Joey could hear nothing but the wind whizzing by his ear as a dull roar. His father's mud-spattered navy blue pickup truck continued to barge down the highway; sitting in the open back of the vehicle, Joey got a great view of the grand buildings shrinking on the horizon as he was taken further and further from the occupied city of Kapcom.

The boy instinctively tried to flatten his tousled hair with his hand, but his mane was beyond salvation in the rushing wind. Joey didn't really notice; he had other things on his mind. He was bubbling inside with a strange brew of sadness and excitement. Sadness because he was leaving his home city ('twas the only home he ever really knew!) and excitement because he didn't know where the magical and mysterious journey of the pickup truck would take him. All he knew was that his mom and dad had made him pack a hasty suitcase that morning. Then the three of them had piled into the truck and, zoom! They were off. Destination unknown.

Joey had a good idea about why they had left Kapcom so suddenly.

Maverick reploids had taken over the city, killing humans, destroying buildings, end of the human race, blah blah blah. At least, that's what he had picked up from his parents' earlier conversation. And apparently, Joey's family wasn't the only one to hit the road; several strange cars were neck-in-neck with their own. A frantic horse race for life where the winners would gain a slim chance of shelter and the losers would become dog food.

Joey crawled up to the sliding window that divided the truck's cab from its back. He poked his fair head into the opening. "Hey mom and dad, where ARE we running to, anyway?" He inquired.

Joey's father took one hand off the wheel and tilted his oversized cowboy hat forward just a little bit. "We're goin' to Canada, my boy...No Mavericks in Canada. Your pa's gonna teach you how to build an igloo and ice fish!"

The truck sped ever onwards to the boarder. It was probably for the best that Joey's father didn't know that ignorant Americans were a favoured snack amoung the Mechadrakes of Toronto.

These words ran through X's mind as he blasted himself a path through the sea of Maverick bad fellows. The chant was a favourite of Zero's; he claimed it fired up the killer instinct. And maybe it did.

Although the sadistic poetry had chilled through X's head when he first began to recite it, he found that the more he chanted, the less the violence surrounding seemed to bother him. He was in a trance. Every bolt in his body was saturated with the will to protect humans. Freaky.

Kill the beast...bash his head...do him in...

X never took his eyes off of the shadow of the Roc. It was truly a nasty thing; although poison seemed to pulsate from its frame, its slow, careless way of floating in the air made it look almost passive.

The blue reploid wearily wondered if he'd ever catch up to the fortress; wave after wave of baddies broke upon him. The city was completely occupied...

X caught very swift movement to his left. Without hesitation, without reason, he whipped around and fired at the new threat. "AY YAH! Take that! You can't have my ice cream bar!"

A red Ford with a pink lawn flamingo taped to its hood and a license plate that read 'LIL BSTRD' promptly screeched to a halt. A very irritated teenager unrolled his window and leaned out to examine the huge scorch mark that now resided on his car. Seeing X and his smoking arm cannon, the teen bared his teeth which were already showing some faint niccotine stains.

"YOU DON'T SHOOT AT THE CIVILIANS, YOU DOINK!"

Well exc-uuuuuse me for trying to save your lousy species...

Zero resurfaced from inspecting his fingernails and looked up at Celeste who was studying X's progress through the city on one of the monitors in the Observation Deck. "Hm? You say something Celeste?"

Celeste was starting to get peeved. "You heard me."

"You're cute when you're mad."

Celeste ignored that. "What's X trying to do, anyway?"

Zero allowed himself a slow, casual intake of breath. "Oooh, I have a feeling that he wants to take down that entire flying fortress all on his own. Some sort of berserker battle program seems to have kicked in with the human race being threatened. I guess he was built to fight after all!"

Celeste became alarmed. "The entire fortress? By himself? Good God! He'll be killed!"

"I imagine so."

"Aren't you going to HELP him? He's your friend!"

Zero pouted mockingly. "Aww...I was gonna spend all day staring at Baywatch reruns. Well...I GUESS I can keep an eye on him for a little while..."

Zero ducked the paperweight that Celeste threw at him.

"Heheh! Okay, okay! No need for projectiles. I'm off!"

What fun.

