Unaccounted for emotions

As the scientist continues his non-stop metallic tinkering he suddenly feels himself getting slightly light-headed, as his eyes start getting heavier, his body and mind start to progressively slow down from before.

He lets out a groan not being able to focus on the task ahead, getting up from the messy work desk that is littered with all kinds of metallic nick-nacks and blueprints of all sorts, starting to make his way towards the door.

"I need some fuel." - he whispers under his breath while stepping out of the room, the brighter lights from the corridor making him squint for a moment as he sees a purple-skinned figure coming around the corner to where he is.

"Oh! Doctor!" - she approaches, the slight squeaking of the wheels that allow her to move around demarking her movements. - "I've finished cleaning the room you asked me to clean. How's the project the doctor is currently working on going?" - she asks, a hint of innocence in her voice, even though the doctor knows that, after what she has most likely seen while at the Zeldrim's laboratories, the girl was anything but innocent.

"It's..." - Screks stares at her lower body which looks more like a glamorized stool with wheels than anything else, he pauses for a moment. - "Winter, how were your legs before? Were they anthropomorphic? Humanoid? Did you have a tail? Did you have more than two legs? Did you have cuffs?" - the doctor rambles on, going through every possibility he can think of at the moment, while W just stares at him, wide-eyed.

"Uhm...why...why does the doctor want to know?" - she lets out an awkward giggle, as confusion fills her face.

The doctor diverts his gaze towards her mechanical eyes that stare back with confusion. - "To build you new ones of course, why else?" - the scientist blurts out, raising one of his eyebrows, as if what he just said was the most obvious thing in the world.

The girl just stares at him for a good minute, dumbfounded.

"Being silent does not answer my question. I'm sure you're kind of tired of "walking", if that can even be called walking, with a wheeled stool for legs. It was supposed to be a temporary solution and I was planning to make that a side project, but I've kind of grown tired of them, so I'm moving that project up my priority list, a certain human boy and a armored four-race that you are acquainted of have also question me about this topic some time ago, so that also adds to the thing in question, even if I was already thinking of proceeding with this matter before either of them made that call." - the doctor announces, gesturing at every word, while the girl just stares at him, her hand starting to cup at her mouth, eyes watering slightly. - "Do you know how to draw? Can you draw them for me? That would help. Oh, they don't have to be like the ones you had before, you can just come up with new ones! Yes, that would make the readaptation process slightly harder, but it would still work out fine, I've had multiple customers make-"

The doctor's rambling is suddenly interrupted by an audible sob coming from the girl in front of him, which makes Screks divert his gaze from the nothingness of the wall, where he was previously staring while lost in the midst of his own thoughts, to his assistant that had tears trailing down her face, her cheek blushing slightly with her hands still cupping at her mouth.

"Uhm." - the scientist stares at her, immediately stopping with the gesturing and rambling, blinking repeatedly at her, his eyebrows sinking down, not knowing what to do about the crying person in front of him. - "Uhm. Do you... want... a...tissue...? " - confusion is very clearly in the doctor's voice, who feels himself start to sweat slightly at the awkwardness of the situation.

"No, no I... I'm..." - her hands travel down towards her chest, gasping at it softly revealing a wide smile that traces her cheeks. - "I'm just happy..." - her face flushes up slightly while tears of joy keep steadily falling through it.

"...right..." - Screks pauses while the girl in front of him brushes away her tears with the back of her hands. - "...Why...?" - the doctor questions. - "Did you assume I was just gonna let you become a moving stool for the rest of your life? I thought you would have a slightly higher opinion of me after all the projects you've seen me finish while working as my assistant. Well, not that the ones you've been able to observe show as little as 5% of all my work but considering you've seen over 15 complete projects walking out of the lab with shiny custom prosthetics, that should be enough to-

Screks is once again interrupted by the girl who this time leaps, or the equivalent of leaping from someone that has for the lower half the equivalent of a fancy robotic wheeled stool, forward towards the scientist who uses his mechanical arms that sprout from his back as support so he doesn't fall backwards, as the girl hugs the stiff scientist that just kind of stands there while she squeezes her superiors torso gently.

"Thank you so much doctor, that, that really means a lot to me. I will never be fully able to compensate you for all the doctor has done for me so far. The doctor did not have to give me a place to stay or a way to be able to move at all, but the doctor did that and so much else, and that really means more than I could ever put into words and I'm so thankful for everything." - the teary-eyed assistant says as she tighters the hug around the scientist that continue to just, don't really do anything more than the minimum so he doesn't fall back with her weight on his torso.

"Uh...m.. yeh, sure. That's... a thing I... did...? ... yeah... totally..." - Screks mumbles under his breath, patting awkwardly the girl on the back as he just hopes that she decides to finally break contact, which she does, to the scientist's relief.

