2023-04-16: Heavy Bird-ens
- Cast: Anser Vulpecula, Koji Kabuto, LiSA, Rita Bernal
- Where: Fujinomiya City - Photon Power Prototype Hangar
- Date: U.C. 0097 04 16
- Summary: Koji and Anser talk shop over Rita and the Phenex. Rita permits Anser to see inside her heart - neither of them come away from the experience the same.
<Pose Tracker> Anser Vulpecula has posed.
Anser's role has largely been one performed in the background - the true mark of a fine engineer. When they're doing their job correctly, it's almost difficult to tell that they're doing anything at all, until various systems start to come online. Her work has largely been performed during times when the entity known as Rita Bernal is inactive. For that matter, when most people who keep sane hours are inactive, with very little overlap.
Her workday started with squinting at the various changes that have been made since her last shift. After all, as much a specialist as she is, it takes a village to repair a mobile suit that's been this severely ruined, especially with the necessity of sourcing the correct parts to try to make up a solution that will actually work when cobbled together. They can't just call up Anaheim and ask for schematics or white papers, or order spare parts. So there's been a lot of fabrication necessary.
"What the fuck is this supposed to be?" The engineer ran her hand over the handiwork of the PPL, a mixture of wonder and professional disdain. Pinching her nose, she'd left all the projection equipment untouched until she's had a proper hand-down from the team to figure out why they've made the choices they have, but she had a pretty clear guess, and it's one that she disagrees with the time allocation for. Then, well - she got to work.
In the here and now, Anser isn't on the equipment that's been set up to make for a stable workspace - she's tucked into a crevice of the inactive machine's damaged frame, the top of her head only visible to the outside world due to her high ponytail peeking up just over the scoured armor plating. She's not entered the cockpit yet, as she's not bothered to fire up the projection equipment. She's got a heavy-duty laptop that's got wires snaking out of it, some more easily discernible than others. One's clipped in taking voltage readings, another's in one of the exposed diagnostic ports, but the rest? They seem to be attached to seemingly random locations that have been recently filled with PPL's 3D-printed meshwork. She's not typing like a madwoman, but she is staring at the screen, parsing through lines of code and the litany of errors that are being thrown.
It's an easy statement to make that Psycommu are 'magic'. It's an easy statement to make that the Psychoframe is a 'miracle'.
Those that think so don't have to deal with mind-numbing minutiae of ensuring that the atomic-level clusters of machinery actually speak to one another so that they can do their job. And as much as Anser could be spending her time welding or tinkering with other elements, she knows damn well why she was called into this. The agonizing specialization of analyzing the network, analyzing the replacements fabricated by PPL, and making them actually talk to one another in a way that doesn't make the entire thing a horrific deathtrap for the next newtype to sit in the cockpit.
Or, well. Ensuring that the next AI to spool up the machine doesn't overload things on an unstable psycommu network and blow the hangar up.
The occasional frustrated sound issues from the tiny mechanic, and she reaches up and tears the hairtie out of her ponytail, irritatedly chewing at her lip and muttering to herself, "Fucking things, you think you get to just sit there and be stubborn just because Miguel isn't here? Kiss and fucking make up, you fucking death machines. Yes. Fucking override it. Yes, for the millionth time. Why can't I do this in bulk? Anaheim, you useless shits, why did you make this shitty Operating System so hard to deal with? Maybe instead of spending your meetings coming up with an unoriginal pithy name, you could have made me able to BULK SELECT."
She... may be a touch irritable, given she's not able to take a cigarette when submerged in the guts of a mobile suit.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"You'd almost think it would be faster to rip the guts out of the firmware and start from scratch," Koji remarks dryly as Anser rants about Anaheim's programming chops.
The Head of the Research Institute's Experimental Development Department is sitting at another console around the wounded Phenex. One monitor is showing the ongoing vibratory scans of the mobile suit's psycoframe - a way to detect microfractures and disruptions in the crystalline structure that the human eye would miss - while another is his actual work monitoring the call-response efficacy of the replacement psycommu chips based on existing test software.
Overhead a third monitor displays a materials-and-energy analysis assessing whether the Phenex's armour could benefit from being replaced with Super Alloy Z while iterating on new alloying formulations for the latter material, as well as projections on reactor replacement.
Koji pushes his chair back away from his workspace, clicking his tongue. "They haven't even commented half of this." He shakes his head.
"... So is that the question you meant to ask about that?" He waves to the projector device sitting inactive on the floor. "I almost feel like you meant 'what the fuck is this for'."
