route666rp | [open] test environment

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[open] test environment

Who: SecUnit and OPEN
What: The husk hatches! This is actually good news.
When: Around the 19th.
Where: In and around the Convoy.
Warnings: Insectoid features, depictions of PTSD, others TBD.

1. Reactivation

[Forced shutdown: restart

failure: retry
failure: retry

retry

restart]

There's something wrong with its eyes. They won't focus, and it's staring at a... something. Wall? It takes a whole 7.9 seconds to determine that the abstract line it's looking at is, in fact, the corner of a room where the ceiling meets the walls. Which feels wrong. It's pretty sure the last time it was stuck like this, the ceiling blended into the wall.

It hopes this isn't like the last time it was stuck like this. It mostly remembers being very fucking bored.

Then the rest of it snaps online, and SecUnit has access to all of its memory files. Which doesn't help, actually, because there's something wrong with its systems. Analysis of visual records indicates that the light coming in through the slatted window and the hints of terrain are distinctly different from the time it shut down, and yet its internal record has no record of how long it's been shut down.

Okay. No need to freak out just yet, even if the situation starts to send prickles through the organic parts of it, and threat assessment is beginning a slow climb. It starts to get off of the bed where it's been leaning back, and promptly fucking overbalances and hits the ground with a crash.

It doesn't move for a second, because this really is like its memory rebuild, and maybe it should just sink into the floor and never move again instead of paying attention to the diagnostic warning it now has unhelpfully warning it that its legs need calibration before use due to extended inactivity and potential obstruction. There's shards of - something on the bed and the ground around it, metal that leaves the remnants of a shell.

One hand and arm is still coated in it.

SecUnit reacts, extremely fucking reasonably by its measure, by punching the hand into the closest wall, it's entire mind a scream of oh shit.

-

2. Around the Convoy

By the time it's gotten its legs working again - and, more importantly, ensured that there's no corruption to its memory archives, SecUnit slips away from the room it's apparently spent the past two weeks in. The Convoy is stopped for the evening, and most of the humans and human-adjacent organics should be handling their meal break, leaving SecUnit the chance to patrol the shields mostly undisturbed. It makes a sweep, aiming ultimately for the weird floating islands that start spiraling up from the ground at the edge of the shields.

It gives the strange glowing plants a wide berth, remembering the weird colored water of the oasis. Threat assessment keeps trying to spike at every unexpected twitch of movement, every unfamiliar noise, flooding its organic parts with stress chemicals, so it's slow going for SecUnit, who's trying not to stop dead and keeps doing so anyway.

It has to start running processes in background, filling its head with three simultaneous floods of data to try and even out the performance reliability that sits somewhere in the low seventies as it does - one analyzing all of the vehicles around it for signs of damage, a second in background playing Sanctuary Moon (Episode 206, which it's paying less that 18% of it's attention to, it's just there for background, and isn't working as well as it would hope at making it feel better), the third plotting a route to ascend to the top of one of those floating islands, all the while it patrols, alert for any signs of monsters. Or worse, people.

And underneath it all; there's no corruption, code analysis comes up clean. Get it together, Murderbot.

[ooc: feel free to use brackets or prose! I'll swap to match. Also if your character has any of the plant effects this month, feel free to have them pick up on what Murderbot here is thinking/feeling.]

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The crash of something hitting the floor, and then hitting the wall, draws Sephiroth's attention like an alarm bell going off. The new but ever present undercurrent of predatory interest is firmly squashed as the sound is tracked to one of the convoy's bedrooms.

Not his. Memory did not supply who did own it, and after a long moment of thought and listening, one hand rises to rap against the door twice, sharp enough that he's sure he'll be heard.

"Do you require assistance?"

It's not hunting. It's seeing to nominal allies.

It's a room further away from the amenities in this same section of the Convoy, nominally quieter, though there's evidence of activity on the outside of the room, particular scuffs, a few small tufts of fur on the floor from some dark-furred animal form. Inside of the room, there isn't any new sound of falling or shattering for 1.3 seconds. Then a buzz starts up, like the rising hum of an insectoid cloud, audible even through the door.

Inside, SecUnit hears the knock and nearly pulls an energy weapon, because it hasn't had any warning - no drones, no cameras, no ART to warn it that a human is stopping by, and that spike in threat assessment is enough to shock its system out of the loop it was starting to spiral down. Its efforts to rise to its feet first result in a stumble as a knee joint locks up again, knocking its shoulder into the bed, and it has to brace itself with a hand against the sleeping surface, feeling oddly imbalanced with the remains of the metal shell still encasing its arm.

