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Who: Newton Geiszler and Yooooouuu
Where: An seedy looking office within LA Chinatown
When: Late March, every evening between 3-5
What: Newt's arrived in LA and before his official job starts, he decides to set up a health clinic for aliens and cyborgs. Because that's a thing you do.
Warnings: over zealous discussion of autopsy probably

[The best thing about not really sleeping much every night meant that Newt got over the jetlag from moving from Japan to America pretty quickly. Nothing several cups of coffee and a bowl of overly sugary cereal aimed at children (not middle aged scientists) couldn't fix, even if it was three in the afternoon.

He's got his laptop open, absently reading the latest shonen jump--it's really not the same reading it online, but it'll do--swinging around in his chair with a bowl of cereal in one hand, sucking on the spoon with his other.

The office is pretty basic, with a desk and a few chairs, a slowly filling bookcase and a sink. He's not had much time to get things set up since he's only been in the city for a few days but it's got the essentials for setting up a totally respectable clinic. As well as suspiciously looking like a studio apartment. He's been looking into getting a gurney for patients to make it look more clinic-y and less like he's living here, but figured a camp bed would do for now. It's certainly been good enough for him, so nobody will mind. If they're visiting they probably have a few different things to worry about anyway.

He isn't even sure if anyone will turn up, but it doesn't matter. He's got about four years of academia to catch up on before he starts at Mintaka, and of course, has left it to the last minute to do it.

But then again, he doesn't need sleep. So it'll probably take him no time at all.]

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[ A half hour after their conversation, Aña walks into the clinic. She'd gotten there a good 15 minutes ago and spent her time scoping the place out, making sure it looked at least vaguely legit. And it had, so she sucked up the courage to go in.

Stepping inside, she doesn't necessarily look like she should be here - she's just a petite Hispanic girl with a long ponytail, a long-sleeved shirt, and a glove on her right hand which could easily be a fashion thing. ]

Um... Hello? Dr. Geiszler?

[He's leaning over his computer and glances up when the door opens. he has his mouth full of his third bowl of cereal, and raises a heavily tattooed arm to wave her inside as he quickly swallowed.]

--Call me Newt. Only my mother calls me Doctor. [He gives her a grin, and then looks her over. Not exactly what he was expecting. She doesn't look like an alien, but Skrulls could be tricky sometimes so he's not about to make any judgements.

He shuts the laptop and motions to the free chair, getting up so he can sit on the edge of the desk just in front of her.]

Lemme guess. [he squints at her, rolling his other sleeve up.] Terminator, right?

Okay. I'm Araña.

[ Aña grins at him, lopsidedly, and sits down, perched on the edge of the sea a little nervously. ]

I usually get pegged for a guy, I'm impressed.

Edited 2014-05-26 21:35 (UTC)

[He gives her a brief once-over as she sits, trying to figure out where exactly the tech she was talking about was. Probably the arm that had the glove on it. He'd bet money on that.

When she speaks he grins and gives a shrug.] I deal with a lot of species that don't really have gender as part as a social concept, so I'm not here to judge, man.

You got any questions before we get this show on the road?

[ He's sharp. Then again, it's kind of weird to only wear a glove on one hand, especially when it's not really cold enough for gloves. ]

Um, not really.

[ Deep breaths, Aña, you really need to have the arm looked at and he's definitely the most qualified person you know of who's not part of CONDOR.

Hell, he might be more qualified than they are, if all the stuff she found online is true.

She pulls off her glove and pulls off her long-sleeved shirt (there's a camisole underneath) to reveal her lovely new cyborg arm and the obviously-fresh scarring along the border between flesh and metal. Her entire shoulder has been replaced, and if he took an x-ray or investigated it, he'd find even some of the connected musculature under the skin in her chest and back have been replaced with high-tech mechanics. The arm is proportional to her other arm, almost as if she had metal casing over it, but it's fully mechanical. She shifts a little awkwardly in her chair, tucking some loose hair behind her ear with her non-metal hand. ]

Um, so I don't really know for sure if it's waterproof or anything? I've been using a plastic bag when I shower, like when you've got a cast. And I had to use it to punch out of a sort of cell and everything was already painful right then so I don't know if I damaged anything in the hand or in my body or anything.

[He watches her with a slight raised brow which turns into a look of disgust when she finally takes everything off. It was a botch job, and looked like it had been done whilst she'd been awake. The flesh wasn't healing in the right places, and the arm didn't look like it was meshing well with the organic tissue.

He immediately pushes off the desk to get a better look at it, wincing and hissing in a breath when he looks behind at the shoulder.]

Where the heck d'you get this? A back alley chop-shop? [He pulls away, to go and retrieve some tools and his headlamp for a more indepth look.]

