Murderbot's October Catchall

[offinventory]

who: Murderbot & others
what: Various October happenings
when: All month
where: The Entertainment Feed, the Black Parade, Around Trench, etc

content warnings: see individual starters

Comments

Construct Squared (Black Parade | Unmasked)

[offinventory]

CW: Forced transformation, Terminator

The mask is half-human and half-bot. The bot half is "terrifying" with a red eye and a metallic skeleton framework revealed from just beneath the surface. "The truth." As much as it looks like some literal representation of a construct, it isn't. However, it lets Murderbot feel like it's walking around as itself, being seen, recognized, and accepted as this part-bot part-human sent back in time from high tech to low tech mostly dumb planet. It's a good feeling.

Until it's less a feeling and more a reality. Diagnostic alarms ping and ping. If it were attached to a SecSystem, it would ping MedSystem, and it would have even more to ignore as its internal pathways alter course. It scans in real time and watches the shifts. Even when percentages aren't changing, the shape and design change. It's the strangest feeling in the world (it doesn't hurt because it turns down its pain sensors, and those seem to be among the last to go).

In the end, it stands among the parade goers mortified and confused. Well, no one will mistake what it is now. "I don't," TerminateBot says to no one in particular, "know what I expected."

[survivalthroughhate]

"You and I both," comes a distinctive voice from rather high up. It's easy to pinpoint where it is coming from. Nearby, there is a large dinosaur in a very familiar red-and-black color scheme. He's squished himself back away against a building, away from anyone he might accidentally step on. Across the way, a demolished stand already shows what has happened thanks to his large tail. Despite his ferocious appearance, he's not in any hurry to hurt anyone or go on a rampage.

He squints down at the ground, trying to figure out who is talking. Though his eyesight isn't bad in this form, it's hard to tell one person from another unless he's close to the ground. It appears this lizard-like form uses a sense of smell to distinguish one body from another more than sight.

[offinventory]

It looks up and up and up and up, and nothing in its programming designates megafauna as an immediate threat to be eliminated. It doesn't step back or forward, only looks at the being that looks more out of place than it does. That's something.

"Do not accept masks in the shape of fauna," TerminateBot says, "Noted." It looks at the buildings around them and the megafauna.

"I must ask that if you attend book club like this, you do so from outside. I'll open a window," it says. If the colors are anything to go on, this is a regular of the Entertainment Feed. The Feed can accommodate a lot but not this.

[survivalthroughhate]

"It appears not accepting masks of any kind might be preferable for the near future," Maul observes as he continues to squint, kneeling down so that he can look carefully at Eden and what's become of her face. The hot breath coming from him is strong enough to ruffle clothes this close up.

"Duly noted. If I am still like this when the time comes, I will be sure to stay outside," Maul says agreeably. "Hopefully the others don't mind participating with a very large reptile in their midst." He's no desire to go around stomping everyone and everything into gooey little bits like this. While his body has become that of a dinosaur, his mind is still his own.

[offinventory]

This terminator has been through a lot. A fair amount of its insides show, the human artifice burned, melted, or otherwise scoured away. As the transformation just occurred, whatever battles and chaos caused that isn't apparent. However, those insides have been in better shape. They look worn, crusted with salt, and perhaps like something or someone dunked TerminateBot in the ocean, perhaps in those sunken ships, for a while.

TerminateBot does not meet MegaMaulFauna's eye. It turns its head sideways, so the more human half takes prominence. The scrutiny is uncomfortable.

"Trench is a weird place where this kind of shit happens," TerminateBot points out. It looks again at the small trail of damage. "Where are you trying to go?"

I'll Be Back (Unmasked)

[offinventory]

CW: poor manners?

It watches all the films at high speed as well as the TV shows, starting on the ones with the face that matches it and expanding outward. It leads to a comfortable gimmick whenever it's uneasy. Whether conversation, situation, or anything else, once its anxiety, Murderbot stands, steps back, or otherwise creates more personal space for itself. "I'll be back," it declares solemnly in a close but not perfect imitation of the character it now looks like.

Then it takes thirty seconds or a minute or two, wherever it can get some privacy, to settle back down. It checks its drone network. It checks DeerNet. It plays a few minutes of Michael Jackson's music. Once its performance seems up to task (it no longer has the same performance reliability module), it returns.

"Where were we?" Murderbot asks as it returns.

Forced Shutdown (Lost in the Woods + Options)

[offinventory]

CW: Choose Your Own Adventure, Ghost Ship, Terminator
Note: Options 2 & 3 can be mixed together. Option 1 is it's own.

