Cryo fic - now with plot!
Because I've had a wee bit too much of The Almighty Cock recently, I started writing plot-oriented fic! With a possible yuri pairing on the horizon.
Pairing(s): Chance of Winry/Paninya, eventually. And thus Cryo dooms the fledgling fic to ignominy :D
Warnings: Spoilers for entire anime series; automail pseudoscience. (I’ve got an idea of how I’d like to see it “work”, but well…uh…we all know the concept is pretty broken XD Just remember the motto, kids: “If the Gate exists, nothing is impossible ^^”
Prologue: The shoulders of giants
---
There are times, she thinks, when she understands about religion - the meditative peace that gurus claim gives them access to enlightenment. It’s probably the same for runners, though she’s never been quite as into it as Dominique and probably never would. Merely something about the rhythm, the all-encompassing routine, that let one’s heart slow down and one’s mind fill with peace.
Finger plate, knuckle joint, top shank, ball. Of all of these the terminal was most important. She had worked on this particular junction for two days and nights already. She knew it, as if it were an extension of her own body; her breathing went in with the tightening of a screw and released when the fingertip joint sprung back under her flesh one. This was the finest piece she had ever built (just like the one before it, and the one before that) and she was part of it, one with it, and knew that it loved her.
There was an annoying buzz at the edge of her hearing.
”-ry!”
She shook her head a little, trying to get rid of the ringing.
“Winry!”
“WHAT?”
A dark form, made even darker by the haze of sunlight drifting through the picture window. Jet black hair, twisted up into a utilitarian Xing ponytail. Angry eyes, staring at her like she was a contrary bolt refusing to budge.
Paninya. Goddamit, Paninya.
“’Nini, I’m working.” She snapped, resisting the irrational urge to just chuck her screwdriver at the other girl’s head. There was a hairpin screw right THERE, halfway tightened in its socket, and she had been right in the MIDDLE of doing so when SOMEBODY had to walk in and interrupt her--
“Yeah, I noticed.” Paninya snorted. “You remember to go to the post office?”
“Yeah, course I did.” Winry muttered. “I was just about to head out there-”
“Liar.” Her friend grinned, and then suddenly a brown package appeared on the table.
“Ta-da! I figured you’d forget to check. The lobby was already closed, but you know that old barn…their heating ducts are always open for business.” She winked, obviously pleased with herself.
Winry put her pick down and stared at her friend.
“’Nini, you didn’t…”
Paninya flashed her the devilish grin she was famous for, and placed her automail hand on her hip.
“What, you think I was gonna let you tear yourself apart waiting for this sucker? C’mon, honey, look me in the eye and tell me you could honestly have lived until tomorrow.”
“You didn’t have to go THAT far.” Winry pouted.
“You’re just mad you didn’t think of it first.” Paninya grinned back. “Come on, get it open - I wanna see how it turned out.”
Winry sighed and reached for a shaping blade, unable to say anything in the light of her friend’s overbearing enthusiasm. She knew it was probably silly to worry - the way the postal system was backed up lately, it was doubtful that anyone would even notice the package was missing. Most likely they’d assume they’d come by during regular working hours. And it wasn’t like they were taking anything that didn’t belong to them. It was just…Winry couldn’t feel quite so blasé-fair about breaking and entering, anymore. She was a little jealous of Paninya for that, actually.
Paninya had never hacked her way into the switching room at Central HQ, and realized that there were some doors that were meant to stay locked.
“Winry?” Paninya was asking, looking concerned. “You okay?”
“Huh?”
“You were spaced out again.” She said with a frown. “What’s up?”
“N-nothing!” Winry replied, way too quickly.
Paninya gave her a look.
“Didn’t look like nothing.” She muttered, but mercifully, let it drop. They had been working together for too many months to keep stripping out the same sockets, as Dominque said. Eventually, Paninya was either just going to give up asking, or she was going to learn to stop being such an ever-loving baby about everything.
She had thought that she knew what pain was, once, but it seemed like every time she opened her mouth about it she only found out that it could always get worse.
