2021-04-08: A Boy and a Bot
- Log: A Boy and a Bot
- Cast: Azoth, Dean Stark
- Where: Zoara Badlands
- Date: April 08, 2021
- Summary: Azoth meets Dean for a monowheel playdate. The experience awakens a few memories for Azoth.
=============================<* Zoara Badlands *>============================= Most of Zoara's interior is a vast expanse of desolate earth. A handful of areas receive just enough rainfall to allow the growth of foliage, but by and large, this place is almost as inhospitable as the wastes of Ignas. Ghost towns dot these dusty plains--many of them are settlements that dried up and died during the Celesti Civil War. Most of the remaining settlements have forfeited their sovereignty to Guild Galad in exchange for their continued survival. Rail travel is the easiest way to cross the Badlands. Guild Galad's military maintains a tight grip on most of Zoara's rail routes, ensuring that transit is reasonably safe, if extensively-policed. Outside of the rail network, travelers band together in caravans to keep themselves safe. Centuries of war have scarred this land, and attacks from bandits -- or worse -- are an unfortunate fact of life. BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeL32o-P6Yw
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Though Azoth had once been warned to run from Dean once Dean learned of Azoth's true nature, he figures it wasn't an all too serious alarm. Probably. Dean seems far too friendly for that...! Excitable, maybe, but so was Azoth's own persona. Besides, having spent a chunk of his life assuming being accepted in spite of what he is was the bar to meet, Azoth meeting someone excited because of what he is was uplifting. And Azoth had seen Dean act with too much compassion to think he was going to walk away with his arm stolen as some sort of trophy.
He had also once seen Dean take a blow for Ida, standing in the place of one of Azoth blades of light, Dean's blood splattering into the air.
But Azoth carries himself as cheerfully as ever, as if that memory wasn't something that called itself up in perfect clarity to remind him of the pointlessness of friendship. Instead, Azoth pulled Dean aside to ask about the monowheel he mentioned once and if he could see it as a pretense for hanging out and observation.
"Thanks for this!" Azoth says brightly. "But are you really okay for it? You've had to purify a lot of Malevolence lately. Is it exhausting?"
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
It hadn't been too bad, probably. Dean had definitely bombarbed Azoth with lots of questions to which he probably didn't wait long enough to receive the answers while dashing back and forth around him, admiring him with sparkling eyes. If Azoth's able to put up with his EXTREME fanboying, then it'd be fine! Dean's top fanboying is for specifically Golems anyway, and Azoth is an android, not a Golem! (As far as he knows.) It's definitely true that Dean's excited *because* of what Azoth is though--and he already thinks of Golems as people anyway, so continuing to think of Azoth as people is no problem, either. He definitely isn't going to crank off one of Azoth's arms and walk off with it like a trophy. He'd be much likelier to mournfully bury it!
Assuming there is ever a context in which Azoth loses an arm and Dean can't simply return it and must bury it instead. But what are the odds of that, right? Haha. Ha.
"It's no problem!" Dean replies, beaming, as he walks off the train station with Azoth into the Zoara Badlands, where there's plenty of empty space to right. "Purifying Malevolence *does* take it out of you, but I've got plenty of energy. I'm good at bouncing back!" He *is* still a teenager, if only for a couple more months. "My monowheel's a one-seater, but I've been thinking of getting some sidecars so Avril and Rebecca can ride too. Maybe we could try testing that out?"
Either way, once they've got enough room, Dean calls up the monowheel. It's, well, a giant motorized wheel, in which there is a single seat for a driver to ride. "D'you wanna take a ride first, or d'you wanna see me go first?" he asks cheerfully.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Answering questions would have been a nicer feeling if Azoth didn't have overrides that demanded some lines of questioning go without honest answers. It's another for the list of experiences Solaris' tampering robs him of. But as well as he could, he was happy to answer with his own bashful sparkling, and took advantage of Dean jumping too fast from one thing to another to avoid answering what he couldn't.
More questions remain an open invitation in spite of that.
"You're pretty tenacious, aren't you?" Azoth says, but he's grinning in admiration for it. "Is there anything that helps you? It looks like some Malevolence is still lingering, and I want to help as much as I can."
Azoth perks up a little. "Ah, Avril with the golems, and Rebecca with the noodles!" Don't worry his identification system is actually more complex than that. "Testing with me would be a good idea. If I fell out or something went wrong, I doubt I'd be hurt much." Crash dummy Azoth, at your service.
