thisavrou_log | You can never say that I didn't try

Entry tags:

You can never say that I didn't try

Who: Rinzler and OPEN
When: April 14th through the 24th
Where: the Hold
What: Rinzler killed some people and copes poorly. Set after this log.
Warnings: references to character death and mindscrew, glowy injuries, unfortunate assumptions. (See also: Rinzler.)

The first place Rinzler woke up in this system was a cell. He'd been locked in after a fight with his duplicate—with Tron. Not that the enforcer had been capable then of even hearing the older version's name. Rinzler had attacked because he had to, because the overrides built in his mind detected conflict and demanded he delete the source. Since then, he's shattered that if/then chain. Chipped away at the filters on his memories, even managed, once or twice, to speak.

But he's back where he started, and he knows better than to expect things to end the same way.

For the most part, visitors will find Rinzler seated on the low bench back against the wall. Circuits burn dimly in the shadows, almost outshone by the dull glint of fractured code that covers a full half of the enforcer's core. He's turned slightly to conceal the injured side, but the spiderwebbing cracks through code and armor are obvious to see, and he doesn't have the power to refresh his shell and cover up the damage.

The low rattle of corrupted code echoes through the cell and down the corridor, though it does nothing to compete with the invectives from the user locked in one door down. Rinzler approaches shutdown just once, curled up against the wall, and if the flickering lights and twitch of limbs is any sign, it's anything but restful. The program won't notice anyone approaching then, but he probably wouldn't mind being woken.

Once or twice, Rinzler rises, pacing, frustration and the need to move boiling up through the despair. There's nowhere to go, though, nothing to do, and even that much risks opening his damage further. Maybe he should. Fracture, break, rip himself apart and leave them voxels on the floor to claim and punish. Rinzler wonders if he ever tried before. If he does, he can't remember. He wonders what they'll make him into. Alan-one had told him what would happen, told him he'd correct the fault if Rinzler fought again. Now two users are dead, and if there's any hope at all, it's that they'll decide he's too worthless to salvage.

[[ooc: ~~the duration during which Rinzler can be visited depends largely on the results of his trial, so there may be some time-wobbling. In particular, if he ends up with solitary confinement...~~ no longer applicable; Rinzler will be visitable for both the trial period and his sentence. ETA 2: As of the 20th, temperature conditions will be improved thanks to Vision + co.

Prose and spam both welcome!]]

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Asriel saw the footage. He really wished he hadn't, but after how they're encounter had gone in the prison, Asriel's both horrified at what took place and yet he wonders if he should've seen the signs the whole time.

And yet between Sans and Chara, it seems like EXP was something that people here were a little too eager to collect.

He stops by the hold after his shift ends at work, later in the evening. And Rinzler looks, well... awful. But no one in the hold really looked their best anyway. He has a lot of questions, a lot of whys. But seeing him curled up the way he is, Asriel decides not to ask right now.

"Rinzler...?"

Are you okay? seems like a stupid question to ask. He'll wait to see if he can even get a response.

"Rinzler."

The greeting was simple, if forceful. The words more meant to command attention than to placate. The damage, worse than the last time he saw him in here. Nasty. He'd seen that damage happen to him. He knew that Rinzler probably wouldn't respond. So Miller did the one thing he was good at, he just talked.

"When I first met you I was terrified. But you didn't attack me. You were more interested... in analyzing things. I don't think it was all looking for threats.

"Did I tell you why I was afraid of you? About the things... that took my arm and leg. That ruined my body. Did I tell you about them?" He didn't think he did. But sometimes things slipped his mind. Miller... to his credit, was on two legs now. But out of paranoia was still carrying his crutch. In case the artificial one failed him again.

The words have their effect, and Rinzler's helmet lifts a little. Miller's presence isn't a surprise. The user had been here last time, too, asking whys and offering to help. Somehow he doubts this trip is for the same reasons.

Rinzler's a weapon, and Rinzler's a threat. Clu's threat, Clu's weapon, but still one half the system feared, and there are a hundred reasons why anyone with sense might do the same. Far more puzzling is why Miller ever stopped. Rinzler's not sure where the user's going with this, but he shakes his head. No, he wasn't told.

It takes a moment. The heat bleeding in from the engines is enough to clutter his processes with lag, if not nearly so badly as the baking oven of the users' trap. The damage doesn't help either, or the numb ache of low power. Still, if Rinzler were to be completely honest with himself? The hardest part is motivation.

But that voice is familiar, and the expression he sees when he looks up, more so. It's the same face Asriel had worn in the cells of the facility, when the beta looked up and saw him soaked in blood and voxels. Almost funny, how quickly the projection had proved true.

