X1

As Zero teleported to the inside of the underground caverns, he briefly thought of the up-and-coming Hunter he'd somewhat befriended.

"Argh, that rookie had better be able to hold his own with Spark Mandrill or I'm gonna hear it from Dr. Cain! These data chips will hopefully equalize the playing field between us and those damn Mavericks."

Ahead of Zero was a very long descending passageway riddled with Mavericks shaped like mechanical bats. Lucky for Zero a mechanized platform lay waiting for him to take the quick journey down. He unsheathed his new Z-Saber and jumped onto the rickety device.

"No time to waste! Hyah!"

Upon his leaping cry, Zero and the platform screamed down the long passageway, a torrent of Mavericks being left dazed in their wake. Then Zero saw trouble up ahead.

"What the...? Is that an ostrich?? And a Bubble Bat?!? Haven't those been-"

But before he could say another word, the sharp spikes protruding from each end of where he stood punctured and instantly destroyed the invading Mavericks. But that was the least of Zero's troubles.

"Oh crap! I can't stop this thing! What's worse, I gotta deal with large gaps up ahead!"

In a split-second decision, Zero leapt from his fatal platform and landed safely on solid rock. He now realized he was venturing deeper into the crust of the caverns.

"Geez I just can't escape you guys, huh?"

With a quick swipe of his Saber, he quickly made work of a couple Maverick bats swooping down towards him. Directly in front of him was another one of those ostriches he'd quickly seen before.

"Sorry 'bout this but you should've kept your head in the ground all along!"

KA-SHING! In an instant, the lifeless body of another ostrich Maverick lay in front of Zero, its head slowly rolling to the side of one of his feet. With a swift kick, the head went spiraling down a pit, clunking the sides as it plummeted downwards.

"Heh, good riddance to bad 'bots."

Up ahead, Zero saw a couple deja vu of what he'd just been through. Two more bats and an ostrich patiently awaiting an unsuspecting Maverick Hunter.

"*sigh* Short work o' these guys..."

With a completely straight face, Zero almost blindly took down all three Mavericks in one fell swoop. Once the halved robot parts lay to rest on the cavern floor, Zero took a quick look at his Saber and smiled. Then he quickly became all business again. He saw before him a large pit which lead even deeper into the caverns below.

"Man if I go any deeper I'll hit the earth's core! Armadillo'd better be down here somewhere."

Zero took his leap of faith and landed safely onto a very rough rocky surface. Behind him was a curiously organized-looking wall of rock looking almost as if it had been carved there. Zero gave a shrug and began his trek once again. Unfortunately his first suspicions of the wall should've been taken into account. A loud whirring sound came bellowing from the other side and the wall came crashing down in a spectacle of pebbles and rock clusters. On the other side was a gigantic rock-crushing machine, and it looked hungry for Zero's parts.

"Aww shit! Just what I need!"

Zero started running, but the rock crusher drew closer and closer. He could see the terrain ahead wasn't going to get any easier with spikes and low ceilings calling out a sure death sentence. So he did the only thing he could think of...he turned around and faced the Maverick rock crusher.

"Alright, just you and me, pal! See how you like a gearful of my Saber!"

The crusher's pneumatic arm swayed up and down, clearing a path along the tight space between it and Zero. With his keen sense of timing, Zero rolled under the arm as it lifted into the air. He sliced one side of the arm with his Saber and it sparked and fizzled in a blinding feat of fireworks. With no time to waste, Zero leapt again from the arm onto the back of the contraption and sliced a giant 'X' into its engine compartments. The machine was now overwhelmed with heat, sparks and blazing fire on its entire frame.

"Now is a good time to exit! Nice knowin' ya!"

Zero jumped from the back of the malfunctioning machine and kicked off the wall just ahead of him, nearly getting filleted by a flurry of grinding metal and spike strips. With all his might, he once again tucked and rolled under the pneumatic arm just before it finally came crashing down onto the cavern floor, beginning a cascade of explosions down the Maverick's body and finishing in an epic boom. Zero stood there and watched as his enemy's metallic carcass melt and burn away.

