smash_logs | She can fix it!

Seeing as Rock was being relied upon for maintaining Zero and the Guardians, at least upon their arrival, he had neglected his own maintenance schedule. He hadn't forgotten that the incident that led to him and Lucca becoming a couple was directly related to a mechanical failure, and it was probably a good idea to stay on top of things like that.

Rock wasn't about to go visit his girlfriend empty handed, though. And when he knocked on the door to the machine shop, he held a box of chocolate covered strawberries for her.

Lucca puts down the book and crosses the shop.

"You can come in," She begins through the door before she even opens it. "You don't even have to kno--Oh! Rock, hi! C'mon in!" She says and welcomes him towards the repair racks.

"Looks like you got my message about the maintenance thing earlier." She continues cheerfully.

"Yeah, I got the message," he replied, throwing his arms around her to hug her when he walked in. "I'm sorry I haven't been here sooner!"

When he let her go, he held out the strawberries for her. "I brought you these!"

She hugs back, and makes a curious noise when he shoes her the nondescript box. However, she lights up when she opens it to see the contents. Strawberries are her favorite. Chocolate-covered ones even more... favorite-r.

"Ooo, wow! Thank you! Y'mind if I have one now?" She asks. "I kinda forgot to pack a snack when I left tonight."

"Not at all!" he said with a big smile. "I kinda figured you would have forgotten to eat for a while anyway, and I know those are your favourites." He was definitely learning.

She plucks one of the treats from the box and noms it.

"Mmn. S'so gud." She murmurs around a large mouthful of strawberry. "Thank'oo for bringing'm." Gulp.

"Oh... wait. You're not here for repairs again, are you?" She asks, suddenly a little more concerned. Sure, he LOOKED okay, but looks can be deceiving.

"No, no, nothing's wrong!" he said quickly to reassure her, raising his hands for emphasis. "I just figured if you were doing maintenance... I mean... I might come in for a checkup. Er, diagnostics. You know!"

"Oh yeeeeeah, it's been a while since you had some maintenance, huh?"

In fact, she remembers now. The last time she did anything was when she repaired them and they became a couple. She blushes a little at the memory, and sets the box of treats down for a second.

"Welp, there's just one thing for it: It's time to check up on it! C'mon over here and sit down, and I'll start a diagnostic routine." She says, a little too happily to be truly professional.

"Yes, Dr. Ashtear!" Rock laughed with a big smile. Maintenance was never really a hardship for him, more of a fact of life. People got checkups, robots got diagnostics. And he trusted Lucca about as much as he trusted Dr. Light.

He hopped up onto the table, ready for her to work on him, kicking his legs a bit. "I probably should've asked you to do this earlier," he said, "but we've been having a bit too much fun every time we get together, you know?"

"Yeah, I know!"

Oh BOY, does she know.

"I'm not complaining. Alright, pop off your ear, and I'll plug you in."

She fits the helmet onto her head, and the tiny display in the front blinks to life.

"Oh, what kinda routine diagnostic does Dr. Light usually do? I don't wanna miss anything."

Rock did as instructed, removing his ear to reveal the access port there, and sat up. "Well, he usually does a full system analysis, checks for irregularities or voltage spikes, spot checks various parts, and tests my weapon systems if I'm getting ready for combat," he explained. "But I don't think I'm getting ready for combat just yet!"

She tilts his head and pops in the cord, although she has to turn the end three times before the stupid thing will fit in...

"Maybe we'll do a weapons check later." She mutters, face close to his but focused on the readout for a moment. "Sure, you're not gearing up to fight right now, but you never know. I don't want you to get caught with your pants down... so to speak."

"Dr. Light says that sometimes too," Rock said with a small laugh. "Well, something to that effect. I don't wanna be caught with my pants down either!"

Rock bit his lip a bit, eyes on her as she scanned him over. Unable to help himself, he shifted forward and quickly stole a kiss on her lips, a smile on his face.

Lucca squeaks in surprise When he does because her focus was elsewhere. However, she internally smiles and kisses back, leaning over the bench and pressing him against the pegboard wall.

~~And then she caught him with his pants down.~~

Rock didn't plan on this, but the diagnostic was put on hold for at least a little while it seemed! He slid an arm around her shoulders, continuing the kiss, feeling his circuits warm. Whether it was her doing or his he wasn't quite sure, but after the incident in the ferris wheel, he had heat alarms active to alert him to when things got a little too heated for them. A couple of tools fell off the wall when she pressed him against it, but neither of them seemed in any hurry to stop.