Continuing to track X down, Zero eventually came upon a yellow and black schoolbus that had obviously seen some action earlier. It now lay on its side, contorted and twisted like some nameless monster about to give birth. A pudgy child with an overturned saucepan resting on his head as a crude helmet suddenly ran from behind the bus and smacked Zero in the shin with a gnarled, blackened tree branch. The Hunter yelped. "Take that, Maverick!" The boy crowed as five of his merry men sprang from behind the sheltering bus and proceeded to abuse Zero by whacking him with sticks, pelting him with rocks, or pulling at his hair. Zero caught a rock as it flew towards his face. "Okay. What's this all about?" He grunted.

The fat kid brandished his stick with boyish triumph. "I'm Eric, leader of the Rabid Squirrels Hunting Unit!"

"Uh. I should have figured. Look kid, I don't like to kill dreams, but you're too fat to lead much of anything other than a line to the cafeteria. Where are your parents?"

No answer; the assult on Zero promptly resumed doublestrength.

"Hey...(OW!) Cut it out you guys!...Let me pass...(ACK!) Damn, that smarts! If you stop now (OUCHIES!)...I'll give you chips...(YIKES!)"

A gutteral yet familiar voice suddenly pierced through the boyish battlesounds...

"'EY! YOU KIDS WANT SOME CANDY?"

The Rabid Squirrels unit stopped their beating and slowly looked at one another and around them for the source of that new voice.

The voice hailed again, a raspy sound that seemed to float from the leaves of a nearby tree on the roadside. "Hey! You kids wanna be in a movie? It's called 'Erotic Adventures in the Phone Booth!'

Now the boys looked at each other in utter panic, terrified by the unseen and potentially perverted summons.

"Um...Eric..." one of the boys wavered, "I think I've gotta go now..."

"Yeah...me too..." another boy followed up. Soon all of the boys were suddenly full of excuses to leave the Rabid Squirrels. They surrendered their 'weapons' at their commander's dirty running shoes.

Eric became startled. "Hey...wait! Come back!" As he watched his troop dash off without him into the afternoon sunlight, his squinty eyes brimmed with huge tears which begam to slide unchecked down his fat cheeks. "Screw you guys!" He finally screeched after his friends. "I'm going home!" He stomped off in the oppisate direction.

With that ordeal over with, Zero cocked his arm cannon in the direction of the tree where the mysterious voice had come from. "All right...who's there?"

The sheath of leaves rustled a bit before an unmistakeable reptillian head adorned with a black ponytail jumped out of the leaves like a jack in the box. "Hello!" Red Draco sang.

Zero lowered his arm cannon. He lowered his jaw as well.

"Thought I'd just help you out with that road block," Red declared as a forward flip brought her down from the tree. She plucked a few stray leaves out of her hair. "I've been keeping an eye on those orphaned kids, you see..."

"'Orphaned kids?'" Zero repeated in disbelief. "But...you killed those humans in the Regal Dragons. I thought you were a Maverick?"

"Hm? Oh yeah, that thing," Red said absently. She grimaced slightly as she pulled a tree snake from under one of her shoulder pads and handed it to Zero. "Here, be a dear and hold him for me. Reptiles is people too. Yeah, I still AM a Maverick. The reason I was looking after those kids is because I wanted to eventually use them in an experiment to see if humans can be molded into mindless machines that would kill their own kind without question. I was planning on submitting a whole huge report to the Mavericks, as well as Mechadrake Assemblies Inc. It's something they'd be very interested in."

The faint flutter of hope that Zero had dared to feel when he first saw Red pop out of the trees snuffed itself out like a candle flame. Angirly, the crimson Hunter drop kicked the tree snake that Red had asked him to hold. It went spinning through the air like a small coil of rope and out of sight. "Why did you get my hopes up by helping me, then?" Zero spat. "Why didn't you just let your 'test subjects' beat me into submission?"

Red frowned when she saw how Zero treated the snake, but the frown quickly dried up as she pinched one of Zero's cheeks. "Because it was the safest thing to do, Bunny. You have a short temper and that charming bloodlust...eventually you might have ended up hurting those kids badly, and my experiment would be shot. As it stands now, I can always just find those boys and assemble them when I'm ready to continue my research." Red suddenly glanced at her Mickey Mouse watch. "Holy Mother Tiamat, would you look at the time? Must be going!" Red leapt into the air and pumped her wings until she was wheeling above Zero like a scarlet bird of prey. "I'll be seeing you very soon, Honeybunny! Until then, remember to eat right and listen to heavy metal music! Oh, and my apologies for nearly killing you that day Skysheen, Siggy and I turned sour."

