He finds that his limbs are heavy—heavy in a way that he is unused to. His processor has slowed. Perhaps it is malware, but instead of popping open his control panel to nose around, Ei pries open that spot at the base of his neck and murmurs an unexpected word: Obsolete.
Kunikuzushi isn't so much a name as a title bestowed upon him, dramatic in its irony for it's no less villainous than any other stock players in Ei's workshop. And yes, he was her favorite for a time, hours spent pulling at his wires and circuits, tweaking and tweaking.
She has tweaked him enough. "Too gentle," she said to him that day before prying open his circuit board and removing a few chips. "Nearly there—you were nearly perfect. But I have no use for an AI who wishes to be human."
He wants no such thing and he tries to say that only his mouth doesn't move right and his vocal processors seem to be offline. Ei pulls back to look at the chips in her hand. They catch the lamplight and twinkle against her palm, like the stars in the sky that he pretends to have no interest in.
Too gentle, she'd said.
Kunikuzushi isn't a gentle man—he isn't even a man, just a mass of silicon and circuitry that might have an interest in being a little more. He is no fool, though. A machine cannot want. He's nothing but ones and zeroes, and even those strung together create complicated patterns only to say the most simple of words.
He has never been tired in the traditional sense but he thinks that this sluggishness that pulls at him might be the closest he'll feel.
Things become clear once they arrive at the resale shop. "A good model," she says to the proprietor, tugging Kunikuzushi's arm forward to show off his carefully crafted limbs. "Obsolete. Older programming, but a good shell. Perfect for those who might like a fixer-upper."
"Too much," says the shopkeeper when given her price. "Twenty thousand Mora." An insulting counteroffer, but Ei accepts it with a handshake and the press of her wallet drive into his console. With a ding the money is transferred and Kunikuzushi's fate is sealed. Together they move him to sit against the wall towards the side. "Just until I find a place to display it."
"Him." Ei's reply is insistent. Quick and smooth. One last kindness, Kunikuzushi supposes.
She gives him a piteous look that sears right through him. For a moment, he remembers her kindness. She'd pieced him together. She'd brought him to life. She'd tinkered, tinkered, and tinkered—
And yet, it wasn't enough.
Ei leaves him in that shop where the days bleed into weeks. The shopkeeper moves him around just enough to not collect too many cobwebs.
At first, Kunikuzushi counts the days. One, two, three. Then the weeks. Forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine. Then the years. Ninety, ninety-one, ninety-two.
When his battery finally depletes, and his circuits slow to a stop, Kunikuzushi has but one thought: I wonder if I'll dream?
#
Kunikuzushi whirs back to life in stages.
He blinks but his vision processors do not work, leaving the world black before him. One ear is hollow and deaf, and whilst the other hears, there's a persistent ring that pulses through his computer brain. His mouth moves and there is sound—but his words come out like grinding gears, his throat clogged with dust and decay.
"Oh shoot." The voice is soft, feminine. There is the pitter-pattering of feet and the tinkering of tools as the woman fusses about him. Ei, he thinks. Mother. She must be installing upgrades, he thinks.
Only these hands are gentle as she grabs hold of his chin, tilting his head back until the joint creaks and prying his mouth open at the jaw. The spray of condensed Anemo clears the gunk from his throat. The can clinks softly as it's set to the side.
Ei was always curt and calculating. Not cruel, but swift in her movements as she tinkered with his workings. Her touch was not harsh, but it did not linger, nor was it sweet. Whoever this is seems to be kind.
Kunikuzushi tries again. "I-I—" Garbled sounds. A frustrated grunt as he tries to move unoiled gaskets.
A thumb smooths over his cheek as his face is turned from side to side. "Hm. Perhaps your voice module needs to be adjusted." Her voice lightens into something amused. "Ah. Ever the optimist, aren't I? I should have known better than to think you'd come back like new. No, no, there is much work to be done."
He doesn't like to be thought of as work. It is impersonal. He was work to his mother, a project to suit her curiosity and whims. Eternity, she'd whisper into his ear, dreaming of finding a cure for humanity. But work is often cast away as it becomes obsolete, with newer and finer models taking a project's place.
Kunikuzushi's memory circuits have faded but the blurred edges of the shop are seared into his brain. "Who—" he chokes out.
The woman laughs. "I've been working on you for a long time already. Had to replace some bits and pieces before I could turn you on." She twists his arm to look at the readout under the panel there. "Still lots more to be done, too."
