Probably should have left the alcohol to Athos, really.

[at_your_side]

Intoxicated. Yes, that was- that was the word she was looking for. Intoxicated was just the very thing she could use to describe herself...or her state...the state of herself?

While the details of it had become increasingly fuzzy with each of the delightful, oh so colorful cocktails the bartender sat in front of her (how many had she had again?), Constance was fairly certain the day had begun well enough. There had been a bath, a bath! One with an endless supply of hot water piped right into her room so she might lie in her tub with the dawn light filtering in through the glass of her colored windows and wiggle her toes in easy contentedness.

But then there- ah! There had been the issue of dressing. Or, rather, not of dressing but of what to dress herself in when her only...dress, yes, had been worn already for the day before. She could have made do with it if she had had to, had even pulled it on while not pulling too much of a face, but had been all too grateful upon meeting the lovely Ruby in the hallway not far from her door.

Never had she seen a woman who wore so little out in public. It had left her gaping in the second before she had recovered herself, to see so much skin on display with not so much a flicker of concern in the other woman's expression as she had smiled and introduced herself. Somehow - now here the details were particularly fuzzy at that moment - they had gotten onto the subject of Constance's singular dress and somehow further the conversation had become one of the other woman, still a stranger, but so earnestly friendly, had volunteered her help.

All of which led to her sitting there at the bar of the Smoking Room, wearing pants of all things while Ruby slid a drink in front of her. She was certain there had been sense behind the action, and no, she did not feel the least bit overexposed with the buttoned shirt she wore beneath her corset or the coat she wore that hung down to her knees (she tried not to giggle at the thought of needing to cover her bum, but was only partially successful). What was even more certain was that these - those little cocktails, they were delicious.

Comments

[soft_robot]

"I do not have a medical license, but I have been programmed with over ten thousand medical procedures to assist licensed medical professionals in triage, diagnosis, and the treatment of non-emergency procedures," Baymax explains, continuing on in a gentle, patient voice that matches his non-threatening, huggable design.

"Please drink this water. It will rehydrate your body."

[at_your_side]

Constance could not help but reach out a hand to poke a finger at the bulbous white body of the creature. It was so tall she needed to crane her head up to meet the two black round ... eyes? Tall as d'Artagnan or Porthos, she had to guess, although broader than even the latter.

Her eyes went wide when her finger pressed into its body with only a limited resistance, the texture smooth as silk yet too solid against the tip of her finger for all that it almost appeared to be full of air like a bladder blown up and tied off like a farmchild's toy.

She took the glass when prompted, drinking obediently while watching it over the rim. When she had drained a good measure of the cup, she had to ask, "You just wander about offering to help?"

[soft_robot]

Baymax tolerates her poking and prodding patiently, the cameras in his eyes 'blinking' now and then to take in new information. Any press creates a small indentation and, if the young woman were to press her face into his vinyl stomach, she might see his mechanical skeleton.

"I was designed to friendly and nonthreatening, capable of lifting up to one thousand pounds or four hundred and fifty tree point five nine two kilograms. My balloon-based design means I have no sharp edges to hurt my patients."

At her question, Baymax nods. "My programmer, Hiro Hamada, is not her. In lieu of his directions, I will follow my original directive."

[at_your_side]

d'Artagnan had spoken of the Nexus in terms of magic, and where she had thought she understood something of his explanation, the great white creature stretched the limits of that understanding. Further even than the idea of the same electricity held in lightning having been harnessed in the lamps and signs around the hotel. Perhaps had she already tried a door other than back to Paris for the dauphin she might have been a degree less stunned by Baymax.

"That must be very helpful," she said, in regards to the strength it claimed. Even the idea of lifting a thousand pounds was too much to really wrap her mind around, even had she not been blissfully fuzzy with the amount of alcohol in her system. It left her mildly amused as the shock bled away, willing to hear the creature out as she mused on the oddity her life had taken on.

She wondered what Doctor LeMay would think of the creature. Of how he would surely light up in curiosity at what such a thing might know when so far removed from their own time, where science ruled over faith.

"Hiro Hamada," she tried the sound of that name, foreign on her tongue, with a slow precision. "Is he like you?"

[soft_robot]

Again, Baymax 'blinks' as he processes the question. "Hiro Hamada is human. He is a robotics student at San Fransokyo Institute of Technology," he explains, still calm and patient, with very few other settings. "I was invented by his elder brother, Tadashi Hamada."

It's possible then that Baymax looks a little lost, even on his gentle, vague face. "Tadashi Hamada passed away recently."

[at_your_side]

It was very possible that Constance was far, far to drunk to be having her first experience with a blow-up vinyl robot man. It was very possible lots of things. Such was the state of the world while she looked over her glass at what she had tentatively deemed a 'creature' in the privacy of her own mind. The question of what defined life or not was too far beyond her in that moment of all she might have, leaving it far easier to accept a simpler explanation for the immediate future.

She lowered her glass, lips pressing into a moue of concern before she reached out a hand and awkwardly (being unsure whether it would feel it or not) pat Baymax's arm. "I'm sorry."

