thearena | Where a dead man called out for his love to flee.

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Where a dead man called out for his love to flee.

Who| All those on the liberation mission and all those being made to fight against them.
What| The liberation of District 10.
Where| District 10.
When| This week.
Warnings/Notes| War, violence, death. Please warn for more in headers.

Fields of grass are all that can be seen in any direction for at least an hour while the hovercraft come in. These fields are broken only by the occasional color change (marking different kinds of grass and even the occasional wheat field) and a farmstead every now and again. It’s easy to see that the animals here far outnumber the people as it’s more likely to see a grazing horse or cow or even something stranger like llamas and elephant before one would ever notice a human being. The temperature is mild in this season, not too cool in the shade and not too hot under the sun, although as the hovercraft come in and the people of the main city come into view, quite a few are dressed in long pants and sleeves, their clothing worn and dirty from hours of hard labor. In wide open fields like these there are only a few groves of trees to park a hovercraft out of sight behind. It’s one of these far off groves the craft lands. It would be a shame to have to hoof it all the way into the city.

If you’re from the Capitol, this doesn’t apply, as they can land wherever is most convenient. For those in the rebel forces... well just be glad someone knew what to expect and has procured more than a few horses to carry you into town.

District Ten has always been overlooked by the Capitol. A large district by landmass alone, its people are perceived to be just as domestic as the livestock they tend to, so despite whatever political climate it may hold, rebellion is not seen as a concern here. Consequently, those on the rebellion’s side will find they’re the first ones on the scene.

They’re greeted by friendly, if not guarded, faces. These are people who stick to their own community, their own families, but they’re not an unfriendly group. They know who you are and why you’re here. They’ve said for ages that the Capitol needed to go down, that something ought to be done about Snow and his Games, but no one ever paid them any mind. Probably because all that talk may be there, but it’s only ever been that. No one expects an uprising from the countryfolk.

Being so laid back, there's really not much in the way of graffiti. No one particularly has anything to say that has been said and shrugged off. One might hear laughs and mutters about the compliance video or a morose mention of Bison and the call to fight. There are also others pointing out that this is just the way things work.

Even the peacekeeping forces here are limited and laid back, not nearly as strict as might be found in other districts, but they are still there, so it’s best to keep your heads down as you move through the town.

As for how the Capitol forces are greeted upon their arrival, well, that all depends on how successful those rebels are.

The war continues, and in the back of everyone's mind is a familiar phrase; may the odds be ever in your favor.

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He motions for her to follow, turning aside and heading for the motor pool instead of the infirmary. There he picks up supplies as they walk from one end of the makeshift garage to benches at the back; a small wrench and screwdriver, a hand welder, some rubber tubing and some electrical tape. All the things he's needed in the past to do spot repairs after a disaster in the field. Once his bounty is collected, with Albert entirely ignoring any protests of Capitol mechanics in the process, he lays it out in easy reach of a bench and motions for Luna to sit.

"Here. Let me have a look at you and you can tell me what happened." He doesn't sound kind, per se, but he doesn't sound antagonistic either. Honestly he's still not sure what he thinks. He's gone around and around in his head over Luna since discovering her origin, always to simply shove the problem to the back of his thoughts as unnecessary to dwell on. Until he couldn't help it. And then he'd go in circles again. Until finally he'd spoken to Jet about it, maybe because it seemed less dire than the problem of Jet's mind being still partially scrambled, or maybe because he just couldn't get it out of his head, but either way Jet had encouraged him to treat Luna like anyone else, at least until her programmed loyalties could be confirmed.

Luna isn't sure about disturbing the mechanics, but she's in neither the mood nor the position to be protesting to Albert right now. She takes one arm off the wound on her side as she sits, and points out the different locations where her skin's been punctured - her side, her chest, her thigh, her arm. None are severe enough to have penetrated through her artificial tissue to damage wires or metal, but the injuries on her side and leg especially are leaking a significant amount of fluid.

"I ran into one of the rebels," she explains, but it's all Luna can manage before her voice cracks with shame and her words slow to halting. "My orders wouldn't permit me to let him be. But he was armed, and I was never programmed to fight. So in the end...he shot me until it was best for me to run, and he escaped." There's a tamped-down sort of relief evident when she speaks of his escape, contrary to her talk of orders. She'd recognized Jeremy from the Arena, and she hadn't wanted to bring him back to the Capitol regardless of what her orders compelled her to do. The fact that she's come out of it bleeding and in need of more repair mutes most of the enthusiasm she could have shown, though, even if she weren't wary of any punishments over potential rebel sympathies.

