Been forever since I've put anything online here... Had the idea for this story a long time ago, and seeing as there really isn't enough Sci-Fi AUs out there, I thought I'd take a crack at one. Hope you all enjoy it.

Disclaimer: All characters, settings, scenarios, etcetc, et all, belong to their respective owners, namely Square Enix and Disney.

Genre: Sci-fi

Rating: T

.:=.=:.

Do Robotic Nobodies Dream Of Electric Hearts?

"So, do you have any plans to rejoin society any time soon? It's been almost two years since anyone has seen you out of this house, Axel. It's unhealthy for you to be alone so much." Zexion frowned when he realized that Axel wasn't listening to him. "Come on, Axel. There has to be something that will get you back into the world of the living, right?"

Silence crackled to life with electrical static as the horizontal control of the com-set went haywire.

"You haven't even fixed your com-set? What's going on with you Axel? You love fixing all your electronic gadgets." Zexion shook his head, sending his steel blue hair cascading over his face. He angrily flicked his head, trying to marshal the wayward hair back onto one side of his nose, obscuring his cyber-optic implant. "Axel, are you there? Who am I kidding, it's not like you'd be anywhere else. Axel, answer the com-set!"

A grunt came through the white noise and a shadow slowly raised its spiky head into the visual port for the com-set.

"Good, now adjust your com-set. Your visual is horrid and your audio is all white noise."

Another incomprehensible noise sounded through the crackling as the shadow moved out of the viewing area. There was a light metallic clanging followed by a swift secession of clicks. "Zssst— Crackle, crackle— Tes… Testing, testing, one, two, three. Can you hear me? Audio working?" Through the oppressive flood of white noise, Axel's voice slowly filtered in, that familiar blend of scratchy rasping, from years of smoking without any regenerative surgeries, and lilting baritone.

The short, slim man smiled slightly, glad to hear his friend's voice for the first time in two months. "Yes, Axel, your audio is working. Now just get the ghastly white noise rid of and we might just be able to have a pleasant conversation for once."

"White noise, aye…" The ghost disappeared from the flickering screen again and more metallic noises could be heard. After a good minute there was a satisfied crackle of electricity and then the static and radio interference was gone, leaving the clear, clean silence of a working audio port. "That fix it up?"

"Crystal clear." Zexion nodded, although he wasn't sure if Axel's com-set received visual any better than it was transmitting. "Now fix your visual transmissions. It looks like I'm looking through a glass darkly."

Axel laughed harshly, "Only you, Zexion, only you would explain a fuzzy visual transmission with such poetry. But, sure, give me two minutes and I should be able to clear that up. You're coming in just fine, by the way." Axel muttered as he ducked down and opened the central panel of his com-set, exposing an abdominal cavity filled with wires for intestines and electric mesh for connective tissue. Its life blood of electricity and plasma was hemorrhaging from several frayed wires and a crack in its CPU showed corrosive deterioration. "Ouch… this'll take three minutes, tops. I need to grab that spare CPU." The shadow stood and passed across the screen as Axel stumbled over piles of electronic odds and ends, looking for the proverbial needle in his mechanical haystack. His foot caught in a tangle of ribbon cables and he fell onto a rack of ram chips.

Zexion heard the crash and then groaning. "Are you alright over there? That sounded painful…"

Axel waved, but then remembered that his visual wouldn't be able to show it at all. "Yeah, just peachy. Just tripped myself and," he pushed himself off his ram chips and angrily hissed, "utterly destroyed half a kilo of antique ram chips. That's not good, but I'll deal with them later." He scrambled up a pile of computer casings, muttering as he went, "Could probably solder some of them back into working order, cannibalize the worst off, maybe save sixty percent of the load…" His skeletally thin fingers skittered across the surface of a second pile, easily towering over twenty feet, deftly searching for the item he needed. "A-HA! Found it!" His arm dove into the pile and his fingers curled around the old CPU. "Hmm, looks a little old, but it should work."

"Is it that hard to find a CPU?"

Another bark like laugh sounded across the com-sets. "Give me two minutes to fix the visual, and then you'll see why it's such a difficult task. You should just be thankful I have a method to my madness… well, enough of one to have a basic floor plan of my apartment, at least." There was a small din as Axel scrambled down his piles and skidded to a stop before his exposed workspace. "Microphoton-solder gun? Where'd I put that now… AH! Back pocket, of course." His endless muttering continued as he swiftly extracted the dilapidated central processing unit and installed the replacement. "Let's just hope this one has enough life in her for this…"

The horizontal control righted itself immediately; however it still looked as if Zexion was staring into Hades, with shades and wraiths ghosting across the darkened screen. "You've got the horizontal under control, but it would seem your contrast or something like that is still akimbo."

Axel raised his head and knocked it against the undercarriage of the com-set's visual display. "Akimbo? Where do you dig up these words, Zex?"

"A dictionary." Zexion dead panned. "I was raised to believe that having an eloquent vocabulary was a sign of learnedness, and quite respectable."

"And in the process you've become laughable, how sad," Axel quipped good-naturedly.

Zexion huffed and frowned, "Oh, shut up and fix your com-set."

"Testy, Zexy." Axel muttered as he began replacing the frayed and severed wiring. "Almost… there! How's that lookin'?"

The picture cleared instantly and showed, "MY WORD! What in the nine moons of Saturn happened to your apartment?"

"Yup, guess it's working then."

"That's not an answer, Axel, and you know it. Now stand up so I can see if you're in as sorry a state as your apartment."

Axel obliged his friend, standing up slowly and brushing off his dusty knees. "Well?" He held out deathly pale arms as thin as tooth picks, gesturing to himself. "How do I look?" He looked, for lack of a better expression, like a bag of bones. He was frail and as thin as Death himself, ribs and hips jutting out from under his skin painfully. His skin was pallid with huge bruises around his eyes, attesting to a lack of sleep that ran far more serious than a few late nights. His lips were almost blue and when they pulled back into an awkward smile, they revealed white teeth with gums that were horribly receded and speckled with blood. Jade eyes that had once shown with an eldritch glow were now dull and lifeless. All in all, Axel looked like he was about to keel over and die on the spot.

Zexion gasped, "You look like Hell! What have you been doing to yourself?"

"Um…" Axel scratched a hand through limp, matted spikes of hair that might have been red once. "Not a lot, just…"

"Trying to die?" Zexion all but screeched. "Stay right there, I'm going to grab Demyx…"

Axel interrupted him, "Who's that?"

Zexion glared at his friend, affectively silencing him, "…and we're going to come over. Can't believe I left you alone for so long," Zexion began muttering as he stalked about his own apartment, raiding his fridge for enough food to constitute a healthy meal for his emaciated friend.

"You don't need to do that, Zexion…" Axel protested weakly.

"Oh yes he does!" A new voice chimed in as one of the doors in the hallway opened. A strange construct walked out of the room, trailing a power cord.

"Is that a…?"

"Robotic Nobody?" The construct offered brightly. "Yup. Name's Demyx. I'm Zexion's personal mechanized habilitation assistant. In other words, I'm his best friend, since someone saw fit to disconnect from real life for so long."

Axel might have been offended at Demyx's words, but he was more interested in studying the Robotic Nobody than listening to what it had to say. The being looked almost human, if it wasn't for a few tale tell signs, namely the large binary serial code tattooed across the left side of his face and the glowing yellow orbs where eyes should have been. Optical sensors, that's what they had to be, but Axel had never seen them quite so sophisticated as the ones on this model. Most glowed dimly and you could still see the hardware and cybertronics exposed like a dirty secret, but not on these.

