Upgrades - Chapter 1
Ports
Crossposted on Ao3
Surgery fic. Hordak's awake.
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“Are you ready?” Entrapta asks, looking over her tools, making sure they’re all ready for the work ahead of them.
Hordak is bent over the workbench, sitting on a stool and looking impassive. “I am. Get to work whenever you are ready.” He declares. He’s letting Entrapta work on him. She’s getting ready to remove and re-implant some of his armors anchor ports. The current ones are, of course, very well designed, and were implanted as well as someone doing it essentially on their own could have possibly hoped. Entrapta can make them better though. She can make them sturdier. She can increase the data throughput. She can make him better.
Her hands and hair glide over his angular form. Making note of the alien musculature of his back. Nothing is quite right; too long, too short, angled incorrectly. The way the anchor ports disrupt the natural flow of his musculature yet the visible bypasses beneath keep him functional. None of it is human. It’s intoxicating to work with. To feel. Fingers press into the flesh around the central port on his back, testing. Hordak gives a small grunt at the feeling. He’s tender where the flesh and metal have merged.
She can feel the metal beneath the skin, slipped below. She can feel the way there’s nothing else in that area. Directly around it curls the reshaped musculature. She has asked about this before, he had it pulled and re-made to work with the anchoring system he had implanted. He did it himself through a combination of automated and remote surgeries of his own back. Entrapta wishes she could see recordings of that, that they existed. She wishes to watch the process, to see the before and after.
She wants to know every change Hordak has had. Every way he has made his body more inhuman over the years. Every way he has made his body better than it was before.
Entrapta realizes she’s paused in her examination. Hordak’s eyes have closed, relaxing under her touch.
Her hair wraps around him — his limbs and his torso. She holds him tight. She makes sure he will not be able to move and potentially hurt himself while she works. Another tendril reaches up to grab the dangling anchor plug above them. It was designed specifically for this work, a hybrid of data probe and disassembly tool. It will be seeing a lot of use tonight.
She pulls the plug down and slides it into the port on his back. Hordak jolts ever so slightly at the feeling of it entering his body, at the electrical surge of the data feed beginning. It helps to hold the port together, it helps Entrapta see the state of the hardware she is working with, and of course the state of Hordak himself. Though that data feed will not last for much longer. There is no non-invasive way to do this after all, she is removing the entire internal assembly.
With careful hands her scalpel sinks into flesh, delicately cutting around the port and breaking the fusion of flesh and metal. Her earlier exploration, as much as it was for her own enjoyment, was for this moment as well. She cuts through the thin line separating the implanted metal and the reshaped musculature. Hordak grits his teeth, he hisses in pain. His talons sink into the metal workbench. Entrapta’s hair tightens around Her Hordak, holding him in place. “Be careful.” she speaks simply.
“Me?!” he hisses out through gritted teeth, glancing back. Her hair shoots out and grabs his head to force it back forward.
“Minimize muscle movements please. For your own safety.” Entrapta commands as she completes her careful initial cutting. The flesh is broken. The internal weave exposed. Now she cuts outward, incisions to let her pull his flesh back, away. Broken capillaries leak inhuman blood. A bundle of her hair wrapped in cloth moves to dab and keep the work area visible. Twist, slip beneath the metal, sever the fusion from underneath. She’s examined his designs endlessly, she has memorized the method she designed to do this.
Still it is harrowing. Still it is so exciting. Her own breath quickens, a small smile spreads.
And soon the second stage is done, enough has been freed. She can take the faster route now.
So she grabs and twists the anchor plug with her gloved hand, locking it inside of the port as his armor would lock in. While the armor acts as an exoskeleton to hold him together the plug is used for the exact opposite. With all of her strength she pulls directly out from Hordak’s spine, her hair holding him down with all of its own substantial strength. The entire assembly is torn out of him violently.
Hordak howls in pain. It echoes through the Fright Zone. His fingers clench and tear gashes into the workbench. Entrapta holds fast, keeping him steady. Then he recovers, the initial pain passes and the remaining pain can be handled. Hordak is very resilient.
It is one of the many fascinating and helpful aspects of him.
Entrapta lets go of the plug, letting it dangle. Hordak first. She leans in to look into the hole in his back, extending tools inside to clean and examine the internal frame that holds him together. Metal and ceramic built around and through muscle and bone. A direct tap and bypass of his spinal column. The interior facing port housing remains within him, metal walls ensuring minimal bleeding and exposure, but it’s useless without the rest of the hardware that she just removed. It’s little more than a hole in his back that has the potential to connect a machine interface in to.
Quietly, with curiosity, she pulls off one of her gloves. Deftly she reaches her fingers into him, running over the smooth metal walls inside. It’s so unlike anything she has ever seen before, anything she has ever touched. Hordak shivers.
“Entrapta…”
Oh right. Her thumb was grazing the open cut flesh around him. That was probably uncomfortable. Probably.
“Apologies. I was checking for any deformities of the inner wall.” She wasn’t.
Still the work must continue, so when she’s sure that he isn’t damaged by her violent removal of the port hardware she turns to the dangling piece of hardware. The small mechanical tendrils in her mask extend out, beginning to quickly disassemble the components. So much of it is old, loose, it’s a testament to Hordak’s design that it has lasted so long with any sort of reliability. Entrapta plans to replace almost all of it. They have access to superior alloys now, to better ceramics. Also rubber. Which will help stave off corrosion for the contacts going forward. Apparently Hordak has had to remove the corrosion himself a number of times over the years.
That must have been a feat.
She glances back at Hordak. His breathing is heavy, his eyes are squeezed shut. Entrapta leans forward and kisses his back just above the port. “Don’t worry. It’s going to be so much better when we’re done. You’ll be better.” there’s excitement in her voice.
Hordak gives a smirk. “Just keep working.”
Entrapta grins wide now.
Gladly.