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
As Anser has worked on the Phenex, she may have been able to feel someone watching her, even in the dead of night. It was constant. Never any sense of malice or expectation, only watching.
That came to an abrupt end two days ago.
Rita Bernal has not made an appearance as a spirit or a hard-light avatar. Her presence can still be felt, for those sensitive to such things. The suffering, burning child, curled into the pilot's seat of the cockpit. No words or feelings echo from her. This is the type of silence one has to make an effort to maintain.
Perhaps a few balloons are still attached to the Phenex. Maybe the remains of a blanket nest can be seen along the hangar floor. It looks like the morning after a child's birthday party, all things considered. A box of hairclips rests on an out-of-the way table.
It should be a cheerful sight. Rita should be thrilled with it! But she does not emerge, even when Koji comes to assist Anser.
<Pose Tracker> Anser Vulpecula has posed.
Anser's head pokes up and out to look at Koji. She doesn't fluster at having been overheard, but she does quiet down considerably. The barrage of curses cuts short. Anser and Koji may not have had the time to formally get to know one another, but they're aware of one another's presence from working opposite shifts. Appreciating one another's decisionmaking, or questioning it via written communications at the end of every shift. Their contributions in the hand-down information are both excessively loquacious.
Loose, raven-black hair, tired crimson eyes, and wearing a thin frown, the disemobided head of Anser Vulpecula speaks from within the Phenex, staring at Koji. "Looks like we finally overlapped. Good to put a voice to the face and the words." The anger has fled her tone like a memory. Now she sounds almost painfully neutral. She tilts her chin up, "If I could overwrite this utter mess, I would. But as much as I hate what they've done here, they've iterated on the MSN-02 in ways that seem to have given it significant uplift. And doing so might have consequences for the brainwave records, and clear the AGI." Which is to say, Rita, in terms that Anser refers to her. "Korts wouldn't forgive me if that happened. I know you weren't serious. You'll have to excuse me....Koji Kabuto. Would you prefer to be addressed by any title in particular, or would you prefer to dispense with formalities?"
Koji's commentary about... well, comments... gets a pained groan from Anser, a clear sound of agreeement without the need for an immediate verbal retort.
"Yes. It's military grade technology. It's only natural that things are a bit arcane to work with when interfacing with, but... nng. There aren't helpfiles. The code is inelegantly laid out for the sole purpose of making it harder to parse, and I'm starting to get it, now, but it's not like the lab environment back in Sweetwater with the Director. Commented code, functions that make sense, and --" She pauses, and her head vanishes. The sound of typing. "Wait. Wait, no. That can't be it. No, you've got to be..."
A squeaky sound issues from Anser's direction that sounds like air being let out of a balloon - enough so that one could be mistaken for thinking it's a leak in one of the ones that's lingering around the Phenex - but it then turns into a gutteral snarl, "Why is that argument case-sensitive when none of the others are!? Who -- I -- every other argument is lowercase, why would..."
Seldom does someone sound quite so upset about a discovery that's presumably just made their life easier.
Anser hop-pulls herself up out of the frame with a few well-placed footholds, and seats herself cross-legged. "I've got my guesses. It should be easier than making our onboard pilot have to line things up with magnetism and hunt and peck on a keyboard." She cranes her head and gestures to the balloons, "...I didn't find anything in the problem areas the last shift marked for us. Not sure what they were on about."
...Because of course the balloons can't just be celebratory, Anser.
Anser's only been aware of Rita's presence in the barest possible terms. A slight tickle on the back of her neck. The thought that in the otherwise empty hangar, someone's just walked in, but they haven't. The thought that her mind is playing tricks on her, but without the ability to quite feel the reason for why. And emminently able to rationally dissect her own feelings as a lack of sleep and an overuse of stimulants.
"As I mentioned, I'm limited with how in-depth I can get without directly jacking in to the cockpit, but I'm not about to crawl in there without the AGI's consent. I've seen what lengths this line will go to in order to protect its pilot, and I'm better use to everyone in a solid state rather than as a slurry of red ichor to be cleaned out of the crevices."
She gestures to Koji, then tilts her head toward the Projector. "...Are comms broken, or did we accidentally cut off its ability to interface at some point?"
Which is to say, why hasn't Rita used her fancy new projector to talk with the surly engineer? "...Maybe it doesn't care for me much after I suggested to dismantle it."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"'Koji' is fine. 'Doctor Kabuto', if you're uncomfortable going straight to first-name basis." Koji smiles. "Yeah, this... insularity is nothing like what we do at the Research Institute. It makes sense, though - black projects using a banned material and research field wouldn't exactly have turnover on staff members."
