A/N: hehehe please don't kill me. I am so sorry that it took me this long to update. Thanks for fabulousanima, who helped me beta this on the most last minute basis imaginable.

"UPDATE COMPLETED."

Maka jolted awake, startled by the loud voice in the small room. She glanced around nervously, trying to find the source of the noise, before realizing that the voice she'd heard was her own.

"Oh thank God."

The utterance took her by surprise, but she reminded herself that her database program, calling himself 'Stein' out of a disturbing sense of kinship with Shelley's Victor Frankenstein, had somehow accessed her eBooks and then retold them as entertainment for other programs in the System. It was not too far-fetched to believe that one of them had picked up the lexicon.

Especially a white-haired program who liked Grimm's Fairy Tales the most—the same program that was hovering over her like a concerned dog, hair falling into his face.

"Care to explain the relief?" Apparently the Meister body didn't experience grogginess after an Update. If anything, Maka's mind felt sharper than it had before, information springing readily to her mind. Yes, this was her Security Operation Utilty Liason, whose name was shortened to Soul, lover of stories. He'd lived in this small room his entire life and his eyes were the reason for the red light that washed over her and made the white strands of his hair glimmer pink. He also seemed to be somewhat embarrassed.

"I'd thought...well." Static echoed in the room as he ran a hand through his hair. "Every time I've come back from an Update, I've gotten up to check on the Meister. The body was always inactive and I was alone. So when I woke up and you were still, I thought…."

"—that you were alone again." Maka smiled at him. "Don't worry, Soul, I'm fine."

He smiled at her, toothy grin filled with sharp points, and held out a hand to help her sit up. Though she didn't need the assistance, she took it anyway, glad for the contact.

Out of habit, she bent forward to touch her toes and was shocked at how easy it was in this body. A part of her wondered if it was a sign that the Meister body was exceptionally fit, or that her actual body was in worse shape than she thought. Maka made another mental note to take up yoga if she ever managed to fix her computer; the list was becoming exceptionally long.

Soul watched her with a sort of bemused interest, tapping a rolled up sheet of paper against his thigh. He waited until she had finished stretching before holding the paper out to her.

"You've got a message. Somebody called Black*Star?"

Maka nodded, too distracted with the realization that she'd already spent an entire day in the System to notice how Soul covered his ears when she unrolled the paper.

"MAKA."

The sound of her programming colleague's voice boomed through the room, causing Maka to start. The paper fell to the floor, but the message continued unhindered. She wondered if an Update could fix a shattered eardrum.

"THIS IS YOUR GOD SPEAKING. WAS IN THE AREA SO I LET MYSELF IN TO CHECK ON YOU A LITTLE EARLY.

THE COMPUTER IS STILL MAKING THAT WHINY NOISE, BUT NOTHING SEEMS TO BE ANY MORE OUT OF CONTROL THAN IT WAS BEFORE. THERE'S BLOOD ON THE KEYBOARD THOUGH. THINK YOU FACEPLANTED WHEN YOU TURNED ON THE RESONANCE. TOOK THE LIBERTY OF THANKING GIRIKO FOR YOU. WITHOUT THAT HELMET HE MADE FOR YOU THE DAMN THING PROBABLY WOULD HAVE BROKEN ON IMPACT."

'Is there some way of muting this?' Maka mouthed in Soul's direction. Even with her own palms pressed to her ears, the volume of Black*Star's voice was unbearably loud.

Soul rolled his eyes. 'Unfortunately not.'

"HELPED MYSELF TO WHAT WAS LEFT IN THE FRIDGE," the message continued. "AFTER YOU GET OUT OF THERE, I AM BUYING YOU DINNER. YOU LOOK LIKE SHIT. BLACK STAR OUT."

The last bellow resounded in the room and then fell blessedly silent, leaving Maka with a distinct ringing in her ears. Gingerly, she picked up the sheet of paper that had fallen to the floor, giving Soul a sympathetic glance.

"Was it always this bad when I sent messages into the System?"

Soul shook his head as he leaned against the wall. "No. No, with you it was always pleasant. I liked hearing your voice. It was…a way to break the monotony. This is the first time the message has been so loud…" he tilted his head, "but then again, it's also the first message from someone other than you."

