I don't own Cyberchase. Max is mine.
Chapter Three
Temple of Care
Max was in bad shape when Motherboard dropped the six of them off at Shangri-La's gates. She was barely breathing, her mouth slack and right eye partially open. Digit gripped Max's right paw with his wing and was stunned when she did not grip his feathers in return. Marbles noticed, too, and ran to alert the warriors.
"Gargoyle down! Gargoyle down!" He shouted.
The thick gates opened within minutes of Marbles' alert and eight bearers marched out led by the diminutive Red Warrior. They approached Max – shooing Digit and the kids away as they laid the stretcher down and rolled her battered body onto it.
The Red Warrior placed his ear against Max's chest. He signed and said, "We have little time. Take her to the Temple of Care."
The warriors nodded once and bore the stretcher to their shoulders. The Red Warrior stayed behind and addressed Marbles.
"She was electrocuted, wasn't she?"
Marbles could only nod.
"Hacker?"
Another nod.
Red sighed. "We were afraid this would happen. Come."
They followed Red into Shangri-La and up into a Bogota where they were admitted into a room. "Stay. We will call you when it is time for you to be called. You may do what you like but do not leave this room."
"How is Max?" Inez blurted out.
Red regarded her. "She is very weak. Electricity is deadly to a gargoyle. From what I heard from her heart. I can assume she has been electrocuted many times at high voltage."
"That's right." Jackie said.
Red regarded her next. "I will pass that on. Thank you for your information. Now, we will get back to work."
Marbles presented Red with Max's arm and leg. "Can you take these to her, please?"
"We will not need them right now." Red told him. "I will call you when we are done." With that, Red shut the door and left.
Marbles paced the room like a caged animal; clutching the oversized limbs to him like he was afraid to let them go. Digit perched on the arm of a chair. Matt lounged on the one bed in the whole room. Jackie went to one of the windows and looked out wile Inez worked on a puzzle book she found in a drawer under another window.
"What's that noise?" Jackie said after a few minutes of silence.
All activity in the room ceased. Everyone listened and Marbles joined Jackie by the window.
"Those are the warriors down in the Temple of care. They're chanting and praying while Master Pi heals Max." he said. Then, as though a thought had occurred to him, Marbles went to the low table, laid both prosthetic limbs out, and opened them up.
"What are you doing, Doc?" Digit asked, fluttering to the table's edge.
"I feel I must inspect these parts." Marbles said. "After all, they have been in Hacker's possession for some time. I must make sure he did not reprogram them."
"Good idea." Digit said. He opened his chest hatch and out came a toolbox.
Digit had primarily agreed with the Doc's assessment only to encourage him to do something. As long as Marbles was doing maintenance work, his mind would be off Max who was now being healed. Repairing things usually distracted the Doc from everything else.
The room was mostly silent except for the occasional sounds of Marbles hard at work checking Max's replacement parts and Inez's pencil on paper. Matt had closed his eyes and resorted to snoozing while he waited to hear any news and Jackie was still watching the odd ceremony in the Temple of Care; occasionally telling them things like "Now they're dancing" or "Now they're beating drums."
Marbles was only half-paying attention to what was going on. His thoughts interrupted whenever the twelve-year-old spoke. Having spent some time with Max in Shangri-La, Marbles knew many of their ceremonies by heart.
"The dance is to keep evil spirits at bay." He said. "The drums make the sound of her heart."
At the mention of the drumbeats equals heart beats, Inez looked up. "Do you suppose Max is aware of any of this?"
Marbles shrugged and said nothing.
Digit handed him a flat-head jeweler's screwdriver which Marbles used to remove a circuit board and a CPU form the leg.
"We're better off not assuming anything at this point." The cyboid said. "Max was pretty heavily sedated before that incident on the Northern Frontier. Whether or not the electricity was a wake up call is hard to say. We may never know anything until Max wakes up."
Marbles still said nothing as he scanned the circuit board and CPU with his Sqwackpad, checked the readings, and returned both parts to their places. Then, he poked at the gears with the edge of the screwdriver.
