#threads.txt

   “Disappointed? At seeing an old RIVAL show up once more in the depths of today’s computers?”

   “Come now, Bob. I would rather see your data spread across the world wide web in ways beyond any recoverable repair.” It was... Bittersweet, at best. Sweet, in seeing someone familiar after all this time. Bitter? For that exact same reason.

     Silence is all he’s met with at first, eyes boring into his defiantly as her jaw nearly creaked under the pressure she pressed upon it. Weakness. God it had been years since she’d felt this – vulnerable. So out of focus and out of touch with herself and everything she’d thought she stood for. Fought to become… All unravelled like loose twine and turned to nothing but a mimicry of what it was.

     And though a small part of her screamed in absolute anger – the rest simply crumpled and she finally had to look away. Loathing herself in that moment.

     “ Terrified. ” It was such a simple word and yet it felt like a leaden weight in her chest. Suffocating as she drew a shaking breath. “ You –  it’s so easy to just – let go. Every goddamn second I spend near you I can feel a disconnect with who I am. I was… I don’t know which was truer to myself. Who I was … Who I’m becoming. Reality is fracturing right before my goddamn eyes and I feel like I’m losing myself. ”

     Lips parted on a soft exhale, Bee finally let her eyes drift shut. Shoulders dropping and muscles unwinding.  Like a string cut from a marionette and now she simply stood there in his hold. And she just let it happen. Who the fuck was she?

 “ And worst of all? I don’t think I want to fight it. Because it’s you. And that’s – terrifying. ”

   “My... What a heavy confession, my darling.”

   He pulls her in just like that, her form now pressed against his.  Clawed fingers dig into her back, poking at her spine through her shirt as the dull sensation of fabric registers. He still forces her to look up at him, to make EYE contact with the very source of distress that he could tell that she wanted to avoid.

    “But you needn’t fear a single thing...” Said finger that was underneath her chin were joined by other digits, dragging their way up from her jawline to the side of her face, until his hand rests on the side of her cheek.

   His thumb merely brushes against that gentle, soft skin. Pressing the end of his claw right into her cheek, he applies just enough pressure with intention to draw some blood.

   “That IS the nature of WHAT I am, is it not? And here I am, not even having to infect you to instill such a sensation throughout you...” 

   Out of all the things to happen, could Megabyte say that he EXPECTED a USER, out of all people, to be smitten with him? No. But he most certainly wasn’t complaining either, well aware of their influence of power.

  If she only knew. If she only knew just who had truly neutralized her, then perhaps-- Perhaps she wouldn’t be acting so kindly upon that couch of his where she rested.

   One of her own personal assistants had struck her right in the back, plunged a large set of claws right through her, twisting and turning her insides with sharp talons to steal her consciousness right out of her. Yes, the look of shock on her face that mingled with the expression of pain, he could have only imagined how beautiful that looked upon such a gentle, sweet face such as hers.  The Queen had fallen right at his feet, lifeless and limp.

   Then another stepped in, knelt down right in front of her, and got straight to work. It’d have only been mere moments after they were finished re-configuring her that Bob himself would have added the finishing touch--

   A fate worse than deletion, really.

   With the help of another particular virus to serve as distraction, it was only natural that when the one idiotic guardian’s attention was stolen to the newest threat once Daemon herself was neutralized.

   Lingering right in front of the couch, he only gives a slow, gentle nod in response. Both hands behind his back. His chest out. Broad shoulders rather relaxed.

  Yes, he was content with her assumption.