Scene #8319: Facing reality

Owner	Pose
Ishirou	It has /not/ been a good week for Ishirou. Betrayed by someone who he thought he was helping. Had his old name brought up as a slur against him. Lost the chance to destroy a rival. Then to have that rival turn around and do the one thing that would have thwarted all their efforts. Worse...make it so that his home would never be his home again. Honestly, he had done so over wanting to help his slavers, which would make this double ironic. When Ishirou wasn't wallowing, he was trying to distract himself by doing something. Anything. Work. He could focus his mind on something. Just as long as it wasn't thinking about Indus. Or thinking about Petra. Right now he was in the server room, going over security and upkeep for the Aegis. He didn't need to do it. He's spent enough time on this that the processes could be done by almost anyone who could work a computer. It was, however, distracting and allowed him to put his mind to something, even if the task was futile or mediocre. He didn't want to think about his dim views of humans right now. Or his realization that many of them aren't good...but rather would do anything to help themselves or set someone else on fire.
Dimokratia	Work. It's always work, in the end. Labor, or lack. Despite being a castle-museum, the Aegis Astray still has the modern conveniences one expects of a super-fortress: A highly secure hole kept as cold as possible and still sweltering with heat from the generation of hope in the form of ones and zeroes. Ironic, then, that the one tending the room was so hope-less. The door of the server room chimes externally, and then unlocks. Cycling open, a handful of heavier tak-clicking steps sound out - one weight-bearing surface blunt, one weight bearing surface pointed, and a soft patter of lesser points finding contact with the warmed stone beneath the baking-room. Stalking, like that, without any actual intent to be 'hidden', the height-again span and weight of Dimo stands over Ishirou, smirking down at the work-focused Ishirou. Silver-white hair frames a shell-white face, panel lined and inhumanly sculpted perfect for all its deeply human beauty. Her smooth-shelled cheeks fall to an armored skeleton of metal vertebrae and tubing, paneling, bare connections where tendons would join and skin would cover. Shamelessly synthetic, she crosses carbon-black forearms and articulatedly segemented fingers across her front. "Poor, poor boy. You should be spending time in the place that makes you feel most comfortable." Dimo observes, her voice more sweltering in-person than the server room's heat, a drying-heat, warm in the way of a sunbeam against cloth, metal, or stone. She tingles and crackles in the air palpably as she speaks, a toned hum to her that the world falls into alignment with. "Is that this place?"
Ishirou	Ishirou was startled by the words of someone else, he apparently didn't hear the door chime open. He swivels in his chair to face Dimo, but the moment of being startled is quickly over. He first looks quizzing at her comment about being somewhere that makes him feel comfortable. He starts to deny it but stops. It's...cramped, warm, surrounded by things that make sense to him, and always something going on to try and distract or seek out something he didn't know before. There is always something to do or something to learn, and if that failed there were always games. The walls were close too, hard to get behind him and stab him. "...I guess so..." he says after a moment. "Comfy, understandable, safe," he admits and deflates slightly. The boy really doesn't have a deceptive bone in his body, easily read like a book. "Is...there something wrong with your access? I can have it fixed in a second, Dimo.." he says, already turning back around as if to sink himself into a task, rather than acknowledge what she was here to talk about. Because he probably knows what it is about.
Dimokratia	Dimo, who began the encounter knowing she was right, graciously allows Ishirou to come to that same conclusion after considering it. The thought pleases her, him working it out on his own without requiring to be walked to the knowing. The effort of considering - for a few seconds - passes with Dimo's cold blue optics and half-lidded eyes lingering unblinking. "You know so. I know so. It is obvious. It is true. You could be anywhere, and you are..." Dimo's shoulder raise and fall, rolling with an expressive shift-in-segments. Her voice falls to to a breathy fond. "... here. Poor, poor boy." Stepping around Ishirou, so he has to rotate to follow her as she stalks around his rolling chair, Dimo plants one hand - large, seizing, atop his left shoulder, and as she steps around his seat, her right, on his right. The chair, sized for the Inspector, is loomed over, and Dimo places special interest in dropping to a crouch just behind the 'poor boy'. She is notably hotter, and more radiantly heat-expelling, than the whole room's server cluster put together. A sweat-banishing, baking heat. Her voice pours from her near-leaned lips. "It's not any key of mine that's in need of fixing. I do not wish to draw it out of you. The sickness, the illness you feel. You have sensed the shape. It needs fixing, doesn't it? Repair."
