"Want to test out the micro-tuned dexterity feature?"

Dustrielle nodded without looking at Gin, still opening and closing the fingers of his new prosthetic. If this worked as optimally as they had intended, well, Gin would be right: they'd made something even better than the original hand he'd had.

He concentrated, unfolding the fingers, watching them extend out. Gin and Dustrielle had taken inspiration from the folding walls to come up with a prosthetic that was particularly well specialized for Dustrielle's needs. While the fingers normally held the expected shape of fingers, but in a metal form, they could unfold out to form spindly sticks, nearly twice the length of the original fingers, with sharp points at the tips.

Dustrielle reached into his pocket and pulled out his most recent concoction, a dark polymer, held in a small jar in liquid form. He unscrewed the lid, and dipped the ends of his prosthetic fingers into it, coating the sharp ends in a rubber-like substance, giving the tips a better grip. The substance quickly dried, and Dustrielle nodded, reaching the hand out towards the pipette on the table.

Slowly, gingerly, he took his elongated thumb and index finger and picked it up. The pipette didn't shake at all as he held it, and as he dipped it into a glass of water, he drew up a few milliliters. He eyed the measuring notches, and delicately held the pipette, concentrating, and willing himself to drop only an eighth of a milliliter. It would be a difficult measurement to get precise with his original hand.

Dustrielle squeezed just the very tips of the fingers gently, and, with pinpoint accuracy, an eighth of a milliliter of water dropped out.

He grinned, looking at Gin. "I think we've got a bingo."

Gin nodded, beaming. "We'll probably need to calibrate it just a bit more, but that is an optimal result if I've ever seen one."

Dustrielle gave a thumbs up with his other hand, before pulling out another jar from this pocket. This one was a solvent, one specially designed to clean up the polymer. He unscrewed the cap, dipping his metal fingers into the substance, dissolving the gripping rubber off, before folding the fingers back up to their normal form. He made a mental note to make sure he kept a good eye on his fingers when they were unfolded. The last thing he needed was to poke an eye out.

He stretched his arms and spine out, walking past the fume hood, and catching his face in the reflection. Frowning, he saw that his face was cracking a bit, yet again. He sighed and pulled out a small container of skin cream from his pocket, rubbing it into the left side of his face. Even three weeks after the fight with Crash, the left side was still having issues with drying up quickly, so he needed to keep it moisturized. The Lab Assistant with medical training had estimated that it would stop drying out in a couple more weeks.

The scars were discolored: a pinkish set of raised skin in patches down the side of his face, starting from near the bottom of his ear, up to the bottom of his forehead, save for the space right around the eye. His goggles had saved him from damaging his eye or his vision, as well as preventing scarring around it. The Lab Assistant had informed him that while the skin swelling would likely die down a bit, the scarring would never truly fade.

It was still something he needed to get used to, looking in the mirror and looking different. Before his bandages had come off, he had worried sick that he'd find himself revolting beyond recognition or belief. But the scarring wasn't as terrifying as he'd feared, and it gave him comfort that the right side of his face still was more or less intact. Brio had, in jest, purchased a DC comic for him featuring a two-page spread of an illustration of Two Face. He'd reassured Dustrielle that he certainly looked better than that rogue. Or, at the very least, had better fashion sense, "and that's half the- the battle, isn't it?"

Dustrielle eyed his watch and cringed, nodding. "Gin, close your ears."

Gin sighed, and both men stuck their fingers in their ears as Cortex's voice announced over the loudspeaker that the daily huddle would be in ten minutes.

Dustrielle gestured to the door. "Let's show him the goods."

Gin nodded and led the way out of the lab.

As the two arrived into the atrium, Nathan couldn't help but grin as they approached Brio and Tropy. He waved, chuckling and wiggling his fingers on the prosthetic hand.

Tropy rolled his eyes, looking like he was suppressing a grin. "Show off."

Brio smiled and pointed to the hand. "Nice… w-works as expected?"

Dustrielle and Gin looked at each other, both nodding. Gin cleared his throat. "So far, so good, though I'd like to run more dexterity trials with it. That's our goal for the day."

The two took their seats, and Cortex strode over, sitting down in his own chair.

"I see that N. Gin, well, gave you a hand today, N. Dustrielle."

