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Clever title goes here

WHO: Patch, anyone who wants to find her, plus Qubit and Loki.
WHAT: running, exploring, fixing vehicles, offering driving lessons, being deeply depressed
WHEN: end of October, maybe a bit of November. Whatever you want. I’m easy.
WHERE: garage, agricultural level, kitchen
NOTES: Patch is going to get sick, and she’s going to hide from everything while she is sick. So for October 21-25, after she’s realized that she’s sick, she’ll be holed up in her room until her fever breaks.

Also, I don’t like action-spam. I won’t write in it for face to face interactions, but if that’s what you’re most comfortable with, I don’t mind if our styles don’t match. I just ask that you don’t do small text for anything more than a sentence or two.

A. - hallways (October 15-17)
She finds the head surprisingly quickly. It’s perhaps the most unpleasant thing to happen to her. The cheery little voice does not prepare her, just chirps out “someone is looking for what’s in the box” and then falls silent. Like the irresponsible jerk that it is. Patch reaches down, lifts off the lid, and recoils so quickly that she literally falls on her ass. Then she promptly shoves the lid back on, stashes the thing in a closet with a very heavy piece of debris on top of it, and books it the hell away from the horror of the Head In The Box. Who the hell would be looking for that?

The voice doesn’t return right away. It takes a few days before it starts encouraging her to make her delivery. Swapping out her portable phone thing for a new one doesn’t help. It follows her. Even leaving it behind entirely doesn’t help. The voice pipes up out of speakers wherever she goes. She ignores it for as long as she can, until she can’t even sleep, until she has no choice but to go back, find the box, wrap a pair of bungee cables around it so there’s absolutely no chance that the lid will come off, and then begin kicking it down every hallway in the city asking literally everyone she passes if the head inside it belongs to them.
[[ OOC: You don’t have to be Qubit to respond to this. If you’d like to know about the freaky head, go for it. ]]

B. - garage
When she finds herself in need of an all consuming distraction, she heads to the garage. There are parts there to fix, seized up engines and faulty voltage regulators and slipped belts and corroded alternators, and unlike the work that Peter is doing, all of this is stuff she actually knows, things that she can fix. So she does, whenever she can, she takes things that are broken and she fixes them, and it’s not the same as being fixed herself, but it helps.

She’s also still helping Peter with the driving lessons. At some point, it occurs to her that he might not be the only one in need, and she puts up some signs in and near the garage.
Don’t know how to drive?
Want to fix that?
Call me.
[Bad username or site: det @ patch]

C. - agricultural levels and mess hall kitchen
When the plants go crazy in a riot of colour and strange flavours, she’s all for it. Something totally new, something familiar, something positive. She goes gathering, not so interested in naming and identifying as she is just finding something she’ll want to use, something that can bring her a little taste of the familiar. Literally. The chilis that she finds, for example, are perfectly round as beach balls and bright blue, but they taste like poblanos. She can work with that. It’s inevitable that she runs into other people doing the same thing she is. It’s another chance to force herself to be social.

Even more so when she spreads out her newly found harvest in the mess hall kitchen, intent on making her mother’s potato stuffed chiles and forgetting about her problems for a little while.

D. - open for one thread
The shift inside the city sneaks up on Patch in a most unpleasant way. She’s on her way to get breakfast after a shower, turns through a doorway and into the motel room. The last doorway she ever walked through, back home. Everything is exactly as she remembers it, the muted sounds from the bathroom, the god awful ugly bedding, even the box of doughnuts on the dresser and the pills ground into the carpet. The blood on the ground, that’s hers, isn’t it? Or it is just a shadow? She has no idea, but the icy panic that surges up from her stomach is all too real. This is her death, the end of her, all over again.

! - WILDCARD
Except for the time she’s stuck in her room, find her wherever to do whatever. Just let me know and we’ll make it work.

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Qubit loathes being ill, and the fact that this pathogen took him totally out of commission for over a week has been driving him crazy. He's finally on the mend now, though, even if not all of his symptoms have disappeared - the fever broke a day or two ago, but he's still a bit lightheaded, and the congestion and hoarseness will probably take another week or two to go away completely. And he still keeps seeing weird flickers in the corners of his vision, some of them resolving to numbers or code fragments that dance in the air for a few seconds before he loses them. A little distracting, but nothing he can't ignore.

