2582/Aw, shucks

Aw, shucks
Date of Scene:	23 July 2020
Location:	Labs - Titan's Tower
Synopsis:	Vic removes Sam's power armor
Cast of Characters:	Victor Stone, Samuel Morgan

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Victor Stone has posed:
The doors from the tower elevator swish open and Vic Stone rushes out into the lab area, carrying Techno's inert shell across his chest. He angles himself slightly as he passes through the doorway, careful not to smack the helmet or boots against the frame as he does so. A few long strides bring him over to a work table, where he deposits the power armor, still frozen in mid-combat, pointing a pistol at the ceiling.

Vic moves quickly and with purpose, but there's no scramble to it, and for once he's not keeping up his usual rapid patter of jokes. No one's been able to make contact with the boy who pilots the suit, as far as he knows, and quick work is the best chance of a rescue.

First thing's first, though: Vic attends to the handgun, flicking the safety on, clearing the chamber (he neatly catches the bullet as it flies out), and removing the magazine. Don't need the suit seizing or suddenly becoming unfrozen and accidentally sending a live round ricocheting around the room. The next step is to activate a scanner system mounted to the table itself: beams of light shine over the suit from crown to sole. In moments, a readout should pop up to give Vic whatever data it can: he most urgently needs to know the status of the pilot; locations of any available plugs, data jacks, or latch mechanisms; status of the power unit and what's preventing the suit from operating; and what the suit's made out of, in case he's going to have to shuck him like an oyster to get him out of there.

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    It was a hectic moment, after the PymTron met his demise at the hands of a group of heroes with an axe (and ex) to grind while rescuing the elusive Doctor Pym. But Techno had been delivered to the Titan Tower double quick, given that nobody seemed to know for certain if he was still alive or not.

    The suit is, as could be imagined, too heavy for a regular person to carry or even lift, and that's without the pilot inside. Luckily for Sam, there's plenty of people in the tower much stronger than your average Joe. Silent and dark, GAUSS refuses to respond to any queries, refuses to move, and no contact is possible with the pilot inside.

    When safed, the pistol is shown to have a magazine of specialty ammo loaded, looking like APFSDS rounds with a custom load, just the weapon you'd take Ultron hunting. Perhaps curiously, the brass of the round that ejects when the chamber is cleared is laser engraved with the words 'Ultima Ratio', with the next round in the magazine shown to read 'Kill Switch'. Someone had spent some time looking after his equipment...

    A scan of the suit, which will identify itself as GAUSS Mk.1 micro engraved on the cuirass, appears to be made of a Tungsten-Titanium alloy, and seems to lack any and all data connections to the outside aside from a charging port shielded behind the third lumbar plate. A myriad of capacitors and graphene battery packs provide distributed power to the different control systems... and all of them appear to be at least partially charged.

    There is, in short, no reason why this suit should be offline.

    There is also not a single sign of any control mechanisms whatsoever. As if the pilot is controlling the whole thing like a second skin.

Victor Stone has posed:
Without looking at them closely, Vic sets the magazine and loose round aside; his time is precious, especially when he spots a specific line blinking on the scanner screen: FULL ENVIRONMENTAL SEAL ACTIVE.

"Shit," he hisses, his first fragment of commentary on the situation. Succinct, at least.

Leaning back, he grabs a drill on an articulated arm, then leans forward and sets the diamond-tipped bit on the faceplate of the suit's helmet, clamping the entire assembly to the 'chin' so that the drill's range of motion will be as limited as possible. He puts it off-center, well away from where the pilot's nose would be, hoping to reduce the risk of injury.

"Sorry about the fumes, man, but I don't have time for the jaws of life," he says through gritted teeth. The drill spins to life, its motor thrumming and the bit squealing against the hardened armor surface.

This process takes his entire focus; he needs to be absolutely precise to get through the armor without going further; only his trust in the precision and speed of his own limbs' actuators gives him the confidence that he will be able to compensate for the sudden lack of resistance once he pierces the shell.