Zero's arm cannon hung forgotten at his side; he hadn't even thought about so much as lifting it. Instead, he waved his arms up at the Mechadrake above him and shouted "Wait! Where you going?"

Red pulled herself into a sitting position in the air and pointed to the east where the Roc hung ominously. "Going to the Roc to visit my dear brother, I suppose."

"'The Roc'?" Zero puzzled. "Is that what the fortress is called?"

The draco snorted. "What did you expect? 'Tommy's Holiday Camp'?" Without another word, Red glided off to the east as she had promised and was swallowed by the sunlight, leaving behind the deserted fortress of the Rabid Squirrels and an emotionally scrambled Zero.

"What ungodly thing is that?"

Storm Eagle, who had the sharpest eyes of anyone on board, looked over his commander's shoulder. "It appears to be X, sir. Remember him from MHHQ? He's jumping up and down like an idiot, waving his arms at us. I think he wants a confrontation."

Vile paused in thought. "X, hmm? He still owes me ten bucks. I'll confront him all right. Get the Chimera Mech ready."

Storm looked nervous. "Sir, that 'Mech' isn't meant for fighting. We use it to put books on high shelves. It won't hold very well in battle. In fact, the right arm is loose and ready to fall off at any given moment now."

"Storm old friend...it's not about how you fight...it's about how flashy and impressive you look while doing so! Now prepare to lower the Chimera and I to the highway."

Vile was speaking. Smooth and seductive. It seemed as if all traces of Skysheen had been purged out of that nasty purple shell. "Hello X. Isn't it a nice day? Let's play a game. I'm going to see how many of your teeth the Chimera can punch out in a minute. Then I'm going to try to beat that record! Do you understand? Let's begin then. Oh, wait one minute." Vile smashed his way over to a nearby parking meter where he inserted a dollar for the parking of the Roc. With that done, the Maverick dashed into X and pretty much mowed him down.

X knew right then and there that he had made a bit of a mistake. When he had a chance to catch his breath and the red haze in his eyes cleared a little, X made a valiant attempt to fight back, but he may as well have been emptying the ocean with a teaspoon. The Hunter felt as if he were being bashed over the head repeatedly with a sack of hardcover Stephen King novels...you know, the really big and heavy sort that he likes to write on occasion. X collapsed, completely spent. From afar he could hear Vile gloating "See! I TOLD you it was a fun game!..."

A plasma shot flew through the air with a comforting sizzle, like frying bacon. It smacked into the Chimera with sharp report. The Chimera's right arm flew clean off.

"Argh!" Vile shrieked above X. "Who built this cheap thing? GM?"

Zero screeched to a halt just past the collapsed form of X. "Whup, whup, wahey!" He sang as he began to charge up another shot for the former Mechadrake and his cheap Mech suit. "Hey Vile! Yo' momma's so fat, the last time she saw 90210 was when she stepped on the scale!" He released the shot, but it just missed the Maverick as he hopped onto the Roc's lowered platform with the Chimera. Vile disappeared into the Roc's belly, but a styrofoam cup of coffee flew out seconds afterwards, obviously hurled by the irrate loser. "Here! Have some coffee! Coffee is the spoils of your stupid joke!" Zero ducked just in time and the cup landed behind him on X's still form. The scalding brew spattered all over the blue Hunter, bringing him around.

"AHHH! TOO HOT!" X rolled around on the floor for a bit before he noticed Zero standing above him with his hands on his hips. All at once, he came down from his berserker high.

"Um...hi Zero." He said with an edge of a whimper. "I guess I'm not ready to defeat him..."

"Gee whiz X, you think so?"

X fell silent.

Zero finally cracked a smile as he helped X up. "Don't worry about it. Vile was built to be a war machine, so he's not going to go down easily. We'll get a chance to throw things at him some day. For now, there's a lot of occupied areas in the city that we need to clear out. That should give you some practice, and who knows? You might even become as great and godly as I am some day."

X brushed himself off. "Cocky little bastard, aint'chya?"

"Let's not get sore. I've had a very rough day." Zero set his teleporter for MHHQ and was swept away by a crimson beam.