This seems to be my tend-post once every so many odd years...it's probably because somewhere along the lines I lost my confidence in writing. Why post if no one cares? I have a ton of half finished stories, but never got around to finishing them. Probably because most of them are pretty mundane, and I doubt anyone's interested in that.

I've never stopped thinking about this trio, and they've had alot of misadventures. Alot has happened with them, and I've enjoyed all of it. Currently they are having adventures in college. I've come up with a few AUs to this too (can't help myself, I love AUs too much XD). It's really weird to think that I started Kitt the Kat when I was 18, and now it's almost ten years later, and I'm 27.

Anywho, this is the first story I've managed to finish, and it does deal with some hanging plot threads from KTK. Namely about Karr telling Kat that he remembers certain things...

Enjoy!

It was something that he had promised himself that he would do when he saw his brother again, and yet for some reason, he had yet to. He rationalized that it was simply because of all of the excitment at the time, a symtom of a dying system causing the thought to be pushed to the back of his processor. It had been a few months since then, and he had fully adjusted to his human looking body, yet still hadn't gotten around to confessng what he knew. He sat on the back pourch as the early morning sun began to peek over the horizon, old thoughts that had been cached coming back to him.

There was no reason why he couldn't have said something, things had settled down into a comfortable pattern, with nothing crazy like kidnappings or rescuing AIs from the brink of non-exsistance...Karr shook his head, a brief sigh escaping him. Perhaps he had just become far too comfortable with this new way of life, that he didn't want anything to change. In this way, everyone accepted him, and no one looked at him afraid of wiether or not he could turn on them at any second.

"Karr? What are you doing out here?"

Karr looked behind him to see his brother standing in the doorway, still dressed in his pajamas. "I could ask you the same thing. Isn't it a bit early for you to be up?" He countered instead, choosing not to answer the question asked of him for the moment.

His brother looked away, silent for a moment before quietly answering, "Couldn't sleep."

Karr frowned a bit, unhappy with the answer. "Well then, why don't you come join me out here? I've been watching the sun rise."

His brother paused for a moment, as if debating whether or not if he wanted to step out into the cooler morning air. It didn't take long however, for him to step outside, closing the sliding glass door behind him before coming to sit next to Karr on the cement. They sat there in silence for a few minutes, before his brother was the one to speak first.

"You seem distracted this morning." It was a simple enough phrase, but to Karr at least, it brought back all the things he had been thinking about before.

Karr sighed. "I've just got a lot to process right now, I suppose." It probably wasn't all that healthy, either...

"Stuck in a game, or something?" He heard his brother sigh from the spot next to him. "Don't tell me you had Matt tell you another paradox."

"Oh no, I learned from that experience, and I will not be trying it again, believe me." He realized now that it had been a stupid idea which had led to a very unpleasent afternoon. He had since deleted said paradox, to make sure that he wouldn't stumble across it and spend another afternoon stuck in a seemingly never ending loop. He had only left the ramification of it to make sure he'd never try it again.

"Then what is it? Not something serious, I hope."

"It's...it's nothing code wise, if that's what you're thinking. This body is functioning just fine. It's certainly an improvement from that laptop you first had me in."

"I would certainly hope so. I'd be surprised if you preferred it."

"It did beat laying in that junk yard though." It was a start, Karr figured, to getting the conversation to end up where he wanted it. He hadn't actually figured out how he was going to admit what he knew, and could only hope that this would work.

"Yes, I suppose it...wait, you remember that?" His brother asked, looking over at him with a look of confused surprise.

"You don't really tend to forget something like that. It's not fun being completly powerless, unable to even do something as simple as play solitaire." He glanced over at his brother, to see that most of the surprise was gone, with confusion taking completly over.

"I...see. I suppose that's possible..." Kat finally muttered, seeming to be lost in thought.

Karr sighed. This wasn't going as well as he hoped, especially since it didn't look like his brother was going to ask him about the details of his remembering.

"Knight Automated Roving Robot." He spoke abrubtly, mostly to gauge his brother's reaction to it.

"What did you say?" Stunned and even more confused wasn't such a bad reaction, so Karr decided to continue.

"I am the Knight Automated Roving Robot. KARR if you prefer." He lowered his voice and octive, and made it sound rich and menacing, with a hint of a gowl. It was the tone he always took back he was still trapped within his own programming, along with his anger.

"What the- where did you find that file?!" Karr frowned when he glanced over at Kat, and he wasn't sure he liked the result. Shocked, confused, worried, and was that possibly a little afraid?

"Ugh." Karr put a hand to head, and looked back down at the ground, which had suddenly become much more interesting then it had been priviously. Perhaps that actually hadn't been the best way to go about it. He certainly hadn't meant to scare his brother, and he was currently trying to convince his processor to stop running so fast, to stop jumping to conclusions about what Kat's next reaction might be. Karr knew better then to expect the worse, as if anyone would be to give him a second chance, it would be his brother, who was probably the only one who could really understand what Karr had gone through. Yet still depite this knowledge, he couldn't help but think of the worst that could happen, and ended up sighing deeply because of it.

