Of all your waiting tasks, there's one that needs to happen most.

We should get my cockpit transferred into the Firebird next.

You show the message on-screen, and Tendou gulps. “Yeah, guess so.” He gets up, and begins to look up and about the cockpit. He frowns. “Can I get your schematics?”

You pop them up for him. He only looks at it for a moment, before he waves his hands at the screen. “You can clear everything else, make this bigger. Touching the screen again, he spreads his hands wide. You follow his motions, expanding the image all the way to the edges of the wraparound monitors.

Tendou peers closely, eyes narrowed. He wordlessly drags his hands across the monitor, and you match him. You continuously shift the image, sizing it up and down in time with his motions, letting him examine it at length.

He does so, for more than an hour. The entire time, his eyes dart from one point to another, examining the myriad of lines and bits of text dotted all around, taking it in and learning. When he finally leans back, he lets out a long breath, one hand rubbing his forehead as he winces in pain.

“Ugh,” he groans, grabs his water, and takes a long drought. “This is going to take... a while. Just, uhh, give me a minute.” He presses the large metal canister to his forehead. Rather than one minute, he remains like that for three minutes.

Tendou huffs, “Ok.” He takes the controls and walks you over to the Firebird, carefully dragging it into the middle of the cleared space in the middle of the room. He lies it down on its back, and you kneel down. After a long, sighing breath, he climbs out, and sets off across the large room.

Tendou comes and goes numerous times, speaking with the surrounding workers, running around, and returning with boxes and armfuls of tools. He piles them up all around you and the Firebird. Then he climbs up onto the frame beside you, and starts working.

With powertools whirring and sparks flying, he slowly cuts away overly damaged portions around the cockpit, so he can get to the internal parts he's looking for.

The work stretches on for hours. While you wait, you decide to do more checks on your new computer. You ask the Primary Control System to run diagnostics and hardware checks. The results come back after a short wait. You look through your logs to find data on your previous computer, and compare the two.

Given the newer construction, it is a marked improvement over the old one. There are only minor effects for you, primarily with your visual recognition speed. It looks like Pilot Assist will benefit far more. The increased specs will help it to interpret and act on Tendou's intentions in the middle of combat.

After some back and forth with the system where you run through a few simulations, you find that it will also aid Pilot Assist in using its control over your body. Computing and modifying your balance and smoothing your motions will all benefit from the improved speed, since it all needs to run in realtime – all at once, in the middle of battle no less.

You spend a good deal of time going through your checks and simulations, but Tendou is still working when you finish. You watch on as he goes at the other ray frame, most of his body down inside the other unit. He's using wrenches, cutters and screw drivers to unfasten and rip out one piece after another, throwing wires, bolts, and whole metal plates, aside among other little bits and bobs you can't identify from this distance.

They all go tumbling over the side when he tosses them away, to bounce loudly across the concrete below. In time, he climbs back out of the machine, clambers down to the floor, and sits against the side of it, head leaning back against the metal. You check the time again. It's already late at night – he's been working for ten hours already.

After a short break, he walks off, returning some time later with more food and water. He eats and drinks in your cockpit, unspeaking and ready to fall asleep at any moment. As soon as he finishes the meal, he does just that, slumping backward and snoring loudly.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

As always, you simply cut down on unnecessary power use, and allow the time to pass.

Tendou wakes up again the following morning, fresh and ready to go. He jumps right into the work, and by noon, he's making quick work of the Firebird's cockpit, dumping entire sections of the construction out one after another with the help of his engineering glove.

He only stops briefly when a few workers come over to offer him some food. They sit and chat, and the men openly balk at him when he explains what he's doing. “It can take a maintenance crew days to do a job like that!” one man exclaims.

All Tendou can do is shrug. “I don't have a team or anything, and I need to get my frame refitted. So I'm just going to do what I can.”

After a little more discussion, the men wish him luck and head off. The next time Tendou takes a break, it's already late in the afternoon again. He takes a few minutes to look over the frame schematics again while he munches on some bread. “I see, so that part locks in a bit different in the Firebird...” he remarks, voice muted and somewhat dull from the long day's work.

When he finishes that, you see the opportunity to start a conversation.

How is the work going?

“Fine, I'm almost done stripping the Firebird, I should be able to start on you tomorrow.”

That's good to hear, no complications so far?

“No, mostly just differences in the way you were built. The internal structure follows... kind of similar patterns. Sort of.” He sighs and waves a hand. “At least, the way they did it makes sense, even though it doesn't exactly match how your manufacturer's made you. Which, yeah, it's way heavier, it needs all that extra reinforcement and the extra mounting structure to account for the size and weight of the components for the larger cockpit... Huh, I'm gonna have to account for that when I need to slot in this one...” He trails off there, seemingly lost in thought. You leave him to it.

As promised, he finishes with the Firebird's cockpit before the end of the day. The pile of discarded metal is taller than he is.

The next morning, he begins the day by climbing down into the hollowed out midsection of the other ray frame. The sounds of fiddling and grinding metal echo out for some time, before he emerges again, carrying a single, large component. You recognize it as an engine. He barely gets it up onto the chest of the Firebird before his engineering glove's strange lifting effect ends, and he has to come over, using you to pick it up and set it the rest of the pile of discarded parts.

When you ask, he explains, “The engine was right next to the cockpit. When I checked, it was totally trashed. I'll have to pull yours to use instead.”

I see.

Before he even asks, you give him a report on the condition and note the location of the component, currently in your upper torso. It's pretty worn out, but that's mostly from weathering. It sustained only minimal damage from the battles you've been through since reactivating. He nods and hums in thought as he reads it over. “Good, good, guess I'll get to it.”

As he says, it's your turn next. He wastes no time cutting away the broken bits to get better access to the internals of your cockpit. Here and there, you lose access to some specific sensors and motors when he disconnects one part or another, but for the most part, there's little change.

Then, he climbs into your cockpit and says, “I'll be pulling the reactor connection next, so you'll lose power. The next time you... uhh, 'wake up,'” he stumbles a little, describing it that way for you, “things should pretty much be done.”

Good to know.

There's little else for you to say. Based on his current speed, it will take him a number of days to finish the job. Whether you are 'awake' for it or not doesn't particularly matter, except that you can't help him search your schematics during that time. Still, Tendou has only needed to check a couple times over the last few days, so that doesn't appear to be much of an obstacle anyway.

With a small smirk, he waves a hand. “See you again soon.” Then he climbs back into the mechanical guts around your cockpit to get it done.

You wait, listening to the thrum of his power tools, getting things taken apart. A few minutes pass.

PWR_OK inactive

Reset

You receive the familiar message from the Primary Control System, but have no time to do anything. The the very next instant, your own power fails as well.

Everything disappears. No sight, no sound, nothing. There isn't even a you anymore. Just a long, formless tunnel leading to pure emptiness.

Time passes. There is no way to measure it. Pure nothingness.

Nothing...

Nothing......

Nothing.........