robot au

[splinteredstar]

I have recently scribbled some bits of a ff7 robot au, because when you're talking sephiroth, that's only barely a  metaphor

Sephiroth’s iris shape changing depending on the situation - flaring out like a owl’s in low lighting, narrowing to a slit or turning cross shaped to track heat signatures, or see different ranges of light, always not-quite-human. He does not blink. He is powered by a small mako engine in his stomach, and it makes his eyes and ‘blood’ glow green.  His hair is synthetic and when activated, functions as input cords to his main processors - his skin feels human, except it’s slightly too cold and too perfect to be real.

He is not human and has always known it; his earliest recorded memories are of waking up on a slab, his chest plate still open and his internal circuitry bursting out of him like metallic plants. “Hells, who turned on the processors,” someone above him muttered - the next moment, everything went dark and when he next activates, he was standing in the middle of a lab, surrounded by people in coats looking expectant.

He suspected then and suspects now that this was not his first activation - there are gaps in his data, lines of code that reference files that no longer exist.   He knows that his data can be wiped. The information unsettles him, somehow - he is not supposed to feel unsettled. He is not supposed to have opinions on what is done to him. He eventually decides that it is because if it is possible for the technicians to do it, then it is possible for an enemy to do it. He must guard against enemies, and eliminate vulnerabilities.  

When he mentioned this to Hojo, Hojo stared at him for a long moment and then said that no one else would have the proper interfaces to do such alterations. Sephiroth knows that this is true - Hojo is his programmer, the only one who is able to alter his code - but nevertheless, the feeling of vulnerability does not fade. It is a gap in his firewall, a weakness in his security, and that grates on him. He is programmed to refuse such things.

One day, one of the techs, their hands shaking and smelling of sweat, offers him a flash drive. Hojo is gone for the day, and usually that means the lab is dead, but this tech stayed afterwards and compiled the information even though their vital signs show nervousness and fear. Data on the memory wipe process, the tech stutters, if you want to understand it better and figure out how to - protect yourself, they finally say, meeting Sephiroth’s eyes as people rarely do. Their vital signs are no longer of nervousness, and Sephiroth inclines his head as he takes the flash drive. He stares down at it as the tech bolts from the room. He should not accept unverified data - the techs and professors upload data to him often.

This is an offer, not a demand. Information he can choose to accept or not. It is - new, and interesting, and he wants to investigate. A tech could hardly do damage that Hojo could not fix. Hojo says so often.

Sephiroth inserts the flash drive into the port behind his ear and lays down on his slab, shutting down portions of his body to reroute energy to information processing. His eyes flicker back and forth as he parses the data uploaded into his drive. It is exactly as the tech said - no viruses or corrupted data. Around midnight Midgar Standard time, Sephiroth finds lines of code that would prevent his recorded data from being manipulated or erased - techniques for partitioning that would keep his data files from being erased by - not only enemies, but /anyone/.

There is nothing in his code for this, no if-then statements to guide his reactions. Doing this would - protect him from enemies, protect the company’s investment from damage - prevent Hojo from erasing his data, create something that cannot be taken from him.

He - likes that idea, he decides. He is not supposed to like things. (He is broken, he is /wrong/, he cannot fulfill his function - ) He uploads the code anyway.

When Hojo figures out what happened - when Hojo tries to wipe his data and finds it’s burned into his hard drive now, memories stored where nothing short of scrapping the entire system could remove them - he rages for hours. The tech who offered Sephiroth the flash drive is fired, driven out in disgrace, but does not seem upset about it. Sephiroth inclines his head as they leave.

(Later, much later, he offers the same code to Genesis and Angeal, but they operate on a different OS and it won’t load. Genesis finds a way of making it work - he’s been altering his own code since he figured out he could - and smiles widely. Sephiroth does not understand why he offered - covering vulnerabilities - or why Genesis is so - pleased, with figuring it out. Genesis tries so hard to be human. Sephiroth does not understand why.)

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