"So, wait... This thing was your grandmother?" Jake pointed at the remnants of Balilaika that Valentine was tinkering with. "Hold on a second, this ain't right..."
"She gave up her body after giving birth to me." Valentine spoke up, still focused on his delicate toolwork. "She's like Motoko, but without the synthetic skin. Or, a better example... a full body version of Stella's limbs."
"He's right." Yuuki nodded. "Motoko once told me about a former superior officer of hers that was similarly designed. Only difference was her face didn't move, it was completely solid metal in the shape of a face... Like a mask."
"So what are you planning to do to her?" Jake asked, since they were in the Darkwood's basement, which was where Valentine's bedroom had been set up, plus a workshop for his project regarding his robotic mother.
"I'm firstly going to repair her body." Valentine explained. "Then, after removing and formatting her cyberbrain, I am going to rewrite her personality from scratch, and make numerous upgrades to her sensory, psychological and physical matrixes."
"In English please?" Neither Jake nor Yuuki could understand what he'd said beyond repairing the damaged body.
"He intends to turn her into a servant, like a bodyguard or housemaid." Motoko spoke up from behind them, carrying a dufflebag of her cyber equipment. "What about Akira? Any plans for her too?"
"I haven't decided yet. And after all that you've done to her body, I might need to invest a lot more time into this project than I'm willing to sacrifice."
"Serenity said she wasn't taking any chances this time." Motoko held up her hands. "I could do her repairs myself, actually. Of course, I'm also dealing with the cyberbrains for both of them, so it isn't much trouble to fix what we did to her." Motoko smirked, since Akira's synthetic flesh had been melted off her body, no thanks to Rize's Pyrokinesis from the incident two days earlier.
"That'd be a better option, thank you Motoko." Valentine smiled, but didn't remove his gaze from his work.
By the second week since Valentine's arrival, he had Balilaika's body back to working order and began working with Motoko to revamp the cyberbrain from the ground up. Aided by Tobias, Natasha and his sisters, the dual robot project - Akira's prosthetic body was also back to full function, but lacked the synthetic flesh at the moment - was quickly taking strides towards completion, which didn't go unnoticed by the rest of his family.
"Takes after her, doesn't she? That intelligence and the natural talent with science..." Rize commented in Japanese, which they all knew Valentine didn't speak, to Tobias, who nodded in agreement.
"I think it's a fitting end for her legacy. Turned into the plaything of the one person she so proudly threw away her humanity for." Tobias agreed. "And I know what you three did to Akira back in Raccoon City, just so you know."
"It's not like I was exactly hiding it from you or anything. It just never came up in conversation." Rize laughed, knowing what he was referring to.
"Done. Let's do it." Motoko finally disconnected the cyberbrains from their cradles, then carefully lifted them one at a time back into Balilaika's and Akira's heads, which sealed themselves with loud clicking sounds. After several seconds, both of them began to show signs of activation as their eyes lit up and they lifted their heads.
"How may we be of service, Master Valentine?" Both of them queried as they bowed their heads towards Valentine at the same time, both speaking in synthetic voices as their identical bodies clasped their hands together in front of themselves.
"Just call me Valentine." Valentine waved his hand dismissively at the title. "I want you to confirm your primary function parameters."
"We serve you and your family, obeying all commands given by registered members and associates, as delegated by yourself, Valentine Balilaika Darkwood." Both of them listed off their basest, most 'instinctive' orders in unison, still standing at attention as Motoko presented them with the contrasting outfits that Valentine had prepared for them.
"Confirm identities." Valentine spoke up as they accepted their outfits.
"Kuro." Akira's former body spoke up as she accepted the bag.
"Shiro." Balilaika said her own name right afterwards, likewise taking the offered bag.
"Put on your uniforms, once you are done, you will be provided with a 3D render of this house, designation: Darkwood residence." Valentine held up a data storage device's cyberbrain cable. "Save the data into your cyberbrains, then follow me."
