Baronel

of a common Reploid, that's what I am.

**Baronel** is an antagonist in Mega Man X: Unit 49 and one of the main bosses during second season. He is a valued and experienced mercenary shrouded in mystery, with an unique fighting style using the Amorphic Transformation. Due to his extreme precision tactics and success rate, Baronel considers himself infallible.

## **Appearance**

Baronel has the semblance of a basic mass produced reploid, and his visual strongly resembles X. In his normal form, his arms are equipped with Anti-beam Shields, and the B-Thrusters are attached to his shoulders, and their angles are adjustable. Due to his amorphic nature, Baronel can assume several distinct forms, although his color scheme stays the same.
After being shot in the left eye by Captain Elika during Parade, Baronel kept a small scar even after being repaired.

## **Personality**

Baronel is a quiet and cold specialist that speaks like a machine who receives tasks and report statuses. He manages to stay focused on his objective and takes every task to the end, no matter what is necessary to achieve the best possible results, while avoiding leaving any traces and witnesses alive. Only a difficult battle can make him display any kind of emotion, and  the astonishment in the face of his victims when seeing his true nature is the only thing that can make him feel pleasure.

Baronel seems to be an apathetic person who does not have an ideal of his own, since he is just an intermediate for Death (to whom he refers as an entity) to take unlucky people to the other side and also a tool for his hirers, who mostly pay him for fulfilling selfish tasks, like thefts and executions. For the first time, he could serve a master that aimed a greater good not for himself, but for all Reploids.

## **Abilities**

Baronel has extremely quick reflexes and a capacity of thinking in the best outcomes possible in a fraction of a second, allowing him to make turnarounds even in the most disadvantageous scenarios.

Baronel is an *Altered New Generation Reploid* who is able to modify his own DNA program to make any tool or weapon that is required in the moment through the *Local A-Trans*, which also repairs parts whenever he morphs. His body was able to resist many bullets from Captain Elika, Ride Armor pistomatic punches, buster shots and attacks from Zero's saber before showing signs of being damaged.

### **Known Transformations**

* **Normal form**: Baronel fights with his bare hands in this form.
* **Dart Ejector**: Baronel takes off his mask and extends his head, turning his "mouth" into a dart shooter that can fire up to nine projectiles per row.
* **Triple Cannon**: Baronel's B-Thrusters and his chest morph into three fire cannons.
* **Rotating Spike Torpedo**: Baronel's feet merge into a spike shape, while the rest of his body parts align to turn him into a kind of rotating torpedo. It is his fastest form.
* **Fire Gunblades**: Baronel detaches the B-Thrusters from his shoulders and merge them with his arms, then morphing into a kind of fire gunblade, which can create flame blades that can be amplified to work as a flamethrower or be expelled as projectiles.
* **Exhaustion Flamethrower**: Baronel morphs his entire body to become a large fire cannon that can exhaust his entire fuel in a single *Overdrive* attack.
* **Sarcophagus**: An improvisation form that wraps his target and becomes a tight sarcophagus with locks that prevent any kind of movement inside, while squashing them to death.

## **History**

### **Origins**

Nothing is known about how Baronel came into being. The several hypothesis about his origins can be summarized in these two cases:

* Baronel was created as a mass produced civillian Reploid that looked like his current normal form and turned Maverick at some point, then he heavily modified himself with Amorphic Matter, becoming an *Altered New Generation Reploid*.
* Baronel was created as an *Altered New Generation Reploid* since the beginning by an unknown person, being them a human, Reploid or Maverick. He could have been created with the purpose of being a mercenary since the beginning or turned Maverick later.

At some point in an unknown time, Baronel started working as a mercenary and was hired for several stealing and assassination missions, although officially he is suspected of being involved only in seven cases.

### **Neo Maverick Army**

Around the 2190s, Saturn met Baronel and hired him to the Neo Maverick Army. Baronel was actually convinced by Saturn's ideals and plans, believing that his work would have a greater meaning for the first time. He seems to be the only Neo Maverick who had any contact with the Mysterious Man, who is aware of the Maverick Virus inside Zero's body and tasked Baronel of capturing him, with the justification that he is a key to end the Maverick Wars.

### **Parade**

Baronel appears briefly in Parade, kicking and dragging Zero to the skies with his Rotating Spike Torpedo before the Hunter could hit Saturn, finishing his move by making a charged shot from X hit Zero. After this, he is hit by several bullets from Captain Elika and loses his left eye. Shortly after, Saturn opens a green energy portal and escapes with Baronel.

### **Fanfare Operations**

Baronel is seen inside Arashiha's barracks during One Step Ahead listening to Kerbekeros' instructions about the *Fanfare Operations*. In the same day, he is sent to Earth Army's Hangar 3 along with Arang to steal the Blue Moon and Red Sun Super Ride Armors. Although they managed to destroy most of the security forces, a mechaniloid guardian called *The Hound*began chasing the two. Arang distracted the guardian while Baronel stole the Red Sun, but shortly after he was distracted by the unexpected presence of the Maverick Hunters and was brutally destroyed. Baronel could not arrive in time to protect his partner, but he managed to destroy The Hound with a massive missile barrage.

Baronel quickly noticed it was a good opportunity to capture Zero, but first he had to eliminate the nuisances from the battlefield, Encore and Red Thunder, who have been asked by Zero to get the Blue Moon in order to stand a chance against the enemy. Zero compared Baronel to Vile, but Baronel considered him a weakling for dying five times and failing in the end. In a single try, Baronel would succeed. Baronel also told Zero about the reason a high bounty was put on his head by the Mysterious Man and noticed Zero could only think about using the "demon" inside him to destruction. Although Zero managed to immobilize Red Sun's legs, he was still knocked out by a grenade. Since Zero needed to be kept alive, Baronel would only hit him as long as he insisted on fighting.

As soon as Encore returned with the Blue Moon, Baronel used a tactic of keeping the trio in a single side of the corridor and flocking them into the smallest possible space, as well as using moves that were only distractions before launching the real strikes. Although the battle was in a stalemate, Baronel launched one *RS Meteor* and exploded the opening in the roof to allow the rescue ship retrieve the Ride Armor. Before he could launch the second missile, Red Thunder used his *Crimson Pulse* to disable everything around. Baronel could recover in less than a minute and begin fighting the Maverick Hunters with his own weapons. Baronel eventually discovered about Encore's ability to absorb energy and realized he could not win a battle against them, so he manipulated the fight to an outcome that would at least allow him to escape with Zero.

After a failed *BM Ray* shot from Red Thunder, the Red Sun was destroyed, but Zero took critical damage. Baronel unleashed his *Overdrive* ability to knock out the Hunters and kidnap Zero. Encore went after Baronel and forced him to stay behind while the airship took Zero away, but that got him trapped in Baronel's *Sarcophagus* form. Red Thunder did a trick to knock Zero off from the platform, ruining Baronel's plan. At the same time, Encore figured a way to kill Baronel from the inside and pierced his head with the S-Bladester. At the moment of his death, Baronel was desperate and could not believe he had failed.