648/Out of the fying pan...

Out of the fying pan...
Date of Scene:	22 September 2014
Location:	Wily's Hidden Lab <WHL>
Synopsis:	Ferham gets a little intensive care... in Dr. Wily's laboratory.
Cast of Characters:	516, 529

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Ferham (516) has posed:
     When Ferham is brought in, she'd just been rescued by Clokwerk, however despite the efforts by medical staff the female Reploid seems to have... well, something wrong with her head. This would appear to be something much moreso than usual. She'd had several shock dart projectiles removed from her body here and there, and apparently there was a need to restrain her with heavy metal shock treatment manacles just to be safe. When she's wheeled in, she's not happy, at all.

     "NRRGH let me go! arghh!" it would appear whatever is wrong with her is affecting her mind somehow. And right now there seems to be just one man that can stop it.

Dr. Wily (529) has posed:
    When you want to know about a sword, you ask a blacksmith. If you're curious about warp drive, you call Starfleet engineers. And when your problem is a brainwashed robot... you turn to Doctor Albert Wily. Waiting behind the opened shutter doors of his 'secret' Citadel laboratory, it seems that he was aware that this visit was coming, and is waiting anxiously for it.

    The doctor is not alone in the lab this time, however. Scattered discreetly around the lab floor are a number of active and visibly tense robots of his own design, prepared to jump in in case something goes wrong. He's not, it seems, taking chances with this project.

    "Clown! Flash! Get over here, be ready to keep her down. You pushing the cart! Take her to the chair over there. Put her in if you can." Wily's manner is brisk, and a bit snappish, and each sentence is punctuated with a half-threatening shake of a spanner. He doesn't make it sound like this is the first time something like this has happened, but he's still clearly not best pleased about having a potentially violent barely-restrained 'patent' wheeled in on short notice. But if there's work to be done...

    As the wheel cart is moved into position, Wily spares a moment to stand a short distance away and, speaking for possibly the first time directly to Ferham's face, say in an almost mocking tone, "So then, miss Ferham... what kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into?"

Ferham (516) has posed:
     Indeed, Ferham looks a little like Frankstein, as she's being wheeled in on an upright cart that's tilted slightly backwards, almost sorta like Hannibal Lector, actually. She had been more or less secured and escorted right to Wily's 'secret' laboratory/storage space upon being received by medical staff. Apparently even they didn't want to deal with an angry robot that couldn't be brought down easily enough to be worked on. The damage she seemed to have was minimal anyway. No, rather the problem was whatever had tampered with her still being in there, likely. Clown and Flash Man might have a bit of their work cut out for them if they're going to be responsible for keeping her restrained, at least Clown could rope his arms around her, if it came to that. Sorta like that scene in Poltergeist with the clown doll under the bed!

     Ferham looked up blearily at the sound of the voice, paying the two other androids only the vaguest of attention. She at first doesn't seem to really see Wily, almost sees /through/ him for a moment, before blinking, as if becoming a bit more lucid.

     "Knight Errant! I must terminate Knight Errant!" she barks, almost in a frothing rage, it sounds like. It still sounds like her, she even seems to still have the results of that 'prank' Wily played on her before with her boots still. Guess she just adapted to the new design.

Dr. Wily (529) has posed:
    Muttering to himself - "... barely responsive... process override..." - Wily briskly walks away from the cart and gets the area set up. Carts of tools are moved in toward the analysis chair, monitors are activated, cables connected... and nobody is moved from any carts. Whoops.

    His preparations ready, Wily returns to the chair and his subject who should have been place in it. This is what happens when you don't tip the delivery man. However, it does offer a bit more interview time before work begins in earnest. His questions are simple, asked in what should be - but aren't quite - soothing tones, and he pauses between each to wait for an answer, jotting down the response or lack thereof on a notepad before moving on to the next.

    "Who is this Knight Errant?"
    "Why does he need to be terminated?"
    "What do you get when you mix red and green?"
    "Whose orders do you follow?"
    "Where are you now?"

    The brief Q&A session ends with Wily gesturing, and Flash Man stepping in toward the ring of monitors around the analysis chair, emitting a brief intense light, and...

    -discontinuity-

Ferham (516) has posed:
     The femmebot IS more or less viciously struggling, and doesn't seem to be in her right mind, so it is probably a surprise when she finds herself in the chair. Struggling begins anew amidst the line of questioning.

