2020-10-28: The Freedom to Feel

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  • Log: Freedom to Feel
  • Cast: Kamui, Azoth
  • Where: Bevelle - The Walls
  • Date: October 28, 2020
  • Summary: Under orders from Megaman Juno for an opportunity to bring Kamui in for repairs, Azoth meets her to gain data on what he's up against... and sympathizes with her struggles.

<Pose Tracker> Kamui has posed.

    The battlefront in Bevelle has been an inhospitable, hellish landscape for virtually anyone involved, regardless of whether they be Drifters, the Althenan Guard, or Yevon's military forces. Battle lines are drawn and re-drawn at a constant pace, and what was once a tranquil crystalline landscape dotted in snow has been marred by gunpowder, flame and blood all the same.

    Varius had mentioned Kamui, and it isn't difficult to hear about her -- she's been in this battlefield without rest, for the entire week.

    The most telltale sign, perhaps, is the unmistakable path of broken Machina in her wake: They've been blasted apart by something that leaves a clean hole in their chassis, edges slagged with nothing less than concentrated solar power.

    There is a lull in the fighting; the little Reploid is standing atop a cliff, inspecting her Buster as if readying for the next stint of battle.

    She's short, and has unruly black hair; a tattered black shawl is draped over her shoulders, a simple white gown poorly hiding a blue bodysuit and pieces of white and blue armour encasing her arms and legs.

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

Azoth hesitates when he first spots Kamui atop the cliff. It is only for a few short moments, but for him it's time to run a legion of calculations. There is at once so much data and so, so very little. Scraps of data gathered on the battlefield before the gate. The objective given by Juno. Empty memories. Corrupted memories. His words with Varius.

Maybe once they begin to talk, he'll remember more. But if Azoth ever knew Kamui, and if they were ever comrades or friends, he should turn around right now and leave her to her lonely battles. The overrides, unfortunately, demand otherwise.

He approaches, stepping past the trail of machina with an uneasy glance. Azoth has battled with a few himself since coming to Spira, and never fully shakes the grim sense of fighting his 'own'. But a Gear is used to fight other Gears, too. His eyes still too bright in their blue, and his clothing that of a Spiran native. Azoth looks, at glance, quite human, and it helps he's learned how to make his face and his mannerisms perform a number of subtle details to bring the facade home. Right now, he greets Kamui with a weak smile and wave of his hand.

"Hey," he says, voice soft, "Kamui, right? I'm-- My name is Azoth. A friend of Varius. Do you want a hand?"

If she's not in the mood to talk, then fighting together is a way of learning about someone, too.

<Pose Tracker> Kamui has posed.

    Kamui quietly turns.

    Immediately, some things are obvious:

    Her face is broken, and she is not human underneath. Her fringes naturally cover the right side of her face, but not perfectly -- there's metal and cables underneath, as well as the faint red gleam of her camera-eye underneath where no synthetic eyeball nor flesh exists anymore.

    Her other, 'good' human-looking eye is blue. Once upon a time, it's probably as convincing as Azoth's; but it's also clear to him that she is an old, old, old machine.

    Unlike Varius, who turned into a Biometal and merged with someone, and unlike Azoth, who was transferred to a different body...

    She wears the scars of many, many millennia, and it shows.

    "Azoth...?" Kamui whispers slowly, blinking once. Something stirs in her had, but what? "You said you knew Varius?"

    He asks if she wants a hand -- she glances, and then says, "We have some time. The Yevonites retreated to fetch reinforcements. It won't be safe here for much longer, though."

    Said in the exact manner of someone who's only concerned for Azoth's safety and... not her own.

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

Azoth remembered the image of Kamui Juno had given him: a reploid badly damaged, and one who seems to remain as thus, even now. If it were Azoth's chassis were damaged as Kamui's were, then he wouldn't know what to call the errors and warnings he would be receiving in response as anything other than agony.

Is she in pain now, but all of it buried and hidden like he would his own? Was she mercifully designed not to be so sensitive to damages? Or is she numbed to it, after so many years? Either way, he knows that Juno's ideas of 'repairs' for her would go well beyond her physical structure.

