[color=#6b71db]"Woah, oh gosh... is it really time to talk about our life stories already?"
"...Looks that way."
Kris would clasp his hands together - a boney human hand and a skeletal prosthetic intertwining fingers in ponderment. Amsel would stare down at the congregation with her lifeless eyes, with a faint pale glow behind her irises, remaining in a silent stance as the conversation proceeded.
"Well... what's there to say. Former Technocrat, getting-in-trouble extraordinaire, dumb as a bag of bricks and... Sunbucks enthusiast. What's there not to like?" Kris smiled with lips stiffened into a smile.
"There's not much about me either, I'm afraid. My line of models uses a synthetic facsimile of the primary cerebral focal points from a volunteer in Kishiro's R&D - don't ask me who, or what she is. I know this purely from hearsay."
She would tap her head - as artificial as she was, parts of her weren't.
"Shortly after I was manufactured and the Nomad Wars fizzled out, there were no more investors in our project, but due to a legal oversight, I avoided the termination protocols beyond the end-of-life updates and supports Kishiro imposed in my programming. But... I pulled through nonetheless. I learned more about Kusari as I tried to live among the common folk, trying to... eke out a living as a tailor, then as a bricklayer, I remember tending to a bar as a waitress for a time, too, all whilst concealing my identity."
Kris would keep quiet, nodding as she would explain her past in detail, as if he had heard the same story a hundred times before.
"It wasn't easy by any means. When it rains too often and I'm in a nasty and humid environment for months, rust will eventually start to grow on my frame like a goddamned rot. I learned fairly quickly that I had to put my innate talents to use before I would rust away in my own bedroom, unable to move and trapped in my own body."
"I ended up joined Samura, of all things. Hired bodyguard duty. They assumed I was some disposable Kusarian ex-military woman to use as a meatshield from a stray bullet or laser bolt. Unfortunately, I'm not made of meat."
"I was with one of their executives for a month or two. Covering him at every turn, walking alongside him, and mindlessly agreeing with all of his remarks. I didn't care, I was just in it for the coin. Until that day. A young man waded his way through the crowd to land a shot on Kaji-san. I stood before him, and absorbed the hit and quickly retaliated. Straight in his eye..."
Her stance mirrored that of Kris. But her hands began to tremble. Her lips stiffened.
"What I had done to that boy was nothing short of barbaric. But that was what I had been built for. I had to stay stalwart in the face of such... feelings. But doing something like that to a child? A street urchin with a pistol? I began to truly doubt myself."
"I continued to take more jobs, making sure I could deliver a swift end to nasty individuals - rabble raisers, anarchists, riff-raff that would only cause trouble. My way here has been paved with blood and coin, all for the sakes of resisting the passage of time by hiring techniciants to repair bits and pieces of myself. But... to what end, I wondered?"
The white glow in her eyes dissipated.
"It went on for what felt like forever. Like an endlessly repeating equation. Like a periodic number. I began to ponder if my entire purpose to exist and be sentient was to destroy lives. I started to lose touch with reality, and I even lost one of my legs behind, rendering me incapable of any kind of toil... until this boy found me, battered and broken. By tripping over me, of all things."
