Scene #5474: A Stilted Conversation

Owner	Pose
Septette Arcubielle	In ages past, this place was called as the fabled 'Drowned City'- the half of the great port of Armoroad that calved off from the surface long ago and fell beneath the waves, hidden from outside eyes for nearly a century. But to those who lived and died there, it was never drowned. All the world's oceans could never drown this place's indomitable spirit, nor hide its splendor. To them, it is and shall always be the Deep City, a shining jewel in the abyss. The Deep City holds many wonders, but the grandest of them are the immense magical dome of air that encompasses the city and the gargantuan tree that shrouds every building and street with the shade of its boughs. The dome of air has no name, for it is merely their sky; the tree is named Yggdrasil, and treated with reverence. It is almost as much a fungus in form as it is a tree: ruffled lappets and frills grow from its massive trunk that are sturdy enough to build houses of stone upon. On bright days, sunlight filters down through the waves to the city below, casting everything in shifting pale cerulean light as great ocean creatures brush past the protective bubble. But it is not by accident that Septette invites her guests here in the evening. Absent the light of the sun, wild bioluminescent moss gleams a gentle blue and magical lights bathe the city in a pale yellow glow like artificial fireflies, silhouetting each white-walled building in an artful dichromatic display against the darkened ocean in the distance. Perhaps some allegory can be found in the fact that the Deep City is at its most beautiful when deprived of even the surface's sun.
Septette Arcubielle	The path that Septette's directions describe leads on a short walk through bustling marketplaces, quiet residential roads, and colorful crowds to a cliff by the edge of the town. It looks more like some kind of undersea ridge than any kind of terrestrial architecture- but if Mei opts not to scale it with her gadgets, she'll notice a wide, winding staircase carved into the grey rock that tacks back and forth to provide safe passage up and down. At the top is a simple grassy meadow, nearly concealed from the town below, that comes right up to the very edge of the bubble. Beyond the bubble, of course, is only crushing water and the flat, silty abyssal plain- or is that the continental shelf?- stretching out into the murky distance. Of course, two things here are more eyecatching than the watery void, and serve as merciful diversions from the enormity of the bubble's scale: a cozy hand-built cabin of wood and stone with an acutely peaked roof, and a figure dressed in a hoodless lavender cloak perched at the cliff's edge, feet dangling off as she surveys the city below. She almost looks human, at a distance: a lightly tanned face that seems lively and expressive even in serenity, framed with long black hair. With the concealing shawl wrapped around her shoulders, her mechanical nature is given away only by her metallic, triangular ear-fins and softly glowing purple eyes. She seems not to notice Mei's approach, too lost in her own thoughts. But perhaps, given her precarious perch, it'd be best not to startle her...
Mei Hatsume	It's probably not too surprising that a new guest would be marveling at the sights laid out before her. Massive domes, oversized trees, spectacular fauna... No, what'd probably be more surprising that it's taking quite a while for anyone the show up! Even with the amazing people going about in Mei's home world, fantastic architectural and natural displays aren't the sort of thing she sees normally. She's stopping every few seconds to stare at things, take notes, and even activating her Quirk to look at things more closely despite being super far away! Eventually, however, she does finally come across the giant staircase and scales it like a normal person, largely due to being careful not to actually damage anything. Heroes have rules to follow in civilized society, regardless of whether she's in her own or someone else's! Eventually, however, she does finally spot a curious sight: A figure at the coordinates she's been given! A mysterious one, even, to which the inventor regards from afar with yet more use of her far-seeing power so as to make sure this person is indeed the one she's agreed to meet. "... Hmm. Hey there! Are you Miss Septette?" If her voice isn't familiar, the fact that she's carrying what could easily be mistaken for airplane luggage might be some clue.
