[ENG] Hetalia Rochu "The Discovery"

Chapter 2

The controls that coded the android's mind were under his scarf, in the nape of the neck. For research, he had taken off this piece of clothing as well as the coat's first buttons, stripping the humanoid and contemplating its bare back. Yao was on top of the body, which he had carefully put the belly facing his consultation bed and was tinkering with some tangled wires. This position was quite unusual for him to be in but his patient wasn't the most normal thing either. The instruments in his fingers were less skillfully handled than the usual syringe or stethoscope, his hands dealing with screwdrivers and monkey wrenches but the nature of his patient allowed him way more experimental freedom and he had already determined the absence of blood or any other human-like characteristic inside the body, the dissection he performed revealing a mostly empty shell made to look like a man. The layout of the insides of his guinea pig was anything but productive, being messy and very obviously a rush job. The whole ordeal of trying to turn it on had gotten Yuan as frustrated by his failures as he was excited by the thirst for intriguing work. Those knowledgeable fingers of his, used to the touch of human flesh were now much more stimulated by the fake skin and imitation of life under his palm.

A sweet light began to seep in by the blinds, sometimes a gesture by the controls would produce sparks, a slight motion in an arm, a blink, all so mechanical that it was like playing with a puppet. This pretty doll and its strange eyes stayed dead despite the tinkering of the doctor's toys. No resistance. Eyes wide open, no reaction and the arms dangling while instruments dived, with a simple incision, into its insides. Neither hot nor cold, without a shudder under the passing of his fingers, the automaton rendered optimal the concentration of his puppeteer who wandered over his shape without coming across a hindrance. Calm reigned, silence only giving way under the pleasant constancy of his respiration – he did not hear anything else and only saw the exciting phenomena in sight. At once leisure time and work, relaxation and stimulation, some eagerness took over him and as he saw this lifeless thing, inhuman mass before him, he could not but see beauty. The compliant and moldable doll embodied innocence and danger at once, adventure in itself, quest for answers and wisdom through a journey in the simile of a human body.

After connecting dots for quite a while, he figured out the essential mechanism of the thing and sat into his chair in a sigh for he was worried whose hands this malleable creature had gotten into, before him. Such a technology in such a neighborhood would only be used for ominous purposes. What would his code entail concerning his awakening?

He frowned, exhaled, looked at it, looked away from it, with firm eyes, with glitter in them, with concerning interest. Childlike curiosity for a toy to play with, maternal instinct for a kid to care about; a longed for meeting. But one that could be deceiving and more. A nine month's worth of wait for screams and stress. The worth. The unknown element, the X in the equation. Rewarding risks or disastrous imprudence? Why try to stay out of trouble for so long if you were to dive in it head on anyway? But looking at the body, the only wish left was for it to move. Get up and meet expectations.

And it did, that is, get up, upon pressing a button. It jolted right up and its eyes wandered in a panic, seeming somewhat intense to the doctor used to seeing them still. Following the sudden chaos of motion, the silence and immobility were tense and breathless. As the patient looked curiously at his host, his eyes blinked and lips moved: "YOU...aArRE ?"