Questions of Superiority

[10.02.01] » by Nightsong

Click.  Click.  Click.

It couldn't quite be said what the noise was.  Sigma did, however, know that it shouldn't have been present, and that it was certainly annoying.

Click.  Click.  Click.

Strange how little noises could make a reploid nervous.  One would think that Sigma, great leader of the Mavericks… savior of the reploid race, would not give distant taps that could come from most anything a second thought.

Click.  Click.  Click.

But he did.  It was confusing, this noise.  As far as he knew, he was the last living being onboard what Repliforce had so unoriginally dubbed the "Final Weapon," at least in this area.  The nearest reploids had to be literally miles away in the Officers' block, fighting off the Maverick Hunter X… or trying to.  Perhaps that was all this noise came down to.  Sigma feared that X was ahead of schedule in reaching him?  He shook his head, allowing the hood of his cloak to fall back.  It simply wasn't possible, he tried to convince himself as he ran one heavy hand over his bald head, stopping briefly as it ran over the opal-like gem embedded there.  He would have known.  He would have had to know.  There were sensors all about him, checking the status of the ever-annoying reploid.  He would know before X came within a mile of his position. 

Click.  Click.  Click.

Then what the hell was that!?  Sigma fairly leapt to his feet then, looking about himself wildly.  His pure-blue eyes could see nothing, could sense nothing, anywhere about him.  The only heat source in the room was the ram's head-shaped generator in its center… and this bizarre tap-tap-tapping certainly wasn't coming from there.  This made no sense… no sense whatsoever.  Illogical, Sigma told himself.  Usually, he avoided words like 'logic.'  They made him feel more machine than man… and that just made him think back to the accursed nature of his existence.  It wasn't fair.  He'd been born with emotions, just like any human – his eyes narrowed in anger at the very thought of the self-important race – and yet had been expected to become a slave for them.  He'd been 'born' to work all the sorts of jobs humans didn't like.  And when the Maverick movement had begun, he'd been enlisted to kill his own kind, another job the humans didn't like.

Click.  Click.  Click.

Ignore it, ignore it.  It's nothing.  The Maverick movement… what hateful memories that phrase brought back.  He'd been the best of the Maverick Hunters… the best of the extermination squad.  He'd killed hundreds of rebel reploids, many without even the benefit of a team backing him up.  Hell, he'd even brought down the maverick they'd found in the remains of Dr. Wily's labs… quite possibly the most powerful 'evil' reploid in the world.  Zero.  Zero… how ironic their fates had been.  If Sigma believed in a God, and believed that this God would care about such a soulless being at himself, he would have had to bow to the deity's sense of the twisted.  His fight with Zero had been the beginning of the end… back in those days.  The reploid had been found in a state much akin to how Dr. Cain had found X several years prior, and of course the reploid teams excavating the site had immediately turned him on.  Mistake.  Zero had burst forth from his capsule like a bat out of hell, and immediately slaughtered the shocked civilian-type reploids.  Oddly enough, he never left the compound… it was as though he was waiting on something… or someone.  Sigma had heard of the incident, and sent a team in to investigate.  Of those… none came back out alive. 

Click.  Click.  Click.

Maybe I won't leave here alive.  No, no, don't think like that.  It's just some faulty piece of machinery.  The excavation site… graveyard for so many good reploids… Sigma had immediately gone to the scene himself at that point, whatever passed for his heart filled with sorrow and rage.  He entered with a lust for destruction in his heart… it was one of the very few times that he would be glad to kill a member of his own race. 

It had not proved quite so simple.  Zero had damaged him, and badly.  Ripped one hand off with nothing more than a lead pipe, and nearly killed Sigma himself.  It had only been some bizarre malfunction that had given Sigma the upper hand and allowed him to knock Zero out. 

And then it began, from the moment he shattered that W-encrusted gem.  The ending, the ending, the end of all.

Or was it just a beginning?  Indeed, the day after the battle had been one of Sigma's most clear.  He'd thought about so many things… and come to so many realizations.  Such as the fact that humanity had no right to rule over the reploids.  It was beyond him how they couldn't see the paralells in the fate of the reploids and the fate of so many of the darker-skinned humans back three centuries before.  But there was one truth that was quite within his grasp.

