A few days later it was possible to translate Sei's and Tae's scheme into action since Toue was absent from Oval Tower for a change, leaving Sei's room guarded only by the easily to manipulate surveillance cameras. And Clear... got mail. Or to be more precise it felt like the sudden order to visit Sei was directly implanted into Clear's mind like a thought would have been.

"Eh?"
The white haired android had just joined Aoba, cuddling him from behind on the bed in his white cell-like room. He was deep-kissing him, entwining their tongues and eagerly waiting for Aoba to respond in another way than just to shiver in fear, when he was interrupted by Sei's message and parted with Aoba's lips again.
"This is rather odd, but well..."

Sei was the next high-ranked person after his master Toue, so Clear guessed he should just follow his order. He honestly wasn't sure about it due to the unusual way the call for him had been made, but he obeyed nonetheless and climbed away from behind his beloved toy. Aoba seemed to look at him in a curious way, judging from his slightly opened mouth and the way he pricked up his ears. Not that a normal person would have noticed these kind of things, but whithout eyesight and the black blindfold over the region where his eye sockets were, it was hard to tell if Aoba was intending to 'look' at anything in particular. Clear noticed it of course and gently leaned Aoba back against a thick cushion at the bed's headboard after having risen from the bed. He made sure Aoba was in a stable sitting position before carefully brushing his bangs aside to lightly kiss his forehead.
"Don't worry, Aoba-san. I'll be back as soon as possible. I just received a message stating that I have to visit somebody on the upper floors."

Before he left Aoba's side he smiled at him and asked him whether he needed to use the bathroom, since he was unsure how long he would be gone. After a moment, Aoba lightly shook his head at the question and Clear turned on his heels to head for Sei's room. Aoba turned his head to where he guessed a window should be in his cell and listened intently in hope to hear some noise or even music wafting inside from the ever busy streets of Platinum Jail. He got lucky today and smirked barely noticeably at the rhythmic sounds reaching his ears. It would be easier to pass the time when Clear was not by his side when he could take in something other than the silent darkness constantly surrounding him.

After having passed countless floors of Oval Tower in the elevator, Clear finally arrived on the top floor and knocked on Sei's door.
"It's Clear. You called for me?"
"Come in."
Sei's voice was barely audible from behind the door but Clear's hearing abilities were top-notch so he had no problem understanding him and entered Sei's room.

Having never been there, Clear took in his surroundings as he entered the room. Aside from the unmissable pile of plushies and gift boxes of all kinds and sizes in one half of the room, that gave the impression of a children's room rather than of that of an adult, there was a huge bed with a mint green curtain hanging above its head board on the other side of the room. Sei sat up in the bed, propped by two large cushions behind his back and with his hands folded together, smiling at the newcomer. To his left side stood Tae and a man unbeknownst to Clear, who wore the same white lab coat a lot of researchers of Toue's were equipped with.
Clear had never seen Sei in the flesh before, only knowing of his importance as Toue's kind of adoptive son and his role as a tool for Toue's plans to dominate mankind. He studied Sei's pale features, recognized his dark hair and eyes and suddenly a weird sense of sparks flying through the air hit Clear and he came to a halt in midway between the door and Sei's bed.
While he still wondered what had happened to him, he noticed the area surrounding him consisted of nothing but a blue sky tinged with yellow-greyish clouds with no bottom to be visible bellow his feet. Translucent gears, made of a material with a blueish shine that reminded of glass, hung in the air and a slightly broken song was hearable in the distance. Clear knew that song, he had made it up himself a long time ago, but he rarely sang it anymore. There was simply no reason to do so. Up here in his mind the song sounded kinda off and interrupted, like something blocked it from coming through perfectly. It would even hitch occasionally, giving off a sound like a broken record. Clear was sure he was inside of his own mind, smirking crookedly at the fact that he possessed something like a 'mind' or 'heart' like a human would. But maybe the Alphas had something like this as well - it was all fake anyway.

Suddenly Sei was standing infront of him, still smiling with his mouth but not with his eyes. Clear smiled back at him in the same manner.
"I have a distinct feeling of a déjà-vu.", Clear began to speak, "Only last time there was Aoba-san inside of my head."
"I see.", Sei responded unimpressed, not being sure if what he had witnessed on the surveillance cameras' video then was really Aoba using Scrap on Clear or him simply failing since Clear had no consciousness to use it on. But here Sei was, inside of an android's mind and it looked rather beautiful, if disturbed by something at the same time. Ignoring Clear waiting for Sei to tell him why he had scrapped him, the young man looked around and finally spotted two gears being stuck to each other with a glass-like lens embedded into one of them with the words "It's better to stop now." carved into it. Below it there lay shattered pieces of the same material with different letters. If Sei concentrated he could recognize the words "It's fine to rest." on the pieces. Sei furrowed his brows at the messages. Maybe that was the reason Clear hadn't won against his brothers when he had fought against them to try saving Aoba. Maybe those words imprinted on his mind had held him back to a certain degree and Clear simply hadn't been strong enough to defeat the Alphas when he so desperately tried to do so. It was just a theory, though. But Sei had the inner urge to do something about that message. He wouldn't do anything before speaking to Clear though, so he finally turned around again and faced the android's consciousness.