The point is, he's well enough to get back to work. And he needs that; the forced idleness has been making him depressed.

He went the extra mile freshening up today. Shaved smooth, styled his hair with a little extra aplomb, even ironed his slacks and wore a tie (green, of course, all he ever wears is green). So even if he's not at a hundred percent just yet, at least he feels like a human being again and less like a grungy sack of trash.

He's walking the halls briskly and with purpose, going down a mental list of things he needs to check on, issues he didn't have a chance to address last week, and so on. With him and Peter both out of action for a while there, priority one is to make sure nothing's fallen apart in the meantime. But he slows when he sees Patch coming toward him, behaving... rather oddly.

"Detective?" he asks, once she's within earshot. He can't say he knows her well, but kicking around a battered cardboard box held together with bungee cords is pretty strange behavior for anybody. "Everything all right?"

(The voices may have given her another clue at some point: "What's green and green and green all over?" But that could be referring to anyone.)

"Shut up about the green!" Patch is obviously at peak frustration, to be shouting at a disembodied voice, but she really can't manage to care. This is awful and she hates it and she just wants it to be over. Not to mention the pressure in her head has her close to tears all on its own.

Qubit gets a withering look that she doesn't know he deserves, and she lets out an explosive and miserable sigh. "No, everything is not all right. I have a head in a box. These deliveries people have been getting? All these nice things from home? Someone got a fucking head in a box."

Then, like she's been doing with everyone, she yanks one of the bungee cables keeping the lid securely closed on the body of the box free, the elastic snapping her hand as she pulls a little too violently, and almost going flying, and shows him the horror in the box. "So, no, everything is not all right. Everything is this level of not at all all right."

"A head?" Qubit makes the obvious assumption that she's talking about real, biological, human remains, and in that case, she's got every right to be upset. Deeply alarmed, he comes over to have a look, and she's kind enough to rip the box open for him...

And inside that box, staring up at him, is Modeus.

No - no. It's just one of the Modeus robots, obviously. Hasn't even got its faceplate. Qubit lets out a sigh, relaxing somewhat. So this is his "mystery gift," is it? Not quite what he asked Santa for, but then again, he's probably been blackballed from the Nice list.

He kneels next to the box, reaching inside without hesitation and turning the thing a couple different ways to inspect it. "You might have mentioned it wasn't real," he says, equal parts relieved and annoyed. "Had me worried for a moment."

He's feigning casual unfamiliarity with it, but his mind is racing. She doesn't know it's his. No one knows it's his. They don't know what it is, or what it's for, or who it's fashioned after, or why he made it. And most important, they've no idea what it knows.

They might not be strictly human, at least the type she's familiar with, but how is Patch to know that they aren't remains? The only robot in her world was built by an alien to guard over a group of hive-mind messiah children (not that she knows any of that) while the rest of humanity has not evolved past the Farnsworth tube and optical fiber. This is a head. It might be the weirdest damn head she's ever seen, but it's a fucking head. The robots here are way beyond her understanding, and also her only exposure, being at best vaguely humanoid in shape. The connection is not made in her mind. This thing has hair.

So at his assertion that it isn't real, her anger spikes all over again, and the moulded plastic lid of the box comes slamming down on his hands. "Not real? I'm not imagining this." She lifts the box in both hands, and gives it a shake, the head thumping audibly against the sides. "Hear that? That's an actual physical object rattling around inside a box, and that object is a damn head!"

Qubit's preoccupied enough with the head itself, and with considering his next move, that the lid coming down catches him totally off guard. "GAH!" He fails to get his fingers out of the way in time, and recoiling from that pain makes him lose his balance and fall on his ass, like the cool guy he is.

His temper flares. What the hell is her problem?! Sure, he knows the space flu can cause hallucinations, but at no point did he claim the box was empty- He quickly gets to his feet, shaking out his hands. "Yeah! I have eyes, thank you!" Impulsively, he makes a grab for the box, intending to wrench it out of her hands - that way he can open it up without losing any fingers.

