Utopia

Chapter 7: Iris


Time passed and seasons changed. Spring turned to summer, summer turned to fall, fall turned to winter. The flakes began to fall and the trees became as bare and cold as the asphalt beneath the snow. Maverick Hunter Headquarters was no exception to this either. After the Doppler Incident and the high reploid casualties, Maverick Hunter was having an increasingly harder time finding new recruits. This worried Dr. Cain due to the gradual rise of new mavericks within nearby cities. After all X and Zero could only handle so many missions in a day and it seemed MHHQs efforts were not enough to keep the threat at bay any longer.

After almost a year of Dr. Cain fretting over what to do to protect the world, he suddenly had a stroke of genius. He decided to work endlessly right then and there to create a new organization of reploids to help Maverick Hunter HQ in their struggles for peace ‘I will call this new military association Repliforce!’

Three Months later the snow began to melt and the leaves and grass started to flourish. Nature was ready for its annual rebirth, celebrating with it the birth of Repliforce. The world seemed ready for a new attempt at restoring order to the surrounding cities.

Back at HQ X and Zero were relaxing in Zeros room watching a movie on his bed.

“This movie blows!” Zero pouted crossing his legs on the bed.

“Yeah it does. Sorry bad choice on my part. To bad Jade and Kate aren’t here they have good taste in movies I think.”

“Sometimes, but that’s why you let me pick the movies X, and you buy them!”

“How is that fair Zero?!” X snapped.

“Because it’s not my money… That’s how.” Zero smirked jumping off the bed “Shut it off and let’s go do something else.”

“Like what?”

*Emergency! Maverick Hunters X and Zero please report to the Command Room for mission orders*

“That answers your question X!” Zero smirked shrugging his shoulders and walking away.

“Let’s go see what’s up Zero.” X said following behind his best friend.

“Hey X I wonder if it’s to announce when our meeting with the new Repliforce will be…?”

“Maybe, we’ll see won’t we?”

X and Zero entered the Command Room meeting Dr. Cain who looked very serious.

“X, Zero I have missions for you both” Dr. Cain ordered “X I want you to go investigate a maverick sighting at point-D. The maverick seems to be acting alone. Maybe it’s looking for remnants of Sigma or Doppler. Either way check it out right away. Any information you can dig up is vital. We need to find out what those mavericks are up too!”

“Yes sir!” X saluted teleporting out of the room.

“Zero, you will need to make use of your excellent strategic and stealth abilities for this mission. I want you to investigate Point-B-06-R63 in Mettool Town. It’s a tall glass building used for different business locations. I want you to go to the top floor which is floor 6 and gather information from the gathering of people in room 63. It sounds trivial, but my sources tell me that the group of people who are meeting there are planning something big. Find out what it is and retrieve as much information as you can. This could be useful… Good luck and report back as soon as you can.”

“You can count on me Dr. Cain!” Zero saluted teleporting to the closest destination to the glass building.

“I guess I’ll have to walk it a bit… It’s so crowded here.” Zero looked around tracing his coordinates.

“What kinds of people have a secret meeting in the middle of the day??” Zero criticized as he walked around minding his own business “Oh here it is.”

Zero found the tall glass building. He looked up, wondering what the best way to reach the top floor was. He finally decided to climb up the exterior walls behind the building. It was a secluded area where few people ever walked in.

He reached the top floor of the building quickly with no sign of being detected.

‘Now where is room 63?’ He thought speedily tip-toeing past the windows. Straight ahead he noticed a window that was open. He heard a voice coming from inside the room. Sneaking quietly towards the window Zero maneuvered himself the closest he could get before sitting down and putting his ear towards the sounds coming from inside.

“Excuse me is this room 63?” A woman asked.

“Yes, are you here for the meeting?” A deep male voice questioned.

“Yes.”

“Please take a seat.”

A man with a higher pitched voice spoke next.

“It looks like we are all here now, so let’s begin shall we? My name is Aaron Dyson and this is my wife Ilean. I thank you all for coming today. This is my first official meeting as your new leader. I would like to start off by saying that this is a crucial time for us, the ARRM. Three maverick wars have taken place so far causing much of our goals to be accomplished for us. An insurmountable number of reploids have been destroyed already because of the wars. More and more humans are becoming fearful and turning against reploids giving us the full advantage of swaying people towards our cause. We all have our reasons for being here today, whether it’s out of fear for our loved ones, the safety of our world, or moral duty. God did not intend for robots to run free! We are humans created by God to control machines. Sin has taken control of the world by letting the sinners do whatever they want! We humans were here first! Reploids are immoral, destructive beings and we have the divine right to take our world back! Now that the world has seen first hand the dangers of letting machines run around with free will our mission should become a reality very soon. I promise.”

