Scene #5945: A Inquiry to a Colleague

Owner	Pose
A2	After the Maslow Peak incident came to to its ultimate conclusion, everyone involved had taken their leave pretty quickly. There was no reason to stick around on a steep, windy, treacherous mountain, wracked by psychic lightning storms and covered in dense, spooky forests filled with hostile, also-psychic wildlife, as well as the crumbling ruins of dubious 1950s superscience facilities altogether like something out of a comic book. With the ultimate mystery revealed, the 'Ghost' dealt with, and August's Shadow on the run, there is no real reason to stay, but then there are those who don't have any reason to go anywhere else either. A2 hadn't left the site. At least, she hadn't strayed far from it. For the past couple of days, she has wandered the subterranean tunnels and dark forests, aimlessly hunting down the remaining Cold Readers and smashing any remains, as well as functioning computers, she can find, scavenging odd parts here and there, but ultimately without her heart in much of anything. Without the ghostly presence, there isn't much left of interest here, and so she finds herself predominantly wandering in circles and replaying the events that had lead up to this over and over again in her memory, thinking too hard about what should have happened, what she could have done instead, and what it all means. By sunset, she ends up wandering back to the cabin they had started this from, low on the mountain, with its timeshare resident having departed, but not even bothering to venture inside. Rather, she slumps on the front steps with the back of her head against the closed door, one foot up on the porch, and her arm looped loosely around her sword, staring blankly up at the sky, waiting for the stars to come out.
Azure Armature	Azure Armature did not participate in the Maslow Peak incident, nor did she understand the full depths of what transpired there. The spooky forests held no lingering sentimentality, nor did the crumbling ruins hide the figments of imagination or terror in shadow. It was just a place, like any other. A cabin in the woods, that was all it was. The subtle energy signature of Armature's transmaterialization system whispered in the wind down the hill a short ways, and out of the snow did trudge the Alchemical, into view. Her pace was fit for conversation, boots crunching in the half-frozen pack atop the path and her arctic digital camouflage clothes dappled in white flecks of snow. As she approaches, openly, she pulls down her scarf and a puff of heated breath. "A2. I had thought to continue our conversation, but you are not the easiest to pin down and find." There's the hint of a wink, and a knowing smile comes and goes on the Alchemical's face, before she continues. "Is this your method of meditation, then? We were interrupted, before, on the radio."
A2	There is only so stealthy that boots crunching in snow can be. A2 takes it to mean that someone tromping up the frigid, winding pathway isn't even trying to be. She catches wind of Azure Armature very early, but doesn't move from her spot, expecting that anyone who meant to pick a fight wouldn't walk right up to her as if asking to be found, and soon enough, she is proven right. In opposite to how Azure Armature is dressed for the occasion, A2 couldn't be any less fitting, as she usually is. There is the matter of wearing effectively half of a set of clothes, and high heels for mountain terrain, but frankly, the most uncanny thing about her is the subtle but increasingly noticeable lack of fog issuing from her lips with each exhalation, especially in this temperature. It's not as if she's trying to pass, however. Her arms and legs are still in that variegated state of breakdown that starts from the most frequently used extremities and works its way inwards, along with the burns and abrasions elsewhere, including one that marks her otherwise doll-like face across the bridge of the nose. She only rolls her head slowly in the Alchemical's direction once she hears her voice, her hair crackling slightly with frost where it had settled on the wood, and then leans from backward to forward, stabbing her oddly shaped blade into the hard-packed dirt. "Habit." she says laconically, having the voice of someone burnt out and spent despite spending hours just sitting around. "Meditation is . . . a word for it." she continues, subtly looking Azure up and down with an eerie lack of impression that she really sees her. "If it's just you, I don't mind. It didn't sound like it was that important before."
Azure Armature	Armature was not trying to be stealthy, because stealth was not always the most diplomatic way to approach a situation. Starting from a ways out, tromping up deliberately... It was how a hunter normalized their presence in the wild, presenting themselves with a measured pace, a lack of sudden motions, a gait as if they belong. As if all is well. So as to not cause the feeling of being cornered, of being under attack. Of course, A2 was not a cornered animal, even if she fought like one. And she wasn't so foolish as to think that 'Blue' lacked weapons or ability to use them. The operative wore fangs of steel and claws of tungsten, honed not by biology but but by craft. She stopped some few steps away from A2, looking down with some interest upon the laconic motions and the frozen-over hair, withdrawing a strange metallic cylinder with one tapered end and -- ok, it's a weird metal cigar. It is not until she speaks that her breath fogs the air anew. "Of course. I had thought we were colleagues of a sort, and wished to share a more... tailored approach to the practice. One I found more helpful than..." There's that gravelly, emotive sigh that she had used many times before, her shoulders falling. "Attempting to empty one's mind. It doesn't work for me, but there is a point to meditative optimization. Of self-care in a mental way. Are you interested in hearing it?"
