Auristitecture (Solo)

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

27th Day of Summer, 512 AV Tock was late coming into class. Again. "Miss Zipporah, see me after class," the professor said as she hurried in, clutching her books and papers to her chest. She just gave him a nod, already knowing what the upcoming lecture would be. How she had to take her responsibilities more seriously, how the schedule needed to be respected and upheld, how she was wasting her time and his if she couldn't be prompt and blah blah blah. As if it were HER fault... she'd just been caught up in one of her other projects at home, trying to draw up blueprints for a steel wolf's jaw. The books she'd taken from the library didn't give her enough detail for a proper set of schematics. She was going to need to capture an actual wolf for study soon. That was the only way her masterpiece would ever be complete. So what if she'd been a little late to class because of her personal studies? It wasn't like she'd missed anything important. The professor always spent the first ten minutes talking about boring stuff, like essays. ESSAYS! She had a bloody magic city to build, and it wasn't going to get built by writing ESSAYS! It was going to get built by her doing IMPORTANT stuff, like building her wolf so it could drive off predators and protect her and her babies when it came time to claim her own patch of the wildlands. Though she DID need a better understanding of Auristics, so that she could fix her baby Cutty. She settled into a seat near the back, dumping her books and papers all over the desk, not really listening to the professor as he droned on about unimportant stuff like the signs of overgiving. She started sorting through her papers, focused entirely on her own concerns, waiting until class moved on to the good stuff. "Miss Zipporah..." the professor said, tapping his pointer on the desk. His tone indicated he might have said her name more than once while she wasn't listening. She looked up at him, staring blankly. When he didn't say anything for a moment, she just dumbly asked, "What?"

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

"I was asking you if you had your essay?" he asked her. She stared at him blankly. "The one that was assigned last class? The rest of the class handed theirs in promptly this morning..." "Oh," Tock said, digging through her papers, searching for the essay. "Aye, I did it, I did! Lemme jus'... where the petch...?" She grumbled as she dug for it, sorting through pages of wolf drawings, gear schematics, and notes she'd made for herself about her project. She cursed softly, then pulled her backpack onto the table and opened it. Bitey, her eighteen inch long wooden mechanical spider, crawled out of the open flap. The class gasped, several of them pushing their chairs further away in fear. The professor crossed his arms and gave her a stern look; she wasn't supposed to bring her Automatons to class. Worse yet, she had located her essay... or what was left of it. Bitey had torn it into strips and attempted to weave a web from the paper, though the end result was little more than a mangled mess inside her pack. She frowned, pulling the scraps of paper out, cradling them in her hands. "Is THAT your essay?" the professor asked. The students, those that weren't cowering in fear, laughed at her. "Aye," Tock said with a pout. "I guess... my golem ate my 'omework..."

