Scene #8595: Petra Gets The Surgery

Owner	Pose
Petra Soroka	Even though she was invited, it's still a relief that the Egg Carrier's defenses don't activate when Petra enters. Even if it would be a fun obstacle course, the idea of being a persona non grata in Eggman's domain again is a stressor that she'd be incapable of dealing with, after the week she's had. So after a moment of tension and needless anxiety when she steps into the entry bay of the Egg Carrier, Petra lets herself relax more than she has since delving into the Factory. Orbot and Cubot are given enthusiastic hugs again, which seems like it'll be a recurring thing now that she's done it once, and she slowly regains her energy while walking through the ship. Before she gets to Eggman, Petra quickly pulls out her phone to let the rest of Control Team know where she's at, since she's expecting this to be an arduous process. <Steadfast Pursuer> PSoroka \| operation time <Steadfast Pursuer> PSoroka \| see you on the other side <Steadfast Pursuer> PSoroka \| :thumbsup: <Composed Commander> Jrook \| Congratulations! Let us know if you need anything. <Quiet Negotiator> Yuri \| finally getting the antlers huh }(o.o) <Plucky Hunter> Cinder \| she'd be so cute as a reindeer... blush <Attentive Assistant> Random \| How would she get those? :/ It's probably just limb replacement. <Secretary> Angela \| Cease your speculating. It is not your business. -Angela Petra has already flipped her phone closed by the time the other messages come in, so she doesn't realize she never told them what it was for. The presence of the Control Team in her life feels like it should account for a longer time than being a robot does, so it's jarring to think that they've only ever known her as one. "Hey, Doctor!" Petra's still wearing her bomber jacket and gauze, every inch of skin covered as it's been for three months now, even though she expects she'll have to expose her arms at the very least at some point today. It's still scary, even here, even now. The Transteam gun is shoved in one of her many pockets, as it has been since she was given it, because there's no Chekhov's gun with more of a guarantee than one given to you by a time traveler. "So how's this all going to go?"
Eggman	Orbot and Cubot receive the hug comfortably and then fall in line with her. Orbot is wringing his hands nervously as they float along. "Are you sure about this? Being a robot isn't so bad, you know. It's not like you're mindless or anything. And you'll be able to live anywhere Doctor Eggman terraforms, since you're already sort of robotomized..." But, ultimately, it's just sort of a quiet nervous energy that Orbot projects rather than meaningful objections. He's just worried about her, for some reason. Probably because he's a bit of a worrier and a downer to begin with. Cubot opens the doors to Eggman's onboard laboratory, where the Bad Doctor himself is waiting. Eggman looks a bit...well, surprisingly, kind of worried. His moustache is a little droopy, he's frowning, and his brows are furrowed. Maybe Orbot's not just worried about her because he's a worrywart. After a moment, Eggman presses a button. A blocky thing extrudes from the floor, a long, horizontal crate larger than a person, on a slightly raised platform. It releases an ominous multicolored steam as the end of the crate opens like a tunnel, or a maw, with an awful hiss to accompany it. Eggman's hand wavers over a dial. "This is, as best I've been able to construct, an original-model Roboticizer. I had to dig very deep into the other Ivo's archives and reconstruct bits of the design that he didn't bother to write down - sloppy of him, really - but in theory this is as close to Sir Charles Hedgehog's design as it's possible to achieve." He adjusts his glasses. "The idea is to use this Roboticizer to 'invalidate' your current robotic status, forcing the Silver into a contained state, and then reverse this Roboticizer. Which...brings me to the two concerns I have about this process." Eggman holds up two fingers and adjusts his glasses. "The first is that you will, temporarily, be robbed of your sense of self. It should be momentary - a brief gap in your memory wherein you will be a mechanical existence entirely. If all goes well, then you won't even remember it, but..." "That...brings me to the second concern." Eggman turns away from her and folds his hands behind his back. "We're relying on the Chaos Emerald to do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to deroboticizing you the second time. It's...well, as the name implies, fairly...chaotic. But..." His fingers go to his moustache. Is his hand trembling slightly? "It...should permit this process to go smoothly." "So...when you're ready, simply...climb into the Roboticizer, and...prepare to...well." Eggman pauses again. "...Petra, are you absolutely certain you want to go through with this? If something goes wrong your sense of self could be utterly obliterated, and while normally that's a positive, I'm rather fond of you, and I don't...wish to..." Eggman's fingers twitch a little. "...are you absolutely certain?"