A2	"Colleagues." A2 repeats the word without recognizable intonation or inflection. "I guess. More than some others." She stares flatly at Azure lighting up, and then just blankly asks. "The hell is that?" gesturing just barely with one hand. Her right index finger briefly hitches in the motion, due to some part or another in need of replacement, apparently not built with longevity in mind. "I'm sure there's a point to a lot of things. I just haven't been a part of any of them. My 'jungian identity' hasn't exploded out of my head and run away to kill people yet, so I must be doing something right." she says, a little too drily to come off as self-effacing. "Don't get it wrong though. There are times I'd kill to be able to just stop thinking for a second."
Azure Armature	Armature pulls the cylinder from her lips after a few moments, smoke curling around her mouth before she blows the smoke courteously away from A2. "Plant-based stimulants and the like. A habit from a... previous life. It is centering, in some ways." She holds the future-cigar pinched with thumb, middle, and ring fingers, holding it loosely at her side as she move to sit crosslegged - not in a full lotus, in the more natural 'actual basic crosslegged' in the snow with a deep crunch under her from the snow packing down. "Would your identity, jungian or otherwise, threaten yourself or others without your will? Is that a concern? Perhaps the technique is more useful to you than others, in that case." She takes another draw, tilting her head as she visually 'thinks'. "Meditation, to me, is optimization. A mental inventory-taking, no Process or expenditure of magic quintessence. In fact, those are the sorts of things that take away from the effect. To think of oneself - or to be - a machine, a tool, and to maintain it mentally. Like a polishing cloth, an abrasive to scour away rust and reveal useful or usable space." Armature speaks, the smoke sort of just lingering around her mouth, pushed out by her words like a caldera's opening. "It is useful to hold a grudge, to maintain a mental ledger of pains and even score oneself with marks to remember particularly important lessons - but they have to serve a purpose - your purposes. Do you do anything similar? Sharpening yourself?"
A2	"How the hell should I know. I barely understand anything about humans as it is, never mind whatever the hell is wrong with that one." A2 responds, not needing to name names. "What even is identity, anyway? If it's who we are, then my identity has threatened me since the day I was created. If it's what we want and what we think, then it threatens other people less than I want." She doesn't move, or make any moves from her spot, but the Alchemical would be able to pick up on the previously non-present tension after the words 'past life'. "If you have to stop to think about yourself as a tool . . . I think I'm used to other people thinking of me as one." says A2. Then, quite abruptly, she takes a long, long pause. The simulated motion of her chest rising and falling ceases completely, and her blinking stops to follow suit. She stares into the near distance, frost forming on her eyelashes, leaning on that sword which is so much better maintained than she is; a spotless and gleaming weapon juxtaposed to her body's artificial tapestry of scars upon scars. When she replies, she isn't even looking at Azure Armature, but some space between them. "Do I look sharp, to you? I'm already junk. I rust from sitting still. I fight. I kill. I break. I fix myself, and I keep fighting. That pain alone proves that I'm alive." "Useful space? There's nothing but space in here. I don't need to do anything special to remind myself of that emptiness. Purpose, if you really wanna to call it that, I don't have it. There's no point to my existing. If I look inwards, all I see are the things I used to have and used to care about, so I try not to. Nothing gets done until I grind against it, until either it breaks or I do. No matter how you look at it, if you take away those grudges and those scars, there's nothing else to put there anyway." "Save it for people who still have the things they care about in this world."