Septette Arcubielle	One metallic ear-fin twitches and angles itself towards the sound milliseconds after Hatsume's first syllable leaves her lips, but when Septette turns her head to size up her visitor, it's with a deliberate delay to approximate human reaction and processing times. No need to risk unsettling her, after all! The android leans back from the ledge and pulls herself up on sharpened talon-like feet, closing one eye and stretching her back in an imitation of soreness. She's got that 'human' act down pat, if nothing else! Septette takes a few leisurely steps forward before slipping one arm out of her shawl and waving to Hatsume, preferring to close the distance first rather than shout back. With her supernaturally acute vision, the inventor would already be able to pick out some fascinating details- that arm has a kind of skin-tone exoskeleton over blackened matte inner workings, with a few subtly glowing components at the major joints. "In the flesh," she finally replies in an unmistakably synthetic voice, just a few paces away. Up close, Septette isn't a very imposing figure- she's barely five feet tall! "And even if you didn't look so much like an offworlder, the fact that you can't infer my name confidently would imply that you're Ms. Hatsume. Pleased to make your acquaintance." She extends one hand in greeting. Now that it's at rest, sharp details and sharper edges come into focus: the tan plating looks like an emulation of human skin in color and function, and the human skeleton in shape. Her fingers taper to knifelike blades on their inside curves, but the way they're held carefully tesselates the edges to avoid pressing them into Mei's skin if she shakes. Still, is that really safe...?
Mei Hatsume	Septette's timing with her turn is just right so Mei doesn't look perturbed by it, and it's entirely possible she didn't even notice anything off right away! GOOD JOB~ Besides, Mei's busy staring right at her and looking her over rapidly with the look of someone that's spotted something NEW AND SHINY. A broad grin crosses her face, and then the inventor is already approaching the Yggdroid rapidly. "There's that voice! It really does sound different in person, too... And making an entrance is only natural! I need to make sure my best side is showing to match my babies~" It's not too hard to tell that she's getting excited just to see Septette in action, but the inventor keeps herself calm enough to take Septette's odd hand and shake it while still managing to stare at it closely. "Very interesting... Ah! Yeah, it's a pleasure to meet you, too. Now, what...." Mei's starting to trip herself up some. All the amazing tech of Septette right in front of her, the otherworldly quality, the strange care she's showing in not lopping Mei's finger's off... "Where to start, where to start? Your make is superb... Who made you?"
Septette Arcubielle	"Does it really sound that different? I had no idea," Septette replies a little sheepishly, rubbing the back of her neck with one hand. It does, though: the slightly distorted audio of a radio connection doesn't do justice to how her voice is actually distorted, its warm and emotive tones marred by a raw synthetic burr that underscores her words like the vibrations of a cheap speaker. Her smile widens a little as she glances over Ms. Hatsume from head to toe, but looks with particular curiosity at the luggage she's carrying! "Your 'babies', hm? I still look forward to a demonstration... but come inside, come inside. It's a little chilly out tonight, and there's nothing in there that'd be broken by a misfiring jet-boot." With that, Septette turns on her heel and opens the door to her little house, beckoning Mei inside. The foyer is nothing remarkable, though it is well-lit and toasty, but the android ushers her guest into the living room before long, where a teapot and empty cups are already waiting! Then she pours some inky-black tea into a pair of cups with remarkably delicate dexterity. After a moment, little pinpricks of light appear in the tea- it looks almost like the night sky, with a bit of imagination. "You're asking questions with complicated answers already," she says with a wry shake of her head, finally addressing Mei's query now that she's settled in on a comfy-looking chair. "Suffice it to say: my inventor was far ahead of their time, but they're gone now, and all of their other sapient creations are destroyed. It's been two hundred years since I've had decent maintenance or repairs, as this world's tech has yet to catch up, but I make due with what I can salvage from their other inventions. In a 'Ship of Theseus' sense, I suppose you could say that I'm mostly self-built at this point." That makes a surprising amount of sense. Despite how stunning and civilized the Deep City appears, it didn't contain anything else as advanced as Septette seems! And on closer inspection, her arms look stripped-down and barebones, like there used to be more there... "So tell me," she says, setting down her teacup, "what did you bring for me to look at today? I'd rather not give away all of my secrets before seeing a few of yours!"
