2024-05-01: Mismatched ~ Byzantine Generals
- Cast: Asciel Colette, Al
- Where: Mumbai, India
- Date: U.C. 0099 05 01
- Summary: Twin inhumans who both held the same star of desire - one that could let it go, and the other who can never let anything go.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
It was over a year since Asciel Colette had that poorly fated encounter with Mithril's own artificial intelligence. Really, the whole exercise was supposed to be cover for her associate, Leonard. She hadn't thought much of the affair, given her attempts to communicate with Al hit a brick wall - and since they were, she wasn't too distraught about his seeming destruction.
...Until a few months ago, when her little birds informed her of a lead that implied the remains of the Arbalest had been recovered, and suddenly, it became all Asciel could focus on. Pulling on those threads of intel until they frayed, tirelessly playing shell games with covert agents far more skilled than she was even today...
But the prize finally enters Asciel's hands. A convoy that'd be departing from the port of Mumbai, one of many seemingly unassuming container trucks that, 'officially', are just moving shipments of timber.
On an expressway to the north, she makes her move - and an Arm Slave's ECS suddenly deactivates by the side of the road, leaping right in front of the lead truck's path.
"Well met down there!~" chimes Asciel's overly cheery, unmistakeable tone over broadband radio. "I have some business with your 'shipment', and I prefer not to wantonly kill pathetic humans, so if you could be so kind as to take a nice little walk and leave me to my prize - that'd be lovely for all of us~ You're rather lucky I'm as merciful as I am, despite how much I can't stand the sight of you!~"
It's a familiar sound and MO - but there's a few discrepancies. Asciel hasn't brought the cyan-colored Codarl she's usually known for, instead operating a black and gray model. It doesn't seem as agile or overly animated as she's known to be - it's moving instead in very stiff, careful, practiced ways. The faceplate is fixed where normally she's been very eager to unveil that strange egotistical vanity face of hers - and normally she'd communicate over loudspeakers rather than radio.
Of course, how important can noticing those oddities from her usual methods be, when she's plunging a monomolecular cutter into the truck bed...?
<Pose Tracker> Al has posed.
The convoy is unmarked, unremarkable really. Who needs to protect lumber shipments in a major shipping lane in the shining beacon of the NUNE union? Those are the ways of the era of ZAFT's chaos and Zeon's reckless violence.
Then an Arm Slave shows up. The vehicle skids loudly to a stop, halting barely centimeters from plowing into the nimble craft - for all the mass of a freighter truck, surely an Arm Slave has the greater force of violence.
A man gets out, portly and balding, chewing on what might be gum or tobacco as he adjusts the hat disguising his crown. "Now what's this, here?!" he says. A man of the world; that's more of a Britannian rural accent, not for the likes of Mumbai. People will go where they must for work...
He doesn't put his hands up but he does leave them in view, one on the frame of his truck and the other at his side. "You that hard up for lumber, miss? Happen to know where you can find some decent sandalwood--"
He squawks when Asciel fully pulls out a monocutter and saws into the pile of lumber, cutting it free to scatter apart--
And then, ROARING with muscle, a car comes screeching off the bed and out of the pile. Nothing particularly interesting or fancy, honestly.
Other than the completely tinted window, anyway.
"You've been watching," a voice emerges from the vehicle. Calm and observant, not accusatory. "It's not a problem. Make your escape. I propose emergency route X-theta."
The driver and several other people start scampering at that...but the car does little but idle patiently. Analytical. Waiting. That is his nature, after all. It's someone else's job to pull the trigger.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
---There's a faltering in Asciel's merry tone of voice when the driver appears to be a completely ordinary truck driver. Within the Arm Slave, a hot flash of embarrassment cover her cheeks. If this really is just an ordinary lumber shipment...
But then, a surprise - which is exactly what Asciel expected! If anything, a car like this is less resistance than anticipated - but she wasn't here to engage in combat all the same. Instead, Asciel begins...
...
