Even three weeks in after her activation Iris doesn't think she's important. She certainly doesn't feel important.
That's why she's so touched that her mothers and fathers (she has so many, isn't she fortunate?) care so much about where they're going to place her. As far as she's concerned, she exists to be both her brother's keeper and a conscience. Everything else is a very happy bonus.
It's wonderful that she's surrounded by such good people.
But they do confuse her sometimes. Like right now for instance.
"I'll be working for the Maverick Hunters?" she repeats. "I don't mean to question you – "and she sincerely doesn't – "but shouldn't I be working close with my brother in Repliforce Headquarters?"
Head scientist Dr. Leonard sighs, running a callused hand through his short, blonde hair. This father has been so tired lately it makes Iris' heart ache. Her next research should be how to help people relieve stress and fatigue.
"Iris, we told you that as long as you're within Colonel's range you'll both be fine. Don't worry about it too much."
"It's not our lives that I'm worried about. I'm aware that we can function long-distance from each other." Iris looks down, her brown bangs shadowing her face. "It just makes me sad because we spend so little time together as a family and we're already separating."
"아 세상에, 강아지를 치는 것 같아," moans Dr. Kwon, one of Iris' mothers, who's standing a couple meters behind Dr. Leonard next to Dr. Gutiérrez and Dr. Edochie.
Ashamed at her ignorance, Iris flinches as if those foreign words are a lash of a stick. There's more languages out there besides English that her parents use. She should request some language programs to download and integrate to understand them better. Emotions, psychology, therapy, ethics, stress relief, languages – there's so much she has to know and she knows so little. Will she ever learn them all?
Dr. Leonard shoots a sharp glare at the female scientist behind him before swiftly returning his attention to Iris.
"Iris, you and Colonel can still visit each other," Dr. Leonard says soothingly and slowly as if talking to a child, which Iris is very much aware that she is one. "You're still part of Repliforce. But do you know why Repliforce was created?"
"To protect the innocent and their honor," she answers. That's what Colonel told her.
"Sure, that too. But do you know what Repliforce's exact directives are?"
When Iris says nothing, the human scientist raises a loosely closed hand and sticks a finger out for every goal he verbally lists out.
"One: compensate for Sigma and Doppler program failures. Two: uphold Reploid sciences, research and development. Three: maximize reploid efficiency. Four: increase troop response time for the Maverick Hunters. And finally, five: prevent further Maverick action."
"In a way, Repliforce is augmenting the Maverick Hunters. It is because of number four that you'll be stationed at Hunter Base to directly learn from their Navigators on how to become an effective operator. Once you're done with your training, you will be an operator for both the Maverick Hunters and Repliforce since the Hunters lost a lot of Navigators recently. You're going to help them until they get better, okay?"
And helping people get better is important.
Accepting this answer, Iris smiles. "Of course! I'll do my best!"
"Good girl."
The young reploid blushes, pleased.
"Now go to your recharge tube. You're going to have a big day ahead of you tomorrow."
"Yes, Father," she dutifully answers.
That's another thing that confuses Iris too. Every time she calls her parents what they are to her, they look more and more uncomfortable. The laughingly limited facial expression database that she has tells her that they appear 'guilty.'
Iris doesn't understand. Her parents have done nothing but help her and other people. Maybe her database is wrong? It doesn't surprise her if it is. She's disabled after all.
After the human Repliforce personnel bid her good night, Colonel enters the lab five minutes later. Before Iris can properly greet her brother, Colonel breaks the quiet first.
"You shouldn't call them fathers and mothers."
Iris blinks, tilting her head inquisitively.
"They're not real family. They're scientists who were given a directive to build us so we can carry out our directives in turn. You shouldn't get attached to people who we're not going to see again once we begin our jobs."
"Maybe," Iris defers hesitantly. "But I'd like to think them as family. I'd like to think of everyone as family. It just makes the world a much fuller and brighter place when I think of people that way. That everyone is a friend I haven't met yet."
Colonel's face is always aloof, fittingly stoic for the soldier reploid. But the corners of his stern lips turn downwards at Iris' words. He disapproves.
"That's a dangerous way to think," he says confidently – something that Iris, who constantly doubts and worries, is so impressed by. "It'll hurt you. The world isn't a good place. If it was, there's no need for me to exist. There wouldn't be a need for the Maverick Hunters or Repliforce to exist."
