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The Maintenance Logs Part 1: Triggering Routines For repanbo By Draconicon

Having moved from her mountain lab to the imitation of one in the dragon's skyscraper, Tatyana had been forced to make a number of accommodations to make sure that she felt...secure. They ranged from the difficult task of securing proper lodging for herself adjacent to one of the dragon's harem members to the more difficult task of fitting all the proper tools into said quarters. A certain amount of the laws of physics were made to weep by the time that she was done, but eventually, it was all set up.

The tigress shook her head at the meager exam table, the cramped quarters that forced the different monitors forward and over the table rather than distributed neatly across the wall, but she required all that space for other devices. Tools, racks of them, were locked to the wall, as were power sources and the tubes and wires that delivered nanites, energy, fluids, and other things to the various tools.

It was a cramped, tight space, but it was what she had to work with. There was a small cot in the back corner of the room, opposite to the wall that also formed the outer wall of the building. It kept her from worrying about anyone tunneling in during the night, and it kept her bed on the side of the room near the door out. Better to deal with someone up close if they snuck into her room at night than be on the opposite side of the room in case they had a gun.

It wasn't comfortable, but it would work. Work well enough for her purposes, at least.

She was still adjusting the bondage straps on the exam table when a knock echoed through the room. The metal door that blocked off the rest of the world shifted to the side, and Tatyana forcibly reminded herself that only four people could get in and out through that door. Only four people had the codes. One was herself, one was the dragon that owned this place, one was the security officer...

And one was her client.

"Ellyra?" she asked.

"Oh, wow. This place is tiny."

"Yes, thank you for reminding me," she muttered in Russian. "Are you here for another check-up?"

"Well, yes, and maybe -"

"Get on the table."

"Can I even fit on the table? Do you need to shrink me down first? Oh, did you bring a shrink ray?"

The tigress rolled her eyes at the reminder of the unicorn's energy, doing her best to keep herself from feeling irritated. She was already cramped up, already thinking about how she was going to need to bring in a few more tools that were going to make the tiny space even smaller, but...

At the same time, she was looking forward to the work that she'd do here.

The white tigress looked over her shoulder at the robotic unicorn that had decided to hire her on as a mechanic. It was a bit below her usual skills, and if the unicorn had been a simple android, there was no way that she would have taken such a demeaning job.

But this one...

There are mysteries to this one. Big ones. Best to have an eye on her rather than having her running around the world.

The last time that she had examined this...mechanical marvel, she had been astonished at the number of hidden routines that were dotted about in memory banks through the robocorn's - as Ellyra called herself - body. It was like a treasure trove in there, and she'd only filled out half the treasure map the last time that she'd shocked the client with a heavy dose of electricity.

She was sure that there was more, and that was why she had decided to take the position of mechanic.

The more I learn, the safer she is, Tatyana told herself. The more I find out, the better she will be, and the better I will be.

She cleared enough of the trash off of the exam table, gesturing at it. The robocorn, black-gray with a bit of neon light coming off of her mane and a few other places, looked down at it and then back up at her.

"Are you sure I can fit? Really?"

"You'll fit."

"Well, if you say so."

At the very least, it was comforting that the robocorn could speak back to her in her own language. Russian was far more comfortable for her, despite all the difficult memories that came from her past. English had too many little rules and irregularities to it for her to speak in it for long.

Shaking her head, she began the usual process of tying the other woman down, getting her nice and restrained to the metal board beneath her. The last thing that she needed was for the robocorn to pull everything loose and start making a mess of things. The different monitors on mechanical arms over her were rather expensive, and she didn't want to replace them with more from storage back home.

Or have to make that trip again. Her guts were still heaving slightly from making those portal journeys.

As she finished restraining the robotic horse's legs, she looked up to find Ellyra grinning at her. Tatyana looked behind her, half-expecting there to be a joke about to be pulled at her expense, but there was nothing to see.

She turned around again, an eyebrow raised, and Ellyra chuckled.

"What? What is so funny?"

"You. You're taking it so serious. Come on, we're friends, aren't we?"

"You are a client. I am a mechanic. We are conducting business and studies."

"Come on. You don't have to be so serious all the time. Don't you like looking at my body? I saw you grin the last time you looked at the schematics."

"...You saw nothing."

"I saw a smiiiiile."

