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Who: Milly & Julius Baelheit
Where: L.A., mostly a secure lab in Mintaka Industries
When: Early March, starting the night of this encounter
What: Baelheit retrieves Milly’s injured body and replaces her broken cyborg parts with shiny new ones. This time with 100% more energon!
Warnings: Baelheit’s hecked up priorities. what is wrong with this family
For all that he and Milly have had their differences over the last couple of years, Baelheit has never forgotten that he is a father. Regardless of her accusations, of every fight (if you can call it a fight when only one of them is doing all the yelling), Baelheit has never once forgotten about Milly. How could he, when everything he’s worked for in the last twelve years has been to ensure her safety and well-being? When she has always been at the forefront of his mind with every new development his cybernetics research brings? His destiny concerns the whole of mankind, for certain; but Milly is part of that destiny, too.
It is because he is a father that Milly has a systems monitoring chip installed that alerts him of imminent failure of any of her implants. He’s working late at the office -- as per usual -- when the warning flashes on his PDA and his computer screen both at once. Damage readings to Milly’s implants like he’s never seen before. There are few things that bring Baelheit to alarm, that make him drop everything else, but this is one of them.
Milliarde, I’m getting some alarming readings on your implants. Is everything all right?
No response. The minutes tick by; Baelheit’s chest seems to tighten a little more with every one. Never, in all the years since that accident at TRIDENT, has Milly ever come so close to being in danger. Oh, she’s sustained a few scrapes and bruises, so to speak, a dislodged implant here, a broken joint there, particularly after she’d begun her superheroic endeavors -- but multiple systems failures on this level -- it brings to mind, for the first time in years, the screaming alarms that rang in Baelheit’s head in the TRIDENT facility.
He had long ago decided he wouldn’t go through that again.
Daimon holds him back with urgent whispers -- she is a product of your design, she cannot be dismantled so easily -- but it’s not enough. She is the crux of his research, and more; as if he will let her lay unattended while her systems malfunction. The only sound as he leaves his office is the snap of his briefcase and the click of the door.
Baelheit is not often given to anger; it is a waste of time, of resources. But to see his daughter -- his life’s work -- strewn in a gutter, cradled by broken concrete, exposed joints still sparking faintly, it inspires nothing short of quiet fury. With the assistance of a work drone, he loads Milly into the car he’d driven there, leaving behind a smeared puddle of coolant tainted with blood. Fortunate, he thinks, speeding through the Los Angeles streets in the dead of night, that he and Miriel have completed the synthetic energon formula by now; fortunate that they’ve already begun production, that he’s already begun adapting his newest generation of cybernetics to an energon infusion-based system. Fortunate he’s merely days away from the completion of a working prototype.
There is a secure lab underneath Mintaka Industries that accepts only one set of access codes -- Baelheit’s own. Milly has always been his second-best kept secret -- second only to Daimon, of course -- a family secret, so to speak. No one besides the two of them has ever known about Milly’s status as a cyborg, not even Baelheit’s most trusted colleagues. He has always worked on her alone. And as he lays her out over the table, neatly arranging his tools, he prepares to get to work once again.
It takes three days. Reconciling a human circulatory and metabolic system with an energon-powered cybernetics system is the most difficult problem, by far; but his and Miriel’s work on energon and its application in cybernetics systems has already proved fruitful. An energon infusion system would remove the assorted difficulties Milly had encountered with the power cells -- it provides a significantly more…natural solution, for certain definitions of natural. And in the three years since her last implant upgrade, he’s made considerable improvements. Better feedback, more resilient, a little lighter weight for how sturdy they are...he’s not quite ready to implement everything he’s learned about Cybertronian anatomy into his research yet -- the finer points of transformation still require considerable research -- but the new additions to Mintaka Industries’ arsenal of data speak for themselves all the same.
“Dad?”
He’s there when she wakes -- slumped over the desk in the lab, face pillowed in his arms -- her voice is thin and reedy, but it cracks through the air like an alarm. He jerks upright, turns to look at her. Her face is still pale, her hair lank where it spills over the table. In an instant he’s at her side, a hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t move, Milliarde. You’re all right now, but it’ll take a little while for you to adjust to your new implants.” Baelheit’s barely gotten more than a few hours of sleep, but he’s alert now, his gaze shifting to the instruments that give him live readouts on Milly’s vitals, on her cybernetics. He’d managed to avoid a toxic reaction to the energon with the new infusion system. Some would call it luck -- Baelheit, however, is merely precise.
