smash_logs | Help computer.

Entry tags:

Help computer.

Who: Rock and Lucca
What: Rock has a breakdown in the middle of the night. Who you gonna call?
Where: The repair shop
When: January 8
Warnings: R for REPAIRS

It was a night like any other. Rock lay in bed, entering a recharge sleep cycle. Unlike human sleeping, Rock just shut down primary functions to recharge energy. It wasn't something he needed to do often, but when in Rome... Also unlike human sleeping, he didn't dream. Of course, cognitive functions weren't completely disabled. His mind was still awash with thoughts that he struggled to process. Thoughts about Zero, and the implications of his discovery on their friendship. Thoughts about his family and his home, how he missed Dr. Light and Roll, and how much he wished he could see them after all that had happened. And among all of his fretting and worried thoughts, he remembered the mistletoe incident, and what happened with Lucca. He couldn't get it out of his mind, and he didn't know why. His first real kiss. And he liked it. He had so many problems to worry about now, why was he so distracted by that moment?

As confused as he was, brain trying to sort through his thoughts as he slept, he was snapped out of his reverie by a diagnostic alert. He sat up like a shot, covers flying off, as if waking from a nightmare. He looked down at his arm. It wasn't moving... Why wasn't it moving? The diagnostic ran through his mind like visions plastered over his eyes. An old servo had given out on him. He gave his shoulder a good whack, but to no avail. His arm wouldn't respond.

What was he gonna do? A quick glance at the clock... It was almost 3 AM. Everyone had to be in bed by now. But even if they weren't, who could he call? There was the biomech teacher, but she lived off campus. Dr. Eggman... No, not in a million years. Gordon Freeman? He was a physicist... Zero? He wasn't exactly mechanically inclined. Besides, he wasn't entirely sure where he stood with Zero now. That left the only other roboticist he knew...

Hopping out of bed, holding his arm at his side, Rock left the room and padded down the hallways towards the girls wing. BW-08, Vivian and Lucca's room, there it was. He knocked quietly at the door, hoping beyond hope that Lucca wouldn't mind taking a look at him. But... no answer. He knocked again, a little louder. Still no answer. She must have been sleeping. Or maybe she wasn't even there? Where could she have gone this time of night? Worried about waking her up from an obviously deep sleep, Rock left the dorms. Maybe he could repair it himself... With one hand, it was unlikely. But better than nothing. He had to try. Quickly he hurried off to the repair shop where the science club met...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Rock will notice a couple of things odd about the repair shop. The lights were on for one, and they shouldn't have been for that time of night. For another, that rack of blueprints was snoring.

...No wait, it wasn't the rack. It was the girl slumped over the tinker table behind it, that was snoring instead. It didn't take a detective to figure out the forensics behind the scene: The cold, sloppy cup of tea on the table next to her and robot schemata scattered around it told of an all-nighter that didn't exactly last all night. Her helmet sat on the ground next to the desk, and her glasses lay open on another cluster of papers on the corner.

Well that certainly explained a lot, Rock thought as he saw Lucca sleeping at the table. Clearly she'd been overworking herself and just lost track of time... He knew what that looked like, and he felt momentarily relaxed by the familiarity of it. Dr. Light did this all the time.

As much as he felt bad about waking her up, this was kind of an emergency. He walked up next to her and called her name quietly. "Lucca...?" He gently nudged her shoulder with his working hand.

"Mmmnh. Chrono, what're you doin' wearing that prismdress...?"

Ooookay then...

"Hmn?" She dopily uncoils from her sleeping position a little, eyes squinting open but still hazy with sleep and nearsightedness. "Whass' going on?"

"Well, I don't know who Chrono is," Rock began quietly, "but it's me, Rock."

"Rock...?"

The fog starting to clear, she gropes for her glasses and plasters them to her face, her eyes magnifying to their normal size.

"I must've fallen asleep out here, sorry." She mumbles. "But what're you doing here?"