It regains consciousness after a forced shutdown, one without warning. Like the hallways a month before or the boat after that, it's in a secondary location. This time includes a lapse in consciousness that triggers a run of diagnostics. It's fine. Nothing reported as having any problems. No log entries indicate a reason for shutdown. It seems Murderbot must accept that someone can access an on off switch. It would shiver, if it were a human that did things like express angst in such a way. Instead its algorithms keep it moving smoothly.

Option 1: The First Time (Open to one (1))
It doesn't know where it is, and although it can ping its drones, none of them are nearby enough to be useful. This is it, some (hopefully) mini run of one of its worse nightmares. Abandoned alone on an empty planet. The lack of angry megafauna is appreciated, but the unnatural silence makes Murderbot uncomfortable.

It walks in one chosen direction, fragment in hand but ignored as something to roll around physically again and again and again and enjoy the way the light acts like the head of a chicken. Always staying put. That should be the clue to tip it off. Instead, it's a dangerous animal, more than animal but not quite full beast, that it manages to roll its sleeves up for and stun with energy weapons. No killing required.

Then it thinks about the chicken color and changes course. For some time it's nothing else, just a way through woods that it slowly maps with small landmarks it doesn't recognize. It hasn't been mapping the woods with its drones. It hasn't spent much time in the woods outside the healing areas of Lumenwood.

Then there's someone else. Friend or foe? Murderbot tenses and goes for the socially accepted... wave.

Option 2: Houston Houston, Do You Read? (Loneliness Kills)
"Yeah yeah," Murderbot grumbles as it picks up its chicken compass fragment. It doesn't waste time, it runs at near peak human levels in the direction the glowing gem indicates. Nothing like the experience of video games as picking up from the same save point. Only this time it knows how to play.

It isn't exactly the same, however. Unbeknownst to it, a small drone in the shape of a spaceship the size of a human head, floats behind it. The ship is dark with no running lights, no beeps or flashes. No noise, movement, or anything suggests it has power at all. Yet it trails Murderbot faithfully, a small satellite.

Option 3: Come With Me If You Want To Live. (Unmasked)
It's seen all the movies by now. It knows this game. TerminateBot quickly reaches the next important plot point in the game. This time, however, it stares with a dead inhuman gaze as it speaks lines that belong to another character. "Come with me if you want to live," it says.

The tone is flat, the quote turned on its head. Murderbot holds out the fragment of compass.

option 2!

[tealeafs]

This may not be Chizuru's first rodeo either - or rather, not her first time suddenly waking up here in the woods and having to navigate her way around with one of those glowing pieces - but she still seems to be taking it all in with a bit more nerves. After all, just like last time, she still has that feeling that there's something out there following her.

And past experience is never any indication for future success. For all she knows, she just got lucky last time, getting out of the woods before whatever was there could pounce her. So Chizuru quickly tries to move in the direction the piece is guiding her to--

-- only to spot something running at her. Maybe if she looked she would be able to realise it's someone she met before, but the paranoia of being watched and followed makes Chizuru just startled enough to let out a surprised squeak, before her hand lands on the hilt of the sword at her side, pulling the kodachi out of its sheath.

Of course it's only when she's already holding out the sword that she realises the person approaching her isn't dangerous at all. Even the drone that's following it doesn't seem all that surprising to her, since it's a little reminiscent of the one she saw it use back on the beach..

Instead Chizuru is much more preoccupied with speaking up with: "O-Oh, it was.. you.. I thought it'd be a monster.."

Her sword slowly lowers. It's not like Chizuru is going to attack someone who tried to help her out before. Apparently the girl doesn't even seem to consider the possibility that it might be a trick either, or that the person standing in front of her isn't who she thinks it is.

[offinventory]

Murderbot halts a little out of sword range, at least what it knows about sword range from the media. People rarely walk about wielding swords on space stations and mining installations. It raises its hands in a woah woah motion. It's an easy mistake when someone or something runs at you in the woods.

"Good instincts," Murderbot compliments. "You didn't freeze, and you didn't attack me once you recognized me." It's more than it can count on from most humans.

It holds out the compass fragment. "Have you done this before?" Murderbot asks, "If the rules stay the same, it's pretty simple."

Yeah, it hears how that sounds. When are these things ever that simple? Even when they seem simple, something may happen later. Maybe it'll turn into a forest monster instead of a squid. Or forget Chizuru entirely. Or they'll always know where they are. It cannot predict.