Dustrielle sighed, smiling weakly and nodding. "How very funny, Doctor Cortex. That's what Gin and I are working on for today. I should be back to normal duties by tomorrow. Well, er, I'll be starting on making that new attempt at the catalyst, that is."

Cortex had taken the sound advice of the entire team and scrapped the idea for the acid moat, after what happened to Dustrielle. Mostly because of Tropy insinuating that he might push Cortex in the moat if the mood struck him to do so. Cortex had, once again, filled it with water, though Gin had insisted on adding cybernetic sharks as the new line of defense.

Cortex nodded. "Very well, though we're going to skip team updates for today, because we have a new initiative in mind."

Dustrielle eyed the others, and each of the others eyed everyone else. Whoever "we" were, none of the scientists appeared to be a part of the group that supposedly knew of this idea.

Cortex pushed a button on the table, and a hologram started to shimmer above the team, displaying a collection of four masks. They sort of resembled Aku Aku and Uka Uka, but weren't wooden. The materials the masks were made of varied, one resembling fire… another resembling rock…

"Now, N. Gin, N. Tropy, do you remember… goodness, how many years ago… when we tried to create our own bandicoot to oppose Crash?"

Both Gin and Tropy nodded, with Tropy narrowing his eyes. "Are we attempting to do that again? What, is our new plan to try it with a wallaby this time?"

Cortex rolled his eyes. "If you'd like to spearhead that idea in the future, when we're out of any other options, be my guest. But no. My point is that we allied ourselves with the Elementals as our way of powering the bandicoot up, right?"

Gin nodded, tilting his head. "Are we…are we going to team up with them again? But… how… what?"

Cortex smirked deeply. "Well well, N. Gin, we're shifting the plans slightly. We don't have an animal to power up here, but we do happen to have a lovely little machine with many moving parts that might benefit from… a bit of supernatural energy."

He pressed another button, and the schematics of Gin's machine, newly dubbed "The Intoxicator", appeared before them.

"Now gentlemen, let's think about this. N. Brio, N. Dustrielle, your toxin and catalyst are meant to affect plants, right? But what will be the biggest impediment to the ground spread? The soil, of course! A bit of help from Rok-Ko might aid in that regard. And N. Dustrielle, I know that water neutralized your acid, but the catalyst, would it-?"

"The chemical structure I'm looking to achieve would function well enough with water, albeit slightly slower if there's too much water in ratio to it"

Cortex nodded. "As expected. So, right then, Wa-Wa could also help channel the toxin throughout the soil, aid in the spread. Chemical reactions like the toxin and catalyst will function quicker with heat, so Py-Ro could come into play there. And if we're spraying it from the sky, then Lo-Lo's powers could help with the initial spread from the air, and get a bit of wider coverage than we might have had otherwise."

Dustrielle considered this, and had to admit that each element of the plan, pardon the pun, did make sense. Though they'd need to fine tune each of the masks' powers, as a full blast from any of those elements were certain to cause disaster in the device components that the masks were meant to aid.

Tropy raised an eyebrow. "Pray tell, Cortex, how do you plan to convince them to work with us? Forgive me, but our schematics are a bit more… finessed than a mere deluge of elements. They're not exactly known for precise details, or liking initiatives that involve anything besides pure chaos. And lest we forget that the last venture we had with them ended poorly. I'm simply unsure of their willingness to try another plan with us."

Cortex grinned widely. "That's the genius of this plan, N. Tropy: no convincing will be required."

All the men raised their eyebrows as Cortex held his hands out. "We already have tools that can restrain spirits of their caliber, and channel their powers to work for our own means, regardless of their desires or willingness to do so. Our devices managed to work on the Quantum Masks, so quite frankly, restraining and harnessing the Elementals should be a breeze. If we manage to summon them, we'll just reward them with a surprise stay at 'Chateau Cortex.' A permanent one."

Brio furrowed his brow. "What if the summoning does-doesn't work? I know they have to be willing to sh-sh-show up to fully enter our dimension."

Cortex waved his hand, leaning forward. "Of course, that is a possibility. I'm taking it into account. If that winds up being the case, we might just have to go on a bit of a journey into their realm and do some light persuading there."

Tropy frowned deeply, staring at the table for a few seconds, before looking back up.

