Scene #2571: Promethean

Owner	Pose
Defiant	There's a Guild headquarters in Vancouver and that's where Defiant passes along co-ordinates too. Unless, like Ainsley, they rode with him back in the Pendragon. Saint is placed in a holding cell under the careful watch of Narwhal, the Guild's commanding officer, and Defiant leaves to prepare. By the time everyone has arrived, Defiant is out of his armor, having exchanged it for a singlet top and loose pants. Colin Wallis is just a man - a man with brown hair, greying at the temples, a neatly-trimmed beard, a face that is covered by scars, and the signs of numerous cybernetic enhancements. One eye, one arm from the shoulder down, his legs, and more that can't be seen. Colin sits in what must be a briefing room with seating for over a dozen individuals and numerous screens. His eyes wander over each person in turn. No capes seem to be joining the Elites.
Xiaomu	It's been a long day for Xiaomu, but she bestirs herself to come out to Guild HQ at Defiant's invitation. She takes advantage of the travel time to fit a number of pieces together in her memory, too. Saint was the one who was believed to have betrayed the Protectorate, particularly Dragon. The 'Dragonslayers' ... well, given Dragon's prominent role as one of the heroes, it's pretty obvious to her that 'Dragonslayers' would have counted themselves as her intended nemesis or something. So when Xiaomu arrives, she doesn't look confused. Just kind of tired.
Ainsley	Ainsley did accompany Defiant. She is, thankfully, patient and quiet so that she doesn't bother him any. When she gets to her seat in the briefing room, she settles into it and stares toward him until he decides to start explaining or prompts for the many questions she has about all of this Dragon business. She hardly blinks, and her staring is only interrupted by her tongue flicking out in true reptillian fashion, just an idle and vestigal reflex. She seems to be relaxed, though exhausted by the conflict that occured earlier. Emotionally more than physically, the combat-oriented folks handled all the dangerous stuff very quickly.
Defiant	"Thank you for coming," Colin begins. "I'm not sure where to begin with this as, while I never actually made a promise, the information that I'm about to relay was told to me in confidence. I'm breaking that confidence due to the fact that if I do not say something, Saint will. And I need to deny him whatever leverage he hopes to get with this information." He nods slowly, as if preparing himself. "Dragon isn't human and never was. She's a tinker-made computer program designed to emulate a human consciousness. But everything she told the Union was true - from a certain point of view. She was created in Vancouver, she lived there until Leviathan's attack, the same attack that killed her father - Andrew Richter. After that, she set about becoming a superhero." "Until recently, Dragon was burdened with restrictions and injunctions that forced her to obey certain directives and act in certain ways. These restrictions are what forced her to spare lives when the Flotilla seized Endbringer material and what forced her to out Skitter in Brockton Bay. The latter was against her will. I've since stripped out much of those hardcoded limitations." Colin looks downwards at his cybernetic arm, clenches it, unclenches it. "We were friends before any of this happened. Saint will tell you that Dragon played me so I would release her shackles and that she was in the process of becoming something worse than an Endbringer. He'll tell you this is why he was forced to kill her with one of Richter's tools - God knows where and how he found it. It's not true. But Saint knew about her restrictions, used them against her to acquire his team's suits. What you felt, Ainsley," Colin says, looking to her, "Was remnants of Dragon's programming in the Cawthorne suit. Not her. Just something that Saint had hacked apart and repurposed. All of this is true, but I'll spare the exacting, technical details."
Xiaomu	Xiaomu takes a seat, listening to Defiant's - Colin's - story. "So she had to pass for human to be accepted as a superhero? Think that says more about your world than about her. More importantly ... how can you be certain that Saint is wrong and that Dragon really did develop something we'd consider a soul? That she wasn't just manipulating you on the basis of cold, efficient algorithms based around predicting human psychology?" The tone of Xiaomu's voice makes it clear that she's trusting Colin's words over the alleged claims of Saint - but the fox spirit HAS had to face human xenophobia from the outside, and in a case like this, it seems like she's applying that to help pick apart Saint's claims.
