2020-12-09: What versus Who
- Log: What versus Who
- Cast: Azoth, Ida Everstead-Rey, Seraph Boudicca
- Where: The Fahrenheit
- Date: December 09, 2020
- Summary: Martial arts, philosophy, and questions of identity: all in a day's work when you're dealing with a sad robot.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
While usually content to zoom about the Fahrenheit looking for odd jobs or eavesdropping on conversations, Azoth has carved out time for a new behavior of combat practice. Or perhaps, given his robotic nature, he would conceptualize it more as combat tests. Regardless of the semantics, he's stolen a moment to use Ida's practice space when it was not in use by anyone else.
It's the Machina Suplex scroll that has him trying to work out the calculations. Azoth follows through with the motions in the scroll, though he hasn't a colossal opponent to test this with, currently. Instead, the dummy's gained one (1) new friend: a sack of sand about twice the size of an adult Ronso. It may not be big enough, nor mechanical, but it serves to test at least some of the variables without access to a more appropriate opponent. (If only he could test it on himself -- a surreal hypothetical.)
At any point someone may be walking in on him or otherwise observing, they will find Azoth charging the sack to grab hold and trying to bend over and smash down, but generally only resulting in flopping around.
Eventually, his inability to master the scroll and desire for successful feedback at all results in him using an explosive boost from his chassis to blast himself and the sack in the air and hurl it down to the ground ahead of him. For a moment, it looks as if he means to follow up with a devestating plunge attack.
Instead, he chooses to land on it face first.
He lies there and makes a sad beep.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida was on her way to talk to Boudicca when one of the technicians flagged her down. The woman somewhat haltingly explained that she was hearing loud noises from the small lounge Ida repurposed as a training room--and she didn't want to go there alone, just in case.
Ida steps into the doorway just as Azoth hefts the sack for the final time. Her eyes widen, but she makes no move that would disrupt his concentration--instead, she turns to the technician, and motions for her to come forward. "Cusauha amca ec icehk ed," Ida says, pronouncing the words slowly and carefully.
The woman looks past her, frowning thoughtfully as Azoth leaps into the air.
WHAM
Ida winces. The technician visibly cringes, but recovers quickly.
"Oui tet fyhd du ghuf ev fa luimt lynno [gears], teth'd oui? Syopa ra'c dacdehk dryd." The technician turns with a bow of gratitude. "Dryhgc! Syga cina ra tuach'd pnayg yhodrehk esbundyhd!"
Ida understood maybe twenty-five percent of that. She hurries in to tend to the fallen android. "...Azoth? What are you doing?"
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
Boudicca was on the deck, because of course she was on the deck. It's the closest part of the airship to the sky; it's the best place to think.
Looking down at the world below... could she pick him out, from the treeline?
Moving between worlds... how long until...
She might have the notion to go and talk to Ida at just the same time Ida has the notion to go and talk to Boudicca. The Seraph, of course, knows the first place to check: Ida's training room. (It's not really a training room, but she's sort of moved in.)
What she beholds, as she steps in, is a fellow who seems to be losing a fight with a sack.
...
Boudicca blinks, and squints, and no, that's definitely what's going on here.
Ida does, in fact, appear, and Boudicca shares an alarmed glance with her before she says to that fellow: "Are -- are you quite all right..?"
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth has no damages, only despair. His voice is muffled by lying face first in the sack, but not as badly as it ought to be with much of his voice able to resonate through his throat even with his mouth covered.
"Failing."
He sits up, looking to Ida like she's come home to her apartment to a dog that's gone through the garbage. "...Sorry. I didn't mean to disturb anyone. I was trying to implement the concepts behind the scroll we found." Al Bhed isn't something he's fluent in yet, but the technician doesn't sound terribly unhappy, at least. Possibly because he's yet to break anything.
Unfortunately, that includes the sack.
Azoth glances past Ida, noticing Boudicca with a shy smile and accompanying wave. He remembers her from crashing the wedding -- or more accurately, the time after it. The Seraph who became a ball of wind...