Scanning the written message to check if it was the same as the spoken message, Maka laughed. "Actually, he's just like that. Black*Star is…obnoxious."

Soul snorted derisively. "To say the least. Though I must ask: he's not…the one the stories call God, is he?"

The message was on the floor again, fallen from Maka's hands. She stood there, mouth agape, her face a mask of horror. "No! If he were God, I think every person on Earth would kill themselves out of despair."

"Good point," Soul conceded. "I did think it was strange that he introduced himself as your 'god,' so I figured I'd ask."

"He just has an overblown sense of importance." Maka collected the message again, rolling it back to form. It somehow stayed in its tubular shape without the need of adhesive, which Maka found curious. When she had more time to spare, she'd return to the System and research the phenomenon, but for now, she had more pressing matters to attend to. "Is there a way to respond to this?" she asked.

Soul nodded. "There's a terminal here that we can use to communicate with the admin. It only opens when a line of communication has been established by the user, though."

"'Only speak when spoken to?'" Maka repeated sheepishly. "I promise to fix that."

"You'd better," Soul teased. "Especially if I get stuck in this tiny room again."

"I'll fix that, too."

A slow smile formed on the program's face. It had a gentler nature than his grin, and it caused a small dimple to form on his right cheek. "If you keep those promises, I'd be happy enough to kiss you."

"Don't try your luck," Maka warned, though she smiled despite herself. "The Meister giveth and the Meister taketh away."

Soul quirked an eyebrow. "Well you already gave me these clothes, so I'll admit that I am looking forward to the day that you 'taketh away.'"

Maka weighed out the benefits of smacking him again, then shrugged. "I'm getting better at working with this native code for the System, and I don't need a template to rewrite anything. With a little more practice, I should be able to code freely." She stood, a wicked smile curving on her face. "I can do most anything, once I master that." Mimicking a yawn, she let her gaze drift down to Soul's crotch, ignoring the blush that threatened to warm her cheeks as her eyes deliberately lingered there. "I don't think you'll be too thrilled on the day when I finally 'taketh away.'"

Soul's face went ghostly pale. "You wouldn't."

"I suggest you don't test me." Despite the seriousness of her words, Maka kept her tone light. Soul managed not to flinch as she patted him on the shoulder. "Besides, Programs don't reproduce sexually, I imagine. After all, I wrote most of you, so I don't see how you would need your junk anyway."

A small frown formed on Soul's face. "Programs don't reproduce sexually, no. But that doesn't mean that there's no need for sex."

Maka laughed. "You do know what sex is, right?"

"Of course I do!" Soul's tone was defensive, his raised voice stinging on her sore eardrums. She was taken aback by the strength of his response, but before she could rise to his verbal challenge, he backed off. "It took us a while to figure it out; Stein and I spent several Update cycles going through your stories, trying to decode the workings of it. From what we could tell, it's not just for reproduction."

His earnestness calmed Maka's mirth. She had kept all of her eBooks on that flash drive, including her stockpile of bad romance novels that she read on nights when just ice cream wasn't enough. Maka cringed as it occurred to her that Soul's conception of coitus was based entirely on purple prose and exaggeration.

"No." Her tone was thoughtful. "Where I come from, it's not just for reproduction. In fact, I'd say the majority of it isn't. But I can tell you that what you read in those books isn't indicative of the way it is in the real world. Sex is…complicated."

"Evidently so." His mouth thinned, a look of displeasure growing on his face. "Stein told me that he was going to gather more data on the subject and share his findings…but he managed to avoid the subject whenever possible afterward."

"For most people, it's a very private thing." 'Most people' being the conditional phrase; Maka was not looking forward to leaving the System and having to deal with Black*Star, who had evidently decided to camp out in her apartment. While Maka was grateful that he was watching over her, her friend would likely clean out what little was left in her fridge, and when she returned, he would drag her to dinner to regale her with tales of his programming and sexual endeavors. Those conversations often ended with him trying to set her up with another one of his stupid friends. His last suggestion, an already balding attorney by the name of Ox, had been so heinous that Maka had sworn off dating indefinitely.