Noise grinds out, a little rougher than usual. Rinzler waits.

The kinds of things Rinzler had pulled would've merited at least a century in jail in the Hierarchy. Saren would have called it paltry.

Nihlus had been inclined to agree- up until Elle had cast her vote on Rinzler's trial.

Now he's less sure of himself.

J's death and failed resurrection had been the main reason for his vote and plea for a more severe punishment. You didn't kill innocent civilians and walk away with only a month in solitary confinement, unintentional or otherwise. Spearfall's death had been more of a gray area, but J's was clear as day.

And yet.

As Nihlus makes his way down to Rinzler's cell, he finds himself idly wishing for Saren's black and whiteness again- and then promptly hates himself for it. Even if the bastard hadn't shot him, it wasn't like Nihlus had a ever agreed with the older agent's ethical choices half the damn time.

What if Elle was right, anyways? Was he compromised for letting himself be swayed into thinking Rinzler deserved another chance? And with what evidence? He can't trust his instincts anymore, not when it'd let his mentor put him in the cross-hairs.

And yet.

It's not an unfamiliar doubt. This is not an unfamiliar situation. After eight years of being a Spectre and working with the people he did, doing the things he had...

He stops in front of the glass, the click of his talons fading into silence. If Rinzler looks up, he'll see Nihlus' striped face set in a carefully neutral expression.

"They were fast. Unimaginably. Blindly goal directed. They sliced through my unit, one by one. I was the last one left alive. Not all of me, though. When I first met you, you sparked that kind of fear. But you didn't live up to it. Not for me."

In fact, he'd let Rinzler hear him ask for help. He'd let Rinzler see his leg.

"I'm telling you this because I expect better. Because I know you're not like those things." He found himself leaning back against a wall, feeling guilty at the same time as disappointed still. He takes off his sunglasses for a moment, rubs them with the edge of his uniform. He squinted at the light some, before putting them back on.

"I should have dragged you in for more testing scenarios. Gotten through non-lethal neutralization. I got wrapped up in my own mess." Miller had a job to do. He failed it.

She shows up not long after seeing the footage. Part of her doesn't know why she's bothering - part of her thinks she shouldn't be here, should turn around and go and...go to Engineering or finish that book on magic she's been uselessly squinting at from the library or...or something.

Somehow, though...

Well, here she is anyway.

He's damaged - she remembers him being vaguely so when they first met, though she hadn't figured it for what it was then. Now, though, it's obvious, and it's even pitiful. But apparently he won't let himself be fixed. If Rinzler were organic, she'd wonder if it was guilt. But he's not, and she's merely confused.

If he doesn't notice her, she'll tap at the wall to get his attention. Only when she has it does she say anything.

"You know, uh..." Her mask is on - her enviro-suit, too, still on from having been on board the station - and her sigh comes through as a crackle on the mic. "I haven't met the other program. Tron. We've been on board as long as each other and I've never spoken to him. Ever. The giant robots are getting hard to avoid, but I stick to rooms with low ceilings." A scoff of a laugh, but there's not much humour to it. "None of them have been killing organics, either."

She's twiddling her thumbs, a nervous gesture, not a bored one, and suddenly blurts out. "Do you have a soul?"

The words are out before she can even wonder where the hell they came from.

Loki can't very well condemn Rinzler for murder, attempted or not, not with the blood of so many on hands that weren't his to begin with. At least, not witout a little more information.

And, perhaps, a little sideways sympathy. If Rinzler is a program, is it fair to judge him for what his programming forces him to do? Does he know what he does, does he have an opinion on it? Or can he see the trap, but with no way out, the way Loki

He stands by the bars, watching for a moment, before he clears his throat.

"Are you actually allowed to speak in your own defence? And if you are, do you have anything to say?"

Deacon didn't expect it to be so hot down in the hold. Beats of sweat are already prickling on his brow and scalp as he sits down on the floor inside Rinzler's cell to talk semi-privately. It's making him feel a lot more unsure about this whole ship justice deal. Punishment is one thing, or eliminating a threat, but a week of this edges into torture and Deacon's not okay with that. He takes off his wig and sets it in his lap and is silent for a long time before he speaks.

"Hey."

Another long pause.

"Wanna have a staring contest?" says the man in shades to a program in a helmet. It's not what he came down here for, but it's a way to start talking. And if the person he was talking to were human, it'd perhaps catch them off guard and give Deacon a small tactical advantage for the first stages of the conversation. Rinzler isn't human, and Deacon doesn't know how he'll react, but habits are habits.

The stare continues for a while. Goal-directed and fast doesn't sound that different to Rinzler, and if he didn't live up to Miller's distrust, that only makes the user a rare exception. But when the speech turns self-recriminating, Rinzler's helmet shakes, hand reaching for his MID.

