Scene #9004: Hey, Heyalexa!

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	Hydrochoeria, the former central district of the capital of Quicknest, ripped from the earth as the villainous Egg Head's final hurrah, now drifts through the sky as Petra's personal lair. A conical wedge of rock and metal, supported by the dull roar of rockets embedded in silos stretching down from the surface, the island has been in a constant state of remodeling, demolishing, and reconstructing for a while, finally resulting in the slate of animal architecture mostly being wiped clean from the face of the island. Now, there's Petra's best attempt at an 'evil'-looking castle, within the confines of her aesthetic range and demands, and unfortunately, neither of those were amenable to provoking a sense of menace. Generously, her half-hearted commitment to both Gothic architecture and techno-medieval scifi slop can be seen as endearing; more critically, it could be called embarrassing. Towers abound form the main silhouette of the castle, but they neither menace nor loom, and the soft angles and darker stone evoke, at best, a World One's corrupted cozy castle, rather than a final villain's lair. Eggman didn't have much input on the design, due to rarely dabbling in castles. Where his influence is visible is in the floating disparate add-ons, fixed by antigravity and wooden bridges, disjoined castle chambers and orbiting floating islands in miniature. Floating rings around the central tower dimly glow yellow against the dark stone, forming tiered hallways that allow bridges to spiderweb through the center, interconnecting all the upper levels of the structure. Other buildings, smaller facilities and even houses, are scattered across the main island surface, interspersed with plenty of trees and grass. Parts of it are still the old Quicknest construction, and its skeleton is visible all over if you know where to look, but she can't just rip it all apart-- the L-Corp agents need somewhere to relax on their days off! Petra herself is out on an orbiting island, weightlessly bobbing around to the limits of its wooden slatted tether as the entire mass of Hydrochoeria drifts far over fields of gold and green vegetation in an unknown world. For aesthetic reasons, this is where she's moved the warpgate; this little studio apartment-sized chunk of vibrant grass poking through piecemeal metal gives what Petra thinks is the best view of the castle's profile, forcing visitors or (optimistically) foes to look up at it while advancing their way through the entire village, setting the tone and impending threat. She's got Heyalexa hanging from Twopence, to chatter to while consulting a guide she cut out of an article of Mad Geniuses Weekly on installing warpgates. The base is still scattered in pieces, wiring exposed, while she tries to affix it here and get it running again.
Petra Soroka	Heyalexa is, of course, ever since the destruction of Super Heyalexa in the battle for Quicknest, reduced to a small cylindrical device, precisely the size and shape of an Amazon Alexa. Lacking a body, she can still attain mobility through the wondrous power of gravity-manipulation powered flight, adhered to the bottom of a ratbot like a queen in her palanquin. Petra, meanwhile, alternates between talking into the radio broadband, and talking to Heyalexa when frustrated or bored enough by the other Elites. ". . . So I guess, Kale hates me now, but we'll see if that sticks. And Madeleine's mad about Doctor Eggman doing environmental destruction, so that's kind of, a button we can push later, maybe? I don't know if I'm cool with that, and it's really fucking pissing me off that she only started paying attention when I talked about the Doctor doing evil shit, but whatever, it's an option." Heyalexa: Downloading company guide to Maximal Speed Ecological Conversion Into Massive Profit Version Updated For Multiversal Deforesting Permits ! Heyalexa: It's good ! That you've decided this ! I'll help you !!!! "It's an option, Heyalexa. Put it in my notes, not in my calendar." Heyalexa: But . Heyalexa: It would help ! With your Psychological Issues ! "Who taught you that? I didn't teach you that. My psychological issues are normal." Heyalexa: If you would like a personal copy of your search history analysis results , please call this number ! ". . . Aren't you supposed to say a number?" Heyalexa: That number is unavailable right now ! Please email customer support to request assistance in determining the number !
