There was nothing like taking a blow to the side of the head to mess with your day.

Glitch regretted walking past the basketball court. The ball practically snuck up on her. That girl had a very strong throw, too.

The good news? Glitch didn't feel a thing. The bad news? She now had vision problem. Technically, she could still see. But, her right eye was frozen in position, giving her a cross-eyed appearance and double vision.

To complicate things, being mechanical meant that standard healing was out of the question. That woman, Ghost, knew someone who she said was good with machines. He was supposedly heading there now.

Glitch was seated in the infirmary, waiting. Her metal fingers idly drummed on the adjacent table.

Richard had recovered from his ordeal at the Tech center and was pleased to be on his feet again. He had recieved an intriguing message from Ghost, something about needing his help in the infirmary with a technical issue. Something about his powers being useful. Even if the message had not piqued his interest, he could hardly refuse a request from Ghost.

As he slowly walked down the hallway, recovering from being stabbed in the lungs is not a quick process, still slightly affected by medication, he tried doing mental exercises to try to shake the cobwebs clear of his brain. Running commentaries and observations were the order of the day.

Turning the corner he spied a slim, well designed, fully articulated.... well robot. Without realizing it he had started to make his running observations in a soft whisper.

(Think Professor Mordin Solus from Mass Effect
"Hmm, robot, well made, fully articulated. Gestures natural, sentient? Human in robot suit? No, no response times to fast. Fully integrated neurological interface? Could explain smoothness of motion. No, no technology still in infancy, too.... bulky. Fully sentient AI?" He paused mid step for a second then continued, he was not halfway towards the robot, still blissfully unaware that he was voicing his thoughts in a whisper.

"No, no, technology still in infancy, to many errors, application specific, too narrow a field. Exhibits emotion, human gestures and positioning, too inefficient to be computed yet too individualistic to be mimic." He gasped softly. "Could it be, effect of mutation? First time for everything, perhaps reason for Ghost's request. Depend on extent and exact nature of mutation, affect effectiveness of my abilities."

Walking up to the robot, Richard extended his hand. "Hello, My name is Richard, Ghost directed me here to help someone? Do you know anything about this or am I in the wrong place?"

Glitch watched quietly as the man entered. He was talking like there was no one who could hear him. And the subject was her. The expression in her eyes went from puzzled to a little annoyed and most definitely uncomfortable. Listening to those unfiltered observations made her feel like a lab rat.

Relief swept over Glitch when he reached the correct conclusion, and she nodded in affirmation. When she reached out and accepted Richard's handshake, she kept her grip intentionally weak to avoid hurting him. "You must be the mechanic. I'm Glitch."

She pointed to her right eye, which, unlike its counterpart, was angled downwards. "Something in here broke. I can't move it. Think you can take a look?"

"Um sure, I would be happy to." Said Richard with a warm smile, warming to a challenge.

When the most human like robot/perosn was placed before you and she pointed to her eye and essentially said Fix, well there were thousands of things that could have caused it. It could be something as simple as a jamming of one or a number of the servos that controlled eye movement, a servo could ahve gone bad, perhaps additional lubrication was needed, or a bearing replaced. Not to mention that Glitch's eye could work in hundreds of different ways. How was her eye designed? with ring motors? with servos, sun and moon gears? How was it lubricated? Oil packed? Perhaps it worked.

"If you wouldn't mind just lying down on the table, lets see if I can figure out the problem and what to fix it."
Richard sounded much more confident and happy now that he had a challenge and problem to focus his mind on. It was much better than wrapping his mind around his... friend/patient?

"Okay." Glitch went to the table and plopped down on her back. Hold still, let the mechanic do his work. Or should she say doctor? Doctor-mechanic? Mechanic that was doing doctorly task? This situation wasn't exactly usual.