He doesn't plan to grab the box until just before he makes his move. Patch can see that. Or rather, she doesn't see the decision to grab it telegraphed in his moves. So does he really want it, or is he just mad at her? Either way, this box showed up in her path, and it's hers to deliver, and she's pretty sure just handing it off to some random person doesn't count. Besides, freaked out and sleep deprived and sick though she may be, this package used to be somebody, and even if she can't stomach the idea of carrying it around, she still feels obligated to figure out just how he ended up here.

So, when Qubit's hands make contact, surprisingly fast for someone who didn't even see the lid coming at him, Patch digs her fingers into the ridges of the moulded plastic handles and refuses to give it up. "Let go, or I'm going to kick you," she warns, with cold determination to do her really distasteful duty with this thing.

"Oh, now you do want it?" Qubit exclaims, tightening his grip as well. He doesn't even stop to consider whether she's bluffing, because frankly, he doesn't care. "It's the head of an android, for G-ahh!"

Ow, yeah, she was not bluffing. Her boot nails him right below the kneecap, which throws him off balance, but it's not enough to make him lose his grip just yet. Possibly because he's just that stubborn. "Will you stop that!"

"Of course I don't want it, but it's still my responsibility!" Patch wraps her arm around the entire box, over the top of it and gripping the bottom, getting far closer to the dismembered body parts than she wanted to with her whole small shipping container and bungee cord situation, and she wrenches it away from Qubit, not caring that she's throwing him to the ground in the process. "I am sick, I am tired, my head is killing me, I have been shuffling around a body part for the last two days, and I don't care if androids aren't seen as equal to humans where you come from, that's no reason to kill them and force people to deliver their body parts like they're presents from Santa!"

As Patch yanks the box from his hands, sending him sprawling, it belatedly occurs to Qubit that perhaps picking a fight with a stressed-out police officer was not the best idea he's ever had. He picks himself up less quickly this time, keeping a cautious eye on her while she rants, and putting a couple extra feet between them for good measure.

Until now, he couldn't figure out why she was so worked up about the damn thing. You'd think she'd been given a box full of human remains, the way she was acting. But... he doesn't know the first thing about her world, her background. If, in her world, androids are equal to humans, her reaction's a bit more understandable.

He's still pretty irritated about how this is going, but the worst of his actual anger has passed. Once he's certain enough that she won't continue the fight, he takes a second to straighten his coat lapels, with a sharp snap of the fabric.

"It isn't dead, Patch," he says flatly.

She blanches visibly at that, all of colour and most of the muscle tautness leaving her face in a rush. "It's-- it's a head." But guess who is yanking that lid back off the box to peer down with muted shock and horror at the contents. "It's a decapitated head."

Not dismantled or detached, decapitated. Not component or machine part, body part. Not power down, kill.

Her reaction still doesn't quite track. If androids have achieved equality, then presumably they're fairly ubiquitous, right? Naturally he wouldn't expect everyone there to be a robotics expert, but they ought to know a few key facts.

"So? Androids don't 'die' the way organics do," he says. "As long as their core programming survives, losing hardware is at worst a nuisance."

There are a whole lot of words coming out of his mouth, and she understands very few of them. Which is not actually the point, is it? She doesn't know what's going on, but he does, and this all seems very normal to him. It has for a while. She should have picked up on it earlier. "Green." Oh for crying out-- that is the worst joke. Ever. She'll be annoyed at the little voice later.

Right now, bigger fish to fry. "Is this yours? Do you know who this is? Did-- did you kill him?"

Green? What kind of non sequitur - oh. That was her clue, was it?

Qubit draws up to his full height, though he's only barely taller than Patch, and grasps his lapels with both hands, the lines in his face deepening with his frown. He doesn't answer for a few seconds.

Because it is his. And he knows it inside-out - as he should, since he made it. But he didn't want her to know that. Why did she have to jump straight to smashing his fingers? He could have handled this quietly, with some grace. Taken the thing off her hands without arousing too much suspicion. But he let her get a rise out of him, and now she's asking him two questions to which he cannot say no without making himself a liar.

