Now, I know that this isn't the best thing that I've ever written and, to be honest, I think that it is complete garbage piece of writing but I'm posting this thing anyway, just to prove that I haven't completely abandoned writing since I didn't do the Oktoberfest stuff. Feel free to say how good or bad it is (Probably mostly bad) and feel free to tell me how to improve. Thanks to @Zero HP and @Strytho for the ideas that made this into being. Sigh So here we go... Spoiler: Chapter 1 Zero “Oh, Zero, it’s about time that you came to see me about what I’ve found,” greeted the scientist as I entered his laboratory. “Well, what did you find?” I asked. “Sadly, what Sigma told you was true, you are a carrier of the Maverick Virus. ” replied the scientist. “I was hoping that he was just trying to get into my head,” I sighed. “Is there anything that we can do?” “From what I can tell, it is basically a part of you, but you also seem to have full control to where the virus can’t affect your judgment. So what I’m basically saying is that we would have to make you a new body and transfer your memories to it.” “Is there a way to do it without anyone noticing that I’m gone?” “I’m not sure, and besides that, it would be difficult to make you a new body since your current body is so complicated that making an exact replica of it would take years, especially if it is going to be just me and you building it.” “We’ll have to make do with what we have, it would be too dangerous to trust anyone else outside of me and you, especially since we just found out that I’m the source of all of the maverick problems.” “With this new information, what are you going to do now?” “I’m going to find Sigma and find out what else he knows and how he knew,” I said. “But I’m with X all the time, so why hasn’t he been infected?” “I think that it is just like why you are not being affected, he might be one of the few reploids that are immune to the maverick virus.” “Sounds about right,” I chuckled as I turned towards the door. “What are you going to do if the Maverick Hunters find out?” I turned towards the scientist. “Are you suggesting that they will?” “I have a plan to destroy the information if any other Maverick Hunters come here.” “Then I don’t have to worry about it,” I said as I walked out the door. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if the Maverick Hunters were to somehow find out, especially X and Signas. I shook the thoughts away, I somehow needed to find Sigma and I don’t even know where to start looking. I concluded that I must keep my contact with other reploids to a minimum. I got onto my bike. As I rode back to the city, I realized that I had forgotten to turn on my communicator, I quickly turned it on and immediately got into contact with Alia. “Zero, please respond!” “This is Zero,” I said plainly. “Where have you been? We haven’t been able to get into contact with you for the past thirty minutes.” “It doesn’t matter, what do you need me to do?” “Alright, X is coming to your location right now and he will lead you to the newly found Maverick base.” “Roger,” I answered as I slowed my bike to a halt. As soon as I stopped, I could see X on the horizon and I willed my bike forward to meet him. “Is everything ok, Zero?” X asked. “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” I replied sternly. “Let’s just get on with the mission.” “Alright, just follow me.” We rode in silence, my thoughts drifted to what was I going to do when X finds out, cause the likelihood of him as well as the other Maverick Hunters was very likely and I plan to tell them at some point, but not until I was close to all of the answers as I can get. Soon I could see buildings on the horizon and I could only presume that was our target. “There it is. They are planning to build their own missiles to launch an attack on the cities, our job is to make sure that doesn’t happen.” “Roger that.” “Oh,” X suddenly said. “I forgot to mention that Axl should be clearing a path for us since he went on ahead while I met up with you.” “So that’s why we aren’t taking any resistance,” I replied. We went into an opening in the walls of the factory and got off of our bikes and left them there. We followed a trail of maverick remains to where Axl was at. “What took you guys so long?” asked Axl when he saw us coming. “It doesn’t matter right now, we’re here. What’s the situation?” I put in. “Well, the Mavericks are putting up quite the resistance and from what I can tell, they haven’t had much time to prepare the missiles for launch or else they would launch the missiles and abandon the base,” Axl replied. We fought our way to the main control center. I looked at the timer and it said one minute. That wasn’t much time to stop a launch, but there was still time. I told X and Axl to watch my back as I disabled the missile launch sequence. “Alia, we are at the main computer, attempting to stop the launching sequence,” I heard X say. I pounded at the keys without a single thought in my mind. I looked once more at the timer and it said ten seconds. Then the computer asked for a password and I used one of the emergency passwords that the Maverick Hunters used to get into the computer in emergency situations. I pressed the enter button and whirled around with my z-saber drawn. The attacking Mavericks suddenly started retreating. X and Axl started pursuing them and I went back to the main computer, looking through data. I quickly found a file about Sigma and I looked through it, finding that he was being rebuilt in a base on the Moon. “So that’s where you are now at,” I whispered to myself. I remembered that Sigma told me that I had played a part in everything that was happening, and I guess in a way, he was right. “But how to get there is going to be a problem,” I thought. “Especially if I’m planning on trying to get there without the Maverick Hunters noticing.” I paused for a moment, thinking of what to do next. I pressed a couple of buttons, deleting all the data about Sigma’s location. “Sorry, but I can’t let you know where I’m trying to go.” I left the screen on with the data about Sigma and walked out. I could hear the fighting going farther away and I managed to get back to the bikes with no resistance. “I’m sorry, X and Axl, but you two are going to be on your own for a while,” I whispered as I turned off my communicator and drove off.
