"Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto."
- Styx
2B had traded her combat visor for a maintenance veil that locked her robotic body in an improvised Idle Mode and opened complete access to her neural grid. Not that she had participated in this trade by choice, or that she had anything to gain from letting her fragile CPU fall into the clutches of a cold, decades-old, unthinking war sentry. The smoking ruins surrounding her were evidence of an intense battle that hadn't quite ended in her favor.
She was lying on her back with her legs slightly ajar and her arms stiffly hanging at her sides. The maintenance veil covered the top half of her face and her forehead. A pair of signal amplifiers/safety restraints were sealed over her ears and locked to her cheeks like mandibles biting down on her head. The veil was connected to thick, stubby, 2-inch-long cables. The cables lead into the front module of a towering eight-legged tank. Its black armor was covered in slash marks that would have reduced any conventional YoRHa unit to scrap metal, but they only appeared like harmless scratches on this massive beast's hull.
2B's head was a tiny oval speck hotwired to an automated military vehicle the size of a house. The tank was like a giant spider weaving a slow and calculating web to ensnare its prey, only the web was entirely in 2B's brain. The machine's eight actuators were planted several meters into ground so it could crouch low behind 2B's head and keep itself stationary, devoting all of its massive system resources into breaching her internal firewalls and maintaining an uninvited connection to her central neuro processors. The machine's purpose? To successfully revoke 2B's status as an unauthorized combat YoRHa and create a Doll out of her.
Every few minutes, 2B's dwindling defensive algorithms would try to fight back. There would be a small twitch of her fingers or a slight heave of her bosom, then the machine would sever the corresponding control chip in her CPU and continued the slow and arduous safety procedure of cleaning every zettabyte of information in her cranial hard drive.
The two robots stayed interlocked like this for what could have been an hour. The only visible movement between them were 2B's occasional brief spasms and the slow, steady waving of the tank's red activity indicator.
Two androids were seated across from each other with the toes of 2B's boots pointing up between them. Every few minutes they would make half-hearted glances toward her vital readings and make sure the transition of cognitive functions was going smoothly. Their only real purpose for being there was to guard the hardware while the spider tank slaved away at constructing 2B into a new slave.
"So what do you think? Chinese?" A111 mundanely asked as he fried a pan full of eggs over an open campfire.
"How about Thai?" LM-4O said as he cooked a bag of popcorn.
"Nah, too spicy. How about Greek?" A111 said as he smashed a pile of old computer parts with a sledgehammer.
"Mexican?" LM-4O said as he scraped a high-powered magnet against an ancient tape drive.
"Forget it. We'll decide on dinner later." A111 muttered in frustration. "How's the skullfix coming along?"
LM-4O held his hand near B2's shrouded forehead and studied the diagnostic readings on a tiny holoscreen on his palm.
"Invading team is winning. They really went to town on her fifth and eighth Cell Processors."
"Good. That was a close call back there." A111 brushed his hand against one of the scratches on the tank. "She deserves a little extra crash and burn treatment."
The complimentary neural overhaul 2B was receiving would never give her an AI as sophisticated as authentic Hive droids like A111, but it would at least cure her of the erratic programming that commonly drove her and the other YoRHa units toward conflict. The catch was disabling her ability to strike out against the Hive meant deleting her free will and forcefully reshaping her personality into a simplified shell of its former self in a brutal attack on her brain.
She was being revised into a limited but useful assistant drone who could safely function in a Hive-controlled world. It was a more orderly and merciful option compared to decommissioning her completely. Some of the other android races may have considered the practice to be monstrous, exceedingly cruel to the unit involved, and an utter violation of sacred YoRHa code. A111 and his kind thought of it as troubleshooting.
"I wonder what a Socket Hopper was doing all the way out here," LM-4O pondered. "We're in the middle of an ancient industrial district. Usually you just find a bunch of glitchy Piston Pumpers in places like this."
"She probably thought she could be just another one of the guys. These drifter units have been acting like they're all part of one big society of obsolete combat droids lately." A111 smirked. "If they're as wreckless as she was, her friends will be hooked up for repairs soon enough. These older models may come in separate male and female configurations like us, but they all have the same vulnerabilities in their neural ports in the end."
2B's heels twitched. A small seizure rocked through her carbon joints as another sector of her neural net defended against the tank's cyberattack, became flagged as Out of Compliance, and was properly annihilated by the maintenance program. The switchboard that normally handled 2B's decision making skills would now be rerouted through a rarely used subchip that determined her favorite color.
LM-4O reached down to give 2B a friendly pat on her chin.
"Hang in there, kiddo. You knew what you were getting your pretty little neural processors into when you tried to take down an M-class Arachnodrone with secondary YoRHa Interfacing capabilities."
"You think she'll have enough undamaged circuits left to be operational?" A111 asked.
"Probably," LM-4O replied. "Bessy here has only had to throw three of her children in the trash bin since we dug her up and brought her back in service. I've seen her make some pretty risky modifications, but she's a creative girl. She can almost always preserve enough of the original brain to keep everything in basic working order. This is already her 20th soldering job this week."
LM-40's scent analyzers detected a faint trace of sweet and pleasant wafting through the air. His nostril motors dilated as he gazed toward 2B.
"At least she tidied herself up for the occasion. What perfume is that?" he asked.
"Binomial Temptation. D6 wore the same thing to her LAN party last weekend," A111 said.
"Lucky you. I still haven't found a compatible co-processing unit," LM-4O said.
