[WORLD ONE] SPEED DATING EXTRAVAGANZA

[spellbindmods]

Who: Participating coven members
Where: The Palai marketplace
When: Day 49
Open/Closed: OTA

[ Any and all who are in the marketplace will find that there is suddenly a mysterious barrier around the marketplace (that may be eerily familiar to some) -- specifically one large portion of the marketplace with a large number of tables and chairs, perhaps purposefully set out for nefarious reasons.

A few Palai are ushering coven members to chairs, and everything seems about normal. As normal as the Palai can be when they're putting on a show anyway. It's not until a sizable portion of the coven members are seated (and also supplied with breadsticks and small shrimp), that things get a bit more bizarre.

Thanks to the power of the Eltos, a small band of energy keeps coven members stuck to the chair (magic can interfere, of course), but that's not the end of it. On each table, next to those delicious smelling breadsticks and shrimp, is a bowl of scraps of papers. Every five minutes, a strip of paper will pop out from the bowl.

If you ask the Palai, they'll be inclined to explain speed dating to you. Asking questions, getting to know a person, then being shimmied off to the next potential mate -- this is made possible by Elto magic yet again, through flying chairs that transport their holder to a new table at standard intervals.

The Palai are extremely invested in this exercise? Will you let them down? ]

[ OOC: In the spirit of speed dating, each character will have a top level. All who want to respond to this top level can with questions from this post, but the threads have to end at 10 comments from each character. After this last tag, the characters can be assumed to have been whisked to a different potential match. You're free to have characters make up their own questions, interact with Palai serving food, etc. ]

Comments

[deem]

[Knowing 2B believes it's within his ability is encouraging, and 9S sits up just a little straighter for it. Her opinion matters more than he's ever been able to put to words. Perhaps she'd find that impractical on some level, but it's always meant a lot to him, like the day she'd suggested his curiosity might be admirable]

That's true...there's probably more to gather here than on the whole surface of Earth by now. So much has degraded, not to mention humans here have a clear idea of what those relics were even for.

[Actually, it occurs to him that he ought to ask about what some of those were for. At the same time, some humans here name off their places of origin and he's not remotely familiar with them. Would they still know?

How much was universal, anyway...? 9S hums thoughtfully as he considers that]

Say, what are you most interested in learning about them, 2B?

[apatheia]

Me?

[His question catches her off guard for a moment. It's so outside of her duties and purposes to think about things like this, she's not sure she even has an answer. Of course being presented with humanity face-to-face made her much more curious about them and their culture than she ever would've been back home, but she wonders if there might be another side to it too. This world wasn't an entirely peaceful one by any means, but without an enemy present to fight, she's not sure there's anything else for her to do aside from gather intel as well.

There's a certain freedom to not always having a direct mission on hand, or the freedom of not having to take on an objective that she doesn't want to, but it leaves her a little lost, too.]

... Other ways they spend their free time, maybe. [It looks like they'll have plenty of that here, and she needs ideas on how to spend it honestly.] Or what they'd like us to do for them.

[deem]

[Way they spend their time... 9S turns that thought over with a hum. It's true that they only have bits and pieces to go by; they knew about things like shopping and fishing of course. But everything they had was fragmentary, and so much relied on their interpretation of what they found]

You know...it seems like hobbies are probably as diverse as humans themselves are.

[Not to imply that androids aren't themselves unique, but they seems to have far more commonalities than the humans around them do. It's interesting, if a little difficult for all that it opens up so many questions and so many lines of investigation.

They ought to be busy, that's for sure]

[apatheia]

That's true, too. I never would've guessed that there were so many things and ways people could spend time on.

[She guesses it makes sense if she thinks about it. Androids aren't particularly materialistic after all, so hobbies like arts or crafts or making something were of no real use to them. Especially for units deployed on the ground like them, if they couldn't use it to aid in their survival, what was the point of having it?]

If I picked up a new hobby, I'd like it to be beneficial to them at least. [2B, that kind of defeats the point of what a hobby is in the first place..... Fishing was one thing when there weren't any missions at hand, but the mission to protect humans is always at hand, so!!]