The air around them is a tad warmer, but she ends the kiss with breathy giddiness before it can bring itself to flash-point.

"Gotta be careful. You're gonna make me burn the place down if you keep that up."

+10 tech points! Lucca learned flirt!

"We still had a few degrees to go before we had a problem," Rock replied with a smile, hands on her arms after the kiss ended. "But I guess we SHOULD get to business," he added with just a hint of disappointment.

He may have experienced things differently than a human would have, but kissing was still pretty darn good.

She re-adjusts her helmet and taps the side with a look that focuses into a thoughtful pout.

"Let's see. Nothing looks too damaged on first glance... Running a little hot, but that's to be expected." She adds with a small smile. "Have you had any problems with your arm recently? Anything else weird happen since then?"

"Nope, no problems!" Rock replied happily. "It's been working great ever since you fixed it last time! Everything FEELS like it's humming along well at least."

He smiled sheepishly. "And I don't mind running a little hot around you," he added.

Zero wandered in late one evening, looking like he neither wanted help, nor like he was here to make a new friend. But that was probably how he always looked. He was, however, at least a little curious as to what kind of set up Rock's girlfriend had for this supposed maintenance night.

He stepped in, said nothing, and looked around.

"...Oh, hi!'

Lucca uncouples herself from her lounging position at the back of the maintenance bay, setting to her feet.

"Are you here for the open maintenance session?" She adds, shuffling in place and pointing to the pile of tools nearby.

Zero stared at her for a long, drawn out moment. So, this was Lucca. He hadn't heard much about her, but mostly because he had never bothered to ask. After all, he trusted Rock, and Rock trusted her. But could Zero trust her? Especially with his body?

One scientist had already done enough damage probing his programming. It was immensely uncomfortable thinking about letting anyone that close again, even for something as straightforward as maintenance.

"I can handle my own maintenance," the reploid all but deadpanned. "I was just on patrol."

"Oh..." She adds awkwardly. She'd seen Zero around before herself, but she never really got a good chance to meet him before now. The only reason she guessed at the maintenance, was because he was down there in the evening in the first place.

Anyway he was security, she knew THAT much. So why wouldn't be want to keep himself, or at least his weapons, in good shape?

"...Oh wait. You're a friend of Rock's too, right? I think I've seen you two talking."

"Yes. We're friends." There was a small pause before he added, "And you're Lucca. The two of you are... dating."

The words felt awkward and foreign in his mouth. He wasn't even really sure what to call them, exactly - the words 'girlfriend' and 'boyfriend', even 'love' were so far from his vocabulary and his world that he wasn't even sure how to use them, much less articulate how he felt about the concept.

This was completely foreign territory. With an air of discomfort, Zero struggled to ask, "...Is he happy?"

The direct abruptness of the question makes her blush, and she fiddles with her glasses.

"I... I'm pretty sure he is. I know I am!"

There was another long silence before Zero muttered to himself, "I see..."

Maybe it was the fact that they were both scientists at such a young age, but Lucca almost reminded him a little of Ciel, with that helmet and the way she blushed. Zero furrowed his brows a little, remembering the how much she'd worry, the way she looked at him - the things that went unsaid.

But... Rock was happy, and that's what mattered.

"Good." Another pause, before he added, "Take care of him. The other reploids at the school, too... we've been lacking in robotics support for a while."

"Yeah, I know." In fact, the only other robotics expert out there that she knows of is Robotnik.

"That's... why I'm here. I mean, here in the shop. I wanted to give them a chance to get repairs they need, when they can't make it back to their labs or their homeworlds..."

"Most of us can't." Withholding the fact that this was due to the fact that back in their homeworld, Zero and the guardians were rather dead. "No trans-servers, no navigators... we're lucky our communicators work at all. But with so many combat models here now, we won't be able to go without a repair facility for long."

(Because Fefnir was definitely going to keep trying to pick fights with Zero. That's why.)

Eyeing the supplies at the workbench though, Zero added, "I might have to borrow some tools."

Edited 2015-05-13 08:51 (UTC)

"I don't mind that!" She agrees happily.

