Crystal
“I did say it was silly.” She says with a brittle smile. Crystal… acts reassured, but she’s only acting. She focuses on what she can be sincere about instead, because her gratefulness that Pink tried is sincere. “You’re doing very well with the cool colours, by the way, your work with the makeup is incredible, I-”
No, she breaks. She doesn’t do anything so dramatic as put her face in her hands and ruin all that hard work. She doesn’t cry, she doesn’t shiver. She just closes her eyes and holds her breath, and prevents the internal from showing in the external. She’s silent for ten, maybe twenty seconds.
“I’m being ungrateful.” She admits when she opens her eyes again. “What you just said gave me a very unkind thought about myself. That if my greatness is in bringing out the best in others, is measured in the success of others, then it would be the measure of my success if I’ve helped Fiona to go somewhere I can’t follow. I should want that for her.”
“I think it’s just that, bank robberies, domestic terrorism, becoming queens of the digital underworld? You’re in a better position to support her more than I. I’m not saying I feel like I’ve been replaced-” She catches how she says it, and emphasizes it again. “I do not feel like I’m being replaced. You’ve done everything right, I just… I suppose that might be it. Maybe I don’t know my value to someone I don’t know how to help.”
If Fiona were here she’d probably say something about how important Crystal is for being the person who helped her before she deserved it, and made her want to deserve it. That she continues to love that about her long since she’s needed it from her - it’s not just how they met White, it’s why they did.
But if Fiona were here, she wouldn’t be saying it.
Crisis Center:
Gabriel 10-13 - or Gabby Romans - is a very odd one. The Gabriel line is from a particularly religious strain of androids, which in and of itself is an outlier. It’s a bit on the nose that a pattern named for the Archangel that announces God’s will to men would end up as a crisis dispatcher, but this one’s a little bit more twigged than usual. When she was assigned 10-13 as her unit number, it lined up with Romans 10-13, for whoever shall call upon the name of the lord shall be saved. So where most androids go by phonetics for their last name, she’s Gabby Romans for that bible verse. It’s something a lot of her siblings have done, take their numbers and take the name of the biblical book that has the best passage associated with them. Kind of like astrology.
It’s just, also like astrology, some take it more or less seriously than others. Gabriel 10-13 is actually Matatron Prime, but one of the few androids that ever make that status that will keep their assigned names.
She’s working front desk rotation right now. “You’re here for Mr Knightly?” her accent is faint but distinctly Minnesotan. It’s just an accent that’s so distinctive that it’s easy to pick up even in small amounts. “Lucky you. What a good man he is,” she says like another person might say ‘handsome’. “He’s- Not in his office right now. Let me try…”
“Crimson!” An out-of breath voice says from behind, and you’ve heard it enough on a radio to recognize Aaron Knightly booming across the lobby. Some people glance nervously up at the ceiling from the volume of it. He crosses the floor from a swipe-card exit you’ll probably have to go through anyway, but he’d rather meet you for the handshake than make you come to him if he’s already late. Stealth is not an option here. “Sorry, sorry, a meeting ran long.”
“You didn’t have any scheduled.” Gabby asks curiously. Aaron Knightly gives her an exhausted look. He isn’t quite 30 yet, but there are deep and hollow bags under his eyes and visible flecks of white in his black hair.
“I didn’t, no.” He is bone tired. “Nothing ever takes ‘just a minute’ though, does it, Gabby?” She giggles embarrassingly. Knightly takes Strategic Team. “Right now it’s just the word of a mutual friend, but I’d like it if you’d think of me as a friend all the same. I’d like to start in my office, if you’d like, and then move from there.”
Gabby seethes with jealousy. As she should, for all the bone-deep exhaustion, it’s easy to see why Knightly and Leather would be fast friends. They’re both trying to live up to being superheroes in their everyday lives, but Knightly’s actually traditionally handsome on top of the Superman act. He looked taller on television, he’s actually slightly shorter than average.
He’s wearing a steel-thread UN flight jacket from the 2040s, the kind worn by aviators who had to actually covertly land their planes full of humanitarian resources to distribute them, since air drops would just get picked up by warlords. It’s a jacket that means this is a man who’s willing to kill or die protecting a crate of baby formula.
Monk
Monkey giggles, and even with the void face somehow manages to look like she feels bad about it. “You really did take after Dragon, didn’t you? It’s very… him to see temporary middle steps as wasted effort. ‘Just do it correctly the first time’. And if you can’t see a way directly to it, then it must mean you’re doing something wrong. It was very impressive when he made it work, which might be why we so often forgot all the times we had to do it for him when it didn’t.”
Tranqulity continues. “I was a modified Crown and Slate android body for a while, since that’s what they gave me. Then I tried being an autonomous assembly line, to make money. I found that quite meditative, but we got quite bored of it. But it was what I needed to do to afford this, when we decided this is what we wanted. If the problem is that body is wrong for you, then I would suggest changing to something else as soon as you can, even if you don’t love it. Don’t worry about it being the correct one yet, just worry about it being the one you chose for yourself today. And then…”
Monkey comes out, interrupts, cuts over Tranquilty. “Why is being influenced by the dragon body chosen for you meaningfully different to the anime maid body chosen for you?”