Ishirou	Ishirou doesn't deny it once it's out there in the open. Though wanting to deny why she is here isn't so easily engaged with. That is until her larger hands grab his shoulders, forcing him to face her as she knees over. He is smaller than her by a not insignificant margin. Compared to her, he's much cooler, though parts of him are slightly warmer than others. The parts that couldn't be transferred from being an android to being a human. His breath is caught in his throat as he's forced to face her. She mouths out the words, dripping from her and despite his position forcing his eyes to look away. "I..." he starts, he could say that it's not true, or that he's fine...but these are both lies. His eyes remain cast down, shaking his head. "It hurts right now...I...don't know what to do or...what to say or..." he says sniffling. "I thought I was helping her...I thought I was doing the right thing..." he says again. "I thought...I thought I knew better.."
Dimokratia	Confrontation is a skill, and Dimo obviates it by gripping Ishirou and gunbarreling him. His frontal arc if he makes no effort to look away and avoid her - and could he? would he? - is taken up by chromesilver and shellwhite and carbonblack woman. She stares, inspecting his every movement, moment, word, and he stammers under it, before spilling and flowing with his own emotion. Dimo holds Ishirou as he speaks, and he finds the only other thing in the room looking at: himself, his own lap. "That pain is the first from you. I am surprised, Ishirou, that you'd think of her before yourself. Is this hurting..." "Ishirou's faith in Ishirou?" "Or... Ishirou's faith in Petra? In this other?"
Ishirou	Ishirou folds in on himself again. He seems to shrink under her gaze. It's not fear or shame...but being forced to face what happened when he really doesn't want to. On the other hand, you don't always want what you need. The alternative is letting it sit there and fester, getting the wrong lesson out of what happened. "...Myself.." he admits. "I...thought I wanted this. I thought...humanity wasn't...this," he says finally. "I held it up on some sort of pedestal. That the people who did those things were just...lead down the wrong path, or hurt...or victims of their circumstances. Rarely that...some are just broken in some way..." "But it's not that at all. There are...people who just want to get one over on others, who want to hurt others...no rhyme or reason to it. I thought I knew better but..." He finally starts crying, "I...I don't know anymore. I lost my home...I lost my faith...and I almost hurt the closest thing to family I have..."
Dimokratia	Dimo, even bringing herself down to the server-room shut-in's level, isn't what Ishirou fixes his eyes on. He speaks into his own lap, cries against his own countenance, and the synthetic paragon across from him might even have been able to remote in and receive the same words and feelings. But, she would not have put Ishirou upon the feelings, placed him in the chair, and forced him with her words to acknowlege the plain truth. "Were you a warrior, I would tell you, Ishirou, that simply being bested once, returning to society at all after a defeat, is a victory in and of itsef. Were you a warrior, I could build you up so simply, by providing the reasonable needs of a warrior." "Place, role, companionship. What society is, to a warrior. But you are not hurt, as a warrior is hurt, from a failed battle or campaign. You are hurt, Ishirou." Dimo's voice shifts, as she does, leaning in a bit more to place her arms about the back of the chair and rest her chin on the top of the crying boy's head. "You are hurt in the way a human becomes hurt. You have contracted the disease, poor boy. A negativity, a self-generating cold cancer within you. It is the poison of waste, the damage of 'lost time', the symptoms of humanity that twists pure souls and tears great wounds into them. That Petra... She is a 'human', yes. She hurts, as humans do. Denied, the cold defilement spreads." "That thing that hurt you. It is the disease. The unreasonable, metastasizing, spreading, creeping-wet filth that seeks corners and cracks and crevasses. Once the disease takes hold, like a parasite, it will consume the host and generate more of itself. You wished to do right, by others, and look at what that disease has done to you." "The negative society. The inconsiderate form of living."