Wrong.

About the fault. About him. All of it.

Rinzler will look up. There's a momentary stillness—recognition—before a faint tension slides through the enforcer's hunch. That particular ballot isn't far from the program's memory either, and if the vote itself was meaningless, Nihlus' encouragement of harsher measures left more of an impression. When it comes to calculating "the most severe" punishment, Rinzler has a millennia or so of good examples.

He doesn't get up, though. Eyes flicker down behind the mask, checking for his disks. If the user has them, he can't feel it, and anything else it might have come to do, he can endure. Noise rattles out, low and grinding, but otherwise, Rinzler only waits.

Whether Rinzler noticed her or not, it's after Tali's tap that the black helmet twitches her way. Her own mask takes a moment to match up. The voice is familiar, though, despite the communicator's distortions. He's met this user. She'd been afraid of him before. If the faltering language and faint twitches are much sign, that hasn't changed. He waits through the rambling tangent. The amusement at his kills. He even manages not to bristle when she brings up Tron in contrast.

That question, though? Is a surprise. Rinzler's mask tips a little, startled to open incredulity. Does he... really? He's heard of the concept, yes, but never with any reason to expect it might apply. Which is itself an answer, probably.

The enforcer shakes his head.

Rinzler watches right back. The grinding rattle of mismatched code is the only noise the program will answer with—the only noise Rinzler ever makes, even if it's usually a little smoother. There's an almost deliberate skip at Loki's questions—derision or offense, it's hard to say.

Rinzler isn't allowed to speak at all. He reaches for the MID, red-orange letters scrolling out into the air in short reply.

No purpose.

Funny how one word can burn almost as much as "please". Wrong. He'd been wrong about the Boss. Wrong about every dream he tried to build his life around, about Cipher, about the Diamond Dogs. Wrong about leaving behind his mother and then leaving behind his father. How much had he been wrong about?

He stared a good few moments off to the side.

"I am wrong about a lot of things. Not this. And I'm not going to let you make me wrong. I don't think you want me to feel like that." Because he's certain Rinzler did have a concept of feelings.

"Those things I mentioned. They couldn't even walk in a straight line if they weren't being controlled. But you can still move where you want, say what you want... even if it takes a little effort to work through it. You're not like those." And he should have stopped him. He could have. He knew that he could have.

Edited (tense fix) 2016-04-15 03:14 (UTC)

For the longest of moments, the Spectre agent says and does nothing more than observe. Nihlus' expression and posture would've been unreadable even without the divide of species between them, everything carefully tailored to the image of cool, military poise.

And then he closes his eyes and draws in a slow breath and the facade slides off of him like water, his shoulders drooping as if weighed down.

He's been a real fucking hypocrite.

"Once you're out of the hold," he says, just loud enough to be heard through the glass and nothing more. "I'm going to help you find Elle an apology present."

That was also the closest Nihlus can get to an apology for Rinzler himself right now. He's not sure yet if a real one is deserved. There's too much he doesn't know and the program had still killed two people.

The fact of the matter, however, was that he's let others off for worse. It's funny how being a Spectre worked sometimes.

"You're still probably getting a real fledgling's sentence though." With the ease of someone who was far too used to visiting people in jail, the turian settles down cross-legged in front of the cell and flicks on his omni-tool. "So I'm here to mete out some suitable, additional disciplinary measures."

The document hovering over his arm is a picture of an Asari with a gun in her hand leaning down to tenderly smooch the barely clad turian lady who was clinging adoringly to her chest. The background is vaguely on fire. The turian lady was kneeling because she was clearly about two and half feet taller.

Above the image, the title reads 'The Silver Flower' by Matriarch Ayatera.

The heat is stifling by human standards. For a program? It's different, but definitely not better.. Rinzler doesn't sweat, but he can feel the heat dragging at his code, pushing it past any metric of ideal function. System over temperature. Errors compound, glitches and lag stringing out until his processes self-terminate unclosed. It's compounded by the existing damage, and the power loss out to the air. It makes it hard to hold more than the most basic thought together.

Not that the current situation requires much. Rinzler's helmet tips up at the greeting. At the line that follows... well, he stares. Incomprehension? Incredulity? Subtle rejoinder? Deacon can decide.

"Yeah, okay, bad idea. Forget the staring contest."

He draws his knees up towards his chest and rests his arms on them. It's about as non-threatening a pose as he can muster--on the ground, hands visible. If he's going to have a chat with a deadly person with a hair-trigger, he's going to go out of his way to be careful not to present himself as a danger that needs to be eliminated, even if Rinzler is injured and unarmed.