Until Anaheim were done, the dark thought flits into his head unbidden.
A bunch of details in Anser's grumbling click together, and Koji opens his mouth to quiz her on them - and then she starts complaining about a single upper-case argument and this time it's him making the sympathetic groan. "... Pass me the syntax. Might have shown up again in this batch." He turns back to his workspace for a moment, creative cursing on the parentage of the Anaheim programmers following in Japanese.
Debugging complete for the moment, he turns back to Anser, picking up his train of thought. "You're familiar with the Sazabi's architecture." It's not a question. "... And you know Doctor Mass, right?"
Anser makes an educated guess as to the function of the device, and Koji nods. "It's an assistive device - for us, as much as the Phenex." He looks up to the balloons. "... I think they're just decorative. A... friend came to visit her."
When Anser asks why the mobile suit isn't communicating with them, Koji gets up from his chair, walking over to the Phenex's hand. "I don't know. She hasn't been talking to me, either."
He puts his hand on the bare psycoframe. "Rita? Are you okay?"
<Pose Tracker> LiSA has posed.
Surprisingly not having been there with Koji, LiSA slips into the silo as the two are discussing the lack of response from Rita. As a fellow computer-person hybrid just more on the physical person side compared to Rita, she's very fond of the bird already. That's being half-Kabuto for you.
Dragged into the silo with her is a giant bean bag chair. Everyone's seen the type before, it's large enough for two people, three if you get cozy, four if you really like each other, or just one if you don't like anyone. Approaching her own work station quietly, LiSA sends her spinny chair spinning away to a corner with mechanical precision, where it gently bumps into nothing but a wall at the end of it's movement, and drops the beanbag chair right where it was, putting her next to the Phenex.
Then she promptly flops over onto it with true grace, nestling into the fabric as she pats it, a silent signal for Rita to come join her.
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
If the Phenex or her pilot mind hearing the state of their internal systems, they don't show it. Perhaps neither of them has any more than an instinctive grasp over their body. One can exist as a fleshy human without knowing the intricacies of neurology, after all.
Psychoframe is dark and quiet as they work on it. Partially to ensure the safety of those installing repaired plates, and partially because Rita isn't trying to project herself using its strength.
Koji calls to Rita, and this changes. A soft glow ignites, barely more than a firefly's luminescence, from deep within. The child's spirit extends her hand, and the projector hums to life.
Rita Bernal, as she was when she died, stands quietly, one hand wrapped across her chest to grasp her other arm. She's dressed in what seems to be... cosplay? A magical girl looking outfit. Realizing this, she fuzzes out of view briefly, returning clad in her custom normal suit.
"I'm so sorry to worry you." Rita says, looking first to Koji. "I've just been, um. Thinking about things."
Nobody here is a Newtype, she'll for sure get away with a few white lies. Just be confident!
Anser gains Rita's attention next, and earns a gentle smile. "Anser. I'm so happy to be able to speak with you like this. Thank you for all your hard work. Please, let me know what I can do to assist you, and I'll do it right away."
Putting a (very clearly artificial) spring in her step, Rita walks over to LiSA, looking curiously at the... squishy chair. A foot carefully extends, tapping the base of the beanbag. Huh.
"LiSA, what's this thing?" Rita asks, (faux) brightly. "I can sit here, right?"
Cautiously, the hard-light avatar steps closer, pressing a hand against it. The beans (?) compress beneath Rita's hand, earning a terribly soft laugh. It's barely a giggle, but it happened. Rita turns and flops down, letting herself fall into the squishiness.
"I like it." Rita says, grinning at Lisa. One of her hands picks at the fabric, pulling the beans to and fro beneath the surface of the chair. "It's a little funny."
<Pose Tracker> Anser Vulpecula has posed.
Scooping her wire-covered laptop up from where it laid on a high perch within the damage frame, Anser rattles off a quick little memo to be added to the hand-down, murmuring, "...There. We should keep an eye out for other inconsistencies in arguments we expect to work that don't, or appear missing."
She blinks up, and only belatedly nods, "Anyhow. Sound reasoning, yes. I'm sure any documentation is separated from the code, but present. We surely won't be seeing it." She sets her laptop to the side again and leans back, closing her eyes as she holds herself up with her hands planted behind her. She looks out-and-out exhausted, deep circles under her eyes that indicate that this is a habit more than a recent occurrence. She doesn't open her eyes, "...I serviced the Sazabi a time or two, in a more foolish life." That really wasn't that long ago. But everything's easier to compress when you're just out of your teens. "...Most of the data that Director Mass and I have worked on over the years has been based on iterating on that framework."