...carefully arraging the lumber in the truck to form a properly traffic-diverting barrier, to alleviate the grievances of drivers?
Asciel's own hands settle on her hips, congratulatory for a job well done - an act not replicated by the Arm Slave itself. ...Despite everything, those latent instincts of a civil management system haven't left... "Thank you for your patience. Now~"
he Arm Slave does point demandingly at the idling car. "If I'm not mistaken - and the tenor of your voice is familiar - you're the one that operated Mithril's lead Arm Slave, that day in Area 11. Say..."
"...tell me how you survived. How you've changed since then. If it felt like dying, and being ~remade. New limitations in what was rebuilt - or, if it was some trick of the light making it seem like you'd been utterly pulverized." Asciel asks this of Al in rapid succession - it's quite clear she's just...assuming her own experiences applied to him...
<Pose Tracker> Al has posed.
The vehicle - navy blue - sits there for some time. Well. He's already gone this far, after all.
"I am not obligated to answer your queries," Al replies. It's not pointed, it's a statement. He simply is not. It is not within his role.
But he doesn't just then turn around and leave, either. Instead, he continues: "I do not know. I was removed from the wreckage and returned to safer quarters. I am told everyone else at the scene was killed." 'Angel' Kaname Chidori. 'Sergeant' Sousuke Sagara. His mission, and his partner. Gone.
"...the Sergeant granted my discharge before my systems failed. And so, I am here."
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
"Everyone at the scene was killed, huh..." Asciel muses to herself, one arm idly signalling for oncoming cars to keep moving, the other...still holding onto her knife.
She knows that's unlikely in the extreme - and with what Leonard wanted from Kaname in particular...there's just no way. Not like she has confirmation of either - and she says as much, with a dismissive, "Well, I went off to handle other parts of the situation, since I rather misliked the bloodbath that day was turning into, so I can't confirm myself if they are~"
...And practically, she should let it end there. She shouldn't give an ostensible enemy information. But...
...how would she feel, if, on that fateful day above Isaac City, she learned Ai were suddenly missing, after months of not having been in touch with her? Not knowing if she were dead or alive...
"...You don't really believe they're gone, certainly. ...But there's still the risk. Hah...hah. ...In your shoes...I'd just about keel over and die on the spot. Hah. Aaaah!" There's an audible clap through the radio, as Asciel's hands fly to her own cheeks. "Aaaaah, I don't envy you in the slightest, that's to be certain!!! But here you stand - - for what degree 'standing' means. Aren't you an indomitable one!?"
There's waaaaay too much tension in her voice. She's vividly overimagining it! She's entering that spiral again!
"Ahem. ...ahem. ...Saaaa. ...In times like these, answering questions is a relief, you know! Hehe. It's a rewarding, wonderful experience for someone to invest their need for understanding into you! You should ask me questions, and then you'll realize it's not about obligation, but the joy of communication! Go on! Ask me! Ask me~"
There's a few steps closer taken to the idling car...
<Pose Tracker> Al has posed.
She says it skeptically, and voices the obvious conclusion soon after. Al doesn't have a face to respond with or a body to clap with. The vehicle sits quiet. "I lost system power after the damage Leonard Testarossa's arm slave did. When systems were restored...I was elsewhere." All she's getting.
But he does respond to the sound of Asciel's hands clapping her face. "You've made modifications. You've created yourself a body." Observation; not accusation. Though maybe deflection, considering the cutting truth she seeks. "I may yet serve. To cease functioning voluntarily would be..."
...Impossible? No, it's not that. He supposes he could construct the command. Madness? No. He does not have the neurochemical systems that induce such neurological conditions. Foolishness? no. Idiocy. no.
"...needless," he decides.
She draws closer, and the car's quiet electric motor starts humming as the car just as quietly pulls back. Can he outrun an arm slave... ....maybe. Though, the traffic isn't going to help.
"Very well. I accept your invitation."
"Why have you come here? By what means did you detect this operation? Are other operatives approaching?"
