The thought occurred to him one day without much of a warning; Grey had the power to A-trans without Model A. He didn't know how he had formed the thought, but it was a powerful one. It was a thought so interesting that he didn't dare act on it until far later into the year- he needed a day where everyone was working, while Grey himself had nothing to do.
For this, it was safe to say that Aile was to blame.
When Grey wasn't placed on a babysitting mission with Ashe, he tended to spend his time with the current interim leader of the Guardians, Aile. It wasn't a well known fact, but Aile was slowly dying due to some altercation she and her brother experienced some years back. Grey liked Aile and enjoyed hearing of her past experiences. He was sure that he could have called her a friend, but he never really got around to asking if that was the case.
"You requested my presence, Commander?" Grey greeted as he entered the Grand Nuage's command room. Immediately, Aile turned her chair around to greet Grey with a smile.
"I did." she affirmed. "Help me up, would you? We need to discuss this privately."
Doing as he was asked, Grey helped Aile out of her seat and together they went to the commander's bedroom. Grey helped Aile down on a particularly comfy looking sofa before making sure that the door was securely locked. With that done, he took a seat next to Aile and waited for further command.
"Grey, I'm going to cut to the chase here; do you have Model A with you?"
"No." the Reploid disagreed without a second thought.
"So Ashe has him now, right?"
"Yeah…?"
"Do you ever use Model A, Grey?"
For a moment, Grey gave the Guardians' commander a funny glance. Aile wanted something, that much he was pretty sure of, but what did it have to do with Model A? And why did her face look so passive, yet so incredibly smug at the same time?
"Commander Aile, I don't follow." he admitted. Hearing this, Aile sat a bit straighter in her seat; in another time, had she been able to stand on her own, she would have gotten up and stood right in front of Grey to assert a stubborn dominance over him.
"I'll be blunt then," Aile mused, "When we leave this room, we're going straight to the training room and you are going to A-trans."
Grey recoiled in a mild discomfort. So this is what Aile wanted…
"We don't even know if I can A-trans without Model A..."
Aile reclined a bit, a small smirk crossing her face in amusement. "What was it that you told me Master Albert said? 'I made you in my image' and something about being a spare?"
"Something like that." Grey grumbled under his breath.
"Ergo, since he had some capabilities to A-trans, that means, by all rights, you should be able too."
Once more, Grey could do nothing but stare at Aile.
"Aile, when was the last time you saw a neurologist?"
To his surprise, she laughed at him.
"You're starting to sound like Vent." she snorted. Grey raised an eyebrow as he allowed her to let out a good chuckle. When Aile was satisfied with her moment's reprieve, she turned her attention back to the Reploid. "Just trust me on this, just this once. If it makes it any easier, you can transform into me. You still have that DNA, don't you?"
The already confused Reploid could feel his hair stand up on end in pure shock.
"I… I can't do that." he insisted.
"Why not?"
For this, he hesitated for a moment. Grey had always felt bad for trying to A-trans into females. It didn't really matter if they were human or Reploid, or even a Reploid that took on the appearance of something less than human, he felt bad about all of them.
"Never mind then." Aile -who Grey was starting to notice was getting more impatient as they went on- then dismissed. "Just meet me in the training room in about 30 minutes. Okay?"
"Yes Commander," Grey dutifully agreed, finding he didn't have much of a say in the matter. With a nod, he and Aile left the room and he helped her back into the commander chair. Despite Aile not liking when he did such a thing, Grey gave a small, formidable bow before leaving.
. . .
Grey had been in the training room for about thirty minutes before Aile arrived. The Guardians' commander was being guided in by the elbow, with help from one of their nurses.
"Do you need help? Grey asked- if only out of obligation.
"No." Aile huffed. "If it wasn't for Vent, Rose wouldn't be here either. No offense..."
The nurse at Aile's side gave a soft smile, her face flushing a light pink, before replying in a small voice; "No offense. Vent can be very stubborn."
"Makes for two of us." came the bitter retort. To her nurse directly, Aile then said, "Thank you for escorting me Rose. Grey can handle it from here."
"Of course Commander." Rose agreed with a small bow. Without having to be told twice, the nurse then scuttled out of the training room, leaving Aile and Grey alone.
"So," Aile mused as she made herself a bit more comfortable, "Whose DNA did you jack?"
Grey couldn't help but flinch. "I didn't know their name," he admitted. What he could not say was that he didn't want to know, either. The closer they got to learning if he could A-Trans, the more nervous Grey was becoming. This was what Albert wanted, wasn't it? Didn't this only make Grey closer to what Albert had envisioned?
"You don't have to sustain the form for long," Aile casually reminded him, "We're just testing a theory- not putting it into practice."
"Today." Grey found himself correcting. "We're not putting it into practice today."
Aile gave a laugh so genuine and carefree that Grey almost smiled with her. It put a lot of color back into her pale face. She stopped after a few moments though, before going on to say, "The systems are already tracking your data, Grey. You can start whenever you feel like it."