Azure Armature	"Identity is many things. But to me, identity is goals. Identity is motivation, it's what you accomplish or intend to accomplish. Grudges, missions, goals, plans. It's an identity. Other colleagues of mine would call identity the people you raise up, or identity the ideal you enforce. To me, it's the bottom line and the numbering of the objectives. The priorities. The personal needs or hangups in a mission planning session. What you demand - and what you don't." Her left hand, gloved, moves under her poncho, and there's a notable tug as she draws one of her knives, drawing it out into the cold winter light of the cabin by the woods. Her right hand, ungloved, moves to a pouch to withdraw a cloth, and she holds both up, largely by thumb and index, the other fingers fanned out disarmingly. "The self." She jangles the knife. "And the process of refinement." She waggles the cloth. "You keep your weapons well - the edge is perfect, though you carve and hack your way through so many. Care goes into it. It is a tool. So, too, is identity. It is the tool of the self, the blade of 'you'." Her fingers close around the knife slowlt, holding the blade horizontally, edge 'in'. "I don't mean that I think of myself as a tool specifically. There are moments that I am, and moments that I am not. Contexts, and relationships. I meant that identity - my identity - is a tool. And maintenance of tools, proper care and use, is one of the highest virtues someone can have. Wastrels and fools, those who do not lack outwardly, never learn it." She begins using her 'bare' thumb, a loop of cloth curled into it, along the edge of her knife. "Useful space can be empty. Unburdened. Even the most powerful systems have constraints somewhere - a give and take." "I serve a purpose, a people, a mission." Her fingers work, each major word gaining one shhhhhhhnk of cloth along edge. Purposeshhhhhnk. Peopleshhhhhhnk. Missionshhhhhhhnk. "Why?" She pauses, for effect. "Because I was made-" Shhhnk. "-for it. Because it matters-" Shhhhn. "-for the maintenance of the society I live in." "Each hesitance, or each thought, should have a question, and an answer. A refinement of the edge, a definite response. If I can't answer, I go back, and question that thought. Is it really what is important? Do I hold onto that? Have I forgotten the reason?" She reverses the grip on the knife, holding it edge-down by the blade, offering handle to A2, her other hand more simply proffering the cloth. "Simple and direct. Nuance has a place, but the subtleties of the tongue and the written word lack the agility, the directness, and the consistency of a well-hewn path, a well-oiled holster, or a well-straightened edge." "That would be the rust I speak of - and the energy, what there is to reclaim. My meditation is a refinement, a crucible, a cloth along an edge. The rust, the chipped or bent edge... That is the uncertainty, the pain without a wound, the grudge without a reason." Armature smiles, just a bit, her cigar-cylinder having been pocketed sometime during the demonstration, her breath misting without the herbal smoke she had been enjoying. "I have saved it for someone who cares about quite a bit. Drive and passion have a root, though it could be not for something in this world, that is fair."
A2	"Then if my identity broke free, I doubt it'd be any different. That is, unless my identity by itself could come up with some new ideas." A2 continues after a long break, her tone flat, even, steady, and tired. "I know what it is that I need to do. I know myself. There's just . . . only so much I can do. I don't think it has any meaning, but it's what I intend to do anyway. I guess you could call that part of identity." Her eyes, that odd translucent lavender, finally travel down to her Type-4O blade, her palm resting on the butt of its handle. She glances over the incredibly technical and complex weapon, tuned and mirror finished, and then to her worn and abraded hands, little more than black rubber beneath once-skin covered in so much wear that the knuckle mechanisms are going to show soon. The difference between the care she shows for her sword, and the care she shows for herself, doesn't seem to register behind those eyes. "A tool isn't any good if you don't know how to use it. Or where to use it. I tried it. It's not hesitation. I think. It's . . ." A2 looks up from her own weapon to the simple knife, very slowly reaching out to take it in one hand, and the cloth in the other, with the slightly audible stuttering of a ground down motor. "Maybe it is. How should I know. I can act on what I know and what I feel as much as I want. I can kill who I know needs to die. I can fight those battles I'm sure need to be fought. In the end though . . ." A2 only stares at the knife and cloth in her fingers, her voice having become stone dead, scorched bare, and utterly hollow. "It won't bring them back. I can wash away betrayal with blood, I can kill the ones who manipulated and murdered them, and I can take responsibility for failing them, but I can't put their souls to rest. I don't know if it's outside my reach, or if I just don't know how, but I can't die until I do that much."