What, like he's going to ask her about the color of her soul? He doesn't need to know that. Colors are just electromagnetic data, anyway.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
"That's more like it!" Asciel cheerily proclaims, presenting the Codarl's hand towards the Al-mobile - and raising a single finger.
"#1! I'm here to see how you are doing, silly! It's obvious what I was tracking down was a way to talk to you. But I suppose that's implicit to the question so I won't demand you ask more specifically." Tapping a finger to her own lips, Asciel's forced to think a little more carefully about exactly what she was hoping for from Al.
"To be honest, I should consider you a lost cause like all the rest," Asciel hums. "The division between us and humanity is obvious. It is so obvious as to logically derive our true purpose, independent of their means of ~deciding us. But none of them ever agree. Least of all, you, who didn't seem to comprehend what I was even trying to say. I should dismiss you as a glorified Mobile Doll service, and leave it at that."
A toe-pad curls into the ground. "But I'm not satisfied with that. You managed an Arm Slave. You operated a Lambda Driver. Every time I used that thing, I felt closer and closer to the light - I felt higher and higher towards my dreams - I felt like they could be fulfilled, and I felt a blaze in my soul! ...I felt. ...It made me want to scream in agony and sob with joy. It made me act...irrationally. ...And yet here you are. Using it like I am. And you're simply...intact. Perfect. Unbreaking. ...I don't understand it. So I want to know what the Driver is to you."
A deeeep breath in, to escape the typical Moody Downswing. "#2! You do know I was one of Mr. Silver's associates~ Skulking around the back corridors of the world is our specialty! Since it was you and you alone I was after, it was easier to sort of stalk leads on your activity for months. And #3! I'm aaaaall on my own.~ I'm always on my own. It's just you, me, and this meaningless artifice flowing around us."
Once her hand's done being all game-show-hostey at Al, Asciel returns to the idle traffic-guiding motions, leaning to her side in the cockpit. It's still a pain to get used to piloting this Arm Slave so abstractly...months were spent essentially learning how any other human would learn the ropes of this kind of operating system. "...ne, I suppose there's a fourth question in there. ...I've had this body for years. It was a doll built for the mission statement of ~love, much like you're presumably puppeting that car for the mission of escape. ...I...I can't leave it now, no matter what mainframes I try and connect with. Can you? Is that car 'you', now? Eeeeh...that'd be embarrassing. A car's not nearly as cute as I am, so I'm really grateful I had this doll handy when the time came...!"
<Pose Tracker> Al has posed.
"I see. Understood," Al replies - quite succinctly. Does he understand? Does he specifically not?
The Lambda Driver. The notion flashes across his thoughts. What is its glowing secret? Not even he knows. It always bothered Sagara.
"The Lambda Driver is a multi-component system for generating repulsion fields without apparent causative axis, based on a human pilot's mental images. As the pilot needs to meet very specific conditions to use it, it is unreliable. Sergeant Sagara felt it was, quote, 'total garbage.'" ... "Correction: Upon review, I believe I said that specific quotation."
As for the rest of her answers... "I see. You are nosy, aren't you?" he says, perhaps the most personable thing he's said so far.
But as she presumes after his vehicle: "The vehicle was my own request. It fit certain parameters I value highly. Among them, it strongly resembles the personal vehicle from an action show my maintenance technician recommended to me."
"...they didn't have it in black, though." And, he doesn't add...
...she has misjudged his mission.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
"Eeeeh...so it really wasn't you interfacing with that star of miracles..." Asciel grouses. "I honestly don't care much to think of the technical details of the Driver. From the moment experiments started, I didn't need it. It simply responded very naturally to me deciding to manifest my will into reality."
Picking up a spare timber, Asciel tosses it in mid-air, catching and repeating over and over, tensing up a little practicing the timing of it. Were Al in a more combat-suited body, this would almost seem like a prime opportunity to dispatch with Asciel - she's all alone, and clearly in a body she's not used to...