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    Full environmental seal, no active comms, no data ports. It's not the kind of information you'd want to see in this kind of situation. And perhaps it can be forgiven for a combat suit to have no external override controls, it's still entirely inconvenient when the pilot is trapped inside.

    The bit cuts through the armored face plate, slowly but surely, digging towards one of the myriad locking systems keeping the helmet in place. Like much of the rest of the suit, it's segmented but locked together to provide a seamless surface, nothing to even get a spudger into. Smoke rises from the drill bit, fighting against two of the hardest known metals on the planet forged together into an alloy that has proven just how tough it can be in recent missions.

    Until the tip hits the latch, compromises its integrity, and the helmet fair blows apart.

    The severed locking latch goes flying, pinging off the lab wall, while the heavy armored face plate jumps up out of its bearings, forced out of its locking tabs by the pressure of the actuator, and jumps clear off Sam's face. The two halves of the helmet that remain pop sideways, locking surfaces grinding against the inner lining of the gorget and falling apart.

    Hurrah, Sam's head is free.

    Eyes closed.

    Is he breathing?

Victor Stone has posed:
Vic's taken aback by the force with which the seal breaks, but doesn't do more than jerk backwards. He unclamps the drill from the helmet, and as soon as he lets it go, spring tension tugs it up and out of his way. Setting two metal fingers against his patient's temple, he gently tips his head to the side -- as much as the boy's helmet will allow -- to get a look at the patch of skin below and behind his ear. Vic's metal fingertips don't have the surface sensitivity to check for a pulse the traditional way, so he'll have to confirm visually.

"Come on, kid, talk to me," he says, tone laden with urgency. "This is the bit where you dramatically cough and start gasping for breath after giving me a second to get totally convinced that you're dead."

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    With a loud *CLANG*, the face plate lands on the floor next to Techno, with a noise fit to wake the dead.

    Despite that, Sam does not, in fact, wake.

    Nor does he appear to be dead, but it takes a bit of checking to make sure. There is most certainly a pulse, just about detectable by someone looking for it hard enough, but barely there otherwise. Likewise, while Sam does appear to be breathing, he doesn't seem to be doing a lot of it. There is no indication that he's about to cough, sit up and loudly ask where he is and why people are staring at him.

    What is obvious, however, is the dried blood under his nose and around his ears, which is never a good sign.

Victor Stone has posed:
The results of Vic's rapid inspection come in quickly: Techno is alive, but unresponsive and injured, to an unknown extent. "Fucking hell," Vic spits, glad Caitlin's not here to look at him disapprovingly, but kind of wishing she /were/ here to help him tear this battle suit open like Captain America shredding an insufficiently patriotic log. Well, he has other options, just not ones quite as direct.

"You'd better be wearing pants in there," he says in an almost threatening tone. Then, he tugs the scanner readout closer with one hand and curls his opposite set of fingers down into the suit's metal cowl. With a series of complex clicks and the whirr of unseen motors, his entire hand segments into pieces, each extending on telescoping tubes down into the suit itself. He has a few specific targets: the latches that hold the suit closed are going to have to go if he's going to give Sam any kind of medical treatment.

He doesn't have to do it all by spatial reasoning; the scanner comes back online so that he can track his fingertips' progress through the suit interior, like a sort of nail-biting, high-stakes tunneling video game.

First, he's going to try to physically disengage the latches with his fingertips; the least risky possibility. Failing that, he'll try to shock the suit's actuators into doing it themselves; there's some risk of electrocution there, but hopefully nothing too severe. As a last resort, this set of middle fingers have cutting lasers built into the fingertip, for especially scathing bird-flipping as well as situations like this one. He'd really rather not be bringing that kind of heat into play so close to someone's skin -- not to mention the risk of his clothes catching fire.

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    It's never a good sign when a cyborg swears.