Milly’s eyelids flutter slightly. Everything feels -- weird and unfamiliar. But she remembers this from before. It’s not the first time she’s had new cybernetic implants installed. “New implants? But -- ”
“You were damaged, Milliarde. Very badly.” Baelheit’s voice is crisp, matter-of-fact, but when he looks back at his daughter, there’s a softness in his eyes that hardly anyone ever sees anymore. “But you don’t have to worry. I’ve upgraded your implants, and none of your vital systems were severely injured…” He trails off, his gaze wandering to Milly’s hand, pale and limp, lying outstretched on the table. A hand she’s had for less than three days, and yet --
“What happened to you?” he asks then, his voice still quiet, but the question is abrupt. “You didn’t answer my messages. I was -- ” He looks back at her face, deep creases in his brow as he frowns. “I was worried, Milliarde.”
Milly squeezes her eyes shut, as if trying to think. She shifts on the table slightly, but it’s like her body is still too heavy to move. Ugh, she hates that groggy feeling after an operation. “I was…in a fight.” She looks back at her father again, still tired, but this time almost glaring. “It doesn’t matter what I was doing,” she says then, her voice a little stronger. “It’s hero business. As in, none of yours. I can’t believe you changed my -- all my stuff again! You didn’t even ask me.”
Baelheit feels stricken. He averts his gaze, his eyes falling instead on the instruments still laid out in the lab sink, waiting to be washed, spattered in a mixture of blood and faintly glowing synthetic energon. She’s angry with him.
“I didn’t have the luxury of asking, Milliarde. I needed to act quickly to save you.” The words are little more than an echo of ones he’d uttered to himself long ago. He looks at her hand again, intent. The pale skin of her palm seems to gleam under the harsh laboratory lighting. “I thought you’d be happy with an upgrade. You were always complaining about your old implants, about the power cells...I replaced them with a new power source. It’s a kind of plasma fuel. It works on an infusion basis -- which means you’ll need to supply your system with it regularly, but it should integrate much better than the -- ”
“I don’t care how it works!” Milly’s voice rings out in the lab, still cracked and a little weak, but there’s a steely backbone to it. It’s jarring to Baelheit, how much she reminds him of her mother in this moment. Madelynn had always been so -- spirited. “I don’t care what you thought! You just -- you just assumed and you did it without asking me! Of course I’m not happy, Dad -- this was never what I wanted!”
Baelheit stares at her, at a loss. What would she have him do? As if he could stand idly by while she suffers, while she needs fixing. He reaches for her hand, envelops it in his, minutes too late. “Milliarde…”
With force far greater than his own, Milly jerks her hand out of his grip, moving to push herself into a sitting position. She can tell that something is substantially different about her system now -- whatever this new power source is, it feels...tighter, like it flows -- but she doesn’t care, not now. She’s always been dependent on her father to keep her body in working condition, but she only resents it more than ever. She doesn’t want this half-human body. She never asked for this. “Unless you’re going to say sorry,” she fumes, “I don’t want to hear it. Give me my clothes, Dad, I’m going home.”
“Milliarde, I really must recommend that you -- ”
“I’m going home.”
“At least let me give you a -- ”
“I can get there myself,” Milly snaps, and she doesn’t enjoy the way her father recoils when she does, but she’ll take what she can get from him, these days. She all but snatches her clothes out of his hands when he brings them -- he’s always kept a spare set of clothes for her at the lab -- and throws them on as hurriedly as she can. There’s always the matter of recalibration when it comes to new implants, but she does all right. Baelheit feels a strange sense of helplessness as Milly gets on her feet, a little unsteady at first, but she manages just fine on her own. She can’t slam any doors on her way out -- not in a secure lab -- but the pressurized hiss as the door reseals itself after her exit is loud enough.
Baelheit has never forgotten that he is a father, no. But what it means to be a father -- that’s something else entirely.
