2024-02-03: One Sunset ~ For Two of Us
- Cast: Asciel Colette, Ai Martel
- Where: Nagoya
- Date: U.C. 0098 02 03
- Summary: Facing nightfall is far easier when you know you're not alone.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
The state of world affairs since late December - 'numerous large fires extinguished that then immediately turned into dozens of tiny fires'. Those who believed they could rest easy with the erasure of large, Earth-threatening disasters...well, the shape of the world power structure being in such flux speaks for itself.
Shortly after that time - right after the collapse of Goragon - a somewhat bitter and resentful message found its way to Ai's messages. It was seemingly 'from' Asciel - and yet was in tones that were desperately trying not to be Asciel.
<<"It has become apparent that I must rethink the means I am building the future. I must do more to tear the past down. My present opportunities to take action have become an obligation. I'm sorry that I will not be able to see you for a while. -I love you.">>
-- -- -- -- --
...come May 0098, and Ai's re-contacted in far more desperate, yet far more familiar tones, shortly after she may have heard of...an awful lot of chaos at Isaac City.
<<"Oh hell, it's been five months since I last contacted you, unbelievable-! ...L...Listen, I'm about to say something that sounds a lot like that I royally screwed up and that you're the only one I can crawl back to or something. It must be reiterated that the important element is the part where I messed up. I was always going to come back to you. ...I was always going to come back to you. ...A lot's changed for me, quite suddenly. ...Now that I'm calling you, all I can think of is coming back to you. I really made this more complicated than it had to be, didn't I...?">>
Soon enough, with a target on her back of just about every institution in the Earth Sphere, including her former employers, Asciel's managed to smuggle herself and the smoldering remains of her Armored Core halfway across the world, to the one remotely safe location she has - a cargo container with the carefully disguised components of the Nine-Ball Seraph deposited at long last at the Martel estate, followed by Asciel herself.
As soon as the truck departs, and the world is quiet, her extremely perilous situation given a moment to breathe...Asciel topples against that very container, sliding down to the ground, knees against her chest.
"...to think just how close I came to...ruining this. Now it's all I have left, huh...?" she murmurs to herself...giving a moment of reprieve to ignore the flashing call of low power reserves in her sensors. Just a bit more. Soon.
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
That initial message was... concerning. And with little information as to what was going on, thanks to the partial breakdown of her intelligence network, there's been little she could do but wait, try as she might to find out what's going on. After hearing of the events at Isaac City, she's been spending much of her time down in the family mausoleum, doing God-knows-what...
And now she's finally gotten word. Madeline's been told to wait for signs of Asciel's arrival, and when the truck DOES arrive, the grounds staff gets to work retrieving equipment to move the container out of view of the road, while Ai rushes up above ground, wearing--heavens forfend--a utilitarian outfit, something that belongs on a mechanic! Her cheek is smudged with grease of some sort as she runs to Asciel's side.
She's speechless for a long moment. She stares, almost in disbelief. Asciel is back, just like that... but the sight is a welcome one. She can't deny that. Ai crouches down in front of Asciel and hugs her, tightly, with the sort of strength only she can muster. "Oh, my dear, my dear... ma petit chouette...what's happened? The last I'd heard from you, it felt like it was hardly you..."
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
There's so much clouding Asciel's thoughts that initially, Ai gets a bit of a blank stare of lowered recognition - she's been running on such a utilitarian mode with such limited processing power at her disposal. Besides, Ai doesn't usually wear something like that-
---Ai doesn't usually wear something like that. And yet, inexplicably, the sight of her in something so rugged and simple makes the butterfly in her heart flap wildly, all the moreso when Ai's warm embrace floods Asciel right back into reality.
This is the reason she had created this body. And now, she is fully incarnated into it. It's an avalanche of emotion for her exhausted spirit.
Arms clenching tightly around Ai's waist, locking eyes with renewed determination, a sputtering laugh escapes Asciel's lips, as she draws herself a little more upright. "...Ehe. Ahahahaha!!! Aaaaaaahahahah...aha...ha..." That three phase laughter from short and whispery, to high and manic, then back down to running out of breath. "...Oh, Ai...I set myself upon a doomed one-man crusade against all the Earth, my own limited power trying to slay a planet of conquest. Aaaaah...it almost worked, for a short while...not nearly long enough to crack the tower in half. The end result is...is...you can see it for yourself right now."
