voicetest | Setting: A generic street

Shouhei's leaving HOMRA right then, sleeves of his jacket rolled up and a bright smile on his face as he ambles down the street away from the bar and towards home. Though more and more, HOMRA and his comrades within the gang are coming to represent home for him.

His smile falters a bit when he catches sight of the man standing alone, the only non-mover in a sea of busy busy people, and Shouhei sidles up, head tilted to one side as he speaks up.

"Ah...are you lost, mister?"

The Terminator looks down on the person who has approached him, his brow crinkling in even more confusion. Most people with the exception of the Connors seem far too busy wrapped up in their own lives to pay him any attention. Not this one.

Young male, late teens, early twenties perhaps. His systems scan for any kind of weaponry. Finding none, he's categorized as a non-threat. "Possibly. Where am I and what year is it?"

Shouhei's easy-going grin slips a little as the man looks down and stares at him. It reminds him a little of walking into HOMRA and having the attention of everyone inside suddenly on him. This guy looks like he could easily be part of a gang too, tall and looming.

Although, that's certainly not the question he's expecting.

"Where are you and what year is it?" He echoes the question stupidly, not sure if this is part of some elaborate set up or if this dude really doesn't know. "It's July of 2011 and you're in Japan right now. Shizume City. Are you looking for someone?"

2011? How had he slipped forward through time? It was possible, of course, but the usual methods should've caused him to appear on the streets naked. He looked around him, as if taking in the bustling streets for the first time. In his future, Judgment Day has come and gone by this point. The world is a desolate wasteland by 2011.

To see it alive and full of people, the way it should be, sets off a deep feeling of satisfaction within the Terminator. They had won. There's the briefest flicker of a smile before he answers. "Negative. There is nobody I know in this place."

Ah, it looks like his answer's well-received, and the man's smile elicits a responding one before Shouhei's (often slow) brain fully processes the words spoken and his smile goes fizzling out again.

"Then, how come you're here in Shizume City? Is it for a business trip?"

The man does seem distinctly un-Japanese. Foreigners come to Japan all the time for business trips, right? And it would explain why he seems to be so lost.

"No. I am unsure why I am here. I had a mission. But I thought it was over." Perhaps it's his fate. That's what Sarah Connor was always going on about, how to change Judgment Day and end up saving everyone. Now, with his mission complete and the fate of the world completely changed, he's been left in the lurch. If only there was some hint or clue as to which way he was supposed to go.

Detroit is a much safer city than it was, for the moment. But still, Murphy knows crime doesn't sleep, so his car still prowls the streets, looking for signs of trouble.

And that, there, looks like trouble.

His car rolls to a stop, and he sits for a moment, waiting for the figure to movie. Caucasian male, nothing else. His head tilts, puzzled, as he pushes out of the car's seat, rising to his feet.

"Do you need assistance, citizen?"

The T-800 turns his head to where he sees a....well, he's not sure what kind of Terminator that is. He scans the machine, but the results come back negative, flashing 'Unknown model' over and over again in his red-tinted vision.

He sizes up Murphy, internally wondering if he could take him, should the scenario come to that. An unknown model means unknown variables. Better to err on the side of caution for now. "Where am I?" He asks, his voiced colored by a thick Austrian accent.

The accent marks the newcomer as a stranger. His CPU sets off on a race to track the accent down through his voice stress protocols, but he sense no deception.

Still, the question is a puzzle. Is he asking about the street? The city?

Murphy's head tilts, with a whir of servomotors. "Are you in need of medical assistance? Are you suffering memory loss from traumatic head injury?" He's looking, but he can't see obvious damage.

The Terminator gives a brief jerk of his head from left to right. "Negative. All systems are operating normally." That in itself is a puzzlement. He'd taken quite a beating before being lowered into the steel. Being sent wherever he was seems to have taken care of the damage he'd received.

His question has not been answered. His eyes dart around, trying to find some clue as to where or when he is.

