"Fascinating." Lifesaver was examining a chip, holding it in a pair of tweezers. It was perhaps the size of his thumb, and gleamed with purple, green, and dark blue colors as he turned it in the light. Much larger than a computer chip, it held an extremely potent microcomputer.
The jewel chips had been named on the basis of their appearance. That appearance, however, was a marketing tool. The simple titanium casing was treated in various ways to create a glossy, jewel-like coating that held unique patterns for each chip, usually consisting of three complimenting colors. The one Lifesaver was holding looked like a fire topaz, dark but lovely. The appearance was completely unnecessary for the chips to complete their function, but it had made the commercials featuring them more interesting. Lifesaver looked at the exposed circuits on Axl's chest, and started inserting the chip.
"That tickles." Axl suddenly yipped. "Ow! Lifesaver!"
"Hush," Lifesaver murmured, glancing at Axl's double who was watching, interested. His chest was also exposed, revealing his own jewel chip… an iridescent green chip that looked like the back of an insect's wing. Lifesaver had carefully examined the differences between the two Axl's, and had decided to keep the second open for reference as he worked on the first.
"There." Lifesaver finished installing the jewel chip, and picked up a scanner to test it. That was a piece of foreign technology as well, specifically designed to test the activity of a jewel chip by mimicking the threat routines of the Maverick virus. He connected it to Axl's ports, and nodded as the scanner registered the appropriate activity. "It's working, good." Then he started closing Axl back up. The second Axl waited impatiently, and sighed as Lifesaver finally got to him.
"Lord, that was dull." The real Axl complained as he sat up. Then he grinned at his double. "Hey, want to go watch a movie? I have Constantine."
"Sounds good, but let's go get Tabby first." The two Axl's were getting along very well, and both getting along with Tabby. It was making a lot of people very nervous. Tabby sometimes acted as the voice of reason for her Axl, but sometimes took an unholy glee in egging him on.
"Whatever. Just take it out of my infirmary." Lifesaver didn't trust the two of them at all, but of all the alternate Hunters, Axl's design had proven to be closest to the real thing. Strangely, the real version needed very little work to make his wiring suitable for the jewel chips. Almost everyone else would need extensive refitting. Fortunately, most of their doubles had been refitted so Lifesaver already had a blueprint to work from.
The chips themselves had been extensively examined by the research staff, who had gone into rhapsodies over the mutating counter-virus. Many of them had reservations about the person who had created it, and perhaps even its ultimate purpose, but none of them had any about its effectiveness. The jewel chips were not the first line of defense against Maverick infection. They only activated after all the other firewalls and fail safes had failed, because of their side-effects… they turned the Reploid body into a battlefield for dominance. The researchers thought that the chips probably wouldn't be as effective against the active Sigma virus as they had been against the weakened version on the other world, but they still thought there would be a fifty percent success rate. That was much better than the zero chance Reploids currently had when the last defense was breached.
The two Axl's both scampered out of the infirmary, and Lifesaver shook his head, reaching for another jewel chip. Installing them all would take a long time and work, but in the end it would be worth it.
A little while later, the real X happened to glance into the lounge and stopped, seeing something a little peculiar.
"Axl?" He stepped in, and two heads turned to look at him in an absolutely identical motion. X felt like cringing. Except for the fact that one Axl ate more sweets than the other, they literally could not be told apart by behavior. And even that was difficult to be sure of, since the real Axl could sometimes go on sugar binges. "Ah… well, both of you. Why are you wearing ribbons on your arms?" Both of them glanced down at their arms, simultaneously.
"Oh, that was Tabby." The one with the green ribbons grinned. "After the third time she kissed the wrong one, she said we just HAD to get something to identify ourselves."
"So now we're wearing ribbons," the other one put in cheerfully. His ribbons were a light blue. "She's off getting popcorn now. Would you like to see a movie, X?" X shook his head, and thought for a moment, trying to figure out a way to find out the answer to the burning question in his mind. He finally gave up and decided to just ask.
"So who's wearing which ribbons?" The two Axl's blinked, then grinned.
"I'm the alternate reality one!" The one with the green ribbons put up his hand.
"And I'm the real one!" Axl shook his head with a grin. "Isn't this weird, X?"
"With you two, that's putting it mildly." Tabby came in with a huge bowl of popcorn, and X stepped back. "Well, have fun with the movie."
If he was hoping the rest of the day would be uneventful, his hopes went unanswered. The next person to speak to him was Zero… and not his own. The alternate Zero seemed terribly amused by something.
"Hey, X! You're this worlds', right?" Zero absently rubbed a hickey on his neck, and X sighed.
"I'm not smoking, am I?" he said wearily. His double's nervous habit of lighting up cigarettes was becoming notorious around the HQ already. X had already heard some pretty bad jokes about it and speculation on exactly how many his double smoked in a day.
