Intervention (response to forest minuet's drabble challenge)
I actually got a couple of different ideas based on the idea of "X, Axl and intervention", but this was the one that popped into my head first. I'll probably write the second one as well.
This is a little odd, but I hope you guys all enjoy it anyway. :)
"... and X hasn't slept in three days, Zero! Three days!"
Even with the flat static of a long-distance radio connection and thousands of miles between them, Axl could nearly feel Zero's wince.
The red Reploid was currently stuck in a holding pattern with several other Hunters in Bangladesh; they'd been assigned to flush out a Maverick nest and been caught by a flash flood. Not only had their encampment and the Maverick's base been obliterated, but the entire area for a radius of hundreds of miles was in ruins. Human damage was high, and the Federation had ordered the entrenched Hunters to assist in rescue and recovery efforts. Axl had contacted Zero to keep in touch, and was currently relaying his worries about X.
"Figures this all hits while Signas's in for upgrades... Shit. Okay. Just talking to X is useless when he gets like this, so... it's up to you. You have my permission to do whatever it takes to get X shut down. Official, even."
Axl's grin spread from ear to ear. "Seriously? Sanctioned action?"
Zero laughed across the planet in Axl's ear. "You heard me the first time. I'm counting on you... ah, shit. Gotta run, the chopper just arrived with the emergency rations. Don't call me back until you've got X locked in his recharger."
"Anything, huh..." Axl murmured aloud, scratching his cheek as Zero broke contact.
An idea rapidly blossomed, and he nodded to himself.
"Okay, time for Operation Intervention."
- - -
Axl caught the elevator to the 5th floor, where X's 17th Unit worked and recharged.
Axl grinned, fingers linked behind his back, as he noted the fresh coat of sunny yellow paint and orange patterned carpet that lined the floor.
The 17th were on the whole much like their leader, stoic and purposeful- but the carpet in this section had been a mess forever, stomped flat and threadbare, and the walls had desperately needed repainting for years. Nobody from the 17th had ever found the time or energy to redo it, so Axl had finally simply taken it on himself to quietly rally Hunters from the other Units together.
They'd snuck in and redone the interiors of the hall and common areas while the 17th were on manuevers- a driveby painting, as Axl'd called it at the time.
X, stumbling back into the halls weary from combat, had been so pleased at the sight he'd nearly broken down crying.
Warmed by the recollection, Axl strolled casually into the 17th's common and lifted a hand in greeting; Winger and Stryper, twin hawk-like Reploids, were playing chess and scowling at each other with every move, while the munitions expert Scorpio was draped in a heavy chair eagerly scanning the new electronic edition of Jane's.
"Hey guys," Axl smiled, nodding at the collective greetings he received in turn. He kept on grinning as he asked lightly, "So... Where's X holed up right now?"
There was a collective groan from all three; Scorpio actually pressed his book over his face and whimpered. They loved their leader dearly, but hated that X asked so little for himself, and worried constantly about how much he was asked to do...
"Tactics," Winger sighed. "Last I saw."
"Nuh-uh," countered Stryper, who took the opportunity of his friend's distraction to reach out and deftly capture Winger's left bishop. "Got summoned out of our debriefing there to go help in ER. 8th got shredded in Beirut."
Axl frowned; he had friends in the Heavy Armored and determined he'd check in with them later. But one mission at a time; he was worried most of all about X right now. "Seriously? With no sleep? He's gonna kill somebody!" Or himself, more like. He turned to go. "Thanks for the news, guys! I gotta go drag him out of there."
Stryper nodded. "Good luck. Let us know if you need some extra firepower."
Axl giggled. "Nah, I totally have this covered."
- - -
Riding the elevator toward the ground floor and tuning out the giggling of two junior navi's he shared the car with, Axl crossed his arms and continued to plot. Gotta gain the higher ground.
Well, that was going to be tough, considering. X was probably planning to remain in ER until he was about to lose consciousness from critical battery failure- in which case, he'd just grab an emergency field charger, strap it to his arm with duct tape and get right back in it again, knowing him. Axl rolled his eyes.
