The sand whipped around her face, and she tugged the bandana up towards her eyes again. She supposed it wasn't really sand, but dust instead. Xion wondered who in their right mind would want to live in such a place. How did humans even survive such harsh conditions? If this had been outside The Database, there would have been particles in her joints, and she might have gotten jammed. Thank goodness for virtual reality. Abandoning the horse when her new found companion signaled to, she followed on foot up a slope of sand to where the only protrusion in this desert seemed to be. "You know, I'd never thought to use a horse when traveling before." He shook dust from the folds of his robes as he lowered his hood, "Guess you can teach a dog new tricks." The man chuckled wryly as he waited for her to catch up. "But then again, I guess I could use a camel too. There's more than one way to skin a cat."

The onyx haired girl nodded slowly and stared up at the rusted red plateau that stood as a colossus in front of them. The lone mesa seemed to have a song of its own that separated it from the luring illusion of the desert. "What are we doing here?" She asked, already having assumed that the other AI must be somewhere nearby possibly watching them. On their long ride, she had learned a lot about this man who had approached her.

The other AI, Xigbar, named after his creator (or at least that's what he said. Xion couldn't find anything in her searches online to back that up) was almost forty years old. He said he was one of the first major sentient programs in this area and had been updated over a long period of time as technology progressed. He was the long lived project of a human about twenty years older than himself. Xion calculated that out, and the man would have been born in the 1980's. A far cry from the date her father had been born on.

There were a lot of things about Xigbar that she had come to like as they had travelled across the dusty world that they occupied. One of them was that he was old fashioned. Xigbar could have coded up a car or a truck and had them to the mesa in minutes, but he decided to make a horse as well, so they could get to know each other. He was also really clever regardless if he had been voiced by a beach surfer back in the 2000's. She also liked his appearance, but he eventually told her a little further into their trip that he had lost his eye and gotten his scar due to a file corruption several years ago that his programmer hadn't noticed, and he didn't have the heart to tell him about. "He's getting old, ya know? Like the dude is almost 67, and he has grandkids and his wife passed away. I'm just something he tinkers away on in his free time. He did a great job, and I just don't have it in me to let him know his memory is slipping."

The words reminded Xion of how short humans truly lived, and how she would be around for decades to come as long as she played it safe in The Database. Xigbar interrupted these thoughts by clearing his throat before taking out a bottle of water. What an ironic thing for a computer who could never use it in the real world to simulate. Xion almost snorted as he brought it to his lips to take a long 'refreshing' drink. He didn't even know what real water tasted like most likely. The older man wiped away any renegade liquid with the back of his sleeve before commenting, voice finally free of that thick scratchy sound that all voice boxes seemed to procure out in a wilderness like this, "Can't you tell? I mean it's not like it's that hard to figure out." He teased.

"We're here because the other AI are here, right?" She guessed watching as he started to knock on the stone, listening for a hollow or some other cliché action movie plot device.

"No," He mumbled a smile growing as he located an area where the code warped, "We're here because this is where the other AI are hiding." He grinned, "And you, poppet, you look like a fix to our little virus." Moving behind her, he pushed her along, " I'm teasing. Now come on. Be nice. Don't worry. A little glitch in a simple structure like this never hurt anyone."

Reluctantly she stepped through into the area where she was expecting to find some empty abyss or the end of the world. To her relief, the sole of her boot struck solid footing, and she continued on through the anomaly that shouldn't exist, or if they had in Twilight Town, she hadn't noticed them. Dark black hair contrasted against startled blue eyes for a moment as she looked around, "Are we-?" Her eyes narrowed in on the windows that displayed something from one of those fantasy video games that Axel loved to play. The low ceilings and the walls of carved stone tipped her off immediately. If this place had been handcrafted, it would have taken a lifetime and more.

"Underground? Why yes we are." Xigbar's smug face sported a cheeky grin, "Come along, I'll show you the ropes since you'll be staying here for a while, right? I guess I should have asked if you were moving in to the network. If you're only staying for a while, you probably would have been fine out there underneath the sunshine, but I didn't want to take any chances."

Xion's laugh jingled in the small room that they now occupied and it reverberated off the walls, "Why? Is the sun that bad?"

"Oh, it's not the sunshine you should be 'fraid of, but there's a reason why every rational animal has a fear of the dark. Plus…there's other things that go bump in the night here." He decided not to linger on the idea and grabbed her hand, leading her to the window, "Now look and tell me what you see."

"I see-" She started, analyzing the streets and walkways that looked of ancient Roman architecture mixed with a little Norse touch. "I see one thousand flames from the same match."

Xigbar who had been leaning against the wall studying the bottom of his shoes looked up and snorted, "That's a good way of putting it."

Glancing again at copies of copies of copies, she sighed, "I thought you were teasing about the virus." Not that she had ever seen a virus, but something definitely felt unnatural just by looking at the crowd of AI entities that were identical in appearance.

Xigbar gave a bitter laugh before answering softly, "No, only about you being the fix."

Took my AP euro exam today :3 Here's a chapter for you all~ Thanks Layla for beta