[open] someone like you with something to prove

[lesbeau]

Who: Beauregard and maybe you??
When: First half of May (1-14ish)
Where: Various; around ADI, at the book fair, and on the train.
Summary: Catchall for the start of May; Beau is coming down from the Fenix interrogation and is starting to realize she's in this Entity thing a little deeper than she thought.
Warnings: Nothing outside of standard for this game, but will mark if it comes up!

i. [library] i, i don't want to be the villain all the time

Most people would think that tracking someone down and killing them would make things weird, but Beau didn't actually expect it to be. She's made a career out of finding jackasses doing crazy magic stuff and punching them in the face, but of course, leave it to Fenix to have made things weird. Her physical injuries are fairly minimal, or at least downplayed by the amount of scars she usually carries, but that's also because he most certainly got into her head. It's... frustrating. The whole thing is frustrating.

As usual, Beau can be found poking around in the library, trying to do research, but her heart doesn't seem to be in it like usual. Sure, she's got a book in front of her, but it's hard to tell if she's really reading it or just scowling in it's direction. No matter what, it seems like there's something on her mind, but not enough to distract her from whenever you get close enough. Anyone in her vicinity can be greeted by her eyes snapping up as she looks towards them, face not looking any happier no matter who you are.

"You need something, or what? I'm busy."

ii. [well read] that i, wanna take all of the heartache from your life

Originally, Beau comes to the book fair less on any kind of ADI mission and more on a personal one. She does like reading when she's got soemthing interesting to read, and hey, libraries have been a place she knows as home for a long time. It's familiar enough that she almost doesn't question how they know who she is and how she has a library card, before she has to stop and remember this isn't her library and they probably shouldn't know that. Cool. Great. Fun.

In the meantime, she's poking around and ends up at one of the computers, clicking through a test idly without specific care for if she's getting it right, until it flags something as incorrect- more specifically, when she looks, the cue actually says Pay attention. That gets her to sit up straighter, narrow her eyes and actually read the question in front of her.

Would you ever forgive your father?

She takes a look over her shoulder, and then back, taking a moment before she selects her answer. But the next one pops up clear, Do you think you'll ever see Yasha again? and that makes her get up and go to punch the thing.

Maybe you'd like to stop her. Maybe you'd like to see some computer carnage. Or maybe you have your own questions about who this Yasha person is. Regardless, she's likely to send her fist into that thing if not stopped in the next couple of seconds.

iii. [train; generic] someone like me with nowhere to be

Trains aren't really familiar for her, being a technology that didn't really exist much in Exandria. Sure, she understands the function of them and how they work, but being this close is interesting in a new kind of way. Which means she can actually be found up near the front of it, kind of peeking in on the driver and towards the engine, just taking a look at the concept of it all.

If she sees you approach, she'll give a nod, and then tilt her head back towards the engine. "You ever see this? It's huge. I mean, the whole thing is, uhh, big, but it's cool as hell."

She might just like all the fire in there. It's hard to say.

iv. [train; fearful tunnel syndrome] i just need a, i just need a minute to show you

When the lights go out, people won't be able to see anything, but they'll certainly begin hearing something. About 30 seconds into the experience, Beau's voice can be heard by anyone in the car with her, sounding more frustrated than fearful. "Are you kidding me-- this is all you do! This is all you're supposed to do! Fuck!"

A few moments later, there's a hand on your shoulder, and Beau's voice is louder. "Hey. Put these on and tell me if you can see shit." She's then shoving what appear to be a pair of goggles into your hands that will do... absolutely nothing. If your eyes have adjusted to see her in close quarters, you'll probably see that she's frowning and looking very disappointed in just about everything at the moment. But hey, feel free to draw her attention to the creepy stuff and not... this, perhaps. Or maybe this will be a good distraction from the things outside apparently attempting to get into the cabin.

v. [wildcard] everytime I come back running to you

[Want another prompt or have another idea you want to discuss? Hit me up at cancerously, via DM, or in the game discord! I'm down for anything and happy to discuss other stuff.]

Comments

i

[failedpromise]

Really? You're not even a little happy to see a super attractive and very naked woman, Beau?