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

"You'd best get it to me by the end of the day," he told her. "And keep that away from the other students," he pointed to Bitey, drawing a fierce glare from Tock. "'E won't bother nobody," she said with a sneer, grumbling under her breath as she scooted Bitey back into her pack. She kept one hand in there, petting him, while the teacher continued on with the lecture. Most of it made Tock yawn; she hated the talking-learning here almost as much as the reading-learning. She much preferred it when they got past all that stupid crud, and got to actually DO stuff! Eventually, the professor finished droning on, and told them to break up into pairs, and choose an animal from the cages on the side if the room to study. Tock got stuck being paired up with some annoying blonde girl whose name she could never be bothered to remember; the type who always came to class in a pretty little dress, with ribbons in her hair, and spent half her time making eyes at the boys in class instead of paying attention (which was COMPLETELY different than the way Tock didn't pay attention, since when SHE wasn't paying attention, it was because she was busy sketching wolves, which was far more important than boys!) Instead of going over to the cages, Tock pulled Bitey back out and set him on the table. The blonde girl pushed her chair way back, letting out a yelp, and eying Bitey's long metal fangs with fear. "Miss Zipporah," the teacher snapped, "I thought I told you to keep that away..." Tock scowled at him and replied, "Ya jus' done told us fer ta study an animal!" She petted her baby lovingly. The blonde didn't make a peep as Bitey stared her down with his bulbous glass eyes, watching her like she was dinner. "But that's not an animal," he told her. "Course 'e is," she replied matter-of-factly. "'E's a spider..." He stared at her blankly for a moment. She stared back with innocent certainty of her statement, feeling it was quite obvious. The professor opened his mouth and gestured to the spider, which was clearly a spider, and couldn't be mistaken for anything else. He scratched his head, and cleared his throat, with Tock staring innocently at him all the while, completely oblivious to what the problem could be. Finally, he sighed in defeat and said, "Very well. Carry on..." The blonde girl shot him a horrified look, but he was already moving on to the next pair of students.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock focused on Bitey, some paper in front of her to take notes. She began concentrating, eyes narrowed, slowly channeling Djed into her vision. It took some time, with deep, careful focus, before the aura began to form in her vision. She had studied animal auras before, to a limited extent. Though Bitey's aura was a bit different. For the first few minutes, all she got was his physical details. The cold metallic aura she was coming to recognize went with most metal constructs. The rough, grainy feeling of wood. The cold reflection of his glass eyes, almost making her feel like she was studying the aura through a reflection in a mirror. It frustrated her that she couldn't figure out how to sort past all that right from the start. These were details she could see with her own normal eyes; the MAGIC-sensing should have been able to skip past what her eyes to see, and tell her something more. But for some reason, it never did, until after she'd spent more time focusing, probing deeper to find what she really wanted to know. After several more minutes, with Tock starting to get a cottony feeling in her ears (one of the early signs of mild overgiving, which could lead to all out deafness if it continued long enough), she finally started to get something a little more 'intangible.' A dark, skittery aura, flowing around the Automaton's body like a web floating in the wind. Tock glanced at her book, flipping through it, until she found the relevant page. This sort of aura was generally associated with arachnids and insects. She smiled. She had made Bitey from a living spider, and his soul was copied directly from that of a Golden Orb Weaver. Thus his aura matched that of the arachnid he was made from, though the grainy feeling of wood and the metallic gleam of the aura belied Bitey's artificial nature.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Blondie was yapping on about something while Tock took notes about Bitey's aura. She tuned the girl out, continuing to record as much detail as she could, until the girl said rather loudly, "EXCUSE me..." Tock looked up at the girl, blinked, said, "Yer excused," then turned back to her notetaking. "Hey," the girl protested, "HEY! I'm talking to you!" She reached across the desk to poke Tock with her quill. This proved to be a mistake, for Bitey took it as an aggressive move, and he crouched, raising his fangs, ready to strike. The girl squealed, and Tock told her baby, "Bitey, leave the lil priss be..." She touched his back, and he relaxed. He couldn't understand her words, but he was programmed to be soothed by her voice and her touch. "Wow..." Blondie muttered, "he does what you say..." Tock didn't hear a word the girl said, though. She was focused on a very interesting shift she'd seen in Bitey's aura. Blondie continued yapping about something or other, but Tock wasn't paying attention, and the cottony feeling in her ears from overgiving was getting worse. She ignored it as well, trying to understand what she'd just seen. She grabbed Blondie's arm and shoved it near Bitey again. If the girl protested, Tock didn't hear it. Bitey reacted once more, scurrying back a few steps. Tock touched him and said, "Be good..." and there it was again. A subtle shift in Bitey's aura. Though she didn't understand what it meant. For just the one moment when she touched him, the spider's aura became more... rigid. Restricted. Almost like the aura's image of a web floating in the breeze suddenly became pressed under glass and was shoved in a picture frame. Too distracted to realize she'd been focusing too long, and overgiving had temporarily robbed her of her hearing, Tock raised her hand to get the professor's attention and said in a far too loud voice, "TEACH! I NEEDS 'ELP WIT' MY SPIDER'S AURA!"

