Rebel Girl

[animusnpcs]

Characters: Aria (R-037), open
Setting: infirmary all week
Format: action preferred
Summary: Aria is open to speak to the residents of the Tower, if they would like to.
Warnings: potential horror event warnings; for now nothing though
Note: Please specify the date you are visiting Aria in your subject header.

[The infirmary swarms with retrieval units and worker units, all of whom have chipped collars. Most of them seem busy with one task or another, but a few are free enough to direct anyone who asks to speak to Aria to the woman in question. She's converted one of the examination rooms into something of an office, albeit a sparse one. She looks nervous and a little tired, but excited all the same. Her office is guarded by four retrieval units--attacking her here would be a bad idea, even setting aside the fact that Aria is a retrieval unit herself.

She seems happy to see anyone who walks in, though.]

Comments

12/16

[fionnuisce]

[Into the infirmary comes a very hassled and slightly disheveled Waver, carrying a notebook and having clearly sprinted quite a lot of the way there.]

What the fuck is this plague doctor bullshit?! [The question seemed rhetorical, Waver sticking his head out the infirmary door to make sure the coast was clear. Considering his green collar, it was obvious he was there more for the quick shelter and less for a checkup.]

[animusnpcs]

[Aria winces a little at the tone, but answers anyway.] The current theory is that it's Jason's doing, though we're not sure.

[fionnuisce]

You know, I was afraid you'd say that. [If nothing else, he sounded a little calmer when speaking to Aria.] I'm told he looks like one himself, so it stands to reason his freakish little familiars would be similar.

[animusnpcs]

That was part of our reasoning for thinking it was him, yes. ...That and he has every reason to be angry at us.

[fionnuisce]

He's such a pleasant individual usually, I'm stunned.

[The sarcasm was practically tangible.]

...Question. Can they still not hear us right now?

[animusnpcs]

They shouldn't be able to. I know no one can hear us in here, but I'm not sure when it comes to places near that rift I heard about.

[fionnuisce]

In that case, I'll get this out of the way for my own peace of mind regardless of whether this is the time or place for it. I doubt anyone knows much about those explosions that keep happening at inopportune moments, but have you seen or heard anything that might indicate a source for them?

[animusnpcs]

We've been trying to look into it, but whoever's doing it is doing a good job of keeping the information to ourselves. I know it's none of us--I've asked just about everyone myself because it's really not helping anyone--so it's either one of the administrators or one of the residents.

[fionnuisce]

I expected as much. It's remarkable whoever's responsible is actually this subtle about it.

[Shaking his head, Waver dismissed the topic for something a little more relevant.]

Never mind. That rift on floor twenty-three...is there any way you can think of to close it?

[animusnpcs]

[She hesitates, as if trying to come up with the right way to explain herself.]

Maybe. I haven't been able to see the rift, myself, so I can't say for sure what it is.

[fionnuisce]

I see--that does present a problem. If we can't determine a way to close it, then the second most likely option to stop those things would be to kill the person responsible.

...'Person' here being used in a very loose definition of the word. Is it even possible for people like us to kill an administrator?

[animusnpcs]

In theory it's possible. They have real bodies and they're living things. They all have various defenses against death, though.

[fionnuisce]

'Various defenses'? That sounds ominous...could you go into any further detail?

[animusnpcs]

They're all capable of psionics on some level, as well as having the Tower under various levels of control. How much we know depends on the administrator.

[fionnuisce]

Fantastic.

[how completely done an individual is with a given situation will now be measured on a scale of 'one' to 'waver velvet'.]

What can you tell me about them or their abilities? Even if it isn't much in a given case, I'd like to hear it.

[animusnpcs]

Jason can identify vital organs and structural weaknesses in anything. Riki is a technopath. Zo works with barriers. Ruana--Ruana can do a lot of things. She absorbed Dax's abilities, which were control of order and chaos, but aside from that no one's really sure where her abilities begin and end.

[fionnuisce]

[Waver mentally took careful inventory of that information. Jason's sounded strangely familiar, as though he'd read a similar concept somewhere before. But it likely wasn't relevant, so he quickly dismissed that line of thought.]

Right, I get what you're saying for the most part. [Riki being a technopath made sense where he built most of the place, and Zo's ability likely made short work of the barriers meant to be established between worlds. Second Magic made simple.] But I don't understand--'control of order and chaos'? What did that involve, specifically?

[animusnpcs]

Things have a certain structure, right? A table is a table because everything in it lines up right. Dax could manipulate how everything lines up. He could make things fall apart completely or organize themselves into something rigid and useless.

...It's a very powerful ability.

[fionnuisce]

And you're telling me Ruana has it.

[There was no magical comparison Waver could even make there. Mystic Eyes of Distortion, maybe. But from what Aria was saying, this was something on a vastly larger scale than merely twisting matter.]

Fucking hell.

[animusnpcs]

The ability requires time to activate--of course, once it's active, you don't need to do much else besides use it, but if you're interrupted while it's charging you're essentially defenseless.

[fionnuisce]

Sounds like basic magecraft. But I'd imagine she's got a thousand more defenses and abilities to prevent that.

[animusnpcs]

[She nods.] Ruana's abilities go beyond the others, though we don't know the details.

We know that all the administrators except Zo are afraid of her. Dax was, too, when he was alive.

[fionnuisce]

Anyone with common bloody sense would be.

[Beat. Waver followed Aria's words and his own statement to the next logical stop in his train of thought.]

...But if that's the case, why isn't Zo?

[animusnpcs]

Ruana is nice to Zo, so he likes her. He's been sheltered until fairly recently. Even now that he's not really sure if she's doing the right thing he isn't scared of her. He's powerful in his own right.

[fionnuisce]

That does make sense, for a given value of the word 'sense'. I would guess 'fairly recently' would be whenever they started this little game in the Tower, is that an incorrect assumption?