'Negative'. That sounded like...him, really, something he would say, a programmed answer to an OCP protocol.

"You are in Detroit, Cadillac Heights. It is...not safe here." OCP has plans and their rehabbers are on the way.

"That is impossible. I was just in California." Unless.... "Is there a teleportation system in place in Detroit?" He doesn't think there is, but he comes from a future with time travel technology and there's a robot of an advanced quality standing right in front of his eyes. At this point, anything is possible.

Admittedly, Taeko is going into this rescue mission a composed mess of nerves. Per protocol, Coppelion teams usually embark in their designated teams, but with Ibara and Aoi injured running their last objective, Taeko is left on her own. A survivor was lost in these streets, but with him or her giving off such a low heat signature it was hard for sensors to detect if the individual was young, old, or in between. The sparse details add to her unease, but this is her job. She needs to put those fears aside for the survivor's sake.

With a wave goodbye to Vice-Principal Mishima and the rest of the higher-ups, she steps out of their transport vehicle towards the streets. Suddenly, a flash of light blinds her, drowns out her surroundings to the point that they're painted white, and wind rushes at her like a blizzard. Instinctively, she holds her breath until... whatever this is stops and she lands on another street corner. In her direct line of vision stands a tall man, seemingly still down to his fingertips and toes, and gazing out of focus -- a peak at him from over her glasses confirmed such.

"Sir, are you lost?" Taeko calls out as she runs towards him. "I'm with Coppelion's Medical Rescue Team. I'm here to..." Her words taper into a fragment as she slows down at his side. Noise. Pedestrian noise, around them. She sees people pass by them casually, carrying out conversations or going about jobs, errands, or meetups.

In other words, bustling. Nothing like the depleted, near-deserted old capital she expected to run her mission in.

"Sir, do you... know where we are?"

The T-800 watches as he's approached by a young woman. With her glasses on and a lack of firearms, she appears to be a normal human being, a non-threat as classified by his internal systems. He'll keep the classification until proven otherwise.

His head, and only his head, turns as he answers her questions, his expression unchanged. "I think I am lost." What is an appropriate response to the second one? He runs through a list of emotions in his head, each one categorized with their own picture to go along with it. He focuses on one of John shaking his head slowly back and forth, relaxing his face and copying it to create a rueful expression. "I do not. The last place I was aware of being was in Los Angeles, California."

"You were in America?" Taeko asks, scrunching her brown to think. She takes a breath, and another realization strikes her. She sniffs. The air is clean, lacking the nuclear toxins that poisoned Japan's old capital's atmosphere but she and the other Coppelion, thanks to their genetic engineering, were able to breathe. "If neither of us know where we are, we should find an authority like the police. Maybe they can help us."

She removes a GPS tracker from her medical bag, but when she switches it on its screen shows nothing but static. A fried electricity buzzes from its speaker. Frowning, she stashes it away.

She pivots back to him, then dips into a bow. "I'm Taeko Nomura. I was sent on a mission to recover a stranded survivor, but it seems like we're both lost." A wry smile punctuates the statement. She motions to the passersby. "If we ask these people, one of them must know where we can find the authorities."

The Terminator stiffens at the mention of the police. He's a wanted man back in America. Even here, far from home, the thought of getting the local authorities involved creates an uncomfortable feedback in his CPU. In an ordinary man, it might be an emotion called dislike.

"My name is..." Well, he doesn't really have one, now, does he? The machine settles for using the spur of the moment name John gave him. "...Bob." He turns to a nearby person and abruptly grabs a short businessman in a suit. "Where can we find the authorities?" His people skills are nonexistent and the little man looks terrified of the looming figure in leather who has a iron death grip on his arm.

Edited 2014-03-16 05:35 (UTC)

Taeko smiles. "It's nice to meet you, Bob. Don't worry. We'll figure this out!" She imagines if Ibara were here with her, she would pump a determined fist and sport a toothy grin. She'll need to channel her elder's gung-ho initiative to get them someplace safe and secure.