Okay, who wouldn't be noticed milling around the ER in an emergency? Well, a Lifesaver'd be perfect, but...
After the elevator came to a stop and the giggly Navis dispersed, Axl strolled lightly down the hall and turned a corner.
One of the Lifesavers -he was never sure if it was the real guy or one of his many drones- was moving toward him. Aha, there we go. Axl stifled a giggle and slid toward him.
With a trained assassin's ease he fluidly clamped onto the Lifesaver - luckily, a drone - and held it still against his body in the middle of the hall. "Sorry, sorry, sorry! I just really, really need to borrow your DNA for a bit...! Promise, " he grinned in the struggling drone's ear, "... you won't even feel it."
Anyone passing near the hall might have seen a brief and piercing flare of white light, and heard Axl's soft giggling.
A moment later, the Lifesaver steered his plodding, heavy frame toward the medical wing and passed through the open double doors. Slowly but surely, he advanced on a familiar blue helmeted shape visible moving here and there amongst the chaos.
- - -
X stepped over quickly and pointed into the opened chest cavity of a small female Hunter from the 8th. Her diagnostic panels were split open several ways, like a strange metal flower. X was weary enough to find an odd, dream-like beauty in it... and then quickly rallied himself to scan her again. "... damn, she's losing PPSI. Close that air line with a Venson clamp!"
Several Lifesavers and a few volunteer Hunters with medical triage training were weaving in and out around X, the whole medlab a hive of flowing motion, chaos-with-intent. X moved and breathed, swaying now and then. For entire nanoseconds at a time, his mind was checking out, casting a weird haze of unreality to everything around him, leaving him bemused. The completely rational part of him knew this was dangerous, but he felt the burden of filling in for command so deeply. These were his people, his responsibility, every last one of them... No, he refused to give in to his weariness while he had power to move.
His hands were covered in oil and blue and orange coolant. He left a smear across his forehead when he brushed absent-mindedly at his face. "Okay. Now, reroute the secondary compressor to the converter matrix. Should bring her internal pressure back up."
"Uhm, right." Disert, of the 13th, hastily obeyed these orders, then glanced up as the blue Reploid slid off to check another patient. He'd heard the stories, sure. Every Hunter in the Tower had some crazy story about X, it seemed- but to actually be working side by side with the legend, and to realize that X could still be that coherent with only 3% of his energy remaining...
X was so deeply immersed in the flow that it didn't seem at all strange when a Lifesaver hooked into the subtle dance of bodies and manuevered to step-step-dodge right beside him.
It didn't even seem strange to X when the Lifesaver caught him by the elbow, murmured that they needed to talk and nudged him gently off to the side, circling through the flow to its outer edge and then off toward the door, apart from the others. X nodded, figuring that he was about to get a lecture about overextending his systems; he had 30 reasonable arguments to counter any point already cued up in his subprocessors.
He was not at all prepared to feel the unreasonable blunt end of a familiar pistol brushing his waist and to hear Axl's distinct giggle sneaking out of the Lifesaver's mouth. X looked down in stunned surprise, up to see a familiar flash of green eyes... "... wha?"
"Bang bang," Axl whispered in his own voice, and silently shot X twice in the abdomen.
- - -
The first shot had been raw energy- easily transferable, easily absorbable emergency power to flood the blue legend's starved frame- the second was a disrupter pulse, to put X offline so he wouldn't attempt to try and use that power. Axl caught X as he slumped forward against the Lifesaver's broad frame, and cradled him; he was surprised to note that his hands were shaking now, even though he knew that he hadn't actually -hurt- his friend in any serious way.
After Axl had spent a precious second calming down and pondering how to get X back to his room unseen, he realized the frame he was borrowing at the moment provided for its own excuse. Not like anyone never sees Lifesaver dragging X by the hair back to his room or anything...! At that, Axl grinned, hefted X's scant 150 pounds over his shoulder, and walked away with a smile.
Sometimes stealth meant being right out in the open.
- - -
As Axl had guessed, there was little public outcry- a knowing laugh and look or three from some of the older Hunters, startled stares from the younger ones, a bit of whispering and gossip. Nothing too serious.