The Nobody towered over his vertically challenged friend, easily coming in at 6 feet tall. It… he? He wasn't quite as tall as Axel, but it was still a giant for the heavier gravitational field of Jupiter. Axel got away with his gigantean proportions and willowy frame because he could afford a thin exo-support suit and a gravitational dampening field inside his apartment. If it weren't for those, there was no way that he could walk upright under Jupiter's crushing gravity with his 6' 8" build. Axel's body structure made sense where he'd come from, the only moon of Earth, where gravity was only a 1/6th of Earth Standard Gravity Unit, ESGU.

Axel shook his head and continued his visual perusal of the Nobody. He had two toned hair, a sort of dirty blond mix with dusty russet roots. It stood in the strangest style he'd ever seen, shaved close on the sides but standing straight up in a sort bastard child of a Mohawk and a mullet. The silicone-alloy skin gleamed bluish in the warm lighting of Zexion's apartment and a latticework of cybertronics was faintly distinguishable as glowing tattoos just under the skin. Demyx's build was slim but certainly not the wraithlike emaciation that Axel sported. "You got a Robotic Nobody, Zexion? How in the world did you afford one…?"

Demyx smiled affectionately at Zexion before looking over at the com-set's screen, "I'm a new trial series. Zexion was chosen as a beta tester. As long as there are no errors in my programming or behavioral subroutines, my make and model will be cleared for mass production. Of course, Zexion shall keep my unit as compensation for his assistance to the RN Program and Organization XIII Industries."

Zexion walked over to the com-set, weighted down by a picnic basket full of healthy food to cram down Axel's, likely, disused esophagus. "You remember that I worked with Professor Vexen back at the Institution, correct? Well, apparently he put in a good word for me with some of his colleagues at Organization XIII Industries, and I got this hyperactive Nobody."

"Hyperactive?" Axel questioned skeptically. "Is there a problem with his emotional subroutines?"

Zexion shook his head, sending his hair in every direction. "No, that's just the thing. They've been trying to produce RNs who seem more human. So, while they went a little overboard with Demyx's programming, the idea is that his model line will be almost indistinguishable, emotionally, from a fully functional human… in other words, any one but you."

Axel took the gibe in stride. "Right, right. So, do they still require 1.21 gigawatts of electricity to charge or have they finally found a way to power them for…"

"Axel!" Zexion interrupted his friend, "We're going to be at your house in 10 minutes, but you've got to cease your endless conjecturing and postulating long enough to let us get out the door. I'm sure Demyx will be quite content to answer any and every question you can possibly think of, when we get there." With that he nodded to Demyx and the screen went dead.

Axel frowned slightly but shrugged. He turned his com-set back to passive receiving and turned to look at the wasteland before him. His apartment looked like an electro-robotic landfill, bursting at the seams with every sort of gadget and hardware piece that one could ever possibly hope to find. Needless to say, it didn't lend itself to accommodating guests, especially as there wasn't a square centimeter of horizontal space showing on which they could stand, much less sit. He sighed heartily and internally shuddered at the thought of how hard it would be to find anything after what he was about to do. "Jenova, you online?" He called to no one in particular.

A red light flickered to life on the wall, an electronic eye blinking wearily as Jenova's system resurrected herself at the sound of her creator's voice. "Jenova system powering up. Hello, Axel. It has been twenty three days, two hours, four minutes, thirty seven seconds, twenty two milliseconds, and…"

"Jenova." Axel warned.

"Since you last accessed my central network," Jenova finished hastily. "What can I do for you this fine…" She took a moment to reestablish her satellite link with the Ethernet, "evening?"

Axel cocked a short, red eyebrow, "Evening? Damn, I don't even know what day it is Jenova, I don't care what time it is."

The electronic eyeball whirred angrily as it brought two identical eyeballs online on two of the other walls of the central living area of the apartment. There was a momentary flickering of light before an ethereal woman stood in the centre of the room. A heavy metal visor was in place over her eyes, the word 'JENOVA' etched into the alloy. Her electronic eyes, projectors for her hologram and force field, flickered for a moment and she seemed to phase in and out of existence. Then they went full blast and Jenova was brought into physical manifestation above the mounds of electronic clutter. "For your information, Axel, it is currently the 5th day of the 7th month. The time is two hours before dawn."

"Couldn't care less, Jen, but thanks for letting me know, I guess." Axel waved off her information and then motioned to his glorious pack rat horde. "I need you to find a storage space for all of this; we have guests coming over…"

Jenova's metallic face broke into an incredulous smirk, "Guests, Axel? YOU have guests coming over?"

Axel muttered something about A.I.s that are too much of a smart aleck for their own good before he nodded. "Yes, Zexion is coming over, said something about how I look like I haven't been taking good enough care of myself. Oh, and he's bringing over his new Robotic Nobody."

"An RN? How intriguing." Jenova looked around at the mess, her physical manifestation mimicking the much higher scanning that her sensors throughout the apartment were undergoing. "How long before they arrive?" She asked almost absently.

Axel glanced at his wrist, before noticing that his watch was long since gone. "Um… I'd say about 7 minutes?"

An alarm started blaring and all the lighting in the apartment began to flash red.

"Red Alert?" Axel asked with a smirk.

"You don't know how to give a woman enough time to clean… so yes, Red Alert is necessary to acquire enough power from the local power grid to clean ALL OF THIS MESS!" Jenova replied testily as panels of the wall began flying away, opening gapping wholes through which she could herd the mess into storage locations. The floor became alive as large sections of the wooden floor boards hovered up from their resting places and ferried pile after pile through new passageways to the basement. The very air was alive and crackling with electricity as Jenova overhauled the apartment, changing the construction at will while still managing to maintain structural integrity.

Exactly 5 minutes later, Jenova was standing in the center of the central living quarters of Axel's apartment with actual furnishing and decorations arranged artfully. Axel raised his eyebrows and walked throughout the apartment, noticing that he actually could walk through his apartment. Tables, desks, chairs, couches, lamps, and futons, long forgotten by him under the disorder and pandemonium, had been resurrected and placed throughout his living quarters with a studied excellence. He walked into his kitchen and found the fridge empty, as was to be expected. He stared sadly at the forlorn shelves of his refrigerator and sighed, "How long has it been since I've eaten?"

Jenova glanced at him from a view panel that was installed over the sink to his right. "From my visual records… two weeks. Although, a week ago, you did have a supplement tube." She said with an almost motherly disappointment. "If I didn't know better, Axel, I'd say you were trying to kill yourself again."

He looked at her visage on the screen and shook his head slowly, "Not really… I just… forget to try to keep myself alive some times." He admitted with a dangerous resignation.

She frowned and flickered off from the screen while her holographic projection entered the room. The force field projectors gave her a substance, a shell, which made her body capable of achieving more than a light display alone. So, when she walked over and laid a hand on Axel's shoulder, it had actual matter to it, hollow though it may have been.

Axel smiled at the thought, wasn't that just like him, to create a hollow comfort for himself, who was in fact, a hollow man.

Jenova was just about to say something when the doorbell sputtered and chimed to life. Her apparition suddenly disappeared, only to reappear behind the door as she sent the electronic message to open the data locks and pressurize the airlock. "Welcome Zexion." She greeted heartily through the apartment's speakers.

Demyx looked around frantically, trying to place who or what the voice belonged to.

Zexion merely smiled an infinitesimal degree and replied, "Hello Jenova. Axel got you to clean his pig sty before we came?"

"Affirmative."

"How very like him." Zexion responded dryly.

Axel walked into the entryway and smirked lopsidedly at his friend, "And hello to you too."

Demyx's eyes lit up, glowing even brighter, as they fell upon Axel, "Is this your reclusive friend, Zexion?"

Axel quirked an eyebrow and looked to Zexion, "Couldn't he see me on the com-set?"