Such a strange device though. Azoth greets the monowheel with another wave. "Hello!" He looks back to Dean. "You won't have to hold back if it's just you, right? Show me!"
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
It's okay; Dean absolutely didn't notice Azoth only answering some of his questions. He was too busy exploding with excited glee. At least he's gotten it out of his system by now. He's still excited to see and hang out with Azoth, but it's a reasonable level of excitement.
"Food!" he replies promptly. "That's why Rebecca brought all those noodles that one day--I've got a big appetite!" You'd think he'd be taller in light of that, but alas, even after a minor growth spurt over the years, he's still pretty short: a mere 5'5", as opposed to the 5'3" he was when he first started Drifting four years ago.
Speaking of which, though, it's absolutely fine that Azoth identifies Rebecca by noodles and Avril by golems. To Dean's ears, this is an extremely legitimate ID process. "Yeah, exactly!" he thus enthuses. He beams as Azoth gives the monowheel a hello--it doesn't say hello back aloud, but maybe it does in *spirit*--and hops on in when his companion invites him to.
"All right! I'll be back in a minute or two!" he says, and then guns the engine.
The monowheel is sturdy, at least. It's also actually quite fast, as long as one doesn't crash it into a rock or a cactus or a bump in the road. It bounces back each time Dean does while getting it to a more open part of the badlands, no worse for the wear, and once he's actually got some good clean flat ground, it leaves a growing cloud of dust in its wake. Dean pulls several wheelies, whooping in enjoyment; a couple minutes later, he arcs back towards where Azoth waits.
"And that's how you do it!" he declares as he pulls up to a stop next to him. "You wanna give it a whirl?" He's already sliding out of the seat while leaving the engine on so Azoth can do just that.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
About the same size as Azoth, then. Or at least, this chassis of Azoth's.
"Food," Azoth repeats, nodding with dawning understanding. "I've never eaten food myself to go off of. Do you have favorites?" Maybe this is a catalog he should be keeping for less mechanical friends. Actually, the mechanical ones, too. Azoth is the only one he knows so far who doesn't eat. "Are noodles one of them? Rebecca seemed to know you'd like them. The three of you seem close."
Dean's beaming for Azoth's greeting is another one of those uplifting moments. Validation!! Azoth watches Dean take to the vehicle, giving every movement the intense observation it deserves -- trying to calculate acceleration, weight, maneuverability, apparent durability -- while giving cheers of his own, of course. Digital beeps of joy underline Azoth's own calls as he allows himself unapologetic robotery, and once Dean returns, Azoth claps his hands together in applause.
But once offered, Azoth points to himself. "You mean, drive it myself?" He grins brightly, eyes sparkling. "Well, if you trust me." His smile turns more nervous. "Admittedly I usually plug into machinery to operate it... but... maybe I could try a more 'manual' approach..."
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
"Yeah, I love fried noodles!" In Japanese parlance, that'd be yakisoba. But this is technically set in an English-speaking world, so fried noodles it is. "I don't have any foods I *don't* like, though. Meat, grains, fruit, vegetables--you name it, it's all good!" Dean adds. "I grew up in a tiny town way out in the country, so we had to grow all our food. So the taste of fresh veggies still feels like home to me!"
If he didn't know Azoth was an android, Dean would be a lot more surprised to hear he's never eaten before. Instead he just nods. "How d'you get your energy instead?" he wonders. "Are you solar-powered or something? Or d'you have some kind of engine inside of you?" He grins when Azoth observes that he, Rebecca, and Avril are close. "Yeah, we're all best friends! Me and Rebecca grew up together, and we met Avril one day when she fell out of the sky in a Golem arm. We set off from Capo Bronco together, and we've been together ever since!"
Well, more or less. There have been times when they've been separated, or when they took different routes. But they've never parted without the intent to come back together again, so in Dean's mind, it still counts.
"Of course! Why wouldn't I trust you?" Dean replies, beaming at Azoth. (The deepest cuts come from a place of cruel innocence.) "I'm not sure there's a place on the monowheel to plug into, but even if there is one, I bet it'd be fun to try it the manual way too! It's up to you, though!"
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth brightens. "That makes it easier!" Focusing on optimizing nutritional content and caloric needs it is! He frowns a little in thought. "Tasting like home... an interesting turn of phrase." But he thinks he understands it. Stimuli that brings up a pleasant memory... It would be nice to be able to provide such thing.