"This could be rather taxing on Uka Uka, especially if he needs to play a major role in summoning them here. Has he approved of this plan yet?"

Cortex's face went pale, as he swallowed in a loud gulp. "I… er… not yet… but I can't imagine he'll write off the idea as a wash."

"He understands patterns, Cortex. He might disapprove of this if he thinks that his time and resources expended in summoning the Elementals wouldn't be worth a second failure. And traveling into their realm could also prove extremely risky. I highly doubt Uka Uka wants all of his competent operatives wiped out in one mission."

Cortex sighed. "Yes, yes, N. Tropy, I hear your concerns. I've invited him to come down here in a few days and I'll be pitching the idea then. But don't give up before we've even started. I really hate when you're a downer-"

"I'm a realist."

"You're the worst, that's what you are."

Dustrielle raised his hand. "So, is this Elemental plan, like, a priority thing, or am I still making that catalyst?"

Cortex pointed at Dustrielle. "For the next few days, I want you to get that catalyst created. At the very least, I want a sample that works as intended. We'll hold off on full scale production once we have approval on the plan, and focus on procuring the Elementals then. Besides, their abilities might help you and N. Brio with the production, right?"

Dustrielle sighed. Once again, he was on a time crunch that, while manageable, would still be tight.

Cortex eyed the group, narrowing his eyes. "So, similar marching orders for you all. N. Gin, I want the containment tank and fans finished, at least, by Tuesday. N. Tropy, you said that we can reverse engineer that scramble component, right? So try to get some of the parts you need acquired or made by then. N. Brio, your solution works, so why don't you help N. Dustrielle tinker with his catalyst? Any questions?"

Dustrielle exhaled and couldn't suppress a grin. Having an extra pair of hands and someone with a bit more experience would help him out immensely. The others shook their heads, and Cortex straightened up.

"End of day reports by 8. Get busy, and get excited. We've got a real fun few weeks ahead of us."

Dustrielle stood up, and he couldn't help himself. He unfolded the pointer finger on his prosthetic and brought the extended finger close to Tropy's nose.

Tropy scowled as he saw the finger approach. "Don't even think about it."

Dustrielle gave the nose a light *boop*, not enough for it to hurt, and chuckled as Tropy sighed.

"Literally, what did I just tell you?"

"It was a reflex."

"A what?"

"An action taken without thinking. "

Tropy rubbed his temples and groaned as Dustrielle walked past him, heading to the hallway. Gin caught up to Dustrielle and smiled widely, eyes shining. It was the same smile Dustrielle would see when Gin got a compliment on, or he himself was admiring, his handiwork.

"Getting used to the hand?"

Dustrielle folded the pointer finger back up and nodded. "Yeah, I do need to be careful with this, though. Might wear the goggles a bit more, at least until it's all second nature. The acid missed my eye, so I'd rather keep it undamaged from this point."

"My biggest piece of advice would be to make sure you take the hand off before you sleep."

"Well, duh."

"You say that, but I once forgot to do that with mine, and wound up having a nightmare. Woke up yelling and waving my hands around. Cortex thought I'd secretly gotten into a fight with the bandicoot, because I came down to get breakfast with a black eye and a few bruises."

Dustrielle nodded. "Fair enough. I will say this: I'm not looking to face Crash again anytime soon. But when we were fighting, he was close enough, a couple of times, that I could've grabbed him. Maybe even dug my fingers into him."

He unfolded his prosthetic fingers completely, watching the sharp, claw-like tips gleam in the dim light of the castle halls. "Next time, he might need to watch his step two-fold."

Gin rolled his eyes and sighed. "Why don't you actually recover enough to get back to your regular lab duties before fantasizing about that?"

"Well, let's finish testing this out, and I'll get back to business as usual, then."

Gin smiled mischievously and grabbed his forearm, quickly popping off his prosthetic.

"Catch!"

As he said it, he tossed his prosthetic towards Dustrielle. Though he'd been caught off guard, Dustrielle managed to catch the gauntlet. And even though the fingers looked impossibly thin and feeble when extended, they were rock-sturdy and held up remarkably well, even with the heavy weight of Gin's gauntlet.

"Yes, you were right. I think we do, indeed, have a bingo."