2025-06-16: Biological Girl♡Mechanical World

• Log: 2025-06-16
• Cast: Lilium Valerie, Minerva Ashton, Akane Shinjo
• Where: Lilium Valerie Secondary Maintenance Chambers, Underneath Heaven's Base, Reykjavik, Area 10 (Iceland), Britannian Union of Solar Energy and the New Continent
• OOC - IC Date: June Sixteenth, Universal Century 0100 (2025)
• Summary: Following her previous induction to the Gaia Sabers, everyone's favorite Queen of Monsters (A name that has stuck, much to a certain doctor's chagrin) assists with some regularly scheduled maintenance. It doesn't feel regular to Lilium, though.

---

<Pose Tracker> Lilium Valerie has posed.

Heaven's Base, being the kind of complex it is, is home to many different kinds of facility. Hangars, Barracks, a thing that looks like a half-finished mobile suit factory scaled up by a factor of three that Akane has been told not to worry about, far more Newtype Labs than the legal limit (Which is of course Zero)... And this. Officially Lilium Valerie's personal quarters on earth, taking up what would be a not-insubstantial substantial portion of the base's underground facilities, but more accurately described as 'Boosted Songstress Maintenance Workshop 02'.

The room is filled with all kinds of devices, each one a unique combination of fascinating, unique, and terrifying.

Over next to a large hangar door, beyond which lies an elevator to a hangar on the surface, the Seraph sits--with its decorative paintwork stripped. It cuts a rather different figure that way, much more obviously a machine of war. Several cables run out from its cockpit and opened Funnel Bay, connecting to the various machines about the space.

Behind a set of opened dividing curtains, a strange contraption of air pumps and mechanical arms sits next to the various components of Lilium's pilot suit.

Crates are stacked all about the room, some with mundane labels like 'prosthetic replacements', but others emblazoned with strange new warning triangles and phrases like 'DETECTABLE PSYCHOHAZARD--DO NOT OPEN IN THE PRESENCE OF COGNIZANT NEWTYPES'.

A large freezer, kept under constant armed guard, is labelled only with the letter 'V'.

A much larger version of what those who have actually visited Lilium's 'birthplace' (Which is to say; Frankford and presumably Ashton) would recognise as her original maintenance tank--the extra bulk being utilised by what appear to be two Minovsky Craft Systems, one at either end.

The entire space is, impressively, remarkably sterile. Most of the workers wear full protective equipment, and even the weapons on the guards are kept a clean white to ensure any contamination can be spotted. The one exception to this is, of course, Lilium herself.

She's currently being lead up to a series of intricate devices connected to some form of table-chair hybrid by Doctor Frankford, with Akane and Minerva being lead along behind her. Rebecca stops for a moment, turning about to face the group. "Now then... Doctor Ashton? Your, ah..." Her eyes narrow slightly. "Assistant" understands why she is here, yes..?

Lilium remains silent.

<Pose Tracker> Minerva Ashton has posed.

It's been three days since Akane was ""hired"" by the Gaia Sabers, and not much has happened in that time. She's mainly just been given a routine physical and been brought to a room for "extraction" - she's been given only vague answers to what that means, but based on what she knows she's here for, it's probably kaiju-related. Dr. Ashton has overseen most of her operations, and has maintained her ever-chipper demeanor the entire way through.

Which brings them both to the present - standing in front of Lilium's tank.

"I would hope so! Akane, dear, you (twelve) know why, yes?"

There is one other thing that's been happening. Every time Minerva's talked to Akane, she's. . . done something odd. She's been counting. Slipping numbers into her sentences.

"Did you (one) get all that, Akane?"

"Akane, I just need you (six) to hold still for a few minutes. . ."

It's infrequent enough that Akane could almost forget about it. But it hasn't stopped. When asked, Minerva seems to not even hear the question. She just continues with her sentence as if Akane had never spoken.

Minerva waits for Akane's response, and then turns back to her colleague.

"I'm ready to begin with procedures if you are, dear Frankford~"

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane is worried about it. Indeed, being told not to worry about it makes her more worried about it. The Queen of Monsters is not much pleased to see that the Gaia Sabers have been going behind Cathedra's back with all manner of horrors, and resolves to call the cops when she's out.

(... unfortunately, she is the cops.)

Akane is not happy to be read in on this, either; this whole situation makes her skin crawl, and while she knows that if(when) they get her out of here, she'll be better-equipped than ever to do something about it. ... In the moment, though, it mostly just means she feels like she's on the hook for everything she can't stop from happening, to say nothing of the things she'll be made complicit in.