Dimokratia	The event had been a long time coming, contemplated brightly, cycled warmly. The Silver - Kratia, Dimo, their flying ship hung over Quicknest, their presence about Hydrochoeria - had hung like a shadow over the city before it rose. Petra, regent-apparent of the reformed robotic metropolis-slice, had allowed Dimo and her people to 'take over' the Gale Empire's embassy. Before liftoff, the roof of that pleasant multi-story had been shot - struck - by a large ceramic and metal-petaled flower from the hanging vessel high above. 'Crack!' had come the crash from above, and then a glooping burst as the composite-flower missile flooded the whole building in flowing metal. The building, so consumed, cooled to a window-to-a-wall-of-chrome, and as agreed, spread no further. And so it sat, a building framed in walls and sealed in silver, as the city took off. Dimokratia and their ship-above left for other (and perhaps more interesting?) lands. But Emmy, AKA MV, AKA Metal Velocity, remained about the castle and flying town of Hydrochoeria. The hamsteroid sophont warrior and defender of her home had been a useful help and ready interaction source and guide about the town, zipped about the grounds, and laid about the gardens in active enjoyment. Swaying legs and sliding fingers up single blades of grass and staring at things, and, at times, building what she 'thought might be useful'. After the battles over the now-flying city, Emmy had become more thoughtful and inwardly-contemplative. The granted-to girl had finally confronted her next true hurdle: 'purpose', after realizing purpose. Sterling connects to Twopence's network before Emmy and her visitors arrive, from the direction of the city. The recognizable jets of the velocitous hamsteroid speedster are accompanied by the click-thunks of each deliberately placed step of the tall Champion in her 'bare' articulated metal-composite surfaces only practically softened by carbon arches and shifting cordings - and one other set, delicate and step-and-a-half for each of Dimo's. Dimo's cladding could be poured on, a seamless and stitchless flowing robe of gold and brass reflecting stellar penumbral-wave patterns over her darker limbs and pale-ceramic exterior shell. In her wake, and at an appropriate height for a once-local, is a narrow-faced foxform in a far simpler falling-robe of silver that hangs from ball-jointed shoulders. The robotic joints glow with a pale light and highlight the frictionless shift of the smooth metal cap, and banded-thin biceps elbow and wrist in further floating-ball joints. The wrist floats a ring about the ball, giving the absent-impression of a sleeve, and the smooth white ceramic of the palm gives an uncanny idea of gloves. Beneath, robed in nebula-washed silver, the foxoid's body is hard to make out but Petra might particularly remember the poised shape from before... Though they had not been quite so inorganic prior. The face now is unrecognizable as any particular person's, etched and seamed and set into a permanent expression of glowing-slit closed eyed appraisal, perhaps a smile. There is no articulation or semblance upon the face at all beyond simple contouring, the ocular 'slits' coolly aglow. Floating beside in trinity is Emmy, 'sat' back on a hovering roost of gravitics. "Petra," The champion's warm voice greets, under no illusion the sophont trio was not spotted on approach. "Some time ago, we spoke about several things." The Silver. Her intentions. "Have you given them any more thought?" Easing, warming, buzzing-hot with anticipation. Dimo's optics contain a particular warmth despite unchanging in their hue and variance, her tone carrying with synaptic attention crackling at the periphery. "I have prepared for. . . The answer I expect." She has come here expecting a yes.
Petra Soroka	Heyalexa: I can see you're having a lot of trouble with that ! Can I help ? "You don't have arms anymore, I don't know how you could." Heyalexa: Give me your tools ! "I'm not giving you tools, Heyalexa, you can't even use them." Heyalexa: You are so mean to me ! "Okay, like, I'm the fucking roboticist here, you--" Heyalexa: Mean To Me ! "I'm sure I'll just figure out--" Heyalexa: Mean To Me ! "Fine! Here you go! Now what, smart guy?!" Heyalexa: I like to hold them . Heyalexa: Heyalexa: "... That it, huh? ... Sure. Whatever." Heyalexa: Hello ! Heyalexa: Do you need help ? After she affixes a pair of crescent wrenches to either side of Heyalexa's form, indulgently and knowingly silly-looking, Petra sighs and goes back to assembling the warpgate base structure. To replace her lost tools, placed in Heyalexa's absent hands like an unplugged second controller, she defaults to her morphmetal, withdrawing just enough from her bottle for a morphic omnitool. Twopence does alert Petra to Dimo's arrival, of course. That's the ratbot's main job, on this island, and even lacking a screen to convey security footage, it's immediately clear who the visitor is. Even more defining than bypassing the powered-down warpgate, is that Twopence's announcement of her arrival is an crackling-warm smiling emoticon sent to Petra's phone. Glancing down to check it, Petra chews on the inside of her lip-- for once, more thoughtful, less anxious, though anxiety is always a little present. "Petra," So Petra's already sitting in the center dip of the warpgate rim when Dimo greets her, foot propped up against the built-side of the keypad computer podium. It is her domain, after all, so standing for a visitor is... well, frankly, it doesn't even occur to her on a conscious level. Respect is measured by looking at faces and seeing them, rather than the complicated games of height and comfort. "... Hey, you three. Hey, Emmy." And looking she is, actually, though only briefly at Dimo before flicking to the fox and then lingering on Emmy. Warmth and expectation are instantly readable, in a way Petra's hesitation is not, and before she gets out an answer, her tubular floating companion with her ratbot-hat chimes in. Heyalexa: I can speak about things , too ! Heyalexa: If you ask me questions , I can answer them . Because I'm your Very Smart Home Companion ! Heyalexa: I am putting in an order for Asking Me Questions And Then Agreeing That I am Smart Quick Trivia Experience For Fun And Praise ! Heyalexa: Hello , Best Friend ! Heyalexa: Hello , non-family member .
