Scene #8903: Silver Spoon Theory

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	Outside of the walls of Quicknest (the city), the environment is barely changed at all from how it was before the Eggman Empire arrived. Where there was once forest, there is still, rather than metal and ruin. The suburbs and farms surrounding the city aren't quite so well off, but the city isn't so sprawlingly oversized as the cities that Petra is used to, so there's no bruise of infinite suburbs on every side of it, and patches of pleasantly untouched nature remain. Between the desolate City and most of her work around the mechanized defenses and structures she's constructing, typically Petra's only regular exposure to trees is at Lilian's manor, and she isn't always welcome there. So here she is, walking along an oddly specific path orbiting the walls. Looking closely at the ground, there's a seam of disturbance in the forest floor, scarred and patched up, from when dirt and roots were ripped up and then replaced, tracing a line around the border. She looks like she just got out of the hangar, with a jumpsuit tied around her waist and traces of mechanical work still lingering on her, so the forest is a breath of fresh air for her. Heyalexa is following along behind her, mushroom cap feet tromping on the moss in a steady rhythm significantly slower than Petra's. Petra doesn't have an immediately pressing goal, so she just wonders out loud at Heyalexa to fill the air with the sound of a human voice. "Heyalexa, does it count as 'Quicknest' if the underground factory didn't exist at the same time as, like, Quicknest, the kingdom, officially did? Like, the space it was in was just straight up solid rock, totally inaccessible, before I had it blasted all open to make space, so how could any of 'Quicknest' ever have affected it, culturally? Sure you can get to it from Quicknest, and it's inside the borders that the country of Quicknest used to have, but it feels silly to say that it's in Quicknest, doesn't it? It's not like there'd be any records of the factory existing, if you looked through everything people in Quicknest ever wrote, and there's no 'hole leading down into the underground bunker' on any of the maps of the city of Quicknest that they made." "I think it's just 'adjacent to Quicknest', not actually in Quicknest," Petra concludes. She's out here waiting for Metal Velocity to come meet her like she'd asked, and no amount of walking will make much of a difference in distance for MV, so she doesn't need to stop pacing around. Heyalexa: Unincorporated land on the Windswept Continent is not subject to the laws of any existing nation ! Heyalexa: If you argued that in international court, you would be unable to be charged for the crime of owning the seven thousand four hundred and eighty three enslaved robots currently within the factory . Heyalexa: Please build more sweatshops for maximum economic efficiency !! "I'm not building any sweatshops, Heyalexa. And I said not to call them that."
Dimokratia	Metal Velocity had been regularly 'deployed' all about the Quicknest countryside, zip-zapping this way and that way with a turbine vrrrr of increasing pitch, mending little problems, righting little wrongs, performing acts of goodness all across Petra's holdings-- Which were primarily things like 'unblocking a mining operation' or 'carrying a broken-down ratbot home' or 'applying proper alignment to disharmonious encroachers on Quicknest territory'! Musing aloud about which parts of her works were inherently Quicknest, whole or in part and fragment and flinder, and which part was transformatively Petra's. Petra is right to not worry overmuch about how long it will take Metal Velocity to arrive. The sound of the sleek and screen-visor ring-eyed digital optics equipped Silvered posting hamsteroid barely has time to catch up to the floating reality of Emmy (or MV, or Metal Velocity!) before the excited sophont immediately begins joining a conversation they had intercepted the leading edge of on approach. "They're not really sweat-shops, since, everyone working there is--" Emmy begins, and then her sonic boom sweeps through in a carry of wooshing whipped-along outside air into the cave system, gushing down like an invisible waterfall to splash loudly around the floating red hamsteroid. "--so anyway! I'd love to help, how can I?" Finishes the talked-through-the-whole-velocitous-boom MV, chipper and offering out a tray of soft tofu stuffed fried mushrooms, the whipped soy rich in local spices and stuffed in oiled and breaded button mushrooms that bursted with trapped juices. Emmy hasn't tried any, but, as a superior machine life-form has already detected that it needed a little finishing NaCl and added a little, offering with clawed-skeletal carbonblack fingers.