That's okay; Cortana doesn't seem to happy either. She's more startled than anything: she'd been minding her own business walking past when the other woman decided to look up and snap at her, and all she can do for a moment is just stare, wide eyed and blinking.

"Just ...passing by, actually." Beau isn't the only person who uses the library.

[lesbeau]

Okay well, let's be real, that is not what she expected. She was kind of thinking someone else was coming to bug her, or another ADI employee was here to ask her a dumb question. She blinks once, sharply, when she tries to take in the view of the... everything suddenly in front of her.

"Uh." Is she wearing clothes? Is she supposed to be wearing clothes? Is this a person or is she finally hallucinating from stress? "Not you. I mean, I-- I didn't know it was you. Or who you are?" Great, okay, let's get her head on the right way here. "Who are you, anyway?"

[failedpromise]

See, this is why Cortana chose to go with a naked avatar: it's a great way to get a reaction.

She smirks. "Cortana." She walks a little closer, brazenly leaning in to get a look at whatever Beau is doing.

Yeah there's absolutely nothing covering that body other than tattoos. It's clearly a very nonhuman body, all glowy and ever so slightly translucent, but that probably doesn't help, since all the important human bits are very clearly present.

"You act like you've never seen an AI before." Her tone is one of very obviously feigned innocence: she knows exactly what the real problem is here.

[lesbeau]

Beau's workspace isn't that unusual- she seems to be writing in a blue leather-bound journal, and a couple of books are open around her. She's pretty much stopped writing at this point to talk, but she does have a pencil in her hand that she puts down so she can lean her head on her hand.

"Babe, I don't even know what an AI is." Wait, no, that makes her sound like an idiot. Try again. "Most people that have nipples wear clothes though. Not that I'm saying you have to. Just, like, wow. Nipples. Cool."

[failedpromise]

See, now she's just gonna see what she can get away with while Beau is preoccupied with her nakedness. If the journal is open, she'll try to read what's on the page, and the same goes for any open books.

She also parks her ass right on the edge of the table like she has every right to be sitting there.

"Men have nipples and they don't have to cover them." She snorts. Beau can try to sound smart but it's clear she's not currently thinking with her brain. "Besides, I'm not most people." Her tone, and her grin, are those of someone confident in her uniqueness and also her right to do whatever the fuck she wants.

[lesbeau]

Okay, she's gay but not that gay. Either way, she has one braincell still functioning and uses it to close the journal with her free hand as Cortana slides up. The books aren't sensitive- all her research materials right now are from ADI, so it's not like she couldn't access them herself if she really wanted.

"Okay, yeah, but most guys also aren't glowing lights as a beacon of 'look at me'." Beau snickers, giving her one more look-over. "Anyway, you said you're AI? What's, what's up with that."

[failedpromise]

She pouts a little when Beau closes the journal, but fair enough. Even if the books are standard ADI fare, she's still curious about the topics-just what is this woman looking up?

Appearances aside, she's clearly got more on her mind than just tits.

"Artificial intelligence. It's kind of like being a robot but without the robot part." Which doesn't make sense unless you know a lot about how robots work. Still, she doesn't know whether Beau has the context to understand the 'intelligent computer program' explanation or the 'mathematical model of a mind' explanation.

[lesbeau]

Aah, a woman who contains multitudes. The books are... honestly, a lot of different topics. One is on symbology of ancient culture. Another is on English architecture. A third seems to be on the history of the arch in the design of churches. Three more stacked seem to be about the Fibonacci Spiral. It... invokes questions, for sure.

"Uhhh. 'Kay." Ironically, the model of a mind in a non-organic body would make way more sense, considering she's known golems, people who were trapped in bodies not their own, and more. Robots are very out of her purview, but she's going to assume it's not magic if she's not using the word. "So what does one of those... robots? Do, exactly. Run around naked and hang out in libraries?"

[failedpromise]

Architecture, symbology... the golden ratio? Maybe she's studying the appearance of the latter in the former? Or she's curious about multiple topics.

Clearly though, she might understand more than Cortana initially thought.

She snorts at the question. "A robot is an autonomous machine. Particularly smart ones contain an AI, a mathematical model of a mind." There are a lot of sexy math jokes that could be made here.

