The townhouse's basement looked more like a garage than an underground robot repair facility. Which was great… she thinks, in case anyone ever decided to take her away, but at least she knew where everything was. Unless she didn't know where she put her precision tools, then there was a problem. She just had them too… where on earth could they have gone?
She had taken the liberty to hook the robot up to the computer she used to analyze one's inner workings. This computer was no better or faster than an old Commodore 64, but it still served its uses. So far, she had been able to process some basic information: who made the robot, what her code number was, her nickname, and some other little details. It would take longer for a full diagnostic. Although, even without the full details, there was some sort of anomaly located in… everywhere of that robot. Removing its weapons as a safeguard seemed to have slightly dropped the severity of those anomalies, oddly enough. Removing the rest of the robot's armor could help diagnose what caused the anomaly to begin with, but she needed to find her tools. Oh, for the love of Thomas T. Hikari- where were they?
On the counter, near the door that led back up to the main house, her phone started to buzz- indicating that someone had text her. Annoyed at her lost things, she walked over to the phone to see who needed her.
Richard, 9:19 PM: L? U didn't answer me. I demand answers.
And you're still not getting them, she defiantly thought to herself before she noticed something to the side of her phone. Her tools had been next to her phone this entire time. Letting out a relieved sigh, she picked up her tools and went back to the robot. It was going to take awhile to peel off the layers, but hopefully the robot could respond soon when its system didn't have to focus energy to twenty different outputs.
. . .
It had been awhile since Ray had gone through a hard reboot. Admittedly, not the best thing in the world, but it gave her time to reassess her bearings. And the biggest elephant in the room?
"You... removed my weapons?" the bot questioned to the head by the side of her right hip, no doubt the girl from earlier. "How...?!"
Surely enough, the head paused and turned itself around to look her in the eye. The human girl had a dollish face, flat chest, and innocent enough expression for someone illegally tampering with a contraption that certainly wasn't hers.
"I self taught myself reverse engineering, and by extension, robotics." the girl told Ray in a still tone, as if testing to see how the bot would respond to such news. "You're the seventh robot I've helped after a serious shut down. You seemed pretty far gone too… I didn't think you'd ever boot back up again. Your coding is one big mess- like a complex spider web, but without the planning."
Giving the human a rather dirty look, Ray decided that she needed to get out now before she found her personality chip inside a toaster. She didn't realize how damaged she was, though, from the reboot, leaving Ray to let out a pained groan as she attempted to sit up.
"Hold still!" the girl quickly proclaimed, immediately slapping her left hand on the robot's torso, just a little below the breast area. "One false move and you could experience severe paralysis and a full's day of work will be down the sink!"
Grumbling, the robot relaxed again so the human girl could continue.
"You're too young to be screwing around with advanced robotics." Ray seethed as she helplessly allowed the teen to make modifications. The girl didn't seem to listen, and instead went deeper into Ray's code. Huffing, and finding she had no other choice, Ray looked up at the ceiling and waited.
"Alright." the girl eventually decided, "You can sit up now. Just not too quickly, your gyroscope still seems to be a bit off."
Compliant, if only to gain some sense of trust while looking for a way out, Ray sat up before dully tracking what the girl was doing. The human placed her tools in a drawer before coming back over to the robot.
"My name is Leilani." the girl greeted, sticking her hand out for Ray to shake. The bot looked at it, then looked at the human girl with disgust.
"You don't need to know who I am." she told the girl darkly. "Just like you didn't need to 'fix' me. I was fine."
Leilani tilted her head to the side, unsure of whether to be confused or amused. "You were going to reactivate yourself when you had less than eleven picowatts running through you?" she mused with a grin. "That's some feat."
Ray didn't answer, she didn't feel obligated to, really.
"Your name is Raychel, right?" the girl then inquired. "It was the nickname listed in your coding, but I wasn't sure if it was the author signature or not."
Ray looked at the human with a blank stare. There was just something about this that didn't seem right. Or maybe it was because an illegal robotist she didn't know still knew how to access her coding.
"Yes." Ray agreed. "That is my name."
Leilani smiled, a nice one, a real award winner.
"I like it." the girl told Ray, as if she needed to be impressed. "You know it means 'gentle lamb.' Mine means 'heavenly flower.' Pretty neat, huh?"
"Lambs eat flowers." Ray mindlessly spat. Leilani looked at her, as if she were trying to analyze the unintended double entendre in Ray's words. Shaking her head, the human girl then left to get something on a nearby table, and brought it back to Ray.
It was a small bowl filled with some kind of solid blue energy, cut into crystal-like shapes. They almost seemed to have the same energy readings of xels- barely. There was a faint difference, but for a bot who wasn't aware of how desperate she was for energy, Ray chose not to comment on it.
"Eat this," Leilani suggested, "It's synthesized energen fragments. It should work with your BIOS well enough. I manufactured it just for you."
This caused a red flag, though.
"That's not possible." Ray told the girl with a dark tone. "No one knows my BIOS, let alone what works with it. How are you able to do that, and under what reason do I have to trust you?"
For the longest time, the human didn't have an answer. Ray stared her down- there had to be a reason, an explanation for the very idea that this child could do something her own creator couldn't. Eventually, Leilani carefully opened her mouth to say, "If that's the only thing you find impossible about this, then you're in for a rude awakening."