He marches towards Iris, every step a curt, steady clack across the clean tiled floor. Once he's in front of her, Colonel bends his neck to gaze down at the smaller reploid with his arms folded behind his ramrod straight back.
"The world is full of evil people who pretend to be good and innocent. For your safety, I advise you to not be so trusting. Don't think of anyone as family. Understand?"
The brunette shrinks back. She understands where Colonel is coming from, she really does – it's his role to fight against evil and to serve justice. To protect the innocent, to be righteous. And that means to be constantly vigilant.
He has to distrust everyone. Colonel is truly her opposite.
It makes Iris melancholy that they can't easily share their views even though it can't be helped. It's just who they are. Still…
"It's okay if you don't see me as your family," Iris speaks earnestly and softly, her words almost drifting away with the low background humming of the various lab machines around them. "You will always be mine, Colonel."
Now it's the taller reploid's turn to hesitate.
Seconds tick by until Colonel's shoulders relax, his arms falling to his sides. He bends on one heavily armored, yellow striped black knee gently, his height matching Iris'. Sharp dark eyes level with spring green, doe ones.
"You're the exception," Colonel declares. "If I don't trust you, how can I trust myself? You're the other half of me after all."
Oh, so he knows that too. The lab assistants really aren't as quiet as they think they are.
"But understand that because of who I am, I have to take risks. I will take risks. Promise that you will not become too attached to me, sister. I don't want you to get hurt because of me."
Moved, Iris' tear ducts activate enough for her eyes to grow wet. Colonel, despite how cold he seems, is really a good and kind robot. She's so lucky she has such a sweet brother.
"I can't make that promise," the peaceful reploid apologizes gently. "I already love you."
After all, it's hard not to get attached to family.
Thousands of buildings and sprawling streets with people hustling and bustling, the city an organized chaos under the infinite expanse of the sky. Colorful, everything is so colorful, and no matter how many times she's gone through it, hands and face pressed against the window at the back seat of the transport, she's always in awe.
She relishes the moments when the car slows to a stop at the intersections. She can sneak glimpses into the lives of different strangers and guesses what they're doing.
A little boy dragging his father's hand to the window of a mini mech pet shop.
A woman rushing to help an art student struggling with a shaky cart full of supplies across an uneven sidewalk.
A young teen pushing his grandmother's wheelchair as he runs down the narrow pathway through a park, racing against no one and delighting in the elderly human's shocked laughter.
And then the car moves again, their lives blurring past away with her view frame.
The transport parks across the street from her destination. Slowly Iris is filled with apprehension at the sight of the colossus reminder of the danger that crawls beneath around her.
She can't understand why anyone would want to hurt another person. It fundamentally makes no sense to her.
That's why the Maverick Hunters Headquarters is both beautiful and uncomfortable. Twin glass towers with connecting bridges and a golden orb sitting right before arched point. A reflective blade aiming for the sun, standing tall at the center of Abel City like a silent guardian.
The sword and shield for those who cannot protect themselves.
Iris reads the slogan engraved in the arched gate at the entrance a few more times, thinks of her brother, then walks in.
Iris greets nearly every reploid she meets on her way to the Command Center.
It's her new favorite thing to do: sometimes she catches a passerby's eyes and she sneaks a hi in those precious seconds before the other reploid looks away, pretending they weren't staring at her. Mostly she gets confused looks or no acknowledgment, but sometimes she gets a polite smile, even a verbal greeting back.
Iris wants everyone in Hunter Base to know that she's a friend.
Then she gets to one of the highest floor (it turns out Command Center sits inside the giant golden sphere she saw from the outside) and she's already being directed to watch the most senior Navigator before anything else.
It doesn't take a minute for Iris to realize that being an operator is way more complicated than it initially seems.
As a newbie, she's shadowing for now. The younger reploid watches, amazed, at the sheer precision, efficiency, concentration that the veteran Navigator exhibits before her, Alia coolly juggling multiple tasks at the same time without frying a circuit.
"This neighborhood has been abandoned after the previous Maverick attack. Expect few civilians but keep in mind that the buildings here are still fragile. Proceed with caution," Alia reports before switching off the comm to one unit, fingers already pulling up five different mechaniloid profiles on her monitor screen.
