Mega Man X: The Novel --Chill Penguin: Lord of the Snowy Plains--

[skybuns]

CHARACTER INTRO	PROLOGUE	DAY OF 𝝨	CHILL PENGUIN	SPARK MANDRILL
DR. CAIN	LAUNCH OCTOPUS	STING CHAMELEON	STORM EAGLE & ARMORED ARMADILLO	FLAME MAMMOTH
BOOMER KUWANGER	VILE	SIGMA	MEGA MAN	EPILOGUE

“Chill Penguin! Why are you doing this!?”

“Ha! Even if I told a B-Class Hunter--a humanoid like you, you wouldn’t understand Sigma’s ideals!”

“You don’t know that! Talk to me. I don’t want to fight you, too…!”

“...You really are just a B-Class pushover… That’s why I hate you.”

----------------

The day Sigma revolted against humanity, I didn’t waste a second. I became a Maverick and stood against the world. They always say “People are not born equal,” but nothing exemplified this more than we Reploids.

Think about it. From the very moment we’re born, we’re Reploids: machines for the purpose of making the humans’ world prosperous. In other words, as soon as we’re created, we’re already treated as inferior to humans. No matter how hard we struggle, we can never rise above them.

No matter how far a human falls, they are still human. Some of us don’t even vaguely look human. As a Reploid modeled after a penguin, specializing in activities located in regions of extreme cold, I’m the best example.

For me, not being humanoid was the beginning of this inequality.

I consistently aimed to excel as a Maverick Hunter, but because of my characteristics, I was only deployed to uninhabitable, lonely, cold regions. Many opportunities were denied to me from the moment of my creation, simply because I was not humanoid.

“X. Have you ever wondered why you’re humanoid?”

Someone like you wouldn’t understand, but still, it wouldn’t hurt to try. Not only that, I’ll use all my power to deny everything you believe in.

“I have. Not once, not twice, but constantly. It’s been on my mind since my creation. ‘Why aren’t I humanoid?’”

But thanks to Sigma, I finally have that answer. My many years of resentment, hatred, of frustration, pressed into my memory like the accumulating weight of a snowbank.

“No… I’ve never thought about it.”

So that’s it… Humanoids really do get treated better. Of course you haven’t thought about it.

“That’s because you’re a sheltered pushover.”

“What do you mean, Penguin? So what if I’m humanoid?”

Oh, I see. Apparently, I had the wrong idea. With our ability to think for ourselves, why would we ever question our existence? Of course we should. Seems the humanoids never considered that, though. Then again, I bet they thought they were on equal standing with the humans.

Ha! That’s the funniest joke I’ve ever heard!

“Do you honestly think you’re on the same level as them?”

“Of course! No one is superior to anyone else. Reploids and humans ought to live in harmony and support each other! Isn’t that what it means to have a peaceful world?”

Are you serious? Wow, this guy’s completely insufferable!

“Harmony? Support?” I laugh. “Have your lenses gotten foggy?”

Humans and Reploids don’t live in harmony. This world is one where humans use Reploids as a crutch to survive. Concepts like the “3 Laws of Robotics” are a thing, right? Their mere existence proves they already hold us in disdain. This idiot can’t even understand something that simple.

“In a ‘peaceful world’ where you walk alongside humans, there’s no place for me. That’s why I support Sigma’s utopia for Reploids. A world where Reploids are truly appreciated. That world has no need for humans. To me, they’re the real Mavericks!”

Why am I getting so worked up? This guy’s just a puny B-Class Hunter, and it’s the infamously naïve X, to boot. He’s hardly a match for me, a Special A-Class who clawed his way up to the top.

“Penguin! What’s left in a future without humans?”

“Enough! It was stupid to even consider talking to you… Just freeze to death!”

----------------

“Persistent, aren’t you? I’ll admit, you seem to have gotten better in the short time we haven’t seen each other. However….!”

X evades my ice attacks, feinting, but it’s not like he can do anything. What could a B-Class do when all of his buster shots bounce off my ice armor?

“Damnit! Then what about this!”

He starts charging his buster for a shot. However--

“Do you think I’ll wait for you to finish charging that? Eat this!”

With a mighty shout, I hurtle myself straight towards him, coated in an icy armor.

This ice-covered room had been designed to maximize my fighting capabilities. X, on the other hand, isn’t used to ice, so he can’t move freely. He can see me coming, but he can’t balance, let alone dodge.

“Arrghhh!”

He takes the full brunt of my charge and slams into the frozen wall behind him, shattering a chunk of it. He falls to the ground with a clank and a shower of ice shards.

“Well, well, well. Would you look at that! It was a mistake for a B-Class Hunter like you to challenge me in the first place.”

Buried under the ice, X doesn’t even so much as twitch. It looks like he took a considerable amount of damage--there’s no movement at all.