Zexion shook his head, "No, that's one of the quirks that they're still sorting out. For some reason, their optical sensors can't pick up the visual frequencies and data from com-sets. They think they might have figured out where the glitch is, but Demyx, being a beta unit, probably won't ever have it fixed."

"Nonsense." Axel waved a hand at Zexion. "I'd be happy to tinker around and see if I couldn't fix it for you." He then walked over with his peculiar sauntering gait and held out a hand to Demyx. "It's a pleasure to meet you Demyx. My name's Axel, and yes, I'm Zexion's socially reclusive acquaintance."

"No longer claiming friendship, Axel?" Zexion asked incredulously as Demyx took Axel's hand and shook it enthusiastically.

Axel laughed heartily, "Wasn't sure you'd still want to claim being a friend of mine, after all, I'm not a very good one if I haven't once contacted you in ten years." He smiled at Demyx and thumbed in Zexion's direction, "It's always been this guy who kept our friendship alive. Darn man won't let me die in a ditch somewhere without him knowing about it before hand."

Demyx smiled, "Seems like Zexion, he's always been good about keeping tabs on those he cares about."

Zexion glared at the two lightly, obviously uncomfortable at being the subject of the conversation. So he held up his picnic basket as a distraction. "We should get some food in you, Axel. You look like you haven't eaten in…"

Jenova interrupted him, supplying him exact dates. "A week ago yesterday, he had a supplement tube. However, he has not had solid food since two weeks ago today."

Zexion frowned, "Axel…"

Shaking his head lightly, Axel took the basket from Zexion and led everyone to his small kitchen. "I wasn't trying to kill myself, if that's what you're worried about. I just… lost track of time."

"What were you doing that could disconnect you so fully from time, not to mention your bodily needs?" Zexion asked testily.

Axel set the basket down on his syntho-oak table and turned away from his friend and Demyx to grab plates and utensils. "Nothing much…"

Zexion tapped his foot impatiently as he waited for Axel to explain further.

"I…" He turned around, clutching the plates so hard his knuckles were white. "I just started watching my old vid-reels, Zex…" He glanced away, suddenly finding great interest in the wood grains of his floor boards.

"Axel…" Zexion breathed out the name softly, and for a man of few emotions, that one word conveyed the surprising depth of his sympathy.

Axel looked at his friend and offered a weak smile, "I guess I just lost track of time, ya know?" He placed the plates on the table and had to carefully uncurl each clenched finger.

Zexion nodded supportively.

Demyx looked between the two of them for a moment before he asked the inevitable question. "Vid-reels?"

Axel's pallid complexion somehow bleached even whiter, and he turned away to grab the utensils as a much needed distraction.

"Axel?" Zexion asked quietly, and when he saw the nigh imperceptible nod from his friend, he turned to Demyx. "Demyx… Axel was from Earth's Moon…"

Demyx's head cocked to one side in confusion, "I don't see how that is possible, Zexion. I scanned Axel, and he appears to be no older than twenty eight. The Meteor Shower of 3452.09 Standard Year was over 500 years ago…"

Zexion nodded sadly, "Yes, however, Axel was one of a very scarce amount of survivors. He traveled a Hyper Warp, meaning that the time dilation left him at the same age, but by the time he finally arrived at Jupiter, after some rather extensive traveling, 500 years had passed." He explained in sadly.

Axel placed the three sets of utensils on the table and raised weary eyes to Demyx, "The vid-reels were of my family, Demyx. My little sister, my older brother and his wife, my mother, my father… all those who I left behind, friends and family." He picked up a knife and tenderly ran a finger down its edge, smiling wistfully at memories of the past. "I don't have much, not much made it through the Meteor Shower, only a few vid-reels, a picture or two…"

"Axel has been on Jupiter for the past 10 years. I met him in the immigration office, seeing as I was moving to Jupiter from my backwater moon of Europa." Zexion said with a ghost of a smile in his voice.

Demyx nodded slowly, "Ah…" He looked at Axel with a new found respect, "Where did you travel during those years?"

Axel looked at Demyx with a dark hatred burning in his eyes and sneered.

Zexion put a hand on Axel and forced the tall Moonling to sit down. In a constrained voice he said, "Axel never has told us about that, needless to say, it wasn't a good voyage, wherever he went."

Demyx nodded and smiled apologetically at Axel, "I'm sorry, I seem to be stepping all over your past…"

Axel took a deep breath and slowly let it out. "No, don't worry about it, Demyx. No way you could know what makes me uncomfortable. After all, it's unfair of me to expect the whole world to skirt around the issues that pain me." He gave Demyx a weak smile "No harm done."

Jenova had been silent for the duration of the talk, but now saw that it was time for her to enter in. "I believe it is time to get Axel to eat." Her projection walked into the kitchen and opened the basket. "Seeing as your stomach will have mostly closed down do to inactivity…" She noticed the warm vat of soup tucked away in between stacks of vac-packs. She carefully extracted the soup and set it on the table, "We'll start you off with a light bowl of soup." She smiled appreciatively at Zexion. "Your thoughtfulness knows no bounds, Zexion."

The blue haired man blushed behind his bangs. "It was nothing… just need to keep Axel alive…"

Demyx laughed, "I'm guessing this isn't the first time this has happened then?"

Axel scratched the back of his head sheepishly, "If I said no, would you think less of me?"

Everyone laughed at that.

Jenova served Zexion and Axel a bowl of soup and turned to Demyx. "I'm sorry, Demyx. I'm afraid I have yet to retrieve specs on RNs, are you able to consume food, or would that damage your internal circuitry?"

"Ah," Demyx shook his head, "Thank you for the concern. But, no, food is fine. I gain most of my energy needs through electrical charging, but food is a wonderful supplement of energy every once in a while, and a fun recreational activity. Organization XIII Industries felt that it would make their new line of RNs more acceptable to humans if we could eat with them. They felt that because most robots don't share the daily needs of their human counterparts, they end up being alienated and less of a bond is formed between themselves and their owners." Demyx explained cheerily.

"How thoughtful of your creators." Jenova replied as she served up a third bowl of soup.

.:=.=:.

"So, I believe I figured out a way to help… ground you to the present." Zexion stated slowly, carefully.

Axel looked over at Zexion and set his spoon into his empty bowl, an eyebrow raised slightly. "Oh?"

Demyx leaned forward, vastly intrigued by any idea that Zexion would propose.

Zexion nodded and gestured with his spoon as he slowly fleshed out his idea. "You need a project. Or a relationship." He noticed the cringe from Axel at the suggestion of more human contact and frowned, "You can't be a recluse forever, Axel. Well, with your kinds of money and genius, I suppose you could. You could just work from your home and rake in trillions from the patents on all those amazing inventions of yours." He thought a moment, "Isn't that how you were able to afford this place?"

Axel shook his head slowly, a wary expression in his eyes, "No… not quite."

Recognizing that look as the one Axel always wore when something about his past was brought up, Zexion decided to drop it and return to his plan. "Well, needless to say, Axel, the way you're living now… isn't really living. I remember that while you were working on Jenova, well, you were still a bit of a recluse, but you never let go of yourself like this. You had a reason to keep going, something to aim for. I think you need a new project, and it just so happens that I might have one for you." Zexion said proudly.

His interest piqued, Axel waved a hand at Zexion to continue.

"Well," Zexion looked from Axel to Demyx. "Vexen contacted me, when he'd heard that I would be a beta tester for Demyx here. We spent some time reminiscing about our days back at the Institution, but then he told me a simply amazing piece of information."

"Being?" Axel prompted, trying to make Zexion get to the point instead of beating around the bush.