"Ranger Unit Troop C, the mechs that you're facing seem to be a custom job based on the Hover Gunner," she answers in another channel. "In fact, they may be powered by MAME-Qs. Elevating Irregular status to Maverick."
Seconds later she's sending out evacuation alerts from the perimeter, taking dispatch calls passed from PSAP Navigators when she needs all her focus on one squad, orders spilling from her lips as if she was activated for it.
This continues for a good thirty minutes. When all there's left is a single patrol to focus on and the emergency calls sent to the veteran Navigator go miraculously quiet, Alia rests back into her seat with closed eyes, deeply exventing from her nose. A small respite. When she opens her eyes, she glances at Iris, whose mouth is open in wonder.
"Ever since the previous war, it's been hectic juggling multiple units and troops like this," the operator says plainly. "But with the new reploids entering the force like you, it'll get smoother."
Iris scans around the Command Center again in a whole new light. "It's not enough with forty-four Navigators…?"
"And we're supposed to have way more than that. Think of it this way: Abel City has a population of eight million humans and reploids. We receive an average of sixteen to seventeen thousand calls a day in which the PSAP Navigators have to quickly decide whether they involve real Mavericks or it's a fake report. If the caller makes a mistake and there is no reploid involved, calls have to be passed to the human police."
Alia points at the digital map of the city at her monitor full of bright routes, dots of various colors scattered here and there, sometimes in clusters, and a feed of recently received transmissions and incidents scrolling at the side of the screen.
"As the calls go higher and higher in the hierarchy, that's when we have to reserve the time to acquire all the details of the emergency the caller is experiencing. If it's a reploid, it's easier: we can receive location coordinates and even visual feed depending on the model. Humans are harder: usually they don't know where they are during the attack and so we have to further pinpoint their location with the transmission towers. It's even worse when there's a large attack and we have calls flooding in all over the same incident. If we aren't data-orientated reploids, it would be nearly impossible to handle all of that. And that's just for the calls."
Alia taps a couple buttons on her master keyboard and specific unit profiles show up, hogging enough space that the map grows smaller to accommodate.
"We have eighteen units, each of them composed of multiple troops, and more than half of them are constantly on patrol. If any of the Hunters engage with an Irregular or a Maverick, we're sending out evacuation orders, researching the sector background in case of any other environmental abnormality can affect their work. And if they're having serious trouble, we need to pull up data over data, find the nearest units and send back-up – you get the point. The work doesn't end."
"And this is all while watching the satellite feeds in case there's an attack so large that multiple sectors fall silent. Communications fall down, which then we can assume that we're at a war again."
Iris shivers. Alia ticks off maybe a portion of the responsibilities and duties that Iris is expected to conduct later and it's all already so overwhelming.
And war? War? Iris has heard of Sigma's Rebellion and the Doppler Invasion, but she doesn't know the gritty nitty details of them. One time she tried to learn more and the results - the articles, the obituaries, the anti-reploid propaganda, the photos and videos of the tragedies and the bodies – she ended up crying. She couldn't look it up again.
She knows so many people died and she can't…she can't even imagine how that's like, for so many lives, every one of them with a home, a job, a family like a sister or a beloved brother - people who they care and people who care them back - to just vanish like that, from something so meaningless like violence.
It's...it's...
Iris swallows the block in her throat.
"Don't be too nervous. Eventually you'll get used to it," Alia says over Iris' internal turmoil. "With a job like this, you'll develop thicker cables in no time. Now do you have any questions so far?"
She has so many. She wants to ask why do Mavericks happen, why do people hurt each other, why can't everyone just get along – it makes so much sense that way so why can't the world see that?
But Iris understands that Alia means any questions relating to being a Navigator so the brunette tosses out a clarification one.
The brunette forces her voice to be clear. "I heard you say eighteen units, but aren't there only seventeen…?"
"We do have eighteen units. After the first war, Maverick Hunters established the Zeroth Unit for Captain Zero."
Iris's lips twitch in a smile. "Captain Zero of the Zeroth Unit? That's really fitting."
