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Franky sat at his workbench, his left forearm open in front of him. The giant hand of said forearm was splayed, He willed it to move and nothing happened. He had just made his super entrance on the Sunny, reuniting with the crew after those long two years, and right on cue the nerves gave out. They had been touch and go for awhile, but he thought he had finally managed to get everything down. So his whole left arm disconnects from his mechanized nervous system if he produces his mini hands and holds down his nose for six seconds. What are the chances of that ever happening?. Of course he had forgotten all that in his desire to show off for the kids. Part of him had known, the engineer in his head that never went away saying “You’ll have to fix it later” but he hadn’t seen them in two years. Even Robin and Nami’s patented disinterest in robotics was refreshing to experience again. They could ignore him all day if they liked. At least they were there. Close at hand. They all were, which meant that Luffy, Chopper, and Usopp’s gleaming eyes made sure he could never say no. He needed to show off what he had done. That Luffy was right, he had gotten better. The two years had not gone to waste. If it meant he he had to slink away afterwards, holding his left arm to hide its limpness, it was worth it. He wasn’t hiding it persay. He just didn’t want them to worry. Bugs were normal. It was part of the process. He peered closer at his open arm trying to spot the lose wire, when he heard a squeak behind him.
Franky didn't turn to look. Even after two years there was no way the Sunny had mice. They hated the smell of Adam wood. Natural repellant. Instead his head whizzing he spun it around a full 180 degrees to see who was sneaking up on him. It was a new trick that he had been planning on using in battle against a foe who was naive enough to think they could sneak up on a cyborg.
“Holy shit Franky!”
“Someone call a Doctor!”
Instead of the bounty hunter he had expected, it was their sniper Usopp, hands clutching the right side of his now muscular chest
“Franky you almost gave me a heart attack! What the hell? Why can you even do that?”
“Your heart’s on the other side Usopp” Chopper sighed. Their little doctor hadn’t grown an inch in the last two years but his gaze had changed a bit. Not quite as wide eyed innocent as it had once been. Everyone grows up eventually. The old eyes in the teddy bear body looked Franky up and down.
“ That can’t be good for your cervical vertebra”
Franky smiled, “I just got my head on a swivel. It spins around easy. No vertebrae harmed. Or well I switched out the axis one. So one vertebrae was harmed. It went to Taroimo. He seemed to like it. “
Chopper continued to stare at him but before he could say anything Usopp recovered from his not a heart attack and asked “Wait Franky are you saying you fed one of your neck bones to a dog?”
“Yeah.” Franky stopped a moment and turned the rest of his body to face them. It was too disorienting not having the rest of his body not facing the same way. Another bug to fix. Chopper’s gaze moved from his face to his side. Shit he had forgotten about the arm.
“It wasn’t even my original axis either. Broke that one ten years ago. The train fractured it but I managed to build around the actual spinal cord pretty well. After the accident I rebuilt with what I had in order to survive”
Usopp piped up here “ Didn’t you have an air cannon?”
Franky laughed “There are all kinds of ways to survive. I built to just keep going. Making small changes to the core structure. But while we were separated I tried something different. Instead of building with no real objective in mind besides survival. I tried thinking super!” He tried to pose but his left arm dangled instead.
“Big changes , testing to see what I could do. How far I could take my body. Always changing. Every new upgrade designed to be easy to replace in case it doesn’t work or I think of something I like better. Kind of a planned obsolescence. Always moving on to the next biggest thing”
Chopper pointed at Franky’s arm “And what is that?”
“Just a bug”
Usopp’s ears perked up “What kind? Did a hercules beetle get in there? Can I have it?”
Franky shook his head “A glitch. When you make a big change, little mistakes happen and you fix it. I can handle it”
Chopper shook his head “We can fix it. I’m your Doctor, I know the nervous system backwards and forward. And if we do have any bones questions, we can always use Brook”. There was a faint YOHOHOHO outside on the deck and the sound of a bass chord being struck.
Franky opened his mouth to speak but Chopper wasn’t done “I think big changes are cool too. But we can work together to make sure that the little stuff doesn’t get us. Let me have a look at your arm” Chopper stepped forward to inspect it and Franky let him. What are Doctors for after all?