"...Hnn, there we go, X... Home in bed, safe and sound." Axl sighed, easing the unconscious blue Hunter into his recharge unit and releasing his own transformation. He activated the unit, set it to suppress all incoming signals, and watched X's smudged face smooth over, his breathing deepening as the recharger assumed partial control of his body.
Still, even in deep sleep, X had a melancholy look that made Axl feel terribly guilty. He squirmed and murmured, "C'mon, X... it was for your own good! And.. And Zero told me to do it. He said it was okay!"
Axl bit his lower lip, gazing at the ancient Reploid. "It's just... you work too hard. Everybody knows it, but nobody ever does anything about it... okay, I guess Zero does sometimes, but he's not here, and I am, so I had to do it. I dunno if they're all just scared of making you mad or worried that they'll break you or something, I don't know..." He chuckled. "I know you can't hear me sayin' all this. I guess it's good, 'cause I'm kinda rambling, huh? It's just... damn, X, you don't have to prove anything! I love you. And Zero's totally in love with you... isn't that enough?"
Rubbing the back of his neck, Axl sighed against the silence, mouth moving into a tired line. "And you got all dirty... geez. I'm gonna go get something to clean that off with. Be right back, okay?"
He returned with a chair, and a small rag and a bottle of solvent. Quietly, biting his lip, Axl reached out and began to dab the blood away from X's forehead.
- - -
Fifteen hours later, the chirp of the recharger unit shutting off broke the deep silence in the room. X's eyes opened slowly, taking in his surroundings; after an instant of tension he recognized his own room and relaxed. His short-term memory was a blur; he had no recollection of how he'd gotten here.
A soft snore caught his attention, and he glanced over, with a curious noise, to see Axl draped along the side of the recharger. The younger Reploid was resting his head on his folded arms, mouth open. Frowning, X rose quickly and scanned his friend, startled at the result.
"... eight percent...?"
X reached out with a sigh and gently tucked Axl into the recharger he'd been occupying only moments before.
He brushed his fingers sadly over the newgen's brow.
"You've got to stop doing this."
*end*
This is a little odd, but I hope you guys all enjoy it anyway. :)
"... and X hasn't slept in three days, Zero! Three days!"
Even with the flat static of a long-distance radio connection and thousands of miles between them, Axl could nearly feel Zero's wince.
The red Reploid was currently stuck in a holding pattern with several other Hunters in Bangladesh; they'd been assigned to flush out a Maverick nest and been caught by a flash flood. Not only had their encampment and the Maverick's base been obliterated, but the entire area for a radius of hundreds of miles was in ruins. Human damage was high, and the Federation had ordered the entrenched Hunters to assist in rescue and recovery efforts. Axl had contacted Zero to keep in touch, and was currently relaying his worries about X.
"Figures this all hits while Signas's in for upgrades... Shit. Okay. Just talking to X is useless when he gets like this, so... it's up to you. You have my permission to do whatever it takes to get X shut down. Official, even."
Axl's grin spread from ear to ear. "Seriously? Sanctioned action?"
Zero laughed across the planet in Axl's ear. "You heard me the first time. I'm counting on you... ah, shit. Gotta run, the chopper just arrived with the emergency rations. Don't call me back until you've got X locked in his recharger."
"Anything, huh..." Axl murmured aloud, scratching his cheek as Zero broke contact.
An idea rapidly blossomed, and he nodded to himself.
"Okay, time for Operation Intervention."
- - -
Axl caught the elevator to the 5th floor, where X's 17th Unit worked and recharged.
Axl grinned, fingers linked behind his back, as he noted the fresh coat of sunny yellow paint and orange patterned carpet that lined the floor.
The 17th were on the whole much like their leader, stoic and purposeful- but the carpet in this section had been a mess forever, stomped flat and threadbare, and the walls had desperately needed repainting for years. Nobody from the 17th had ever found the time or energy to redo it, so Axl had finally simply taken it on himself to quietly rally Hunters from the other Units together.
