"Cyborg."

"Robot."

"Cyborg!"

"It's a Robot."

"Daivor, I'm telling you, this arm was clearly built for a cyborg. Why would you give corded synth-muscle to a robot? It needs to be wired into a central nervous system."

"Or a network of robust Mini-controllers that can do the same thing. The power draw and weight are too much for a standard human to handle." The gnome argued back.

"There are aliens in the world, Y'know?"

"Yes, but the size has to be for a humanoid. Unless K-Tech is gonna start selling a series of mini-arms to the military."

Kaleb grit his teeth and tried to think of an argument as his fingers traced the power lines of the K-Tech prototype. They had carefully pried open the outer casing and disassembled Milly's new home. However, they quickly discovered that the arm was a maze of circuit boards, synth-muscle, and wires. Most of which was just hanging about the place under the arms' exterior. The form-factor was sleek and minimal. But the internals were an absolute mess.

He and Daivor had been discussing the travesty when they bumbled into their current argument. Kaleb unseated another batch of wires and traced another set when Terrance spoke up.

"What makes you think it's for the military?"

Kaleb glanced up to see the boy looking over from their forge. His Salamander was hard at work again, melting metal and creating ingots. Daivor glanced up at Kaleb before explaining.

"Essentially, it's the strength of the arm. This thing is a beast… or it would be if it had any sort of power supply."

"Nothings powering it?" Terrance asked in confusion.

Kaleb waved the kid closer and waited for him before picking up the explanation. "We uncovered a charging port and a housing for several cores. But nothing was in them, obviously. K-Tech isn't going to toss out power supplies with their failed prototypes."

Terrance nodded as Kaleb pointed things out. The arm was barely even half taken apart, but enough was open for Kaleb to show off what he wanted to. Daivor was currently working on the housing for the power cores. They still hadn't discovered what exactly K-Tech used to power a lot of their tech, and the gnome hoped that the housing would provide a clue. Kaleb, meanwhile, was watching Terrance for any further question.

The boy rubbed his chin as he took in the entire arm. Eventually, he nodded his head and gave Kaleb an apologetic look. "I got to agree with Master Gnome. It's for a robot."

"Gahhhhh!" Kaleb groaned as he waved the boy off.

He spun in his chair as Daivor did nothing to hide a laugh. He heard Terrance return to his forge as Marie coughed from her own workstation.

"Are you surprised? He's a MASTER Gnome. He is going to be a little more right about these things." She picked up the breastplate she was working on with her rock-covered arms and examined it before she put it back down.

Kaleb scowled as Daivor continued to chuckle. The gnome pulled the housing off the arm's interior wall and set it aside. A tiny homunculus handed the gnome a set of tools before vanishing and Daivor started trying to get into the housing. Kaleb bit his tongue and instead focused on finding the synth-muscle's connector port. The bound reams of muscles wrapped around the outside of the arm, but the couplings appeared to be inside. As his hands traced the inside of the arm's casing, his Mechanical Engineering skill pushed knowledge to the forefront of his mind. His hands hit the coupling just as he interpreted the information the skill was trying to give him.

The coupling hissed and the synth-muscle exploded upward. Kaleb covered the thick, corded muscle with his robotic arm and shouted a warning to Daivor. Thankfully, the gnome was only half inside the arm itself. He got jostled around a bit, but it wasn't for long as Kaleb got the Synth-muscle under control. The pop of the disconnecting synth-muscle had reverberated around the workshop and the others were all staring at him worriedly.

"Sorry! Sorry. My fault. I forgot to expect the backblast. Synth-muscle is always a bit jumpy, especially if it's been seated for a while."

"Well, we'll have to check the cords once everything is taken off." Daivor said, adjusting his shirt and checking himself.

"Maybe you should get out of there while I find the second coupling?" Kaleb said.

Daivor nodded and pulled himself from the arm's interior. It took a bit of work and he almost got stuck, but eventually, the gnome managed to pull himself free. Kaleb bit back a chuckle at the wires dangling off the gnome's trousers and reached back into the arm. Now that parts of the synth-muscle were unbound, it was a little trickier getting his fingers to the coupling. But he managed it quickly and gave a shout to the workshop.

"Get ready for another pop!"

Kaleb flicked the couplings open and pulled his arm back as the synth-muscle popped up again. This time it was less severe, but the cybernetic arm still jumped. He collected the reams of muscle fibers and placed them on his desk before he examined the now muscle-less arm. It now looked like a more standard robotic arm, with the synth-muscle wrapped around the top of it. There were still smaller bunches of the metallic muscle fiber around, but Kaleb figured he'd get to them later. For now, they were free to start taking the arm apart in sections.

Kaleb reached for a wrench he knew a Homunculi would hand him when he noticed his desk was crowded again. This time, Marie, Roy, and Terrance were all standing next to his desk. Their eyes were locked on the cords of synthetic muscle he had laid out. Kaleb shared a smile with Daivor before he rolled his eyes and coughed.

"Ahem! Would we like a lesson, class?"

Marie scowled at him as Terrance and Roy nodded eagerly. Kaleb chuckled to himself as he moved his chair aside a bit and waved a hand over the muscle cords.

"This is synth-muscle, as you all know. Bound cords of flexible metal designed to recreate the muscle tissue of skeletal muscle. Now, depending on the manufacturer, you could get all kinds of strength levels when dealing with synth-muscle. Most maintain the same look, however. They have the standard striations we see on actual muscles and they are even multinucleated."

"How is that? When they would have to have nuclei?" Marie asked.

Kaleb nodded. "Very good. Synth-muscles don't really have nuclei, but instead they have nodes that serve the same function. These nodes are fed power by whatever powers the arm itself and usually are proprietary to the manufacturer."