"It'd be less creepy if there were monsters," Murderbot looks around them. "Suspicious how calm it is. Unnatural."

[tealeafs]

Chizuru forces herself to calm down further. Breathe in, breathe out. It doesn't restore her back to total calm, but it at least makes her relatively calm enough to put her kodachi back into its sheath, especially since she only feels more antsy holding it around someone she doesn't want to hurt.

".. no, it would definitely be creepier for me if a monster did jump out.." Chizuru manages to say, almost sighing as she says it, yet still sounding on edge.

A monster fight is the last thing she wants to deal with here, after all. She can't defend herself very well, let alone someone else - and she doesn't want this person she met last time around to get hurt. It's not like it showed any attitude to her that would make Chizuru okay with it getting hurt, after all.

So she shakes her head, trying to momentarily get rid of the eerie feeling of being watched. Instead she holds out the fragment she found, only realising that the fragment is similar to the one it is holding, even without knowing what exactly it is.

"But, I.. I don't really know what's going on here," she admits, with a quick shake of her head. "I found one of these though. If it's pretty simple, then.. surely you know what these are, right..?"

[offinventory]

Murderbot glances over at her, mostly eyeing the sword as a nice easy reason not to look at her eyes. "It would be more dangerous if a monster jumped out," Murderbot says, "but unless it was an especially creepy monster, it would be less creepy." Because anything that scares or keeps monsters away is creepier than the monster. Or scarier, but it doesn't say that part out loud.

It accepts her fragment and gets ready to combine them. "This will be bright," it warns, changing the filters for its vision, and holds them together. They glow bright, so bright even Murderbot cannot see the seams closing together in clear and useful detail. It's magic, not tech, anyway. It thinks.

The compass is formed, and Murderbot spins the chicken compass around. "I have no idea which way is north, but last time, follow the blue glowing gem worked out," Murderbot says. "It's not like we want to stay here anyway." That rules out one option.

option 1

[underbluesky]

This again. Vash feels slightly less unsettled this time, even though a gap in his memory will never quite be comfortable. At least his previous experience can let him to be fairly confident in the idea that following the glow of the item won't lead him into some kind of trap.

The figure in the woods waves, and Vash waves back. The broken object glows ever brighter as Murderbot approaches.

"Hello."

He is not sure if he needs to explain, or if the other has been through this before already as well. He waits to find out.

[offinventory]

Initial exchange of social ritual complete. Murderbot doesn't particularly recognize this individual and falls back on a line from media (after all, 'Hello' takes all of 1-2 seconds).

"Funny meeting you here," Murderbot says deadpan, acknowledging both the surprise and lack of surprise at the same time. It looks at the object of increased luminescence in both of their hands and sighs.

"Chicken colors for us both," it mutters as it rotates the fragment that continues to point toward the newcomer. "Welcome to Team Gallus Colores." It holds out the fragment. No it has no idea what it's doing besides following the chicken color that brought them together.

[underbluesky]

Chickens are not particularly plentiful on a desert planet like Gunsmoke, so the reference is a bit lost on Vash. Nonetheless, when Murderbot holds out the fragment, Vash extends his own, and allows the two fragments to join together, as they had before.

"It makes a compass," he explains. "Following it leads us out of the forest."

[offinventory]

"Oh Good," Murderbot declares, "That's where I want to go." It moves the compass around, up and down, in a pattern, and even spinning it. It sure seems to want to go in one direction that Murderbot would not particularly describe as due North, East, South, or West. Presumably walking any direction long enough exits the forest but possibly with more resistance.

"Monster free last time?" it asks as it complies to the wishes of the compass. It's not the dumbest thing ever, but it also seems like a potentially great way to lead people into a trap. You know, out of the frying pan and into the fire as one character always says despite a lack of frying pans and fires.

Buggy Emotions (Loneliness Kills) [Closed to Vi]

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CW: body/machine horror, gore, blood, trauma, mental confusion, ghost, high corruption

It shudders on its hands and knees and forces itself to stand. Its visual sensors make no sense. It sees a forest, a parade, a road, a dead end, a shop front, a field, a lake, a—

It's too much. It lunges toward the person only a few steps—

Not in front of it. Its hands open and close, and it focuses the visual data on the appendages approximating hands within its view. The synthetic skin has come completely clean of one. The metal structure revealed together moves stiffly, flaking rust each time it sends commands to the hand. One finger doesn't move at all, fused together (impossible). The other hand is mostly covered. The skin is paper thin, revealing the inhuman structure below it. Importantly, the person it reached for is not within its grasp.

