[PRP] Upgrade (fin)

[TawnyAngel]

When he was actually allowed to walk out of the tech department with it attached to him he could hardly believe it. It was surreal, all of it, feeling it, it wasn't like his real hand but it was undeniably there. He brushed the fingers along the wall as he walked just to feel the smoothness.

He headed upstairs to his room, trailing the fingers along the wall all the way without a care for the soft scraping noise it made.

As soon as he was inside his room he closed the door and headed over to the bathroom - currently vacant and so he moved through it and knocked on the door that led to Tam's room with the metal hand. It sounded like he'd just tapped the door lightly with a hammer. "Hey, hey Tam are you in? I want to show you something." He tried to keep the excitement out of his voice, and he failed spectacularly.  

[Gwennythe]

"Growrororow! Grr! Groworow rowrow!" Either Tambrey had taken to barking like a Growlithe at visitors or Pakhet was out of her ball and particularly excited at the prospect of Aulus visiting.

<> Came a familiar little voice, followed by <>

They made no mention of what Tambrey was doing, but they didn't tell him not to come in, and now it sounded as though Pakhet would start whining and crying if Aulus /didn't/ come in.  

[TawnyAngel]

Uuuuuh.... Aulus deflated a little, feeling somewhat guilty for his excitement. He flexed the metal fingers and tried to reach a decision. "Err.... I'm going to come in, okay?" He tried the door - it wasn't locked - and pushed it slowly inward, ready to pull it shut again in a hurry should anything be hurled at him.  

[Gwennythe]

Aulus would be greeted with a very happy, bouncy, Pakhet trying to leap, or even climb, up his legs and then pausing with a very confused head-tilt.
What the heck was...? He had grown a very bizarre smelling arm! Exciting!
She wagged her tail and tried to stand on her hindlegs to get a better look and scent from the new arm.

Franklin was more subtle in her excitement, but her eyes still lit up with interest.
<> She remembered humans liked being complimented, especially regarding looks, on occasion.

Palu was out but quiet. Apparently the bird had become able to sleep through the Growlithe's noise.

Tambrey was, indeed, in the room, sat at her desk with her back to the door... and her lack of response soon became apparent; she had headphones over her ears, and a pencil was scribbling at a notebook that was absolutely full of of strings of letters, numbers, symbols, and strange shorthand.
She was clad in a blue sleeveless top, black three-quarter length trousers, and her hair was pinned up to keep it out of her face while she worked. Her glasses had slipped down her nose slightly- something that tended to happen when she'd been working for a long time- and the end of her pencil had clearly been chewed on.

One bare foot tapped out a beat, more in a reflex of frustration than any music she was listening to; the sound was up loud enough that Aulus could likely hear that it wasn't music. It was probably inaudible as to the subject matter, but it was clearly a voice droning on about something.  

[TawnyAngel]

Oh phew, she was busy not ignoring him. Aulus relaxed a fraction and knelt down to let Pakhet investigate the metal arm - his arm - as much as she liked. He didn't move to scratch her with it though, he was still feeling very cautious about the power he knew the titanium fingers held. If he squeezed and meant it he could break somebody's arm with plenty of PSI to spare, now was that cool or terrifying or both?

"Thanks Franklin," he replied with a smile, "it's pretty amazing, Agent Faleen made it for me. It's got a touch screen." That was definitely in the 'cool' category, a powerful little computer built right into him!...

What was Tam listening to and what was she working on? Work stuff, he guessed, and he understood even less of the fine detail of Tam's work than he did of Alex's.

Aulus got to his feet and moved a little closer to his partner before clearing his throat noisily. "Hey!" he said loudly. "You didn't hear me, so I came in because I'm an arse. Wha'cho working on?"  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey gave a start and jumped as a voice that definitely wasn't from her headphones, wasn't Franklin... and kind of hoped wasn't Tarana because she'd yet to hear his voice properly and if Tarana and Aulus sounded identical that would just be way too confusing...

She spun, eyes wide, on her chair, the action yanking the cord free from the device she was using.
"...and of course this vibration means that the afterl-" It died as, almost entirely on reflex, Tambrey scrambled for and found the shut off button.

Thus she could return her wide-eyed look to Aulus as she took her headphones off.
"Holy frak... You... have two arms!" She exclaimed; some part of her brain told her it was a good job she was still sitting down.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Hehe, yep." Aulus waggled the metal fingers in a wave. "Pretty cool, hu?" Despite getting excited about the whole 'show Tam the awesome' again he was somewhat interested in what Tam had been listening to. The after what? Afterlife? Was that like a half-life but for something biological rather than radioactive? And what 'vibration' anyway? Or... was she just listening to something about the afterlife? He wanted to believe the former rather than the latter, far fetched though it was.

"They just let me walk out with it now, want to have a look? It's got a touch screen!"