"These gears are extremely dry. It is a wonder Max could even use this leg at all." Marbles said. "Digit, I require oil."
Digit dug out a can of oil and a syringe. Marbles filled the needle with the oil and gently sprayed each gear with the smallest amount of lubricant. Then, with his screwdriver, Marbles carefully moved the gear around their spindle, stopping only when the gear refused to move, then sprayed the ornery pieces and tried again; spraying them only when he wasn't satisfied with the result.
Eventually, Inez got bored with her puzzle book and went to the table to see what Marbles was doing. She scanned the appendage, critically with her eyes, then regarded Marbles.
"That's a pretty interesting piece of equipment you got here." She commented.
"Thank you." Marbles said, simply.
"How do they work?" Inez continued, encouraging Marbles to keep his mind off Max.
Marbles reached inside the leg again and screwed the circuit board back in place. Then, he detached the battery and servo motor, scanned them, and replaced the battery before returning both back to their places. Marbles then wiped his hands on a rag which had been in the toolbox, closed the lid to the leg's machinery, and set the limb aside before answering.
"Max may have lost her arm and leg, but her brain is still sending out signals to move them. These parts take those signals and amplify them."1
"How?" Inez pressed. Normally Marbles was only all too willing to discuss the inner-workings of one of his inventions. Today, he only seemed interested in "fixing" Max's replacements, lest Hacker had changed something – which could be a very bad thing.
Marbles looked at her. Then, with a pen, he pointed to the pegs at the top of both limbs.
"This peg works the same way as a radio receiver does. It takes the signals her brain sends out, passes them through the CPU which translates the signals into computer code and sends them to the circuit board. The CB, in turn, pings the servo motor which moves the parts."
"Does it take much time for, say, a finger to move?" Inez asked.
Marbles shook his head. "No. Ada and I have developed these parts so the action will be instantaneous once the signal leaves her brain."
"So the prosthetic parts were designed to be sort of natural." Inez said.
It wasn't a question, but Marbles treated it as one.
"Yes. I suppose you could call it natural."
Having gotten bored with the procession, Jackie joined Inez, the Doc, and Digit at the table. They watched as Marbles opened a panel on Max's arm, scanned it with his Sqwack, read the results, closed the panel, and opened a different panel.
"Dr. Marbles -" Jackie began.
"- Yes?" The Doc said, absently.
"When you were giving Max her replacement parts, how did she feel about relying on robot body parts?" Jackie asked.
"She did not really have much of a choice." Marbles answered. "With her left arm and leg gone, she would not be able to crawl like other gargoyles. Technicality, she would not be able to move like other gargoyles. Max has her pride and did not want to be carried everywhere nor did she want to be trapped here on Shangri-La for the remainder of her natural life. So, she agreed to be fitted with replacements."
"What about her eye? Wasn't her eye gone, too?" Jackie asked.
Marbles stopped what he was doing just to look up at both human girls. "Yes. In fact it was. The Dematerializer made short work of that portion of her face. Now, there is nothing more than a hole where her eye and the socket around it had been eaten away. A portion of her skull is missing, too. The eye-patch you have observed is, quite literally, just an eye-patch with an optical device."
"How does the eye-patch work?" Inez asked.
"The eye-patch, itself, is fused to the side of her face to prevent infection. The eye is level with what is left of the socket. The optic nerve was plugged into the back of the robotic eye, thus permitting her to see."
The girls were quiet again as they digested this bit of information. They continued to watch Marbles as he fiddled with the circuit board, battery, servo motor, and CPU. Satisfied those were in working order – particularly after the replaced the battery – he checked the gears and oiled them as needed.
The room was quiet, once more, except for the occasional snore from Matt and a scrape of metal against metal from Marbles' tinkering. Nobody noticed the ceremony had ended until Digit happened to look out the window.
"Hey. It's awfully quiet out there."
