense of her environs. "She could have been made just before the lab was destroyed...", said Zero. Matrix looked up at him and said, "Whatever happened here is just only another thing that I'll never understand."
Casting her eyes downward, she realized she knew nothing other of her past than what she had been programmed to remember. Even though she was newly made and activated, she felt a hole inside, feeling that there was so much more that she had missed. "X? Zero? Guys? Can you hear me? Did you find any survivors?" Zero recognized Alia's voice on the communicator.
X responded into his portable transmitter. "Affirmative. We have one sole survivor. Are you picking up anything else on the scanners?" "Sorry, guys. Sensors are all clear. If you're done, return to HQ. I don't want you being down there longer than you have to be," commanded Alia, her voice crackling through the communication device's speaker.
"Matrix, you're going to have to come with us," stated the one designated as X. Just as he reached for her, a black flash, originating from under a table launched itself at X, latching itself on his face, scratching and biting him ferociously. The creature appeared to be a half-cat, half rabbit hybrid, about two feet in length. It was assaulting X with the fury of a creature ten times its size. "Get this thing off me!" Screamed X, frantically trying to wrench the creature from his face. "Mi-Ohki, come!" scolded Matrix.
The hybrid abandoned its overzealous attack, dropped to the ground, and sauntered to Matrix, suddenly calm, as if there had never been an altercation. "How did you know how to call it?" queried a confused Zero. "I don't know," blinked Matrix, in shock, herself. How had she known how to call off the creature? Or, its name?
Having been newly activated for the first time, how was this creature familiar enough with her to heel when she commanded? Her attention was diverted from this mystery, to the reploid in blue, X. He was slightly injured, though she doubted the creature was really capable of doing any serious damage. Wiping at a trickle of blood from his forehead, X growled, "We need to go - NOW!"
Back in HQ, they found themselves surrounded by complex computer systems, lights blinking, screens flashing. The walls were a gunmetal grey. All sound seemed to reverberate as if they were in an echo chamber; the sound of their breathing was audible. Someone whom Matrix could only assume was Alia, the voice from the communicator, was busy tapping commands into the console she was seated before.
To her side was little Mi-Ohki, rubbing her furry body against her leg, meowing. It's seems the strange little fuzzball had made a new friend. "So, you're the new reploid, Matrix, right?" Alia didn't even look up, searching through multiple databases for any information she could retrieve regarding the enigmatic Matrix.
"And you are...? "I'm Alia." She continued on with her work, she raised her hand to wave, putting it back on the input keypad the instant she finished the gesture. "You, my new friend, are quite the mystery. I can't seem to locate you in any of our databases, and I can assure you, they are most extensive." A moment later, she sighed.
She turned to another, who was seated nearby at another terminal. "There's no data in any of the indexes that would clue us in to this Matrix. Absolutely nothing." "Are you sure? She seems to be of a common enough design," replied someone Matrix had never heard before. Nodding to the new reploid, he introduced himself. "Name's Signas. I help out around here, keep these folks in line." Smiling, he eyeballed the new find.
She seemed, indeed, to be one of the more common models. "I guess the only way to find anything about Matrix here,, is to return to Tokyo, sector 123A69B13. I think it would be best for everyone if she was to stay with us." said Alia, nodding her head towards the now only somewhat-confused Matrix.
When X and Zero excused themselves from the room, discussing new advances in reploid armour an armaments as they made their exit. Seeing the two leave, another person, seated at a table in the centre of the room, marked his place in his book, and placed it on the edge of the table.
Standing, he studied Matrix momentarily, and smiled.. "Hi! Name's Axl, pleased to meet you. Up for the grand tour of HQ?" Grinning widely, he led Matrix out of the room, going over what made this place better than any other like it. X and Zero reached the wreckage of the lab where they found Matrix, hoping to find a clue as to what set her apart from others like her that were similar in appearance. X tapped on a massive girder that blocked entry into another part of the lab. This section seemed to have taken the brunt of the assault. It took but a single slash of Zero's Z-saber to cleave the metal in two.
Sizzling, the metal fell asunder, falling to the ground with a heavy thud. After a brief inspection, they found that this portion of the lab was in fine shape, as if nothing ever happened. Beakers and flasks containing unknown chemicals lay on tables, undisturbed by the destruction but a few dozen feet away. On a desk in a far corner, a lone disc lay. "That must contain information on Matrix!" triumphantly cried Zero, pointing at the storage media. X strode towards it, arm outstretched.
Before he could reach it however, an alarm sounded. Speakers in the walls blared out a glitched, digital recording: "LA-A-AB SEL-SEL-F DE-DE-DESTRUCT SEQ-SEQUE-NCE-CE ACT-ACTI-ACTIVATED-ED!" X dove for the disc, snatching it from the table's surface. Holding it firmly in his hand, he dashed off with his companion, almost slipping on some debris that had fallen due to their cutting the girder.
Regaining his balance, he joined Zero in exiting the lab. Reaching their transport, the two investigators escaped, as explosions ripped through the complex, obliterating the lab they had stood in barely a minute before. If the disc they had in their possession didn't contain the information they sought, there would now be no second chances. When they returned to HQ from their mission, X handed Alia the recovered disc. He hoped it was worth it. "Strange. According to this data, Matrix here was made by a woman named Washu. Let me check the records. I believe we have a file on her," stated Alia.
She immediately spun around in her seat. Her fingers sped through the characters on her keypad, furiously digging through the new information for the answers she knew had to be there. "If she can't find anything, we'll be right back where we started." said Zero, turning his gaze towards Matrix.