Cohost writing prompt: @spy-thief-assassin-who — Spy who didn't expect this would require so much... fluid
The mechanical princess is shaking and breathing in short, rapid gasps as Pinifer hauls her through the back door of a safehouse. That she's breathing is good; the assassin's musket-ball must have missed the Air-aspected crystal at the heart of her. The shaking is...not.
"Lie down," Pinifer says brusquely, swinging the princess's juddering form onto the edge of the kitchen table. "I need to see the damage."
The princess slumps backward, and Pinifer efficiently slits the front of her gown from neck to waist, slapping the knife down next to her.
The gunshot hole is alarmingly central to her chest, only lipped somewhat at one side to say that it wasn't straight on. The spy peers, as closely as she can, through ventilation slots; hisses through her teeth at the bright and distorted metal of the crystal's setting, which must have deflected the ball only just enough. The crystal is uncracked, and the great air-pump still tirelessly whirling, even if somewhere behind it there's the constant gust of ripped air-tubes. From the slacking of the princess's legs, Pinifer guesses the main line down to them is nicked.
The shaking has not abated, and that's of more concern; that suggests damage to the nervous fibres. Pinifer curls a hand under one metallic shoulder, and is rewarded with the faint char-scented crackling of anbaric sparks, and a rattle that points to the cause: the musket-ball in still inside, and touching the metallic cores of some number of nervous fibres, their signals and anbaric surges jumped across and mingled in injurious ways.
"Princess," Pinifer says. "Princess, if you can hear me, I need to remove the musket-shot from your body."
The princess makes a garbled noise. Pinifer hopes she understands; she wasn't asking permission. Neither of them can afford for her to wait for it. She flings open the cupboards, grabs kits for both human medicine and mechanicals' emergency repair, opens them, lays them on the table to either side of the princess's hips.
The thoracic access plate yields easily to the screwdriver with the correct head, and Pinifer draws a steadying breath. Normally, maintenance procedures would see the pneumatic muscular bundles vented and collapsed, making space to work; but Pinifer is no mechanic, and neither is she familiar with the princess's layout. She can see many of the flexing bundles half-deflated from the air leaks; it will simply have to do. Rolling up her sleeve, she attempts to thread her hand among them.
"Ah," the princess says, as if in shock, and her muscles clench around Pinifer's hand, which she extricates with difficulty, gritting her teeth, and douses with mineral oil from the repair toolkit.
"I swear I'm helping," Pinifer says grimly, and worms her hand back in, the juddering princess wheezing and whining. "I swear I'm helping—" and she hopes she is, as she twists her wrist to aim around an air-tube junction and pushes, her elbow lodged against her body, other hand gripping the table edge to stop it sliding away as she thrusts, lunging from the knees.
The princess makes some kind of squealing noise that humans can't, as the beaked-together point of Pinifer's fingers drives between her tubes and twitching muscles, sinking almost to the elbow, echoed by Pinifer's own grunt of alarm; and then a sudden anbaric shock makes her arm jump and they both make a noise.
"Oh," the princess says faintly, the first words she's said since being shot, "this is funny, though, isn't it? I think the more lllllurid human bards tell cautionary tales like this one, about our people having too much to do with each other; though I — ah — I think they're usually rather more about warm and corruptible human flesh being — AH! — fillllled with with with mercilessly p-pistoning steel—"
"Please relax," Pinifer says through gritted teeth. "Before my wrist breaks."
"I'm trying," the princess says earnestly.
"Thank you," Pinifer says. "Your highness," and attempts to flex her numbing fingers inside the princess's giggling chest.
"Holy—" the princess says, and then sparks sting Pinifer's fingers, the princess's voice turns into a painfully loud crackle, and every muscle surrounding Pinifer's arm clutches at her like a merciless mailed fist.
"Sorry," the princess says, after long seconds, sounding dazed. "Are you — are you hurt?"
Pinifer is bent double over her, arm trapped, forehead pressed against the princess's chest, teeth clamped together. Her cursing, also trapped and unable to exit her mouth, has migrated to the back of her throat as a rumble of gravelly fury.
"Um." The princess moves her arm, very cautiously. "Do you think. Do you think if you took some more of that oil and tipped it into my ventilation slots, it would help you extricate yourself?"
Pinifer breathes emphatically through her nose.
"Yes, of course," the princess says, and giggles nervously. "Only, if you're still stuck up there when anyone else arrives, they might get the wrong idea about who tried to kill me—"
Pinifer ruthlessly grabs the musket ball out of its nest of broken fibres with her fingertips, rides out the next screaming convulsion with her teeth drawing blood from her lip, then tips all of the remaining oil on the princess's chest vents.
"Oh-h-h-h." The princess twitches, and finally lies still, juddering quelled. "Oh, I'm going to be so s-slippery and full of oil. I'm going to need a pressure washer up there after you when you're d-d-done—"
"Spare me the filthy mechanical pillow talk," Pinifer grunts, braces her knee on the table, and pulls.
"Ah — ah — ah — ah—"
The spy wrestles her arm loose; filthy, scraped and bleeding, barely able to open and close her fingers. She tosses the flattened musket ball on the table next to the princess.
"I realise I probably can't openly award a medal to one of your kingdom's spies," the princess says. "But I'm having that cast into one for you anyway. Special services to the c-c-crown." She gingerly puts a hand to her side, by her open thorax. "Especial fearlessness in rearranging my guts—"
Pinifer can't help a rusty, shuddering laugh. "Next time, you should probably get someone who knows what they're doing," she says, watching as oil puddles under the princess and drips from her fingers.