He was envious of that.
"Yes, I'm unhurt," he says. "Thank you."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
"Boudicca," Ida says, looking back to the Seraph as she steps inside. "What a coincidence, I was on my way up to the deck."
Fortunately, the only injuries Azoth seems to have sustained are to his pride. "Ahh," Ida says, as she approaches the android. "The methodology is sound--the sack, I mean, as a substitute for an actual opponent." But he's been unable to make it work, despite that. "Do you want to discuss it?"
Ida pauses a beat. "This is Boudicca, a dear friend of mine. Boudicca, this is Azoth, another dear friend of mine."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
"And I was on my way to... oh!" Boudicca realises what they've just done, as a breeze picks up her braids in astonishment. How did a breeze get inside the Farhenheit? Don't worry about it.
But, Azoth is...
"Please do not become discouraged," Boudicca encourages him, immediately. "It is difficult to learn new techniques." Ida has more helpful advice, but Boudicca is still supportive!
"And, ah -- yes, Azoth, I remember. We have come across each other many times, but I fear we have never been in a position to stop and converse." Boudicca smiles, dipping her head in a nod. (The horns on her helm dip, too. At least the ceiling is high enough that she doesn't have to duck. She'd give a Ronso a run for their money in the size department, that's for sure.) "It is pleasant to finally make your acquaintance properly."
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
When Azoth is introduced as a 'dear friend', his face turns to one of a tiny smile inversely proportional to the amount of joy it expresses. And Boudicca is in this category, too!
Boudicca, who immediately encourages him. It seems Azoth's dejected spirit is an easy thing to banish, for he breaks into a wider smile at that and thrusts a determined fist in the air. "Right! I'm not giving up...!" His smile quiets a bit at Boudicca. "It's nice to meet you, too. Without the sense of urgency."
A glance back to Ida, then to the sack. "I couldn't get a big machina in here, but even this...." As Boudicca noticed earlier, Azoth was losing this fight. He puffs his cheeks. "I can't figure out how to account for the differences in scale without adding considerable strength... But the technique doesn't seem to rely solely on that."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida returns Azoth's smile with one of her own. She'd been meaning to introduce the two for a while now, and things have finally fallen into place.
"You're correct," Ida says, looking down at the sack on the floor. "Even accounting for preternatural strength and stamina, the forces involved are well beyond what the humanoid frame can produce through muscle alone." Ida pauses a beat, glances at Azoth. "Or the equivalent. What powers the technique is breath."
For someone who does not breathe, this may sound like a hard "no, you cannot." But Ida explains further.
"I don't mean the process of breathing, though it is a crucial component. I mean the free and unrestricted flow of a body's innate power--its life-force, if you will. Many martial artists can do quite well without learning to harness it--Doctor Whitehead, for example--but both Zed and myself have trained extensively in its use. When harnessed properly, it allows for 'impossible' feats."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
Or the equivalent..? Oh. Oh, yes. The way Megaman Juno greeted Azoth... well.
Boudicca doesn't think less of Azoth for it, evidently. She doesn't have to breathe, either. She just likes doing it!
Ida knows much more about technique, of course; she waits for her to give her advice, before Boudicca leans back and sits on -- empty air? Yes, it seems she's just floating there, as her gauntlet-clad hands fold in her lap.
"I will tell you a tale I was once told, when I was young, and eager to fight things much larger and stronger than I." Boudicca shares, with the echoing tones of One Who Is Telling A Story. "A Wind Seraph and a Fire Seraph set to a competition, at the expense of another Wind Seraph. They claimed they would be able to make their fellow discard his jacket -- just by virtue of their might. The Wind Seraph was indeed mighty! He blew terrible winds, which knocked their erstwhile companion all about..."