"Point being, that Organization XIII Industries and the RN Project have another new RN model, but there were some problems with it. There's only the one prototype that they constructed, but even that was never finished. Vexen said something about their being a major problem with the base program, which the programmer refused to finish the new prototype…" He thought a moment, trying to recall the reason why. "I believe Vexen said that the programmer, DiZ was his name, was unable to make the program work."

"The man must have scrapped and restarted the code at least twelve times; however he found that every time he tried to write it, it came out too similar to the older S0R4 model. He wasn't able to make this new project what Organization XIII Industries wanted it. So, he threw a fit and damned the project by leaving it, and with his black mark of disapproval, no other programmer was willing to go within ten hundred kliks of the project." Zexion looked over to judge Axel's reaction. "If you're interested, Vexen said he could get his hands on the prototype, seeing as they're planning on scrapping the project anyway. Interested?"

Axel whistled softly and sat back in his chair. "I've read DiZ's works, in the different scientific articles… the man's a genius…"

"More so than you?" Zexion asked honestly.

"Hmmm." Axel gave him a coy smirk, "Perhaps, perhaps not. It would be interesting to see if I could finish what he couldn't." He looked over at Jenova who was positively glowing with pride at her programmer. "Interesting indeed."

Demyx looked between the two men and finally he couldn't contain himself, "So are you going to do it?"

Axel grinned mischievously and nodded, "Yeah, just tell me one thing."

"What?" Zexion asked.

"This project got a name?"

Zexion nodded, "They were planning on calling it R0X4S…"

"Hmmm…" Axel pulled a touch pad out of one of the many cargo pockets on his black pants and penned the name, looking at it for a moment, "I think I like Roxas better. Less pretentious than what they wanted, more…" He thought a moment, "human."

.:=.=:.

It was two days later when Zexion and Demyx returned to Axel's apartment with a large cold-storage coffin and a data-chip of the remnants of DiZ's program. Axel looked like a little boy on Christmas as he keyed in the code to the cold-storage coffin and watched with barely contained enthusiasm as the hatch slowly slid back. Cold fog wafted out from the coffin as the dry ice and other chemical agents came in contact with the air. A bluish light flooded from inside the coffin, giving the moment of unveiling an almost mystical feeling, like the birth of some foreign god.

Axel carefully lifted the slight frame from the coffin. Zexion had been right when he said they had scrapped the project early on. The frame for the prototype was barely more than an ultimanium skeleton and some schematics for basic body proportions and muscle groupings. The prototype seemed rather short compared to Demyx, and ridiculously so compared to Axel. However, the longer that Axel looked at the slight frame and the schematics for it, the more he thought it felt right. "He reminds me of someone…" Axel stated quietly.

Zexion had been in the process of plugging the data-chip into Axel's extensive home computer network, but turned and stared at Axel, "How can that remind you of anything? It's only an ultimanium frame, and not much of one at that." He started back on his task before a thought struck him, "Who does it remind you of, anyhow?"

Axel shook his head as he laid the small skeleton on the work table he'd had Jenova erect in the middle of his living room. "I, I suppose I can't quite explain it, but he reminds me of someone I knew a long time ago, but as if from a dream."

Demyx walked into the room with two large cabinets of micro-precision tools, "Well, maybe because there's so little there, that's why it can remind you of someone. Ya know? There's so much potential for this guy, he can be anyone you want." He looked from Zexion to Axel as he set the tool cabinets down by the work table, "I mean, they never designed what his exterior would look like at all. You are practically… well, you are, creating him from scratch. In the end, who he becomes will be exactly who you want him to be. Right?"

"You're right, Demyx." Axel smiled at the thought, "Exactly who I want him to be." He looked over at Jenova, who was currently rerouting energy into a reserve for when they would begin using the synthesizers to create all the parts they would need to flesh out the new prototype, and his smile broadened. "Just like you were, eh, Jenova?"

"Why, yes." She said with a hint of surprise in her voice, "I suppose so."

Axel turned his attention back to the holo-design pad that was projected next to the work table. "Now, let's see…" He quickly sketched the skeleton that he had and then he added the basic schematic ideas that the original work team had been designing. However, it quickly became evident to Axel that they had been planning to build this prototype to reflect Jupitorian anatomy, meaning that not only was this poor RN going to be short, but they would have made him stout with corded muscles. Now, Axel didn't have any problems with the Jupitorians, but they were a far cry from what he felt was aesthetically pleasing, and he couldn't see any reason that his RN shouldn't suit his ideals of aesthetics.

So, their plans went out the window and Axel began sketching his own schematics, working from the skeleton up. His projected materials would be stronger than the originals would have been, making less bulk required for the same strength. The RN would be no where near as gaunt as Axel, but it would still be plenty skinny, with an almost adolescent musculature.

Then came the designing of the organs, skin, and face. The organs were simple enough, as he had full access to Demyx and was able to copy many of the ideas that Organization XII Industries had implemented in their RNs. The skin, well, that was a different matter; for while Axel respected Demyx's dermal covering for what it was, he found glaring flaws with it. First off, the hue was so unbelievable, due largely to the excessive cybertronics that seemed to litter Demyx's body. By removing even half of the cybertronics and recessing them to slightly lower layers, Axel was able to create skin with human skin tones, and only the faintest traces of cybertronics tattooing, which should still be visible enough on EM scans to satisfy all the current laws and statutes pertaining to personal Robotic constructs.

The face was something of divine inspiration. Zexion had brought up files of a creature called a Seraph that had been found preserved on an asteroid orbiting Alpha Century. The creature had been a fair haired, avian. No one knew exactly where it had come from, for no others of its species had been found prior or since. They had titled it the Seraph and set it up in the Galactic Smithsonian on Old Earth. Axel took one look at the Seraph and found himself drawing a face. It wasn't the Seraph's, but he could see the inspiration that had come from it. The hair, while a similar shade, was styled differently as well. When the drawing of the schematic was done, Axel found his breath stolen. Gazing at the creature before him, he felt the strongest sense of déjà vu, but he was certain that he had never seen anyone like this before that very moment. So, it was with a sense of great trepidation that he told Jenova to begin synthesizing the body of his RN, Roxas.

.:=.=:.

It was a week later when Zexion and Demyx again crawled through Axel's air lock and into his oddly depressurized apartment. Zexion had never felt quite right in the lower gravity that Axel was accustomed to, but it was not so great a disturbance that he would ever complain. Demyx on the other hand found the entire process to be exhilarating, he needn't use as much of his energy in this lower gravity!

Jenova greeted them at the door, frowning slightly and complaining to Zexion to see if he could force Axel away from the damnable code long enough to eat. Apparently Axel hadn't done either since he'd seen the completed form of the RN. "He's a man possessed, Zexion, I swear." Jenova said as she led them down the stairs to the basement computer network. "I'm glad that he has something he's so attached to, but damn it! I don't want him denying his health again." She fretted like a worried mother.

Zexion nodded understandably and held up the customary picnic basket. "Don't worry, Jenova, I brought him more soup. I had a feeling he wouldn't eat if I didn't force him to."

They stepped off the last stair and into the cool basement.

"My word, Axel?" Zexion's visible eye opened wide as he stared at the sight before him. He had heard stories, of course, they all had, about the Moonlings and the extreme lengths they had gone to interface with technology, but he'd never believed them. But proof sat only a dozen feet away from him, startling in its morbid obsession.

Axel had a large plug in the base of his neck that connected his mind, via a thick, bio-electrical wire, directly to his computer network. There was a visor over his eyes and strange gloves that seemed to be made entirely of wires over his hands. A sheen of sweat could be seen on Axel's skin as his mouth moved wordlessly, too fast to be forming anything comprehensible to humans. He was interfacing directly to the computer. Zexion knew his friend was a genius, but the level of not only intelligence, but mental fortitude, that it took to be able to 'dive' into a computer network and not lose your own identity was unthinkable. If this had been what the Moonling race had been capable of, then perhaps the conspiracy theories about the Meteor Shower being planned by a hostile force were true.