     "Nghh... Knight... Errant, subsidiary of Ares Macrotechnology in shadowrun... sector of Detroit Michigan, I must terminate Roger Soaring Owl! The head of Knight Errant!" she seems as if she's struggling to answer questions between efforts to pull herself out of the chair somehow. Weird. "My orders are to terminate him!" she replies to the second, as if that's answer enough.

     "B-Brown!" is the answer to the second. That's an easy question for her, apparently, with her advanced heuristics language hard at work. Red and Green were primary colors, silly. The second to last question has her as if in pain trying to answer his question, as if there's something that's deliberately trying to keep her from answering.

     "B-Blindside group!" that's apparently all she knows, her face cringing as if she's in a mix of pain and anguish. "D-Dr. Wily's storage space he hides out in in Confederate Science wing!" Ouch, well, least she's being honest, more or less.

Dr. Wily (529) has posed:
    -discontinuity-

    The time stopping effect of his robot's weaponry has, it seems, allowed Wily an opportunity to mofe his subject into the chair safely. It seems this wasn't done easily, however - a couple more helpers are gathered behind him, and a robot with a jester design motif and ludicrously elongated arms is standing behind the chair, apparently prepared for any sign of trouble.

    "Now... you're lucid, at least. Bit too motivated. Sloppy work, never make an override that obvious. So just sit back and relax, Ferham. Let's see what's gone wrong in there."

    The chair has a loud, flashy 'brain' scanner, which has been connected in advance, and it begins to whirr into action, displaying a neural net diagram. At this point, perhaps all parties involved should feel fortunate that Wily has a record of the old layout on file...

    As he taps at a keyboard and watches various monitors, the doctor's tone is a bit more conversational. Sure, he knows it's a bit pointless, but maybe he's working on bedside manner? "So, taking on assasination missions then? Well, at least you've found a way to make yourself useful. Could have done worse. Might want to consider renegotiating though. How are you feeling? Chair's comfortable? Restraints aren't too tight? ... not going to self-destruct, now, are we?"

Ferham (516) has posed:
     She growled and tried to work at the restraints keeping her down, likely to her ankles and forearms. Her wings worked back and forth too a bit, before she collapsed back, giving up for the moment. The initial brain scan would definitely turn up with something... new. Some chip that hadn't been there before had been placed into her neural network, which was inside her head. Any other time she might have just taken his advance and relaxed, as dubious as this was hearing it from Dr. Albert Wily if you were a robot yourself, but she still seemed driven, restless. Whatever had been planted in her braincase was giving her a bad case of the murderousness.

     "Ahh.. it hurts," she manages through a bit of growling, and what might have been stress. Apparently whoever modified her didn't want her spilling the beans too easily, and so her pain receptors are being triggered as long as she's giving out info. She doesn't seem to be about to self-destruct however, if his machine's ability to monitor is able to check things like her energy readouts. It's a rather odd sight, with the cybernetic beauty locked in the chair, not looking not at all happy at all. Angry, rather.

     "Grrr... get it out..." she whipped her head back and forth before unleashing a blood curdling scream. A shriek, rather, rising into a howl. Despite wanting it out, there was some part of her that seemed to not want to be rid of it, as if whatever the program was inside that chip was... addictive.

Dr. Wily (529) has posed:
    The new chip on the readout is certainly an eye-catching addition to the neural net. However, while Wily's eyes widen briefly when it first appears on the monitor, it's his patient's reactions which seem to interest him more. "... ah! So you ARE still in there. Just sit tight, I'll see what I can do, but... hmm. This might take some work."

    It doesn't look like the doctor's quite ready to do any actual work at the moment, though. Instead, he's... abandoning the chair to disappear into the deeper depths of the lab for a while? So much for bedside manner.

    This leaves a sort of awkward silence at the chair, though. A hum of scanning equipment, a restrained reploid with a crude mind control chip, and a few tense robots left to contain whatever situation might arise. Yes, this is a party waiting to happen, right here.

Ferham (516) has posed:
     There is a howl of what might be frustration or rage as the doctor apparently just gets up and leaves, leaving the femmebot alone with Clown Man and who else knows what. It wasn't so much her new company, but likely what the chip was doing to her since she was being detained and directly kept from following her orders. It was likely causing her a good amount of duress. She wound up trying to rock the chair back and forth, left with only the buzz of the machines and scanners to keep her company, or likely causing a clang each time she tried to push herself around in it.

