Chapter Two
Tricky Dealings
xXx
Back in Hunter HQ Axl felt he should have been able to relax a bit, but for some reason he found himself fighting Alia, X, and Lifesaver's attempts at taking the unconscious Sunako from him.
This was the scene Zero walked in on. His protege clutching a girl to him and rather violently cursing at the three trying to take her from him, X trying to calm everyone down, Alia scolding Axl, and Lifesaver attempting to tell the young reploid about his own injuries.
Zero blinked. He had never seen Axl so...protective. He tapped X on the shoulder. "Hey, what's up with Axl?"
The blue hunter sighed in exasperation. "He found the injured girl on his mission, but he won't let her go long enough to get her treated, or himself for that matter. Lifesaver says he's got some pretty serious injuries that need to be looked at."
Eying the redhead's disheveled state, Zero had to agree that Axl looked a little worse for wear.
"Need help?"
X gave him a look that said everything.
"I'll get him, you get the girl."
As one they rushed Axl, Zero pinning his arms as X took Sunako.
Axl exploded. He started screaming out curses in what had to be at least four different languages as he struggled against Zero's unbreakable grip.
The Crimson Demon was stunned at his normally cheerful subordinate's rage. "Lifesaver! Sedative!"
An instant later an injection gun was emptying into Axl's neck, and he started going limp.
"D-damn you Z-zero!"
Axl's body fell slack, breathing heavily in an attempt to cool his systems, but his eyes refused to close.
"What the hell did you hit him up with Lifesaver?" asked Zero. "Isn't he supposed to be knocked out?"
"A paralytic, we need him awake, not unconscious." responded the white and green medic as he took Sunako from X. "This behavior calls possible virus infection to question. If and when he's cleared, I'll give him an actual sedative, he's gone at least four days without sleep."
xXx
Tending Axl's injuries was...interesting.
Zero peeled back the grey and navy armor once they were sure he was clear of the Maverick Virus, but other infections were very possible. Lifesaver had to use a laser scalpel to reopen Axl's synthflesh where it had closed over his wounds, and he cried out in shock.
"What is it?" asked X, rushing over. "Is something wrong?"
The medic gaped in disbelief. "I...I knew he had regenerative systems, but this..." he started, staring at the internal damages. "This is insane! There is no way these structural damages could have repaired themselves like this!"
Indeed, under the young reploid's flesh was what should have been a severely damaged rib cage strut. Aside from some minor warping, the metal was mostly whole, only a few hairline cracks and a crinkled surface that resembled a puckered scar.
Zero took one look at it, scratched his head, and quipped. "Well, that's different."
Alia whacked him upside the head. "Idiot! This sort of thing is virtually unheard of even with Axl's unusual self-repair systems!"
"That, and it looks like a patch job." said Livesaver. "I'll need to overhaul the damaged areas as usual. Once I'm done you two need to move him to his room and keep a close watch on him, the sedative is clearing his systems a lot faster than I'm comfortable with and he will wake up in some pain."
Zero gave X a worried look as they watched the medic work his magic on their young teammate, cutting and welding around what they all knew were extremely sensitive components that criss-crossed the reploid's frame in a tighter net than seen anywhere else. No matter how careful a medic was with Axl, there was absolutely no escaping the inevitable accidental minor damages to his delicate internals. It was like a human getting surgery, he always woke from repairs in pain.
xXx
Three hours was long time for a reploid to be under sedation for repairs, but in Axl's case the extra time was necessary to avoid causing further harm. His anatomically humanlike build and unknown origins made repairs a very tricky business, having to navigate his ridiculously complicated structure that had triple the amount of sensory receptors of the average reploid.
...Funny how a young reploid with such a inhuman shape-shifting/power-stealing ability looked so convincingly human without his armor on. Zero had to keep telling himself that this was Axl that he was carrying in his arms, unconscious and clad only in hospital patient garb. Hell, he even had an IV inserted in his arm to help replenish the fluids he had lost over the week and bandages wrapped around him to protect the wounded areas Lifesaver 'stitched' back together.
Alia had gone on ahead to Axl's room to find the teen something more comfortable to sleep in, Axl always raised a huge fuss if he ever woke up in the infirmary or wearing anything other than his own clothes. While normal policy was to restrain injured or ill reploids to medical facilities, Axl made an exception for his sheer paranoid, destructive fear of said facilities. X and Alia theorized that it was from trauma, Zero said it was just the kid being a brat...
But what Zero thought on the other hand was different, but hey, he had a reputation to hold up.
Zero arrived at Axl's door and handed the teen to a waiting Alia, then hustled off to his own quarters to get changed out of his armor.
-Now, a reploid could only teleport their armor by conscious command, but when a hunter had the time it was better to remove or don it manually and arrange the pieces properly. Sometimes teleporting into your armor left you with some uncomfortable fits, things that you just couldn't adjust with any dignity.
No way in hell did Zero ever allow that. So he religiously arranged his armor himself onto it's storage forms every time to prevent those awkward pinches.-
Armor off and now comfortably clad in a loose red tank top and grey sweatpants he padded back to Axl's room in his socks.
Alia already had Axl tucked into his bed and hooked into the unobtrusive monitoring devices kept stashed in the room. He looked pale against his black sheets, red hair splayed around his head like molten copper and cross scar half hidden by his bangs.
He just looked so...fragile.
"Want me to take watch?" Alia asked, brushing her fingers through the redhead's bangs tenderly.
"Nah, I got this. Why don't you go help with that girl Axl brought in? You've got better people skills than me." said Zero. "I've got a databook to finish."