Zexion carefully approached Axel's interface terminal, carefully edging his way around the vast sea of wires on the floor, some as thick as his waist. Tip toeing with the utmost care he stopped beside his friend. He stared for a long time, watching Axel process terabytes of data in milliseconds. His eyes flashed to the code that was compiling on the screens, bits and pieces of it displayed across the entire room. Zexion looked back to Demyx and motioned for him to come over.

Demyx followed Zexion's lead, carefully making his way over. He looked at the screen and his jaw dropped. His eyes tore themselves away from the wonders of what each screen held to look at Zexion. "Do you… do you understand what your friend is doing?"

Zexion nodded very slowly, "I fear I don't quite comprehend the gravity of it, but… is he creating a base matrix for the RN?"

Demyx shook his head, glowing eyes wide in amazement, "No, Zexy, it's so very much more than that. He wrote a base matrix for Jenova, then he wrote in an A.I. program into her that I've never seen an equal to. What he's doing here…" Demyx drew in a deep breath, trying to steady himself. "He's creating something on the same level of the Ethernet, in a manner of speaking. He's not using a base matrix at all. He's writing a learning A.I. but… we thought that was impossible. To truly create a 'human' from a program. Programmers have been dreaming of this for… I don't even know how long. Thousands of years? Tens of thousands?"

"What makes a learning A.I. so hard to create?" Zexion asked.

"What makes it so hard to create?" Demyx asked incredulously. "Oh, they've made steps on the path, programs that could learn, but only in infinitesimal, infantile ways. Scientists have studied the human mind since… the dawn of science, almost a hundred thousand years ago, and they STILL can't explain everything about it. For a programmer to recreate something that we haven't been able to reverse engineer in so long, it's unthinkable. But," His eyes scanned the code that was swiftly ascending the screens, "this, as far as I can tell, is the real deal. I can't even tell you why it is, I just know it is. My word. What I wouldn't give to see this in action."

Zexion looked at Demyx and thought for a moment, "So, you're not a learning A.I.?"

He laughed quietly, smiling at Zexion. "No, not like this. Not like this at all. I am the closest they've come, so far, but even with that, I have set parameters that I'll never go beyond. No matter how many RNs they create with my code, while they will all be slightly different, it will be easy to a trained eye to see where we all suffer from the same emotional, intellectual… spiritual, if you will, limitations. But this code…" He smiled and shook his head in silent awe. "This code would be able to create individuals as different as you and Axel, as different as 'humanly' possible."

They stood in silence, awestruck by the data passing by on the screen.

After a few minutes, Jenova grew fed up with their reverence and ghosted over towards them. She raised an eyebrow and poked Zexion in the side, "I know that Axel is basically creating the Dead Sea Scrolls of programming, but he'll never finish it if you don't make him stop to rest and eat!"

Demyx pouted.

Zexion saw the truth in Jenova's warning, and although he wished he could pout with Demyx, he turned to attempt to get Axel's attention. "Axel?" He laid a hand on the man's gaunt cheek, alarmed by the chill of the flesh. "Axel, I need you to stop, we've brought you food."

The barest of whispers escaped Axel's parted lips, "I can't… Roxas… this will bring Roxas to life…"

Jenova threw her hands up in the air before she pointed at Zexion, "I'm going to draw him a bath, and you're going to get him out of there without harming him. I don't care how you do it, just get him disconnected long enough that we can get him some nourishment and sleep. I'll sedate his soup if I have to, I swear!" She muttered on as her projection went up the stairs.

The two men watched Jenova leave and then glanced at each other. "Tricky business." Demyx muttered as he joined Zexion by Axel's side. "We can't just unplug him, as I'm almost certain that would be disastrous for his mind. We need to get him to extract himself from the system." They both looked around the console, which spanned half the room.

Zexion read the labels on a row of switches, utterly confused as to what they were for. "Are these labeled in English?" he asked as he pointed to one switch that was labeled 'End of Line' and another which read 'Bio-electric Filter Sequence'.

A light chuckle sounded from Demyx as he scanned his half of the room, "Of course not, Zexy, they're written in Programmer, or Computer Technician, I suppose."

"Ah." Zexion exclaimed suddenly, drawing Demyx's attention to the small screen that Zexion was studying. "Look here, see the blinking cursor?"

Demyx nodded.

"Right above that, it says 'End of Ether Dive Sequence: Pending'." He looked to his taller companion. "Do you suppose that's what we need to get him out safety?"

"Yeah, I think so." Demyx said as he turned to look at Axel. "And I've got an idea on how to initiate that sequence."

Zexion watched as Demyx pulled open a segment of his neck, exposing a network of cybertronics and wires. He pulled a thin wire and found an appropriate jack connected to Axel's headgear. "I don't know if my processors could hold up on a dive into his entire system, but his visor seems to be a slightly more secluded system, so I might be able to contact him through it without frying my circuits." He smiled hopefully back at Zexion as he plugged himself in. Just before he closed his eyes to initiate the Dive Connection, he heard Zexion whisper.

"Good luck in there."

Demyx's smile nearly burst his face in two as he nodded back at his owner. Then his connection wire was plugged in and his consciousness retreated from his robotic body, flying at the speed of light through the wire, to interface with Axel.

.:=.=:.

He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but it certainly wasn't what he saw before him. Demyx looked at his mental projection in this data world, he was a wire frame of himself, filled to bursting with a matrix that slowly cascaded in constant motion under his surface, looking like he was filled with coded water. His glowing eyes burned brighter in happiness, he'd always liked water.

The shock to his system came not from his own avatar in this electronic plane, but from the program around him. He hadn't been made for this specifically, but he had been given enough understanding of programming that he wasn't without some landmarks. There were great spires of data that seemed to siphon against gravity, drawing data from the lower levels that he stood on, up to the soaring peaks of new code as it wrote a seemingly endless datascape around him. This had to be Roxas' program. He looked down at his own avatar in this program and smiled shyly. While a data link didn't allow for full transfer of one's program, it allowed for a good portion to travel through, and if he was such an insignificant spec in this program, then Roxas' A.I. was on a whole new level of programming, just as he'd suspected. Freshly humbled by his surroundings, he jumped into a data stream and decided to follow it, hoping that all streams lead to the programmer.

His data flowed through the data stream, merging for nanoseconds of blissful completion, before he had to drag himself out of it again, unless he fall to the temptation to lose himself to the program surrounding him. So to distract himself, he watched the 'scenery' as he slipped through the immense dimensions of the datascape. It was breathtaking. To a human, it would have seemed akin to abstract architecture, with a barrel vault suddenly translating into a wave of glass panels into a bare bones structure of rebar and concrete chunks. However, Demyx saw it for its mathematical perfection, for the way that everything transitioned seamlessly into the next segment. There were rolling fields of untapped potential that would serve as memory banks that slowly fused into the alien styled architecture of the Central Processing Unit, a tower that reached into the heavens with grand spires and arches and a mixture of gothic and modern design.

Demyx had never seen anything so beautiful and he doubted that anyone else had either.

"Intru—r Ale—t, Ini—ating Alpha Tango Fox—t. Intru—r Ale—t." A broken and disjointed voice called from all around Demyx. It was a strange voice, still hollow, tinny, but there was the beginning of a human sound to it, the barest beginnings of a young man.

"Damn it all, what sort of bug is that?" Axel's voice boomed from every direction at once, bouncing and refracting off the disjointed architecture of a spotless mind until it was a din, closer to a crazed symphony than a voice.