She cracks her eyes open, just a little. "...I wanted to make it safer. Offload the neural strain. Alternate applications that didn't involve weaponry. Can you imagine how much easier it could make life, if Psycommu could be used for tools, rather than as tools of war?" She ducks her head, and looks off to the side. It sounds like she has more to say on the topic, but she doesn't share it. Her bitter expression says enough.
Anaheim ruined that possibility, now didn't it?
She watches Koji's trajectory, keeping silent as he tries to coax an answer out of Rita. She flits her attention to LiSA. She watches over her with a mix of scientific fascination and... well, interest.
And beanbag chairs are comfy, and she may or may not be envious.
Anser unfolds her legs and instad lets them dangle into the hole in the frame, quietly kicking her legs. She reaches up and unfastens the top of her cover-alls, shrugging her way out of it so that it bunches behind her, her loosened hair resting against the back of her black tanktop, all but blending in. She shifts her bangs so that they're not in her eyes, and merely... watches. Waiting for any indication.
Then the projector blazes to life and...
Mahou Shoujou: Rita Bernal.
Anser lift a hand to rub her eyes, and when she looks again, the projection is more conservatively dressed. Either way, it still has Anser's interest, much the same way that she regarded LiSA. The engineer peers silently for several moments after she's addressed before she slowly nods her head. "...It's good to speak with you again, Pilot of the Phenex. With your consent, I'd like permission to work inside the cockpit. There are certain higher level functions I can only access from inside. Can't run a few of the diagnostics or deeper queries without the proper priveleges, and Anaheim layered that off behind physical security. Access to the cockpit implies pilot-level clearance. I didn't wish to enter without your consent. Unicorn reacted quite strongly when its pilot felt fear in the pilot's seat. I didn't want to trigger the same response - you're always in there, as an integrated entity."
Anser looks down at the discourse over beanbags, brows knitting upward. She asides quietly to Koji, "Hardly distinguishable from the real thing, either of them. I'm glad I had Korts present to rebuke my initial suggestion. Disassembly would have been unethical."
Yes. The right choice.
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"Thanks," Koji replies to Anser, finishing up a bit more debugging with the help of her memo. He lights up (fortunately, only metaphorically, despite his primary field of expertise) as LiSA enters the silo with her beanbag - and seems to be part of what coaxes Rita out of the psycoframe.
"You're worried about something." Before she moves over to Lisa, he puts a hand on the avatar's shoulder. "I have a fair guess what, given the timing - if you want to talk about it later..." He lets the offer hang for now.
Yeah, he didn't mishear: 'Director Miguel'. "... Huh." Clearly the importance of that name isn't lost on him, but there's no sign of any judgment on his part. "It's not a foolish dream. It's the same as my grandfather wanted for Photon Power, and it's the mission we strive for here." Even though he's capable of and willing to work on a machine like the Phenex. Is that a contradiction?
"Sayla referred me to Sweetwater, actually. ... It sounds like a nightmare keeping that power grid running. Yeah, just slap two different colony structure together with spit and duct tape, fuck the people who have to live there." He rolls his eyes. "Typical logic from the same people who thought 'hey we've had lots of colony-based insurrections after oppressing colonies, what if we oppressed colonies harder?'"
"Idiots."
Anser makes a comment on how indistinguishable Rita and LiSA seem from the 'real thing' and Koji grins. "She's 'an original'. The real wonder is her construction, honestly. Lisa?" He's inviting her to divulge.
"As for Rita..." He chuckles. "When you've fought alongside Super AI, there's no real distinction at all. Remind me to refer you up to Orbit Base after we're done here." He takes another glance at the much younger engineer. "Maybe not if you get a lot of headaches, though. Mic Sounders the Thirteenth is... a lot, on a first meeting."
He barely suppresses a snicker imagining the surly young woman's reaction to a boisterous "HELLO!!! MY FRIEND!!!" from 3G's Fighting Music Robot.
<Pose Tracker> LiSA has posed.
LiSA's eyes are on Rita as she appears first in mahou shoujo form, and she can be heard muttering to herself, "For the future of the universe, I will be of service, ~nya..." Ah, a true intellectual choice. Of course, LiSA is all about the future universe herself, after all.
<strikethrough>Don't cats chase birds?</strikethrough>
"Yes! This is a 'bean bag' chair!" LiSA proclaims. "It has a soft chenille fabric covering, and inside it contains something called polyfoam, which is what makes it so supportive for being, as it seems, just a shapeless bag. It is nice to share with friends."
