Skunk doesn't remember what his "birth" name was. He can't really say he just forgot his name, since his electronic brain doesn't work like that. The data wasn't being used and was deemed irrelevant, and in Skunk's head, it was written over by more important data. Like his new name, or the names of his friends and employees.
He doesn't remember a lot of his childhood, either. The gaps in his memory never really bother him on a day to day basis...the only time he struggles to recall his childhood is when prison psychoanalysts needle Skunk for his "tragic upbringing". It's fun to change the story every time.
If Skunk had to guess, he probably had his power shut off a lot of the time. His father's child-rearing patience was shorter than the man himself. Skunk's father was a stout, pale little man, balding with frayed strawberry blonde hair along the sides of his head. If someone told Skunk to describe a sheltered geek, he'd probably accidentally describe his own father.
One particular one morning from Skunk's childhood stands out. He booted up at exactly 7:30 AM, like he always did, and walked from his storage closet out to the living room. Skunk's father sat at the couch with a brimming mug of coffee and a bagel. The way the little man frantically ate his bagel almost reminded Skunk of a squirrel. The boy stepped into the middle of the room and sighed.
His father glanced up, almost annoyed as he asked, "What is it, my son?"
"I don't wanna go to school today," the boy mumbled.
"Why not?"
"The kids make fun of me."
"...Why?"
Skunk glanced up. His father set both parts of his breakfast on the arm of the couch, and hobbled over to Skunk's side to examine him. Skunk flinched and stepped away.
"They say I'm short and smell bad," complained the boy. "Like "solvent" or something. This one kid named Michio says I smell like a tractor!"
Skunk's father scoffed. He sneered, not at Skunk, but into the air, almost at the idea of his classmate. "How would he know? What's a farmer's boy doing at an inner city school?"
"That's not the point," Skunk whined. "I hate my life."
His father tutted, and addressed Skunk by his original name - whatever it was. He said smugly, "You'll have a change of scenery soon. I'll be moving us up north next week!"
"Fine," the boy grunted. His father seemed to move across country all the time.
Looking back, Skunk didn't mind the fact that he was always changing schools. Humanoid robotics weren't as good back then as they were now. Public school was a bad enough experience - as far as Skunk knew from what he'd seen on TV shows - but a kid didn't also need to have to pass as human. Skunk remembered himself looking awkward and gangly, with freckles, and shaggy hair with curtained bangs; it was strawberry blonde, of course, to match his father's. Skunk had made a few friends here and there, but not enough to make him miss each school.
Skunk barely knew what his father did for a living. He did have to move regularly for this work, working from one contract gig to another, moving from one big city to another...it was just a slow and painful routine. Looking back, his father was probably just designing robot parts for shady companies. Skunk never saw too much of his father's work with his own eyes. The man was an expert with nanomachines, though, and he would bring Skunk to some of these late night contract offer meetings. Skunk genuinely hated those memories. His father would open up Skunk's cranium cabinet and arm casings, pointing out every fuse and circuit that he'd built and designed. Scientists, black marketeers, and other shady individuals would observe, nod, smoke cigars, and place orders for their own copies of the hardware. The next month, Skunk's father would finish fulfilling orders and then move house, yet again.
It never really felt like a family unit. Skunk couldn't relate to stories about family bonds and that other sort of tripe. Skunk was maybe 13 years old - or whatever the informational package equivalent to it was - when he realized he wasn't his father's son. He was a floor demo. What better way to promote your own micro-robotics than to make a boy robot with them?
One day, he'd said to his father, "When do I grow up?"
His father was in the middle of driving a Rent-U van full of his lab equipment to some dump called Metro City. He wouldn't look up from the steering wheel. Skunk sat in the back seat behind the passenger's seat, parallel to his father's seat.
"Dad?"
"You grow up when you're an adult, son." His father continued to stare through the dash window. Skunk couldn't see his face from the back seat, but his grip on the steering wheel had visibly tightened.
"When do I become an adult?" Skunk asked. "How old am I now?"
"You're in 8th grade."
"So am I 13 or 14?"
Silence again.
"I'm sick of being a kid, dad."
"It's only been two years like this," his father said through gritted teeth.
"So I'm two years old?"