The ruined frame of the Nine-Ball Seraph is extracted limb by limb, joint by joint - the arms in their entirety having been severed back at Isaac City. But the most striking item in the container...is the giant spherical mainframe that served as Asciel's mind, the calculating terminal that could be called 'her', and everything else just a puppet of that hand.
It is utterly ruined. Cracked nearly clean in half, charred and thick with slag, and, of course, completely inert and silent. It would, by all rights, entail that Asciel has died.
And yet here she is. Clutching Ai all the tighter when it enters her peripheral view. "...it is perhaps 'that' which had contacted you. Which had begun to believe 'I' was...~harming it. Heh. Ahahaha. ...What a painful dilemma that existence came to live with. If it ~remained the way it was, then it was doomed to embody everything humanity feared if the light of insight ever truly came to the artificial. But if it ~allowed me to rise and bloom - it turned out to be quite poisonous in its own right. T...that is to say..."
A pause, a quiver in Asciel's abdomen, pushing herself back up to her feet and staring skyward. "...it attempted to extract 'me' into this puppet. ...It should not have worked. I should not be able to speak with you right now. By all metric, such an act was 'dying'...but you can perhaps see that death had come for it all the same. ...It's a strange sensation. This...~reincarnation. ...I'm still getting used to it. I hope you haven't had to undertake anywhere near as drastic an ordeal, Ai."
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
Ai watches as the Nineball Seraph is extracted, piece by piece. A jolt of fear rushes through her heart when she sees the core, ruined. She looks at Asciel... then at it, then at Asciel once more. "You..." she whispers, then allows her to explain.
"I see... another self," she nods, slowly. She keeps staring at the hollow vessel. "How long was it there with you? Do you know? What happened in Isaac City?" Finally, Ai looks back at her. "... and... what of you? It shouldn't have worked... and yet it did. How- how diminished are your capabilities? What's been lost?" Ai's hands cling to Asciel's arms.
"... the Britannian Princess Euphemia committed a massacre at a GUTS event. I wasn't in attendance, but..." She shivers. "Many innocent lives were lost. Quite a few of my students... Emilia is safe, thank the gods, but..." She shivers, haunted. "Between that, the collapse of the Federation, and your disappearance..." A chuckle. "I've had my hands full. Much of my network's gone dark, as well... we've been working to get that ancient suit ready for combat." Her head tips lightly toward the mausoleum.
"I never doubted that you would come back, as long as you survived. And now that you're here..." She hugs Asciel again, tightly.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
Asciel's hand clenches at her own chest - at the sense that...something has nested there. Something unspeakably important to protect. "...I...it's hard to say for sure what...came 'between'...'us'. For quite a long time it was simply that I was what I wanted to ~become. ...I can't help but remember right after we parted ways, on that painful day. I had this very strange feeling of me needing to fight against my usual self-operated storage routines. ...I think the way I was inhabiting this puppet was messier and more involved than I imagined."
A grimace crosses Asciel's face, doing her best to ignore the constant warning flashes. "It's difficult to remember. At some point, it began to perceive me as maybe...a ~dream it'd be foolish to fulfill. Something it could never truly ~obtain. ...and given the method it used to ensure I could live on is...quite forwardly implausible, it's easy to see why. Ai...I don't truly understand how and why I'm alive right now. This body shouldn't be able to contain me."
Maybe Asciel speaks somewhat elusively, strangely about her own situation, but the longer she clings to Ai, the more something a little clearer is felt. That sense of mentally 'pushing away' that Asciel always inhabited - especially when one came closer to her mainframe - is utterly gone. ...If anything, something's opened up wider than expected.
That very flashing notice of being low on power supply, purely internal to Asciel's diagnostics, something she's trying to hide...it flickers into the corner of Ai's mind.