Tatyana half-stared, half-glared at the robocorn for a handful of moments, then pulled a tablet up from the side of the table. She tapped a button on it, initiating the link between the computer systems and the robocorn in general. Then, she tapped another button.

"MMMMPH!"

"I will restrain your ability to speak until you can take it more seriously."

The robocorn fixed her with the most indignant look that Tatyana had ever seen, made all the more ridiculous by the fact that her lips were locked down by a metal plate, keeping her mouth from opening at all. If it had been one bit more ridiculous, she might have actually cracked a smile.

As it was, she managed to keep her face straight as she looked back at the tablet in her hands.

Initial diagnostics look promising. No damage from the high voltage scan from the last time. A few adaptations, though.

It was fascinating, in its own way. It was as if the unicorn's body was trying to hold back any further studies, hardening a few of the pathways that had been blasted open with a less conductive material. Perhaps it was a bit of nanites inside of the robocorn that she hadn't spotted, or perhaps there was another bit of tech to this woman that she hadn't unearthed just yet.

Either way, it was certainly a reminder of why she needed to stick around.

"We will start with an initial electrical scan, see if there is anything else that has popped up since the last time."

"Mmmmph! Mmmph!"

"Will you take this seriously?"

The robocorn nodded, and Tatyana pressed the release button on the tablet. Ellyra farcically panted for breath, only to grin as if to remind her that she didn't need to breathe, actually.

"What is it?" Tatyana asked.

"Are you zapping me to map me out, or are you zapping me to make me cum again? I know you liked seeing me squirt last time," she said with a giggle.

"..."

CLANK!

"MMMPH!"

"I asked you if you would be serious. It appears that you were not being truthful. We will remain on silent mode until the first test is over."

"Mmmph-mmphing mmmpher..."

"Or gagged mode, I suppose. I will have to research how to properly silence that in the future."

She shook her head, ignoring the string of letters that started appearing on the pad. It was really only a matter of time before someone as advanced as Ellyra was would start poking holes in the firewalls of her tablets and other machinery. It was all the better that they were away from the lab and the only wifi that she hooked into was the one for the skyscraper.

No need for the robocorn to go rooting around in her stuff.

Setting the tablet down, she grabbed some of the wires off the wall, flicking through to the USB ends before plugging them into the right ports up and down along the robocorn's body. There was a new one that was right above her clit, and Tatyana paused, looking up from between Ellyra's legs.

"I would hope that this one was installed by someone else, but no. You are just that eager for punishment, aren't you?"

"...Mmmm-eeeee...."

Translating that as 'maybe,' Tatyana sighed and plugged it in, finishing up the electric circuit that would pump the robocorn full of voltage and then channel it away. The tigress retreated to the edge of the small room, the tablet in hand.

To be fair, the unicorn likely would have been erotic art to the right eye at that moment. She was bound at the neck, wrists, ankles, and waist, and considering that clothing didn't seem to be a part of her repertoire - at least, not when Tatyana had ever seen her - it seemed like she had been tied down for a bit of mating, at the very least. Forced copulation at the worst. All the lines that ran into her looked less like USB connectors and more like IV lines, like she was being kept cooperative for those that had captured her.

The thought sent a shiver down her spine, and she had to pull herself away from that comparison as fast as possible. Her head was aching as she looked down, and the memories were pounding at the doors that she'd put up to stop them.

Focus on the experiment. Nothing but the experiment. The past is gone. They're gone. Never coming back. Don't think about them. Think about this.

There were words streaming across the top of the screen, words that she just barely caught as her fingers hovered over the 'test start' icon. She read them, and winced.

Are you okay? was what the robocorn had asked her.

She didn't want to answer that. She didn't want anyone to see that.

So, instead, she jammed her finger into the button.

As soon as she did, the room started to hum, electric power rushing down the connector wires. The USB connectors shouldn't have been capable of transferring so much voltage at once, but she had modified these for such experiments. After all, one needed to have certain methods of overclocking different machines, as well as punishing recalcitrant robots.

The power hummed all the louder, the room getting louder and louder and the cords starting to glow. They were probably overheating slightly, but as long as the glow didn't reach a certain point, they would be fine. She just needed to keep an eye on it.