"No pressure, right?"
"No pressure."
Grey gave Aile a partially worried nod before carefully closing his eyes. In truth, he had only used Model A to A-Trans twice in the past; the power of the Biometal too overwhelming to use too often. He could still remember how the two were about to A-Trans. It only took a bit of concentration, a little bit of remembering the structure of the DNA in question, and having the will power not to chicken out mid-transformation.
Well, visualizing the DNA wasn't that hard. In his mind's eye, Grey could clearly see the Reploid he had casually taken the DNA from. They had been about his size, with darker colored skin and a mop of jet black hair. Despite not getting a good look of their face, Grey could see that they had stunning glass blue eyes, and when they grinned, dimples would appear. In his mind's eye, Grey started to blur the individual parts of the unknown person and started place them on himself.
The skintone had been the easy part, as it was close to the tone Grey was. At first, he had figured that changing hair colors would be harder- what with them being on different spectrums. No, the change of hair color had been just as easy as adjusting skintones. But it was those eyes, those shockingly blue eyes that seemed to hinder Grey slightly. You see, they were a very beautiful shade of blue, and no matter how Grey tried, he just couldn't replicate them perfectly; like an artist trying to recreate the perfect blue sky. Eventually, Grey was able to recreate the shade just as well.
Now came the clothes. At first, this seemed simple enough. The Reploid was only wearing a simple jumpsuit over their secondary skin- polyester and cotton blend, some handmade stitching on the sides, and a bit of fraying at the sleeves. But then Grey noticed something on their wrist; a watch. It was an old analog watch, and there were details on the outside. The closer Grey tried to see the details, the more they seemed lost to him. He tried, he tried so hard, to see what the details were but failed.
Grey let out a short yelp as his arm short circuited, immediately casting him out of his mental image, and losing any progress he had in the transformation so far. If he had actually made any physical progress, of course. From where she was, Aile had flinched, but she did not look particularly concerned.
"Are you alright?" she even asked.
"Yeah." Grey replied in a distant voice. "It just… smarted a little, I think. I'm fine."
"Reploids don't feel pain." Aile mumbled to herself, perhaps more troubled that Grey short circuited than she was letting on. He almost considered to remind her that he, and a good handful of other Reploids, could feel pain in even more various quantities. He even thought to tell her that he was no ordinary Reploid to begin with, but he stopped himself before he could.
"How long did it take?" he asked instead. He wasn't quite aware of it, but his hand was tightly holding his wrist. Aile cocked an eyebrow at him.
"Ten seconds." she replied without a blink. For a moment, Grey could feel himself stagger back in shock.
"Are you sure?"
"Come look for yourself," Aile bid to him, and to which he wasted no time in doing.
There was no reason to distrust Aile, and yet Grey still couldn't believe the results. The total test time had gone to ten seconds and twenty-eight milliseconds. In that time, the Guardians' testing equipment had picked up electronic waves of energy from his body, but nothing that could have seemed out of the ordinary. As Grey did his best to read through the rest of the report, he finally came across the mission summary. It didn't surprise him that it was a failure; what he was interested in was the reason why it had been a failure. Grey found the correct data point, and in a bold, red font, it displayed the message; INCOMPLETE SOFTWARE: Data read failure detected. Complete data info can not be read at this time. Please reenter data, or try again later.
So… the DNA he tried to copy didn't transfer correctly? Or was it saying that the Guardians' training room wasn't able to pick up all the details? Before Grey could ask Aile what it meant, a very angered voiced shouted at them,
"Why are you not at mission control?!"
Both Grey and Aile turned to the source of the voice, and were less than surprised to see Vent there. Aile's younger twin brother looked like he had been on a fruitless search to find his lost pet; in a sudden realization, Grey understood that in some degree, he had been.
"Grey and I were testing a theory." Aile told her brother coldly. "Would you like to join us? It might be beneficial to us in the future if it works."
That was when Vent gave Grey such a dark, cold stare that the Reploid could have sworn his core stopped functioning for a moment.
"You are not authorized to be here." the young man venomously spat. Grey started to rebut in his defense, but Aile beat him to it.
"I gave him authorization to be here. Rose and Muguet have better things to do than remind me that I'm dying."
Something in Vent diffused a bit at hearing this. He was still tense, make no mistake about it.
"Please," the young man then softly begged. "Go back to the command room."
Aile stared at her brother for a few moments before giving an annoyed sigh. "Grey," she said to the Reploid, "Can you help me back to mission control?"
"Yes Commander." he agreed without question. He took her by the arm, and together they left the training room without another look at Vent. For a moment Grey wondered if Vent would look over the battle data, but he was distracted by Aile tugging on his sleeve for attention.
"Keep practicing." Aile hissed into Grey's ear. "Keep me updated on anything interesting. Got it?"
In the back of his mind, Grey wondered if he had any true consideration in the practice, but to Aile he agreed with a small, "I'll try Commander."