"Intru—r Ale—t…" The voice protested weakly again, almost whining, trying to make its creator understand that it was under attack by a foreign program.

Deciding that he might cease further frustration by speaking up, Demyx plucked up his courage and called out into the void. "Axel? It's Demyx. I'm sorry for scaring your program."

"Demyx?" Axel asked in surprise.

"Intru—r Ale—t!" The program alerted them again, triumphantly this time. Demyx had proven it right, it wasn't glitching this time.

"Yeah, yeah. Sorry for doubting you Rox. You can shut off the alarm." Axel's voice seemed to slowly be pulling together, sounding less like a cacophony and more like an orchestra warming up for practice.

Demyx felt the data stream slowing down and swam out of it, beaching himself rather ungracefully on the shores before the giant CPU tower. "Wow… this is… amazing, Axel. Do you know what you're doing? I mean… this is…" Demyx's mindless babble died down as he stared in awe at the CPU tower, finding himself incapable of intelligent thought.

Axel coalesced next to Demyx, his body a queer, alien representation of his mind. It stood on two legs, spindly and impossibly jointed, bending backwards and ending in hook-like claws. They seemed insectoid to Demyx. His hips were bony things, covered in a data matrix that shown with startling brilliance. They led up to a waist that was all but nonexistent for how thin it was. From there it widened out into a humanoid chest and shoulders, but the arms were replaced by appendages similar to his legs, stretched and oddly jointed, ending in fingers that were so thin they should have been impossible to bend. However, Demyx watched with morbid fascination as those twig like fingers danced in constant motion, weaving data streams from the very air, creating bits of program as his mind idled. Returning his attention to Axel's body, he found a neck that was roughly normal, but Axel's head was not. He had no mouth, no visible nose. Eyes blazing like twin stars shown from the green matrix of data, his facial tattoos almost outshining the radiance of his eyes. His hair was much the same, Demyx supposed, if some how wilder and more feral in this realm of endless possibilities, closer to fiberoptic tubes than spikes.

"Demyx," Axel spoke warmly, his voice still resonating from all around them, thrumming its own tune from the endless hum of electricity around them. He held out his arms, a sweeping gesture around them, "Meet Roxas. Roxas," he nodded to the CPU Tower and pointed towards Demyx, "meet Demyx."

Demyx stared at the CPU for a moment before he noticed that the program was attempting to form an avatar of itself, so as to greet its visitor with proper cordiality. It was obvious that the program wasn't finished yet by the strange gaps and panels that didn't close. Roxas appeared quite similar to the sketches that Axel had designed him by. Due to his incompletion, his left leg formed no further than his knee and the right extended to half way down his calf before it disintegrated into a swirling energy and data stream. His arms wouldn't form at all, leaving his torso an odd affair, reminiscent of Greek statues, with its broken stubs of shoulders. His face, like Axel's, had no mouth or nose, but his eyes were warm pools of light, as deep as the ocean. Hair spun from the finest filaments stood at odds with gravity, askew every which a way.

"Ple—re to me—t you, De—yx." Roxas said warmly, nodding to Demyx in lieu of a handshake.

Axel lovingly ruffled Roxas' hair and beamed proudly at Demyx, "You'll have to excuse him, his program's still got some bugs, like his vocal subroutines. And obviously, there's still sections that I need to code. Poor guy needs some arms."

"It's a pleasure to meet you too, Roxas." Demyx nodded back before he looked towards Axel in awe. "Roxas is amazing, Axel. How… how can he already be functioning like this?" He shook his head slowly, still unable to fully believe that someone he knew was creating a self aware, learning A.I.

Axel rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, obviously embarrassed by the praise. "It's not like I did all that much. Really, I was looking over DiZ's program that he'd started, and I simply started the thirteenth rewrite of it. While I was doing that, I combined what I'd done with Jenova and well, some sort of inspiration hit, and," he gestured to the program around them, "this all sort of started falling into place." He thought for a moment before looking down at Demyx, "This'll sound crazy, but when I start writing Roxas' code, I felt like I already knew his program, already knew what to write. Just like how when I saw his body completed… I felt like I already knew him. It's the craziest thing." He shook his head, obviously unable to explain himself like he wanted to.

Roxas looked up at Axel and smiled softly before he rubbed his head against Axel, barely coming up to Axel's chest.

Demyx was touched by the simple action, and he was amazed that even with how much more coding the program needed before it would be finished, Roxas already had 'feelings'. He wondered if they were real, programmed or otherwise. He smiled sadly, thinking of his own feelings for Zexion. Were his feelings real? Did he care for Zexion because he was assigned to work for Zexion or because the shorter man was so kind to him? He shook his head to clear it of that train of thought, trying to remind himself that he'd come in here on a mission for Zexion and he needed to carry it out. "Axel."

"Yeah?" He replied absently as he tinkered on some of Roxas' program, fingers slowly weaving together a wire framework for his right arm.

"I came in here for a reason, Axel." Demyx said with a hint of warning in his voice. It was rather obvious that even with him standing right in front of Axel, the man was barely paying him attention, so focused he was on completing Roxas.

Axel looked up at Demyx's words, breaking himself away from his work for a moment, "I would imagine so."

"You've been in here for a week straight, Axel. Jenova is starting to get worried and Zexion wants you to come out so they can force some food down your throat."

"Ah… I'm rather in the middle of…"

Demyx interrupted him, "Everything! Axel," he huffed indignantly, "if you don't take care of yourself, you'll collapse long before you finish Roxas. And I highly doubt that anyone else could finish his program if you weren't around, right?" He glared up at the man, trying his best to seem authoritative to the taller programmer.

Axel's eyes narrowed slightly and he looked away, "Well… yeah."

Demyx knew he was getting through to Axel and he cheered inwardly. He was going to succeed and that would make Zexion happy with him.

Roxas looked from Axel to Demyx and then back to Axel, "C—me out? Ax— is lea—ing?" In the week long existence of Roxas, nothing like this had ever happened. Could he exist without Axel? Would his program start failing? What if an error or a virus began to attack him? His oceanic eyes frantically searched Axel's face, looking for some reassurance that this new program, this intruder, was lying. Axel wouldn't leave him so defenseless and… alone, would he? He did not yet know what loneliness felt like, but Axel had told him about it, and the very thought of such a feeling terrified him.

Axel looked down at Roxas and ruffled the program's hair affectionately, able to read the thoughts through his Dive Connection. "Don't worry, Rox. How about we use this as an excuse to give your body a test run? You won't be able to use your arms yet, and I doubt your legs will function properly either, but, it'll mean you won't be alone up here." He pointed to his head.

Roxas nodded enthusiastically.

Axel nodded to Roxas and then turned his attention back to Demyx. "Alright, I'll send you back to your body. Just give us a few seconds to make sure that the data transfer won't harm anything in Roxas' program and then the two of us will follow you out. Alright?"

Demyx smiled broadly. "Perfect!"

Axel suddenly grabbed an invisible cord connecting Demyx to his body and surrounded it with a simple coded demand.

Demyx felt himself being pulled back out of the datascape, back to his body. His eyes closed on the scene of Axel waving goodbye and Roxas attempting to wave the new, half constructed wire frame of his right arm. He was failing to make it move any better than a few jerky contractions, but Demyx figured it was the thought that counted.

.:=.=:.

When he opened his eyes he found himself standing next to Zexion, fingers holding his connection wire into a plug on Axel's visor. "That went well," he said with a smile as he turned to look at Zexion.

Zexion started at the noise, "Demyx? Why aren't you in there? Weren't you able to connect?"

Demyx was rather confused, "What do you mean, Zexy? I was in there for…" He checked his internal clock, "5 seconds? Wow, it felt like an hour." He shook his head to clear his thoughts, "Yeah, I went in there and talked to Axel, he's agreed to.."