"Is that the best you got, Sigma? COME ON!"

Now just as pumped as ever, Zero felt that nothing could stand between him and his goal of finding Armored Armadillo and putting an end to the terror beneath the surface. In fact, all he saw ahead of him was a downward terrain. He wouldn't even acknowledge the Mavericks he was wasting left and right. It almost seemed dreamlike as he effortlessly put down Maverick after Maverick. First there were bats, then a few lowly Mets were quickly scissored in half, and by the time he opened his eyes a spiraling spiked Maverick lay twitching in a mess of its own gears in front of him. All he could see for the next while was more of the same.

"Seriously, is this it? If so then I guess I'd better make quick work of the main threat here. Don't want poor Armadillo to dirty his hands now!"

Zero smiled at his own humourous remark. He quickly dashed past a long ceiling of stalactites and Maverick bats whilst leaping over unsuspecting Mets and curious spiked rolling Mavericks. Finally he came to another double-spiked platform much like the one he saw at the mouth of the underground caverns.

"Ah, another ride. Armadillo said these things would take me where I need to go, so here I go!"

He once again hopped onto the platform which immediately started moving forward at a very fast velocity. Zero could barely stay on the device as it careened into the walls, crashing back and forth as it sunk deeper into a large pit. It wouldn't stop there. It kept on rolling towards a fleet of mining Mavericks as they meaninglessly tossed pickaxes in Zero's direction. The platform tore through each miner like wet paper and the pickaxes easily floated over Zero's speeding head.

"Holy crap, this is quite a ride! Thank god I...OH NO!"

With no time to spare, Zero half fell-half jumped onto the ground in front of him just in the nick of time. The moving platform was on a direct course for a bed of spikes and Zero cannot stand spikes.

"Geez, at least gimme a warning next time!"

Zero knelt and waited for his body to cool from all the activity he'd just witnessed. As he stood there on one knee, he looked up ahead to yet another deep, dark pit. He couldn't even see the bottom of this one.

"Great. Just great. *sigh* Well the platform took me here so..."

Zero fell and fell and fell some more. He reached the very bottom of the cavern to feel a massive thud beneath his boots.

"Hmph, what's this?"

Just ahead of him he could see something very familiar. It had several engine compartments and a pneumatic arm.

"Oh for god's sakes, not you again! This'll be no problem!"

Zero brought out his Saber and began cutting another X-shape into the engine when his Saber quickly recoiled and nearly sliced him in two.

"Dammit! A force field on the engine! Looks I gotta stop kidding around!"

Zero then gazed at the pneumatic arm. It was cutting a way through yet another narrow passageway, but strangely the machine itself wouldn't even acknowledge Zero's presence. It just pressed on as Zero ran behind it, barely keeping up. Zero saw ahead a very cramped area loaded with spikes and incredibly hard rock

"Aww man if this thing reaches that tight space, it'll explode and wedge itself! I won't be goin' anywhere!"

Zero thought fast and hard, and quickly came up with a solution. He jumped over to one side of the arm like he'd done before and cleanly cut off its arm bracer, sending yellow sparks everywhere. He then made an incision into the other side of the arm big enough to weaken the other arm bracer. Gathering all his strength, he began pushing on the pneumatic arm's bracers themselves.

"This...ought...to...do it..."

The arm was being forced backward against the direction of its gears causing massive gear malfunction and program overload. With one final push, Zero threw the pneumatic arm onto the engine, breaking the force field and causing internal compartment failure. Oh, and lots of explosions.

"Whew. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you again."

After Zero collected his composure, he made his way out of the narrow area and came upon a third platform. The standard roaming bats and Maverick activity were more than a welcome sight for the Hunter.

"This has gotta be the last platform. And just where the hell is Armadillo anyway? Augh!"