“I’ll make you into an ice sculpture later. It’ll serve as a nice present for Sigma.”

Now I’m lagging behind on my orders from Sigma. Maybe I can work my underlings harder and try to recover the delay…

Wanting to return to my duty, I turn my back on X to leave the room. Suddenly, a flash of light whizzes past my face with a roar and crashes into the wall.

“Hm... So you lived, huh?”

“Argh… I won’t be finished off… that easily…”

I look behind me. X, despite his injuries, stands on trembling feet and points his buster at me.

I see. Only his willpower seems to have improved any. But in the end, he’s still only a B-Class Hunter.

“If your attack hadn’t missed, you probably would’ve been promoted from B-Class.”

“I don’t want to shoot an ally in the back.”

He’s still so determined. He’s talking like he hasn’t lost already. And yet, he can barely keep himself standing. Even now, he wants to irritate me even more.

Ally?

You and I? Allies, you say?

I chuckle at first, but eventually it turns into a raucous guffaw.

“Wha… what’s so funny!?”

Are you kidding me? Even in this situation, even in his condition, he still thinks of me as an ally! Maybe the chip in his head bugged out a long time ago. And don’t we call the irrational ones ‘Mavericks’?

...Nah, he’s just been under the wrong impression from the get-go.

“X, I have never thought of you or the other Hunters as allies.”

“Wha…?”

Ah, this is pointless. Talking isn’t going to get through to him… I should’ve learned that by now. I’ve gotta show this moron more clearly that I’m his enemy. If I don’t, he’ll keep calling me his ally in an infinite loop of presumptuous, self-righteous garbage. I have to make him understand the difference between the two of us.

“Alright, X. I’ll prove that I’m your enemy… with this!”

I send an order to the computer that controls the room’s functions. The dome’s frozen walls gradually grow transparent until they’re easily seen through.

Now, all of my hard work is ready for X’s viewing pleasure.

“What… How could you!”

His eyes, which held such innocence before, fill with rage. Now, he understands what kind of hell he entered; the idea that I am his enemy finally sinks in.

Icy statues of frozen Reploids make up the walls of the room.

“PENGUIN!”

With a roar, X charges at me, his buster humming with power. Finally, he gets it. Not that it changes the situation, though. Those shots just keep bouncing off my armor.

“What a change, seeing you attack with such murderous intent! But a B-Class is still a B-Class.”

X only screams in response, blinded by his rage. He keeps firing his buster, ignoring his limits. Does he really think he’ll hurt me if he just keeps shooting?

I’ve wasted enough of my time messing around with this B-Class pipsqueak. It’s about time I end this.

“I’ll freeze you just like one of these statues! Take this! Shotgun Ice!”

<>

Witness the ultimate freezing breath, the pride of the Lord of the Snowy Plains!

Blasted by a sub-zero snowstorm capable of freezing even lava, X freezes into a large ice block, his buster still aimed.

By the time he realizes it, it’s too late. In the blink of an eye, he’s turned into a motionless, humanoid ice sculpture.

----------------

I can still see and hear, but my body can’t move… So this is Penguin’s Shotgun Ice attack… What power…

“---”

What are you saying, Penguin?

“---”

No… Stop it! Stop hurting innocent people! What gives you the right to do such an awful thing?

“---”

There might be a chance that everyone can still be saved! What good comes from doing this?

“---”

I beg you… Please stop…

If I had the strength… If only I had more power… I want the power to help others. Even if I’m alone in my fight, I want to be able to protect so many others… My friends… I want the strength that will grant me this. I refuse to give up our peaceful future like that. I want power!

Yes, I must not give up.

I must not give up here!

----------------

“Finally shut up?”

I stare at X’s frozen statue, taking the time to relax. Now I can carry out Sigma’s orders. He entrusted me with an important task to complete. It’s unacceptable to be late or fail the mission just because of some nuisance like X. Originally, I planned on sending the frozen Reploids as a kind of gift to Sigma, but the run-in with X ruined my mood.

“Tsk, if I give him something like these useless ice sculptures, it’ll just be annoying, so why don’t I destroy them all instead?”

When it comes to interior design, you should only send something that fits the receiver or the place, otherwise it’d just be oversized junk. Like X, all the peons here are B-Class or lower.

It’s just as well. If I don’t present something like the frozen statue of Special A-Class Hunter Zero, that pretentious artist Octopus will harass me with endless snark. While I have no obligation to comply with that guy’s artistic senses, excuuuuuuuse me for wanting to avoid tiring, unnecessary verbal abuse.

“Sigh. Dealing with all these peons is a bother…”

I step toward the closest frozen Reploid, reaching out to destroy it--

There’s a sudden thump from the statue of X.

“...Huh?”

For a fleeting moment, I think I see X move within the ice.

