mental link - :018

[circumspector]

[ There's a crackle of static, of a radio station getting tuned in and a deep breath. Not a loud one, this one, just tentative brush at whatever is closest. ]

( ... Aoba? Petre? )

[ Well, someone's awake. Tired sounding, but awake and she tries to clear her mind to focus enough to reach out broaden to whoever might be nearby. More direct, a little more present. Nervous always, when she feels disconnected from others. ]

( ... Hello? Anyone nearby? )

[ and for anyone looking for her, she's around the Bearings as she catches up on what she's missed out on, getting herself cleaned up from her extended nap time, and plugging herself back into the nest of machines in the common area. ]

Comments

[dbag]

[ She's very tranquil. Completely different from him. It's oddly calming, though; an advantage of being someone who feeds off people around him so much. It's usually in a negative way, arguing for argument's sake, escalating situations that could have been defused, but today, it's not. He's still apprehensive, but his mind quiets a bit. It hasn't done that since he got here. It's nice. He looks amused by the CL4P-TP comment for a moment, then settles. ]

Okay. [ He's not very good at this, not the way she seems to be. For a second, he doesn't do anything, just looks at her. Her eyes are closed, so he figures maybe his should be, too. There's an urge to make a stupid joke to lighten his awkwardness, but he forces it down, knowing it'll probably make him seem more awkward than less. He takes a deep breath like she says, feeling a little stupid, then reaches out. ]

[circumspector]

[ She waits by some mental door like he's an expected visitor as he reaches out for her - and it swings open as easy when he comes knocking. A simple let in, and -- to him at least, what her mind is shaped to should be familiar.

It is the ordered halls of Hyperion, it is the high walls of vaults she has never been too. It ebbs with purple light and it echoes with chatter of the hundred ways she connects herself to the hive, to the machines, to the older empty stones of something she does not know, never understood, but dictated this all somehow she imagines. It's ordered, and she is aware of it all. Every path, every flicker, she is comfortable in it its teeming. Ever expanding as a mind does but - ]

( Here, come with me. )

[ Leads him, fingers around his, the markings glowing bright and white on her body, out from under her clothes. Control of that too: reality is nothing solid is the realisation her mind comes with. It is an easily distorted, wonderous, twisted thing, this here too - and that knowledge is not that is it terrifying just that is what it is, a stab of not so much arrogance but power, not a vaguely manipulated thing, but true, utter, the strength of women who came before, will come after, whose bodies are not bodies but are raw and crackled like storms do and they laugh with a mouthful of fire - ever fought a siren before?

Leads him with all of it - lets him lean into her, warm and open, here at least, she is in complete control where externally she feels too often her own short-comings. ]

( Tell me if it is too much. )

[dbag]

[ There's something both unsettling and comforting about her mindscape being so familiar. Every second within the Nest has been completely unfamiliar, both in physical setting and feeling — it's one thing to be somewhere new and strange, another thing to be there while feeling the presence of everyone else there and knowing they can reach into his mind — so it's nice, in a way, for there to be something well-known, even if it isn't solid. It's foreign at the same time, uncannily similar to what he knows but not quite right, not with the knowledge that it isn't reality.

Still, it's easier than something completely unknown, even if he's somewhat uncomfortable. ] ( It's not too much. ) [ She knows what she's doing, it seems, or is at least good at pretending she does. He's fully okay with allowing himself to be led, mostly because he doesn't know any other way to do it. ]

( Weird, though, it's weird, right? )

[circumspector]

[ She stifles a giggle, the mental feeling of an eyebrow being raised at him. ]

( Weird? You've... been to Pandora, right? )

[ It's a teasing jab. It's no weirder than anything she's ever seen. Maybe just different is probably better. ]

( I'll tell you about the time Jack... digitally constructed his vault hunters into CL4P-TP's code some time. That was a nightmare. I thought Athena was going to murder him right then when he suggested it. )