He was interrupted by Axel's voice, husky and rasping from disuse. "To come out and eat food. Yeah, yeah." His ashen fingers curled around his visor and carefully pulled it off his head, bloodshot eyes blinking against the sudden light. "I swear, you guys worry too much." He extricated himself from the seemingly endless wires attached to his body, until only the great Dive Connection was left. His fingers felt around the base of the thick fiberoptic bundle, searching for the clasps that kept it tightly secured to the jack in the base of his neck. Suddenly there were two clicks and a hissing as Axel twisted the connection, carefully removing the spiked contraction from his neck. Briefly, his eyes seemed to search for something, but he closed them and took a careful breath. "Always weird coming back out of a long dive like that…" he muttered as he laid the connection over the arm rest of his command chair and stood on shaking legs.

Zexion and Demyx stepped forward, ready to help steady Axel, but he waved them away.

"Nothing to worry about. Just a short residual weakness as my mind reconnects to my central nervous system."

Zexion's eye widened comically, "It disconnects?"

Axel looked at Zexion with eyes that seemed too old for his face, "Yeah, the human mind isn't really supposed to, but mine does. It makes Diving a relatively safe procedure, but it makes returning something of a…" he searched for the right word, "pain in the neck?" He shook his head and stood straighter, flexing muscle groups individually to help reconnect his mind.

Demyx, ever the naïve one, asked the question that Zexion had thought but decided against uttering. "Why is your mind able to do that?"

Axel was in the middle of rolling his head around, trying to reacquaint his mind with the muscles in his neck, when he froze. After an awkward silence, he pulled his head up and looked at Demyx sadly, "It was something all Moonlings had in common…" There was a dangerous undertone to his words that Demyx finally picked up on and no one spoke for a long while.

Finally the silence was broken by a gasp.

"Roxas?" Axel's head whipped around as he looked at his Robotic Nobody, laying prone on the work table. Sure enough, Roxas' chest was rising and falling ever so slightly and his eyelids were fluttering wildly, obviously fighting hard to open.

"Ax—?" Came the quiet groan as Roxas used all the air in his lungs to attempt speech.

Zexion stared at Demyx, hoping for some form of explanation.

Demyx smiled slightly and leaned his head in to whisper to Zexion about what had transpired in the 5 seconds he'd connected to Axel's mind.

Axel walked over to Roxas, his strength already returned to him, and laid a cool hand against Roxas' cheek. He smiled warmly as he watched Roxas' eyes open for the first time. "Welcome to the real world, Roxy."

Roxas' mouth opened and closed a few times, vainly trying to speak. Finally he sucked in a deep breath of air and choked out, "S'a str—nge pl—ce."

Axel nodded and helped Roxas sit up, carefully moving his legs to dangle over the edge of the table. "Take your time to get accustomed to your body. You don't have all the programs you need to use it properly yet, so don't over work yourself. If the information isn't there, just ignore that function or body part, alright?"

Nodding weakly, Roxas' eyes traveled over his corporeal form. "Str—nge…" His left arm hung limply, but he was able to get his right arm to move a little, fingers curling in convulsive motions. He abandoned his arms as useless causes for the time being and moved to his legs. He could work them some, but seemed to have no control of his feet or ankles, so he reasoned that he would not be able to maintain the muscular precision necessary to walk as a biped. His breathing seemed to be coming easier as his subroutines began accustoming themselves with the parts they were to work with, and all of his senses were working perfectly. An odd thumping sound was detectable inside his chest and he puzzled at it, he'd never heard anything like that inside the Ethernet. "Ax—, there's som—hing in ones ch—st."

Axel put a hand on Roxas' bare chest and a sudden smile crept across his face. "That's your heart, Roxas, that's your heart."

Roxas accessed his memory banks, trying to understand what a heart was, and why it would make Axel smile. If Axel smiled because it was thumping in his chest, then a heart was obviously a good thing, Roxas supposed. He nodded to Axel before deciding that giving Axel a progress report might be beneficial. "Ax—, ones arms and l—gs are below op—mal opera—ing standards. One can n—t move one—elf."

"I suspected as much. Well, no worries." He leaned forward and looped his arms around Roxas' slight frame, picking up the RN in a bridal hold. "I'll just carry you."

Demyx, who had just finished relating all the happening from inside the Ethernet to Zexion, looked over to see Axel holding Roxas in a bridal hold and sputtered before laughing outright.

Zexion followed his gaze and chuckled slightly.

Roxas looked from the two flustered men up to Axel, entirely confused as to their reaction. "Wh—t is that ha-ha noise?"

Axel glared at the two of them as he made his way for the stairs. "It's called laughter, Roxas. It's what friends do together. But don't worry about them, they're just being silly."

"Lau—hter?" Roxas parroted in his broken and halting speech patterns. He would need to ask Axel about this in depth later. Right now, he needed to scan this strange passageway that they were currently ascending.

Axel couldn't help but laugh when he heard Demyx ask Zexion if he'd like to be carried bridal style too. "You have so much to learn, Roxas. So much…" He said absently as he walked through the apartment, finally stopping inside the kitchen. "This is the kitchen, this is where we keep food and eat it, generally." He carefully deposited Roxas in one of the chairs.

"Ah, Axel! Zexion and Demyx succeeded in pulling you out of your programming?" Jenova walked out of a wall, her hologram shimmering for a moment as the force field generators had to disable so that she wouldn't make a hole in the wall. "Oh, is Roxas up and running?" Her visored head turned to scan Roxas, acquainting herself with everything from his thermal scans to his personal radio signature.

"Roxas, meet Jenova. Jenova, meet Roxas." Axel motioned in between the two of them. "She," he pointed at her with a smirk on his face, "is a busybody. I should never have patterned her after my mother." He winked at Roxas, quickly relaying snippets of memories about his mother to Roxas over the house's internal Ethernet, which he was constantly connected to thanks to a small transducer at the base of his skull.

Roxas watched the memories and gleaned the meanings of 'mother', 'busybody', and 'Jenova'. He nodded to show that he had received and reviewed Axel's transmission. He was quite glad that Axel was still able to connect to him, even without being directly inside his program, and he clung to the Ethernet connection like a small child would cling to a security blanket.

Zexion stalked up the stairs and into the kitchen, sending small glares back at Demyx. He hadn't taken well to the prospect of being carried. He'd always been a tad sensitive about his stature.

Jenova turned and smiled her small smile at Zexion and Demyx as they entered the room, "Well then, seeing as everyone is here, I'll start serving up the soup." She turned to look at Roxas and Axel, "Can Roxas process food yet?"

Axel shook his head, "No, the organs are in place, and while I have his circulatory and repository systems working, most of the others aren't."

She nodded and pulled out three bowls. "Well, he can learn from watching at least."

"True enough." Axel agreed as he sat himself across from Roxas.

Demyx followed Zexion, apologizing profusely, but his words fell on deaf ears. He looked crest fallen when Zexion sat at the table and refused to look at him. Demyx looked to Axel for support.

"Sorry, Dem, you're in this on your own. You should never make fun of Zexion's height, stature, or feminine wiles." His words earned a glare from Zexion, but he merely laughed. "I made fun of him once, asked if he was a middle school student, and he didn't talk to me for four months." He smiled fondly at the memory and then looked over at Roxas. "I can't promise I won't make fun of you too, short stuff."

Roxas did his best to puff up his chest and look indignant, "Th—n I ca—'t pro—ise I won't n—t talk to you for…" Roxas deliberated how long not talking to his programmer would be a sufficient punishment, "5 min—tes." He cringed internally at the huge sacrifice that such a lack of contact would mean to him, but bravely tried not to show it.

