"Meega thought yuuga just said 'blocks'?" Said 626 as Oltz and Ava hovered a half-dozen crates into his room. "Isa bit more here."

"Yes," Ava explained, "but the local toy store didn't exactly look kindly on us buying out the entire stock, so we mixed and matched a little. We've got little buildings sets, model spacecrafts, a couple boxes of L'yn'k'yn Logs…" She grinned at the Grand Councilwoman. "All billed to your office, of course."

"As is usual." The Councilwoman rolled her eyes in amusement. "Well, if the account information ever gets leaked, it'll definitely confuse a lot of beings."

626 tilted his head. "Naga habida. Isa problem?"

"Hmm? No, just some political things." The Councilwoman looked back at the door. "Say, where's Dr. Scheur? I thought he'd be here by now."

"We passed him in the hall a little while ago." Oltz replied. "He said something about needing a bunch of pictures?"

"Oh? Interesting. In the mean time, 626, feel free to start looking through the crates."

"Okietaka." 626 walked over to the nearest crate and pried the lid off. Inside there were a number of toy spacecrafts, ranging from little one-being fighters to a giant dreadnought he guessed was a scale model of a real Federation ship. He studied it a moment before discarding it on the floor and turning his attention back to the little fighters, a bright red one having caught his eye. Grabbing it, 626 tried to imagine himself piloting it around in real life, blasting away at various targets on the ground. It was fun for a bit, but at the same time, since there was nothing but the cold floor it was hard to really get the feel of it.

626 looked at another crate. Hmmm… Opening it, he found a number of boxes containing the blocks the Councilwoman had initially promised. Aka Tooka… Taking a box in each pair of arms, 626 ran back to the corner. An image had appeared in his mind's eye: a city street, buildings perfectly lined up in two neat lines, and 626 got to work bringing that to reality. Slowly, deliberately and with a care that surprised even him, he stacked the blocks together to make a skyscraper, then another next to it, and then a little block of apartments. Then, moving to the other side of the 'street' (having purloined some of those L'yn'k'yn Logs to act as the sides of the road) he crafted a single, massive building surrounded by a number of smaller connected ones. After taking a moment to admire his creation, oddly proud despite the fact that it was nothing more than a bunch of toy blocks, he grabbed the craft again.

"Psssheeeeew!" The craft sailed down the city street, and 626 imagined it sending a flurry of plasma shots of the center of the road. "Yuuga in sabusa now!" The craft whirled around the skyscrapers next. "Pew pew pew!" He kicked the first one over, sending the blocks tumbling across the room, before knocking off the top layer of the second. "Yuuga bad people!" The craft flew across the street to knock down the connections between the various little buildings and big one, before taking the craft and hurling it straight through the middle of the big building, sending the entire thing crashing down. Isa FUN! Laughing, 626 continued to fly around the room with the craft.

He was about to jump off the desk when he felt a pair of hands close around his side. "Whoa there", the Councilwoman said, "be careful! You're going to hurt yourself."

"Isa okietaka. Meega tough, remember?"

"Well, yes, but -"

"I believe what the Grand Councilwoman is trying to say is she'd rather you not scare her like that." The door whizzed open as Dr. Scheur entered, smiling and shaking his head. "Bulletproof experiment or not, the sight of little kids jumping off things they shouldn't scares pretty much anyone ." He looked around the room. "I see you got started without me, then. What is that, a canyon?"

"It was a city block." Answered the Councilwoman. "626 spent a good half-hour setting it all up before pretending he was destroying it with a toy space fighter."

"Ah. Interesting." Scheur studied the blocks. "Why's this building untouched?" He pointed at the apartment building.

626 blinked in surprise: he'd skipped right over that? He certainly hadn't meant to.

"Naga sure. Isa where people live." Actually, when he thought about it… "Meega naga hurt people's homes. Isa bad, ih?"

