It's hard for me to come up with good titles

[failedpromise]

Who: Cortana and ...you?
When: Early December
Where: ADI building
Summary: Cortana is still adjusting to the constraints of her new body… and she’s very much not adjusting to the sudden weirdness that is going on with the ADI building.
Warnings: Mentions of drowning, possibility of Cortana doubting/not trusting her own experiences, will warn for anything else.



A)

"You know, I hadn’t really considered the possible issues of this particular challenge." Cortana muses to herself as she watches other people learning to swim in survival class. She’s sitting this one out for now – her body is a little too dense for actual swimming – but it’s brought up some questions that she might want to get an answer to sooner rather than later.

Getting wet won’t destroy her, she knows. She can even submerge herself for a little while before it starts to cause damage. But. She’s physically incapable of breathing, of experiencing oxygen deprivation (The literal kind, at least. The general sensation of being out of breath is something she’s unfortunately entirely capable of feeling, albeit stemming from not intaking and processing data instead of air.) as an organic would, and she’s discovered that abilities that go beyond what is typically defined as humanly possible might affect her breaking her connection with the Eye.

Even if she can’t just stay under water, even if it’s damaging to her, even if her inability to swim actually means that bodies of water pose an incredible risk… will that lack of actual breathing compromise her efforts? And what will she do if she gets stranded in the middle of a deep pond or lake or caught in a flood? Give up and die?

She sighs. She really ought to figure out some sort of protocol for this sort of situation, even if she currently plans to avoid deep water entirely.

B)

She might have had to give up a lot of her abilities when she transitioned to her new form, but memory is one thing that Humans can possess on a level to rival an AI (even if such a thing is extraordinarily rare), and so that is one part of herself that she’s kept.

Even if she has some trouble with trusting herself nowadays.

It is thus quite jarring when she turns into what every part of her mind says is the hallway that leads to the stairwell only to find herself at the door to the canteen. Immediately, she comes to a halt and stares, blinking.

What? She wasn’t even on the right floor. Seeing someone else nearby, she attempts to catch their attention.

"Excuse me. I know this is a bit of an odd question, but can you tell me what floor we’re on?"

C)

Well, that sure was an experience.

She’d spent a whole day having to re-memorize her internal map of the building she’d been working in for almost a year now, only to have things abruptly return to their original layout. It was ...deeply disconcerting, especially as most people she had questioned seemed to think that nothing was amiss, either during or after the switch.

The evening after her experience finds her in the library, looking through every scrap of information she can find on the ADI headquarters building and its layout. She’s found or purchased a notebook somewhere and has copied down everything about how the building is supposed to be and all the changes from her experience, including simple hand drawn maps of the areas that she explored that day and the normal building layout for comparison. She doesn’t have the experience sketching and drawing things that Dr. Halsey has, but she does have the basics of the skill and the previously mentioned perfect memory, so the maps aren’t pretty but they’re easy to read and accurate. She’s poring over them and muttering to herself obsessively. She doesn’t even look up at anyone who approaches.

...Wanna bother her?

Comments

[lesbeau]

Uh, of course? What kind of question is that. Her grin gets a bit wider in a knowing sort of look, and closes her book.

"Oh, so it's a nighttime stay. Y'know, not the first time I've spent a night with a cute girl." Wink. She has to, the joke is too easy. "C'mon. I'm on the second floor. You ever been over here? It's really kinda cozy."

[failedpromise]

She snorts.

"But did the other girls also have the ability to bench half a ton and translate over a hundred languages?" The tone is half playful, half boastful. To tell the truth, benching that much would probably cause her to overheat quite rapidly, but she could do it! Her capabilities had to be within human limits and well, it turns out that some humans really can do a lot.

Grinning, she'll follow Beau up the stairs. She looks around curiously as she goes. "You know, I haven't actually, aside from visiting the memorial room. It feels ...lived in." Which, true, the apartments are also very lived in but there's a uniform sterility to them that isn't present here. For someone who comes from a military background, it's actually a bit of a novelty.

[lesbeau]

"Damn, I wish." What can she say, Beau likes 'em buff. As always, it's a shame Yasha isn't here, but Beau stays quiet on that as Cortana follows her along.

"Well, that's what happens when people actually live places, and don't just use them." While she was never strictly military, her room at the Cobalt Soul was... far from homey, to say the least. They were barracks. Not homes. This place feels somewhere in the middle. "It's also housed, like, a billion people on and off, so. We kinda just have to keep making it work."

As they reach the end of the hall, Beau reaches in her pocket for a key, and then produces it and unlocks the door. "Well, here it is."

