before the sky split [ninjago next generation]

cybernetic perfection, part2

Junko's teeth ground against the bound cloth in her mouth. Her gunmetal prosthetic caught the light as mechanical fingers gripped the blade. A rubber tie bound the blood from her living arm as it rested across the workbench. She leaned down to press the cold blade against the natural bend of her elbow where the skin had already gone cold and adopted a tint of blue. The skin wrinkled strangely, as if it had already ceased to be a part of her and the only thing left to do was amputate.

Its replacement lay on the workbench, ready to be fused with muscle and bone. Clawed fingertips curved towards the warehouse ceiling like golden sunflowers seeking the sun. Junko shouted against the gag in her mouth as she slid the blade across her skin. She cast the blade to the side and struck the workbench with her forehead as her mind failed to make anything more than a superficial wound. The knife clattered to the ground as her breath continued to come fast through her nose. Junko recovered the blade and ordered her more perfect hand to have a firm grip. When she ordered her human hand to do the same, her fingers barely twitched. She steeled her mind and placed the knife back to her arm.

Blood welled around the blade's edge as Junko pressed its cutting edge into her skin. Three breaths came slowly to her and filled her lungs with the stale scent of the warehouse's air. Her eyes blurred, then focused with a new clarity. One swift motion drew the knife through her arm, deep enough to stain half the blade with old blood, deep enough to grind against bone at the bottom. Skin and fat and flesh revealed itself, shocked and white at first. Her blood tasted the air before it oozed like syrup from the gash.

Junko screamed against the cloth as a million needle points dug into her flesh and imparted their burning acid retreat. Cold air seared her flesh as she threw her shoulder to the side and sliced again with reckless exercise. The second cut missed the first with no less depth and she screamed again as she mangled her arm. A suture needle, already threaded with a strand of her hair, mocked her from the workbench. She bit until stress ground against her temples as she placed the knife within the wound to grind and work against bone. The blade scraped and slipped to lacerate the flesh of her forearm and Junko's head rolled back as she tried to scream loud enough for the Realm of Madness to crash into Ninjago and swallow her whole, to take her body to another state where everything scratched and tore so one cut wouldn't hurt so much.

She focused herself.

Her blade found its way through sparse lumps of fat as if driven with a purpose, with a morbid curiosity, with a human drive to discover the depths as her machine drove the bloodied silver wedge between bone and cartilage. She saw through the red stabbing streaks that pounded against the dark corners of her tunnel vision. Junko's knife ground forward and slipped back once, twice, and slammed against the workbench with a dizzying sigh. She stood away from her workbench and left the knife and her hand behind. Junko let her mind spin as she swayed in place. In peace.

The power drill whirred to life as Junko pulled the trigger like a pistol. She placed it on its side and placed her cut arm back against the table, lined it up with the implant that would connect her false bone to her true one, and pinched the trigger again. The cloth gag slipped and her teeth gnashed against each other as dirty metal pierced her bone with a mechanical whirl. Junko spat the thing out and let herself put voice to the jagged breaths that tore from her throat. She let the drill wail until stillness was restored as she took the needle and pierced her skin to draw it closed around its new metal protrusion. Her new hand gleamed in anticipation, but first, blood. The stench began to rise like floodwaters and Junko choked.

When the wound was closed, she released the rubber tie and let blood gush back into the freshly mangled flesh. It seeped from the edges of the wound as Junko sat herself atop the table and allowed her red life to soak through her clothing. Metal fingers grasped the new metal forearm and she screwed it preemptively into its place. Her implant wiggled like a baby tooth as the bone rejected her relentless tampering. She flexed her new fingers without wiping sweat from her brow like a new mother. Her first mechanical creation, the third version of its type, slid against the blueprints that fell over each other on the other end of the operating table. New legs, new ears, perfect eyes, lungs, perfection stared at the ceiling, unfeeling, from that stack of plans with bloody handprints.