"I wish!" Azoth says of solar-power. "I can convert certain kinds of energy into a charge within myself, though it's proven more adaptable than I thought. There are even forms of sorcery, when applied correctly, that can work." He grins more sheepishly. "Something like the Thunder Plains has almost the right kind, but it's so volatile there I might just get fried trying to recover myself."
That he doesn't readily provide where he typically goes to get energy delivered to him in the right context is just the way it has to be right now.
"Fell out of the sky?!" Azoth flinches back in shock with the story. "I'm glad she's okay...!" The golem must have protected her... just as the golem had within the Emulator Zone. Just what kind of person is Avril...? "Growing up together sounds nice, though." There's a brief pang in his memory banks, but all it finds is corruption and dead end calculations. Strange... Azoth wouldn't have 'grown up' with anyone. But he smiles more warmly. "Lifelong companions, then?"
Oh Dean, stab him right in the core, why don't you. But Azoth gives no indication of the way such an innocent little comment pierces him. After all, did the overrides not permit the entire investigation with Yvain in part because it was determined it might help win the trust of those involved?
"I ought to try new kinds of input and output now and again," he says. "Manual it is." He takes the seat as offered, observing the controls momentarily. His observations allow him to recall certain inputs, but distance and dust obscured some of it. But Azoth's always done best with trial and error.
Off he goes into the badlands, slow at first as he tests acceleration for himself, but soon initiating higher speeds. He may not be able to perform the tricks Dean can, but he's uncannily good at avoiding even the smallest of obstacles, building to absurd levels of speed to just go for a moment of --
... Ah.
...
Azoth finally pulls back to a stop next to Dean. He steps off of the monowheel, expression dazed, but eyes dilated and bright. He looks to Dean, his hesitant and uncertain all of the sudden.
"...Thank you for that," he says, a little bit quietly.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
Capo Bronco's a long ways from here, too, so it won't exactly be easy to swing by and research the kind of food they grow, cook, and serve there. But Dean did say that Rebecca's his childhood friend, so presumably she'd know more about it. Dean... Asking Dean is certainly an option, but he's a mediocre cook at best. He appreciates *good* food plenty, but he can tolerate merely okay food fine. When you're hungry enough, anything tastes delicious.
"Huh, really? Even sorcery? That's so cool!" Dean says appreciatively. "It might not be solar power, but that sounds really convenient! Can you use sorcery yourself?" He laughs good-naturedly at the mention of the Thunder Plains. "Yeah, it's a little *too* powerful there!"
He holds up his hands reassuringly when Azoth flinches. "Yeah, she was just fine! She had amnesia, though... She still does. That's the reason we started traveling together--I wanted to help her regain her memories." And she has regained *some* of her memories, but... Dean frowns as he bows his head. Considering what he knows of them, it's not really his place to share. He shakes it off, though, and smiles back at Azoth. "Yeah. It really is nice."
He stands back as Azoth gets into the idling monowheel, then grins as he watches him ride into the badlands. Azoth's really good for a beginner! He's really good at avoiding obstacles. It looks like an incredibly smooth ride with him behind the wheel. When the android returns, though, he seems a little off.
"You're welcome! You were really good," he praises him. "I'm always running into something, but the monowheel's built so tough, I stopped trying to avoid every little thing." He pauses. "Are you okay? You seem a little... I dunno." He pauses again. "Was it weird, doing it 'manual'?"
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth shakes his head on the matter of sorcery. "No, unfortunately not. What I do may look like sorcery, but I'm more like a person shaped laser ARM." Who shoots sword bullets. Don't judge Azoth's bullets. He tilts his head in thought. "I could amplify it, though. With the right parts." With the missing parts.
On the subject of Avril's amnesia, Azoth gives another little smile. "That's a pretty good reason." He does not offer how he relates to that. At least, not in this moment. But -- !
There's a cheerful beep at the praise and a brief, sheepish rub of the back of his own head. But it's quick to subdue do again into 'seeming a little... I dunno', as is a good way to put it. Azoth shakes his head. "No it's not that, I --" Overrides run roughshod over numerous calculations. What he wants to say, or considering wanting to say, and what's left that he can say after the internal war...
"You mentioned Avril lost her memories," Azoth says. "I've lost some of mine too." He grins awkwardly. "Okay, a lot of mine. And --" He's lost so much else. But the overrides rip it from his available output. This is as much as he can say to try and convey that sense of loss, even if it's not quite for the right thing.