Mei Hatsume	"Oh, it's not a bad thing. A filter might help!" Mei suggests with that same broad grin, her expression only widening when Septette mentions her babies. "In due time! And you don't have to worry about any misfire. I've tested most of these plenty before even coming here." Most is good enough, right? Right. Once they're inside, Mei does that thing she's rather good at: Getting distracted by the stuff around her! Even if it's not a particularly fancy home, that doesn't mean she won't still gawk at Septette's sense of decor. % At least she has enough sense to take a seat. "I see, I see... Advanced AI /and/ self-repairing? So this is where technology could go with enough time..." She strokes her chin lightly while taking those goggles off, then shakes her head a bit to let that mess of pink on her head breathe some more. "Hmm.. Fair's fair. Alright! So the first thing I want to see is a little more on the brute force side of things..." She pauses for dramatic effect, tipping her luggage over and opening it in a swift motion that's clearly been practiced way too much. Out comes... A weird-looking hip harness thing! "Hydraulic bars! Perfect for evading attacks even from behind~ I've modified these to be strong enough to move a car, although..." Mei leans over to peer at Septette's hips. Legs? "... How sturdy are you? The modifications were tuned for someone much heavier than myself, but if you think you can handle it, we can test this one along with...!" Another pause, another pull from the luggage, and out comes a pair of odd boots that look similar to (and considerably larger than) Mei's oversized ones. "Hover soles! These probably won't break anything, but the charge isn't great on these yet.
Septette Arcubielle	"'Self-repair' is a little too forgiving a term," Septette responds, covering her mouth with one hand and giggling softly. "I do it with tools and spare parts like anybody else- it's not a 'metal in, replacement parts out' deal." Then, a little more seriously: "There's a reason the others didn't make it, you know. We were built to take hits, sure, but not to last." "Hydraulic bars," she marvels, looking over the girdle-like contraption. "So those are meant for evasion via sudden kinetic displacement... seems quite handy. I've used similar techniques with my integral blades before-" she partially unfolds some horrible bladed contraption from her forearm, then retracts it- "but they're not designed specifically for that purpose, so it ends up being a little clumsy. Hmm..." She pulls herself to her feet, making the floor creak a bit, and slips out of her cloak. The rest of her body looks rather like one might expect, after seeing her arms: a tan shell reminiscent of a human skeleton overlying complex black machinery, with scattered glowing parts. A bared 'spine' leads up to an open ribcage protecting a glowing red core along with other vital-looking components. On closer inspection, though, Mei's keen eyes and mechanical expertise would begin to pick up... oddities. The first is that Septette's design consists almost wholly of different types of parallel, redundant motor systems: hydraulics, tension wires, servomotors, and stranger systems still, all working in concert to keep her body moving even if multiple failures occur. The second is that, even with that staggering redundancy, she shouldn't even be standing. There are dozens of places where mechanical failures are subtly apparent: gears catch and grind against one another, glowing crystals flicker slightly, and portions of her hydraulic 'muscles' are drained of fluid. But even where the failing machinery ought to seize a joint in place, she moves unhindered, as if possessed by some animating force to which the machinery is only secondary. Finally, she fastens the hydraulic bars on her waist and nods confidently. "I'm fairly sturdy, Ms. Hatsume. Certainly moreso than an ordinary person." Come to think of it- didn't she say she weighs a ton? With her short, petite construction, she'd need to be denser than depleted uranium for that to be true! "How do I activate these, exactly...?"
