OPEN

[metabee]

Who: Metabee and You
Where: Trailblazer Dorms, CONDOR HQ, Some Park
When: About a week after the cyborg invasion
What: Metabee's back in society after getting his programming cleaned up.
Warnings: Grumpy teen robots

Waking up alone in the one of the towers was not really the ideal way to come back online. With the AI out of commission, and no longer screwing up his core processing, his internal readouts were going crazy with error reports. He managed to get himself out of the tower and called up the Medabot Corp first thing, feeling pretty rundown. It didn't take them long to track him down and get him back to the labs, and even moving quick on the repairs it was still nearly a week by the time they were willing to let him out.
Enter your cut contents here.

CONOR HQ

As soon as Metabee has passed all the tests AGAIN, he'd been sent over to CONOR HQ for a debrief. Which was as bring as painful as it sounded, since he had to recount how he got abducted after attempting to met with Dr. Dynamo, putting his teammate at risk in the process, and proceed to assist the AI in it's questionable goals. They'd been at it for hours, asking a hundred questions, many of which he couldn't answer. It felt like forever before they finally approved him to return to the Trailblazers.

He was currently sulking on on of the hall benches near the exit, waiting for a ride to drive him back to the dorms.

TRAILBLAZER DORMS

Coming back to the dorms was simultaneously a relief and a little weird. Metabee hadn't exactly treated the others the nicest he could have when he was being controlled by the AI, and he knew them all well enough to know they were probably sitting on grudges. Or 'I told you so's, considering how many of them had accurately suspected he was making a lousy decision.

When he quietly pushed the main door open, no one else was around, but then most people didn't hang out by the front door anyway. He made his way down the hallway, hesitating a brief moment before calling out.

"Yo, guys, I'm back and not brainwashed."

SOME PARK

Even having just come back form being brainwashed, when public opinion was very much again AIs right now, there was only so much sitting around Metabee could handle. He'd waited till it was a little less busy outside to head down to the park nearest the dorms, climb one of the larger trees in the area, and parked out on his favorite branch to people watch. He wasn't exactly out of sight, but it was pretty clear he wasn't exactly open to interaction right now. Even on that short walk he'd gotten some pretty nasty glares from people, being an AI wasn't exactly the most popular thing right now.

Comments

park

[pullingamiko]

When Miko had decided to go out for a while, wandering the city and looking around, it was mainly with the hope that she would run into one of her... friends? She wasn't around most of them for long, and 'allies' didn't seem right either - acquaintances from the cyborg incident. The way she had ended up losing contact with each of them, left with no idea of what happened to them and whether they got out of that mess safely, didn't sit well with her.

She wasn't sure how good the chances were of actually encountering any of them by just drifting around like this, but it was worth a shot, and it wasn't like she had much to go on here.

What she was not expecting or intending was to see a rather familiar yellow robot sitting in a tree at a park.

The moment she saw Metabee, she froze, a few yards away from the tree. Then she ran up to the base of the trunk, pointing up at him accusingly. "It's YOU! What are you doing here?!"

Re: park

[metabee]

He wasn't expecting someone to really address him up there, let alone start shouting at him. Metabee jumped a little, loosing his balance and nearly falling out of the tree completely.
"AARGH! Oh, you know, just hanging around." It was hard to miss the growl as sarcasm as he clutched on the branch for dear life.

"Look I'm sorry about that stuff at the towers, but it wasn't my fault so can we just drop it? Thanks." He scrambled back onto the branch in a huff, glaring down at her from his perch.

[pullingamiko]

She crossed her arms and glared right back at him. "Really. Would you mind explaining how, exactly, you calling my friend-" So maybe she was just over why that wasn't quite accurate, but she was willing to use the term loosely here. "-garbage and saying that I should be grateful for my own kidnapping was 'not your fault'?"

True, him passing out suddenly was kind of weird. And she did know that some robots' brains had been messed with. But right now she was too busy being ticked off to quite make the connection there.

[metabee]

"Well I was kind of reprogrammed and brainwashed at the time, for one thing," he retorted from his spot above her, pretty glad to have the higher ground for once.

"I mean yeah, I did call your friends trash but trust me that is not my normal opinion on superheroes. I obviously wouldn't be a Trailblazer if that were the case, dude."

[pullingamiko]

...oh. Brainwashing actually explained a lot, didn't it. Her arms remained crossed, but she dropped into a somewhat less aggressive posture, shoulders relaxing slightly.

Then she heard something that caught her attention. "Wait, wait, hold on - you're a Trailblazer?" After a moment of thought, running through names in her head, she pointed at him again, though more excited than accusatory now. "Bronze Beetle, right?"

[metabee]

"Uh, yeah, that's me." Well that was certainly a 180 in the conversation, but he was glad she'd stopped shouting at him anyway.

"Why, you a fan or something?"

[pullingamiko]

"Yeah, you could say that." She grinned, all ill will apparently forgotten. "Name's Miko Nakadai; I'm a reporter for the Los Angeles Times!"

She made a couple attempts to climb the tree in order to get more level with him, but ended up mis-stepping each time. "Dammit. Haven't climbed one of these in forever. Uh..."

She settled for standing a bit further back so that she wouldn't have to crane her neck so much. "So what's it like being in the Trailblazers? Must be pretty exciting, obviously, but how much do you guys get to, y'know, do your own thing and decide stuff?"

[metabee]

"You mean like, on our downtime or for missions and stuff?"

Metabee swung down out of the tree, landing on the ground near the trunk so she wouldn't have to look up so far.

[pullingamiko]

Okay she was definitely glad for the change of perspective here, that made things a lot easier.

"Well, either! I mean, if we're gonna call this an actual interview, then I'm probably expected to ask about missions and stuff, maybe with the occasional unnecessary personal question thrown in. So even if it's not an interview, I guess missions."