It's... cluttered, almost messy, but not dirty at least. There's a bunkbed in one corner, which looks like is actually slept in up top and the bottom is odd storage. The desk is covered in papers and books borrowed and bought, and there is a filing cabinet that must have some kind of system despite looking full to bursting. There is a closet, but the door is shut. Beau walks in, expecting Cortana to follow.

[failedpromise]

Cortana smirks. She's not even visibly muscular - the embodiment of that strong woman without the accompanying muscle trope - because as it turns out heat controlled contractile muscles are so incredibly strong that you need very little to get even professional body builder levels of strength and also she wanted to keep her robot form as close to a more human version of her original body as possible.

"Guess so." Blue eyes move to take in the little details, the wear and tear, the personal touches, all those telltale signs of the people that have been here. "So ...what made you choose the flophouse over the apartments?"

Cortana follows Beau into her room without hesitation, already scanning for a useable outlet.

[lesbeau]

There's plenty of outlets if you know where to look; there's one or two by the desk, one by the door, but Beau moves to the bottom bunkbed and starts to move things aside. The blanket and mattress is still on there, and conveniently, there seems to be a plug right next to the beds.

"Because I didn't know who the hell would be watching me in there. I came here day one." Not that the ADI weren't nice, but Beau's job at home was rooting out corruption even in her own organization, so... better to not be living there, too. "Plus, I knew a guy living here. Felt weird not to be staying with him. What about you?"

[failedpromise]

Oh, well that's convenient.

"Thanks Beau." The smile and gratitude are genuine. While she's waiting, she'll take her shirt off -- she needs to keep her back uncovered to help prevent the battery from overheating while it charges. Also, Beau's reaction will be a good way to tell how realistic she looks to an actual human who hasn't been working on building this body.

"Honestly, I didn't really feel like my own room or apartment was necessary, I just took what was offered because ADI insisted. And then I found out one of my roommates is a robotics expert."

[lesbeau]

Ultimately, the rooms in Bonnie's were made for two, there's just never quite enough people here to really necessitate it. She had expected Jester to move in, but she seemed to prefer the ADI spaces, and Beau wasn't too broken up about it. Point being- there's space.

Ironically, Beau isn't incredibly phased by the shirt, if only because she was kind of expecting it by now. Not that Cortana is predictable, but Beau is a little bit used to her flaunting her fake tits. She looks, though, because hey-- she's curious about how realistic they're supposed to look.

"Well, that works out. Are they the one who built you all, uh, all this? Or was it a whole team thing?"

[failedpromise]

Cortana pouts momentarily at the lack of reaction. As for the tits, well, those are probably the most realistic part of her chest. Sure, everything looks Human enough at first glance, but the major computery bits had to go somewhere and under that human skin is a hard case full of equally hard robot organs. Except the tits. Those are soft and jiggly as would be expected. Her extensive 'tattooing' obscures some of the details, but she's got nipples too.

After a moment, she grins. "Like what you see? I wouldn't say it was a whole team, but Tony and I did have some help working on it. Mostly with funding and materials."

There's probably a joke here about how of course it would be the incessantly flirty dude who made her look like this ...but Cortana has always looked like this, the robot is actually really faithful to her original form, just in more human colors.

[lesbeau]

Huh, that's actually more than she expected. "I mean, it's really, uh-- it's not something I'm used to really seeing? Like, that they're jiggly and all. Are they soft too?"

This is the most unsubtle way of asking if you can touch someone's tits, Beau, and yet she's coming over anyway. "Can I? Or is that weird. Tell me if it's weird."

[failedpromise]

"They're actually made with some of the same materials used in surgeries to repair or enhance Human-"

Beau approaches, and she realizes her intent. She's startled, and would probably be turning more than a little pink if the robot were capable of that.

"...It is a little weird." She laughs, because now that the shock is gone, it is also kind of funny. "But sure. I've also been wondering how they measure up to the real thing."

[lesbeau]

Even though Cortana can't blush, Beau has had this effect on many, many women and is frankly enjoying the fact she can get a little bit of a one-over on Cortana. Ha ha, the genius robot is waylaid by titties. It's like the opposite of their first meeting.

But this is something Beau knows how to handle and handle well, so she just grins with a little bit of a cocky look, and waits for the okay before she moves. "Well, good news for you, I know a lot about the real thing. Tell me if you want me to stop, yeah?"

For all of her muscle, Beau's hands are gentle and warm, if Cortana can even feel it. But she does kind of cup Cortana's chest and give them an experimental squeeze-- nothing hard like crushing a grape, just to see if they give like skin.

