[OPEN LOG] I've a heart of gold in the smallest size

[serialskiller]

Who: Murderbot and y'all
When: Early December
Summary: My normal approach is useless here.
Warnings: Squishy things like bot emotions. Also risk of fall damage.

1. More than an illustration [About Anywhere]
Murderbot's gotten pretty good at painting landscapes, thanks to Bob Ross, but now it's stepping out of that comfort zone and trying to sketch people. Well. Parts of people. The way a ponytail falls over a shoulder, but without a face. An incomplete hand with tidy nails, gripping onto some sort of pole or cane. A single shoe, a black leather mary jane. An individual eye. A man's mustache and nose. Hair in a braid. What is unmistakeably Max's knee, smoldering after being shot.

It doesn't seem satisfied with any of it, though the renderings are detailed and very photorealistic. After all, its mind's eye is a literal camera. Of course it registers every detail. But as it rips out a page and crumples it up to toss away, it happens to hit the nearest person with the paper ball instead.


2. Points of articulation [The Memorial]
There's a sweatshirt Murderbot received as a Sundries gift months ago that it's never worn in public. And never will now. Near everything else people have set up, Murderbot folds the shirt so the number 57 on the back, like the numbers on the back of a sports jersey, are visible, and sets it out with everything else.

Yeah, this memorial was originally meant for previous passengers, but there's nowhere else for it to properly...you know.

"And you got the number wrong anyway, dumbass. Sixty-one. It was sixty-one. They counted too."

Beside that, he also sets some of Jinx's tools and half-finished creations, and then turns to slip away before anyone notices it was here.

...oops, too late.


3. Come to life on a brass spring [Promenade]
Look, the new brass statue in the Promenade is weird and Murderbot is climbing it. That's it, that's the prompt. Come bother it?


X. Such a wonderful plaything [Wildcard]
darkersolstice or darkersolstice #9463 to plot

Comments

[sabigoe]

Wow, those folds are way better than her first time making one.

"Here, I'll show you how to throw it."

Once the paper airplane is completed, she stands from her seat and lifts it up. With a flick of her wrist, she sends the plane flying across the room and sliding underneath another table.

When she first did this with Natsuno, she didn't do much of a good job. Her airplane took an early nosedive.

"Now you try, Rin-Rin."

[serialskiller]

Murderbot's plane glides a bit further, aided by the precision of its folding techniques--across the room before hitting a wall, its nose crumpling.

"Oh! That worked better than I expected."

[serialskiller]

"Roommates are hard. I just lost mine. Which is also hard, but in a different way." It nudges one of Jinx's tools with its foot gently.

[winepouring]

He had tried to lighten the mood, yet things have only gotten grimmer.

"I see..." he looks down at the tools, but they aren't recognizable to him. "Were the two of you friends...?"

[serialskiller]

“Sometimes? She was loud and chaotic and didn’t respect anyone, including me. But. Sometimes.”

It isn’t sure how it should feel about her now, honestly.

[winepouring]

Sometimes... How relatable.

Shi Qingxuan sighs. "She sounds like my own roommate..."

...

"Were you going to stay here a little longer? I was planning to give my respects to the former passengers myself while I was here."

[sabigoe]

"Wow!" Fio blurts out without thinking, clapping her hands together. Immediately, she clasps her hands over her mouth as she remembers to use an 'inside voice' in the library. She muffles a delighted laugh.

"That was amazing. So much better than my first try."

She bounds away from the table, going to retrieve both paper airplanes. Of course, she has to clean up their litter...

[serialskiller]

"Who's your roommate?"

It steps aside so Shi Qingxuan can do whatever he'd like to at the memorial, and so it can watch.

[winepouring]

"The Young Miss Rita Mordio..." he replied, playfully referring to her with extra reverence.

As he knelt before the monument, he drew the paper crafts from the folds of his shirt and set them before it. They weren't the most faithful replicas, but he had folded the paper to approximate the shape of the phones, and had used ink to paint on the details of their screens.

While his hands busied themselves with arranging them, he turned the question back on it, "What was your roommate's name?"

[serialskiller]

"Jinx. She was known as Jinx. No family name that I was aware of."

It wonders if the nuances of that name translate, or if it's merely word-sounds.

[winepouring]

It's both, and admittedly, "Jinx" carries more overt meaning to him than the name "SecUnit" does.

That, and he's heard that name before. A strange look comes across his face, and his actions halt with his hands hovering over his crafts.

Slowly, he pulls them back to rest on his lap.

"I remember hearing about her before, but I never met her. She sounds like she was the bold and tenacious type."