As Christmas got closer things got more and more hectic. While there were less people I seemed to continually find more things to do. Finally the night of Christmas Eve came. As I settled down for dinner I suddenly got a weird feeling. Owls delivered the letters for the night. One owl much bigger than the others with some kind of harness landed on the head table right infront of Dumbledore.
The old man took the letter it had and sent it off then began reading it. I and many others could see his face visibly pale. After reading the letter he spoke with McGonagall who also paled. I knew it wasn't the assassination of more enemies so I had no idea what could have caused them to react in such a way. Dumbledore waved his hand and created a piece of paper. He quickly scrawled something down then walked away with another wave of his hand.
The paper he'd just written on shot over to me. I quickly opened and read the note. I could feel the blood rush from my face. There had been a massive accident in the states involving multiple magical children. They had all been injured after an attempted rescue mission to save them from some group. Dumbledore and many others were being called on to assist. The old man had asked me to come with him and bring as many magic tools as I could.
I'd previously built some magic tools with him when we were creating materials. I assumed he was hoping that the tools could help in some way. I flicked some data to Sasha whispered some stuff to Rena and set off for Dumbledores office. I had many heavily expanded spaces on me so carrying everything wasn't had for me to do.
As I entered Dumbledore nodded to me and grabbed some items from his stuff. He put them in his own expanded space and took my arm. Fawkes leaped from his perch onto our shoulders. A flash of flame and a brief glimpse of the speed phoenix's could travel and we were in the Appalachian Mountains.
We quickly met with a large group of MACUSA wizards. After brief introductions we were led to a cabin in a small valley. Captain Graves, the lead auror took us into the cabin and down into an expansive, maze like structure. After lots of twists and turns we entered a magical elevator and descended multiple floors. At the bottom we squeezed past at least ten aurors and down a long narrow hallway covered in runes. At the end of the hall was a door with just enough space to fit two guards. Graves took us inside and then we saw it. Within an absurdly large expanded space was a massive rune matrix on the ground. Within the matrix was at least ten obscurials.
I quickly set up my tech and began scanning for anything and everything. Most of my stuff simply caught fire or completely stopped working for no reason. A few things survived but mostly spat out incoherent babbling or gave hundreds of errors. The people in the room watched on as my tools slowly broke of fell apart. After an hour of scanning and fixing stuff I got something. A massive energy surge was occurring.
I informed Dumbledore and the aurors who attempted to evacuate. I instead stayed calm and started my own attempt at survival. I hadn't tried it before but with magic I could get a lock on my powers and hopefully shunt the energy into my power. Dumbledore caught on quickly and started helping after I showed him how to lock onto my power. Three hours later and the energy surge plateaued.
When the energy suddenly shifted we activated the energy shunt and I felt my body lift off the ground. Everything became unbearably hot as I could feel a fall coming. My glowing eyes locked onto the fearful eyes of multiple small children all at once. I heard a cry from fawkes then a flash of pure energy overtook my vision.
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Three months later
I woke. I could barely more my body. My brain itself felt slow. My chrome responded slowly to my thoughts. I eyes eased open like a squeaky, rusted metal door. Light immediately blinded me. A thought tinted my eyes like shutters falling. I was in massive pain. I felt like I'd just been burnt alive. I tried to set up while looking around but I only managed to shift my head some.
My left arm and leg weren't responding. I shifted myself and pushed up with my three fingered right hand. I found myself in a sterile medical room. Everything was out of focus as I attempted to balance on my remaining leg and bony ass. Whatever had happened to me hadn't been good. While looking around my eyes caught something familiar.
A laptop with a screen saver. On that screen was a hollow red circle on a black background. Within the circle was a red line with three prongs leading to small filled in circles. A soft click sounded behind me and before I could turn a woman had pushed me onto the bed. If it was a different setting and I was an adult with control over my body I might have welcomed that, however I could easily tell I was young and of course missing some limbs.
She was speaking to me as she made me lie down. I caught some of it but most was garbled static. Somewhere off to the side another voice sounded and seemed to have told her I couldn't understand her. An hour passed by till they got my head, eyes and ears working. A series of questions later and the woman left looking satisfied and two more people entered. They immediately started taking measurements and such then had me sign some stuff to confirm my permission to attach cybernetic limbs other tech to me.
Turns out I had been put in the body of a younger version of myself. He had been 'arrested' and given to Arasaka as he'd shown talent with the net. I'd been a street rat who'd made my own dive tech and assisting AI. I was now in the same project that Lucy had been in. Apparently Arasakas acquisition of me had bought them Netwatches cold shoulder as they had wanted me for my AI.
I had lost my limbs in an explosion when some corporate climber thought he could climb by stopping this project. My handlers had been forcing me to create an AI when the idiot activated his plans and my shit went boom. He'd been hunted down and executed for his idiocy and I was shoved into an ICU bed. 'I' woke after they ended the medical coma I'd been in. The ripperdocs were ordered to give me basic implants. They'd been open with the fact the the director of this project wanted me to create my own custom chrome for him to copy.
Unlike the other children here I had been taken for my extreme talents in hardware. Many of the children here had stuff I had developed. Lucy herself had something I had made called the Rebreather. It allowed her to go extremely deep into the old net without being detected.
After a few hours of messing on a tablet I was put under for my surgery. As I fell asleep I was already making plans for escape. I figured it'd be easy with a Star Wars AI to control the base. I also wanted to try out some other types of tech I'd knew. Having a second set of arms or VTOL wings would be very cool.