Edited 2015-01-08 20:13 (UTC)

"It's okay, you haven't done anything wrong," Rock told her. "Unless you haven't eaten, in which case you really should," he added, his old lab assistant instincts kicking in.

"But uh, I, um... I have a problem... And I don't know anyone else who can help me with it," he said, nervously hoping she would be willing. He gestured to his left arm, dangling at his side. He grabbed his wrist, lifted it, and let it go, watching the arm flop like dead weight.

"...There's something wrong with your arm?"

That seems to sharpen her up a little. She sits up properly now, brushing hair out of her face and from its entanglement in her glasses. Without a word, she takes his wrist and does the same lift-and-drop he did.

"...Huh... Looks like an actuator blew out, or a sensor got stuck or something. C'mon over here."

She gets up from the desk, carrying her helmet to the bench on the opposite side and gesturing for him to get up onto the bench. "What were you doing when you lost movement? Anything strenuous?"

~~"Well, I was thinking about you, and--~~

Rock hopped up on the bench, relief on his face now that she was ready to help. He rolled up his T-shirt sleeve up to give her full access to the disabled limb. "No, I was just recharg-- er, sleeping," he explained. "Then it just gave out. I have diagnostic systems that let me know when there's system failure. It must have just been wearing out and didn't last until my next maintenance check..."

"Um... Sorry to wake you, but... thanks," he added, smiling sheepishly.

She gives him a smile over her shoulder as she takes down a couple of cables and some palm-sized tool cases. "It's fine. More than fine, I wouldn't want it any other way... You need help, and I'm here for you."

She sets the stuff down next to him, and steals a kiss on the cheek.

"Now then." She adds professionally. "I get the feeling I'm going to have to disable your pain sensors if I need to change something; I'll also need to run some further diagnostics to figure out exactly what's wrong. Where's your access port?"

Oh hey, he was still blushing. And getting kissed like that was still a pretty awesome thing! He smiled like a goof, until finally registering what Lucca was telling him. "...Huh? Oh! That's fine, no problem," he nodded quickly, trying to banish the proof of his crush. "Here..."

He reached over to his arm, pressing against a seam, one of the only things that betrayed he wasn't actually a flesh and blood person. It unlocked the casing around his arm, and he was able to remove it for her, revealing the circuitry and mechanics underneath. "I have an access port up here," he added, reaching up to his ear, popping it off to reveal a connection port. He set the ear and arm casing down, looking a bit sheepish at her seeing him like this.

Human psychology is a funny thing. Lucca knew that Rock was a robot, of course, but seeing this still was a shock to a handful of midbrain-connected neurons that expected Rock to not be able to disassemble himself like that. It's a feeling that's easily vanquished by an even stronger impulse: curiosity.

She bows to that urge now, and runs a finger along the edge of the casing and the complex metallic cording underneath. "Wow... I never would have even thought you can do that. I hardly saw the seam."

"Well, you know... I do kinda need to be able to be repaired now and then," he reminded her with a small laugh. Her curiosity got the better of her, and the awkward moment passed as she examined him. "Dr. Light put a lot of effort in to making me as human-like as he could," he explained, watching her.

"I can tell." She replies, absently. She runs her hands over the metal sinew again before self-awareness kicks in and she straightens, her face close to his.

"...Uhm... Let's get you fixed, okay." It wasn't really a question, because it wasn't him he was trying to convince. She takes out her tablet, fiddles with it to boot up a couple of programs, and pops in a cable. Then she looks to him again, reaching up to his head to gently tilt it, and pop in the other end of the cable. Pop.

"Let's see what this thing has to say." She mutters, looking over the servo map diagram on the screen.

Despite being a robot, having things plugged into your head still felt weird. But that just came with the territory. As he could feel his systems interfacing with the tablet, he sat up a bit, trying to peek over at the tablet to see what she saw.

It brought his face closer to hers, but he didn't quite realize that right away. He was just curious about what kind of diagnostic info she was seeing.

