"You should take a break," the human made wizard named Acid said to a hardworking Ace, who was typing into a computer with a frenzy that the wizard had rarely seen. "You've been working non-stop for nearly three days now and it cannot be good for you health."
"Forget about my health. I'm the fool that tore his body apart every time I merged with you to become Acid Ace," Ace smirked back before he brought up a file, scanning over it quickly before he went back to his work. "And this is worth the exhaustion and a few nights without sleep."
"Then what about your wife?" Acid reminded Ace, who sighed before he glanced to the side of his desk at a picture. It was of Ace, a woman named Tia, and her little brother Jack, all standing around the front of WAZA. "You haven't been home in a week. And I've been the one to take all of her calls for you. She's worried about you."
"Thank you for that, Acid, but with the apparent death of Megaman, I had to be working around the clock to keep up with what the Maestro has been doing," Ace replied with a tired sigh, before he held out an instructional pad to Acid. "And now that we know Geo and Mega did survive their fight with Maestro, we can move into the next problem that has popped up. Bud and his friends will be here soon, so can you go get Geo and the others before you drop that off?"
Acid let out a sigh before he floated out of the room, leaving Ace alone with his work. He exited the room to find Geo, Sonia and their wizards sitting outside of the room. Geo looked tired, Sonia had a horrendous black eye, and the two wizards looked to be slightly on edge. But what drew Acid's full attention was that a certain princess of the sun was missing.
"Where is Celestia?" he asked them.
"She's with her sister. Figured that she had been away for too long and wants to make sure that Luna's alright," Geo replied.
"I'd like to meet Luna. If she's as interesting as Celestia said she is, then she probably has some really cool stories," Sonia said before a deviant smile crossed her face. "Not to mention now that we have two Luna's we can totally mess with them by calling out their name when they're both in the room."
"Indeed. Ace is ready for you to go in."
Geo and Sonia nodded before they stood up and headed towards the door, leaving Acid alone with the other two wizards for a moment. "Stay close to those two," Acid instructed the pair. "Even if you managed to kill the Maestro, he has left quite a few presents for us to open."
"What do you mean?"
"Ace will explain everything for you. Now if you will excuse me."
Acid turned and floated off, getting a snarl from Mega before Lyra grabbed his arm and dragged him into Ace's room. They joined Geo and Sonia, who were both standing at attention while Ace typed away at his computer terminal. He glanced up to see that the four of them were there and he gave them a smile, clicking one last time before he stood up and walked over to the pair.
"Glad to see you're still with us, Geo," Ace said as he extended a hand to the kid, who grabbed Ace's hand and shook it with a large smile. "And glad to see that you could join us, Sonia. I know that with your life as a singer slash actress, it can be hard to find free time for anything."
"The world is in danger, so you know that I'll be there," Sonia said with determination, before she glanced up at the ceiling with a smile. "And the fight with Maestro totally trashed the studio that I was recording at. It will be quite a while before I can get back to work on my show."
"All the better for us. The Commandoes need every able body we can get," Ace replied before he heard the sound of feet running through the hallways outside the door. "And speaking of the Commandoes, I'm glad to see that the rest of them have decided to join us."
The door was practically torn off its hinges and three teenagers ran inside, all of them with tears running down their faces as they laid eyes on Geo. He had only just began to raise his hand to greet them before all three of the teens tackled him all at once, bringing down the hero of the earth and burying him beneath his crying friends.
"Nice...to see you guys...too," Geo wheezed out as their combined weight crushed him.
"We were so worried about you!" Luna cried out between her sobs, trying to get a hold on herself and failing miserably. "Scratch that, we all thought you were dead! Everyone thought that you were dead! Why didn't you tell us that you were alive?!"
"Part of...plan," Geo wheezed out as Bud finally managed to position himself so that he could crush Geo's ribs with his bear hug.
"I'm so sorry that I wasn't any help during the fight! But I promise that next time it will be different!" Bud sobbed as he tightened his grip, nearly squeezing the life out of Geo.
"Bud, there's a ninety percent chance that if you don't stop squeezing, Geo won't make it till next time!" Zack said in a muffled voice before he pulled his face out of Geo's shirt and glanced up at him with tears streaming down his eyes. "And there's a hundred percent chance that if you ever do anything like that again, we won't forgive you!"
It took about ten minutes for his friends to calm down to the point where they were able to stop crying, but it was hard for Ace to keep from laughing when he saw his commandoes all standing in a line with red faces and one of them looking like he was on the verge of moving on to the next world.
"Thank you all for joining me today," Ace said in a serious tone, taking full control of the room as he did so. The five teenagers and their wizards stood at attention, which almost made him crack up. "As all of you know, recently our world has come under attack from a monster known as the Maestro. A being of unspeakable power that treats human lives like pieces on a chessboard who sought to bring ruin to our world."
"But thanks to the warning of Celestia, along with her efforts alongside Megaman, they managed to either kill him or stop him for the time being. Either way, we owe the both of you a great deal of thanks," Ace said to Geo, who nodded before he got elbowed in the arm by Sonia. "But just because the Maestro is gone doesn't mean that what he was working on has vanished with him. And that include this."
Ace turned and pressed a button on the remote he was holding, bringing up an image upon the colossal television that rested behind his desk. The image was of a massive sphere that floated above a facility, with both Sonia and Geo recognizing the metal it was made of as the same metal the Maestro was made of.
"Whatever this is, it is the cause of the power and...EM outage, I guess, in the area in the southern part of our country," Ace informed the group with a bitter frown upon his face. "We've lost contact with all of the people near those areas and all of the agents we've sent in have gone silent. That includes...Solo."
