There is going to be quite a bit of a time skip, but I do want to come back and write chapters of the missing time in the future. This chapter still happens in season 4. WARNING! There will be mentions of blood.

 In Joe's voice, "TIME SKIP"

~~~~~~~~~

Xisuma stared at the code in front of him. "Why can't I find a way to fix this stupid glitch?" X muttered under his breath. He rubbed his weary eyes. Silver let out a rumbling purr on his lap. 

She was curled up in a ball and peacefully sleeping. He pet her soft fur with his ungloved hand. He just wanted to curl up with her and sleep. Sleep. It sounded so wonderful right now. He could just close his eyes for a moment and let everything just drift away.  He shook himself awake. His body craved sleep, but that would have to wait. He needed to fix this glitch before it let something slip into the server. He didn't want any accidents happening. Not after last time.

His communicator buzzed. 

Doc: 'Hey, how are things going?'

X: 'I'm trying to fix a glitch, but I can't seem to find what caused it or how to fix it.'

Doc: 'Are we still going to meet up at noon?'

X: 'I thought we were doing that on Tuesday.'

Doc: 'X'

Doc: 'It is Tuesday.'

Xisuma stared at this blankly. It had already been three days? No wonder he was so tired. His communicator snapped him out of his thoughts.

Doc: 'I am heading over.'

X: 'No, it's all good. We can just meet up after I finish my work.'

Doc: 'I am coming over and there is nothing you can do to stop me. I know you don't care for yourself when you get wrapped up in your work.'

Xisuma looked back at the code. He needed to finish this before Doc got there. Last time Doc threatened to come over he had forced X into sleeping at least 8 hours before he let him go back to his work, and he doubted that this time was any different. Doc didn't understand how important this was.

He heard footsteps behind him. There is no way Doc got here that fast. X turned around. Staring at him was a armored man. His suit looked like Xisuma's but red replaced his green and purple and it appeared to be much more heavily armored. X blinked at the figure. 

This must be a hallucination. When Joe discovered one of his working sessions, he told him that is was possible for someone to hallucinate from lack of sleep, but that usually only happened after three nights. Wait, it had been three nights. Xisuma spun his chair back towards his work. "You are just seeing things," he told himself.

A sharp blade pressed against his unprotected neck. "Are you sure about that?" A voice asked. X froze. The voice sounded just like his own, albeit slightly distorted. Anxiety coursed through him. How is this possible?

Silver let out a protective hiss and the figure responded with a kick. Worry and rage flooded Xisuma as she hit the wall with a thud and then scampered off. "Don't you dare," he said through gritted teeth.

"Don't you dare," the voice mocked. "Don't worry, I won't touch your precious kitty. I'm not concerned about your pet, I want to hurt you where you will truly feel the meaning of pain. I want to hurt something else you care about." He paused. "Or should I say... someone else."

"You little..." The blade cut him off as it dug into his throat, letting a small trickle of blood flow down his neck.

"It would be a shame if I were to stain my new carpet, now would it. Your taste is, well questionable, but we wouldn't want to tip off any of the hermits. They can't know that you are gone. That would be rather unfortunate for them, I can't have anyone interfere with my plans." 

X swallowed. He didn't like where this was going. 

"Oh! Looks like Doc might be here soon. Time for you to disappear. It's my turn to play."

Everything went black.

~~~~~~~~~

Well... that happened. I wanted to write a nice chapter, but then I thought, where's the fun in that. I'm sorry this took so long. I got seriously stuck and school was going crazy. On another note, thank you CharoletteBuurn for coming up with Silver's name. Hopefully the next chapter will be out much sooner than this one. Thank you all so much for reading!

Don't follow Xisuma's example. Try to get some sleep.

-J