2022-07-12: That Which Has No Form
- Log: That Which Has No Form
- Cast: Arriety Hearn, Puru Two, BC-001 Minae
- Where: Ra Mari
- Date: 2022-07-12
- Summary: Arriety and Callisto decompress after an encounter with the void with a doting Minae.
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
Arriety and Callisto had a horrible experience!
Now they're back on the Ra Mari, in the medical bay; Arriety is slumped over the bench, because ultimately she didn't get hurt one bit, just shaken; she's got a big bottle of water on one hand and has definitely just taken her emergency meds, because the adrenaline is just starting to wear off and the crash is pretty bad.
Myrme isn't anywhere at the moment. She's probably gone off to go eat scrap again or something.
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Callisto has since changed into a pair of loose-fitting green patient scrubs, since she's obedient and frankly, wearing some loose clothing sounds like a great deal after being so close to the psychic black hole earlier. She's sitting on a chair, because there's no need to lie down, and has an IV in one arm. The secret here is that it's less effort to whack an IV in than it is to drink water, when you feel all weird and confused.
She has one hand sitting patiently on Arriety's shoulder, and the other is holding an electronic book in front of her face. It's basically a K*ndle.
"... careful you don't hurt your back." she cautions, but doesn't pester Arriety about it overmuch. Nothing to do now but wait, really.
<Pose Tracker> BC-001 Minae has posed.
Minae had gotten so used to Arriety's newfound independence that the idea of anything dire happening to her had barely crossed the robot's mind as of late. She'd stayed behind mostly because hey, it turns out she actually does have a daytime job these days, organizing her notes on both the Brave Police and the pair of Super AI that she's been asked to help with and getting back into the motions of counselling for a ship rather than 'chatting with friends' - drawing the line between the two properly has been a project of hers as of late.
On the other hand, her eyes can encompass the entire Ra Mari if she wants - so it's moments after Arriety and Callisto are properly situated in the medbay that Minae is barreling through the door. "--are you both alright?" she blurts in panic, even as the rest of her below her shoulders remains utterly methodical as she checks the IV connectors and organizes medication so that it's easier for Callisto to reach later.
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
Arriety groans and forcibly pulls herself up as Callisto chides her on her bad posture, but that proves to be a bad thing right now as blood rushes to her head. "Ooogh," she slumps her shoulders. A pause, as Minae emerges in her usual warm style. "Hey Minae," she weakly says.
"Uh. I didn't get hurt. I dunno if Callie-sis sprained something. We didn't get shot or anything, though. ... it was real close."
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Click. ... click. ... click. The occasional thumbing of the next-page button is most of what Callie is putting down right now. Lost in her own head somewhere, trying to make sense of something she didn't know was possible until very recently. Maybe a little overwhelmed by having all of her senses back.
... like coming up for air.
She lowers her read once the doors burst open and a panicking robot buddy zooms through, fiddling with everyone and everything at once. Not that it's annoying. "I'm fine." she confirms, soft-spoken. Maybe a little whispery, but there's not really any distress in her voice. "I hurt my ankle taking a spill, trying to stop a mugging."
... like taking a blindfold off.
Callisto lifts a finger and taps the side of her head, eyes on Minae at this point. "But... something much weirder happened right afterwards."
... like waking up from a bad dream.
I mean, Minae and Arriety have different, but equally valid methods of accurately reading how the girl is doing: she's controlled. Spooked, but in control. Managing it.
<Pose Tracker> BC-001 Minae has posed.
"Sprained?" the robot latches onto that word by dint of general logic and learned intuition. In most situations she'd expect the worst injury to be mentioned first... but one glance over at Callisto is enough to know that most sprains don't leave people bedridden and feeling, even to Minae's senses, quite far away. It doesn't take much to connect the situation to things she's never directly experienced but has plenty of practice with - there's a familiarity to it that reminds her of nights spent sitting patienty at Arriety's side.
"... that's good that you're not physically hurt. And good job on the good deed," she says first and foremost with an encouraging smile. She glances once at the IV to check its contents, and makes a mental tick against the checklist in her brain to prepare a sedative for good measure. "You're both safe here. No-one's around to-- well, there are rather a lot of people around who might try to bother you, but I'm a very good doorstop."
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
Arriety slumps to Callisto's side, idly staring at the book she's reading. But she's not really reading, just idly drifting her head in a direction to latch onto something. "Myrme ate the attacker's handgun," she includes helpfully.
