[FIN] Handsome Hands

[TawnyAngel]

Sera had been the third person he'd told when he got hold of it. Hold was the wrong word. When he'd got... attached to it? He was already very attached to it. It wasn't real but it was wonderful. He was still getting used to it and honestly he just forgot to use it a lot of the time, just as he had tried to used the hand he didn't have a lot for the first few months after losing it. It was heavy too; he wasn't used to any weight there at all anymore and it weighed slightly more than a natural arm would, what with the thick metal casing and all. There was... it was... there were complicated thoughts about it as well as the excitement but he was ignoring them for now, though he suspected they'd come up later on today.

Today - this evening rather - he was heading for Camphoren, for a bar he and Sera had been to a couple of times before. It was a warm evening and even high up in the sky on Red he only felt slightly chilly in just a t-shirt and jeans. The sun was just beginning to go orange on the horizon as they approached the city, it looked warm and beautiful. Life did too right now, and wasn't that tacky? Aulus grinned to himself, nobody else knew about the tacky thought so it was okay.

They landed in a square not far from the bar and Aulus walked the rest of the way, aware of the stares he was drawing from people on their way to their own evenings' activities but - probably for the first time ever - he was kind of enjoying the looks. Yes, go ahead plebs, revel in his amazing piece of tech! No you can't touch it.

As he approached the bar Aulus opened the sliding shutters on his metal forearm and tapped out a quick text to Sera on the touchscreen below. //Just arrived, you near? What's your first round?//  

[BlackFireKitsune]

While Seraphine wasn't one to arrive early to things - if she cared about it she would arrive on time, and if she didn't care then she'd arrive late, if she even arrived at all - this evening was a rare exception to the rule. Kurt had told her about his new arm and seemed more than eager to show her, and it would be misleading to say she was anything less than excited to see it. She was already attempting to nonchalantly recline in one of the bar's seats - she was too excited to relax and thus failing every attempt to do otherwise - when she received his text, and she leaned forward to tap out a response with her single thumb: Already inside slowpoke! The usual

What would it look like? Was it as useful as he'd expected it to be? Was it as good as having his original arm? So many questions buzzed about in her head and she wanted to ask them all, to know the answers to all of them and more, but she couldn't do anything else at the moment but stew in her curiosity that grew exponentially with each passing second.  

[TawnyAngel]

Sera? Early? Was the sky falling? Aulus grinned to himself a bit and resolved not to draw attention to her earliness, it wouldn't do any good and might do some harm but he found himself somehow pleased by it; he interpreted it as her wanting to see his new arm as much as he wanted to show her.

Once inside Aulus made for the bar, he didn't have to wait long and soon had a beer for himself in his left hand and Sera's drink in his right. He was still a bit wary of grasping things in the metal digits knowing their crushing power but he hadn't yet accidentally squashed anything and so he wasn't overly worried that he would now. Spotting Sera he headed over and moved into her field of vision.

"Evening. Drink?" he held it out to her with a grin.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Although Sera was quite good at lying - she'd had a great deal of practice over most of her life, after all - and thus also usually good at masking some of her emotions, some of them were more difficult to disguise than others. She tried very, very hard to not look too eager while she waited for Kurt to arrive, and while she mostly managed it - apart from the frequent anxious fidgeting - all of her efforts flew out the window the moment she saw him -- or more accurately, saw his new arm. A large portion of her questions were answered already, just by looking at it, but she still had so many more, though for the moment they remained at the very back of her mind. She was far too busy studying his new arm to even think of them. The glass he handed her was accepted absent-mindedly as she scooted closer in her chair to get a better look at his new piece of tech. Sleek, black and very technical; it wasn't at all how she'd been picturing prosthetics thus far -- which was entirely her fault, given her persistent stubbornness to ignore any and everything regarding prosthetic limbs since her accident despite every effort made by both her mother and her doctor. Everything, absolutely everything came second at the moment; she didn't even remember to try her drink. "Damn," was all she could say. How did it work? Did it work well? Was it difficult to use? ...if it worked well, would that be something she could get for herself?  

[TawnyAngel]

"Right?" Aulus grinned at Sera, turning away from the bar in favour of a table where they wouldn't be so crowded by people. He'd thought about what to tell her of course, he could hardly admit the actual source of the tech, and so thanks to Alex there now existed a former company that was now going in a different direction and thus not taking new orders. He had also come prepared with information about actual companies who did similar things, though probably without the hidden weaponry. He wasn't sure if it would be desired or required but he had it if Sera wanted it.