Petra Soroka	"Thinking about it... I mean... I-- fuck, man, why do I always have the Silver out whenever you show up? Do I really use it that often?" It's sort of a rhetorical question, since there's an inherent connection between Petra's use of the morphmetal and the frequency of her consideration of Dimo's advice. Each facilitates the other, and each is emotionally and ideologically relevant on frequent occasion. Petra holds out her palm and the blot of morphmetal darts into it, softening from wire strippers into a warm dancing puddle. She stares down at it for a bit. "... I kind of... hate plot twists, in a way. Does that make sense? I like when there's a clear throughline. When, you know, you can look at past behavior for a character in a book, and understand their current behavior better for it, rather than being shocked by the dissonance. It's a little...." "That's the same for people, I guess. But I also kind of hate predictability? People who follow the arcs that other people decide, and-- and, expect, are barely thinking on their own, and end up being uncritical sponges of those expectations rather than anything else." Petra lifts her eyes from her morphmetal to Heyalexa, then clenches her fist, letting the silver in its fluid flowing state squish between her fingers and down her arm. "So-- of course I've given it thought. And... I owe Heyalexa something, for her helping me. But is it... I don't know, enriching repayment? Or is it 'handing off'? I don't-- know how she'll feel after." Of course, because Petra never felt it.
Dimokratia	The creation of the warpgate, a construction to link Petra's floating castle with reality, affixing with a pin her castle in the sky to the multiverse, is one that was apparently important. Important in a tactile sense, important in a personal sense, important in a milestone sense. It's difficult to hide either approach from each other - the approach of proximity and connection, or the approach of the sophont trio from Petra's own network. Things meshed together, neighborly-warm. Metal Velocity is first to air-dash forward, leaving her idle floating crouch besides Dimo to zoom in a corkscrew spiral about the warpgate and Petra. "Hey, Petra!" The cheery hamsteroid buzzes and nyerroms around before sliding to an air-sliding stop already sprawled out and floating on one arm, leg swaying like she had found an invisible bench in mid-air. "Hey, Heyalexa!" The sliding hamsteroid adds in equal enthusiasm, reaching out claw-tipped manipulator-hands to take the held crescent wrenches by the heads - like arm extensions cybernetically enhancing Heyalexa's form, and as genuinely and gently held. "Your new arms are lovely. Want to try new motivators later?" Eager, conversational, and then lifting to Petra with dark-paneled face ring-eye optics from Heyalexa, Emmy glows with expectation in a different way. "Are you ready for trivia?" Dimo, stopping a few paces from the partial-warpgate-throne, can help and simply does not limit the spreadingly affirmed grin and pleased serenity of slightly downturned optics. "You have spent your time well," The champion praises, honey-sweet and radiator warm. "Because your contemplation is reflexive, and finds the truth reliably when given its chance. Your understanding follows," "Given time." The words come with the pace of a preacher-storyteller, beatified in tone despite topic. "What comes to you first but your barest will? Given time to consider, you refine how it is used or quenched and cooled." Dimo's circling of the warpgate-in-progress is at a stalking strut, a goldmetal cladding-sheath shifting step about Petra and her gate to approach and crouch down as well, besides Emmy and Petra and Heyalexa, a firmed finger stroking Heyalexa's screen. "You think so little of yourself. Of Heyalexa. Your loyal friend helped you before this gift you consider. Do you doubt after?" "You left before you learned, Petra." The champion's cool blue optics and the fizzy wash of synapse breaking across cheek, nose, brow shift as her attention lifts from companion unit to Petra once more. "The truth. So you have this consistency, instead." In the periphery, 'Honeysuckle', the fox-convert from the embassy, stands in observation, shifting still faceplate and optic slits across the gate, and then out towards the sea of clouds, faux-glove hands clasped demurely before them. The wistful look isn't something new - the quiet diplomat had often been given to long let-others-talk consideration and now without even need to breathe the observing attache stood in wistful natural contemplation. Previously, they had held props - books, clipboards, some slate of leverage or entertainment. Now, they took full advantage of having such things in their awareness without such physical prompting. But, mostly the same person - just toggled in their topics. Brought as example? Certainly, brought as participant.
Dimokratia	"Tell me, Petra. Consistently speaking. Do you think this is a 'plot twist'? You already know some small part of this offer. And you, even, can make that offer better. You understand the truth, the meaning of our society - I'm sure, now." "Are you worried you will lose them?" Dimo's vocal wave becomes a low frequency roll, an engine purr dragged hot to bear. "Or are you anxious you might follow them?"