Clapping echoed throughout the room as Zero continued listening intently outside.

Aaron continued his speech… “Now is the time to take action! To save the world from more wars and destruction! We can’t afford to waste anymore time or else the world might be annihilated. Any longer and we humans as a race may cease to exist because extremist reploids like that Sigma will have wiped us out! We can’t let this happen to us! We need to put our plans into affect immediately! Who’s with me?!”

The room began to cheer loudly as Zero could only assume that all the hands went up in agreement.

A woman spoke up over the cheering “Sir, what is the plan? What can we do to set it in motion?”

“A crucial part of our plan is to find where a large number of the reploids are hiding. There have been reports of reploids disappearing and escaping society somehow… It would be a big help if we could find out where they have run off too. Once we find the hiding spot we will attack. There have been rumours going around of a shelter far away that is housing reploids and humans. We must retire those reploids and kill the humans who are helping them!”

“But, aren’t we supposed to be protecting the human race?” The girl asked.

“Yes, but those humans lost the right to live when they betrayed the human race by deciding to help those despicable machines! For now our main objective is to find the shelter where the reploids are staying. Any questions or comments before we wrap up here?”

The room became silent for several minutes before Aaron spoke again… “Ok. This concludes our meeting for today. The next meeting will be posted via e-mail so keep an eye on your inboxes this week. Thank you and goodbye.”

Zero heard the pushing of chairs and footsteps towards the doorway. Zero lay his head back on the cold cement wall and closed his eyes ‘The ARRM… That is the same group Jade and Kate warned us about… I have to report this and warn the shelter right away!’

He climbed down from the building and ran for the teleportation point back to HQ. As he ran towards his destination he noticed that the crowd had died down considerably. It was almost too eerily quiet and Zero could sense this.

*Crash!!!*

Zero balanced himself as the ground shook ‘What was that?’ He scanned the area around him and saw nothing. Suddenly he heard a girl scream. He ran to where he heard the noise and came face to face with a gigantic robo-dragon.

The dragon was green and carried several laser blasters all over the front of his body as well as a giant powerful one inside his mouth. He had giant metal wings on his back that enabled him to fly and dodge attacks easily. The dragon glanced at him and then turned back to his pray in front of him.

Zero looked to where the dragon was focusing his attention on. It was a female reploid who was trapped against the dragon and the wall. She had long, dark brown hair, blue eyes, with a pale complexion. She wore a blue and red kimono type shirt with a knee length red, blue, and gold skirt with red boots. She looked innocent and frightened as she coward towards the wall she was up against.

“Don’t move!” Zero yelled “Stay perfectly still!”

The girl looked at him with desperation in her eyes “Please help me!!”

“Don’t worry miss I’ll take him down!” Zero drew his beam saber and charged for the dragon.

The dragon ignored his victim and watched Zero prepare to attack. The dragon shot a stream of lasers at him hitting Zero and knocking him down. He quickly got up and jumped towards the dragons’ chest holding his Z-Saber upwards for a downward slice. His blade punctured the dragons’ chest destroying most of his mini-laser weapons. All that was left was the weapon in his mouth.

‘All I have to do is cut off the energy to his final weapon… Maybe decapitating him would work!” Zero thought sharply.

As Zero was fighting the woman watched in amazement ‘He’s a good fighter… Who… Is… He…?’

Zero ran towards the dragon again aiming for the right spot to jump for his final attack, but the dragon had a plan of his own. The maverick reached out its arms as Zero jumped catching Zero in his grip. Right away the dragon charged a deadly plasma beam from inside his mouth. Zero writhed in the mechaniloids grip trying to get free, but it was no use.

‘Shit I’m trapped! But I planned it perfectly! How could I…?’

*Swooosh!!!*

A flash of light appeared before him as a straight line formed under the dragons’ neck making his head slide off the body seamlessly. No mess made.

“Are you alright?” A deep voice called out.

“Yeah, thanks for saving me… Um, I guess I owe you one… Hah this is new for me… I don’t usually make mistakes in battle…”

“Well it happens to the best of us.” The man commented.

He climbed over the dragons’ corpse and stood by Zero. The male reploid had a black army hat and red chin guard. He wore a long white robe, black boots, and carried a purple sword similar to Zeros Z-saber.

“Who are you…?” Zero asked defensively.

“My name is Colonel. I work for the Repliforce. And you are?”

