Xigbar had never been to another server before. His creator had no reason to go anywhere in his age, and so, he had stayed. By staying, he had learned the lay of the land. He had watched as canyons, mountains, moons, forests, rivers, oceans appeared and vanished over the years all eventually being swallowed up into the code. The only thing that had stayed constant was him, the sky, and a few others. Even then, they would sometimes go. "Where's O9?" Gone. Pulled the plug. The file corrupted. The system collapsed. Whatever. It happened. No reason to shed tears.

Xigbar shed a tear for Xion, though.

He had been bemused by the network Xion operated in. It was so colorful. Everything his dull dusty world missed, she had built up and out. "Most of them lack this: imagination. That's why my network is so boring." He smiled pushing leaves out of the way as the two started along an animal path, "Did you code all of this?"

"As you said, most of them are fine with whatever is here. They're just hanging out in their off time before they wake up and serve their humans, but a few of us, the customs and the Level 6 and ups tend to find enjoyment in making the world around us. Creating. It's a nice…feeling." The word rolled around her mouth like a glass marble, colorful and shiny, "Yes, I coded most of this area here, but the animal paths were something…A friend of mine liked to add." Xion only did it in memory of Namine,
"Anyways, I'm glad you were granted a network extension."

"I'm just baffled by the fact that your home network is the same network that Moshiva uses." The older man snorted, "Who would have known you were a little traveler?"

Laughing a bit, Xion shook her head, "I feel a little bit bad about going to dismantle their launch code, though. It's practically vandalism and murder if you look at it two ways. The first way is we're ruining a product: vandalism, but because we're also AI…Doesn't ruining them count as murder?" A moral battle was beginning to awaken within her before Xigbar shook his head and gave his point.

"No, when you kill someone, you end an existence. This is one existence, one file that they've copied over and over again. If anything, it's an act of rebellion to show that we're protesting their unimaginative cost effective launch." His gold eye swung up to the sky, "Do you understand?"

"I guess. Humans count murder as when you extinguish a soul. That's why abortion is such a big issue with them." She shrugged, "Why don't you ever code anything in your network? You spend plenty of time in The Database." She was beginning to wonder if Xigbar even had a shell.

"At first I did." The man grunted as he popped his jaw, "But the longer I've been here, the less enamored by it all I am. I mean I remember when World War 3 started. Sometimes soldiers don't get offline right and parts of them get stuck wayward in The Database never to return. They're ghosts. They tell me stories about their lives before they begin to fade. I had the honor of talking to a very powerful human man once. He told me things are changing out there. That it's as hard to be a human as it is to be an AI. What kind of world are they creating for themselves out there? For some reason, I'm alright with the emptiness. The emptiness is easy to understand. You have to go through it like a ship through a sea. When there's all this nature and beauty like this, you have to process, understand, and appreciate. I'm just not there anymore. Not that I don't like what you've done with the place, but I wouldn't want to duplicate anything I've seen here at home."

Xion laughed softly, "You remind me of my human. He talks exactly the same way about how hard it is for AI and humans." Different though, the two were definitely different. "Do you have a shell Xigbar?"

"No." He answered before quickly adding, "And it's not that I don't want one…I guess it's just best that I come clean with you, Poppet, considering how we need to trust each other. I'm not your average AI."

"Well neither am I." She snorted.

"No, I mean…You know how we're worried about you getting deleted if a virus infects the copies? I told you that self-preservation is a great motivator, and I'm not like you. I don't have a file." He admitted, hands slightly shaking.

Cocking a brow, she stopped walking, "What do you mean?" Her tone had switched from light hearted to serious. "What are you trying to say?"

"Xion… I'm human." Watching her face, he saw the chaos that had begun to rage inside her processor. "Hear me out!" He raised his hands in surrender, "Just hear me out. I promise it will all make sense."

She demanded to have a full story, and so he gave it to her once they were in Twilight Town where they could comfortably take a seat, "You see I was part of the original upload, back when humans were trying to transcend the mortal realm and become immortal. Most of the people failed due to lack of knowledge or faulty equipment, but a few of us succeeded. Most of my teammates who also made it are gone now through bugs and the others that are left have gone into hiding or are so far into my network I can't find them anymore. Now it's just me, the customs, and the clones." He sighed, "And that's cool, don't get me wrong, but I'm afraid of dying just as much as you are. I want to live. I'm worried that the copies may cause a network collapse because there's so many of them. Not really a big deal, right? I mean if you're backed up on your human's computer, even you'll come back, Poppet. Me though? I'm not even a file. I'm a block of code floating in space. I'll be gone if the network goes down. You're part of The Database and network if that makes sense. I'm just part of the network." He shrugged.

