(A/N: It's now midnight here so I'm too tired to discreetly beg for reviews. Just have fun with this extra long chapter.)
Chapter Seven: Test Run
Rio paced in his living room impatienly, checking the clock on the mantle of the firplace every thirty seconds, waiting for 2:00 to roll around. Pulling it's usual trick, time slowed to a crawl, making the wait agonizing for him. A month and a half had past since his meeting with Ichiro and the twins, the two boys mentioned working vigorously to develop and perfect Gerry's Link System for its first test drive today at the appointed time of 2:00. During that time neither of them let Rio know anything about the developments, Gina was also shut out of the loop as well, so the two uninformed friends spent a lot of time together during the month and a half.
Half of the time they'd spend their whole day trying to get into Gerry's lab, and most of the time the epically failed at doing so. The other half they spent scouring the outskirts of the town or near the ruins for the perfect spot to test drive the suits. Once they found a suitable spot (no pun intended) on an abandoned farm three miles away from town, they prepared a sort of obstacle course to test the various abilities of the armors. But since that only took two weeks, the curious pair were left to their own devices for the rest of the waiting period. And now, only an hour away from test time, Rio felt like this was going slower than the other month and a half had ever gone.
Deciding to try and focus on other things while waiting, he let his mind wander back to the mysterious pair in the abandoned facility where he and Ichiro had found Zero. He had mulled over it several times before, but it still didn't make any sense to him. Everyone knew how much trouble the Sigma virus had caused, and Zero's chip was a carrier of said virus, who in their right mind would risk their sanity for something so destructive?
Rio awas also suspicious of the couple's lack of identity. The research facility held records of everyone on the continent, but after a quick and discreet search, Ichiro reported that there was no picture on file that matched either of them. While this did support the long held belief that there must be life on other fragments of former Earth, how did they get here in the first place? And how did they know about the hidden laboratory where Zero was?
Too many questions had presented themselves without any logical answers, and Rio's mind became cluttered with fanciful speculation. Shaking his head to clear it, he looked to the clock reluctantly, hoping he had wasted more time on his thoughts then he thought he did. When his face met that of the clock's, it read 1:45.
'Man, first I'm ready an hour early and now I'm close to being late!?' Rio thought of the irony as he grabbed his backpack and sped out the front door, feel his heart beat faster then it ever had in his life.
...
"Wow, could we get a closer resemblance or what?" Gina remarked as her and her twin examined the two test drivers of the Link System in front of them, Ichiro and Rio for Zero and X respectively. And it was pretty much true, both being about the same height and build as the orginals, and the fact that Rio's short hair was covered up by the helmet while Ichiro's hung out behind him completed the look.
"I know what you mean, I feel like I'm seeing them in person!" Gerry chimed in as he calibrated the wireless transmitters in the suits to his laptop.
"Come on guys, enough jokes and lets get on with the testing!" The red head tapped his foot impatiently, not wanting to delay what he felt was the most important moment in his life.
"Cut him some slack, if Gerry doesn't set the Link to the right intensity, our brains will fry from stress." Ichiro informed his test mate of the reason for the delay.
"Oh." Was his only reply before he went back to tapping his foot. A few moments of anxious silence passed as Gerry continued to work, until he finally spoke up.
"Ok, are you guys ready?" The male twin confirmed as he adjusted his glasses.
"As we'll ever be, hit it." Ichiro g ave the ok, silently as eager as Rio.
"Then here we go! Initiating Link squence in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... Start!" the three others watched as Gerry's hand launched toward the ENTER button, hitting it with a click of finality, as if after this moment nothing would be the same.
Immediately the twins noticed the change. Both test subjects seemed to tense up and their eyes closed tightly, as if they could feel the information seeping into their brains. They stood there for a few moments that felt like infinity, and Gina began to get a little worried. But before she could protest, the boy's eyes shot open simultaneously, and Gina could have sworn they were glowing brighter than they had just minutes ago.
"The Link has been successfully established, and is within tolerable levels. How do you guys feel?" Gerry looked up from his laptop.
That question should have been a very simple one for Rio and Ichiro to answer, but at this point it was probably the most complicated. In all honesty, no one was sure what was going to happen when the Link System was activated. Whether the two reploids would be reincarnated in the armor so to speak, or the program would just be a simple search engine database that pulled up relevant information know one knew. But now that they were actually experiencing it, there was only one way to describe it. In those few minutes, Ichiro and Rio had "relived" the two Maverick Hunter's lives, since everything was carefully recorded in the backup computer. Every battle, every mission, every thought, every emotion the reploids had ever experienced the two boys could recall as clearly as their own memories. It was like becoming another person, being absorbed into their lives and their memories.
"Better than ever!" Ichiro replied enthusiastically after a while.
"Is that you Zero? I mean Ichiro?" Rio finally came to life as well, trying to keep the two sets of memories in his mind separate.
"X, uuhh, Rio? Wow that's going to be hard to keep track of." The blonde hung his arm over the back of his head, a bit of confusion on his face.
"Is everything ok?" Gina asked. After they explained what happened, Gerry replied,
"Well then this obstacle course should be a piece of cake, since you remember doing this stuff like a million times already! Head on through whenever you're ready. "Up for a little competition?" Ichiro eyed Rio with a bit of a challenging grin. Rio returned the favor, smiling as well.
"You're on!" The blue-clad boy replied as he lowered his center of gravity and dashed forward, toward the first obstacle. Ichiro immediately responded, catching up to the other boy in an instant. The first obstacle was a dash jump over a six foot wide gap, which both cleared easily and quite gracefully, still neck and neck. Rounding the corner of the course, they headed for another jump obstacle, only this time they had to clear five consecutive jumps without stopping. Rio had to slow down to time it right, which put him behind Ichiro as they bounded quickly over the jumps, but he regained their tie as they came out of it. Next was the wall jump, which were fifteen foot high planks of wood placed next to each other and sturdied by supports. Kicking off the gound with incredible speed and strength, both executed their respective wall jumps flawlessly. Rounding the last corner to the home stretch, the last obstacle was to eliminate three dummies each before moving on. Without even having to give it a second thought, Rio transformed the armor's left arm into X's signature buster, and fired. Ichiro, also with inhuman speed, whipped out his sword and charged the dummies. Before either of the twins had even blinked they both had hit all three of their targets and were dashing furiously to the finish, only thirty yards to go.
"I'm not going to let you beat me this time!" Ichiro yelled, launching himself into the air far ahead of Rio.
"And you think I'm going to let you!?" Rio called back, dashing forward and quickly baseball sliding toward the end, also aiming his buster up at Ichiro and firing a shot. Ichiro blocked it at the very last second, and in the same moment they both crossed the finish line. When they turned to the twins, they saw the identical astonished faces they had, eyes bulged with mouths agape, and laughed a little.
"So who won?" the blonde deftly sheathed his sword so to speak, and Rio reverted his buster to an arm. there was no reply from either of their friends, they stayed silent. Waving his hands in front of their faces, Rio spoke up
"I think we broke them."