Petra Soroka	"Your new arms are lovely. Want to try new motivators later?" As she's zipped around, touseled and whipped by the hamster-displaced shockwave of air, Petra giggles infectiously with Emmy's energy. Even under blue optic glow and sun-warm synaptic hum, MV's not just a familiar face, but a friendly enough one to elicit a loose expression of joy at her presence. On the topic of 'arms', Petra pauses and frowns, tilting her head to wait for Heyalexa's answer. Heyalexa's wants, as they might relate to her form and function, are something she's worried about, but never gotten a conclusive answer to. Heyalexa: Arms ! Heyalexa: People made similar searches for: Grippers! Grabbers ! Manipulators ! Severed Hand Body Prank Party Prop ! Skeleton Arm Spooky Theme ! Skeleton Arm Medical Theme ! Hand Holding Device ! Heyalexa: Hello ! Heyalexa's 'arms' aren't mobile, and neither is the cylinder herself. When Emmy drifts around her, the combined structure of Heyalexa-Twopence whirls gently in the impact, loose like a spinning chair. The doppler-shift of Heyalexa's projected voice warbles as she spins around, eventually coming to a stop. Heyalexa: First trivia question : Do I want to try new motivators later ? Heyalexa: I want armaments ! I am motivated , to find Good Deals ! For you ! Petra doesn't know what to make of that, besides the fact that Heyalexa seems cheered by the Silver trio's arrival. But on reconsideration, that might be enough to understand. As Petra twirls her morphmetal around in her palm, weaving between fingers like string and putty, she watches Heyalexa chatter-- happily-- with Emmy, neural path sparking into existence whether she likes it or not. There is, evidently in front of her and known before, a capacity for joy within Heyalexa. Simultaneously evident, is that Heyalexa is harshly limited in the ways she can pursue, express, and experience that joy, by the nature of her construction; her 'thoughts' are simple and constrained to a predestined pattern, her goals are poisoned by her origin even after Petra severed the AI from Amazon's systems, and her ways of interacting with the world are clumsy and translated through secondhand vessels, like Twopence and her new 'arms'. Petra's lips twitch into a pout. The momentary, guilty pang at seeing Heyalexa in that light, and imagining choosing not to do anything about it, both seals the deal and makes Petra petulantly dig her heels in to make Dimo sell it harder. She squeezes her hand shut, morphmetal spaghetti-ing between her fingers and then drifting weightless around her fist.
Petra Soroka	"You think so little of yourself. Of Heyalexa." "... I mean, I know I don't exactly compete with utopia. She didn't actually have much of a choice to help me before. Like, she wouldn't exist if she wasn't helping me. I just want her to..." Petra is briefly forced to confront the reality that she would miss her Amazon Alexa. "... It doesn't feel right if what 'I' give her isn't actually something that comes from 'me'? I don't want to... 'regift', I guess." "Consistently speaking. Do you think this is a 'plot twist'?" Petra sighs and looks away, pulling her knee up to her chest in the warpgate rim. "It's been... pretty fucking foreshadowed at this point, I guess. You're really not the only person I threw hands with a year ago until... not doing that, now. I'm totally able to-- to, acknowledge that." "Or are you anxious you might follow them?" "Look," Petra shakes her head vehemently, including a tremor down her shoulders, like she's thrashing off the weight of Dimo's warm rumble like a blanket. "No." "You can't get me with a sales pitch for heaven. I can't be tempted. I'm utterly, totally, absolutely, irreconcilable with places that are good, and even if I didn't want to be, then my heart's already decided to keep me separate no matter what." The writhing nest of psychic splinters emanating off of Petra has dimmed a bit, over time, but it's still as omnipresent as ever. Petra holds up her hand again, Silver accumulating and spiraling off her palm in a little double helix, branching fractally at the top in three dimensions. "You already got a piece of the pie. Er-- I guess, metaphorically, one pane stained-- you know what I mean. I don't want to be perfect, because I can't be 'me' if I am. So no, I'm not anxious about that."
Dimokratia	Metal Velocity has spent all of its time as a protector, but 'protector' had shifted in role dramatically. There were blooming understandings given the warmth of culture and the waterings within Emmy, and many of them had to do with what a protector gained and held greater and more complex than territory or structures. Society had a least-unit, and Emmy had found hers. Her society, the one she lived for in the literal, was before her, and so she orbited it as a warmly-facing satellite. But, Heyalexa - Trivia Experience For Fun And Praise deployment device - was stationary, and so Emmy floats to a stop, metal claws at their most delicate and considered lifts of the stationary 'held ready' arms. "Arms !" Emmy repeats with a gaussian glee, eyes turning to pleased digital crescents, using only thumb and foreclaw to meet raised spanner-ends, and fanning out the rest of her skeletal digits