"... Riding it just now made me feel like I did in the past, a little bit."
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
A person-shaped laser ARM. "That makes sense," Dean replies without a trace of irony.
After Azoth's joyride that is maybe less than joyful, he listens, nodding every so often. His eyes widen when Azoth admits he's actually missing some memories too. "Really?? I'm sorry to hear that. It must be tough on you..."
So riding the monowheel made him feel like he did in the past. Dean considers this for a moment. "D'you wanna go riding a while longer? Maybe if you ride long enough, you'll remember something," he suggests. "I don't mind lending it to you for a while! It'd be great if it could help you out, after all."
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth lifts his palms in surrender. "I-It's not that bad...!" he says. "The memories I do have feel like a complete life. I had a family and everything." Had, though, past tense. He smiles weakly. "But... I suppose, to be honest, it is the reason I became a Drifter."
Which isn't even quite a lie, if not for the omission that someone else put that want in there.
Azoth stares at Dean with a wide eyed blink. Maybe he should be expecting this from someone like Dean, who jumps so wholeheartedly into helping. "I appreciate the offer," he says, and he looks back at the monowheel. "It is an enjoyable ride. But I don't think that's how my missing memories work. It's not that they're in there hidden so much as --"
Even the overrides recognize that sometimes, and risks sometimes need to be taken for greater reward. The more Drifters with amnesia he hears about, the less suspicious it is to admit it. And the more sympathy -- and support -- he might get. It's all manipulation, isn't it?
"-- so much as they've been removed. When I run into relevant data, I can remember the feedback they give me -- that is, the conclusions I came to when I once experienced them -- but the data itself isn't there. But I remember being taken apart. So. It must be out there somewhere...?"
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
"Really? A family?" Dean wonders, eyes wide with curiosity. He's usually not too bothered or not bothered by family--after all, he grew up without one--but the fact that this is an *android's* family means he has to ask, "What were they like?" But... So he became a Drifter because of his lost memories, huh... Dean nods in sympathy. "I think a lot of Drifters are like that. I don't know what it's like myself, of course, but I can think of a few people like that. Avril, Fei, Xantia, Ethius... They could definitely tell you more. Maybe you'd feel better if you talked to one of them about it?"
He pauses. "...you probably shouldn't try to talk to Ethius," he concludes reluctantly. He's a friend... more or less... but he's not exactly a chatty guy. Even if he has been chattier lately.
But--so it's not that he *forgot* so much as the memories were *removed*. Dean puffs up like a smol angry bird. "That's terrible! How could someone do that to you?!" he declares. He grips Azoth by the shoulder, if he lets him, and gives him a fierce stare. "Don't worry, Azoth! If your memories are out there somewhere, we'll help you get them back!"
He pauses then. He remembers the way Avril has reacted to some of her memories... "That is--if you want them back?" he adds, now worried.
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Aside from a few critical details, the overrides aren't what's made Azoth hesitate on speaking of his family. But the more variables he encounters, the more he expands, and the more he opens up. He smiles wistfully. "They were a human and a beastfolk, so we were a family of unlike. But no matter how different our backgrounds, we were able to understand each other... Falk may have been impulsive, but he had his heart in the right place. And Ovelia was scary smart. I thought she was timid at first, but she really could have a mouth on her."
...It's nice to remember.
Azoth's eyes widen. "That many...? Xantia and I have discussed it a bit but -- even Ethius..." Azoth frowns. That re-contextualizes Ethius for him in a few ways. Despite Dean's warnings, now Azoth kind of does want to ask Ethius about it...
Dean's shoulder grip and fierce stare are met with a blink back from Azoth, and then a look of unguarded fondness. "You're a really good person, you know that, Dean?" It hurts. "I hope you get as much help as you give everyone else."
Azoth puffs his cheeks. "I don't know who did it...! They deleted that, too!" It is terrible, thank you once again Dean for your validation! But Azoth deflates a little with Dean's worry. "I won't pretend I'm not afraid of what I'll find. But I still want to look."
Or at least the overrides make him want to.
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
"Wow, a human and a beastfolk? That *is* a family of unlike," Dean says with wonder. "I would've guessed you meant fellow androids, or whoever made you, or something like that." He grins. "Then again, the closest thing I've got to family is Rebecca's mom and dad. So I guess I know something about different kinds of family myself, come to think!"
