Artificial Willpower

Parts

Lovely picture of our favorite overthinker by _sleepy.moth_ on Instagram! This one is from 2 chapters ago, but due to the emphasis on Pitch I put in the last one, I thought it would be a nice place to pop in sheeraayame's piece.  Enough tangents though. Enjoy!

After a few hours of watching cartoons with no real meaning, Yancy found himself calming a little. Watching children's animations proved to be a fun, low-stress activity for him to calm down with. He watched quietly, but after a while, he noticed his finger flicking across the groove of the panel in his arm. He wasn't sure how long he had been fidgeting with it, but now he couldn't think of anything else.

A few moments passed as Yancy tried to stay engulfed by the comfort of the cartoons, but reality had a way of being heard. " Hey, Illinois...?" He finally tried hesitantly.

Illinois turned down the volume to just a soft hum and looked at him. " What's up, bud?" He asked.

Yancy hesitated, then said," I uh... youse got access to the blueprints... right?"

Illinois nodded," Yup. I've hacked into those too."

A moment of silence, only filled with the mumbling cartoons before Yancy spoke again" Can youse help me understand them? Like... startin' with under this panel?" He asked

Illinois looked almost excited as he got up," Of course. I can actually go print them out if you want, and I can help you understand them."

"Yeah... that'd be nice," Yancy said, a little nervously. Ignorance was great, but he knew he had to learn about them sooner or later.

Illinois smiled," Alright, I'll be right back. " He said, before quickly leaving the room.

The smell of bacon was gone now, giving way to a cozy type of smell you'd expect to find in a cabin-like it. Yancy wasn't sure how to describe it. It gave him the same feeling as a forest after rain, but it didn't smell the same. Not that it mattered. It just felt calm, and abnormally normal.

Illinois came back, a little bit later, with a toolbox and some paper. He set down the toolbox and lined some papers together on the coffee table" The blueprints weren't formatted for printer paper, so I had to make do" he said, as he pieced together the paper puzzle for Yancy.

Yancy looked over the technical nonsense. The numbers that seemed to not represent anything, the words he had never seen and the diagram with lines he didn't understand, very similar to the one Pitch showed him.

He looked down at his mechanical hand and flexed it. It made as little sense to him as the diagram.

Illinois looked over the blueprint," So you wanted to start with the panel, right?" He asked as he straightened some papers.

Yancy nodded, "Yeah. I know it's probably just how to get to wiring or somethin bu-"

Illinois shook his head, "It's not." He said, sounding a little more excited, like a kid who just found a limited edition Lego set. He got a screwdriver," Do I have permission to take off the panel to explain what's in there?"

Yancy still wasn't sure about Illinois. He had calmed down a little, but the back of his mind kept telling him that Illinois wanted more than Yancy was willing to give. He seemed so excited about the bionics, but Illinois was a mechanic. It was possible he was just fascinated and excited about the technological wonders of it. Yancy could admit, out of the morbid context, cyborgs were a pretty cool concept...

He hesitantly held out his arm for Illinois. He wanted to know what was in there, and couldn't unscrew it himself.

Illinois spun the screwdriver between his fingers, before taking Yancy's arm carefully and undoing the screws. " Alright, so since they designed these bionics to be for soldiers at war, they made these parts with limited resources in mind. They had to make you strong, with no need for a recharge. It's not like there's outlets in the war zone. Or time to charge, or time to risk someone's power source dying in battle. So they used a straight-up nuclear power source. If the blueprints are accurate, it's encased in a thick glass tube in there, but... just be careful when we get this sucker open, otherwise, you'll leave a crater where this house is"