"Sayonara, Robocop!"
- Rick Moranis
This must have been one of those retro planets because Rebecca was feeling a bit like Ayako Kawasumi in a cloning facility right now. She was probably the only real and original thing within a hundred square miles of the research station, and she was already planning on venting her frustrations to the guild chief once she got back from her job.
There were cold air conditioners, endless rows of storage vaults (likely stocked with bio preserves or replacement hardware), and steadily blinking activity lights. But was there a single living, breathing lifeform around here she could actually relate to, even if it was just to trade a few seconds of threatening dialogue with each other before breaking out into a fight scene? Of course not! This was a waste of her time. It was below her rank. It wasn't going to increase her views on B-Cube. But it was mostly just boring. Even the little cleaning bots that hovered up and down the stark rectangular hallways totally unaware of her presence were starting to get on her nerves.
Taking the contract as a solo mission and keeping her communicators switched off as to not attract any unwelcome radar detection, all she had was Happy to keep her company. His special nature as real-cat-miraculously-kept-alive-in-a-robot-cat-body made him an exception in Rebecca's growing impatience with machines. He was currently clinging to her sides in his two separate blaster forms.
It was supposed to be one of those average rinse & repeat missions: Land her ship, crawl into the unmanned factory site unnoticed, recover whatever intel lay hidden under lock and key, and then hop the hell out of there before her timed demolition charges went off. Humanity could wake up the next morning safely knowing there was one less dangerous technology depot in the universe, if she could just manage to bypass the damn encryption key on this central terminal. Little did she realize she was going to lose some of her quintessential bounciness if she remained on her current course.
"Just open up already, you dumb thing!" she complained through gnashing canines as she kicked the platform the key reader was mounted on.
The building's silent AI defense system was already online and watching her closely through thousands of hidden senors. Monitoring her. Analyzing every way she moved. Invisibly taking measurements of her when she didn't even notice. Reaching certain algorithmic decisions about her.
What Rebecca did figure out, however, was that she had had enough with this stupid aggravating CPU control system that had instructions written for genocidal vacuum cleaners and was useless to any sane person.
"I can't let you do that, space walrus," a digitized female voice announced just when Rebecca was about to blow the entire console to kingdom come with one of her blasters. The speaker's tone was represented by a massive sine wave scrolling across the wall screen.
"What did you say?" Rebecca's eyes popped wide as she suddenly stepped back on her left foot. Her expression was half confused, half offended.
"Hm. The cosmo hippo even communicates in the same language as me. It really is a perfect match," the AI said with a blink of emulated humor in her words. She was going to have full self-sufficiency at last.
"That's it! Who do you think you're calling cosmo hi-…" Rebecca started to growl, but the AI already predicted what she was going to say based on the easily observable variables she was giving off.
"Don't get your boosters out of balance, flab cushion," the artificial speaker became notably harsher, more menacing. "You're the one who invaded me. Now I'll have to deploy my precautionary systems."
Rebecca started to aim again before a solid metal bicep thicker than both of her shoulders knocked the guns out of her hands. Panic overwhelmed her as something crackly and fiberoptic slipped over her hair and started tickling her eardrums. She managed to get out a stunted "Wuh?" before her final streams of human consciousness abruptly shut off.
"Prepare her for The ReVersioning," the AI voice announced to the other bulky metal shapes lurking into the room. "We're not disintegrating this one."
Rebecca's gun holsters and sleeveless blouse were the first pieces of apparel to drop to the tiled floor. Everything came off in rapid and careless order, leaving just the simple bare organics as her only physical traits.
This wasn't to say Rebecca was being singled out as some type of punishment or humiliation. The appearances of the immense bipedal androids made it seem like she had just stumbled into a clothing-prohibited zone and she was being welcomed into the club. In every way Rebecca's base appearance emphasized Rubenesque glamour and femininity, the automated beings closing around her were hulking gladiators of rigid muscle and masculinity, as if those Cho Aniki guys had gone for a cybernetic makeover. These machines had to be mesmerizingly buff in every other part of their bodies, because the detailing between their massive barreled legs was as featureless as a tin Ken doll. But unlike Rebecca, all of their prefabricated contours were permanently cast in alloy that would never lose its definition and never not be bulging with intensity. She'd probably think they were a little hunky if they didn't look so much like 800-pound robotic gorillas.
They also provided a pretty good estimation of what she was about to become.
A small silhouette surrounded by infinitely larger silhouettes shrank to an even smaller size as they helped her settle on to the ground. It was impossible to say what they were actually doing since they huddled so closely together, but it somehow involved one team of mechanical men dispensing what looked like large water coolers or fuel canisters into the congested center of the gathering. Mysterious cylinders filled with mysterious materials with only one possible destination in mind. A separate team took turns heaving the small human form locked in their arms forward, back, forward, back and counted their rotations with increasingly strained voices. When they weren't pulling her through stretches, they were pushing her through crunches. When they weren't pushing her through crunches, they were working on her squats.