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

The professor stepped over, but Tock didn't hear anything he said. A bit of overgiving had temporarily robbed her of one of her senses, this time hearing. Unaware of it, and too focused on the mystery before her to realize how silent the room suddenly was, she kept focusing on Bitey's aura. Every time she touched him, the same subtle shift happened, as if something about him were locking in place. But she couldn't understand what it meant. She was feeling tired, and her head was starting to pound, but she seemed to get a headache every time she used Auristics. She was coming to just accept it as normal. She kept focusing on Bitey, ignoring everything else around her. Finally, she felt a hand touch her shoulder. Startled, she jerked around and almost swung a fist, looking up at the wide-eyed professor who stepped back, raising his hands to soothe her. His lips were moving but she couldn't hear a word. "WHAT?" she asked. "OY, NEVER MIND. LOOK!" She pointed at Bitey, and touched him again. "YA SEE 'AT? 'IS AURA'S GOIN' ALL... FUNKY AN' i DUNNO WHY..." The professor continued speaking to her, lips moving without a sound. She frowned in confusion, not sure what was going on. Finally, the professor grabbed her by her shoulders and pushed her into a chair. He pulled out a small vial and popped the cap off, waving it under her nose. Whatever was in it smelled foul, and made her dizzy. She winced, trying to push him off, coughing and closing her eyes. Her concentration was completely broken, her Djed flow cut off. She was handed a glass of water, everything still silent around her. She drank the water, and rubbed some of it on her face. Her nose was tingling and her eyes watering from the smelling salts, or whatever it had been. After a few minutes, when she felt like she was recovering (except for the continued lack of hearing), she looked up to see the professor writing something on a sheet of paper: How are you feeling? She frowned at the paper and irritably replied, "OY, WHATCHA DONE MEANS!? WHAZZAT STINKY STUFF ALL 'BOUT! BLOODY RUDE, IF'N YA ASK ME..." The professor sighed and wrote another line, then held the page up for her to see: You're overgiving. It's clearly robbed your hearing. Please stop shouting. She scowled, waving a hand at the paper in disgust. "WHAZZA MEAN, 'SHOUTIN''?" she asked. She couldn't hear her own voice, and didn't realize she was instinctively raising her voice to try and make herself heard. "MY SPIDER..." She pointed at the table, where Bitey was cringing away from a few nearby students. Most of the class was watching now, curious to find out how to handle a case over overgiving sensory loss. Most of them were keeping away from Bitey, but a few were studying him curiously, though from a safe distance. The attention was setting his instincts on edge, and he was crouched down, ready to bite anyone that came too close. The professor glanced at Bitey and wrote: You can't channel any more Djed until your hearing returns. If you do, it could become permanent. He held up the sheet of paper and tapped his finger repeatedly on the word 'permanent'. Tock stared at it for a moment, the repercussions slowly sinking in. She rubbed at her ears, frowning. She didn't understand what she'd done wrong. Bitey raised his forelegs defensively when one of the students got a little brave and stepped closer. Not wanting to be blamed when the stupid git got himself bitten, she stood up and grabbed Bitey, cradling him against herself protectively. A few more written notes from the professor explained the signs she should have picked up on earlier: the cottony feeling in her ears, the fatigue, the headache. He accentuated the point by handing her a book, which detailed all the signs and warnings about overgiving. Then he passed her one final note: From now on, you STOP at the first signs of fatigue or pain, so that it doesn't get this bad. And until your hearing clears, you read up about overgiving in order to learn better... She read the note twice, then looked up at him and said, "BUT...!!!" All he did was shove the book at her, giving her a stern look. Grumbling, she settled into the chair, spider in her lap, and started skimming the stupid book about stupid overgiving...

