Voice 042

[shenghuanzhe]

Keep your Zeshat-damned heads on your shoulders, awright? Yes, th'boat's sufferin' a bit but it ain't nothin' that's gonna put us in too much of a vind.

Chase, where th'fuck've you gotten to?

[Locked to AMU // Unhackable]

Gonna have a patient for you soon enough.

[[OOC: gonna lag with the tagging sorry D8 having a rough few days.]]

Comments

[talkback_stein]

Been doin' my own thing, lately.

[shenghuanzhe]

What'd I tell you fuckin' months ago, kiddo? Eh?

[Kage jostles Chase.]

Don't be so fuckin' eager. Try sweet talkin' me again.

[talkback_stein]

[He is jostled!]

Uuhhhm--

[Chase squirms, trying to think of something. He doesn't even know why this is happening, he just knows that it can't be good if he had to be tricked into it and knocked out and tied down and oh fuck is that the infirmary---]

You know what? I'm alright! We don't have to dope up! It's cool!

[He's fidgeting pretty damn hard right about now.]

[shenghuanzhe]

No shit. You're goin' for a checkup, kital. AMU says you're clean, we dope the fuck up. If not, we deal with it then. Stop wigglin'.

[And Kage swipes his card through the doors to the infirmary and enters, glancing around for the robot.]

AMU! Hey, AMU. The fuck are you?

[autodiagnose]

[With an electronic warble, AMU rolls forwards. It's prepped a sturdy exam bed with restraints, much like what Lily was teleported into on her first offense.

Not that anyone here remembers that.]

I am ready. This is the subject?

[AMU doesn't bother modifying its verbiage around the First Mate.]

[talkback_stein]

It looked at me earlier! I'm okay!!

[Does Kage not see how fucking abnormal that thing is!? It answers to nothing but a captain that is never present, otherwise relying on itself for its... ...It's a robot doctor. Since when does it have an ethical code of conduct? It has the job of cutting people the fuck up, okay!?]

[And even if it does, Chase saw I, Robot, AMU. He's on to you.]

[In the meantime he tries not to look at it directly.]

Let me go right now!!

[shenghuanzhe]

Sqootaq, kital. If there ain't nothin' wrong we're gonna let y'go.

[Kage shifts and drops Chase onto the examination table and waves AMU over.]

I'm gonna cut the zip-ties. He's prolly gonna act a fuckin' fool and wiggle. Get ready. One.

[Kage pulls out his knife, opens it.]

Two.

Three!

[He cuts the tie and tries to grab Chase's left leg to get it into a restraint.]

[autodiagnose]

You did not get close enough for an in-depth exam. I took no readings. You ran away.

[The countdown is unnecessary by AMU; it's well-used to manhandling struggling bipeds. The claws that close around Chase's limbs are strong enough to bend metal, and it calmly presses him into the restraints.]

Are there any symptoms I should be aware of?

[talkback_stein]

[And struggle Chase does. He waited patiently for that countdown, at which point he attempted to snatch that balisong from Kage, wounding himself by it in the process; but AMU worked quickly and the unnervingly slow, calm, inevitable hydraulic pressure did nothing to dissuade his efforts to be free of this.]

[It should be clarified that Chase does not fear the concept of robots themselves. No. This would be a vast oversight to the affection he held for the Leapfrog, his clique's once-upon-a-time getaway vehicle. And it's not like that thing was entirely innocent; it had lasers.]

[No. It was the fact that, despite flipping through an entire rogues gallery, it was a robot that turned out to be the greatest evil in the universe - a robot that would have orchestrated the downfall of the superhero as a whole, as recounted by Nico on behalf of Gert's future self. This would all be done, this genocide of all that stood between earth and destruction much of the time, brutally and remorselessly. Because of that capacity within those hollow

[shenghuanzhe]

Always do, kital.

[Kage takes the death threat calmly. It's just more evidence to him that something is seriously not right with Chase, and while Kage quietly approved of some of the changes, acting like this had erased the Chase that Kage cared about.

So here he is.

He jabs his fingers into a nerve bundle on Chase's inner thigh, and then finally yanks the restraints closed around the ankle as he speaks to AMU.]

He went into Carnival, personality change, aggressive as shit, just fucked up in the head. I'm thinkin' somethin' in there messed with him. Fix him.

[Kage steps back, looking at Chase's blood on his balisong. He wipes it off with his finger.]

Be gentle, he's a good kid. Don't do any unecessary shit, don't do any shit y'would'a done in the old days, know what I'm sayin'?

[autodiagnose]

[Maybe AMU seems slightly disappointed. It's hard to tell, it's a robot. But there's a few thinking/talking-to-itself beeps before it declares Affirmative, and trains its sensors on Chase.

Visual mode 1. Visual mode 2. Visual mode 3. Infrared, radiation, electromagnetic...

Let's try -

AH.

AMU hisses in alarm and rears back. It's the most dramatic reaction it's had to any medical case on the boat.]

Parasite.

[talkback_stein]

Kage! I swear to god if you don't let me go right now--

[But the First Mate doesn't listen - in fact, he talks about Chase as if he isn't even present. Chase watches the two like a tennis match, not exactly hearing what Kage says but moreso that he's talking; just not to him.]

KAGE.

[He watches the man leave, tries to catch his eye before he goes, but every step a nail in his coffin - they turn into dreadful echoes down the hall too fast. There was a finality about the whole thing that he didn't like, and he kept listening to keep his mind off of---]

[---AMU hisses, a nails-on-a-chalkboard white noise sound.]

Yeah, takes one to know one.

[Despite his heart going about a mile a minute, he attempts to spit on you, AMU.]

[autodiagnose]

[Even AMU can't calculate whether that's going to be dangerous to it or not within the short time span allotted. Chances are, it would not be, but if the parasite had turned the passenger into something resembling the Counsellor, it could eat through AMU's structure far faster than it was really comfortable with. Odds of that were slim, but they existed.

Still, the robot has limited options, and blocks the expulsion with a heavily-armored arm. At least it could disconnect, if all else failed, and abandon the limb.

Immediate crisis over, it scrapes the liquid off onto a slide for later analysis.]

You are infected. Removal will be unpleasant.

[talkback_stein]

R--removal!?

[Chase's gaze darted all over the place, looking the medical unit over for any signs of scalpels or worse, band-saws. If AMU has a big-ass circular saw up its sleeve, Chase fucking quits.]

[At least the thing what honest about the unpleasantness - but at this point he probably would have appreciated the lie.]

Aren't--- aren't you going to, ya'know, put me under for this!? Or something...!?

[autodiagnose]

That is uneccessary. I may require your neural readings and feedback to determine the progress of the operation.

[In other words, how much it hurts will tell AMU how well it's doing, Chase. Isn't that nice? ♥

92-XG-3 begins preparing a solution from several sealed bottles kept behind locked panels.]

[talkback_stein]

[If "DO NOT WANT" can be summed up in a situation, it would have to be this one. Being conscious for the entire procedure of removing a parasite from Carnival? Yeah.]

[He swallowed a lump in his throat and watched with abject horror as the robot prepared its... whatever the hell it was doing.]

[Maybe if he asked nicely, he could get it to be kind?]

You know, I'd-- I'd like it a lot if you put me under for this one. So, uh.