Luke the beetle bot

With the greenlight from Lucas, Zoe confirmed that she would be ready to perform the procedure for the bio-matter storage in about three days, after she gets the equipment ready. Ivy and James drove back, and Ivy immediately called up Luke's parents in the car to have a long conversation. While his parents had grown accustomed to spending time occasionally with an Ivy-bodied Lucas, they had difficulty discussing the idea of having an experimental procedure over a call with a voice that to them was strange. Midway through the drive home, Luke's family decided to go to the hospital and talk with him directly, causing him to disconnect from the Ascend. Ivy and Hilda remained, but Ivy still seemed worried in her seat.

"I'm worried for him," Ivy eventually said. "I know he can give consent without their opinion, but you know his dad. He's got this weird hangup that Hideki gear just breaks too often. I feel like there's gonna be a fight. And once we go through with it, he's gonna use my body to talk to them later, and those conversations are going to always feel awkward."

James shrugged a bit, keeping his eyes on the road. "Yeah, Luke's dad is all in on Yabusa, but Yabusa doesn't make anything remotely like these machines. Plus, he's the one that took the initiative to get the Ascend headsets, so he's willing to accept unusual solution to problems. If only Yabusa made this stuff, we wouldn't even need to talk with him..."

Three days passed. A second scare with Luke's health underscored the severity of the situation, as he came close to organ failure once again. Fortunately, there was no objection from his parents, under the condition that if they find a surgeon or procedure that can increase the odds of survival that he consider that instead of staying forever in a metal tube. Luke agreed, although inside his mind, he already made his decision, knowing that with the Ascend, other bodies were open to him--Ivy's as well as others.

Zoe arrived on the third day, bringing a whole host of devices and boxes with her into the hospital, taking up one of the operating rooms for a while. Lucas was wheeled into the operating room, and Zoe, as well as a team of Hideki employees, went to work. Ivy and James could only wait, barred from entering the operating room or knowing any of the confidential details of the procedure.

After four hours, Dr. Hildebrand exited the operating room, hands stuffed into a lab coat. But promisingly, she had a smile on her face. "He seems to be responding well to the stabilizing fluid, and there's full connectivity between the capsule and the Ascend. He's getting used to the unit right now, would you like to come in and see his progress?"

Both teenagers nodded, and Zoe led them inside the operating room. About four Hideki employees stood around the operating table, as the metallic robo-bug skittered back and forth, testing mobility. "Oh, hey guys!" Lucas said, through some tinny speakers on the Ascend. "They're saying I can leave the hospital if their last tests come back clean. Isn't that great?"

Both James and Ivy smiled. "Really good news," James said. "How are you holding up though? It's gotta be weird being a robot beetle, right?"

"Well, I don't have to be," James said. "Watch!"

Without warning, Lucas scurried up one of the arms of the Hideki assistants who, to her credit, barely flinched at all. It seemed she had sort of expected this behavior. The bug traveled at incredible speed up her arm, and the Ascend receiver, previously affixed to the beetle-bot, is unclasped by one of the robot arms, which swung around to plant the receiver on the staffer's face while the remaining canister body gripped tight to her upper arm. There was a brief moment of disorientation, before the woman grinned. "See? If I can get to a human body, I can connect to them really fast. Having Hilda in here makes it a lot easier."

James laughed a little, while Ivy seemed a bit jealous that Luke chose to attach to some stranger rather than inviting her over. "You can't just go around attaching yourself to random people though," Ivy said disapprovingly.

"Well, actually, I can. Maybe I shouldn't? But I definitely can." The staffer strolled over to James and Ivy, putting a hand on each of their shoulders, before pulling them into a hug. "The thing is, with this setup that Dr. Hildebrand gave to me, I move so fast that I usually have the mask on someone's face before they can be aware enough to do anything. Then, I can blank their consciousness for the duration, or leave them thinking everything they did was their own original idea, doesn't matter how bizarre. I could make a body streak through the hospital and they would swear that it was their own idea!"

Ivy twitched an eyebrow. "Well, don't do that with me in my body. That sounds like a bad idea."

"Actually," Lucas said with a grin through his borrowed form, before stepping over to another table. He used his new body to deliver the Ascend V5 transmitter helmet to Ivy. "I was wondering if maybe you would join me with some hijacked bodies sometime? We can keep our mix stable and use any body we want."

Ivy paused, her face brightening up. "Actually, that idea sounds great!"

James was the only one who still wasn't sure on that idea. Lucas could see it in his face, some sort of moral dilemma brewing in James's mind. "Don't worry, Jim. If we're all in the same mind and we pick out a body to hijack, you're the one who would end up in bed with it."

...While extremely tempting, that didn't really solve the moral dilemma. James knew he would be wrestling that in the near future, though, as Ivy and Lucas were already huddling over to the side to plot what sort of bodies to take over and surprise James with.