sixthiterationlogs | (no subject)

WHO: Niska Elster
WHERE: On the path from bunker to village
WHEN: March 17
OPEN TO: All!
WARNINGS: She may get angry, but no true violence past the animal attack

It was always inevitable that this would happen, though Niska had been hoping that she might avoid it. She charged at night, she always wore her contacts, and the only person who knew her secret was someone that she knew that she could trust. Perhaps it had been human of her, but she had allowed herself the delusion that no one would discover her secret.

What Niska hadn't counted on was the giant warthogs that lived near the bunker and that one of these days, her luck would run out -- not that she believed predominantly in luck, but she did believe in odds. An animal attack was far from impossible and with the strange flurry of bio-luminescent activity, she should have been more careful.

She wasn't, that's the trouble.

In her haste to leave the bunker from her last coding trip, Niska had wandered right into the warthog's territory. While she hadn't been stung, clearly it had been riles and in its frenzy, pinned her to a wall, sniffing her before deciding that she hadn't been worth the attack, moving on. Grimacing, she checks on her clothes, her scrubs, but when she lifts her palm back up, it's coated in blue synthetic fluid.

She's bleeding from the scrape to her hips and stomach from where she'd been pinned to the wall, the blue of it soaking through her scrubs -- her very bright scrubs where she won't be able to hide it. She needs to get back to her house, but being the middle of the day, it means that anyone she comes across is going to see her.

If she lingers or takes too long a path, then she'll bleed out, because she has replacement fluid at the house, but she needs to get there. Forming a plan, she instantly begins the march back, hand protecting the bleeding as best as she can.

Yet, no matter how hard she tries, her fingers are still tinged blue. She's still limping. Deep down, Niska knows that her secret won't make it past today, but she does something very human. She hopes.

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She's been consistently tense around him simply because of his knowledge when it comes to technology. He could destroy her, if he wanted to, especially now that she's handing him over knowledge of how she's put together.

Niska watches him, unblinking, and she can worry about stopping him later. If she simply stops, that won't even be a discussion to have. "I feel all pain," she says, her voice strong despite the fact it could wobble when speaking. "I've lost fluid, but I'm minimally hurt. It was a bad scrape."

"You would have to turn me off to do that and I won't tell you how," she warns, because the place under her chin that would disable her is a secret she intends to guard tightly.

"I'm not asking you to tell me," he says, almost cheerfully. "Wouldn't want to. Don't want to know. Let's not go there. I want you turned on, okay?"

He winces when he says that, shaking his head. "As in not turned off. Shut down. Not like it sounded, because I have a boyfriend and really into him and not into you. Not that there's anything wrong with you. I think you're pretty neat," he says, sighing. "Right. Shutting up and working," he says, settling in to do what she needed.

"Tell me if I'm doing anything wrong. You're my first robot. Android? What's the proper term?"

Rambling on as he gets the liquid ready, moving to open the port so that he can make sure she's okay, and that she doesn't pass out because of loss of fluids. If that's what it's called.

Niska doesn't react to Jake's panic in the least, nor does she find it amusing or endearing in any way. She simply tips her head to the side in order to regard him, not sure if she should worry about this man yet or not. He clearly has the technical skills, though he also lacks the social ones, from what she's discovering.

"I'm a synthetic," she replies, watching him carefully. She could do this herself if she were able to reach the awkward angle. It's not life-threatening, it simply will reduce her fluid levels and require her to charge, after. "I was made by David Elster to assist with his son's tutoring and care, and given the code to feel as any human would. Including pain," is her warning, with a gesture to her body.

Despite his words, and the sometimes insanity that spews from his mouth, Jake is a trained soldier, special forces at that, and he might be social awkward, but his physical work on fixing her is steady and determined, and definitely done with the skills of someone that knows what they're doing.

Shame he can't ever seem to sync those two things together.

"I'm doing my best not to hurt you," he says softly, glancing up for only a moment and then back to his work. "That's pretty fucking amazing though. They have trouble with nerve work on humans with injuries but he got it right on you. Pretty cool."

And if nothing else, his tones show just how amazed he is with her and what she is.

"Though never would have pegged you for the kid type."

"I assure you, I'm hardly the maternal type," is Niska's reply, calm and even, as she begins to press against the wound with a faintly amused look, mainly because she doubts that she could ever be a mother in any sort of capacity. "I was the tutor. Nothing more than a teacher." Yes, she had loved Leo. She still does, but she's not Mia. She's not his mother.

"You can cause me pain," she says flatly. "I can tolerate it. I may feel it, but I have withstood far worse than you," is her confident assessment, her eyes fixed and firm. She's not saying 'I am stronger than you', but it's in the in-betweens of her words.