AN: Hey there. After my rushed one-shot yesterday I thought why not try and go for a full-fledged story? read, leave a review and I'll see if people in this fandom still look for anything active.
"How´s he doing?"
"Poor kid was a breath away from dying from dehydration, he´s lucky Coco found him when she did."
"Remind me to get her a gift basket for that one."
"Unless your gift basket is you wrapped in ribbons I don´t think she´d be too interested."
"Well, I try."
Rex couldn´t remember much. There had been the mission, the rouge sandworm-like EVO rampaging throughout the desert, Six doing whatever ninja stuff he always did to help out, Bobo shooting like crazy, but after that… Not much. He´d been trying to get closer and attempt to cure it, but a swing from its gigantic tail had sent him spinning out of control in the air and it was then that things really got jumbled together.
The voices, which the teen hoped weren´t only in his head, continued arguing back and forth and the more lucid Rex became the more he realized either Providence was getting really lax on personnel behavior or he wasn´t in Providence. His instincts told him to lean more towards the latter option.
"Wha- who are…? What is-?" Rex didn´t manage to get a coherent sentence out of his mouth or barely open his eyes, blurry black and white shadows being the only things he could be able to make out though his half-lidded eyes.
"He´s waking up!" The youngest-sounding of the voices came closer and he felt a hand being placed on his forehead. "Take it easy, you had quite the fall."
The picture was steadily becoming clearer by the second and finally paradise came into focus. At least Rex assumed it was paradise because two beautiful women were looking down on him with worry in their also beautiful eyes. One had black hair and the other was an albino and both were wearing clothes that seemed to have come straight from Steampunk or a Mad Max movie.
"Well, hello ladies. Don´t worry, I am enough for the two of you"
Immediately the women frowned. The white-haired one crossed her arms and sighed while the other turned her back shortly to pick up a glass of water.
"You´ve been unconscious for most of the day, do you think you can drink?" Asked the black-haired one.
"From such a beautiful lady I couldn´t refuse anything."
Another sigh. "Let me help you stand up." She pulled one of his arms over her shoulders and pulled him up on the bed he´d been sleeping on since the day before. "My name´s Rebecca, by the way, and she´s Drew."
"Beautiful names for beautiful ladies." His charm was still unbroken from the fall.
Getting tired from the attitude they were getting from a kid that seemed to be the same age as hers, Drew sat on the bed and crossed one leg over the other while giving him her best ´mom stare´. "Please, stop with the compliments. She may be young but I´m old enough to be your mother."
Rex chocked on the water he´d been drinking and Rebecca proceeded to pat him on the back with a concerned expression. The poor boy needed fluids, but in his stomach, not in his lungs.
"Are you for real?!" Were the first words out of his mouth as soon as he´d stopped coughing.
Drew was starting to doubt the sun exposure and dehydration hadn´t permanently damaged their guest´s brain. He seemed average enough, if not for the part where Coco explained how she´d seen him create a jetpack and swords from his own body out of thin air, but his reasons skills seemed to be somewhat lacking, social skills too. Her (not-so) little man´s childhood had been spent with minimal interaction with other children his age and he for sure didn´t act this way towards any of her friends.
"I am thirty-eight, she´s twenty-eight." She pointed to herself then to Rebecca. "Now you´ll drink properly the rest of your water and then explain to us what someone your age was doing fighting an EVO that dangerous." Drew then shifted and sat towards the teen. "Is Providence so desperate they now start training them young or something? There´s a bet you need to between Noelle and I."
The boy nodded but, before he began to talk, he hesitated. He didn´t know anything about these strangers that claimed to have taken him in after his fight with the EVO. Six had taught him to be distrustful of new people that seemed overly-helpful and, as far as he was aware, Providence didn´t have any agents stationed this far out in the desert.
"You first." He said with conviction.
"What?" Asked both women, unsure of the answer he was looking for.
"Who are you? Where am I? Are you with Providence? Who are Coco and Noelle?" The string of questions seemed never-ending. Rex wanted to know if he should be afraid and, if so, how much of these people.
"Well…" Started Rebecca. "My name is Rebecca Holiday and I'm a doctor who studies nanites. This here is Drew Saturday and her area of expertise are cryptids and the like. We´re out here because we ran away from our old lives to dedicate ourselves to finding a solution to the nanite explosion that happened back in the day. There´s also Coco and Noelle, our, let´s call them, muscle in case things ever go sour, and also scientists as well."
"Now tell him our social security numbers and he´s set." Drew whispered with a dissatisfied expression. "We´re out here because our study methods are a bit unorthodox compared to Providence and, if we ever met, they´d likely jail us just because we´re trying to get everyone better but in a much more efficient way."
