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The morning sun had just risen over the horizon, leaving the sky a beautiful array of oranges and reds, and pink that adorned the bottoms of puffy clouds high above. However, neither of the two reploids that were crazy enough to be awake this early didn’t really care about something like the sky. Even the clad blue, who appreciated beauty in everything, was too exhausted to even look up at the sight to behold above.
The two don’t say a word. They’re breathing heavy, wiping dirt from their armor and shifting their joints back into place. The battle had lasted for so long. A reploid had gone berserk at precisely 4:57 AM, according to Zero’s records. A large, bulky reploid who couldn’t be damaged by regular buster shots. Both Maverick Hunters had spent their remaining energy charging up shots, especially X. All Zero had to do was wack the thing around with his Z-Saber, since that damaged it normally, or staggered it at least.
Now the two were just spent. They sit against a building, tending to both their injuries and their immense exhaustion. X was already half asleep, bleeding a dark black substance from his arm. It wasn’t a terrible wound, only pouring in small rivulets down his thigh. X’s wounds were simple, and even though he had done most of the work neutralizing the threat, Zero had received most of the blow. His helmet had shattered during the battle, so he was, reluctantly, without a helmet to receive or give transmissions. That fact bothered him, because if it weren’t for it being gone, he could have contacted Alia already to bring them home in a drop ship. They could be home right now, but because of that damn reploid grabbing him by the head and slamming him against a building… now they were stranded. He knew X’s was nonfunctional due to it freezing over during their last mission, so that ruled that out.
Zero lays his head against the wall, feeling the throb of the building from earlier pulsate through his head. Hurt like hell. The red reploid turns his head towards his friend, whose currently wincing as he shifts an arm joint back together. Zero can hear the crunch and squeal the metal makes against each other as they are shifted back into their proper place.
“You okay?” Zero raises an eyebrow. He tries to scoot towards X to try and help him with the slashes and dislocations that must be littered throughout his friends body. He had a tendency to care about other people’s well being over his own. It was a sad truth that X knew very well.
“Ugh… Yeah, I’m alright. I had a number done on me. What about… Ngh… You?” X popped another joint, this time in his leg, back to place. He moves the leg out and in to test if it was safe to maybe walk.
“I’m fine.” Zero murmurs as he puts his hand against a conveniently-placed piece of rubble. He uses his hand to push himself off of the filthy ground. He grunts in pain, and his legs shake, willing to give out on him under all of the pain. Zero sternly shouts at himself in his mind to stay up and alert. You never know when another reploid could attack. Could happen at any moment, Zero had to remind himself to stay alert and strong enough to continue standing. He would protect X if another maverick dared to step foot within a 5-mile radius.
“Are you sure? You look damaged. Badly.” X murmurs softly, but says nothing else as he also gets up. It’s less harder for him, because he had actually put his knee in place again so he could walk with little trouble.
“Any sign of life around?” X says, seemingly scanning the area himself to see if anything was wrong, out of place. Like a human in the area, or a robot that wasn’t entirely destroyed.
“Nope. Everything seems fine. No sign of life detected. Think we’re good to go back to base, X?” The red reploid takes a moment to look at his best friend, who’s actually contemplating it.
“I dunno. Maybe we can just stay here for a bit? I’m not really in the mood to fill out reports and deal with those news anchors.” X puts his head on his forehead, and turns to give his friend a hopeful look. Zero simply laughs and nods, he felt the exact same level of tired. That being said, he leans against the wall, which does give him a bit of leverage on his injured leg. He sighs to himself and takes a minute to look up at the sky. It was absolutely gorgeous. Now that the sun had risen a bit more, the red sun rolled lazily over the horizon, the oranges from before now brighter, and the unders of clouds had turned a harsh red.
“What’s this? Ruthless Maverick Hunter Zero taking a moment to look at the sunset? What would everyone at base say about this?” X teases, giving Zero a cute smile and leaning against the wall beside him.
“Tell anyone and I’m cutting your head off.” Zero snaps back, turning his head towards the blue reploid. He pouts when he hears X laugh in response, but still cracks a small smile. X tended to do that to people. Zero always found himself smiling a bit more around X. He thought nothing of it of course, being as dense as he was.
“Haha, I can’t blame you though. The sky is really pretty today.” X crosses his arms and joins Zero in looking up at the sight above them.
“Yeah.” The red reploid nods in agreement, crossing his arms as well and putting more of his weight on the wall he leaned on.
“I hardly have time to look at nice things anymore. Gets way too busy nowadays.” X murmurs, looking down and coming back to reality. “Maybe we should get back to base, so Alia doesn’t crucify us for taking so lo--”
“Now hold on a minute. You said you wanted to rest, didn’t you? We’re going to rest.” Zero puts his hand on X’s shoulder, who in return smiles and nods.