She had been told in the past that she kind of sucked at interviews, and the best way to improve at something was to practice, right? All the time.

[metabee]

"Well, um, I mean for big missions we all work as a team, usually. There isn't an official, you know, team leader or anything but Longclaw usually calls the shots if he's around. Otherwise is depends on who you're patrolling with. Trailblazers always patrol in groups." Usually. Officially. Actually, it would probably be good to ask about that, considering all the bad PR he'd been involved with lately, it would stink to make it worse.

"Is this, like, and official interview? Are you going to be publishing this stuff?"

condor

[rememberyousoon]

Nilin was hurt. She was determined that she was not as hurt as she was, which is what she kept telling the physicians, but they still wouldn't clear her for combat training. She didn't know what to do with herself if she wasn't spending a significant chunk of her time working out, so she was understandably a bit grumpy.

She couldn't help but pause on her way out, however, when she saw the small robot sitting on the bench. It looked a bit upset, despite being a robot, and she felt some sympathetic instinct kick in. Nilin really wasn't any good at this sort of emotions business, but she stopped nonetheless. It looked like a kid, and she wanted to make sure it was alright.

"Are you... are you waiting for someone?"

Re: condor

[metabee]

Metabee glanced up at Nilin, feet swinging since his legs didn't touch the ground. He didn't think he'd seen her around before, but then there were so many CONDOR agents at the HQ he honestly wasn't surprised.

"Yeah, just for a ride back to the Trailblazer Dorms. I'm guessing you're not the person who's supposed to take me over there?

[rememberyousoon]

"Oh, no," she said. Nilin shuffled her feet awkwardly and looked around in case the person responsible for Metabee showed up at that moment. They didn't, so she stuck around.

"So, you're a Trailblazer then? Must be exciting."

She can be bad at this conversation thing sometimes.

[metabee]

He hangs out with Katniss and Jon all the time, your conversation skills are fine as far as he's concerned, Nilin.

"Yeah, it's pretty cool I guess. Though everyone's probably going to be a pain after what happened with that stupid AI thing."

[rememberyousoon]

Nilin relaxed a little bit and sat down on the bench across from Metabee. It wasn't like she had anywhere to go.

"Why would they be a pain?" Her tone was a little less awkward and genuinely curious.

[metabee]

"Weeelll, half of them got kidnapped by the AI and I may have wound up getting reprogrammed by that thing so I didn't help them out and possibly made things more difficult for them. You know, stuff like that." He spurted out kind of quickly. Was he embarrassed about being one of the only hero robots to get brainwashed? Of course not, why one earth would he be embarrassed about that.

[rememberyousoon]

"Oh," Nilin said. "That's rough."

Yeah, good one Nilin.

"But they can't blame you for that. It was pretty powerful AI."

[metabee]

"See! Yeah! But the others probably won't see it that way since I kind of took a big risk even though they told me not to."

[rememberyousoon]

"And what was that?" Nilin asked. Her voice was soft, but not patronizing. She felt like she was talking to a kid, and she had never been very good at talking to kids the way other people talk to kids.

Dorms

[withoutaworld]

For a moment, there's no response to his announcement... and then Rikki appears, barreling down the hall into the foyer only to come to an abrupt stop a couple feet away from him. She lets out a huge breath of relief, and smiles at him only a little nervously. She hasn't been here long, and she's been a little stand-offish the whole time, so she doesn't know him well, but she has been feeling guilty about the way things went. She was supposed to make sure he didn't get taken by the crazy AI.

"Welcome back! I was really starting to worry, it'd been so long, and..." She pauses, bites her lip. "I'm sorry I didn't... That I wasn't much help, when you got caught. I didn't mean to leave you, I just went to get backup, and... Anyway, I'm sorry."

Re: Dorms

[metabee]

Metabee pretty much lights up when Rikki shows up to greet him. When she starts apologizing though he interrupts here, emphatically waving away the apology.

"No, it's fine! The others obviously needed you a lot more that I did. Boy am I glad to see you made it out of there ok."

He pauses, dropping eye contact and shuffling his feet a little. He was really glad Rikki was ok, but he knew the others weren't quite as lucky.
"Everyone IS ok, right? I know Nessa and Cynthia got caught by the robot thing."

[withoutaworld]

She brightens considerably when he reassures her he really is fine - and unlike with Nessa, she actually mostly believes him.

"Yeah, they're, uh... They're basically okay. Physically fine, and otherwise..." She shrugs. She's been in similar positions before. Maybe worse, though she doesn't know specifically what happened to them and she's definitely not into Trauma Olympics. She can more or less guess how they're feeling. "They're not talking a lot. I don't think they're great, but they'll be okay."

[metabee]

"Oh...yeah I can kind of imagine." He hadn't really experience any kind of horribly trauma before getting brainwashed, so he was having a hard time imagining.

"Did anyone else get taken besides them?"

[withoutaworld]

"I think just Jon. And this vigilante girl... maybe one or two more people? I don't know, it was all really... chaotic..."

She shrugs a little, looking down at the floor. It feels weird talking about them when they're not around, like they're gossiping, talking about something they shouldn't... but it also feels a little wrong to say nothing. After all, they're on a team; you have to know things about your teammates to function well, and that includes their emotional state. That's how she's justifying it to herself, anyway.

"Jon seems okay enough. He's looking out for the others, at least."

[metabee]

"Ok, I'll have to...go talk to him later." and the others, really. At least he could trust that Jon would probably be surprisingly calm. Like always, something that Metabee still found a bit odd sometimes, even remembering Longclaw had been at this superhero gig a long time.

He folded his arms, staring at the floor.
"Ugh. I wish I knew how to make it up to those guys. They didn't deserve that. I was a total jerk back there."