"Oh…" Rex hadn´t expected them to be so straightforward with their explanation. Honestly, he´d been prepared for some half-assed sob-story and a couple crocodile tears to sweeten the deal, not scientists trying to fix the mess the world had become. "Well, that sounds… nice, I guess. I´m rex, by the way, but I still wanna know why you brought me here."
"We didn´t." The younger woman shook her head. "It was Coco. She saw the fight and told us you fell down and the others couldn´t find you after all that mess was over, so she waited and brought you here."
"Couldn´t she have just called out to them?"
"I think we´ve made it clear us and Providence wouldn´t likely see eye-to-eye, so it is best for us to remain in the shadows of the organization with White Knight unaware we even exist."
"But why? If you´re scientists you could help!" He was getting an awesome idea. He loved it when he had those. "If you come back with me I´m sure you could be all set up in a real lab with all sorts of equipment and more! I can even cure some EVOs, so you could study me and go along faster in your research! Heck, compared to those white-coats your bedside-manner is like a saint´s."
The two women exchanged sad gazes and a shadow of a smile. Those faceless drones at Providence wouldn´t understand. The world wouldn´t understand. Their mission was far more than just to cure the earth´s population, they wanted it to improve and get better. To be just like them, with better adaptability traits that gave them an advantage over a normal human´s and better regenerative systems.
Their mission was to change the world… for the better!
Drew interlaced her fingers in her lap. "I don´t think that would be viable. We just wouldn´t fit in with all that impersonal contact and the like. It´s one of the main reasons we came out here, freedom to be ourselves."
"We do some odd jobs every now and then for some cash and go to the nearest town sometimes to have some fun, then come back to our research and pretend our lives are still great." Rebecca nodded with a tinge of sadness to her voice. "We are very different from what you´re used to."
"Holly, don´t say anything else." Drew advised her friend.
It could be just like every other place all over again. Someone found them out, they moved, only for everything to happen all over again and they just couldn´t take it anymore. They´d gotten so tired of everything, their friends leaving or plain dying or even transforming with the nanite explosion, no one else to turn but each other and the world couldn´t care less about them unless it was to incarcerate and run tests on them.
"But he´s like us!"
"No… he´s not." They had to face the facts. The truth was cold and ugly, much unlike their normal outward appearance. How was that for irony? "He´s got his whole life ahead of him and has these amazing abilities that could help cure the entire world. We´re very different, you have to face it."
"You can cure EVOs like me?!" Rex had never felt this excited. Finally, someone out there could understand him truly at last! "You really have to show me what you can do!"
"No, darling, we can´t." Drew had softened up her attitude towards the boy. He was more like her son after all, eager and curious about everything, always wanting to help others. "We can do some things but nothing that comes close to the dimension of your gift. We would love if you stayed with us but you´re needed out there, saving people from getting killed as EVOs, even if you´re so young."
"Then, you could at least come with me and meet with White. Maybe he could give you the resources, make you a sort of unit of Providence. I could introduce you to Noah, Bobo and even Six. He´d be pretty mad at me for putting myself in danger but I bet with you there I bet he´d mellow out even if just a bit!"
Rebecca and Drew went silent. They longed for the resources a real organization could obtain, brand new and certified equipment instead of the home-rigged variations they´d come up with, more personnel to help out, accurate data readings, field agents who knew what they were doing in managing EVOs… So close yet so far away, they wondered.
Eventually it was the younger woman who broke the silence with an apology. "No, sorry. We can keep you in until you´re strong enough and after that Coco can point you in the direction the others took after they couldn´t find you. That´s the most we can do for you. No public appearances, I´m afraid."
"Well, why can´t you come with me?"
Rex saw though these ladies and he could see they really were nice people. They´d helped him, demanded for nothing in return, showed what they´d been doing out there in the inhospitable desert free of charge and now they wanted to send him home well-fed and with a bandage and a kiss, so to speak. He wanted to make up to them and give them something in return, they were also trying to make the world a better place, so why not take up on his offer?
"We can´t risk questions, Rex."
"Well, why not? It´s not like you´re committing a crime or anything! I´ll even explain everything to White so you don´t need to be afraid of him thinking you wanted to kidnap me." He would do anything to help out these women. They´d helped him free-of-charge, so it was his turn now.
Before one of the two women could answer, the teen´s savior chose that moment to appear and answer his question without a single word dedicated to his inquisition.
"I heard voices, is he up?"
The lab door suddenly flew open and a genuine blonde harpy, talons for feet and legs, feathers in her hair and clawed wings, burst in with a wide smile and a canteen in hand with, what one would assume, was water.
Rex promptly fainted upon seeing the half-EVO/half-human that had opened the door wide to let herself in.
"Coco, what in the H E double hockey sticks?!"