Free the mind and the rest will follow (open)

[Deleted]

((This thread is open with the exclusion that those with any sort of hostile and neutral nature are pointedly not allowed to join, only PG's friends. Sakkara and Tony Stark would've been specifically asked to attend.))

The damage to her arm needed to be repaired. The tech was not of this world, nore this time. It's hyper tech of hyper tech. The most advanced tech, a thousand years in the future. Well, Maybe not a thousand years, but from powergirl's limited understanding, it's quite advanced.

She doesn't know it's self healing, the lost glowing liquids are self replinishing. Well she knows that, but she doesn't want to wait. Her systems diagnostic puts a recovery time of one month on the damage done to her shoulder. Sakkara is able to heal the damage done to her flesh, but the cybernetics would have to heal themselves, Or be repaired.

Powergirl will option for the second, but to do that she must enter Spiral's lab. Thankfully doing that is as easy as removing the door. Forcefully or otherwise, hacking the dialogue console is easy enough though, so she does that. She'd like to keep it locked so not just anybody could poke around in there. There are a number of traps and protection protocols in place, but thankfully Powergirl is aware of them all and able to hack and disable them very easily.

It's no wonder spiral put a kill switch on Powergirl, she is a real beast. All her strength and a complete mastery over modern tech to boot. The only thing she lacks now is magical attunement. Unfortunately, a lot of the things going on inside Spiral's body shoppe is magical, so PG can't make effective use of all of it, but a sizeable amount of the technology used to rebuild powergirl is there in the lab, waiting to be used, spare parts as it were.

So Powergirl arranges an operating table of sorts. She builds from scratch a number of robotic arms and possitions them around the table. She creates an internal network within the lab, allowing her access to all the computers and mobile platforms avaiable within. Giving her a limited omnipotence of the room, provided she upload part of her conscience.

Which is exactly what she plans to do. She removes her powergirl outfit and lays it neatly on the table, she lays down on the table, then covers her naughty bits with a towel and lays back. She presses a distinct area on her chest in a very distinct way and a panel pops open, showing several physical connection interfaces. A cable she laid near by which will allow her to connect to the network is then pluged in, the cable is thick and very advanced looking, it is not your average USB cable for sure. After that, powergirl lays back and closes her eyes. She's still breathing, she's still there, she's just connected to Spiral's computers now.

She immediately begins taking control of all the robotic arms and platforms in the lab, little devices which used to help Spiral in tasks now belong entirely to Powergirl for the same reason, their little servos whir and the pneumatic pumps expand and collapse as they move into place.

Powergirl puts herself into repair mode, which is an extremely vulnerable state. It's one of the many additions to her physiology that spiral made, showing just how ingrained this technology now is inside of powergirl ,it actually relaxes the atoms of her cells, allowing her to be operated on by conventional means. The process is painless and instant and can be reversed at a moments notice, In fact, fail safes exist that reverse her to her normal invulnerable state should any trauma of any kind occur.

The robotic arms go about using their tweezers like fingers to lift and move scalpels and tubes. They bring spare sparts of alien design towards powergirl and set into the work of repairing the mechanical portions of her arm. Cut tubes are replaced, broken servos are removed, repaired and reinstalled. the entire orchestra is beautiful to behold, a mechanical symphony of gestures, perfect, precise and concise.

Powergirl had invited a number of people to attend, both to protect her, and to just be there. It's unlikely anything will go wrong, this isn't conventional surgery, but there is no reason her friends should be excluded from this moment, besides, Tony Stark will especially want to poke around Spiral's lab.

[Deleted]

Back to the Satellite again Sakkara didn’t want to be here but Karen wanted her to be there and even used her secret weapon she pouted it was dirty fighting and it worked too. So here she was following after Karen who had taken off as soon as they got here like her pants had been set on fire. It took her a bit but she finally made it there only to realize Karen had already started. She looked to be out of it so she didn’t bother to say anything and just took a seat and pulled out a book on child care. Having been stuck baby sitting Hal Jordan’s brother’s kids she needed to know how to do it. Or better how to do it.

Of all the people Hal could have left those kids with it had to be them. Karen might not have such a problem with it she looked like she would make a great mother. But Sakkara? Leaving kids with her would be like leaving them with Emma Frost. It was just that awkward and Sakkara was that clueless when it came to young children. And she was sure Karen had a good laugh or two watching her try and do things with these kids. But she was slowly getting the hang of it. At lest Jane and Howard were old enough she didn’t have to change their diapers thankfully. She was sure Karen would die from laughing at the sight of her trying to do that.