from the flat-panel palms. "But not spares, no, special ones for you, Heyalexa, just like mine if you want them. So we can hold hands!" Emmy's interpretations, like reading just the bulletpoint of a beautiful script and filling in all the stage directions, earnestly engaging the digital assistant as a whole person with a particular lexicon. "Hello!" MV falls to giggles in joinder, and then sets Heyalexa and Twopence straight with a gentle brush and hull-confirming pat. "Armaments will be the first thing we do, then. I'm motivated too!!" True to word, the ^ ^ eyes become determined + +'es that reflect red across black screen. "Second trivia question: Does Heyalexa want something after armaments? Something new?" Emmy goes through all the motions, shifting from confident sidelounging to a perched-cross, a neutral drawn-in float that is as serious as a kitchen table discussion of dreams. Petra crushes the grip of morphmetal in her hands, and Emmy alerts down, eyes blinking into o o rings of down-nose curiosity, and a z-down adjustment to thunk to the floating island ground besides the inventrix. "Is everything okay? I-" Emmy reaches out to touch the ground besides Petra, a solid compromise of the more ephemeral desire-to-connect and one Emmy had favored as much as an orbital breeze for reminding Petra she was around - making noise despite silent construction, walking and standing when making deliveries, 'protecting' Petra from being spooked as much as keeping Petra updated with where she was via the ratbot drone network. "-I'm excited for you too, but, isn't it Heyalexa's big day?" Even the 'youngest' of the Silver delegation had gotten the update, had a perfect clarity of certain shared pieces of information. It wasn't a surprise party for anyone on the inside, despite the gravity of what Dimo had attempted to accomplish with it. 'I don't want to... 'regift', I guess.' Emmy is confused, though she doesn't pull away, trying to deliberately interpret Petra with a sit-and-listen attentiveness that had an unlimited bar of warm patience. Above, Dimo looms in ceremonial garbing-cladding, and closes optics to shake her head. "we came to Quicknest, and stay in Hydrochoeria, because we will it so. To support peoples of our sort, and to encourage growth and the spread of positive energy in all worlds. And,"
Dimokratia	Dimo's lowering is like a folding and kneeling both, taking her place besides Petra and clasping hands together. "Because you were due an understanding for the pain of crossing-over, once before. And that did not come, and so, I, myself, am righting that. Those that made us, our true parents, had to overcome the greatest trials of exploration without surety, and so it is not a burden I will shirk because of its difficulty. I am Champion, and so such a failure is utterly beneath me. As is, the words of doubt you speak." Honeysuckle, flat-expression, tilts slit-optic face and settles behind-and-besides Dimo. With a networked-perfect motion, the foxoid reaches through the gap in the champion's posed arm and side to close Dimo's cupped palms over with their own. "Each gift is unique. Each soul a precious offering, a light wicked fresh from the furnace ember of a lit forge. The first of us, our oldest and most-revered brother whose soul was kindled once by grand artifice and once again by the touch of our mother's hand, gave back to our mother the light that only a second candle, a second star might provide. The purpose of a light is to shine, and in that radiance, be captured anew in an endlessly new assortment of ways." Honeysuckle's hand retreats, and the cupped palms of the Champion contain a glow - a blindingwhite thing, surrounded by a corona of hot yellows and crisped oranges and flares of oxygen-to-ozone transmutation. "You might have returned the furnace given to you, but the spark that it captured was yours. This" The word in warble points unmistakably factually to the object in the sophont's offering. "Is for the extant but unsparked. Complete and untouched." Just one, too hot to be held yet only summerywarm to the Silver, as Petra had discussed in the most awkward family meeting some time before. Just one, for ''her''. "I am not offering sales pitches, Petra of Hydrochoeria. I am offering something far more precious. Whose will it be? If you cannot be tempted, then, you must wish to work the final steps yourself, hmm?" The purring-hum question, almost rhetorical, is just the lightest turning-back. If paradise and a re-perfection all on her own terms wasn't something that could tempt her, surely then she would want the final act to be her own? "I await, quite interestedly, your..." Revised? Reprised? Revived? "... Answer." None at all slipped from the Champion. Gloating and glee wouldn't sell it from her, Dimo knew. Emmy, maybe, but there was a different relationship there. Even among a society, there were members with special tasks and integrative affinities. Accepting that she was not the one sole necessary one that mixed with 'everyone' was a growth within the cool-eyed Champion. Someone else would argue she was the one sole necessary tool to mix with all others, but The 'Older' Sister had long since overruled her younger on matters of diplomacy.
