Work Text:
Steady hands pinched a pair of pliers and turned, bending the metal tabs. Slowly…slowly…
He exhaled when the connection held.
Now for the gears and core. Those would be easy, just time-consuming. The process, according to his plans, should take no longer than a half hour, as long as he wasn’t distracted.
He couldn’t afford to be. Not when he was finally making progress on other projects. His schedule needed to be clear before the Anemo Gnosis was retrieved.
Dottore looked up from his workbench for a moment, peering beyond the magnifying lens, towards the contraption at the center of the room. He would have to test each Chess Piece accordingly, individually, and then comparatively...if he could find the common factors in the devices, then perhaps… perhaps…
He returned his attention to the pieces in front of him, moving wires carefully with thin instruments, so the circuitry wouldn’t get caught in the path of the cogwheels. With a few more additions, the creation was almost complete, save the glowing core set aside. This side project was nothing but a whim, really. He wanted to see if something much smaller than a puppet or a Ruin Guard was not only capable of interaction but reaction, of learning and applying knowledge, adapting.
A series of squeaks broke his concentration and Dottore’s gaze fell back to the table for a moment, where a rat stood on its hind legs and assessed the air, nose twitching. Around its neck was a single pink bowtie, identifying it as one of the Harbinger’s pets. He wasn’t just some rat, after all. Dottore put down one of the instruments in his hand and brushed a finger over the rat’s belly, straightening out a patch of wayward fur.
“Almost finished, Mathias.”
Other Harbingers thought it was ridiculous that he kept the single rat that continued to try and make a home in his private study when he first arrived in Sneznhaya. But the creature was quiet and easy enough to train with the right incentive. Most impressively, the rat survived for years without a colony, much like the Harbinger had at the Academia. A fine companion, however unorthodox.
Dottore plucked the core from its resting place, set it into the circuit, held a button, and then closed up the device. A mechanical mouse, complete with fully functioning limbs, a segmented tail, and a voice box that generated realistic-enough squeaks to be recognized by other creatures. Namely, Mathias, but if it blended in with the other colonies that nested around, so be it. Mathias was a social creature with no colony; he needed a companion that wasn’t a human. After a moment, the eyes lit up with the familiar warm glow of a Ruin Guard’s optical socket and the tail twitched as the machine tested its abilities.
He placed the mechanical rat, R4T, on the table and carefully cradled Mathias and brought him closer to it, allowing him to sniff and inspect it.
When he let go, Mathias and the mechanical rat sniffed one another and gave a few squeaks and chirps that Dottore could discern. Any other communications were outside of the frequency humans were capable of hearing. That one had been a bit of a challenge but it seemed to be a non-issue. So far.
Before long, the two were running around through the tubes that were installed around the lab. Installation had been an inconvenience but it meant Mathias didn’t need to be in Dottore’s pocket or out in the lab where he could get hurt.
Not that the Harbinger cared , of course. Whoever thought otherwise would make a fitting subject for his table.
Dottore tested the peripherals, the microphone, audio, and camera assemblies of R4T. All operational. At least this way, he could record behavior as it happened and update the machine as necessary. That it might double as a device to catch wind of other conversations was an additional benefit.
When they returned to the worktable, having finished their game, Dottore pulled out a tiny matching bow tie from his coat pocket and settled it around R4T’s neck.
There. Perfect.