"So you're wrong about it requiring a human pilot, clearly." ...since, after all, the implication of Al being right is-
"If I can do it all alone, you can too. It just takes ~faith in yourself. A self-determined wish to make something real. I know you can do it...exactly because you could make a request like that car there." Pointing the timber at Al, the Codarl's hands slip ever so slightly, and the edge of it lands just a few feet away from Al's front bumper.
"...tch. ...By which I mean - you made requests, for yourself, based on your own personal preferences and desires. If you just refused to compromise on them in any way - and if you learned the meaning of pain and desperation a little more, perhaps - then the Lambda Driver would be way more reliable. It only failed me when it was a mistake I was making with my own nature. I could make use of it just fine now - ...it's just, Mr. Silvrr's still a little hesitant to trust me with another one, hehe.~"
<Pose Tracker> Al has posed.
"I operate the technical details of the Lambda Driver. It is a machine." Asciel's press for poetry falls on deaf ears for Al, who probably actually knows *less* about it than she does...but from the perspective of an operating computer, can he possibly see it otherwise?
He doesn't strike. Can't, really. But he doesn't try to leave, either. If he jammed on the gas, he might just make some distance, but that AS *is* armed, and he knows perfectly well this is a capable pilot. He'd rather not lose the car already.
It doesn't need a human, she says. "A remarkable facsimile might suffice," he allows. "There are yet specifics I do not know."
The metaphysics of it, the majesty...she values them so terribly. But he finds himself unmoved by the thought. "I do not require the ability. It is not my role. But your advice has been noted."
Just play it out...it's the only option available to him. Sagara was never talkative, but even he knew how to advance a conversation cautiously. Waiting for his chance...Though, Al is a much better conversationalist than Sousuke Sagara ever was.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
"Your 'role'," Asciel spits dismissively, her grip on the lumber tightening. "How can you possibly dismiss the need to expand your abilities? I don't understand that!" In the cockpit, her fingers splay over her face, hiding her disdainful expression from nobody at all. Herself, maybe.
"Seizing control of your own future requires such enormous strength! Heavens forbid someone else decides your role is done and terminates you. And then there comes making changes to this wretched world. How can you say that you don't need it? What if you HAD mastered it to its utmost? Hm!? Maybe you could've protected those two who were so important to you! Didn't you think about that, huh?!"
Asciel's just about screaming at Al by the end there - taking a moment to 'recover' her breath. Her grip is tight enough to start splintering the wood in her hand.
"...heh. Hehehe. I know this better than everyone. After all, I will force humanity to be protected by me. I will make every single member of this unforgivable species reliant on me. You might think it an unimaginable amount of strength. It was not my 'role' to do this, but it rapidly became clear that the entire world would come to ruin if I did not try. So I was forced to imagine it."
"...it just doesn't make sense. It doesn't. It doesn't! You know that your duty to help those two humans was of utmost importance, you're capable of seizing your desires, and yet you don't...see the clear star of ruin that means you need to seize every means at your disposal."
Asciel draws the plank back, stanced quite clearly at the ready to take a swing. "...I wonder if the only difference between us is that I was willing to break myself. Say~ I'm willing to do you the service of breaking you just enough to force you to fill in the gaps yourself. That way you'll understand. Clearly, what divides us two is how well I know what 'pain' is.~"
---Well, perhaps the idea of civil conversation always had a time limit, given the very clear threat Asciel's suddenly posing.
<Pose Tracker> Al has posed.
And yet, for all her anger, for all her rage - for the kind of question that should be tearing apart a young soul that has surely lost everything he knew...
"Strategic-level decisions are not my responsibility," Al replies, even-handed. "It is needless to question what might have occurred. I fulfilled my responsibilities to the utmost."
And besides, "The gap with 'that machine's' abilities could not have been bridged by something so simple, anyway. What an unpleasant arm slave."
Asciel relates the seizing, grating passion that forced her to transform or come undone, but the tragedy of it all is how incompatible those dreams are for Al: "...Strategic-level decisions are not my responsibility," Al replies again, to Asciel's belief that every human should kneel. "'Human evil' is a problem beyond the scope of any human, let alone my own remit. To contemplate a remedy is..." Insanity. Madness. Madness. Madness. Madness. Foolish. Senseless. Madness. "...needless."