     "Gaaaah!" was more or less a resounding scream coming from the lab, ringing throughout it. Hopefully the good doctor made some improvements to the storage space to include some soundproofing, because goddamn.

Dr. Wily (529) has posed:
    The rattling, struggling, and eventual scream seem to be unsettling Wily's robots, too... this probably isn't an entirely unfamiliar situation for some of them, and it may not be bringing back the best of memories. Also, well... it's just one of those awkward, uncomfortable moments in general. "He's... coming back, right?"

    Oh yes. Wily's coming back all right. It takes a while - around twenty minutes of "Did he really just leave us here" and "I hate guard duty" pass before the return, but eventually, the doctor does return to the chair. And the monitors. And a keyboard. And... wait, how can he...?

    As if things weren't bad enough. Now, it seems, there are four Dr. Wilys around the lab. In unison, they explain: "This is going to be a very complex procedure - I felt it best to bring in some assistants I could trust not to mess it up. Now, just try to relax. Count some electric sheep or something. (... hey... that sounds like a laugh...)"

Ferham (516) has posed:
     "Nngg... nrrgh!" if any of the androids even get close to Ferham, they might suddenly be warded backward by a sudden jolt of her towards them and a growl. "H-how... how are there..." somewhere inside where Ferham is still cognizant, she might be wondering just how there's suddenly four doctor Wily's standing in front of her, even in her enraged murderous fury, she's still trying to process this in her logic circuits.

     "What the hell is... this," she might even seem confused, that expression cutting through that mask of rage and discomfort her face had been up to that point. "Let me out of this chair... Dr. Wily...Wilys..." she all but growls at him, wishing she could likely get to her whip, which was probably still downstairs after being collected off her when she was brought in.

Dr. Wily (529) has posed:
    How can there be four Dr. Wilys? Why, that answer is simplicity itself! "I took Ninja as an elective for a year in university." Only one speaks this time, and it's a very dry tone. Probably not entirely serious. The more likely answer is that the other three are spring-head decoys, but it doesn't really matter as long as they can do what needs to be done, right?

    "Now, I can't let you out of the chair just yet. You're not leaving until I've done something about that chip. So I suggest that you try a little harder to calm down and relax. I'm not entirely sure what your safety shutoff threshold is, and I would rather this not be the day I have to find out." That is voiced as exactly the sinister threat that it is. It seems that Wily's not even trying to be pleasant now - it's simply time to get to work, and anything that interferes is too much of a nuisance to deal with.

    "Three. Activate the electro-magnetic restraints. Tight focus, we don't want to cook this one. Four, get the helm-- oh, right, that's..." Absently, the speaking Wily pokes Ferham on what he remembers as the armor control gem; just a simple jab probably isn't going to trigger it and kick her out of battle mode, but it's worth trying. "Two, stay on the neural monitor. You know what to watch for. And you there, in the chair..." Suddenly, a less clinical and much more patronizing tone, "... this shouldn't hurt a bit."

Ferham (516) has posed:
     "Ahh!" Ferham sounded quite surprised when she was told to calm down and relax, that /really/ was not something she was able to do at the moment, it would appear. As her collar gem was brushed against, it would likely access her armor control function, which in this controlled environment with his prior experience with it would allow him to de-power her armor for the time being. Soon there was a white glow and flash and he'd be sitting there with Ferham, shoulder-length brunette hair whipping about, in just her black spandex undersuit.

     Whatever he was doing with the magnetic restraints it seemed to keep her from thrashing about in the chair, at least. She was able to move a lot less, she knew that. "Nnngghh... s-stop it..." she might have meant the magnetic wave, or maybe she was talking about the chip. It was actually hard to tell at this point. Still, there was a howl as she wished for this to end, somehow.

Dr. Wily (529) has posed:
    "... of course you wouldn't. Fiiine." The last word comes out as more an exasperated sigh, as (a) Wily realizes that he's going to get very little cooperation from his patient on the calm and relaxed front. Well, at least the armor was easy?

