"Professor… you seem so sad these days. Is something the matter?" Minas asked her creator kindly. Her creator was an animal-based Reploid, designed to look like a platypus. He had designed a pack behind him with four extra hands- they were quite useful for reaching things the Professor could not, and for maneuvering rather complicated tasks.

For the past few days, he had been working on a new Reploid -his first in decades- and the longer he worked on it, the more distraught he seemed to get. Minas wasn't quite sure why, and the thought of it made her upset. She couldn't help her own creator, when he had built her to help everyone- and it made her feel useless.

"The world is so different Cinna- Minas." the Professor sighed, almost calling her by her original name before she had been modified. "You were my only creation until I had a dream one night; the dream was about a young boy swimming through the ocean without a care in the world."

"But Professor… Reploids can not dream..."

"I know." the Professor agreed dimly. "This is what made the dream fascinating to me. I knew I had to build the boy from my dream, and I'm not sure how, but he must be connected to the waters of earth. It is his destiny."

"Destiny..." Minas muttered to herself as she looked over the new Reploid. Humans could have seen a rough ten year difference between her physical age and his, the truth behind that was much longer however. Minas was built before the Elf Wars and the fall of Neo Arcadia. The age difference between the two young Reploids spanned nearly forty years and then some.

The Reploid woman placed a kind hand on her 'brother's' forehead before moving it to the side a bit to trace the standard red marker. It reminded her of a certain hero from ages long past that she almost felt sad.

"Minas..." the Professor softly spoke, placing a gentle hand at her hip as he couldn't reach much higher, "Would you like to activate him?"

Minas turned her head to look at her creator and gave a wide, cheerful smile.

. . .

COMMENCING START UP SEQUENCE…

BEGIN MENTAL BOOT SEQUENCE...

MODEL IDENTIFICATION: PGAM-02

NICKNAME: Thetis

GENDER IDENTIFICATION: male

PERSONALITY IDENTIFICATION: ENFP-A

MENTAL BOOT SEQUENCE FINISHED…

BEGIN PHYSICAL BOOT SEQUENCE…

HEAD AND NECK MOVEMENT CHECK…. complete!

ARM MOVEMENT CHECK…. complete!

LEG MOVEMENT CHECK…. complete!

TORSO MOVEMENT CHECK… complete!

PHYSICAL BOOT SEQUENCE FINISHED

ALERT! UNIT NEEDS EXTERNAL POWER UP SOURCE!

EXTERNAL POWER UP SOURCE IDENTIFIED

TRANSFERRING POWER DATA FROM PGAM-01 (Cinnamon) TO PGAM-02 (Thetis)...

POWER TRANSFER COMMENCING... complete!

RESUMING START UP SEQUENCE…

ALL CHECKS COMPLETE… ALL OPERATIONAL SYSTEMS ONLINE…

BEGIN EYE OPENING ROUTINE…

WELCOME, Thetis…

. . .

"Did I take this long to activate?" Minas mused as she and the Professor waited for the new Reploid to open his eyes. She had been connected to the new Reploid with some wires going from her chest into his.

"Longer." the Professor informed her, expressionless in his own observations. "Due to your unique abilities and additive functions regarding FME-DNA, you took much longer just to complete the initial boot sequence. Oddly enough, your start up was more nerve racking for me than his… Perhaps it was due to you being my first complete Reploid, or the power you contained. That being said though, his start sequence is a bit longer than most Reploids; admittedly, I might over equip my designs by a fraction or two at the end of the day, which causes the longer start up time."

Minas nodded, lingering on every word while still studying the new Reploid. The Professor didn't even tell her his name yet. Was he going to let her name him? That would have been great, but she knew that he already had registered the new Reploid with the Reploid Regulation Committee, which means the new Reploid already had a name. Minas wondered if the Reploid himself was going to tell her his name- she was going to love it, whatever name had been decided for this new Reploid.

To answer the Professor and Minas's waiting, the Reploid finally started to stir from his start up. Slowly, he started to sit up and trained his head to look at Minas. Seeing her sparked a reaction from him, and he inched closer toward her until there was little more than a centimeter between them.

"You're kinda pretty." he mused with a tilt of his head. "My name's Thetis. Did you power me up?"

Minas nodded, trying to prevent herself from blushing at his compliment. "It was what I was designed for. Well, helping Reploids recover was what I was designed for, but helping to power them up is no problem either."

"Cool." the new Reploid grinned. He then looked around Minas to see the Professor. "Who's that?"

"That's the Professor, he built us."

"But… he's a Reploid too. Who built him?"

"That isn't important." the Professor dismissed with a wave of his hand. "What is important is that you are fully functioning now and coherent. How do you feel?"

"Pretty good!" Thetis enthused. "But I kinda feel like.. swimming? Can I do that?"

"Of course!" the Professor agreed. "That was what I built in for you; a love of swimming. I gave you a vast knowledge of swimming techniques, sight underwater even in the darkest and murkiest of waters- I did not give you the ability to talk to sea life though, I thought that would have been too much."

"But I'm still part fish, right?" Thetis questioned, sounding so serious but was holding a rather humorous expression. The Professor couldn't tell whether he had been joking or not.

"I believe..." the Professor slowly started to say, "That you are more akin to a dolphin than a true fish; you'll still need to come up for air, depressurize, and all that."

Thetis nodded as he thought it over. So he wasn't a fish, that took some of the fun away, but he would probably be just as fast. And there was only one way to solve such a theory…

"I want to go swimming," Thetis decided, "Where can I go to do that?"

"We live in a city in the sky," the Professor started to tell him, "It will be hard to find a-"

"I know a place!" Minas exclaimed. "They just put it in Professor, it's so marvelous; it catches rain water and gathers it in one place to simulate an ocean! Oh, and they have this really fabulous beach with it too, it's so great, I'll take him if you can't Professor!"

The Professor looked at the two, each sporting a rather pitiful look that could have broken his heart.

"Yes, you may." he granted.

Thetis was so excited that he forgot for a moment that he was still connected to Minas as he leapt up from the table. "Let's go-whoa!" he declared before falling over backwards as the cable between them snapped. The young Reploid blinked up at the ceiling in a daze. The sudden disconnect must have momentarily knocked the senses out of him, Minas was looking over him, the cables connected to her now gone and her chest piece returned to normal.

"Are you alright?" she asked him while helping him stand back up again. Thetis nodded; he didn't feel dizzy, but he was… exhilarated? Was this what it felt like when something made you really happy? If so, it was very confusing.

"Let's fill you up with a bit more FME." the Professor decided. "Then you two will go."

Thetis looked at the Professor and gave another nod. Slower, Thetis decided, he needed to explore some things slower and not head first. But even that was easier said than done.