TerminateBot lets out an inhuman scream, insulated by the walls around it. Its knee gives out again, and when it slams into the floor, a seam bursts. A thin stream of blood sprays to the side. No tears tear free of its eyes. It lacks the capacity for tears. Whispers and laughter taunt it. It hit play on its queue, but even in this artificial screen inside its head, people run away screaming from it.

Someone starts shooting it on the screen, and it feels jealous. At least they engage with it. It cannot reach the squid on the beach. It cannot reach anyone in a pub. It cannot reach the actor in the tree. It cannot reach anyone at all. This is it. Nearly shut down and alone. Without crew. Without crew. Without crew.

Elsewhere a drone flies directly into someone (crew's) face.

[faceblocks]

Vi sits at her desk, pausing in her sketch - which is of a local man, and not (surprisingly) D, smudging a line here, reconsidering a line there, sighing and about to scrap the whole thing and start over when she's greeted by the little drone, which she instinctively tries to swat away until she realizes what it is.

"Hey, you." she says, surprised to see it in her bedroom of all places. This is ...odd. "Did you get lost, or do you need something?"

Unease begins to raise the signal of "uh oh", as she thinks back to any time her own Omen sought out someone else. She's avoided a lot of things this month, but that doesn't mean she hasn't seen some shit happen.

[offinventory]

It's only an intelligence drone. It lacks the equipment for much. No arms for manipulation or writing anything down. It can stream to a feed—

It isn't only an intelligence drone. It's an omen. It doesn't need a feed. Stopping an inch away from flying into her face again, it spins around, rises, and projects an image over her drawing.

The view looks down from on high at what looks like a horror film. The being doesn't look like Murderbot or even a corrupted version of it. It looks like a decrepit T-800 that was abandoned on a colony for decades or centuries. The metal joints corrode, rust, and bend out of shape. The black sweatshirt half-shredded tangles with outgrowths of metal that don't make sense. They are sharp and pointy, a hedgehog of icing tips. Each spews a tiny jet of dark blood.

Another drone flies into the room. It projects an image next to the feed. This reveals a whole series of movies called Terminator, which shows a similar type of robot in better form.

[faceblocks]

Bye bye drawing, hello...

...she doesn't recognize the scene, but she's seen the image before sort of. It's not supposed to look like this, is it? It's a mess of sharp edges and a chaos of snaking lines. In flies the second drone to clarify for her that no, this is not how it's supposed to look. She's already dropped her pencil.

That's ...blood. That's---

"Shit." She's out the window almost instantly - it's faster than using the stairs and the door, and it's only a series of leaps to make it to the Feed, but she wants to be sure - so a glance back to see if the drones are following, or if they've gone ahead of her. Either way, there's a deal of dread in her belly - these are the kind of stomach drops she detests.

Eden's Omen wouldn't just show up like that would they? They might, but only if it was something important. Something very, very good or ...very, very bad. Two out of three of those things are pinging right now.

"Fang send a message to user Rin." she calls out mid jump, and waits the few seconds to land to finish, "Are you okay?". It's weird enough for Violet to use full sentences, and maybe weirder if a reply doesn't come.

It's a reflexive but silly gesture, because she's moving fast enough she can't check it for text, and another few leaps and she'll be able to check for herself. If Eden's in the Feed.

[offinventory]

One of the omen drones stays with Vi as she hoofs it to the Feed. The other speeds on ahead, already communicating with itself to accomplish what a multibodied hive minded omen can do. It's what Murderbot would do, if Murderbot were capable of being itself at the moment.

Vi is met by a swarm of eight drones that guide her up the stairs, through the less developed gaming section, to a section of wall that opens where there hadn't looked to be a door, and into a back section of the Feed. This part of the building is a bit rougher, weather worn, and not entirely fixed up. They lead her to a door, at which point they fly about above her head, mostly bobbing and weaving.

One drone projects the other side of the door onto the windowless door. It's the same scene, hardly changed. After another few moments, they unlock the door and let Vi in.

No Shirt No Shoes No Service (Sleeper Farm) [Closed to Vi]

[offinventory]

CW: artificial anatomy (mixed robotic/human), gore, horror imagery,

The whole view is disgusting and disturbing. Unfortunately, it's familiar this time. Its vision still catches on its feet. They're nothing like human feet—the most human thing about them that they fit in human shoes. Murderbot groans. It does not want to die again, but it has to get out of here. It cannot stay. It cannot stay. At some point that need will be larger than the fear of dying (again).