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock got really bored, really fast, reading through the book. The signs of overgiving were listed right in the first chapter, and she committed them to memory for future reference. But after that it went on and on and on, listing all the variations and specific symptoms. Tock didn't see any point in all that; once she knew that hearing problems were a sign of Auristic overgiving, she didn't need the book to list every possible type of hearing condition, from dulled hearing to ringing to buzzing to whispers. By the time her hearing cleared up, class was over. The other students filed out. She gathered up her things, and carried Bitey over to the professor's desk. He looked up at her and said in a very soft voice, as though still testing her hearing, "Class is dismissed, Miss Zipporah. Next class session, make sure to--" "Ya still ain't 'elped me find out why my spider's aura been broken," she told him, setting Bitey on the desk. The spider scurried around, climbing over stacks of books before finding a perch in the corner. Then it crouched there, waiting, as though for some prey to enter its web. "Surely this can wait until next class...?" the professor asked. Tock crossed her arms and stared him down. This was her baby, her firstborn. She wasn't putting this off. When he saw the look on her face the professor sighed, then asked, "Very well, what seems to be the problem?" "'Is aura's weird," she said, focusing on Bitey again. Now that her head was clear she started channeling Djed once more, concentrating on the spider until the wavery, web-like aura slowly expanded in her vision. "One sign of overgiving, and I'm cutting you off," the professor said, standing and focusing his own attention on the spider. He picked up a ruler and gently prodded at the spider, prompting Bitey to snap at the offending object. Tock batted the ruler away and glared at her teacher. "'E's a baby," she protested. "Don't POKE 'im!" The professor locked her with a stern look for a moment, then cleared his throat and said, "I don't see what the problem is. The aura seems about what I'd expect from a... mechanical spider. Signs of artificiality, several classical indicators of arachnea, a vibrancy to the aura that indicates life combined with the more stoic signs normally associated with the inanimate..." He turned his attention from the spider to meet Tock's eyes, "I'm not especially familiar with Automatons, but this is about what I expect... though if you are having a problem with the... device, I'd suggest speaking with Professor Claudia..." Tock snorted. The LAST thing she wanted to do was go talk to the uptight bitch professor of Animation. She'd long since surpassed anything Claudia could teach her. The University couldn't really teach her anything more about Animation. She was on her own now. But she still had questions about Auristics. Opting to ignore the professor's ignorant comments about Bitey (he was NOT a 'device'!), she said, "It ain't... oy, 'ere, LOOK!" Concentrating on Bitey's aura still, she reached out to pet him. The curious look on the professor's face showed that he saw the same thing she did, the brief constraint of the aura. "See?" she asked. "Whazzat mean...?" The professor crossed his arms, tapping a finger against his chin. "I'm not sure..." he replied. Tock sighed. He was supposed to KNOW these things!

