♈ Aradia: Emerge.

[ar0se]

Who: ar0se and teds_up
What: Aradia finally wakes up.
When: Dec. 6, morning-ish?
Where: Room 2001
Rating: wiggler-safe

Comments

YOU'RE FINE BB ♥

[teds_up]

And all the meanwhile, Ted had hovered in and around Aradia's room. Aradia's room was at the bottom of the tower, which was quite fortuitous for Ted, but even then, the idea of having to go back between there and the third floor the castle made him uneasy. So, he just... simply stayed in Aradia's room. Just wished up a sleeping bag and held tight. It wasn't like he had any other pressing matters that needed his attention, although he occasionally at least allowed himself to take a walk out in the snow.

This morning, the soft thud of Aradia's body against the ground stirs him from his sleep. Blinking with a screwed up, rather discomforted look on his face, he groans as he fights with his sleeping bag for a moment before he finally manages to unzip the thing.

He yawns, and upon finding Aradia's body on the ground, gives a slightly confused look before coming over and setting her upright. Just in case she might have been awake:

"Aradia...?"

♥ ♥ ♥

[ar0se]

She wasn't awake, not just yet. Days of strange dreams mingled with something like memory only backwards. She didn't know where she was. Who she was she had narrowed down to two or three. But there was something wrong with her body, she became gradually aware of that. Something was constricting her on all sides and squeezing her chest and smothering her face and it was hot and she couldn't breathe.

And someone was touching her. Who? Maybe it was herself. No, that wasn't it. She recoiled instinctively only to find she could hardly move. Her body was so stiff. It tensed visibly at the joints but that was all.

[teds_up]

Ted lingers in front of the girl, looking into the lifeless orbs that were the robot's equivalent of eyes. A soft puff escapes him. He'd realized some time ago that there was a chance-- a good chance, even-- that Aradia would wake up, not as the bright and cheery girl Ted knew, but instead, the emotionless pessimist of a robot.

No, not emotionless. Ted had seen the light flickering in Aradia's eyes just before he'd hugged her. Perhaps she was pessimistic, but she wasn't a lost cause. Ted was positive about that. If she'd woke up the same way, then so be it. If her previous self was any indication, Aradia did have the potential to be that happy, energetic girl once more. And if Ted had to bend over backwards to get her to be that way again, then so be it.

He sees the movement, certainly, but he doesn't want to get his hopes up unnecessarily. Dismissing it as a mirage of the lighting, he draws away to grab the cream next to his sleeping bag, and begins to spread it over his burns.

[ar0se]

She had to get out.

It was a simple imperative born of semiconscious panic. She was trapped inside something, and had to get out. Vague memories of a time long past, of being a tiny troll with spindly arms and legs trapped in a hard-carapaced pupa, flitted in and out of her awareness. She had to get out, she had to get out, she had to get out. The pressure was maybe not painful but certainly unbearable.

So Aradia struggled. Her robot shell began to twitch with her efforts, metal scraping against brittle metal. It felt the worst at her back. In jerky movements she leaned forward, trying to split it. She had to get out.

[teds_up]

Ted pauses during his favoring to look over his shoulder. He'd definitely heard something that time, and-- was she trembling? Dropping the bottle of soothing cream on the floor, he scrambles back over.

"Aradia?"

Ted felt anticipation bubbling up in him. For all he knew, the robot could literally explode in his face. Or, she might be coming back to life.

He hoped it was the latter.

[ar0se]

Fortunately, she wasn't going to do any exploding. But she felt some give. Just a little further, a little further... and there was a loud WONG sound, as the metal at her back split from neck to waist. A pair of vivid red butterfly wings burst out through the break, still partly coated in something dark blue. The relief was incredible. They stretched themselves first, but then began fluttering anxiously. She still had a ways to go.

Arms next. If she just had her arms she could tear the rest of this stuff off. Metal snapped audibly in her shoulder joints, her elbows, her armor plating. She had to get out, she was viscerally sure she would suffocate in here.

[teds_up]

"WOAH!"

To say Ted was surprised by the wings was a big understatement. In fact, it'd caught him off guard so much that he fell right back onto his bum. For a moment, he sat there, stupefied, not sure what to make of all the noises and the wings.

And then it suddenly occurs to Ted that Aradia might be inside.

