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WHO: Arkady + Open to Anyone
WHAT: Arkady offed herself to get rid of the chip and then came back to life, minus her chip.
WHERE: The park or the dorms or pick a different location!
WHEN: Mid/Late Feb! Pick a time
WARNINGS: Suicide mention

The fourteenth seemed like as good a day as any. Arkady figured nobody would notice her slipping out at night and making her way to the park. There were no notes left. No explanations for what she planned to do. That was a risk that could mean someone would try to stop her and she had made up her mind. Nobody was going to stop her from making this choice. It had to be done if she wanted full access to anything and she very desperately wanted that. She also very desperately wanted to be free of the idea that someone else was controlling her fate. Things had gone too far with the executions and she didn't want the Head in her head anymore. It was bad enough that sometimes she had other events in her head that got all confusing.

Besides. Not many other people could try like this. Most people here would die and then come back as a robot thingie. There was a chance that wouldn't happen to her. There was a chance she'd be fine. And even if she wasn't quite fine, she'd been not quite fine before. She was used to her brain being scrambled a bit. It was not so scrambled that was newer to her. Either way she could do it and she should do it. Anything was worth a try here, even if it meant never coming back or going home. At least it would be her choice.

The park was where she chose to do it. At night and away from everyone else. She tried to keep herself off paths that most people traveled. That way there'd be less of a chance of someone finding her body even if it stayed there after her death. There was an entire bottle of vodka that she'd downed (technically her second one) next to her body as she prepared herself to take the chip out.

Once it came out of her head her death was pretty quick. But she came back. Not as completely as she'd hoped though. There was still a nasty hole in her head from where she took it out when she came back to life, which meant she wasn't going to go straight back to the dorm. Instead she hid out in the park for a few days while being hopeful that nobody actually notices that she went missing for a few days with no explanation.

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Saying Connor was actively worrying about Arkady was an overstatement. He likes her, and when he likes people it actually registers with him when he sees them, like he's ticking off a tiny little checklist - they're alive, check, they're uninjured, check, they're looking happy... Well, he's not a great judge and what's the point in checking that here?

But he noticed that little series of ticks hasn't been marked off for Arkady in a while, and she's been mentally moved into that awful little list of possible disappearances.

And life goes on. If he was to start worrying, really worrying, about everybody on that list, he wouldn't have processing power for anything else.

Which is all to say, he wasn't in the park looking specifically for Arkady. He's out walking, which he does sometimes with his dog Maggie, who's a robot herself and doesn't need the exercise, but they both like it enough that they go through the motions of being organic anyway.

It's like Maggie's been deviating. She gets antsy without her walk.

Hard to say which of them notice someone in the park first - Maggie tenses at about the same moment Connor glances off the path towards what seems at first glance to be some trees and underbrush, absolutely nothing there.

But his chip's been taken out as well as his LED, so his scanning is back to normal and telling him there's a heartbeat there. Human, mutant, alien, he can't discern that - but it's not a small animal, and, judging from how Maggie doesn't seem concerned so much as just curious, it's not a clone; she's never liked clones, since before they realised that's what all the people in the city were.

"Hello?" he calls over. "You OK over there?"

A voice. A voice she recognizes. Oh no. This really should have been planned better. More carefully. A better place to hide for a few days. Or perhaps it really just should have been planned at all. The idea came into her head a long time ago when information about the chip first got handed off to her. Getting the chip out would kill someone. That's what they said. Then the thought popped in: what if you come back when you die? From there it became something she thought about a lot. Could she die and come back like back home? Probably. Maybe. But what if not? What if something here prevented her from coming back and instead there was a new robo-her there in her place? That's where her personal worry came in.

Until the executions.

After that she knew it had to be done. So, she just did it. Now she realizes she should have planned for so many different things. She should have thought it through more carefully. Left messages for people. Explained. Prepared a place to hide out for a few days. Thought anything through at all past the death aspect. Turns out some people just don't learn fully. Think before you leap didn't apply to Arkady back home and it wasn't going to magically apply here. Strangely though she did feel a bit more together now. More together mentally at least. Or maybe just scrambled in a slightly different way. At least she's able to recognize that mistake she made in just doing this without letting anyone know.

"Ok? Yes! Very," and that's not even a complete lie. Her voice sounds a bit unsteady but other than that it sounds like how Arkady always sounds. she tries to keep to shadows, slightly behind trees so that maybe Connor won't notice anything is wrong with her. Like the still healing hole in her head from chip removal.

Doc Yewll is coming back from picking up a set of flowers ande her medical bag. Just very basic clinical gear, something she'll be using to make an anesthetic and an antibiotic later. Cuttings from the plant salvaged to grow more as fast as she can. She was already wary of the city's medicine, but after seeing creepy goth man give a performance on their network?

Hooboy.

Is she no longer interested in Dualis prescribed medicine.

Luckily there are just enough people in Dualis, fake, real, or otherwise indeterminate that want medical care a little bit off the record that her particular brand of work has been accepted and valued. Which, luckily, also means when she comes across a skinny bald girl sporting what's a pretty impressive head-wound in the park she's rigged to help and has some useful plants ready to do the job.

