Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Maybe you're right," the boy groaned, pausing after saying something so simple, failing miserably at keeping the conversation going and he knew it. After some time, he groaned, "So..." he was fumbling for words, "um... shoot, what to talk about..." he scratched his head, he had nothing in common, nothing to relate to that he himself could remember, "You... uh... have any siblings? Brothers? Sisters?"

{{Cue: Dispossession - String Version from NieR}}

"I'm sorry..." he said trailing off as Kyle finished speaking. He should have known not to ask something like that, given the fact his world- their world, had been destroyed. He tightened his grip into a fist, "It must be hard none the less... for everyone," the boy clasped his fist in his other hand, "Then, it might be strange, and not mean much coming from an amnesiac, but you can count on me. I'll do whatever I can to help you bring your brother back, Kyle. If not for how much I owe you, since from what I gather, I kinda owe my very existence to you, then what the other me owes you as well-"

The young man took a deep breath and stood up in a rush, spinning on his heel, before stomping his foot down taking a very stern stance, eyes sharp, a determined fire in his eyes, "I don't know how I'll do it exactly, but somehow I just know I can. From now on," he chuckled, "I'll be your guardian angel. From now until the day you're reunited with your brother, when we can finally bring your... our world back, I'll protect you from the darkness by any means necessary. I promise."

As he extended his hand to Kyle, at the edges of the boy's sleeves, it would seem that the black in the shirt was peeling away, like dying white cloth, but in reverse.

Installation Complete. Welcome to the Castle That Never Was Operating System.

That's wordy as balls, I'll come up with something better later.

Ajora scratched his chin. The entire idea rested on the assumed knowledge that, in copying the Hollow Bastion OS, he had copied the various programs that made it up, much like Ansem had done when he first copied it. With any luck...

Opening up the command prompt, he began to type.



He grinned.



Ajora made a dramatic sound of shocked disdain, physically recoiling from the keyboard for a moment before moving to type a response.



He grimaced, thinking back to the final fights in the second game, dreading to think what else had befallen the castle in the two years left blank.



He paused again. He'd forgotten how much of an effect Sora had had on Tron, now obvious by the sign of emotion.



With that, he pulled out the OS disc and replaced it with a disc containing his findings from the Twilight Town Manor. After a couple minutes, the installation completed--and before he could say anything else, the command prompt window popped back up.



Ajora strummed his fingers as Tron went to work. He wondered, briefly, if the system would be able to handle him, and not out of arrogance. He believed the data world to be more rigidly ruled than reality, so with the various cosmic upgrades he'd given himself...

Hopefully it's just a matter of limitations and not overwhelming. Besides, if its a concern about power input, that can be fixed.



Ajora did as mentioned, and a scanning laser began to stream over his body, rapidly crossing every inch of him.


There was a moment of sensory deprivation, of free fall, of suspension--and then everything washed over him. Instinctively, he gasped, as if for his first breath, but here he needed no oxygen.

Glancing out over the digital landscape of neon blue and silver, he reeled, if only slightly. He'd gone from sensing nothing, to sensing what felt like too much. It wasn't too bright, or too loud, or any of that. But he felt so much more. Not from his skin, but his magic.

This world was anything but corporeal; he had not shrunk down to fit onto some strange microchip, nor had the computer formed some strange wormhole into a world where everything that happened affected some computer some distant hundreds of miles away. No... this world was formed entirely by technology harnessing magical energy into some odd pocket dimension.

In reality, magic circuits existed in all things. Here, magic circuits formed all things.

Suddenly, Ajora was very, very giddy.


Before Ajora had even stepped back up to the computer, a window appeared in the monitor, displaying Tron's technological world--and in it, the digital Ajora.

"Oh, that's nifty."

"So, guess what?"

"Saved a bunch of money on car insurance," he mused, typing that in.

"Hah. No. This world? Formed by magic."

"Well, yeah, I kind of assumed," he muttered, rolling his eyes as he typed in "So?"

"... what does that mean for us."

"Oh. OH! Oh holy s**t that makes things easier." He typed in a single exclamation point.

"For our own sake, I'm going to pretend that you were slow just because things are faster for me in technoworld. Anyway, go ahead before I go techno-AI rogue or whatever those damn sci-fi books would have us believe."

Ajora began to type in a few commands here and there; small bangles appeared around the digital clone's wrists.

"Not that it matters since we're on the same page. But a safety precaution all the same. Now, time to go introduce myself to Tron and get started. I'll give you an update in a sec."

The window disappeared, bringing the command prompt back into view. He'd missed a message.



He brought his hands up to the keyboard and began typing up the message. However, before he finished, the video window reappeared. This time, both himself and Tron were in the visor

"Oh, he can see and hear us?"

"Absolutely! Say hey, Tron!" Ajora said, an arm around the program's shoulder and pointing into the viewport.

"Why would I tell myself hey?"

"No, I mean... say hello to the User."

"Ah!" he said, his confusion dissipating. "Hello, User! Your digital self has some remarkable programming abilities. We'll be done in a fraction of the time."

"Yep. Speaking of, let's quit wasting it and get to work. Oiy," he said, turning his gaze to the viewport. "You know how to reach us."

The window vanished, once more leaving the command prompt up, with a message about the estimated completion time. He frowned slightly before shrugging, deleting his typed response.