He does not have a heart but it feels like his inner workings twinge. Kunikuzushi doesn't want to be another project, to be fiddled with, or pulled at and plucked apart, only to be put partially back together before this woman's attention is tugged elsewhere. Engineers are all the same, ruled by their whims and the shiniest new models and toys. It is only a matter of time until he is left to rot in the dust again.
But then, her next words surprise him. "We'll work on it together. Two heads are better than one, no? Let me adjust this right here—hang on!"
Kunikuzushi feels her tug at the wires in his arm. He hears a soft zap and the whirring of a soldering iron as she messes with his workings.
"I'm Nahida, by the way," she continues. Another harsh tug at his wiring. "There, is that better? Are those old vocal processors kicking into gear?"
Kunikuzushi is already exhausted by this woman but tries to speak nonetheless. "I'm no one," he manages in a raspy grunt.
Nahida hums softly and closes the panel of Kunikuzushi's arm, patting it gently.
"Well, that'll only make this more fun now, won't it?"
#
The first thing that is properly repaired is his voice box, which becomes the undoing of Miss Nahida.
"I'm already tired," bemoans Kunikuzushi loudly. Once docile and quiet, abandonment has led him to be cynical and rude. It is only a matter of time before it happens again. Kunikuzushi doesn't want to bother with getting attached, so he won't.
"Quit being so dramatic." Nahida is face-first in a book, eyes scanning the pages as she silently mouths the words. His inner workings are old enough that she's had to brush up on inferior types of circuitry, something that she constantly quotes as fascinating. Interesting until she gets bored, at least. Even if he could breathe, he wouldn't hold his breath.
He's sluggish. The battery currently equipped is jerry-rigged, but even he has to admit that Nahida seems to know what she's doing. Still. "It's only a matter of time before I shut down again."
"Then I'll plug you back in, let you charge, and turn you on." She flips a page. "It won't be the end of the world. Think of it as a good night's rest. Even I sleep from time to time."
Barely. Nahida seems to function mostly on energy packets and sheer will, forcing herself to rest when she becomes too tired to handle tools properly.
"I still don't—"
"Aha!"
Kunikuzushi jumps, hissing at her exclamation. Annoying. So, utterly vexing.
Nahida shoots him a mischievous grin. "So lithium ion parts aren't really used anymore, but I think I can fix something up if I adopt the idea of an Electro Vision and…"
Her voice fades off as Kunikuzushi finds himself lost in thought. Electro. Visions. He thinks of Mother and her experiments, zips and zaps of energy as she tested him to his limits. Never cruel, but Kunikuzushi also doesn't feel pain, at least in the way a being is supposed to. Everything is programmed, carefully attuned to feel real if the correct processing chip is turned but—
"What do you think?"
He realizes too late that Nahida asked him a question. "I… uh…"
Nahida seems unbothered by his wandering thoughts, waving them away before she repeats herself. "A self-charging battery! Obviously, I can't use an old Electro Vision, but the idea is there. We'll create a conduit that'll pull the energy from the air, which, in turn, will charge your battery."
"Do you expect there to be constant thunderstorms hanging about?" he asks dryly. Oh, he doesn't have time for this. Not that he has anywhere better to be.
Nahida scoffs. "Of course not. There's enough ambient energy in the air to give it a boost. Celestia knows there are enough Holo-billboards whose power sources could feed a village."
Kunikuzushi seems doubtful but doesn't question Nahida. While he hasn't quite figured out her exact intentions, he does trust that she has an inkling of expertise. "You keep saying we." A topic he's been meaning to approach for a while.
Nahida looks strangely caught for a moment as she thinks of just how to respond. "I mean… you know yourself better than anyone, right? To do my best I your help."
"I'm not—ugh. I won't fall into your pleas for help just because you're knowledgeable. You are the one who purchased me with grand illusions of fixing what's already broken."
Her laugh chimes through the workshop, to which he sneers in annoyance.
#
For all of his mutterings about refusing to help, Kunikuzushi finds himself giving her unsolicited advice. Quite a bit of it, every piece dripping with scathing sarcasm. Nahida says nothing, only gives him a crooked grin before diving into his bits and pieces to fine-tune whatever he's whined about.
She is insufferable with her questions, driveling things such as, "What is your name?"
(To which he had no appropriate answer because what Mother called him leaves only a sour taste in his mouth. "Nothing," he wound up telling Nahida, who in turn gave him a wrinkled expression, staring for a moment too long before returning to her tinkering.)