They reached a table soon enough and Aulus sat down in one of the chair, resting his metal arm on the wooden surface. "So?" he asked with a smile.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Usually while in bars or clubs with persons of the opposite gender, Sera conducted herself with a certain amount of decorum and class; she most certainly never followed boys around like an eager puppy as she did now. Kurt was excited too, that much was plain to see, and his excitement served to make her more excited somehow. How? Why was she this excited over something someone else got? She wasn't sure she really understood why, but figured it had something to do with the thought of having two hands again instead of just one. Even though this meeting was mostly about Kurt and his new arm, she couldn't help but think a great deal of herself and how something like this would work for her. "So," she echoed but stopped as if she had something else to say; she searched for a word for a while and would have gesticulated somewhat if her only hand weren't busy holding a drink she'd all but forgotten about. "So tell me about it!" She said instead, still unable to contain her eagerness as she practically fell into her seat and only just managed not to spill her drink everywhere - which reminded her she actually had it, so she took a sip or two before lowering it to continue, "When'd you get it? Did they just stick it on there, or did you need surgery for it? How's it work?"  

[TawnyAngel]

Tambery had been very excited by his new arm but not this excited, but then how could she be? It was awesome to her, sure, but it didn't mean what it meant to him and to Sera. "Well! I actually got this made in the UK, but apparently there's people in Kodo who do similar things? Which is good, because the company I got it from have decided to go in a 'different commercial direction', they're not producing any more prosthetics they don't have on order. But," he waved his normal hand at the trivial detail, "like I say, other places exist. I had to get surgery to have it, yeah. You get a metal bit put inside your bone, and when that heals you get an external bit screwed into that and the prosthetic attaches to that bit. Basically it works by plugging into the nerves you have in your arm already, feeding in signals from sensors in the prosthetic. It ah," Aulus shrugged and grinned, "it... kind of feels like strawberry sweets taste, you know? It's not quite like my natural hand feels - or maybe I'm just not used to it yet - but the sensation in the hand is really good and so's the dexterity, I haven't got any problem manipulating small objects and I haven't broken anything by mistake." Yet, probably, but still! He hadn't!

"Oh, and seen as my prosthetic is so big there was room to fit this in," he added, grin widening as he slid aside the shutters on his forearm to reveal the touchscreen. "Integrated pokegear!"  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Ah, so the company that made his wasn't making anymore of them, though that wasn't too terrible given he knew other companies right there in Kodo made similar prosthetics. Hopefully very similar. "Surgery," she echoed quietly with a frown. Surgery... Surgery meant going back to the hospital, having her arm opened back up again, having metal stuck into it and - if nerves were involved - it likely meant rooting around in it to place them all properly. The thought of it made her skin crawl a bit, but it meant having two hands again - it meant being somewhat normal again - and despite how uncomfortable the thought of surgery made her, the thought of having a useful arm and being independent again outweighed the cons. If nothing else, Kurt had agreed in that line of thinking - though maybe he liked invasive surgery; what did she know. "It's not the same," she elaborated on his 'sweets' analogy, though her tone was questioning, almost hesitant, "it's different, but it's good anyway? Is it... is it just as good as having a regular arm, or almost?" She'd spent this whole time, the entire time since her accident assuming that any and every prosthetic wouldn't even remotely compare to having her real arm, and that all of them were subpar at best. A lot of the ones she'd seen demonstrated to her - when her mother all but bodily forced her to go to the hospital to see them - had looked like sad doll part more than useful, functioning limbs that could replace what she'd lost, and so she'd assumed all prosthetics were similar. Until, of course, she'd heard about Kurt's new arm; now she'd seen it, and it was still difficult to wrap her head around.

...and it had pokegear in it? What? "They could do that?" She asked incredulously as she leaned over to get a better look at the screen. If her eyebrows went any higher they'd disappear into her hairline. "Seriously? Like fully-functioning pokegear?" That sounded way too cool to be real, almost like it was straight out of some sci-fi movie or something. Seriously? Could she get one like that? ...she didn't have a pokegear, and thus far hadn't needed one, so would she get one like that even if she could? She had gotten used to typing one-handed, but it wasn't ideal... Maybe she wouldn't.

While she was so busy studying and thinking about his new piece of tech, her hand repeatedly flexed over the table without her even thinking about it. The muscles in her other arm acted similarly, but given the lack of a hand it wasn't nearly as obvious.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Surgery," Aulus confirmed with a nod. "It wasn't fun - general anaesthetic, and again to have the second part screwed into the first - but the recovery from both was quick. You have to have a gap of several months between the two surgeries to let you bone integrate with the implant though."