“I did say it was silly.” She says with a brittle smile. Crystal… acts reassured, but she’s only acting. She focuses on what she can be sincere about instead, because her gratefulness that Pink tried is sincere. “You’re doing very well with the cool colours, by the way, your work with the makeup is incredible, I-”
No, she breaks. She doesn’t do anything so dramatic as put her face in her hands and ruin all that hard work. She doesn’t cry, she doesn’t shiver. She just closes her eyes and holds her breath, and prevents the internal from showing in the external. She’s silent for ten, maybe twenty seconds.
“I’m being ungrateful.” She admits when she opens her eyes again. “What you just said gave me a very unkind thought about myself. That if my greatness is in bringing out the best in others, is measured in the success of others, then it would be the measure of my success if I’ve helped Fiona to go somewhere I can’t follow. I should want that for her.”
“I think it’s just that, bank robberies, domestic terrorism, becoming queens of the digital underworld? You’re in a better position to support her more than I. I’m not saying I feel like I’ve been replaced-” She catches how she says it, and emphasizes it again. “I do not feel like I’m being replaced. You’ve done everything right, I just… I suppose that might be it. Maybe I don’t know my value to someone I don’t know how to help.”
If Fiona were here she’d probably say something about how important Crystal is for being the person who helped her before she deserved it, and made her want to deserve it. That she continues to love that about her long since she’s needed it from her - it’s not just how they met White, it’s why they did.
But if Fiona were here, she wouldn’t be saying it.
Crisis Center:
Gabriel 10-13 - or Gabby Romans - is a very odd one. The Gabriel line is from a particularly religious strain of androids, which in and of itself is an outlier. It’s a bit on the nose that a pattern named for the Archangel that announces God’s will to men would end up as a crisis dispatcher, but this one’s a little bit more twigged than usual. When she was assigned 10-13 as her unit number, it lined up with Romans 10-13, for whoever shall call upon the name of the lord shall be saved. So where most androids go by phonetics for their last name, she’s Gabby Romans for that bible verse. It’s something a lot of her siblings have done, take their numbers and take the name of the biblical book that has the best passage associated with them. Kind of like astrology.
It’s just, also like astrology, some take it more or less seriously than others. Gabriel 10-13 is actually Matatron Prime, but one of the few androids that ever make that status that will keep their assigned names.
She’s working front desk rotation right now. “You’re here for Mr Knightly?” her accent is faint but distinctly Minnesotan. It’s just an accent that’s so distinctive that it’s easy to pick up even in small amounts. “Lucky you. What a good man he is,” she says like another person might say ‘handsome’. “He’s- Not in his office right now. Let me try…”
“Crimson!” An out-of breath voice says from behind, and you’ve heard it enough on a radio to recognize Aaron Knightly booming across the lobby. Some people glance nervously up at the ceiling from the volume of it. He crosses the floor from a swipe-card exit you’ll probably have to go through anyway, but he’d rather meet you for the handshake than make you come to him if he’s already late. Stealth is not an option here. “Sorry, sorry, a meeting ran long.”
“You didn’t have any scheduled.” Gabby asks curiously. Aaron Knightly gives her an exhausted look. He isn’t quite 30 yet, but there are deep and hollow bags under his eyes and visible flecks of white in his black hair.
“I didn’t, no.” He is bone tired. “Nothing ever takes ‘just a minute’ though, does it, Gabby?” She giggles embarrassingly. Knightly takes Strategic Team. “Right now it’s just the word of a mutual friend, but I’d like it if you’d think of me as a friend all the same. I’d like to start in my office, if you’d like, and then move from there.”
Gabby seethes with jealousy. As she should, for all the bone-deep exhaustion, it’s easy to see why Knightly and Leather would be fast friends. They’re both trying to live up to being superheroes in their everyday lives, but Knightly’s actually traditionally handsome on top of the Superman act. He looked taller on television, he’s actually slightly shorter than average.
He’s wearing a steel-thread UN flight jacket from the 2040s, the kind worn by aviators who had to actually covertly land their planes full of humanitarian resources to distribute them, since air drops would just get picked up by warlords. It’s a jacket that means this is a man who’s willing to kill or die protecting a crate of baby formula.
Monk
Monkey giggles, and even with the void face somehow manages to look like she feels bad about it. “You really did take after Dragon, didn’t you? It’s very… him to see temporary middle steps as wasted effort. ‘Just do it correctly the first time’. And if you can’t see a way directly to it, then it must mean you’re doing something wrong. It was very impressive when he made it work, which might be why we so often forgot all the times we had to do it for him when it didn’t.”
Tranqulity continues. “I was a modified Crown and Slate android body for a while, since that’s what they gave me. Then I tried being an autonomous assembly line, to make money. I found that quite meditative, but we got quite bored of it. But it was what I needed to do to afford this, when we decided this is what we wanted. If the problem is that body is wrong for you, then I would suggest changing to something else as soon as you can, even if you don’t love it. Don’t worry about it being the correct one yet, just worry about it being the one you chose for yourself today. And then…”
Monkey comes out, interrupts, cuts over Tranquilty. “Why is being influenced by the dragon body chosen for you meaningfully different to the anime maid body chosen for you?”