When the human returns to your cockpit, your Chi Function has risen to 14%. Your legs are barely suffering any damage from continuing to hold your weight now. That's especially good, because when he climbs back into the pilot seat, he begins to push you upright. The extra force that puts on you would have been much less bearable without the extra support.
You suffer a small amount of extra strain, but standing fully upright for the first time, your Chi Function begins to rise notably faster than before. It should only take ten or twenty minutes to return to full strength now.
While you consider that, the man begins to work the pedals. You take two steps before nearly losing your balance. The man pulls desperately back on the controls, Pilot Assist aiding his efforts to keep you from toppling over.
“Holy shit,” the man is saying inside the cockpit. After that, he moves even more slowly, one step at a time. Your balance sensors flail and the assistance works overtime, making constant adjustments to his inputs to fix your posture, but it only has so much leeway, and he nearly crashes twice more, before one stumble drops you to a knee.
Lying upside down after falling out of the pilot seat, the man scrambles his way back up, panting, with wide eyes. “Alright, alright, alright. I think I'm getting the hang of this...” he says for some reason, as he pushes you to your feet once more.
It turns out that the man is correct. Between him and Pilot Assist, he quickly begins to stumble less. Your rising Chi Function finally finishes counteracting the ongoing structural damage when it reaches 20%.
However, that brings your attention to your still-struggling motors. Even though they aren't accumulating much structural damage, they're screaming through every motion, stopping and starting with sudden grinding jolts that continue to degrade their internals and cause trouble for the human piloting you.
Not to mention, they're still sucking down power at an alarming rate, requiring you to instruct the Primary Control System to continue firing the generator regularly to keep your battery from discharging.
You go back through your logs, checking for anything you loaded earlier, but didn't have time to properly search through.
You pulled up all sorts of system specifications, but little explanation of what most are for, so you aren't sure what you're even looking for. Checking against your Motor Information, you note that each of them has three actively listed specifications, Charge, Load, and Integrity.
You're quite familiar with Integrity at this point, and Load obviously indicates how much stress the motors are under. You note how many of them in your legs and feet are pushing at or above 100% regularly. Clearly the source of your current troubles.
That just leaves Charge, which hasn't changed from 0%, just as it was when you first awoke. This makes you think they should be able to store electrical power similar to your phaser.
Since none of your general knowledge about motors has anything to do with them being charged or discharged like a battery, you try using the key terms from that information to make another search through your logs, and something comes up. It looks like you did record something relevant earlier.
Recommended MMRs: For best component longevity, ESM Motors should generally be kept at 50% of their rated redline capacity for an MMR of 10:1. This should provide adequate load reduction, without too much heat build up.
Depending on frame type and heatsink effectiveness, higher MMRs can provide improved performance in combat, so long as the heat does not build up excessively. Charging can be difficult to achieve in combat without affecting available power, so it is recommended to charge motors in advance.
While the text is tangentially related and doesn't quite explain everything contained within, it's enough to extrapolate what you need right now.
It looks like you can charge these motors, and it will reduce the load on them, exactly what you need. To do so, you first check through Frame Settings, and find Motors listed among your Internal Systems.
Starting with the most heavily struggling motors running in your ankles, you begin to raise the target charge level, aiming for 50%, as advised.
A good deal of power suddenly draws off from your generator's output, and your battery has to make up for the shortfall. In the cockpit, the human clearly feels the difference, because he immediately stumbles when your body's responsiveness lags.
You adjust quickly, pushing the motor charge levels far more slowly in order to not divert too much power away from your ongoing movements. Of course, this means you have to charge the motors even more slowly than expected.
And it is slow. Even compared to your Chi Effectiveness, raising motor charge is anemic. And you have hundreds of them to go through. You settle in for the long run on this one, consistently diverting what power you can, while the generator runs full time to get it done.
You allow that all to run in the background, turning your attention ahead. A new area is separating from the gloom ahead, thanks to the light seeping in through cracks overhead, where bits of rubble broke off and to crunch underfoot.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
What little you can make out at first, looks to be more machinery. Large metal rails overhead, and much more clutter on the floor than before, with less plantlife peeking through the ground.
Then you close in further, and you see a wall, tall and solid. It doesn't show any of the same cracks or fallen rubble, like the ceiling above or floor below do. What it does contain are large metal plates set its surface, ringed in by more reinforced metal. It looks like a massive doorway.
You walk beneath the ceiling mounted rails on your way toward the far wall. The human has to be careful, stepping over a large, reinforced groove cut into the floor beneath the rail. It looks like a track for something to slide in, twice as wide across than your foot is long.
There is a second rail and groove, and then the human arrives at the wall, directly in front of the massive door. Again judging based on your own size, it is twice as wide, and a full third of your height taller than you are. Another set of overhead rails leads directly to the doorway, dead-ending just before the metal plates.