“I’m Zero, commander of the #0 Unit at Maverick Hunter.”

“Ah yes Maverick Hunter. We are scheduled to meet with you tomorrow evening. By the way what are you doing here in these parts?”

“I was sent on a Reconnaissance Mission. On my way back to base this maverick started attacking here. There was a girl who was captured by the maverick she’s right over… wait… huh? Where did she go?”

“She ran to safety I assume.”

“I’d better head back… Thanks again. I’m still a little embarrassed haha! I’ll see you tomorrow at the introductory briefing.”

“Until then Zero”

“Bye Colonel.”

The next day Zero and X were not scheduled any lengthily missions because of the meeting with Repliforce that evening. They reported their past missions and called Jade on the intercom. Zero explained the findings that he had discovered on his mission in Mettool Town.

“Because of what I heard at the office building I would suggest you start major preparations for the attack immediately. It doesn’t sound like they are going to wait much longer.” Zero cautioned.

“Yes, we will do that right away. Thank you Zero. How lucky that you were sent on that mission by your base. Do they know anything else?”

“I asked them and from what they explained to me they don’t know a lot. Many things are only assumptions on their part. I didn’t reveal you don’t worry.” Zero assured.

“Good. I hope we can put a stop to this before Maverick Hunter becomes too heavily involved. Your institution is well known and if word were to leak to your officials then it could leak to Sigma and then we’d have two major attacks on our hands instead of one.” Jade warned.

“You’re right. We have to try and distract the ARRM somehow…” X suggested “But how?” He asked rubbing his chin.

*All Hunters please report to the assembly hall for an important meeting right away. Thank you*

“It’s time to meet Repliforce!” X stated eagerly “I hope this takes some of the pressure off of us.”

“Me too” Zero nodded.

“Good evening ladies and gentleman! I would like to announce the newest association to assist us in our battle for peace against the mavericks! Let me introduce to you the Repliforce!” The announcer cheered walking away from the microphone.

Everyone clapped as the main members of Repliforce appeared on stage.

The first reploid was a giant golden reploid with a gray face and white mustache. He looked as gigantic as the dragon that Zero had fought the other day.

“I am General, General of the Repliforce. I thank you for welcoming us to help in the fight for peace and equality. Thank you.” The general hovered off the stage as the next representative took the stage.

“I am Colonel, Colonel of the Repliforce. I am second in command next to the General. I look forward to working with all of you in the fight against the mavericks and the protection of our human creators. Thank you.” Colonel walked off stage and the next person walked on stage.

Zero couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw who it was “T-that’s the girl I saved yesterday! What is she doing here??” Zero stared gawk eyed with his mouth open as the woman began to say her speech.

“Hello, my name is Iris. I command the negotiations sector of the Repliforce however I am of equal rank to my brother Colonel. I hope to maintain the cooperation of both our base and yours and I will perform different duties such as navigation etc. to keep the communication between us in tact. I look forward to meeting all of you and getting to know you all better. Thank you.” Iris smiled skipping off the stage.

After the rest of the units introduced themselves everyone was dismissed from the assembly hall. Zero sauntered down the hallway as X ran ahead to go contact Jade back.

“Zero” A voice called from behind him “Nice to see you again.”

“Colonel”

“I wanted to thank you personally for saving my sister the other day. She recognized you and told me about you fighting the dragon to protect her.”

Iris exited the assembly hall and stood by her brother joining in the conversation. She smiled at Zero and began to blush a light pink “Zero, so that’s your name… Thank you for saving me. I’m sorry I didn’t stick around yesterday, but I was so scared that I just ran away.”

“Understandable” Zero smiled “Umm… Will you be visiting long?”

“No, I have to head back to base now, but my brother and I would like to take you out to dinner as a thank you for saving me.”

Colonel nodded in compliance “Yes, that and I would like an excuse to battle you at full strength. I’ve seen your record and I see you being a worthy opponent.”

“No brother! I told you not too remember?!” Iris glared putting her hands on her hips “There is no need for you two to fight! I want us all to be friends! If not then I at least want Zero and I to become close friends…” She looked down putting her hands behind her back at that random comment.

“Ok. I should get back to work. I wasn’t finished filing a report before the meeting.” Zero shrugged walking away from them.

“Work, work, work that’s all you boys ever think about! Jeez!” Iris groaned, waving her hand at them and walking away.

“Iris wait! I’ll call you Zero.”

“Later Colonel” Zero waved walking down the hallway where X was presumably talking to the shelter members.

‘Iris huh…? Hmmm…’