Parade

**Parade** is the fourth chapter of Mega Man X: Unit 49's Season 1.

The chapter starts with two reploids talking somewhere in a city when a screen shows the *7 News*, presented by the reporter reploid Akira. Suddenly, Mavericks invade the studio and the transmission is stopped. Back in the city, two cars are running, apparently fleeing from Saturn's large sound truck. The Mavericks who attacked the TV studio are actually Saturn's subordinates, and with a cameraman Guardroid, he starts his speech.
Saturn reveals the name of his criminal organization: the Neo Maverick Army. He claims to be recruiting reploids who are tired of being "undeservedly" labelled as Irregulars (Mavericks), and he see this term as a synonym of "free". The N.M.'s primary objective is destroying the "human dictatorship" and their protectors. Saturn seems to not care if his future soldiers don't agree with one or many of his ideals, since that's the apparent purpose of this movement.

The 49th Unit is imediatelly sent to catch Saturn, but it was a trap. Zero tries to hit the vulnerable Saturn but is stopped by a spinning missile kick of the arriving reploid. Saturn enters his car's cabin and takes a mirror, somehow another reploid comes out of it, stopping Blue Knight who tried to attack the car.
The missile-reploid makes Zero be hit by X's shot, but is strafed by Elika's buster right after. Elika asks if Saturn really thought this "parade" would intimidate anyone. The Neo Maverick leader replies "the real parade starts now", a huge wave of Mavericks come from the street, explaining why those cars were running before. Saturn says to Kran lead the parade and withdraws with his minion through his portal technique.

Eventually, the Hunters manage to stop the Maverick wave, and the large mechaniloids start to charge their cannons, who'll probably obliterate everything in the beam's way. Again, the Hunters stop the Mavericks by aiming their cannons, as Platina suggested, though Zero and Snacman used their sabers. For being to close, they're hit by the mech's explosion and the energy beams expelled by them, Snacman is pierced in the chest. Right after this, a new maverick wave appears.
Right after this, a reploid calling himself as *Thunder God/Raijin*reaches the battlefield and releases a powerful electrical wave in the middle of the Maverick Hunters, throwing all of them away and knocking out Platina, *Raijin'*s own armor couldn't bear so much energy being released at once and fried, thus making it impossible further attacks from his part.

Suddenly, the Bat-like reploid joins the scene and express his admiration by lady Platina, who's unconscious in the ground and rapidly tries to kidnap her. Blue Knight quickly reacted and showed to already have a bond with Shad, jumping on him and dragging him away with his red boosters while Nora was withdrawing Platina. Shad got rid of Blue Knight and continued to fly in Platina's direction, his obsession for her seemed so strong that he didn't even realized that she was being teleported, and ends up diving the road, thus taking a charged shot from X. *Raijin*says Shad is a good distraction for being an idiot while jumps on his floating ship, and Zero instantly realizes six more of the large mechaniloids far away from there, almost finishing to charge their cannons.

The Maverick Hunters are forced to withdraw, but Captain Elika decides to stay and risk his life to not leave the battlefield empty-handed. The mechaniloids shot their devastating lasers and Kran gets oddly distracted and amazed with the "beautiful show of lights", while Elika jumps on *Raijin's* ship. With his weapons fried, *Raijin* couldn't make anything better than call Kran's name, though he didn't even seemed to make much effort. Elika suicidally jumps in Kran, kicking him into the lasers and returning to the ship, but it was too far away. Elika falls in the abyss separating the two roads, and waits Nora to finish the tracking of Kran, and finally returns to the base.

Saturn is seem celebrating in his hideout accompained of a mysterious man with shining green eyes, who's not so happy. He complains about Saturn wasting 9 of their best weapons and having one of his men tracked for nothing, making Saturn angry. Saturn explains that this pointless and dramatical situation was just part of the propaganda, showing the Maverick Hunters having their second loss in less than a week, live in one of the biggest TV stations, would make the news spread through the world in a very short time. He continues saying he is an expert in

robot architeture and development due to his past in RaDoRB and afterwards, and had been selling reploid technology and weapons to the black market, making him well known in the deepest part of the society.

He mentions Sigma as a "mate" of the mysterious man, and says he never seemed symphatized with criminal organizations, so it was just a matter of time until they joined forces with the Neo Maverick Army. Axl is shown inside of a capsule, being monitored by engineer reploids. An anomaly is detected, and it seems the shard inside of Axl's crystal is corrupting and exchanging his DNA, and Saturn looks stunned.