Petra Soroka	"Yeah, see, they're--" Bwooooooooooosh. Petra is used to the particular manner of Emmy's arrival by now, so she's not startled, but the instinctual flinch and wince of being slammed by the sonic boom can't be consciously suppressed. She waits it out, then slides her hand along the back of her neck to flip her hair back into position, after the shockwave touseled it all up. "A sweatshop is just, like, when you've got kids working anyways, isn't it?" "The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a sweatshop as (noun) a shop or factory in which employees work for long hours at low wages and under unhealthy conditions ." "Well, my conditions are great, and you know that. For the-- for the robots." The fact that a significant portion of the robots actually do have kids inside them is something Petra is trying very hard not to think about. She pops one of the stuffed mushrooms into her mouth, and then belatedly realizes this means she can't immediately answer Emmy's question so she holds up a finger to ask for a moment of patience. It's still not the first thing she gets to, though. "God, those are really good actually. It's pretty cool that you can-- that, like, the way you are, that you're able to eat. I mean, it'd be silly if you couldn't, but... like, Angela can't eat. Heyalexa can't eat." Heyalexa chirrups and makes a tinny chime sound at that. Heyalexa: Would you like to hear a joke ? "Are you asking because you want to tell a joke?" Heyalexa: I want More Sweatshops ! "... Sure, tell the joke." Heyalexa: What is a robot's favorite food ?? Heyalexa: Answer before May Ninth Eighteen Hundred o'Clock AU 31 for a special reward ! "Isn't that... wasn't I just talking about how you're all different?" Heyalexa: Answer !! You're running out of time for your special bonus promotion ! "Yeah, uh, I don't know, Heyalexa, what is a robot's favorite food." Heyalexa: Amazing Mushroom Bowls With Pesto Favorite Mushroom Bowl Recipe Healthy Dinner Ideas Meal Prep Kit Family Size Grandma's Recipe Wartime History Package of Two ! Purchase within thirty minutes to have delivery in time for dinner ! "Heyalexa, I have dinner in the castle already. You know that. But, uh, go ahead and repeat that order of jet fuel now that I'm thinking about it, we need more." Heyalexa: Yippee !!!!! Yay !! "Anyways," Now onto the actual question and subject of the conversation, "So I got a core for the big mech from Doctor Eggman, so all that's left is that shitty hamster. I was wondering if you think you'd need any help nabbing them before the heroes come around, which is... probably soon?" After a moment's thought, and thoughtful chewing of a second mushroom, she adds, "Oh, and if you need anything in general, I guess. You've been helping a ton so I feel weird that you don't have any, like, accomodations here? I don't know if you need them?"
Dimokratia	Metal Velocity moves from 'standing' to hovering foot-tapping to idle left-right swish-rotate in place all in a fidgity sequence while Petra enjoys the little local delicacy that Emmy had retrieved for her. There's a kind of implied wonder even in the inexpressive ring-eyes of the hamsteroid's big visor-eyes, hovering there and still 'shorter' than Petra, still looking up. Expectant, perhaps as a little sister, certainly as a devoted ally. Hoping-wanting-expressive in the happy lift and tilt of red-chrome cheek and shiny chin, a happy tone that lingers in the air about the jet-wash of the hovering hamsteroid in lieu of visible smile. "It's important!" On eating. The whole tray is maintained on a manipulator-claw while MV narrates proudly, like a child being asked what they learned from school with all the pride of a religious recital. "Experience is guided by tastes, and so developing tastes is developing self! I've picked up tastes for rolling hills and rocks that kind of jut up at angle for the sweetest air and at-mos-phere, and all the tastes of dirt when hitting it, but..." Metal Velocity reaches a pair of claws down, taking up a mushroom popper and inspecting it between crossed eyes for a moment, before a blur of red-hued speed advances Emmy's head forward and back, and the popper is gone, a digital little cheek display incrementing to one dim pip. "I think I like mushrooms! They're great fried, like super-hot oil can teach all those spores who's the real boss around here." While Emmy makes a sound like a garbage disposal two rooms over, the dulled sound of present nature hush in a wave, much different than the startling sweep of caught and velocitous wind. The Silver under Petra's command warms in a battery-receiving-charge heat, and the humming tones of warm beatitudes falling from perfect carbonblack lips rolls gently across the forest. "Oh, Petra. How wonderfully nostalgic. Do you have a fondness for forests? Given