september catch-all

[robussy]

Who: falco grice, shoyo hinata & 2B with friends!
What: a log with closed prompts and open prompts soon to come for the duration of september! feel free to reach out on my plotting comments, liberos or owlie#3609 if you'd like to plot something specific! i will definitely do personalized tls!
When: september!
Where: corners of trench!

Content Warnings: will add as they come.

Comments

[robussy]

When 2B lifts her gaze, it falls flat to mask the psychological disarray too profound for her to bring to palpable light. It didn’t have to do with her.

“I wasn’t programmed to keep count.”

But she knew how many times she’s killed 9S. 48 times.

[offinventory]

"That's one dumb way to try to minimize trauma," Murderbot rolls its eyes. Right, like deaths don't matter if it happens so many times.

It sighs, pressing its hands against its eyes. It's as dumb a measure as not counting. The situation is palpably awkward. "We could play twenty questions," it says, "or you could tell me what about it actually bothers you. Because I can tell something's bothering you.

"Otherwise, I guess you could kill me again, but that'd only put off the twenty questions and telling me. Neither of us needs to go through that again." Yes, it can be an incredible asshole. ART doesn't have a monopoly. Yes it's aware ART is probably also an asshole because it thinks Murderbot is being as stupid as Murderbot thinks 2B is being. It's an asshole/stupidity train, okay? Sometimes you're the asshole. Sometimes you're the stupid.

[robussy]

She snaps, immediately and hot: "Don't use that lightly."

She takes offense and feels the sting, unintentional or otherwise. She respected her Commander, her council, and she put them all above her as any patriotic, dutiful soldier would. The air has gone from awkward to tense in no less than a spin. 2B's lips have gone thin and tight. Part of her wants to say it, Murderbot can see it as plain as day. Her emotion is showing like an open book: strained brows, lips, eyes, feelings that fluctuate from anger to sadness to anger once more. She wants to say it. She frustratingly finds that she cannot, and says with a trembling attempt to sound collected: "It's classified information."

There's a pause. Her system does not allow her to breach. But to be clear in her intent, she breathes for the first time in her life, away from YorRHa, "I never hated a word more than that one."

[offinventory]

Murderbot's face doesn't change at the accusation because it isn't guilty of that crime. It hated every part of that experience except for 'no longer raging and murdering people.' It doesn't want to go through it again because 2B's unwilling to talk about her problems. Murderbot hates the thought, but not more than it hates 2B going through her horrible shit alone. Somehow, it's always easier to pay the price for whatever its doing itself than on someone it's responsible for.

Oh comes the realization with the stock buffered answer. "You can't," Murderbot says, but it doesn't sound upset. It's excited, a touch eager. It just had its head full of 9S's operating system, hardware, subroutines. It could hack a goliath given a day or two to reconstruct some of the coding. That gets tagged for later. It's going to code that. Goliaths are only the beginning. The real target, the real important one to hack is 2B.

It picks up the book it previously handed 2B. "I need this back," Murderbot says. Again, 2B can pick a fight over it, to the death, or she can let Murderbot have it.

[robussy]

There was a gut instinct to retrieve the darkest of her memories on paper, to keep it with her just as she did her sword— but she does not. If her hand had moved for just a second, it stopped soon afterward and stayed motionless by her side. 2B could connect the initial dot easily: Murderbot understood.

Why he’d want her book comes in close second, but not completely, so she has to ask, “Why?”

She is not taking it from it, though. She is only asking.

[offinventory]

SecUnits can lie. CombatBots generally don't bother. They rip you limb from limb. They also don't threaten; they inform. It can feel like a threat, but it really isn't. SecUnits can lie, hack, and otherwise use means that don't occur to CombatBots.

Murderbot doesn't know 2B's operating code. It doesn't know what might trigger punishment, shutdown, some kind of damage dying and coming back from a squid wouldn't solve. It doesn't want to lie to 2B, but it wants to hurt her even less.

"I want to understand," it says, not a lie, "We're alike, but we're not. It's the most efficient way to close the gap." None of that is a lie. None of that is it's deepest motivation. It doesn't give any of its normal nervous responses because this is its job. This is what it does, and it's very good at what it does.

[robussy]

To understand. That's something a Scanner type would say. In some ways, 2B sees in SecUnit what it knows about her own models. Scanners are curious. If it wants to understand, it's going to have to burrow deep. It may find things that aren't kind. It may definitely find things that even 2B resents of her own design and make.

The only difference is that YoRHa is not here to punish that sort of behavior. YoRHa does not exist anymore, wiped by a virus and destroyed from top to bottom in pluming explosions. They would not obligate 2B to listen to an order of execution if it found out. In fact . . . There is a surfacing part of 2B that would like to know and be unbound.

". . . Alright," she decides, without giving further insight. This was enough, for now.

It's small, but there is a fleeting, yearning fondness in the way she briefly stares at SecUnit. When it becomes too awkward, she busies her hands and looks everywhere else but forward. At a time like this, it'd be nice to have a window to look through.