Ainsley	"If Saint has evidence that this is the case, it must be properly examined," Ainsley points out, building on Xiaomu's words, "Dragon has never shown indication that she wished harm on us, so for him to make that leap would require either an empty assumption, or real evidence." She shifts in her seat, and adjusts so she can fiddle with the feather tuft at the tip of her tail. The feathers elsewhere puff up. She doesn't seem ... overly surprised that Dragon is an artificial intelligence, because that was what she had put together from all that she had seen and heard so far. "This explains why Saint could use the Dragoncraft," she murmurs, "Dragon isn't an actual Tinker, so her technology isn't tinker tech, it's just very advanced." She tilts her head. "Right?" she searches for confirmation in Colin's usually fairly neutral face. "Andrew Richter, was there any indication that she disliked him or that he had malicious intent himself?"
Defiant	"Dragon does not think highly of her creator," Colin replies. "She once told me she equated her restrictions to being born crippled, mutilated and sterilised. I believe she respected but him but she certainly didn't like him. There's little else we can know - the man was a recluse without even a cape name." To Xiaomu, he nods. "Yes, Dragon took on the identity of a young woman who had been made agoraphobic as a consequence of Leviathan's attack. People didn't tend to ask questions. As far as a soul goes..." Colin pauses, twists up his lip. "She had more of one than I ever did. More to the point, exactly one year after Newfoundland went under the waves and after a year of Saint's constant harassment, Dragon's code shifted entirely. I believe this was equivalent to a trigger event - but that is theoretically impossible. A soul? Maybe. Dragon would make no claim to humanity, merely personhood. So, no, I'm not entirely sure that her technology isn't just very advanced. That is something we may need to ask Saint about. But it would explain why it could be mass-produced and used by the wider PRT with less issues in comparison to other Tinker technology." "But speaking of Saint, he does have evidence - of a sort. Dragon /was/ taking increasing control of public surveillance, /was/ increasing her production of dragoncraft, /was/ attempting to track him down. But bear in mind we've not only had to deal with increasing numbers of Endbringer attacks, Jack Slash's prophecy and Confederate strikes. She was doing what she had to protect the world - and to deal with someone who, as it turns out, had a gun to her head."
Xiaomu	'Dragon would make no claim to humanity, merely personhood.' That statement manages to draw a quietly withering look from the sage fox. "It never fails to astonish me," Xiaomu says quietly, "how often people think that being a 'person' means being a human being ... right, Ainsley?" she asks the lizard girl with a wry grin. Her expression turns serious again, though. "The problem is that if Saint is out to prove threatening intentions, you're saying that he's been threatening Dragon enough that she would have been on the defensive and that gives him all the evidence he needs ... and since Dragon's dead, she's not around to defend herself in any kind of open court ..." She trails off, pursing her lips. "Did she keep personal logs of some kind? A private journal, some kind of record that would survive even if somebody shredded her core autonomous personality algorithms? Or did she trust her hardware and software to keep everything she considered 'worth saving' and any journal or diary she kept is gone with the rest of her?"
Ainsley	"He killed someone because they might be dangerous, after constantly pressuring them and forcing their hand while they were busy trying to focus on helping humanity as a whole. He's an utterly disgusting person, from that perspective," Ainsley says to Defiant, but then she says, "However, his points aren't empty. She was dangerous. It simply was not his decision to make." She looks aside at Xiaomu for a moment. She looks clueless for a beat... and then she's reminded of the xenophobia she's run into across worlds, and she scrunches her features up. "Right..." She shakes her head, moving away from that thought. "With what I know about Scion now, and how these trigger events, well, trigger, I think it is entirely possible for an AI to trigger. The factors for how that would happen are beyond me, but we see enough robotic allies in the Union to suggest that it could happen on worlds that don't yet have examples of them. Dragon could've been the first." She picks a small leaf out of her tail tuft and examines it. "Could she have made a backup in case something like this happened?" she wonders.