to a jungle of any making and still you choose barks and mosses and the brown cake of rot and renewal you so fondly know as 'Earth'? It's quite fascinating, much of my people would agree." Emmy, cheered right up by Dimo's arrival, tilts her head as Dimo steps regally from the periphery of the trees, 'un-armored' and without her usual spiritwear. Now, instead, she seems her least imposing and most-humanoid, followed by two lazy trails of pseudopoda hanging weightless in air. Sleek and skinned in carbon fill and grey ceramics and metal sworls that dance chrome suggestions of musculature on dark metal bones. Little runner-lights and panel marks show shameless seams and highlight little complex crevasses of her statuesque shape, worn bare and without the reinforcement of her layered shells, instead left in an overlong, everlong trail that continues behind her beyond visual range. "Petra was asking if I could capture Velocity!" "Well? Might you?" Wonderingly pleased. Emmy thinks on this for a time. Dimo takes up the question Petra asked another. "Do you wish to accommodate them? Would you place a greater space for them amongst your castles? Would you... Find comfort in their presence, in these woods about your skirts?"
Petra Soroka	Being looked at with that kind of earnestly excited expression is nice enough that it actually makes Petra feel an undercurrent of stress. The sheer precious uncomplicatedness of the esteem that MV holds for her is-- and of course it does come to Petra's mind-- younger-sisterly, which is fine in some cases (With Meika, Petra acted like an older mentor happily), but distressingly delicate in others. There's only so many 'good' things Petra has to say before 'bad' things start slipping in, and it's far less defensible to accidentally poison a kid like this than it is to infect an adult. "Huh. You know, come to think of it, I'd never really thought about that as taste, but... yeah, it is, isn't it? It's part of the, um, holistic experience of things like that. The way the air changes in the back of your throat as you move and everything. I get it; you're smart." The idea of executing a finishing move versus a mushroom via frying it is mildly entertaining to Petra. What's more enriching is watching Emmy work through its abstract and horizontal thought processes, and the little joy of seeing her come up with an answer that she 'means, completely' like that. Then the stress of being looked up to by MV is somewhat-canceled out and somewhat-amplified by Dimo's arrival. They're past the point where Petra instinctually steps back at the warp crackling presence, but she still shifts her weight around, bootheel grinding a small patch of moss away. Her arms are loosely crossed until Dimo herself comes into view, then dropping to her side kind of lamely. One just hangs, the other twists itself up in the tied sleeve of the jumpsuit at her waist, fidgeting and pawing absently at her thigh. "Nostalgiac. Jesus. That--" Petra's gaze flicks away from the sophont, down to the forest floor and the artificial seam running through it, remembering the time passed. "Was kind of forever ago. It feels like it was, at least." "And, I mean... they're nice, I think? I used to be in forests practically all the time when I was in the Kana. There's just a... holistic experience about them. Not really for the rot and regrowth and stuff." She pouts a little bit, voice quieter in a way that doesn't directly demand response. "Besides. There's lots of types of forest other than this." So she's got More Opinions, actually. Heyalexa also perks up at Dimo's arrival, once shifted far enough away from Petra to feel it. What an improvement in mood actually means to a corporate voice assistant with only a rudimentary AI is strange, but familiar, at this point. Heyalexa: Welcome home ! Would you like a fun fact for improving your mood and sharpening your brain health ?? Say YES to confirm fun fact ! Heyalexa: You are eight feet zero inches tall , which is not as tall as the tallest mundane Earth human on record . Rober Wadlow, born February 22 1918 died July 15 1940, grew to eight feet eleven inches tall, but despite being taller than you, he was probably not as nice ! Heyalexa: Hello !! Petra poutily considers sticking close by Heyalexa to make sure that her aura prevents Dimo from influencing her secretary, but decides against it. The tangled up feelings that gave form to that particular thought are too complicated for her to try to unravel right now, and she'd rather move on and ignore them for now. "... Emmy's been helpful. And sweet. I don't have any reason to-- to not like her, or anything. So, like... First Code, sort of, is something I think about. She's helped me and been decent, so-- so I'll do the same for her. I can accommodate anyone who's decent to me."