"Well, technically destroying any building would be bad in real life." The Councilwoman shrugged. "But especially residential buildings, I suppose." Turning to Dr. Scheur, she continued. "Say, Doctor, why were you late? Ava said something about pictures?"

"Hmm? Oh, yes." Scheur dug a small circle out of his pocket and pressed a button on its side, and a second later an image of a verdant grassland under a light teal sky was projected into the air. "I just thought I might grab a couple images we could use as a base when making stuff." He clicked the button again, and the image was replaced with a giant red mountain. "Do either of these stand out to you, 626?"

"Naga."

"Alright, moving on." The mountain vanished and was replaced with a vast, blue body of water. "This may be a little difficult, but perhaps you would enjoy an ocean?"

626 shuddered. "Naga."

"Yes, I suppose you wouldn't like the ocean, would you?" The Councilwoman said, thoughtfully. "After all, you'd probably sink like a stone."

"Fair enough. Perhaps something a little more urban?" The ocean vanished and was replaced by a vast cityscape. "This is where we are right now, Turo City." He pointed at a tall building at the center, which had a number of spires reaching up into the atmosphere. "That's the Federation Headquarters. The tower in the middle is where the Grand Councilwoman keeps her offices, and we're located about halfway up that right now. Thoughts on this picture, 626? Care to build it?"

"Ih! Ih!" 626 clapped his hands, excited. Putting the entire cityscape together - and then tearing it down, he supposed - would be so fun! Especially the Federation Headquarters! "Tookie Bawabah!"

He raced over to the crates again, rifling through them, grabbing all the blocks he could. Soon the outer shell of the Federation Headquarters was completed, but as he was starting the spires he ran into a problem: although he could stack the blocks together to form the height, they stubbornly refused to stack outwards. Every time he tried gravity took over, sending the creations toppling to earth. "Choota!" He yelled after the central spiral collapsed for the fifth time, balling up his paws in exasperation.

"626!" The Councilwoman cut in. "Do not use that word."

"Soka." 626 gestured towards the spire. "Naga know what to do. Meega want to make tower, pano…"

"I know, it's frustrating. But," Scheur suggested, "perhaps the answer lies elsewhere?"

626 looked back at the boxes and rubbed his chin, thinking. Isa different shapes? Looking through the boxes he eventually found a set of blocks in the shape of octagons, grabbing one, he placed it on top. Chaba… But it was still precarious. What to do?

He heard a strange noise. Turning, he saw the Councilwoman was looking through another crate. "Perhaps these magnets would help stabilize it?" Walking over, she picked up the octagon and the square block below it. Placing a thin, disk-shaped magnet on top of a square block, she replaced the two she'd taken and put another magnet on top of the octagon. 626 heard a snap , and when the Councilwoman pressed a finger against the octagon it was far less wobbly than beforehand. "See? The force of the magnets locks them together, making it harder to push over."

"Taka." 626 copied the design with the other three towers before taking a step back to admire the finished building. "Gata, isa time for rest of the city!" He looked up at the Councilwoman, and then over at Dr. Scheur. "Yuuga help me? Isa lot to do."

They both nodded, and got to work.

Over the next two and a half hours the floor of 626's room was gradually transformed into a cityscape as high-rises, offices, apartments, and restaurants shot upwards. They had a fair bit of difficulty with the bridges between buildings in mid-air, with even the magnets failing to combat gravity, until 626 got the idea to bend little strings of twine around some or build suspension bridges under others. Once or twice 626 had the sneaking suspicion that the other two knew full well how to solve one problem or another and were just humoring him otherwise, but all the same every conundrum he puzzled out filled him with a sense of accomplishment. Every so often the Councilwoman or Dr. Scheur would stop and explain to 626 what one building or another was, and although a big part of 626 was still trying to file away certain ones as potential targets for destruction, there was another part of him that was just…excited to learn.

Dr. Scheur stood back and whistled when they were finished. "Wow. Did we seriously just reproduce Turo City?"

