Disclaimer: I do not own "Chobits," and do not claim to.

Chapter One - Symbiosis

For as long as he could remember, Jima seemed to run on alternating cycles of activity and inertia. At times he felt that he could work at full capacity for several weeks straight and never feel the need to stop, but these periods were always followed by a deep exhaustion. When he hit one of these lows, all the strength would drain from him and he could hardly bring himself to move. The only thing he could do was wait it out.

On this night, he was just coming off one of these difficult phases. Although he had regained much of his energy, he still felt a bit dazed and unsteady on his feet. He would have liked to move somewhere else that night, as he had been atop the same high rise for a few weeks now and was beginning to tire of the view, but the world spun around him whenever he tried to get up. Sighing, he stretched his arms behind his head, resigning to the fact that he wouldn't be going anywhere soon. This sudden movement disturbed Dita, who was curled in his lap with her head resting on his stomach. She sat up at once and stared into his eyes, sensing his discomfort.

"Jima, is everything alright?" asked Dita, unable to hide the concern in her voice. She didn't like to see him like this. She desperately wanted to help him feel better, but nothing she tried seemed to work.

"Yes, I suppose," answered Jima, "I'm still a bit weak, but I can tell it's starting to pass." He gave her a smile meant to reassure her and attempted to pull her close again. She resisted and sat back up, taking the connection line from her ear port.

Jima reached out and stopped her hand before she could connect. "What good is that going to do, love? You'll only end up running yourself down." He wrapped his arms around her small frame, hoping she would get the hint and lie down again. Instead, she took Jima by surprise by pinning him against the side of the building. She cupped his chin in her hand and gave him a look for the ages -- fear, confusion, anger, and sadness all in one. Dita was truly a master of wordless communication, whether she realized it or not.

"You don't understand...I have to try." She let her head fall on Jima's shoulder. "I was created to protect you. If you're not feeling well, I should be able to do something about it. If I can't, then I'm useless."

Dita had never been the type to say these kinds of things outright, and Jima was a bit shocked. He pulled her closer, and she buried her face into his coat. "Don't say things like that, Dita, love. It isn't your fault that I get this way, it's just something that happens. You've scanned me dozens of times, but you've never found anything amiss. Do you want something to be wrong with me?"

"Of course not!" snapped Dita. She stared at the street below, deliberately avoiding his gaze. "It's just that..."

Jima took hold of her chin, forcing her to look at him. "What is it, Dita?" He could tell there was something she wasn't telling him.

"It's just that it tears me apart to see you like this! I can't stand not knowing why this happens, and I can't shake the feeling that I might be able to do something about it." She lay back down and put her head on his stomach. Jima sighed again.

"I'm sorry, Jima," said Dita. "I've obviously upset you."

Jima ran his fingers through her hair. "It's alright. There's no need to apologize," he said. "I appreciate your concern, but you should know that I'm not suffering. If I was, I wouldn't hide it from you."

"I know," Dita said. "I just can't help worrying. After all, what would it mean if I didn't?" She closed her eyes, listening to the steady, normal clicking of the database inside him. The sound was comforting, and she soon drifted off to sleep.

Jima looked up at the sky, contemplating the stars. He wondered which of the twinkling lights were real and which were satellites, as it was nearly impossible to tell. He found himself unconsciously calculating the coordinates for his location and then searching his database for information on the number of satellites in the area. He found a total of ten, mostly owned by various IT and telecom companies. Artificial stars. Imposters. Fakes. Unnatural.

He glanced down at Dita, who still looked a bit uneasy. She was a Persocom, as was he. By definition, they were as unnatural as the satellites hiding among the stars above them. From a distance, they were indistinguishable from the dozens of human faces on the city's crowded streets. If someone took the time to look closer, however, they would see the I/O ports where their ears should be. He wondered how many people out there were still suspicious of Persocoms. As the National Databank, Jima had quite a bit of information about the technology's early days. He looked through these files from time to time, and he once found a collection of news stories about crimes against Persocoms committed by neo-Luddite terrorist groups -- virus writing, random kidnappings and beatings, even several drownings. Something inside him ached when he read about these incidents, as he couldn't understand how people could be so cruel.