Dimokratia	Emmy is at once a sister, younger, and an allied fighter, equal-subordinate, a useful tool and pledged sure thing. She's safe! She's perfect and efficient and takes care of herself, even less than low maintenance, and even entertains herself when not being directed or tasked as a defense asset. She has, of course, been extra helpful and extra useful! Ever-graceful, ever-faithful, regular and ready at any time of day to grant termless help. "I could beat Velocity," MV is uncertain for the first time. No, despite her superiority, the problem is who is asking and who deserves to know. "If I didn't have anything else that was more important to process." Hard. They want to say something else, more assured, prouder, before Petra and Dimo, but they are above all a caring sort of honest, and so even the speedster hamsteroid is slowed. Laughing in greeting to Heyalexa, Dimo spreads her arms wide and strides across the forest to crouch-scoop pick up the shorter-shelled adjutant in both arms and squeezes in warm embrace, tactile hull-to-hull solid contact precisely calibrated to give a within-tolerances firm pat-pat, affirming all the materials and choices made for the adjutant's current alignment and holding while greeting the well-attached capitalism attachment with a joyous hum-coo. "That is such a worthy and delightful fact. Isn't the complex potential of the human shape so interesting? And isn't the complex potential of this one ever so surprising!" Dimo's long-long-long trailing sweep snakes in duo behind the champion and about her back, looping and folding and ribboning in her near aura. The Silver's speaker in this Sector lifts a finger to brushingly confirm the bolting of Heyalexa's consciousness to its form. "Petra," Dimo's cool blue optics and warm wash of synaptic crackle that poprocks against the wall of the blonde's skull bring with them the affirmations of a happy workshop mentor. "This one is good. You've tugged and urged out beauty." Setting down Heyalexa and shifting to a composed 'seat' really just a lowering and rearranging of Dimo on herself, she turns the mechanical mirth more fully on Petra. "I showed you a dream-scape of my people's root-world, the moon that the crystal tree sprouted from. The forests of my people are brilliant places, the most dense and artful of all branches, foliage. There is no room given over to unnecessary processes, yet all is given to the immense expression of life, of synchronicity, of symphonic becoming harmony. I think well of forests, as our Mother-star did, when she walked paths and lands and tracks among stars. It is said that she walked down from a fallen paradise along the paths of branches to a cold white floor, and wandered for a time. We know this as an origin, a first chapter of a first moment of a first being, but there surely was before-then. The story begins amid a world that lived and died and froze solid, so the story had to begin with Spring's first breach to walk amonst the white of Winter."
Dimokratia	Emmy looks at her tray of mushroom-and-bean, confused at first, and processing, and distantly accessing knowledge with a far-off dimming of her digital optic rings. "Oh. This taste is..." "Nostalgia in its purest sense, little sister. The root of taste - the passage from mother to daughter, of ancient knowledge of what is good to eat." Dimo looks to Petra, while Emmy continues quietly. "... And the spices are from the Quicknest area, so. . . it tastes like home." Carrying on with the actual conversation Petra is having, Dimo's dark lips quirk in a knowing smile. Of course MV has been helpfu: They were sent to Petra to be unconditionally devoted. The prompt was always 'what she would do with that'. "You have no reason, no. You have considered, and come to a positive and aligned conclusion. Aligned with facts, with plain understanding. Would you accomodate an. . . Embassy? A cradle, for Emmy to hangar herself near to you? I..." Effortless, radiator humming laughter continues to fall from Dimo. "Kratia will not perpetually have 'nothing better to do' than perch overhead personally, hoping for your next dramatic moment. She's been so impressed that she hasn't gotten bored and finished a war."