All sets of eyes widened in shock at Ace's words, leaving the general to press a button and show an image of a dark clad warrior with spikey white hair and a wicked looking sword. "After the Maestro showed us what he was capable of, I sent in Solo to find out what was going on with that sphere."
"How'd you get him to do that? He hates to listen to anyone weaker than him," Luna reminded them.
"Who said I'm weaker than him?" Ace asked with a sly smile before he shrugged. "But we didn't fight. I told him that the sphere was made up of material from the continent of Mu and he race off in a frenzy. Since he hasn't contacted us or destroyed the sphere, either the Maestro got to him or something else has happened. Either way, we've lost contact with one of our strongest fighters and are still no closer to figuring out what that sphere is."
"That is his final weapon. That is what he used to kill our world." Every set of eyes in the room turned around to see two princesses standing in the doorway, one of them looking far more angry that the other, who simply looked tired. "It is a weapon that sucked all of the magic out of the very beings that lived in the land and used it to wipe out anything that had magic within it. It is a symbol of his power."
"Well, thank you for answering the what and why. Now I need to ask you how the heck can we destroy it?" Ace asked, but Celestia shook her head with a bitter look on her face.
"My sister and I did everything we could, along with the Ambassadors, but we couldn't even scratch it. Our power, the power to move the sun and moon, wasn't able to phase his creation. I have no idea how to destroy it."
"I see. Luna, any ideas?" Ace asked as he glanced at the princess, but before she could speak the human girl named Luna stepped forward.
"Well, as Geo now has a brand new form that was able to destroy the Maestro, yes, I saw the battle on the news, it only makes sense that his form would be able to destroy anything that was built by him," she offered with a proud smile on her face, but her face fell when Ace chuckled and shook his head.
"Thank you Luna, but I was speaking to Princess Luna, Celestia's sister."
"And so it begins," Sonia whispered to Geo, who smiled in reply.
"Oh...okay," Luna said as she stepped back with a wounded look on her face, but no one noticed as the princess of the moon stepped forward with a stern look.
"I agree with my sister when she said that none of our magic was able to harm it. However, at the time our world was under attack and we were not able to devote all of our efforts to bringing them down," she explained, but before she could continue Ace held up a hand.
"Them? As in, more than one?" he asked, swearing under his breath when Luna nodded. He punched in a number on his hunter and turned so that the others couldn't see who he was talking to. "I need every agent and wizard we've got to spare on the lookout for anymore of those spheres like the one that showed up in the south. And if you find one, do not get close to it. Just report it. I'm sorry Princess, what were you saying?" Ace apologized as he turned back around.
"As I was saying, we were also dealing with the Maestro and his attack upon our world. So my sister and I only really assaulted the outer shell of the sphere, never trying any other tactics. And when it was clear that we could not harm it, we...focused all of our efforts to kill the Maestro. It wasn't until after he activated them that we learned that they were the real threat all along," she said as she hung her head in shame.
"I think I get what Luna is saying. Both of them," Geo cut in when Luna didn't speak any further. "With both the Maestro out of the way and with my new form, we might be able to find a way to destroy these things. It's clear that the metal is the same as what the Maestro was made of, meaning that the solar blade that Celestia and I can use should be able to cut through it."
"And even if that doesn't work, with the Maestro out of the way for the moment we might be able to find a way inside of it, maybe even find out how he built something like that," Zack added as he adjusted his glasses, before his wizard appeared next to him.
"Statistically Zack, it would be further in our interest to simply destroy the machine instead of risking its activation," Pedia, the wizard with an open book on the top of his head, suggested.
"Pre...cisely," Luna agreed before she let out a weal groan and started to fall over. Celestia moved like a blur and caught her sister with her shoulder, gently pushing Luna back to her hooves.
"You have been up for too long. You still haven't recovered from the wounds that the Maestro gave you," Celestia reminded her sister while glancing at her sisters burned side and missing wing. "You need to go back to your room and rest."
"I do not wish to rest, sister. I want vengeance upon the monster that took our world, our home...my wing from me," Luna snarled, but her quick flare of rage was extinguished by exhaustion and she leaned against her sister for a moment. "But I am...not opposed...to a quick rest."
"I will take my sister back to her room. As for the rest of you, please inform me of any plan or attack that you have in mind before you put it into motion," Celestia asked the humans. "I am still worried. Like there is something else that we are missing. Something important."
As Celestia took her sister and left the room, Ace leaned against his desk and lowered his head. He stayed like that for a moment, lost in thought, before he lifted his head once more and took in the group of teenagers that were awaiting his order.
"I don't have anything else for you right now," he said to them with a shrug of his shoulders. "Right now I'm going to go meet with Doctor Goodall and my superiors and try to come up with a plan of attack...and then I think I'm going to call me wife and see how she's doing. You're all dismissed for the time being. Try to have some fun and catch up. You've all spent the past week thinking one of you was dead while that one fought for his life. You guys need a break."
"He's right, you have all been pushing yourselves too hard. Especially you, Geo," Luna agreed with Ace as they left his office, the teenage girl giving Geo a look of concern. "And are you sure that you've recovered from your fight with Maestro at the mall? Because after what he did to you..."
"Don't worry, Sonia and Celestia patched me up perfectly," Geo comforted her with a nod to Sonia, who gave him two thumbs up in reply despite her eye. Luna flashed Sonia a grateful smile before the group noticed that Acid was floating towards them once more. "What's the matter, Acid? Did the Maestro show up again?
"No, but you do have a visitor, Geo. Two of them to be precise," Acid said. "Your parents."