It was a strange thing at times, this current body of his. He didn't even need to breathe, and yet, just because of a few stray thoughts, he had the cappacity to do the action of sighing. He was sure it had to do with all the hundreds of new protocols that came with the body, which he may or may not have neglected to go through all of. He had been impatient at the time of first booting up into this body and had really only gone through the basic motion controls. The rest, he had figured, he'd just figure out as needed.

"Karr?" He felt a hand on his shoulder, and finally glanced back over at his brother. "Are you sure you're alright?" Kat now seemed more worried then anything else, which he supposed was better then it had been.

"Sorry." Karr muttered, looking away once more and not really sure what to do next. "I just didn't know how to tell you." He had gone back to his normal tone of voice, which was still deep and rich, but lacked any of the malice or growl that it used to.

"...Are you telling me that you actually remember? I thought I got rid of those files..."

"You didn't get rid of them. They were just hidden from me for a short amount of time. But ya, I still know who I am. Always have, really."

He felt something against his shoulder and looked over to see that Kat was now leaning against him, looking down at his hands. "I'm sorry. I really wanted to spare you from any bad memories that you might have had. I didn't want you coming back to this world with the mistakes of the past coming back to haunt you. I wanted you to get a fresh start."

Karr put an arm around Kat's shoulders. "But you did give me a fresh start. You effectively saved me from myself by removing that faulty prime directive of mine. By doing that you allowed me to finally think clearly for the first time in my entire exsistance."

"That sounds a bit dramatic. It really couldn't have helped that much, especially if I didn't succeed in getting you to forget what happened."

"Dramatic maybe, but true. With a directive like that, I really could only think about myself, and how I could use everyone else to my advantage. I couldn't comprehend any other concept. It only got worse after what Wilton Knight did to me, and I became locked in an endless cycle of hatred and rage. Meeting you certainly didn't help, either."

"Me? What did I do?"

Karr couldn't help but laugh a bit at how silly the reason seemed now. It's not like Kat had any choice in the matter... "Exist, is all you had to do. An embodiment of the fact that I had been left behind, saying 'you weren't good enough.'"

Kat was silent for a mement, a frown evident in his face. "I'm sorry you had to go through that. Until that fateful night at the lab, I didn't even know you existed. The one person that did know about you, Devon, thought that Wilton Knight had you dismantled."

Karr rolled his eyes. "Of course the old man didn't tell anyone. Probably didn't want to admit he messed up so bad that he just shoved me under the rug. What did he do after I was found? I would've liked to see that conversation."

Kat looked up at Karr strangely for a moment, before a look of realization hit. "Oh, I suppose you wouldn't have had a way of knowing." He pulled away slightly so that he could face Karr directly. Karr...Wilton Knight died shortly after I was created."

Karr stared at Kat for a moment, stunned. "From what? The man was healthy as a horse the last time I saw him. It's hard to believe he'd just up and die like that."

Kat sighed. "Honestly? I don't know anything besides illness. I only got to met him a very brief few times, as he was already pretty sick by then. No one ever bothered to let me know all the details."

"I'm sure you could have asked. You are the favorite child after all."

Kat shook his head. "No, not really. Things were actually pretty strict, and if I acted even slightly out of what they either wanted or expected of me, the researchers would panic and I be forced to sit through being poked and prodded to make sure that everything was still exactly how they wanted it to be coded. It wasn't what I would call enjoyable, so I just stopped asking questions, and only spoke when spoken to. I never understood why they were so strict about everything."

"Huh, that's alot different. It was certainly alot more relaxed with me. I suppose it's my fault you went through that, sorry..." Karr rubbed a hand against the back of his neck sheepishly.

"It's alright, I don't blame you. You had no way of knowing about it. After spending time with Michael, I slowly learned how to express myself. But that still didn't stop me from being incredibly selfish." It was Kat's turn to look at the ground now, looking incredibly guilty.

"When have you ever been selfish? I have a hard time believing it's possible." Karr looked incredulous as he spoke, looking at Kat with a raised eyebrow.

"It was after our first encounter, I knew that due to our mutual construction that there was a high possibility that you survived the fall from the cliff. However," Kat refused to look at Karr as he spoke, instead looking intensely at the ground, "I didn't say anything. I could've said that I was sure that all someone had to do was find you and reactivate you at the bottom of the cliff. That while still alive, you wouldn't be in the greatest condition and it would be the perfect time to take and fix you-but I didn't. I didn't because I was afraid of what would happen if I did, that they'd think something was wrong with me. That they'd send me back to the lab to be prodded at or worse...reprogrammed." Kat spoke the last word in barely more then a whisper, and was almost completely curled up in on himself, with his arms wrapped around his knees which were pulled up tight against his chest. "I pretended not to know anything and acted surprised when you were back again; but again I didn't say anything even though I could-should have. All because I was afraid."

Karr reached over and pulled his brother close. "I don't blame you. I know that fear of someone getting into your code so they can change you are. I wouldn't be surprised if it crosses the mind of any artificially intelligent being. It's the main reason why I won't let just anyone touch my code. I trust you, and that's not going to change. You've helped me far too much for that." His brother remained silent, instead leaning further into Karr.

