Log01.entry

[ugh_emotions]

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.

Comments

[ohaiyo_isekai]

Of course they do. Can't let any of the slaves escape and set an example for any others, can't let any humans show solidarity. Hikaru snarls across the feed. On Mundus, at least, the Gods would forbid it; it's a running joke that to use Delvar's gift on a person and find they have a fair market price obligates one to arrest the seller. I am truly sorry you had to endure such.

He sighs.

Rin, this is not the Corporation Rim. I know you to be kind, and to have remarkable restraint for your doubtless deadly strength. Siobhan knows too, if she trusted you with the knowledge that we're likely a similar manner of being to you, if apparently better shielded. You are my friend, Siobhan's friend. This doesn't change that.

[ugh_emotions]

They don't...they don't think of it that way. Slaves are people.

And constructs...constructs were not people. Neither were bots. They were equipment.

We're not friends. Because SecUnit, as Hikaru might be noticing, has some Issues. And I know it's not the Rim. I know there's places that are...different. But everyone here comes from different places. And I don't have any way of knowing what they all think about constructs.

It meant each person was a new, unique risk. Would they think it was a person? Or would they think it was...not?

[ohaiyo_isekai]

...Dawn take them, he says, muffled, as if he didn't want Rin to hear it.

And then, out loud: Allies, then, if not friends yet. I cannot promise no one will fear or hate you. No one can. But I can promise that those who would act on it will answer to me, and I know the others from Mundus feel similarly, at least.

[ugh_emotions]

Okay...fine. 'Allies' it can tolerate.

Then it has to pause for a moment, to have another emotion.

(Part of it wants to protest, that it doesn't need protecting. It's a SecUnit. It does the protecting. A bigger part of it is just feeling melty at the fact that Hikaru would defend it at all.)

...Thanks, it says.