Mia's POV
Finally! Took me a long time to engineer this dumb cadet's accessories. My team worked the longest on the bionic stuff, including the morphing bands... ah, crap. Eliseo and the Daer twins are singing that goddamn song again—
"Mia Khalifa! Mia Khalifa! Mia Khalifa!" they sang. I was deeply offended.
"Guys, focus! And stop that," I admonished them. "I'm going to tell the Trine team to exterminate you all if you don't shut up!"
They know not to mess with our top security/reconnaissance faction named Trine. There are only three members (Sally, Brian and Toro), but they are badass killers.
The idiots instantly shut up. I finish nano-wiring the tiny core inside Denki's fully metal skull. Then Alaïa welds the opening shut, and we stick more artificial skin over it so it will bind with the other skin patches. After examining our work, you can't tell if he looks like a potential weapon. He just looks like his young self.
"What about the eyes?" Gage asks. "The chemicals blackened his cornea."
"Don't mind it. It's common here. Take a look at the duelist Pish," I replied.
"And Shureliya Gaki," Aleph added.
"Ah, okay."
"Are you ready for the unveiling of the best weapon we made so far?" I asked. They cheered.
"Alaïa, please turn on the android."
She went to the computer and typed in a command. Denki's body shone with a soft blue light for a moment, then some electricity sparked around him.
"The Electric Special," Eliseo joked. "It's a good thing he happened to be an electrokinetic or we would have to induce seizures in him for the code to work."
"True."
The light show stopped, and he opened his eyes.
"Initializing..." he said in a voice we enhanced to make him sound like eighteen. "Systems online... ready." He stood up from the frame that held him for four years.
"Awesome," Gage managed to say after a long pause.
Denki looked at us. I programmed him to recognize friend from foe, despite the missing piece of code three days ago.
"Good evening, Mia," he said. "Good evening, Hongjun engineers."
"Hard work pays off," Alaïa mused, looking the android all over. "Who designed his outfit, by the way? I forgot."
"It was partly Nasu's idea," her brother said. "I just added the dark blue stripes to give it some subtle zest. Beats having gold splashes."
We gave Denki a black skintight shirt with dark blue stripes and black chenille pants, finished with a long white scarf around his neck and some boots. (I like copying Shuri's voice and saying they're not boots, they're sneakers. Gage contributed to making the footsteps silent by muffing them to the hilt. It works anywhere.)
"Why the scarf?" Aleph pointed. "It looks weird."
"Let him keep it. Me and Krizia found him wearing that scarf, and we fixed it."
"Ew."
"How many languages can you speak?" Gage asked Denki.
"English, Micfortressian, Aetheran, Blackwatch, Neiran, Bahpese, Raiteran and Bijian, including all dialects of the said languages."
"Holy crap." Gage rubbed his face. "Say 'Today is a great day' in Micfortressian."
"Nkahtu ni se hilred voj."
YOU ARE READING
another life. (RHG OC Backstory)
General FictionA freshman holding a bomb throws himself off the balcony. No one found his corpse, but all that remained were ashes. Four years later his sister and his boyfriend are taunted by the possibility of him being alive. But where is he, really?
