Opinions without 3.1415 are just Onions (Week1 post trial)

[ghostricked]

After everything, the house seems almost too still and too mundane. At least as long as the doors to that room remain closed. One by one those covered in what was once their teammate are lead to the showers or change in silence. There is no warm meal waiting for them. No words of encouragement.

Life goes on, regardless.

Comments

[reanimania]

[ Well, previously Saphir would have gone to the tool shed to distract himself and relax, but that's certainly out right now. Instead he ends up in the armory, which is the next best thing. His initial intention is to try to find something of relatively low importance to take apart and put back together again, but in the end, he just ends up sitting against the wall in between a couple of monitors, hugging his knees to his chest.

After that, he sticks to room 6 for the rest of the night. He tries to write some things down in his notebook for a while, but gives up pretty quickly and just curls up under the covers to try to delude himself into believing he's going to get to sleep any time soon. At least if Battler's wound reopens and starts dripping blood onto his bunk or something, he'll be awake to deal with it, so. There's that. ]

[notbymyside]

[Ango has other reasons for being in the armory, but when he sees Saphir there his plans quickly get altered.]

Oh? You're sitting in here?

[reanimania]

[ He glances up, brushing some hair out of his face. ]

Obviously.

[notbymyside]

If you're looking for a task to do, then I can help you with that.

[reanimania]

What is it?

[notbymyside]

I was going to check the cameras to see if there were disturbances elsewhere in the mansion during the 'trial'. Would you like to watch with me?

[reanimania]

[ Well, if something can be both useful and a good distraction, he isn't likely to reject it right now. ]

I wouldn't mind.

[notbymyside]

I appreciate your help. And thank you, for what you did at the trial today.

[He'll work on getting the day's files pulled up so they can scan the videos.]

Armory

[impyroverished]

[Emil was coming to the armory to try to find something relatively technologically advanced -- that wasn't part of the security feed, hopefully -- to open and examine, but instead he found Saphir in there.

For a moment he hesitates, but decides to approach anyway]

Are you trying to hide from everyone?

[reanimania]

[ Saphir raises his head -- he's not exactly thrilled to have someone else show up in here, but he doesn't really mind it, either -- and gives a halfhearted shrug. ]

Not really. I just came in here to work on something and then decided I didn't feel like it.

[impyroverished]

Were you looking for anything in particular?

[Ammo of some sort, he supposes.

Emil decides to keeps his distance, sticking to the other end of the room. Better give some space]

[reanimania]

[ ...This person had been an absolute idiot diving for that bomb like that without a real plan, is what he wants to think. Even if they were all likely to die otherwise, why practically guarantee it for yourself rather than seeking out protection from a barrier and letting someone else risk it?

But he knows most of them will probably regard it as the heroic act of someone who was willing to risk his life for the team, someone worth keeping around for when things get bad again. So maybe it wasn't as stupid as he'd like to think it was. He probably hadn't done himself much of a favor in that regard.

He shakes his head. ]

I was just going to take some things apart and reassemble them, honestly. Something to keep my mind sharp while passing the time.

[impyroverished]

[He was so confident about being able to neutralize that bomb, it surprised him to find out he wasn't going to be able to complete the job. Who would have thought self-destruct mechanisms from incredibly advanced robots would be so advanced too.

Most people, really]

...I was coming for that too. I have to figure out all about electronics if explosives are going to be like...that.

[Part of his training as a cleanser included volatile components and explosives, and it's a very large part of his identity. Not being able to disable that bomb properly is a punch to his pride]

[reanimania]

Oh.

[ He instinctively bristles at that -- the idea of someone else trying to learn any of the things he already specializes in. Everyone would probably like that, wouldn't they? Being able to rely on someone they already liked better anyway for some of the same things he was offering.

...He supposes if he limits it to concepts that would be potentially relevant to explosives, it's probably fine, as long as everyone knows where that newfound information came from. ]

Well. I suppose I can walk you through that if you want.

[impyroverished]

You would?

[Emil's eyes widen, he manages to smile a little]

I'd appreciate that. I'm finding out modern technology is a huge mystery to me, someone who knows all about it would be a great teacher for this.

[He's still wrapping his head around the concept of a smartphone]

[accrowed]

[ He isn't here for any particular reason, really. His "plans" are too aimless to treat as anything more than meandering, but when he spots someone crouched low out of the corner of his eye he has to pause.

Ah jeez. Now that he's seen this, it'll be pretty hard for him to leave this alone. It takes a few seconds before he gives the nearest surface two light knocks. ] Mind if I join you?

[reanimania]

[ Oh. This guy.

Saphir shrugs and sits up a little straighter. ]

I don't know what you're going to get out of it, but I won't stop you.

[accrowed]

[ Yep, this guy.

Give him a minute or so to find a spot on the ground and dropdown. He isn't super close so there's no need to worry about space invasion (or, worse space invasion), he just didn't wanna stand when someone else was sitting.]

Looks like we have that in common. Lucky for me, my goals here are simple. All I'm looking for is some light conversation and a small distraction.

[reanimania]

[ Fine, fine. He's not complaining. That does sound vaguely sketchy though, like pretty much everything else about him so far. ]

Seems to me like you could have met either of those goals more easily elsewhere. Who comes to an armory for conversation?