I'm gonna have to pull this shoulder casing off to get a look at the mechanics. That okay with you?

Uh... well, that's not entirely inaccurate, actually... [The look of disgust punches her in the gut for a moment, even though she knows it's directed at what was done rather than at the fact that she has the arm at all. She's pretty disgusted by that bit, too.]

Um, yeah, go for it.

[She breathes a little, then continues as he gets to work] But I mean, um. Dios, okay, I don't know if you heard about the big cyborg AI attacks that went down recently? Anyway, that happened, and I got grabbed and they were after people with powers, and I had this tattoo, and they thought if they removed the tattoo, my powers might disappear with it. So they um. [her voice shakes a little. Okay maybe a lot. In case you were wondering, yes, she was awake for at least part of this.] They took my arm off and put this in.

[a beat]

It didn't work, neither, I've still got my powers.

[Newt grabs his screwdriver and starts working the tiny screws that kept the casing attached to the underwiring attached. He's doing his best not to hurt her, since the skin still looks raw and healing, but he can only be so careful with the screws being so tight. He pauses to listen to her story, scowling as it unfolds. He'd only heard what the newspapers had reported, and knew it had been pretty horrific.]

Gott. [he swallows and looks back at the arm.] I mean, all things considered, this job could be worse. It doesn't seem like your body is rejecting it, which is a major issue for a lot of back alley deals. This might hurt.

[he twists the screws free, chewing on his bottom lip, because he knows that probably is gonna do more than sting. It needed cleaning out though, desperately. He can see all the gunk oozing from under the seam.]

I'm really sorry that happened to you. [he pulls the casing off to reveal all the robotics underneath, putting it to one side as he goes to pull on some gloves.]

But I'm gonna get this all cleaned up and checked for you so that you won't have to worry about electrocuting yourself, okay?

Gracias, Dios, por los pequeños favores [it's muttered under her breath, and she winces a little as he works to get the screws loose. She hisses in pain when he finally pulls the casing off, but it's kind of like pulling off a scab - something about it feels right.

Plus, you know, cleaning it out is good for her continued survival and staying out of the hospital and gunk.]

Yeah, me too. Could've been worse, though. [sigh] If we hadn't broken out, they probably would've moved on to removing more limbs, or fucking around with my brain.

[he squints a little, his Spanish not being as good as his Cantonese,but he vaguely gets the just of what she's saying. He leans forward, shining the light onto as much of the wiring as he can. He's seen worse jobs, but he's certainly seen better. He might even suggest pulling the entire arm out to reinstall a new one. It'll need doing at some point. He grabs a numbing spray solution and squirts it onto the exposed skin to help ease the pain. Then he gets to preparing some sterile wipes to clean up the healing wound.]

Yeah, you really don't want then up in your brain. Way too much shit to go wrong up there, right? Man, I'm glad you got outta there.

[now that he's given the solution time to enter her skin, he gets to work cleaning away the foul smelling crusty blood and white blood cells surrounding the metallic muscle strands, grimacing as he does so. This wasn't done in a sterile environment, he can tell.]

This isn't the best robotics I've seen. [he trails off, tossing the goo covered cloth to one side and going in with a second on the join.] Once I get all this crap out, I can see if it's a socket join. And we might be able to install a better arm for yah. Something way lighter and less clunky. Oh hey! What's the synapse speed on this thing?

[So very not sterile. But clean enough it hasn't gotten hella infected yet, at least.

And then they're off "sympathy and kind of cruddy stuff" and on to him being a total geek, and Aña's pretty okay with that. Makes her smile.]

Lighter and less clunky is good. [pause] I don't suppose you'd be able to make one where the hand has some sort of wall-clinging capability, would you?

...and I have no idea what synapse speed is.

--Oh, it's the speed it takes your brain to send electrical signals down the synthetic muscle strands to make the parts move. Sometimes with bad tech there can be a delay, but that's usually due to bad processing chips.

[he tosses another gross rag behind him and finally has gotten most of the sludge out so he can see the main joint and nerve joints. He musses around in his toolkit for a moment, and brings out some pliers to pull back a synthetic membrane that protects the strands of metallic muscle.]

You wanna just move your fingers for me? Gonna check the synapse speed.

Oh, that makes sense. I haven't noticed too much lag, but it's also weird to get used to, so...

[She flexes her fingers and her wrist for him, hoping that whatever he sees is good. There's a miniscule lag behind what a biological arm would have, but nothing too bad. Provided you don't rely on good reflexes like Aña does.]

[He watches the movement carefully, and then moves to look at the nerve endings connected to the small electrical wiring, making a noise of irriation at the back of his throat.]