Something is distracting her, though. Numbers? (One, six, twelve...) Akane only briefly expresses curiosity about that. When she's brushed off, she lets it go.

For now.

"I'm to assist with adjustments to the Boosted Songstress," Akane says, a little tonelessly, in that slightly-chirpy voice of hers.

She needs to commit this to memory -- as best she can, if only to help future victims of the process. ... She can't really do anything about the present moment, though, save what she's asked.

She's gotten fairly good at playing the elevated prisoner, as it happens. It is, after all, her third time around.

<Pose Tracker> Lilium Valerie has posed.

"Right, then. Lilium--up on the table with you."

Lilium pouts slightly, but does as she's bade. She climbs onto the table, and casually removes her patient's gown without being prompted.

She leans back against the more chair-like portion of the apparatus, her back lining up nearly with a section cut out. Now that she's in the chair.. table.. thing, Lilium seems to be wringing her hands with uncharacteristic nervousness...

Doctor Frankford, on the other hand, looks almost bored. "Doctor Ashton--Have your assistant connect her to the diagnostics"--she gestures to a loose series of thick-looking cables, some of which have uncomfortably long metal points on the end--"and take your position next to the readouts, please?", gesturing again to a set of several monitors connected to both those loose cables and, if one were to look closely enough, the distant Seraph cockpit. She passes a clipboard with several papers attached to it to Akane, but doesn't explain anything just yet--though she does stare at her curiously for a moment.

Lilium, meanwhile, is if anything only getting more nervous--especially considering a pair of workers have secured her to the table, apologetic mumblings aside. "U.. uhm... Doctor..?" She ventures, "Are you, like... sure we have to do it this way? I don't remember you doing this before, usually for a checkup you just... just... ehhhh... what is it...?"

She can't really remember. She can't remember any medical inspections, actually, despite the fact she knows she's had several...

<Pose Tracker> Minerva Ashton has posed.

"Akane, do as she says," Minerva tells her assistant. "If you need any help with the cabling, ask me, and I'll guide you (thirteen)." She gives Akane a small pat on the shoulder, and an. . . encouraging smile?

"I'll be at my station~!" Minerva takes her place at her monitors, adjusting a few settings for her personal use.

"It's nothing to worry about, Lilium! This is standard procedure for your checkups in gravity." She begins to tap at her screens. A few lights blink on on the cables and in the tank.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

Akane, faintly distracted by trying to figure out what, in hindsight, that extraction process was about (though having a fairly distinct idea already) and by the count-up, takes a few moments to realize that she's the assistant being prompted. She accepts the clipboard, taking a few moments to look it over; her expression, at least, is one of modest familiarity with the task at hand.

(She's played captive-assistant to Dr. Murasame before, and personality reinforcement isn't actually that far off from some of the methodologies involved in these types of projects.)

Once Dr. Ashton affirms it -- with another damn number in that count-up -- Akane gives her a nod. The pat on her shoulder gets her to straighten up slightly in that awkward, 'not totally sold on being touched' kind of way; she then sets aside the clipboard and gets to work.

"What exactly are we looking for here?" she asks, as she double-checks where the cables are supposed to go. ... Yeah, she's not crazy about this, to say the least.

<Pose Tracker> Lilium Valerie has posed.

Frankford waves a hand idly in the air, having taken up her own position on a slightly elevated platform. "The cables are numbered--put them in highest to lowest. They should adhere themselves to her automatically--do take care to put the three with pre-deployed a good distance from each other and below the one that goes in her injection port... No less than two vertebrae, no more than five--and if you can't fit all of them you've spaced them out too much"

Lilium's back, now that she can't hide it, is a stark contrast from the rest of picture-perfect her body. It's covered with obvious scars, some of which a sort of... metallic grey substance can be seen. Something about it is unsettling, and not just that it Should Not Be Inside a Human Body. More relevantly, though, a little metal port looks like the slightly thinner cable marked as '01' would fit it appears just below the base of her neck.

On Minerva's monitor, meanwhile, in addition to the various vitals readings currently coming online from the less-intrusive sensors technicians are placing all over Lilium's body, a large box is displayed:

        ---<BOOSTED SONGSTRESS SYSTEM>---

                [J-SOUND SYSTEM: OFFLINE]

                [B-SONG SYSTEM: OFFLINE]

                [SONGSTRESS ACCOMPANIMENT SYSTEM: DISCONNECTED]

                [ANGEL IV: DISCONNECTED]

<Pose Tracker> Minerva Ashton has posed.

"Yep! Just like that. Be careful but firm. She's delicate hardware, after all," Minerva says to the ex-GGG employee.

