Author Notes: Oh wow you guys have all been so supportive and your reviews have been so kind. Thank you to everyone who has been encouraging about this story! (And to the people who keep reblogging the link on Tumblr.) I'm doing a format with shorter chapters for this story, but I should be updating it once a week if I can keep on schedule. As always, I don't own anything.
He nodded, the grin spreading once again. Maka noted that his teeth were jagged. Shark teeth. She wondered what part of her programming caused that manifestation. The bright light of the room reflected harshly off his stark white hair.
"In the flesh. So to speak." He tilted his head as he spoke, rubbing ruefully at the cheek that she had smacked.
"But I didn't program you to have flesh…." She cautiously looked past her companion, examining her environment. She was in a room: small, tightly enclosed, and distinctly lacking doors. Wide, rectangular lights lined both floor and ceiling—too bright for her to look at directly. Built into one of the walls was a small bench; Maka realized that, until she had awoken, that bench must have been where her security program—Soul—had sat.
Sympathy washed through her as she looked on at the white-haired program. If she had any idea that her programming was capable of manifesting in this way, she would have given him a less crowded place to stay.
Soul shrugged. "Sometimes things work out differently than you intended. You're the Admin, not me."
Maka tilted her head at him. "Admin?"
"You're the Administrator. The user of the system?"
"But earlier you called me 'Meister," Maka remarked. She flexed her feet experimentally, trying to get a feel for her new legs.
Soul nodded. "The body you're in is the Meister. It's a program form that is compatible with your consciousness, which is the Admin. Or at least, that's what they call you out in the System."
Maka's eyes widened with relief. "You can leave here? You can go out into the System?"
The program shook his head. Arms folded, he looked profoundly uncomfortable. "I have minor communicative abilities with other programs within the system, but I can't leave. And I can't confer with them unless they speak first."
"But why—"
"You tell me." Frustration transformed his grin into a grimace. "You're the one that did the programming."
Maka looked down at her feet, chastised. They peeked out under a white jumpsuit, the legs of which ended just under her heel. There was a part of her that was thankful that, despite the unforeseen fleshy ramifications of her programming, she had manifested with clothes on her body. Soul was wearing something similar, though it was black rather than white.
"I didn't know."
"I know." His tone softened and the feet moved hesitantly in her direction. The warm pressure of his hand rested against the small of her back. "You're just as confused as the rest of us. I get that. But—" he patted her firmly, "—the only way for us to fix the situation is for you to get up and get a move on. We've got a system to save."
Maka slid off the table slowly, hissing at the sensation of the cold floor touching the soles of her feet. Every sensation her new body experienced seemed overwhelming. Soul hovered beside her, the red glow of his eyes making the arm of her jumpsuit appear pink.
"Do you know what happened here?" She took the steadying arm he offered as she stretched out her ankles. Though her eyes were beginning to adjust, her muscles felt strained with even the slightest movement.
"Only partly." Soul's brows furrowed as he spoke. "Everything was fine until the Asura program."
Maka nodded. "That's when the computer started acting up, as well." Confusion flooded the program's expression. "The computer. It's the physical form that houses this system." Her laughter echoed loudly in the small room as his eyebrows threatened to become one with his hairline.
"There are other systems?" Though he tried to sound incredulous, the program couldn't completely mask the wonder in his voice.
"Yep. I never connected you to any networks for fear of it messing with the system, so you've been entirely self-contained, but someday I'll connect you and you can go see these other systems for yourself." Maka smiled up at him, cheeks heating up as he leaned in to bare his shark grin once more. His jumpsuit was skintight, doing little to conceal the well-defined muscle underneath. The girl wondered at how he, who was never supposed to uphold physical form, could uphold it so well.
Realizing that she was ogling a program, Maka straightened. She cleared her throat in an attempt to mask her embarrassment. "Well, if we're going to go save this system, we're going to need more appropriate clothing."
"What's wrong with this?" Soul's tone was defensive as his free hand struck his collarbone. Maka rolled her eyes.
"Where I come from, walking around in clothes like this is indecent."
"I like the suit."
"Well I don't." Maka shot a glare that effectively silenced his next interjection. "I'll feel too embarrassed to think straight if I walk around like this. Besides, reprogramming us new clothes will give me practice for the things I need to fix."
Soul's face was sullen as he crossed his arms in front of his chest. He sat on his bench with a low growl, the sound alarmingly similar to the death rattle of a computer. Maka turned to chastise him, but the look on his face so amused her that she found herself giggling. Less than ten minutes into her foray of the world in her computer and she'd already made her security program pout.
Though he growled again, the sound fell on deaf ears. Maka's consciousness had temporarily detached from the Meister program, searching out a way to access the programming code directly.
It was a strange process. Without a body to interpret sensations for her, the sudden onrush of data that flooded her brain was hard to process. She could neither see nor hear nor feel the code as it passed, but her memory of those senses gave the code phantom meaning. Enclosed in an endless space of code, Maka felt claustrophobic. Though her lack of a body gave her no physical sensation of fear, its psychological nature plagued her.