Ishirou	Ishirou can't keep his eyes clear of the tears, brought to the point of letting them out. The pain is raw and fresh...it won't go away easily, and worse...tied into a lot more than just this wound. It hurt him on a fundamental level, and even Dimo can see he won't walk away from it easily, not without addressing the root. He leans against her warmth, her chin on his head. Despite how warm it was there was a comfort there. He sniffles again, before speaking. "Is...is it what it is..? This feeling? A disease?" "I don't understand it...it hurts. I feel like...everything I believed in was a lie, and I...changed myself based on a lie," he says letting the thoughts drop out of his mind. "Not just her...Eggman taking my home from me...just out of spite.." He sobs, "I just...I just want a home...a form I can be happy with...somewhere I can belong..."
Dimokratia	It is quite a lot, to hold vigil over the sobbing weight of a quiet, wounded boy. Dimo is up to the task, but little is called of her. Her weeps, and speaks, and she is patient and considerate in turn. She does not quite need breath, does not rock or shake with movement at cycling needs. She is, humming and buzzing reactor-like besides him. "It is the thing that is found in all people such as them. The misalignment, disalignment, distance to true society, true divinity. And it hurts you, because you wish to know. Vulnerable, because you wish to be certain and are not." Her voice dips, her hands patting and rolling Ishirou's shoulders gently. "Seperate each, and learn why, from yourself, each of these things hurts you. Become specific, and move from considerate to considered. The Doctor Egg Man takes great pride in his knives that cut humans, and his weapons that harm flesh. He has learned effective methods. How has he hurt you? And why are you hurt? Has a vulnerability been exposed that is necessary for your function, or can it be reinforced, replaced, repaired?" "You would beg mine, because I am much farther along the path than you. I understand this, in you. I hear it, within you. But then you would not be you. You would be me. And that is a disease as well. 'Take this pain from me', 'destroy me'. You have seen my work upon the deeply lost. You have not seen their work, within, so far back upon the path that they begin a road within first, and without second, and you wish..." The synthetic breathes, then, smells Ishirou, moving her nose across his hair and breathing deeply. "... To go back to a more divine state. Yes, I know." She draws back, pulling off of him and 'sits' on trails of silver, a helixing coil of morphic liquid that forms a springing coil of a balancing 'seat' beneath her. "You want everything, Ishirou. And you are abandoning more than you realize. What of the Paladins? Would you take a one-way trip away from them, as well?"
Ishirou	Ishirou takes time, everything said was off that raw pain and wound he just suffered. The kind that makes you do something without thinking or realizing it. He takes some time to wipe his face and take some breaths...the raw thing was out, open for them both to see. She wanted him to separate it. This time he's not looking down at his lap, but either at her or off in the distance if he's taking too long on a thought. He still has to wipe his eyes from time to time, but he's far calmer now than he was. "I'm sorry...you're right. I'm just..." he says, steadying himself. "I took the offer from Phony when I was...emotionally unstable and realizing from what I learned about Indus. Their betrayal...the realization that I put so much of my self-worth into /being/ human. I...only recently started to question the decision..." "Maybe I already knew what I knew...and thought I was smart enough to try and work around it, or that I could change it," he says and thinks on it a bit more. "I'm hurt...because he's done everything to make sure I have no home. Indus will...it won't ever /be/ that for me again. He's turned the city on itself, the androids there...some see him as some sort of savior, others less so...but because of that it'll be a civil war over it." "I...I took the side of the humans. I can't deny that, I can say that it wasn't their fault, or that it wasn't every human. Every android has their own pain from that time, and anything I say pales compared to that." "Petra...she betrayed me. When I needed her most, she decided that Eggman was worth her time. I...put so much into trying to prevent her from wanting to shatter herself on people. From...spiting the dream Persephone has. I...I should have known better. I should have listened to Lilian." "She hurt Lilian too. She won't admit it to me, but...I saw it. I know what I saw." "No, I won't...I wouldn't abandon the Paladins. I'm..." he sighs. "I want to be so certain...that I reject the ideas of others because they could be wrong...because of the possibility of something better. I feel like...it's just leading people I love into more pain. Everything I've done has just led to those around me suffering." "Standing up against Eggman in Robotropolis...trying to help Petra..."
