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Jugger x Solita

Nathan smiled and patted her head playfully. "Ha...As grateful as I am...You don't have to look like you're trying so hard about this." He turned to look back at the road. It was just their car on the road, along with several others that were passing by in the opposite direction or were following Nathan's example and taking this longer shortcut rather than waiting through the traffic jam. "So all we have to rely on are killnoises...Alright I'll make sure to keep you safe as well, Ophelia. I don't want you to be in harm's way too much if you don't have any sort of defense mechanisms."
 
Ophelia pouted slightly as Nathan patted her head, seeming to have found her determination silly. Her expression softened to one of slight confusion as he said that he would protect her as well, and for a moment she fell silent. Privately, she was happy to hear him say that, but she knew what her mission here was, and so she turned to look at him again with a serious expression, shaking her head slightly.

"No, Nathan... my safety is a non-issue. If I at any point have to... sacrifice myself to ensure your safety... I'll do so without hesitation." She said, averting her eyes to look out at the road ahead of them. "...So don't try and come to my aid if it would put your own safety at risk... as of now, I'm... expendable."
 
Nathan put the car to an immediate halt upon hearing her last word and did not look at her. Cars trailing behind him quickly swerved to the next lane and many of them honked their horns and flipped him off as they drove on past him. "I don't ever want to hear you say that again. No one is ever expendable..." He finally looked at her and he seemed truly serious with his words. "As your creator...I order you this. I don't want you to 'sacrifice' yourself for me or anything. If I am to die and its inevitable, do not throw yourself into harm's way. If I die before I can even create you in the first place, someone has to finish the work being done on creating you. And that person HAS to be you and Devin, and even Grady wherever and whoever the hell he is! My life isn't your real mission...Truly we both know that all that needs to be done is the creation of a fully functioning AI with a body of its own. My life staying as it is is just a benefit and something that you want to have, Ophelia." His gaze softened as he looked at her. "But I do thank you for all that you're willing to do for me...Ophelia."
 
Ophelia cried out slightly in surprise as the car suddenly screeched to a halt, looking over at Nathan as the other drivers began to pass them. Her eyes widened a bit as he spoke, and for a few moments after he finished speaking, she seemed to be dumbstruck, unable to say or do anything. Soon, her mouth began to waver slightly, moisture beginning to appear in the corners of her eyes, until finally she shot forward, throwing her arms around Nathan and pulling him into a tight hug.

"...N-Nathan... thank you so much..." She said, keeping her arms wrapped firmly around Nathan as she buried her head against him. After a few moments, she raised her head to look up at him, smiling through her tears. "...Then... both of us... we'll protect each other."
 
He smiled as he felt her hug him, that being her reaction to his order toward her. When she finally spoke, he nodded. "Yeah...I promise I'll do my best to protect you as well. You saved my life once...now its my turn to save yours when the time comes." He smiled and stroked the back of her hair gently as he spoke, and eventually released her so he could put his hands back on the steering wheel. "Alright...Lets continue. We should hurry and get there before nightfall otherwise...well...I don't feel as safe during the night as I do during the day."
 
Nodding as the two of them broke apart, Ophelia settled back into her seat and began to wipe the moisture away from her eyes. "Y-yes... it'd be best if we got going." She agreed, smiling over at him as the car set in motion again, much to the exasperated delight of the other drivers on the road. Yes... this Nathan was different from the one that she knew... but perhaps not in a negative way. The compassion that she'd always admired in him was certainly still there... and in fact, as she reflected on that similarity, she felt another familiar emotion welling up inside her, causing her to blush a bit belatedly at how readily she'd hugged him. It seemed doomed to failure, but... perhaps that could turn out differently as well?
 
After an hour of driving, Nathan began to pass up signs that led him into the town. "We're almost there...Should be about a few minutes if I can keep myself from getting lost. I rarely come here unless I really need to and thats pretty much about once a month." He explained as he took a route that would seem random to someone not used to getting to where he wanted to be. "The first step I need when it comes to your creation is to keep on creating your actual AI...I'm still programming it in my laptop and I just started so who knows how long it'll be before your brain is completed."
 
Ophelia turned to look at Nathan again as he spoke, breaking the prolonged silence that she had been using to do some internal reflection. She grew a bit pensive again at what he said, but for a different reason than she'd been for the last hour or so.

"Well... we're not really here to put a rush order on my creation or anything... I mean, like I said... in my time, it took you nine years before I was finished... if you were to finish any earlier than that because of our interference... well, we're not really sure what would happen." She said with a slightly worried expression. "We're here trying to preserve what's left of the normal timeline... not alter it ourselves."
 
