Because when I still haven't gotten a confirmation to the email I gave Ruby, I'm reposting the stuff here with the needed blab. Go delete the other one..?

Name: the Keet

E-mail Address: tonya_angelwings@hotmail.com

Website: None

Name of Image: Requiem

Description of Image: Because I am feeling long-winded and pretentious (YEY), this will probably be long.
At first I wanted to do a fight scene. After all, that was what the game was about, right? Fighting stuff. It's what you play it for, it's what you do, right?

Then I wondered: then what would make it different from any other fighting game? Why should Capcom have made the notion of reploids at all? They were doing fine with robots. And when will my rhetorical questions stop?

So what does make robots and reploids different? You guys all know this: reploids can think for themselves, feel, learn, choose, etc. They're almost human - and yet they're not. Therein lies their tragedy. Anything can fight: humans, robots, reploids, whatever. But it's not the battle between a reploid and another that has meaning; it's the all-too human emotions in an inhuman being that drives them to fight and sacrifice and kill. And it's not the fighting itself that defines them: it's what comes before, after, and during the peacetime.

So that's why I decided to draw this scene. It's not actually one in the game - heck, you don't even know if it happened at all. But it's more than probable - like an omake! I love omakes.

After Elipzo's been defeated and cyber-elf-ed, and after the Dark Elf mysteriously went on her way, Zero was left to his thoughts. You don't see what happens after to our little red reploid. So did (or rather, would) our favourite little green reploid leave Zero and whole-heartedly trust the guy to save Master X? Come on, now. That room just blew up in massive balls of fire as Elpizo destroyed X's body, and Harpuia isn't one to ditch his duties to X and the humans. Sure, he's still injured from the last time he fought Zero (not his fault, he was possessed), but that's not stopping him from checking out what happened and protecting his Master. But his Master blew up, Elpizo was gone, and the Elves escaped. It's not a very happy ending.

It doesn't matter what side you're on in a war; when the battle's over, we all have casualties, and both sides will mourn. There are no sides in grieving. Harpuia mourns the loss of X - his master and a symbol of hope for the humans he cares for, and Zero mourns for a friend who can never rejoin him as anything more than a spirit, and even Elpizo, who had only been trying to do good for the Resistance, and became misguided on the way.

Done with prismacolours, and took a bloody long time to do.

I think I?m done now. Whew, I went and wrote a honkin' essay. Then again, it's better than just putting 'Zero and Harpuia are sad that X and Elpizo are gone," isn't it?

Notes: The break you take between possessed!Harpuia stage and evil!Elpizo stage has been omitted, or greatly shortened. Take your pick. It's just there for the player to recuperate, but since time was of the essence at this point of the game, Zero probably didn't stay for long. Thus the reason why Harpuia's still badly injured - not that much time to heal.

You can still see bits of X, too. Why? Because even after an explosion like that, really, the blue-boy's body is more durable than that. After all, every boss Zero fights blows up in a massive explosion, but they're still rebuilt in time for him to fight AGAIN in the final stages. And the bits of X are based on (that I think is) his design in MMX Command Mission, as I believe he's got a new look. Also: Zero and Harpuia are not wearing helmets, as I thought that going bare-headed for the two of them would be a lot less impersonal.

~the Keet