He'd ask what she was working on later, she was usually happy to explain what her latest project was.  

[Gwennythe]

Whatever she had been working on, she'd been working on it for quite a long time, probably without a break; the notebook she'd been working on was absolutely covered in the scribbles of letters, numbers and symbols on the page she left it open on, and she was at least 20 pages in.

It was quite readily abandoned for the moment though; the robotic arm was insanely cool and, more importantly, her friend had a new arm.
"It's really cool! A touchscreen? Biometric? What... How does it feel?" She reached to see if Aulus minded if she touched it. "Can, um, you feel with it?"  

[TawnyAngel]

When Tam approached Aulus smiled and held the hand out to her palm up. "It feels like strawberry sweets taste, if that makes sense. It's a real sensation but not quite the same as natural feeling. There's not a lot of feeling in most of the arm," he rapped it with the knuckles of his left hand, which he then shook with a grimace. "Ow. Bad idea. But yeah, not many sensors in most of the arm but there are a lot in the hand. It's all transmitted through the casing into wires, and that's all processed in here," he tapped the section of the arm above the elbow, "and that feeds through the abutment and into my nerves. Oh, screen! That's in the forearm, it's like having a little tablet in there. Oh and also I have claws now."  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey pushed her glasses up and brought her face in to have a closer look. It was amazing technology... She used technology, of course, in work, in every day life, but tech was not one of her strongest sections of knowledge... This 'biotech', however... The melding of machine to biological functions... There were certain aspects of such a thing that she couldn't help but understand, and the revelation that technology could marry with flesh was, of course, also a sci-fi staple... As a self-proclaimed geek, she couldn't help but think of such things.

She reached out her right hand to give the metal a soft poke, and then to give the hand a gentle squeeze, to see if Aulus could feel it.
"The sensors can... um.. feel that?" She looked toward the processing area.
Then he pointed out the screen... and then mentioned 'claws'.
"C-claws?" Her eyes lit up with a grin flittering on her mouth. "Like Wolverine claws?"  

[TawnyAngel]

"Hah! Yep, I felt that," Aulus replied, giving a very cautious feather-light squeeze back. "I've got to be careful what I do with it, apparently I can crush bones. The claws I've got right now are in the fingertips so not all that big but I could probably get Wolverine claws at a later iteration, might be useful to have both right?" Aulus grinned back at Tam and shrugged. "I'm not very good at using them yet. I've got them to come out a couple of times but it's weird, like how do you even think 'so now I'm going to extend my claws'? This is some awesome scifi bullshit right here, I swear."  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey's grin widened as she received a gentle squeeze back; it was amazing that Aulus had felt that, and had been able to return the gesture in such a way, controlling it to produce such an appropriately subtle response.

"Oh! Like Sabretooth?" Apparently it was still cool. "Yes, probably..." Tambrey agreed, thinking to herself how Aulus could almost certainly put more force behind a punch to put claws through something, but fingertips were, at least, good for detail.

"Hm... Well. I suppose you just think exactly that." The scientist ventured, eyes alight with the idea of it "Like... You'll be creating whole new neural connections in your brain... Telling your, um, body to do stuff that other people just can't do because... well, we don't have claws." It was very exciting.

<> Franklin chimed in helpfully.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Sharp fingernails," Aulus replied to Franklin with a sharp grin. Ooooh yes. "It worked a couple of times," he said with a nod to Tam, "I'm just trying to remember how it... felt? What I thought? Or how I thought it? Ha! Maybe I just need to pretend I'm Sabertooth. Always liked him more than Wolverine anyway. Apparently the shutters over the touchscreen can work like that too but they've got a manual control too for now."

As he spoke Aulus pulled a thin stylus from a slot on the underside of the forearm and poked it into a hole, which caused the shutters on the other side to slide apart and reveal the blank screen underneath. He tapped it with the stylus, pressed his thumb to it, and a screen with a plain red background just a few apps and programs such as web browsers popped up.

"Tada!" Aulus waggled the fingers of his left hand over it. "It gets wifi and all."  

[Gwennythe]

<> The little Psychic type called brightly.

"That is so cool..." Tambrey muttered, peering at the fingertips, trying to imagine how the claws would appear, and then raised her eyebrows as the screen was revealed.
"Oh that's so handy..." Almost immediately she'd realised what she said and covered her mouth with her hands.  

[TawnyAngel]

Ahh Franklin, never change.

"Handy?" Aulus grinned at Tam. "You put your finger on it alright. There's still some uploading to do but with proper security protocols it should also be able to have my dex functions on it. There's no audio input or output right now though so I'll still need something to make calls with but maybe in the future? There's all sorts of stuff that could go in. Do you remember saying something to me about sonar?" That was ages ago now, back when he'd first lost the arm and probably hadn't really been taking in most of what people were saying to him.