[Deleted]

In the avenger Jet, Tony left the underground base and headed towards the watchtower of the Justice League. He heard that Karen was finally going to fix herself in order to get the old back to PG. Tony didn’t forget that day when he and Rhodes were trying to take on the clones, luring them away from civilians and go after them. Then Karen came and she was in a good mood. She sound so cold and heartless. Hearing her story of what happened after her death was so hard for him to hear. He hoped that after this, Karen would be back to normal & that he can hang out with Karen more. He left Rhodes in charge while Tony was away.

Arriving at the watchtower, The Martian Manhunter greeted Tony and told him where Karen was at as he walked down the hallways. Tony wasn’t wearing his armored suit but he did bring the briefcase of it, just incase anything went wrong but this isn’t the time for battle and Tony knew that. He’s here for his friend and the woman who’s like a sister to him. As Tony came to the room he could see that PG was already started and saw Sakkara. “Well hello there” he said in a low voice as he took a seat next to her. “So how have you been lately?” he asked Karen’s wife, since it’s been a couple of months of her last visit to him.

[Deleted]

((To be clear, she is NOT there to address her head. Just her arm. The head will happen along the way))

When Sakkara arrives, Karen's heart rate and pulse actually go down. There are near by monitors which are easy enough to see. They display a lot of data, more than just homeostatic readings, there is a lot of computational data involving a mess of variables that wouldn't make any sense to a casual onlooker, they likely refer to the vital statistics of her synthetic cybernetic half. Tony might be able to read some of it, but without context he wont understand it.

PG is fully aware of what's going on in the room, there are several cameras she can watch them through and the ears on her head still function. It's pretty weird being able to segregate your senses in such a way, but sense a little less than half of PG is now a hyper advanced cybernetic being, these kinds of things are possible, not only possible but intuitive for PG.

She decides to remains silent for the moment, that and something she found in Spiral's files has suddenly caught her attention. Two of the many many monitors in Spiral's lab are suddenly streaming with text. Text that details Powergirl and her synthetic augments, it's streaming so fast though, not even tony can read much of what's being said.

[Deleted]

Sakkara didn’t look up from the book she had been reading when Tony came into the room at first until he sat down beside her “Hello Tony.” she tried to go back to her book but no such luck he wanted to talk “Busy baby sitting some children as well as having to deal with Karen’s episodes. Keeps me on my toes.” It was one thing dealing with Karen it was another when she had children she had to look out for and keep them safe from her wife mostly. There had been times when Karen had scared the two little one’s not that she was meaning to do it.

“Still doing crazy things like taking on the clones all by yourself or with Rhodey in your little tin suits?” She still didn’t think Stark had to tech to go toe to toe with those things. It’d probably take years to come up with something that could withstand their power. Sakkara had killed a few clones on her own but that was because she was fueled by grief and rage which meant she had stop holding back and destroyed a good part of New York because of it. Mostly everyone was dead or dying by the time that had happened. So she hadn’t had killed any human’s in the attack.

She closed the book as she looked over at Karen on the table the arms working to repair the damaged arm. After it had happened Divine had disappeared again to where she could only guess but probably not where she had been living. She couldn't blame Divine at not wanting to be found by Karen they already had a rocky history and watching Karen kill two women in cold blood really didn't help any. The old Karen would have felt horrible for what she had done but this Karen she really didn't know what she felt for what she had done.

[Deleted]

Hearing her question including answers,, Tony chuckled a bit. He knew people criticized him using his "toys" too much and never doing much damage, not even at a clone. Some people didn't understand...but they always ate some crow, eating there own words about the legendary Iron Man. Tony Stark is a hero, despite what others think, they don't know the real Tony Stark like Pepper, Rhodey, and other avengers/heroes have. The rest can go screw themselves. "Well acutally yes and no. The avengers are doing good acutally recruitting other members and survivors together. I'm also working on new stuff with others and are coming well. I'm proud of the work everyone's putting in, those clones won't know what'll hit em when the time comes" he said as Tony noticed her looking at Karen on the table working on her arms.

"You know...Karen will come out of this stronger. She's one of the toughest people I know since we've been best friends. I know it's been hard for you since what happend to Karen but bright things are coming in the future, you just gotta be strong and keep hope alive" he said as Tony kept looking at Karen. It was there friendship that pulled Tony away from the bottle, kept him positive and kept him going....doing what he likes. When he heard about Karen's "death" it hurted Tony inside, very deep. How could something like that happen? A doomsday clone sent from the government. Once this war is over, the heroes and the people need to work together on rebuilding the world. As for the government....well they need people who can trust heroes like Tony, knowing that wouldn't go rouge. That's what started this whole vendetta between them and others.