A longer pause, as Callisto mentions something strange happening. She nods a few times, then looks back to Minae. "I, uh, I kind of had to negotiate... Callie-sis being held up by her. Maybe. I don't know. I didn't think I'd be in that kind of situation."
Her eyes are back to normal now, now that the adrenaline is gone. Her pupils sure shrank earlier, though, until they were little dots.
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
> "Sprained?" asks Minae.
Callisto gives an affirming nod to this, and points down at her ankle. It's wrapped in tape, but ... pretty much unharmed, otherwise. This is like the kind of injury you get from trying to rollerblade somewhere stupid, not a warfighting wound. She'll get over it fast. You can already see her HP ticking up.
"Yeah." she confirms, making room for Arriety to slump against her. The book she's reading is... ...a history book on the Napoleonic Wars. Wow, that's like, in the middle ages right? "I was charging this weird lady who was trying to hold someone up. But when I got to about three metres away, it was like..." and Callie slowly stops as she tries to remember. She stares straight ahead. Now loading...
Diving, disappearing, unmade, unborn, nothing, void...
Callisto blinks once, eyes focusing. She gives Arriety's hand a squeeze. "... it was like someone reached in and pulled the plug on my brain. I fell over, and when I looked up, I couldn't feel anyone anymore." she's thought about this answer a great deal.
"Myrme ate the attacker's handgun," Arriety includes helpfully.
"Yeah. If you didn't sic Myrme on her, that would have gone even worse."
<Pose Tracker> BC-001 Minae has posed.
Minae doesn't need to breathe, so the slow exhalation of air is an attempt to sympathize. "... we'll have to give Myrme our thanks later, then," she says gently, before reaching over to pat Arriety on her hair. Her eyebrows raise in surprise, and then she slowly nods her head again. "There's no way to prepare for something like that - but you did well. You got the both of you safe," she repeats with a quiet insistence, repeating what is to her the most important part of their current state.
Minae has never complained about being unable to sense the things that Arriety and Callisto can. Even if she doesn't understand how it happens, it's clearly something that does happen - so she's learnt to work around and use that knowledge as best she can. Even if she's never really had to deal with isolation on a personal basis, it doesn't take much to tell from Callisto's expression and mannerisms what it must have done to her. "Do you still feel that way?" she asks, more to fill the air and prompt an answer. She doesn't think so; she'd expect a lot more panic. "Or are you slowly feeling better?"
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
"Well, there's being a trained career soldier or something like that, right?" Arriety finds herself half-joking to Minae on the topic of how one can't prepare for something like that; she peeks back towards the book and... it immediately goes over her head.
"Is Napoleon that anime character...?" Arriety asks with genuine guilelessness.
Arriety rubs her chin and thinks about it, explaining: "Remember... that lady from the REA we met at the party in Shenzhen, Minae?" She's technically breaking her promise to Yuliana, but on the one hand, she already got back what's most important to her (Callisto), and on the other, she kinda feels like being a promise breaker right now. Woohoo!
"Yeah, Callie-sis got it real hard... I'd experienced it before, and... well, each of our brains processes things a bit differently, I guess. It's not to say it was easy, though." But there's an undeniable push of physicality when she goes into that Mode.
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Callisto patiently waits and thinks on Minae's question.
> "Do you still feel that way?" (...) "Or are you feeling better?"
She gives another simple nod. "I'm fine now. As soon as I got more than ten feet away from that hag, it's like someone turned the lights back on." and turns her head for a moment to regard Arriety. Entertaining her query on: who the heck is Napoleon?
"No, he was some warmonger in old Earth history." Callie responds with a dry little smile, preferring Arriety's mistake. "I don't think he'd make a good anime. Maybe they already tried."
Her attention passes back to Minae, it's important she finishes her thoughts!
"Anyway. I was so fried after having my senses blocked, we were lucky that lady didn't want to mess with Myrme, and let us back off." she summarises. And then tilts her head roofwards, to sigh and close her eyes.
"Ha~ah... what a pain in the ass... how am I going to train for that kind of situation? I didn't know you could jam someone's senses like that..." she seems to be in good spirits about it, relatively speaking. It's like whining about getting beat up in a video game, rather than wallowing in despair.
<Pose Tracker> BC-001 Minae has posed.