Minerva puts a headset on halfway - like a DJ or radio operator might - and gives a thumbs up. A slight expression of concentration comes across her face as she double checks everything.

"Good for activation. B-Sound ready. Vitals are stable."

"Now, pay attention, Akane! You'll want to be familiar with the details of this process for later."

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

... It's not the first time something like this has come to Akane's attention, though she's usually on the untangling end of it. She takes a deep breath and sets to work on the numbered cables. If it weren't her here, she reminds herself, either Minerva would be hooking these up herself or she'd have another assistant; nothing would change. The fact that she's here, now, is a good thing in the long term.

She glances back at the clipboard briefly, then gets back to work again, trying to suppress her reaction to any clicking, squelching, or other horrible sounds involved in hooking up the subject.

It's not very successful. At least in that sense.

... Unit 02. Akane can't help but think about that as she stares at Lilium's back, at the sheer -- unnatural, unsettling nature of it all. Unit 02. She needs to do something about this. She needs to do something about this.

... And right now, what she can do about it is keep doing her job. As long as Lilium is in full working order there's no need for Unit 02.

(Who bumps into someone without even saying --)

"Sorry," Akane murmurs under her breath, then finally goes back to looking at the clipboard and getting herself familiar with everything. "Right," she acknowledges Minerva.

<Pose Tracker> Lilium Valerie has posed.

Lilium is growing... increasingly distressed--for starters, she's hardwired to never let anyone see her exposed back for... obvious secrecy reasons, but also: She Does Not Like This Situation. At All.

"I.. I'm really not.. sure that this is..."

She struggles against the restraints slightly, her desire to Not Be Here forcing its way through even her substantial Conditioning and Remodeling. "Surely we could jus--"

Lilium freezes mid-sentence as the cable Akane has just connected to the port on her neck locks itself into place and Interfaces with her. Her body relaxes for a moment, giving Minerva's lovely assistant time to insert the far more problematic to work with cabling as well.

On Minerva's screen, the entries for 'Angel IV' and the 'Songstress Accompaniment System' change to CONNECTED.

Lilium lies motionless, and Frankford gestures for the technicians to remove her restraints. "Alright, then! Wipe the last thirty to forty-five minutes of her memory, and prepare for program inspection!"

She turns to Minerva, specifically--"Doctor Ashton. How do her Vitals and Systems look?"

<Pose Tracker> Minerva Ashton has posed.

Minerva is silent as she watches Lilium squirm and Akane finally plug the last cable in. Her eyes disappear behind the tint of her spectacles.

"Good job, dear. (Fourteen)"

Minerva nods as Lilium's systems reports come up. She smiles just a bit as one specific bit of data appears to have increased since her last checkup. She's coming along so well.

"Looping mental functions and beginning memory wipe. Blurring edges. . ."

"Her vitals are holding steady. B-Sound system is online, J-Sound is good for startup, Accompaniment is connected. She's as fit as a fiddle," Minerva tells her coworker.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

It's so casual. Even the subject protests, and the amount of 'someone else could be doing this' that is objectively true can't quite balance out with the amount of 'I am doing this and should not be' that is stacking up. Akane blanches a little as she sees Lilium relax, and the part of her brain that really wants to catastrophize sits with that for a minute.

(Sure, the finger snap was mostly theater last time, but it wasn't entirely theater. Could they get her into that headspace again? Could they use Akane's past work against her? Could they --)

Her step in this process is over. She takes a half-step back and lets them run through basic diagnostics. "So how often do you do this?" Akane asks, curious, as she looks between Minerva and Lilium. She doesn't much want to talk to Frankford.

... More time to review the clipboard.

<Pose Tracker> Lilium Valerie has posed.

On Minerva's screen, the Songstress Accompaniment system's readings... fluctuate slightly as Minerva smiles. Was Lilium--or something--picking up those feelings..?

The other values shift as Minerva would expect them to, though. Technicians working on smaller monitors give various gestures, calling out phrases like "Levels are optimal--she's stable!" or "Backing up current muscle memory; loading debug program!" or "Prepared for vocal benchmark, ready to engage at any time!"

Rebecca nods to the last technician. "Go ahead", before turning to Minerva--"Check her waveforms against the references, would you?".

The technician activates the program, and Lilium's mouth opens. "Do. Rei. Mi. Fa. So. La. Ti. Do."