She slashed at the packing tape with single-minded efficiency until the box was unwrapped; fourteen point oh five seconds by the watch on her work bench. She slid the tiny leather case out of its protective wrapping carefully, and undid the latches with a reverent slowness.
“So? What’s it look like?”
“…beautiful.” Winry whispered.
She turned the box around so Paninya too could see the tiny plate, its rows of miniature nubs glistening importantly under the orange lab light. Paninya whistled, impressed.
“Awesome.” She breathed, and her human fingers twitched on the tabletop. “Absolutely, perfect.”
Their eyes met, at exactly the same time.
“Microscope.!”
And THAT was the part she liked best about working with Paninya, Winry mused as they both rushed to drag the side table over. It was so easy for them to just slip into a groove where they knew what the other was thinking, and they had the same thought just often enough it was creepy. Dominique sometimes called them ‘his twins’, which got them funny looks from any one who happened to be in the shop at the time. Not like there tended to be. But it confused people, when there were, and at least that much counted.
The microscope table (thank god for wheels) slid neatly into place by the main shop bench, and Winry immediately got to work calibrating it. It wasn’t a good model (the newer ones all went down to even lower resolutions), but it was serviceable, and besides, they’d been pouring all their expendable income into other venues anyways.
“We could have just taken the box over THERE, you know.” Paninya laughed, but neither of them made to push the microscope back to its proper position. There was an unspoken feeling that the plate shouldn’t be moved anymore than necessary, as if, now that the box was opened, it was somehow in mortal peril of shattering at the slightest disturbance. Which was ridiculous, of course. It had survived Paninya crawling her way through the post office, and it would sure as hell have to take more than that if it was going to be part of someone’s automail, but somehow it was still just as fragile. As if by opening the lid, they had accidentally let a bit of the magic escape, and now their device was earthly, no longer an ethereal idea given form.
Paninya reached for some sterile forceps, and extracted the receiver plate with shaking hands. Winry very nearly snatched at the instrument to hurry her up, but restrained herself. That sort of impatience could mean disaster. She watched as her friend inverted the wafer-thin plate and carefully slid underneath the eye. Again, not needing words, she stepped to the left and let Paninya take position at the right lens of the microscope, so they could both get their first glimpse of it at the same time.
She pressed her right eye to the left lens and immediately the hooks and valleys of the sensory terminals came into view, a little fuzzy around the edges but still recognizable. She reached for the focus at the same time as Paninya, giggled as they flailed around trying to catch the knob; Paninya won and then suddenly everything was sharper, even more breathtaking than it had been before. There were so many leads on this chip that they couldn’t even see them all, even with the additional magnification; it looked like an endless field of cacti, tiny knobs with miniscule spines coming out of thne sides. The knobs were the coiled material for each of the individual pickup leads. The spines were their terminals.
Even Winry had to admit, alchemy had its uses sometimes.
“We DID it!” Paninya breathed, and elbowed a stunned Winry away from her eyepiece. “Move, I want a better look!”
“Hey! So do I!” Winry hissed, jockeying for viewing room of her own. “I designed it!”
“I produced it!” Paninya retorted, but yielded to the sputtering blonde. “So remember that, next time you start whining about something being ‘impossible, not gonna happen, the world is ENDING tomorrow, whine whine whine’. Sheesh!”
Winry elbowed her but snickered, unable to get seriously mad. Okay, she deserved that. Maybe more. She’d delayed voicing what had been (and was ultimately going to BE) a brilliant idea simply because she didn’t see how it could possible be realized. Well, Paninya and Dominique had some curious thoughts about reality.
They’d thought, if you can’t build something small enough, build it large and then have somebody make it small. And wouldn’t you know, they DID happen to know someone who worked out arrays for a living.
So. Multiple tiny sensor plates, to transmute to the surface of Paninya’s very best fingertip moldings. Hundreds of cables, shrunk down and fused into a single colorful band. And the most important of all, the pickup plate, to be surgically implanted into the missing fingers’ socket, with more terminals in one half-inch square than in most professional leg replacement prosthetics. Enough, in fact, to make something even more previously possible within a stone’s throw of reality.