"Gah...You're telling me that...I NEED to finish it in nine years and no less...? Think about what you're saying, Ophelia..." He frowned a bit as he pulled up in front of the safehouse. "We're here but...You need to know something. I can't be hunted down for nine years straight. Its not fair that I must live my life in secrecy and have to worry for my well being...I doubt that I would be the same person I will soon be, come nine years, if I have years of paranoia and stress building up over time...I might even just break down before I can even finish you. And you can't repair a human like you can a robot, no matter how...Erm...Human that they may be."
 
Ophelia glanced out the window for a moment as they arrived at their destination, then turned back to Nathan with a slightly confused expression as he continued speaking. Her eyes lit up with understanding once she realized there had been a misunderstanding.

"Oh goodness, that's right! Of course you wouldn't know about that!" She said, thwacking herself on the head for her forgetfulness, then turning toward Nathan with a reassuring smile. "We know next to nothing about time travel, but one thing that we do know is the Parallel Effect. Basically, when something is sent back in time, the time that it came from and the time it arrives at start moving in synchronization, and it becomes impossible to send anything further forward or back until it's returned." She explained in a factual tone, smiling a bit brighter as she realized she was able to deliver some good news to Nathan in the midst of this chaos. "What this means for us is that you'll probably be safe again within a week or two, as the situation in the future gets resolved. This definitely isn't going to be going on for nine years, you don't have to worry about that."
 
"Thats comforting...even if I don't entirely understand it since time travel isn't really a concept I'm too familiar with fact-wise." He shrugged, and got out of the car and moved to the side door to open it for Ophelia. "Its on the first floor so we don't have to climb a flight of stairs...and because my real safehouse is underground." He grinned and led Ophelia inside and it was the last door on the left of a long hallway that stretched past a few flights of spiral stairs leading up. Upon opening the door, it would show a basic looking apartment that was being kept in a good condition...especially since he was barely ever here. "This is where we'll be sleeping at least...my actual research is, as I said...underground."
 
Ophelia smiled at Nathan as he opened the door for her, stepping out and walking with him into the building as he explained where they would be staying. She looked around curiously as the two of them made their way down the hallway, glancing up the flights of stairs as they passed them by. When they reached the last door on the left and stepped inside, she looked around at the modest but comfortable looking apartment where they would apparently be staying.

"This looks like it will do perfectly!" She said, turning to Nathan again with a smile. "But, um... are you sure that 'we'll' be sleeping here?" She asked, glancing around once more to confirm her suspicions. "It... doesn't appear as though there's any guest bed around..."
 
"Yes I know there isn't a guest bed around..." HE murmured. "I never expected to have guests in my safehouse that would stay the night...Why don't you get the bed? I'll sleep on the couch or something." He murmured as he walked over and took his laptop out of its pack, and placed it down onto the table in front of the sofa to turn it on. "Want to come see yourself in your forming years, Ophelia?" He said with a grin. "I don't know how it'll look to you...but in my eyes, its my very own creation being formed at my fingertips."
 
Ophelia's brow furrowed as he suggested that she be the one to take the bed, about to protest before he mentioned seeing herself before she was actually completed. She hesitated for a moment before walking over to sit on the couch next to Nathan. "Alright, but... we aren't done talking about our sleeping arrangements." She warned him, her natural curiosity getting the better of her as her attention was momentarily turned to the computer screen in front of them.
 
He opened the program which was simply titled 'Alpha AI.exe' There was nothing except for what looked like a heartbeat monitor on the screen. Nathan grinned as he looked to Ophelia. "This is you...Sort of. Its your brain being developed...Go on. Ask yourself something...But make it simple...like...What color is a firetruck or simple adding and subtracting. I don't have everything programed into you yet for you to be actually thinking...right now you're technically just a VI until some more tests are done."
 
Ophelia looked at the little heartbeat-esque display on the screen in utter fascination, feeling something akin to deja vu as she stared at it for a few moments, wondering at the impossibility of this. It was like she was a human that had gone back in time and was now seeing herself as a baby, or perhaps even seeing her parents while they were still expecting. This was her... before she was really her.

"O-oh, right..." She said, remembering that he'd told her to try asking something. Thinking for a few moments, she struck upon something to ask. "Um... what's the first letter of the alphabet?" She asked uncertainly. After a few moments of increased activity from the display, a single letter appeared on the screen.

A

Ophelia turned to look at Nathan with a smile after the successful little interaction. "Could I... try a less simple question?" She asked, having forgotten about her concern with the bed for the moment, utterly fascinated with this precursor to herself.
 
