revivalproject | A Search for Peace

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A Search for Peace

WHO: Obi-Wan Kenobi and YOU
WHERE: Various locations around Temba
WHAT: Jedi doing Jedi things.
WHEN: During the V-Day Mini Event
WARNINGS: Grumpiness probably

Waking up on his bunk in the Twin Roses one morning came with a surprise. A random pink mothcat plushie having been left for him at the end of his bed with a little card. The Jedi is confused as he has no idea what this is even about, and hasn't yet seen one of these creatures to boot. Even so, he leaves the plush on his bed before going out to do his thing.

A breakfast of food paste stuff and then morning meditation. Except... that's when the confetti starts. Obi-Wan finding himself covered in glitter and confetti and disturbed by any confusion and chatter regarding the stuff in the ship. Where is it even coming from?! Dusting it off, only to get covered with more, the annoyed Jedi leaves the ship only to find that it's happening outside as well.

He is not feeling the love.

Trying to escape the glitter, which is futile, he also attempts to find a place to meditate in peace. He can be found in varying locations, usually initially appearing as a sparkly mound as sitting and being still gets him covered in the glittery stuff raining down on everyone. Though every time someone talks to him or disturbs him in some way, he ends up moving somewhere else.

Ultimately he ends up on top of Cayde's tower. How did he get up there?! It's a mystery. Either way, he's sitting up there, trying to get away from it all and calm his mind.

It's proving very difficult as this ridiculous glitter keeps falling.

Come meditate with him or bother him. The choice is yours.

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"Yep, mostly. Ah, you're one'a those people..." Cayde grins lopsidedly as he glances down at the Jedi again. "At least I figure droid is a niche term people from one end of space call all the robots. I'm an Exo."

He turns around as well as he can manage on his narrow perch like he's modeling the latest Hunter garb. "Bet they don't build your robot people like me! Then again they don't build us anymore either."

Edited (wow did I actually accidentally hit the button before I was finished???) 2021-02-25 04:18 (UTC)

His brows raising at that, Obi-Wan is a bit perplexed. Normally he wouldn’t sense much from a droid other than the metal it was made of. But there was certainly somehow different about thus so-called Exo.

“I suppose I am, and no I highly doubt it. What is it that makes you different?”

Cayde takes hold of the end of his raggedy cloak, shaking it out in vain. "Know if anyone's got an industrial vacuum around here or is that something we'll have to build..." he muses aloud before realizing the man's asking a question.

"Huh? Oh. I used to be human." He says this as casually as if he were merely discussing the weather.

He has to blink at that. It’s not an answer he was expecting but he can’t say such things are unheard of either.

“Really? Is any part of you still human?”

Perhaps that was prying but Cayde has yet to seem bothered.

Still idly picking at sparkles, Cayde pauses to tap at his head.

"My brain. That's the messy part, really. Surprise, surprise, but organic brains don't work well in the long run with mechanical bodies. Have to get our minds rebooted before we crack. Not a fun process. You lose a lot of yourself, start fresh." He shrugs, letting his cloak fall from his hand.

"I'm at six and I have no idea how five was, and I don't care to move onto seven. I'm good where I am."

“Yes... I can see the necessity for that, though I can’t say I blame you for not wanting to go through it either.”

This is somewhat intriguing to Obi-Wan.

“What led you to become this way? Was it a choice or a series of circumstances?”

The glitter had almost gone forgotten by the Jedi as he finds himself interested.

"Got a buddy back home who's been rebooted forty-four times. His memory's a mess, but he still knows his way around working with weapons." Poor old Banshee.

Obi-Wan's questions brought a crooked smile to the Exo's face as he tilts his head back to watch the glitter fall. "From what I recall? Bit of both." They're fragmented memories like much of his past, but he remembers some of these better because he'd wrote them down. "Had a job to do, did some damage in the process. It happened to be on the property of a big name in the robotic science biz. So. Got an offer I couldn't refuse. Cancel my all my debts, put my skills to use."

He shrugs, sighing as he lowers his head. "Do I regret it? Hell if I know. Maybe back at one or two. Don't think about that much. Those are different lifetimes, centuries back."

Nodding slowly as he listened, it was easy to see why Cayde would take such an option. Whether it was the right choice or not us hard to say, but that hardly matters at this point.

