Brain Marbling [Jackie]

    K4's 'weird' was just a genre of fiction, and his bizarre had to be at least as abnormal as Agarus, that 'moon-spirit' whose name he never quite got. When Jackie produced an ember he immediately drew a barcode, comparing it to another in the matrix. Now, it could just be coincidence, but there was a second powerful human on Earth who wielded ki in the form of flames. His hair was pastel pink, and his skin pale like dairy (hence the name?) didn't resemble the patient's in the least... But he would still bring it up, just in case. As for the fate of the Sun Monks, it only concerned K4 as far as it did Jackie. He still bet against them surviving, as a simple exercise of probability. He needed these to hone his guesstimates into facts.

    "No ki indoors." he chided halfheartedly, rummaging his wrist "But I'm not telling if you're not telling." a Beppan cigar popped and danced up his fingers, it was cut and lit and then put in his mouth. Meanwhile a fan the propped robot calf began spinning, circulating the air. Even if K4 had no craving or pleasure, the slow drag of smoke helped him think. It reminded him of looking for thrown cigarette butts in Radditsu, and that complicity makes people open up like nothing else. An instinct, naturally his or coded into his brain, guesstimated that he could steal Jackie's identity without anyone noticing. He deleted the idea before it became a plan. It was nevertheless recorded, and he felt... shame.

    "See, in the great classics," K4 was referring to comics without outing himself as a nerd "loss almost always wins. At some level, the characters end up as less than who they began as." he stopped to fill his singular lung with more toxins — he was struggling to connect this thought he had made about himself to Jackie, he needed time "And losing as we may be, we can always take pains to help others."  A truism? He could do better, he needed to. "Have you considered writing down what you remember? Spotty as your memory is, I think there's enough to have it trend on social media. There's a chance it'll be noticed by another Sun Monk, and if not... well, at least that much of them will be recorded forever."

    K4 wasn't prone to accidents, they just happened around him. Still, Jackie's joke got him to stop with the hand tricks before something inside him exploded. His body was a work in progress, but not one he ought to detonate. He let the raspberry-flavored smoke float warmly in his mouth, blowing out ring after ring as he mused on revenge. It was a very fleshy notion, and a big part why the mercenary business was booming. Was he any better than a vulture? Every part of him, in some way, succeeded because of the misfortune of others.

    "People who are in the business of killing tend to be quite good at manhunting. It's possible that you went unnoticed for years, or simply ignored. Them going after you, after all these years... it'd have to be more than business." without an ashtray, K4 slid the cigar back into his wrist, shutting the lid "Which is not impossible." Earthling martial artists were a very intense bunch, the sort to start vendettas over the slightest difference in style. Luckily for Vegeta, saiyans didn't adhere so strictly to schools, and their fights were more social. Even saiyan violence didn't match human insanity.

    "It's normal, healthy, to want to undo an injustice. But what happened to the Sun Monks can't be undone. No amount of justice will bring them back." the cyborg leaned in, his visor reflecting Jackie's stare "Those who destroyed your village, maybe they deserve to die. But you're not a killer. You'll remember their faces, their screams, for a long time." he drummed his fingers on the desk, processing, processing, processing... Then balling his fist. "But I can help you with that."

    Wait...

    "Not as in, I'll kill them for you. But I can fight them. My full power exceeds one hundred thousand units, that is enough to blow up an asteroid." a very small asteroid, which was still more than most fighters could boast "My professional advice is to keep your expectations reasonable. And to not obsess with revenge. Ultimately, this treatment is transformative, not destructive."

    Super bot. Superbot. That certainly had charm. Like Circuits Bizarre, but without the anguish. Yes, there was hope in Superbot... He added it to the list of major update names.

    "I'm a man of many hats. And a cyborg, not a robot." he tapped his chin, scrapping Superbot. Superborg? "Technically speaking, you didn't pay for anything. You're still welcome to make a donation. Or volunteer." many hands make light work, be they fire-spewing or metal. And truth is, K4 could use someone to talk to. He had already alienated his coworkers, and his closest thing to a friend was Faustus (who, while a delightful person, was heartless to the extreme). Whatever it may look like, the cyborg wasn't joining in for the social aspect of this misadventure. He just wanted to assure that this acquaintance he came to like wouldn't die.

    "This is a retribution, stress the lowercase. But it's good that you can recognize its limitations. You mustn't let it consume you, and in turn be limited by it." K4 wondered if he wanted revenge on anyone, even subconsciously. Maybe the Strongbones in the Stars, with their scalpels, chimes and tumorous backs. Still he felt indebted to them, and it went deeper than code. Why, then, did the cyborg feel diminished? Jackie thought, talked and acted like an organic, while that side of him was... upgrading. Maybe all he felt were copies of copies, echoes that'd slowly fade. He didn't even think the same as two months ago.

    "You might want answers now, but what about after the fact? You'll have these people to deal with. If you're not killing them, and I'm not killing them, it'd be best to..." he looked at the message pinned on the cactus, sighing "Blast, Earth doesn't have the sort of prison that can hold ki users. And their crimes might not even escape its jurisdiction." K4 hated the law and its people, their limited views, their fickle principles. Even as tools, they were worse than useless. "There's not much to build a plan on. And it's too early to make an opening move."