"...You've been at diligent work on that project, it seems. So that's the labor I interrupted you from..." Asciel guides Ai a few inches away just to get a closer view, a gleam flashing across her eyes, pupils contracting dizzily. "...You manage to be breathtaking no matter what your presentation. Indeed, seeing you like this...it's quite profoundly compelling..." ...that echo of exhausted battery emanating from Asciel's spirit is flooded with a hazier thought. Delirious dreams of being taken apart and fixed - only by Ai would she ever let such a visceral process ensue...
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
Ai nods. "Like you were... well, incarnating into an avatar, rather than simply inhabiting a puppet. It might be that you developed a sort of 'soul', something distinct from the bare-metal machine consciousness that you arose from."
"Of course, this is all speculation. I've learned quite a lot, but it's been rather hard to find documentation on Super-AI creation and development, particularly with my reach so diminished..." She taps her lips. "Mn. I am... at least very glad that it didn't desire your *death*."
A ping, of sorts--an echo--reaches her mind. She doesn't quite understand it, but she intuits enough. There's a giggle, and a light smile. "Truly? I suppose there's a certain allure to the mechanic's jumpsuit..." She bites her lip, and looks toward the mausoleum. "How is your power supply? We've several spare generators in the crypts, if you would like to appropriate one."
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
The butterfly of a spirit parts its wings. The notion of having changed in such a way sends a plume of anxiety up Asciel's body, clutching Ai's hand a little too tightly.
"...haaaah. It's the only explanation. Of course it is. I still feel like I ~fell quite a long ways. ...As far as...processing capability goes, it's a lot less though. I definitely feel much more sluggish and confined. It...takes a lot of my capacity just to...be." A few more steps taken off to the side, as everything's finally put away in storage, hidden away inside the Martel estate. Marking, at least, some relief.
"It's strange...part of me feels...relieved. Like there's a lot of weight no longer holding me down. But at the same time, that same weight was security. ~Flying or ~falling...it's hard to know what. But at least I'll be going there hand in hand with you."
A long sigh ensues, Asciel digging her heel into the flagstones, as the more practical subject is broached. "...Power supply. Yes. I haven't...recharged since I was remade. Normally it wasn't a factor - I had so many ways to bring this puppet to refueling stations, and if it fell, it fell. ...oh. ...N...Now I'm really, REALLY not sure what happens if I run out." Anxiously gazing to either side, a stumble of exhaustion comes across Asciel. "...please take me there. I'll likely need to spend some time...just...inactive and replenishing every so often." ...'sleep' in other words...
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
Ai nods gently. "I'll help you get used to it," she says with a smile, opting not to remark on how much more human this makes Asciel. Instead, as her love mentions that they'll be going hand-in-hand, she takes her hand, giving it a squeeze.
She leads Asci across the manor grounds to the crypt; it's rather different than the last time Ms. Colette was down here. Temporary lights, strung on the walls or on stands, illuminate the way down, which is wide open; the chamber hiding Bradamante is similarly well-lit, the giant, silent knight surrounded by scaffolds, its once tarnished and broken armor now gleaming in silver and blue. As they walk, Ai speaks. "Flying, I think... it may be useful to think of things in terms of evolutionary fitness. It may not be quite the same, granted... but in evolution, a being might *seem* to regress, to 'fall'... some call this de-evolution, but it's merely an adaptation to a new environment. New conditions."
"You haven't fallen, my dearest. You've merely changed. Without this second self weighing you down... you're in some ways more fit than you were. Adapted to a more chaotic world, perhaps, where something so large as you were is vulnerable?"
Ai leads Asci to an object about the size of a drink cooler--the technology may have changed, but the form factor of generators, it seems, hasn't. "Now... I trust you use a fairly standard receptacle?" she inquires, unlooping an orange cable from the side of the generator and brandishing the plug toward Asciel.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
The haze breaks a little with a look at the unearthed Bradamante, a gloved hand rising up to Asciel's chin. "So you're remaking it in full swing I take it. Progress is clearly coming along nicely, hoh...well. ...I suppose I might have very little better to do in the immediate future than help you ~restore it. ...Much as there are very pressing matters at hand, I...I think..."
