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unfinishedlibrary2026-01-20 07:47 pm
ugh_emotions) wrote in unfinishedlibrary2026-01-20 07:47 pm
Log01.entry
Who: SecUnit, Charles, and eventually other people depending on how things go lots of other people, everyone join in
What: SecUnit checks up Charles, no one has a good time
When: Just before the start of the Story
Where: The stacks
Content warnings: SecUnit getting accidentally bricked
Every time SecUnit or one of its drones caught sight of Charles, he seemed to look even more dead than the last time.
Which was weird. He was already dead (which was also weird), surely he couldn't get any more dead. You were either dead or you weren't.
Whatever. It wasn't SecUnit's problem. Charles wasn't one of its humans. It didn't need to worry about him.
(It worried about him.)
Eventually though, it gets to the point where it can't ignore it anymore, and it stomps over to where Charles is in the Stacks.
"What's wrong with you?" it demands.
What: SecUnit checks up Charles, no one has a good time
When: Just before the start of the Story
Where: The stacks
Content warnings: SecUnit getting accidentally bricked
Every time SecUnit or one of its drones caught sight of Charles, he seemed to look even more dead than the last time.
Which was weird. He was already dead (which was also weird), surely he couldn't get any more dead. You were either dead or you weren't.
Whatever. It wasn't SecUnit's problem. Charles wasn't one of its humans. It didn't need to worry about him.
(It worried about him.)
Eventually though, it gets to the point where it can't ignore it anymore, and it stomps over to where Charles is in the Stacks.
"What's wrong with you?" it demands.
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"They fainted because of Charles letting off an eeyempy," Siobhan explains. "That's a pulse of lightning and magnets? Fucking magnets, how do they work?
"Hikaru says that Rin probably has lots of cybernetics inside them and that's why the eeyempy made them faint. It might do the same thing to me too, so don't let one off again," she adds, directed at Charles.
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Must be part of the cybernetics. Address swelling, if any; trace damage if any... "... if they're as integrated into Rin's systems as you say, I should address obvious injuries before then. Those cybernetics did a good job of protecting central nervous, at least."
Use the chemical compress. She hums, pulls away her judo uniform, and uses that to prevent frostbite. Carefully applies the cold to reduce swelling. She suspects that the body isn't going to swell enough to cause damage via swelling, but it's best to get ahead of these things.
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Siobhan nods. "Hikaru says it's probably something called an 'innerlociter' which they'd use to control their drones and process what they're seeing. It's very normal for humans with the job of protecting people if they're from an 'interstellar era.' Which me and Laina and Hikaru also are," she adds, directed at Charles, "so be careful."
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.. and what little she swore she saw knit up as she watched, as well. "... hm. Perhaps I should have brought my laptop, instead-- if this is common enough there's probably an external bus to check on the interface's status."
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It wasn't going to soothe him all the way, but it did keep him from spiraling much farther in the moment. Guilt hitting him at the idea that he'd hurt Rin making his grimace and tone a little sharper than it needed to as he replied. "I didn't let off an emp, it's not sommat I do on purpose-"
He managed to cut off, taking a shaking breath he didn't need to try and calm himself, glaring down at his hands. Fuck. Fuck, just existing around people here if he couldn't keep a lid on it was going to hurt them?
"I should... probably go then, yeah? If... just bein' around me is gonna do this-" How the hell could he even tell who was safe to be around?
no subject
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No. One obvious port. ... One she, unsurprisingly, can't interface with. She sighs. "Yeah, this is up to Rin now."
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"It's... normally it's not like that. Normally, so long as I don't like... walk through someone physically, they don't even feel it," He grimaced, shaking his head. "But then we don't have people with cybernetics back home. Not anything like this. Normal tech like... I dunno, phones, computers and stuff, they all kinda get messed up if I stay around 'em too long."
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Siobhan hooks her arms under SecUnit's arms and starts pulling it back away from Charles with her--but since Strength was her dump stat, it's a bit of a struggle.
no subject
She closes the first aid kit, and is, unlike everyone else, acting calm, even if she doesn't quite feel calm, for reasons unrelated.
