hacker_twins | [Backdated, see below]

Seeing as Forte's build was based off Mega's, this Forte hasn't put much thought into the resemblance there. Or maybe he is blocking the horrid thought of someone combining their designs into one.

He also doesn't have anything to say about the pet conversation, if he's not tuning them out to think about other things. Like what they were going to do if X doesn't get scared out of his poor sleeping habits. It isn't his problem if X wants to skimp on sleep until he falls over, not normally anyway. But he guesses he owes X for fixing him. That and the fact that X could hurt their efforts if he didn't get enough sleep on a regular basis.

Edited 2011-12-23 02:40 (UTC)

Luckily for that, the twins soon dart off on a detour to get the needed equipment. They catch back up just as Zero reaches X's door. He knows the access code, of course, and stores his armor to be quieter before letting himself in. The twins follow the hint on storing armor. This was going to be tricky enough unless X was a really sound sleeper.

The main room of the apartment-like area is cozy and for the most part neat and clean. Roll had intervened with X's habits early, trying to make sure he wouldn't be as messy as Rock, and it would seem she'd mostly succeeded. The room is clean and one can find the floor, but it's also slightly more cluttered than Roll might have liked, in a comfortable and relaxed way.

The walls are in a soft creme with blue trim, the carpet a darker blue. There's an overstuffed and comfy couch and a few beanbag chairs, a TV, and a video game system. Zero and X have played a lot of multi-player FPS/Puzzle games here, sometimes with others joining in. There's a coffee table for snacks, though right now all that's on it is a folder of what looks, at first glance, like art sketches.

More than one wall has an arrangement of family pictures hanging on it. There are two other doors, one going to a small bath, and the other to the bedroom... If X is in here, it would seem he really did go to bed.

Forte pauses at the others storing their armor but gives in and does the same. There's another pause as he makes sure what he's wearing isn't so dirty that it'll cause problems, since he can't remember what he was doing the last time out of armor, just that it couldn't have been anything clean. Luckily the state of his clothes is of the stained and torn verity and not the track mud and dirt where he goes.

With that done, he orders Gospel to stay at the door and follows the others in, trying not to look too interested in the game system.

The last game played is still in the system, and is of the multiplayer biohazard variety. Lots of puzzles to solve, and lots and lots of zombies and other nightmareish creatures. Rock likely squicks just at the box art.

As Zero very quietly opens the bedroom door, he'll find out two things. One, X did actually go to bed. Two, his estimate on how well the Lightbot would be sleeping was dead wrong. It seems Rock isn't the only one in that family prone to nightmares.

The bedroom also has more pictures, and four little plushies on the bedside table - a little black bat, a blue dolphin, a red dragon, and a small green bunny.

Techno frowns at all of this. This was not going to be at all easy...

The type of game is surprising until the mental image of X covered in gore comes to mind. It's still hard to picture the X that has reminders of his kids all over the place as the same X that isn't bothered by digging into someone's chest. He half wonders if X could have broken the same as Rock, but reploids are more flexible mentally so it isn't likely.

He's not sure what to think of the nightmares, or how to deal with them. Will this make him harder or easier to wake? Should they continue with the plan at all? Best to get it done with is his thought, but who's to say they'd agree with X in this state.

This is the problem with helping people, he thinks sulkily, everything has to be handled carefully.

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?"

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.

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."

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?

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..."

The images are.... silly, good teasing material, but he can't poke fun at people who aren't around. He'll... just have to save it for when they got back. If they came back...

As for humans, nothing is special about them as far as Forte's concerned. He has nothing against them, but there's nothing for them either. They're different and they get some props for creating robots, but he's never had a problem taking one out if it suits his needs. He does the same with 'bots. He figures it equals out in its own way. That doesn't help X though.

"Ever think that when talking about your alt, he was talking about his own version of that weird little copy they have," he ponders aloud as the thought suddenly hits him. Copies. It's always copies.

"Even if he was confused about that, Forte... he still thought he'd been abandoned..." says X.

"So," says Techno, fidgeting, "do you still need us for anything?"

"Maybe," says Zero, dashing the Twins' hopes of sneaking out of this mess. "When I was talking to Gospel, the idea of a VR 'punching bag' of Weil came up. Think you could set up something like that?" When X starts to say something, he continues with, "It won't really be human, just a simulation. And we won't tell Rock."

"And? You can't control how other people think. If he thought his X abandoned him then so what? You can't save everyone. Let it go." He's aggravated that X is stuck on things like this, but what can one expect from a Lightbot.

"And if you take your frustrations out on it, you'll be less likely to take them out on yourself for stupid reasons."

"It's not that Harpuia that bothers me, Forte. I had to accept a long time ago that there wasn't anything I could do to help him," X says. "It's the thought of my Harpuia thinking the same... That I abandoned them to Weil, that I wouldn't even try to save them."