... If it waits, will whoever's out there go the fuck away? So it starts without saying anything, unaware that the unconscious buzzing hum it's emitting is already more than enough to give it away.

On the other side, he waits and listens.

There's still movement, there's buzzing like a swarm of irritated wasps, and while he couldn't interpret what THAT was about, the rest did suggest someone was alive on the other side. A moment is taken to lean closer and test what he can of smell and taste in the air and detects no blood, but it didn't necessarily mean things are alright.

"If you are capable of communicating, please say so. Otherwise I will assume you're incapacitated and enter by any means necessary." Is it Sephiroth's problem? Yes. Everything in the convoy was ~~his~~ worthy of protection, and if someone was hurt and .. covered in bees.. and he did nothing, what then?

"Don't."

Shit. It just - needs five fucking seconds, okay? (Five minutes. Five hours Even five hundred would be great). It has an ID tag on the voice, vaguely, for a figure it's seen around the Convoy with black leather and a giant sword, but it can't figure out what the fuck he's doing near its room.

For a moment. Then it remembers the dent it's left in the wall, and yeah, okay, it guesses a human might come to investigate that.

There's a metal smell in the air, but it's not an iron-thick tang of blood. More like something ionized, overlaid with a clean mechanical-plastic smell. But SecUnit estimates an 83% chance that this isn't going to be enough to drive the voice on the other side of the door away, so it shoves itself upright and away from the corner of the bed to yank the door open with its one free hand.

Its expression is as blank as it can make it, but it doesn't look okay, insectoid mandibles pressed tightly against its jaw, its human hair and clothing plastered flat against its head. SecUnit's eyes are wild, even as it refuses to look Sephiroth in the face.

Silence falls on the other side of the door. He'd gained a response, and that was enough for the moment. In another several he'd likely try again, persistent whether or not he's wanted there, and even more annoyingly if necessary go find someone else to help him in that goal.

But any such effort is stalled by the door being yanked open, and on the other side is ... someone not faring well with their monster changes, at a guess, and Sephiroth studies the SecUnit for a long measuring handful of seconds.

And there's shards of something on the bed and floor, metallic and strange but still a bit familiar, like he'd seen them before. But only ever intact, in pieces like this is new. Habit means looking for signs of injury alongside signs of transformation, but there's no bleeding wounds, no missing limbs that he can tell, just signs of what he'd have guessed to be barely controlled distress were he dealing with a human.

He relied on that tightly controlled blankness often himself. "Are you compromised?" For all that the question can be taken countless different ways, it's pitched strangely gently.

That earns a brief and automatic grimace from SecUnit, like even the simple act of asking how it's doing is somehow too much for it to be comfortable with. "I'm not going to attack you," it says, which is kind of an answer to the question. The source of the buzzing sound is made more or less clear, as the hum redoubles SecUnit's voice like bad feedback, leaving it to grimace a second time and try to flatten the mandibles back against its jaws.

It shifts, it's attention dropping back down to the strange metal shell still encasing one arm. "I need to - " do something. Maybe blow the arm off, if this metal casing doesn't come off, it thinks but doesn't say.

It is, and is not, but he accepts it as if nothing else, a sign of a still rational mind. Definitely distressed, that much is obvious. The shards on the ground and bed look.. awfully like the casing on the SecUnit's hand. And that in turn looked ... a lot like the husks, didn't it--

What happened to put SecUnit in a Husk, and that it had been one at all for a while, is unknown to him. He really needs to pay more attention.

But maybe, given its insect--like mandibles, there's supposed to be a shell? Some kind of pupa? Or a stuck shed? His brow furrows slightly, thoughtful; if he's concerned about being attacked it doesn't show itself in expression or even heart rate. This being is a veritable stranger, and not someone Sephiroth should be bothering, but he's here anyway. "I have a small number of tools in my vehicle, if you wish to ... attempt to remove the rest of the casing. It may be easier with a second set of hands."

A rather convoluted offer of help.

Whatever the source, SecUnit is clearly not thrilled about it, as it tries to pry at a particular section that seems loose on the arm - until Sephiroth makes his offer. It pauses, its eyes almost fixing on him, though it stares past his shoulder with a pinch to its eyes that shows its confusion at the offer. "You just have the tools, for some reason."