Dimokratia	"It should not surprise you that I am correct, correct consistently, correct on these matters I have overcome and you have not." Dimo explains gently. For all her confidence, she does not need to project over Ishirou's feelings and needs to make herself heard. Perhaps he did that to himself, as his original problem. But now he sat alone, together with a listening ear, and tried to make sense of it under shared scrutiny. "You believed you knew what was right, and you believed you knew what was right, and you believed you knew what was right, and you will, in the future, believe you know what is right, and so, Ishirou, I must ask you: Is the problem with your belief? Is it faith that has unmade you? Is it spirit that has un-manned you?" That ending, humor, lifts Dimo's voice in a curl of thoughtful amusement. "Further seperate. Allow them to be sorted, quantified, named. You wanted one thing, and then another, and then another. You have gained knowledge. You have learned limits. You have moving through space." "You had an ownership, you believed, of 'Human'. This focus, this ownership, became a shackle, a weight, a drag on you. You were not, and then you believed you would gain a stake in correction by becoming. But who are you tell tell the Doctor Egg Man of his humanity? Who are you to tell Petra..." A chuff. "Ah, actually, that girl is an avatar of disease. You are harmed because she harms." Dimo leans back to lift a leg incrementally, crossing it over its mate, and quirking a brow thoughtfully at Ishirou, as he further speaks through this knot of pain within him. "You mix your feelings with your facts, and it is part of why you are so pained. You specialize in the feeling of pain, draw it in, create great organs of sensitivity to the harm." A pause. "And you have been harmed, Ishirou. But the harm is not your journey. I..." Delicate, but honest, admitting and clear: "... of course would say you moved away from divinity for a time. And so you made choices, fought wars, selected sides. And you feel... Pain? Harm?" "Negative energy." She decides, lands on, and nods. "Yes. You rage against negative experience. You wish it taken from you. You cannot give me your whole self and find peace. Listen, and you'll hear that truth in your own voice." Dimo extends a hand, patting Ishirou on the shoulder. Her fingers apply pressure, palpable force, a stopping-hand. "Everything you have done has been your best attempt at the truth. If you will mix the disease's words into your consideration, then you will carry the disease. Is this the truth? Or the disease? Does this move you towards your personal divinity, or away from it?" Her hand withdraws, and Dimo looks up, away, casting her eyes around the room. "You did not move far. Perhaps you are close to where you started. So... After sorting, have you found the positive yet?"
Ishirou	Ishirou closes his eyes, trying to do as Dimo asks. Sorting through what is pain and what is purpose. What is divinity and what is disease? What is truth and what is delusion? 'Is it faith that has unmade you? Is it Spirit that has unmanned you?' The latter gets a sour face, but despite this, it does lighten the mood enough for Ishirou to start focusing on the former. He scrutinizes his decisions, looking back on what he was seeing, and what he was blind to. "...No. It's not faith. It isn't...faith that is wrong, my faith in others...or wanting better things. It was my method..." "I let myself become too vulnerable, believe in words at face value without listening for what they meant...not putting the clues together to shape a motive. I let myself be fooled. I let myself take responsibility for things beyond my control as well. I let what I felt get in the way of what I was observing..." To the human question...he speaks slowly, working through the feelings and emotions. "Indus made us believe we were not people. The consul knew the truth, the thing that made the androids people were human souls, forged into android bodies. On one hand, we knew in our hearts we were beings...that we had rights..." "But denied that...I think...I know I conflated being human with 'personhood'. I wanted to be able to be myself so badly that I turned 'who I wanted to be' into... being human. ...It was a shackle...and I'm being shown that now. Even if /he/ says it, I'm limited now...and that limitation is what's causing this problem. It's not humanity is a problem...is that I tried to shape myself into a shape that I'm not.." 'Negative energy' "Am I trying to avoid the bad..? I...maybe?" he says, and the pat on the shoulder calms him. Ishirou tries to find some positive...and it's very hard to find. There was so much lost, so much hurt... "...That Lilian wasn't hurt. That...Eggman was driven out, even if in the process my home was lost to me. The Humans were removed, and Indus is in the hands of the Androids now. Those responsible will stand for their crimes. It...despite what happened, was a positive move...and Petra acted before she could deal real damage." "...And I learned from things. Despite this feeling, I...feel as if I could do better next time. I...know I also want to be more. Grow more...make it so nobody else has to suffer as I did. Make things /better/ for my home."