Chapter Three: Reflections II
The shining blue slight made Mechanica's eye water a bit as it finished scanning her in. She wiped away the tear and entered into the Lab's vault, whistling casually as she looked around. The vault was large and somewhat imposing - there was a lot here, all set aside in similar looking cases with similar looking locks and markings. Each case had a serial number on it, sure, but that wasn't much help as there seemed to be little rhyme or reason as to the order in which these were all laid out.
Mechanica sighed. It'd take all damn night to look through these things! And it was already pretty early into the morning. If she stuck around any longer the ARMS staff would start showing up again, and that'd make things at least somewhat more difficult for her.
An echo of heavy rapid footsteps came from the hallway she had just entered from, getting gradually louder. Looks like someone had noticed the vault had been entered. They were coming quick too, so surely she'd have to hide quickly and-
Springtron entered the room suddenly and glared directly at her, his metal casing chattering slightly as his internal engine was fully prepared for him to start throwing ARMS.
Mechanica looked back at him casually, standing right where she had been, with no attempt at all to hide herself. "...Hey?"
Springtron looked at her and slowly calmed his engines.
"Yeah, Coyle told me to come in here." She smiled at him. "You don't have to be so protective - it's only me! "
Springtron looked down a bit, as if apologetic.
"I mean, if you're just eager to see me, that's fine too!" She giggled. "But I don't have much time to do any repairs right now, I'm afraid. I'm looking for something."
Springtron looked to the large vault collection for a moment and then headed back for the door.
"Hey!" Mechanica squealed. "You're just gonna leave me like that?"
He turned to face her, as if confused.
"You could at least help! " She sighed, rummaging in her pocket for a slip of paper. "I need the case with this serial..."
Springtron took the paper slip and examined the handwritten code on it. He turned back to the collection and slowly began to walk through it, as Mechanica followed. He came to about the end of the room, where he then reached out his ARMS and pulled a case from the very top of a highly stacked tower of cases.
"Thank youuu!" Mechanica blushed, putting out her hands for it.
Springtron motioned to hand it to her, but then paused, looking at the case closer. He looked back at her and pointed to the classification marked on it - Deep Green permissions required. That was a level exclusive to Coyle and Coyle alone.
Mechanica looked at it and then looked back up at Springtron. "W-Well yeah? I told you Coyle asked me to come get it! It's hardly going to be of much use to me alone." She sighed. "...If you want to call Coyle and double check, go ahead. But you better hope she's awake..."
Springtron thought to himself for a moment, before ultimately deciding to just hand her the case without checking-in with his creator. He had a soft spot for Mechanica, given all the repairs she had given him, and trusted her well enough that what she was saying about delivering it to Coyle was true. Thank god for that.
Mechanica took the case from him with a smile. "Thank you!~" It was a decently large case, perhaps about half the size of Mechanica's mech or so. It was pretty heavy too, but she insisted she could carry it alone and that Springtron should go back to his charging outlet for the night.
Springtron obliged to this and nodded her farewell, before leaving her alone again in the vault. She laughed to herself a little - this was all surprisingly easy, after all.
She picked up the handle of the case and briefly swore to herself - it was really heavy, and she wouldn't be able to switch to a strong, more ARMS-having face until she was at least out of Springtron's general range.
She took the case to the door of the vault and briefly lay it there, before heading back to the series of servers that were lined up by the back wall. She pondered for a second, then selected a specific few of them and unplugged them from the mainframe, resting them on the floor ahead of her.
Springtron would certainly hear a change in her footsteps, but she was in the clear well enough for making a brief switch if she stood firmly still, right? With a burst of steam around her, she returned to the curly-haired young woman she had been earlier that night when she had first met with Mummy. Ahhh, it was so nice to be back in her own shoes!
With a cheeky wave to the far-off security camera, she slipped a small electromagnetic device from her pocket and pressed it to the top of the servers she had removed. She pressed a button on the top of the device and, after a short moment, a quick splatter of electricity shot around it, causing a small puff of dark smoke to come from the servers below - which she then casually blew away.
She slipped the device back into her pocket and misted right back into being Mechanica, who then set aside the broken servers and made her way back to the case she had put by the door. She paused for a moment, overlooking the nearby case that was of a similar size, though somewhat smaller.
She sighed deeply. "Better to be safe than sorry, I guess." With some decent effort, she heaved the case atop the one from before and began to slide the two of them out together.
After dragging them through the empty ARMS Lab for a good long while, she decided to take a much needed breather and relax for a moment. She peered around the room, simply to see what kind of a place this really was on the inside. It was then that a small green light coming from one of the rooms caught her eye.
She approached the room and peeked inside. "Ohhh?" She smiled softly. "Hello there~"
Inside was a series of large tubes, and in the foremost one was a familiar glob of green goo. He seemed to be asleep, but she figured a quick wakeup wouldn't be a bad idea.
A flick of the nearby switch drained the tank of it's syrup-like liquid, leaving him in there alone. Another switched raised the tube itself, allowing him to blob out and onto the floor.
"Heya buddy!" Mechanica smiled.
The display on Helix's face lit up. "Oobloo?" He bubbled.
"Heyyyy! Did you sleep well?"
"Blo blaaaahb!" He glooped at her.
"...Okay, well, anyway... " She sighed.
She didn't really want to do this bit but whatever - she grabbed him as firmly as she could, despite his gooey nature, and faded herself into him. To Helix's credit, he didn't seem to be phased by this at all. He barely even seemed to notice.
Helix looked at Helix, then turned to look in the reflection of a nearby floor tile. "Bluuuub." Came a very weirded-out tone.
Helix faded out again and returned to being Mechanica. She quietly vowed to herself never to turn into him again because, well, ew, and then worked on getting the real Helix back into his tube.
With Helix tucked away and back asleep in his strange shimmering water, she returned once again to the case Springtron had picked out for her. She heaved it up as best she could, careful not to drop the one atop it, and carefully made her way back out of the Lab.
About midway into the parking lot she took another deep breather. Couldn't these cases have come with wheels or something?! She turned to the nearest security camera, which could probably barely see her in the dark anyway, and sighed. "This is a lot of work, y'know. Of all the ARMS League fighters, you just had to hire the child..." The camera certainly wouldn't be able to hear her, but the comment seemed to be more for herself than anyone else.
Finally, reliably far away enough now, she transformed herself back into the stained-shirt wearing Master Mummy, who picked up both cases with immense ease, and stomped off into the distance without a care.