"Hey!" she calls out to her. "I'm guessing you need a doctor like you need a hole in the head, huh? Let me take a look at that."

The last thing Arkady wants right now is to see anyone at all. Or more accurately to have anyone see her. Not when she's got a literal hole in her head. That will just worry people. Worry them and potentially give away what she's done and she's not quite sure she wants people to know. Though, she can't place why. Maybe she forgot why she didn't want people to know. Everything feels so jumbled and yet not so jumbled. It's not fun at all. But it's out. She thinks.

Yes. It's out. At least it worked.

She rubs the back of her head and then tries to put on a big smile for the approaching person.

"But I already have the hole," she says with a strained cheerful voice.

"Well, you already got the hole, so why not the doctor, right? And look, I'm conveniently here."

She finds a bench to open up her bag on, quickly retrieving a couple of bandages, some alcohol, and a flower from inside.

"Alright, let me clean that off. I'm gonna guess there's a reason you're not at a hospital. You know trepaning isn't the best way to get rid of a headache. Even if it might seem like it at the time."

She knows it isn't, but she's attempting to keep Arkady talking long enough to get her comfortable. It'd be easier to help her out. But what did this woman do to herself?

"I've never had a hole before. Luke did though," she says rather calmly. A little too calmly. Kind of like that person whose trying very hard to keep it all together and is slipping into the failing category. This person reminds her of Miki though and she misses Miki. Who would have ever thought she would come to a point where she missed Miki's worrying?

"I don't need a hospital." That's the reason. Right there. That's it. She knows she won't need a hospital. Theoretically even if it gets infected she should be able to clear it up. "It's the best way to get rid of other things though! And I think it did!" She's pretty proud of that. It's definitely out.

"I didn't think anyone would be here." She sits down on the bench and slowly reaches her hand up to poke at the hole. Maybe she shouldn't be doing that.

"I tell you what, you wanna keep that hole I'll install a light socket so you can show everyone your bright ideas. Otherwise let's keep your fingers out of it, okay?" She reaches to take her hand away, quickly replacing it with a sterilized bandage to stifle the bleeding until she can clean it.

But she thinks, then, about where she did it.

"You did it to get rid of your chip, didn't you? How the hell did you survive?"

This whole Luke with a hole in his head story can wait for later.

Oh, okay, that actually gets a light laugh out of her. Except laughing actually hurts and she visibly flinches. "It'll heal itself. I think. It should. Luke's did. But it was gross and smelled for a few days." Was it a few days? Or was it less? Or more? Time doesn't seem quite right. Not that it ever seems quite right. It often seems quite wrong or quite gone. Maybe both.

"I didn't." Survive that is. "It's gone now though." She blinks and looks off. "I'm glad I came back." At least she thinks she is. No more chip means a lot more freedom for her to help. But she's not really happy to be in this place still. Not at all.

So some kind of immortal. Something she's gonna have to get used to. Not all that common a thing where she's from. But then again, not entirely uncommon, either. Gulani come damn close.

That's beside the point, though. Whatever Arkady's particular brand of immortal, she's still hurt.

"Well, babe, I heal fast too. Takes me a couple of days to recover from some pretty serious stuff." She can even reattach parts that have been lobbed off weeks after it's happened. "Still helps to keep it cleaned and treated. If you got the option to not feel like crap, take it."

Doc Yewll closes up her bag and gestures for Arkady to follow her. "Come on. Come with me. We'll take a discrete route. Don't want anyone guessing why you'd go miner forty-niner in your own head."

"Healing fast is good!" She tries to sound enthusiastic like she usually would but it comes out strained and forced. She stands with the Doc's gesture, unsteady but doing her best to appear like she's not in any pain at all. Clearly it's going wonderfully and she's an amazing actress.

"I don't want anyone to see. That's why I came here. So nobody would find me. Or see." Or worry. Mostly worry. "You don't have to help. I did this so it's my mess."

"You know how many people make their own messes and still need doctors? Practically 90%. You're in the majority. At least you're owning up to it."

She keeps near her in case she loses her balance, even if Doc Yewll is shorter in comparison.

"I got a good nurse. I promise, he'll do right by you."

"Need and deserve are different." Despite the words she sounds oddly neutral. Neither depressed nor particularly cheerful, but also not robotic. "I've made a lot of mistakes and learned to just accept them. But this wasn't a mistake, just messy!" Maybe it's a vague attempt at a joke. The more she thinks about it the more she realizes that the way she went about it was perhaps a bit of a mistake. But what's done is done.

"I don't want anyone to have to do more work just for me," because maybe she doesn't think she fully deserves it. But just as she says that she stumbles and catches herself on the doctor. Luckily she's light. A bit too light and frail to be walking around with a hole in her head after literally dying.

"I'm sorry! Everything is all scrambled like bad eggs."

"I treat everyone like they deserve it. Short of a genocidal psychopath or two. I have my limits." She says dryly. Despite the fact that she once was a brutal and detached scientist, she's dedicated herself to not being that. She's not fond of letting other people get away with it.

She puts an arm around her back to lead her down an alley. She's going to be irritated if the city's mixed things up in the last five minutes.

"I think digging one of those things out literally scrambles you. It must have been doing a number on you."

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