His father's fingers gripped the steering wheel so hard that they audibly rippled against the pleather lining. Skunk continued to glare at the side of his father's head, studying him, anticipating any sort of response.
His father's grip on the steering wheel loosened slightly. He cleared his throat, and then declared, "How's about we make you a new body?"
"Sure," said the boy. His brow remained furrowed. All he wanted was an updated construction - and he'd brought this up plenty of times - yet his father seemed reluctant to even try. That, or this was just another one of the corny acts his father liked to put on.
His father called Metro City Elementary that afternoon, claiming Skunk would be attending a different school and to cancel his registration. He then called up the landlord of their new place, extending their stay by a few more weeks. His father claimed they were staying in Metro City longer so they could attend a funeral. In a way, someone was dying; the old body was very quickly wearing down. Skunk's father had never been very good at making solid machinery.
The boy slipped in and out of consciousness for several days. He knew he was hooked up to a number of machines, but his CPU was stuck running in safe mode. He couldn't connect to any of the machines' internal clocks.
Eventually, Skunk powered on. There was a burst of electricity inside his own head, and he sat up slowly on the mechanical examination table, the computer equipment around him whining as it all churned down into standby mode. His father stood at the edge of the examination table; his grin seemed to beam brighter than the glare off his thick welding goggles.
"Good morning, son," he smirked.
"Good...morning?" Skunk struggled to respond. He wanted his internal clock to catch up before he took his father's word for it. It was 12:43 PM; close enough.
"Go on, try out your new legs," drawled his father. "They should be mostly stable, aheh!"
"Okay..." His voice was deeper now, too, he realized.
Skunk precariously slipped his longer legs off the examination table. He was clad in men's pyjamas, ones too large for him, which almost looked like they'd been stolen from a hotel. They probably were, actually. Skunk carefully took a few steps around the room to assess his new centre of gravity.
"I've been paid for my latest gig, too," his father beamed. "We'll be moving next Monday."
"Oh."
That night, Skunk pretended to deactivate for the evening. He could hear his father's heavy snoring in the other end of the apartment. His father had bought a bottle of wine in celebration for his latest gig. Skunk pretended to be happy for him as he went about quietly packing his belongings.
"The future is so bright," his father had said before passing out on the couch. "We're moving onto new things, let me tell you."
"Yeah," Skunk mumbled. He made sure his father wasn't looking as he slipped a metal incense holder off the mantle shelf.
All of Skunk's belongings only filled a single canvas bag when put all together. He lay in his containment capsule until his battery was fully replenished. As soon as the gentle "ping" sounded, Skunk sat up, waiting to make sure his father was still snoring.
It was time.
He climbed out of the containment capsule and unplugged it. He'd assembled a cheap-looking but serviceable outfit out of clothing that he'd found in one of the apartment's closets, all too big and a little dingy, obviously rejected by the previous tenant.
Skunk had carefully scanned his new body for any tracking devices in advance; a single geolocation chip had been loosely stuck on the back of Skunk's head. It was easy enough to pry off and then flush down the toilet. He had been surprised by the lack of tracking tags on his person overall, but maybe, his father just never assumed Skunk would want to run away.
But, he was a young man now. It was time to move out. Young people did this sort of thing all the time in movies, right? They'd moved to a dingy little apartment with few security cameras nearby. His father wouldn't dare go to the police, either. All that would be left of Skunk would be a path in some tracking software. He'd have to scramble through whatever fatherly panic he'd have through a severe Merlot hangover, too.
Skunk unlocked the back door, crept out, and then stepped onto the outdoor stairwell. He kept the doorknob turned to the side, keeping its catch mechanism concealed, and he carefully pushed the door closed. If he were human, he'd be shaking. But, with an unnatural calmness, the now-teenaged Skunk walked away, all his belongings clutched in a pale canvas tote bag. He kept walking, descended the stairwell. Kept walking, headed towards the distant city lights. Kept walking, walking, walking, until he found a bus station.
He was free now.
Skunk snapped himself out of his thoughts; the door across the room had just opened. He and Pilat had driven out to some doctor on the edge of town on an emergency medical expense. The rest of the gang seemed terrified to know Skunk would be seeing a doctor, but having Pilat go with him seemed to put the boys' worries at ease.
