"So what's this thing gonna do to me again?" Sheva asked, staring at the device that Valentine was showing her. She wasn't sure about the idea, so she wanted to hear him explain it again.
"This is a DNI, or a direct neural interface, a transponder that Motoko and Stella helped me come up with. It's augmentation for you and Rico to have more fluid communication both in and out of combat. As you can clearly guess, it's going to be installed via surgery. Yes, it can be removed afterwards, it's not like a cyborg's cyberbrain. At all. I made absolutely certain that was the case when I developed it."
"I presume that he's already fitted you for your half of this?" Sheva asked Rico, who was standing in his nearby bay in the Nightfall's hangar deck.
"Not yet. I would be required to be close by during the surgery process, to actually initiate the neural link between us. From my understanding, Valentine also wishes to perform a full upgrade to your right arm, which would logically happen at the same time."
"My arm?" Sheva glanced at her metal hand, then up at Valentine warily. "What the hell are you planning?"
"Parts replacement, and I need to replace the internal power system with a Magno-Core in the bicep. The existing bio-electricity system isn't going to perform as well with the DNI, if you want to go ahead with it."
"You just want to tinker, don't you?" Sheva teased.
"I would say yes if it wasn't already completely finished. It's so straightforward of a replacement that you could do it yourself after disconnecting your arm from your shoulder." Valentine chuckled at the jab. "If not, me and Motoko will do that to your arm while the surgery happens for you and Rico."
"Speaking of which, how will that be done? Rico mentioned he needs to be close by... How close are we talking here?"
"My central core would suffice as is, and you were present when it was installed in my cockpit. My core would initially need to be within fifteen feet of the transponder when it is installed. If I were to stand as is, at full size, my sensor array would extend the initial linking range to fifty feet. Any further would reduce the percentages of success due to weakening the signal pulse generated by your DNI upon activation."
"How far would we be able to communicate after it's done?"
"Anywhere within Jormungand's reach. Your communications would be handled by Jormungand's satellite network, so you can literally be on opposite sides of the planet and still have perfect signal to each other."
"So the relay signal to the satellites is why my arm needs the Magno-Core, isn't it?" Sheva understood now. "So what way do you want to do the link, Rico?"
"Uninstalling my central core would cause no defects or errors to my systems, and since you will be the one to participate in the surgery for obvious reasons, I think it is a logical conclusion to extract my core and carry it into the operating room yourself, ensuring optimal success rates and assurances. My hull would remain inert unless manual control is engaged by you from within my cockpit, or my core is reinstalled, thus forcing a full system check and reactivation."
"Can you still gather any intel when you're just the core?"
"No. I would require the minimum of some sort of auditory input and output devices to be connected to my core for any form of communication. Think of it as me being asleep, in biological terms. Only you neural-linking to me would wake me up."
"So when can we get this done?" Sheva nodded, finally comfortable with receiving the augmentation and upgrades.
"You pop out his core, I'll call Motoko and the cyberbrain technicians we spoke with to perform the surgery. You'll be back on your feet in time for dinner."
"What about the surgery part? Stitches and all that crap."
"Remember how I said it's removable?" Valentine smirked. "It's like Stella's augmentations on her spine, she was up on her feet in a few hours after the surgery. She was how I came up with this design in the first place. It's attached to the back of your head and the upper part of your neck. A single cable will be inserted under the skin of your shoulder with a guider probe, and it'll connect to the baseplate for your arm, and of course to the Magno-Core inside your bicep. Minimal poking and cutting, couple of stitches wouldn't even be necessary. After that, just learn how to use it and you'll be good to go."
"And if I ever needed to yank it off?"
"It'd hurt like a bitch, as the saying goes." Rico replied as he opened his armoured canopy and then the underlying hatch for the cockpit, reaching inside with his index finger and thumb, withdrawing his central core and holding it out to the pair since they were standing on the gangway in front of his bay. "This comment is recorded before I removed my core; I promise that I shall greet you when we are linked, Sheva. Until then, for once I will be the one in your hands."
"Mind if I ask you a question, Val?" Motoko asked while they two of them fluidly upgraded Sheva's removed arm with the compact Magno-Core and replacement parts while two doctors stood nearby, waiting to take the upgraded limb back to the operating theater to reconnect it to Sheva's shoulder and use the guider probe to connect her DNI to the awaiting socket hidden within the bicep.
"Sure, what's up?" Valentine nodded.
"Why not give Sheva a normal cyberbrain, and add the DNI to the existing electronics in that?"
"Not enough power to broadcast the signal." Valentine replied. "I have nothing against cyberbrains, it just doesn't have enough power to generate the signal strength I wanted them to have."
"And on that note, can this link between Rico and Sheva be hacked at all?"
"It's not exactly easy to determine the signal itself, since it's biological impulses translated to binary code, and the reverse, respectively. That's why I asked Koko to help. But I won't say it's not possible to get ahold of the signal."
"And what was the projected strain on Rico's core's processing power?"
"Fifteen percent, at the worst. Five at best. We'd have to ask him after we get his core back into his hull."
"What's his highest peak?"
"9.3 percent. That was apparently during the ambush at the shipyard."
With that, they were finished with the upgrades, and both nodded to the doctors waiting for them. But, neither of them wasted a moment just waiting on things, so they quickly followed the doctors right into the operating theater, since they were already wearing the required scrubs and masks to be present to observe.
Sheva was already finished receiving the DNI, and not even five feet away, on a folding metal chair, was Rico's central core, in plain view with no obstructions between him and her. Rather cheekily placed atop was Sheva's glasses.
With ease, the arm was reconnected to Sheva's awaiting baseplate, locking into place in mere seconds as the probe was set along the preprogrammed route under her skin, dragging behind it the short cable that would signal the end of the whole surgery process.
"Are we to expect any sudden reactions when the probe connects the cable to the socket?" One of the technicians asked Valentine, who shook his head.
"Not that I am aware of. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't consider them possible."
"Ten seconds." The doctor tracking the probe reported, and all of them took a step back, especially away from the designated no-man's-zone between Sheva and Rico's core. "Five. Four. Three. Two... One..."
Sheva slowly opened her eyes, expectedly blurry without her glasses, but her face broke into a relieved smile as she sighed to the crystal clear, but very cheeky words from Rico that only she could hear.
"Pilot located... Greetings, Sheva."
A/N: I wanted to have Rico's greeting to Sheva be something more smartass or cheeky, but I decided to use his first ever quote towards her, which is from Chapter 32 when he went from being called 'the mech' to his full identity as it is now. Also, for those of you that are wondering what Rico's hull is designed like, it's very obvious that he's based on the Titans in Titanfall 2. In particular, Rico resembles an Ion overall, but has the large bulky legs of Legion, with Scorch's shoulders, Northstar's jet engines (with some also on the backs of his 'shins') and - as mentioned earlier in the story, he has a head, not just a cockpit like the Titans - his head itself is shaped like Scorch's cockpit, with the 'eyeball' in the same spot in the middle. His head can turn and look around at will, it isn't locked in position like a Titan's cockpit. The armoured canopy that covers the hatch for his cockpit is retractable secondary armour meant to specifically protect the cockpit. Also a reminder, he's 39 feet tall, and Titans are about 20 - 25 feet.