Several photographs accompanied the files, and Jima couldn't bear to look at them. He had a glimpse out of morbid curiosity when he first found the folder and became physically ill. His processors went blank, and he was distressed enough for Dita to worry that he'd picked up a virus. He showed the pictures to her when she connected to scan him, and he could tell that she was as shocked as he was. "You're so sensitive, Jima," she had said, trying to brush it off. However, the frightened look in her eyes betrayed her true feelings. As his protection program, Dita had to be thinking about threats to his well-being at all times. When she looked at those pictures, she must have imagined him in place of the victim in every one of them -- collapsed on the ground after a massive viral onslaught, picked apart chip by chip, or pulled up from one of the city's canals. She must have! Why else would she have spent the rest of the night holding him as tightly as she could manage?

Unsettled, he wrapped his arms around Dita, and she yawned and burrowed further into his coat.

At times, Jima felt that he would collapse under the weight of all the information he carried. He was very aware of the modifications done to him so he could do his job as the Databank, but he still worried, perhaps even more so. His processors were the most advanced ever built, but they were overclocked to an excessive and probably unhealthy degree. Dita once told him that he was literally running at the breaking point -- if his processors were pushed any further, he would suffer complete system failure.

His database was made up of eight interconnected, experimental hard drives -- the developers had called them "UHDD's," or "Ultra High Density Disks." Altogether, he currently held over five petabytes of data. He was a stunning piece of technology -- the only computer intelligent enough to pass the Turing test with a perfect score. This, however, was cold comfort when his database was packed nearly to capacity and he was feeling the strain.

Jima suspected that the extreme conditions under which he ran were the cause of his bouts of fatigue, and he also had a serious concern that he was beginning to lose his resilience. Lately, it had been taking his system much longer to recover from glitches and attacks than it had in the past. Hopefully, he would be strong enough to keep fighting, and Dita could help him when...

His thoughts were abruptly cut off by a stab of pain in his temple. He reached up to touch it, and a flash of light streaked across his field of vision. Suddenly, the pain spread to his database and he involuntarily grabbed the railing on the side of the building. "Unnghhh..."

Dita sat up in alarm. "What is it, Jima?" she exclaimed, noticing the hollow look in his eyes.

Jima was in agony, but he was able to choke out a reply. "Hacker!" he yelled. "In the file library!" He closed his eyes and let his head fall against the railing, suddenly lacking the strength to support it.

"Hold on, Jima," said Dita. "I'll get them out of you." She sat up in his lap and unwound her connection line. She plugged it into his ear, and he immediately felt the stress on his system drop. When Dita connected, his resident protection programs automatically switched off, allowing him to focus on keeping his system stable while she did all the work.

It didn't take her long to find the intruder. First, she confirmed the hack by looking at Jima's network activity log -- an unauthorized user with a foreign IP address had indeed entered the system a few minutes prior, likely brute-forcing the password and blowing right through the resident firewall. Knowing this, she searched the system for the offending IP, tracking it down to a point deep inside the file library. Judging by the trail of damage he left in his wake, the hacker didn't seem too concerned with data theft -- this was strictly a "slash and burn" operation designed to do the largest amount of damage in the smallest amount of time. Dita seethed with anger.

Focusing on the intruder's location and IP, she quickly closed in on them. When the time was right, she back-hacked into their system and shut it down with a tremendous jolt. Dita took no pity on anyone that broke into Jima, but she was especially merciless when it came to the senselessly destructive. She would be as rough on them as they were being on him.

When Dita took out the intruder, the effect on Jima was instantaneous. The pain in his database greatly reduced, he loosened his grasp on the railing and reached for Dita instead. He pulled her down onto his chest and kissed her forehead. She watched as the color returned to his eyes and his pained expression faded.

"Good work, Dita, love," he said. "I'm proud of you." He really meant it. Whenever she chased out an intruder, he never failed to be genuinely impressed with the skill and finesse in which she did it. Dita smiled at him, and he kissed her again, this time on the cheek.

"My, my! You're certainly feeling better, aren't you?" teased Dita. She gave him a playful nudge on the shoulder.

"I'm getting there," said Jima. "The attack took a lot out of me, but I know you can get me up and running again in no time."

"Well, I am afraid I have a bit of bad news," said Dita. "You've taken some damage to your database. If you're still a bit sore, that's why. I'll need to scan you again to check for any viruses the hacker might have left behind, and then I'll get to work repairing the corrupted files. When you wake up tomorrow morning, everything should be fine again."

"Thank you, Dita," replied Jima. "I think I'll try to sleep now so you can get to work."

He took Dita's hand in his and closed his eyes. He was asleep within moments, and Dita began the long task of cleaning up the mess in his database. She was tired, but she kept herself going by thinking of how much better Jima would feel in the morning. She would work until she collapsed from exhaustion if it meant seeing him back to normal again.