Sneak into the basement

"Okay, Luke, you win," James said, with a sigh. "If we go to the basement, can you let up on control over Ivy though? I bet she's freaking out right now."

Ivy's form shimmered again, as all the electronic parts seemed to vanish. She still had the shapelier body, but her eyes were closed like she'd just been experiencing a lovely massage. When she realized she was able to see and hear normally again, she opened her eyes, and looked at James, her face turning red. "I, uh... wouldn't mind doing that again later. When I can't see or hear or anything else, my sense of feeling heightened..."

"See James? She is gonna enjoy being your multitool. Having an AI and phone capabilities is one thing, but you're going to find us so more useful like this!"

The word 'us' in the sentence stuck with James, before Ivy suddenly began walking out of the room, holding James's hand. While her movements were filled with purpose, her face was unsure. "What exactly did you and Luke agree to do?" she asked. "Or is this just him taking initiative?"

"He wants to go to the basement," James said. "There's some robotics projects that he thinks might be interesting.

Ivy and James hurried down to the main floor, past the kitchen and into the hall where the door to the basement, bearing a sign that said "Employees Only, Yabusa Robotics" as a dad joke--but also as a serious warning--awaited them. Ivy continued to glance nervously at James, she's heard about how dismissive Luke's dad had been about anyone even trying to get in there. And here she was, turning her hand into a key to open the door! They could all get in big trouble for this, especially if Luke wasn't able to actually influence his dad's brain as easily as he thought... but he knew his dad was in the garage at the moment, so there wasn't much concern about being caught in the near term.

The key fit in perfectly, and Ivy opened the door, leading the way down, her body still more confident than her face. James followed after, closing the door to leave no trace.

"He'd put up some security systems in here, even," Luke started to say. "But, I've got the controls from the Ascend to... there, disabled. Hideki makes it so easy to just do that!"

"I kind of miss seeing all the prompts on the face from the Ascend, if I'm fully honest," James said. Ivy grinned a little at that, seems she was of the same mind.

"I'll bring them back later. For now, let's just start looking!"

Down in the basement, James and Ivy were given a crash course in the Yabusa Robotics R&D department. Yabusa made big, sleek powerhouses of machines, things that looked like they were straight out of a sci-fi film. While there was enough glow from some of the active servers and other machines running along a wall to illuminate the room in a soft green light, Ivy found a lens of a flashlight forming in the palm of her hand. Shrugging, she held her hand out to better inspect some of the robots.

Yabusa's robotics took a lot of cues from their automotive department in how the robots were shaped. Nothing was jagged or angled when they could avoid it, there were barely exposed wires, often their casing was a slick mirror-like black. Ivy paused in front of something that slightly resembled a giant bird made out of motorcycle parts, like a sportbike had been split in two and its components made into wings. "What is this...?"

"I heard about this one online from a Yabusa classified leak," Luke said from seemingly nowhere again. "It's the Yabusa Angel. It was designed to attach to a human so they could transform back and forth from a motorcycle to this 'angel' mode where they could walk around with these wings attached to them. This is one of the projects competing against my dad's smart car project... after the crash, I'd read news that Yabusa is considering moving forward with one of the alternatives, this might be one of them. They don't trust their AI right now, so implanting a person inside the machine to replace the AI is their goal."

"...They're going to turn people into cyborg motorcycles so other people can ride around on them..?" James asked. "Why not just make a normal motorcycle and have passengers get on the back?"

Ivy stared for a moment, thinking. "Well, parking wouldn't be a problem anymore. If the Angel person was waiting to give someone a ride, they could just turn human and go get lunch or something, they don't ever have to leave a vehicle sitting. Maybe Yabusa's thinking about urban planning. I would love to write something for the school paper about this..."

"Hey, come check this one out." James had moved on to another group of machines, past a literal stack of vacuuming robots and beyond, to a massive humanoid-looking machine, again in sleek black. One arm had some sort of projectile launcher affixed to it, while the other had a long, protruding blade. Despite its bulk, the machine had some sort of feminine quality to it, in a subtle hourglass shape. He looks closer at one of the labels on the side. "Meteor V..."