As she does so she lets out another wide gentle smile, which makes Screks just slowly reach out for the golden earring on his right pointy ear, which upon contact vibrates with a magical touch as he hears a familiar voice in his mind.

"Cael? Is something in the matter?" - Katsu replies, a hint of confusion in his voice.

Screks takes no time to telepathically reply to the mage. - "Come to the lab immediately, I need your..." - the scientist pauses in the middle of the sentence, trying to think of the right word - "Just come here already." - he gives up, taking his finger out of his earing and with it cutting the telepathic conversation with his partner.

Winter stares at the seemingly perplexed doctor with slight confusion, as Screks' body, other than his right arm, hadn't move an inch from the pose he was in while the both of them were hugging a moment ago.

"Is everything ok doctor?" - she asks reaching out towards the scientist, which makes him finally move, to take a step back, away from her touch.

"Yep, everything is-"

Screks is interrupted by the sound of quick footsteps coming from the lab's entry hall, and he knows exactly who they are from.

"Doctor, you called?" - he hears a familiar voice coming from a tall figure with red galaxy hair coming from around the corner.

"Ah, yes! Katsu! Come here! I need you! Now!" - Screks immediately answers, gladness extremely clear in his voice and body language, getting closer to the mage who looks slightly confused as he also approaches the scientist.

"Uhm?" - he looks at the fidgety scientist and then at his assistant, who, as confused as him, stares back. - "Did something happen Winter?" - he asks gently, noticing the slight redness under Winter's eyes.

"N-no... I was just, uhm..." - she looks slightly away - "Uhm, telling the doctor how thankful I am for all he's done for me and..." - she gazes back at Screks who immediately looks away, a neutral unreadable expression on his face, and then at the mages gentle eyes that stare back.

The mage lets out a soft sigh. - "Okay, I think I got it, you see Winter, the doctor is not the best at dealing with ... let's say, emotional reactions, nor at dealing with physical interaction that he wasn't accounting for started by anyone other than the doctor himself." - Katsu explains in a compreensive tone.

"Oh... yeah I..." - she gazes at the doctor that once again immediately averts his gaze. - "I... guess I could... see that..."

"It's not that I don't know how to deal with emotional reactions, it's just that when you have someone start crying for no apparent logical reason and that immediately, without leaving me time to process the exact reason why of such emotional response, proceeds to do something that, and I demark, has never done before, such as leaping towards me which in of itself is a bad idea, considering the wheels that she is using to carry herself around are not meant for any kind of vertical motion, leaving me no choice but to serve as stopping site for the fall that results in-

The scientist is interrupted by Katsu who covers Screks' mouth with his hand, shutting him up.

"What the doctor means is that he appreciates your gesture, but he would appreciate it even more if you had warned him beforehand, specially about the physical interaction part, as he is not the best at dealing with... things along the lines of what I can assume just happened between you too. You did nothing wrong, the doctor just has some very specific... boundaries about these things." - the mage explains, in a reassuring tone, resting his free hand on Winter's shoulder, who seems to relax a bit while hearing Katsu's calm explanation.

"Oh! Okay, I'll keep that in mind. Thank you Sir Katsu." - she replies with a warm smile, trying to keep her gaze away from the scientist that she can feel that is staring at her intently.

"No problem, these kinds of things are common when dealing with, well... just, try not to overthink what just happened too much." - Katsu reassures once again, taking his hand out of the scientist's mouth that stays quiet.

"Okay, I'll be going back to my shores now, I'll send what the doctor asked as soon as I can, thank you again." - she does a light bow in Screks' direction, before leading herself out of the corridor to continue what she was previously doing.

Screks stares her down as she leaves the corridor, and waits until she is completely out of their earshot.- "She's a good kid, she will accomplish great things, just not locked in here." - the doctor discloses.

Katsu looks at the scientist, his eyes blinking rapidly as he hears Screks' words. - "What do you mean by that?" - he asks.

"Winter is very bright, but she's scared. While she doesn't try to conquer her fears she will remain in a never-ending cycle of stillness, that will take her virtually nowhere. The first step to try to push her out of it is some new legs, so that's what I'm working on at the moment." - the doctor explains, not looking away from the corridor where Winter had just passed through.

A soft smile grows on Katsu's face. - "You're a kind person..." - the mage seems to stop himself mid-sentence as he is about to blurt out the name of the person beside him, knowing that that was not the right place for that, ending up simply patting Screks softly on the shoulder while his magical braid wraps around the doctor's organic arm, reassuringly.

"I wouldn't say that." - the doctor replies after a few moments of silence, his expression still as neutral as before.