[lesbeau]

"Well, damn. If you're math then I'd have been way more interested in math." Smooth, great, doing well. It's not like she's lying, so that's a... plus, or something. Haha. Math jokes.

"But uh, that's-- that makes more sense. So you're just a person but made from math instead of from like, skin and stuff." See, there we go, like golems. She seems a lot more complex than most golems she's ever known, but it's a start. "Still didn't tell me what you're doing here. Though uh. Sorry I snapped at you, I guess. That was probably kind of rude."

[failedpromise]

"I bet you say that to all the sapient mathematical constructs." Which would be true, since Cortana is clearly the only such thing Beau has ever encountered. She rests her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands and grins.

"Apology accepted. This world is really similar to the past of my own, I was wondering if I could find any particularly interesting differences. What about you? Symbology and fibonacci spirals aren't exactly what I'd consider typical research topics."

[lesbeau]

Beau snickers, but shrugs. Eh, what can she say. Girls are girls are girls. She turns a bit in her chair back to the front where all her books are as Cortana shifts the focus, chuckling once or twice under her breath.

"Oh, and I bet you say that to everyone who you're snooping on." But she doesn't let that sentence last long, launching into the next one shortly after. "Nah, it's-- I'm kind of trying to figure out how long people have been trying to get the Entities into common... culture, I guess? Figured spirals are one of those things we see all over the place, so if I could find something common between 'em that didn't make easy sense it might be something else to chase."

[failedpromise]

Well, Cortana is a very attractive woman.

She also appears to be not even remotely offended of the snooping accusation. She's supposed to collect information, after all.

She tilts her head as she considers what Beau has said. "I suppose that would be something worth figuring out. What about myths and legends?"

[lesbeau]

Hey, Beau wouldn't be offended either. Sometimes you know what you're doing, and she has used her... well, her attempt at feminine charms to get information before. Besides, now they can have a chat, girlboss to girlboss. Or something.

"Legends are harder. You don't know what's real and what somebody made up. 'Ss why I was looking into like... building designs, stuff like that. You can use sigils and specific drawings to enchant things, so. Maybe somebody made a specifically Entity-aligned building, and then I can figure out what else they did. Leads to leads."

[failedpromise]

...Do either of them count as girlbosses? Cortana at the height of her insanity sure did, but...

"True, though if you had an idea of what you're looking for..." The bit about the buildings though, that's interesting. "Maybe check for buildings with a history of strange occurrences near and in them?"

[lesbeau]

Eeeeeh, depends on how fucked up you are at any given moment. It's fine. This is fine.

"Mm, that might make sense. Find a place that's got a lot of those hits. Figure out the common, uhhh, theme. What they're made of, how they were built, who made 'em." It couldn't be a single person- not entirely through history- but it could just as well be a family or some kind of connected cult. It always comes back to cults somehow, even if it's a family cult. "It's also just weird, because these things like... they're fighting each other through us, right? It'd be much better if they all worked together. But instead they're just flinging shit at each other. What's the point?"

[failedpromise]

"Ego, maybe? Or territoriality." She takes a moment to think about Beau's question before shrugging her shoulders. "Either way, maybe we shouldn't risk giving them ideas."

"I wonder if this library keeps old news records of supernatural events?"

[lesbeau]

Huh, territory, that's one way to think about it. A bunch of these Entities do seem animalistic, and if you feed of it, it makes sense to get defensive of your only feeding source. But surely they've planned ahead, unless that's also off the table...

"That's probably the only thing they do have. Real scarce on actual other books around here." Yes, sure, there are digital editions, but that's different. You never know what gets transcribed differently when it's a copy. "C'mon, you wanna help me with this? There's a shitton of newspapers to go through."

[failedpromise]

"Sure." It seems more interesting than her current avenue of research.

She'll look at what Beau has already selected with some interest. Does Beau keep what she has looked at sorted from what she hasn't yet? Because if so she's just gonna go for the not read yet pile and grab something.

this can be wrapped i think!

[lesbeau]

Eh, in a sense. It’s in piles she can explain, at least, even if they aren’t labelled or very logical. But ultimately it’s a good bonding experience, and they might even get some ideas out of it. All in all, a win in Beau’s book.