Where: L.A., mostly a secure lab in Mintaka Industries
When: Early March, starting the night of this encounter
What: Baelheit retrieves Milly’s injured body and replaces her broken cyborg parts with shiny new ones. This time with 100% more energon!
Warnings: Baelheit’s hecked up priorities. what is wrong with this family
For all that he and Milly have had their differences over the last couple of years, Baelheit has never forgotten that he is a father. Regardless of her accusations, of every fight (if you can call it a fight when only one of them is doing all the yelling), Baelheit has never once forgotten about Milly. How could he, when everything he’s worked for in the last twelve years has been to ensure her safety and well-being? When she has always been at the forefront of his mind with every new development his cybernetics research brings? His destiny concerns the whole of mankind, for certain; but Milly is part of that destiny, too.
It is because he is a father that Milly has a systems monitoring chip installed that alerts him of imminent failure of any of her implants. He’s working late at the office -- as per usual -- when the warning flashes on his PDA and his computer screen both at once. Damage readings to Milly’s implants like he’s never seen before. There are few things that bring Baelheit to alarm, that make him drop everything else, but this is one of them.
Milliarde, I’m getting some alarming readings on your implants. Is everything all right?
No response. The minutes tick by; Baelheit’s chest seems to tighten a little more with every one. Never, in all the years since that accident at TRIDENT, has Milly ever come so close to being in danger. Oh, she’s sustained a few scrapes and bruises, so to speak, a dislodged implant here, a broken joint there, particularly after she’d begun her superheroic endeavors -- but multiple systems failures on this level -- it brings to mind, for the first time in years, the screaming alarms that rang in Baelheit’s head in the TRIDENT facility.
He had long ago decided he wouldn’t go through that again.
Daimon holds him back with urgent whispers -- she is a product of your design, she cannot be dismantled so easily -- but it’s not enough. She is the crux of his research, and more; as if he will let her lay unattended while her systems malfunction. The only sound as he leaves his office is the snap of his briefcase and the click of the door.
Baelheit is not often given to anger; it is a waste of time, of resources. But to see his daughter -- his life’s work -- strewn in a gutter, cradled by broken concrete, exposed joints still sparking faintly, it inspires nothing short of quiet fury. With the assistance of a work drone, he loads Milly into the car he’d driven there, leaving behind a smeared puddle of coolant tainted with blood. Fortunate, he thinks, speeding through the Los Angeles streets in the dead of night, that he and Miriel have completed the synthetic energon formula by now; fortunate that they’ve already begun production, that he’s already begun adapting his newest generation of cybernetics to an energon infusion-based system. Fortunate he’s merely days away from the completion of a working prototype.
There is a secure lab underneath Mintaka Industries that accepts only one set of access codes -- Baelheit’s own. Milly has always been his second-best kept secret -- second only to Daimon, of course -- a family secret, so to speak. No one besides the two of them has ever known about Milly’s status as a cyborg, not even Baelheit’s most trusted colleagues. He has always worked on her alone. And as he lays her out over the table, neatly arranging his tools, he prepares to get to work once again.
It takes three days. Reconciling a human circulatory and metabolic system with an energon-powered cybernetics system is the most difficult problem, by far; but his and Miriel’s work on energon and its application in cybernetics systems has already proved fruitful. An energon infusion system would remove the assorted difficulties Milly had encountered with the power cells -- it provides a significantly more…natural solution, for certain definitions of natural. And in the three years since her last implant upgrade, he’s made considerable improvements. Better feedback, more resilient, a little lighter weight for how sturdy they are...he’s not quite ready to implement everything he’s learned about Cybertronian anatomy into his research yet -- the finer points of transformation still require considerable research -- but the new additions to Mintaka Industries’ arsenal of data speak for themselves all the same.
“Dad?”
He’s there when she wakes -- slumped over the desk in the lab, face pillowed in his arms -- her voice is thin and reedy, but it cracks through the air like an alarm. He jerks upright, turns to look at her. Her face is still pale, her hair lank where it spills over the table. In an instant he’s at her side, a hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t move, Milliarde. You’re all right now, but it’ll take a little while for you to adjust to your new implants.” Baelheit’s barely gotten more than a few hours of sleep, but he’s alert now, his gaze shifting to the instruments that give him live readouts on Milly’s vitals, on her cybernetics. He’d managed to avoid a toxic reaction to the energon with the new infusion system. Some would call it luck -- Baelheit, however, is merely precise.