A vaguely Rock-shaped outline greets him, with plenty of text sprouting up at odd points, bearing phrases like "unersponsive somatic nerve circuit-servo relay" and "unknown stimulus-induced increased core temperature." Lucca doesn't mind his being so close, especially since she's focused on the tablet herself.

"...Could you feel it when I touched your arm? I mean, do you still have feeling in it?"

She brings up a magnification of his arm, and starts to poke at odd points, trying to activate servos to test them and hopefully move the arm.

Rock understood some of those words. He wasn't the robotics expert, Dr. Light and Lucca were. So while he tried to make sense of it all, he looked up at her, finally realizing how close he'd gotten. "Ah, no, I don't feel anything from it," he answered. "Not even when you touched it. Is that bad?"

"It's not bad. I mean, y'know, it IS, but we can fix it." She replies as she plies her tablet and his arm stubbornly refuses to move. "It also gives us a better idea of what's going on. There's a servo out to be sure, but something shorted out your somatic impulse receptors too. I get the feeling you got an internal power surge while you were sleeping."

Don't worry, Rock, that happens to all boys once they reach your age. Lucca leans past him, even closer, and pulls a box from the ones lining the shelves. She leans back with a tiny silver match-stick of a servo.

"Alright. I'll replace the servo first, since you can't feel any pain in that region anyway... okay?"

"I wonder what could have caused that," he said curiously, sitting back. "I don't feel anything else out of whack," he added. "It must have been pretty localized if that's the case."

He could have said things were less complicated before. Sure, he had to battle endless armies of evil robots hell bent on conquering and/or destroying the planet, but somehow being a teenager still managed to be more complicated.

With a nod, he said, "I don't feel pain during repairs anyway, so don't worry about it," he reassured her. "Go ahead."

"Oh yeah? Okay. That takes some of the pressure off." She admits, smiling nervously. "The last thing I wanna do is hurt you."

She shifts back and returns to his exposed arm, opening one of the small toolcases and bending down a magnifier to get a better look. She mutters quietly as she works:

"Okay, that's the actuator housing... bend that back... the red wire or the blue wire, it always comes down to that... the fibril bundle servos have to be under here... hey Rock, hold this for me for a second."

You're now being given a small piece of yourself, Rock. Don't lose it.

"I appreciate that, I really do," he said with a smile.

He watched intently as she worked. He rarely got to see anyone working on himself, so this was quite an interesting opportunity for him. But suddenly he was handed an important piece of hardware. "Sure thing. Uh... What is it?"

"Uh... I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure it's part of the internal myofiber-analog mediator housing, though."

She finally gets to the offending servo bundle, and is greeted by a small puff of powderized metal and the smell of burnt components.

"Uff! Yeah, this is it alright. Hold on."

Twist, wiggle, pop, wedge... the spent servo falls to the ground in a scattering of shards...

"Aaaaaaand, THERE. You still won't be able to move it I don't think, not until I figure out what caused that overload." She warns. "Here, I'll take that back now."

She reaches for the housing in his hand, eyes falling to his. This time they don't scurry away so quickly, but linger with an odd querying look.

Rock winced a bit at the sight of the puff of metal coming from his arm. He didn't realize it was that bad... "At least we found the problem," he said, trying to reassure the both of them as he held out his hand to return the component.

Then her eyes met his, hands meeting as she grabbed the component he held. He suddenly became very self conscious as she got so close. Here he was, with wires coming out of his head, and his arm in pieces, and she still managed to fluster him. He gulped. His throat wasn't dry, but it was just one of the many autonomic responses he had been programmed with. "Ah..." He couldn't exactly make any other sound at the moment, though he certainly tried.

Edited 2015-01-09 03:23 (UTC)

"Hey, Rock? Uh..."

He wasn't the only one with non-factory-standard impulses to suddenly deal with. Wires and titanium aside, her closeness to him gave her a tingle up her spine, an odd tightness in her chest, and had kicked her heartbeat into high gear.