"I think you might be a long way off a trained career soldier, and that's perfectly fine," Minae counters with an amused smile and a shake of her head, before her expression turns more solemn. A small tray gets set next to Callisto - a glass of water and a familiar couple of pills. She doesn't say anything about them, sure that the pilot knows well enough whether she needs them or not. "I remember," she nods instead, her brow furrowed. "Should I send out word to the authorities about her?"
"... that's... good," Minae nods to Callie's story, but it's halfway through that she catches herself and frowns. Maybe it's not good. Proximity implies something was controlling it, and maybe that means that someone's got themselves a handheld dampener. She files that thought away for later - it's not something to mention right now while they're both recovering. "Maybe that means you need to bring me along," she gives an encouraging grin instead. "Sounds like I'm the counter-measure."
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
"No, that's what I mean," Arriety sulks. "If anyone was gonna be prepared for that, they'd be one, instead of being a scrawny seventeen year old going up against a trained career soldier. I'm pretty sure she could've just snapped me in half in one go. Or rather... the threat of it all..."
Arriety distracts herself as she focuses on Callie's topic. "... hmm. Yeah, maybe it was some anime about historical figures," she can't really remember anymore. They love making that kinda stuff, though.
"I remember feeling the same way the first time," Arriety admits to Callisto. "As for how, though, um... hmm. I guess I focused more on my physical senses... I'd been neglecting them for so long, that what I've been doing lately helped..."
She glances to Minae again. "I'm sure she *is* authority. She's some ace pilot in the REA, I think? Her name... her name..." She rubs her head. "Rena or Annie might remember, they were at the party with me. ... oh-- Yuliana."
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Callisto is a grown-up, and that means she can elect when to take prescription drugs for fun and effect. She elects to do this now, without any special aplombp. She just picks up the pills and chases them with a placid sip of water. The ability to make sure her next sleep period is a restful one? Yes, please.
(... it's not so bad when you get the choice to take them, right? ...)
"Arriety's right." she adds calmly, setting the empty glass down.
A single finger extends. "I haven't been physically training as much as I used to. That whole thing was a scary wakeup call. I let myself slip through school, and half-assed it here..." and she wags it briefly. "And Arriety did warn me about something like this before, too. But I didn't expect we'd run into this... Yuliana... just like that."
(... how do i strike that which has no form? ...)
The hand descends back to her side.
"Anyway..." Callie glances again to Minae. Shifts her weight upon the chair. "I've never felt anything that just shut my extra senses out. They--" (who?) "--never had any kind of technology like that on Axis." she taps her forehead again. "And when someone's mind overpowers yours, it's like... being wrestled and pinned down..." again: trying to put some of these concepts into words is like trying to describe color to the blind.
"... but not like this. This was just someone hitting the off switch. And I've never seen any Psycommu tech that could do that!"
To cap this recap off, Callisto just puffs her cheeks out in frustration and huffs. "Ugh."
It's so gremlin-y, it's clearly a sign she's in good health.
<Pose Tracker> BC-001 Minae has posed.
%"Still, it's good that you made it through. I'm not going to discount that so easily," Minae puffs up in return. "Prepared or not, trained or not, you did what you could. I'm proud," the robot promises, before making a face as Arriety continues. "Even so, if you'd like, I'd be happy to write the initial report. We should probably let someone know that the REA is letting their pilots do things like that," she adds. Of course, if she's saying that, she's probably already halfway through composing it in her head. "I think you'd both be better off resting for now."
By the very nature of her birth, Minae is a patient listener; she waits for Callisto to feel her way through the explanation, and slowly nods afterwards. "I think I understand," she decides gently. "There are a lot of studies around becoming used to a constant stimuli and then suddenly being cut off from it. Of course, they usually concern sound or light, rather than the sensation of other people - but I can imagine it's a very similar thing."
She has to pause for thought. She'd like to give a serious answer, because this sort of thing cuts close to what she sees as her forte - but the practical fact is that she's spent a long time trying to do the opposite and support Arriety's attempt to dampen her senses, rather than doing the dampening herself. "To be honest, physically training might be the answer," she wonders after a moment. "It may be a case of making sure you don't rely too much on those senses, and can still fight without them."
"But I think you shouldn't just take my word for it," she adds quickly, and with a comically solemn look. "And only once you're feeling up to it!"