Almost a full year afterward, Maka was nearly ready to recant, but the Resonance had swiftly taken over her life and swept away any chance of romance with it. Yet no matter how bad her love life had become, Maka had never expected that she would be debating the role of sex with a computer program.

Soul seemed baffled as Maka broke out into quiet giggles. He was holding eerily still—due to the lack of breathing— and watching her with wide, glowing eyes. Noticing this, she waved dismissively in his direction.

"It's nothing…I'm just laughing at how weird this situation is. I never thought that I'd be having this conversation." She stretched out a hand to pat him on the shoulder. "I promise that once we get everything straightened out, we'll have a more informative conversation on the matter."

Soul brightened, the light of his eyes seeming to luminesce a deeper red.

"Though," Maka interjected, not wanting him to get his hopes up, "I might not be the best person to ask about it. My experiences haven't been too great or numerous." She shrugged. "I might have to set you up to talk with Black*Star." Soul flinched at this and Maka remembered the insane volume of her friend's message. "Or I could just hook you up to the internet and then you'd be good to go."

Soul cocked his head to the side when she mentioned internet. "Is the internet the interface for linking to other systems?"

"In a way," Maka said. She shifted her weight onto one hip, tapping at her thigh with Black*Star's message. "It's like a world network that everyone can access. I have no idea what it might look like for programs, though. Still, this conversation is for later. If we don't respond quickly enough, Black*Star might get it in his head to try and send us another message." They shared a look of horror. "Where is the terminal where I can respond to this message?"

"Here." Soul turned to the wall beside him and quickly swiped his palm against it. A faint chiming sound ran through the room and part of the wall folded down, revealing a small keyboard and a screen built into the wall. "The interface is simple—just type here and then press the enter button to send the message. The terminal will seal itself until another message is received."

Maka nodded. "I can change that. And besides, Star's chatty. He'll respond pretty quickly after I send him something. We won't be waiting long, especially since he's got nothing else to do but eat my food and laugh at my bloody face." Soul moved to take the paper from her grasp as she stepped in front of the keyboard. She gave him a questioning glance.

"It'll archive itself after you send a reply." He set the small tube on the table that Maka had coded earlier. "Although frankly, I'd rather not go back and listen to this one again."

"Frankly, I'd rather not have to listen to Star talk ever," Maka replied. "But he knows his stuff. There's no one else I'd rather have on the other end of the computer if my life is on the line." Hands hovering above the keyboard, she stared at the black screen, considering how to phrase her response. Something nagged in the back of her mind, fuelling her hesitation.

"Soul?" Though she tried to keep her tone neutral, her hesitance drew out the syllables like a person on a rack.

"Hm?"

"You said you can listen to the archives again? That you can play the messages back so that you can hear them?"

Movement in her peripheral vision. At first Maka thought it might have been a nod, but the delay in his response made her turn. Soul was shifting, obviously uncomfortable; their eyes met for a brief moment before his fell to the floor. The downward gaze lit up his face with a pink glow.

"Yeah." The word was accented by the scuffing of his feet.

Asking the next question seemed almost unnecessary, so obvious was the security program's embarrassment, but Maka felt the compulsion to know.

"How often did you listen to the messages?"

She could hear the gentle humming of the lights, the silence was so thick. Soul stopped fidgeting, holding perfectly still as he bored holes into the floor with his laser eyes. What could have been minutes or hours passed before he finally spoke.

"Often. They...filled the silence." He held himself so tense, he might as well have been made out of stone. Maka reached out, letting her fingers rest on his shoulder.

"I'm glad," she murmured, a smile curving at her lips. "You deserved far more companionship than I supplied for you."

She kept her reply message brief:

Star, this is Maka. Things are more complicated here than I expected. See if you can run a diagnostic on the system—look for the St/In program and see if it's functional. If it isn't, see if you can debug it. Please don't fiddle with the Meister or SOUL programs. That could put my life in danger.

Also, please don't type in all caps. I still have eardrums here and you're gonna shatter them if you keep that up.

I'm working on chapter V, I swear.