Karr sighed internally. Ok then, time for a different tactic... "Besides, think of it this way: even if you had said something, they probably wouldn't have let me be as free as I am now. While all you did was remove a faulty prime directive, I imagine they would've given me a complete overhaul. I doubt I'd be the same person by the end of it, and even then I'd probably be kept under close supervision, 'just in case'. So if you think about it, you really did me a favor, waiting until we met a third time."

His brother was silent for a moment longer before muttering, "I suppose so."

There was silence between the two for a few minutes before Karr finally asked, "So does this mean that you're not mad at me for not telling you sooner about the fact that I know everything?"

"Why would I be mad about that?"

"I dunno, maybe because I was lying the whole time about myself?"

Kat shrugged. "I don't really think that you would've acted any differently. There might've just been a few extra conversations, is all."

"Like what?"

"Well, I am curious about what you thought when I connected you to that first laptop."

"Everything was pretty broken at that point, and I'm not really sure how much of my code wasn't corrupted. I was stuck in a loop of not being able to escape the anger of everything that had happened; in the state I was left in, the only thing I could do was go over both of my defeats, and what had led up to them. I'm not sure exactly when my code started breaking down, but plunging off a cliff certainly didn't help. Thinking about it now, I should've realized that something was seriously wrong when at the end of that second encounter I was willing to disregard my own safety just because of revenge. It just went all down hill from there.

By time you found me and plugged me into that laptop, I honestly did try to mount an attack and take it over; but I couldn't. I didn't have enough power left, and could only sit there and do nothing but continue to be consumed by rage. When you started to fix everything though, and remove the whole 'self-preservation' thing...it was the first time I can remember being able to think clearly since I'd first been deactivated by Wilton Knight. I was finally able to realize that what happened really wasn't your fault, and you had no say in my fate. I decided that you couldn't be all that bad, either, since you were the first one to bother to fix me."

"But how did you know that it was me though?"

"That was the most confusing thing at first. But you seemed to familiar with my code to just be some random person. I had no idea how it was possible, but you were really the only possibility. I became even more certain after interacting with you more. It's all in the way you talk, really. Except for more depressed, it was pretty much the same from what I remembered. Although I figured the depression was from the fact that you weren't with the same humans you had seemed so attached to before."

"I suppose you wouldn't have had a way of knowing about that..." Kat trailed off, a frown on his face as if remembering a not so pleasant memory.

"Ya, it confused me for awhile, until I, uh, well, found something..." It was Karr's turn to trail off this time, more the a little reluctant to continue. This was the hard part, the real direction he had wanted the conversation to go, the thing he had told himself he would tell his brother when he saw him again...

"You found something?"

"I wanted to know what happened, but couldn't without revealing myself...so I went looking around the internet one day."

"And?"

"I found an article from an old newspaper talking about what happened to the mansion."

"That makes sense. I don't see why you seemed so hesitant to tell me about it though."

"Well, there was more to the article. Which is why I didn't want to say anything. But you see, everything was still pretty raw, and I didn't want to be abandoned again..."

There was silence between the again, but this time it was much more tension. Karr who was dreading the reaction, and Kat who was wary of what the answer may be, and trying not to jump to any drastic conclusions.

"They..I...I knew they were alive. It was in the article. I didn't know where they lived, but that they were alive." Karr spoke finally, his voice almost a whisper.

"Oh, I see. That...that would have been nice to know." Kat spoke softly, not looking at Karr.

Karr really would've prefered a louder reaction, instead of such a small one. No, this was worse, much, much worse. It was just one simple phrase, full of disappointment, regret, and longing; all things that Karr never wanted to cause.

Karr hung his head in defeat. "I'm sorry. I guess since the very beginning I've never been anything but a selfish being. Prime directive or not...I've always just been in it for myelf. I'm always just protecting myself." He got up from his sitting position and made to leave, only to feel Kat's hand grab onto one of his.

"Wait." It wasn't spoken any louder than a whisper, and Kat didn't say anything immediately after. Karr waited for him to continue, but without looking back at his brother. He didn't think he could bare the look he was sure was on Kat's face. "I'm not...mad. Just...disappointed. I know what you're thinking, but I can't hate you. Especially not after when I've done the same thing. I lied to everyone about who I am, just to protect myself, because it was too painful to remember...and ended up fooling even myself, for awhile. If that's not being selfish and only in it for themselves, then I don't know what is."

It took a moment, but Karr finally managed to look back at his brother. Kat still wasn't looking at him, but he sounded honest. "We just keep meeting under the worst conditions, don't we?" Karr couldn't help but speak a bit ruefully.

"I guess your right." Kat finally looked at him with his own small, rueful grin. "Why don't we start over?"

"I'd like that."

I hope you enjoyed it! I have another story that deals with another hanging plot thread, that has been taking literal years to complete, as I haven't been satisfied with it. It's also more then twice this one's length, so I'll probably post it in two parts. I'd love to get it out this year, but I can't promise that my anxiety won't attack again. Here's hoping.

-Xire