"Do you love my brother, Clear?"
The question startled Clear but he answered with a humorless smile on his lips: "The person I love is Aoba-san. I have no knowledge of Aoba-san being Sei-san's brother."
"I see.", Sei looked to the invisible ground, "He and I were originally one, but we were born as two individuals."
"Sei-san is Aoba-san's twin brother then?", Clear asked without deeming the information interesting in any way. "Then it's no miracle that both of you can use Scrap I guess."
"No, that's our natural ability.", Sei looked up to Clear and his smile faded. "You hurt my little brother, Clear. Why did you do that if you claim to love him?"
"I would never hurt Aoba-san. The only thing I did to him was making him more like me.", Clear stated with an enraptured look on his face at the thought of Aoba's current state.
Sei balled his hands into fists without realizing it and had difficulty uncramping his jaw to open his gritted teeth again.
"My brother is a living human being, not a machine like you that you can tamper with at your leisure."
"Yes, and that's the pity precisely.", Clear pointed out, lifting his index finger with a new smile on his face, "But I have worked on a way to correct that. I only cut away what he didn't need anymore." Blinking once, Clear looked at a far away spot in space and continued to speak fondly. "Aoba-san is so much more beautiful the way he is now than he was before. He is unable do to anyhing without me, he's completely helpless, he needs me. He's just something holding life, a being equally dead and alive at the same time - something similar to me."

Sei grew so furious after hearing that explanation that he had difficulty controlling his ability and holding down his emotions while being inside of Clear's mind. His anger caused a distortion in the space surrounding him and a few of the gears hanging in midair began to vibrate slighty. Sei's power was not supposed to bring destruction like Aoba's, it was more a way to create something instead. But it could also be used to enforce Sei's will on somebody else like he had done it with the members of Morphine. When Clear broke down to his knees with a sudden headache, Sei drew a deep breath to try calming down his emotions. He hadn't come here to arouse conflict between the two of them, but to find a solution, a new starting point for Clear. There was no use in him overpowering Clear or to make him more artificial by enforcing his will upon him like on a lifeless doll. The sheer fact that he lost his temper so easily when he was around Clear surprised Sei himself. Under normal circumstances, he was a calm and collected individual, but when it came to Aoba a strong sense of wanting to protect him arose inside of Sei and all the more in respect of Aoba's current condition.

Sei looked back to the gears stuck to each other with the word-lense inside one of them before he began to speak in a composed but determined way.
"So you did what you have done to my brother for your own self-satisfaction. But no matter the reason you might have had to harm him, to modify his body - especially to the degree that you did it, doing something like that is clearly not a thing a person loving somebody else should do. If you love someone, you're not looking for that person's 'faults' but for how to make them happy. Nobody should ever be forced to change to please the one they love, especially not so drastically."
Sei turned around on his heels and saw that Clear had gotten up from his knees again, albeit still holding his head. He seemed angry and his voice shook slightly as he spoke.

"So you doubt my feelings for Aoba-san?", Clear growled lowly, balling his hands into fists and then he shouted at Sei. "Those feeling might be as artifical as the body holding them, but they are the closest thing to a real emotion I have! I won't allow you to dismiss them as wrong! Loving Aoba-san is the only thing I'm a hundred percent sure of! I want to be with him forever and ever more! It was necessary to alter his body to ensure that! I don't ever want to part from Aoba-san! He's mine!"

Sei... smiled at him in a pitying way. His voice sounded warmly but sadly.
"I see that there is real emotion behind those words, Clear. It's just your perspective that's wrong. I prefer the Clear that protected my brother before thinking about his own safety, his own life. The one that said that Aoba had taught him valuable lessons of life and who wanted to 'become a human' for Aoba's sake, not for Aoba to become something artificial for his own self-indulgence. I hope I can recreate that kind of self within you."