Paranoid? Maybe. But it's disoriented and its performance reliability hasn't bumped back up, so it braces itself rather than starting to move towards the door.

"I've been attempting to repair the damage to my truck caused when the tornado hit," is the even, and prompt response. "Every time we come across cyborg in vehicles or garages, I look for parts, and the tools needed."

He didn't have even MOST of what he thought he'd need, but he had some things, and some things were better than no things. Trying to find a door that fit, or an undented hood or any one of a number of other things was taking some doing.. but whether SecUnit is disoriented, suspicious or just plain not wanting assistance from strangers, Sephiroth's not nuanced enough with other people to tell. "If nothing else, are we not allies by virtue of this Convoy? If I can assist, I must."

It can be all three.

Still, from the pause as SecUnit thinks that over - two seconds, because it doesn't have to take too long to evaluate that statement - it's not too unbelievable of a scenario. And they probably do need tools capable of fixing the vehicles, given how long it takes them to find new garages, and the shit fate that tends to come of pulling up to them (because the last thing the Convoy needs is more victims being brought in).

"There's no rule that says it's how it works." SecUnit argues, because it might as well make it harder on itself. "... Fine," it adds, after another 0.5 seconds. Then it tries to straighten up, shoving the coated hand into its pocket and reaching with the other one to pull up the hood of its jacket.

It almost looks casual with the way it slouches after that, but its expression, or what can be seen of it, is still tight.

Levi'd been standing guard outside of SecUnit's room for multiple days with no excitement. But this time when he returns there's noises from inside the room and that's very worrying. SecUnit was a husk, did it hatch into some sort of monster? Or did someone get in there and try to break the husk? He's not really sure which would be preferable but he doesn't have time to think before he draws a hand gun and enters.

"Si...ecUnit?" He's not sure what he expected but its not this. Was that good? He's still on alert and doesn't put his gun away but he doesn't point it directly at SecUnit. It could still be a threat even if it didn't look like a monster (more than usual, at least).

It only has its eyes to rely on, which means that the moment the door clicks open, SecUnit whips towards the door. Emergency alerts and a sudden flood of chemicals into its organic parts make it jerk around to face the door, the weapon on its free arm half-powered and raised before its facial recognition kicks in with tags - Levi, human, client - and it forcibly jerks its arm back down.

The first attempt it makes at speaking results in nothing more than a wasplike hum of static, and it has to stop and reset everything before it can try again.

"What the fuck." The words still barely come out audible, with the feedback of buzzing in its voice, made all the worse by the grey platelike chitin framing its mouth and the twitching mandibles folded against its jaw.

Levi tenses as SecUnit's arm raises but he relaxes (sort of) and lowers his one gun once SecUnit lowers it's arm.

"I, um, I-i don't really know. You turned into a husk or something like that. We brought you in here."

SecUnit doesn't look like it even knows where to start - its expression is wild and its clothing and hair are in slight disarray, as it stares somewhere in the approximate vicinity of Levi's face. It starts to pry itself off the floor, staggering slightly as its legs start to throw errors, then planting a still-encased arm on the bed.

"That was stupid."

"Which part, the one where we put a husk in the convoy or where I busted in to what was probably a monster?" Neither of them were stupid (well, maybe the first one), but he can see how it might seem that way.

His ears pull back a bit as SecUnit stumbles. "Do you want help?"
Normally he'd try to help someone right away, but he knows better than to try that on someone as stand-offish as SecUnit.

Edited 2025-05-20 20:08 (UTC)

"Don't touch me."

It's near-instantaneous, that response, as SecUnit does its very best to straighten right back up. It gets mostly there, even though it has to keep entirely still to do it, some part of its usual movement struggling to compensate for the weight attached to its arm. "The part where you walked up to a husk and touched it." And the other parts, but given how husks seem to react to them getting close, trying in the first place was a really bad idea.

Levi takes a step back and holsters his gun. SecUnit seems to be acting normally so far...or at least like a monster waiting to pounce.

"I guess. But it turned out okay. It's not like I wasn't armed or anything."

He eyes the arm still encased in the husk-thing. "I won't touch you but maybe I can bring you something to help?"

He shouldn't be doing that until threat assessment has cleared, and maybe until it's had a proper scan in a medbay, but it hasn't, and so it's not like it can ever actually be cleared for that.