    Well, this is what he's got minions for. "Junk Man! Over here, hold her head steady. Try not to cause any damage, but don't let it move." Apparently THIS was the reason he built a robot with a giant vise grip for an arm. Or maybe it was a happy accident, but either way...

    "I can see asking you to be calm and relax isn't working. Fine. Just try not to panic. I'm about to open up your head and tinker around with some circuits you MAY have been just a LITTLE attached to. I trust you're clever enough to piece together what happens if you start struggling?" Not a reassuring tone. Not at all.

    Wilys two, three and four take up positions at various monitors, while Wily one, who seems to be speaking for the group, sets to work doing just what he said: Delicate brain surgery on a reploid, what fun. Hopefully Junk Man's grip doesn't slip, and Ferham doesn't thrash about too much - while he's mostly working with a tiny jeweller's screwdriver, the wrong movement now could be have dire consequences.

    "... as long as I'm in here... how do you feel about accents?"

Ferham (516) has posed:
     Ferham went wide-eyed and somewhere deep inside she might have thought this was going to seriously hurt her, but instead that hydraulic vise-grip arm of Junk Man has her head in it, like that torture scene in Casino. "Aauughh..." she rattles, though she /definitely/ can't move her head now, even if she wanted to. Still, there was something that seemed to drive her to resist still, as if she understood that losing the chip would mean losing something really important to her. She had likely been equipped with it far too long, far longer than she should have been, anyway.

     The surgery itself wasn't exactly as complicated as real brain surgery, but shared some eerie resemblance. Instead of using a circular paneled drill device to slide a section of skull away, all Wily had to do was peel back her synthetic skin over her head with a light incision and use an electric ratchet to undo the shock-dampening assembly port that would open up her actual 'brain', which was a series of delicate and micronized chips and processors sitting in a valley of titanium skull several inches thick.

     "Accents...?" she rasped, her voice just above a whisper, her eyes darting around crazily. He was going to take it out... the addictive affect of the behavioral program had already made it so she very much feared that.

Dr. Wily (529) has posed:
    "Yes. What do you think? French? Romanian? Heh, maybe a German accent, that would go over well. No sense in cracking your head open without making a few fun little tweaks." Speaking of which, Wily's already gone and gotten in; it doesn't take him much time to figure out how to get into a synthetic brain case, which MIGHT just be an indicator that he's gotten a bit TOO used to it...

    However, once inside... "Oh... that's trouble. I'm going to run a light current over some circuits. I'd ask you to tell me what happens, but I have a feeling I'll know. This really is just... unfortunate work. No finesse at all, but getting it loose..." Wily pokes at a few spots with a probe; each spot being connected to the chip, the results are likely to be unpleasant at best.

Ferham (516) has posed:
     Whatever Wily was doing to her, it sure seemed to have her attention, as if she was filled with some kind of dire dread. "F-French?? Augh, least g-go for German," she at least still seemed to be in there, for what it was worth. The chip was rather easy to see, it was the newest addition to her synthetic brainmeats and it was made from what looked like plastic while everything else in there was silicon and encased in what looked like ceramic just to protect it. He'd just have to be a bit careful from the cryogenic cooling system the inside of her brain box possessed, the riggers /had/ used a pair of long tweezers to insert the thing in there.

     With that current run over her circuits, however, she seemed to be a little stunned by it, or rather just bothered--her eyelids closing as her eyes rolled into the back of her head, whatever was going on it would likely affect the behavior chip the most, as it wouldn't be anywhere near as shielded as the rest of her from radiation or electricity.

     "Gah... d-do it..." she breathed, this strange scene of brain surgery intense.

Dr. Wily (529) has posed:
    "... results, two?" Probing the affected circuits is nearly the last step in figuring out what can and can't be done with the control chip. The results seem... encouraging? Wily's duplicate at the monitor answers back with, "Controllable. Sending to four. Won't be pretty, but it can come out."

    "Alright, that's good then. This is probably going to be unpleasant, but the chip can come out without serious damage, so it's best to do so. Three and four over there are programming something I can slip in as a temporary replacement. It should ease the after-effects, but it won't be able to remove them entirely." A relatively pleasant and gentle tone gives way to something a bit harsher: "In the future, I suggest you not let this happen to you."

    Aaaand careful, careful... out it comes! The doctor's of course taking what precautions are necessary to protect himself from internal systems - he's fine despite the coolants, but his patient...?

