[Backdated, see below]

[hacker_twins]

(Continued from here after Release 88 made the first post unusable)

The only thing that grates on Techno worse than when people notice how obviously he resembles Forte, is when it dawns on them he resembles both Forte and Mega. He isn't really sure how to feel about the person responsible being dead, as now he'll never get to have that nice loud 'what the hell were you thinking' talk he'd sometimes fantasized about.

But for now the Twins skirt around that topic and onto one of pets, as they follow Zero towards X's room.

"I still think we should get a puppy."

"We live in a treehouse, Middy. Canines can't climb."

Comments

[ekkusu_light]

The Twins set the heavier equipment down by the door, and start to creep closer...

But none of them get more than a foot or two into the room before X jerks awake. In armor. And pointing a buster at them. "Wha.. Weil... hnnn," he shakes his head. "Nightmare. Zero, is there any news?" After all, they were supposed to wake him if there was.

Zero just mutters a swearword in German. "Is this why you've been avoiding sleep? Hell, are you getting any sleep at all like this?"

[builtforbattle.livejournal.com]

Forte barely subdues the urge to recall his armor. In it he can take hits and shake them off no problem, without and that's not the case. He can dodge if he has to, and this is the Nexus, but his fighting programming still isn't happy with the buster pointed his way unarmed.

"Is there not a way to turn that off?" Keeping the discussion off why they are there seems like a good idea.

[vengeancechild]

X sends his armor back to storage. Zero sits on the bed next to him and soon ends up with an exhausted Lightbot leaning on him.

The twins seemed torn at first between hiding behind the VR equipment and staying in front of it to hide it. They'd ended up doing the first, though both now had their armor back.

"No, there isn't," says X, avoiding Zero's questions. "What's happened?"

Zero sighs. "Nothing's happened..." Then he thinks of a way to salvage their situation. "I just... Gospel and I were talking earlier about setting up some kind of stress relief for you. And from the looks of things, you need it more than I realized."

[builtforbattle.livejournal.com]

With the plan interrupted to comfort X, Forte tries to find something to do with himself. He's pretty useless in this situation and it shows with how he uncomfortably leans against the door frame and searches for something to focus on besides X and Zero. His eyes land on some of the pictures of X's kids and he frowns. They aren't much more than little soldiers now, like the Hunters before them and the Robot Masters before that. The thought fills him with rage, but he hasn't lost any sleep over it.

How much more must it be bothering X if it keeps him from sleeping even when he tries to get some rest?

[vengeancechild]

Some are even little silent video clips in digital frames, with the ones in X's bedroom more potentially embarrassing than the ones out in the 'open' in the main room. Leviathan, with Splash hanging off her like a backpack, sitting on top of Minnow the whale outside. Next to that frame, a full-sized but not very old Phantom is laying in the grass under a tree, watching a bee... while inside there's Leviathan with duckweed in her hair, picking bits of it out and eating it, and a Phantom unexpectedly knocked out of a tree by a cheery Fafnir. There are even pictures of them as chibis. A bitty Harpuia waves hi with short little arms from one camera frame while, behind her, a chibi Fafnir is headfirst in a box of bbq bites.

"I don't know, Zero... I don't think anything's going to help... except getting them back, and..," X pauses and looks away, "making sure they're safe from him." He balls the edge of the blanket up at that... and there's almost a half second count before he bursts out with, "What about being human is so special anyway?" Two of the people here are Wilybots, and he knows the Twins won't tell his family...

"Rock can't even think about hurting Weil. He doesn't have the laws any more, but it... it's like there's this invisible line we're not supposed to cross, and all I want to do is choke the bastard... And I know I can't. That if it came down to it, I'd hesitate. He's going to force them to kill people, and even if we could get to him, I couldn't kill him to stop him."

"Don't worry about that, X," says Zero. "We'll get to him. And he'll pay for this. You're the medic. You just worry about picking up the pieces after."

X just shakes his head slightly at that. That wasn't enough. "I just remember that other Harpuia... saying my alt didn't care about them. He abandoned them when they needed him..."