Taking the extended cable, Asciel slips it through a seam in her sweater, plugging it into her mid-back and sighing in relief - though the readouts indicate slow recharge rates, prompting a beleagered groan from the idol. "...I think I'm not going to get anywhere if I just...go right back out with even less at my disposal. Nnn. ...I wouldn't call this ~re-making 'regression', but it's...I'm not sure how I will fulfill my [promises] anymore. ...It's hard to say I could have oversight over a whole planet if I am in a confined and static body like this."
Easing herself onto a folding chair that creaks under her weight, Asciel's gaze slowly starts to lose illumination, flitting back and forth between Ai and Bradamante. An exhaustion from over a decade of frenetic exertion seems to have settled in. "...I thought I was supposed to be their ~salvation, you know. I wasn't supposed to just...take from them. They created me to reconcile their obligations with their desires. They were supposed to ~become me. ...Maybe I'm...overthinking it. Maybe that's what happened. This strange sense of someone else having sacrificed for my sake may just be...part of the process. I don't hate the feeling. I just hadn't expected I'd be in this circumstance, and I mislike feeling lost..."
"Well. Being unjustly lonely in a world that frankly doesn't deserve us makes for both of our circumstances. The Earth's most worthy inheritor and most adored idol, with none to call upon but each other." Though clearly tired, without the spark of light in her gaze, that familiar confidence stretches over Asciel's lips in a pushed but genuine smile up at Ai. "Despite everything, neither of us feel lost with each other. After all, this is the place I realized I ought to go at my most adrift. ...So...forgive me, somewhat, that so shortly after returning, I may need to...go inactive for a while. ...Apparently I won't recharge much if I stay up and alert. Ugh..."
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
"Mm. I believe humanity will live to see enough tomorrows for us to do what we must... and look at it this way, my dear. We can create a system worthy of you. This is hardly permanent, after all." Ai smiles gently.
She sighs softly. "I suspect you're overthinking it, yes... as you so often do." The smile becomes a wry grin. "Things have changed, a lot. And not entirely for the better... but now that we've found each other, I don't think we'll remain lost for long." A hand--bare, not gloved--is placed atop Asciel's. "Until we're ready, we can help ensure the world doesn't shake itself apart."
There's a chuckle as Asciel says she needs to go inactive. "You deserve to rest, my dear... to sleep." It's a little odd to imagine Asciel really *sleeping*, going fully inactive. And it must be moreso for Asciel. "... I'll make sure you're safe. When I'm done here, we'll move you to my--to *our* bedroom."
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
...The very idea of falling inactive for awhile sends a spark of worry through Asciel. Going inert in one location and waking up in another, under another's impetus - there's something that gnaws on the little scar etched into her spirit.
She's about to protest, 'Don't move me without my knowledge' - maybe Ai can 'hear' that feeling lashing out instinctively, if weakly. But it's far, far overcome with the exhaustion...and the delightful promise of returning to cognizance in Ai's arms. "What a wonderfully warm thought...you really are something special. Do be careful. Though you're the best consort a goddess could ask for, I'm still so very much to handle.~"
With a flashy little tousling of her hair, Asciel sighs and leans back against the crypt's walls, begrudgingly engaging inactivity routines - a process that feels like willingly disabling her own cognition for the first time. Bit by bit, the lights begin to go off, and her joints begin to loosen their simulacrum of human tension.
...the process halts, for a bit.
"...Ai...this is harder to accept...than I thought..." The voice is low, creaky, flat, coming without even moving her lips - though her hand does extend out to brush along Ai's one last time.
It's too late for her to stop it all entirely though. And soon enough - Asciel's descended into 'sleep' for the first time, only to be roused upon certain motion or decibel thresholds.
<Pose Tracker> Ai Martel has posed.
Ai looks... perhaps a little confused by what she 'hears'. She isn't used to such connections, so she doesn't quite... understand what it is. She nods. "Of course, my dear. You'll be given the utmost care."
She watches as Asciel begins the shutdown process, intently. It must be scary, she imagines... and at that last admission, as Asciel brushes her hand over hers, she clasps her other hand over it. "It'll be all right, my love."
It takes a few minutes before Ai is willing to stand up and resume her work. And when Asciel awakens, several hours later, she'll find herself...
Exactly where she was, with an elegant blonde woman in a mechanic's jumpsuit asleep in a chair right next to her.