All activity stopped. Even Matt stopped snoring. His eyes open and staring out the window.
"Hey. You're right, Didge. Wonder if Max survived." Matt said.
The screwdriver slipped out of Marbles' normally stable hands and clattered on the table top. He flexed his fingers as though working out a cramp, but by the look on his face, everyone knew he was trying not to think of the worst.
They heard sandals on the stairs leading up to their room. Everyone stood up as the door opened and the Red Warrior stepped in.
"Max is alive. But she is still very weak. This is the second time in her life she has been electrocuted to near nonexistence. This time, she almost didn't make it."
"Is there anything seriously wrong with her?" Digit asked.
"Only some temporary side-effects from having her body charged with 360 volts of electricity. Occasionally she will twitch or something but that is fairly normal. The most damage she sustained was to her wings. The membrane has been ruined beyond repair and there are a few hairline fractures to the ridges. I can only assume the damage was caused by a chain."
"Yes." Marbles said.
Red looked disgusted but quickly composed himself. "Dr. Marbles, Master Pi has given you permission to attend to your daughter. You may bring the replacement parts with you."
"May my assistant, Digit, come with me?" Marbles asked.
Red considered it and said, "Don't get under foot."
"Right." Digit said.
They cleaned up their mess, grabbed the two parts, and started out the door. Then, Marbles turned to his three friends.
"Perhaps it would be better if you three tried to get some rest. If Max wakes up, I will have someone come retrieve you."
"Okay, Dr. Marbles." Matt said. With a yawn, he collapsed on the bed and the snooze fest began once more.
Inez gave the Doc a reassuring squeeze to the elbow. "You going to be okay?"
Marbles gave her a small smile. "I will be just as soon as Max restarts." He patted her on the head, then withdrew. In his place, two warriors entered and unrolled mats, spread out pillows and blankets, then left.
Jackie fell asleep first, but Inez was still awake; her mind still rolling over the day's activities. Every time she closed her eyes, she still saw Max on the floor – shaking and twitching and screaming. The screams were loud and shook Inez to the core. She found she blamed Hacker for it. She found she blamed Hacker for a lot of things.
Exhausted from a long day, Inez finally fell asleep. But her dreams were still disturbed by images from Max being tortured. Her screams loud and long. Inez was running to save the gargoyle, but no matter how hard she ran, the compound was only getting farther and farther away. Then, Max's ruined face appeared, eye-patch missing from her face. Max reached out to Inez with a paw, the left one, and Inez reached out to grab it but it quickly vanished in a cloud of binary code.
0
Inez awoke with a start, sweat dampening her face and her heart pounded. She gasped, unable to shake the terrible nightmare.
"My pardon. Are you alright?" Said one of the tall warriors who squatted beside her.
Inez nodded. "Yeah. Just a dream." She said. She looked out the window and saw that it was morning. "How's Max?"
"She has awakened and has already begun taking a stroll through our site." The warrior said, handing Inez a glass of water.
"What? She's already on the move?"
"Gargoyles heal very quickly. We are quite pleased with her recovery. We did not think she would, last night, but her will to defeat Hacker is strong." The warrior said.
"Can I go see her?"
"Certainly. But first you must eat."
The warrior pointed to a breakfast set up on the low table. Inez sat down and ate. The food was strange but good. While she ate, she looked around the room. Matt was still asleep on the bed and Jackie was sprawled out on her mat. Marbles and Digit were in the room too. Both in sleep-mode. Marbles laid on his belly on another mat; mouth open. Digit was nestled on a pillow with a blanket draped over his body, his head tucked under his wing.
Once Inez had eaten her fill, she got up and went to find Max, no difficult task because of Max's vastness and her color. She found Max sitting on a bridge overlooking a reflection pond. She was not alone. Master Pi was with her and the two seemed to be trapped in a serious conversation. Inez stayed away so as not to impose.
1"[Max's] arm and leg are gone, but [her] brain is still sending out signals to move them. These parts take those signals and amplify them." - edited lines from FullMetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa