A shorty. Sam gets (mostly) put back together and West gets a robot son, which is in no way scary.
Warnings- surgery mention? Idk better safe than sorry
Sam watched trepidatiously as this new person- a smaller woman with curly hair, originally reddish orange but now streaked with grey- picked up his jar that had been separated from the mana converter. Lady stood behind her, looking over her shoulder as she lifted and tucked it against her chest. “You got it?” Lady asked, trying to keep the fret out of her voice. She’d worked hard and she wasn’t about to lose her patient now.
“Yes, I do,” the woman said, glancing behind her with faux irritation and a smile. “I’m not so old that I can’t lift things, you know.”
“Sorry, Oph,” Lady replied, a relieved smile on her face as she patted the other woman on the shoulder and they made their way out the front garage-style door.
Sparks, West, and Grenfell watched them leave and after a few moments when they were sure they were well gone Sparks spoke. “Okay narc’s gone, time to work.” Even as she was saying it West went over to a shadowed corner and pulled a tarp from something stacked there, revealing a huge black iron creeper that they’d been insisting to Lady was just ‘spare parts’.
Sparks held a screwdriver and started undoing the plating when another voice said behind her: “Uhhh who’s a narc?” She squeezed her eyes shut and handed Gren a plate, which he quickly took and started scrawling things on with a finger.
“Damn it, other narc,” she said, looking back over her shoulder to see Crow half out of a shadow, leaning on it as though he was peeking through a window. “Just keep your trap shut for a few hours, okay?”
“I’m not a narc,” Crow insisted, looking over this new project. It wasn’t nearly the size of Big Daddy, but staring at a large black metal spider that could possibly be up and running soon was unnerving. “Sooooo why can’t Lady know about this?”
“We’re gonna slap a developing AI that we totally legit got into it, and Gren wants to see if he can have the thing automatically repair itself,” she said, still unscrewing the plating. The one Grenfell was holding glowed briefly with a finished enchantment. “But Lady’s gonna be all ‘that’s dangerous, guys, don’t just slap things together without testing, mah mah,” she raised her voice mockingly for a moment. “So we gotta hurry and get it running before she’s done with the surgery on Sam.”
“And she won’t just stop you once she’s back?” Crow asked.
“Not if we have it make beeping noises,” Sparks said. “Then she’ll think its cute.”
----
“Excuse me,” Sam said, manifesting his eye and trying not to look at the large jar in the woman’s hands. It was more than a little unsettling to look at pieces of yourself. “I don’t believe we’ve met, miss…?”
“Ophelia, no ‘miss’ needed,” the woman replied. He noticed she had on a worn black priest’s robe and a staff slung across her back, the ring on top jingling with bells and metal chimes.
“...are things bad enough that a priest might be needed?” Samuel asked, glancing to Lady. He knew getting back together was always going to be risky, but he did hold out hope that something could be done. They were walking to meet with a man named Mochi in his tent as apparently he didn’t much like going into the Stone City.
“We like to use ‘just in case’ around here,” Ophelia said, smiling gently at him. “So, I’m here just in case.”
“Ah.”
----
The surgery was long, though not the hardest Lady had ever done. She and Mochi tended towards being quiet and exacting while working, both of them with an eye towards detail that meant suturing first while he healed, weaving back together organs, veins, and nerve endings with delicate precision that had made for a long day.
Samuel was still asleep, and they’d left Ophelia to watch for when he woke up while they took a break. Mochi was still unsure of how much Samuel would be able to feel after all was said and done- unfortunately the parts of his original body were fairly well gone even with the regeneration, and dead things weren’t a weaver specialty. Maybe they could set something up, she thought as she made her way slowly back to The Workshop, intending to make sure that crew had actually saved and put away the pink charcelony. If he could regenerate with that stuff, then maybe they’d just set up a bigger chamber for him to-
She heard the noise first, the clunking and whirring sound of something metallic, heavy and robotic on the concrete floor. For just a moment she wondered if Big Daddy had needed repairs, but that thought was quickly banished. Those three always got up to something the second her eyes left them.
Lady peeked around the corner and into the large central garage, eyes bleary and annoyed in the way of a mother having been woken up by loud children.
There was a black iron creeper in the center of the room trying to step carefully around the people beside and beneath it. A gold plated blue glass eye zeroed in on her and the thing beeped in greeting.
“Uhhhh, hi!” Sparks said, waving as she screwed back in a plate on its side. “Meet Chirok! How’d the surgery go? Sam okay?”