At Koji's prompting, though, LiSA replies just as promptly. "I am not truly one hundred percent biological, or one hundred percent robotic. My construction is confirmed - I'm ninety percent biological mass!" And one-hundred and one percent confusing.
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
"Please call me Rita." The Pilot of the Phenex responds, gently. Only enemies have ever referred to her by her title, after all. "We're friends by now, aren't we?"
But Anser's next question makes Rita pause, a hand coming up to her heart. "I see. I..."
Green eyes close. "I died inside the cockpit, and I'm afraid it will distress you. If this is the only way, then... It's more important to fix her, of course."
Rita turns to Koji, clearly nervous about the thought of someone going inside the heart of the Phenex.
"Thank you very much for asking first. The Phenex would not have reacted well to someone forcing in, just like her sisters." Rita blinks, then, as if remembering something. "If you ever see my sisters together, Anser. Please get as far away as you can. It is very dangerous for us to meet."
LiSA's comment makes Rita laugh a little, and she shakes her head. "No, this is Wonderful Persimmon! The strongest magical girl!"
Atop the beanbag, Rita appreciates the soft fabric, appropiately "ooh"ing as LiSA describes it. "It is nice. Whoever made this must have a very kind heart."
A hand lands on Rita's shoulder as she appreciates the bean bag, and she looks up at Koji. "I..." Green eyes look down, and her face goes entirely neutral. "Everything is exactly the way it has to be. Please don't worry, Koji."
Pale hands come together in Rita's lap, squeezing her own fingers, a self-soothing gesture.
"I won't stop believing in the path."
It's whispered. More like a prayer than a vow.
Green eyes blink widely as she's compared once again to a Super AI. "I'm not an AI, I'm really a person! I promise!"
"Or, maybe..." Rita thinks for a moment. Her shoulders slump a little. "I was. Now I'm something else."
How can she call herself the same type of thing as those heroes in the room with her? All the same, LiSA's proclamation gets a polite round of applause. "That's very impressive."
<Pose Tracker> Anser Vulpecula has posed.
Something about what Koji says when he speaks about Sweetwater sees Anser's expression become more complicated. She half-shrugs a single shoulder, commenting, "As for Sweetwater...It was ill-conceived. It's improving, but there's more repairs than a single person can tackle in any sort of reasonable period. I should know. Took some jobs here and there to try to improve on it. Got parts of it stabilized, but there's only so much I can do. It's as you say - conduits run criss-haphazardly and without much thought given to best practices. Enough to all but a person hives to look at."
But it's home. At least, for now.
She slowly tilts her head at the mention of someone who might give her headaches. Her lips momentarily upturn, and she shakes her head, "...Mmn. My headaches are usually of my own making. But it sounds like this AI you're referring to has a lot in common with someone I know in Sweetwater."
LiSA's proclamation steals Anser's attention, and she rubs the back of her neck, as though trying to parse that statement, thinking out loud, "...Well. That's not troubling on its own, at least. Bioprocessing isn't the most glamorous, and it's frequently misunderstood. As long as it's done with full buy-in of all parties, there aren't any ethical concerns that come to mind. Biomass is just that." She flexes her hand, looking down at it for a moment before looking back up. "Haven't seen it on that scale, before."
Anser's eyes lid most of the way. "Until recently, there's a great many things I hadn't seen before. Science moves in fits and starts, and right now? It's raging out of control. Moving quickly, recklessly. Dangerously." The engineer puffs a breath, "...We live in amazing and depressingly misguided times."
Speaking of, there's Rita, disclosing her death.
"I-- didn't know that detail. I can see why they-- mmng." She cuts off her train of thought, and reaches a hand up to pinch the bridge of her nose. "No. I can't see why they made any of the decisions that they did, but that's neither here nor there. I have no intention of being disrespectful. I just need to jack in, and I'll leave the cable run active so I don't need to go in and out of the cockpit." That would be her preference, anyhow, with these units.
She lifts a brow, "...'Dangerous?' Is there an interaction I should be aware of? Is that why this unit is being cloistered off? Well. Other than the security concerns, I suppose."
Anser pauses, and then lowers her voice solemnly, "...There's no question in my mind that you're accessing memories of being human. I do the very same thing. So... I didn't intend to cause any offense by ascribing a label you're uncomfortable with. In spite of your current state of being, If your current preference of identity is 'human', I'll be sure to remember that, Rita."
