Talking was harder than it looked. It was harder than she thought it would be, and despite how hard she was trying, she was starting to believe that she'd never spit a word out. XJ9 was currently sitting on her bed in her room, looking at a book about the alphabet. Each page was colorful with a different letter and a list of words that start with the letter. She was currently staring at the letter M's page, more specifically at the word 'Mom' on it. Above the word was a picture of a kid hugging their mom, and it made her frown.

Maybe if she learned how to talk, then her mom would hug her like that, but that was still far away. The sad thought made her want to cry, but she shoved the tears away and tried to focus again. It was a simple word one that was only three letters long, yet it stumped her. She wasn't sure what she was doing wrong, and that made her huff in frustration. She was reading the book which had taught her letters and which letters made up the word. While her brain had been pulling up samples of the letters sounds for her to hear. Yet, she still couldn't spit a word out as everything just came out as a messed up sound.

XJ9 didn't know how long she had been at it, but it was too long and too irritating for her. She slammed the book closed and threw it on the ground beside her bed before flopping over on it and curling up. She had been upset before, but never like this. Why couldn't she do it? It was just one word, and it should be so simple. Mom, all she had to say was mom, why couldn't she? She let an irritated mumble before she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

She got up and paced around her room, looking at all the monitors. She scanned across all of them, and each one helped ease some of her frustrations. She loved looking at all of them, and a big smile spread across her face at the thought that all of them were hers. As she was watching them, a person caught her eye. Someone in a Skyway Patrol uniform was talking to someone at the park. The cadet scribbled something down on his notepad before saying something else, and both of the people split up.

Skyway Patrol, ugh, the thought of them brought back some of her feelings of irritation. She didn't understand those people for sure, what did those guys even do? Besides breaking into her house, and being mean to her mom. Now that she thought about them a little more, not only did she not know why they were bothering them a lot, but also, what did those guys do? They have to do something, right? XJ9 could have contemplated it all a bit more, but quickly got fed up with all of it.

Yesterday the men in suits had busted in and disrupted her schedule, and now she wasn't going to let them disrupt her thoughts too if she could help it. She made a mental note to lookup more about them later, but for the time being, she had a bigger issue on her hands. She walked back over to her bed and picked up the book off the ground. Some of its pages had gotten bent up from being thrown, and she gently smoothed out its pages as an apology to it. Poor book. She felt bad for it, but at the same time quickly felt that frustration from earlier come back as she couldn't get the pages to stop being crumpled. As she smoothed the pages out, she heard her bedroom door being opened.

"XJ9, are you ready for your next progress test?"

She didn't look up from what she was doing and frowned. She didn't want to take a test; she just wanted to make her own progress on talking.

"Today, we'll be testing your scanners and recognition software."

She didn't want to test some scanners and whatever software. She wanted to talk, and she wanted this page to straighten out.

"Now, for this test, I'll be showing you a picture. It'll then be your job to locate the item or person in the crowd as fast as possible."

She didn't mean too, really, she didn't mean to. She was just so frustrated with everything, the talking, Skyway Patrol, the test, and now the crumbled up page. She didn't mean to lose her patience with it, but she did, and when she did, she pulled a little too hard on the page. The loud sound of paper ripping filled her room, and all she could do was stare at it. The letter M's page was ripped across it, and the tear went right through the word 'Mom.'

She dropped the book, just dropped it, and watched it hit the floor. She looked at the piece of the page in her hand. Half of all the words were on it, but she only focused on half of the 'o' and the last 'm' from 'Mom.' The picture of the mom and the kid hugging was ripped in two now and the kid was alone on her piece. She stared at the lonely kid. She watched as drops of water suddenly fell onto the piece of paper, and was confused for a moment to realize then that those were her tears. She didn't even notice that she had started crying, but when she did notice, well, that was enough for her.

She fell on the ground like the book did and rubbed her fists over her eyes frantically, trying to stop crying. The more she rubbed her eyes though, the worst it seemed to get, and that made her rub more furiously. She wasn't sure how it happened or when it did, but eventually, her brain registered warm hands on hers that were pulling her hands away from her face.

"Oh, don't do that now. You'll scrap your optics."

Her mom's voice was soft and sweet, not angry like she thought it would be, and for some reason, that made her cry even harder. With her hands not being busy with rubbing her eyes, XJ9 threw her arms around her mom, wanting any form of comfort. She could feel a warm hand rubbing her back, and with each little rub, she felt herself grow more tired. She knew she shouldn't fall asleep, she was supposed to take her nap after her test, but she suddenly found herself too tired to care about the test so much as her eyes drifted closed. Her systems were buzzing as they worked to keep her from overheating, but the buzz wasn't annoying. If anything, the light noise made her feel even more sleepy. She'd take the test later she decided, and with that matter settled, she fell asleep.

Author's Note- Hey everybody, I just wanted you all to know that I haven't given up on this story despite the lack of updates. I worked to get two chapters done during Spring Break because I knew that April was going to be pretty busy for me. College finals were rough and I had a lot of work to do. I've been updating at least once a month to this story, and I can say it's all going to change starting now.

With college out for the summer, I'm proud to say that this story will now be updating every week during summertime! It will be updating every Sunday, except for this week. (As its update is this chapter, I just wanted to get back to you all as soon as possible so it's early.) Thank you all for reading and sticking with this story! Things are going to start rolling soon with shenanigans.

Please leave a review they mean a lot to me. Thanks for reading!