Over the course of the next several days, I worked continuously on designs and schematics. Jada and Shea came and went while Ravage helped me out around the workshop. Elita was getting more agitated with nothing for her to do and nowhere she could go. Sparky seemed to have taken a liking to Shea and spent his time with her, which was just as well. My coding tests with the new design didn’t go as well as they had with Ravage. Ravage was mostly “off the shelf” code, and what I was working on now was all scratch built.
Finally, after repeated tests I got things working and brought Elita into the workshop to show her. There sitting on the workbench was a pair of, almost, human-looking hands and a human-looking head and neck along with several other armor replacement parts, aside from their metallic coloring and texture. She stared at them for a while and then looked at me.
“What is this?”
“Replacement parts. To help you blend in.”
“This is dumb. It won’t work. It’s close, granted, but it’ll never pass.”
“Oh, ye of little faith. Let’s try, you’ve got nothing to lose except your extra thumbs.” I said wiggling my fingers at her.
The silence was drawn out. This whole idea was way outside of her comfort zone and I couldn’t blame her. We were talking about heavily modifying her body here. This wouldn’t be a simple disguise or mask to pull over. I’d thought about those but given her warrior class size, it would never work as an additive thing.
“Okay. Fine. What do you need me to do?” she said, resigned.
“Great! Hop up onto the workbench and lie down,” I said as I cleared the space for her.
She looked at me for several beats then did as she was told. I could feel that she was putting a lot of trust in me, and I wasn’t about to betray that trust. I brought up [Console] and started opening up multiple screens.
“Okay, relax. I won’t let anything happen to you. I’m going to start shutting down your senses so that you won’t feel anything as I work on you. It’ll be like you're asleep and when you wake up I’ll be all done. Just like with the [Slave Override] I’ll need your permission to do any work with your magic code, okay?”
She looked at me and nodded slightly. “I trust you, Prime.”
“Good. Sweet dreams.”
“Dreams? What do you meeee....” she started to say, but I’d already begun shutting her senses down.
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Once she was fully out I got to work and began removing her armor plating, exposing the mana fiber muscles below. For the most part, all of the new armor was one to one, so it wasn’t too much of a problem to replace old for new. The head gave me the most trouble, especially the eyes. In the end, I had to keep her original eyes and make some modifications to the head plating and some of the code I’d embedded into it. She was nearly ready. Aside from some joint lines and the metallic sheen of her grayish-white “skin,” she looked to be a young woman in her early 20s with a tall and athletic build and long silver hair.
I started bringing her systems and senses back online, and slowly the glow came back to her eyes. Slowly she sat up and looked at me. “Did... Did it work?” she asked.
Before I could answer, Ravage jumped up onto the table and into Elita’s lap, throwing her arms around her neck. “Big Sister! Nyow you’re awake!”
I had to chuckle. I knew that Ravage had taken a liking to Elita, but I didn’t realize she saw her as an older sister. “You tell me. Come, have a look.”
I guided her over to a large slab of polished steel to see her reflection. She looked at the reflection then down at her hands, turning them over and moving her fingers.
“There’s an extra one,” she remarked, wiggling her pinky. “This is amazing.” Then she touched her face and looked back at the mirror. She had a mouth now, one that opened and closed as she spoke. She spent a while just making different shapes with her mouth, opening and closing it, and looking at her teeth. “How... How is this possible? This is really amazing work Prime... but it won’t fool any of the people in the town if they get close to me.”
“That IS true. It won’t. And you’re still bigger than most human or elf women. So check this out. Open up your [Skill Menu] and look for [Cloak()], good. Now activate it.”
The joint lines and articulation creases disappeared, giving her a smooth surface while her plating turned a light yellowy green. Her black gem eyes gave way to natural-looking organic eyes with red irises while a small set of tusks protruded from her mouth. Her mouth dropped in shock and she looked at me then back at the reflection then back at me.
“What what what?? I’m an orc??”
“And a very beautiful one at that if I do say so myself.”
Her cheeks flushed. I was happy to see that function worked. The more life-like the better and the lower the chance of her getting found out.
“My voice is different too”, she remarked.
“When you [Cloak()] a vocal filter kicks in to mask that metallic echo we have. It’s not perfect though so I wouldn’t get into any long conversations with any cute boy orcs.”
She rolled her eyes at me, “So, am I a Transformer now too?”
I couldn’t help but smile inwardly that she remembered what I’d called Ravage. “My dear Elita, you are what I would call a Pretender, but be careful though and keep an eye on your mana. Using [Cloak()] eats up a lot, so try to go without when possible,” I warned.
At that moment Shea returned with Sparky on her shoulder and nearly fell over when she saw Elita.
“Um Um Um we’re not open to the public, Miss Orc!” She shouted.
“Shea, this is Elita. Her [Cloak()] disguise is pretty good, right?” If Shea was fooled, then I was sure that Elita wouldn’t have any problems.
“Ah. I see. This is Elita. Disguised as an orc. So Prime, tell me... WHY IS SHE NAKED??”
Elita cocked her head to one side, then looked down at herself, then at me.
“Right. She’s going to need clothes, isn’t she...”