Here her hand lifts, and gestures. "... but the Seraph simply pulled her jacket closer to herself." It drops back down, as she continues. "The Fire Seraph, meanwhile, did not make any attack at all. She simply encouraged the heat of the day to grow a little stronger... and a little stronger... and a little stronger still. And do you know what happened? The other Wind Seraph discarded her jacket, just like that!"
Her gaze tilts up, and she supposes, as she thinks on the moral of fire besting wind, "Well, the other meaning of this tale does not apply so much to you, I suppose... but do consider the strength of indirect action. Raw power decides little, in the end."
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Indeed, the moment Ida mentions breath, Azoth winces and raises a finger as if prepared to protest. But she goes on to clarify the meaning. He lowers his hand, the tension not quite gone from his features. A flow of life-force may be as equally beyond him as breathing is.
Is Azoth even, strictly speaking, alive? He feels that he is. The forces of the universe may disagree. What he has may not function the same way, and his current body can't handle it in its full capacity. Perhaps he is still thinking of it too much in terms of a raw output. Boudicca gives a different insight to it, and Azoth perks up as he gets to indulge in story time, his mouth a little 'o' all the while.
The other meaning isn't lost on him (is that not something he is constantly employing in his forcibly given purpose?), but it does provide a perspective on the uses of power. Azoth taps at his lip thoughtfully.
He frowns a little. "I... may need to adjust the technique to use it." He looks to Ida and Boudicca -- a bit longer at the other before looking to Ida as if to silently verify something (but Boudicca is a friend! and probably not religiously against robots) -- before giving a nervous smile. "I'm not sure I have an equivalent."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida sees that little wince. She falls silent, letting Boudicca tell a very familiar story--it wasn't Seraphim, in the version Ida heard, but the point was the same. "There's no shame in adapting techniques to one's own strengths," she says. "Especially if they weren't designed with you in mind."
Ida cannot take a seat in mid-air, and thus has to pull out a chair from the table in the corner of the room. She sits down, and offers the other chair to Azoth.
"Let me ask you something," Ida says. "When I first began my studies in the Method, my master asked me what I sought to gain. I would ask that of you now."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
"Air is all around you," Boudicca points out, kindly. "No matter your personal ability to respirate, it will be there. I hope you will not feel too disadvantaged for being a little different. There is always a way to adapt!" That is, in the end, the beauty of the world; it would be simple if everyone were human, but that is not the truth of Filgaia, or Lunar, or any of the stars in the sky.
She didn't quite catch the entire meaning in Azoth's glance, but perhaps she can figure out enough.
And so she falls quiet, to let Azoth deal with Ida's question, because it is not one which seems asked lightly.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth smiles warmly at Boudicca. "I suppose you would know that better than most." He glances to the side. "...Maybe you're right. Even in your story, it isn't important where the warmth originates from. It being there at all is what completes the task." Maybe he's not considering solutions broadly enough.
But Ida provides him with a difficult question. The calculations for honest responses are torn from the output queue, left only as his own internal data to chew on, and each joined by new, paraphrased responses into a frustrated jumble of silence.
Maybe the pauses this provides in his apparent thought process makes him seem more human than he is. It's a cruel irony. But he plays to it, circling the chair once before sitting in it.
"I've lost something," he says, finally, if vaguely, with his eyes averted. "Without it, I'm barely able to protect anyone. Something like this... it would be like getting a little bit of myself back."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida nods to Boudicca, a gentle smile on her face. She has to restrain herself from telling Azoth she thinks he's right, though--when she asked him that question, they both entered a space of contemplation. She can't hand him the answers. He has to find those on his own.
Ida has seen Azoth's mask slip, in the past. When he pauses, she wonders what's going on behind those eyes, and glances at Boudicca to gauge her reaction. What does she make of it?
It's momentary, though. She nods, slow and somber, as Azoth confesses to what he feels is weakness. "Helplessness is a feeling I know all too well," Ida says, looking at Azoth, and then at Boudicca. Boudicca first met her when that helplessness had consumed everything. She saw Ida at her lowest. "It's like acid. It seeped into me and hollowed me out. I thought there was nothing left of the woman I once was, and if anything remained, it didn't matter. When I first began my studies, I was gripped by helplessness. I sought power, even as the price of that power destroyed me."