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

"You need to understand," he told her, crossing his arms and taking on a lecturing pose, "that everything has a unique aura. There are certain similar signs one can learn to look for, such as the coloration or texture of an aura that indicates a plant, versus an animal, versus a human..." Tock rolled her eyes. She knew this part already. They'd covered it early on in class. Sensing her irritation, the professor moved along. "Automatons, no doubt, have their own type of unique aura. One that I'm not familiar with, considering how rare they are." Tock stared at the professor blankly, then asked, "So, is 'e broken?" Her heart clenched at the idea. She already had one malfunctioning Automaton. She didn't know if she could deal with another. The professor rubbed his hand across his face, then shrugged and said, "I don't know. I don't have enough information to say. I'd need, at the very least, to make a comparison to another--" "Oh," Tock interrupted, reaching into her pack and pulling out Handy. "'Ere. I gots four wit' me..." "Four?" the professor asked, looking at her in shock. "Aye," she nodded, not seeing what was so surprising about that. Handy immediately started flipping through the pages of one of the books on the desk. The professor watched with some hesitation; a scholar of magic or not, this wasn't the sort of magic he was used to. But he studied Handy intently, and so Tock did the same, focusing hard on the flow of Djed to feel out Handy's aura. Like Bitey, she sensed the grainy feeling of wood and the coldness of metal. Though his aura was a bit stronger... she'd learned a lot by the time she made him, and so he was more advanced than Bitey by a good margin. Rather than giving the arachnid sense that Bitey gave off, Handy had a more bright and fluid aura. It shimmered a bit with a light yellow color, flickering with signs of pink here and there. She recognized those colors as signs of human emotions. Handy wasn't capable of anything very complex, but he was advanced enough to have some minor emotions. His aura seemed much more 'human' than Bitey's. "He was imprinted from yourself?" the professor asked. Tock nodded. "Well, everything seems about as expected again. The same mixture of the natural and artificial. But I'm not sure about the... discrepancy the other one had. Does it only happen when you touch it?" Tock considered that for a moment, and reached out to touch Handy. He shifted his fingers to grasp her hand and shake it, then turned back to turning the pages of the book. There was no sign of any shift. The professor considered this for a moment and asked, "Can you think of any difference between the two that would account for this?" Tock thought about this for a moment, then noticed Handy crawling across the table and reaching for the professor's unlit pipe. He picked it up and started waving it around, spilling some cold ashes out. "Baby, stop," she told him. He froze in place, and so did his aura. Compressed. Unmoving. Like water turned to ice. Tock's eyes widened, and the professor arched a curious eyebrow.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock studied the frozen aura a bit longer, trying to figure it out. She started to feel a twinge of pain in her temples, but she tried to ignore it. The pain must have showed on her face, however, for the professor told her, "That's enough..." She glanced up at him, then looked back at Handy. The professor lifted her chin to make her face him, and told her, "Stop. When the signs start, you stop." She sighed and released the Djed flow. But she still studied Handy with her own normal eyes. "Whazzat mean?" she asked the professor, gesturing to the unmoving Automaton. He was frozen in place, two fingers braced against the desk, three still holding the pipe up. The professor scratched his head, considering the mystery. "Well," he asked, "why did he stop?" "Cause I told 'im to," she replied with irritation. The professor shot her a stern look for her tone, and asked, "Is that part of the..." he waved a hand around, searching for the right word, "'programming'?" She nodded, then her eyes widened as it started clicking in place. "Izzat like..." she pointed at Handy, trying to think how to voice her idea, "like 'ow 'is programmin' makes 'is aura does diff'rent?" The professor shrugged and replied, "I can't say for sure. But it seems likely. Is the programming... 'restrictive'?" Tock thought that over, and nodded. The Directives in each Automaton were like extra, unbreakable laws, laid over top of their personas. When Handy wasn't given a direct order, his natural personality took over. He did as he pleased, whether that be shaking hands, or playing with the stuff on the desk. But when she gave him an order, his Directive of obedience overruled his personality, and he had no choice but to obey. "Locks 'im in place... an' locks the aura down, too," she said, voicing the tail end of her train of thoughts. This told her a great deal. Perhaps there were other ways that an Automaton's aura would change based on its programming. She'd have to do tests... a LOT of tests. Most of her babies just had the same Directive of obedience, and nothing else. But their individual programming and personalities were all different. And if she could figure out how to judge differences in their auras and link those to aspects of their programming, she might be able to use that information to help her repair Cutty.

[Minerva Agatha Zipporah]

Tock thanked the professor for his help, then gathered up her babies to head on home. Though before she left, the professor stopped her to remind her, "Miss Zipporah, we still need to talk about your tardiness... and you owe me an essay..." Tock grumbled under her breath, and sat there for another half a bell while the professor lectured her on the importance of being on time, taking responsibility for her actions, a bunch of other stuff she didn't hear because she was quite frankly tuning it all out. If he asked her later to repeat any of it, she'd just claim to have had a relapse of the hearing loss. After the lecture was done, she decided to quickly write the replacement essay now, so that she wouldn't have to walk all the way home just to come back to the University later tonight. The subject was supposed to be a summary of the week's learnings. Since she couldn't remember exactly what she'd written the first time, she decided to just write what was freshest in her mind. Golems has auras what are like, half real and half fake, cause they're alive but they're artificial. So you can tell a Golem is a Golem and not a regular living thing by that, even though you can tell that just by looking at them just like you can tell like, EVERYTHING from auras just by looking at them with your eyes so I almost don't know what we need auras for at all. And overgiving can make you go deaf which I think is STUPID because I don't even USE my ears to see auras! She handed it in to the professor, and he looked it over with a disappointed frown. The handwriting was atrocious and barely legible, making the whole thing look almost like a child's scribblings. He sighed, set it aside, and asked her, "Miss Zipporah, have you ever considered taking our courses on Literature, grammar, and writing?" "Nah," she replied, heading out the door. "Why should I?"