While Lilium does this, Akane does have more time to read her clipboard. A lot of the labels on the first page have been hastily redacted--clearly they don't completely trust her--but a lot of the text remains. 'In order to achieve the desired effect, the ------ ----- system requires data input. the original system made use of ---------- issued at ------- entrance, but for our expanded purposes this was undesirable. Fortunately, the use of SUBJECT VICTOR enables the use of quantum brainwave reading as a substitute form of input. This is partially achieved via direct ability enhancement, but in order to achieve proper system synchronicity-' The next two paragraphs are entirely blacked out excepting specific words, including: 'Grassley Warehouse' 'Singularity One Phenomenon' 'Non-replicable results' 'Brainwave-digital integration', and several other worryingly contextless phrases.

"Kyaaaah! Don't look there!" "Hi, everyone~! Let's do our best!" "Uuuuu... Please don't fight..."

Lilium's voice cycles through various emotions, but her face remains static, vacant eyes staring up at a point in space vaguely in front of her.

<Pose Tracker> Minerva Ashton has posed.

Minerva turns to Akane with an intrigued look.

"Ideally we'd be checking her every two weeks regularly, but in reality it's as her schedule allows. Sometimes she needs to be opened up multiple times, too - the concert programmers really do have to go to great lengths there."

Minerva crosses her arms with a proud look as Lilium's memory wipe goes through. She made sure to compartmentalize the areas being wiped - she doesn't want to impede the Boosted Songstress program's most valuable asset.

"Okay~! Memory wipe has been completed."

"As for the waveforms. . . 99% match, with a very small margin of error."

"Quantum Brainwave emissions confirmed, Chibasong meter movement confirmed, key phrase outputs are all functioning. She's doing great!"

Minerva quirks an eyebrow at the unknown motion. Very, very interesting.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

... So much goes into maintaining one boosted human. Akane knows this, of course, but it's another thing to be party to the sausage being made. "Okay, that's pretty normal," Akane agrees, at the answer. It's not unheard of. Flip flip flip through the papers. She makes mental note of 'Grassley Warehouse,' in particular -- unlike a lot of these, that one is an actionable location where something could conceivably happen.

Lilium performing emotions utterly decontextualized, though. That's... Akane shivers a bit. She reflexively takes another half-step back. "How long does this benchmarking process take?" she asks, next. Surely it can't be that long if they're doing this in concerts. They're probably doing it the slow way right now specifically to screw with Akane's head -- something that she can tell but which brings her very little comfort whatsoever.

"... Okay, this would be kind of cool if it wasn't super creepy," Akane concedes, with a small shake of her head.

<Pose Tracker> Lilium Valerie has posed.

Lilium falls silent, instead making various exaggerated faces. Her eyes still remain motionless.

"A full inspection can take up to an hour--concert programming is done in several smaller bursts--only attaching the number one cable, but it's typically done over the weeks leading up to the concert instead--her muscle memory has a decent chunk of allocated space on-board." Frankford doesn't elaborate on why it's possible to write to Lilium's muscle memory, but she's sure Akane can guess. "There are other steps, but you're not particularly cleared to know about them--speaking of."

A hand is swept out to a specific technician. "Inject her with the minimum viable Activator dosage! Perform a ten-mile perception test for fifteen seconds!"

An acknowledgement is heard, and a vial of orange-tilted fluid attached to the thin cable drains... and passes up the tubing into her injection port.

The effect is immediate. Lilium's pupils dilate, though her gaze remains stationary. The readings on Minerva's screen go wild as Lilium briefly intakes a massive amount of data--of feelings...

And from Akane's perspective, that unsettling metallic substance inside Lilium's scars takes on An unsettling orange glow...

A glow that should not exist in this world.

The forbidden light of possibility.

<Pose Tracker> Minerva Ashton has posed.

Minerva watches Lilium's readings spike. Her smile grows.

"You're going to be so beautiful, my angel. . . So beautiful indeed."

Minerva turns her attention to Akane as Lilium begins to glow.

"Look at it, Akane. See it. We're creating miracles here. I do look forward to you helping us.

The light of possibility shines brightest to those who believe in its radiance. Minerva hopes Akane is a believer too.

<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.

The exaggerated faces. The uncanniness of it all. Akane's... gotten a little better at remaining neutral at this type of thing; sometimes, it's cruel to a victim to make too much of a face at the sounds and sights involved. It's a professional issue for her, at this point.

... but only a little better. She still shifts uneasily at this step, too, though the soundlessness is easier to ignore.

She notes a ten mile perception test; how much are they trying to achieve with her, exactly?

The lines start to connect, step by step, in her head. She's not a fan.

Amid the orange glow, Minerva asks Akane a question. "... I can see that," she says, quietly. "You're definitely doing something."

... Still, when faced with Lilium in the flesh, it is a little difficult not to believe in something.