The forest, late that night…
The teknopod had managed to burrow seven feet down by now, and was showing no signs of stopping. But something else, something within the pod, was starting to happen now.
Thin bio-wires were starting to sprout from the inner wall, reaching out to take hold of the Teknoman slumbering within. The wires wrapped around his wrists, his ankles, and his neck. The teknopod itself began to elongate, pulling Teknoman Darkblade from a fetal position into a standing one.
Now that the teknopod had stopped burrowing, at least temporarily, it could concentrate its stored energy on Darkblade. The first thing that had to be done was to wake Darkblade from his hibernation. The pod's wires began pumping energy into Darkblade's body. Slowly at first, then with increasing intensity and rapidity.
As more and stronger energy was pumped through his body, the hidden, organic Teknocircuts began to light up. Darkblade's eyes began to flutter, the entire eye glowing with the same intensity as the Teknocircuts. He had been breathing shallowly when he had been in hibernation, partly because his heart had been beating so slowly and partly to conserve the limited oxygen that the pod was able to produce when it was frozen. Now, as his heart rate started to climb back to normal, Darkblade gasped, gulping in the oxygen newly created by the teknopod.
The pod knew that the Teknoman it contained was the only one of his kind on this planet. The energy that the pod had stored was now being channeled along the exposed Teknocircuts. As more and more energy was fed into them, Darkblade's body began to undergo a dramatic change.
His cells began to multiply at an unheard of rate. Muscles all over his body, those that had been atrophied from more than three years of disuse, began to rebuild themselves. But, once the physical degeneration had been repaired, the cells did not simply stop multiplying.
Darkblade was a Hunter Teknoman, and for as long as he had been in the company of a Warlord or with a group of his fellow Teknomen, this was sufficient. But now, on this unknown planet, with no other Radam to look to for leadership, Teknoman Darkblade would have to become something… more.
His open eyes shining like red beacons, and his open mouth taking in as much oxygen as his lungs would allow, Darkblade felt his mind opening up. Deep within his subconscious, memories that had been suppressed for over one thousand years were suddenly unleashed into Darkblade's conscious mind. The mental flood was a bit too much for him to cope with as yet, and so Darkblade's mind shut down from the overload.
This made no difference, since right now the changes being made to him were purely physical. As more cells were created, Darkblade's bones began to lengthen and harden. Darkblade's base height had been five feet nine inches. Now, as his bones began to grow, that base began to change.
Soon, Darkblade stood at just over six feet, and he was still growing. Once he stood at six feet seven inches, Darkblade stopped growing taller. Now, now that the physical changes were complete, there were the mental alterations that had to be made. It would not do to have a comatose Warlord.
Bioelectricity began to course through Darkblade's brain, reawakening synapses that had shut down after the initial shock of too many memories being unlocked at once.