03's Dorm
MX-Z0: "...Please. I need you to open."
She was fiddling with something in her hand....some sort of screwdriver, or at least a sharp piercing thing.
And she was hacking away at a plate in her arm...Shhk. Shhk.
Cling!
The plate sprung open, revealing a tangle of wires and strange knobs. She flinched.
It wasn't painful doing this, but exposed wires...her pain protocol was at the alert already.
MX-Z0: As she brushed her finger above the open panel, she stopped at the third knob on the right.
"This one should be the one that..." She mumbled, "...switches it off."
She turned the dial to minimum.
(This is it.) She thought. (I'm correcting myself. I will reset my emotional range to factory settings.)
...
...
...
Nothing happened. She felt no different. That feeling that was eating away at her still remained. The memories were still just as painful.
MX-Z0: "...Why? ...Why!?"
Her electronic voice almost broke with the force those words came out. She kept messing with it, turning it up and down, up and down- nothing changed. Not a single thing changed.
She still felt. No matter how much she wanted to turn it all off forever.
She tried suppressing it. She really did. But seeing him, and remembering it all; who wouldn't wish to feel nothing but apathy? To be the machine she used to be?
And the worst part...was the look on Stranger's face. She wanted to care not for it. But it was the most heartbreaking thing on her mind at the moment, and it wouldn't go away.
She was a failure of a machine. Something too emotional and biased to be a proper robot, but too metal and soulless to be a prota.
She sat on the floor, pushing the panel back down in frustration.
She wanted to be alone.
...
No, that was a lie.
But she refused to tell herself the truth.