Sari

Sari is a character in Grand Battle Season Unknown Game 1.

Weapons/Abilities
Holds an extrusion of Blue which just happens to look like a sort of curved, ornate silvery staff covered in shifting iridescent patterns. This staff can create beacons of Blue that look like an intricately woven lattice of glowing blue hovering crystal. If allowed to persist, these beacons will grow larger and more complex, slowly altering the surrounding area to match the Blue part of her home. This tends to involve the landscape shifting into a certain architectural style, gravitational anomalies, electrical and magical disturbances, and, if the field grows large enough, the creation of other beings. Living creatures, intelligent AIs, even prostheses in the area are unaffected, but it's unclear how the beacon knows what to affect and what not to. Beacons are about as strong as stone, but crumble especially easily at the touch of something warm-colored. Sari can also create objects of luminous Blue energy which, when used as a weapon, cause more harm to warm-colored objects than cool-colored ones. This ability's strength is correlated with the strength of the surrounding Blue aura, and under normal circumstances is just enough to form a weak protective field over Sari's body and carry a few objects.

Description
Physically, Sari is an interesting specimen. She stands about 7 feet tall on small feet capping lanky, tapering legs. Her body is sinuous and slender, and her skin is smooth and colored bluish-grey. She is covered in darker grey curved patterns across the right side of her body and face, her right leg, and both arms. Her arms might be more accurately described as a combination of tentacles and wings. Each is a long, flattish, sweeping affair that almost reaches the round, much wider at the end than at the shoulder. They are ribbed on one side by prehensile finger-like nubs which grow longer towards the end, with an extra one on the front like a thumb. She has a tall neck topped by an almond-shaped face with large blue eyes, thin lips, and no apparent nose. She is also trailed by vividly blue hair which would be down to her lower back if it didn't constantly sway through the air as if floating in water. Her face is obscured by a flat mask of silvery-blue metal which curves up into two flattened horns. She wears minimal armor of the same metal over her chest, hips, and legs, and it all seems to glitter with shifting, iridescent symbols that are only visible when the light hits it at the right angle. She does not walk so much as she skips and hovers over the ground on an intangible wind, looking very much like gravity isn't quite sure what to do with her. While her vocal cords are capable of making sounds understandable as human speech, she isn't initially quite sure of the language and more often makes sounds like ringing pipe bells. None of this, however, is the primary reason she is a physically interesting specimen. She is physically interesting because all of the preceding facts seem to be completely coincidental.

Sari is not so much a creature as a fundamental piece of the physical makeup of her universe. Comparing her to any other Sapphire Auracaller Radiant Incarnate is a bit like comparing any two Hydrogen atoms. Curiously, however, she is far from simplified for her purpose. She has a brain fine-tuned for intellect, organs, bones, blood, flesh--things that, in another universe, would be the trappings of a sapient, intelligent, living creature. In her universe, she could scarcely be called alive. She was a mere vessel acting to spread Blue over Orange, complemented by other vessels with the same goals and different functions, and others still enacting the opposite agenda. She and all other such vessels do this in accordance with the laws governing their universe, which do not allow for a brain to function the way it does in ours. That every one of her kind takes such a form is one of the most cosmically unlikely coincidences in the multiverse. However, taken out of her home, she will fundamentally change. To return to the Hydrogen atom analogy, it would be like moving such an atom into an environment where the fundamental laws dictate that the relationship of an electron to a positively-charged nucleus is not one of orbiting, but one of facilitating self-awareness and rational thought. She will be capable of discovery, learning, emotion, creation; in short, she will, for the first time, live. While it may take her a while to acclimate to an existence independent of her previous programming, how she deals with this revelation, especially in the face of a battle to end the lives of others, remains to be seen.

Errata
Excerpts from "Specimen extraction, Dimension 3.015 'Blue-Orange'"

[...]Like other specimens from "Blue-Orange", Sapphire Auracaller Radiant Incarnate specimens will exhibit completely mirrored behavior to one another if given mirrored stimuli. SARI-15 and SARI-16, for example, have thus far never had an accidental breach of containment protocol, have been given identical nourishment and entertainment, and have been interacted with exclusively via identical remote probes, all on strict matching schedules. The two are thus far performing identically enough that one researcher can carry on the same conversation with both of them in unison via the speaker system, 280 days after their simultaneous universal transfers. However, given their inherent intellect, those given differing stimuli tend to develop their budding minds in ways that result in astonishing differences.