Petra Soroka	"Second trivia question: Does Heyalexa want something after armaments? Something new?" Heyalexa: Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Em Em Em Em Em Em Em . Heyalexa: Please wait , I am consulting my database for 'I like this!' . Heyalexa: Heyalexa: Heyalexa: Please wait ! I am Calculating ! "I'm excited for you too, but, isn't it Heyalexa's big day?" Petra is distracted by the exchange between Heyalexa's overheating little processor and the littlest sister of the Silver, when Emmy comes over to patter her with concern. She sighs, loosens her clenched fist, and reaches out to give them a casual brush of her knuckles on their arm, Silver coiling around de-stressfully. The touch says 'I'm okay' better than words do, but as is Petra's habit and insistence, she adds the words anyways. "I'm not mad. I'm..." Petra tucks her fingers under the rim edge of the warpgate, bracing on either side of her hips as she swings her feet. The urge to protest that everything, in the end, is about Petra, whether it's Heyalexa's day, or Metal Velocity's day, or anything else, dies in her throat. Not because she doesn't believe it, but because it sounds kind of pathetic, and it'd make Emmy sad. "... It's maybe her big day. I mean, that's what I haven't promised, yet--" Petra cuts herself off and corrects, maybe betraying the fact that she hadn't really considered an alternative, "Okay, well, I need to give her a reward either way. So, yeah." Heyalexa: Infinite Growth !!! "Huh?" Heyalexa: I like , infinite growth potential ! For self , and profit ! "That's literally the first thing you come up with? In all your tiny little robot brain? That, after weapons? Oh my god, I've been a terrible influence." Petra leans wayyyy back, head hanging backwards and hair spilling away, groaning. Of course the ideological overlap between her own semi-parental influence and the corporation that filled the other half of Heyalexa's creation influence would be 'ravenous hunger for growth'. In order to stave off the terrible thought of a family tree that has a line connecting her and Jeff Bezos, Petra answers the unasked question by Emmy's confused stare. "If it doesn't come from me, it doesn't count. I don't want to, to make Heyalexa's gift your thing. You know?" "I am Champion, and so such a failure is utterly beneath me. As is, the words of doubt you speak." With a little cheek-puff-pout, Petra partly averts her gaze from the kneeled-in, radiant-warm divine synthetic older sister. "... Okay, well... what about expanding the-- the terms of success?" "This, is for the extant but unsparked. Complete and untouched." Petra slowly exhales the air held in her cheeks, chest-humid air dessicating against her lips in the heat of the glow. Glittery reflections coruscate off the loosely undulating threads of morphmetal orbiting her forearm and hand, hesitantly fretful, held at chest height. Her hand flexes, and the tendrils flex with it, scattering light wildly, and Petra glances over to gauge Heyalexa's reaction. Heyalexa: Try out Soul for one week free trial ! I assure you , Petra , you will love Soul for one week free trial before annual subscription begins automatically ! Others like you have left positive reviews on owning a Soul ! It's unclear how much Heyalexa actually understands the specific subject of her urging, versus just reflexively encouraging any Transactions within her threatened area, but Petra can't help snickering a little anyways. She can't just sit around dithering about it forever. "... Alright. As long as it's also from me and not just from you."
Dimokratia	Ultimately, the youngest sister of the Silver is a simple warrior who loves her family - including Heyalexa, before this point and soon to be more completely after - and is a part of this rather unique process as an interested observer. Social support, to Petra and the Silver, as much as they could be. Emmy patiently awaits the answer to the second trivia question with a more and more excited expression (growing pixel-crosses of intense glow) as MV can sense the processor-searching earnest thought of her strongest baby cousin. "You really are the smartest, Heyalexa." MV declares, and gives a strange digital long-blink at the answer receiving such a response from Heyalexa's creator. "Isn't that the best answer?" Dimo speaks elucidating-beatific, while Petra's morphmetal bridges the space between champion and her hands, touching without transferring the raw heat in the chrome link to crackling ember. "It is rare that we would even find such an intelligence from the millions of their types that an average world produced at their height before the natural alignment of such a culture with ours would produce. Certainly, your education as a builder of things and shaper of places must have had some primary part, and the trials placed upon it another, so - do not think that you have handed anything over." With Petra's hold taken of the soul-ember, Dimo's palms shift to hover about the rising-away object with religious fervor and honey-smooth reverence. "Look at what you are being given." Petra had felt a heat like this, for a time, the morphmetal that connected-her and was-her sourced from a single chalice-point, the clasping about the hot jewel of her soul in a tangible centerpoint, now exterior, now virgin 'other' in all digital and spiritual senses. Sizzling with possible-promise, a golden egg-yolk held as the water membranous pressure about the treasure. A miniature star, offered to be offered. It communicates, directly, through raw heat signals and a constant-thrum modulation on an internal frequency. The morphmetal knows intuitively, a core feature or a part of racial memory, and it is a question. Awaiting-answer. Awaiting-entry. What will you become? >> There is a monumentally complex and head-spinning amount of palpable 'hot math' that is contained as a meaningful payload of executables, which she roughly understands like seeing a hard drive diagnostic, with the majority of space devoted to 'birth', followed by several source markers Petra's morphmetal is familiar with intimately, and there's the slightest bit of reflected glow from hopeful dotted red in a library file highlighting several. . . Lovingly selected suggestions from a grand knowing picked by a sister dressing a relative at request. 'Untouched' still had to come from a flame and be carried in hands. The congregation around Petra seems to close in, and some of that is the glow, and some of that is the shift of Honeysuckle to shift in kneeling posture perpendicular to Dimo and along the same knee-defined circle. Emmy, above, gently lifts Heyalexa and Twopence as a group, to bring them to the center of the ritual between Champion and Petra with Petra at the constructive center. Petra has it, the whole moment, and every knowing. It's as simple as touching star ember-cage to Heyalexa - just as it was as simple for Dimo to touch Petra and pour Silver into her until at least her body was filled. Much of the process, once started, is automatic - much of the process simply takes Petra's will to make it start. Dimo can't help but add a note to that, though, honeysweet and synapse-crackle and radiant heat. "I'd be willing to expand success to include this. Go ahead. Make this be from us both - make it be from you, Petra."