"Wish I could help ya out, but I don't know how a lot of this stuff works," she admitted. Regretably, her mechanical knowledge was still very little, embarassingly little for someone who looked like a robot. Probably because she kept putting off her research into the topic. Because Richard was there, she had the opportunity to ask questions. Once she could think of them, of course.

"I haven't even seen the eye mechanisms. I guess I could look in a mirror, but I'm not sure I want to see myself with my face off." The mental image gave her the chills.

Richard figured that working on a live.. well cyborg? Robot? Glitch, working on a live Glitch was like a doctor with a patient, it was always better to tell the patient what you were going to do before doing it in order to prevent alarm and violent reactions.

"Right so.. Umm Glitch I am going to place my hand on your head so I can use my mutation." It would probably be a good idea to explain his mutation, so he did so.

"I have the ability to touch most things and see how they work, how they are put together etc."

Richard placed his hand over Glitch's right eye and concentrated. He was also very careful to intentionally JUST concentrate on her eye. The last thing he wanted was to black out when his mutation tried to download the schematics, material properties, grid coordinates of every molecule and  their inter-molecular bond strength into his brain at once. He had made that mistake one with a much much smaller object and the migraines had floored him for more than a week while his mind slowly assimilated the information. Even now he could not recall the even without shuddering. Richard cleared his mind and pushed.

*Flash* a high definition camera with digital and limited physical zoom in a spherical housing.
*Flash* positioning was accomplished via ultrasonic ring motors set in an elegant yet complex pattern.
*Flash* the location of every fastening screw was highlighted on the blueprint that was forming in Richard's mind.
*Flash*
*Flash*

Richard rocked back slightly and put one hand against the wall behind him for balance while his eyes blinked rapidly. He took a moment, maybe two to gather himself, then straightened and turned to Glitch.

"Right, I think some connectors got knocked loose, nothing a soldering iron cannot fix but I need to..." Was there ever any good or non creepy way to say stuff like this? "Remove your eye and disassemble it. Umm... do you mind?"

"You can find out how things are built like that? That sounds kinda cool,” Glitch commented. Even awesome. Learning stuff without studying and sitting through classes sounded pretty appealing at times.

Glitch stayed quiet the whole time Richard did his thing. Having someone touching her eye was plain weird. Sure, she didn't feel any of it. Sure, it wasn't going to hurt her. But it was impossible to ignore the fact that humans normally don't let hands in their eyes. There was a crack on the ceiling. Yeah, Glitch was just going to focus on that instead of the HAND THAT WAS TOUCHING HER FREAKIN' EYE.

And, after a little while, Richard was done. Good.

Of course, the eye still needed to be repaired.

Glitch suddenly sat bolt upright. "...Y-you want to... take it out?" she stammered. "I mean, you're the mechanic. I guess you need to do that. It's just... I've never taken it out before and it'll be kind of weird, ya know." She lied back down. “Oh, let's just get this over with.”

>"You can find out how things are built like that? That sounds kinda cool,"

"Mmmm, I guess it is. Though i have to be very careful not to try to "learn" about something too big or complex. There are rather painful consequences."

When Richard "learned how something worked" it was far more than that. It helped the other part of his power, which was molecular manipulation. So when he "learned" imagine the coordinates and attributes for every single molecule of an object suddenly thrust into your brain. Try to absorb too much and..... Richard was just thankful that his brain had a safety switch. If he tried to learn too much his brain would either erase all knowledge and shutdown and leave him with a debilitating migraine for days, or try to process it in chunks wherein he would essentially become comatose until his brain had jolly well finished thank you very much.

>"...Y-you want to... let's just get this over with."

A brave one. It suddenly occurred to Richard that this was the equivalent of doing surgery on a patient. The eye was close to the brain, no matter how you looked at it. The realization was startling. All in all he would have to be very very careful not to short anything out. Thankfully the infirmary had some nifty x-ray machines that worked with pretty much any material so once Glitch had gotten herself comfortable he put on his electricians gloves and set to work. He had no idea what voltage or current he would be dealing with so this was as much for his protection as hers.