Room 6

[dreamdispersal]

[ Though none of what happened has affected Zabuza much in theory, he still dwells on the event of the day even into the late evening. He'd thought it was all a whole lot of nonsense, but even nonsense can stick to one's mind for a bit. So sometime in the evening, Saphir will find himself addressed from the bed across, where Zabuza is sitting and sharpening his sword. ]

You're into robots. Do you think it matters, the whole personhood deal?

pretend he's wearing a shirt in this icon b/c i can't not use "thoughtful while lying down" here

[reanimania]

[ Saphir had been curled up under a blanket and staring at the wall before this; if nothing else, the sound of scraping metal was more comforting than annoying to him. When he's addressed, there's a pause before he rolls over and slips his glasses back on.

...Before this, he would have been able to easily say no. Even his replicas that are full biological humans are just objects to him; when one doesn't meet your standards, you poison it and dispose of it like you would any other garbage. ]

Not really.

[ ...But those replicas were also all blank slates that lacked any memory or personality. There weren't any intelligent interactions with them. He'd certainly never played party games with them.

He also hadn't even realized Olympia was a robot the first time he'd met her, so she'd been a "she" in his mind already before he'd had a chance to demote her to an "it." ]

I do think... that it's a little complicated in this case. Olympia was much more advanced in both form and function than any robots I ever worked with in my world. The brain is essentially a computer, and memories and personality data that can theoretically be saved and reproduced, so it's difficult to determine where to draw the line between artificial intelligence and "real" intelligence.

[ If he could have built a robot on that level with the Professor's appearance and memories... he thinks he could have convinced Jade that it was enough to count as her. He's sure he could have convinced himself. ]

But when there's a chance to rebuild her and restore her memory data, I think it's stupid to refuse to acknowledge that just because we want to pretend she was the same as us in every way.

[ Isn't it much crueler to abandon something that could potentially be saved if you claim to care about it? ]

that is a beautiful icon, his nakeyness is forgiven

[dreamdispersal]

[ Zabuza never had reason to put any thought into these matters before. In his whole life, he's never encountered anything like a robot. And even now that he has, he's not really thought much of it. Olympia's functions were fascinating, sure, but he'd never felt a desire to get philosophical about her.

Now everyone's tripping over one another to re-affirm her as more than a tool and it's... it sits oddly with him, a man who has defined his life around being a tool. ]

A broken tool can be discarded. That's what I'd ordinarily say, but she does still have a lot of use left to you science types, doesn't she? Understand what makes her tick, use it to go to greater heights.

[ Like when you'd take the body of an enemy ninja to get all their techniques from them. ]

Not that any of that relates to being a person either way.

[reanimania]

Y-yes, there are a lot of things I'd like to understand about how she was designed and constructed.

[ That had been the entirety of his motivation for wanting to examine her when she was still in operation; so he could apply whatever he learned to his own projects. He'd never had any strong feelings about Olympia as a person -- setting aside the debate about whether she qualified as one in the first place -- and research opportunities aside, her absence isn't something he expects to feel much.

But...

It's the combination of Dazai's and Sho's accusations, he guesses -- that his desire to bring her back meant he considered her replaceable, and that he could have prevented this if he'd acted sooner, as if it wasn't the damn killer's own fault. This has nothing to do with the Professor, and yet he can't stop thinking about her now. About the gradually dawning reality that he may never get back home to save her and might never get back that happy time he's been so desperately looking for. Bringing back Olympia -- as easy as it should have been, when he'd had her backup data right there in his hand -- would have at least made him feel like there was some hope. But that's out of the question now.

He refuses to doubt that bringing her back is the right choice, though. Dazai doesn't know anything. If he thought the Professor was replaceable, he wouldn't be trying this hard to get back the one he remembered. ]

That's all.

[dreamdispersal]

[ It's not all. It's obviously not all, but who is Zabuza to ask? He doesn't even care, not really. Saphir is among the people he considers more useful than not around here and he's committed to having some kind of functional working relation to him, but what does he care about his thoughts and feelings? Nothing, not really.

Working in a team again is strange. For most of his life, Zabuza had been working with a variety of groups, but the last year or so he'd been mostly on his own. Everyone had betrayed him, left him, spit on their common goals. He'd gotten used to being with Haku and Haku alone, not considering anyone's priorities but his own.

Now he's looking at these people he's spent the past two weeks with and thinking to himself that they're his team - and most of his team has just proven themselves to be complete idiots. It sucks.

And somewhere in that uneasiness, he finds the motivation to not simply let the conversation die out right now and instead offer some of his own thought. ]

Humans and robots can be the same in this regard. In my world, we'd take back any enemy ninja's body to take them apart and gather their secrets. The body is a powerful storage media full of insight into one's life and abilities. Often it's more valuable than the person had ever been alive.

Olympia and us haven't been different at all, but that's not because she's a person. It's because we're all tools to this mission.

[ Maybe that's what bothered him about all this. The ridiculously high and mighty thinking that rejected this simple reality. ]

[reanimania]

...That's not entirely unlike the way we collected replica data, I suppose.

[ He's a little hesitant to say it when he's still trying to play the part of a good doctor here, but honestly, it's strikingly similar. And he'd never been bothered by the corpses he and Jade had collected from the battlefield -- or, well, maybe he had once, but it's been a long time now -- when they were just a means to an end that was much more important than any of their individual lives had ever been. He may be weak in some regards, but he isn't a softhearted person by any means. ]

But this wasn't like that. It was a stupid and pointless death and none of us got anything out of it.