Well, I mean. It's okay. As long as you know, don't rely on ninja reflexes or whatever. Probably fine for everyday life. [he gives one of the nerve endings a small probe which causes her wrist to suddenly jerk.]

Whiiich, I'm guessing on the whole reason for this, you might need ninja reflexes.

[she squeaks briefly when her wrist jerks, just startled by the sudden movement, but then sighs as what he's saying sinks in.]

If it's gonna keep up with the rest of me, then yeah, I kinda do. It's already got me at a disadvantage... ¡Maldita sea!

[she rubs her face with the non-metal arm. This just keeps getting better.]

[He chews on the end of screwdriver he'd just been poking around with, and stands there looking at the insides of her arm with a frown. His mind is racing, but he's not saying anything, and a silence passes over them as he gives her another brief once over, poking around in the join.]

I think I can take this off. [He starts playing with some of the screws before realising that he's just taking it off without asking.]

Uh, if that's okay? Your nerve endings were strapped up with plugging, so it shouldn't actually hurt. Too much anyway. And I can get this arm on the work table and take some photos and call a girl and get you something better.

[Anya resists the urge to giggle - she'd kind of been expecting him to remove the arm, and the sudden pause to ask permission was weirdly adorable.]

Yeah, that's cool.

[She does her best to hold still, gnawing on her lip as she thinks]

I'm just double-checking that you realize I can't pay for something better, right? I just... I really can't. We gotta feed mija-- my little sister, I mean-- and it's hard enough getting that done, you know?

[The moment she tells him it's okay, he starts to unplug all the tiny nerve connectors and loosen the screws. It would feel very odd, like he was separating each strand of muscle fibre but without any pain. The only time there is any pain is when he pulls the arm from the socket, thanks to the way the skin had tried to heal over it. But he knows that, so he gives her sufficient warning before he does it.]

This is gonna sting. [And with a sharp pull and a hideous sound of ripping, he pulls the robotic arm clear off, putting it to one side before checking over the damage left around the socket. Thankfully it's not too bad--just like puling a bandaid off a fresh scab, but he's going to clean out the joint and get it looking a lot healither before he even thinks about putting the arm back on. As he sets to work, he blinks as she talks.]

--You have a sister? Can't your parents help out? [he starts scrubbing the area with antiseptic, dying her skin a bright orange.] And don't worry about it. I did say it was free, remember?

[That is the weirdest sensation she has ever felt, and that includes everything she's ever done with the exo, and the feeling of shooting webbing. She hisses a little when he pulls it off, but it's not too bad.

Honestly, after the arm removal, she's pretty sure most pain is gonna seem mild. Getting fatally stabbed was mild compared to that.]

I sort of do. It's complicated, and sort of secret, but basically, yeah, I have a sister.

[It's nice that he's working. She doesn't have to pretend to have a reason not to look at him.] And no, my mom died when I was little. And Papá, um, died about a year ago? It's kinda just my best friend and me and M, none of us have anybody else.

[he raises an eyebrow at what he's doing, swapping the cloth out when it gets gross and gunky.]

A secret sister? That's kinda weird. [he laughs, before biting his tongue a little when she continues, grimacing. Well done, Newton. He tries to just continue scrubbing, peering into the empty socket.]

--Sorry, man. That sucks. [What else are you supposed to say to that.] How old are you again? Should you guys be out on your own?

[ God, it is so weird not having that weight anymore. From too heavy to too light, she feels all off-balance. Good thing she's sitting. ]

Yeah, it does. [ Not much else. Thankfully, she doesn't expect much else, either. ] I'm a legal adult, if that's what you want to know.

[He jams his glove covered fingers into something that's not metallic but definietely squishy and that just popped, and gives a wince.]

--Sorry. I think I just got a blister. [The way the metal was rubbing against the exposed skin, he's only surprised that she's not covered in more. That and burns. He presses something cold and covered in antiseptic against the oozing spot, pulling his glove off with his teeth to reach for a fresh one.]

Hey, I'm not judging. I just figured I should y'know. At least try and be an adult at you. Hey, can you hold this here? [he pulls her other arm up and presses it against the gauze, before wheeling away on his chair to refresh his gloves and to get some more supplies. He wheels back, using both his legs as his hands are full to scoot across the floor, and dumps the assorted supplies next to her. He carefully pulls her hand off, and peels back the gauze which is already sticking, and peers in the hole some more.]

It's not as bad as it could be. Got a bit of infection and blistering up here. [he's pointing as he talks.] And this part looks like its got some necrosis going on. Gonna have to cut that out. But I can make it work.

[he gives her a smile and a thumbs up.] Then we can get your new arm fixed.

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