Milly’s eyelids flutter slightly. Everything feels -- weird and unfamiliar. But she remembers this from before. It’s not the first time she’s had new cybernetic implants installed. “New implants? But -- ”
“You were damaged, Milliarde. Very badly.” Baelheit’s voice is crisp, matter-of-fact, but when he looks back at his daughter, there’s a softness in his eyes that hardly anyone ever sees anymore. “But you don’t have to worry. I’ve upgraded your implants, and none of your vital systems were severely injured…” He trails off, his gaze wandering to Milly’s hand, pale and limp, lying outstretched on the table. A hand she’s had for less than three days, and yet --
“What happened to you?” he asks then, his voice still quiet, but the question is abrupt. “You didn’t answer my messages. I was -- ” He looks back at her face, deep creases in his brow as he frowns. “I was worried, Milliarde.”
Milly squeezes her eyes shut, as if trying to think. She shifts on the table slightly, but it’s like her body is still too heavy to move. Ugh, she hates that groggy feeling after an operation. “I was…in a fight.” She looks back at her father again, still tired, but this time almost glaring. “It doesn’t matter what I was doing,” she says then, her voice a little stronger. “It’s hero business. As in, none of yours. I can’t believe you changed my -- all my stuff again! You didn’t even ask me.”
Baelheit feels stricken. He averts his gaze, his eyes falling instead on the instruments still laid out in the lab sink, waiting to be washed, spattered in a mixture of blood and faintly glowing synthetic energon. She’s angry with him.
“I didn’t have the luxury of asking, Milliarde. I needed to act quickly to save you.” The words are little more than an echo of ones he’d uttered to himself long ago. He looks at her hand again, intent. The pale skin of her palm seems to gleam under the harsh laboratory lighting. “I thought you’d be happy with an upgrade. You were always complaining about your old implants, about the power cells...I replaced them with a new power source. It’s a kind of plasma fuel. It works on an infusion basis -- which means you’ll need to supply your system with it regularly, but it should integrate much better than the -- ”
“I don’t care how it works!” Milly’s voice rings out in the lab, still cracked and a little weak, but there’s a steely backbone to it. It’s jarring to Baelheit, how much she reminds him of her mother in this moment. Madelynn had always been so -- spirited. “I don’t care what you thought! You just -- you just assumed and you did it without asking me! Of course I’m not happy, Dad -- this was never what I wanted!”
Baelheit stares at her, at a loss. What would she have him do? As if he could stand idly by while she suffers, while she needs fixing. He reaches for her hand, envelops it in his, minutes too late. “Milliarde…”
With force far greater than his own, Milly jerks her hand out of his grip, moving to push herself into a sitting position. She can tell that something is substantially different about her system now -- whatever this new power source is, it feels...tighter, like it flows -- but she doesn’t care, not now. She’s always been dependent on her father to keep her body in working condition, but she only resents it more than ever. She doesn’t want this half-human body. She never asked for this. “Unless you’re going to say sorry,” she fumes, “I don’t want to hear it. Give me my clothes, Dad, I’m going home.”
“Milliarde, I really must recommend that you -- ”
“I’m going home.”
“At least let me give you a -- ”
“I can get there myself,” Milly snaps, and she doesn’t enjoy the way her father recoils when she does, but she’ll take what she can get from him, these days. She all but snatches her clothes out of his hands when he brings them -- he’s always kept a spare set of clothes for her at the lab -- and throws them on as hurriedly as she can. There’s always the matter of recalibration when it comes to new implants, but she does all right. Baelheit feels a strange sense of helplessness as Milly gets on her feet, a little unsteady at first, but she manages just fine on her own. She can’t slam any doors on her way out -- not in a secure lab -- but the pressurized hiss as the door reseals itself after her exit is loud enough.
Baelheit has never forgotten that he is a father, no. But what it means to be a father -- that’s something else entirely.