Qubit has become many things he'd rather not be, in the last couple of years. Manipulator. Extortionist. Betrayer. Hypocrite. Murderer.

But he won't be made a liar.

"I told you, it isn't dead," he repeats, more forcefully. "Do you want me to wake it up? Because I can."

Well, that answers her first question, and Patch might look delicate, but she's had steel in her spine from the moment she was aware of the world around her. She might not understand a single thing that's going on right now, but she won't let herself be bullied out of her integrity.

"Did. You. Put. This man's head. In a box?" She's still using words that have nothing to do with machinery, and is currently cradling the box in one arm almost protectively.

The colour high on her cheeks now is the result of something other than the sickness tearing through the city. She is livid.

Qubit doesn't flinch. Does she really think that's going to intimidate him? He's stared down worse. But her singlemindedness, her dogged refusal to let up on that one asinine point, is fraying his last nerve.

"That. Is not. A man!" he snaps, jabbing his finger in the direction of the box. Sorry, if androids are equals or whatever then that probably sounds racist as hell, but it really seems like Patch does not understand the difference!

"It is a machine. It's a tool, engineered for a specific purpose. You might as well accuse me of murdering a bloody miter saw!"

It is not a machine. She's not sure of much, but she's sure of that. She's had to wrap her mind around a lot of weird shit since coming here, but she knows what robots look like. They are clunky and awkward and only vaguely human in their general shape. They have hard angles and no set configuration in their limbs or build, and they absolutely do not look exactly like a human head with the face ripped off and metal musculature underneath.

Which is what she clings to, while she reaches the end of her rapidly fraying rope. "It's not a machine. It has eyeballs, it has lips, it has fucking hair." Her voice cracks a little on the last word. Who would build a machine with hair? What purpose could it possibly serve?

Probably not the purpose you're thinking. That was more the real Modeus's thing.

Some of the wind leaves Qubit's sails as he realizes... he must have been wrong about Patch's world, because she's clearly never seen an android in her life. Even the early ones had eyes and lips and hair, because the whole point was to make them look human.

"All synthetic," he replies tersely. "Silicone skin, acrylic hair, plastic eyes. No part of that thing has ever been alive."

Patch can't think of any reasonable purpose. She shakes her head slowly, and looks back into the box, warring emotions all over her face. "Why would-- It feels like a person. It has to be." This is too much. Much much too much. "This is yours? You... made this?" She still has a difficult time getting the words out, wrapping her mind around the motivation for it. "Why?"

Qubit doesn't answer. He doesn't have an answer for her.

Oh, an answer exists. But he can't give her one she'll accept in twenty words or less. What's he supposed to say? It's an early warning system in case my checkered past comes back to haunt me? Even if he were willing to open that can of worms right now (or ever), even if he had the time or obligation to explain himself, even if he trusted Patch with that sort of information - even then, all she'd do is get hung up on its stupid ears or something. It's the absolute least important detail she could have chosen to fixate on and it's driving him crazy.

It wouldn't matter what he says, he finds himself deciding. She wouldn't understand, anyway. And he doesn't owe her an answer. He doesn't owe her anything.

But as he's eyeing the head, debating his next move, something happens that changes everything. Without any input, the plastic eyes light up green, and the lip actuators curve upward in an uncanny smile.

"What's the matter, Qubit? Cat got your tongue?"

Qubit blanches, his eyes going wide. He knows that voice. But it can't be. It's impossible for so many reasons, he can't even choose one to focus on - so instead he considers none of them and goes straight to his gut reaction.

That's not just an AI. That's the real Modeus in there.

And that means Anchor is in terrible danger.

"Drop it," he says. (Why hasn't she dropped it already? Don't tell him evil voices are the one thing she does expect out of it-)

Qubit's reaction is more than enough to get Patch to re-examine the box she's holding with panicked urgency. What she sees, however, is nothing. No change in the slightest, nothing at all to provoke the reaction that Qubit is having. Which just makes Patch give him the calmest thousand yard stare.

This is right up there with those kids who tried to convince her and her partner, her first year on the force, that their drunk driving was actually because of hornets in their car. She can still see them so clearly, their bumper wrapped around that telephone pole, their ruined radiator belching steam into the sky, running around screaming and batting at their heads and warning the officers to keep away, save themselves, don't be heroes!