Ferham (516) has posed:
     "Auugh..." she still didn't sound happy, and she knew she wasn't going to be. Losing the behavior chip would deny her of it's affects, which while not pleasant, had become addictive not long after she'd been stuck with it, which had submerged her personality and memories into it, also made her very resistant to the idea of going back to being without it and thus having it removed. The chip itself will simply slip out of the adaptor, but if Wily is removing that as well, well more power to it.

     "Eeeaaaahhhh!" and then it was done, the infernal chip was out and she seemed to be relaxing, somehow, though not before she seems to twitch again. Uh oh, was the cyberpsychosis of being plunged back down into thought chaos starting to onset...? Yeesh.

Dr. Wily (529) has posed:
    *VWEEP VWEEP!* *VWEEP VWEEP!*

    "Two! What's--"
    "Recursive neural overload. Non-terminal. Get the buffer chip in quickly anyway!"

    Alarms from the monitoring terminal push the Wilys into... something less than an expected panic, even as his patient's scream rings out. Perhaps it's something one gets used to. They do seem to be a touch more hurried about their work, though.

    "Okay. Good. Control chip is out. Just relax. Keep calm. Clear your thoughts. Clown Man! Do some tricks or something to keep her focused and distracted!" After barking his quick orders, Wily Prime bustles over to the workstation behind which two of his doppelgangers are typing... briskly. Not frantically at all. Dropping the freshly-removed chip into a convenient port on the console, he joins in the typing and tapping, hitting a few buttons. A schematic of the chip pops up on one of the overhead monitors, but not a single Wily spares it a glance. Not the important thing right now.

    Clown Man, meanwhile, is tying one arm into a bow with the other inside Ferham's presently-limited field of vision. Nobody said they were good tricks.

Ferham (516) has posed:
     Ferham is more or less a sort of... distracted, mess at the moment, watching Wily's android with the long stretchy arms do something absently as she's still more or less being held in place by Junk Man's vise-grip hand. And it was an actual vise, that wasn't a metaphor for how strong his hand was, or anything. She felt... quite a bit more like her old self now, though she could tell there was definitely something wrong, the thought chaos was definitely becoming more and more apparent. Now that she wasn't being given any more orders or personality data from the behavior chip, her own was coming rapidly into the forefront, and she still was quite unhappy.

     "I need to... need to do something, the chip... it..." she was more or less rambling, already feeling lost and totally desolate without the chip, the sudden lack of the personality data was jarring, to say the least. She was however, a lot less murderous now, which was perhaps a good step in the right direction. Her eyes still followed Clown Man's arm, finding the colorful robot at least decently distracting. It probably helped she had no idea the android's weapon was electric in nature, in terms of keeping her calm.

Dr. Wily (529) has posed:
    "... good, good. You're coming around. Don't worry, I've just about... there." Wily Prime continues to type even as he looks up to reassure the patient. A few more keystrokes, a few more buttons pressed, and... *ding!*

    Sometimes, you have to make do on a budget. What's wrong with recycling a microwave timer. Not everything can have a dramatically appropriate sound effect, okay?

    "Now, don't worry. I'm going to install a replacement chip. Yes, that sounds bad. Just remember, even history books exaggerate a little." As Clown Man continues his distracting - apparently he can braid his arms if he tries! - Wily Prime grabs a second chip from his console. It seems... very similar. Not quite identical, which is probably fortunate. But then, even if it were exactly the same, right now only he could know for sure.

    He continues to speak in a not entirely reassuring tone as he carries the chip back to the chair. "You're going to have some after-effects from that control chip. The buffer chip I'm putting in should help with that a little. It's designed to emulate most of what the control chip was doing, but in a much more... controlled manner. It'll burn out in a week or so, but you should be fine by then."

    He's been walking as he spoke, and even beginning to work again... by the time Wily finishes speaking, he's already behind the chair; without waiting for any sort of response (most likely the horrified sort), he's already installing the new chip. It's a quick enough procedure, after all. And it's punctuated by an audibly suppressed nasty laugh, and "... there might be a few... side-effects."

