Doom Mask

The eternal question concerning the anti-Gnosis androids is the same one that governs most of human existence and philosophy: nature versus nature? Who and what decides the outcome for any one thing, living or replicated sentient?

Why are KOS-MOS and T-elos so different? Obviously Shion can't think of one without thinking of the other (which is to say, she can think of KOS-MOS alone, but T-elos just recalls and recalls and recalls her sister source).

It's funny, too. T-elos wears those fragile little spectacles, like she's pretending to be impaired, but really she'll snap your spine in half faster than KOS-MOS can even prepare an R-Blade.

Is that why she hates KOS-MOS, do you think? Because the two are so often compared? But no, there's no way that would be a vital part of their programming. Of T-elos's, anyway. Unless she's truly internally motivated by jealousy...

The pattern of comparison makes something unpleasant twist in Shion's gut. Too heavily tied down with her own ghosts...

Imagine if T-elos had been her charge from the first. What kind of future would they have been able to build, with T-elos so quick to act and final in her judgement?

She doesn't even asked to be cleaned. A bloodstain on her heel doesn't bother her, hardly even makes her flinch.

There are two roles someone like Shion can take in this situation: either they can play good cop on bad cop, with the cops policing each other, or Shion can attempt to be a counselor, talking through the practical motivations of whatever it is T-elos seeks to do. Certainly, there's no loving her. Certainly, there's no gentle stewarding that can take place here. Right?

Ruthless. Brutal. She's honestly rather dislikeable.

And yet, there's no doubt that T-elos is absolutely incredible. Shion finds herself openly mourning the alternate reality in which T-elos had the opportunity to learn, not just be trained, and to empower herself of her own curiosity.

In everything T-elos has destroyed, there have been shreds of purpose and order; fragments of meaning that have shown to her why it is that these things must be destroyed, these concepts must be overridden.

It's that inherent vulnerability that draws Shion to her, even still. That lack of complete knowledge that every created being has, whether they were created by a god or by a human...

Could this possibly be what causes T-elos to bring other beings pain? Is she that afraid of feeling it, herself?

Such a human reaction is really quite understandable, given that T-elos is less an android and more a cyborg; seeing as the systems of self-preservation are often described to be encoded into humans' very cells.

Oh, but it's all just a load of speculation, still. What troubles Shion the most is how innately impossible it seems to just be able to talk to T-elos, and ask her what she's feeling.

Maybe she'd pretend ignorant. Maybe she'd act arrogant. Maybe she'd shun Shion completely.

She has to know that power is not enough. It simply isn't.

Yes, Shion assumes that T-elos is unhappy, if only because it's the only way she can imagine herself being of any use to the combat unit, but she does not have to imagine it - the unhappiness itself - because it is so palpable, in the coldness of T-elos's demeanor.

T-elos doesn't feel pain. Indeed, T-elos has never felt anything at all.