I'll have to get some form of camera or something. Does this even have USB? Is that even a thing? I don't think that's a thing.

He strummed his fingers again, trying to figure out his next plan of action. His mind was fraying. There was so much to do. He needed the actual schematics of Cid's machine to properly reverse engineer it. He needed to gather more weapons. Hell, if possible, more wishes. He needed Zexion to finish his chores so he could properly set him out--though, perhaps more importantly, he needed to find the Schemer's heart. He needed to keep an eye on all sorts of people, particularly Kuro...

He sighed. There was one thing he could at least get started on now that didn't depend on anything else. Flickering in a glimmer of light, he vanished from the core and returned to the laboratory, walking back over to the sealed pod in the far corner. Carefully taking from it the short golden scepter, he vanished from the lab back into the core, where he knew he was isolated from the rest of the world, as well as shielded from the rest of the cosmos. With a soft, almost reverent gentleness, he slid one hand over the smooth golden metal, sighing.

"Oracle!"

The gem, once a deep emerald, immediately flared up with blinding white light. There was a light tug, and he let it go, allowing the scepter to hover away from him, taking a vertical stance just above the ground. The gem began to emit brilliant rays of light, until finally the translucent image of a heavily cloaked woman appeared.

"Your question is mine to answer."

"Explain your rules, unless doing so uses up my question." It was a command; he was clear to avoid the use or even the implication of any sort of question.

"I see almost all that has been, and almost all that will be," she explained, her ethereal voice echoing through the empty metal sphere that was the core. However, even as she spoke, her eyes were narrowed at him, as if trying to understand him. "Yet I am bound by the rule of one: one question, one answer. You have but to ask."

He hesitated, chewing on his lip. The "almost"s were curious, but he had a feeling it had to do with the same thing that altered the genie rules. Otherwise, exactly as he remembered. However, he also remembered that she was not exactly above loopholes. She had given Aladdin information--that his father was still alive, and could answer his many questions--without anyone asking her to do so. Further, when asked about the location of the Hand of Midas, she not only jumped straight to when the Vanishing Isle would appear, but also illuminated the path to the isle over the sea.

She was a spirit bound to the scepter. She was not some law-forged magic, but a consciousness snared, like the genies with their shackles.

"Here is my question. What must I do," he began, narrowing his eyes back at her. "to remove your Rule of One in such a way that you will retain your vast knowledge and still correctly answer as many questions as I wish to ask?"

{ ATE : The Unexpected Guests : 38 }
[[Louis? : Station of Awakening]]

The angelic boy grabbed Kyle's hand with both of his and shook one with a tight grip, "Of course! I would surely hope you would," he smiled an laughed a little. The black in his sleeves sapped away along with the black in the rest of his shirt, leaving a pure white shirt in its place. The black converged on his black, filling in the silvery wings, without bleeding into anything else.

There was a faint glow for a moment before black wings suddenly burst from his back, silvery strands running through the feathers, like veins of mineral through stone, almost glowing against the velvety sheen the black majority had as a backdrop to the silver.

The young man looked over his shoulder in surprise, nearly bashing himself in the face with a wing as it moved around instinctively to be observed. His shock sent him further stumbling till he flopped onto his rear and looked at both of the wings laying open at his sides. A feather floated down in front of his face, which he blew away with a breath from his pursed lips, eyebrows still scrunched as he was baffled beyond understanding, "Well, that's new."

The boy laughed as he accepted the hand up, careful not to mindlessly beat his wings and kick up any more non-sense, "Yeah... what the hell, that definitely doesn't feel normal," he placed a hand on Kyle's shoulder, looking back at the edge he'd nearly tumbled off of being a total klutz, "So, how bout we go back to the solid looking spot back that way. Call me ironic, but the guy who just got a pair of fancy wings, isn't exactly fond of falling into... uh... big black abyss... abysses? Abyssi?"

"I'm trying to think of a witty remark paired with wing pun, but I can't really think of any at the moment," the angel replied, crossing his arms, wings curling in over his shoulders, "I can try my hand at the flying thing later though. Don't think you'd care to join me? Maybe sprout some wings of your own as a flight of fancy?

The boy laughed at the puns, regardless of how terrible they were, "Haha, yeah, not exactly sure what to ask at this point. My memories are shot, so, it's hard to judge what's normal and what isn't. Um, I guess, uh, what'd you do before the world got destroyed? What was normal life like?"

The angel crossed his arms as Kyle recalled the earth, his wings crossing over his shoulders and chest, essentially wrapping him in the feathered appendages. The more he talked the less he seemed pleased. The old world seemed... depressing to him, "That... doesn't sound very pleasant at all. I'm not a very good judge I suppose but it feels to me that life there was kind of... dreary and empty. I mean, maybe I'm missing something, but it definitely doesn't seem like a very enjoyable place to live."

The young man buried his mouth in the feathers like a blanket, and mumbled through them, "Then again, this world seemed worse in some ways, huh. Look at me..." he buried his face deeper into his soft wings, keeping his eyes just above the line, looking at the floor and Kyle off and on, "I wonder what my life was like. Was my life good by those standards, or was I worse off? What did I do? What did I like? Was life difficult, was it easy? Sorry, I'm rambling again..."