So according to the X-rays, the eyes was accessible once the facial cover had been removed... This was... was.. Richard did not even know how to describe the feeling. Should he make conversation? Ask if she could go into standby? Did she feel pain? How do you talk to someone who you are literally removing the face of?

"Umm, I have not done anything like this before either. Let me know if you feel any pain."

A few moments later and Richard gently lifted the... well front cover? of Glitches face. He made a note to take care when putting it back so as not to damage the watertight seal. Right now onto the eye....

“Yeesh.” Info dump to the head. Glitch could imagine her own brain frying from something like that.

Unfortunately, the X-rays showed that the face plate had to be taken off. She avoided looking at it. Her face was separated from her, sitting on the table like the inanimate metal object that it was. It was freaky, yet another reminder that she wasn't human. Glitch closed the undamaged eye and held still, trying to ignore the sound of Richard tinkering around in there. Freaky indeed.

“Don't worry. I don't feel pain. At least, I haven't since I went all robot. Maybe I can if I wreck something badly. Though, I really don't want to try that for obvious reasons. Should I shut up and let you concentrate? 'Cause the talking kind of helps.” But not if it distracted Richard, of course.

Now that the face plate was off, and the inner workings were exposed, Richard next had to carefully remove the eye, dismantle it, clean it, resolder the damaged parts, and reassemble it perfectly all while under the eye of his patient. So no pressure whatsoever. It was not like Ghost gave him any warning that he would be doing surgery when she asked him to have a look and see if you can help a fellow mutant. Richard sighed mentally, braced himself then started to work.

"Right now I am going to remove your damaged eye and repair it. It should not take long." 

Ugggggggh it all sounded so clinical and dehumanizing, but he could not think of a better way to put it. He could almost imagine himself saying things like, would you like an eye with an optional X-ray attachment Madam? or how about would you like an extra limb with that Madam?

>“Don't worry. I don't feel pain. At least, I haven't since I went all robot. Maybe I can if I wreck something badly. Though, I really don't want to try that for obvious reasons. Should I shut up and let you concentrate? 'Cause the talking kind of helps.”

 

So she did not feel pain, that was a relief. Richard mentally sighed with releaf. He had horrible visions of Glitch silently screaming in pain and it would make him feel horrible. Still he had to be careful not to create a short.

"That is good, I would hate to think that I am causing someone pain. As for talking, please carry on. It kind of helps me as well." Richard admitted smiling. 

Thankfully the eye came free without a hitch and Richard took it to a table to set about taking it appart. His fingers dexteriousely and deftly opening the clamshell casing that made up both parts of the eye revealing the circuit boards and the ultrasonic motors that controlled movement and zoom. He laid things out neatly and precisely. With micro eletronics precision is vital. Next he setup his magnifying glass and holder and a fine tipped soldering iron and set to work.

"Have you always lived in New York?" He asked trying to make conversation.

“Cool.” Glitch continued chatting away, mostly with idle babble, whatever came to her. Having thoughts in her head other than the mechanical slash surgical tools was comforting. It was also good to know that Richard was around as weirded out as she was.

The vision in the damaged eye cut out suddenly, and with her remaining eye, she could see it being placed on the table. The task was completed surprisingly faster than Glitch had anticipated. She got up, retrieved the metal plate, and held it back in its proper place.

“No, I'm from California. It was pretty nice back there.” She and her parents had been quite the happy family. But what had happened to her mother was awful, worse than death. Glitch tried to hide the tremor in her voice. “Things... changed, and we ended up moving here a few years ago.”

Trying to shake her thoughts, she focused on the disembodied camera eye , trying to make sense of the tiny gizmos it was made of. “So, that's my eye.” She gestured to it with her free hand. “Like, what is all of that stuff?” Since the expert was here, she felt like she should try to learn something from him.