    Space Prison could definitely hold these toughs, but the killing of some martial monks was too little for the Galactic Patrol. Maybe the act itself had extenuating circumstances to Earthen law? Inter-dojo politicking wasn't exactly K4's forte, on account of how secretive and wary they were of technology. Arranging their deaths really was the only long-term solution... Besides Jackie leaving Earth behind, taking on new worlds and lives at a pace faster than even the cyborg. Not exactly a lifestyle organics could excel at.

    "I can assure you most people would want to help. I just happen to have the sort of power and schedule that allows me to do some good, from time to time." K4 didn't toot his horn as loud as 4K, but he gloated as easily. Even if his actual reason was quite selfish, a good deed was still a good deed. "You should be more open with people. Maybe not with this, but in general. One or two close friends, good friends, make a world of difference." Easier said than done, the cyborg's own choices forbade him from letting people get close. Still, they kept liking him.

    "See, the reason why your mental health professional is advising you like this is because my confidence in the powers that be is nil. Justice is decentralized, negotiated, participatory. Law is, at best, a suggestion. At worst it's a handicap, or a death sentence... But that's just how I see it." he shifted in his much too small seat "The important thing is how you feel about this. You're not before a dichotomy of action or inaction, it's important that you consider every mean and end."

    Talent was an interesting choice for Jackie to describe her peers, and herself by extension. Was this refusal to be coy and open admission of exceptional power a symptom of egotism? Perhaps, perhaps not, self-love had to be administered carefully for the sake of compassion, cooperation, the striving for survival. That holistic borderline nonsense concept monkeying as high concept psychology, the so-called 'Dark Triad', was for once useful: the human wasn't callous or indifferent, as her want to avenge the Sun Monks seemed rather... compassionate. Her self-esteem felt grounded, and liable to develop as she moved on from trauma.

    He let the silence hang as he was smiled to. Felt weird, warm, like a vice around that lump of meat that once beat as a heart. The flexing of muscles, the slight baring of teeth, the small twisting of the lips up, made for a too genuine answer. K4 disguised it by scratching his reddening cheek, "You can never think enough. A lot can go wrong when you don't." Against his own words, he felt like acting on impulse. Leave the wars and schemes behind, live as a psychologist in this speck of a planet, help people as they needed. He certainly had enough money to live this lie for some centuries, but what would come after? His maintenance came at a cost beyond zeni, beyond even this galaxy. And he wanted to thrive, not simply live.

    "You were adopted." he turned the conversation cold and clinical again, draining the color from his face "How would you describe your childhood after being taken in?"

    Fleshies blushed for a multitude of reasons, cyborgs too. But while the conversation cooled, sensible thoughts didn't return to K4's head so soon. He thought that Jackie was positively smitten, which was how he dealt with people that could relax around him. It was easier, then, to remind himself that he had more in common to a bomb than a person. Simple causes lead to simple effects and all that. But even he had to admit it was odd that almost ten different people had fallen for him just that month. He suspected it had to do with his psychic sense, emanating the calm that came from being part machine.

    Scion was a very distinguished name, Hue came off as more common. Which was the surname? Earthlings were chaotic with their naming, Jackie even named herself after an article of clothing. It was all very silly, yet crucial in K4's search. The same he had tried to control himself from doing. Ah, but control was precisely why he was doing this. Public schools in Central City kept data, which contained photos, putting names to fresh faces that could be algorithmically traced as the years unfolded. K4 came to know Jackie, her classmates, their hobbies and professions. Where they lived, for how much, how long. It was an instant to him, a reflex he regretted immediately.

    She was saying something about movies?

    "I like them too." he blurted out, tapping at the paper at the tempo of his rising anxiety. Then he stopped, erasing this data he had scrounged, all except the records. He hated that he couldn't commit to anything. "I play holofilms in my head when I'm bored. I like watching them as intended, each second taking a second, even if it's be easier to just read the code." Read was an approximation he thought was apt. There was always something lost in the process.

    Jackie probably wasn't talking about films. K4 probably said something completely unrelated. He wanted to apologize and come clean, hard as it would have been to keep good relations if his ease and propensity for stalking were revealed. 'Manhunting', is what he had called it to his patient, because that skill was quite profitable for a mercenary. The sort that goes around razing villages.

    "Ah, sorry for... Ads, you know? And their impeccable timing." he presented a tired, sighed smile. Completely artificial. But the migraine shooting between his temples felt very real, he wondered if the warbling static could be heard outside of his head. K4 cleared his throat, adopting the decided stance of a vanguard thinker. "I'm developing a theory, on a field that's already pretty abstract. It would do a lot of good for both of us if you gave your opinion." his hands moved as if tearing, joining, comparing the concepts he brought up "The conscious tries to find a pattern for the subconscious, rationalising events as a connected series. Self-identity is the reflection of that pattern, the perception that life is coherent, like in a story!" he tapped the paper excitedly, his head no longer hurting "See, the conscious can't accept that it isn't in control. It refuses to not be the protagonist, the motor of the plot. So causes and effects are perceived, made coherent the narrative one writes for themselves because they are its building blocks!"

    He forced himself to calm down, no longer dealing with the foundations of ideas but an actual person.

    "I think that it's not impossible that a lot of the hurt you feel is owed to your trauma may in fact come from other instances of suffering. You may need to... decontextualize your day-to-day living, both current and past. Do you ever feel guilt, or relief, or... feelings you may feel aren't grounded."