(First things first: this is the first time I've read a first-person story based on a character who has a name I respond to. That was trippy in a fun way!) Whew, this is a very strong start for a story! Right where you leave it, I can see the screen fading in to the title card of the series or movie, like this was the little five-minute hook in the prologue. While your choice of story and your characterization are strong points, I'll be honest and say that your dialogue and narration have room to grow. The strong parts: your lore seems perfectly canon like it could be slotted between X7 and X8 without any plot holes. Your Zero in particular seems true to canon form, and I could hear his X8 and MHX voice actor reading his dialogue even. He seemed a bit distant, but if you were trying to make him seem distracted or worried by carrying this bad news, then you hit that nail right on the head. On the note of character, I think you could have expanded it some to flex that talent you're already strong in. The scientist at the beginning, for instance: his time was brief but he's an important person to Zero (the first-person character) to be trusted pretty much as his secret doctor. Could he somehow be connected to Cain or Doppler or Light, or an ancestor of a MMZ resistance member? I'd even be interested to see how you create an entirely original full character. Now, the bad news: the weak parts. Some of your dialogue is choppy or rushed. Like at the beginning, Zero had an opportunity to react to the bad news, like "Darn/damn, I hoped I was wrong and this is difficult to absorb, so I'm going to be implied to be silent and lost in thought while you're presumably telling the finer details of my diagnosis.", but instead he just goes right on with his action plan without any denial, rage, bargaining or depression. A few other things were weird, like it took me a few re-reads to figure out how "carrier" and "not-infected" can co-exist, but that's probably my fault; and how Zero used the phrase "hang out with X" when these guys are soldiers and anti-terrorist assassins, but on the other hand they do seem to be really close bros, so it's up for interpretation. Aside from that, people spend a lot of time saying each other's names several times in the same conversation. I, as a unique and English-speaking person with my own personality, tend to only ever say someone's name when greeting them or to get their attention. I don't know how effective it is (maybe I'll give you an opportunity to judge soon), but something I do when trying to make my dialogue (and narration) sound more real/natural/fluid is to read every line aloud, speaking with my mouth, as if I'm a cartoon voice actor playing every part, or LeVar Burton reading a story, and then refine it until it would sound like I'm just talking. So it seems to me like you're in a sweet spot of growth: the soft-skill aspects which are harder to hone (character, plot, etc) you seem to have fairly well, and the hard-skill aspects which can be honed (dialogue, format, conveyance) have room to grow with practice. I urge you to continue this, you're off to a strong start!
I know that this chapter is short but I feel bad that I haven't been posting much of anything for the past couple of months in any of my stories so here's what I currently have and I'll let you guys know when I update it Spoiler: Chapter 2 X Axl and I fought through the rest of the remaining Mavericks pretty easily. “Those maverick pieces of scrap couldn’t stand a chance against us,” cheered Axl. I looked around but didn’t see Zero anywhere and I looked towards Axl. “Hey, Axl, do you know where Zero is at?” I asked. “Uhh...I hadn’t seen him since he stopped the missiles from launching,” Axl replied. “Maybe he’s still back there.” We carefully picked our way back to the main control room, but Zero was nowhere to be found. I tried contacting him through the communicator, no response. Axl looked on the monitor. “Hey, X, you might want to look at this.” I walked over and saw some data about Sigma. “You don’t think that he went to go after him, do you?” asked Axl. I chose to not answer and got into contact with Alia. “Alia, have you gotten into contact with Zero since we started the mission?” “No, why?” replied Alia. “I haven’t been able to get into contact with him and we haven’t seen him since he stopped the launches.” “I’ll look into it, he couldn’t have gotten far.” “He also left some data about Sigma,” I said as I went towards the monitor. “I’m going to send you the data that we have right now.” There was a short pause. “Alright, we have it and I’ll have Douglas look over it when he gets the chance. We’ll also send a team over there to disarm the missiles and clean up, consider it mission complete.” “Thanks, but what about Zero? Shouldn’t we go looking for him now while we are over here?” “Your current mission is complete, so you can go after him if you want but another more pressing mission comes up, you are to abandon your search until the other mission is complete, is that understood?” “...Yes, sir…” I turned towards Axel. “Are you coming with me?” “It isn’t like we’ve got anything better to do, besides that Zero is our friend and he may need our help. Cause you know him to be the one that likes to do things on his own and not ask for help.” “But he usually doesn’t just run off on his own without at least telling us where he’s going.” “Well, what are we waiting for? Since we have the time now, we can go after him while he’s close,” said Axl with enthusiasm. “Agreed, let’s go,” I replied as we headed out.