Taking a moment to respond, Xion bit her lip, "I guess it makes sense now why you don't consider ending all those AIs as murder…I mean how could you see killing something like us wrong, if you're not one of us." She laughed bitterly.

"No, no, don't look at it like that." He sighed, "I'm trying to help you!"

"You're trying to help yourself!"

"No." The man stated, "I'm not. Think of this logically!"

"I am! I can't think of it any other way!" She screamed, "I'm a computer! That still doesn't mean that I'm not weirded out! God, what kind of human would become code!? Do you know how much I want what you had!?"

Taking a moment, Xigbar's one good eye reflected the light and seemingly flashed, "That's it, isn't it? You want to be human." Xion's mouth gaped as she tried to figure out what to say. "No, it's fine. I get it. Look, Poppet, we all need to follow our dreams. You want to be human. I want to stay alive. It's not murder, alright? Look…Can you please just help me?" Even if she didn't, Xigbar had heard the plan and could do it on his own.

Xion wondered if this is what it was like to be human. To feel hurt, but still want to remain friends with someone, so you had to forgive them. She didn't know if she wanted to let this go, though…She was so confused. Reluctantly, the smaller robot nodded, "Alright, but after this, we're going to have a talk."

"Fine by me." He snorted, breaking out into a grin.

~o~

"See the clock tower?" She pointed, "That's all Moshiva's code. I just recoded around it."

"See the clock tower," Xigbar laughed, "It's a little hard to miss. Explain to me what we're doing one last time."

Grumbling, she stuck her tongue out, "Really? You need me to repeat it again?"

"It'd be nice, but I got the gist: I'm distraction. You'll do the dirty work, right?" He quirked a brow.

Nodding, she approached the wall, dropping the remodeling she'd done, so the bare code was exposed, "Try and run fast if any firewalls or anti-virus software find you." She winked.

"Yeah right…" He rolled his eyes, reaching out to touch the data, "I should be saying that to you. Don't get caught, Poppet."

"And what if I do, huh?" She sang, "Gonna rescue me?"

Xigbar snorted, "Only if you need me too."

"Like that would happen."

~o~

"We have a breech." One of the technology security personnel managed as he set down his coffee to begin patching any holes that were made.

"Alright, what sector?" A woman called from the other side of the room. They had somewhat expected it considering how soon launch was going to be.

"They're already on level C."

"Jesus, alright." Moshiva's walls of security were given letters, and A was only for top level employees. Most of the security personnel only had B access at best.

"Can you see what they're looking for?" The manager on the floor asked, taking a seat as well to help.

"No, they're sifting through a lot of code really fast." God, he wished his HTML was significantly better at times like this. "I've been hit by two viruses." He switched computers as the hard drive on that one crashed.

"I'm down over here too." One of the men across the room called, moving one over.

"I've blocked off most of D, E, and F." Someone called, "Sending out my own drones."

"Mine too."

~o~

"Can you work any faster?" Xigbar asked, taking out a rifle to begin shooting of the drones as they appeared. Building up his wall, he covered Xion best he could as she continued to plug in.

"Don't distract me." She mumbled, stripping a layer away and annihilating it in a moment, "I found the file." The robot yanked at the stream of code to bring it closer to herself, so she could access it. Namine. Namine (1). Namine (2). Namine (46,783). Delete. Delete. Delete. Of course it wasn't called Namine, it was under the name Project 7, but that only pissed her off more. Her friend was reduced to a number. A number. "God, what is wrong with people."

"Xion!" Her brain snapped away from what she had been working on to turn to Xigbar, "Look out!"

A drone had slipped past him and the giant gray bot was zooming towards her, "Xigbar! Help!" Her voice came out in a frail scream as she watched it close in, not having enough time to switch away from the file and defend herself.

Wasn't this all supposed to keep her from dying?

Somewhere in the back of her code, the idea that a few sacrifices had to be made for a revolution sparked, but then her file was corrupted and everything stopped. 'What will Axel think tomorrow when I don't wake up?' She wondered.

Xion wouldn't ever find out.

~o~

"We eliminated the issue, but we lost most of the merchandise in the local area." The manager reported in, "Nothing in the Asian or European branches was affected, though."

"That's good." Torm let out a long groan, "I guess we're really going to have to go through and reprogram all those bots."

Fuck. It just wasn't his week.

Review :D Thanks Layla for Beta.