"But," Ida continues. "I am not you. I am your teacher. The way of the Method is one of questions. What would it take for you to feel yourself again? How do you define yourself?"
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
Azoth falls silent, and Boudicca cants her head a little, wondering if perhaps the question is too much for him. She wonders if she should give him a convenient excuse to change the topic. And, more distantly - why that question is so difficult.
Luckily, he processes an answer before she leaps in to save everyone from awkward silence.
"Finding yourself again..." Boudicca looks to Ida, in the wake of Azoth's answer, the question in her eyes. And Ida does, in fact, share her experiences - they're Ida's to impart, so no wonder Boudicca was quiet. She nods, to hear it told anew.
And, she notes, with interest, Ida has taken a student.
Far be it from her to interrupt a lesson!
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
It is a great kindness to Azoth that Boudicca has considered. But here he is now, trying to answer as the questions stab deeper and the knife twists.
Ida describes a situation that feels wrong to relate to. The fundamental experience of pain itself is so different from his own, and he's never sure how his compares. But defining himself... That he ever chose to emote at all once again becomes a trap he's set for himself. The mask slips because the only other option is a lie so blatant the loneliness of it would crush him. For a second, Azoth's face is hauntingly nothing before readopting a soft smile.
"I guess the easiest way to put it is... I'm defined by my objective." He grins more nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. "Without an objective, I wouldn't even function. It determines... well, everything!"
Azoth lowers his hand, looking down. "It's not something I decided for myself. It's not something I can decide for myself." He looks to Ida -- and a little to Boudicca, feeling they're both weighing in on this -- before answering. "But it's what I am. And it's--" The words are ripped from him again, and again and again, until he gets it vague enough. "--to protect. I was built to protect."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida is the very image of patience. She knows that questions like these aren't meant to be answered right away, not like it stopped her when Kalve asked them of her. And she's had enough interactions with Azoth to know there's a very delicate line there--he seems to experience emotional turmoil, and while the precise mechanisms may be different, it's no less debilitating for him. Ida meets his gaze and holds it, even as the expression falls off his face.
Of course, she thinks. He's a machine. Why wouldn't he have been created with a specific purpose in mind? Bitterness and guilt churn in her stomach. Part of her wants to know who made him, if only so she could somehow smack them across the face.
"I see," she says. "And when your body was changed--without your consent--you lost something."
Ida's own mask slips. She rises from her seat and--if Azoth will allow it--she sweeps him into her arms. "I'm sorry," she whispers. She tenses up a moment, and flashes Boudicca a look of guilt. "God, Azoth, I--I'm sorry."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
Something decided for him...
It's not unknown, to the Seraph Boudicca. Obligation -- debt -- essence. There is something sad in her eyes as she looks to Azoth, a thread of anxiety, but there is no surprise; moreover no judgement for how he was made.
These old fears, they were built in the ages before your castles! Do not ask their names. Some stories are all moral and no form.
She shares this expression without rising; she leaves the physical comfort to Ida, who has ever been more apt at contact. Rather, now, it is her turn to press in with a question, offered in supreme gentleness despite how easily it may cut.
"That is what you are," Boudicca acknowledges him, accepts what he has said. "But, Azoth... I wonder who you are."
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Their reactions hold more shock and concern than Azoth predicted. Should he have worn a different smile when he said it? He gives a start, staring back at them with a new kind of uncertainty. "Yes. That objective is the same, even if the body isn't." They didn't figure out how to delete what made him, 'him'. They could only add on top of it with their glaring contradictions. "So I can't..."
Azoth trails off, letting them fill in the rest of what he can't do. It's easier than trying to find words he's permitted to say. So much of the truth is absent. Would Azoth still get their sympathy if it wasn't? Would he get more of it? Which of the two is more painful?