It took her a moment to compartmentalize her fear enough to actually read the code. Though initially it had felt as if she were immersed, the code moving around her, Maka realized that she was perched upon a sort of web. The sensation of moving code was due to her own mental twisting, attempting to get her bearings. Once she had control of her fear, she could feel that the code around her was actually static.
Conjuring up the sensation of the Meister body, she searched for its programmed code. She remembered it well; she'd gone over the program at least a few hundred times to make sure that nothing was left to chance. And though her efforts to completely control the situation had been evidently unsuccessful, she could still recite the code that she had written verbatim.
When she finally caught the tail end of one of her Meister scripts, her consciousness vibrated with joyful crowing. Once she had a handhold on that little scrap of code, it was easy for her to feel out where the rest of the program was. Though it felt smaller than it had on her computer, as she filtered through the code, she realized that what she had written was only the skeleton of the program. Under her code were large subsections written in a programming language she had never seen before.
It was a simple thing, almost as basic as binary, but it had a concise nature. Its patterns were predictable and it took little time for Maka to discover how to read it. Writing, however, took a little more effort.
After searching out Soul's code, she used his subsections to cross-reference the subsections in her own. Lacking physical form, Maka could sense both swaths of code and process them simultaneously, which made the process much faster. Identifying the subsection that dealt with her Meister's clothes, she jury-rigged a section of code, taking out the horrid jumpsuit and replacing it with an attempted replica of her favorite skirt and jacket. Soul's took more time to formulate, but she managed to pull together a shirt and a pair of pants for him. Brimming with pride, she felt out the consciousness port of the Meister and returned to her programmed body.
The return to physical sensation hit her like a sack of bricks. Her mind screamed in protest of the sudden overstimulation of her senses, and the lag between mind and body had returned, making it difficult for her to voice her frustrations. Soul had, for some reason, dragged her to the bench while she had been coding and she was laid across his lap, feet squished up into the alcove against the wall. His arms were wrapped around her protectively and her face was awash with the soft red light of his gaze. Though she wanted to swat at him, her effort to move her arms resulted only in an odd twitching in her hands.
"Whuuaii?" Her voice was slurred, slow enough to detach sound from meaning. Soul looked confused, his nose wrinkling as he squinted at her. The light on her face dimmed.
"Come again?" There was warmth in his voice that sharply contrasted the robotic tone of his speech. Maka found herself wishing that she could hear what his voice would have sounded like if he were a real person.
The sobering thought brought some clarity to her mind. A real person. Her hand twitched once more before she managed to reach up and pull one of his hands off of her shoulder. "Why…why did…you…move me?" The words stumbled from her clumsy lips, but they were clear enough for Soul to understand. He chuffed in sudden laughter.
"The Meister was about to fall. I caught it before it hit the floor." He ran a hand through his hair. The sound it made was like soft static. "It wouldn't do to let any harm come to my Meister. My entire purpose is to protect it…." He let go, moving out from under Maka so that she could sit up. As she did so, he extended a hand to help her stand. She took it bemusedly and they stood, newly coded shoes scuffing the floor. Soul leaned towards her to mutter in her ear. "I will protect you."
Maka had enough control of herself to punch him lightly on the arm, though she found herself smiling. "Turning on the charm, I see."
Though he smiled in response, the seriousness had not left Soul's face. His voice was low as he stepped back from her, pulling at his new shirt. "When you spend your entire life staring at someone, waiting for her to wake up, occasionally you think of charming things to say."
"I am sorry." Maka swayed on her feet, getting reaccustomed to the sensation of legs. The transition in and out of physical form was proving to be more difficult than the transition between forms. "There's a subset of code to all of this that I was unaware of until now. I think that's what gives the System form...but I can't see it from my computer. I can only alter it from here. It was never my intention to stick you in this little room by yourself with nothing to do."
Soul flashed his grin, shoving his hands into his pockets with enthusiasm. "Yeah, you're not that pointlessly cruel. Besides, you gave me these things, so you're forgiven."
Confused, Maka raised an eyebrow. "You mean pockets?"
"Ah, so that's what these things are called?" Soul's fingers wiggled under the fabric. "Pockets…." He sounded out the new word like an interesting new piece of food. "I like them. They're a lot more useful than the thing I was wearing before."
Maka placed a hand on her hip. "Well I'd like to say that I'm not going to tell you I told you so, but…."
Soul shrugged. "The way I see it, you can always bring it back if you want to stare at me some more." The light in his eyes got brighter as he leaned forward. "Or you can just take the clothes off entirely."
Maka hit him harder this time.
It was a short chapter this time, but you'll get a longer one next week. Thanks again to everyone who has supported me in this- odat, for being a great beta and friend; Marsh of Sleep, eisschirmchen, and luerdelaube for their enthusiasm and providing a lot of laughs as they talked about Software!Soul. You guys are all awesome. Have a good day, ne?