Mei Hatsume	As Septette reveals the reasoning behind the lack of others like her, Mei actually gains something resembling a frown. She even scoffs after that last part! "That's such a waste... All this amazing technology, so much development for something that they probably wanted to protect them, and they didn't even make sure you could last...?" She actually sounds somewhat peeved by that. It wears off rather quickly, though, once Septette eyes her hydraulic bars (and Mei catches sight of Septette's arm blades). "Ah, for a quick attack even if you don't have much space to swings your arms? Do you have anything that could come straight out, too?" She gestures at her palms, then pantomimes something coming out of it. "For extremely narrow spaces? I've got the wire arrows, but-Oh!" Mei leans over to start helping Septette with fitting the girdle/harness properly, although it's quite easy to tell that she's letting her eyes and hands wander a bit. "Oh, this is impressive... Even if that breaks... And if that parts just gets stuck... Eh?" She sounds confused as she starts to notice the oddities and things that should be impossible, peering closer at those joints before remembering that she's supposed to be making sure the harness is on right. "Anyway! If the sensors are all working, then just swing your hips as if you're trying to jump without moving your legs. It'll propel you in that direction if the bars don't break first!" For better or for worse, the inventor probably hasn't quite worked with enough deplated uranium to get quite THAT far in her analysis. "I could also swing or shoot something at you, but... Ah, we can test that afterwards if you want to see how my baby works on its own~"
Septette Arcubielle	"You could think of it as a waste," she replies, mirroring Mei's partial frown. "I sure do. But Yggdrasil saw it differently. It didn't think like a person, you understand. Our purpose was to fight a war- sapience was a useful tool to that goal, and nothing else. So what if we were always going to fall apart without its repair facilities? As long as that didn't happen until after the end of the war, Yggdrasil didn't care." She emulates a sigh- her hollow ribcage even expands and contracts in an imitation of breath- and shakes her head as if to clear her thoughts, standing still to let Mei fasten the harness. "Enough with those old stories," she says in a soft and tired voice. "You're not here to hear of what I was, but to see what I am. Enough people have wasted ink on that story for me to not waste breath. And as for extreme close quarters- I don't have anything quite like that, but the assumption is that if I'm able to effectively grapple with something, the fight's already over." The way her limbs move is fascinating- each motor system takes the strain off of the others, but she could probably exert a frightening amount of force if they were all used at once, given that just one seems to be enough to move her heavy frame as easily as if it were flesh and bone. But in those places where she shouldn't be able to move, where the machinery has been broken or pruned away, the air over her joints ripples and shifts subtly as if perturbed by an invisible force. It's not just a trick of the light; something is keeping her moving even in the absence of functional components. "Swing my hips, huh..." She repeats after Mei, looking a little bit nervous as the last touches are put on the harness. She takes one step back, away from the tea set, and gives it a try... and extending rods come out of the harness, lifting her a bit into the air! "Oh! Ahaha, this is great!" Her expression lights up with genuine childlike glee... then she kicks her legs, and scrunches up her face a bit. "Ah. Er. How do I get back down, Ms. Hatsume?"
Mei Hatsume	@emit "It's still a shame. Expendable tools like smoke bombs and spills are one thing, but for a full package like yourself and the others..." Mei shakes her head quickly, then returns to her usual focused and vaguely bug-eyed grinning expression while nodding in agreement with the Yggdroid. "Right! THe important thing is you're here now, so... Close range? Interesting... Although I guess that makes sense with how solidly you're built. Hm..." It's clear that the gears are already turning in Mei's head as she steps back to watch Septette in motion, the oddness of it all bewildering her quite a bit. She claps her hands together when the bars push out and manage NOT to snap even under Septette's weight! They do creak just a bit, though, so it's probably a good opportunity to instruct her further. "I don't do much with direct attacks, but maybe... Do you have any sort of non-lethal subjugation tools? Like tasers or wires, perhaps?" The gears are turning further! And then she ponders when SEptette brings up an important point. "Getting down? Aah, right! Just... Clench?" Mei strokes her chin lightly while circling Septette, peering at her from MULTIPLE ANGLES to try and get a beter look at her from behind. "... Do you have anything /to/ clench?" This could be a problem.
Septette Arcubielle	Skeins of piano-wire tendons tense and slacken, hydraulic muscles shift, and glowing gemstones pulse faintly as Septette tries in vain to signal the hydraulic bars to retract. She lazily bends her spine backwards at the waist, hinging it it ways that would be near-impossible for human flexibility, to face Mei upside-down even as the inventor circles her like a shark. Her long, straight hair nearly brushes the floor, but she doesn't seem to mind the vertigo-inducing posture! "Primarily close-range, but I can do some work at longer distances," she replies cheerfully. "Nothing strictly nonlethal- that could be really useful!- but I've got some less-than-lethal stuff, if it's called for." There aren't any obvious projectile weapons built into her body, but she twists her hand so that it's palm-up relative to the floor and curls her fingers. "Here- watch this." A blue glow envelops her fingertips, and a geometric prism of ice materializes above her palm, spinning lazily. A little spark of light glows within the prism, expanding to melt it down to steam in under a second, and settles into a guttering candle-like flame. Then the flame flickers, turns into a flickering bluish spark, and flows back into her hand with a smell like ozone. "Basic elemental magic! Some human mages are more dedicated to the art than I am, but unlike them, I don't get tired! If I can cast a spell once, I can cast it a hundred times, so it's very reliable." As if on cue, her wriggling finally causes the hydraulic bars to retract- while she's suspended upside-down! With an almost deafening crunch, she lands on her face on the hard stone floor... and little spiderwebbing cracks run through the stone. "I'm okaaaay," she says in a slightly muffled tone, and rolls forward before sitting up and shaking her head. One of her metal ear-fins is a little bent, but everything else seems in order. "I'll keep that particular movement in mind. Sorry for my clumsiness... the invention itself is pretty impressive, you know!"
