“Alright. Finally.” Nova said with a huff. She turned and set her feet down on the floor. But then, she hesitated. She could feel her heart thumping in her chest. Suddenly the new metal apendage felt so incredibly heavy…
She took a deep breath to calm her nerves, and stood to her feet. Immediately after which she stumbled forward and nearly fell down on to the hospital floor. Thankfully Niko was able to quickly rush forward and catch her.
“Easy now. I got ya.” He said in with a gentle smile. Nova was visibly shaken, and needed another moment to refocus herself.
“Th-thanks… thank you.” Nova then tried her best to stand back up, but still needed to lean on Niko for stability.
“How about I help you walk while you’re still getting used to this?”
“Yeah… that’s probably a good idea.” Nova admited.
Slowly the two moved forward. One foot in front of the other. Each and every step was methodical and deliberate. This all felt so alien to her. The feeling of motors whirring in her knee. The sound and sensation of the heavy clunk her metal foot made on contact with the floor. All of it worked to further drive the reality of her situation into her. This was her life now. All she could do is get used to it.
After a few more steps away from the bed, Nova stopped and looked to the medical staff that had been tending to her.
@Chromeharpoon
“Alright. Now that I’m up and moving again, can anyone tell me where my stuff is? I’m not leaving here without my gear.”
“I was thinking much the same thing,” Nirali said. “SolCon’s looked into the possibility of the two being connected, but as far as they’ve determined, APOSTLE is confined entirely to Sol. They don’t have any connections to outside entities. The two Gabriels are also putting out completely different rhetoric- if you can call APOSTLE’s nonsense ‘rhetoric’, that is.”
Contained within each file are examples of the prophecies and screeds published by the two entities. Gabriel the prophet’s writings allude to a Rapture-like scenario in which his dark gods will grant eternal life to their adherents while laying waste to the unfaithful; The manifestos of APOSTLE’s Gabriel are riddled with embarrassing grammatical errors, esoteric datanet lingo, and paragraphs meandering from one petty grievance over Sol’s politics to another.
“The first Gabriel’s prophecies stood out to me, too,” the Chancellor continues. “Similar language has been used by quintesson-worshipping cults in the past, and he only caught Task Force Canary’s eye relatively recently. No solid connections yet to anything that’s happened in the Imperium, but I might have another lead on our mystery man’s identity.”
“Your belongings are being kept in Room 131,” Suture informs Nova. “Your suit is still damaged, but we have not tampered with anything.”
“Alright. Thanks.” Nova sighed. Still leaning on Niko, she walked out of the recovery ward and tried to find her way to room 131. It took her some time to orient herself and figure out which way to go, but she was eventually able to find her destination.
She peered inside, looking to see if she could see where her belongings were.
“Would there be any way to trace the origins of this Gabriel’s communications? If there were a way to locate a potential source, tracking him down would be easier,” Defender asks. “And what is this other lead? Most certainly it is of importance.”
He puts aside the holographic dossiers, leaving their holomatter representations hovering beside him as he looks up at the Chancellor.
“Oh thank you, Doc! I can’t go anywhere without dropping my dispensing tray,” Oreo exclaims. He takes the device from Moreyn’s hands, and opens a panel in his right forearm. The device fits perfectly inside, slotting into a complex mechanism appearing to consist of a coin holder, a panel displaying scrolling human writing, and various electronic and mechanical bits, all wrapped around his internal structures. The dispenser tray installed, the panel closes with a click, leaving his arm perfectly normal.
Oreo smiles, a boyish grin that looks a bit odd on a giant metal being.
“I’d best be off to put up some of my luggage,” he says to the doctor, “but I thank you for keeping this safe.”
Having finished speaking, he heads for the Excalibur’s hangar, leaving the medical bay out of sight, behind a multitude of halls and rooms.
Hauler leans back, tired after a lengthy but successful surgery. Such precision took significant mental strain, especially on such a small patient. Like a minicon except mini-cons don’t die if you poke the wrong spot.
He glanced over to his mobile workbench, and saw a printout from it’s internal computer and his optics widened with horror. He knew he’s forgotten something! He grabbed the paper and rushed out of the room “Miss!” He called “Miss Nova! I must speak with one last time!”
Hauler slid to a halt, in front of them, emphasizing just how wide he was. “I apologize for delaying you, but you need these.” He presented them with a few sheets of paper “These include plans for your upcoming prosthetic, as well as a list of potential suppliers and estimated length of manufacture.”
The first 2 pages were a basic mechanics plan, showing joints, swivels, hydraulics, the integrated firearm in the sole, and more. The next 4 pages were a wiring plan, consisting of a dizzying array of wires, running up and down the prosthetic, along with ratings, gauges, and recommended power plants.
The seventh page contained a list of suppliers, such a skobel Mechatronics, Baktoid Engineering, and Starcorp Biologics. At the bottom was the good doctor himself’s business. Next to each is a time frame estimate. 3 Weeks, 4 weeks, 3 months (Geeze what was Star Corp smoking?), with the only definitive date being the doctors at 13-15 days.
Nova looked over the papers carefully. Taking her time to inspect every aspect of the mechanics plan. This was definitely a fair bit more advanced than what she was familiar with, but she still understood everything fairly well.
When she got to the supplier estimates however, her expression visibly shifted. She was infuriated to say the least.
“15 days? Two weeks??? You expext me to hobble around on this glorified hunk of scrap metal for two weeks while I wait for you to put my leg together?! I can barely walk with this thing! Let alone even think about combat. This is ridiculous!”
“Hey, this place is like a mega-center for all things tech and robotics right? Correct me if I’m wrong, but most of that estimated time I would imagine comes from sourcing and gathering all the right parts. What if you tried getting everything you needed locally? Would that help you get it done sooner?” Niko suggested.