"Is that really the best you've got?"

"Qubit! That's no way to intimidate a lady," he hears the snide synthetic voice intone. "Have you tried severing her hands?"

"Shut up!" Qubit snaps. There's no time to think, he has to act! "That wasn't a request! Drop it and run, if you value your life!"

A bright blue-green light fills his eyes, and he whips his hands toward the nearest wall - in response, a panel bulges outward, then pops off and clatters to the floor as he telekinetically rips out the electrical system behind it, twisting and warping it to spec as if it were no more durable than wet clay. The light fixture directly above them goes out with an audible POP, leaving the immediate area dark except for the dim ambient light of the atrium - and the bright, eerie light cast by Qubit's power.

It'll take about ten seconds to come together - slower than usual, for him - but whatever it is, it's cylindrical, opaque, and slightly larger than a human head.

It's well beyond his safe limit in both size and complexity, and the cost hits him hard and fast. Pain shoots up his arms like lightning, through his skull like an electric spike, and for a terrifying second his vision blurs, and he knows he'll black out if he so much as blinks - but somehow, whether it's through determination or simple stubbornness, he keeps his eyes open. Gritting his teeth, he forces his focus to stay in the machine and complete it -

The light from his power goes out abruptly, and the cylinder clangs to the floor. As Qubit bends to retrieve it, though, the leg Patch kicked earlier buckles, and he falls to one knee, breathing heavily, holding the cylinder to keep himself upright. Modeus's dry laughter echoes in his ears, or - in his head? - "Ha! Well, would you look at that?"

Edited 2019-11-26 15:21 (UTC)

All right, of all the shit she's had to deal with today, having her life threatened by the dude who made a head just for shits and giggles is a step beyond the pale. Patch, hand on her gun, is closer to shooting this man than she's been with anyone else so far.

Until he makes the actual walls curl down like banana peels. Which is officially just Too Fucking Much, and she bolts - but she hasn't dropped the box with the head in it. She's making pretty good time, too, for how exhausted she is, until she hears the noises stop, which is a relief, and then hears him fall and grunt in pain, which-- damn it.

Her hand is back on the gun at her hip when she turns back to face him, but the fact that he's stopped being unbearably creepy helps. A little. Very very little. She really wishes she could just walk away. Life would be a whole lot easier right now if she could just be the kind of person who would just walk away.

With all his attention consumed by finishing this machine without passing out, Qubit doesn't even notice Patch has bolted until afterward, when he looks up and sees her halfway down the walkway - with Modeus in tow.

"Patch! Wait!" he wheezes. The anger's been drained out of him along with everything else, and all that's left in his voice is desperation. Fear. Not for his own sake, though - he may think Patch is an idiot, but as far as he knows, her life is in danger right now, and she doesn't deserve any of what Modeus might do to her. Nobody does.

"The head - that's the danger-!" He tries to stand, but wobbles badly and doesn't get anywhere. "I need you to -"

His hands shake as he fumbles with the controls on the machine he just made. Can't feel his fingertips, that's probably a bad sign. But he does get it open, the wall of the container sliding back with a mechanical hiss.

"In here - it'll stop him making the jump," he says. "Please. There's no time. You don't know him, he'll kill you, I'm the only prison that can hold him-!!"

Is he, though? Can he, in this state? Doesn't matter, he has to.

She checks the head again. Still just sitting in the box doing sod all. None of this makes the tiniest bit of sense.

That desperation, though, the hint of fear, that's real. Fuck. This guy is either a serial killer and she's about to end up with her own head in a box, or something else is going on in his mind, and just because she doesn't understand it, doesn't mean she can ignore it. Fuck.

She closes the distance and looks at his creation. It's a box. He made a bigger box. With the harvested wall panel to control a much smaller door than intended. So maybe he made a tiny cylindrical room for the head, which she supposes might be a step up from box. Point is, it doesn't look dangerous. Doesn't mean it's not, but she can't shake that timbre of desperation from her mind.