All go through an early exploratory stage attempting to reconcile their place in the new world, often attempting to carry out their former duties with confused diligence. All show a great intellectual curiosity, especially concerning other living creatures and intelligent AIs. However, minute differences can result in large variances in demeanor over time, most importantly with respect to propensity towards violence. For example, SARI-228 and SARI-229 were given identical stimuli except that the covers of 75% of the books in 229's cell were colored red or orange, while the same books in the same locations in 228's cell were colored blue or purple. Despite all else being identical, 228 developed into a curious and abnormally conversational specimen, but with IQ test results with a mean of only 125. 229, as we all know, orchestrated the second most lethal and, in this researcher's opinion, most cunning breach of containment to date, tragically ending the lives of 25 members of the security squad before being trapped in a corridor and neutralized with [REDACTED]. Its mean IQ test results were 152, with many researchers noting in the weeks prior to the escape attempt that it may have been intentionally performing poorly on its tests to artificially lower expectations. Complete immersion in warm colors has not resulted in a similar outcome in later tests. The variables regarding this effect are still under research.

[...]SARI specimens' brains seem to come pre-programmed with certain information. Most significantly, they seem to naturally have an understanding of the American English language. This understanding is, as far as current research has been able to determine, nothing more than another in the list of massive coincidences surrounding these specimens' existence. In addition to this linguistic understanding, SARI specimens also come with a set of pre-existing memories. Unlike their knowledge of the language, however, these do seem to be truly random, and irrelevant to anything they could have actually experienced in this universe or theirs. These memories are documented in full in section 10.

[...]A SARI specimen's acclimation stage takes approximately 24 hours. In the hours immediately following the extraction event, its latent intelligence is barely apparent. Only 1-2 hours after extraction do any seem to make any attempt to communicate in English, though fMRI scans show brain activity denoting recognition of speech immediately upon arrival. Additionally, specimens seem to have a strong urge to establish and maintain anomalous material beacons (see section 16) during this acclimation period, regardless of attempts to communicate the futility or potential harm of doing so.

[...]Study of persistent Blue anomalous material "beacons" has been difficult, as the fields of influence have had a tendency to alter sensitive equipment meant to be measuring the fields themselves. Additionally, if left active for too long, the beacons often result in containment breaches--either by altering safety mechanisms until non-functional, or by sufficiently empowering the nearby specimens to create their own breach. Additionally, specimens seem able to store a small amount of power internally from these beacons for later use, if they are allowed to remain exposed to one for significant amounts of time. For this reason, current containment protocol dictates that these beacons be destroyed immediately upon detection.

Consideration has been given to a motion to allow SARI specimens 22, 36, 42, 43, 89, 105, or 107 to perform monitored off-site testing outside of containment, as these specimens are noted as being the most compliant with researchers and test protocols, with "general enthusiasm towards science". However, the pending results of an internal investigation into the exact nature of the relationship between SARI-89 and Dr. [REDACTED] (see Internal report [REDACTED]), may result in a project-wide tightening of containment protocols that renders this proposal unacceptable.

[...]As with other Blue-Orange specimens, strong correlations have been drawn between SARI specimens' feelings towards other individuals and a color associated with that individual. Unlike other types of specimen from Blue-Orange, however, the parameters for SARI favoritism are more nuanced than hair, eye, and clothing color. Some specimens refer to seeing a type of inherent color of an individual. Specimens in isolation will identify different photographs of the same test individuals as the same colors, even going so far as to provide identical color values (if they are introduced to the meaning of a color scale beforehand). This indicates that this "color-sense" is based on external measurable variables. More interestingly, test individuals can, with statistical significance (See Figures 18.7 - 18.12), often guess their own color before observation by a SARI specimen, typically citing some personal significance of the chosen color to them. This behavior persists even if both the specimen and test individual are isolated in containment units coated in [REDACTED] to block potential telepathic signals.

When presented with images of either themselves or any other SARI specimen, even those given distinguishing markings, specimens always refer to the subject as "Sapphire" with hexadecimal RGB value 0000cc.