"Right now, I don't know if they even remember you, X," Zero points out. "But when they're back to being themselves, that's the last thing any of them would believe. There's no need to run yourself into the ground to prove it."

X sighs and just nods in response to trying the VR at least.

"Right, one Weil Punching Bag coming up," says Techno. And he'll start coding the scenario for the VR.

"Are we going to need extra connections?" asks Middy.

"That's just as stupid." For exactly the reasons Zero gives as well as what X did for Harpuia a little while before. He just isn't make much sense to Forte.

-You could use it,- Gospel chips in before Forte can make an excuse to be elsewhere. He makes a face at this and responds with the usual, -I'm fine.-

Zero gives the VR stuff an uneasy look. As much as he'd like to blast even a fake Weil, he's never been comfortable with allowing that kind of systems access. Not since Omega.

Which is when they get a small interruption. Quint knocks on the door.

The last time Forte was in a VR simulation, it wasn't his choice, so it isn't the best of memories. It's not a valid reason to avoid them though. The interruption gives Forte a good reason to ignore anything more Gospel says.

Despite looking like he was more than half asleep on Zero, X jerks awake at the knock as if he was attached to a string someone had yanked. He shakes his head and goes to open the door.

Quint's there, fidgeting and holding a box. "I, um, I'm not interrupting something, am I? It's just, you wanted to know if there was anything that might help, with Weil and all, and... well, I'd completely forgotten about these," as X lets him in, Quint makes his way over to set the box down near the game system, "but I was cleaning out my closet earlier and found them. You know how there's fiction in other universes. Games. The first year I was here, someone gave me these because I was worried about Ballade. He did something when he fought your brother that we didn't want Wily to know about, and I thought it might be in a game."

Zero's about tired of Quint's nervous chatter already. "Get to the point, Quint."

"The point is, I thought they were all games from, well, when Wily was around. But when I was cleaning I saw a box with Axl on the box art. And then I looked through, and... um, I think some might have stuff with Weil. I know it won't be any more accurate than trying to find clues from alternates, but there might be something there."

Forte moves out of the way to let X pass, sighing a bit when he sees it's Quint. At least he has something worthwhile to say. Of course when he starts to ramble off topic, Forte decides to take a peek in the box himself and skip Quint's explanations.

He tunes out most of the rest to dig through the box, looking at the different box covers and flipping them over to read the backs. No one ever told him there were games...

Quint soon makes his excuses to leave, and a tired X ends up on the couch after seeing him out. The Twins relocate the VR equipment to next to the couch.

And Zero joins Forte in going through the box. He'd heard about the games, in passing, but mostly from older siblings who'd said that, unless you wanted to see yourself get killed in 8-bit graphics, it wasn't worth it. And he'd had enough real things to worry about that looking at video games for information on Weil hadn't even crossed his mind. "See any with Weil on the box?" he asks Forte.

Some of the box art is horrifying, especially with the thought that somewhere there could be a world that looked like it. He's glad by the time he spots his own image on a box that the art is more reasonable. Being late to the game, as it were, seems to be a good thing when it came to games.

"No, but here's one with the kids." He scoops out the box only to give the cover a funny look, look to Zero, and then back at the cover. "The upgrade doesn't make you look any less girly, I'm afraid," he says, cracking up as he flips it over to read the back, and starts laughing even harder. The front had covered up the 'thong' armor with the logo, but the back had a nice picture of it along with a little fairy thing.

"I managed to avoid one armor change, I hope to avoid that one too..," says Zero. He does, however, start looking for games that have him in that armor. And winces slightly as he reads the back of one. "The 'elves' and the 'dress up' theme don't help either."

He leans over to look at what Forte's looking at, and just swears. "No way in hell am I wearing that. Looks like a pair of girl's underwear..."

Forte is still snickering. Zero saying what is going through his mind doesn't help. "It's like they turned you into a magical girl. All that's left is a sparkly transformation sequence of some kind, and hell, nothing says it doesn't have that. Maybe you are a girl in these- no, male pronoun, never mind."

He digs out another, still looking for any mention of Weil and only finding more things worth laughing over. "Might explain why you look so pissed off on all of these."

"You'd be pissed, too, if you had to fight in girl's underwear, surrounded by sparkling fairies," says Zero, who's snickering by now too. Hey, he can laugh at himself... when it's an alt in an outfit he has no intention of ever being forced into in any way.

"That it's possible to fight like that at all is mind boggling." Besides looking ridiculous and uncomfortable, the 'armor' doesn't look like it'd offer much protection.

"Here we go, defeat the evil Weil and blah blah blah. Fourth game. Heh, there's a recipe system. Any more after this one?"

[Backdated, see below]

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