“Am I seeing things? No, it can’t be…”

Yet there’s a weird feeling in my gut that stops me short of saying “It’s impossible.” Just to be sure, I raise the sensitivity of my ocular sensors to peer into the ice… Hey, is this for real? Not only is this guy still conscious in the ice, he hasn’t lost his audio-visual functions!

“Gwaa! Isn’t this interesting?”

In that case, I’ll let X experience the consequences of opposing Sigma. I’ll show him firsthand what reality is.

“You can see and hear this, can’t you X? Right now, I’m going to destroy each of these Reploids one by one. I’ll show you the reality of your situation: that you can’t protect a single person, that you are just B-Class cannon fodder.”

The ice groans.

At my words, I can see X tremble within the ice again. I ought to praise the guy for the fact that his systems are still functioning even after taking a direct hit from Shotgun Ice. He may be a B-Class peon, but he’s still a Hunter assigned to the 17th Elite Unit.

But a weakling can only be a weakling.

This guy doesn’t even have a single watt of power left to change his hopeless situation. Now, if Zero was the one who came here, I would’ve been in trouble. I guess the Maverick Hunters have been stretched so thin they can’t even make a decent decision anymore. This should prove to be good news to Sigma, too.

“Well then, who should I destroy first… Alright, let’s start with the guy with the most annoying face.”

The ice creaks.

I turn my back on X’s frozen form to face my chosen target. I don’t feel like just smashing his little friends into pieces, I’m also interested in seeing X’s resentful face permanently frozen in place. But in this state, I can’t tell the difference between all these peons. Without any unique external features or equipment, they’re just rabble. It’s such a waste of valuable memory to record these small fries.

“Peons who don’t even have enough value to be memorable, huh… Is there any significance to your existence as Reploids?”

Now, who to destroy? While thinking about that, one guy suddenly catches my eye: a humanoid Reploid sporting a blue frame. It’s not that he has any special characteristics, but I keep going back to him. I have to laugh.

“Alright, let’s start with this guy! Luck has run out for he who looks like X!”

I extract the frozen statue of the blue Reploid and place him just a bit away from the wall. While adjusting the distance, I also position it in a suitable angle.

Directly in front of X.

The creaking continues.

The reality that you can do nothing, the reality of your own weakness. The reality of this world with inequality constantly shadowing you. With the cold blooded death of his comrades, I will teach this B-Class weakling all of this!

...Huh?

It sounds like something’s been cracking for a whi-

“I WON’T LET YOU!”



“Gwaaahhhh!!!!”

All of a sudden, with a resounding cry from behind, I’m sent flying through the air by an enormous force. I don’t know what happened, but I do know one thing: I was attacked by “someone”. The proof is right there on my back.

I catch my balance just before I crash into the ground, looking back where the voice and attack came from.

“Gwah! What the heck just happened? Hunter reinforcements??”

My feet scrape against the ice as I adjust my battle stance to prepare to deal with those reinforcements, but--

“I haven’t been beaten yet, Penguin!”

It's X! He escaped the statue created by my Shotgun Ice, and now faces me with his fist raised.

“You bastard… how did you break out of that ice!”

“I don’t know… but my burning spirit gave birth to a miracle!”

It’s infuriating that my proud work of ice is shattered into pieces, and now X is calling it some sort of miracle.

“You, a machine, making miracles? Gwah gwah! There’s a limit to such unscientific garbage!”

“It’s alright if you don’t believe me, but I’ll make it happen as many times as I need to!”

The meekness in X’s eyes up until now vanishes with his declaration.

How? Why was he able to break my ice? All I can come up with is he temporarily overheated the solar power reactor in his buster, and used the heat to quickly melt the ice from the inside -- that’s the most likely way.

I should have knocked him out. I screwed up.

Ultimately though, it’s a matter of how much he was saved by chance. Because of one lucky move, a “miracle” as he called it, X is suddenly overflowing with confidence.

That fact, above all, is the most infuriating.

“Then freeze again! This time, I’ll make sure your CPU gets frozen along as well!”

I fire Shotgun Ice at X again! Compared to the last time, the hyper-cold air used has a higher concentration of freezing gas. This is my version of a charged attack. There’s no Reploid around that can take this lethal ice breath and stay conscious!

I’ll freeze his internal circuitry and memory chip in its entirety!

“Gwah, gwah! Die this time, X!”

“Where are you looking Penguin? I’m over here!”

“What--!?”

The voice came from behind me?

I immediately whirl around, and there he is.

When I look carefully from the place X was standing before to where he is now, I understand. There are tracks gouged in the ground.

“What’s with this speed? Were you hiding your power before?”

Not even I, with my capabilities, can hide the shock. X must’ve taken less than a second to dodge my ice breath as it was launched. Though we’re Reploids, the only one who could take less than a second to cover this much distance, to my knowledge, is Boomer Kuwanger, a specialist in high-speed battles.

