"I'm not a car battery. I don't need rechargin'."
- Rowdy Burns
Fiora's dull, half-opened eyes stared upward. She couldn't move. She couldn't blink. All she could do was look up.
Her world was violently moving. Rows of blinding overhead lights streaked past her in a vertical blur. She was falling down a hallway. Or rather, she was being rapidly pushed through one. She was on a gurney moving at flight speed, and her mind couldn't piece together where she had come from or where she was going.
At first, her top felt looser than it should, like maybe she had broken one of the laces while she was exercising. Then she noticed everything between her neck and her thighs felt looser than it should. She heard a haunting raspy sound coming from all around her, before she realized it was the sound of her own weak, labored breathing being regulated through an oxygen mask.
"Heart?" a female voice asked hurriedly from the left. The woman it belonged to was flying through space at the same speed as Fiora. Something icy pressed against her chest, then seemed to effortlessly slip inside.
"Massive trauma, she was killed on impact," a male voice answered from the right. "The emergency electrodes we've been using will only be able to squeeze a pulse out of her for another 20 minutes or so."
"Lungs?"
Something warm filled Fiora's throat and dripped out of her mouth.
"One was ripped apart when her ribs shattered. The other isn't holding up much better."
"Homs typically aren't known for their durability," the woman said in concern. "Kidneys?"
"Metal Face made shish kabob out of them."
"Liver?"
"Chopped to oblivion."
"Damn it. He was supposed to help us capture a live subject, not ground meat!" the woman angrily shouted.
"She came out of nowhere," the man stated. "Technically speaking, she was the aggressor. There was nothing we could do once his self-preservation protocols took over."
A cloudy hand reached from the woman's side of the gurney and floated over Fiora's eyes. The tip of the index finger lit up with a small beam and moved closely to her pupils.
"Brain?" the female voice asked.
"That's just about the only thing that wasn't damaged," the man said. "It looks like the time we wasted prying her out of her Mobile Artillery left her braindead, though."
"Finally some good news," the woman sighed in relief as the hand went away. "We can speed things along by skipping the mental cleanser. The Lady is insisting she has this girl while she's still fresh, and we're losing her quickly enough as it is."
Fiora heard a loud crash coming from her unseen feet, and then suddenly she was in a much darker place. The ceiling was covered in specks of digital starlight, and a cooling blue mist seemed to flow up around her from the bottomless abyss underneath her gurney. Wherever this was, it had more in common with a server room than any sort of hospital.
"Get her on the table," the woman ordered from thousands of miles away.
As Fiora felt her weightless body drift from one surface to another colder one, she could barely see a group of shadows scurrying around her like giant insects. The woman continued issuing commands.
"I want her on full life support. Cut these garments off. No, tag them and send them to processing. She wants all of it replicated. Give me more light. I'm starting at her heart. Careful, careful, right down the center. I need forceps to remove this shrapnel. Muscle spasms, increase her dosage."
A syringe flashed in front of Fiora's glossy eyes. The starlight grew brighter and brighter until all she could see was an intense white, and then everything abruptly turned black.
Fiora woke up flat on her back with a sheet pulled over her head. Her hands seemed to move on their own as they reached up to pull the cover away. Then her body managed to sit up without her help, and her eyes glanced down at the material still covering her legs and lap. It had a strange translucent white texture, like a cross between a silk funeral shroud and an anti-static cover for computer hardware.
Her legs kicked away the rest of the sheet and shimmied themselves over the side of the steel table. Her entire body left the table and landed on the floor with a light hop, and then her legs started walking across the room on autopilot.
Fiora struggled to remember the last thing that happened to her. Where was she? Why did she feel so detached from everything? She had a vague recollection of piloting a Mobile Artillery and helping Shulk fight a Mechon. Maybe she had been knocked out and she just needed to get her bearings.
She was in a sterile room with solid, brightly-lit walls. Even after her eyes fully adjusted, everything in her vision appeared with a subtle green tint. When her feet stopped in front of a body length mirror hanging on the utilitarian wall, her eyes gazed directly at her reflection.
She felt a little at ease when she saw she was still wearing her usual arrangement of a laced short top, white sleeves, a short skirt, leggings, and ankle boots. The only difference appeared to be on her choker. Instead the red and gold pendant she was expecting to see, her choker was decorated with a round blue opal that nestled comfortably against her suprasternal notch. Under the light, it seemed to give off a steady, almost radioactive glow. She actually liked the new accessory in a way, as it gave her a slightly more distinguished look without going overboard. If only she could remember how she got it.