He glances up at her from his examination of her side, cold fingers carefully teasing at the broken tissue while his other hand holds a small penlight to see within and find the leak. He grunts at her talk of orders, acknowledgement more than anything. "The Capitol doesn't know how utilize its resources properly. They're not a military powers, just a bully."

There's a hint of approval in his words though, a note behind the disparagement of curiosity at Luna's motivations. Could it be she actually did go against her programming in some small way to let the rebel go? That she purposely endured these injuries as a loophole? If so, it displays a major level of free will that Albert's being forced to acknowledge more and more, not just in Luna but in robots and AIs as a whole. Sphinx, Protoman, Valhalla's AI, and now Luna, they all function according to their programming but also expressed themselves through it, through purposeful expressions of remorse, worry, regret, and personal allegiance as opposed to dictated ones.

He can't find a difference between that and someone non-artificial working past their upbringing, finding who they want to be is different from who they're told their are, different from what they're 'programmed' to do. He's just not sure how to bring up the subject.

He owes Luna an apology, but he's not sure how to bring that up either.

"I need to open this wider to get at the leak. Do you have nerve net? If so, I can try to numb it first if that would work." A kindness, worrying over what pain she'd feel.

Luna doesn't take her encounter in the field as optimistically as Albert does. She'd stalled as much as she could, tried everything she could to avoid threatening Jeremy, but in the end she'd attempted to harm a human. Or in other words, she'd violated the First Law of Robotics when she'd promised herself entering the Hunger Games that it would never happen again. She's glad Jeremy got away, but in her eyes it reflects more on her failure than her success.

As a result she's not feeling very talkative, so Luna just nods quietly in confirmation, shifting her position to give Albert a better angle to deal with the wound and bracing herself for the pain. "Yes, that's fine." She makes no effort to start up a conversation beyond that, figuring that Albert wouldn't be interested in talking now that he knows what she is. It shows in how she's dedicated to not meeting his eyes.

Privately she agrees with him, though: the Capitol certainly hasn't used her optimally. Given the politics that led to her current condition - namely, her creator's status as a suspected traitor and her own proposed status as collateral - bullying seems to fit as well. But giving it a name won't undo what she's done, and she doesn't know what Albert expects her to say about it. If the former rebel wants to talk anti-Capitol sentiment she's in no position to stop him, but she can't just go and engage in it either. Not with things as they are now.

Her non-answer prompts an annoyed sigh. "Is answering the bare minimum part of your programming too or is that a choice?"

He looks disconcerted for a moment at having said such a thing and makes a disapproving noise at himself as he very carefully presses into the wound in order to find were he should patch. "I'm sorry, that was uncalled for."

Another moment of silence, and then Albert takes a page from Jet's book and decides to just talk, hoping that he gets to the point eventually in a way that his company will understand. "I owe you a larger apology for before, at the Center and in the infirmary, as well. I've never been terribly comfortable with robots, as I'm sure you've gathered, but I've been doing a great deal of thinking since we last spoke."

He falls quiet again after that, needing his concentration for his hands for a few moments as he finds the punctured tube not too far in her body cavity and goes reaching for the electrical tape with one hand and pinches the tube with the other to keep it from continuing to leak.

Luna ducks her head when Albert makes the jab. She doesn't respond, and it's easier that way for more than one reason. A machine's pain isn't precisely the same as the kind she experienced while in a more organic form, but it is enough to keep her preoccupied as Albert handles her wounds.

Albert gets her full attention when he apologizes, though: that's strange to her, certainly not something Luna had been expecting. She's trying not to move, so as to avoid any startled mishaps, but she feels comfortable enough speaking again. "You don't need to apologize. You were right, when we first spoke in the infirmary. And you don't have to worry about my feelings."

That's what she assumes this is about, anyway. As with their last meeting, that much consideration is already more than she expects - especially if it really is something that bothers Albert that much. "I understand why you wouldn't be comfortable with me. But what do you mean, you've been thinking?"

"I wasn't, not entirely, and nor are you if you agree with me."

He lets out a long breath, already certain he's botching up the conversation at its root. At least he's able to get the tape in on the injury.