"Hah! True 'nuff. Hey, do you know who manages the staff? I mean, the cooks and stuff?" X blinked, caught of guard by that question.
"I… have no idea. Why?" Zero looked a little embarrassed, and then shrugged.
"Well, I was going down to see Maria… she likes to have a good time sometimes, if you know what I mean-"
"What?" X exclaimed, cutting Zero off. "She has three kids! What about her husband?" Zero snorted, waving off that objection.
"That ass? He left her years ago. Turned to booze and drugs after he heard about the Maelstrom and finally disappeared with her paycheck. D'you want to hear what the problem is or not?"
"Problem? Another one?" X winced. In a lot of ways, his double had been right about the problems involved with the alternate Hunters staying at the real HQ. There had been several fistfights, although fortunately no one had pushed things beyond non-lethal weapons. There was a great deal of tension, though, especially between the Repliforce survivors and the rest of the HQ. The alternate X and Zero had always taken care not to offend the pride of those survivors, but most of Hunter HQ couldn't give less of a damn. In this world, Repliforce was disgraced, not a thing to be proud of.
"Yeah, kinda, but I don't want to take this to my X. I remember the last time he tried to deal with something like this," Zero snickered. "He nearly got an eye clawed out when all the ladies went for him." X blinked, entirely lost.
"Could you start from the beginning… what's wrong?" He asked, confused. Zero shrugged.
"I was trying, before you asked about Maria's husband. Look, I was going to see her, okay? So I heard the whole thing go down in the kitchen. Maria doesn't work here in your world, but her mother-in-law DOES. In fact, she runs the kitchen the way Maria ran OUR kitchen. Can you guess they don't get along?"
"Oh, I see." X muttered, suppressing an urge to pull out his own hair in frustration. "Is anyone hurt?"
"Yeah, actually, one of Maria's daughters has a concussion from a frying pan to the head. Could have been worse. Actually, the words exchanged WERE worse. Started with puta and went downhill from there." Zero grinned. "I took a few notes. Never know when curse words can come in handy."
"So what do you want me to do about it?" X asked as calmly as possible. Zero just shrugged.
"Beats the hell out of me… I just know I'm not touching it. But I thought you should know what's going on. See ya later, I have some training to do." X resisted the urge to throw something at his back as the red hunter walked away. It was just like him to tell X about a problem, and give no input at all on how to solve it.
X sighed, and decided to see if he could figure out who was in charge of the domestic staff. It wasn't something he'd had to look into before.
Back in the lounge…
"So, I was curious," the real Axl said brightly after X had left. "If there were no Mavericks, why was there a Red Alert in your world? And do you know who created you?" That was a burning question for him, since he didn't know anything about his own creation. And he and his double were so much alike; it could be assumed that the same person had created them.
He wasn't expecting the reaction he got. Tabby stiffened, her lips tightening, as his double leaned against her. The alternate Axl rested his head on her breast, looking for all the world like a child needing comfort, and Tabby gently stroked his hair.
"I can tell him the story, love, if you don't want to." She whispered, and kissed his forehead as he nodded wordlessly. Then she looked at the startled, slightly guilty double beside her. He hadn't meant to cause the alternate Axl such obvious distress. "Could you tell me exactly what your history was, first? So I can skip over what's the same?"
"Sure," Axl said, puzzled but willing. "I woke up in a ruined building with Red over me. He took me back to Red Alert and I used my copy power for them. They tried to duplicate my copy ability and went insane… so I joined the Hunters and had to retire them." Tabby nodded.
"That's similar, but my Axl's story starts before that," Tabby said as one Axl listened raptly, and the other tried not to. She drew a deep breath. "He was created by Doctor Romero Kennesey. The first and last Reploid he ever made. The good doctor was a genius in cybernetics and VR, but didn't have much to do with mainstream Reploid research. No one knew he was doing anything at all with them until he died." Axl stared at her, utterly enrapt… finally, he had a name for his creator. "But… he died without a will, in our world, and he hadn't left any notes on Axl so no one knew he was anything special. He was activated after the doctor died and sold with the rest of the estate." Tabby slowly stroked Axl's hair, looking down at him, and then fixed his double with a somber gaze.
"That was a bad time for a private sale. Everything was going to hell and… little things like contracts were easy to ignore. He was sold to a moderately wealthy woman who was so unpleasant she couldn't keep any servants. She was a control freak and OCD, so she punished him for the tiniest things, like not putting the honey back in the right place. And sometimes she punished him for imagined slights. He was only a baby then, you understand, and this became normal." Reploids like Axl didn't grow, but a newly activated Reploid was a 'baby' in many important ways. It was possible for a cruel beginning to influence the mind forever. Many Mavericks had started that way. Axl leaned back, shocked and horrified by the revelations. Tabby smiled sadly, still comforting her love.
