By Erico

FOREWORD

One year ago(Summer of 2000), I began work on a story whose short name was AUF. Long name, An Uncertain Future. I did this because I realized NO ONE had ever done a sound, solid Fanfiction Piece novelizing the Mega Man X series. Not even one game. AUF did that in spades from all the positive feedback I've seen it get.

But there was also a request by many of these voices, one I was wary to try and fill. That request was for a Sequel. A continuance of X's saga for the other X games.

It came to me in a dream, inside of a dozy REM fog that usually holds only gibberish. But this was different. Like a bolt from the blue, a clear vision stood before my dreaming mind of what could be done.

This dream was how I would go about retelling the game of X2 in a solid storyline. Certain aspects fell into the place the following morning when I began to tally the numbers.

The place.

The time.

The emotions.

And so within the timespan of a day, three grape sodas, and a long session of listening to MP3s and running over the memorized stage maps of X2 in my head, I had completed the rough outline for this next tale.

Island of Awakening.

Six months after X defeated Sigma in the horrific First Maverick Uprising, his scattered followers still cause trouble for the Hunters. Knowing that they lack a true leader to give unity to them makes it easier for the Hunters…

But harder to track the Mavericks down at the same time.

The X that lived before the First Uprising is gone, the exterior temperament melted away in the fire of battle and the loss of his friends.

The loss of Zero especially still weighs heavy on X's mind. Heavy because Zero killed himself to save X. A life debt that X can never repay to his Crimson Friend.

But he goes on. Angry at himself, angrier at the Mavericks, but with an edge of sorrow buried deeply within, X leads the Hunters as their head Commander. Second only to Cain in superiority.

But what X does not realize…

Is that soon, something within him…and something in the world as well…will stir from their comas.

Something that will be resuscitated only by the power…

Hidden within the Island of Awakening.