Petra Soroka	Petra's smile dims a little when Orbot voices his worries. She's not any less happy to see him, but it's a reminder that this won't be as simple a process as becoming human was the first time. Which is a good thing, assuming she survives. "Yeah, I knew that was coming. It's okay, Orbot, I know what I'm doing." Petra can imagine that Eggman's lack of confidence is the same as what Orbot said, at first. She knows it isn't, really, but if it's as simple as 'being a robot is better', that's barely a problem at all. She can't argue the point as well as anyone else could, but it's just an opinion anyways, so it's easily resolved and she'll be able to just show Eggman that she's happier for it. She watches the machine rise out of the ground with an equal mixture of horror and anticipation, rubbing the back of her neck in mirrored anxiety. "Temporarily robbed of my sense of self? That's..." Petra thinks back to the roboticized Consular, and the casual, lifeless ease of her being bossed around and disposed of. In the worst case scenario, would Petra's roboticized body be treated as that worthless? Maybe she-- she would be treated like a prized object, or a memorial, or something. That would be kind of nice. "Ahaha. That part's not even new, for me." Petra is about to walk up behind Eggman when he turns around, assuming he means to show her something, and then stops before taking a step when his hand trembles. Oh. Right. I really do need to be more careful about these things now. Petra can't quite look at his back after that, turning her head fractionally to the side to look diagonally at the floor. Her voice hums a little when she talks again, in a comforting-but-anxious mid-pitch, rather than low and relaxed. "... Yeah. I know you put a lot of work into this. If it goes wrong, I... know that's a risk that couldn't have been avoided." Maybe she should send a text to Lilian. It seems like it'd be cruel to not tell her, and let her discover an essentially-dead Petra as a surprise. But on the other hand, it might be cruel to tell her in the case it goes fine? Isn't that just making her worry for no reason? After staying quiet for a few seconds contemplating, Petra pulls out her phone and murmurs into it. "Hey, Siri? Send a text to Lilian in two hours, delayed. Ummmm. 'Hey, I tried to do the thing to get rid of the Silver, but instesd my sense of self got utterly obliterated. Sorry.'" Petra pauses for a moment before finishing the message. "'Love you. Sorry.' End message." She looks up at Eggman again, putting her phone away. "Do you think two hours is long enough? Also, please, holy shit, if this works out please remind me to cancel that message. Ahaha. That'd be the worst thing ever." Petra settles down into a slight frown, talking slowly to make sure the words take shape correctly as she says them. "... Yeah. I'm sure. There's nothing that comes before this. I know who I am. If I'm not willing to take risks to be that, then my sense of self isn't really worth much in the first place." With that, she takes her shoes off and her jacket off, since those feel like they shouldn't go in the machine. Maybe it doesn't matter, but it feels wrong. Does the gauze come off? ... No, she wouldn't want to start bleeding all over the inside of it, since all of those dozens and dozens of wounds are still just as open as they were when she got them. "Alright. ... I'm pretty fond of you too, Doctor. You've been a great mentor. I still have a lot I plan on learning and doing, so this won't be the end of it."