She leaned back against the wall, watching the readout as the mapping began. She started to catch different routines that were buried, maps of where the secondary memory banks were. There were bits and pieces of them everywhere, like they were scattered about to avoid any sudden memory loss due to jolts or sudden bonks on the head or elsewhere. She found memory banks embedded in the hooves, like map banks, and there were others that were buried in the glutes and above the sex.

They were probably related to sex, for all that she knew, but she made markers for them just in case, making sure that it was all mapped out.

She was so focused on making sure that the actual procedure was going well that she forgot to keep an eye on the power generators behind her. They had been temperamental at the best of times, due to the way that they were designed to pump out more power than their safety restrictions allowed, but she had never had a problem with them before.

First time for everything, though.

Pop.

Fizzle.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!

Tatyana screamed as every bit of fur on her body went spiky and jagged, shooting out from her in all directions, and collapsed, her heart going still and her eyes going dark.

The next time she opened her eyes, Tatyana expected to be on the lab floor, her back aching, at least a few burns up and down her body from the sheer voltage that she would have absorbed. She was already making accommodations in her head, demanding of herself what she could, making plans for a pacemaker in case there was damage to her heart from that.

When she found that she was in a softer bed - and a bed that was a great deal softer than the little makeshift one that she had set up in her lab, for that matter - she nearly lost her mind.

I was moved. Someone found me. Someone found me, moved me...touched me!

The tigress was on the verge of screaming, the only thing keeping it from happening being the fact that a scream had always been punished outside the lab. Outside the lab, screaming got the attention of the bad ones, the ones that wanted to hurt them for being subjects. The ones that thought that they were the lucky ones, the ones that hated them.

Quiet kept safe. Quiet kept pain away. Quiet kept her from getting hurt more.

Think. Think.

She was tied down. That didn't make things better, and the white tigress's heart was rushing at a mile a minute.

Good news. That works. No damage from electricity or it would have stopped.

Didn't make her feel much better in the moment, though. In fact, it generally made her feel worse, because it meant that she would have recovered on her own, eventually.

Who touched? Who touched? Where did they go? What do they want? What if they're bad? What if they're back? What if THEY are back to get me?

The paranoia was running rampant, and if it weren't for the fact that she was restrained by something that was much, much, much stronger than ropes, she would have been thrashing about and flinging herself out of bed.

She was hyperventilating and there was no way for her to stop it, no way for her to slow her breathing down enough to feel like she was safe. She needed to stop breathing so hard, needed to stop panicking, but it was nearly impossible.

Nearly.

She started running through the primes. Each one jumped forward to the next, going from one, two, three, to five, to seven, to eleven, and so on and so forth. She kept the numbers coming, following the chain, following the illogical logical progression of them, and slowly, the panic that threatened to take her down into the darkness faded.

Her fear, however, didn't follow. She was still afraid, and the fear brought anger in its wake.

She tried to open her eyes, only to find herself staring into blackness. That was nearly enough to bring the panic and screaming back, and if she hadn't seen the tiniest little bit of light at the corner of her eye that suggested that she was merely wearing a blindfold, she wasn't sure that she would have been able to hold it back.

Blindness. That had been another worry about the exploding electricity, if it had hurt her head and damaged her there. What if that had broken down her ability to see? What if she had been left with nothing? Nobody to make her bionic eyes, nobody to give her something to replace them?

The dragon might have helped, but he...

No, he would have helped. But she wouldn't have been able to ask him.

Tatyana took a few more deep breaths, huffing and puffing in a way that was still more panicky than she'd like. She forced it down, ground it into nothing beneath her brain. She needed to focus on how to get free.

"Oh, good, you're awake. I was so worried."

Ellyra. It was Ellyra.

Tatyana flinched as she felt a hand on her head, almost like someone that was feeling for a fever, followed by a pair of fingers against her neck. There was a tut-tut sound above.

"Your heart sounds like it's about to explode."

"What happened?"

"No, no, you're going to rest first. When you're feeling better -"

"I can't rest. Need information. Can't stop. Need to think. Need to know. What happened? What happened?!"

"Nothing bad happened, I promise. Well, I mean, you got shocked, and you got REALLY shocked. Like, it looked like a comedy show, like your fur was all poofy. It was really silly, but then you started screaming, and -"

"What happened after?!"

"Um, I just...broke the restraints and took you to bed."

"..."

"I'll fix it. Promise," Ellyra said, as if that was the biggest problem.

She touched me. She took me away from the lab, and she touched me. She touched me.