“In my galaxy it is possible to replace body parts with mechanical ones. My student lost his arm in combat and had a fully robotic prosthetic.”

It had actually been a rather traumatic experience for Anakin. Obi-Wan had seen him through it though and it didn’t limit him in any way.

“Though I did know at least one being who was somewhat like you. His entire body was robotic save for his brain and a few organs. Rebooting is not something that could be done however and his sanity was certainly questionable. “

BrayTech was surrounded by questionable methods and suspicious practices, and Exo technology had long since been lost in the Collapse. Cayde wonders if it's perhaps better that way.

"Oh, prostheses are a thing, definitely. And we got regular robots that aren't so complicated as us Exos." The Hunter pauses, glancing down at the Jedi again as he brings up knowing someone similar. "Was he as good looking?" he asks, brow arching as smirks.

“No,” Obi-Wan says without hesitation. “General Grievous was not easy on the eyes, but he was never human either.”

Not to mention he’s dead now. Their world was better for it too, even though he doubt it would have changed much at this point.

"That bad, eh?" Cayde can't help but chuckle at Obi-Wan's immediate response. "I guess not everyone can look like me. But then that would make things less fun." Not to mention he'd be a little creeped out seeing his face shared by more than just himself.

True the Exos probably had limited templates for facial structures but those who were brought back by the Light had personalities and a sense of style that none of them looked alike.

“You certainly have a better aesthetic,” he agrees.

All of this explains though why he can sense life from Cayde, though not on the same level as most living things. Only his mind was there and the rest was clearly cybernetic.

“Tell me, is this body of yours difficult to maintain?”

It's part of it, definitely. Cayde wouldn't be able to classify what the Light was that had brought him and many other Guardians back to life, other than some supernatural force.

"Eh, not terribly? I have a good mechanic," he says, grinning. He holds a hand out, gesturing for Sundance to compile in the air above his palm in a sparkle of light. "Otherwise I wouldn't know what to do with myself. I know Stark's champing at the bit to try figuring it out any chance he gets." Cayde nods at his little friend then. "This here's Sundance, my Ghost," he introduces. The Ghost gives a slight bob in the air in acknowledgment. There's a similarity to her presence and Cayde's, that 'other-ness' of some sort of power that connects them.

“If you want my opinion, don’t let that man anywhere near your circuits.” He was both joking and serious. Tony was an interesting fellow but he wasn’t so sure he was fond of him tinkering with things beyond his understanding. He still didn’t much like the fact that he wanted to help Cal build a lightsaber, but kept those feelings to himself.

Obi-Wan’s eyes rose when Sundance materialized. “Your ghost?” He is a bit perplexed by that. “Is it a part of you?” It certainly felt like it was.

Cayde laughs then. "I can be crazy but not that crazy," he says. But he still trusts Tony, and not just because the man had risked his neck to save him from a nasty fall from the radio tower. If ever there were a situation that Sundance couldn't patch him up, Tony would be in the running.

"That she is," the Exo says. "Back home things got complicated. This mysterious giant ball appeared, like a miniature moon, and ever since its discovery mankind learned from it how to advance technology, and how to travel beyond Earth. I can't really explain much about the Traveler- even now a lot of the big eyeball's still a mystery. But that was centuries ago, and Exo tech was part of the great developments of the time. And then came the Darkness."

He gestures vaguely. "It came after the Traveler. Near wiped out humanity, swallowed everything up. The Traveler stopped it, saved us at risk of itself. Created the Ghosts, who carry its Light and search for those I guess you'd say are compatible with them. Bring 'em back from the dead. Keeps bringing us back so long as the Light's there."

"I can't say I understand it all, but it sounds like a rather complicated history. With some elements I'm familiar with, and others not."

Despite that some of what Cayde was saying was going over his head, Obi-Wan couldn't help but be interested. Learning was what he did best, particularly when it came to other people and their cultures. It was what helped him earn his title as Negotiator after all.

"What is this Light and Darkness that you speak of?"

"Oh, it's pretty complicated. Definitely long. I'm sparing you a lot of details." Cayde folds his arms, giving a shrug of his shoulders.