[deem]

If it's for others...wouldn't it be a trade?

[Rather than a hobby, it'd be something more like a vocation, 9S thinks. His own personal interest had been vested in studying machines, especially their attack patterns and combat behaviors. Ultimately that did benefit other members of YoRHa, he supposes, but it was borne of his own curiosity rather than a motivation to do something for others.

He liked to study, he liked to analyze. But these things were more for himself than for others...]

What about something you'd like to do, just because?

[apatheia]

I feel like doing otherwise would be a better and more productive use of my time though...

[Not a waste of time exactly since she'd never call fishing a waste of her time, but she does feel kind of weird at the idea of just. Doing something for herself, because she likes it and wants to, when she could be doing something to help humans instead. Her entire life has been one long series of dedicated missions. Having free time at all is still something she's adjusting to.

She realizes this probably seems silly 9S though. 9S, who was always so eager to learn about human customs for himself and not get right down to work. She's not sure she knows how to be like that herself.]

[deem]

There're probably humans who'd want you to try.

[9S can certainly think of one he's been verbally jousting with for a while now. Much as he appreciates the consideration and concern, he has to admit to himself that he struggles with the insistence that he look at himself in human terms. That he be treated in human terms. It simply doesn't seem right.

He's as grateful for such kindnesses as he is confused by them. They seem so undeserved]

But maybe there's room for both, sometimes.

[apatheia]

[She nods. Yeah there are a definitely a few people she can think of who would encourage that... Much to her own confusion, but.]

Maybe. Or maybe I'm just getting ahead of myself when I haven't even found a hobby to catch my interest. [There's a bit of dry wryness to her tone. She has a feeling they're probably overthinking things, but it's hard not to when they don't know anything about these kinds of things though.] What about you though? What are you most interested in learning about them?

[If he can even pick a "most" interested when he's probably interested in everything.]

[deem]

[9S shouldn't be surprised that the question is returned to him. Even so, he sits back with a thoughtful hum, folding his arms across his chest. There's so much information to gather, and as a Scanner, it feels like there's so much potential that it's difficult to know where to begin.

But he supposes there are some things more immediate than others]

Maybe...how they decide what their purpose will be, since it's not assigned to them.

[That seems less freeing and more alarming to 9S. They have to find their own direction in life, and he wonders how such determinations can be made. Even when he decided on a path after losing 2B, he was still adhering to what a YoRHa was meant to do: fighting machines and a traitor]

[apatheia]

You'll probably find as many different answers as you would for hobbies.

[Which is probably what they should expect. Sure, it's not as if all androids were the same no matter how they're produced. No 2B (or 2E, really) model would be exactly like her, even if they'd start out with the same sort of base beginning. Older androids like those in the Resistance were also naturally different, and there was quite a lot of variety of androids in just YoRHa. But none of them were as diverse or individual as humanity either, something she sees quite clearly after having met them.

She thinks that with nothing assigned to them, no intentional purpose leading to their creation, they really could choose to do whatever it was they wanted. The idea of that much freedom is almost mind-boggling to her.]

[deem]

Isn't that what makes it interesting though?

[There's no concealing 9S' enthusiasm, not that he's trying. Having countless answers to one question might be daunting or even frustrating to some, but in his eyes, that only means boundless potential for new information. He can come to better understand mankind with every response, and he can share the impressions he gets with 2B.

How could he not be excited about that?]

Maybe it'll even help with something like picking a pass-time. Other than fishing, that is.

[He'll always treasure sharing that time with 2B, doing something so quiet and peaceful. Without their pods though, it's not exactly the same]

[apatheia]

It might. [There's a brief pause, and then:] Although I'd like to go fishing sometime soon.

[It'll be weird without Pod for it, but she's not against learning how to fish using tools like a fishing pole or something else. And, she hopes that 9S would be interested in joining her, even if he doesn't do any fishing himself. He's always been by her side during such times, but maybe it's selfish to assume he'd come when there are other things he could be doing or researching.

But before she has a chance to ask him, TIME'S APPARENTLY UP, and the chair's whisking her away. She'll just have to ask him another time...]