The two metal doors have slid together, mostly coming closed at the center, but they aren't well aligned. The right side is cocked slightly, leaving a narrow gap up the length, widest at ground level.
Through the gap, you see a robot. You can only assume it is the same kind as you, since it is about the same size you are. Maybe somewhat larger, though it is hard to make a proper estimate based on the extremely limited view.
“Awesome!” the human shouts, “There's another!” He kneels you down low once more, and jumps out of the cockpit. As soon as he hits the ground, he sets off running. Though the distance doesn't seem far, the human's size makes it take him quite some time to reach the gap in the doors. You use the time to divert all power to the motors.
That makes a huge difference. Their charge levels rise quickly, and you find that you can charge fifteen motors on the power generated by each cycle of the reactor. You'll only need a few minutes of uninterrupted charge time to get it done.
From your lower vantage point, you have a better view through the doors, watching the human run up to the other large robot. After a short search, he begins to clamber up the front of one leg, finding handholds in the shape of the armor to pull himself up.
Despite nearly slipping and falling a couple times, he eventually makes it to the cockpit, hands scrabbling along the outside. This is the point when it finally registers. Since you are heavily damaged, the human is trying to find a less damaged robot to use. Without him, you don't have any way of doing anything.
That is a huge problem for you, but you literally have no way of stopping it. Considering things from the man's perspective, it makes perfect sense. Why use a damaged machine when an undamaged one is available?
Nevertheless, all you can do is watch as he eventually finds a way to release the hatch and climb into the cockpit. He fiddles for some time, pushing and pulling at the controls. It takes quite a while, but he does find a way to activate the reactor; you can feel the unique shudder of it starting up from where you're kneeling.
Raising the machine's arms, the human tries to pull the doors open, but they don't budge. He pulls repeatedly, turns into it, tries yanking them a number of times, and you can hear the audible scream of the machine's motors firing up to max load, the same way yours have been.
Just like yours were, they must be uncharged, barely able to move their own weight, so they clearly aren't going to accomplish anything against those huge metal doors.
Not knowing that, the human struggles for a little longer, before giving up. He turns in place, like he's searching the area beyond the doors for something, but must not find it, because he soon kneels the other machine down, and jumps out.
He runs over and climbs back into your cockpit instead. Settling into your pilot seat, he pauses. “Maybe there's another, or some way to open the doors, or spare parts, or...” he's mumbling quietly, counting off each thought on a finger as he goes.
Soon shaking his head, the man grabs the controls, and gets you to stand once more. Now that you are mostly through charging up the motors properly, the motion is incomparable to before, smooth and easy.
The man actually stops briefly, visibly confused at the change. He makes a few more moves, swaying to shift your balance from one foot to the other, motors humming steadily.
In fact, now that they aren't screaming under maximum load, the amount of power they consume is a tiny fraction of what it was before - not even ten percent of the earlier draw. It leaves plenty of headroom to continue charging the remaining motors without a hint of trouble.
Even if he doesn't understand the changes, the Pilot Assist informs you that the man is very pleased with them, as he turns left, and easily begins to walk you along the wall. No more stuttering or stumbling, his balance is incomparable to how it was just minutes earlier.
You can finally walk without damaging yourself.
You pass by more rails and doors at regular intervals, but most of them are either closed, or empty. When you come upon one that is mostly left open, and still occupied, the man climbs out again, and runs to the robot.
Once more, you're forced to watch as he climbs inside. This one is definitely larger than you, its thick form standing up, steadied by massive metal hooks under its arms, painted in a yellow that has mostly chipped away. The robot's paint is similarly degraded, in dull green.
Looking it up and down, your visual recognition actually finds a match. It's an Octagon. Unfortunately, that's all you can actually tell without any way to look up more detailed information on the model. The overall shape is much more rounded than your own, its armor featuring many slopes, curves, and overlapping segments.
The man gets the Octagon started up, wiggling his way out of the hooks holding it up. You can hear it struggling under its weight, but that doesn't last long at all. The robot takes a single step, and pitches forward. The man flails the controls, pulling back, but that only destroys its balance more.
A handful of moments pass, the man yanking the robot around more and more violently in his attempts to balance it. He overcorrects each time, until the entire robot's frame is too far tilted to pull it back from toppling anymore, and it goes crashing down hard enough to shake the ground beneath you.
After a delay, the man attempts to stand the robot up again, only to immediately go tumbling once more. He makes a number of further attempts, each lasting slightly longer before he inevitably puts the robot on its back again.
In the end, he crawls out of the crashed machine and comes back to you. “What. The hell,” he drones haltingly, after easing you back to your feet, like he expected you to fall over too.
He pushes ahead, and you keep walking.