Even as Axl and his followers worked to contain the worst of the magical outbreaks, more subtle powers were unfurling. Many were simply too small to register on Axl's screen. Others were indigenous to certain areas, or meshed well enough with reality that they were no threat to it. From Axl's perspective, they could safely be left alone.
Of course, that did not mean they were no threat to individuals. Nature was never kind, and like wild lions could be dangerous, so could magical beasts. In the time of Axl's first life, people had known how to deal with such things, but now it was different. And one such activity was about to attract some attention.
The ship moved slowly with the swells, as the two Reploid girls manned the controls.
The ship was almost entirely automated. A triumph of engineering, it took only seven people to control the massive tanker ship. Oil was not as vital to industry as it had once been, with the advent of cheap fusion power reactors. But it was still needed in a wide variety of ways, in everything from lubricants to fabrics.
The girls currently at the controls were the most junior of the crew, and the only females. One had long brown hair in a thick braid, while the other wore her golden hair short. Other than that, their armor was painted in the red and black colors of their company. The logo of Amerind Oil was emblazoned on their right shoulders.
One pulled out a candy bar, breaking it in half and offering the other piece to her friend, who accepted it silently. They were old, old friends and had done this shift a million times. They would do it a million more, and felt no need to fill up the hours with endless chatter.
Unlike most of the crew, they never complained and never wanted much time off. Contented little tortoises, they had never asked for promotion and never gotten any. They were perfectly happy with the quiet and calm of their midnight shifts on the tanker. It helped that they didn't really have to do anything except be there in case of emergency.
"Mmm… Mandy?" The girl with brown hair finally said, working a bit of nougat out from one tooth. "I t'ink… mrf… think that Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is on channel 134." One of the perks of working in the tanker was a satellite TV link and all the channels in the known world.
"I heard that thing got a Rotten rating from Rotten Tomatoes." Her friend said after some cogitation. The brunette snickered.
"Rotten for a tomato movie? Well, are we doing something else important?" she asked. Her friend shrugged, and turned on the TV. For a long time, they watched the movie in silence.
"Do you hear something?" The blonde suddenly said. The brunette stopped chewing on a celery stick.
"Yeah, I was eating a celery stick?"
"No, not that… it sounds like singing…" The blonde turned off the TV, and they both listened intently.
It was singing. A very sweet, melodic crooning. They both settled into their chairs, entranced by it…
The blonde suddenly jolted bolt upright. "Ohmigod I fell asleep!" She looked around frantically, utterly horrified as she saw the chronometer. "Two hours! Hairy flipping gods, wake up!" She frantically shook her brunette partner, who woke up with a snort.
"Wha… ha?" Then she blinked as reality came back. "…We were asleep?" She paled as that fact sank in. Sleeping on duty was one of the things you Did Not Do. At the very least, one person was to stay awake while the other catnapped. Both at once… "We could be dismissed!" They both exchanged horrified looks. There was no other conceivable job where they could spend all night basically doing… nothing at all, and receive free food, lodging and a tiny bit of pay. If they lost their jobs, it would be the worst trauma of their lives.
"Wait… wait. No one knows we fell asleep." Relief suddenly bloomed in the blonde's face as she checked all the monitors. "And nothing happened. We just don't say anything and no one will know." The brunette huffed a sigh of relief.
"Oh, thank god!" They both diligently turned to their monitors, entirely forgetting the strange bout of sleep.
Until it came time for someone to relieve them.
"Where is Amleric?" The blonde was fidgeting. "I want to go to bed…" They were on twelve hour shifts. Four of them manned the control room, two at a time, while the other three Reploids tended to various mechanical chores around the ship in eight hour shifts. So basically, all the two of them did was work and sleep. Since they could do almost anything during work, that was an equitable arrangement.
But that meant they needed their sleep. When the relief was late, it was a terrible imposition. Usually, everyone was prompt.
"Why don't you stay here, while I go look for them?" The brunette offered. One of them needed to stay in the control room at all times. The blonde nodded, and her companion started looking for the others.
She found… nothing. A rather creepy nothing. There were parts scattered at one of the engineering stations, as though the Reploid stationed there had just abruptly gotten up and left. She also found some cold food in the quarters of one of her relief. Breakfast, the sort of thing he would have been eating three or four hours ago… he always woke up well before his shift started. It was half finished.
But there was no sign of struggle or violence. Nothing at all. She finally went back to the control room.
"Well, where are they?" The blonde demanded impatiently, thinking longingly of a hot meal and a comforting recharging capsule. The brunette ignored her, keying the emergency transmission button.
