X slept soundly that night. This, of course, was not surprising in the least seeing as he had downed several large quantities of alcohol, so it was somewhat of a given.

As the night drew on, a small figure slipped outside and stared out at the city walls.

Fass sighed and drew his sword. "When should we tell him, Iggy?"

The sword hummed in annoyance at the nickname.

"Tough. The nickname stays. But seriously, when are we telling him?"

The blade began to glow a dim orange. The glow's intesntity shifted in what seemed to be a sort of pattern. Fass seemed satisfied by this event.

"Yeah, you're probably right..."

~~~~~

Tracer ordered his team into position.

"Remember. We're here for the Core. Let's try and get this over with as quickly as possible." He pointed to a map of the city. "Here's where we picked up the resonance. Here's where we strike." He said, indicating Fassigen's house.

His comrades nodded.

"Move out!" He cried, taking flight. The rest of his team followed suit.
~~~~~~

"I mean, what's the worst that co--" Fass clutched his chest. "Shit. They're coming."

A shuffling noise came from the hall, and Siegfried began pulling his chair out to stand up when he heard the voice, familiar as it was even though layered in a perfect accent, "Because we, are not without our own set of abilities either. Lance walked slowly into the room, keeping himself steady off the wall but looking considerably pleased with himself.

Siegfried made a movement to get up to go to Lance, send him back to bed or ask why he was here, but Lance held up a commanding hand that it seemed Siegfried almost physically struggled against it and then sat down. Lance spoke again, his voice with level confidence even toward these people so much older than himself to the point where his voice seemed almost fully matured. "If they will split. Then we will split as well. Siegfried could easily draw them away, the amount of light energy in the sword alone would be like a beacon. Only in battle of course, otherwise it's just shimmery. While he would draw, I would take care of the village. By the time they even got close this entire place would be completely gone to their eyes."

Siegfried stared in amazement at Lance's sudden military surge, but he finished off, hoping to aid his friend. "Not to mention that if they got anywhere near here, we'd see them first. There'd be plenty of time to ensure everyone's safety. Not to mention I doubt they're looking specifically for this village. If it wasn't here, they'd have no reason to believe it ever was."

Not for the first time, the warrior was contemplating shaving. He was still awake, his body seeming to refuse to sleep. Likely do to the difference in time zones he seemed to be experiencing, now that he was no longer on Earth. At the moment, he was in some temporary housing generously provided by the trolls. Resting against the wall were his sheathed sword, just polished, and his newly repaired shield. The dragon emblem pressed on the front gleamed, and the blue metal covering most of the shield seemed to glow, thanks to the strange material it had been reforged with. His armor was mounted up on a stand.

As like he had countless other times during his stay in the Nightmare Realm, where his body's growth was held in stasis, he decided against shaving, putting the razor down on the sink and exiting the bathroom. The warrior instead contented himself with knowing he at least felt clean again, though the... shower, it was called? had been an absolute trial to figure out. He sat down on his bed and sighed, closing his eyes briefly.

Just as quickly as he closed them, he opened them. He could feel that something was on its way; a remnant ability left behind from Diablo's foul possession of his body. He looked out of a nearby window, but saw nothing. It didn't stop his acute feeling of incoming trouble. Swearing a coarse oath, the knight stood up from the bed and approached his armor rack, taking the armor off piece by piece and returning it to his body. When completed, he picked up his sword and strapped it to his back, then took up his shield and helmet; strapping the shield to his left arm and holding the helmet under the crook of his right.

Now ready for battle once more, Aram Kiros Denamon strode out of the house and into the night air.

===Argentina, South America===

The council began speaking amongst themselves, their murmuring hard to make out for Lance and Siegfried. After several minutes of discussion and deliberation, they quieted and the Mayor stood. "Why exactly did you come here in the first place?" he asked.

Matt sighed, and stood up as well. "I'll go see if he needs anything, I guess."