They were about to build the smallest automail ever, and it was going to be sensitive.
Pairing(s): Chance of Winry/Paninya, eventually. And thus Cryo dooms the fledgling fic to ignominy :D
Warnings: Spoilers for entire anime series; automail pseudoscience. (I’ve got an idea of how I’d like to see it “work”, but well…uh…we all know the concept is pretty broken XD Just remember the motto, kids: “If the Gate exists, nothing is impossible ^^”
Prologue: The shoulders of giants
---
There are times, she thinks, when she understands about religion - the meditative peace that gurus claim gives them access to enlightenment. It’s probably the same for runners, though she’s never been quite as into it as Dominique and probably never would. Merely something about the rhythm, the all-encompassing routine, that let one’s heart slow down and one’s mind fill with peace.
Finger plate, knuckle joint, top shank, ball. Of all of these the terminal was most important. She had worked on this particular junction for two days and nights already. She knew it, as if it were an extension of her own body; her breathing went in with the tightening of a screw and released when the fingertip joint sprung back under her flesh one. This was the finest piece she had ever built (just like the one before it, and the one before that) and she was part of it, one with it, and knew that it loved her.
There was an annoying buzz at the edge of her hearing.
”-ry!”
She shook her head a little, trying to get rid of the ringing.
“Winry!”
“WHAT?”
A dark form, made even darker by the haze of sunlight drifting through the picture window. Jet black hair, twisted up into a utilitarian Xing ponytail. Angry eyes, staring at her like she was a contrary bolt refusing to budge.
Paninya. Goddamit, Paninya.
“’Nini, I’m working.” She snapped, resisting the irrational urge to just chuck her screwdriver at the other girl’s head. There was a hairpin screw right THERE, halfway tightened in its socket, and she had been right in the MIDDLE of doing so when SOMEBODY had to walk in and interrupt her--
“Yeah, I noticed.” Paninya snorted. “You remember to go to the post office?”
“Yeah, course I did.” Winry muttered. “I was just about to head out there-”
“Liar.” Her friend grinned, and then suddenly a brown package appeared on the table.
“Ta-da! I figured you’d forget to check. The lobby was already closed, but you know that old barn…their heating ducts are always open for business.” She winked, obviously pleased with herself.
Winry put her pick down and stared at her friend.
“’Nini, you didn’t…”
Paninya flashed her the devilish grin she was famous for, and placed her automail hand on her hip.
“What, you think I was gonna let you tear yourself apart waiting for this sucker? C’mon, honey, look me in the eye and tell me you could honestly have lived until tomorrow.”
“You didn’t have to go THAT far.” Winry pouted.
“You’re just mad you didn’t think of it first.” Paninya grinned back. “Come on, get it open - I wanna see how it turned out.”
Winry sighed and reached for a shaping blade, unable to say anything in the light of her friend’s overbearing enthusiasm. She knew it was probably silly to worry - the way the postal system was backed up lately, it was doubtful that anyone would even notice the package was missing. Most likely they’d assume they’d come by during regular working hours. And it wasn’t like they were taking anything that didn’t belong to them. It was just…Winry couldn’t feel quite so blasé-fair about breaking and entering, anymore. She was a little jealous of Paninya for that, actually.
Paninya had never hacked her way into the switching room at Central HQ, and realized that there were some doors that were meant to stay locked.
“Winry?” Paninya was asking, looking concerned. “You okay?”
“Huh?”
“You were spaced out again.” She said with a frown. “What’s up?”
“N-nothing!” Winry replied, way too quickly.
Paninya gave her a look.
“Didn’t look like nothing.” She muttered, but mercifully, let it drop. They had been working together for too many months to keep stripping out the same sockets, as Dominque said. Eventually, Paninya was either just going to give up asking, or she was going to learn to stop being such an ever-loving baby about everything.
She had thought that she knew what pain was, once, but it seemed like every time she opened her mouth about it she only found out that it could always get worse.
She slashed at the packing tape with single-minded efficiency until the box was unwrapped; fourteen point oh five seconds by the watch on her work bench. She slid the tiny leather case out of its protective wrapping carefully, and undid the latches with a reverent slowness.
