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There were times when Knight wished that he had been granted a better way to communicate his emotions. Though technically a machine, he was just as capable of every note on the emotional spectrum as if he were a living breathing mouse. What he couldn't do was express those emotions very well. For as finely sharpened as his AI was, he did not have to ability to vocalize at all. He managed through gestures and writing, and for the most part that worked. However there were other times it just didn't carry the impact he wanted. Such as when Ayn's fifth attempt at a working teleportation device blew up in her face. A sign saying [maybe we should pick this up later -.-] simply did not carry the exasperation he was really thinking.

Normally he would have been all for this, the trial and error in the advancement of science; it was quite literally what he had been built for. But Ayn clearly wasn't thinking straight tonight, she hadn't even bothered cleaning the soot from her face post explosion, and this made it less of a scientific endeavor and more of Sisyphus rolling his boulder along.

"I'm sure it's just a crossed wire or something," she mumbled to herself while looking at the designs over for the fifth time, the Knight noticed though not very carefully. The metal mouse found himself somewhat concerned about her behavior. She would spare him the occasional glance, mumble something, and then try to pretend as if she was working. He ran a couple visual scans over her discreetly but came up with nothing. Aside from bouts of elevated body temperature that would color her ears red she was perfectly fine.

Now the metal mouse was not an idiot. He hated the portrayals of machines in fiction that were oblivious to even the most basic emotions. Still he had no idea what could possibly be so distracting to Ayn. From what she shared things were going well at school, she was starting to branch out and make some non-metal friends, and she was generally happy. What set her off today was a mystery.

"There just about got it." She said while making a small tweak. "With this we should see some progress." Knight nodded but still took a small step back as she activated the device. Just because he wasn't flesh and blood didn't mean he didn't have a sense of self preservation. Ayn carried none of these doubts and easily flipped the switch. Thankfully for them, and especially her face fur, it didn't explode this time only catch fire; which, in a way, was progress.

[I really think we need to call it a night.]

She practically looked desperate "No! We're not doing this till I make progress with y- err the machine. Yes with the teleporter! When we make progress with the teleporter we can call it a night Knight." She said, and then realizing what she said added a nerdish giggle.

Again Knight wished to have a more emotive face as Ayn easily brushed aside his [o.O] sign.

"I'm perfectly fine just," she spared him another glance and sighed "frustrated. I've had this...project for a while now and every time I think I'm about to have a breakthrough I botch it up."

Knight didn't think she had been working on this too long but he could appreciate her dedication. It was one of the things he liked about her.

[I should at least look over the blueprints again.]

She seemed hesitant but didn't stop him. Instead she once again mumbled something under his auditory range and got back to work, putting out the fire and starting up again on repairing the circuitry.

She clearly wasn't well but Knight couldn't place it. Perhaps it was too many late nights in the lab? Maybe some problem that she hadn't saw fit to mention. That wasn't likely if anything Ayn had a habit of oversharing things. Maybe it was...feminine problems. That gripped his silicone soul with an icy sense of dread. That was one thing he hadn't had any experience with, and if google and tv were to be believed most of the male gender failed to grasp this as well. He did a quick search of possible remedies and sought to test his theory.

[Ayn would you perhaps like to get chocolate ice cream after this?]

The brown mouse caught sight of his sign and her ears turned a bright shade of red and she stood stock still. At least before the device blew up again and regained her attention.

No that couldn't be called much of a remedy if anything it had the opposite effect. He was about to just do the simple thing and confront her about what was wrong when he noticed something odd about the blueprints. While the device was of Ayn's design he was familiar enough with the concept to know that this device would not result in strictly teleportation. There were extraneous parts that seemed patched on from other devices they had created. That failed mind reading device, that ludicrous and unnecessary growth gun she came up with, and something else he couldn't identify. Had she done this on purpose? Or had her distraction run deeper than he thought and seeped into the design stage as well? Well it explained why she hadn't had any success there was no way something like this could ever...

"HAHA Success!" The brown mouse proclaimed before vanishing in a poof of smoke. Again the metal mouse wished he was more expressive because [:o!!!] just didn't cover it. He really needed to stop underestimating her. Though with the other tech accidently combined with the teleportation design what would be the side effects?

Knight didn't have to wait long to find out as Ayn reappeared almost as quickly as she had left. Though there was one significant difference.

[I see there were some side effects.] His sign noted. It didn't remotely give a sense of the mix of humor, resignation, and mild sense of awe that he was currently feeling. Ayn had likely been targeting an empty area of the lab to reappear in so that she might lower the risk of teleporting into something solid or any other gruesome scenario. The area was set to be used for storage and had a ceiling of 50 feet and was somewhere in the range of 75ft wide, this was fortunate because Ayn now looked rather cramped.