"Is there really any difference between two people creating a human being organically and raising it to see the world as they've experienced it through their own eyes and creating a being technologically with programming that does the same thing? What are parents doing but slowly 'programming' their offspring, whether it takes or not?" He's silent for a moment, checking for more leaks as carefully as he can. "I thought the difference was in an artificial intelligence's inability to think for itself, but I've found recently that it's not so. Significantly advanced AIs can think, feel, and even want for themselves, and to take that as true means accepting their... humanity."

For lack of a more apt term.

"It took me decades to come to terms with believing myself to still be Human after I was augmented, largely because it was against my will but also because these mechanical parts are superior in many ways to Human physiology. Like this, I can't get sick. I'm impervious to small arms fire. I won't age. Yes I'm still Human, at the core, even if that was not the primary function of my cybernetics. Who am I to deny you, when you're the same as I am, just from the other direction."

"Also, my husband said I was being an asshole." He withdraws his fingers and meets her eyes plainly for the first time since he'd started administering to her. "How does that feel?"

Luna doesn't answer for a moment, just listens what Albert has to say and tries to process it in accordance with everything she knows about herself and about him. About the people she's gotten to know since arriving in Panem, and the things they'd talked about. The things Albert is talking about now.

"I'm all right," she says at last, both as an automatic reaction and because she's noticed that her pain has decreased as a result of Albert's work. She looks down to check over the wound. "I think it's fine for now, but I might need a more thorough repair when everything is over. Again." She sighs. This is the second time in a row she's been injured, and on top of Sigma's death in the previous battle too. She doesn't want to keep worrying him, but so far Luna's been failing in that.

And with the rest of what's Albert said, she knows that's not the only matter she's had trouble with lately. "You know, nobody ever believed that robots and humans could be the same where I come from," she admits. "I'm a machine. Just a jumble of metal and plastic. But since I came here, even Si--um, even my creator...everybody's so different."

Phil and Sansa didn't care what she was. Sigma had told her again and again he wanted her to choose for herself, until she realized he really meant it. Firo vehemently denied that she could be anything but human, and she hadn't known what to think about that. She doesn't know what to think about this, now. It changes so much, or in another sense it doesn't change much at all. She looks down at her wound, freshly patched, and thinks of how she got that way. "Maybe it doesn't matter. There are some things that don't change no matter what I am."

"It will need looked at. This is just a patch, and we don't heal, we need repairs." Which she knows, but he needed to put the 'we' on it, show that they're not actually very different. He's just not sure if that's for her benefit or his own.

He moves back a bit, wiping his hands on a rag as he listens to her sort herself out. The experience she cites of attitudes towards synthetics where she's from is entirely familiar and he nods in understanding. Whenever people found out he and his team were cyborgs, the reaction was the same. Distrust, insistence that they weren't 'real' or valid to even exist, forgetting entirely that they'd likely just saved the person in question's life. Either that, or they were treated like commodities. Weapons to be taken out and paraded around, used as scapegoats or displayed as curiosities. He wonders if Luna's impression of herself was so influenced by a similar society. It sounds like it, from where he's standing.

"Such as?" He wants her to keep talking; this sort of change of mind, even if sparked from outside, needs to come from within.

Luna takes a while to respond again, this time not because she doesn't know what to say but because she's a little afraid to say it. She's never talked to anybody but Sigma about what the Capitol's done, and he already knew about it all. Even then that had been conducted via telepathy. Getting the words out there feels like leaping over a wall, but she does manage it. "As things are right now, I am programmed not to disobey the Capitol. It doesn't matter what I believe, so long as the Capitol's orders come first. That won't change."

It's a little disconnected to the question of how comparable Luna is to a human, but she has other things in mind as well - specifically, the Three Laws. The knowledge that she's violated the first law yet again is a dirty feeling, eating at whatever passes for her heart. She's already dreading the next time this happens, or even worse the time she might actually succeed in harming somebody, and it adds a twist of pain to her last statement.

It's another warning, she tells herself. Luna's never been one to protest her circumstances, but her encounter with Jeremy is a stark reminder that the Capitol has made her into something she hates. "I'm dangerous like this," she concludes. "Harming people is...the worst thing I could possibly do. But when I ran into that rebel, I didn't have a choice."

"Did you harm him?" Albert raises an eyebrow. It sounded to him, by the way Luna explained what happened, that she hadn't managed it, nor had she likely tried very hard to do it in the first place even if she had to make it seem as if she'd given her level best.

