Project: Gamer Ver. 2 Alpha Build 0.6.9
Disclaimer Me Do: I own nothing you recognize. And most of what you don't recognize, I still don't own.
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Red Tornado did, in fact, have access to an android assembly machine. It was one of Morrow's abandoned facilities, and Red Tornado had secured it and purchased the property for his personal use.
An abandoned Radio Shack, go figure.
The first floor, the ground floor, had one very large, very heavy duty chair taken from a dentist's office and three waldos around it. It was where Red did most of the maintenance needed for himself.
Now the basement... That had been interesting. The towering Cray-1 was imposing for a variety of reasons.
Among them being a story Alchemist had read, years and years ago, of a sorcerer putting his mind into one of those same monsters.
'Do you remember the taste of wine?'
He shook his head, no need to fall into nostalgia here.
It was connected to an imposing number of other machines, soldering, fluid fill, spot welding...
An old-fashioned spike connector that would line up perfectly with a covered port in the middle of Red Tornado's back.
"I understand that your need of the equipment is strictly for hardware assembly?" Red Tornado's synthetic voice broke him out of his thoughts.
"Yeah. I've made all of the parts that need to be assembled at once, the rest are going on the backburner for a bit." The rest being a soulstone without any pre-existing spiritual or magical connection to anything.
Natural soulstones occurred pretty commonly in various worlds. They could make up the hearts or cores of monsters, be the lingering physical essence of great spirits, even be the concentrated memories and magic of reincarnated souls.
All of which would be completely useless to him.
Er, well, all of which would be completely useless for his purpose.
Putting a Summon Materia or a piece of Magicite into the holmcross could be interesting. Make everything die in a fire or accidentally bring about the apocalypse, maybe, but definitely interesting.
"And, just to confirm, you are not attempting to reassemble the Amazo android confiscated from one Professor Ivo?" There was no emotion in the question, but also no accusation. Alchemist had a sense of certainty that Red Tornado might be one of the few people who wouldn't try to stop him at every step and demand answers.
"That is correct. Both the head and torso of Amazo remain with Player One. I don't feel comfortable attempting to create an artificial body when I have no certainty that the construct would not be co-opted by an adapting and evolving artificial intelligence." Alchemist did still have the arms and legs, however.
"Understood. And there is no neural or any other form of upload to occur at this time?" Alchemist shook his head no. "Then this will be significantly more efficient."
So saying, Red Tornado pulled a small laptop out of the drawer of a desk situated to oversee the equipment. He disconnected the Cray supercomputer from the web of wires and then connected a USB cable with nearly a dozen adapters to the laptop instead.
"...I suppose that makes sense. This is pretty much just a long list of instructions, isn't it?" Alchemist began setting the various pieces of the skeleton and artificial tissues in the spaces the android pointed out.
"Very simply put, yes. The adaptive program will observe the completed pieces you have already assembled and use that, as well as the reference material that you have provided to determine the most effective method of assembly." Red opened the laptop and booted it up as Alchemist continued placing the components. "Inform me once you have finished and I will begin the scanning procedure."
Roughly half an hour of pleasant, silent work later and Alchemist gave Red the thumbs up.
A light was emitted from one of the waldos, working its way down the loosely assembled skeleton and then slowing down dramatically once it reached the right arm.
"I understand you have engaged Wonder Woman for additional weapons training?" On the one hand, Alchemist hadn't been expecting small talk from the android. On the other, Red Tornado did have responsibilities as the teams den mother.
"Yeah. Myself, Player One and Aqualad are all taking lessons from her in swordsmanship." Today had been lesson one, the most basic lesson.
How to hold a sword.
Kaldur had already known. Player One had picked it up pretty fast. He'd struggled.
The weighted wooden weapon Wonder Woman had brought with her felt wrong, especially the balance.
It felt far too light. It swung too easy. He'd still been worn out and sore afterwards, but it was nothing like he'd expected.