The azure particles of light appeared around R.D. and clung to his form, materializing into the familiar cobalt and silver-blue Dragon King Armor. After a second or two of examining his form, R.D. concluded that the Dragon King Armor had in fact changed again, like it had after he unlocked the Fourth and Fifth Ciphers on Lumiya--it had regained its old appearance, no longer having the extra violet-blue colored plating.

"Oh well," he muttered darkly, letting the dark T-shaped visor close around his face, activating the scanner. He did a quick sweep of the house, quickly picking up the readings for Hugo, Roll, Cut Man, Elec Man, Ice Man, Fire Man, Guts Man, and Bomb Man. With their data collected, he began scanning the rest of the city area for any similar matches.

There was another one. Far out, past the park, toward the industrial district.

"Look, just don't fly around in that, okay?" Matt said, approaching. "We'll get someone to drive us if we need to."

"I'm not even sure if I can fly in this anymore even if I wanted to," R.D. said, looking back at Matt. "I don't think I have the necessary strength to make it fly."

After a bit of scanning, R.D. concluded there were no other similar robot types in the range of the individual target. "Well, if that is Rock out there," he said, pointing in the direction of the industrial district, "There's no other robots near him."

"At most, human-level thugs. We can take 'em." A flip of the coat during a turn back toward the house. "I'll ask for a ride."

"Works for me," R.D. said, dismissing his Bound Armor from his form, turning to follow Matt back inside.

Elec Man was chosen to drive. He seemed ready to grumble about it, but held his tongue, lead Matt and R.D.. and Ileyna to the garage. (Better to have her stay with people she somewhat knew than people she didn't know at all, Matt figured.) He slid into the driver's seat of the corpulent family car, the other one red, and turned the key to kick the beast into life.

"Did you sense if Rock was in any kind of immediate danger?" Elec Man asked R.D..

"No," R.D. said, looking out the window of the car. "I didn't sense any other signals from other robots, and the readings I got on him remained pretty steady."

A stream of explitives flowing from his mouth, Fass ran into the house.

"X. Get him. Hide him. It's important. He's what they're here for, and if they get him... it's over."

Matt fastened his seatbelt. "If anything's still going on, we should be able to take care of it."

Elec Man allowed himself a smirk. "Do you still fight as well as you can make bad jokes, Matt?"

"Just stand back and watch if it comes to that," Matt remarked.

"Heh." The garage door slid up and over them. "All right, R.D.. Just tell me where to go."

"Alright," R.D. said, summoning his armor once more. Ileyna made a sound of astonishment and stared as the armor reappeared around his form. She could only stare as R.D. locked the visor back in place, and scanned for Rock's location--he quickly found it, and R.D. gave Elec Man the directions as he drove them to the industrial district.

===NationStates General===

Aram nodded as Fass made his commands, and quickly exited the building, making his way to where he heard X was at.

What's going on here? he wondered idly as he found the building and entered. "X!" he bellowed, hoping to gain his attention. With any luck, he wasn't too drunk to make things difficult.

"That's a neat trick," Elec Man muttered as he drove.

"You should see what he whips out on the weekend." A short, raucous laugh. "Oh, man, I gotta remember that one."

Then he recalled that there was a nine year old girl in the car. Whoops. "Um...pay no attention to that. And don't worry, that's fairly normal where R.D. is concerned."

It took R.D. a few moments for him to refrain from knocking Matt out of the car, considering that he was in armor and Matt wasn't.

After some driving, R.D. said, "We're close. Should just be around the corner before we're there." He dismissed his armor afterwards, feeling more comfortable in a car when he wasn't wearing it.

They turned onto a street lit intermittingly by red and blue lights-police cars clustered in front of a building, with reporters on the scene, filming handcuffed men being led into armored vans.

"There he is!" Elec Man said, and stopped the car along the edge of the sidewalk. Up ahead was a blue armored robot speaking with another police officer. The robot took a moment to draw back his messy brown hair, the other arm wrapped around his round helmet.