With those words Sei closed his eyes and concentrated. If those words he had read before were the reason Clear was at a standstill, they had to be gone, giving Clear a new freedom of choice. Meddling with another person's mind was a risky thing, though, and it was difficult to decide which parts belonged in there and which did not, or rather which of them were harmful. Furthermore Sei's power was not meant to destroy anything, so if he wanted something to be 'gone' he could only recreate it in a way it might have been in before. Therefore he decided to mend the lenses on the gears stuck to each other to a point before either of them had shattered and then even back to the state before the words on them had appeared, leaving them with a blank surface they must have had before any doubts were carved into them. Then Sei removed the rust between the gears and they began to shiver and started to move.
Clear felt a sudden pain in his head so strong he thought he might break in two and fell to his knees while clutching at his head. He screamed in agony and the sky inside of his head became completely dark while silence swallowed up everything aside from himself and Sei, who stood there, watching Clear's suffering with indifference.

"Clear", his voice rung in Clear's ears like a dull bell, "think about Aoba. Think about what you truly liked about him before the two of you faced Toue."
Clear wanted to do so but it was hard. "My memories are fuzzy. They began to fade after I was restored at Oval Tower."
But Sei insisted: "Try to remember. We are inside of your heart, Clear, your deepest core. Me being able to enter here is proof enough that you possess something akin to a soul. And a soul won't forget those things even if the head might do so. Therefore remember Aoba."

Clear tried to concentrate even with the searing pain in his head like a knife had been run through his temple.

What did he like about Aoba?
Why was he so fascinated with him?
What attracted him to Aoba in the first place?

The darkness surrounding Clear's mind began to fill with mental images of Aoba. Memories of Aoba's smiling face, his confused face, his face questioning Clear's reasons to follow him. Clear heard Aoba's voice inside his head declaring that his face looked no different from a normal human being. A voice which had told him important things about life and death Clear had always wanted to know about. He loved Aoba's voice, he had heard it and acknowledged him as his master before he had acknowledged Toue. Before meeting him, Clear had heard Aoba's voice in the distance and he had come for him to be with him, to assist him in whatever way, to help him, to protect him, to be close to him. And then everything had fallen apart in that one moment where he couldn't muster enough strength to stand up against Toue and his brothers.

Sei had his hands folded behind his back and looked at the images being displayed around them with a real smile on his lips for the first time since meeting Clear. He was confident that Aoba meant enough to Clear to entrust his well-being to this person as soon as his mind was set straight again of Toue's meddling from the outside as well now, allowing him to act on his true feelings again. He bent down a little and spoke gently when he addressed Clear this time.

"Clear, look at me."
His discussion partner had difficulty to do so with the pain still hammering in his head, but he still did as he was told and looked into Sei's eyes.
"I'm going to recreate you. You shall look forward to being with Aoba again and treasure him like the important person he is to you without feeling the need to correct the things separating the two of you, since there are none at the bottom of your hearts."
Clear's eyes lit up and a white light started to engulf his whole mind, swallowing him and Sei up in the process.

Clear woke up still standing in midway between the door of Sei's room and his bed. It looked like no time had passed at all, even though it felt to Clear like he had been asleep for a longe while. His lips quivered as he tried to speak and a very robotic voice came out of his mouth.
"...I got... error messages all over my system. I'm going to shut down as per safety record. Please overhaul my system."
That said he shut down indeed, tumbling to the ground as stiff as a statue and didn't move anymore.

Sei exhaled deeply and fell back on his cushions, sweat dripping from his forhead and his whole body feeling cold from damp clothes clinging to his body. Tae got a worried look on her face and nodded to her befriended researcher to tell him to get to work on Clear while she would tend to Sei.
"I assume it did go well?"
"Yes.", Sei's voice sounded faintly, "I believe as soon as his mind is set back on the right track from the outside as well he will be the same he was before."
Tae wiped the sweat off Sei's forehead and took his pulse, sighing at the rate of Sei's heartbeat.
"You overdid it. What would you have done if it hadn't worked at all? Why did you even think you could scrap him in the first place? He's a machine!"
Sei huffed a short laugh. "I thought Aoba tried to do so once, so I wanted to try as well. He trusted Clear to be human enough for it to work so I had to see it for myself." He turned his head to Tae and smiled at her happily. "You'd be surprised how beautiful his heart was. It was distorted to a degree, but still very pretty. It sparkled a little and it felt very nice. It was very empty, though, but the sole fact that it was there gave me hope."

Tae looked over to her friend working at Clear and sighed.
"I am surprised we were even able to find a backup-disc with Clear's former state of mind on it. I wouldn't have thought Toue to be the kind of man to keep something he'd deem faulty in the first place. I mean he wanted to get rid of Clear once already when he was labelled as defective."
"I am not surprised by this.", Sei opposed her while studying Clear's seemingly sleeping face, "Toue is fond of everything he deems interesting or out of the norm so I was sure he would keep a file of Clear's old personality since he found the way he had changed fascinating. He sees everything as a giant game and likes to collect trophies, too. So I was quite sure there would be something left."