"So, what happened? Not with Peter, like, that was pretty clearly self defense and if someone tried to ambush me, I'd try to kill them back, too. But what happened to make him believe you deserved it?"

Shoulders twitch in a small shrug before the program's constant hunch resettles. He can still move. Still think. He's loopholed enough of his restrictions to output words.

Higher-function.

That much, he'll admit to. That much, he'll defend. He's the best combatant in the system, far more valuable than any batch-wiped sentry or low-function drone. Clu wanted him this way. Perfect.

Still a weapon.

Ratchet sympathizes with the Rinzler that's pacing in the cell; with the person (was he a person?) who's trapped, frustrated, and with nowhere to go except back and forth. This trial, the hold, the Moira, this entire situation...it was impossible not to feel it pressing in on them. His eyes follow the program's frustrated path, and he can't help but feel like he's looking at some kind of visual representation of what far too many of them were feeling.

But that's where his sympathy ends.

"Hey. I need to talk to you."

He stares hard at Rinzler, waiting for a response, his arms crossed tightly, trying to keep the anger out of his expression and largely falling short.

The expression Asriel wears isn't happy, but more than that he just looks worn. It's an expression that seems much older than the one the excitable child normally wears. But there's no screams or demands of whys, Asriel just gives him a brief look as he tries to sort out what he wants to say first. Starting with his most pressing concern.

"...Are you hurt?"

"So? I fight for money. There's a belief that some people are just born with the heart of a warrior. The life is written in their genes. Yours... written in code. It was written in mine, too. I chose the way of a mercenary, to kill people for money.

"I don't buy it. Not that you're not a weapon. That you can't fine-tune your reactions. That your judgement is so poor that you can't work with a unit, retreat for advantage, use non-lethal tactics."

He supposed he didn't think Rinzler could change what he was, not really. Anymore than he could change the blood-soaked version of himself strolling around the corridors of that station just a day before, the weight of his own actions brandished for all to see. And he hadn't cared about that blood. He wasn't royalty. Not like the Boss, or Ocelot, but he was a warrior. So was this man.

That said, it didn't mean he couldn't better control how he does it. How he fought. How he won.

"That's why I'm angry... With myself, as much as you. Because I saw the potential, all you could do. And I just let it go." He should work on that selfishness. As much as he could consider the time he spent being self absorbed as trying to find ways for his friends to live, he knew there were other people depending on him. And he let them down. One was dead now. The other? Here in this cell.

Steps stall. The black mask turns. The enforcer's usual hunched stance leans just a little further today, frame curved around the absence in his side. It's almost a surprise to need to look down to find the speaker. But Ratchet is familiar. Rinzler observed the user's flight assessment just over a week ago.

If he had the processing space to spare for irony, Rinzler might appreciate the reversal more. As is, the pause lingers as the enforcer's frame twitches, restless and unhappy. He can feel the strain from even basic motion, but inactivity is worse.

Talking, he suspects, will solve nothing at all. But Rinzler waits. Listens. There's nothing else he can do.

Ratchet waits a moment longer, but it becomes clear he's the one being waited on. He takes a breath, eyes flickering over Rinzler's damaged frame. He didn't understand the refusal for repair. Was it cultural? Pride? Guilt?

"What are you planning on doing when you get out of here?"

It was broad. Maybe too broad. He had his specific concerns, but for now he'd see what answer he could get. If any.

It's much too broad. Rinzler waits, and Rinzler stares, and it takes his heat-lagged processing a while to realize no further parameters are forthcoming. When he does, he reaches for his MID. It takes a moment to type out the message, but when he's managed, it appears, holographic text floating in the air between them.

Function.

Elle?

Rinzler stares, nonplussed. Out of all the users that he's harmed, he's not sure why that one has taken any worse harm than the others. He's even more unsure why Nihlus would help.

But something's changed, a shift of posture that leaves Rinzler lost and scrambling to follow. He's used to reading every cue he can, used to watching and listening because speech is not permitted and questions lead to worse. The lapse of Nihlus' control should be illuminating. Instead it's mismatched. Wrong. Is he misreading?

Despite everything, Rinzler can't find a single hint of threat.

Fingers twitch uncertainly, curling around the low shelf underneath him. The mask tips down to track as Nihlus... sits. Rinzler doesn't disagree with the assessment, externally or otherwise—the jury sentences are insignificant in the extreme. It's the punishment that follows that Rinzler is afraid of. But somehow, despite the words, he's no longer certain in the least that's what this user means.

None of which prepares him in the slightest for that image. Rinzler stares, wariness dissolving to sheer bafflement as his helmet jerks to the side. Open question: what.

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You can never say that I didn't try

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