The engineer rises, and gingerly walks along the downed Phenex with her laptop in hand, unhooking the current diagnostic cables as she goes. She moves intently toward the cockpit, and looks back to Rita, holding up a cable. "...I've been inside the Unicorn. I know where to plug in. I can be in and out in less than a minute, unless any of it's welded - or melted - shut."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"3G's Strongest Brave Robo Corps are a marvel of AI engineering," Koji says. "They've got a good spread of types, too - personality imprints like Goldymarg or Mic, or carefully-enriched long-term developments like the Dragon Twins." His face falls, considering the latter six robots' current fate as Ruin Apostles. "They're good friends, heroes in their own right. 'Super AI' basically just means 'as emotional and nuanced as a person'... If maybe a little obsessed with rock, in Mic's case." He grins.
"... Yeah. That's why we try to keep those principles of discovery and making the world better alive." He shakes his head. "If we do it off the backs of the dead, what's the point?"
"... I could offer to send a team and equipment up - the Ichinana is a little unorthodox compared to petit mobiles, but its durability gives it a lot to recommend it even with a maintenance configuration. I wouldn't do so without consulting with an authority about what the colony needs, though. If generation is a concern, a backup Photon Reactor is on the table, but it sounds as though it's the grid itself that needs looking at."
Anser asks what specifically is dangerous about the Phenex's sisters and Koji frowns. "Rita demonstrated a couple of days ago - apparently when the NT-D system is active and the sister units confront each other, the psycoframe chassis emit an energy field that basically functions like two magnetic fields of the same polarity overlapping, even as they're driven to destroy each other - and if the mobile suits refuse to be pushed apart, that energy has to go outwards."
"What's the difference between a machine of circuits and metal accessing memories and a machine of flesh and nerves, after all?" He offers Anser and Rita a wry little grin.
<Pose Tracker> LiSA has posed.
The conversation bounces back and forth, and LiSA snuggles her way back into the fabric. Coze. Does the science go over LiSA's head? No, not really. She's a Super AI herself, so she follows it easily. She is a Yumi(-Kabuto.)
Is she needed for this conversation?
Absolutely not.
She's just here for emotional support! Rita support. Koji doesn't need her this exact moment. There is love in the Photon Power Labs, and not just the type that is commonly seen especially with the Kabutos. Familial, friend, what have you, someone can probably fulfil something you need, emotionally. ... Listen, they're all super robot pilots. Emotions are their thing.
In a more hushed voice, she asks of Rita - "Is the music and everything OK? You should be able to manage to interact with the controls. Do we need to get you games or anything? I don't want you to just fret over everything. I meant what I said all the way back at our first meeting. You need to relax too."
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
It seems there's no other way but to open the Phenex's cockpit. Rita's avatar stares hard at the heart of her Gundam. Silence stretches on.
"Alright." Rita says, at last. "But first, just a moment, please."
The avatar closes her eyes. Psychoframe glows brighter, warmer. Nothing visibly changes.
The avatar opens her eyes. "Alright. We're ready. Nothing will hurt you, Anser, I promise."
With Rita's words, the cockpit hatch slides gently open. Soundless. The interior is dark. It appears much like the cockpit of the Unicorn -- just as Anser expected, with the only exception being a gold-and-blue color scheme.
Despite Rita's gruesome warning, there isn't a single hint of anything bad having happened in this cockpit. Everything appears brand new, not a stitch out of place or a scuff against any glossy metal.
The only thing out of the ordinary is a silver chain wrapped around the edge of one of the touch pads. A diamond-shaped pendant hangs down from it, oddly still. The Phenex is the very model of a properly-cared for Gundam.
That is, unless Anser should have to look behind the pilot's seat.
Rita watches anxiously from the beanbag, her hands clutched together over her chest. She can trust Anser. It's okay. This is to heal the Phenex. To reconnect with her greater self. To find the path. Nothing is more important than that.
Anxiety pushes Rita into a soldier's posture, her shoulders squared and her face stern. It's a little disturbing how natural the expression looks on her face.
"Thank you, Anser." Rita murmurs, distracted by her intense focus on the engineer's movements. "For using my name. And believing in me."
Koji's words wash over Rita's awareness. She only half-hears him, but her mouth opens all the same. "Yes. A psychofield is uncontrollable and very destructive. It won't always be this way. Things will be different between my sisters. Some day. I'm sure of it."
"Memories." Rita agrees, vaguely. "I am only a remnant. My greater self is different."
As Anser moves forward, Rita's avatar begins glitching. Her eyebrows draw together. This is the way it has to be. This is the way it has to be. This is the way--
LiSA speaks directly to Rita, and the avatar gasps, startling so violently she tumbles off the bean bag chair. "W--wh.."