    Luckily there is now more than one way to peel Techno, and despite the care that has been taken to finish the suit seamlessly on the outside, there are plenty of exposed control surfaces that can be reached along the inside liner. Sam is, indeed, wearing clothes inside the armored shell, a black boiler suit with plenty of pockets for storage, including his phone in one of the thigh pockets. At least he won't have run the risk of scratching the screen.

    Latch after latch pops open under direct manipulation, and the first segment to open and slide way is the gorget. This acts as a seal for the cuirass, which levers upwards just a bit when the seals are disconnected, but the chest plate stubbornly refuses to clear any further, held in place by several actuators that are integrated fully into the back plate.

    Next to go is the pauldron with the stylised 'T', a marker that had only recently appeared on the midnight blue suit... and on the inside of the shell, invisible even to the pilot unless the suit is disassembled as it is now, are two dates... 06/30/2019 - 07/19/2020

Victor Stone has posed:
"Of all the days to forget my can opener," Vic mutters, in a little burst of gallows humor, as it becomes clear that the chest plate isn't going to come free on its own. His hand retracts to its normal shape relatively quickly, as he doesn't have to stop and undo more latches along the way. Once his hand is free, he both checks on the scanner and then drops into a crouch next to the table to visually inspect the pieces of the armor that are connecting the front section to the back.

Moving Sam's body more than necessary, especially without knowing the extent of his injuries, could easily make things worse, so he's reluctant to start rolling him around, trying to get to the rest of the latches. In the same way that paramedics will cut someone's clothes away to treat them, it's going to be faster and safer for Vic to just break these connections than to try to do the job cleanly.

"Sorry, man, I know you love this suit, but its job is supposed to be keeping you alive," he says. If possible, he'll just reach in and snap the connections in his powerful hands; if not, he can resort to a rotary saw.

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    From a purely design point of view, it makes sense for the armor that protects vital organs to be doubly sturdy, and to be kept in place with enough force that a strong impact won't jar it loose or create a ballistic gap. But really, the amount of fixtures and closures that Sam has on the cuirass is rather ridiculous, as if he was expecting to be hit by tank shells. But for all the strength of the closures, despite the sheer lateral force the latches can absorb and continue to function, they are not designed to withstand pressure from within. It's deceptively easy to pry them open, one by one, with no more than some good old elbow grease.

    When the cuirass opens, it's much like the helmet all over again. Clearly Sam designed the suit so that, in case of catastrophic failure, the pieces of armor forcing themselves outwards would act to deflect away projectiles or debris. A desperate enough armor solution, to be sure, but one usually only found on battle tanks. With the breast plate hinged up, the rest of the suit starts to open up on its own, greaves and chausses opening at the seams and rotating away.

    And despite all of this, when his feet are revealed, his combat boots still gleam.

Victor Stone has posed:
"Now we're talking!" Vic enthuses as the armor finally starts cooperating with him. It's a quick jog over to the section of this floor that contains the medical ward, and he returns momentarily with a diagnostic machine on a wheeled cart. He's not actually using the cart; casters are just going to slow him down when he can lift the damn thing easily and run it back to the workshop.

Once it's set down next to the table, he unzips the chest of Sam's boiler suit, warns him, "This is gonna be cold," and then applies antiseptic and electrodes to their proper places. Metal fingers! Not great for doctoring! The end result is a far cry from an MRI, but the advanced tech STAR labs, Caitlin Fairchild, and he himself have put into this system should at least give him a start on figuring out what the hell is wrong with the Titan in training.

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    Inside the boiler suit, under Sam's shirt, is mostly scar tissue. Few people have ever seen him with his shirt off, and this may very well be why. Those marks are old, proving that he has been getting stabbed and shot since his early childhood. Luckily they don't hamper the placement of the electrodes, or it'd be a long search for enough smooth skin to attach them.

    When the readout comes in, it's... unusual. Clearly the technopath is alive, and his vitals are weak but stable. Mentally though... the lights are on, but it doesn't look like anyone's home. All the hallmarks of a medical coma.