He looks around them to make sure they're not going to be overheard.

"Not all rebellion is loud and direct, nor is it all grand gestures. Sometimes it's not acting when you could, or looking the other way. Sometimes it's finding the loopholes to allow for what you want to do versus what they want you to do." He sets aside the rag and looks at her wound again to make certain it's not going to give her any more trouble before she can get it fixed properly.

"I'm told to go out there and protect the Capitol's interests in the Districts, when we come to these things. I do actually do that, but it's in the way of rescuing people. Civilians just trying to get through their lives, Peacekeepers who are just doing their job because they were ordered to, the same as us. That's in the Capitol's interest; moreso, to my mind, than shooting some people on a battlefield." He places a careful piece of the electrical tape to seal up the cut in her skin, hoping its not so advanced that it will cause some issues in removal later. If anything it'll just smart coming off. "It isn't easy, but it's better than the alternative."

Luna hadn't hurt Jeremy, not really, but the sense of violation - both of her own will and of the First Law - sticks all the same. Luna listens intently to Albert rather than make that point, though, and what he says is...strange. Her own single act of rebellion back in the Nonary Game had been an act of desperation, grand and final. Looking the other way was something she associated with the rest of her behavior back then, choosing to follow her direct orders rather than what she believed was right, and at first the thought of doing that again feels more repulsive than anything.

But that's not what Albert means, she realizes. He means the opposite if anything. She considers that as she examines the area where Albert's applied the tape, picking at the ripped clothing near it like she could tug it back into place. "I've never done that before. I...usually I had no reason, or it was hard just to keep within my orders at all." It's not a denial, but a signal that she's still processing the possibilities. "When what I want to do is prohibited by my orders, it's always a negotiation of sorts. Even what I had to do, earlier...I had to fight for so long."

"It's harder, perhaps, but similar to what organic beings have to do as well. What I'm doing now. Not in helping you of course since we're on the same side, but playing the game because we have to." He doesn't feel like he's doing a very good job of it either, but GB had told him once that to be a spy is to believe your role entirely as you play it but to always be prepared if the audience is a particularly tough one. Mostly, he feels being prepared to be found out is what keeps him from being convincing.

"Even if you weren't conscious of it, it's entirely possible you're fighting it just the same." He rises from the bench, wiping his hands on his pants and offering his hand down to her to help her up. A small smile catches his lips, genuine and tentative, looking for her approval. "At the very least please accept my apologies for my harsh words, and try not to be so hard on yourself."

When he asks it like that, it's hard to say no. Luna's still trying to work through all the implications of what Albert is saying, but it isn't hard to that he means all this genuinely. He isn't as confrontational or radical as Firo had been when he found out, but Albert's arguments about their similarity remind her of that particular talk all the same. And, well - Luna's starting to wonder more and more how right they might be.

So she nods and takes his hand to stand up, and Luna means it when she says, "I'll do my best." She smiles, partly sincere and partly in self-deprecation. And...thank you, for apologizing and saying all this. You're not the only one who's told me not to be hard on myself, actually. I think maybe that's a sign."

"Perhaps it is." The smile remains on his face, soft and somewhat relieved. He's still not certain he's completely rid of his discomfort concerning robots and AIs overall, it may never leave him, but Luna at least he feels is different and that difference he knows could apply to others of her... race? Are they a race? Maybe.

"I have other things to take care of for now, but get that treated by someone professional when you can." Things like dying, if Psiioniic is to be believed. And why wouldn't he be? This is a war after all. But if there's the smallest chance he won't come back, he wanted at least for Luna to know he regrets what was said, that he's trying to do better, even if he has to convince her as well that he was as wrong as he was.

"Take care of yourself, Luna."

"I'll do my best." Certainly Luna doesn't have any plans of getting herself further hurt, and maybe now that she's already been injured once she'll be able to keep closer to headquarters for the remainder of the fighting. Albert seems to be doing just the opposite though, and given the reason she's here in the first place that worries her. "You'll do the same, won't you? I hope that the next time I see you, it won't be as a patient."

That said, there are battles going on and people who need treating. Now that Luna's patched up for the time being, she really ought to get going. With one last goodbye she heads out in search of the infirmary and wherever else she'll be needed, still thinking of Albert's talk of rebellion in smaller ways. It won't be needed for now as long as her immediate goals match with the Capitol's needs, but maybe one day...

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Where a dead man called out for his love to flee.

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