...What was she going to say again?

Oh, whatever. She shifts in her seat and leans in to kiss him. Not a quick peck on the cheek, but something slower and softer.

That... definitely didn't help his mixed up feelings towards Lucca. His eyes widened a bit as she leaned in to kiss him. This was different, even from that day under the mistletoe. It was... warmer. He registered the warmth of her lips, the gentle pressure against his own. Sensors could tell him all about the actual sensation, but none of it mattered compared to the tingling sensation it was giving him. He worried it might be another power surge. He didn't have all of the normal responses that a human would, but he felt enough to know there was more to it.

He was hesitant to respond, not quite sure what to do in this situation. He didn't have any real kissing experience beyond the mistletoe. He had to think fast. And finally, he settled on lifting his working hand and holding her shoulder. He let his eyes close to focus on the feeling. It felt nice... Really nice.

Kisses can send a message. This is something these two are just starting to understand, and hers is a message of comfort.

"I... I'm gonna finish your repairs, and close you up, okay?" She whispers quickly once the kiss ends, shifting back and reclaiming the widget she'd made him hold. "I just couldn't help myself; I needed to do that."

A couple of twists and "oh hey it's a regulator for coolant, not a housing... aaand there's the coolant. Eww. Sorry." later, it's back on.

"Okay. Now we just need to figure out the source of the surges and reboot your somatic limb control system." She adds, returning to the tablet. "You're sure you don't know what caused it last time?"

Rock definitely didn't mind. His body language and the smile on his face said as much. As confused as his feelings were, he couldn't deny that it felt good to him, and that it was a comforting gesture. He felt just a bit lighter, happier... "Y-yeah, sure thing," he replied. "It's okay, I didn't mind. I actually kinda liked it..."

He shook his head again. "No," he replied again. "I was processing data, which I always do when I'm in a recharge cycle, and it just... happened." There was that blush again. "I don't know if it'll help, but I can tell you what I was thinking about."

"You know it might?" She chimes in, giving him a glance but not one long enough to notice the blush. "It could be a top-down cascade from something that your cerebral computer had trouble processing. The loop defaulted, and the excess power had to go SOMEWHERE, so it went into your somatic system. It was just bad luck that it went down your arm and blew out that servo!"

She scoots over the soldering iron and all the other tools, and hops up onto the bench herself, legs dangling, still lending one eye to the tablet. "So what were you thinking about?"

Okay. How to explain this... He wasn't sure he should even bring it up. But she WAS trying to help... And she was his friend. They'd become pretty close, between having lunch together multiple times and now. He just had to admit it.

"It was a couple of things," he started. "On the one hand, I had a... weird conversation with Zero the other day. I don't exactly want to go into details, but I've been kinda... confused since then. And, um..." He reached up to scratch the side of his head, the one without the cord coming out of it. "Well... I was kinda thinking about... um... you."

She knows Zero as well, and their conversation piques her interest, but all that is steamrolled by his last confession. She lowers the tablet now.

"Me? Hey, I'm not causing you that much trouble, am I?" She had no idea that she may even remotely cause him to blow a servo, in a literal sense. The very thought made her stomach writhe and open up a small black pit inside.

"N-no! No, that's not it at all!" he tried to reassure her, raising his working arm to reassure her. "I wasn't thinking anything bad about you at all! I mean, I was just thinking about... how much fun we've had together lately..."

That softens her expression somewhat. "Oh. I guess it was a combination of things, huh. Kissing under the mistletoe and stuff... It's a lot to take in."

While she muses about this, she pokes idly at the cerebral subprogram, tracing nerve-analogues down his left arm. Hold on... There it is, a synapse failsafe tripped in his shoulder. She angles the tablet to show him with a small smirk, and with a flick she resets the breaker.

