Still I Lay Beguiled

The first memory when he came to himself was a smell of something acrid, the tell-tale smell of hot solder and the subtle underlying smoky tinge of burnt wires. his eyes were closed, and he kept them that way, lying stock still, betraying no hint of his consciousness. A silent stock taken of his situation. he was prone, but somehow lying so his head was a bit higher than his feet. There was no pain, but something was off. For several minutes he lay as one dead, considering what was different. It seemed, in some part of his wiring, that something was missing. When it came to the fore of his thoughts, he actually twitched a corner of one eye and his fingers flicked inward in a clutching at the smooth steel at either side of his hips. The pinch was gone.

It hadn't been pain, not really. He'd felt pain before, the terrible body soreness from wounds and from sadness, but for the longest time there had been a feeling like something was too small, too confined. Like a pinch from too-tight trousers might plague a human being. The lack of it was ... strange. There was a new openness in its place, and while he didn't want the pinch back, its loss was noteworthy. Once,when he was younger, Peter had gotten the hiccups. He'd had them for hours and hours until, suddenly, they just stopped and he'd said he kind of missed them for a while afterward. Maybe that was what this feeling was. A missing hiccups feeling. Hesitantly, a single eye creaked open faintly.

There was a low light, a soft bluish glowing that radiated about the room. The sound of bubbling and the hum of electricity was faint in the background as he looked left, then right. There was something in his peripheral and the metallic lids dropped and rose until he realized they were eyelashes. Long, curvy, luxuriant lashes of the thinnest blackened wire. A sudden urge to flutter them danced up in his chest like a flock of butterflies. The other eye opened.

Brows knit as he sat up and swung his legs off the table. A faint creaking of joints when he stood and wavered a moment, adjusting internal servos to accommodate for the change in center of gravity. Hesitantly, he walked toward the figure at the end of the room only to realize that ... it was himself, or rather, herself. He was a girl! He blinked rapidly and leaned in, moving her jaw and widening her eyes, tilting her head this way and that to take in the new faceplate and how it moved. It was familiar, but not. It was still the pretty coppery sheen and the soft tealish green patina here and there to bring color and interest. Her head was no longer the smooth dome, but heavily adorned with screws and bands of black and red that, at the back, shifted to wires and plugs that made a pretty clacking sound whenever she turned her head quickly. The biggest change was the pair of rabbit-like ears that stuck up and turned out, as if alert to every sound, though only her actual ears were capable of hearing. Those were now stuck through with large hoops that bumped her neck as she shook her head. The 'tink-tink-tink' sound, mixed with the sound of gears and the clickity-clack of her wire 'hair' was almost musical in itself.

Her dress was black and there was a soft glow from her boiler grate. She twitched visibly in surprise to note, there were chest bumps beneath it. A fingertip rose, shaking a bit, and with a grimace, as she had no idea what would happen, she poked one gently. Boobs! Brows shot up and she did it again, a grin spreading. She had never had any real gender-defining equipment before. It was kind of weird, but she felt worlds better somehow. Smoothing down her skirt, having made sure the only lady parts she'd been given were on top, she pivoted a little at the waist, then back the other way. It made the skirt swish a little and it felt nice. She turned her back to the mirror and craned her head around to see the bright red bow at her waist, the same red as the stripes in the black tights that covered her legs, the stripes vanishing into tall shiny black boots. She felt whole. She felt happy, and she felt ... pretty.

"I see you're awake." The voice of Peter Walter the sixth drifted forth, a sort of hollow and distant thing, that nonetheless was comforting and full of good humor and warmth. The black space, like a keyhole in a door, was turned toward Rabbit as he approached, the wooden mask making his hair poke up all around it. He needed a haircut.