08 // [Video/Text]

[flashdrive]

[Whoa, Rewind, you look like you've seen better days. The feed cuts to the library, with a flash drive huddled up on one of the many seats littered about it. Ambus, his acolyte seems to hover over him, books held in its hand. There's soft coughing coming from the flash drive, attempting to sit up and look at the screen.]

เ ђคשє ร๏๓єtђเภﻮ เ ђคשє t๏ รคא...

[Cough cough. Wow, Rewind, you sound all modulated and awful. Ambus seems to notice, leaning over further as if to mother hen. Rewind, stick to typing.]

[So he will. Fingers reach out to the keys of the link, typing things up as best he can.]


If anyone has a problem with the A.I. members of our community, you're going to answer to me.

I've noticed their treatment over the Link.

Comments

[nobody_number_8]

[Axel sees Rewind looking sick.]

Lemme guess... brown energon, right?

[Because he's not counting this as a coincidence.]

Anyway, though, I'm probably just gonna prove how little I know about robots by saying this, but to be perfectly honest, I can't tell which ones of you guys are A.I.s and which aren't unless somebody points it out to me. So if I've I've been messing with any of them more than I normally mess with people, it's kind of by accident.

[flashdrive]

[He goes to answer, but all that seems to come out is a weird sort of garbled mess. There's a sigh (also garbled), so he'll move it back to the text.]

It could have been. I've been busy so I haven't noticed.


As long as you're not calling them lesser beings, we have no problems. That seems to be the thing around here.

[nobody_number_8]

Given what's been going on around here lately, I'd say it's a distinct possibility, especially if you were anywhere near a garden in Alpha Trion's area or near the junkpile by a rockpile that looks like a guy waving. Sora and this other guy who's name I didn't catch found some brown energon in those places and now they're both sick too.

Either way, I'll let you know once we know how to fix it.

[He actually chuckles slightly, though, at the idea of calling AIs lesser beings.]

Man, a Nobody like me's got no room to go around calling anybody else a lesser being. In fact, if anybody could be called that around here, it's me.

[flashdrive]

Well I have been hanging out in Trion's place a lot...

[From Axel's description, everything seems to fall into place. Maybe he was just too busy to realize the colour of the Energon. It was always blue or purple, both were just fine with him.]

I'll scan through the Link to see if there's any info we can use.

..


What do you mean by that, though? The 'Nobody' thing.

[nobody_number_8]

Yeah, you probly got brown-energoned, then. And thanks; every bit of info on this weirdness helps.

And a Nobody- with a capitol 'N'- is what I am. A Nobody is what's left after a person with a very strong heart has theirs taken. Only the very strongest Nobodies- like me- look human or retain their human memories. Because we don't have hearts, we can't actually feel things, or form real connections with people. We're incomplete to the point of not properly existing, and thus aren't generally considered to be real people back home.

At least that's what I used to think. Turns out, our boss had been lying to us all along. Nobodies are born without hearts, but we'd develop a new one naturally over time. He deliberately kept us emotionally isolated from each other, and thinking that anything we might have felt was just our imaginations, so that our hearts wouldn't develop and we'd be easier to manipulate.

Being around Sora and my friend Roxas finally kickstarted mine into developing, though I didn't know what was going on til Sora explained it to me. Still, I've got maybe 10% of a heart at this point, and until I've got a whole one again, I really am less of a being than everyone else, technically.