[failedpromise]

Would Beau fare better if the situation was reversed? She isn't the one getting her titties touched, here.

Anyway, Cortana's tits are warm and even have a skin like texture, smooth but not completely so. Her 'tattoos' obscure some details, but they have nipples and areolas and everything.

Cortana is trying admirably to hide her discomfort and awkwardness at all this, but Beau can probably feel it in the way her body stiffens, particularly when she squeezes. Because she can't feel it to the extent a Human would, just a sense of pressure and warmth, and yet it still triggers a sensation of discomfort and vulnerability in her that is entirely irrational. Her tits are quite soft, albeit not quite perfectly so, by the way. They're even slightly floppy.

She makes an awkward, startled noise -- what might actually be a squeak if she weren't fighting so hard to muffle it.

[lesbeau]

Sadly, yes. There's a couple of things Beau is good at, and one is sex. Something to do with being a monk, or-- maybe it's reach and flexibility? Who knows.

"Hey, it's alright. Not gonna go too hard. Trust me, I have experience here." For all of Beau's rough edges, this is gentle- she's smiling a soft smile, and watching carefully. "They do feel pretty real though. And I guess you must feel it. Though..."

She cocks her head, a little lightly teasing slipping into that grin. "If they're that sensitive, why aren't you wearing clothes?"

[failedpromise]

Well good for her! Cortana on the other hand, has spent most of her life touch starved to the point of desperation. She is uniquely inexperienced!

She's trying so so hard not to be even more obviously awkward but she can't even look at Beau right now, her not asking Beau to stop is more a refusal to admit how much this is getting to her than anything else. "Not as much as you'd think, actually. I can pick up warmth and pressure-" she's babbling. It's a combination of nervousness and being a huge nerd. "-but not much else. And yet I'm still responding as if..." she's less awkward now and more deep in thought, at least for a few seconds "...some relic of being based on a human, maybe?" At least until some combination of touch and Beau talking bring her back to reality.

"I have to keep my back ventilated to avoid my battery overheating." As to why she didn't wear clothes when she first came here? Force of habit + aversion to being anything like her armor wearing worst version of herself. A non solid hologram didn't really need clothes, after all. The armor had been meant to make her seem powerful when she'd mentally been at her weakest and most broken -- she didn't normally feel a need to look powerful when she could let her abilities speak for themselves.

[lesbeau]

Beau can't help but laugh, letting her shoulders shake a little. Okay, she's absolutely freaking out now, and she knows when to quit, so Beau takes her hands off Cortana gently.

"They're nice. But it's still intimate, you know? Touching and stuff. Imagine you didn't get a lot of that as, uhh, a bunch of light." While she can act dumb at times, she's never as stupid as she seems-- or distracted. "And you can have backless stuff. Or just the kinda tops I wear, usually. Might help with being able to y'know, touch people and have them touch you in a way that isn't weird for you."

[failedpromise]

As much as she tries to hide it, Beau can probably see the relief in the way Cortana's posture shifts, her whole body relaxing once there are no longer hands squeezing intimate parts of herself.

...Interesting. She's not sure whether she wants to do further experimentation to see just how human her responses are.

"True." Her nose scrunches up slightly as she thinks about it. A bra wouldn't work, because the band would prevent her from opening her vents. She'd need something totally backless... Eda's wings probably pose similar problems, maybe she should ask her.

"...Though I don't think most people are going to be that brazen about touching someone's breasts." One great thing about Cortana's far future home: for all her parading around naked, she's had basically no creepiness of that sort directed at her. This trend has continued at ADI, so she's a little naive in this one particular area.

[lesbeau]

Beau makes a bit of a face at that assumption, one that says she has been there and done that too many times. "Oh, they'll ask first. It just doesn't matter if you say no. That's when you have to break their hand. Anyway there's stuff that ties around your neck, it'd probably be fine."

Beau, for her part, just has some binding around her chest to keep her tits in place, and then what is essentially a tank top and harem pants. Loose, breezy, functional. Her moves don't really allow for armor, anyway. "Or just something, y'know, loose. Then there's room for airflow."

[failedpromise]

"Well, I guess I am several centuries in the past." She says disparagingly. Yeah there are some real creeps in the far future of the Halo universe, but that level of gross is fortunately rare.

"I'd probably need more than just loose, so I'd likely go with the tied option." Fortunately, situations where she has to strip in public are rare. Not that she's ever cared about that, given how little clothing she used to wear.