You walk carefully through the factory. The longer the humans have been working, the less open space there is, more and more partitions popping up on either side of the remaining path, cluttered with various machines and contraptions. You cut through, until there's no more space, around the middle of the factory floor. Tendou climbs out, and begins to trot over in her direction, still at the factory's main control console.
Kneeling in the middle of the room, you find that they've expanded the output from the factory itself, with the one conveyor belt coming from the back now emptying onto newly built parts onto additional belts that lead off to numerous small storage areas. There's a constant flow of parts rolling down each belt, as fast as the factory can produce them. Simultaneously, dozens of people are loading the contents of each storage area onto trucks, to take them away, wherever the parts go next.
Squeezing through the small crowd around the factory console – mostly composed of people who have unloaded from the convoy you brought in – Tendou approaches Tachibana. At first, he has some trouble, before they begin clearing the way for him, a couple of the man slapping him on the back as he walks.
A lot of them start talking at once, and Tendou has an awkward expression, but looks to be laughing along, until he makes it to the older woman. They speak again, for longer than usual, going back and forth for nearly ten minutes. A few times, people from the convoy join into the conversation as well. When they finally finish, Tendou wades back through the crowd and climbs back into the cockpit. He raises a hand and waves, before closing the hatch and beginning to pilot you away once more.
“So, we've got the chi we need for the computer, plus some more. I'm not sure exactly how much, but it should probably cover some smaller things, if that's what we want for our second custom part. Otherwise... well, we can probably cover the difference with that BP we found, or by recycling the chi from other stuff we don't need.”
He pauses for a moment. “Oh, right! They told me how that works. So, uhh,” he flails his hands a little as he begins trying to explain, though the movements aren't particularly helpful. Then he remembers he needs them for the controls, before he continues his explanation. “What they do is take a part that has chi in it, and throw it into liquefied izu.”
Izu? You aren't familiar with that word, and a quick search yields no results. Possibly because your backup computer's information storage is even more limited than the main computer's. Nevertheless, he continues explaining.
“When you heat it up and melt the metal, it'll release the chi. Because apparently, melting it normally - or just breaking it - won't work. Which, yeah, I guess that makes sense,” his tone changes, like he's just thinking about this now. “If that worked, we'd have seen a bunch of chi in battle already. Huh.” You see his point. In retrospect, it would have been painfully obvious if every broken armor plate started leaking the strange red substance.
Getting back on topic, Tendou goes on. “So, a lot of the scrap value of the stuff we've collected is in the chi they can get out of it. The metal is more of a bonus. They have facilities for that in Shado, and they're setting up them up here now. They should be done soon now that the chi is here.”
He pauses there, and you consider it momentarily. You don't know what izu is or why it interacts with chi that way.
I don't have any information on izu, do you know anything else about it?
“Not really, they just mentioned it when they were talking about how to recycle chi. I've never heard of it before.”
I see.
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That's unfortunate, you'll have to look for more information later then. For now, you walk over to where your pair of computers are, seemingly undisturbed despite all the other work going on around them. The humans have left a wide space around them entirely unused. They must have known you'd be back, and that Tendou would need space to work.
With some effort and a small handtruck, Tendou places the new computer in your palm, so you can carry it back across the factory again. He flags down a couple people, who eventually point out an area near the southwestern corner of the main factory floor, where they've set up the chi bathes.
“Hey, I brought the computer,” Tendou calls out, waving to a few of them.
“Good, good, right this way,” one responds, eyeing the big metal box resting atop your palm. They unload it from your hand with an electric lift, the small vehicle rolling away with Tendou following in tow. They go over to one of the smaller vats, little more than a round metal tub from what you can see.
They spend some time carefully lowering the computer in, before operating a control panel, which floods the vat with dark red chi. The two men stand and chat for a while, and you watch intently as the red liquid slowly but surely disappears, the level lowering from the top of the black block of steel, all the way down to the bottom of the tub.
Once every last drop has been absorbed, they get it back into your palm, and Tendou waves and thanks the workers, before climbing into your cockpit once more. “All set,” he says, satisfied, while walking back to the ray frame area.
Once you've settled into position again, Tendou hauls the computer over to the front of your cockpit one more time. He repeats the same process as last time, with a tiny ball of BP and his strange glove. He presses his palm against the side of the machine, then pauses for a few long seconds.
Tendou speaks with a quiet force. “Three, two, one, go!” He slaps the back of his glove with his other hand, the strange slingshot mechanism give a quick snap of rubber. You don't pick up any other audio or visual when it happens, but your force sensors do register a sudden pull. It's just for an instant, a weak pull toward the computer, before it's gone again.
The other, much larger effect of Tendou's glove is the way it seemingly sticks the large computer to his hand, as if floating and weightless, as he quickly backs up into your cockpit, sliding the whole thing up into the canopy of the cockpit, where he rapidly secures it in place with his free hand.
Once that's done, he sighs and sits back. “There we go, brand new computer. Now I just need to hook it up...” after trailing off, he rests briefly, before getting to it.
Like last time, he sticks most of his upper torso up into the canopy of wiring, where you can't see exactly what he's doing. He gets to working on it, and you feel partial connections opening and closing randomly for some time. You wait it out, until eventually, the main computer starts up successfully.
You note that it's exactly like before, given how it's a complete clone of the old one. You quickly reestablish all of your normal connections, glad for the increased speed and stability, compared to the backup computer.
With that done, you wait as Tendou double checks his work, before falling into the pilot seat. “There, done. Is it working?”
Yes, everything seems perfectly operational. Good job.
Given your earlier conversation, he did a strangely good job. He shouldn't have any experience with this after all. Nevertheless, it's done. Seemingly, perfectly. Before you can ponder that much more, Tendou says, “So, that's finally done. What next?”
That's a very good question, you have quite the backlog of plans which were held up by that...
----------------------------------------
Vote:
[ ] Get more work done
-Order new parts?
-Transfer cockpit to Firebird?
-Do something with loot?
[ ] Look for more information first
-About izu?
-About chi?
-About Tonosho?
-About ray frames?
-About something else?
[ ] Return to Shado
-What to bring?
-Hire a transport truck?
[ ] Write-in