Green eyes blink up at her vaguely. "Um." Rita's avatar flickers out of view for a moment. "I-- I've never played games, it sounds--"
LiSA's kindness settles around Rita's slender shoulders. She trembles more violently, and then slowly brings her knees up to her chest. Arms wrap around them.
Staring blankly at LiSA, the Phenex's Beloved seems to just freeze in place. She looks very small, bundled into herself as much as possible. A high-pitched noise echoes in her mind, drowning out the sounds of the hangar. All shapes in her violet-red vision start to go dark.
<Pose Tracker> Anser Vulpecula has posed.
The name 'Strongest Brave Robo Corps' has Anser looking back slowly over her shoulder, a brow arched. Ugh. "...Huh. And I thought my parents had questionable naming considerations. Still. A name is a name. If they're loyal and talented, or important to you, that's what matters in the end. As far as Sweetwater goes, it's both. A capacity problem, a stability problem. Throwing more power at it might make not help until it's properly rewired."
Her brow's lift even further at the mention of the properties that have been built in to sister units, and she lets out an immediate breath that seems to be a thoroughly abbreviated question mark, her head tilting. "...I suppose we should count ourselves lucky they stopped at three extremely ill-conceived ideas, then. At least, I fucking hope that's where they stopped. All of the ways that science can be harnessed, and people can't think of any other way to use it but to destroy. To use it to kill." That's delivered with no shortage of fatigue from her, her shoulders hunched.
Koji and Anser likely don't recognize that anything is amiss at all, but LiSA might notice some strange artifacting out of the corner of her eyes near some of the scaffolding. It's indistinct, and hardly there. Well, wait. It was there, and now it's gone.
"What a foolish thing to build in. I suppose I should have expected nothing less."
When Rita allows her entry, gives her assurances, Anser takes a steadying breath, and nods. She ducks into the cockpit, eyes skirting up to the pendant, unmoving in spite of the rush of air that accompanies the cockpit pressure equalizing with the door opening. The young engineer stops allowing herself to be distracted and moves with calculated precision. A few twists of some screws on an access panel near the pilot's seat, and she's able to lever it open with relative ease. She dips back out momentarily to stoop and grab one of the longer interface cables she brought with her, one she knows is compatible with this line after her diagnostic pass of the Unicorn. She affixes the connector, and threads it carefully through yet another access panel, down into the floor. She threads it out through a small cabling channel and lets it drop down the same pathways that are used to pass signals to the rest of the mobile suit. It's going to be a pain in the ass to fish it out of the robot's guts, but it means she won't need perpetual access to the cockpit over the next several days for administrative code execution. In other words, very worthwhile.
Then she's out, and she sends a thumbs-up to Rita, "...You can close it up. All done."
<Pose Tracker> Koji Kabuto has posed.
"You'll have to show me around sometime," Koji suggests to Anser as regards Sweetwater. "And, yeah. They're all a little eccentric, but, well, aren't we all?"
As the engineer gains access to the Phenex's cockpit, Koji's gaze falls on Rita and notes how she draws into herself and becomes unresponsive. He walks over to the beanbag, crouching down on the opposite side of the avatar to LiSA, and gently takes one of her hands. "It's okay," he murmurs. "I'm here."
"... I don't think it's an intentional design," he notes. "It's... mm. Preface: Guesswork. It's the sheer strength of the emotional feedback through a full-psycoframe chassis that creates the field. They probably just... didn't think it was worth trying to mitigate that effect since the system was designed to be an anti-Newtype weapon." The tone of his voice fully indicates his opinion of people developing weapons to prevent the future's advance.
"The full documentation of our work producing power for Japan is publically available," he explains as Anser emerges from the cockpit. "I wouldn't mind keeping in touch with a fellow engineer - if you approve of what we do."
He returns his attention to Rita. She might appear a full-grown woman, but... He squeezes the hand she's holding. "There's a lot more work to do, huh?" He murmurs to himself.
<Pose Tracker> LiSA has posed.
"Oh, um-"
LiSA is babie. She does not know a panic attack when it occurs, and her alarm is visible at Rita's reaction to everything going on. Koji takes to the other side, and the empathy is doubled. No, they're not NewTypes, but basic human(oid) empathy is still a fact of the world, for photon's sake. She sniffles. Sympathy tears are also a valid thing, even if LiSA herself doesn't understand what is going on. Emotions are dumb, ok?
"I'll talk to Boss! And Shiro! They'll have games we can play, I'm sure of it!" She says, hastily.
Koji is more equipped for this process, and she slips up to check responses on the various computers, preoccupied with making sure that nothing just broke further.
