robots will cry

The last time Cytus had gone to the beach, the blazing sun had rendered her trip surprisingly unenjoyable. Clad in robes and a hood, she had gone to see the ocean, find wildlife, and 'enjoy' what many of the students also partook in during the summer months. Unfortunately, it had just not happened; the heat overwhelmed the poor girl, and Cytus had relegated herself to finding time on a slightly cooler day.

That day had come. The clouds had rolled in, and while there was no possibility of rain, the sudden cover combined with a trade wind had removed much of the heat and light that had bothered the Aenari when she first visited. And yet with all with the light that had been removed, there was something that wasn't as removed.

The strange things that happened while on the beach.

The first day, a rather large starship had crashed into the ocean while she had been combing the beach. Today, a seagull that had apparently bitten off more than it could chew alerted Cytus to the fact that there was a body washed up on shore. How strange.

Cytus moved with some urgency, wondering if this being had gotten caught in the ocean's rather strong surf and then thrown about, or if she had come from somewhere else. So far, chances were the latter. She was fully clothed, but not quite like anything Cytus had seen at the school. Even stranger was that despite her appearance, this being was a human facsimile; nothing more than a replica...or perhaps something much more.

There was nobody by the two on the beach currently, and so in the moment, Cytus placed a transfer beacon on the broken body, and the two disappeared from the beach in something of a flash of light.

The next sort of flash would occur on the Kumari at a point 200 miles above Earth in low orbit, the place where Cytus made her home. The body was beamed onto a sterile table, and Cytus right beside it. She spoke to the AI of the ship, authenticating her presence aboard the much smaller vessel that was the Kumari, instead of the Ry'leh, which was still situated on the ocean floor.

"Please begin wireless charging, local table space only."

"Beginning wireless charging, standard charge rate, operator."

With any luck, the artifical body would revive simply like that. If not, the power would not be enough to damage her...but the extra time it would take for repairs might end up being problematic.

Apparently the wreck that Cytus had recovered from the beach was some sort of artifical intelligence...or maybe that was too generous of a designation. Robot was reasonably accurate, although given the amount of intelligence from artificial beings at the school, it was more prudent to simply assume a given machine was intelligent to some degree.

Granted this apparent kill-bot was booting up like some sort of old Macintosh...but everyone had their quirks.

"Assassin model? Akane?"

While Cytus knew what an assassin was simply from the time on Earth, the concept was still extremely alien, no pun intended, to her. Killing others as a job...yes, maybe it was something soldiers did to an extent, but that was not their first duty. This being's job was. The thought frightened Cytus somewhat, and a thought ran through her mind of just dropping Akane out the nearest airlock.

But doing so would make her no better.

"It is not recommended you move from that table until I find you a suitable power source. Can you tell me why I might have found you laying on a beach in the middle of the ocean?"

"I am afraid I will be unable to give you those memories back. I found your body laying on the sands of Manta Carlos, offline and unable to function until I brought you back here."

A shame really, while Cytus had something of a rooted fear of being killed on the spot due to some possible programming error...she also harbored a deep curiosity to how the automaton came to be on the island in such a terrible manner. Had she simply been disposed of? Maybe a job gone wrong?

There were any number of possible conclusions, but none of which either of the beings on the Kumari would ever be able to confirm. Normally Cytus would just ask for permission to meld with a being to look through their amnesia. The process unfortunately did not work with beings of an entirely cybernetic origin.

Cytus looked once again around at Akane, walking around the table, and running fingers across the back of her neck to get a feel of where she was possibly made...but drew no conclusions from her inspection either.

"You came back here in pieces. I retrieved whatever I could find, but your weapon could not be found. It may possibly be somewhere close to the beach...or it may not. Do you have a way of tracking it?"

Cytus pulled out several tools, intending to fix the girl up before releasing her.

"You are in poor condition, you do not mind that I repair you before releasing you, do you?"