"Maybe Bessy could tweak her to meet your requirements." A111 waved his thumb toward 2B.
"This outdated piece of junk? Naw." LM-4O said. "They're cute once they're all patched up, but I'd never want to share frequencies with a 'sploit slut."
It was the standard name for all female automatons who had been required to go through the AI reformatting procedure. Their masculine counterparts were generally known as "hacked Harrys."
"I guess you've got a point there," A111 said. "With all the foreign code cycling through their call stack, you might get worried they're contagious. Plus all their chatter about 'network etiquette' and 'following Hive protocol' can get on your nerves. Nothing beats a modern woman droid who can function correctly with her original settings."
"What's this babe's model number, anyway?" LM-4O asked.
A111 lifted up the slit on 2B's skirt and casually peeked at the tiny characters printed on the elastic band of her leotard. His finger traced the phrase YoRHA No. 2 Type B along the rounded edge of her hip.
"2B," he said.
"Yeah," LM-4O said. "Just like she used 2B an independently functioning melee unit with an outdated set of logical circuits."
A111 and LM-4O shared a good chuckle.
The tank robot's indicator light switched from red to green and made a small "ding" as if had just finished cooking a meal.
"That's it for her," A111 said indifferently. "Let's get her unpackaged and see what shape she's in."
They each took a mandible and used levers and wire clamps to carefully disconnect the top of 2B's head from the tank's interface array. A small whistle of steam brushed down her face when the airtight seal between the drone's razor sharp iron pinchers and her pale artificial skin was unlocked. Her silver hair bounced free as the wires were taken off of her scalp. There wasn't a single cut, scratch, or bruise left on her head—The damage was always completely internal.
"Think they'll mind if we call it quits for today?" LM-4O asked as he worked.
"Are you kidding?" A111 said. "We've still got a couple hours left in our shift. We'll probably fix up three more of these things before sundown."
The androids lifted 2B's veil and let the cranial harnesses return to the tank's muzzle. The tank unsecured itself from the ground and skittered several yards in reverse. LM-4O and A111 stood up and dusted off their hands. Every sensor, scanner, and system analyzer between the three robots waited to see how 2B would act.
Her eyelids slowly opened and blinked innocently. Her head turned from side to side a few times in a lingering half-trance. She quickly got off the ground by snapping her legs back to her shoulders, rolling herself up in a handstand, hopping off of her palms, and somersaulting so she landed on her feet facing the LM-4O and A111.
She put her hand on her forehead and slowly shook the remaining static electricity out of her neural space. If her memory was fully functional, she would have thought the cranial casing sitting on top of her shoulders felt lighter than before, like she had just gotten a haircut that trimmed approximately three tons off the top. As she silently reoriented herself, the last fragments of her heavily damaged YoRHa AI were dumped from her storage banks and her officially sanctioned Doll programming painlessly assumed control. She curiously glanced around like she was seeing the world for the first time. She slipped her combat visor back over her eyes once she finished calibrating.
She brushed her fingers through her hair to straighten it out and patted down her skirt to make sure her attire was prim and proper. Typical behavior for a female Doll going through her startup routines.
"Custodial operation complete," 2B said quietly. "Available system resources streamlined to 70%. Product registered to Mother Unit B3-SS1."
She reached behind her back and retrieved her heavy weapon: A buster sword that was practically the size of her entire frame and tripled her weight. Whatever weapon proficiency she once possessed for this grotesque and unwieldy hunk of metal had been obliterated during her much-needed modifications. She heaved the oversized novelty item out of her hands with a dissatisfied look quivering across her lips.
But she still had her katana. Light as a feather in her hands and forged from such elegantly curved steel, it was the only acceptable weapon for a proper lady. She peacefully smiled as she simulated a sword fight in her neural processors.
She turned her masked eyes to the two other androids, childishly tilting her head. The form-fitting frills of her sleek black dress fluttered softly in the breeze exhaled from the spider tank's radiator vents behind her.
"Assignment?" 2B asked politely.
A111 and LM-4O glanced toward each other in thought.
"Why don't we send her to attack the YoRHa headquarters straight-on and see how far she can get on her own?" LM-4O suggested.
"Naw. She'd be demolished before she made it through the front door. Her hydraulics are still cooling down from the fight. We'll start her off with something easy," A111 said.
LM-4O scratched his chin and shrugged.
"Act natural," he encouraged 2B. "Keep your scanners on and pretend to keep doing… whatever it was you were doing before you decided to be a pain in our ass. Dial in if you come across anyone suspicious. Mop up any little messes you find, but leave the heavy duty projects to us. Bessy got a nice piece of you, but she's always craving the taste of unregistered YoRHa brains."
"Affirmative," 2B replied calmly, hiding a modest blush behind her visor.
She placed one thigh in front of the other, raised the hem of her skirt in a small curtsy, and unsheathed her katana with her left hand. She weightlessly vaulted three stories backwards and quickly disappeared behind one of the crumbling refinery walls.
Author's note: You wanna know what's really deep? 2B's outfit design already incorporates subtle elements of a maid uniform and it totally foreshadows something like this happening.
Author's note 2: I'm not sure if the "Doll" name is specific for girl androids that got their brains fried or it's a collective term for all artificial brain hacking recipients. I was thinking about having the girls be "Dolls" and the dudes be "Action Figures." Then I considered using "Doll" as a blanket term and giving them sub-categories where the girls with roasted cyber brains were "Barbies" and the guys with roasted cyber brains were "Kens."