“You always know what to say.” X’s face has a slight tinge of pink on it.
“Yeah. I’m a great best friend, aren’t I? I’m totally new to these whole emotion things, too.” Zero laughs, taking his hand off of the others shoulders. He notices that X frowns at the words “best friend,” but he doesn’t ask why. He didn’t like to pressure people, he knew it made them uncomfortable and Zero didn’t want to make X feel uncomfortable in any way. Comfort was still very, very new to Zero, as were many other human aspects and feelings.
“Can… Can I ask you something, Zero?” X messes with his thumbs, tearing Zero from his thoughts.
“Yeah. Of course.” He turns his head to face his friend, who looks like he’s contemplating something important. Zero didn’t dare interrupt by asking “what’s the hold up?” or something like that. He wasn’t a douche.
“I don’t know, it’s going to sound stupid.” X looks away, favoring the sight of the ground rather than Zero.
“Nothing you say is ever stupid.” Zero says reassuringly, putting his hand on the others shoulder again, and pulling him in for a quick side hug, mindful of the gash in X’s arm. This makes X squeal embarrassedly…
“Haha, sorry, but really. You can ask me anything.” The other shrugs, letting go of a red-faced and stuttering X. It takes a hot minute for X to actually compose himself again. Coughing, X looks down at the ground yet again as he begins
“I…”
CRASH! BOOM!
Both reploid’s gazes are shot up towards the source of the noise. A large, circular robot rises up from the ground with ease. Zero recognized it as one of the lesser robots that they had crushed to a pulp earlier through the night. Obviously they had missed one, and it was NOT happy.
“Scanning…” Was all the bot had said at first, then it locked eyes with both Zero and X. The two probably looked like messes in that bots camera. They both looked awful, so whoever was getting the instant feed from the survey robot, was probably laughing their asses off at He an X.
“TARGET FOUND. TARGET FOUND.” The maverick bot screeches, immediately drawing a cannon-like buster from a slit in its front.
“SENDING HUNTER COORDINATES…”
Zero’s eyes widen at this, and with a swift and breathless movement, he grabs X’s arm and gets the hell out of there. The two of them were in no shape to fight.
“W-Wait!” He heard X call from behind him, but Zero had no time to stop. The thing was following them. He heard X make a frustrated groan after getting no response from Zero. He rolls his eyes and turns his head and arm to face the survey bot that was quickly gaining on them. Zero hears X fire a whole load of buster shots at it, but to no avail.
“It can’t be damaged with regular shots! What do we do?” He shouts up to Zero.
“We run and hide until we lose that thing!” Zero yells back, taking a sharp turn into a rather sketchy alley, but at this point Zero didn’t care, they needed to lose that thing before it did some real damage on them. Zero ducks behind a dumpster and stands, taking X and accidentally slamming him into a wall as he did so.
“Watch it!” X hissed, rubbing the blunt of the impact, his arm.
“Sorry.” Is the most half-assed apology Zero can muster out, looking beyond the dumpster to see if that thing was still following them. He immediately shoves his back to the wall as he realizes that it IS following them still.
“What do we do?” X whispers, watching as the eye look-alike of a reploid stalks closer to them and where they hid. It levitates above the ground, just waiting for anything to dare move. Zero thinks, and he thinks hard. He needed to get out of this somehow… but if he moved, it would most definitely shoot at them, and they both were already injured so terribly that it would be one hell of a time in the repair office. Running wasn’t an option. Fighting wasn’t either, Zero was too injured to use his Z-Saber, and it just reflected X’s buster bullets. The red reploid almost smacks himself silly trying to figure out something that would prevent this thing from identifying them. It was edging to their hiding spot when Zero finally had a good idea.
“We can … disguise ourselves.” He looks at X, locking eyes with the blue hued bot beside him.
“How are we gonna do that?” X nervously watches the enemy stalking towards them.
“I… take off your helmet?” Zero shrugs. X gives the other a confused look, but he presses the red jewel on his forehead, and his helmet dissipates, revealing chocolate locks of sweet brown hair. It was shiny, well kept. Soft, Zero assumed.
X squeals as the light barely brushes the top of his head, and Zero grabs him by both arms and ducks down behind the alley wall. Zero presses X against him and kisses him. It’s a heat-of-the-moment act to keep X quiet. Said robot twitches and squirms under Zero’s weight, clearly surprised. He doesn’t make a move to pull away. Instead, he grabs the other by the waist and presses back. Zero is surprised when X actually kisses him back because it was a dumb move on his part, but some part of him is glad. He was new to the whole emotions thing, so he wasn’t sure what glad was, but he was pretty sure it was this.
The pair kiss through the light passing over them, which dumbly deemed them as just “two teenagers.”