damned_institute | Night 64: West Wing, South Hall 1-A

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Night 64: West Wing, South Hall 1-A

[From here.]

Still no one. Harvey imagined that before long these areas were going to be flooded with sick people who were going to follow that clue, so he was glad that he'd beaten them to the punch. It wasn't that he thought it was contagious anymore -- by this point, they would have known -- but he didn't need to be surrounded by a bunch of miserable, sniffling people, either.

Relieved that he'd dodged that bullet, at least so far, Harvey reached the end of the hall and took a right toward their regular meeting spot.

[To here.]

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"Yes, Master X." The acknowledgement of orders came almost without thinking. Still lingering close to X protectively, he turned toward the left. He wasn't one to keep his mind idle for long; perhaps a long empty hallway wasn't as exciting as whatever lurked on the right side of the path, but it made for a good chance to review what he knew.

Fact one: he should be dead. He wasn't. Harpuia was reluctant to append on the idea that he was now human as fact, but he was willing to state that he was a shadow of what he'd been in life -- no weapons, no armor, no wings. So far, he could see no opportunities to gain answers to the questions this fact proposed.

Fact two: he wasn't the only dead reploid present. Despite that, though, X's presence only muddled things further. He claimed to be from centuries before Harpuia's birth -- something that should not have ben possible. Given the technological level of their surroundings, it was hard to say exactly which century it was even suppose to be. Another inconsistency that he couldn't quite answer, but at the very least, he could clarify the situation a little better.

"Master X." Another quick little glance over his shoulder at his companion. "You said you were from the 22nd century, correct? If I may ask... exactly when in the 22nd century? How many of the Maverick uprisings have you staved off so far?"

It might not unveil the reason behind the massive difference in their memories, but at the very least... at the very least, it was a chance for Harpuia to learn a little more about the man he served.

'How many--'

No matter how many times he heard that, it was likely that X would never get used to it. There only should have been one uprising as far as he was concerned; just one, and Sigma should have long since been dead and the Maverick Crisis done with.

At least now he was gone. Sigma was dead; X had made sure of that himself.

"Two." X said after a moment. "I'd just returned from fighting Sigma for the second time, before I found myself here."

Zero...Dr. Cain...do they know I'm gone? Maybe they're already looking for me, and in this place, I can't even send an SOS message, not even some word out to let them know that I'm alive. That I'm all right.

X hoped they were all right. Zero, Dr. Cain, and the other Hunters that he had led only such a short time ago.

"Only two?" Harpuia echoed, looking back at X in surprise. In his own experience, X had been an ancient, experienced machine -- a figure so deeply ingrained in the world's history that society viewed their hero in an almost divine light. It was hard for Harpuia to even imagine what X had been like in the relative infancy of his 300-year existence; the idea that he was right here with him now was a little surreal. Harpuia's own lifespan had been nothing more than a here-and-gone moment compared to X's, but at that moment... he couldn't help but realize that he was probably more experienced than his master currently was.

That... might have helped explain why X had done something as brash as punching a mirror, in retrospect.

"You're much younger than I thought," he admitted. If there was any irony in someone who looked like him saying that, then Harpuia certainly didn't seem to be aware of it. "You've been a legend for so long that I never considered that you might still be..."

...A child? That wasn't the word Harpuia wanted, he was sure of that. It wasn't a term that even really applied to reploids, save for those specifically built to be children, and it struck him as an incredibly patronizing term to apply to the father of all reploids anyway. He knew it grated on his own nerves every time Leviathan addressed him as a pretty kid; he had far too much respect for X to do the same to him. Nor was it quite right to call him a novice. Two wars was still a significant amount of service. Maybe X was going to go on to do brighter and greater things, but that didn't diminish the things he had already accomplished.

Harpuia shook his head, shifting the topic slightly. "It's a little far from my experience, I suppose. I can't even imagine what life was like in 21XX."

'Only two'.

So there were more wars that X had to worry about, according to Harpuia? Even without Sigma, the conflicts would still continue, regardless of how much X himself had worked to rid the world of it?

