This is why I'm not allowed to write RP samples.

[unto_infinity]

Prompt: madness.

Zero was intimately acquainted with madness, but he could scarcely remember it. The memories were there, he knew, but they were scattered and fragmented to almost unrecognisable condition between his first sealing and when he awoke after being recovered by the Maverick Hunters the first time. Maybe that was a kind of madness in and of itself.

He'd also seen it from the other end of the looking glass, and that was where he'd really gotten to know it.

Sigma was the epitome of madness, if you asked him. Lumine followed shortly behind, but what made him more unsettling than Sigma was that even Zero wasn't sure if Lumine had been in control of himself or if he'd been manipulated by the Virus. His aims were like Sigma's, the same twisted ideal that couldn't come to pass the way they wanted--or how the Virus wanted.

But was the Virus itself madness?

Or did the Virus simply cause such corruption in core reploid programming that it thereby drove them mad, making it the catalyst instead? That seemed more likely, that it was just like any computer virus (only several times worse, he thought with a bitter smirk; with a computer virus, at least it was easier to get a handle on what to do about it).

Zero settled back on his berth, arms folded behind his head, synthetic hair pooling at the head of the surface and spilling over the edges.

The Virus.

Blue eyes narrowed as optical lenses bloomed wide. Rage.

He benefited from the damn thing while the rest of the world crumbled under it. Even X suffered if it fought to invade, but at least he could hold his own against it. Zero didn't know what he'd do if the thing ever adapted and infected his partner. Aside from the only possible thing he could do.

Killing X... That really would be madness. That would be the thing that finally drove Zero off the deep end, he figured. Not the Virus--he could handle the Virus, could see through it, had seen through it. Something like this would be on an entirely different level. It wasn't as though X was his last tether to caring about the world; no, he loved the world they lived in, even if it was messed up and needed one Hell of a paint job by this point. He loved life. He loved watching life bloom and it warmed his heart to see people and reploids overcoming the hardships they faced. He loved working with them, helping them even if he never met them, fought to protect them, ached when he lost them.

Maybe that, too, was a kind of madness. But it was all a lesson X and Iris both had taught him. He fought for them, too. For Iris' memory, and the dream she and X both had of a world without the need for all the violence.

And maybe the thought that once they finally achieved that, he'd seal himself away--maybe that was madness, too.

Zero was connected to the Virus--he knew that. Removing that component might keep the world from being exposed to it again, and one less source of violence... The world had seen enough violence. The world X sought, the world Iris had dreamt of... That world wouldn't need him. And that he smiled at the thought...

Maybe that was madness.

Zero was intimately acquainted with madness, if that was true. He didn't mind.