"It is, isn't it? But honestly Captain Zero is so effective at what he does, he deserves having a unit named after him. It's just a coincidence that his name is numerical in nature."
Alia grins, proud of her co-workers. "He and X don't really need a Navigator to focus on them. All we have to do is give them a mission if there is one and only check on them if they're on an op. Otherwise we basically let them do what they want. Any Navigator trying to help them is inefficient use of personnel."
"Oh wow…" Iris whispers.
Then Alia's monitor lights up, signaling another call. Swiftly, the Navigator's eyes sharpen and she's back into work mode.
"Hunter Base to Second Unit Troop B. Understood, will be sending back-up immed – "
Then Alia freezes. Iris is standing behind her and so she can't see her face, but Alia's tense shoulders and still hands speak volumes.
"The white reploid again…?" the blonde operator whispers. She resurges just as quick, summoning the Abel City map again. "Ninth Unit is the closest to your location. I'll direct them to you. If possible, get a clear visual if you can, sir."
It's the only moment throughout the Iris' time at the watch floor that Alia has lost her composure like that.
It's been nonstop learning and integrating Maverick Hunter protocols, familiarizing with the critical contacts of different organizations, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each unit (except the Zeroth and the Seventeenth Units - apparently there's not enough information about their leaders?), shadowing Alia and multiple other senior Navigators, collapsing in recharge, then repeat.
Iris barely has any spare time. She can manage a "Good morning, Colonel!" and "Good night, Colonel!" to her brother whenever she feels his presence available in their shared channel.
A week later, Iris has gotten a hang of things around Hunter Base even though she has accumulated enough knowledge that it feels like she's going to overheat any moment.
It's to the point that one morning Iris dazedly walks into Command Center and Alia takes one head-to-toe scan over the smaller reploid, frowning.
"You look like you're on the verge of short-circuiting," Alia declares, dark blue eyes sharp. "Aren't you recharging on time?"
"Yes, ma'am," Iris answers dutifully. "I've been entering my tube at exactly 2200 hours and waking up at 0600 hours."
Alia's eyes narrow as if she can visually comb through lies and Iris squirms on the spot at the attention. Finally, "Perhaps I've been driving too much information into you. Your profile did state that you were activated a little over a month ago and that's unusually young for the reploids the Hunters take in…"
The older Navigator waves the brunette off. "Take the rest of the day off. Let your analysis routines get a cool down. Be back here at the same time tomorrow."
The first thing Iris thinks of is visiting her brother.
A quick comm suggestion later, Iris gets turned down with an apology. Colonel is with Repliforce's Navy forces and isn't even in Abel City anymore. Though she voices back cheerful encouragements, inside Iris is stunned that she lost track of her own brother's whereabouts. She and her brother have been so busy with their respective work that Iris is no longer effectively following Colonel's schedule.
Now standing in the middle of an empty hallway, she's essentially left to her own devices.
Maybe I can take a walk outside?
But where should she go?
A public park sounds nice. I remember there's a nice big one at Sector North – 10…
Which requires a ride, which requires zennies that she doesn't have.
I can walk all the way there?
But Iris is now very aware how dangers pop out of nowhere, anytime and anyplace. She's a non-combatant reploid with no means of self-defense walking around in Abel City where seemingly docile reploids can go bolts out of the blue. If it was just her life alone, she might have taken that risk.
But I'm connected to Colonel. I can't risk my brother because of my own selfishness.
Iris sighs. It's not Colonel's fault that they were built this way, but she wishes that she isn't such a burden on him.
"Whoa, watch out!"
Iris swivels around, her long brown ponytail sailing through the air at the sound of the voice behind her. Viridian eyes spot an unstable tower of datapads shadowing her and she squeaks, arms reflexively raising up to guard her face. The tablets fall and she falls with them.
"Ow…" Iris moans rubbing her head. She opens a shut eye down at the mess around her. She's covered in data pads, her red beret sitting a meter away from her.
"Oh smelt me, I am so, so sorry about that! Are you okay?"
Standing in front of her is a very round yellow reploid with an external white mouth guard, eyes wide in concern.
"I'm fine!" Iris chirps, quick to put the other reploid at ease.