...What was he thinking. Of course it would still be there; destroying the root of the problem didn't stop the tendrils from growing, or others from deciding to take up his aims. Even if X did destroy Sigma, there were other things he had to worry about, and things he had to do to keep the world safe. But it would be safe someday; if Harpuia was right, and he had created this "Neo Arcadia"...

And even if he hadn't. There was always hope. Even if Sigma came back, X just had to beat him again. Even if fighting was painful, even if it broke his heart to see the deaths of so many at his hands, so long as it was him doing the fighting, and innocents were kept safe, it was okay.

It would all be okay.

"It's likely that you're older than me." X said. "Even if like this, it might not be the case. Whoever put us in these bodies has a funny sense of humor, huh?"

Understatement of the year, clearly.

"But 21XX is...it's a rather vibrant time, I guess. Even with the war, the cities are still full of life, and humans and Reploids alike do what they can considering the circumstances."

With an awkward laugh, X used his good hand to scratch the back of his head, careful not to poke himself with his glass shard.

"It's strange; even though I live in it, it's hard to describe in words." He paused. "What about you, Harpuia? What's it like in Neo Arcadia? Tell me a little bit about yourself."

That... had suddenly become a difficult question to answer. A couple years prior, and Harpuia could have responded confidently and proudly. Neo Arcadia was the paradise X had dreamed of; humans could live in peace at long last, and Mavericks were brought to justice under the fair and unbiased rulings of the Eight Gentle Judges and the X built to replace the one he was speaking to now. The Four Guardians, together since activation, stood united against all that threatened the utopia that the world had yearned for.

It wasn't a perfect existence... but it'd been a happy one.

Looking back now... there was a pervasive sense of bitterness looming over his memories. Tell X about himself? He was used goods. A purposeless, unnecessary machine. Stripped of his position, cast aside as incompetent, a traitor to the very establishment he'd loved with all his being. Neo Arcadia... had it really been the utopia he'd believed, or nothing more than a cardboard cutout, a soothing little lie that was all-too-easily snatched away by a power-hungry madman? The Mavericks he'd cast down in the pursuit of justice... had they been as innocent as the Resistance claimed, despite the verdicts of the Judges?

The loved ones he'd lost, the sleepless nights spent running over the casualties among his own troops, every last drop of coolant fluid Zero's saber had torn from his veins... he couldn't shake the thought that it'd all been without meaning. That he'd been little more than a Pantheon -- a mindless mechaniloid that existed only to shoot at whatever it was told to. What he'd believed from the bottom of his heart to be an ugly but necessary part of protecting the humans he lived for... had it really been anything but the pointless, hollow clashing of war machines?

It... it felt too heavy to discuss. The chance to speak with Master X was precious; he didn't want to taint this experience so soon with something as bitter as that.

"It might be for the best that I don't talk about things that, from your point of view, haven't happened yet," Harpuia replied simply, keeping his eyes trained on the hallway ahead of them. "I don't believe in time travel, but I also don't wish to influence you unnecessarily. Isn't the most important part of hope not knowing what comes next?"

"Not necessarily," X said after a moment. "Because even if you know what happens next, and that future turns out to be bleak...Even if it seems like all is lost, there's always the chance that it will get better, if one works towards it."

After all, X had defeated Sigma. X had brought Zero back, even when his friend had blown himself up before his eyes, seemingly lost to him forever. X had taken his Control Chip, searched high and low for his parts, and then took them back to Dr. Cain in hopes that he could put him together again.

Yes, the future had been quite bleak, but still X believed.

"Having hope isn't about 'not knowing', Harpuia. It's about seeing the odds and knowing in your heart that even if you have little chance to succeed, you can still win with hard work and perseverance..."

He smiled, a bit.

"And believing in your friends and those around you who share the same goals, who are working towards it."

Surprisingly optimistic words. It wasn't necessarily a viewpoint that Harpuia was sure he could share; last-minute miracles were not an especially common thing in his life. Really, the last year or so of his life was better described as a very sharp backslide into despair.