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Kaleb turned and picked up a single strand of synth-muscle. Pulling it away from its fellow. The thick cord was heavy and he could feel the nodes underneath the metal fibers. He passed it to Roy and gestured for him to pass it around.

"You can feel the nodes under the metal there. They are small, but really powerful bits of tech. When I get the chance, I'm going to pull one and examine it."

Terrance handed the muscle over to Marie as he asked. "But won't that get you in trouble? You said this stuff was proprietary."

"I don't intend to recreate the nodes. Just see how they work. They're going to be in my new arm, so I'd like a look at them."

"How strong would you say these cords are, individually, Doc?"

Kaleb watched as Marie tugged on either end of the cord and grunted in effort. "Pretty strong. We're talking super-fine fibers that have been threaded together to form a flexible cord. Also, each cord has to be able to withstand a charge from whatever powers the muscle. So it's an insulated cable that reacts and acts like a normal muscle fiber."

Marie looked at either end of the muscle before a realization seemed to come to her. She pulled the muscle again, hard, but Kaleb didn't think she knew what she was doing. She thrust the cord back at Terrance as a creepy smile came to her face.

"That's it!"

"Wait, what?" Roy said as the short woman nearly knocked him over in a race back to her workstation.

Terrance gave Kaleb an apologetic look, but he waved the boy off. Marie was collecting bits of metal from her own work area as they watched. The three of them shared a look before Kaleb shrugged his shoulders and spun back to his own table. He heard Terrance and Roy walk over to Marie with questions, but he tuned them out as he saw Daivor finally popping the core housing open.

He moved in close as Daivor handed what looked like a mini-crowbar to a homunculi. The gnome rubbed his hands together in anticipation before he pulled the housing's lid off and revealed its insides. Kaleb leaned in close and looked down to see two underwhelming depressions the size of golf balls inside the core housing.

"Now, that's interesting." Daivor grumbled as he looked everything over.

"Are they using literal cores to power the arm?"

"No way. They can't generate that much power with two mini-cores of this size. Look at them."

"I see them, Daivor. But you have to admit that looks like the seating for two cores." Kaleb pointed at the two depressions.

Daivor ground his teeth, but then spotted something. "Look here. Coming off the core seats. Are those power rails?"

Kaleb looked in closer and saw multiple small lines leading away from the two depressions. They looked like silver power rails that you got on a standard PCB. But they were leading away from the core's seat.

"Maybe for even power dispersal?" Kaleb mused.

"Nope. Look. The rails loop back around and head into the seat. Maybe it's a feedback so the cores don't overheat."

Kaleb picked the housing up and looked for a heat sink or something. Daivor joined him in looking, but they both came up with nothing. Eventually, Kaleb shouted over to Roy.

"Roy! Could you grab me one of the K-Tech branded power cores? 42mm diameter."

He heard the boy hurry to give him a hand as he put the housing back down. Daivor hurried over and his hands began to glow. He scanned them over the black box and let his magic get to work. Meanwhile, Kaleb listened to Roy digging through their shelving unit.

"Flat or ball, Doc?!" Roy shouted back

"Ball." Kaleb said, turning.

He was just in time to see Roy holding up a silver and black golf ball-sized power core. He raised it in the air and raised an eyebrow. Kaleb nodded, and Roy tossed the ball with a slow, underhand toss. It sailed toward Kaleb and he caught it with his real hand and gave Roy a wave.

"Thanks."

"No problem, Doc."

Kaleb went back to work and prepared to seat the core into the housing. But Daivor was still in the way. The gnome's glowing hands waved over the core seats and followed the rails that were etched into the housing. He waited patiently for his turn, but when Daivor finished, he held up a small hand to stall Kaleb.

"I don't think I would do that, boss."

"Magic nonsense in the casing?" Kaleb asked.

Daivor shook his head. "Nope. I just think you're gonna fry your core. The rails do exactly what I thought. They feed back into the core."

"To prevent overheating?"

"Nope. To increase the power output. Whatever power the core is designed to output travels along the rails and then feeds back into the core. The rails have seen a lot of wear and use. Enough to prove that the arm has been through testing."

"Well, it is a prototype. But what kind of power supply increases its energy output as it's…" Kaleb trailed off as he thought about the hangar's power generators below them.

Daivor nodded as he saw Kaleb reach the obvious conclusion. "Yeah. The Weikacol solution downstairs does it. But this is something different."

"Of course! Kersait invented the damn stuff! Obviously, they'd have an enhanced version."

"And they've created power cores with the stuff."

"That HAS to increase efficacy. Just like our batteries."

"Maybe. But I get the feeling like K-Tech is using more of an electrical version. Ours is still liquid base. Even the batteries use the stuff as the cathode."

"Can we replicate it?" Kaleb asked, already working through how he would.

But Daivor was shaking his head again. "We don't know how their batteries work or how powerful they are. I think we are gonna have to come up with our own power supply."

Kaleb blew out a breath, but nodded in understanding. It would make the entire project take a bit longer. But that was fine. The entire purpose of tearing the arm down was to see how they could improve things… also to make sure K-Tech wasn't spying on them. Daivor kicked the housing away and a quartet of Homunculi came by and picked the black box up. They tottered off to the edge of the table as Kaleb picked up the cybernetic arm again. He twisted the arm around a bit, deciding which section to remove first when a thought hit him.

Grinning, he looked down at Daivor. "You know, an enhanced power supply would mean that a humanoid could lift this arm."

He saw Daivor roll his eyes. "Yes. But the arm is obviously for a robot, Professor."

"No. It's clearly for a cyborg."

"Robot."

"Cyborg!"

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