That was the thing that was never allowed. Even in the case of subjects that she used for that particular consequence of her upbringing, they weren't allowed to touch her. She would occasionally touch them, but they never touched her.

And now, someone had touched her in her sleep, taking her from one part of the skyscraper to another.

"Where are we? What happened? What's going on? Why am I blindfolded?"

"I thought you'd sleep better with a sleep mask. It keeps all the light out, and after getting zapped, you looked like you might be a bit sensitive."

Sensitive. She might have laughed if she wasn't so angry. More than anything, she wanted to lash out, to hurt, to get away. She wanted to break out of whatever was holding her, run back to the lab, and then run away back to the mountain.

The tigress wanted to be somewhere where nobody could do anything that she didn't tell them to do, and wanted to be there right then.

"Oh god, your heart's getting worse again. Look, I'm sorry for this, I mean, really sorry, but you need to sleep. Now."

"No! Don't you dare. Don't. Don't!"

But the needle was already in, and she sank down, crying as she slipped out of the world of the waking back into sleep.

The next time she woke up, there was no blindfold, no sleep mask. She was still in bed, though, and this time, she was able to see what was around her.

There were hard-light constructions around her, probably something that the robocorn had put down. That explained why she hadn't been able to escape last time, and why she was still pinned to the bed. There was nothing physical to fight again, just a force that held her down and kept her from doing anything useful to get away.

Around her, at the side of the plush bed with far too many pillows, was the robocorn. She looked like she was in sleep mode, sitting up with her head on her hands, but her eyes currently dazed over with a bouncing-ball screensaver moving across them.

At a guess, Tatyana would assume that the unicorn had been sitting there the entire time that she had been out.

Nnngh. I'm not a subject. I don't get stared at.

Particularly not like this.

Her lab coat was gone, and she knew that Ellyra must have been the one to take it. Her breasts were barely covered by the blanket that was on top of her, and her bare feet stuck out of the bottom of the blanket. Her tail twitched between her arches, and she shivered as she felt a bit of cold sneaking up through the gap in the blankets.

The urge to run away was still strong, but not quite as strong as it had been before she'd been knocked out.

"Ellyra."

Just like that, the robocorn snapped out of her little sleep mode. She sat up straight, her eyes back to normal, and she smiled.

"Oh, yay, you're up! How do you feel? Wait, don't tell me." The robocorn leaned forward, staring almost comically sternly at her. "Electrical burns on the back of the neck, 75% healed. Concussion, 85% recovered from. Dead fur, shaved, treated with a transplant from other parts of the body, mostly completed. Heart surprisingly healthy."

The robocorn pulled back, blinking before grinning.

"Hehehe, I knew I could make it better. First time using some new stuff, but it felt so good to take care of someone. So right."

"Let. Me. Up."

And just like that, Ellyra's smile turned upside-down, becoming a frown in almost record time.

"No. You need rest."

"Ellyra. Let. Me. Up."

Tatyana infused her voice with every bit of authority that she knew how to use. She knew that she needed to get back to work, and she knew that there was so much more that needed doing regarding this experiment. Not to mention that the lab had to be a state considering the explosion before she was out cold.

And if Ellyra had broken out of her restraints, then there would be an even bigger mess to clean up. Not to mention the fact that the unicorn had done it in the first place.

How? No. That's obvious. Robot strength, greater power from the uncovered routines.

And new things. That was something else to keep in mind. The unicorn had uncovered new abilities, things that could heal. That meant that there was something else to her than just the plasma cannon that they had uncovered last time. There was more to her than being a machine of war or something like that.

Nobody gives a soldier something that that's good at healing. They wouldn't want it captured by the enemy.

"Let me up!" she insisted again, only for the unicorn to boop her nose. She was so shocked that she stopped twisting about.

"No, you grump. You're staying right there until you're better."

"...I...Did you just..."

"Yes, and I'll boop you again if you start arguing."

"But -"

"Boop!"

Once more, the light pressure on her nose stopped her in her tracks. Not because of anything in her past, but because she genuinely did not know what to do when someone did that. It was...strange.

She stared at the robocorn, even as the little neon colors from the mane shifted over to something in the blue spectrum, more like what one might have gotten from a soothing healing ward than anything else.