Mei Hatsume	It's only when Septette tries to get the bars to retract without quite tensing the way Mei was expecting that the inventor finally recalls... She had something prepared for this, didn't she? Too bad she left it at home. "Right! Syncing your signals to the gear directly... Ah, I'll have to get that prepared for next time." Next time? Is she inviting herself over again? Or is that an invitation to Septette herself? Whichever the case is, she seems more curious than ever as the Yggdroid literally bends over backwards to face her! "So you can do this, too? Very interesting... So that's why you weren't so worried about the hips!" Mei sounds just as proud as ever about that, then rests her hands on her hips with yet another confident grin. "If we ever work together, maybe you could give the wire arrows a shot! Combined with..." She pauses to watch the display of elemental magic, staring intently at Septette's hands as the ice turns to flame which turns to a spark. "... Magic? Afraid I don't have anything like that, but if I.. Ah, yes, yes!" Mei retreats briefly to pull out a notebook, scribbling in it rapidly and only looking up when she catches movement from the corner of her eye. She cringes at Septette's awkward dismount, setting the book aside before hurrying over to try helping her up. "Whoops! Ahah... Sorry about that. Next time, I'll have something prepared so you can control the bars directly. Then you'll be able to avoid taking damage instead of just toughing it out!" Determination flares in Mei's eyes even as she moves to check the ear fin, squinting at it and grasping at her luggage case idly. "... We should probably get this fixed first, though."
Septette Arcubielle	"Next time, huh?" Septette's hair straightens itself out, fine synthetic filaments sweeping back over her shoulders as she pulls herself back to her feet from her undignified position. "I'd appreciate a 'next time'. You seem exactly like the kind of person I could spend hours talking to," she adds with a warm smile. "Even moreso if you bring more of your gadgets... you've got me curious about these 'wire arrows'." Her fingers come up to brush against the bent ear-fin, and her smile transmutes to a slightly concerned frown. "Yeah, that's not ideal. Shouldn't be too hard to just bend it back into shape, but... show me how you fix things, won't you?" Come to think of it... if Septette's reflexes are so sharp, why didn't she just break her own fall with her arms or something? Unless sustaining cosmetic damage was a convenient excuse to get to see more of Mei's handiwork... "I may not feel pain the same way you do, but I still think that'd be very handy. Not everything that breaks can be fixed, and less damage means less down-time, right?" Septette pulls a chair next to Mei's luggage and sits down in it, crossing her legs and leaning back. The chair's frame is subtly reinforced with metal, Mei might notice- all of the furniture here is. Probably to make sure that they don't collapse when the android flops on them! "And as for directly controlling a harness," she concludes, "I can manage something like that. I'm built as a 'black box'- nothing can directly interface with my consciousness going in except for sanitized sensory inputs, as a safety precaution, so it can't directly feed me data unless it goes into a normal visual display or something. But I should still be able to interface with it through arcane or electrical signals." That's a pretty unusual design for an AI... wouldn't it also imply she's locked to one body?