I was armed doesn't mean much, against some of these things - but fine. It glances down at the still-coated arm. "Like what?" 'Bring' at least means that Levi isn't going to try and shoot it off, probably.

Being armed at least gives him a chance to strike back and possibly get away. He was able to find ways to hurt even the armored bulls and the metal dogs. Levi always fights like he's going to die.

"I, uh...I-i dunno. I've never tried to open one of those things or get it off...m-maybe something to pry it off with?"

"Yeah, because they explode into monsters before you can." Or shatter, but it's trying to make a point. Not because it's mad that it was taken along. It just has a lot of complicated feelings about how easily Levi and the others (?) seem to have decided that the risk was worth it, and it's easier to be angry, as ART once put it. (Shut up, ART.)

But it's a stupid thing to fight about, because it's not like they can go back and abandon it, and it's not like SecUnit particularly wants to be abandoned. So instead, it just says, "Fine."

"I'm guessing you can't just brush it off. I think I know where I can get a crowbar." He's not sure about the angle of prying something like that off yourself would be.

He wonders if those guns in SecUnit's arms could be used to just blast it off from within, but he's not sure that's a good idea. He doesn't get energy weapons or whatever but a normal gun could get fucked up with that.

"Maybe the medic's office has something that will cut it."

"The rest of it shattered but this doesn't have leverage." It would just put the fist through something to see if that cracks, and fuck the damage to its hand, but it got interrupted before it could do that. And it doesn't want to fuck up its energy weapons.

"Maybe." It sounds doubtful, but it's not saying no, either. Only - it is giving the door of the room a mistrustful look, the insect-like mandibles by its jaw twitching, the brief rub against the plates of its jaw creating more of that background hum that it's been making so often, recently.

Hm. If it shattered, "I guess you could try just whacking it against the wall. But the medic's got to have a scalpel or something, those are pretty sharp." Might that take a layer of skin off with the husk? Who knows, but there should be bandages there too.

"Um. D-do you want me to go bring something back?"

Serph normally is out at night (hunting, always hunting) so he encounters SecUnit from outside the shields. His eyes widen in surprise. He had fully expected it to stay coated in that strange metal, a potential metaphorical bomb waiting to explode if SecUnit's husk hatched. But given how many unhatched husks litter the environment, he was expecting it to take much, much longer for that situation to occur.

It... does not appear to be completely transformed in the way the monsters out in the wilds are. The question is whether it still has its mind, though the fact it isn't covered in blood from harming someone on the Convoy is a good start.

He openly approaches SecUnit from where it can see him easily. "SecUnit," he calls. A pause, before he adds, "It's good to see you."

As soon as Serph steps into its range SecUnit clearly alerts on him, drawing to a halt and going momentarily tense, but Serph gets at least part of his answer to that question immediately, as it doesn't raise its gun arms or react with any hostility. In fact, it goes awkwardly tense as Serph approaches.

It's never going to get used to that. SecUnit's eyes shift further away from Serph, settling on the side of some nearby vehicle rather than anywhere in the vicinity of his face as it processes the emotional reaction that it experiences at that simple phrase. Even with the facemask Jack made it, the process makes itself entirely visible on its face. It's good to see you. And it didn't even save Serph from anything. It's just... here.

It manages a stiff initial nod, then gives it a full five seconds of silence before it scrapes together any additional response. "... Status?" It asks, the buzzing redoubling its voice in an echoing hum.

Hm. That buzzing he's come to associate more with SecUnit seems to have worsened. Serph doesn't let any of that concern show on his face, instead nodding and reporting on the things that aren't obvious from simply looking around, such as the strange gravity and the new drifters joining the Convoy.

"Largely unharmed, physically. We passed a hospital which held usable medical supplies, so our stocks are much improved. It was also rife with monsters." Of course. Serph folds his arms, the bottom pair of wings also folding across his waist. "There were signs that either experimentation or 'treatment' took place there. Some scanners were active. We register as infected."

There's no blood to drain from SecUnit's face, but its expression goes blank as it wavers. Its head is full of images - a human body, coated with a strange white crystalline substance, chasing after it. The certainty that when that thing catches up, it will be a piece of something else - left trapped inside its own mind.

The flash of horror is so intense that it takes another five seconds to respond, and by the time it manages to rasp something, it looks a bit like a gentle shove could unbalance it entirely, not at all like it's 'try me, fucker' stance.