[soft_robot]

"He was young and in good health. Without the accident, he should have lived a long and fulfilled life." It's clearly something that Baymax has trouble processing. Certainly, his programming allows him to understand death and injury, but it still doesn't make sense to him anymore than the loss had made sense to Tadashi Hamada's human family.

"Tadashi Hamada wanted me to help lots of people. I am...trying."

[at_your_side]

"That is what matters, I think. Trying." Whether born more of the alcohol floating merrily through her bloodstream or the fact that after so many wonders it was easier than she might have thought to find herself speaking to the strange creature, sympathy rose easy within her. Perhaps it was that, after all that had happened, she was still too soft for her own good.

At that moment it did not seem to matter that she had fallen through from 17th century Paris and Baymax was from...some place with an institute with a strange name. "Is that where you're from? Transfr- Fanst-" she paused, brows drawing together at her own inability to make her tongue shape the strange name before she simply shrugged helplessly and hoped it would fill in the blank for her.

[soft_robot]

"San Fran-so-kyo," Baymax repeats. Now he goes more slowly, giving her the chance to learn each syllable one by one before attempting the whole word. His databases on managing stress in a learning situation always indicate that breaking down large tasks and pieces of information is typically beneficial.

"It is in North America, the United States, California." Baymax scans her again. "Please drink another glass of water."

[at_your_side]

"San Fran-so-kyo," she repeated after him, with all the seriousness due matters of State and the workings of the world. It was a name she had never heard the like of before. It began as if it belonged to, perhaps, a Spanish city, and yet it tangled around and became something altogether foreign.

Finishing her glass of water under the watchful eyes? of the creature, Constance was stymied again by the reference to America. "The Americas? Where they send all those criminals?" When the second glass of water was placed in front of her with a kind smile by the waitress, she gave her a distracted smile and began to drink on command.

[soft_robot]

"The United States of America has not been a British colony for many years now," Baymax explains. His stomach scree lights up and he finds a map to show her the whole United States before zooming in to California and then San Fransokyo.

"I am from here."

[at_your_side]

The Americas had been made an amorphous landform to Constance's mind, a distant place she was unlikely (and hardly willing) to ever see. It was rare they sent women to those shores, both her own France and England more wanting for able-bodied men to grind into dust with the hard labor the formation of those colonies and their plantations required. She had not thought to ever see a proper map of it, let alone one that appeared on the belly of a strange white creature and lit up like magic.

Her eyes were wide in watching the display as she sat on her barstool, glass of water cradled against her chest. She blinked, then commented, "You come from so far away."

[soft_robot]

"Travel is not difficult for me," Baymax says. "I can deactivate until I am needed, taking a compact shape." Baymax tits his head and blinks a few times, looking almost perturbed on his blank face.

"I cannot find my location here."

[at_your_side]

Her fingers itched to touch the display, to see if the colors and lights of it would feel any different than the cool sponginess of the creature's belly before. A mixture of awareness of herself and what undeniably confusion as to what was even like protocol in such a world, with such a creature, had her refraining, still cradling her glass against her between drinks (when she remembered).

"You're in a tavern," she supplied helpfully, hoping that would be of some help.

Her imagination could not quite stretch far enough to imagine such a creature becoming compact. The idea was like imagining Porthos shrinking down, or Paris being the least bit small.

[soft_robot]

If she wishes to reach out, Baymax will happily answer any questions she might have to the best of his ability. That is, after all, one of his main directives.

"I am aware, however, I cannot place the longitude or latitude of this tavern or hotel. I am concerned that my systems are damaged."

[at_your_side]

Remembering the creature's admonishment, she continued drinking her water, her eyes glued to its white bulbous mass all the while. Cartography being far from part of her education, Constance did not immediately recognize what it meant by 'longitude or latitude' although she could roughly guess the meaning of such words when it spoke of its location. "Do you mean that you cannot place yourself on one of your," she meant to gesture at its stomach where it had shown her where its home was in California, but misjudged the distance and ended up poking its surface with her fingers. "Maps?"

[soft_robot]

Baymax nods again, "Correct. I find myself lost. It is very concerning if I cannot be available to my patients when I am needed."

Baymax scans her again, "Your hydration is improving. If you leave off drinking for the night, you will be fine in the morning."

[at_your_side]

"Should find yourself again," she said, speaking as if such a thing were definite rather than up to the whims of fate or whatever else was at work within the Nexus. "Wouldn't seem right otherwise." There she was too aware of the fact that the world did not work on whether things were right or wrong, but often felt as if it were run by chaos and chance more than fate. To say so was blasphemy on the scale of Mormont, but it wasn't as if a body could read her thoughts and inform on her to the nearest bishop.

If she did not already have enough strikes against her soul as it was, by the Church's standards.

"Wasn't thinking much about morning," she admitted, if a touch reluctantly at being caught out as not being the sensible one around. Never mind that that had been exactly her aim.

[soft_robot]

"The common name for symptoms experienced after excessive drinking is a hangover. Without adequate hydration and food, you risk experiencing nausea and an acute headache. I hope I have assisted in preventing those symptoms," Baymax says. Carefully, he reaches out and touches Constance's forehead, palm turning cool like a compress.