“Hey, Sora.”
“Yeah?”
“Why did we… start calling you Sora?”
The silver-haired boy wasn’t looking at his brunet companion. They were side by side, one sitting on a tree branch and the other standings with arms folded. Ahead, beautifully blue waves lapped against the sand. It was beautiful, both of them knew that — but, to be honest, the silver-haired boy didn’t know if it was beautiful because
he liked it, or because a certain other person liked it…
“Be… cause it’s my name?” Data-Sora grinned like he was waiting for a punchline.
Despite himself, Data-Riku chuckled a little at that. It was such a Sora thing to say. …Well,
his Sora. “It’s not your name.”
Sora (?) groaned and leaned back on the tree trunk, nearly tipping over backwards. “Oh, no, not this again.”
“I’m serious! Doesn’t it… bother you?” Normally, Data-Riku didn’t find himself at a loss for words. Actually, words were kind of all he was made of. So, then, why was he having trouble finding the right words now? “We met them once before — Sora and Riku. They both acted differently than you and I did, without question.”
Before that happened, neither of them had any real concept of Sora or Riku as entities, only a name with a list of traits. Sora (his Sora) took the role of the original, and he took on… well, maybe not the
role of the original Riku, except for the one part at the end which he was choosing not to think about. (Ever.) But, regardless, he had to have seen some sort of connection at the time. For example, there was— eh— the castle? The castle with bright white everything and illusions abound. In there, he and Data-Sora had shared a newly-discovered memory, he was pretty sure. They had shared a memory that wasn’t in Jiminy’s journal, but it still happened to the real Sora, Riku, and Kairi. The two of them talked about it. But they kept saying ‘you’ and ‘I’, like Data-Sora was the boy who traveled with Donald and Goofy and Data-Riku was the one lost to darkness.
Did it bother him at the time? He wasn’t completely sure, but it certainly bothered him now. The suddenly spotty recollection didn’t do anything to soothe his concerns, either.
“Well, that’s because…” At this, the brunet faltered. Neither of them were completely sure
why Sora and Riku had changed from their recollections. Even if they were a few years older, it didn’t matter; people didn’t just… up and change like that, did they?
…“You know what? You’re the journal here. There’s gotta be a reason why, hidden in the pages.”
The pages. Well, they were the culprits here, obviously. Every single fiber of their synthetic being came from the pages of Jiminy’s journal. Data-Riku remembered all of them perfectly (whether he wanted to or not), and Data-Sora had a pretty good memory, too. Surely, the answers had to be in there somewhere.
“You’re right,” he said, already thinking a hundred miles ahead of the conversation. “Hidden in the pages. It’s got to be hidden in the pages.” At that, Data-Riku pushed himself into a standing position, intending to open a data corridor back to the peculiar starry world he called himself — but he felt a tug on his arm, and stopped.
“Where ya goin’?” Data-Sora smiled then, and even if the smile wasn’t real, it sure was strong. “Wanna bring me?”
“…Oh, that’s right,” Data-Riku mumbled, more to himself than anyone else. Sora had said something about how he needed to stop trying to do everything on his own. “Alright, then,” he said, louder. “Let’s figure this out together.”
The brunet’s expression somehow became even
more joyous. “Yeah! Together!”
—
Shortly thereafter, the two AIs did something unprecedented. No one had booted them up for months, yet they were able to modify themselves: instead of lying in binary
sleep, they suddenly began to
dream.