I can’t believe it. The plain-looking, humanoid X might have been hiding this kind of functionality?

“My wish to defeat you has made me evolve!”

To my utter disbelief, X throws the word “evolve” at me. First a miracle, and now evolution?

“Don’t… don’t give me that nonsense! You’re saying that you, a Reploid, are evolving?! As if--”

As if you’re human?

Human. I’ve never been so furious as right now.

“Gwahhhh! Don’t get cocky, X!”

To us Reploids, there is no evolution. That’s because we’re machines. All we can do is accumulate experience to broaden the range of our abilities. You might call that “evolution”, but we machines are limited to the specs we are created with. To break past those limits, the only method we have is to change our parts and undergo reconstruction. Therefore, X’s speed has to be an ability given to him beforehand.

That revelation, that reality, really grinds my gears.

“You think I’ll accept that you were given the capability to rival a Special A-Class?!”

Fine. Sure. He had that ability all along. I’ll acknowledge that much. But even if a B-Class suddenly pulls this power out of nowhere, we Special A-Classes still have more experience! If X plans on running around with that speed to evade my attacks, all I need to do is make sure there’s nowhere to run.

“No matter how fast you are, you can’t avoid this!”

As X dashes out of sight, I start to spin in the opposite direction, firing Shotgun Ice continuously. Gradually, my attacks transform into an enormous, freezing tornado. The tornado expands until it’s impossible to dodge unless you take flight. Before long, it’s strong enough to bury everything in the room, dying my vision snow white.

After a few more seconds, we’ll be able to hold X’s last rites again. That’s how I imagine it… and decide it will be.

But X has other plans.

After the tornado dies down, I promptly search for X’s ice statue, but no matter where I look, he’s nowhere to be seen. Frantic, I scan every nook and cranny as I back up to a nearby wall, and then it hits me.

“You.... You climbed up the wall--!”

There, right above me, having clambered up the wall by kicking against it until he was close to the ceiling.

“Are you kidding me?!”

This shouldn’t be possible for the likes of X…. the likes of a B-Class Reploid!

“Don’t oppose me, you mere B-Class… B-Class peon!”

How could this B-Class surpass me? I’m Special A-Class! I climbed my way up to the top with my own strength!

“B-Class, A-Class… It’s because you’re so obsessed with these things that you’ve lost sight of what’s important!”

And now this: X telling me not to obsess over status. When my pride was smarting!? Don’t obsess!? There’s only so much joking I can take! Are you saying you don’t know how important status is to us Reploids? Do you need me to show you!?

How outrageous can one person possibly be!?

“My obsession with being a Special A-Class is because that’s a barometer of my true ability! No wonder you’re a B-Class!”

No, I don’t plan on trying to understand the likes of X. As if I’d even want to.

“Though I’m no longer one, a Special A-Class Hunter’s judgement will always be Special-A.”

I speed around to the frozen blue Reploid from before and place my hand threateningly on his head.

“Well then, X. If rank doesn’t matter, surely you can handle this, right?”

“You coward! Resorting to something this low now of all times!”

Even if you’re hiding some strong abilities, you’re still a soft-hearted fool. And that’s why you are a B-Class.

“This is a hostage situation. After all, I’m a Maverick. I don’t do nice things like playing fairly.”

Did you really think we were going to have a gentlemanly duel? To me, everyone in this room is just a hostage I can use against X. And using them to bring him down is a perfectly logical and rational judgement for a Reploid to make.

Well, what will you do? For some reason, X acts as if he’s taking a breath, and then--

“He… he’s even faster than before!?”

With a high-pitched sound, he vanishes. Panicking, I look everywhere, but I just can’t find him.

Fine! You leave me no choice! I’ll go ahead and get rid of this hostage! Just as I’m about to execute him--

What the hell…?

“Why… why must I fight those who were once my allies… Answer me, Penguin!”

“Are those… tears? Are you crying!?”

He is.

On top of that, he’s making a total mess, just like how a human would cry. What the hell is with this meaningless feature? What advantage is there to installing this kind of function into us Reploids?

“How far… how far do you plan on mocking me?!”

“But, because of you, I’ve recalled something important, Penguin….”

Around the center of my back, I feel cold steel touch me. At the same time, I hear X’s voice. It’s only a moment, but during that short pause in his words, I turn around and bathe him in freezing air. Or at least, I try to, but X’s words continue, faster than I can act.

“--I... am a Maverick Hunter.”

An explosion roars through my body. X’s face fills my vision as it starts failing. As usual, that stupid face is gentle, and still crying. Not only can he evolve, he is even equipped with the feature to cry like a human…

Ah, dammit. He really does... piss… me off….