Zero whistled cheerfully to himself as he tromped down the familiar hallway leading to the Medical Unit. As he walked, he tossed his old MU badge up and down carelessly like a kid with a new baseball. He had torn the medallion right off as soon as he had gotten his fresh Regal Dragons badge. Zero sauntered wordlessly into the stuffy room. The stale, alcohol-tinged air reminded him of his old position, and, frankly, he didn't want to recall it. Genesis was in the room, as Zero had hoped. The reploid fox frowned at his old employee. Smiling innocently at his grumpy boss, Zero threw down his tattered MU badge on the table between them, gave Genesis the one - finger salute, and waltzed out of the room, kicking his heels as he departed.

On the other side of MHHQ, Celeste wandered aimlessly down the hallways, so deep in thought that she hardly noticed the heavy weight of her bandaged arm in its sling. Her thoughts turned over painfully again and again, troubling her with every movement they made. Did she really want to go through with her plan? Did she want to be a Hunter...?

Eventually, quite by accident, she ran full force into Skysheen, nearly getting tangled in his leathery wings like an unwary fish in a net. The huge Mechadrake laughed and helped her out.

"Hey there Cel. Whatchya doin' all the way over here. You should be resting until that arm's fully healed."

Celeste shrugged. "Needed to get out and think." She hesitated. "Look, Skysheen...I need advice. Can you help me with something?"

"Uh, well, I guess. I'm no Ann Landers, though. Er, are you pregnant or something?"

"No!!"

"Good! Just making sure! What's on your mind?"

"It's about my future." Celeste said. "I was thinking of maybe finding a position somewhere with the Hunters, once my arm was healed." She looked up hopefully at the draco. "Is there any job open that I could fill?"

Skysheen mused. "Well, we're in need of a table dancer for the HQ's pub..."

"EXCUSE me?"

"Ha ha! I'm only kidding. I'm not very funny, am I? Well, we're always in need of good fighters. And if you're anything like your dad was, you'd be a very valuable addition. Of course, the question is DID you inherit anything from him, or is this whole 'heredity' thing amoung you humans a crock?"

Celeste was rendered somewhat speechless.

"Here's what I say." Skysheen continued. "When's that cast of yours coming off?"

"Genesis said about one more week."

"Good, good. How about this: as soon as you're up to it, I'll take you to the training room. We'll try you out, and you can see what it's all about, and we'll go from there. Does that sound kosher?

Celeste agreed that it was quite kosher.

That night, bored and restless, Zero made another journal entry:

May 16th , 21XX

I found out something interesting today. Cain often uses real, specially trained dogs to track down Mavericks. I thought that was pretty nifty. There's about 50 purebred malamutes in a kennel located near the refugee camps. His real prize is a female named Jessi. Cain assigned two maintenance reploids named Terrence and Phillip to tend to the dogs. If you ask me, that's as big a mistake as it was sending A.G. and Hack to rescue those humans. Well, it's not my lookout!

Little Pip wrung his hands nervously as his head snapped back and forth to take in the stressful problem before him. To his right stood Sigma, silent with a very dark expression hung on his face. Across from Siggy stood another Hunter, a human male. The human stared right back at Sigma, just as hard. His feet were steadfastly nailed to the ground and his arms were crossed over his brawny chest. Pip had been around humans long enough to know that they communicated an awful lot with body language, and as near as he could tell, there was a great chance of a nasty fight erupting between the Spartan and the human. The last thing Genesis would want, Pip knew, is for a brawl to blossom in the Medical Unit.

"Mr. Sigma sir," Pip's heard his voice crack. "please, whatever it comes to, don't fight here! In fact, don't fight at all."

Sigma whacked poor Pip upside the head for his pains. "I am NOT leaving," he announced boomingly following his assault, "until this human apologizes for his inconsiderate remark regarding my leadership skills."

The human's face split into a humourless grin. "Face it, Sigma. The Mavericks have become more and more powerful and you seem to be losing a lot of men lately."

Luckily for the human, Sigma did not have time to respond before Genesis appeared. Pip nearly collapsed like water and thanked his lucky stars that his boss had appeared at the right time.

Genesis looked as cranky as ever. "What seems to be the dilly - hoo - ha here?"

Sigma looked ready to kill. "This human has insulted my efforts, my morals, my values!" He half roared.

"Wowie Zowie, Batman." Genesis snorted disdainfully. "I think I just came. Pip, please direct Sigma, along with his values and morals, towards the door. And you," Genesis tossed his head towards the battle ready human, "will come with me."

Sigma's mouth unhinged with shock. "You can't speak to me like that, Genesis!"

"Oh, can't I?"

Pip diligently ushered Sigma towards the door as he had been ordered to do. Prior to exiting, he heard the human shout jeeringly: "Be seeing you, O great leader! Whether or not in one piece remains to be seen!"

"Your mother was a drunken trollop!" Sigma barely had time to spit out before Pip gave him a final push out the door.

Outside in the nearly empty hallway, Sigma was left alone to his slowly twisting thoughts. Sigma was deteriorating, and he knew it although he revealed nothing of this sort to the world. He constantly had his cold, stern mask on, no matter what mood he was in. But lately, he found that beneath his mask, he was twisting and warping like a bug infested piece of wood. Some kind of terrible hate towards something was transforming him. But WHAT the hatred was directed towards, the Spartan couldn't quite put a finger on at first. When he had first become aware of it, the black emotion had been deeply rooted, but it was still only a seedling. Over time, the dark plant had flourished inside him, and the more it bloomed, the clearer the image of what he hated came into view. Finally, a few weeks after the animosity had been conceived, his mind presented the mysterious object of his hatred as clear as a trumpet fanfare.