Believing in the ones dear to him didn't stop them from blowing up in desperate attempts to bring the foe down with them. The power of friendship had not stopped the Baby Elves from taking over Harpuia's body. Even the strength of the most significant bond known to reploidkind had not allowed Zero to stop Elpizo from plunging that sword into X's chest. The heart of the cards hdn't stopped Weil from sending that missile into a populated corner of Neo Arcadia.

As dear as Fefnir and Leviathan were to him, all their belief in one another had really allowed them to do was march willfully to their deaths.

"And if you find out that the outcome at the end isn't success? Do you intend to change it?" His tone wasn't necessarily bitter or mocking, despite his own inclination toward pragmatism over optimism. Merely curious. "Do you intend to make sure nothing bad happens? Is such a thing even possible? If not, how do you know whether the changes you choose to make are for the better? If you prevent one of the many unpleasant events in the timeline, then none of us Guardians will have ever been built. Is that a worthwhile sacrifice for the sake of a smoother timeline?"

He had no intention of shooting X's belief down as foolish, despite the bluntness of his questions; anything worth having faith in was strong enough to withstand scrutiny, in Harpuia's eyes, and there was genuine interest in X's answers. There had been plenty of legends about X in his time, and before their deaths Fefnir and Leviathan had mentioned a meeting with their master, but Harpuia himself hadn't had an honour like that. This was his first chance to see what sort of man his master was, and he was eager to find out.

Logical questions, most definitely. Questions he almost expected; after all, they were the same sorts of questions Zero or Sigma (back in the days when he was his beloved commander, and not the murderous maverick that he had become) would have asked, had X said the same thing to them.

How oddly nostalgic; if such a thing could even be considered nostalgic.

...Still, there was something in what Harpuia said, his words...

X closed his eyes a moment and sighed.

"Well..."

Time worked on a different scale than everything else; X knew that. Even if he could theoretically change something in the timeline, who was to say that it wouldn't end up the same way anyway, just through a different means? Or if something worse were to happen instead, being caused by his own hubris? There was no way of truly knowing, but even so, why would that stop him from wanting to make a better future?

Even if the future that Harpuia had come from was a bleak one, who was to say that X couldn't change it without having to sacrifice anyone?

"If it was a bleak future, I would do everything I could to change it. It's not possible to change everything; I know that well enough. There's no way to prevent all misfortune from ever happening, but there is a way to lessen it. And even dampening it, even preventing a few lives from being lost or sacrificed would make the effort all worth it in the end, wouldn't it?" X chuckled. He wondered what Harpuia thought of him, hearing these words. From the bluntness of his questions, he seemed to not share his more optimistic state of mind. "If I can do anything to make the future brighter, I'll find a way." There was no 'try', there was no 'maybe'. There was only sheer, youthful confidence in those words, even if his face and voice seemed tired.

"And who's to say that you won't be born just another way, if the timeline does theoretically smooth itself?" X continued. "Nothing's set in stone. There's always a chance, always wiggle room for a better outcome. You might be born for a different purpose, or after a different event. Nobody knows."

But that didn't mean that there wasn't the chance, and he knew that. Even so, who was to say that it wouldn't happen that way? Sometimes you had to consider the options and believe in it, and work to where everyone in the end could be happy, despite the fact that it was impossible.

Then again...

X had achieved the impossible before. His entire existence seemed to be bred of impossibilities.

"But..." he clenched his good hand in a fist, though loosened his hand the moment he felt the glass start to cut into his palm. "Ideally, I'd like to make sure everyone's happy. If I can take the pain away from everyone, even if it means sacrificing myself, I'd do it in an instant."

It was the response he'd expected to hear, more or less. Infinitely hopeful, above all else, almost blindly believing that he would somehow be able to avoid the countless conflicts and crises studding the next few centuries without his well-intentioned endeavours harming anyone unnecessarily. It was a nice thought. One Harpuia almost wished he could believe in.