"Self improvement is an admirable goal. Weapons training can be especially useful for engaging opponents with superior physical capabilities." Self improvement... Well, that was kind of the goal here, wasn't it?
"...How often have you used this place, Red Tornado?" There had been dust when they'd come in, sure, but less than what he'd have expected from decades of neglect.
And the laptop, while not new, was hardly that old.
"I primarily use this facility for the production of replacement parts following a violent altercation. Full body replacement and upgrades often require a significant amount of time, effort and resources." Well, that was fair. Androids were hardly cheap to produce after all.
"With that said, however, this body is the Red Tornado mark Three. Created using modern materials with significantly higher stress and shear resistance compared to what was available following World War 2. Manufactured inside of this facility two years ago." Red looked down and confirmed something on the laptop even as the machinery began moving. "Estimated time until completion is seven hours and fifty three minutes. Would you like to wait here or return to base to collect it later?"
"If you don't mind, I'd rather wait here. No offense intended, but I'm not letting that out of my sight." Leslie nodded towards the skeleton that was taking shape.
"Understood. Please be sure to lock the facilities when you leave."
With that, Red Tornado stood up from the groaning office chair and left, leaving Alchemist alone with the familiar sounds of machinery around him.
-----
Nine hours later, and Alchemist was incredibly bored. He'd spent the time idly working through Heward's Handbook to learn more about its spells and crafting techniques, and burned a lot of his MP just casting Shell and Berserk on himself.
He was regenerating enough MP to cast any of the spells from Final Fantasy Two at least once per minute now.
Though that would be miserable and tedious, so he'd just been casting enough at the start of every hour to burn himself down to one-hundred magic points, the remainder he kept as a general safety net.
The holmcross was mostly assembled, with nerves and muscle, tendons and bones, even the organs in all of the correct places. Now all that was missing was the skin and, well, him.
Nine hours was a long time to wait, and watching the machinery assemble the golem body -was- fascinating, but not nine hours long fascinating. The last hour or so had been various checks and confirmation tests, seeing if all of the joints moved adequately, the computer throwing up errors due to the lack of hydraulic fluids, that kind of thing.
He'd explored the basement pretty thoroughly and, well, there really wasn't much worth looking at on this side of the electronically locked door. There were pretty much just two rooms here. The assembly room... And a wash closet.
That had been a nightmare. Everything was sealed with rust and it had started off utterly filthy. Leslie guessed it wasn't pertinent to Red Tornado's needs, so he'd never paid it any attention except to turn the water off thirty or so years ago.
Repair may have been an Arcane spell, but for him it was a Miracle! He'd cast it on everything he could see in the small room, followed up by prestidigitation to clean everything bit by bit.
It had been a long nine hours.
As the machinery was finishing the final checks, he was sitting back in the chair, pointing at spots of dust or dirt in the room with finger-guns and pretend-shooting them with prestidigitation, cleaning the room spot by spot.
*Thud!*
Came from overhead, knocking loose some dust he hadn't seen.
Had Red Tornado come back?
Leslie glanced at the screen of the laptop briefly-
--Process: Complete!--
-- 27 Errors Found! --
Well, that sort of sucked, but he'd read through what he needed to fix in a minute.
*Thud-Thud! Thud-Thud-Thud!*
Alchemist's brow furrowed as he inventoried the near-complete holmcross.
That sounded like more than one person... But the weight of their steps was either really heavy, or they were stomping around up there.
He checked his phone while he heard them stomping down the stairs...
No texts from Red Tornado, just Kid Flash asking him to make spaghetti.
...Which he'd already done. There was no signal down here, something he'd learned hours ago but checking his phone was just a reflex at this point.
A buzz rang in the air.
The electronic lock on the door had rejected a code.
A quick glance at his MP showed he was about at half... He could try to teleport to the other side of the door, find out who was here.
The door buzzed again.