With the breaker reset, sensation suddenly shot back to life down Rock's arm. He lifted it, moved it around, and flexed his fingers. With a broad smile, he threw both of his arms around Lucca happily. "Thank you so much! It works again!" he proclaimed, hugging her tight.

She hugs back for a long time and tousles his hair. "Yup. Iiiiiiii'm a genius." She crows happily. Being in an actual embrace with him for the first time is so natural and pleasant, that she hardly notices it. Rock can likely tell the exact moment that she DOES notice, however because she blushes and the air around them warms by a few degrees.

"So... Is there anything that we can do to resolve that looping logic circuit?"

~~"Yes," he said as he swept the work bench clean and made out with her on it.~~

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe I could come see you once in a while to just keep an eye on it? If it's related to my personal problems, then I can work on those."

He could register an increase in ambient temperature from her. But that's not why he stopped hugging her. He wanted to look her in the eye, face red as he tried to make the words come out without him sounding like an idiot. "And, um... Maybe if you wanted... we could... go on a date some time?"

~~"Oh Rock!" She cried out in wanton robotic passion.~~

HE ASKED HER, HE ASKED HER! "--Sure we would!" She chirps in a happy response.

Edited (what are html tags? Are they food?) 2015-01-09 21:13 (UTC)

~~He's fully functionaaaaal, and anatomically correct.~~

...She said yes? SHE SAID YES! Inside he was cheering. And the bright smile would not leave his face. "Great...! I've, um, never actually been on a date before," he admitted sheepishly, blushing a bit in mild embarrassment that he really didn't think much farther ahead than asking her out. "So... Where would you like to go? And when are you free, I probably should have asked that first!" he said with a small laugh at himself.

"I'm free anytime I don't have class, really. Most nights too... Although that's probably obvious." She adds, shifting in her seat and glancing up at the clock on the wall.

"...what do you say I clean up while you put yourself together, and then we can have some tea down in the cafeteria? And an E-tank, of course. You could probably use one right now, and I'm not quite ready to sleep yet."

Rock reached up to unplug the cable from his head, picking up his ear and reattaching it. With that and the casing on his arm reinstalled, he looked as human as before again. He rolled down his sleeve, glancing up at the clock and then back at her. "Well, if you're sure you're not tired, that would be nice," he replied, hopping down from the table. "I can help clean up too," he added, going to help her put things away.

"What were you working on that kept you up so late anyway?" he asked curiously, gathering up loose odds and ends for her. His lab assistant instincts were always quick to kick in.

"Working on building my own morality circuit. It's not as easy as it sounds."

She tucks the boxes and tools away with him, quietly appreciating the help. "I mean beyond the three laws of robotics. Something that works for all cases, looks at a situation from all angles, and then chooses what's best for everyone, human and robot alike."

"Wow... Even Dr. Light hasn't done something like THAT yet," he remarked. At least not that he knew about. He wasn't privy to ALL of Dr. Light's projects. "Well. I mean, I'm a robot and still bound by the laws of robotics, but... You know what I mean."

When all the boxes had been packed up, he dusted his hands off, glad to be able to get that arm moving again. When they were done, he slid his hand into hers and squeezed her hand, smiling at her. "Thanks again, Lucca. For, well... everything."

She squeezed back.

"Any time, Rock."

As they left the work room, Rock, face red, asked her a question. "So... Does this mean we're... you know... boyfriend and girlfriend now?" he asked nervously.

"...Whoa. I guess so!" She replies, seeming to realize that herself in a delighted way. "If you're okay with it, I mean."

"Yes! Of course!" he blurted out excitedly. "Er, I'm okay with it," he said a little calmer, laughing a bit.

Feeling more confident after that admission, he looked at her again, and stopped her, holding her hand. He pulled her up closer and gave her another kiss smack dab on the lips. He couldn't help the huge smile on his face. It felt good to say.

When he let her go again, he said, "Well then... let's go get something to drink!"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Help computer.

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I'm drowning in feelings, send help

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