"Fuck no," it says. "Not again." Then it takes two carefully placed steps away from Serph to drop to a seat, bracing head in hands.

Serph doesn't approach; in all their interactions, SecUnit seems to have always preferred to maintain distance and a gaze turned out and away. And so he turns his own gaze away from where SecUnit appears to be dealing with a flood of negative emotions, instead keeping watch for anything that may attack them in the meantime.

When the silence stretches for longer than usual, Serph asks, "Did something similar happen in your world?"

He keeps his tone the same as always, calm and even, not reacting to SecUnit's distress with any particularly strong emotion.

Past experience with humans has taught it to expect awkward attempts at comfort. Past experience with ART has taught it to expect smug needling intended to get it out of its own head. Experience with Serph suggests that he's not the type for either, but it still feels weirdly... relieved? confused? too many fucking things at once, when he turns away from it, standing nearby.

It feels like the way a SecUnit would deal with this shit, and not just Murderbot.

That doesn't do shit for its cratering performance reliability, but it makes it marginally easier to get the words out. "There was an alien remnant contamination incident. It was a shitshow."

"SecUnit!"

Jack is coming out of his van, heading towards the convoy, when he sees the very familiar and kind of unexpected face. SecUnit has, as far as he knew, been encased in metal for weeks, and he was starting to despair if it ever coming out. Or coming out even more changed.

Now he's annoyed with himself for not having the finished masks in his pocket to offer it, even though he could have had no actual way of predicting it would bust free at this specific moment.

But he does jog in its direction, beaming. "You're all right!"

SecUnit stops in place, watching as Jack comes running up towards it. There's some wariness in its posture, it can't help that. There's a seventy-eight percent chance that Jack knows not to touch it by now, but he just looks so excited, and something about that makes its organic parts feel squishy, and not in the bad way that usually means it's about to start leaking or have a part fall off.

It glances down, staring at the road in front of them. "I guess." It's trying not to lie, but it's not even sure of the answer, because - "I don't know what happened." And that's - frustrating. It's frustrated. Okay, sure, it's been dealing with catastrophic function loss related to its stupid memory issues, but that had a cause. It can't figure out why this happened, and that's - freaking it out, a little.

Jack is behaving himself. He stops just out of arm's reach, though he does look like he's vibrating a little with keeping his desire to touch in check, tails flicking this way and that. Still, he's smiling, and obviously relieved. "I was afraid you'd come out of that husk shell not being yourself anymore. But here you are!"

He understands the frustration and fear of not knowing something, something big like that, but he's also just so glad that people can go into those metal things and come back out just fine.

Is it weird to miss your friend while face to face with another one? It misses Ratthi. But maybe it's a good thing that it's Jack instead of Ratthi, because Ratthi would be a lot more likely to try and ask it about its feelings. Jack is just here, being happy. to see it. ~~And it has the feeling that Ratthi and Jack would get along way too fucking well.~~

"Levi said they brought me into the Convoy when they found out." Or at least, there were no signs of attempted murder around. "... Did everyone know? Did everyone stay away?"

[ jayce hasn't been hanging too close to the convoy due to his noticeably staggering size and an appearance that one would rather burn at the stake. the geiger counters go wild with this one, lads. the rotting deer-thing hanging around provided shady areas just exudes magical radiation of an infectious sort. the kind you don't want to touch, or breathe, or by gods look at.

he does stir at the thrumming sound of background noise– a tv show, but to him is just a bunch of noise out of nowhere. now where the hell is that coming from? the stag's rotting skull peers out from under the canopy of a valley tree. only its ears move to search for spund. the eye sockets seem to lack eyes. ]

[Performance reliability right now is - well, it's shit, frankly. 79%, because some of its joints are still stiff and because of the emotional... whatever. Not breakdown, okay, but it's not doing great after another memory insertion and talking about it's fucking feelings and the belated realization that it could have been left behind, and that the humans would have been right to do it.

It's because they don't know what you are.

So yeah, it's having a great time patrolling, which it probably shouldn't be doing. Except it's still got enough attention to spare to notice the flicker of movement out among the trees, and to go completely still. The show playback shuts down, the background processes halt, and suddenly its head is full of calculations. The amount of charge before it has to shut down if it fires its energy weapons, the possible dimensions of the flash its camera caught of bone and rot. And underneath that all -

Shit, shit, shit. Why now?]

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[open] test environment

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around the convoy (but jaybe a bit beyond)

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