“So? What’s it look like?”
“…beautiful.” Winry whispered.
She turned the box around so Paninya too could see the tiny plate, its rows of miniature nubs glistening importantly under the orange lab light. Paninya whistled, impressed.
“Awesome.” She breathed, and her human fingers twitched on the tabletop. “Absolutely, perfect.”
Their eyes met, at exactly the same time.
“Microscope.!”
And THAT was the part she liked best about working with Paninya, Winry mused as they both rushed to drag the side table over. It was so easy for them to just slip into a groove where they knew what the other was thinking, and they had the same thought just often enough it was creepy. Dominique sometimes called them ‘his twins’, which got them funny looks from any one who happened to be in the shop at the time. Not like there tended to be. But it confused people, when there were, and at least that much counted.
The microscope table (thank god for wheels) slid neatly into place by the main shop bench, and Winry immediately got to work calibrating it. It wasn’t a good model (the newer ones all went down to even lower resolutions), but it was serviceable, and besides, they’d been pouring all their expendable income into other venues anyways.
“We could have just taken the box over THERE, you know.” Paninya laughed, but neither of them made to push the microscope back to its proper position. There was an unspoken feeling that the plate shouldn’t be moved anymore than necessary, as if, now that the box was opened, it was somehow in mortal peril of shattering at the slightest disturbance. Which was ridiculous, of course. It had survived Paninya crawling her way through the post office, and it would sure as hell have to take more than that if it was going to be part of someone’s automail, but somehow it was still just as fragile. As if by opening the lid, they had accidentally let a bit of the magic escape, and now their device was earthly, no longer an ethereal idea given form.
Paninya reached for some sterile forceps, and extracted the receiver plate with shaking hands. Winry very nearly snatched at the instrument to hurry her up, but restrained herself. That sort of impatience could mean disaster. She watched as her friend inverted the wafer-thin plate and carefully slid underneath the eye. Again, not needing words, she stepped to the left and let Paninya take position at the right lens of the microscope, so they could both get their first glimpse of it at the same time.
She pressed her right eye to the left lens and immediately the hooks and valleys of the sensory terminals came into view, a little fuzzy around the edges but still recognizable. She reached for the focus at the same time as Paninya, giggled as they flailed around trying to catch the knob; Paninya won and then suddenly everything was sharper, even more breathtaking than it had been before. There were so many leads on this chip that they couldn’t even see them all, even with the additional magnification; it looked like an endless field of cacti, tiny knobs with miniscule spines coming out of thne sides. The knobs were the coiled material for each of the individual pickup leads. The spines were their terminals.
Even Winry had to admit, alchemy had its uses sometimes.
“We DID it!” Paninya breathed, and elbowed a stunned Winry away from her eyepiece. “Move, I want a better look!”
“Hey! So do I!” Winry hissed, jockeying for viewing room of her own. “I designed it!”
“I produced it!” Paninya retorted, but yielded to the sputtering blonde. “So remember that, next time you start whining about something being ‘impossible, not gonna happen, the world is ENDING tomorrow, whine whine whine’. Sheesh!”
Winry elbowed her but snickered, unable to get seriously mad. Okay, she deserved that. Maybe more. She’d delayed voicing what had been (and was ultimately going to BE) a brilliant idea simply because she didn’t see how it could possible be realized. Well, Paninya and Dominique had some curious thoughts about reality.
They’d thought, if you can’t build something small enough, build it large and then have somebody make it small. And wouldn’t you know, they DID happen to know someone who worked out arrays for a living.
So. Multiple tiny sensor plates, to transmute to the surface of Paninya’s very best fingertip moldings. Hundreds of cables, shrunk down and fused into a single colorful band. And the most important of all, the pickup plate, to be surgically implanted into the missing fingers’ socket, with more terminals in one half-inch square than in most professional leg replacement prosthetics. Enough, in fact, to make something even more previously possible within a stone’s throw of reality.
They were about to build the smallest automail ever, and it was going to be sensitive.