They'd snuck in and redone the interiors of the hall and common areas while the 17th were on manuevers- a driveby painting, as Axl'd called it at the time.
X, stumbling back into the halls weary from combat, had been so pleased at the sight he'd nearly broken down crying.
Warmed by the recollection, Axl strolled casually into the 17th's common and lifted a hand in greeting; Winger and Stryper, twin hawk-like Reploids, were playing chess and scowling at each other with every move, while the munitions expert Scorpio was draped in a heavy chair eagerly scanning the new electronic edition of Jane's.
"Hey guys," Axl smiled, nodding at the collective greetings he received in turn. He kept on grinning as he asked lightly, "So... Where's X holed up right now?"
There was a collective groan from all three; Scorpio actually pressed his book over his face and whimpered. They loved their leader dearly, but hated that X asked so little for himself, and worried constantly about how much he was asked to do...
"Tactics," Winger sighed. "Last I saw."
"Nuh-uh," countered Stryper, who took the opportunity of his friend's distraction to reach out and deftly capture Winger's left bishop. "Got summoned out of our debriefing there to go help in ER. 8th got shredded in Beirut."
Axl frowned; he had friends in the Heavy Armored and determined he'd check in with them later. But one mission at a time; he was worried most of all about X right now. "Seriously? With no sleep? He's gonna kill somebody!" Or himself, more like. He turned to go. "Thanks for the news, guys! I gotta go drag him out of there."
Stryper nodded. "Good luck. Let us know if you need some extra firepower."
Axl giggled. "Nah, I totally have this covered."
- - -
Riding the elevator toward the ground floor and tuning out the giggling of two junior navi's he shared the car with, Axl crossed his arms and continued to plot. Gotta gain the higher ground.
Well, that was going to be tough, considering. X was probably planning to remain in ER until he was about to lose consciousness from critical battery failure- in which case, he'd just grab an emergency field charger, strap it to his arm with duct tape and get right back in it again, knowing him. Axl rolled his eyes.
Okay, who wouldn't be noticed milling around the ER in an emergency? Well, a Lifesaver'd be perfect, but...
After the elevator came to a stop and the giggly Navis dispersed, Axl strolled lightly down the hall and turned a corner.
One of the Lifesavers -he was never sure if it was the real guy or one of his many drones- was moving toward him. Aha, there we go. Axl stifled a giggle and slid toward him.
With a trained assassin's ease he fluidly clamped onto the Lifesaver - luckily, a drone - and held it still against his body in the middle of the hall. "Sorry, sorry, sorry! I just really, really need to borrow your DNA for a bit...! Promise, " he grinned in the struggling drone's ear, "... you won't even feel it."
Anyone passing near the hall might have seen a brief and piercing flare of white light, and heard Axl's soft giggling.
A moment later, the Lifesaver steered his plodding, heavy frame toward the medical wing and passed through the open double doors. Slowly but surely, he advanced on a familiar blue helmeted shape visible moving here and there amongst the chaos.
- - -
X stepped over quickly and pointed into the opened chest cavity of a small female Hunter from the 8th. Her diagnostic panels were split open several ways, like a strange metal flower. X was weary enough to find an odd, dream-like beauty in it... and then quickly rallied himself to scan her again. "... damn, she's losing PPSI. Close that air line with a Venson clamp!"
Several Lifesavers and a few volunteer Hunters with medical triage training were weaving in and out around X, the whole medlab a hive of flowing motion, chaos-with-intent. X moved and breathed, swaying now and then. For entire nanoseconds at a time, his mind was checking out, casting a weird haze of unreality to everything around him, leaving him bemused. The completely rational part of him knew this was dangerous, but he felt the burden of filling in for command so deeply. These were his people, his responsibility, every last one of them... No, he refused to give in to his weariness while he had power to move.
His hands were covered in oil and blue and orange coolant. He left a smear across his forehead when he brushed absent-mindedly at his face. "Okay. Now, reroute the secondary compressor to the converter matrix. Should bring her internal pressure back up."