First, the basics. The chains are stronger this time, tensing but not breaking. Murderbot doesn't think a key is needed, but since its limbs are pulled taunt, and nothing is near its mouth, the zealots probably thought they were safe. Shit luck for all of them. (Have you guessed what happens next? Since it's happened before, upside down).

It disconnects the connections with its left hand. The hand grips the chain and pulls itself up higher until the last piece of skin breaks. The chain swings away from Murderbot, the hand holding it. When it comes back, the hand jumps and tries to grab its own wrist. Shockingly, having to purposely control it, the timing is off. Its hand brushes the jump suit its wearing until it hits the torso. Mid-thigh, it finally gets a grip. The hand climbs down the rest of the way to its ankles. Despite the weird angle, Murderbot unlocks one then the other foot. In a sturdy stance, the hand climbs up its whole body to free the last limb.

Murderbot steps away from the wall in its... stall it supposes. Horribly primitive system of imprisonment. Even if it cannot use blood powers to go invisible (or delete itself) this far down. It sets about reconnecting its hand and swearing up a silent storm. It's been through this nonsense once already. Why isn't that enough? Its organs aren't human standard. Is that valuable somehow?

It shakes its head and listens to the sound of footsteps getting close. Murderbot glances down at its feet in alarm. There's nothing to put over them.

[faceblocks]

This place is too familiar, and the blood on her hands this time is mostly not her own - and what's her own is purposefully placed - she's thrown the gauntlet down metaphorically and literally - wearing only one. the other hand is slick with viscous green, the flecks of red owed to vileblood and other blood. Old Sleeper blood. Zealot's blood.

She's moving from stall to stall, rid of the shitty jumpsuit, geared up and grim-faced. But she's twitchy in a way she hasn't been in a long time, and she keeps turning back over her shoulder.

Her eyes are no longer grey, but a sickly green and swirled with red as she peers in, stops and huffs a breath.

"Seriously?" Double fuck these Zealots. A beat as she blinks, looking closer, checking for injury, for anything out of place besides the entirety of the farm. "You ready to make a break for---"

Her eyes land on Eden's feet.

[offinventory]

Murderbot shuffles slightly, but nothing hides what's already been seen. It waits for Vi to turn away from it and leave it to find its own way out. It waits for her to look for a real person to rescue. It waits for rejection.

Humans process everything slowly under the best of conditions. Over something so shocking, it takes longer. As anxious as Murderbot is, it feels each nanosecond. Eternity passes in a second.

It doesn't make eye contact (thank you, Vi, for large enough hair to partially obscure your face) but zooms in on Vi's eyes. The color is wrong, it's the color of her blood, as readily demonstrated on her processor fragmenting blood-coated hand. "You are so not okay," Murderbot declares. "You need a movie marathon... after your shower."

That filth is not entering its movie theater.

[faceblocks]

Rejection doesn't come, but slight confusion does as she asks, "You gonna be all right walking on those?" No, they're nothing like human feet, but that's not a thing Vi is concerned with in the least - it doesn't occur to her that Eden covered them because she'd been trying to hide them. But it does cross her mind that shoes are preferable because feet are easily injured in all kinds of ways.

These feet don't look that frail. "I've been better," she concedes, but she's also been worse. (See: every other time she's come through here, save maybe one. And fuck that one, too, because they took Jun.)

"Have they done anything else to you? Besides steal your kicks?" Another look over her shoulder, and she holds up that hand with a smile that's both casual and cold. "More of theirs than mine, so that's something."

Even as she speaks, her eyes dim down a bit, a green grey murk peeking through - and so does her smile. Every time she's in at this level, all bets are off with regards to her blood.

[offinventory]

Murderbot scans to both sides to check Vi speaks to it, not someone else with fragile squishy human feet. No that question is definitely for it. "I would like shoes," it says, "but I'd like to be out of here without dying even more." If anyone else sees its feet it could lie and say the Zealots did it. It doesn't want to try to hide them/make them invisible because then it might not have feet any longer, and that's more difficult to work with.

"It's not my first time here," Murderbot says, "Took me longer to free myself." It points to the chains previously holding it. It pauses. "Whatever else they did to me, I was unconscious, and I'd rather not think about right now." The diagnostic reports are shoved to the side because performance reliability is sufficient and no warnings affect its performance to the degree of getting out of here.

It sighs and shudders. "I find this whole place disgusting," it admits, "even besides how wrong and terrible it is." The way bodily fluids soak its clothes and waft over the entire area would make it puke if it had swallowed anything into its lungs.