"Just... watch out for the microvoltimeter. It's a little on the fritz, so you have to hit it a few times to get it working... and the diagnostic program is a little buggy so might need restarting whenever you exit out of a scan... as well as the waveform conversion program... uh, actually there are more to remember then I can say right now, so just let me know if you do." She concedes, fidgeting with her helmet.

He had to fight the urge to ask if anything actually worked, but the truth was he wasn't unused to making due with equipment that was a bit worse for wear. Living on the lam as part of a ragtag Resistance group usually didn't net him first class facilities. Whatever they had was often cobbled together, scavenged from their enemies, or stolen from Neo Arcadia's lofty supply trucks. Some of his chips were literally made of junk - but hey, they worked.

Zero approached the workbench and sat down, casually sifting through Lucca's tools. Equipment like this didn't get worn down like this by being idle. "Been through a lot of use?" he inquired.

Harpuia was only vaguely familiar with the name Lucca -- Rock had referred to her as his girlfriend the last time that they'd spoken. That she was capable of reploid maintenance was a surprise, but certainly a welcome one. It'd been worrying to think that their health might have been in the hands of one person alone; the more people could be trusted with repairs, the more at easy Harpuia felt.

He rapped his knuckles against the door as he stepped in, more out of politeness than anything. "Excuse me... are you Lucca?"

"Oh, oh oh wait, hold on."

The reason she's holding off on conversation is that Harupia caught her while she was polishing her glasses. The huge lenses fit back onto her face and she blinks in a magnified manner as she finds Harupia's form.

"Hi! Yup, that''s me. What's your name? I don't think I've met you before..."

"My name is Harpuia," he answered, replying with the straight-backed clarity of a soldier reporting in. "I believe I might be the most recent reploid to arrive here, so I haven't had much time to make friends."

The part that followed, however, was much less straight-backed and businesslike, being a much more foreign thing to say. "I understand you're familiar with Rock, though. He's mentioned you before. I'm... I suppose you could consider me a relative of his?"

"He mentioned me to you?" She blushes and rubs the back of her neck. "That explains why you knew my name, anyway... So you're related to him, huh? Were you built by Dr. Light too?"

"He had only good things to say, that's for certain. He thinks very highly of you." Quite a cute couple, if he had to guess, judging by the way they reacted to just mentioning the other. Not, of course, that it was any of Harpuia's business. He wasn't here to make those kinds of casual guesses.

"I... well, no. It's a little bit complicated. I was built by a team of researchers approximately 300 years after Rock's creation. I was, however, made from the DNA data of Dr. Light's last known robot. It's... a bit of an unusual link, I'll admit that."

"Not that unusual." She assures as she pulls out a big blue blueprint scroll that she unrolls and frowns at.

"What d'you mean by DNA data, though? I didn't think you guys were based on genetic code at all... I don't see anything about that in Rock's prints, either."

"That wouldn't surprise me; reploids differ from robots of the previous era in quite a few ways." Though from what Harpuia had seen of Rock, his individuality and zeal for peace did give him reason to suspect the line between Dr. Light's previous works and X was thinner than history may have thought.

"It's not really DNA -- not in sense of deoxyribonucleic acid. It's... I hope you don't find the comparison offensive, but I suppose it's the strain of programming that makes up a reploid's soul. The qualities unique to that particular robot, even if countless bodies with identical hardware might exist."

"The strain of programming that makes up a soul... N-no, that's a good term for it. Better than anything I can think of, anyway. It's probably hereditary like DNA. After a couple of iterations, the inert parts of code that are left over can add up. Change things in little ways. I've heard it called a 'ghost in the machine', but maybe a soul is a better description..."

She shakes her head. "Sorry, I'm just musing, there. There's no way to prove any of it."

"I don't believe that it's impossible to find evidence to support it, necessarily... but I suppose our resources are much more limited here." Certainly a fascinating line of thought, but probably not the sort of research that would have a very big participant pool. Even if reploid society had been established here, creating new beings from existing DNA data was not something that was exactly commonly done. And given the average level of technology available in the 21st century...

"To be honest, when I first came here, I was worried that the facilities wouldn't be up to handling even basic maintenance."

She can fix it!

I see that innuendo there

I don't know what you're talking about. ^-^

OF COURSE NOT

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YOU DID THAT ON PURPOSE

I SURE DID.

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i am so late to the maintenance party OTL

It's fine! =3

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