Scrambling back over, he immediately reaches for her arm to help. He might not have the strength of a troll, but...

"Hang in there, Aradia!"

[ar0se]

Ted would find he didn't need super strength to help. The connectors were so badly damaged that most of Aradia's arm plates could be snapped off several at a time with a little application of torque, revealing grey skin underneath, albeit coated with an uneven film of the robot's blue blood. As soon as she had some motion in her arms again, even before her hands were fully free of the robot hands, she reached frantically up to her hair, yanking it forward as hard as she could until the back split and

she pulled her head off.

No just kidding, it was just her robot head. Her real head and shoulders popped free with a slight slurping noise and a loud gasp. AIR. SWEET MOTHERGRUBBING AIR.

[teds_up]

HOLY SHIT.

Ted falls backwards again, eyes wide. All the blue-- whatever it was everywhere-- and then the head and if Aradia's head hadn't popped out a second sooner, he might have lost consciousness then and there.

Ted isn't really known for his manliness.

BUT ARADIA.

"Aradia!" Ted grins and wraps his arms around her, not caring about all that blue glop getting all over him--

"--Owwwowowow."

Whoops, Burns.

[ar0se]

He is the most manly, no worries. That's why little girls protect him from vampires I MEAN *COUGH*.

Aradia instinctively returned the hug. Her lower half may still have been encased in metal, but now that she could breathe again, she was less panicked about the whole thing and more simply disoriented.

"Ted?" she said. "W-where are we. Are you okay?"

[teds_up]

"What, don't recognize your own room?" Ted jokes lightly. Son of a bitch those burns hurt, but he wasn't going to let go until Aradia did.

"Nah, I'm fine." Wince. "How about you, huh?"

[ar0se]

As if on cue, Aradia's stomach rumbled loudly, and she pulled back from the hug, embarrassed. It didn't help that she was also neither properly dressed nor anywhere near clean, or that she had just inadvertently ruined one of Ted's shirts. "Hang on," she said. "Uh - don't look for a second. Let me get this thing..." She trailed off, already wrenching off bits of the leg plates.

[teds_up]

Ted didn't care about that shirt anyway! He pulls away, still wincing a bit, when... it also occurs to him that she's not dressed. He pauses, mentally flailing for a moment.

It'd be a good time for a towel right about now, castle.

And on cue, one of the ghosts comes right on through the door, handing the towel to Ted. (Ted decided not to dwell on the fact that this meant the towel was non-corporeal for a few moments.) Instead, he'll just grab that towel, come around Aradia, and drape it around her.

"Here."

A sigh of relief escapes him. Now that he knew for sure that Aradia hadn't just ripped her own head off and wasn't dying or anything like that, he was... really happy. He'd hug her again, but, you know. The girl had just come out of her robot shell after a month, and was terribly lacking clothes at the moment. Celebrations could wait.

[ar0se]

Well not lacking all clothes just most of them and oops I accidentally the thread really awkward anyway 8^y

Aradia accepted the towel and pulled it around her shoulders. A few seconds and some telekinesis (bluh, it made her head ache) were enough to strip away the rest of her metal husk. Her legs were a little shaky still, but she made it to the wardrobe all right and equipped a simple black shirt and skirt (of which she of course had many copies). Her wings she left out, though. They needed to stretch and breathe.

All right. Still a mess, still tired, still hungry. Her hair was matted and damp with blue blood, but really who gave a fuck about that, she was alive again. (Again.) "Okay," she told Ted, belatedly, and flopped facedown into a beanbag chair. "Ugh. Oh my god, I feel like I haven't eaten for the whole dim season."

[teds_up]

And Ted? Ted couldn't feel more relieved. After a rather terrible month which resulted in him almost dying, losing a friend, and almost losing another friend, something had gone right. He'd almost literally felt the weight lift off his shoulders.

And when he hears Aradia's comment? He practically jumps to a stand.

"Right, food! Just wait right here, okay? I'll be right back with something for you."

Before Aradia can hope to answer, Ted's left the room and immediately headed for the castle's kitchen.

[ar0se]

"Wait, Ted, we can just -" But he was already out the door. "- wish for it." Oh well. They were on the first floor anyway, the kitchen was like one minute away. Sighing, she flopped back down on the fluffy plush fabric, trying to get her thoughts in linear order again