"Control? We have a really strange problem…"
A day later, the two Reploids were sitting in Maverick Hunter HQ, waiting nervously to be interviewed.
A tanker ship only needed seven people, but it did need seven people, so when the situation was reported a replacement crew had been flown out… with a few soldiers to keep them company. No one understood what had happened, but it was peculiar and disturbing enough to warrant some serious investigation.
X stepped into the room, and the two girls immediately riveted their attention to him. X blushed lightly. Lifesaver had already checked them both over thoroughly, and informed him that they were clean of any infection and exactly what they appeared to be… a pair of class B female Reploids, of the Akisha line, which basically provided ornamental but competent desk workers and secretaries. Just from that, X had guessed they would be attractive, but it was still startling to see two very pretty girls looking at him with wide eyes.
They were each pretty in very different ways. The brunette girl reminded X vaguely of Iris, although her skin tone was darker and her eyes were a glorious purple, shading to gold along the outer edges. Her body was very buxom, and the uniform/armor she was wearing flattered her.
The second girl, the blonde one, had almost identical features, but eyes of a dark blue shot with green, like the scale of a fish. The Akisha line was prone to a certain sameness of features, but eye color was typically highly individual. Her body type was completely different, however, lean and slender where her companion was lush.
X took a seat across from them, and smiled gently at them both. Signas had already interrogated them… and reduced them both to incoherent tears with his harsh, pointed questions. Zero was out, so it had fallen to X to question the girls. He could have delegated the task, but the whole story was so weird that he wanted to get it straight from them.
"Could you both tell me what happened, in your own words?" He asked, and the girls exchanged glances. Finally, the brunette spoke up.
"Um, well… sir…" she said nervously, and X interrupted.
"Just call me X, please," he said with a smile, which seemed to reassure her. She gave him a tentative smile.
"X, we were monitoring the ship as usual and… the only strange thing that happened during the night was singing." X nodded. He'd already heard about that. Some people were already speculating that it was a new Maverick weapon.
"What kind of singing? Could you reproduce it?" The girl looked startled at that question, while the blonde looked a little intrigued.
"Yes, I think so. It went sort of like this…" She started to hum, and X listened intently. The song seemed to be in a minor key, with a haunting tune, but it told him nothing. Except… the other girl was also humming, and seemed to be enjoying the reprisal.
X was loathe to stop them… the song was really quite pretty, and for some reason, he wanted to hear more. But he had work to do, and finally spoke. "So, what happened after you heard that song?" Signas had insisted they weren't telling the truth about this part. The two girls simultaneously looked guilty, and X could see why Signas was sure. They were bad liars.
"We… just kept manning the ship." One said lamely, and X shook his head.
"Honey," he said kindly, concealing the fact that he couldn't remember their names. "We really don't care about your company. Nothing that you say will go beyond this room, so please, tell me what happened?"
"You swear?" The blonde said, in a soft, hesitant voice. "If… if they find out, we'll lose our jobs. And we really like our jobs. We don't have to do anything at all." The brunette nodded vigorously.
"We just watch TV and stuff," she said, and X stared at them both, a little appalled. He knew that there were people like this, both humans and Reploids, who might as well not have any free will for all they used it. He always thought it was a little creepy.
"No, I won't say anything," he said soothingly. "Please, what happened?"
"We… fell asleep. The music put us to sleep. We didn't wake up for two hours." The brunette looked at him pleadingly. "But it wouldn't have mattered, really… we'd never have left the control room anyway." X nodded. She was trying to justify herself, assure herself that their failure really hadn't meant anything. He wasn't sure of that, but he was sure it wasn't their fault.
"Thank you, ladies," he said politely, standing up. The information they had been hiding wasn't particularly useful, but it was interesting. He could only guess that the Mavericks weapon put its enemies to sleep, and the others had been kidnapped.
He would go investigate that area tomorrow.
X frowned, checking over the profiles of the Reploids on the tanker. He'd meant to go out right away… but something had occurred to him. What had made those two girls special? Why had they been spared?
The rooms to the control room they had been working in had not been locked in any way. And even if they had, some of the others had been in their private quarters when the singing had started. Why had whoever had put the girls to sleep spirited the others away, but left the females?
…Females?
X suddenly blinked as the answer came to him. They were the only girls on the ship. All the other crew had been males. Maybe this weapon, whatever it was, affected men differently then women?
That was a distinct problem. X had never really gotten much use out of it, but he was definitely a man. He could disable his hearing, but maybe it would be wise to take a female Hunter along with him.
It couldn't hurt.