A passerby shrugs her off after she asks them for directions. Frowning, she turns, about to approach a new person when she sees Bob accosting the businessman. "A-aah, please put him down! You're scaring him," she protests, lunging at Bob and latching onto the arm grabbing the poor stranger. She looks around to see other people nearby staring and scuttling away from the spectacle.

"I'm sorry, sir," she apologizes to the businessman as she tries to loosen Bob's grip on him to no avail. He's strong -- inhumanly so. Ibara's genetic engineering makes her stronger than the average person as well, but he feels cold somehow. Metallic, even.

"Please let him go, Bob. We can ask someone else, but threatening people like that isn't going to help," she pleads. Between him seizing the stranger and possessing such a powerful grip, Taeko is beginning to fear him a little bit as well.

The Terminator first turns his head to assess Taeko. The elevated stress patterns in her voice, more so than the tug on his arm, clues him into what's going on. It's exactly like something John would have done to let him know he'd done something wrong.

He lets the man go as abruptly as he had grabbed him in the first place. The small man stumbles away, practically running as he casts terrified glances over his shoulder back towards the pair. The Terminator takes no notice of him.

"I did not mean to scare him." There's no apology in his voice, his tone flat. He had merely been doing what she had suggested. "I was trying to get an answer."

A young girl-- no older than 13, at the most-- passes him. She's walking purposefully, pale eyes scanning around for... something. In one hand, she carefully holds a vividly-colored lotus blossom.

In the other, she holds a large kitchen knife; the manner in which she's holding it implies her intentions with it are anything but benign.

She pauses, glancing the man over, before quickly moving on, searching the area around him for whatever it is she seeks.

"You're new."

The Terminator scans the form of the girl, coming to rest on the knife she's holding. Judging from the amount of force she is holding it with, she knows how to use it. That is not acceptable, no matter who she is willing to use it on.

"Yes, I am," he replies. She's given him a reason to finally move and he follows her, hovering close enough to be near if he needs to take the knife away, but far enough that she won't feel intimidate by his presence. "Do you know where I am?"

There is little reason to worry about her using it on anything as large as him-- or anything larger than herself at all, really.

She stares up at him with wide eyes, though her expression is unreadable-- honestly, it's difficult to tell if there is any real emotion behind it at all.

"I'm not sure it has a name. You aren't the only one who didn't mean to come here."

They're a regular pair of Tin Men, with their lack of emotions. He blinks, a bit unsure of what is meant by that answer. How can a place not have a name to go with it? Even abstract concepts like Heaven and Hell have them attached.

"Did you mean to come here?" Maybe the the reason she has the knife is for protection. He wonders what sort of creatures are around that would warrant carrying a weapon.

"No. But it isn't the first time I've been taken somewhere I had no intention of going." Yet, somehow, she can't help but feel that the same man responsible for the first time has nothing to do with this-- his world was empty, lonely. This one is full of life and patchworked with different pockets of worlds. No, this is something else.

"The first time, a demon who called himself Maxwell deceived me. But this time, I was simply... here."

"The last time something like this happened to me, I was sent through time." He had already ruled that particular theory out based off the fact he was still wearing clothes.

"Are you all alone?" The question is asked softly, a tone approaching as close to tenderness as the Terminator can muster. What can he say, he's got a soft spot for those on their own, especially young kids.

"For now."

The statement is oddly ominous, especially considering the subtle shift in her grip on the knife's handle.

"My twin sister, Abigail, is nearly here."

He notes the even that subtle shift, not liking it one bit. He moves just a little bit closer to her. Whether that's to help or hinder will depend on the answer to his next question. "Are you in danger?"

Setting: A generic street

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'80s reunion up in here?

Woo-hoo!

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I'm so glad you replied, I was worried I was too late to get in on the party

No such thing as never too late :)

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