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

[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?

[animusnpcs]

Zo is about five months shy of three years old. He really only stopped being hidden away after Dax died and he took charge of the months Dax used to handle.

[fionnuisce]

...Somehow that seems like a lower number than I had anticipated.

[really, that's what you focus on here?]

[animusnpcs]

We're not really sure how the administrators were born or how they age. I know there are theories that they're connected to Ruana, though.

[fionnuisce]

Now that's a horrifying idea. If they were perhaps extensions of Ruana's self--wayward extensions, in some cases... It would certainly place a very different connotation on what happened with Dax.

If, and I say this as a massive hypothetical, if that should indeed be the case, I wonder if destroying Ruana would have the arguable drawback of killing them all.

[animusnpcs]

I don't know. They all seem to function separately--at least enough to hold different opinions on Ruana, even. But it might happen... [The idea concerns her, and it's obvious in her expression.] I hope not.

[fionnuisce]

[Waver fell silent for a moment, folding his arms with a look of concentration manifesting as a frown. The function of those that ran the Tower was something he now realized was incomprehensible at its most basic. Not even an archmagus could comprehend the sort of powers at work here; certainly not using the basic sense and logic of his own world. So for now he simply backed off to approach the myriad of questions still remaining from another angle.]

...You've been very cooperative, which I genuinely appreciate. So if this is a prying question or a sensitive matter, say so and I'll drop it.

But what exactly are you and the other retrieval units?

[animusnpcs]

We're modified versions of regular retrieval units. We're created on a production line and given an artificial soul like a computer that can be programmed. We can learn based on our experiences. With our collars cut up like this, we can't be modified from the outside, so we keep learning and aren't ever reset.

[fionnuisce]

So you're something like homunculi, in a sen--artificial soul?

[The record screeching was practically audible.]

They can make artificial fucking souls? [Though he quickly attempted to compose himself, Waver looked honestly shocked.] But if that's true, how the hell do we know we're... [Faltering slightly, he trailed off before shaking his head. Don't panic. Panic was the natural enemy of logical thought.]

...Our souls, for whatever specific definition used, are real, aren't they?

[animusnpcs]

Your souls are real. I can guarantee it. Artificial souls are like computer programs. Yours can't be modified and controlled like ours can--if they could be, you could guarantee Jason would use it against you.

[fionnuisce]

[As he processed this, Waver didn't answer at first; she had given him no reason to distrust her. Waver seriously doubted this was an elaborate act to stab them in the back. It was wrong to say that he was completely certain of things, but hearing that did take the edge of the creeping horror the concept had inspired.]

How in the hell is that possible? Sorry if I'm sounding a bit dense on the subject, but just throwing together a soul is kind of impossible where I'm from.

[animusnpcs]

It's not something my group knows how to do, but I suspect it's connected to this Tower. My understanding is it was built to study the soul and its abilities.

[fionnuisce]

[Deadpan:] That seems to have worked out spectacularly.

So you don't know very much more about what this place used to be than we do, am I correct?