"I've got the most imbalanced gyros in the entire base," the reploid groans, lifting a hand towards Iris. The brunette giggles, taking the hand and gets pulled up to her feet in turn. She brushes off the dirt from her dress, places her beret back to its rightful place then starts collecting the data pads.
"Oh gosh, you don't need to!" the yellow reploid says as he hurriedly bends down to retrieve his pads at a speed faster than Iris. "It's all my fault for being a super clumsybot, I swear…"
"No worries. Besides it seems awfully difficult to carry all those pads by yourself." Iris has a good seven data pads and she jostles them until they sit comfortably in her arms. "Where are you taking these? I'll help you carry them."
"Would you really? You're so nice!"
Iris blushes. "It's no big deal. I just like helping people."
"Then I'm really glad I ran into you! Well not the whole crashing into you and making you fall part, but y'know, just meeting you in general…" the yellow reploid shakes his head. "Anyways, I'm Double. What's your name?"
"I'm Iris. It's very nice to meet you, Double," Iris smiles, already becoming fond of this new friend.
"Iris? That's a really pretty name," says Double as he starts walking down the hallways, Iris naturally falling step just next to him. "You must be a pretty special bot then."
"Oh no, I'm just like any other reploid!"
"You don't look it though. I've never seen a reploid with your design before."
Bashful, Iris focuses on the data pads in her hands. "It's the dress, isn't it? I've seen some people staring at me because of it…"
"That's kind of part of it. But there's something about you that's just different. Like you're not supposed to be a Hunter…"
Iris blinks. "Well, I am technically Repliforce. Could that be it?"
Double turns around a corner. "Repliforce?" he repeats lightly. "I did hear that the Maverick Hunters have a couple Repliforce bots doing some work here, but I don't know what Repliforce is really about. Can you tell me, Iris?
"Repliforce is a separate anti-Maverick organization," Iris replies remembering what her parents and Colonel have told her. "The best way I can sum it up is that it's a bigger, more military-orientated Maverick Hunters made to help augment the Hunters."
"A bigger Maverick Hunter organization?" Double whistles. "I didn't know the Mavericks are causing that much trouble. Though I shouldn't be surprised considering how crazy the world is becoming."
You mean the world is getting worse? Iris doesn't say. Instead she bites the inside of her cheek.
Double stops in front of one of the many doors lining down a mostly empty hallway. He knocks on the door and when he doesn't receive a response, he shrugs and carefully lays the data pads on the ground next to the door. Iris follows suit.
"Thanks for helping me, Iris. You're the best," Double grins again. "Are you busy?"
The brunette shakes her head.
"Then want to head to the canteen and refuel together? I became a rookie Hunter recently so I don't really know anybody yet…"
"Of course!" In fact, she's ecstatic. "I'm new here too! I haven't been training as an operator that long either so I haven't had the time to know anyone else besides the Navigators."
"Cool, we newbies gotta stick together! Follow me, I know a shortcut to the canteen."
The young Navigator tries not to skip as both reploids continue down the spiraling hallways of the headquarters.
Because everyone is mostly working, the hallways stay relatively empty as they walk. But every time Iris does see a reploid, she resumes her hobby of greeting hi with a smile.
After she says hi to the sixth reploid, who gives her a nod of acknowledgement in return, Double pipes up. "Geez, you're the friendliest reploid I've met yet. I've never seen anyone who seems so happy just saying hi to strangers."
"They're not really strangers," Iris says. "They're my co-workers and friends I haven't gotten to know better yet."
Double's brows raise. "That's a really interesting way of looking at it."
"Thanks!"
Iris sees another robot at her peripheral vision and automatically turns her attention back forward, calling out another," Hello!"
She stills.
This Hunter is completely different from all the other Hunters she has seen so far.
Sophisticated white and crimson armor and long, sleek golden hair tied up beneath a horned helmet, a hint of a saber's hilt peeking out from the Hunter's back. A shining azure triangular power gem sits on the V of his helm right between two cold eyes on an equally cold face.
When the Hunter is a little closer, his eyes flash and Iris gets the uncomfortable feeling that she's being dissected from the inside out, that this robot has completely contained her insignificant life within seconds of analysis and finds her lacking. Every other reploid she has greeted has never examined her so thoroughly like this.
There's only one reploid who did and that was her own brother when they first saw each other.