She sounded rather hesitant as she asked him what it was actually like, and so he felt obligated to think carefully about how he replied. "Good anyway," he said after a small pause with a nod. "It's not quite as good in some ways but in other ways its actually better. The sensation on here isn't quite as fine as it is on the fingertips of my left hand but as I said, no practical issues with that. It also doesn't feel pain or temperature - I think that's possible but mine doesn't - so if I want I can pick up things that are really hot or cold without a problem, and obviously I never have to worry about cutting it. Putting in a pokegear, or phone functions or whatever, is actually really easy compared to the rest of the tech." Aulus grinned and pulled up a web browser on his arm-screen, which came up to google by default. "Basically all they have to do is leave a space for it. With yours you'd have less room of course but if you wanted you could fit in something like a smart watch, so you could have a small screen read messages without digging your phone out of your bag or something if you had them linked up. It needs a separate battery from the main prosthetic functions, but if you think of the weight of a smartphone of pokegear it's not really a big deal. Especially if your prosthetic was made of something lighter than mine, this thing's titanium so while it's lighter than steel it's still pretty heavy."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Well... That doesn't sound too bad," said Sera in the tone of one who thought it did still sound bad regardless. A few months? On one hand that seemed altogether far too long to wait, but on the other hand she knew quite well how long it had taken for her arm to heal originally, and so a few months made sense. Still...

His answer surprised her, and it showed in her expression. Better? It could be better than his original arm? If anyone else had told her that she would've laughed in their face and told them off, but Kurt quite obviously knew firsthand whether or not that was the case, and he didn't seem to be pulling her leg about it... "Well I don't think it could be just as sensitive as a real hand, given it's made of metal and doesn't 'sense' stuff in the same way," she noted thoughtfully, "but damn, that's actually really cool... Is it really that easy to add stuff like that?" Ohh, a smartwatch would be cool; she never had much use for a pokegear, anyway, as she'd always just used her phone, and from what she knew of smartwatches they were pretty cool devices.  

[TawnyAngel]

Aulus grinned and nodded affirmation. "Yeah, it is. The inner workings of the prosthetic don't take up a lot of space outside of the hand. You've got the fibre optics to transfer the data to the processor and the processor itself but that's pretty small, and that's it really. I admit I don't know the Kodo company all that well but all prosthetics are custom made, so all they have to do if they can't do that in house is leave a gap for it to fit in, and the right holes in the casing liiiike, this." During the drawn out 'like' Aulus flipped aside a couple of shutters on the underside of his arm, revealing a USB port and a micro USB. "These are for data transfer, and for charging the gear functions," he explained. "I've got another one just above the elbow that provides the power for the limb functions. The gear needs charging about as often as you'd expect a mobile or a normal pokegear to, the basic limb functions can got longer than that without power but I charge every night anyway."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

All the more complex words floated right over her head - Sera knew pitifully little about the finer details or intricate inner workings of technology - but she figured she got the gist of it, being that all of the bits and pieces inside the prosthetic itself didn't actually take up much space at all. Did that mean the inside was more or less hollow? Was there extra metal in there to fill up the space or something? Maybe they used--

Oh, that was neat. "Oh, hey, that's pretty cool," she said, leaning in a bit to better see the small holes. Something occurred to her though, and she frowned a little bit as she tried to puzzle it out. "So do you just.. plug it in to charge and then not move for a while, or...?"  

[TawnyAngel]

Aulus shook his head and took a sip of his drink. "Not usually, no. I might give it a boost if I'm sitting at the computer but usually I take it off overnight and leave it to charge. It already feels strange not wearing it but I don't think it would be all that comfortable to sleep with it on anyway so," he shrugged, "it seems like the best way to keep it charged up without having to tie myself down for ages."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Aulus taking a sip of his drink reminded her of hers, so she pulled the glass into her hand again to lift it and drink some of it. He took it off at night to charge, hm? Curiously her eyes roamed over the length of the metal arm, specifically near the base, and wondered just where and how it came off. "How do you take it off and put it back on again? Is it hard to do?"  

[TawnyAngel]

"No, not hard," Aulus replied with another shake of his head, sliding the sleeve of his t-shirt up his arm as he spoke. The black metal casing came up slightly over the end of his arm; he indicated a little sensor near the top of the prosthetic. "That's a thumbprint scanner. It releases a catch that lets me fold down a section of the prosthetic. Do you see here?" he indicated some barely visible hinges about an inch and a half from the top of the case. "It folds down to there and then I can get a little tool in to turn the whole thing off and then separate it from the abutment in my arm. Takes me a couple of minutes at the moment but I've only just got the thing, once I'm familiar with it a bit more I expect it'll be a bit faster... unless it's like a USB slot forever, have to turn it four ways before it bloody fits." He snorted and rolled his sleeve back down. "But even if so, a couple of minutes to get it off isn't bad and it's much faster to put on, pretty much clicks itself in automatically."