"Honestly? There's a whole bunch of stuff we still aren't too sure of. We know the Darkness is consuming, and it's been after the Traveler. We know that without the Traveler we'd all be dead. After it's first stunt against the Darkness it stayed dormant for a loooong time. I'm talking centuries. It's only recently reawoken, after a close call when the Last City was taken over by the Red Legion. They wanted the Traveler and the Light for themselves- came up with something that actually managed to cut us off from it." He shakes his head. "We lost a lotta Guardians for good then. No Light, no rez."

Even though more of what Cayde said went over his head, Obi-Wan can’t help but be intrigued. This Traveler and its Light particularly interested him.

“What of the Light? How does that work?”

He of course knew of Light and Darkness in terms of the Force. Was it anything like that? The way Cayde described the Darkness as all-consuming certainly sounded familiar.

Sundance quietly hovers as she listens to the conversation, her vertices twitching slightly. She somehow seems both amused and curious as Obi-Wan asks his questions, turning to look at Cayde. Yes, do tell, oh Guardian mine.

The Exo makes a bit of a face at her. "Well it's..." He gesticulates loosely in the air with a hand. "Some kind of supernatural power I guess? No one gave us an instruction manual for it. It's what connects us to our Ghosts, what lets us Guardians tap into other sorts of powers that use solar or arc, or even void energy. And through our Ghosts its what heals us when we need it, or brings us back from being dead."

"Really? So it is comparable to the Force then. At least in some manner."

What Cayde was describing at least sounded much like what Obi-Wan was familiar with, even if it worked in a different fashion. It might not be the Force exactly, or it might be their version of it. It's hard to say really. Different cultures tended to interpret and use the Force different if they were able to at all. So it's to be expected that beings outside his galaxy would have some differences.

"Can't really say. What's this whole Force business?"

Cayde isn't sure how else to describe the Light, especially not when there's still so much about it and the Traveler left in mystery. Even the Ghosts can't explain themselves or how they work, much like the Exos don't know how their inner workings function or how they were put together. It'd be easy to let all those questions, all those unknowns, get to you, but Cayde knows better than to worry about things no one has the answers to. Things will work their way out as they go along, and if things like the Red Legion or the Darkness happen, the latter of which he's sure they haven't seen the last of, then they'll deal. The key would be to survive it.

“It’s about as complicated as what you just described, but basically it’s an energy that is found in all living things. It flows through us and bonds everything together. Beings such as myself are particularly sensitive to its power and can use it. But what interested me is that you mentioned a light and a darkness. It’s the same with the Force. I choose to connect myself to the light, where as some choose the dark side of the Force.”

Hopefully that was an explanation that Cayde could understand to some degree.

"Huh. Interesting. I think the difference here is our Light and Dark are definitely externally sourced. We didn't make the choice to become Guardians, so being Light-aligned doesn't necessarily mean we're good people."

Cayde patches together things from what Obi-Wan's just said and his earlier conversation on lightsabers and Sith. It seems there's a definite line between light and dark with the Force.

"During the early days after the Collapse, there were plenty of light-blessed that went power hungry, took advantage of their newfound ability to not die, didn't care who they trampled in the process. Humanity was trying to rebuild itself so it was every man for himself. Took a lot of work before like-minded folk started seeing it taken upon themselves to look out for the weak, and actually establish a safe haven for everyone."

Taking all of that in, the Jedi thoughtfully ponders it for several moments. It certainly was a bit foreign, even if elements seemed familiar. Someone falling the light side doing evil was pretty much impossible with the Force. It would shift someone to the dark side.

“You’re right that’s not how it works for us.”

It’s strange and intriguing at the same time. Did the Force work differently for Cayde’s people? Did it even exist at all or did they instead have something else? It certainly made him wonder. The Force after all is life, and even comprehending life without it was difficult for the Jedi.

“Even so it’s interesting and I thank you for indulging my curiosity.”

The Exo shrugs. "Eh, 's nothing. Thanks for listening." He smiles crookedly, then turns his head to look back out across the city.

"...this stuff isn't letting up, is it," he notes, squinting at the glitter that still continues to sparkle innocently on the way down. He can hardly blame Sundance for decompiling, vanishing in her own flash of sparkling light if just to be out of the strange metallic shower.

"Well, maybe I should let you alone and get back to...whatever it was you were doin' up here."

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