"Go ahead. It won't blow up or anything for not knowing the answer like they exaggerate in the movie." He shrugged. "It...Or rather SHE will simply just display something like 'Data not Found' or 'Error'. Rarely has she crashed when I asked her some more complex crashes...and that was because I made a few errors in its calculation skills." He laughed lightly. He was finding this amusing to watch Ophelia talk to herself in her Alpha form; before she had any real amazing traits that were unique to AI in that era.
 
Ophelia's smiled brightened as she turned to look at the screen again, brainstorming for something slightly more complex to ask.

"What's four times four?" She asked, another pause passing before 16 appeared on the screen. "Alright!" She said, leaning forward a bit and smiling as she thought up another question. "What's... the square root of negative one?" She asked, a longer pause than before going by before the word Error appeared. Nodding her head, Ophelia grew pensive for a few moments before turning to the screen with a suddenly almost serious expression. "...What's your name?" She asked, every moment of the pause that passed afterwards feeling longer than the last, before the response finally popped up.

Data not found

Sighing, Ophelia sat back in her seat. "I guess that was a bit much to expect at this point..." She said, her smile returning somewhat as she turned to look at Nathan again. "...But... I still get the feeling that this is really me... even if it doesn't really indicate it in any way..." She said, turning to look at the screen again thoughtfully. "That's just... what it feels like to me."
 
"Technically the VI isn't even aware of itself...If you understand what I mean by that anyway. I didn't bother naming it yet since its not an actual AI...I mean, why would a virtual intelligence need a name, especially when its only in its Alpha stage?" He smiled a bit and patted Ophelia on the head. "But...This will soon be you. And I'll name her Ophelia as well." He smiled and said good-bye to the program before shutting it off. "Well you met yourself as a 'baby'. Its still a work in progress." He leaned back on the sofa and sighed. "I still have a long way to go before I can even give it self awareness."
 
Ophelia watched as Nathan shut off her precursor self, noting with a smile that he had said goodbye to it despite what he'd said about its self-awareness.

"Yes, you do..." She agreed with a small nod as he sat back and mentioned still having a long way to go. "But nine years is actually relatively quick for making a scientific breakthrough that changes the whole world forever..." She encouraged him. "I've never stopped appreciating all the time and dedication you put into creating me... even if I wasn't technically around for them, I still consider those nine years a part of who I am... like a piece of you that always stays with me..." She said with a soft smile, resting against the back of the couch as her eyes slipped closed, a peaceful expression settling on her face.

"...And you're the one sleeping on the bed."
 
"Like hell I am." He said with a small laugh as he looked over to her. "As your creator...I order you to take the bed." He winked at her playfully. "You're my guest here...in both my timeline and my safehouse. Its the least I could do." He began to wonder if she would truly follow every order he gave her. This was just merely a test to see if he gave her individuality. He would never program an AI...especially a full working one....with the crutch of being forced to listen to whoever it was programed to listen to. That wasn't them being treated as an equal...that would be them treated as a slave.
 
As soon as Nathan finished speaking, Ophelia immediately shook her head. "I don't have a physiological need for sleep, and you do. Even if I do technically get tired, it would make absolutely no sense to sacrifice any of your restfulness for my own!" She said firmly, apparently not ready to back down on this just because he'd 'ordered' her to. "Really, I insist that you take the bed, and not just as a gesture of politeness. Honestly, I have half a mind not to even sleep at all until the situation is resolved... that way I could keep watch during the night, just in case." She said thoughtfully, seeming to seriously consider this now that she was mentioning it.
 
He laughed lightly as he heard this and simply nodded. "Alright...alright...you raise a good point, Ophelia." He said with a smile as he looked to her. "Though it would be...possibly horribly dull for you if you had to go all night, just sitting around and waiting doing nothing while you were waiting for the sun and me to arise." 'And it would be horribly...horribly creepy if I were to find out that every night you just stood there and watched me...Not even blinking once as you 'make sure I am content while sleeping' or something of the sort...'
 
"Boredom shouldn't even be a factor when it comes to your safety!" Ophelia quickly interjected, still seeming to be giving serious consideration to the idea of not sleeping at all for her whole time here. After a few moments, she shook her head slightly. "But... I suppose in the long run it would make more sense to stay rested so that I'm not tired in case anything does happen..." She said a bit reluctantly, before smiling again as she remembered Nathan had conceded her actual point. "Alright, then it's decided! I'll sleep on the couch!" She said in a matter-of-fact tone.
 
"I won't allow that." He replied instantly when she stated she'd sleep on the couch. "I don't want my guest to sleep on the couch when I have a comfy bed. I'm supposed to be hosting them...I think the only way we could get by would be if we slept on the bed together." He murmured, not really paying much attention to the fact that he was a man and she a woman-droid and it might seem a bit awkward for them to share a bed with one another.
 
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