It's almost a relief – and strangely disappointing? - when the Hunter looks away, ignoring her completely, briskly continuing at the same pace as he passes by her and Double, the strands of his majestic hair following behind him like obedient soldiers.
It takes a couple seconds for Iris to realize that Double isn't standing next to her as much as hiding behind her once the crimson robot is more than a good couple meters away.
"Sorry, Zero scares me," Double confesses sheepishly at Iris' questioning eyes.
"That's Zero? As in the Unit Leader of the Zeroth?"
"You don't know? That makes sense. If you did, you wouldn't have just said hi to him like that."
"He's…something," Iris concludes. The image of those eyes aren't leaving her. The accompanied déjà vu isn't helping.
"Don't get too bothered by it. Zero is one hundred percent, frozen core warbot down to the wire. He's like that to everyone but X," Double explains. "If you're not X, you don't matter to him."
At Iris' blank look, Double blinks.
"You do know X, right? Right?"
"X is the Seventeenth Unit Leader?" Iris states though it sounds more like a question.
"Oh rust me – were you activated yesterday?!"
"Uh, I, um," Iris stammers as Double continues to stare at her like she's a surviving vintage tech relic from the previous century. "I was activated a little over a month ago and I spent all that time on studying…" Everything else except news, politics, and history though she tried, she really did, but it can be so difficult.
"Oh geez, you are young, no wonder." Double shakes his head. "Still it's hard to know a reploid who doesn't know X…"
"Is X really that important?" the clueless reploid asks tentatively.
Double barks out a shocked laugh. "Smelt me, what a bolts question! X is the reason us reploids exist, Iris!"
When Iris' eyes grow wide, the rookie Hunter continues. "He's the android. The first independent thinking, feeling robot created by Dr. Light from the previous century. His backstory is straight out of some epic legend. A human found him sleeping in a capsule for a hundred years and used X's base template to produce the reploid race."
"Oh…" Iris trails off in awe.
"He's the Azure Hunter, the Twenty Second Century Blue Bomber, the Father of All Reploids, Mega Man X – pick a title, he's got plenty and he'll keep collecting more," Double says a tad wryly. "He and Zero are the reason that the Maverick Hunters still exist. They ended the previous Maverick Wars all by themselves."
Flushing red, Iris feels a waterfall of embarrassment descend to her. "I can't believe I didn't know…"
Someone that incredibly important has been occupying the same building as her and she didn't even know what he has done.
Double tilts his head, amazed. "I think what surprises me more is that you haven't met X already. X is a really nice guy and he likes greeting the new recruits. When did you start training here again?"
"A week ago…"
"Oh." Double rubs the back of his head. "That's probably why. X has been downright busy lately. Nowadays I basically see him come back to base just to recharge. He's in and out of Hunter Base before anyone sees him."
"Ohhh. So that's why Captain Zero is like that."
Double falters at the non sequitur. "Huh? What about Zero?"
"Well you said that Captain Zero doesn't really care about anyone but X," Iris points out.
"Yeah, they're basically best friends."
The rookie Navigator purses her lips contemplatively. "No wonder Captain Zero is so cold then."
A warbot is probably similar to a soldier reploid, right? He's like Colonel. He can't easily trust anyone so he trusts…the Father of All Reploids? The closest thing he has to family? That doesn't seem right. Colonel doesn't see our builders as family and he certainly wouldn't think of a robot that he has never met as family either.
But best friends must be the closest thing to family in the absence of one.
If Zero's one family is so busy that the warbot barely sees him, Zero must be lonely if he doesn't have any other friend.
Double chokes and Iris panics. A reploid coughing is a sign of clogged ventilations and she cries out the yellow reploid's name in concern. Double raises a hand to stop her.
"I - I'm fine! I just never heard anyone call Zero lonely. Rust me, that's a first."
Oh. So Iris said that out loud. She blushes all over again.
But somewhere in her heart she feels something. A connection. Sympathy for the warbot who reminds her of her brother, who shares her position as someone who can't easily see the ones they love.
And maybe just like Colonel, beneath that aloof exterior is a sweet person too. Someone who's a "sword and shield for those who can't protect themselves" can't possibly be a bad person.
I want to be his friend, Iris thinks.
The little something in her heart grows strong like a blade.