Instead of resisting Ida's comfort, he leans into it. His own guilt is invisible, but overwhelming in a storm of everything else. From her arms, his voice is quiet. "...Is it so bad, to be an objective?" Azoth doesn't know anything else.
But the questions aren't done, and the next is just as brutal. But he knows from her tone that Boudicca doesn't mean it to be, as if she believes it will lead somewhere kinder, in the end. He lifts up from Ida enough to look to the wind Seraph, frowning.
"I'm afraid I don't understand the distinction. I'm as much a 'what' as a 'who'."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Back in the cage, Ida had called Azoth a miracle. In a way, her opinion never changed--he's a miracle of technology, an intelligence that was forged rather than born. Ida has met over a half-dozen such intelligences, but that sense of awe never really went away.
It's just that now Ida can see the downsides. The downsides, it seems, rarely come to rest on these intelligences' creators.
Ida doesn't answer Azoth's question, at first. She wants to tell him no, but at the same time, she cannot bring herself to lie. "I can't answer that," she says. "But I don't think less of you for it."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
"Yes," Boudicca inclines her head, as Azoth expresses his confusion. "You have told us what you are. Designed to protect, missing what you require. That is as much of the 'what'. And..."
She gestures out to him, fingers unfurling, and a breeze rustles through the room. (There are still no holes in the airship.) "As much as you are 'what', you are 'who'. So, then. What of the 'who', Azoth? This part of you, you have not spoken on."
Her hand lowers back down, as the breeze dies. "Of course, I do not expect you to speak on it here. Forgive me; I pry overmuch, in our very first personal conversation. Besides, this question... I think it is more valuable to answer to yourself, not I." She inclines her head, smiling to him again. "But I hope you will think on it, Azoth."
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
There's still something damning in Ida's choice of words that Azoth can pick up on, but she says the right thing to turn away the worst of his fears. For now, at least. It's easier when the objective is something that can be considered pleasant.
Less so when he comes to that which isn't.
He gives her a weak smile for it, before Boudicca's words arrest his attention. The breeze plays at his hair, and Azoth's eyes glow a little, shifting as if to follow the unseen winds before his gaze falls back to Boudicca herself.
Azoth's still not sure he understands. He remembers the Trial Knight, and how they had asked for what his heart beat. A metaphor, but one he may have misunderstood. It feels, now, closer to Boudicca's inquiry. It may not be an answer he's permitted to give, even if he had it. Mercifully, Boudicca provides him an out.
"I'll try," Azoth says, however impossible he feels that answer is. He manages a smile back on his face, something softer and warmer. "...But... thank you. For asking." He doesn't have to fully understand it to have an idea of her intentions.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida lets go of Azoth, takes a half-step back, and rests her hands on his shoulders. She gives them a firm squeeze, even as the motion tells her just how thin that shell of 'human flesh' really is. "Regardless of what else you are," Ida says, "you are loved. Never forget that."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
And what would Boudicca think, if she knew she shared such common ground with the enemy of all Filgaia..?
Mercifully, she doesn't have to dwell on it.
"There is value in questions," she smiles, a hint of relief that her prying was not taken too badly. She'd worried, after all. "Though I fear my curiosity is elemental to me."
What did curiosity kill, again?
"I am pleased to gain a measure of understanding about you. I look forward to seeing your progress in understanding your manoeuvre," she nods, towards his sad sand sack. Is she giving him an out so he doesn't have to talk about squishy emotional feelings any more..?!
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth looks up at Ida with another weak smile that hides the dark response he'd have to that, if he could speak it. Instead, he just nods, eyes averting as if by embarrassment. "I won't."
At least that part is true.
Boudicca seems ready to move from feelings, which is a sentiment Azoth has been able to pick up on from others enough to know it's time to smile brightly again. He bounces a bit and punches his fist into his palm.
"Then let's get back to it...! I think I know what variations to try, at least!"
He flashes a grin at Ida, too, then prepares for another round of losing a fight with a sack of sand.