Sigma, leader of the Hunters, hated humans.

The argument in the Medical Unit had confirmed this warped assumption. He suddenly realized that humans were the rival species of reploids.

"Humans and reploids can't coexist on the same planet," Siggy thought haughtily as he strode down the hallway to his office, "and if I feel this way, surely other Hunters lean towards my argument, too. If I were to very slowly and carefully - and I mean carefully - bestow anti human propaganda on those reploids, they might just eventually turn from Hunter to Maverick. And, if at the right time, I were to emerge as their new leader..."

The raven thoughts beat in Sigma's head as he cracked a malicious smile. "The beginning of the end of the humans' reign upon earth," he thought, "and such a plan! As Iago would word it, 'Hell and night must bring this monstrous birth into the world's light.'"

Suddenly, Sigma's left leg started to drag a little, surfacing him from his mental strutting. Puzzled, he looked down and saw a small human child clinging to it. The child's eyes shone blue with admiration for Sigma. Completely disgusted, Sigma kicked the kid off and chased it down the hall for a bit.

"Whoops! Sorry, Celeste. I think I punched you a bit too hard there. I thought you would block it."

Collapsed on the Training Room floor, Celeste could feel her eyes bugging as she panted desperately for breath. "It's okay, Skysheen." She finally managed to rasp in a small voice. "I didn't need that left kidney anyway."

"Skysheen plays too rough!" Red sang from the rafters of the gargantuan gym that held a smattering of reploids and humans vigorously training within it.

Skysheen frowned at his sister. "Red, for the fifteenth time, get down from there, or I'm going to tell Cain that you've been goofing off the entire day."

"Oh gee, there's a threat that scares me." Red snorted playfully. "I hate to tell you this, Skysheen dear, but I've been 'goofing off' since we left Mechadrake Assemblies Inc. Besides, when I went to Cain earlier this morning to talk to him about some new Hunting strategies, he smelled of cheap scotch and started telling me scary stories about his ex wife."

Skysheen paid no attention to his sibling's prattling. He turned his attention back to Celeste. "Okay, Celeste, next step in our first training session. How good is your aim with a lightweight laser rifle? It's the weapon of choice amoung a lot of human Hunters."

"I don't know. I've never tried one." Celeste admitted meekly.

"Well, now's a good time to start." Skysheen presented an oily black pistol about a metre long from a holster on his hip, and handed it to Celeste. Celeste accepted the weapon with proper awe....and nearly let it clatter on the floor.

"Hold it up!" Skysheen hissed almost sharply.

"I can't lift it!"

"What do you mean?"

"My left arm just gives out under its weight," Celeste voiced, trying her best to stay calm.

"Oooooh Mother...." Skysheen breathed, suddenly remembering what Genesis had said to him about Celeste probably never having full use of her left arm again. "She's partially crippled."

Zero silently watched his friends from a secluded corner of the gym. They did not notice him; he was an expert at hiding in sparse patches of shadow. Zero forced his attention to focus on Skysheen's shabby method of training Celeste. He tried hard, very hard indeed, not to focus on Celeste herself. Time and time again he had to tear his gaze away from her gentle brown hair, her smile, her....

"Stop it," he thought viciously to himself, "I'm not in love. No, not with a human. Anything but a human...."

"Hi!"

Zero nearly jumped out of his skin. When he recovered, there was X smiling politely at him. "What do YOU want?" The Hunter seethed.

"I....just wanted to talk to you." X nervously seated himself beside Zero. "Uh, listen, I'll put this bluntly. I've been a prick to you. I only admitted it to myself recently that you have a lot of my respect. You're an excellent fighter, really, and I've started to realize that a little fighting HAS to be done to protect the humans. I've accepted it." X stuck out a shaky hand towards Zero. "Friends?"

A glimmer of warm light dawned in Zero and surfaced as a smile. Something told him that he had started on the road to a long lasting friendship. It would prove to be a very bumpy road at times, but it would always be a secure and steady one. "Sure. Friends."

The two lapsed into a comfortable silence. Zero started to watch Celeste's training again.

"You love her, don't you?" X then asked out of the clear blue.

Shock and fear lanced through Zero. "What? Who? What do you mean?" He asked too sharply.

"Celeste. You love her."

"What...what gives you that idea?" Zero stumbled lamely.

"Well, your pupils dilate every time you look at her body."

"Reploids don't need love." Zero half snarled, but his insides were knotted with fear. Was it that obvious? That wasn't good. He was supposed to be killing humans. His creator had told him so. Bass had told him so. And Bass wouldn't lie.

Would he?

"Celeste." Zero heard himself call out.

Surprised, Celeste whipped around to the direction of the hail.

"Sweet Sugar Candyman!" Red singsonged automatically towards Zero from above.

Zero quickly threw his gaze to the ground where Celeste had dropped the laser rifle so that he wouldn't have to think about how blue the human's eyes were. "Your arm will never be strong enough again to wield the rifle, Celeste. Here." Zero unsheathed his precious lightsabre from his back and tossed the cylindrical handle towards her. Celeste caught it as gracefully as a cat. As Zero had assumed, she had excellent reflexes burrowed away in her small form.

The Crimson Hunter produced a cheaper, clumsier sabre and ignited its blade. "A lightsabre isn't a two handed weapon like the rifle." Zero explained in a monotone voice. "You shouldn't have any problems with it, especially since I'm going to be training you from now on. But first..."

Zero fell silent as he raised the pu lsating blade of his own sabre in line between his eyes, a traditional gesture of respect and challenge amoung the Hunters. "This is where heredity proves its worth, Cel. Let's see what you can do with just your instincts."