#noformat

M-HU-ATRIX! Buddy! Aren’t you a sight for sore CRTs!

Hey did you show-up to spend a little quality time with little ole Mike the TV huh? Didya didya didya? Like old times right!

   One good thing about being an AI sprite is that adapting has always come easy to her. It was the essence of her code: when faced with a problem, make necessary internal adjustments to achieve the most efficient means of victory. AndrAIa found a certain joy in each new experience, each new form and friend they came across. Jumping from game to game in an endless run of life or death or deresolution hadn’t taken quite so grand of a toll on her. Not like it had on Matrix.

    “What, you’re gonna tell me you aren’t having a blast with your old buddy Mike the TV and his inspiring adventure commentary?” she teased, making a grand, imitative gesture with her hand regardless of the light scowl it brings to his face - the very idea of the media personality forcing his way into their day-to-day was one more item on the list of things capable of souring his already tenuous mood. The goofy grin tugging at her lips softened. 

    She teased, but AndrAIa knew what he meant. Matrix had been thinking a lot lately - not the ‘brooding’ he was so often teased on, but that faraway, melancholy thoughtfulness that she sometimes worried would carry him away without her one of these days. The end of their long journey of Game Hopping hadn’t been the homecoming they’d been hoping for all this time, and readjustment had been less than ideal (Little Enzo running around as a mirror of innocence lost hadn’t helped, unknowing as the young sprite was). She felt it, she really did, the way the system had moved on without them, to have seemingly filled the void left by their absence and left so little room for the compromise of their existence. Mainframe didn’t feel like home. Not like it used to, and less so for him. 

    “You’re here, aren’t you?”

    She reached up as they locked eyes, letting her fingers brush tenderly against his cheek and her smile broadened as the tired Sprite leaned into her touch. Content with his response, AndrAIa closed the distance and slipped her arms around his midsection, resting her head on his shoulder in a closeness he allowed to so few. 

    “Wherever you are, Sparky, it’s good enough for me.”

    Truth be told, AndrAIa didn’t need Mainframe. She never had. Mainframe wasn’t the reason she’d left her game, after all.