Ferham (516) has posed:
     "Please... help me," Ferham seemed to really be counting on him for help, though whether this was from the show Clown Man was putting on or the effects of the behavior chip was unclear. It may have been a little of column A, little of column B. "Ah.. After effects?" she seemed to be lucid enough, though she still seemed worried, almost like a human on the brink of some kind of nervous breakdown, on the verge of it but not quite there yet. Whatever the absence of the chip caused it was likely to leave her in fits of depression or even catatonia.

     "Buh... burn itself out?" somehow she perhaps doesn't like the sound of that happening to her neural net circuitry, but then she's not the one with the tools working on her in this case. Despite the laughter,a nd the punctually evil laugh, Fer didn't seemed to react when the new chip went in, as instead she was focusing on the influx of data from it, integrating it with her system. What did this new chip do? Well she was about to find out...

Dr. Wily (529) has posed:
    Now that the hastily-assembled chip is in place, Wily Prime seems to be in a bit more of a question-answering mood. "It's hard to tell exactly WHAT would happen without the buffer chip. I'll need to study the one I took out for a while... however, based on how it affected you, and how your systems responded when it came out..." As he speaks, he circles around to the front of the chair; at this point, he's reached the front, and leans in dramatically toward the still-restrained face of poor re-chipped Ferham. "... I don't think you'd still be YOU when it was done."

    As for the other Wilys, two seems to have rushed in to finish prime's job, restoring the seal on Ferham's skull and smoothing synthetic skin back in place. Three and four, meanwhile, are the true heroes of this story. They've skittered off to someplace in the lab, and managed to find a giant crook. Don't ask why something like that is there... just be thankful they're dragging Clown Man away with it.

Ferham (516) has posed:
     "Wouldn't still be me...?" Ferham blinked as the chip sat and was integrated into her, for some reason feeling immediately better due to it, but for a reason she couldn't really grasp. It was doing /something/ that led to the strange level of cognizance she was under with the behavioral chip... but it wasn't submerging her in the alternate personality this time either, she was herself. Strange how hard the smack of reality can be after having not felt it for so long. Like getting beaten with a trout.

     After being tortured by Clown Man for a few more minutes, he seems to be pulled off stage, and the shock-dampening assembly for the poor girl's head is put back in and her head is put back together, literally.

     "Uhhnn... my head is killing me," she muttered, finally feeling somewhat better now, blinking. "Ach... kinnae please tell him tae stoop squeezin' mah head loike that??" suddenly, Scottish. What the...

     Blinking, her eyes looked up from Junk Man to Wily.

Dr. Wily (529) has posed:
    "Well, some of you would have survived. You might have recovered in time. But in the short term... ahem. This is just for the better. I wouldn't worry too much about it, if I were you." Trustworthy words from the most trustworthy man in Neo Tokyo! However, Wily's done with the pep talk. He's ready to turn and wander off, when the accent modulation kicks in, and...

    ... the TRUE purpose of Team Wily is revealed! In all the confusion, it's difficult to tell which iteration of the doctor reacts first; it is enough to know that one does, and the others follow as a chorus.
    "*snrk*"
    "pfft"
    "heh"
    "AHAHAHAHAHEHEHEHEHEHEH!"

    "... hah... haha... ... Junk Man, you can let go now, she's fine. ... aheh... ohhh..." Wily Prime actually has to wipe away a tear; he's probably lucky that little laugh didn't cost him a broken rib or two. He's still letting out occasional laughs - composure is entirely beyond him - as he remembers one more bit of tidying up that needs to be done. While heading for the electromagnetic restraint controls, he offers up a particularly unconvincing, "Well. I can't - heh - can't say I expected THAT. Your old - ahaha - chip was firing off on your tactile feedback systems. Sounded like it hurt a little bit, so I just - pfha - redirected that response to a harmless subsystem. Seemed too risky to take it out entirely. The effects are going to diminish as the chip winds down."

Ferham (516) has posed:
     "Augh, you've done somethin' tae my vocal center," Ferham pulled herself up from the chair once the magnetic restraints were removed, glad for it too, flexing joints that popped and crik'd as if they had never been used. "It had meh under ah personaliteh shell progrum, so nahve I got this," she gestured toward herself, brushing her hair back and out of her face. She didn't look happy, in fact she looked fairly cross with the old man, but stepping up to him...

     KER-HUG.

     "Don'tchae evah mess around in mah head again loike that!" she shakes the man just a fait bit, before detatching herself and turning around promptly to stalk out, before any of his robots can stop her.