"Uhm, right." Disert, of the 13th, hastily obeyed these orders, then glanced up as the blue Reploid slid off to check another patient. He'd heard the stories, sure. Every Hunter in the Tower had some crazy story about X, it seemed- but to actually be working side by side with the legend, and to realize that X could still be that coherent with only 3% of his energy remaining...
X was so deeply immersed in the flow that it didn't seem at all strange when a Lifesaver hooked into the subtle dance of bodies and manuevered to step-step-dodge right beside him.
It didn't even seem strange to X when the Lifesaver caught him by the elbow, murmured that they needed to talk and nudged him gently off to the side, circling through the flow to its outer edge and then off toward the door, apart from the others. X nodded, figuring that he was about to get a lecture about overextending his systems; he had 30 reasonable arguments to counter any point already cued up in his subprocessors.
He was not at all prepared to feel the unreasonable blunt end of a familiar pistol brushing his waist and to hear Axl's distinct giggle sneaking out of the Lifesaver's mouth. X looked down in stunned surprise, up to see a familiar flash of green eyes... "... wha?"
"Bang bang," Axl whispered in his own voice, and silently shot X twice in the abdomen.
- - -
The first shot had been raw energy- easily transferable, easily absorbable emergency power to flood the blue legend's starved frame- the second was a disrupter pulse, to put X offline so he wouldn't attempt to try and use that power. Axl caught X as he slumped forward against the Lifesaver's broad frame, and cradled him; he was surprised to note that his hands were shaking now, even though he knew that he hadn't actually -hurt- his friend in any serious way.
After Axl had spent a precious second calming down and pondering how to get X back to his room unseen, he realized the frame he was borrowing at the moment provided for its own excuse. Not like anyone never sees Lifesaver dragging X by the hair back to his room or anything...! At that, Axl grinned, hefted X's scant 150 pounds over his shoulder, and walked away with a smile.
Sometimes stealth meant being right out in the open.
- - -
As Axl had guessed, there was little public outcry- a knowing laugh and look or three from some of the older Hunters, startled stares from the younger ones, a bit of whispering and gossip. Nothing too serious.
"...Hnn, there we go, X... Home in bed, safe and sound." Axl sighed, easing the unconscious blue Hunter into his recharge unit and releasing his own transformation. He activated the unit, set it to suppress all incoming signals, and watched X's smudged face smooth over, his breathing deepening as the recharger assumed partial control of his body.
Still, even in deep sleep, X had a melancholy look that made Axl feel terribly guilty. He squirmed and murmured, "C'mon, X... it was for your own good! And.. And Zero told me to do it. He said it was okay!"
Axl bit his lower lip, gazing at the ancient Reploid. "It's just... you work too hard. Everybody knows it, but nobody ever does anything about it... okay, I guess Zero does sometimes, but he's not here, and I am, so I had to do it. I dunno if they're all just scared of making you mad or worried that they'll break you or something, I don't know..." He chuckled. "I know you can't hear me sayin' all this. I guess it's good, 'cause I'm kinda rambling, huh? It's just... damn, X, you don't have to prove anything! I love you. And Zero's totally in love with you... isn't that enough?"
Rubbing the back of his neck, Axl sighed against the silence, mouth moving into a tired line. "And you got all dirty... geez. I'm gonna go get something to clean that off with. Be right back, okay?"
He returned with a chair, and a small rag and a bottle of solvent. Quietly, biting his lip, Axl reached out and began to dab the blood away from X's forehead.
- - -
Fifteen hours later, the chirp of the recharger unit shutting off broke the deep silence in the room. X's eyes opened slowly, taking in his surroundings; after an instant of tension he recognized his own room and relaxed. His short-term memory was a blur; he had no recollection of how he'd gotten here.
A soft snore caught his attention, and he glanced over, with a curious noise, to see Axl draped along the side of the recharger. The younger Reploid was resting his head on his folded arms, mouth open. Frowning, X rose quickly and scanned his friend, startled at the result.
"... eight percent...?"
X reached out with a sigh and gently tucked Axl into the recharger he'd been occupying only moments before.
He brushed his fingers sadly over the newgen's brow.
"You've got to stop doing this."
*end*