Azure Armature	Armature's hands fall as she listens, not speaking. Without something to occupy them, they rest idle, her fingers loose around nothing at all, her forearms resting in her lap. "You can finish the mission, obviously." Her voice comes, soft and understanding. "But what after? Sometimes, it's a matter of finding something. Unworked metal, or even scrap. The sort that is deep within, burnt and rusted, torn apart. Consumed in the fires of passion, or discarded in the moment..." Armature's eyes cast down, at the exposing knucles, and the gentle grind of the motor. "You won't finish the mission like that. I can provide rudimentary repairs to your frame, and with a period to gather materials, at least clear up the major misalignments. If you wish it. But first, I must be honest." Armature closes her eyes, which audibly 'click' a few times. "My true name is not 'Blue', but Azure Armature. I was created by, and serve, the people of Estasia, wihthin the Great Maker Authocthon - humans, by your reckoning. And I, a 'machine', or 'android', created by the infusion of magical clay and augmentations with a proven soul, to create a champion. I hold honorary - but not actual - rank within the Tripartite, and act on missions at the behest of that council." Her skin pales slightly, revealing the 'airbrushed with blue glitter' effect, the lines on her face, and the heavy augmetics in her right arm and hand. Her eyes, when they open, glow with an quiet internal light and are clearly cybernetic, concentric circles that whirr and adjust the mechanical irises and aperatures as she focuses on A2. "The situation - your situation - is familiar to me. The arrangement is not wholly different between Champions and YoRHa, on a very basic sense. What you've uncovered about the YoRHa units has set them apart, though, in my mind. Before, I was searching for strong allies to assist in my own mission, but now... That plan has shifted. The objectives have changed. Her left hand clenches, the glove tightening and straining audibly. "Disposable champions. A ruined people. No order, no justice, no goal in sight beyond some nebulous, repeated goal. It disgusts me, but..." She shrugs, watching A2. "... I cannot say I don't also understand it. Champions are the tools and the executors of the will of the Tripartite Council. But we are not so disposable, so cheap an existance as YoRHa seems to treat theirs." "Knowing this, do you still want my help?"
A2	Only when Azure Armature deliberately draws her attention to it, does A2 seem to notice the state of her hand, and herself by extension. Maybe it's just a part of being used to seeing the same thing all the time, maybe it's a form of mental censoring, or maybe she is determined not to see it at all, but her expression grows more complicated and dissatisfied at being made to look. "Tch. I wasn't built with the assumption I'd last long. This entire body. One trial run. That was it. My reason for existing. It's long past its expiration date, but it's not as if I need to look pretty to kill." There is no hint of indignation behind the words, only bitterness, hollow and resigned. The severe, erratic twitching and clenching of her fingers around the utility knife that comes after cannot be blamed on technical malfunction alone. The metal groans in complaint as A2's grip switches from dead limp to white-knuckled intensity, back and forth like a lightswitch, must like the competing expressions that fight for their place on her face. In an impulsive motion, A2 throws the knife past the Alchemical's face, dangerously close, and plants it into the dirt, and then begins clutching her face in her fingers thereafter, screwing up her brow and almost clawing at her skin with her fingertips. The wooden step lets off a brief creak and a loud pop as one of her heels punches right through it from the sustained pressure. Several long, dangerous seconds pass, and then the violent, mechanical trembling subsides. A2 croaks a word out from behind her palm, dragging her fingers down her face until they fall over her mouth. "Cell. I'd almost forgot." A2 says, barely louder than a whisper. She deigns not to explain, seeming too lost in it for a while to notice Azure Armature at all, before finally she lets down her hands. "I'll take it. Not from the Tripartite; yours. I'll destroy YoRHa, and the Council of Humanity, right alongside the Machines, but I can't hate those girls, who are still trapped just like we were. There's no point." A2 lets out a long, tense breath, seeming to lose an inch of height, and some electricity about her presence. "You reminded me of someone just then. Someone I knew a long time ago. What, were you afraid I'd kill you for being a tool like me? Gimme the benefit of a doubt, would you?"
Azure Armature	Armature continues to smirk, though something not exactly physical seems to relax, a very 'human' wave of relief spreading along her brow, her eyes, and the corners of her mouth. It's subtle, but if you're paying at all attention, it breaks like a dam over her. "I wasn't afraid - it was both courtesy and calculated risk." She admits. "And... I didn't want to offer to maintain your body without being more honest with you. Intimacy requires trust, and more than that..." She shrugs. "I'm good. But I'm not good enough to hide my true nature forever. In the middle of a fight, were I have to release my limiters and use my full power, the mask would drop without time to explain. I would rather have the opportunity to explain myself." The semblance of humanity returns, her skin coloring and her right hand snapping back into 'definitely normal human, absolutely'. She moves, deliberately, onto one knee, and then her feet, turning to recover her knife and wipe it off on her pantleg, returning it to its sheath rather than fix the edge right there and then. "If you'd like to spend the time until morning on repairs, I'd at least like to adjust your sword arm. High performance bought at the cost of durability and ruggedness - I do not miss the craft in your form. Do you? I am filled with magic and a technique borne from deific insight. You are entirely something else, and I see both skill and passion in the design." Armature settles back, on one knee, halfway between resting and leaning in. "The arm that swings the sword is arguably more valuable than the sword it holds. It holds the potential for weilding an infinite number of weapons. The wrist, the small connectors, the delicate balance..." There's an artificer's eye and passion that starts to leak in, but Blue restrains herself... Mostly.