Axel's face instantly lit up as he laughed, "Oh man, Roxy, I'll have to make sure never to make fun of you then. Ever."

Demyx and Zexion both joined in laughing.

Noticing the confused look on Roxas' face at the laughter, Axel sent him some memories and data to explain 'friends', 'jokes', and 'ha-ha noises', otherwise known as 'laughter'. After three seconds, Roxas had sorted through the transmission and joined in the laughter with a somewhat awkward chuckle. It wasn't perfect, but damn, it was a start. Axel marveled at Roxas, barely a week old, not even a complete program, and already the kid was learning emotions.

Jenova walked over to a table captive of laughter and shook her head. "Soup's on." She put down a bowl in front of Axel, Demyx, and Zexion. Then she projected a chair and sat down with the men at the table. "Thank you, Zexion, for bringing another soup."

Zexion was still chuckling slightly as he nodded to her.

Everyone began eating, while Roxas and Jenova watched. Roxas was highly intrigued by the idea of eating, and he spent a considerable amount of time scanning through his programs to find which ones would eventually work to helping him eat as well. His blue eyes shown a bright yellow as he sent out wave after wave of electromagnetic frequencies, scanning the men as they ate. With x-ray, he could see their bones keeping their bodies rigid, although Demyx, having an ultimanium frame, like Roxas, showed up quite differently than the calcium based bones in Axel and Zexion. He was surprised to find so many non-organic items inside Axel. Some made sense, like the Ethernet transducer and the Dive Connection Plug, but he found a surprising amount of circuitry that was wired into his brain itself and an extensive robotically assisted muscular system. He switched his scan to ultrasound and watch as everyone's organs worked to process the food.

He took particular joy in noticing the heart beating in Axel's chest, just like the one in his own, except that Axel's wasn't synthesized from bio-proteins and carbon-ion particles. There was another difference between their hearts, Roxas noted. Axel's heart was… slowing down? He switched his vision back to the visual spectrum, the yellow glow receding to reveal sky blue eyes. Axel didn't seem to look troubled, but why was his heart slowing? That couldn't be right, could it? "Ax—, why is y—r heart sl—wing?"

Axel looked over, breaking himself away from the discussion he'd been having with Demyx about the implications of manufactured emotions and what made an emotion 'real' or not. "My heart?" He yawned tiredly and suddenly understood. He shot a glare to Jenova. "You put tranquilizers in my soup, didn't you?"

She nodded smugly.

He was about to make an angry response when his head drooped and then fell onto the table top.

Zexion and Demyx smiled, if somewhat apologetically, at their friend.

Roxas proceeded into hysterics.

"Wh—t just hap—ned? Why did Ax—'s heart sl—w? Is he a—ight? Wh—t's going on?" His head whipped back and forth, staring at the three other occupants at the table.

Jenova frowned and ran a hand through her thick cable-like hair. "This is why I hate new programs," she muttered.

Demyx sent her a sharp glare and then turned to Roxas. "Don't worry, Roxas. Axel is just sleeping."

Roxas had no idea what sleeping was, so the reassurance did little for him. "Is that like… an end o— l—ne? Wi—l Ax— reboot?"

Zexion shook his head and chuckled slightly, which made Demyx glare at him as well.

"Don't laugh at this, Zexy. I had tons of questions like this when I was new." He turned his attention back to Roxas. "Humans can slow down their metabolic rate, heart rate, the rate at which their body functions, and enter a sort of suspend mode called sleep. Axel is just fine, his mind has merely slowed to run as a resting state."

Roxas' voice was choked with concern, "Can I t—lk to him?"

"Not right now, because he's asleep. Human bodies need to sleep in order that their mind and bodies can replenish their energy."

"Why d—d he sl—p now?"

Demyx smiled sheepishly and pointed at Zexion and Jenova. "They drugged his soup with tranquilizers, a drug that forces the human body to relax and fall asleep."

Roxas was quite certain that this had been done without Axel's consent, and therefore, it was not to be accepted. However, he did not know how to counteract the drugs that Axel's 'friends' had put into his body.

Demyx seemed to pick up on Roxas' anger and discomfort, "Now Rox, we did it for his own good. If he doesn't take a break to eat and sleep occasionally, he could die." He picked up one of Axel's stick arms and poked it. "See how thin he is already? He's never been good at taking care of himself, so we were forced to do this to help keep him alive. You wouldn't want him to die, would you? Then he'd never awake, come online, ever again."

Roxas' eyes widened comically and he shook his head fervently, scrunching into himself. The idea of Axel dying, of going offline permanently, it simply didn't compute. Roxas was only a week old, he couldn't imagine that people could die. It was such a horrific concept that he was stunned into silence for a full two minutes, merely cringing in fear and searching every database he could find that might explain how to counteract death. His mind searched the apartment's Ethernet, and what he found disturbed him even more. Humans were fragile! You couldn't make a back up copy of them, you couldn't store their data for later use, and in most cases they didn't live for more than sixty or seventy years. He quickly calculated how long sixty human standard years would equate to Ethernet time. The number was ridiculously small to him.

He was drawn out of his frenzied calculations when he noticed that Jenova was picking up Axel. "Ax—! Wh—re're you tak—ng Ax—?"

Jenova looked over at Roxas, "To lie down on his bed that he never uses, it'll be a lot more comfortable than being slumped over this chair." She explained irritably.

Demyx frowned at her and walked over to Roxas, "Do you want me to carry you into his room? That way you can keep a scan going on him while he sleeps, to make sure he wakes up again?"

Roxas nodded swiftly.

"Gotcha." He bent down and picked up Roxas, much as Axel had done. "Pretty soon we need to finish your program so you can walk around and follow him on your own."

"Tru—." Roxas agreed.

Jenova walked into Axel's room and deposited him on the stark bed. She pulled a blanked out of the closet and flicked it so that it settled over Axel. She looked over to see that Demyx had settled Roxas into a sitting position at the head of the bed, next to Axel. Once Demyx stood back up, Jenova motioned for him to leave the two in peace. She shut off the lights and they left the room, clicking the door closed behind them.

Demyx walked back into the kitchen to find Zexion gathering up his coat. "Ready to go?"

Zexion nodded and handed Demyx's coat to him.

As they passed into the airlock and waited for the pressure to equalize with the outside, Zexion turned to Demyx, "It's a bit like he's imprinted on Axel, wouldn't you say?"

Demyx looked down at Zexion and quirked an eyebrow, "What do you mean?"

"Many animals, when young, will imprint on the first being they see, and treat that being as their mother, regardless of whether they are the same species, gender, etc. This is especially common among birds." He paused for a moment, thinking, "I guess, I just feel like Roxas has imprinted on Axel, somewhat. It will be interesting to see if he stays that attached to Axel or starts to drift apart once he develops a little more mobility and independence."

"Yeah, I guess you're right." Demyx frowned in concentration and then turned to smile down at Zexion, "But I stayed pretty close to you even after I developed mobility and independence. Right?"

Zexion nodded and reached over to squeeze Demyx's hand before he asked, with a hint of trepidation, "Are you sure it's not just because I was assigned to be your beta tester?"

Demyx shook his head slowly, "I don't know yet, Zexy, but I don't think that's why I want to stay with you. Just give me a little more time to figure this out, I mean, I've only been operational for two months. You've got what, twenty three years on me?" He smiled warmly.

Zexion nodded again and looked out at the city as the airlock opened. "Take all the time you need, Demyx. Take all the time you need."

.:=.=:.

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So, I've had this story sitting on my computer for... over a year now, and I never could quite bring myself to upload it. I'm not sure what people will think about it, but I decided to just put it up and see how it goes. I might write more to this story if people want more, but I haven't had much urge to work on it...

~Shadow-D