The cube of a box is not going to fit into the cylinder of the new box, that much is clear just from looking at it. Which means she has to touch the remains. Which is just-- such a great next chapter to this story of her shitty week. SHe opens the box, looks at the head, which is still just sitting there motionless and dead, and carefully reaches her hand in. Facing it this way, she knew would be difficult, which is probably a big part of why she tried to avoid it, running on fumes as she is. Can't avoid it now, though. She lifts the head out, carefully and gently, and places it very carefully inside the container. Then she uses the panel to close it, and then sits on top of it. Not just letting him walk away.

If he can even walk away. Guy looks like he might pass out. Was he sweating before, or is that new? "Straight answers, no sarcasm if you can help it. I've had a very long couple of days and this is incredibly weird and I need some straight answers. What has changed in the last two minutes to make you think this head is dangerous? What is the jump? How are you a prison? Most importantly... are you going to vomit or pass out? You look really bad."

What appears to be a human spots him strolling down the hallway, minding his own business. She proceeds to kick a box toward him.

Scaramouche slows to a halt, waiting patiently for her to come to him once he realizes that's what she's doing. A smile curves across his face. He can see from where he's standing that exhaustion is wearing her down; looks like she's been at this for hours. He has the good sense not to let his amusement show as she draws closer.

What's she got in there? She tells him straight out before he can even open his mouth.

He frowns, his glowing eyes rounding in surprise.

"Run that by me again?"

Edited 2019-11-18 12:00 (UTC)

Patch lets out a frustrated groan, because she knows that he heard her, but she repeats herself calmly, all the same. "Is. This. Yours?" This time she holds up the box, with the head inside of it, high enough for the man in the metal armour to see, hoping that he will still give some sort of reaction for her to read upon seeing it up close.

Scaramouche reflexively tilts back when the box is shoved directly in his face. He peers into it. That's a head all right. A robot's head with its face stripped of its synthetic parts. A bot made to look like something else staring up at him with unseeing sensors.

He lifts a hand and gently pushes the box aside so he can look down at the woman behind it. He points a finger at his face, an affable smile splitting across it.

"Can't you see I have my own?" She doesn't seem to be in the mood for kidding around, so he cuts to the chase. "I don't know whose it is. Where did you find it?"

"It found me and this infuriating voice has been trying to get me to deliver it and I have no idea why anyone would be receiving a head in a box but this is my life now." Does she sound frazzled? Exhausted? At the end of her rope?

The longer she looks at him, the less it helps her general feeling of unease. There is something she's missing. There must be.

Scaramouche knows the voice she's talking about. He's heard it in passing, chiming in whenever others come anywhere near him. 'Getting warmer! Getting colder!' Whoever they are, he'll bet they're the type who gets a kick out of watching people squirm.

He'd know.

Looking at the woman in front of him and her sunken eyes, he wonders if they're keeping those people awake at night, too.

"Turn it over, then; get someone else to handle it. Who says you've gotta make the delivery?"

Simple solution to an easy problem.

"Doesn't actually work that way. That infuriatingly chipper voice, that just won't shut the hell up? It's very particular. Can't leave it alone, either - has to get to the right person."

She sounds about as thrilled with this as she'd be with a root canal. Actually, the root canal might be preferable.

"Or... how's this for an idea? You could destroy it."

That'd teach that voice not to rely on strangers to do their dirty work for them.

"And what if the voice never stops, because I haven't gotten it to its intended recipient, and now I won't ever be able to?" Not sarcastic. Genuine question. It's a concern of hers, and it's not like you can un-ring that bell. She just wants it to stop.

"I don't know what to tell you, babe. Find yourself a nice pair of earplugs."

His wide smile doesn't falter. He isn't being helpful and he knows it.

"Is this... funny to you?" She's not fully trusting her own ability to read a situation at this point - too tired, stretched too thin, way past running on fumes. She can't tell if he's mocking her or just horrible at reading the room or... some third thing that her brain refuses to present her with as an option right now.

Dumb brain.

He leans down, putting his face a bit closer to hers.

"Listen, babe, take my advice and leave it for the next schmuck to find."

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Clever title goes here

A. im gonna be Qubit anyway, so there :p

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1/2

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A. 10/16

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