Peace And Quiet (Or Lack Thereof) [Ashura] [Night-Time]

Between thinking up things to help Paige, meeting up with his fellow Persona Users, beta-testing the clones, recalling 8D and bringing him back to Professor J, and other such shenanigans, Selenus hadn't had any time to himself all day. He was eager, now more than ever, to get to work and actually make a difference, but the income of things to do found themselves overhwelming to robotic wolf. Perhaps an hour or so of relaxation was in order, he thought, and so he departed for East Eden, where he knew that at night-time, nobody would bother him. Even if anybody were to spot him, any regular person would confuse him with a regular wolf under the pale lighting of the moon.

Selenus stepped further and further into the camping grounds, using his internal GPS to guide himself. The light of the moon was weak, but just strong enough that he didn't yet feel the need to activate night-vision, and he wouldn't have had it any other way. Eventually, he reached a small lake sorrounded by trees and bushes, wherein he took a seat on the edge of the water, and delightedly began to simply enjoy the nature around him. No demons, no running from the government, no friends to protect, and certainly no more little girls to take care of. It was bad enough that they were attracted to him like a magnet, if the three or so he was already self-tasked with protection were any indication.

Or, y'know, fate could always just decide to screw him over and greet him with a bag of marshmellows to the face, because whyyyyyyyyyyy not?

Selenus turned around to look at the direction from where the bag assaulted him, and found... you guessed it, yet another little girl. Was the universe trying to tell him something? Even before he was sold off to Newman he'd had more than enough little girls in his life, so how come he kept running into so many? Except.... something was different about this one: For one, she had glaringly obvious feline ears, and two, the constant stream of data that outsourced to Selenus's mind failed to mention the usual body heat of a human, in fact, this one didn't seem to have body heat at all! Another demon, perhaps?

Since the child was already running his way, Selenus would wait until it got close enough before speaking up. "Hey there, kiddo." He spoke, not as calm as his voice let on. "What are you doing all the way out here in the middle of the woods?"

Selenus watched commentless as the little girl looked all over the lakeside, her eyes shifted from place to place with a speed that shouldn't be humanl possible, as if she was... scanning something in quite the literal sense. If her behaviour and her own words were any indication, she'd been chased by wolves, but... again, no human child could outrun a full pack of wolves, especially not in this poor light. In fact, without a flashlight, no normal human should be able to see where they're walking right now.

It was only when the child put her hand on top of his head that the robot wolf understood what was going on. The soft, yet audible metallic *chink* of metal (though padded, if anything) touching metal would answer most of his questions. "You're a robot as well?" That makes two. The wonders of modern psychorobotics struck again. "...they looked more feline than canine to me..." Selenus would comment before snapping back to reality and addressing the child with full and complete seriousness again. She still hadn't answered his question. "What are you doing in the woods this late at night? Don't you have a caretaker?"

This girl was certainly something. If there was somebody out there making little girl robots, then it might have been worth investigating. Oh lord, were Trinity and Tatum robots too? If that were the case, he would have had himself a robot little girl quartet to deal with. The thought was beyond unpleasant. "P-Poochie? I have a name, thank you very much. You can call me Selenus." He assumed the girl would introduce herself next, out of decency if nothing else. He would sigh as she showed that her unusual body parts were, indeed, of canine design. "That's great and all, but it really doesn't answer my question. Why were you running away from wolves, and why were you in the forest to begni with?" Selenus asked yet again. Christ, this girl was distracted. "I would assume you have geolocation systems, right? If that's the case, then I doubt you would've just gotten lost, so what gives?" Did she even have control over her systems, or did she not have access to the data side of her cerebral processing?

Selenus couldn't help but chuckle at the sight of the small child (even if it was a robotic one) holding marshmallows so closely, as if they were about to dissappear any second. She was like a hyperactive Nola, this one. Despite this, her presence still worried him a bit. "You didn't steal those, did you?" He'd ask in a serious but not exactly mad tone, like a parent that was only asking in the off chance that that was actually the case, but didn't actually believe it to be so. "You've got me a bit worried. How come you don't know who created you? Don't you remember your day of activation, or were you even really activated at all?" As far as Selenus knew, there were some intelligent robots that originated as AIs, such as what he speculated was the case with 8D and how he went from a watch to a full-blown robot. "Where is home if you don't even know who created you?" If this was another homeless robot... ooh boy...

W-Wait, if her stomach was a food container, then where did the food she chewed and swallowed go? He guessed it was burnt somewhere in her body and converted to energy fuel, as was the case with most intelligent robots, but there was no way of knowing for sure, since every psychoroboticist had their own style. Still, it was odd to see a robot so fixated on sweets. She's just lucky she doesn't have blood pressure or a pancreas to worry about. Now that he was thinking about food... he was starting to get a bit jealous, as he himself couldn't taste anything, but thanks to the information uploaded to his CPU he knew perfectly well how blissful taste is supposed to be (As long as you're eating something good, at the very least).

Hmm... it seemed Ashure had run away from whatever facility she was activated in, which was not something he encouraged. Not that he was very innocent of running away, mind you, but he had a very good reason to escape, and a few people can testify to that. However... from the sounds of things, it sounded like Ashure's creator ran into some problems while making her, if they had to put her back together multiple times. "Wait, you were a test subject?" Not the most pleasant of news. "What kind of tests were they running on you, if you don't mind me asking? Were they hardware or software tests?" Selenus's curiosity had been genuinely piqued. "Uhh... that's "physical or virtual", in case you didn't know." For being an intelligent robot, she didn't seem to be too familiar with psychorobotic - or even regular robotic, for that matter - terminology.

"No, you're not a threat." He should know better than to judge a book by its cover, but he had just seen her use her stomach space as a sweets storage, so... "I'm just curious. I don't get to meet a lot of other robots these days."

Shooting goons? So she was designed to be a weapon, same as him, huh? God dammit, how much more sentient weapons were these maniacs bent on creating? What, one extremely fucked up psyche wasn't enough fodder for the stroking of their massive egos?! "...I know how you feel. I was forced to fight drones too." Well, he only had to fight drones for the first month or so... after that he had to do something way worse. "But to answer your question, no. I wouldn't. In fact I'd rather we not touch that topic anymore, I get the message..."

"No thanks, I can't eat." Selenus wondered if Ashure would take that the wrong way... "And that's not because I'm not allowed to eat, I just literally can't. My mouth ends at my neck." Well, there was a small, thin space behind his neck where his gun remained when inactive, but he'd keep that to himself. "I have a gun installed in my throat" was never something good to tell somebody you'd just met.

Oooooooookaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy... after that little BSOD on Ashure's part everything became ludicrously awkward. Well, it was awkward until she began to play with Selenus's tail like an actual small hcild or like... well... a dog. Many an eyebrow would have been raised hat night so far, provided selenus had had any eyebrows to speak of. Selenus lifted his tail so as to keep it out of Ashure's reach. The damn thing could conduct electricity, wouldn't want Ashure to accidentally get electrocuted and suffer a short-circuit or any other voltage-related hardware problems. "Please. No touching the robodoggo." While Selenus didn't exactly approve of the nickname given to him by some of his companions, he figured it would appease Ashure and help her recover from... whatever it was that she'd just experienced with the whole "existencial crisis delivery" thing.