Both of them opened the bags and donned their respective white and black outfits, which matched their Japanese names accordingly. Akira, AKA Kuro, wore the black dress, while Balilaika, AKA Shiro, donned the white one. The matching styled dresses consisted of an ankle length pencil skirt with a slit all the way up both legs to mid-thigh. The shoulders and neck were conservatively simple and elegant, without hindering any of the moving parts near their necks and shoulders. On the chest, however, were their names in oppositely coloured embroidery. Both dresses were made entirely by Serenity.
Upstairs, the rest of his family and all of their close friends were waiting for their arrival, having been informed they were needed to register identities for the robots. Of course, they were his, but they still had at least some authority to them.
It took quite a while due to their numbers, but Shiro and Kuro were eventually ready with everyone's relevant information, which left an obviously proud smile on Valentine's face.
"Good, one last thing..." Valentine addressed everyone with a glance at Motoko's encouraging nod. "I've taken ownership of Balilaika's staff and Akira's Quinque. I've got another project in mind for them, in case you were wondering what I did with them."
"Don't break anything, and make sure not to hurt yourself with that Quinque either." Rize warned with a motherly tone. "I've seen what that Quinque can do, believe me."
"'Kay, so we're finally allowed to say what's been going on here for the past few weeks. Our dad's biological mother had a son, but she died and we've adopted him. His name's Valentine, and he's agreed to come onto the stream in a little bit, he loves to build things, so he's downstairs right now." Yuuki explained to the livestream as she loaded hers and Rachael's latest savefile for their co-op playthrough of an adventure game. "He's gonna be answering all the questions, right now, we're off in search of those gems from yesterday."
A short time later, Valentine knocked on the door to his sisters' room, which was quickly opened for him to walk inside.
"You wanted to introduce me to your livestream?" Valentine already noticed the setup of camera's positioned on the desk and towards the room at large.
"Yup, they don't bite, c'mere." Rachael nodded, changing the camera feed to the one aimed at the whole room. "Alright, here's Val, be gentle, okay?"
Valentine sat in the offered chair, nervously glancing at the camera and Rachael's computer as the chat started rapidly asking him questions.
"Hang on..." Yuuki locked the chat down with a few clicks, then turned to her brother. "Okay, so I got the gist of what was being asked, so Val, look at me. Val. Over here." Yuuki swiveled her chair to face her little brother as he looked away from the web animation on the chat. "I'll ask you the questions I saw them asking, you answer them to me, okay?"
"The chat's kinda... distracting." Valentine nodded once in agreement.
"We have six eyes, we can read it and still play. Now, first question they want to know; Your age."
"But you..." Valentine started, but Yuuki held up her hand.
"They're the ones asking, not me."
"Fifteen." Valentine got the idea now, so he answered the questions that Yuuki had collected before stopping the chat.
By the end of it all, Yuuki gave him a pat on the shoulder to let him know he was done with the introductions. "Alright, now that you've scared the crap out of our brother, he's done for now. No more questions after I unlock the chat. Got that?"
Valentine left their room, headed back down to the basement where he'd been working on redesigning Balilaika's three-piece staff into a rather genius collapsing design he'd come up with. Inside of each of the three pieces were Akira's Quinque, and of course, it had to be made of Quinque Steel.
He literally reverse engineered himself a CCG style Quinque.
"So you reverse engineered their weapons together, and made yourself a chestplate to store them on. Very well done, Valentine." Tobias smiled at his son's finally finished weapon, which was the three parts of the staff locked onto the fitted chestplate he was adjusting the straps that kept it in place.
"I have more pieces of the armour downstairs, almost finished them." Valentine smiled slightly at the compliment. "So what's in those boxes?" He pointed at three identical plastic cases, which he vaguely recognized as gun cases, that were in a neat row on the coffee table in front of his father.
"These are a gift for you and your sisters, once they get home from work." Tobias replied. "They're all the same, so I'm waiting for them before I let you open them."