For a third time he climbed onto the spiky platform and made his way across a very long and very narrow path, obliterating any Maverick miner or bat that decide to get in its way. But from far away he could see some robots flying towards him. These weren't the standard bats, but more like bird-shaped robots. They looked unfriendly though, as they dove in to knock Zero off his precious platform.

"You nearly cost me a ride! Take this!"

Another swipe of the Saber sent the robotic birds spiraling into the cavern walls just off Zero's path. Far up ahead, Zero could see a tiny blue light emanating from the mouth of the caverns.

"The outside? Well I haven't found Armadillo yet. Maybe he's in his old quarters!"

The platform ejected Zero from the other side of the underground caverns and he jumped an immensely long distance to the far-off living quarters of Armored Armadillo.

"This guy better have some answers..."

He walked past the first security door and found it disturbingly quiet. Keeping the theme, Zero tiptoed his way towards the second security door, hoping to get a drop on whatever was going on inside Armadillo's living space.

"Ah haaaaa! ...Oh, it's just you, Armadillo. Why didn't you just TELL me you were in your quarters? I could've just teleported here instead of going through all those Mavericks!"

"Hmm...I'd only received word of your scheme to 'help' me momentarily ago. I was thinking X would've come."

Zero frowned.

"Well X can't be everywhere at once. As Commander of the Maverick Hunters I figure I should help a fellow senior Hunter as well."

Armored Armadillo rose from his seated position and stared Zero down.

"Well I have some unfortunate news for you. There's only one Maverick Hunter in this room, and you're not looking at it!"

Armored Armadillo rolled into his invincible ball form and began thrashing and crashing the walls of his well-protected base, smashing into Zero before he realized what was going on.

"Aaaaaagh! Armadillo, don't tell me, ungh, you've gone MAVERICK?"

Armadillo ran up to Zero and cocked his head open, revealing a slender laser gun pointed directly at Zero's forehead.

"Is it that obvious? You know it's only a matter of time before Sigma overthrows us all. Join us. Don't make me kill a fellow 'senior' Hunter, like myself now."

Zero had been clutching his Saber the entire time, waiting for the perfect moment. It came when Armadillo started leaning in to Zero's face.

"If you're not WITH us, then you're AAAAAGH! MY LASER!"

The top of Armored Armadillo's head flew back and slammed into the security door, sending the laser gun into a small self-destructive explosion.

"THAT DOES IT! I'VE HAD ENOUGH, ZERO! THIS ENDS HERE!"

He once again rolled into his ball form and bounced around his living quarters, hoping he would eventually smack the still downed Zero. Zero watched him fly around the room, calculating his next angle of attack until he just had it right. His eyes dimmed and in an almost slow-motion like move, he blasted Armored Armadillo in the face with his charged-up Z-Buster. Armadillo flew backwards joining the other half of his head by the security door and slamming hard on the ground. Now well enough to get up, Zero dashed over to Armored Armadillo and grabbed him by the cusp of his neck.

"Why, Armadillo, WHY? You were such a good Hunter! What ever possessed you to join the likes of Sigma?"

Armadillo smiled and quietly said, "I can't help it. I've gone Maverick. Maybe someday you too will understand..."

The shorting out of his mainframe mechanics combined with the loss of his main motor functions contained in the upper half of his head caused Armored Armadillo to begin powering down.

"Armadillo, come on! Stay with me! I can get you back to Dr. Cain's lab!"

"No, Zero. Just take from me what you need. In the state I'm in, I'm better off to you dead than alive. Just...go..."

Zero watched as the life drained out of his former comrade. He gritted his teeth in anger and sadness, but knew he still had one more thing to do.

"I've said it before...but these data chips had DAMN WELL better be worth it!"

Not able to watch the final moments of his partner, Zero teleported back to Dr. Cain's lab just as Armored Armadillo's eyes slowly closed for his eternal sleep.