"Then, one day, she brought another woman to the house, a pretty, athletic girl with brunette hair. Axl's mistress was lesbian and probably hoping to score points with how lovely her place was, but she didn't know her companion as well as she thought. At some point in the evening, she slapped Axl for something, and the other woman stopped her before she could do more. She told the woman that Axl was a thinking being and didn't deserve to be treated that way. Then she knelt down to help Axl up. As she touched him, she slipped a small knife into his hand and whispered in his ear, 'Take your freedom.'" Tabby paused as her Axl looked up for a moment, at his double.
"I don't know her name. I thank her every day, but I never found out her name… She was the first human to ever treat me like a person." Then he snuggled back up to Tabby, and she nodded, picking up the story again.
"So once she was asleep he used the knife, and fled. Red found him hiding in an abandoned warehouse, and took him in. The rest of his history is similar to yours, except that Red Alert was a genuine criminal organization, not vigilantes. They specialized in robberies and protection rackets, until they tried to duplicate Axl's copy power. He left when they started becoming more violent, killing people instead of just beating them up, and the rest is pretty much the same as what you described." Axl swallowed hard as he thought about that history.
Technically, any Reploid who killed a human was a Maverick. In reality, there were exceptions. Reploids who worked in peace keeping needed to be able to kill when necessary, for the greater good. And for Maverick Hunters, mistakes did happen in the middle of battle. But the kind of cold-blooded revenge killing she had described didn't qualify, even motivated by desperation, fear and pain. It wasn't exactly the act of a Maverick, since it was motivated by personal reasons. But that kind of killing would get a Reploid retired anyway.
"Do… X and Zero know about this?" Axl asked tentatively, and Tabby nodded, then smiled. It was a particularly unpleasant smile.
"Oh yes. I don't know about this world, Axl, but in ours the punishment for real slavery can include the death penalty. In a lot of places, they don't even bother with much of a trial if they find you with the slaves. Three executioners, no waiting." Tabby shrugged. "X and Zero decided justice was done. Who's going to argue?" Axl bit his lip, then nodded.
He wasn't sure what to think of what he'd been told, although now he had a name for his creator. That was something, and he could investigate to see if the doctor was still alive, although Axl thought he probably wasn't. His double straightened with a sigh.
"Now that we've gotten all the depressing stuff out of the way… can we watch the movie?" He asked, and the real Axl blushed, reaching for the controller.
"Oh, sure!"
Elsewhere… In Hunter HQ…
Dynamo frowned as he ran through his recording again. He was sitting in his new room at Hunter HQ. It wasn't much of a place, just a chair, table and a recharger, but he'd managed to avoid getting a roommate and it was free. That made up for a lot, although he was wondering how long it would take before someone noticed he was still tagging along and demand he either put up or get lost. He wasn't quite sure which way he'd go when they finally did ask. Bounty hunting was fun and glamorous, but he'd gotten into a comfortable routine with the Hunters. Maybe he'd sign up.
He hadn't followed Iris to the beach expecting she would meet someone. He just liked to watch her, sometimes; when she didn't know he was there. He did that to a lot of people… it was how he got some of his best blackmail material… but watching Iris was different. It was restful, pleasant.
Until tonight. He hadn't been expecting Zero to show up, or for them to get all touchy-feely. The very thought made him scowl.
"Shit, do I really love her?" Dynamo wondered to himself. It wasn't like him to get jealous. He and Iris had not been dating exclusively, and none of her other guy friends had made him feel threatened. But something about the way she acted with Zero told him that this was serious and he was startled by how jealous and angry that made him. Could he really care for her? What had started this?
Dynamo leaned back in his chair, casting his mind back over their on-again, off-again romance. Where had it turned serious for him?
There. Dynamo blinked, as he realized it had been the love bug that had sealed his affections. Planting it on him had been a seriously underhanded, suspicious thing to do. In fact, it was something he would have done if he'd thought of it first. It had marked Iris in his mind as more than just another pretty face, as someone who could be just as cunning and clever as him. Strange, that planting a homing device on him had been the real start to their relationship. Most people would have ended it right there, but Dynamo wasn't most people.
So now he knew why Iris meant so much to him. But that still left the question of what to do about Zero. The way he saw it, he had three options. One: Try to assassinate him. That could be fun, but if anyone found out he'd lose his cushy spot at Hunter HQ and probably have to fend off attacks for the rest of his unnatural life. Not to mention that a lot of people had tried to assassinate Zero and failed. Two: He could challenge Zero to a duel. He might even win… he'd been drilling with the Hunters for a long time, and his world's Zero had helped him refine his fighting style. Of course, he might get his ass kicked, and he doubted running away would impress Iris any. Three: He could try to woo Iris away from Zero. That possibility had the upside of not eliminating the other two. He could woo her, and if things were going badly, try something else.
Dynamo clapped his hands together with a grin. That was the ticket! Iris still liked him, he was sure of it, and she didn't know Zero at all yet. He'd just make his interest a lot clearer and see how things went from there.
He could always try to kill Zero later.