Mei Hatsume	"Really? That's great! With enough time, we could figure out all sorts of support gear that coudl be used on Heroes with non-standard anatomy..." There's an odd glint in Mei's eyes as she says that, the telltale look of a mad scientist already planning the next twenty steps of their next creation. Septette asking about the wire arrows only intensifies that expression, and Mei pats the belt-like thing around her midsection to gesture at the two holes on each side. "This...! This, I'll show off next time. I can't spoil all the surprises until I'm really in action~ Besides. We need to focus on..." She taps on the ear-fin gently, then digs around in her luggage before pulling out a toolbox. How did she even fit that in there with everything else?! Luggage tetris, apparently. She doesn't seem to have figured out that little discrepancy about Septette's reflexes and the fall, though, or perhaps she just doesn't mind. Whatever the case is, she starts getting to work! Mei's rather careful about it, too, trying not to jerk Septette's head around too much in favor of just standing and leaning around. Exaggeratedly so, even, since... Who's ever heard of a robot with HAIR? How curious. "Treating the symptoms only goes so far. If you can treat the cause instead, then you never have to worry about the symptoms taking you out of commission later." Mei chuckles softly at that, squinting for a moment before resuming work. There's a wrench involved, but she's using it mostly to squeeze rather than twist or pull. She's deliberately avoiding any hammer use for some reason, too. "Controlling it directly could work. These can work by predicting the user's movements and by reacting to their brainwaves, so as long as you can send signals out..." A pause, a tilt of the head, and then another grunt of effort. "... It should work more or less the same way after some testing. You'd just need to be careful not to aim the bars at anyone."
Septette Arcubielle	The metal belt elicits a curious stare from Septette- at least, as much of a stare she can manage without turning her head! It just wouldn't do to jostle Mei when she's doing delicate adjustments like this, now that she's been accosted by the toolbox-wielding inventor. "Wow... you can fit weapons in there? That's pretty fascinating- I bet you could do all sorts of covert things with that, with a few adjustments to the design." She grins slyly, confiding: "I'm not exactly great at the 'quiet' stuff, myself. So maybe I'm easily impressed in that regard." Now that she's trying to hold still for the repairs, it becomes obvious by sharp contrast to her prior demeanor just how much effort the Yggdroid was making to seem lifelike. Her hollow ribcage halts its subtle flow of expansion and contraction; her limbs stop their restless fidgeting; even her eyes lose their lively, twitchy saccades, holding their positions steadily in case Mei wants to take a closer look at their workings. "Or be very careful to aim the hydraulic bars at people I don't like, right?" She laughs cheerfully, sounding perhaps a little too perky for the subject matter. "Er, are you trying to be gentle with me? You don't really need to be delicate. Even if you do break something on accident, it's not really like I'm going to complain, is it? Pain isn't a useful feeling for a robot like me to have..." The repairs are easy- unusually so, for working on something so unfamiliar and sophisticated. All that Mei really has to do is get the ear 'close enough' to its original state, and some peculiar yet subtle magic fills in the details, smoothing over hairline cracks and bending the contours back to match its mirror image on the other side of her head- using, she might note, the same visual distortion that surrounds some of her joints. Perhaps that's the same "animating force" that keeps her intact?
Mei Hatsume	"Weapons? No, no, the wire arrows are for movement! Primarily, anyway." Mei glances at her sides, then lifts one of her giant booted feet up to tap it against the floor for emphasis. "I'll show these off another time, but they work together for some cool movement tricks! In theory, though... It could work!" That has Mei thinking. Not for very long, though, before she shrugs and gets back to the repairs. Of course, being so close to Septette again means she can RESUME INVESTIGATIONS. The lack of human subtleties like breathing and blinking doesn't bother the inventor as much as it would anyone else, although it does make her glance over at the Yggdroid's face every now and then just to make sure she's still awake. "Eh? You could, but then that'd risk seriously injuring someone. Plus, aiming it would be tricky since you'd have to aim your hips sideways at them." Despite the serious tone in Mei's voice, the mental image has her laughing and even wiggling her own hips to demonstrate! "Hmm... If I had made you, sure, I'd be a little faster. I'd know your limits, what you can take, your weak points! But since I'm working with someone else's tech..." A pause, then Mei actually puts some more force into the finishing touches before stepping back. "And that's the best I can do here. The cracks will-" And then the cracks fix themselves... Somehow. "... Would take some materials I don't have on me, but... Hey, what /does/ make you work, anyway? Repairing like that, working joints that look like they shouldn't... Is this more magic, or something else?"
