[open] test environment

[serialmurderbot]

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.]

Comments

[firstsoldier]

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?

[serialmurderbot]

"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.

[firstsoldier]

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.

[serialmurderbot]

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.

[firstsoldier]

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.

[serialmurderbot]

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.

[firstsoldier]

"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."

[serialmurderbot]

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.