The brown mouse squeaked in surprise and was forced to sit with her back bent, and even then her head was pressed uncomfortably against the ceiling. Her ears bright red in embarrassment for even though she made it through unscathed her clothing did not.

Knight ever the gentleman turned his back, though discreetly did snap one photo for personal use later...just because he was a machine didn't mean he wasn't alive...

[So back to the drawing board?] He said, sign held aloft even if he had his back turned to her. It was then he realized how pointless it was to hold up a sign, she might not be able to see him much less his writing. Which left him very few options, luckily unlike most living beings he could access them much easier. Closing his eyes he just went to file, found options and clicked on his SFW feature. Upon turning back to Ayn, Knight now found her covered in less distracting censor bars. Not being able to communicate via normal means, and not wanting to see if his super alloyed frame could withstand an accidental movement of her paw, Knight activated a pair of hazard lights that flashed every other second to hopefully give the titanic mouse some sense of where he was.

'Oh god I'm naked.'

Though given that Ayn had only just now noticed that fact it was probably best to still be extra careful.

'Has Knight ever seen me naked? This is not how I wanted him to see me naked!!'

Knight had scampered most of the way toward his gigantic friend when the strangeness of the comment hit him. More so when he realized at her size he should have literally felt her speaking. He checked that last bit of information, and indeed he hadn't picked it up on his auditory sensors.

'Of course he's seen me naked he has x-ray vision! Well if he wanted to see me naked that is. I mean he was probably curious at some point. Granted I don't have the best body but I'm the only person around and he likes me a little at least....GOD WHY CAN'T I SAY NO TO CHEESECAKE!!'

While Knight was an engineering genius, he felt he could have knocked off a few dozen points to his IQ and still been able to figure this one out. He didn't know whether to commend or pity her for figuring out how to integrate the teleporter with the telepathy device. Most likely pity because she hadn't caught on yet and he had only reached her intimidating foot paw.

'I shouldn't think like that'

'No she really shouldn't' Knight thought before beginning his ascent. He did have rockets for such an occasion, but accidently setting a giant alight seemed like a bad idea. So he was forced to scale the paw with good old fashioned metallic brawn, and occasional use of a grappling hook.

'I mean it's not like he has any frame of reference, the metal girl mice are mostly flat-chested anyway.'

Poor Knight frantically checked to see if he was equipped with any sort of telepathic ignore feature. No such luck. This would be a must for his next systems update.

'NO this is serious. I can't be distracted not now. Anything else is pointless until I get back to my normal size.'

Knight would sigh in relief if he actually needed to breathe. Instead he relaxed and finished scaling her big toe. Looking over the vast brown landscape before him, at his normal size he was the equivalent of a non anthro mouse. So when Ayn was her normal size she was a giant. Now she was, and he hated to overstate it but, a goddess. She took up the entirety of his view. He actually needed to have his internal navigation plot a course just to maneuver on her! Still with judicious use of his grappling hook it should make the trip manageable. One shot to her knee, another would get to her waist, and the he would have to scale past....the censor bars....

All the while Ayn was focused on detached matters trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it, at least until he tried to move from her waist.

'Alright 'operation: get me back to normal and snag a date with Knight' is a go!'

The cool, collected, marvel of modern technology promptly faltered and fell into the valley of the censor bar. It was quite an odd experience mostly because his visual sensors wouldn't let him take in the *ahem* geography. Still apparently the SFW feature did nothing for his touch censors. Yet again his systems were in desperate need of an update.

A normal fur probably would have been more distracted by Ayn's sudden, and private, declaration. Luckily Knight was a bit more advanced than that. Still it meant he had to deal with the equivalent of an annoying pop up window loaded with exclamation points popping up all over his subconscious. He would have to put it off. Saving Ayn from her own raw genius was the priority.

Easier said than done when he had to traverse through a censor bar, also Ayn's thoughts had gone from verbal to visual, and...well the scientist was quite imaginative. He could feel his systems begin to heat up in what could be best described as a blush. Though unlike a blush, given his nature, Knight was a good deal warmer than his mammalian counterparts, so warm in fact he finally shook Ayn from her thoughts and got her to focus on the new sensation.

'I really don't need that part of me to feel warm right now. I mean it feels good but I'm fairly sure I'm in the lab and that means Knight could be watching...maybe he'd like to watch though...NO BAD AYN...focus...be so much easier without that little feeling.'

Knight didn't need a proximity alert to know that wasn't a good sign. Sure enough Ayn's hand was descending on top of him. On the bright side it was nice to see something he didn't have to feel ashamed of. Better yet it allowed him to pretend he didn't just hear any of that. On the downside with their current size difference her hand was about the size of a city block to him.