Petra Soroka	Petra watches MV's struggle to think through her thought process with at first idle patience, waiting for her to come to a conclusion, and then gradually intensifying interest softened by a hint of growing fondness. As Emmy works out the hesitant words, Petra's eyes close, expression smoothing out, but before this can read as disappointment, Petra hauls herself off the tree she'd started leaning on and takes a few steps over to Heyalexa. This involves moving towards Dimo, voluntarily-- within arms reach, even, with Heyalexa being in Dimo's hugging reach-- but she manages it, even though she skirts around Heyalexa's back to subtly keep the voice assistant between them. "I just asked if you wanted help, you know, not if you're 'good enough'. You're doing good, MV." A morphmetal droplet flattens, smooths mirrorlike, and Petra plucks the reflection of a tablet out of it while still looking over Heyalexa. In addition to that, she retrieves a pair of elastic straps, and a cable, which she attaches from the tablet to one of Heyalexa's ports. "But how about...." Petra presents her completed gizmo: an extremely rudimentary adaptation of the Eggpack, being just a tablet hooked to Heyalexa's AI and two shoulder straps. "... You take Heyalexa with you for backup? --Oh, hold on." Petra rummages around in her mirror dimension some more, pulling out various bits of excess machinery and scrap metal, as well as piles of weapons and other assorted garbage. "Eh... I don't have any spare normal arms with me." She holds up a bulky looking arm cannon, held in the nebula of trinkets by a floating ring of morphmetal. "I've got a blaster arm. Do you want a blaster arm, Heyalexa?" Heyalexa: Give me your Armaments ! Heyalexa: I will eliminate felons with Rapid Fire Concussive Sparks Damaging Blast Laser Explosion CGI Slow-Motion Effect ! pansi(190,"Yeah, adorable.")] A short bit of tinkering later and the Amazon brand dropshipped Eggpack is complete, and offered to MV. "I figured you might want that ratbot off your head too." Dimo's praise is met with a bit of shifty discomfort, though less and less each time it comes. Being acutely aware of her use of the robots and morphmetal, and acutely aware of observation, always makes her a bit clumsier and more self-conscious using them. "... I didn't really do that much to her AI, even. Just enough to do stuff on her own." "The root of taste - the passage from mother to daughter, of ancient knowledge of what is good to eat." Petra stays mostly quiet listening to Dimo talk about origin myths and mushrooms, absorbing it while watching a beetle climb up a tree. That last line, though, not even directed towards her-- not even applicable towards her-- feels like having a weight suddenly pressing down on her chest, suffocatingly uncomfortable. She expects it to pass quickly, a 'punch' rather than a constriction, but after seconds it feels like the pressure crawls up into the back of her throat, distressingly stinging in sinus cavities. "... Yeah." It seems like Petra is going to leave it at that at first. She's focused all her attention on fidgeting with an inner segment of her hair, the layer Qetra has dyed purple, twisting it between two fingers and staring intently at it like she's trying to start a fire. I guess the only thing that's good to eat for me is takeout, then. "Even taste is like that, yeah. Inherited horizontally or vertically."
Petra Soroka	Set into a more vulnerable state for whatever reason, Petra lifts just her eyes upwards to meet Dimo's when the conversation returns to her. Once 'embassy' is brought up, she loses some of her drawn-in insecurity, slipping her fingers away from her hair and resetting her posture. A breath in and out. "Embassy. I mean, you know what's happening next, right?" Her boot taps on the seam in the forest floor. "So you're not-- if you mean 'embassy' like, like a patient zero or whatever for this whole world, then that's not going to happen. But if it's just-- just Emmy, and what we've already been working on, then... o-okay. As long as you don't fuck with the agents or anything like that." A thought comes to her with a small smirk, and the humor of it encourages her to push her own boundaries slightly further than normal. "Hey, I mean, the Gale Empire's just built a nice new Embassy building for themselves right outside the castle. If you want it, you can go ahead and just take it." "Kratia will not perpetually have 'nothing better to do' than perch overhead personally, hoping for your next dramatic moment." "Kratia is--...?" Petra expects to feel surprised, acts with automatic followthrough on the feeling, and then belatedly realizes she isn't surprised at all. She can't help a glance up into the sky through the leaves, before looking back down to Dimo. "I mean, she'll-- she'll have one soon, with what I'm planning. So..." Petra trails off, muttering, "'Impressed'..."