"Oh, yeah, I saw that in the leak too!" Luke excitedly said. "That's meant to be a full military android, they would be deployed by dropping from high altitude curled up in a ball and then they'd go do, uh... military stuff. That's why they're the Meteor project though. In simulations, the report I saw said they had difficulty determining who was friend and foe, and Yabusa hasn't figured out how to put a person in there without sacrificing most of its power or adding to its bulk, which defeats the purpose they're trying to achieve. But, that's less of a problem for me, I could stick Ivy into either this one or the Angel machine with no problem, I could turn her into a sleek robo-girl so easily with the Ascend connecting to any of these..!"

Ivy blushed at the thought. She would be made into some sort of super-human if Luke was right... the envy of James and all the other nerdy kids at school and beyond, where this blonde girl student journalist who only had a passing interest in sci-fi would be able to live out their dreams! As she turned away from the large humanoid shape, she saw one other object under a tarp. They'd come this far, so she decided to peek under the tarp, eventually fully unfurling the fabric to get a look at the robot underneath.

Ivy was in awe as she stared at the sizable quadrupedal robot before her. The shape reminded her of a horse, albeit without the traditional horse-like head, which instead was just one cylinder to serve as a camera sensor. Again keeping with the influence from the automotive side, it looked very much like a mix between a sportbike and a creature meant to carry heavy loads.

"Project Ichabod," Luke said, quietly, also marveling at the machine. It was massive, with rubberized tire-like hooved feet, hints of motors and servos and things poking out from under the exhaust vents and other cutaways in the fairing so parts of the electric motor could be seen, likely to be shown off. "The designers consider it to be almost the definition of a workhorse. It can carry a significant amount of weight on its back or on the frame attachments, over uneven terrain and such. That's in addition to a rider, supposedly. They never got the go-ahead because even after all the machine learning they did to get the legs to work together, it required so much processing for route analysis that they offloaded some of that to a server. And when the server would lag, the machine would freeze, often in mid-stride, so it would just fall over. I bet we wouldn't have trouble moving it, though."

Ivy bit her lower lip, as she looked at James. "I, uh..." She yelped, as Luke took over briefly, hugging against Project Ichabod as the orange goo flowed out of her, taking some serious time to absorb the entire machine. While Luke did his thing, Ivy looked back, the robotic headless horse disappearing into her. "I guess Luke made his decision?"

"Just a trial run," Luke said, as Ivy seemed to flow into the orange slime as well, before it fully enveloped the robot! It seemed to seep into every crevice and compartment, before new slime began to grow out of where the headless horse's camera sensor had been. It flowed upward, before beginning to redefine into a human-esque form!

Ivy's head and upper body began to regain definition, becoming solid once more. Her long blonde hair trailed down her nude back, the shoulders and torso and breasts still designed after Luke's mother's more voluptuous form. Good thing, too, as Ivy's upper body would've looked a bit out of place affixed to the massive metal quadruped! When she was able to move again, Ivy looked down at her body, seeing her legs were gone, replaced by this shiny plastic and metal body. She completely ignored the fact that she had the wrong torso and her body was on display for James, that was the least interesting part about all this at the moment!

With a help, Ivy shuddered as she almost jumped in surprise. Even more surprising, the horse-shaped body responded to her! The front legs hopped up a bit, as the back legs braced against the floor. The resulting thud on the ground shook the basement floor quite a bit, as Ivy covered her mouth with her hands, realizing just what she'd done.

"Do you think anyone heard that...?" Ivy asked, peering up at the stairs leading back to the main floor. If anyone caught them down here...

"Maybe, maybe not," Luke said, again in his disembodied voice. "Just tread more carefully, that's all! There's not a lot of room down here though... maybe I should absorb more of these things to replicate, and then we could go drive somewhere with more open space. That's if we're able to get out of here without anyone noticing us, at least."