View source for Irreversible, or Two Hours (Staren)

{{Cutscene Header
|Date of Scene=2014/09/25
|Location=Flying Island and Staren's Lab
|Synopsis=When all else fails to prevent death in the first place, Staren has a way to reverse it. But the truth is, that his tools are far more limited than he would like.
|Thanks=Quote
|Cast of Characters=42
|Tinyplot=Cave Story
}}
Staren appears by the Sand Zone teleporter, holding Toroko's body. He steps through, races across town to the warpgate, steps through again, teleports to the lab. He lifts her body into the tank, a sort of ovoid pod combined with what looks like an MRI machine, which begins to fill up with a clear gel. Toroko floats, the small, fluffy rabbit-girl almost looking asleep, except for the scars on her legs and abdomen. But it wasn't wounds that killed her.

"Eureka." Staren rushes to his console, lifts the gauntlet from its resting place. "Eureka. Wake up."

"Wake up!"

"WAKE UP!" he shakes it, and then, after a moment, rushes back to the machine, setting Eureka down on a lab table.

 '''ERROR: Physiology does not match any stored template.'''
 '''ERROR: Neural structure does not match any stored template.'''

"Of course it doesn't..." Staren mutters to himself. He paces, and thinks, and then removes his armor, continuing to pace in his signature labcoat. Glancing back to the sleeping Abstractum from time to time.

Suddenly, an idea comes to him. Over the past two years, the technology has been adapted to many species of D-Bees, with Eureka's help. Could one of them be 'close enough'?

He has the machine run more scans. Display a list of templates with descending percentages of similarity. It's not the best, but it's something. Maybe... maybe he can tweak them, somehow.

It is slow work. No template is a perfect match, and it turns out that biochemistry, let alone brain mapping, is ''pretty specific work''. Still, he has to try. What if he didn't, and a solution turned out to have been there?

He tries one approach, then another. Modifying templates, mixing pieces. Honestly, the chances are slim. The odds are next to impossible, really. But each time he thinks of a new approach, of something that might match up, he feels ''so close''...

Minutes become an hour, and then two.

 '''TIME SINCE DEATH: 02:00:00'''

The counter in the corner of his vision flashes, accompanied by a buzz. He slumps against the tank, slowly dropping to his knees.

Out of time.

He runs another scan, just in case. But while the machine may not know how a mimiga is /supposed/ to look, it can detect change over time. Decay. The nanomachines, not knowing what they are restoring, have not been able to slow the natural aftereffects of death. The mind is such an incredibly complex machine... just a little damage can change it forever, and just a little more can break it so that it won't work at all. Even if he made it work, now, she would never be the same. He shakes his head. And slowly, turns to look at the gauntlet lying on the table. "...I'll still keep looking for more power..." he whispers to himself.

Abstractum aren't the end-all solution. But they can help him find it. Slowly, he rises to his feat, and pats Eureka affectionately. "One day. One day, I'll have the power I need."

He decants Toroko, and carries her body back to the mimigas.