Eurasia Colony

Months after Repliforce had been dissolved and the fighting with them having ended, the Earth entered a time of relative peace. Though there was a lot to do in order to restore everything. During the final conflict between Repliforce and the Maverick Hunters numerous orbital colonies had been damaged when Repliforce's final weapon exploded. As such crews of workers had set about to rebuild the various satellites and colonies. They had begun work on most of them, except the Eurasia colony.

The Eurasia colony had sustained more damage than the others, and due to it's age, so a massive rework was planned. However when they went to begin work they discovered that they had been locked out and were unable to begin repairs. Then to make matters worse the mercenary who seized control altered the gravity control systems and caused the colony to begin to fall back to Earth. The colony was set to collide with Earth in only 16 hours.

To further complicate things, cases of reploids infected with the Sigma virus increased dramatically (including cases within the Hunters themselves) as Sigma made his presence known and was spreading his viral influence all over.

Signas ordered that the Maverick Hunters use the old Enigma cannon to shoot the colony down as it was falling. Unfortunately the cannon was in need of several parts and a considerable amount of work. Dispatching a large portion of Hunter forces to aid in the repair of the cannon, Signas sent X and Zero off to recover necessary parts.

X and Zero managed to recover the necessary parts in only 4 hours. And the crew managed to install the parts in another hour given the number of workers available. They quickly prepped the weapon to fire, charging it up and taking careful aim… Knowing that they might not get another shot.

With one might blast, the beam cut through the sky and struck the Eurasia colony. However it didn't manage to destroy it. The old weapon failed before it could fire a full shot. In the process the Enigma also blew most of the necessary components meaning that it would be impossible to take another shot (like they had feared).

Fortunately Signas had begun a contingency plan just in case. He had begun preparing a space shuttle with an explosive payload to destroy the rest of the colony (using the other part of his forces to start preparing it). However like with the Enigma cannon, the space shuttle needed several parts. Parts that more mavericks had taken up guarding to prevent X and Zero from obtaining.

Thankfully the Enigma cannon's blast had bought them a bit more time though. Still X and Zero raced to collect the parts. They managed to collect them and get them installed in 6 hours.

Unfortunately another issue presented itself… The auto-pilot system of the shuttle was damaged, having been infected with the Maverick Virus. With time running out and not enough time/parts to fully repair the auto pilot hunters were forced to pilot the shuttle manually. Given that the Sigma virus outbreak had infected a portion of Hunters and many hunters were off doing containment on Mavericks that were running loose, there was only one Hunter capable of piloting the shuttle… Zero.

Zero launched the shuttle into the Colony and at the last second his escape pod shot out from his shuttle. A massive explosion ripped through the sky as the shuttle exploded and managed to break the colony apart. Unfortunately it was not enough to completely destroy the colony as intended. But it managed to break it up enough so that many parts burned up on re-entry. Though a massive section still crashed down into one section and caused a significant amount of damage to the ecosystem.

After a tense period, Zero managed to make contact over the comm lines to let HQ know he survived and where to pick him up.

As the Hunters were preparing to deal with the remainder of the maverick forces (and to get clean up crews organized)… The remainder of the colony that had fallen to Earth unleashed a surprise. It had been loaded down with a new type of virus (dubbed the Colony virus) that quickly merged with the Sigma virus that had been spread around previously. The result was a new virus… It appeared bearing a striking resemblance to Zero.

X and Zero quickly rushed to Area Zero to investigate the sudden appearance of the new virus and were startled to find that when Zero absorbed the virus it made him stronger.

As they ventured deeper into the crash site, X eventually turned to Zero and asked him to return to Hunter HQ to get checked out because the virus has drastically increased his power. Zero refused to go back to HQ just yet (stating the mission wasn't over yet). But Lifesavor ordered that X stop Zero from proceeding before it was too late. This forced X and Zero to fight.

As the fight neared the end, Sigma leaped in to land the final strike on X. But Zero pushed X aside, causing Sigma's attack to miss X, and then countered Sigma with a blast from his own buster. The blast managed to strike Sigma and forced him to retreat. Though Zero collapsed in exhaustion in the process. X waited a while for Zero to recover before both going to fight Sigma.

Together they pushed on to fight Sigma. Before the fight began, Sigma revealed that his whole plan was to infect Zero with the Sigma virus to re-awaken him to his true power. He had heard from an old man that doing so would give Zero tremendous power to fulfill his original purpose… To kill X. But that the Sigma virus alone was not enough to reawaken Zero's power. So eh had created the colony virus to merge with the Sigma virus to amplify it to restore Zero's true power.

After a long and difficult battle they managed to defeat Sigma. Though before Sigma was killed, he engaged a self-destruct sequence with the intention to kill both of them in one final blast. The blast caught Zero who had shielded X. Zero's lower body and left arm was torn off in the process. As X pleaded for his friend not to die, Sigma's disembodied head charged up one final blast which caught both X and Zero in the chest. The damage caused Zero to awaken long enough to retaliate and fire a single burst from his right arm's buster. His blast caused Sigma's head to explode, killing him.

As X lay dying, the capsule containing Dr. Light's hologram arrived just in time. It spoke to him, telling him to relax and not to worry. The capsule managed to repair X's body and a lot of Zero's body (though not all). When X awoke, Zero was no where to be found. Only his saber was left which X took back with him.