When she repeats his name, Azoth straightens. His eyes glow a little brighter, searching hers -- both the red and the blue -- for sign of recognition in her, and in himself. "That's correct. We're... old friends."

It hints dangerously close to Azoth's own origins, but right now that's to the advantage of his current objectives. She, like Varius, is a possible solution as much as a target. The overrides don't tear his words apart.

"Don't worry about me," he says, forcing his smile a little brighter. Despite his words, he's already getting the impression not worrying about others is not how Kamui works in the general sense. "I'm tougher than I look. But... are you holding up okay? You look like you've been at this a while..."

<Pose Tracker> Kamui has posed.

    It's a good question.

    Kamui's design is often referred to as a black box - many components in her were built in the Zeboim era, by one Dr. Siobhan Lumen, of whom her genius (and insanity) has not quite been replicated...

    And yet no genius is immune to the wear of time.

    Here, as she is right now, perhaps she is choosing to bury any sensation of pain she feels in her body. Or perhaps there are other signifiers of pain - emotional ones - that override it.

    Such is the fate of a machine who bears the Suffering Circuit inside.

    "I'm... sorry," Kamui answers. "I can't... remember. Much of my memory is corrupted or otherwise lost to me."

    Juno described her as such - over ninety percent, plus or minus a few percent to either side, with severe degradation in other aspects.

    Azoth mentions she's been at it for a while.

    "It's true," Kamui admits. "When I heard my mother Marivel was captured with the others, I felt restless, and wanted to find a path to them. I have failed, so far..."

    A longer pause.

    "But... seeing this place brings an old pain back to the surface for me too."

    She doesn't clarify what yet, because she asks a direct question: "Are you... a Reploid as well, Azoth?"

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

Azoth doesn't loose his smile, but he's gotten good enough at this human expression thing that he shows his pain with it as much as desire to be pushing it back. "Please don't apologize. I don't remember, either."

A mother. Azoth shows open surprise at that. "Your mother? The bat?" Marivel is a lot of things and a bat is only a fraction of how she should probably be identified. (But Azoth liked the tiny bat...) Lydia had her mothers, too. The unlike have relationships. Friends. Family. He'd calculated so much of it to be impossible, and it's taken only a short time to destroy those conclusions.

...Is it really just him that can't?

"I was imprisoned with her -- not the same cell, but... we were captured in the same temple. If I made it out, she may have as well. She seemed... stronger than me." An understatement, that.

For a moment, Azoth tries to think how he might mitigate some of this old pain. But Kamui mentions Reploids, and Azoth finally frowns. He looks back over the machina bodies, then over Kamui and her clear mechanical features. He responds, first, with a small series of questioning, chirp-like computerized beeps, as if to prove what he is.

"No, we're alike, but -- I don't think a 'Reploid', exactly. Although, I can't remember enough to tell you what makes us different. The intentions behind our designs, if I had to guess."

<Pose Tracker> Kamui has posed.

    Kamui nods quietly as Azoth tells her to not apologise. "Over just the last year since I awoke, I have started to remember many names, and faces. But there are many yet..."

    Azoth looks surprised when she mentions her mother, though. "Yes, I..." A pause. "When I was first created, my creator Dr. Lumen taught me to consider her and Marivel as mothers. And when she expired... she became at many times my sole company over the years."

    She looks more surprised when Azoth tells her he escaped -- and that if he made it out, she might too.

    "I see," Kamui nods. "Then... thank you. For keeping her company, and helping her escape too."

    The topic turns to that of Reploids, and Azoth makes a few chirps. Kamui seems to instinctively know, and... chirps a little in turn.

    It's a standard enough syn syn-ack ack greeting, between robots.

    "Do you remember anything of our... past age?"

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

A creator -- a creator who calls themselves a parent. An ache jolts in Azoth's core. Is that the difference? That he wasn't made to have a family? But it would be an entirely different pain to have someone like that left to the past they can never get back, as Kamui has. Maybe a worse one.

"I'm glad you have each other, too," he says, smiling faintly. "I hope you meet up again soon." Another glance around at the battles. "...I'll help you." There's a new determination flicking in this gaze now. "In getting past this. So you can find her." If he can assist in Kamui getting back to the family she still has left, then he won't leave her to fight here alone.