Not only would he not help the humans kill his kind anymore, he would take steps to stop it forever.

And so it had began, the looting and the destruction.  Sigma had to attack.  He didn't want to take over the world… nothing like it.  He simply wanted a piece of the world where reploids would be safe, and to show the humans that reploid-kind would not sit and take the slave treatment they'd been receiving.

Click.  Click.  Click.

The noise had become almost chilling at this point, but Sigma was beyond paying much attention to it.  It had been more chilling when some of the Maverick Hunters disagreed with Sigma's revelation.  Indeed, many members of the organization had seen Sigma's point and turned a side, but several regiments had remained.

And so had X and newly-reprogrammed Zero.

And they had come after Sigma, and ripped apart his organization, and they had killed him.  It was at once heart-rending and joyous.  Sigma could hardly believe that these… things couldn't see the plight of their own race, couldn't see their people suffering.  But on the other hand, it was a relief not to have to be responsible anymore, to not have to worry about the fates of hundreds of thousands of his kind.

And so, of course, he hadn't been allowed to rest.  Three times since then he'd been rebuilt by various mavericks.  Sometimes, it seemed that the mavericks understood his original dream of a world free of humans… but most of the time, it was just power-hungry fools seeking a more powerful weapon to brandish, a more decorative banner to unite troops underneath.  Sigma hated it, as he was starting to hate some of his own kind… they had become humans.

Click.  Click.  Click.

Sigma hated the noise almost as much as he hated the race.  He hadn't really hated humans at first, just… wanted them to leave his people alone.  But here, nearly twenty years later, he had changed his mind.  The entire race had become a blight, in his mind.  A race of selfish, arrogant, power-mad parasites.  They raped and murdered every other race they came in contact with, considering anything not human 'lesser' than themselves, 'incapable' of emotion. 

And so Sigma's goal had changed from secession to genocide.  And in that, he didn't know if he felt better or worse.

He'd used his own kind to bring his goals about… he'd manipulated Repliforce into starting a coup against the humans… had manipulated them into unwittingly trying for Sigma's initial plan.  They'd seceded from the human-controlled UN, and declared their cities autonomous. 

And just as Sigma had known would happen, they were branded Mavericks, and X and Zero had come to kill them.

The fools… what were they, that they could kill their own kind?!  Did they not feel the guilt tearing into their souls, whatever passed for them?  How did they sleep at night?  Did they think themselves better than other reploids?  Did they think themselves… human?

Click.  Click.  Click.

Cursing at the noise, now much louder than it had been in the beginning, Sigma pulled out his beamscythe.  He stood up from his spot at one wall and began anxiously walking across the room.  His cloak billowed behind him as he walked.  He was tired of this noise.  He was going to destroy whatever was causing it.

Click.  CLICK.  CLICK.

It was just beyond the door.  Almost frightened that perhaps X had managed to come early after all, Sigma thrust the door open with one powerful hand and glared at whatever lie beyond.

It was a simple non-reploid construct… one of the AI units Dr. Cain had built before discovering X.  It was barely capable of conscious thought, which was quite obvious to anyone who saw it.  It looked nothing like a human, standing there on its two backward-kneed legs with its single eye sensor blinking haphazardly.

Malfunctioning, apparently.  It had probably been running into walls for hours.  Angry, Sigma glared at the hapless robot.  This little piece of… nothing!  Less than nothing! … this thing had scared the hell out of him, the mighty Sigma!  The great savior of reploid-kind!

Without even a thought, Sigma looked down at the little robot and fired twin lasers from his eye sockets.  It exploded instantly, letting out a tinny electronic scream that was likely just a reaction from its audio sensors as it did.  Sigma snorted as it burned to nothing, letting the door close behind it.

And then the thought struck him.  How is this any different from what the humans do to my kind?

The thought stayed with Sigma for a long time after that.

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"The things you hate are little different from the things you do." - Myself.

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