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Playing in the snow.

If you were trying to run several things at once on your ship that were in critical condition, yeah, sure, it's a possibility.

But playing in the snow?

No, that doesn't make sense.

Hell, I don't lose track of time if I'm aware of my surroundings and my head isn't built for that.

[ It feels … strange … ]

[ A strange, unfamiliar feeling; her heart beating too hard, a tremor in her hands when they should be steady, a shortness to her breath. It makes sense. It makes sense, it makes sense, it makes sense, it has to make sense. Why is he telling her that it does not make sense? ]/small>

....

[In a strange way, this is a relief. Because she's acting like this. It means something happened. It means something wholly unexpected happened, and there is something else at work here.]

[He reaches out, taking her hands in his own.]

You've been inconsistent, Iota.

[ Is this panic? Is she panicking? No … there's no reason to panic. It's simple logic. A simple, easily understood timeline of events. She had gone out to play, she had realized that she could help the fragments, she had put the plan into action. One. Two. Three. ]

You are mistaken. [ Her gaze snaps to her hands in his, then up to his eyes. ] Everything lines up.

[ (There is maybe some panic, here.) ]

It doesn't. There's a lot of things not lining up, Iota.

[He sees the panic, but if he can get her to understand this, then he's GOING to.]

You lost track of time when you shouldn't. You've left things half done. You've neglected other things that didn't need to be neglected. You haven't been acting like yourself.

I say things you've been curious about for months and you don't ask for clarification.

And you keep doing things that sound like you're trying to ask for help without being aware of it.

Things aren't lining up, Iota. Things don't make sense, not unless something happened on that outing that's not just you playing in the snow.

Asking for help? I have had no reason to ask for help beyond the implantation experiment. You are extremely sleep deprived, Puma ...

[ Sleep deprivation does weird things to human brains, right?? That must be why he's so insistent on this. ]

I have been sleep deprive for like ten years, I would be dead if I wasn't still able to be accurate.

You sent Sabre to me. You sent the text to me. And that's just the overt stuff.

[ Shakes her head ]

You misunderstand. It was logical to point Sabre in your direction; the questions she asked could be explained by the footage I gave to you. Offering her a quest would simply have been inefficient.

The text message was also sent to Kaito. [ Not to Aoko, Iota?? ] It was not a cry for help.

And she was asking questions to help you.

And Kaito still makes it a cry for help.

You are acting extremely inconsistent, Iota. Something happened. Something that someone or something made you forget.

It was a request for advice only tangentially related to my experiment with the AI fragments. I do not believe I have ever felt rage before, and I was aware that my inclination to hurt them runs counter to advice you have given me previously.

While the AI fragments are my priority above all else ... I have never wished for you to hate me. You would hate me more than you do now if I were to kill them. Therefore, the logical step to take was to request advice.

This is true.

And it might be why the cry for help it getting through.

Iota, you drugged me. You've never felt the need to do that before. I begged you not to do something, and you didn't hesitate, which is not like you. You would have at least asked for clarification for why I was that compromised, at bare minimum.

You. Are. Inconsistent. How you're acting does. Not. Make. Sense.

Everytime I ask you to explain something, you have failed to do so in anyway that's at all satisfactory logically.

You're not acting logically. Something's wrong.

[ This time, she doesn't even say anything. She just looks away, trapped, trapped in strange emotions she doesn't understand, floundering because it makes sense, it makes sense, why won't he see that there's nothing wrong. ]

...Iota, if you did a diagnostic scan, can the ship pick up other Echo interference?

[Because what else could do this to her?]

Echoes cannot interfere with other Echoes.

[ takes a shallow breath, pulling one hand away from his. she flexes her fingers, watching them shake. ]

All diagnostics scans have been green. I run them regularly.

...that's at best a rule.

We already know at least one Echo can interfere with another echo.

Has anyone else looked at those results?

[ ... ]

There is no need for anybody but myself to look at them.

If someone's messed with your perception of time, why couldn't they mess with other perceptions?

You keep thinking what you're doing is right, it makes sense, but it doesn't.

Nobody has "messed" with me, Puma. You need to stop.

Iota.

Even after you stabbed me in the back, I defended you. [Squeezes her hands.] If you believe there's nothing wrong with you, there's no harm in letting me see the results. The only reason you'd want to hide it is because whatever has happened to you doesn't want there to be definite proof.

I've never tried to harm you, even after what you did to me.

Let me help you.

… And when you see that it was me, and not the result of third party interference?

Will you try to harm me then?

...no.

Harm comes when you force me to choose between protecting everyone and protecting you. I'm hoping you won't get so bad as to make me make that choice, because I really don't need more reasons to hate myself.

I still don't know if your scanners can pick up Echo magic, but I don't have much choice, but find ways to convince you that something's wrong.

...

[ She sighs. Closes her eyes. ]

Compiling diagnostic data files now.

[He'll wait.]

[ A hardlight holographic screen pops up in front of Puma! It can be touched and manipulated however he requires, and it displays a whole lot of very complicated data. ]

[ Assuming he can parse it, he'll find that everything is A+ okay. GREEN IN EVERY SECTOR ... ... almost ... there are some blips and anomalies. ]

[Going through it slowly because, well, better now than later.]

[Pauses when he notices some blips and anomalies. Looking to see if they're consistent.]

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