Septette Arcubielle	"Oooh... so like pitons or grappling hooks, maybe? Man, between those, your boots, the hydraulic bars... you must be pretty slippery where you want to," she says with a playful smile. Her jovial demeanor erupts into outright laughter at the comical 'demonstration' of attacking with the hydraulic bars, though! For a moment, she slouches forward, chest heaving in an imitation of uncontrollable giggling- then, slowly, she settles back into the chair and slips into her impassively still posture for ease of repairs again. "I don't fully understand what I can take, either," she responds. "Each of us was made differently, with different tolerances- and we were all made to self-optimize through experience and rebuilding. So I don't really know my own limits, precisely- they seem to change almost from day to day. I just know that they're somewhere north of 'accidentally bonked with a wrench'," Septette concludes with a rather wry tone. "After all this, that's not gonna be what ends up on my tombstone." The very second that her ear is fixed, the imitation of life flows back into Septette's limbs- all the little habits and tics that conspire to lend her a warm and reassuring presence resume at once in a stark revival. She pulls herself up from her chair and tests her ear, flicking it this way and that, but seems to find it to her liking! "Oooh, there you go with the hard questions. Let's see..." She bites her lower lip for a moment, looking for a good way to explain. "It's like this. The core in my chest produces magical energy. That energy is used to power my systems, as well as to maintain enchantments that are 'programmed' into the materials that make up my body. Those enchantments enhance the materials, and keep them in something like their 'ideal state'- it doesn't heal acute damage or create matter from nothing, but it can prevent wear-and-tear or correct minor imperfections." Then she holds out her arm, shuts down the motor systems in it- even the glowing components go dark- and wriggles her fingers anyway. "As a side-effect, it can move my body directly, if it's not too damaged. Sort of like if I were a possessed suit of armor, or an enchanted doll. Does that make sense? I know it's kind of weird and elaborate, but..." She laughs nervously, rubbing the back of her neck again. "Well, a lot of things Yggdrasil did were weird and elaborate."
Mei Hatsume	"Exactly! My Quirk's not as strong as a lot of other people's, and direct combat skill only goes so far without something special to back it up. Sooooo..." Mei straightens up to rests her hands on her hips, wriggling the hydraulic bars' harness as well as patting the metal belt thing. "With these, I can help my stronger allies or keep Villains occupied while help arrives!" And then she gets back to work with that same focus as before. "Sounds... Hm. An evolving machine would have been impossible decades ago, but... No, I could see it working even in my world, so I don't see why it couldn't work in yours, too." Once Septette's springing back to life, Mei lets out a satisfied sigh before settling back onto a chair of her own. She listens to the Yggdroid's explanation of her inner working closely, furrowing her brow curiously once more. "That sounds super convenient... And it explains how you're still working without your creator. Even my gear needs replacing and tweaking from time to time." A tap to her giant boots, and Mei starts stroking her chin. "There's definitely a lot I can learn from all this... I don't know what I'll be able to use, but I won't find out unless I try!"
Septette Arcubielle	"You mean your special talent isn't making amazing gadgets? You easily could've fooled me," Septette replies, eyeing the inventor up and down with something that looks like renewed appreciation. "You're, what, sixteen? Seventeen? And you're already building jet-boots and extendo-stilts of your own design. That's pretty incredible, you know- I don't care if it's not what you're 'supposed' to be good at." She claps one hand on Mei's shoulder- gently, as always- and nods emphatically. "You're going places." "'Evolving machine' is a good way of putting it, though," she says, looking thoughtful for a moment. "The enchantments could optimize themselves in response to new stimuli, and eventually lead to physical improvements over time. But I think I hit the edge of that envelope a long time ago. Sharply diminishing returns. It should be possible elsewhere, even if not through the same means." She holds up her other arm and carefully angles it away from Mei, then extends a long, curved blade from her forearm that seems like it's just slightly too large to have ever folded away inside her limb! "If you're looking for something to inspire you, though- you might go with this sort of limb-mounted weapon? Or- hm, no, that might not be any good." She frowns, tapping her chin. "Or the idea of using redundant motor systems to grant increased strength. Maybe you could make that into an exoskeleton for someone to wear, yeah?"