He considered debating further. If the Eurasia Incident had been halted, that would save lives, but it would also mean there was no need for reploids to clean the earth up, and no need for Neo Arcadia to act as an actually inhabitable home for mankind. If X had never used his body to seal the Dark Elf away, then his DNA would never have been used to clone the Four Guardians. Those three things, Harpuia felt, were the influences that shaped him most in his youngest years. The time he'd spent as a creator, not a destroyer, had nurtured his protectiveness toward the humans he served, taught him that life was a valuable and fragile thing. Neo Arcadia itself had been the pillar that held Harpuia up, the locus of all his beliefs. The DNA that was used in his creation, most importantly, gave him a legacy to aspire to. He'd inherited something precious, and had laboured for most of his life under the desire to be worthy of what he'd inherited.

If those were taken out of the equation... would he really still be Harpuia anymore? It was a question he wanted to ask, but... again, that sense of bitterness crept into his thoughts. What was a reploid's identity but one more of those fragile illusions? Zero had lost everything he'd once been when he'd awakened, but that didn't stop the Resistance from sending him out onto the battlefield. Not one of Neo Arcadia's citizens had noticed when the first X had been replaced by a different X entirely -- nor did any of them say a word when that same copy suddenly changed into a hollow, stuttering parody of himself. Not just Master X, either -- he'd seen firsthand just how much the Eight Gentle Judges had changed under the influence of Weil's "upgrades." They were nothing like the fair and gentle pacifists he'd once known. No trace of Inarabitta or Foxtar or any of the others remained in those heartless, cackling shells.

In the grand scheme of human society, who Harpuia was just happened to be an incidental side-effect of his duty. Not something worth arguing about, especially if the topic was the greater good. With no further points to press, then, he simply filed that answer away. It was one worth holding onto -- it shed an awful lot of light onto the nature of X's character. Save the cheerleader AND save the world, huh...? Making everyone happy, even if he had to sacrifice himself... and only himself? It seemed unrealistically out of touch with reality to him, but it struck him as interesting nonetheless.

"How greedy... But can you really do that by yourself?"

His gaze remained fixed ahead of them. Had it been anyone but Harpuia, they probably would have smiled; he couldn't help but feel a faint twinge of amusement that he was asking Master X the exact same question he'd once asked a very different reploid. This really was a strange set of circumstances he'd found himself in.

Could he...? It was a good question; holding onto the burdens of the world on his shoulders, keeping pain and suffering as far away from those he loved as possible while working towards a better, more beautiful future for everyone? If he had to sacrifice himself, could he do it? Would he be able to give away his fragile, flawed, and mistake-ridden life in exchange for the lives of all others...?

All signs, of course, pointed to "Yes."

Even the simple thought of it forced a heavy weight onto his...his heart. Yes, that was the proper word; that thing he had always been told that he had as a Reploid, but which he truly in the most accurate sense of the word had as a human. It was a hard, clenching thing; but not altogether uncomfortable somehow.

X wasn't sure why that was.

"It's not a matter of 'can' I." X murmured. "But a matter of 'will' I. Of course, there are those who are willing to help me, and I will always be grateful to them."

Zero. Dr. Cain.

"...But I'd rather bring the burden entirely onto myself than to let them deal with it. Even if it seems impossible, I'll take on the task, even if that means doing it alone. If it ends up bringing peace in the long run...I don't mind becoming Atlas."

And under the pressure, X knew that he wouldn't shrug.

You could argue that Harpuia wasn't one to question the mentality of trying to run everything yourself. He certainly didn't see any reason to shoot that ideal of X's down; perhaps the sacrifice that he would inevitably make in the future wouldn't prevent the energy crisis, Elpizo's hubris, or the return of Weil, but it had been for the sake of the world.

He mulled this answer over in silence for a moment, expression giving away nothing. Truth be told... he wasn't even able to claim with any certainty that X would even have the chance to change Harpuia's past. The discrepancy in their memories may have suggested time travel, but Harpuia was reluctant to accept anything so utterly irrational.

"You're just as I imagined you'd be," he told X, and simply left it at that, lapsing again into silence as he focused on continuing their search.

[To here!]

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Night 64: West Wing, South Hall 1-A

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