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"Nah. Nah, don't move them if you don't need to- I can just go."
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Her arms slip out from under SecUnit's armpits and she sways visibly.
"Did... did someone catch the arms on the coach that hit me?" she slurs in... well, everyone can understand it, because of the Library's translation effect, but it's very clear that she's suddenly switched from her usual English to straight-up German.
no subject
German, huh? ... Understandable. She didn't learn German, but she knows a few other languages. Maybe she should pick a different one than Japanese?
Thankfully, she is 100% pure human (she says), and thus immune to EMPs. That she's also capable of... After a moment's assessment... picking up SecUnit in a way that is, in fact, safe given its anatomy, like picking up a bunch of grapes, and as immobilized as she can make it? Might cause some reassessments as to her capabilities. "Sio. C'mon."
It... Looks a little ridiculous, given how small Mei is compared to SecUnit, but she gets it far enough to be safe before gently returning it to an on-back position, and begins standing guard.
no subject
"I- I'm just gonna make things worse if I stick around. Just-" He gave himself a little shake and a rake of a hand through his hair, pushing quickly to his feet before glancing towards Mein, brows lifting slightly at the sight of her hefting SecUnit so easily. "Just let me know when they're alright, yeah?"
He wasn't going to wait around for something else to go wrong on his account- he'd just seem to vanish into thin air, though an attentive eye would see the wet footprints tracking his progress, straight towards and through one of the nearby walls of shelving. And the drone would likely still be able to track him through energy signatures should it be scanning for that sort of thing.
no subject
She lurches forward, stumbling over nothing, tumbling top over teakettle and somersaulting the rest of the way to SecUnit and Mei. "Augh. Fuck. Stupid eeyempy. Rin, I'm keeping your secrets. Like I promised."
no subject
And, in fact, she is keeping watch, as a bodyguard would. Eyes over every inch of the library she can see, marking well the exits and entrances.
no subject
"Rin is a very good andrax. Earth human. The best."
no subject
And it just so happens that its buffer is what activates first. It doesn't twist, it doesn't move its eyes, it doesn't even blink. It just starts to speak, abruptly.
"Please stand by. Your Unit is rebooting," it says, in a voice that sounds...different. Even, measured. It sounds like the perfectly calibrated customer service voice. It sounds nothing like how SecUnit usually speaks.
"Please be advised that initiation of a forced shutdown of your Unit is a violation of your contract and will incur penalty fees upon--"
The buffer is cut off, strangled as SecUnit finally gains enough control over its systems to react. Its eyes open, going wide. Visual and audio inputs online.
It stares, inhumanly still, at all the people who have surrounded it. It doesn't move.
But it's wearing an expression of ever deepening horror.
no subject
Slowly, SecUnit comes back online, and--
And despite her expression remaining perfectly neutral, Mei's heart-rate spikes in fury, her fists clench. She knows damned well what would cause someone to have to do that after a catastrophic shutdown on her world and she likes the implications not one whit, not least because of her own restrictions on her behavior.
She lets go, nods. "Welcome back, then. Apologies for the rough treatment earlier."
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"What happened...?"
Charles's panicked message hadn't included many details, but it's obvious SecUnit had been knocked offline somehow and has just now rebooted.
no subject
He was there for Rin's boot-up sequence. He understood what it meant. Perfectly Ordinary Progress Level 12 Human With Cybernetics, huh?
Nevertheless, his reaction is:
"Good morning, Rin." He chokes back the urge to say hello world. "Gave us a bit of a scare. Are you quite yourself again?"
no subject
It doesn't know what happened, not yet, but they're all looking at it, and they all heard its buffer. They heard it say it was rebooting. Heard it call itself...a unit...
It's too much. The concern, the attention, everything. It's too much. Everything has just gone very wrong, very quickly, and it's too much.
In less than a second, SecUnit goes from being completely still and stationary, lying on the ground, to scrambling up and onto its feet and bolting through the Stacks at full SecUnit speed.
And it doesn't stop running until it finds a place to hide.
no subject