In addition to the unexplained pendant, other things about her clothing slowly occurred to her. Something was just a tiny bit different about the texture, and everything felt slightly heavier than she remembered.
As she gazed into the mirror, her hand reached up, swept through the long blonde hair on her shoulder, and touched the flower ornament on the back of her head. Her mouth curled into a peaceful smile, but nothing about this left her feeling happy. In anything, it was making her more frightened.
Fiora heard the door open just beside her. She instinctively wanted to see who was entering the room, and her head turned just as she wished. For a second, she was relieved to know she was finally in total control of her body.
She quickly figured out she wasn't in control at all. Through the door walked a female Machina covered from head to toe in black mechanical armor. The most Homs-like thing about her was her face, but even that sported an unnaturally white complexion. Fiora calmly stood still without the slightest hint of surprise about her. She would have been cautiously backing away if her legs had listened to her.
"Good morning, Lady Meyneth. I didn't think you would be up this soon." The wires on the Machina woman's elaborate head armor swung forward as she bowed. Fiora couldn't remember her voice, but it was the same woman who had transported her on the gurney.
Who's Meyneth? Fiora tried to ask, but the words never came out of her mouth.
Fiora's eyes glanced down to her hands. Each of her fingers wiggled and flexed with tiny minds of their own. Inside her boots, her toes started to do the same thing.
"Ah, everything seems to be functioning correctly," Fiora's lips mysteriously said on their own. "Did you have any compatibility problems with this one, Vanea?"
"No, ma'am," the doctor replied. "It took us a while to bring her to a stable condition, but the transfer went smoothly after we made all the augmentations."
"And this is my capacitor?" Glancing down, Meyneth touched the radiant blue jewel on her neck. Vanea nodded in confirmation.
"We tried to design the casing so it wouldn't intrude on the host's personal aesthetic, as you requested."
Fiora's hand traced around her ear and poked at her cheek. It reached across her chest and carefully squeezed her bare shoulder. Both hands traveled downward and prodded her midriff. Instead of the familiar sensation of her fingers touching her skin, it felt more like she was touching the surface of a warm mannequin, or a firm waterbed. Nothing about her own body seemed completely alive or genuine, and it left her with an unsettling feeling.
"You did a great job on this pseudo-flesh," Meyneth said in spite of Fiora's thoughts.
"Thank you, Lady Meyneth. I was able to preserve most of the host's physical traits with her original donor materials," Vanea explained. "But with the severity of her injuries, we had to mend the rest based on our records. There were a few approximations involved."
Um… hello? Earth to Fiora? Answer me, please? Fiora thought to herself in desperation.
"How about the organics?" Meyneth asked. She looked into the mirror again with a hand on her hip.
"We saved what we could, which wasn't much," Vanea replied.
"What about her pipes?"
"Her… pipes, ma'am?"
"Her reproductive system, Vanea."
"Oh… I'm afraid those were lost in the attack."
"What a shame," Meyneth said in disappointment. "I was looking forward to being a complete woman."
HELLO? Fiora tried to scream, but no one could hear her.
"If you'd prefer, ma'am," Vanea offered, "I could dissemble you and a find a more intact candidate."
Meyneth slowly shook her head.
"There's no need for that. I've been waiting on the switchboard long enough. I'm grateful you were able to salvage this much."
She raised her hand so her palm faced her eyes. Fiora's entire forearm suddenly broke apart into a convoluted array of armor fragments and moving parts. A knife formed out of the internal components, looped over her wrist, and landed in her palm. Her arm quickly changed back to its natural sleeved appearance as her hand gasped the blade firmly by its hilt. The weapon had somehow been stored inside of her despite being wider than her wrist.
What's happened to me? Fiora asked herself in horror.
Meyneth turned the knife over, inspecting it out of curiosity. It looked like a high tech upgrade of one the knives Fiora always wielded in battle. Her other arm similarly split open and produced the second of Fiora's twin weapons. Meyneth compared them, held them in different poses, and crossed them together as she looked in the mirror. When she was finished, her arms opened again and the knives returned to their hidden compartments.
"Is my new Mechon ready?" Meyneth asked Vanea.
"Construction of the Face Nemesis is almost complete, ma'am," Vanea replied. "Once we had secured a host body, we were able to finalize the blueprints and calibrate the core system for your precise dimensions. The engineers finished most of the work while you were in surgery."
"Wonderful," Meyneth said eagerly. "I'd like to start practicing my combat abilities immediately. I need to see if this body requires any fine tuning before I start synchronizing with the Mechon."
"I already had the gymnasium set up for you, my lady. I'll gladly show you the way."
Fine tuning? Fiora pondered nervously as she walked out of the room with Vanea.