His expression gentles, and he nods, when Azoth actually describes them. "Falk and Ovelia, huh... They sound like they were great people," he says warmly. He doesn't actually catch Azoth speaking of them in the past tense, but... subconsciously, he still picks up on the idea that they're not around anymore.
"There might be even more. That's just the people I know about. Like I said, Avril could tell you more, I'm sure," Dean tells him. "Ethius doesn't really talk about himself much... I didn't hear it from him--I heard it from someone else in passing. I don't remember who, it was a long time ago. But... yeah. So you already talked to Xantia about it... I'm glad you've had some support so far, then."
It surprises him, though, when Azoth reacts to his ferocity by telling him he's a good person and hoping good things for him. "Wha--th-thanks! But I'm not the one who needs help," he points out, a little surprised and a little more embarrassed. Everybody keeps telling him he's a good person!! It's nice to hear, but it's not like he does nice things to be told he's a good person. It's hard to know how to react to that kind of compliment.
He does relax when Azoth confirms he does want to look. "Then you'll have my help there too," he says firmly. "Maybe you don't know who took them, but we've worked with fewer clues before! Maybe if you scrape together what you *do* remember about what happened, we can figure something out!" He pauses. "Uhhh... by 'we,' I mean 'our smart friends,' like Rebecca and Ida. I'm not actually that good at brainy stuff," he admits sheepishly. "But I'll still help however I can!"
<Pose Tracker> Azoth has posed.
Azoth shakes his head. "If I had a family like that, I don't remember." Something stabs at him. Azoth grips onto his chest. "... I suppose it's another reason to try and get my memories back." And that's not something the overrides tell him. Are there those, forgotten, that he once loved? Is he doing them a disservice wanting to run away? It's irrelevant to calculate it now.
He smiles softly with Dean's assessment. "They were." And now someone else knows about them. It's more reassuring than he predicted it would be. Then he grins. "You and Rebecca and Avril seem a bit different yourselves. But that just means there's more you can teach each other, right?"
There's been a lot of groups among the Drifters like that. It brings Azoth a sense of comfort. Through the familiarity, perhaps, but it's also nice to imagine a world where all sorts of people can get along.
"Maybe I'll ask her," Azoth decides. At first he'd been worried Avril didn't like him with how she reacted on the train, but then he began to pick up that Avril carries herself differently than he's used to. Not having memories might contribute. "It'd be nice if I could support any of them, too." And he means that, for however much he's able to.
When Dean gets flustered, Azoth smiles more brightly with a cheerful string of beeps. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. But call on me if you do need help, won't you?" There Azoth goes, making promises he knows he won't be able to keep again.
Azoth tilts his head. "No? You've shown yourself to be exceptionally intelligent from where I'm standing. You seem to understand others and their needs well, you seek confirmation where you're not sure, and show good judgment in your approach to solving a crisis." He smiles, and maybe it's a little teasing because he did just learn Dean might have difficulty with compliments. "...But I think I understand what you're getting at. It's not a bad idea. Which also makes it a smart thing to say, by the way."
<Pose Tracker> Dean Stark has posed.
"Oh... That's true. Maybe you had a family like that and you don't remember," Dean muses. "Sorry. It's hard for me to picture what it's like to be missing memories like that... Even after all the traveling I've done with Avril." He rubs his head awkwardly. "Rebecca's always telling me how dense I am." He grins. "But you're right. We do teach each other a lot! And we've always had each other's backs. We're all good at different stuff, after all! Avril's really smart too, but at more techy kind of stuff. Hmm, actually, maybe that means she'd have the right kind of brains for helping you out?"
But it seems like Azoth doesn't agree about Dean's denseness. In fact, when he outright tells him he's 'exceptionally intelligent,' Dean outright blushes. "Whaaat? C'mon, don't exaggerate!" But Azoth lists several observations, and Dean laughs in pleasure, even as his face grows redder. "Huh... You really think so? I sure don't hear that one a lot." He smiles warmly. "Thanks, Azoth. You're a really great friend. I definitely hope we can get all your missing memories back!"
For now, though, there's nothing they can do about that, so he looks back at the monowheel. "'Til then, you wanna help me try to see if we can fix up a sidecar? It'll be fun!" Fun crashing, maybe, once they severely unbalance the machine--but hey, it's a durable little thing, and so are they. Fun will be had no matter what.