Leslie sat back down in the chair Red Tornado had used earlier. He unplugged the wire connected to the laptop as the door buzzed yet another time and inventoried it, too.
Turning back around to face the door, he steepled his fingers in front of his face in the classic Gendo pose and waited.
It took them another six attempts to get the door open, finally accomplished when a very fine jet of water drilled and cut the space around the handle.
And now he had proof of who was here. Wonderful.
Was it bad that he could only tell Red Torpedo apart from Red Inferno based on the chassis?
"You are late." Alchemist said to the two androids.
Hopefully they wouldn't notice his phone sitting on the table and recording them, propped up against an old CRT monitor.
"You are not Red Tornado." No inflection, no purpose, not even the vague hint of something like he could find in Red Tornado when he spoke.
"An astute observation, Doctor Lockhart." Alchemist crossed one leg over the other. "Miss Reilly. It's a pleasure to see you up and moving again."
Did Alchemist have a plan?
Not at all.
"You will tell us where Red Tornado is." Red Inferno spoke as she lifted her hand towards him, lighting it ablaze.
Alchemist stood up slowly, deliberately and stretched his arms out wide.
"He's not here, obviously. He wasn't upstairs, performing maintenance. He's not down here, building a new frame. If you'd like, feel free to check the bathroom. It's the only other door in here." Both androids stood deathly still for several long moments, either deliberating between each other or attempting communications with an external source before the slimmer android, the former Firebrand, actually went to check the wash closet.
Alchemist had an idea, but no certainty it would work... And Red Tornado had mentioned being able to notice -something- when spells were cast on him, which meant testing if Esuna worked on reprogramming would have to wait.
Well, nothing to do but to do it.
Red Inferno had actually opened the door to the wash closet and stepped inside when Alchemist cast his first offensive spell.
Red Torpedo became a toad in an instant, he represented what Alchemist considered the most critical threat. Piercing damage.
An instant later and the world went white.
If not for his protective spells, Alchemist may very well have been knocked out by the sheer concussive force released by Red Inferno in response to Torpedo going offline.
Maybe they were both a critical threat? Alchemist hadn't wanted to risk the spell failing if he cast it on multiple targets...
He was patting the flames off of his shirt when strong, slender hands grabbed on to his collar and lifted him into the air.
"What have you done with Red Torpedo!?" There was more than just the monotone he'd been hearing from them.
Actual desperation and fear was in there.
Danette Reilly was still in there.
"Who's asking?" Leslie hit himself with Regeneration. "Reilly? Inferno? Volcano?!"
Whatever she was about to say was cut off when she turned into a toad as well.
Alchemist stood up, dusting soot and plaster off of himself. Almost absentmindedly he grabbed the two toads on the floor and pulled a bottle out of his inventory to store them in.
The door had been blown off its hinges, there were a couple of fires, there was a puddle over by the entrance where Torpedo had cut his way in...
Repair was going to get a workout.
-----
"Hey Red Tornado!" Alchemist hollered into the android's apartment space in the mountain.
"Alchemist. You've returned. Everything went successfully?" Red Tornado had to look down to talk to the boy.
Were those soot stains on his shirt?
"Yep. By the way, congratulations!" Alchemist had a large square box with him when he'd come in. He set it down on Red's unused table and opened it, revealing a small terrarium with two toads in it. "You're no longer the baby in your family."
He stared at the toads, looked at Alchemist, went back to the toads, internally reviewed the files on Alchemist and then- "Are those people?"
"Yep. Morrow brand androids, just like you! They must've had someway of tracking you in the lab leftovers you use. They came to capture you while it was finishing up my project. That did not go well for them. Or me. Or any of us." Alchemist gently pulled the terrarium up and out of the box. "I fixed everything before I left, but I still have your laptop. I wasn't sure if they were going to try and steal it or not."
"Oh... Thank... You?" Was... Was this how Batman felt?