Eggman	"Ideally," Eggman says after a long moment of absolute silence, "It won't even take two minutes. Though they may be...excruciating. Replacing your entire body twice isn't an exact science." The Doctor presses another button. The machine starts to hum. There's a spark of multicolored lightning, lightning radiant across the spectrum as it runs along the Roboticizer's length. Eggman looks at her as she says 'this won't be the end of it,' and simply nods. With a shudder, he presses the button, and commits to being concerned for another person for the first time in his life. The device slams shut. There is no light. No sound. Nothing. Merely the inside of the machine. Even sensation is robbed from her as the machine begins its horrifying work - bit by bit forcing the Silver out of her body, and replacing it with cold, unfeeling metal. It's as if a million needles are stitching along every fiber of her being. Her body being rebuilt bit-by-bit. She can feel nerve endings go dead as they're severed by a transformation into wires, then light back up as the wires become functional. She can feel blood stop flowing. As the Roboticizer makes its way up her chest she can feel her lungs cease to function. She can feel her heart stop beating. Her throat stops working. As the Roboticizer's transformation winds its way up her head she can finally hear it - a rain of metal beating against her body. It passes over her eyes, and suddenly she can see again, as new senses alight. And then her connection to her body is gone, and she's simply trapped, in the dark, empty, dreamless world, nothing but a brain unable to interact with any sense or sensation. It's impossible to say how long it lasts. How long she's nothing but her brain in that dark place inside her where nothing reaches. But then, slowly, from the top, sensation begins to fill back in. Real sensation. Flesh. Blood. Real flesh. Real blood. It's a disorienting rebuilding of her organic form, starting at the skin and penetrating down into the meat. Finally, it's complete. The machine hisses. It opens. Eggman is there to help her out. "My, ah, estimation was off," Eggman says. "Thirty seconds." Thirty seconds of eternity.
Petra Soroka	Petra has already gone with the absence of her heart and lungs for months now. Those might be two of the things she misses the most, if she thinks about it. The steadiness of her reactor is profoundly uncomfortable every time she hears it, every time it whirs into motion to broadcast her emotions to everyone in earshot, compared to the falliable thudding of her heartbeat. Words coming out of her mouth without breath need to be intentionally paced and staggered to come across as human, mimicking needing air. She's felt all of this before, in another way. Metal propagating through veins and nerves to spread through her body from the inside out, and now from the outside in, warmth and life of the Silver contrasted with brutal machinery. Uplifting versus dehumanizing. Somehow, this version feels better! And then nothing. Fuck this sucks. A beat after Petra's heart restarts, the moment she takes her first breath when the roboticizer opens back up, when blood starts circulating through her veins-- the first thing she feels is unbearable, full-body pain. Petra doesn't manage to take Eggman's hand, eyes squeezed shut leaking tears, her whole body rigid. She makes a muffled groan of pain through gritted teeth, and nausea washes over her. Oh my god. Why did I treat this fucking thing so badly. Did it always suck so much? I'm really, really not looking forwards to actually needing to change out bloody gauze over every one of these fucking things, every day. Ow ow ow ow ow ow. Petra squeaks out air through her throat, in a voiceless whine, and flexes an arm to try to move it. Wait, that felt weird. Carefully, moving tiny centimeters at a time, Petra sits up with Eggman's help, unable to stand yet. She gradually wrenches her eyes open, already bloodshot from tension, and tentatively starts to unwrap one of the gauze strips around her arm, up to just barely reveal the first permanently bleeding wound on her forearm. But it's not bleeding at all. It's scarred over, red and slightly upraised, an ugly imprint on her skin-- but it's not bleeding. Petra blinks. Then this pain in her head, radiating from where she sits on the metal up her spine, gathering in her joints and arbitrary muscles... "Oh. Haha. That's just what being human feels like. Right." She rises up to her feet and stumbles, leaning on Eggman for support. Her feet hurt so much just from pressing against the ground, her head swims with vertigo and nausea, and every movement feels sluggish with noticeable fractions of a second of neurological delay, reintroduced into her system for no reason at all. She starts to say something, sways, and then doubles over and collapses to her knees, throwing up bile on the floor of the lab. Shakily, after a minute, she says, "I don't think I've had anything to eat today other than like, four cigarettes. Hahhhh. Sorry."
Eggman	Petra throws up on the lab floor. Eggman doesn't look angry - just concerned. There's already mindless robots sweeping in to clean it up. Cubot and Orbot scramble over to help Petra steady herself, and Eggman puts a hand on her shoulder very very gently. "Then let's get you something to eat. I'll make you some okonomiyaki. Cubot, Orbot-" They don't even need to be asked. The two of them move to take her hands and help her stay steady as Eggman folds his hands behind his back and starts walking. "Congratulations," he says as he stops at the door, "You're the very first successful deroboticization." "We'll see about making the Silver that was forced out of you something useful later. For now..." Eggman pauses. "...I'm just glad you're alright."