[ Idle chatter, because this is clearly the time for small talk, but he didn't seem to mind it so much - which she was happy enough to give it. Liked just talking for the sake of it sometimes. ]

[dbag]

[ It's definitely weird to hear her talk about Jack. Not uncomfortable or bad, just... weird. He's been uncertain if they're just supposed to pretend they don't have the Jack connection or not; he doesn't have a problem with talking about it, but Jack never kept him locked in a room all his life. She's idle about it, though, like it isn't a big deal to her. Maybe it isn't. ]

( Oh, hey. You know Athena? She kind of always looks like she's going to murder someone. Right? )

[ And she probably is always about to murder someone, honestly. ]

( She really didn't like Jack. )

[circumspector]

( I know all the vault hunters. You're looking at the person that found and recruited them all. )

[ In the end, whether she's comfortable with it or not, making up for it as much as she can, it was most of her life - the vaults, Jack, Pandora. Pretending it didn't happen wouldn't change what she was, in the end. ]

( She really didn't. She was pretty disgusted with him, in the end. Refused to work for him again after... after what he did to the CL4P-TP units. )

[dbag]

( Weird. )

[ Athena doesn't strike him as the type to get worked up about robo-rights of all things. (But then again, it's not like he knows her that well. He's not sure he wants to, either. She's very intense.) He doesn't feel like prying, though, because he's literally already prying into her mind. Speaking of: ]

( Nice place you got here. )

[circumspector]

[ It's here and - not here, but there's the feeling of looking up and around, at this carved space. ]

( Thank-you. Guess you could say I really put my mind too it. ) [ haha, she's so funny. ] ( Guess you've seen it all before, in some form or another? )

[dbag]

[ Haha. Cute. She has a very calming demeanor to her; she's probably the only person who would get a "haha, cute" reaction to her words from him, most everyone else is very much... not "haha, cute." She's right, he has seen it, at least in a way. It's less solid, less real, but he knows it. He's been here. ]

( Have you ever actually been to Helios? )

[ This seems like it would be an automatic 'no' considering what he knows of her life, but she has it down so well. ]

[circumspector]

[ Shakes her head, no - hasn't really seen any of it herself so much. But that's a given. ]

( I know every corner of it, I was integrated into thousands of its systems. The same with Pandora and Elpis. There was very little I wasn't, in the end. But I've never actually set foot on any of it, so to speak. )

[ Which is a horrifying amount of power, when thought about. In her mind, it's felt rather than said. She had been powerful, one thought of hers, one flick of her powers - and millions of people stopped having air to breath. ]

[dbag]

[ He wonders, idly, if she was ever "there" while he was actually there. Probably — it's somewhat disconcerting to know there was something happening right under all of their noses and no one suspected a thing. He could say he's sorry her dad locked her up like that, but there's no good way to say that. Well, there is, he just can't think of one.

Instead: ] ( God, what an asshole. Jack, Jack's the asshole I'm referring to. Not that you were really missing out on anything on Pandora, that's a trash-heap. Helios, though, it's pretty much a crime that he kept you away from the tacos in the cafeteria. ) [ He's trying to be lighthearted about it! The only other option is to actually seriously express things, and he'd rather not do that ever. ] ( It was actually pretty nice up there. I mean, now... not so much, but. Before. )

[circumspector]

[ What on Pandora had happened to Helios that it wouldn't be nice anymore? Well - she'd ask another time. Giggles then, ducking her head because - probably isn't comfortable, knowing she was there. ]

( Do the people from accounting still fight over who gets to be first in line? )

[dbag]

( Um. ) [ This is awkward. She can probably feel his hesitance to answer. He briefly wonders if he should lie, be like, they sure do!!!, but she'd probably be able to tell. Noncommittally: ] ( Not... really? )

[circumspector]

( Oh... )

[ and she seems to deflate with it. Sad, and out of touch in a way that prickles like vertigo. She had known every inch of Helios, all their little habits, odd little quirks. Maybe not as well as Pandora, or at least not as long. But still...

( well, I guess things can't stay the same forever. )