"A medical doctor, though?" Pilat whispers, clearly hoping whoever's behind the door won't notice. "Are you sure this is gonna work?"
"He should, I got this name from a very important contact," Skunk grunts back.
A little girl stares out from the doorway, grinning. She was the one who'd let them into the cottage's little waiting room in the first place. She carries a nurse's clipboard and nods at something on its paperwork; the charade looks exactly like a small child pretending to be a medical technician, yet it's played for real. The child says through a heavy lisp, "Tha doctor will shee you now."
Skunk gets up, clutching his inert arm. He nods at Pilat and trods across the room in a few careful strides, trying not to immediately terrify the child with his height. The child seems unaffected and leads Skunk deeper into the cottage. She leads him to an examination room, and steps away; Skunk is almost shocked to see another man who looks just as worse for wear as he does.
The doctor stares back at him through scruffy, partly-greyed black hair. A scar crosses the middle of his face; another one is just barely visible along the side of his neck, leading below his collar. He's used to stares, clearly, but he's not fond of them. Skunk glances at the other man's eyes and sees them staring back tiredly.
"You may come in," he says with an edge of irritation.
"Heh..." Skunk looks away as he takes a seat. "...Black Jack, right?"
"That's right," the other man replies.
"Do I call you Dr. Jack?"
"You can call me whatever you want as long as you're paying," Black Jack grumbles. He moves his chair closer to Skunk. "So what's this about a dislocated arm?"
"Now, uh, you're not gonna believe this, but..." Skunk draws his hand away from his elbow. His arm falls out of joint with a loud metallic clatter.
The doctor flinches back. Skunk looks down at the floor, stoic. The doctor moves closer, his hands held out in front of him, until he carefully grasps the limb and gently lifts it in his hands.
A bit stunned, Black Jack asks, "...Is this some sort of new prosthetic?"
"You could say that..." Skunk smirks.
The doctor carefully unbuttons Skunk's dress shirt to get a better look at his shoulder. The larger man looks away, almost ashamed. Black Jack carefully runs a finger along the severed shoulder; he stares at the inner workings through thick, jagged bangs.
"It's all robotic," he breathes.
"Yeah. It just has to be reconnected. The thing is, it's designed to look like normal human anatomy, so only someone familiar with that can...y'know...put me back together."
"True, this part almost looks like a glenohumeral joint..." Black Jack's fingers prod into the robotic wound. "...And this power cable looks like a bicep tendon. It's impressive."
"Yeah, I-I got this from my third remodelling," Skunk half-laughs. He knows he sounds nervous. A complete stranger is now the fourth person ever to know what his robotic inner workings look like.
However, the doctor seems to be on his side now. He stares at Skunk's bared shoulder like he's just been handed an incredible lab specimen. Skunk is about to make a joke about being looked at like a "piece of meat" but then realizes he's not made out of flesh. The doctor doesn't seem to notice the awkward silence, or at least doesn't seem to care.
"I can definitely reassemble this," Black Jack says after a moment. "It's not the strangest case I've taken on."
"Can you do it today? I've got a crew who's waiting on me."
"Sure. You got the funds?"
"There's a duffel bag full of $500,000 cash in my car's trunk right now."
"Excellent." Black Jack leans over to the door, creaks it open, and calls out, "Pinoko, let the patient's next of kin know I'll be performing surgery."
"Will do!" the child pipes out from a distance.
Black Jack shuts the door again. He smirks for a moment at Skunk, then turns to a cabinet on his left, and opens it to reveal an appliance toolbox.
"Will this work?"
"Yeah, as long as it's got some jeweller's screwdrivers."
"It does. I, uh..." Black Jack hesitates, stares at another cabinet, and then turns back to Skunk. "I don't suppose you'll need anaesthesia."
"I can synthesize alcohol," smirks Skunk. "If you give me a fifth of booze, it'll be the next best thing."
Black Jack wordlessly pulls a tall, dusty glass bottle of brandy out of the same cabinet as the toolbox. He cocks an eyebrow at Skunk and holds the bottle up, and the latter has to force back a laugh.
"Yeah. That'll do fine."