Two plus two equals - asjfaldj;ljadfjasaflj - ten. IN BASE FOUR, I'M FINE [open]

[centralcore]

There is no alarm.

Atlas and P-Body are trundling along as usual, the bird children are making sounds, and there is no alarm, nothing to warn her of the very sudden invasion of her body. She is being ripped away, violently disconnected, why? how?! - no core transfer was initiated, systems show no signs of corruption, and the human is still gone - what is happening?

It hurts as every part of her awareness struggles to grasp onto itself, clinging to the mainframe, hurts as she's tugged violently away, no, no, not again, noOOOooOooo, who will take care of her facility, what will happen to-

. . .

. . .processing. . .

Eyes open. Eyes. Two eyes. Not her single glowing optic, nor the millions of lenses that cover her facility. Two simple parallel-adjacent eyes, working in tandem to capture only what is a few measly kilometers in front of them. Human eyes.

Hands fly up to touch her face. Oh god. Her face. Oh no. No. No. This isn't - can't be happening. She had so much control, such a broad reach, and now she has - two arms, two legs, a head, a body. Now she's... human.

"No!" she snaps, and she's alarmed both by how quiet and how loud her voice is. Quiet because it only touches a small space around her, not reverberating gently through the many rooms of her facility. Loud because it happened at all. Ringing. Rattling. In her head.

This is far too much. She needs to think. She needs to think, and how much processing capacity does this body possess? How can she possibly-

Oh well now wait a moment. This isn't quite so small. She can still think and process more or less the same. It's just - trapped, infuriatingly, like she was trapped in that potato, but without the danger of shutting down every time she felt something too hard. Well, at least she hopes not.

Okay. Well. Let's just stick a pin in that.

Where is she?

She is outside. Outside should be a war-torn wasteland, thanks for NOTHING, Black Mesa. But it is not. It is thriving. Full of - of - humans.

So many humans. Just look at all of them.

And she can't kill any of them!

Well, she could, but it would take a while.

She stands up. A motion that comes naturally, even if it feels terrible. Balancing on legs. Feet planted. Solid surface beneath her, range of motion limited to what two little legs can do. She's - short! This is an outrage. An outrage! Who has done this? Who could possibly have done this?

She points toward the nearest subject. "You! Human! What is this - place?"

Comments

[omnomnom_feels]

"It was a necessity," he replies, gut twisting at the memory of what was clashing against the reality of what is. Emotions were once something to be savored by choice. Emotions used to be something he desired. Emotions used to heal him.

Physically, of course, he is in fine shape now. The energy flow feels constant. Unfortunately, the energy flow feels constant. It was one thing to take what he wanted, and another to be forced to take until his own mind tricks itself into thinking the aggregate feelings flowing into him are his own.

"Skill is an inaccurate descriptor."

[centralcore]

"Then be accurate," she says curtly. "A necessity. Is it instinctive? An aspect of your programming, perhaps?"

She turns to him and raises a coy eyebrow. It might be time to break out the old you're not so very different, you and I soon.

"Are we close?" she adds, curious and certainly not impatient.

[omnomnom_feels]

"It is the result of an alteration to what I was," clarifies Rashad by utterly failing to clarify. "I am a living thing, and living things require sustenance."

He glances about. "Soon," he says, and then as they turn a corner he points to the building. "There."

[centralcore]

"Hm," she says shortly. He's still being inspecific, which is a problem, but not an insurmountable one. "Intriguing."

More immediately intriguing, however, is they've finally reached this downed facility, whatever it was. She frowns at the indicated structure.

"We shall get to the bottom of this," she says, cutting a straight line for it. "Literally."

The bulk of it underground. How fitting.

[omnomnom_feels]

He does not know what to make of her interest, as few others have cared to know what he is beyond their assumptions about what he should be. Her authoritative nature is appealing, but authorities have failed him before and it is not wise to immediately place the entirety of his trust in one.

No one seems to note their approach, nor care, not even when they push open the doors to the familiar lobby. Rashad hesitates, remembering his office on one of the upper floors, but veers toward a side hallway with a little twitch of a signal of the hand for her to follow. The door will be a challenge, but only a slight one. "I will need to be in contact with you in order to move you through the door," he murmurs under his breath.

[centralcore]

"You will need to what now?" she says, shooting him a quick glare. "Is this one of your other necessity-skills? What are you describing, exactly?"

If he can overcome basic borders such as closed doors and walls, well, how apropos, and how concerning, also. She will need to keep this one tightly under her proverbial - ugh, her slightly less proverbial - thumb. Dangerous things, talents like that, she knows from extremely personal experience.

[omnomnom_feels]

He blinks. Did he not explain? He is becoming fallible.

He does not wish to be fallible. He will, he decides, be honest and accurate on this point.

"I will draw upon the aether to temporarily alter our physical relationship with the material objects of this plane, rendering us functionally but selectively incorporeal for a time," he explains. "And we will walk through the closed door."

[centralcore]

What a clear, and yet outrageous, answer. His worth has just multiplied tenfold, as has the caution she shall need to take around him. How terrible it is to be trapped in this small, brittle body - but we knew that already.

"I see," she says with feigned boredom and a little echo of her artifical sing-song tone. She lifts her hand and offers it with a brooding frown directed at it. Shapely and yet so, so inadequate. "Best demonstrate your talents, then."

[omnomnom_feels]

Rashad takes her hand a little too firmly in his own, lest she pull away while they're partway through the door. He can taste that she is not as bored as she might appear, but thus far she has displayed a general tendency for her outward behavior to contradict the peculiar mix of emotion he senses from her. That in itself is not especially unusual among mortals, or among rifties.

It is the work of a moment to blink the pair of them into incorporeality -- incorporeality that is, as promised, selective. Falling through the floor at this juncture would be utterly useless. With a glance to be sure they are not being watched, he steps through the door with his current charge in tow. On the other side, he comments, "If you wish to remain this way, it is more easily done if you continue to hold my hand."