"You hurt yourself really badly. If I hadn't been there, Master would be taking you to the hospital. And that means that you need to sit here and rest until you get better. Even better if you lay down and rest."

"You...This isn't...let me out of here!"

She struggled against the hard-light projections, but just like the last time, she couldn't do anything. She thumped her head down against the pillow and immediately regretted it.

"Mmmph..."

"Annnd that's the concussion." Ellyra winced. "I'm sorry. I wanted to make that better, but I couldn't figure it out. I fixed the burn, though, and the blindness."

"...B...Blindness?"

"Calm down, calm down," the robocorn said, stroking her head gently. "It was only there while you were out cold. I fixed it before putting you to bed. I promise, it's fixed. I took care of it. You're not blind anymore."

"But...but I was?"

"Well, um, for a little bit. The electricity hit your head pretty hard."

"..."

"Don't start panicking, please? I really, really don't want to make you go night night again."

Tatyana agreed, of course, but that didn't make it any easier to pull her panic back under control. It took everything she had to not go into a state of complete hysteria, now that she thought about what had almost happened.

Blindness. That would have been the death of so many experiments until or unless she had been able to fix it. Bionic eyes would have been the only solution until she could have cloned ones that would have worked for her body. Even then, there was no guarantee that she would ever see the way a normal person did ever again.

And the robocorn had just...fixed it. Whatever she had done in the lab, she'd made sure that the tigress could see again.

It is done. You can't change it. You didn't stay blind. It's as if it never happened. You were unconscious while you were blind. To you, it basically never happened.

That was what she told herself, and the panic slowly started to subside. That panic, at least.

"Please. Let me up."

"...You're going to stay in bed."

"I know. Just let me up."

The robocorn looked at her with a comical expression of suspicion for a moment or two, but eventually nodded. Her horn shimmered, and the hard-light projections faded, leaving her with all the room she needed to get upright, which she did as soon as she could manage it.

Though her legs were still bound to the bed, she felt better now that she wasn't tied down the way that she had been. She took a few deep breaths as the blanket slid down her body, unashamed of her top nudity with just the robocorn around. Her striped breasts rose and fell with each breath she took until she had herself under control.

Calm.

Cool.

Cold.

Her eyes were back to their normal state, half-open and focused as she turned to the robocorn.

"I am better."

"Yep. But not best. No getting all the way up until you're all the way up to the best you can be."

"If you make me stay in bed for more than one day, I am going to find a way to program you into being the herd mare for one of the feral herds outside the city. I will airdrop you in. I will make sure that you will not be able to think of anything but being bred. I will modify you so that you carry a foal in your womb. And then I will make you take care of it until - this is just making you smile, isn't it?"

The robocorn nodded, grinning like a maniac.

Tatyana groaned, rubbing her forehead as she tried to think through the situation. There was no getting out from under the hard-light restraints, even though they had been lessened enough to allow her to sit up. She doubted that she could get a tool to overpower Ellyra from here, and a quick check around her confirmed that her lab coat was nowhere in sight.

Which means all my tools are back in the lab, buried in under who knows what...

Which, in turn, meant that there was literally no escape from this humiliating situation of being kept on a bed. Her only real hope would be to get the dragon to make the unicorn let her loose, but she had little chance of that.

Grumbling, the tigress slid back down onto her back, staring up at the ceiling as she crossed her arms under her breasts.

"Gonna be a good kitty and stay there?"

"I will get you for this."

"I'm just taking care of you."

"I can take care of myself."

"I...I just wanted to make you feel better."

"You fixed the blindness. I can take care of everything else."

"If you say so, but I'm still gonna help you."

The hand on her head didn't make her feel better. If anything, she felt angrier and more annoyed than ever. The fact that she'd been taken from her lab, the fact that she'd been helpless in the process...

The fact that she had gone blind, even if she had no memory of it...

The fact that she couldn't take care of herself, even for a few moments...

It had been a while since she'd felt the urge to cry, but she remembered how to stop it in its tracks. Tears did nothing.

Tears only invited sympathy, and sympathy did nothing.

So she held herself still, letting the storm rage in her chest, letting all those tears that wanted to fall slip away, falling down her throat in a few stiff swallows, and never let those little sobs come back up. They went to the same place that they always did, and though she had to shove them in from how cramped that little vault was, they fit.

They always fit.

I'll get better, and she won't have to do this again. Never, ever, ever again.

The End