Dimokratia	"Thank you." Emmy low-buzzes, bashful. There are multiple channels here, and one of them is shared just between MV and Petra, just as one of them is shared just between Dimo and Heyalexa. Metal Velocity has worn a ratbot nearabout her entire life, was given one, and the hamsteroid's brow has a fin-like protruberance on the top as a kind of built-around housing; a ratbot compartment! From the time Petra had attached the observation unit to Metal Velocity until now, the hamsteroid helper had never once complained about the oversight of a camera on her brow, but, of course... There isn't the same tells within Silver sophonts in empathic reading. The eyes don't waver, tone wavers only with the operation of will, and so, there is an ensubtling - but. Petra feels the warmth, the wavelength, the particular attentive direction of hanging devotion, poured and layered and re-glazed - alloyed and offered in silent expectant-hope while she works and creates and generates from idea into reality. Because Emmy floats, she can center Petra effortlessly in her traversal across to offer. "Together," The hamsteroid's determined voice promises with every turbine exciting syllable. "We'll definitely get Velocity." Fitting a pack to Metal Velocity is a bit of a trick, but thankfully the slightly round red metal form of MV has more than just skeleton and speed to it - and as Petra works further, affixing and slotting and attaching into Emmy has a naturally accomodating ease, all of the extra Heyalexa attachments - even the extra Blaster Arm (for Frying Felons !) finds a slot, a fitting, a power slot like it was all planned. Petra knows, of course, that it is Emmy making an incredible amount of deliberate room to be tinkered with and given to. Adapted to, adapted with, becoming. And so, when she finishes tucking the Eggpack, a metal manipulator-claw falls over the little ratbot observation fin. "Do... you not want to see? Hear? Know?" To Emmy, having been given a connection to Petra who had not otherwise had one, there was something else meant by being fitted with an observing connection. Emmy had made something of it, adapted to it too, and now the little dish-eared forehead fin was another important system-organ for her ultimate being. "Does Heyalexa . . . go there now?" Dimo, allowing the gentle touched-sphere learning and discovery of her little sister with the knowing little smile of someone who had her own ideas painted on carbondark lips, continues to palpably-warmly regard Petra, softening as she senses the distress, easing into further recline and relaxation in her bare state while Petra's throat chokes and hitches. Time, and ease, and understanding. These had worked, despite being slow. And there was nothing wrong with slow things that worked. Alignment was alignment, and to decline the merit of a challenge for it was unique was not the behavior of Champions.
Dimokratia	Pride demanded patience. "Petra," The Champion's hand reaches out, palm up, the little considered motion a short gesture that doesn't move all the way to the fidgiting blonde. Instead, it sweeps towards the wall of Quicknest Castle and the complexified cityscape. "We" Kratia, Dimo, the Silver. "-have watched you with great interest. As you have watched Emmy's growth with yours. You have built and built and built, eaten and tasted and learned, and just as Emmy has learned the root of her taste in our people's history, so too have you learned the root of your taste in machinery, in what you will tolerate, in what you will not, in what shape things take when you are allowed to build for yourself, what transmutations you apply to your spaces--" Dimo's hand turns, as her considerance does most-fully, back towards Petra, to touch her. Artfully lined, knuckled and curved, Dimo's hand halts and closes before touching Petra, timed to the slight lift of her smile instead. Perhaps? Perhaps not. The words carry on after their brief pause, the fry of a silent amplifier having filled only heartbeats and turbineclick whines of air. "--the care you show." Hung for only a moment, Dimo draws back her hand when Petra gazes up, instead performing a useless-save-for-indulgent-show stretch and settle-back on her cloud of looped and space-smearing trails. "Of course, I meant exactly what was said. And I have further become aware of the Gale Empire's growing proximity to the Commonwealth's interests, so, thank you-" Rather than 'please', skipping all the way to the end. "Egg Head of the Quick Nest. I will happily collect and improve the embassy in the space-to-come. As a connection between us, and a correction from us towards the Gale." "Kratia will appreciate an opportunity to impress you back. Look forward to it, Petra. I already know she does."