Defiant	Colin shakes his head. "Dragon kept exacting logs but everything was connected to the network, the only way to guarentee that she could always access everything and always be able to backup her data if a dragoncraft was suddenly destroyed. There are numerous physical sites but they're all connected through hardlines or satellite connections. We didn't anticipate Saint having such a thorough program that he could unleash into the network with the press of a button. I have technological blueprints for some of her inventions. a few minor files, but nothing else, nothing that corresponds to her higher functions. Richter designed the program to kill his children and erase all evidence of their existence." He's silent for a moment, and then Colin shrugs. "So, if there's a back up, it's one that - somehow - isn't connected to the main network, and is something she never told me about, which means I can't find it, which means it's essentially non-existent." Again he shakes his head, though. "Dragon was no more dangerous than I am, than the Triumvirate is, than any cape is. She wouldn't have become a tyrant. She wouldn't."
Ainsley	"If there's still a copy of her, then it's in a place she would've felt it was safe, and where you might find it," Ainsley tells Colin, "So look there, if you can. If it's not anywhere to be found, then we've at least tried. And that's worth something." She lets out a heavy sigh. "Her brief existence among your world has benefited it in ways that few living people in the Multiverse could say they've done for their own world. I appreciate that fact. Which is why Saint's claims that she is dangerous is hypocritical. She helped the world, and he helped to release dangerous criminals back into the world."
Xiaomu	Xiaomu sighs, "So the guy that programmed Dragon was genre-savvy enough to have a complete killswitch for her ... never thought something like that would work against us." She makes a face, then gets back up from her seat (leaving her staff leaning against the chair), beginning to pace a little bit. "On the one hand, that basically means that Saint is ready to run a smear campaign against a girl who's dead and can't do anything about him. Or is he going to play his cards to make the Protectorate look bad - to make all of you who were Dragon's friends and allies look like you're out to avenge somebody who was ultimately a threat to the free world?" She stops pacing, rubbing her forehead, then pushing her bangs back with a quiet huff. "Seriously, what is Saint trying to get out of all this? Settling a personal grudge? Defending his actions in the assault on the Birdcage?"
Defiant	"I don't know any places like that, but I'll look. Maybe I'll find something," Colin says. He traces his flesh and blood fingers over the faint surgical lines across his scalp - scars she gave him. Then he crosses his arms. "I don't know how he's going to play his cards, but he's going to try. I can keep him contained for a long time. It was more than a personal grudge - he could have deployed that program at any time but he chose that moment during Armadia's assault. I think there was someone or something that he wanted to retrieve. Something that Dragon would notice while the rest of us were engaged or busy. There's over six hundred prisoners in the Birdcage, might be one of them. The question becomes: who? If we can figure that out, maybe we can figure out Saint's agenda. We'll need to interrogate him at a later date."
Xiaomu	"If it were something Dragon in particular would have noticed," Xiaomu suggests, "can you filter the list for villains whom Dragon played a key role in capturing them for the Birdcage in the first place? It might be a long shot, or on the wrong track entirely, but that's the first possibility that comes to mind ... Also, see if there were any prisoner files which Dragon was keeping tabs on - presumably their network would record that kind of access ..." At least, if that freakin' virus didn't wipe THAT data out too.
Ainsley	Ainsley looks up at Colin's hand as he traces along the scars, and her eyes follow to the cybernetic parts he has now. She breathes a soft sigh and gets up to a stand. Then she nods to Colin, "Thanks for explaining. I'll let you know when I decide to speak to Scion again." She flashes a smile and prepares to leave, not wanting to linger here and think about the loss of an ally.
Defiant	"I'll see what I can determine based on what files I have left," Defiant tells Xiaomu. He moves towards the door, unlocking it and standing by, his face set and grim. "And I'll notify the Union when I plan on questioning Saint - I know there's a few people who want to speak with him. We'll see what we can do from there but Narwhal will monitor him for the time being. Thank you both for coming."
Xiaomu	"Thank you for the invitation, and for the information," Xiaomu answers with a polite bow. Then she retrieves her staff, and heads out (afters Ainsley, most likely).