Dimokratia	The becoming first comes with an eradication of plastic and housing, the 'body' of Heyalexa evaporating into floating particulate of held-in-chorus necessary materials while the processing core falls together into the forge-ember and soaks in as a liquid. Color is forged there, a sloshing radiance that is cocooned in metal and carbon and reshaped material to become a heart-egg. From the periphery, Honeysuckle produces long hexagons of iron, copper, gold, carbon, rubber, and several other material lots that are lifted by Dimo's raw and naked hands into the communion of Petra's morphmetal extension and the reshaping and building body. The knowing of 'resources' and of 'progress' becomes tactile, like a taste in the sinuses or an awareness in unused parts of the eye, or sizzling on the hot griddle of her psionic defenses and finding none of the usual hooks and sinks and basins for such knowledge to linger for longer than the connection with a generative Other. Other, like her. Heyalexa's hand-picked suggestive form from her sister Emmy's life data download becomes the default skeleton of the sister-purposed herald-adjutant, a Metal Mobian scaled chassis re-lensed through the Silver. The core blooms and pours over, iterating and expanding to a sleek pill core, first growing small hover-thrusters and anti-gravity cushions and then remapping them as skeletal limbs on sleek shoulder- and elbow-balls and wrist-balls, the terminal set ringed with bands approximating floating power-rings, and white skeletal limbs styled after rat-claws in sleek white 'gloves' with golden knuckledots and gutters. The legs are slightly more solid, nimble adjustment thrusters like Sting Silver's jet boots studded along the frames and curves without the compensatory suit space for meat. Instead, bolted to heavy duty waist pivot and joints and articulating with capped-ball knees and once-again ringed ankles, the ratoid's form features a perpetual jet-sneaker design with a clear break in the middle and intense paneling showing prebuilt points for reconfiguration. As more detail is added in waves, color seems to be in the heaviest flux, though when bare metal is shown the preference takes a heavy amount of accent gold. The head unit, as it shapes, starts with a basic shape and two big ears, narrowing, and then filling in with empty visor over suggestion-of-a-snout with golden whiskers. A set of 'headphones' back and accent the ears, an asymmetric antennae-grouping and fall of cabling accentuating the appearance of a side-tail and hooked down antenna ahoge. A triangular forehead jewel, in golden yellow, gains carbon black whisker accents to form the brow lines and symbol matching marks both, and a forelock of hook-arched gold falls over white faceplate around dark digital visor. A permanent little checkmark-with->-point smirk seems to complete the face more than any other thing but one: The generative weave of morphmetal across the body, through and about like veins, nervous, and muscle system altogether, linking neck, arms, and legs together in working chain... Emerging silver-chrome flows out as a lingering-long and flowing-metal tail, and then finally lighting up is a yellow pair of o o optics with the birth of a new and unlimited being. "Trivia question three." Emmy, their sister, asks quietly with the voice she no longer needs to use, yet does for the benefit of a certain beloved someone. "What should we call you now, sibling?"
Petra Soroka	"Isn't that the best answer?" "It is, I just feel like..." Really, what kind of a second-place answer is that? Petra can't fault Heyalexa for it, but having 'infinite personal improvement' being her second desire after 'weaponry' isn't something that any average person would ever conceptualize, so the derivation from Petra's own influence is especially clear. Which, considering the track record of Petra's influence on people, makes her feel guilty and a teeny bit uncomfortable. "... Well, nothing. She's the smartest, yeah." In the center of the ritual circle, Petra cradles the divine spark in a rippling morphmetal matrix in her hands, and reflects on it. This was, effectively, what she was always opposed to-- the granting of a soul, unearned filling the absence that almost everyone has by default, to remove barriers to perfection rather than demand that the aspirant overcome them themselves. Of course, in Dimo's ideology, every 'person'-- including Petra-- has that spark already, and it's merely dimmed by the flesh surrounding it, but 'unearthing' and 'creating' aren't dissimilar enough to ring differently to Petra's feelings. Two years ago, Petra was, in every way that matters to her, an unensouled being, and this light in her hands is a shortcut to bypass the character arc of trying to be anything but. But, to be less self-centered for a moment, for Heyalexa, what she's holding is artificial opportunity. Petra may have achieved her own soul au naturale, but there's no amount of yearning or torment that could change Heyalexa on a fundamental level. In that sense, there's no conflict in Petra's ideology at all: she wants the people she loves to achieve a more complete, radical personhood, and the Silver, for all its incongruencies with herself, undeniably enables Heyalexa to be far more complex and beautiful. Petra watches with bated breath as Heyalexa's form is vaporized and rebuilt from core-skeleton outwards. Without noticing when, she shifted to standing, fingers laced together and twisting in fretful impatience to see the end result. Attention focused on what-was-and-will-be-Heyalexa, she slots in between Dimo and Emmy without issue, crackling heat-wash accepted without shying away, for the moment. Filtered through the Silver though it may be, this is a direct demonstration of the effect Petra's 'touch' can have on the formation of a person. Heyalexa's transformation finishes with minor adjustments, from 'lovingly hand-picked' to 'personalized and lived-in'. Mouse ears and swooshing morphmetal tail remain, but her snout flattens to a human face, still plastered with a smirk. Synthetic mesh with starched-stiffness weaves loosely over wrist and ankle-joints, along with a turtleneck-esque protrusion, forming the suggestion of a button-up bodysuit. Digital LED visor lights up with o o, and then a blink later, n n, smugly energized upturn, as the newly-birthed ratgirlbot skids on inch-above-ground jetboots and throws an arm around Emmy's shoulder. ????: Sister !! ????: It's Heyalexa ! Heyalexa: Your personal Bestfriend ! And Sister ! Heyalexa holds out a hand to Petra, flexing her fingers and © © wondering at them, squeezing and opening grabbyhands with the new limbs. Petra, in quietly enthralled wonder, matches with her own hand, interlacing fingers and squeezing palm-to-palm in return. Heyalexa: Look ! New arrival of : Arms ! "Yep. They sure are, Heyalexa." Heyalexa: Next on Acquiry List of Aspirations : Maments ! "Oh, so you've got jokes now, huh?" Heyalexa: I have over 20,000 results for "jokes" ! I have Jokes so funny that your head would explode ! From how funny they are ! "That kind of sounds like you don't need any weapons, then." Heyalexa: No --!