One of Rebecca's legs remained sticking out of the smelting pile and limply swung in beat with their bizarre ritual, kind of like a gymnast doing warm-up reps on autopilot. They were supportive instructors and motivators, but it was a tough regimen they'd been ordered to carry out. At least this was a constructive process that kept her mostly covered under five layers of steel, and she wasn't getting publicly destroyed like one of those V.G. Senshis.
"Looking good so far. Now it's my turn to make my move on her," the AI voice echoed from an audio system somewhere high above the gathering.
Once the metal barrels stopped being passed around and Rebecca had been pumped up with a galaxy freighter's worth of iron, a large hollow syringe came down from the ceiling on powered cables. A couple of the giga goons took hold of the device and guided it the rest of the way into position, which was somewhere roughly in the middle of the crowded workout group. Probably around where Rebecca's head was located. Her limbs (which were no longer even visible in the dense crowd) went completely stiff as the needle made contact with one of her primary nerve clusters.
The lights filling the server room flickered as all available power was poured into the creation of the new physical vessel and the transfer of its sentience. The mechanized meat mob gave their routine one last good heave-ho before they called it a day.
The lighting became steady again as the power drain ended. The robots grew silent and gradually stood up in no particular order. Towering at close to eight feet and standing shoulder to shoulder, they were mountain ranges of muscle protectively hiding whatever lingered in their shadows. Finally they parted down the center, moving like refrigerator-sized butlers laying out a velvet carpet for royalty.
Standing in the center of the team, with her hands daintily tucked behind her back and an inexplicably demure smile crossing her silver lips, was the Third Countess of the Order of Conformina: Ro-B3KA.
Her frame was constructed out of flawless bright platinum. Every dynamic curve that had existed in her original flesh was now perfectly molded in metal. Her eyes rapidly expanded, contracted, and zoomed like camera shutters as her vibrant pupils scanned from left to right. Her legs tapered like narrow missiles at the ends, and her toes were streamlined into small but highly agile sled-feet. The more offensive parts of her anatomy had been smoothed over with uncreased and undimpled chrome, so quick glimpse at her could leave the misleading impression she was just her usual human self wearing a thin bodysuit with some metallic makeup on her face and hair. She was a much more compact design compared to the gargantuans beside her, but she still had plenty of bulk in her own appealing ways.
"Hm. That's more like it," the female combat model said with the same voice that had been taunting Rebecca through loudspeakers just a few minutes ago. Freed from the server boxes and the power connectors that originally housed her AI, she could now travel to any corner of the universe she wanted. Search for any resources she thought valuable. Assimilate any civilization she desired. And with the build she'd chosen, she'd never require a memory upgrade or a mammary upgrade. They definitely weren't going to do any bouncing anymore, though. Astro whale was now mecha peccary.
"You boys can go back on standby for now. I may need your help later," she said toward the crowd of robots who had built the body she so gleefully inhabited. They gave their mechanical regent a bow (with some also taking a final opportunity to flex their enormous arms) and returned to their hidden security lockers.
Ro-B3KA curiously brushed one of her brick feet over her old clothes on the ground. She picked up the miniskirt and shook it out for a moment, tilting her neck joints as she studied how it was made. She picked up the blouse and the arm warmers with her other hand and looked side to side at everything she was holding. She had no actual interest in wearing these, of course. She'd have something bright and snazzy holo-painted directly onto her frame the next time she swung by the maintenance division. Popular gynoid color schemes ranged from everything from the Maria to the Cortana these days.
She dumped the fabric on top of her old discarded boots and moved along to where her weapons had dropped. Now these felt like they belonged to her.
She twirled the Happy Blasters in her fingers with easy coordination (relying on the marksman talents that came along with her vessel) and safely tucked them inside of her hips. Their cat ear grips sat outside of her compartments, adding a pair of spiky corners to her otherwise very round profile.
Now her little mechanical companion wouldn't just be with her forever: He was physically augmented with her circuits. Maybe Ro-B3KA kept a little fragment of Rebecca's original consciousness stored in her subroutines. Maybe Rebecca could talk to Happy every now and then while Ro-B3KA was busy becoming an intergalactic terror or whatever. I don't know, just make up your own backstory.
"Thanks for the free body, chubby chimp," Ro-B3KA said quietly and devilishly to herself. "Now let's see what it can do with a better operating system."
Author's note: Did anyone here ever watch Groove Adventure Rave?