R.D. looked at the robot, Rock, for a few moments and realized that he must be the Mega Man that Matt and Hugo had spoken of briefly in the past.

He looks a lot like X, he thought, cocking his head to the side. Just a lot... shorter.

Once out of the car, Elec Man walked up to Rock and the officer. "Rock, where have you been? What's going on?"

"Excuse me," the officer said, sliding himself in front of Rock, "this is a private investigation."

"You're excused." Elec Man looked around the barring officer. "Tell me what happened."

"It's okay, officer," Rock said. "He's my brother."

The officer humphed as he moved aside.

"Someone got ahold of an experimental tool," Rock said. "It goes over your arm and enhances your strength. He was using it to rob a bank when I arrived, but he escaped and we chased him to this building. I managed to get the tool away from him. Nobody was hurt, thankfully."

"Why didn't you call?"

"He was a bit tough to take down. That's what was taking up my time."

Elec Man sighed. "All right. I just came to check on what you were doing. Are you done here?"

"Pretty much. I'll take Rush home."

"Okay. Come home soon. There's someone you need to meet." Elec Man turned away and headed back toward the car. Piling in, he said, "He's going to be home after he finishes up here."

Like everyone else, R.D. stayed in the car while Elec Man vacated it. When he returned and explained that Rock would be returning later, R.D. asked, "So, what exactly was the hold-up?"

"Just some idiot with a superweapon," Elec Man said as he pulled away from the scene.

Matt sighed and leaned back. Yeah, those things tended to be uncontrollable at times.

R.D. propped up his head using his arm on the window frame of the car. "Well, could've been worse, I imagine," he said.

In the seat next to him, Ileyna yawned and stretched, starting to become exhausted from the day's events.

They returned home and Elec Man explained the situation to Dr. Light as Roll and Ice Man were putting up the dishes. He sagely nodded and asked Matt if he and his group would like to stay the night.

"Do you have room?" Matt asked, a bit uncomfortable. There were nine or ten people running around in here.

"We have two guest bedrooms," Fire Man explained. "One of them is a queen-sized bed though."

"I'll take the floor," Matt said, before R.D. could say anything.

"Suit yourself," R.D. said, shrugging his shoulders. Behind him, Ileyna rubbed at her eyes, and yawned again.

Siegfried seemed quite confused at the question when it was initially raised and wasn't quite sure what they meant. Lance realized that what had seemed to be the obvious to the two travellers may not be for the village and spoke to the mayor, "We came here, simply because it was a place of civilization where we thought we could rest for a day or perhaps two and then continue on. Up until now this place has had no significance to us, and we only knew it existed from previous villages that gave vague directions."

"Come on, Ileyna, let's get you to bed." Matt took her hand. "All right, Fire Man, show me the room with the single."

"It's at the end of the hall." Fire Man headed toward the stairs.

"When I get back down," Matt said to R.D., "we need to discuss things."

"Ain't that the truth," R.D. muttered, following Matt, Ileyna and Fire Man to the room.

===Argentina, South America===

"So you'll be leaving in a few days?" one council member stated. "Where, then, will you be going when you continue?"

Edited by RisingDragon on October 16, 2008 at 19:34:41.

At the foot of the stairs was Hugo.

Both parties paused, facing each other for tangible moments until Hugo turned and walked away from them, toward the other room.

Matt waited until the Mettaur was out of sight before leading Ileyna up the stairs. Right then it seemed to be the most important thing in the world.

R.D. frowned at what transpired. He really hoped these two would get over their issues with each other, and as soon as possible.

And hopefully without Hugo trying to shoot Matt again.

Soon, Ileyna was shown her room, and they bid the girl goodnight before closing the door.

Matt quietly clapped his hands together. "Well, now that that's done, time for late night video games." He frowned. "Er, I mean, important discussions."