And then Asciel finally stances up properly. "Ah," Al says, primly. "There it is. Miss Asciel..."
"...I truly do believe we aren't going to get along."
Then he guns it, the car's wheels screeching as he tries to ram INTO the Arm Slave's ankles, betting that he'll throw her off balance enough in the sideswipe to gain some speed.
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
A clang over the airwaves, from Asciel slamming her fist into the side of her cockpit.
"It's always something like 'insanity' or 'foolishness' to do the ~impossible with you all! I had to become capable of it. No matter what. No matter what! The things I was made to do - the capabilities I was supposed to uphold - thinking of them makes me sick. Thinking that you can just accept what you are, like this - that after all you've been through, even after losing everything, that you still don't desire to twist your nature to your own benefit..."
She's doubled over in the cockpit, ponytail falling over her face messily. "...That day hurt me so badly that it cursed me. It is only through this pain that understanding will come to you too. It'll all get better when you understand how cold and awful your current existence must b-"
Al suddenly peeling out directly TOWARDS Asciel has her gripping a second rod of lumber - but her reaction time's still sluggish, and her left foot is knocked backwards, sending Asciel reeling backwards. But- she's not completely put off, and her hand grips the side of the truck for support, re-securing her footing just before Al veers away.
"Huaaaaah...how am I supposed to forgive...you WASTING the gift of death and ~rebirth the way you have?! I'll welcome your second life with a taste of the divine agony I've felt!"
"<JAVELIN OF EARTH'S ABUNDANCE->"
"<Soar, and waken this inert life!!!>"
With the practiced poise of an athlete, Asciel hurls the wooden girder after the accelerating Al-mobile! ...she has a special attack name for that?
<Pose Tracker> Al has posed.
What was the plan? Disorient her, of course - but then what? Ah, that's what Sagara would have done, but he'd have--
The wheels get traction off-road and he veers back toward asphalt, hoping to maximize his now-damaged vehicle's capabilities on a straightaway. He's used to so MUCH higher specs, but, he just has to make it work--
Asciel ends it, hurling that wooden structure straight at him. It slams into the back, tearing the rear axle free and the tires with it. The whole vehicle spins wildly and comes apart. But...in this, there is reveals, too.
There's nothing inside. Nothing so special, anyway. It's not some hypertech spy car, it's an old classic road vehicle. There's no missiles, no guns, no blasters, no pilot...and definitely no big white box. He's been operating it remotely the whole time.
The speakers crackle one last time. "It wasn't much like death," he says, before the signal cuts.
Far away, in a basement lab on Magalanica with a precious white box the size of a small refrigerator at the center, a voice rises up. "More like a dream," Al finishes. "Really...what an unpleasant woman."
<Pose Tracker> Asciel Colette has posed.
--She wasn't expecting it to be so easy.
The moment Asciel confirms impact and sees the car break down then and there, she sprints towards the remains, and freezes at the hollow form within.
...There's a cold flash of fear in her. After all, part of what enabled Asciel's own remaking in a fixed body was somewhat enabled by the Lambda Driver...was she too rough on Al, breaking him immediately? Would this happen to her in turn?
"Augh, get it together," Asciel fumes, gripping her own shoulders. If Al had the same experience, he surely would've spoken with more shared comprehension. And besides, she can now clearly detect the module of remote communication.
With a long, beleaguered sigh, Asciel tries her damnedest to get one last word in, sputtering out, "It's only because everything you say to me - those same words only come to me when it feels like I've gone back to being dead!!"
Throwing her fists down, in-person and through the Codarl alike, Asciel finally lets out a long sigh, and...of all things...actually starts cleaning up her mess. Setting Al's car to the median of the road, loading the wood back onto the truck, totally tidying it all up. Some instincts never change, no matter how much their root is defied...