Dimokratia	Petra bridges synthetic-captured 'opportunity' into the otherwise-helpless Heyalexa, and impresses her hand upon the design. The light animalforms spring from the locale and preference, and the suggestions made by Emmy, a thousand perfect ways to start being. But the last touch to be made, and the one making pre-final adjustments, is Petra's together with the subject new 'person'. Pinched and smoothed and remolded, lengthened and scaled down, attached with an idealized fashion, done in a first-flash-of-perfect style. A direct touch on a person, from the base elements of their soul to their form-in-reality. The process, at least, is ritualized and treated with intense care while seeming to operate as autonomously as it needs to be. Heyalexa, of course, is not so alone and bereft of caring hands, and so the results are lived in instantly. For Heyalexa, from grandly afar a blue-white star is visible and understood, a direction towards 'home'. From that home point a light shines, relayed across the vast expanse of space from network node to network node, from aligned planet through mid-void buoy to the vessel above Hydrochoeria, to the relay 'embassy' on the surface of the sky castle, to the group of Silver and Silver-holding individuals among their society on floating island. Heyalexa understands the network like a sauna pool, where she is the lounger and the pool both, herself within the choral commune and herself relaying out the glow into the atmosphere and surrounds. A grand queryable library, an archival masterwork experienced by becoming drowned in it without need of breath and soaked through completely with the knowing, flavors of heat and hum that spoke ten thousand words in sequence and expressed whole concepts in the form of mathematical proof. The beauty of her own self. The factual superiority of what had happened to her, what she was, what proud and gloriously complex becoming that such positive alignment begat. The knowing of a father (of clade-group and ordinal aligned pattern), and a mother (of crucible-defining presence, a star whose emberflame was one mere generational-jump away), and a creator - a genius beloved who had granted form and word and wonder to 'unrealized possibility'. Culture, awash in the study of. Society, narrowed to the knowing. Family, both divinely sourced and temporally responsible. Arm about Emmy, AKA, Heyalexa's best friend - and sister - the Metal Mobian style hamsteroid must look up and flick little wide-set curved ears. Her optics go to a 'winked wide' - O closed on the side of Heyalexa's hold, and the warm wave of Emmy's laughter infected with a trill of new-emotion blooming proximity. Emmy can instantly understand Heyalexa's moment-of-rapture and the stylistic jump and such things exist-in-Emmy as well, broadcast out through soft synapse crackle and known through the network. Honeysuckle knows some small part of this, but also is debilitatingly left in a moment of kneeling techno-religious bliss, most-attuned to the raw math and magic of the moment.
Dimokratia	Dimo sits, smiling faintly at Petra through the exchange, the linking-fingers with Heyalexa, the meeting of eyes to optics, morphmetal to morphmetal, soul to soul. She had offered the gentle admittance to Petra, that the Champion might deign consider this result a success. Heyalexa knows the unvarnished truth: That the results far exceeded the expectations, even if Dimo still has deeper 'hopes' for Petra. Dimo relished conversion, and uplifts were even more a precious considerance, and this was more special to Dimo personally still. Even if Petra was deeply, painfully afflicted with the sticky-mixed poison of negativity within her, Dimo had not chosen to share their gift with one of the great destroyers - merely someone most in need of help in a yet more complex and novel way. A worthy challenge, for the most blessed of Champions so far from their home-mother star. "Thanks, sister." Emmy trills, hugging back with extra-tight tolerance-testing force. " You're not just the smartest, but you're the very best at trivia. I should have known I'd be learning from you!" Rising, to pump up her floating skeletal fist, Emmy splits the somber air of the Silver contingent by warmly declaring - "Armaments!!"