With that, she left and Zero plunked himself down in the armchair next to bed, fishing out the aforementioned databook from a small bookcase mostly filled with comics and fantasy adventure titles.
"Now where was I?"
The Crimson Hunter let himself become absorbed in the gripping suspense thriller he'd been introduced to by Layer, his navigator, while keeping an ear open for any sudden noise from his charge.
Three and a half chapters later he was still stumped on who the killer was in the story, but Axl stirred.
Closing his book he moved to sit on the edge of the bed. "Hey kiddo, you awake?"
The redhead grimaced, opening one bleary eye to see his senior's face, then shut it with a pained groan.
"You ok?"
Axl tried to sit up, but fell back with a cry of pain, the vital monitors shrieking at the distress the motion put on his damaged systems as his body trembled.
Zero, in an uncharacteristic softness, gently pulled the now tearing teen into his lap, rubbing the top of his head like one scratches the ears of a cat. Axl fell limp, burying his face in Zero's shirt.
"Had another dream kiddo?"
Axl only whimpered.
"Shh, you're alright. Just remember where you are now, you're safe."
This was a regular occurrence for Axl, one that X had no clue about. If the blue bomber knew that the younger hunter had night terrors, he'd have even more reason to claim Axl was unfit to be a hunter.
-Now, nightmares are bad dreams right? Well night terrors are several times worse. Dreams so vivid and intensely terrifying that the dreamer literally screams in their sleep, and often wakes screaming.
Night terrors are most often found in young human children, and usually they grow out of it. After all, children have vivid imaginations that can make their worlds exaggeratedly scarier.
In reploids however, it's a different story. There was no documented case of a reploid suffering from night terrors, ever.-
Zero first learned about the problem the first week after their defeat of Red Alert and Sigma, when a frantic, tearful Axl came into his room and clung to him, crying. This unfortunately turned out to be a semi-nightly routine, Axl seeking comfort from the only person on base he could trust like the child he essentially was at a level.
The blonde was confused at first, but came to care for the younger hunter like a little brother. He researched all he could find about reploid dreams, night terrors, post traumatic stress, and Axl's life in Red Alert. The first three items were mostly theories and inconclusive studies on reploid psychology, but Axl's past turned out to be more convoluted than expected.
Who would've guessed that the Copy Reploid has actually been active for the better part of two decades?
Seventeen years of activation with a civilian human scientist according to Red's personal logs (that took Zero weeks to find and decode) that was killed in a maverick attack. Said scientist's work had been fortunately seized by the Maverick Hunters but were heavily encrypted, so Zero was still working on those. Red's logs also stated that Axl was subjected to numerous painful tests by one of his own men before accidental cerebral trauma left him suffering memory damage. For the youngster's health, Red asked an independent medic to do what he could, but all memory was either lost, or locked, so the boy reverted to the mentality of a child.
For three years Red kept Axl as his protege, until his involvement with Sigma's manipulation. An inconspicuous analysis by Lifesaver on the boy's cranial structure revealed evidence of old, partially healed damage to his memory cortex, damage that surmised to a rare case of reploid retrograde amnesia. Any and all attempts to retrieve the locked memory data was met with failure, whatever Axl experienced, it was gone for good.-
By now Axl had calmed down, his head on Zero's lap as he read aloud from a databook of myths and legends. The current one was a story from old Japan, about the legend of the rabbit in the moon, making mochi treats for new years celebrations.
Zero remembered trying the stuff once at Axl's insistence, and personally found it too sticky and chewy for his tastes, but Axl loved it with any kind of filling possible, strawberry custard in particular.
A sound at the door caused Zero to pause in his reading and look up, seeing Alia and X enter the room.
"How is he?" asked Alia.
"Drowsy," said Zero. "Don't think he can focus too well."
Alia smiled at the scene, at Zero's gentleness with the redhead, a hand threading through copper hair soothingly.
"Is it alright for me to take a look at him?"
"Be careful."
As the navigator examined Axl, X stood at a short distance, staring Zero down.
"You realize that you're coddling him?" X asked dully. "He won't make a good hunter like this."
Zero scoffed. "You're the one coddling him, in reverse. I'm just trying to be supportive, he's young, and he's been through a hell of a lot more than you in your first twenty years in his first three."
"You're getting attached to a child that isn't going to live through the next year."
"Screw you X, he'll pull through." Zero bit out. "You're mad because he accepts the need to fight and you don't. You're my friend, but you're seriously getting on my nerves."
X twitched. "He's a fragile child, repairing injuries causes more damage than the wound itself."
"Cause his self repair systems fix things most of the way before he gets treatment. Face it X, with a good teacher and a little more experience he'll make the best damn hunter we've got! Maybe with a little espionage training he'll be a great infiltrations expert."
"And send him into the most dangerous places alone? Are you insane?"
"I was thinking aloud X." Zero drawled, annoyed. "So how's the girl?"
"Sunako?" asked Alia. "She's fine, but that burn healed unusually fast. I'm thinking she might be genetically spliced."
Zero perked up. "Isn't gene splicing humans illegal?"
"Extremely."
"So where is she now?"
"Fourteenth wing, civilian quarters." said Alia. "They're human-level facilities, she should be fine. And Axl is doing well, he should be fully healed and back on his feet the day after tomorrow."
"That's good." Zero sighed. "Hey kiddo, want me to finish the story and then let you sleep?"
Axl made a small noise of affirmation and snuggled a little deeper into the blankets, eyes still closed.
If X could've blushed, he'd be cherry-red. "Do you mean he was awake this whole time?" he gulped, embarrassed.
Zero and Alia shared a grin. "Yep."
Axl gave a muffled snicker. "Open mouth, insert foot."