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
Arriety looks to Callisto and holds her hand after she's done taking her pills. "I think I'm just in a lucky position, because after a whole lifetime of being buried underneath my psychic senses, I'd been broadening my horizons... and that had me using my other senses too. Seeing and hearing and touching and tasting everything that I did..."
When your world broadens, so do your senses. That much, Arriety's certain now.
A pause, as Callisto mentions Axis. She also remembers something she said earlier too. Callisto Diana, no...
Ple Two.
Ple...
"I'm sure you'll get the jump on her next time," Arriety encourages Callisto. Minae offers to write the report, and... "... technically I did promise to say I said nothing, but ..." She quietly shrugs. "I think I already kind of toppled any chance of being friends after our first meeting..."
Arriety reflects on that topic a little. Her words only ended up being so incisive, she thinks... because she saw herself in them. It was as much a knife being pointed at her as it was to Yuliana. If her path had differed only a little...
... then again, her desire to be so closed off to the world summoned a kaiju that killed many people in Winter Wonderland, she's fairly certain now -- if not telling anyone. Is she so different?
<Pose Tracker> Puru Two has posed.
Maybe it's the sedatives kicking in, but Callisto is way more happy to talk frankly about the whole Psychic thing than she otherwise usually is. Maybe it's part of having been upfront about Arriety about who she really is. Maybe it's a lot of things at once.
To Minae, her attention returns. No, she doesn't look drugged, her eyes are still pretty focused: "Yes. Those studies sound pretty accurate. It reminds me of this other thing about our senses," and she takes another drink. It's just water, you goob, don't pretend you've got all that liquid courage. "They'd put us in sensory deprivation tanks sometimes, and it's like... when all your other senses aren't doing anything, the one that can still work is going mad trying to make up the difference. You could feel how many staff were around, really sharply, vividly..."
Callisto turns her hand over in Arriety's, and gives it a squeeze. Big sis is still here, even if she's not too clear on who she is lately.
Or... is there any difference between the two? Should there be? Is making the distinction even helpful? Is it healthy?
"Can't fool me twice. I'll figure something out. Hey doc," will Minae ever shake that nickname? I hope not. "can you help me figure out a training regimen? I need to get back in killer shape."
... that sounds more cheerfully eager than stoic, by the way.
<Pose Tracker> BC-001 Minae has posed.
"That's alright. I'll be careful. I'll say I was with you and wasn't as affected, or maybe there was a helpful local member of police on hand as an eyewitness," the robot rather cheerfully decides as she casually skirts orders, lacing her hands in her lap. The advantage of being a Super AI... not to mention being quite familiar with how to forge things electronically. As for the moral loopholes, that's just simple logic. It's not Arriety reporting it if she's the one reporting it instead.
There's sympathy in Minae's gaze, though she lets Callisto work through her next set of thoughts in another round of attentive silence. She doesn't make any judgment on the story of the pilot's prior training, taking it in stride the best she can. Whether it's due to delirium or relief, as far as Minae's concerned, it doesn't change the person sat in front of her, and any further details can be asked after when Callie is a little more present.
"The situation is quite similar, even if you're both coming into it from different directions. I don't think there's anything wrong in trying to train the rest of your senses to catch up - be it to expand your horizons, or be less reliant on one particular horizon," she muses.
"But!" she adds with a finger in the air. "I'll help organize a training regime, but only after input from Dr. Kamille. He might know best how to approach this sort of situation given personal experience. And I'm not going to let you be a training junkie and burn yourself out either. I still remember when you got egged into piling on more and more weights onto the bench press." She pauses, and wavers, and finally adds: "And-- this is me helping as a friend, not as a counsellor," she makes sure to add out of nowhere.
<Pose Tracker> Arriety Hearn has posed.
Arriety's lips plant a bit more firmly as Callisto shares the story of the sensory deprivation. ... a measure of protectiveness and anger rising out of her. She knows, from the edges of what she's been able to sense from her in the past, that it was horrible...
To think that the only reason she escaped that life is because she had a superspy aunt.
"... we're all with you now," Arriety reassures her. "It doesn't have to be... like that anymore."
Minae suggets a plan of action that surprises her. ".... hmmmh. I guess it's pretty deniable to say that you, as a Super AI, was around without us knowing... wow, so this is what Auntie Seo-yun's work is like, huh."
She grins as she says, "If you're gonna train hard, I'm going to feed you extra-hard too."