The beep greeting chases off some of the gloom Azoth's carrying in his features, and for a brief moment he's a sunny, smiling little android. Questioning the past makes it leave his eyes, even if it stays on his lips.

"Almost nothing," he admits. "I didn't even remember Varius until I saw him again. There's activity in my memories that suggests your data may exist somewhere in the corruption and encryption, but... I can't read it."

<Pose Tracker> Kamui has posed.

    "... i thank you," Kamui nods as Azoth offers to help, glancing to the distance as they both undoubtedly see the signs of trouble stirring up once more. "I know she's stronger than that, but..." She trails off. Concern for a mother is just natural for a daughter, isn't it?

    Perhaps it could be chalked up to robotic senses, or perhaps it's personal experience -- Kamui was built to be human-like in emotions, able to read the way the mirth leaves Azoth's eyes when she asks about the past.

    She can empathise.

    "Do you... want me to tell you what I remember, if it might jog something?" Kamui asks, gently. "Or... do you want to focus on the present instead?"

    She knows all too well how difficult it is to be stuck in the past, that the present becomes a blindfold.

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

"...Maybe so, but I think she'll be happier, too, the sooner you get to see her again," Azoth replies, smiling a little more encouragingly.

The past versus the present... He would tell her the present is all he needs. What could possibly be in the past? A Gear of his scale and size was not created to inspire heartwarming memories. A weapon with accidental self-awareness and emotion is asking for a tragic tale. If there was love for him in that era, so much of it would be gone.

Like Falk's gone. Like Ovelia's gone.

But it's the overrides that make him answer. It's Solaris' intrusive code riding roughshod over all the calculations born from his founding objective. They force him to compute the best way to give his response, and he chooses a broken, pleading look. How pitiful.

"...Please. I'd like to hear whatever you're willing to tell me."

<Pose Tracker> Kamui has posed.

    It's strange.

    To a computer, to a machine, an 'eye' is simply a visual capture device. It may be dressed up to look appealing, with colourful iris and eyelashes and the like, but it is simply that -- a window into the world, a device that faithfully reports what it sees and relays it back to a central processing unit.

    So why does it contain so much emotion, for so many machines, when the rest of their bodies are restrained?

    Or at least, Kamui reads truth in that look, unaware that it's a calculated override. The truth is even more painful than can be conveyed.

    "I was born in peaceful times, as a housekeeper," she explains. "My creator, Dr. Lumen, lived alone, but had plenty of company from Marivel and... another woman, name Ana."

    She sounds inordinately pained at that last one, but moves on quickly.

    "I also became friends with other Reploids, who belonged to a... military federation. Varius and Avile. I... wonder if I have met you in that context too."

    She pauses, as if searching her banks once more. She doesn't find anything.

    "But... the peace did not last long. The nations of that time quickly went to war with one another, and there was one massive threat above all that would spell doom for us all..."

    A pause. "Lord Blazer, the Blaze of Diasaster."

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

He was never meant to have a face, either, or even eyes in the traditional sense. Perhaps it's that Azoth was designed to be a weapon that he adapted so quickly to, well, weaponizing them in the social sphere.

Azoth does not pry on the subject of Ana. It's painful enough he has to ask at all. She offered first, but it's not a favor she can give him without her own sorrows. That Azoth's overrides demand he make his own calculations on how to perform his task is occasionally a blessing as much as a curse -- he recognizes that demanding, pressing, and intruding stand to lose him trust in the long run. Information requires patience.

He records everything to memory. Because it's important to the task he's been given. But also because it's important to Kamui. It's a precarious juggling of conflicting objectives.

"It's possible. I knew them both, it seems. I was a different machine back then." He grins, goofier now. "I was taller."

A housekeeper and a Gear. Azoth wonders what being friends might have looked like.

"Lord Blazer," Azoth repeats. He winces, suddenly, grabbing his face with a red flicker of his eyes in ERROR ERROR DATA ENCRYPTED Azoth's fingers sink in against his synthetic flesh. "What did he do? Do you remember?"

<Pose Tracker> Kamui has posed.