Another day it was, "Where are you from?"
(This question was easily answered because there is no harm in mentioning Inazuma. They are still there, even now, Nahida groaning about how she had to rent a dingy old workshop in the seedy underbelly of what used to be a grand capital. "Do you like it?" she asked and received an honest answer of, "There are worse places to be," which surprised Kunikuzushi more than anyone else.)
Today the question should be difficult. "Who built you?" Nahida asks as she turns a ratchet somewhere inside his back. And perhaps he should be embarrassed that his innards are on full display, but Kunikuzushi both loves and hates that they found a rapport, that he finds himself answering her absurd little questions without a thought.
This one though—this question hits closer to home. Nahida pries kindheartedly and never expects an answer, so she waits without pushing. He listens to the clank clank of the ratchet. Feels her tug at some wires before making an adjustment. They're installing that new battery of her design today but not as the permanent option. His old one will still be on standby just in case it doesn't work out.
An answer rests on the tip of his tongue. "I…" It isn't quite lodged in his throat. "Her name was Ei. I called her Mother. She, like most engineers, valued a good project but lost interest due to my 'weakness of personality.' She had a vision in mind, which was one that I did not fit, no matter how much she readjusted me."
Nahida pauses, her fiddling coming to a stop. She clicks her tongue then, and Kunikuzushi knows that she must be shaking her head. "Such things are learned," she says then. "Developed with time and exposure, not programmed."
"You do realize that I am an android," he reminds her blandly. "I cannot learn in the way you are describing."
A soft chuckle. "You can't?" Nahida tugs at his workings again and he grunts. "It's all that you've done since I turned you on."
Kunikuzushi considers her words. At first, a retort is on his lips, quick to fall into a sneer. And then he realizes that she is right; he would have never spoken this way to Mother. He would have never thought so freely in her presence or sought out the mundane, daily things he does whilst living in Nahida's shop.
"You didn't realize it, did you?" she asks. Another laughing chirp. "That's likely the most human thing one can manage—not noticing when they're wrong." She slams his back panel closed with enough force that he skitters forward.
"Watch it," he hisses, barely catching himself on the edge of the desk.
Nahida just pats his back and gives him a sparkling grin in return.
#
Kunikuzushi counts the days, the weeks, the months—an old habit that he's never quite kicked.
"How's the new arm?"
He holds it out and turns it over. "Aside from it being blue, it seems to work fine."
Nahida snorts. "Beggars can't be choosers. Get yourself a job and maybe we can get you something a little fancier." She means it as a joke; there are few parts that actually work with his model and he knows that Nahida's working on crafting her own from scratch.
He'll just have to ignore her teasing for however long that takes.
"Have you thought about it, by the way? What I asked you the other day?"
Yes. Too much, almost. Kunikuzushi didn't know that his mind could be consumed by so many what-ifs and nots, but it's easier to blame the new critical thinking chip that Nahida has decided to torture him with.
(It isn't torture; he was the one to bring it up after finding some of Mother's old journals in the crate that he came with. And it isn't that he dislikes his wandering thoughts, it's that he's unused to the stream of consciousness. He never thought a cat could be cute, and that might lead to thinking orange was warm, which then would make him think about the sun—
One gets the picture.)
"No," he finally says. "But I would imagine that Liyue wasn't named in a day."
He has never considered being called something, truth be told. Nahida had caught him off guard when she last asked for his preference.
She hums softly, tapping at her chin. "I can give you suggestions—"
"Please don't."
"Are you sure? I'm a wealth of ideas—"
"The last thing that I want is to share the name of a romance protagonist—"
"Hey, just because you didn't like 'Farewell Thy Beloved Dragon'—"
"Tartaglia," he hisses. "Who names their child Tartaglia?"
Nahida crosses her arms over her chest. "Whatever," she mutters. "If push comes to shove, you can always take inspiration from theater."
"I am thinking of a proper name," he says quieter. "I promise."
She nods and the subject is dropped. "Now then, time for something more fun." Nahida grins mischievously. "Want to take that new stomach for a spin? I might have gotten tickets to Chef Xiangling's Extravaganza—"
"Is that what you spent our salary on?"
"Our? I think you mean, mine."
Nahida tugs at that newfangled arm she'd fitted him with earlier that day, and Kunikuzushi finds himself smiling.