“Sadly, no, the actual work takes significant time. This is very careful, precise work in order to make sure it is of quality. Especially since all parts will need to be custom scaled to humans, tools especially. Even the one you’re using now took me 2 days to construct, you were simply lucky I was already tinkering with organic-scale prosthetics. In addition, your additives such as the firearm will take additional time to test and ensure mechanical stability.” He frowned. “Is it really so time sensitive?”
Leslie stands atop an energon cube in the hangar, the cameras in her suit having been recording since the start of the battle. Her gaze briefly lingers on Kitai, tracking him as he enters the ship.
Moreyn starts after Oreo, curious as to just what that device exactly was, but stops short of leaving the medical bay. He would have to satisfy his curiosity later, after the wounded had been properly tended to and the quintesson remains prepared for transport.
Nirali waves her hand over a screen not visible in the hologram, and projection of Gabriel, taken from the attack at the Hall of Records, appears on the bridge. The grainy resolution of the image does little to diminish the man’s corpse-like features.
“This will probably sound insane,” the Chancellor sighs, “But, we have to explore every possibility, don’t we?”
Another image appears next to Gabriel’s: a photograph of a man standing atop a hill in the tundras of Amity’s northern supercontinent, wearing an explorer’s hardsuit with thick furs over its shoulders and neckline. The man holds his suit’s helmet in the crook of his elbow, grinning for the camera, and it is immediately apparent that he is a dead ringer for Gabriel. The two men bear the same gaunt cheeks, the same pale skin, and the same glazed-over eyes. These two could very easily be the same person- were it not for the fact that the explorer’s picture is over five-thousand years old.
“That is Field Captain Arnold Troy,” Nirali explains. “And while I would have written the resemblance off as a stroke of cosmic coincidence, his story is a peculiar one.”
“Of course this is time sensitive! It’s my leg! I can barely move with the thing I have on now. I can’t wait two weeks just to be able to walk properly!” Nova replied. “Look, I obviously don’t want you to rush this, but are you sure you can’t get it done any sooner?”
“Best I can hope for is 5 days, but only if 1) you are willing to help me, and 2) I skirt some regulations that could very well lose my title of body shaper.” He explained. “These things just take time. And one second, if you’re having that much trouble, the calibration must be wrong. If you will allow me, I can adjust it.”
Nova sighed. “Look, don’t go risking your job over this. I’m just… frustrated. I’m not sure how well you understand this, but losing a limb is a way bigger deal for a human than it is for a robot. You cannot possibly understand the kind of stress all this has put me under. If there’s some calibration error, then fine. If you can work that out then I’ll be more willing to wait.” She relented.
“I apologize, I wish I could understand more. Hopefully, I shall be able to make it at least more comfortable.” He knelt down, and flipped open a hatch in his finger. A small cabled snaked out, and attached itself to Nova’s leg at the side of the Knee.
Indeed, he had made some minor errors in the calibration. Namely, the negative force factor was too low, and the joint Leeway strut was too tight. This made the prothstetic significantly heavier to move, and restricted joint movement.
“First, I am going to adjust the negative force factor. Please lean on your other leg but keep this one on the ground. Let me know when it feels a more natural weight.”
There was small whirs and buzzes from the machinery, and the feeling of weight on her leg began to lighten slowly. In Nova’s mind, she could hear faint whispers that sounded real yet were clearly only in her head. They sounded vaguely like prayers to primus, asking for guidance as to the proper calibration and for him to lend his aid in making what was new, a united part of the old. Regardless of his attitude outwardly, this was clearly a deeply spiritual endeavor for the old bot. Still, you can see why he did most of the work under anesthesia.
Nova did as she was asked and leaned on her good leg, leaning against Niko in the process. She shuttered as the whispers played in her mind. The prayers reminded her of a machine cult she had run into a year or two ago on her aimless travels. It was an unpleasant experience to say the least.
The feeling of mechanical pieces moving and adjusting themselves inside her own limb was a strange sensation. Though it was intriguing as well.
After a few moments, the weight of the metal limb felt much more natural than before. “Alright. I think it’s good.”
“One slight issue though.” Niko interjected. “We can’t exactly afford to wait on Astrum for two weeks. See we’re tied into this big mission with Axis Prime, fighting against these crazy interdimensional space monsters. It’s a whole thing. Is there anyway you could maybe travel with us while you work on Nova’s new prosthetic?”
“Axis prime? Big Mission? Space Monsters?” he said “If I didn’t know better I’d say you were crazy. What monsters?” Apparently news didn’t travel far enough to reach Hecate yet, or at least not to the good doctor’s ears. It also indicated that he did not access her mind, even if she lightly accessed his.
“Rancid abominations called qintessons. I lost my leg fighting one of them. Some of the bots we’ve been with talk about them like they’re a huge deal, though I had never heard of them before yesterday.” Nova replied.
“Q-quintessons you said?” *The doctor asked, a sudden fire burning in his usually calm eyes. “Are you certain it was one of those foul despoiler of gifts?”
“Uh, yeah?” Nova replied, surprised by the doctor’s sudden change in attitude. “The old bird lady was pretty clear about it. Horrible monsters from beyond our stars, the enslavers of whole dimensions, I’m pretty sure that was the gist. All I know is that I’m probably gonna have a life-long hatred of snakes from here on out.”
“Foul creatures indeed.” A look of righteous anger came over his face. “How much do you know about them? Are you aware that they can create cybertronians? and that they stole that from us on Hecate? Defiled our ancient gifts? If the Prime will have me, I will happily accompany you on your journey if it’s to spite the Despoilers.”