Fear threw him forward into the darkness and survival instinct forced him to turn his SFW parameters off just to make sure he was even right direction! He saw pink, he dashed past pink, fast enough that it didn't register till he was past it. A few facts did hit him though. 1 his internal temperature had risen again. 2 Given the scale he had to make extended contact with 'the pink'. 3. The visuals now shown by Ayn were things that Knight was rather sure would be burned into his hard drive forever. 4: It felt like Ayn was shivering which to him felt like an earthquake that would burst the Richter Scale. 5: He would terminate anyone who would try to erase that image from his hard drive.

All of that of course did nothing to stop the hand that was still descending on him. Turns out, outrunning a moving city block was rather difficult. Thankfully the owner of said hand, no matter what she was feeling, was still a genius. It helped that Knight could see those gears turning in real time.

'Knight still unaccounted for + assuming I'm still in the lab and enlarged. Factor in a now miniscule knight, perhaps...oh...'

Knight would have breathed a sigh of relief, if he, y'know, breathed, as the hand suddenly stopped and recoiled as if he was on fire.

'That's Knight! Amazing he wasn't even able to communicate and was able to gain my attention!'

Knight beamed at the praise and that 'urgent message' seemed harder to ignore now. She'd collect him and they'd quickly be able to solve this whole thing and put it behind them. However Knight unfortunately made a critical error. He took her thoughts as a scientist as the end of it and forgot to factor in her joint thoughts as a young woman.

'...that feeling was Knight...that meant...Knight was....'

The shriek that followed nearly ruptured his hearing instruments. As Ayn reflexively tried to cover herself the poor metal mouse was launched, the equivalent for him, several hundred feet in the air.

Knight tumbled head over heels in midair brushing close to the ceiling above. Panic would have flooded his servos if it weren't filled with 'certain images'. Not to mention that 'urgent message' that he happened to be ignoring. In a way it helped as he was able to make the very simple realization that he was still able to fly.

No longer afraid that he might set her fur alight with his jets he corrected his trajectory and righted himself in the air. Finding the cute sight of Ayn scrambling below fearful that she may have hurt him, it touched his AI in a way that caused his temperature to rise just a bit higher. As cute as this was though it really needed to end.

He flashed all the lights he had on him, and added in a few annoying sound effects for good measure, and flew in front of her face. The look of relief on her face would have caused his heart to go pitter patter if he had one. He settled for settling on her nose.

[I'm safe, I'm safe, don't worry. Now let's try to figure out how to fix this.]

She had to squint just a bit but somehow was able to make out his writing. She nodded very slightly as not to dislodge him. She then made a strong effort to compose herself but again her thoughts betrayed her.

'I don't know what I would have done if...'

[Just relax and think; I'll help you through it. Think back to the blueprints of the teleporter.]

She took a few deep breaths trying to banish all previous thoughts, her desires, her embarrassments, and focused on the problem at hand.

"Oh dear, I-I used scavenged some parts from some of my other devices."

He neither confirmed nor denied happy to watch her genius at work.

Her brain got to analyzing each and every element of the device she constructed and how they would interact with each other. No longer distracted it seemed all so obvious to her.

"The growth gun, the pause button, the telpa-"

[Wait what?] he wrote suddenly recalling there was an aspect in the blueprints he couldn't identify.

"The pause button, I wanted a device that could lock in something, whether it was an emotion or state of being, indefinitely. But it only lasted about a half hour and...oh dear."

Knight didn't need his internal clock to sense what was coming. It was Ayn's luck that her time as a giant would run out just then, and it was even more her luck that instead of shrinking down to the ground she poofed to normal size mid-air. Lucky for her she still had him and he gently caught her in his arms.

"I can't believe I let myself get that distracted! You must think I'm some kind of idiot." Knight could no longer read her thoughts but he didn't need to just then.

[You're still the smartest person I know. You just need to be more careful.]

She laughed but then went stiff in his arms. Her ears turned a rich shade of scarlet, relief of her cure no doubt replaced by realization of what Knight had seen. So powerful that she hadn't even thought about the other devices connected to the teleporter.

Perhaps spending a little time in her thoughts gave him a better understanding of her. Perhaps he felt guilt at seeing things, both mental and physical, that he wasn't meant to see. In either case he gathered certain files he had experienced in the last half hour, save one, and had them deleted.

[Don't worry, I saw nothing.]

It said a lot that she accepted this without question. Indeed aside from the greater context of his trip he had no further details. Save one, an 'urgent message' he had saved.

[Ayn when we're done here, would you like to go on a date?]

THE END