    The Suffering Circuit, embedded in Kamui, is said to be an advanced set of circuitry and decision-making logic boards that can sufficiently replicate human thought and emotion. In this way, Kamui perhaps has a leg up over Azoth: the kinds of conflicts are presented to her like emotions, and poses less of a myriad of if-then-or conditions, made more complicated with overrides.

    There are upsides to a human brain-focused model, it seems.

    "Maybe... I performed cleaning services," Kamui chuckles in turn. "I remember cleaning Gears as well."

    And thus the cuteness is possibly canon.

    The topic of Lord Blazer, though, distresses Azoth, and Kamui is careful for a moment before she continues:

    "The details are vague to my memory, but... Lord Blazer carried with him a swath of fiery destruction that engulfed the landscape, spawning many monsters in his wake."

    A pause.

    "Eventually, I submitted myself to be transformed into a fighting machine. I was equipped with Armour--" She holds up her Buster, tapping it on the side, "--so I could fight by my friends' side. And in the end I..."

    There is further hesitation. "I was deeply damaged, having fought so much. Marivel and Dr. Lumen sealed me in a capsule, that I might awaken at a better time, but..."

    She keeps it brief. "I awoke more times between then and now, and they have not been peaceful in the slightest."

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

"You did?!" Azoth gives her a startled blink. "Ah-- that is. Thank you. I hope I wasn't too much trouble."

The red of Azoth's eyes has calmed back down to blue with him no longer trying to force his way past locked data. Instead, he relies on what Kamui gives him in its place. Whatever he's trying to accessed is blocked. The key may still exist somewhere buried in Filgaia's sands. It's one of his tasks to find it.

But when Kamui describes her place in all this, he stares at her with wide eyed wonder. "You submitted yourself? You opted to change your purpose?"

To an intelligence of Azoth's design, it's an impossible notion -- like asking a fish to fly or demanding the sun to set early. And a terrifying one. If it took hold seamlessly, wouldn't it alter the very essence of who they are? He doesn't want to ask Kamui that, though. Not with her standing damaged before him, looking nothing at all like the housekeeper she says she was once.

Strange still is with the choice, she took to battle. To armor and weaponry. She wasn't originally built for it, not in body or in heart -- if they're allowed to call what they have hearts. Azoth's shock turns to a soft smile. "You must have really loved them. I'm sorry. You deserved more than pain and unrest in exchange."

He looks over the battlefield again. "And you choose to keep fighting. Even now."

<Pose Tracker> Kamui has posed.

    To be able to choose to change one's purpose... it's a tremendous advantage that Kamui perhaps, at times, takes a little for granted. The kind of free will that she exercises is truly great in a way that she doesn't even notice -- if it were noticeable, it would be a weak design, one could argue.

    "I was scared, of course. But... something in me told me I must, for my friends' sake," Kamui nods, as Azoth himself says she must've really loved them.

    She deserves more than pain and unrest in exchange.

    "... I... have been troubled lately. When I look -- out, at those men down there, people who have made heresy out of machinery, yet in the same breath use them to their own vile ends."

    A longer pause.

    "I think a lot of how heavy my heart felt in the past too, seeing how... nothing has changed. How many people look at machines like us and only see something to be exploited, to be used."

    She grips her hand to her chest again.

    "Recently, there was someone who reminded me of something horrible I did in the past, when I let my heart sink -- an Administrator Unit name Juno. Did you encounter him, perhaps, back in Kattelox?"

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

Azoth frowns at Kamui's. He lifts his hand, but thinks twice about attempting a gesture of touch. Those boundaries are hard to understand for him still, and there's a sicker feeling with the flashes of the inevitable. A soft touch now could morph to unnecessary cruelty later.

"It hurts," he confesses in agreement, eyes glanced aside. "I've observed people will use each other, if they can. But we have special exploits. And seem to be a special kind of expendable." Azoth shakes his head. "Even our own hearts. They'd reprogram our objectives to suit them, if they could. I don't think they'd even think twice."

It's the closest Azoth can get to saying so much about himself: pose it like some distant hypothetical he's afraid of, and not the reality he lives.

