(no subject)

[the_infiltrator]

Who: Cameron and Mal
When: Between missions

Her hand is still twitching. Gentle as she tries to be she's wrecked everything she's picked up with it in the last day, and she has no tools to work on it with.

But she might be able to assess physical damage to it. That would be useful.

So there in the park, alone for the moment, she opens up the synthetic skin over her metal skeleton, and looks at her wrist, moving her fingers to watch the pistons work.

Comments

[once_reborn]

She's wandering, as she does most evenings. And she's somewhat surprised to see Cameron - and in what looks like distress.

So she hurries over, without hesitation.

"Cameron, what-" and she pauses, seeing the metal exoskeleton of her arm. And a number of things click into place. "Oh."

A slight pause. "Oh."

But though Cameron might be expecting horror, or fear - what she's going to get is different. Instead, she gestures at the other to stay still, crouching in front of her to get a better look.

"Self-repair is never the best option. It's like giving yourself a haircut. Let me take a look?"

[the_infiltrator]

Cameron looks up, watching Mal. Finding not horror as she'd expect from anyone who's never seen what she is, but enthusiasm.

"You're familiar with cybernetic organisms?" She asks, but holds out her hand for Mal to look at anyway. "...I killed a bird. It keeps happening. My fingers spasm."

[once_reborn]

She winces.

"Poor bird. I'm sure you weren't trying to, though. This explains why I couldn't sense your essence the way I usually do. And I've met all sorts of droids before - though a Human Replica Droid? Haven't met one of them yet. I wondered if you were one, but with this place there could've been a hundred other answers about what sort of person you were."

She stays clear of the fingers, gently turning the arm to get different looks at it.

"Amazing design - so that's how the muscles work. What happened?"

[the_infiltrator]

Poor bird. Yes. Cameron looks aside, where she's set the crumpled little body. She needs to bury it. Maybe Mal will be with her for the little funeral.

"I was in a lot of fights. But I was without any tools to repair myself. John tried to help but..." A frown. She's confused about how this one hand has gone wrong. "It didn't work."

[once_reborn]

She reaches into a pocket, pulling out a thin metal tool. She uses it to gently probe at the wrist, looking briefly up at Cameron.

"Tell me if it hurts, ok? My guess is you overused the muscles - the more I look at you, the more I'm seeing a blending of human design and machine parts..."

She pauses, gently moving wiring aside to get a deeper look, then smiles.

"Ok, I might need an anatomy textbook to be sure, but I think I've got an idea how to help."

[the_infiltrator]

She's programmed not to respond to pain. John and Sarah don't even believe she can feel it.

Her eyes slide up to Mal's face, trying to assess if she's serious, and Cameron admits, "It hurts a little." But there's no feeling behind it. It hurts; it won't stop her from functioning.

"The library has textbooks. We could go there."

[once_reborn]

She nods.

"Right, I'll think on something for that. I need to get a few things set up...if you're up to grabbing a textbook, we can meet at my apartment in half an hour?"

She glanced at the arm.

"Probably have medical suture for your skin, too. I'm guessing it's fully organic, but I could be wrong."

Your - personhood in every chosen word, without hesitation. Mal is possibly reacting very differently to what Cameron is used to.

She fishes out a piece of paper to write her address on.

[the_infiltrator]

"I can use staples," Cameron says. She has before. "The kind they use in construction works. My skin is organic; it only needs to close to heal."

She takes the paper, memorizing the address, the route she can take from the library to get there. "I'll meet you when I have the book."

[once_reborn]

That remark does get her a bit of a look - one of sympathy.

"I'll see about suture thread," she says, adamantly. "Used to have to repair my own clothes
...I won't be surgeon good, but I can guarantee better than staples."

But she nods. "Right, meet you there." And then sprints off into the night.

[the_infiltrator]

Cameron's leather jacket hides her open arm well enough. She isn't bleeding, she has blood but it never gushes and losing it all won't kill her. It'd just stop the healing of her skin.

She turns up exactly half an hour later--Cameron is never early and she's never late. "Mal? I have the book," she says through the door.

Remembered *one* thing about Terminator lore...

[once_reborn]

She opens the door on cue, because she was pretty sure Cameron would be exactly on time. In the corner, as she ushers Cameron inside, Mal's pony-sized Irish Wolfhound stands up on his doggie bed, growling.

"Hey, Luke, it's ok. This is Cameron. Cameron's a friend, ok?" She emphasizes this with a pat on Cameron's shoulder. The dog huffs and sits back down, but certainly isn't coming over to make friends.

She takes Cameron over to a small table with chairs - she's set up one for Cameron so she can rest her arm on a sort of pad made out of pieces of foam, lined with some plastic. Around it are a pair of boxes - one with a variety of parts, another with tools. Mal shrugs out of her own jacket, pulling off her gloves as she takes the other seat.

She takes the book from Cameron, too, flipping to the index and then finding the section she wants.

"Right," she finally says, after a scanning a diagram, "I can confirm that - the basic interior design is mimicking a lot of biological design. Betting you're much faster than the average human, huh?"

She picks up a small section of wire, and some alligator clips.

"So this might sting a bit, but I think I can bypass the signal your hand is getting - should dull the pain, at least for now. I hope - I'm still learning here, so any tips would be great."

She smiles at the other woman. "We're really blurring the line between repair and surgery here, you know?"