<Pose Tracker> Rita Bernal has posed.
"Don't worry." Rita says calmly to Anser. "I made sure. They'll never make another."
What does that mean? She says it with such certainty, but how could a captive Newtype pilot be sure of something like that? What could turn a power-hungry government away from such a power?
Anser prepares, and something prickles at the edge of Rita's consciousness. Turning her head, green eyes widen. A... creature. A dog? Furry, four legs, a tail. Were those dogs? Hunched up on the scaffolding, radiating sadness and pain.
"Oh," Rita breathes out, forgetting her own distress. "Come here, I'll help you."
Arms open toward the distressed creature, welcoming, promising love and care. But Anser speaks again, and the creature vanishes. Rita lowers her head sadly, turning her gaze back to the engineer.
That's not a good thing. Rita's greater self will fix it, as soon as she's back. Poor little creature, poor Anser...
But such thoughts are driven from Rita's mind as Anser slips into the cockpit. Fear and guilt twine together more and more tightly until they turn to something colder than despair.
And in this moment of heightened emotion, within the very heart of a Beast of Possibility, Anser will see a vision of her own.
Huddled behind the pilot seat is what must be a child. Or maybe what once was. She has no legs. The remains of what was once a blue uniform cling to her form hangs in scorched tatters. Scars line her bare head. Her exposed back. Her neck. Her arms. Overlapping. Red and angry. Fresh incisions. Neat stitches, all in a row.
Shoulders hunch. The child trembles, fire surrounding her and licking up her arms. Her legs, already consumed by the flame, are entirely absent. Her arms are held out before her, hands cupped. She's holding something, trying to keep it up and out of range of the flames.
Grey-black particles. The smell of burning flesh, locked into a small place. Grey-black debris, held so carefully, like something precious.
Ash.
Once Anser steps out of the Phenex's heart, the child can no longer be seen. But there, behind the seat, in the darkness, a handful of grey-black dust hovers.
Rita is unresponsive as Anser gives her a thumbs-up, but the cockpit closes all the same. Silent as before, it smoothly fits back into place with a sense of finality.
Koji takes one of Rita's hands, and she jolts back to herself (perhaps not a coincidence with the closure of the cockpit). At first, she tries to pull away, panic on her face, but... Koji's voice is soft. His touch promises no harm.
Rita's shoulders unstiffen. Her eyes blink. Pupils focus in, and her mouth opens. Closes. Opens.
All at once, Rita leans forward into Koji, squeezing her eyes shut. "It's hopeless," she whispers, "It was all for nothing. Everything I did to them. It was all for..."
LiSA begins to cry, and Rita pushes herself up, shaping her face into something... like a smile. The shape is right. Her eyes are empty.
"T--thank you, I--want to play them with you." Rita wobbles her way through the sentence.
LiSA hurries off, and Rita's smile slips away. She looks up at Koji, stricken, clinging tight to his hand.
Green eyes reflect no light.
<Pose Tracker> Anser Vulpecula has posed.
Easy enough to give a thumbs-up. Easy enough to do. Anser walks stiffly back to where she started the day, and sends a firm nod Koji's way. Her voice sounds a bit off. "I'll, ah, yeah. I'll definitely. Yeah."
That's not a sentence. She seems to think it'll suffice, though. She slides down into the area she was diagnosing before, dragging her laptop along with her. Typical Anser. Getting her work done.
Except nothing about it is typical. Once she's out of sight, a hand covers her mouth and she flinches her eyes shut, huddled there in the cold, hard bunker of a hiding place. Within the Phenex. Too little sleep. Too many stimulants. Overwork. They're all flooding into her, the explanations. The rationalizations. But so too is the sight of that girl. Smoldering. Bleeding. Burning.
The hold over her mouth tightens, and her chest along with it.
When her hand finally lowers, she takes a low, shaky breath, and clears her throat, "I'm ah, just gonna finish up here, real quick. If you need anything, holler."
Then she shoves her hand back over her mouth, and pulls her knees close to her chest, hugging them close. What. The fuck. Was that?
<Pose Tracker> Anser Vulpecula has posed.
Anser suddenly bursts forth from her workspace. "Or, you know. Toilet. Coffee's just goin' right through me." A faked smile. Fake, because she doesn't smile that big. She hasn't, in fact, smiled at all since the day began. It looks awkwardly out of place on her.
Can't be here. Gotta sleep. Gotta sleep.
Without further explanation, the mechanic is... well, gone. Her laptop still unlocked and humming away in the face of her sudden retreat.