"Apparently we did." The Grand Councilwoman rubbed 626's head affectionately. "Great work."

626 beamed up at her before turning his attention to Dr. Scheur. "Yuuga ask me anything?"

"Well, I was going to wait until after you finished both the construction and the destruction, but if you want to go now we can talk about the first bit."

"Smish."

"Alright, then." Scheur pulled out his pen. "First off, 626, why did you decide on wanting to replicate Turo? And why did you make that city block earlier?"

"Meega like idea of cities." The answer came easy, especially after 626's talk about his worries yesterday. "Meega think Jumba wanted that."

"To destroy them?"

626 looked at the Grand Councilwoman before responding. "Ih. Meega think so."

"I see." Scheur looked over at the destroyed city block. "And thus, you both made and unmade that block." He gestured back at their model of Turo. "Do you want to do the same to this one?"

"Ih?" 626 frowned. "Meega okiga now? Beginning, ih, meega want to destroy, but now, yuuga help, so naga sure."

"Alright. Now, when you were building the city block and when we were building Turo City, what did it feel like to you? Were you excited to tear it down?"

626 thought about it, unsure. "Meega think…naga?" He blinked, the realization hitting him: in the middle of building Turo City, all thought of destruction had left him: he'd been so focused on putting everything together, making sure it was all aligned and functional, that the very act he was supposedly programmed to do hadn't even occurred to him. And looking at it now, 626 realized he still didn't want to. Instead, looking over the result of several hours' worth of hard work, he felt, simply, pride. "Meega happy with this. Naga want to wreck it."

"Oh?" It was the Grand Councilwoman who spoke, interested.

"Ih." He explained his feelings of pride as best he could, and how after a certain point he wasn't even the slightest bit inclined to tear it all down.

Dr. Scheur and the Grand Councilwoman looked at each other, and as the former wrote something down the latter appeared to faintly smile.

"Well, we certainly have uncovered something new about you, 626 - and that can only be a good thing." She gazed around the room. "I have to admit, this was more enjoyable than I expected. We'll have to do this again sometime."

"Okietaka." 626 thought that sounded nice.

A chime echoed through the room before anyone else could speak. Looking up at it, the Councilwoman frowned. "But, unfortunately, it definitely will not be 'now'. Ah, well."

Ava's voice echoed through the room. "Sorry to break up the party in there, ma'am, but your meeting with the Carina association's in an hour."

"What? Is it noon already?"

"Quarter 'til, technically."

"Time really does fly when you're having fun, I suppose." She looked down at 626. "I'll be back soon, promise. Until then, Dr. Scheur will stay here and continue today's itinerary."

"Meega understand." 626 felt oddly sad watching her leave, like there was a part of him that wanted to run after and follow her.

He sighed; it wasn't like he could leave the room yet. Muta soon. He looked up at Dr. Scheur. "Yuuga have more to ask me?"

"Maybe later: for now, let's take a break and look through the rest of the pictures I've got here." Picking up the small circle again, he pressed a button. "Maybe we can figure out what to make next?"

Turo City vanished, replaced with a fleet of spaceships traveling through the atmosphere of some planet or another. Then it was a lush forest somewhere, then a planet of one-eyed green beings, and then…

"Aggaba." It was a simple picture: an adult female, an adult male, and a child playing together on the beach. And yet 626 felt drawn to it, even more than the picture of Turo City. He walked up to it, slowly, taking it in, suddenly aware of a strange empty feeling in his chest, until he gingerly placed a paw on top of where the female and child joined hands. The image shuddered and briefly vanished as his paw passed through it, and 626 drew it back, not wanting to disturb it further. Itchu naba? He wanted it, he realized, like an ache: but why? Nothing Jumba programmed into him provided an explanation, neither did what he'd been taught by Dr. Scheur or the Grand Councilwoman.

All 626 knew was that the more he gazed at the picture of the happy family, the more he felt incomplete. Like he was missing something.

Missing some one.