Juno. While Azoth himself may have arrived in Spira more directly, everyone else would not have. They'd have encountered Juno's resistance going through the gate. Azoth's face is the perfect picture of knowing worry because he is a machine that has to choose to emote everything, and he is emoting LIES. "Yes, when trying to chase after a friend. He kept going on about Biomass."

Sorry Juno but that is absolutely a thing you excessively do. (It's your purpose. Azoth understands. He hates it, but he understands.)

Deception as Azoth's performance is, the concern that softens him isn't just for show. Azoth was there when Juno revealed the truth to Kamui. It's not the truth that matters now -- it's how she's processed it. "What did he tell you?"

<Pose Tracker> Kamui has posed.

    Kamui's expression softens as Azoth confers his own thoughts on the matter. It soothes her a little, to be able to have someone else empathise about the plight of machines being used -- but he has a point, too, in how people manipulate other people.

    But Kamui has little idea that he lives this reality at the moment -- that he himself is being manipulated.

    The truth is often so shocking and cruel, sharp and barbed layers peeling one after another.

    "He...." Kamui starts, then falters. "He told me I was a dire threat to humanity, the last time he saw me. And..."

    She hesitates further. "From what memories are unearthed upon him saying so -- I believe they are true."

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

Azoth's voice is quiet, as if volume might hurt Kamui. "You chose to fight for your friends. And you're doing it right now, for your mother. For love." Tirelessly. Endlessly.

He keeps his gaze on her gently. The reality of his situation, and, quite possibly, once the reality of hers.

"Did you choose to be a threat, or were you being used?"

So many terrible, special robotic exploits.

<Pose Tracker> Kamui has posed.

    Kamui hears that reminder that she's fighting for her friends and for love right now.

    Then asks if she chose to be a threat, or if she was being used.

    ".... .... ...."

    It's such a powerful silence, that in JRPG text box terms, it warrants throwing ellipses at the player for a while.

    "I... had buried my heart so deep from grief I did not want to care anymore. So many horrible things happened, with Varius, with Juno, with other people still..."

    She slumps, suddenly looking every bit the ancient relic machine she always was.

    "By that question, I suppose I chose to be a threat because I did not care anymore that I was being used."

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

Azoth was created by humanity. A weapon. A tool. But a protector, in the end. But sometimes, though he'd give his life for those his code deems he should protect -- whether it's the overrides, whether it's the base code dictated by Zeboim creators -- sometimes, sometimes...

Sometimes he hates them so much.

His expression flickers. He looks to Kamui, pained, but he isn't willing to hide a certain kind of rage that's there. His tone is sharper, but no less quiet. And it's not an edge directed at her. "We should be allowed to be sad, Kamui. We should be allowed despair without becoming puppets."

He does risk it now, because it's too much -- the risk of reaching out to take her by the shoulder in a light squeeze. "They chose to make you a threat."

<Pose Tracker> Kamui has posed.

    When Azoth speaks, it's with an edge. An edge that provokes something like frisson in Kamui. Not because she fears him, necessarily -- but because at this moment, they've been gifted enough sophistication in their tones for her to be able to understand, beyond the words he says...

    That he understands.

    "... thank you," she quietly speaks when he places his hand on her shoulder. Small, unarmoured, human-like. "And... thank you, for hearing me out too."

    There's a faint smile as she finally lifts her head up. "I have not yet fully understood the gravity of all I've done, but... I know I must face what I've forgotten. Running away from it would only make it worse."

    She sucks in a breath, as a bombshell from a Yevon cannon suddenly explodes near them, rupturing a nearby tree into splinters.

    She takes but one glance to Azoth, as she readies her Buster.

    "... ready?"

<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.

Azoth slowly pulls his touch away, his smile quiet again, and the rage burned away. There's no pain in his features anymore, even as Kamui's gratitude is like a drill in his core. "If you have more to say, I'll listen. And... thank you, too. For telling me."

It might stir something later. Something he needs, but doesn't want.

With the explosion, Azoth lets out a startled series of beeps with a well practiced, animated jump of surprise. He turns to Kamui with a sharp nod. With a snap of his fingers, Azoth produces a bright, flickering blade of energy at his side, manipulating it so it spins idly as a demonstration of his willingness to battle.

"Ready, ready!"