[Deleted]

The text scrolling across several screens suddenly stops. It's a jumble of code that's hard to decipher. A very advanced programming language, but Karen understands it. As she's repairing her arm, she's learning more about herself from Spiral's files, trial and error, experimentation.

A couple seconds after the scrolling text stops, so do all the arms working on PG's arm. The work is about half way completed, everything is repaired, it just needs to be put back together. Several slender tubes laying out all over kinked off or stopped up with glowing blue fluid in them, lots of synthetic muscle weave laid out, all of this is interwoven with actual flesh, that is totally untouched by the machines. Some cutting on living flesh was required but sakkara can repair that magically once the damage to the synthetic is done.

But it all seems to have stopped now.

The pause doesn't last long, a second maybe. Suddenly, several more arms move in, mechanical arms hanging from the ceiling with all sorts of crazy looking instruments attached for repairing, fabricating and constructing.

At the same time they descend towards the operating table, Powergirl's face comes apart, as well as her skull. Her ears slide on shafts away from her head, her forehead opens up like wings and slides away on a shaft, her cheeks open like car doors and her scalp comes away revealing a mess of brain matter and glowing blue wires an a very strange box. The box has a spinning device inside of it that is spinning -very- fast and glowing with blue light. There are pulsing of electricity inside it arcing between the frame of this small box and the spinning thing that seems to just float in the center. Interwoven through all of it is what is left of PG's actual brain. Only about 35% of it remains, and most of that is on the right side.

Moments after all this, PG's voice comes from some speakers in the lab, her voice sounds extremely electronic, synthetic and not human at all, it's cool, calm, detached and synthesized with very soft digitized pops and cracks in it. As if replicating her voice through the speaks is a chore.

"There was nothing even wrong with my head, I had lost an eye in the fight against the clones, while Spiral was replacing it, she decided to replace a lot more and that's why my emotions are so screwed up right now. It had always been a hunch since my diagnostics couldn't find anything and I couldn't hook into a computer powerful enough to run a full third party diagnostic, but what I just found confirms it. Spiral did this to me on purpose!"

Should Tony look at the screens, he'll see blue prints with diagnostic read outs on several integral parts to the organization and function of Powergirl's synthetic brain. His work in artificial intelligence will give him the ability to recognize some basic parts of the code. No mater how advanced it is, one plus one always equals two and in this case the error is blaringly obvious. He might even be able to suggest a way to fix it, but it looks like Powergirl is already doing that.

[Deleted]

Sakkara looked away from Karen back to Tony he didn’t know Karen was well as he thought he did. It wasn’t that long ago that Karen had been begging Sakkara to kill her because she didn’t want to be this way anymore. Keyword was the blonde had changed a lot since her supposed death. But she decided not to voice any of this Tony didn’t need to know it was just between her and Karen. “We’ll see.” she turned back to look at Karen again the arms had stopped and more arm’s appeared there wasn’t enough already?

She sat there watching as Karen’s head opened up for all to see then she spoke only the words wasn’t coming out of her mouth but from speakers near by “Not really all that surprising considering who she use to be. Mojo created her to do this to people for his shows. That creature is just as twisted as Spiral was if not more so. The real question is there anyway to fix it at all?” Sakkara got up and moved closer to the table that Karen was on avoiding the arms so she wouldn’t get in the way and stop there work. She leaned on one of the control panels not touching any of the buttons on it. She hoped there was some way to get her old wife back or at lest close to it. She really didn’t want to have to baby sit Karen to make sure she didn’t kill anymore people in cold blood. Spiral might have had it coming but the other woman did not.

[Deleted]

As Tony continued to watch Karen at work with the arms, he saw all this stuff coming out of her. It freaked Tony out a bit but no surprise. Karen’s now part human, part cyborg which is just hard to imagine. Spiral did this to her and if Tony was in Karen’s shoes, she would pay but at what cost? Spiral’s the one who had all the keys of making PG who she was on that day Tony and Rhodes encountered her. Spiral didn’t care about the consequences of Karen’s actions but she needed to be held responsible. Tony would never hit a woman or hurt one but it just frustrated Tony to the point where this was so unreal.

Then he started seeing all these blueprints on the screens. Tony heard what Karen said and it’s no surprise, from the looks of it, Spiral did it on purpose. Tony could see these blueprints and figure out a code. It’s been so long since the doomsday clone invasion that he focused on something like this. Not that he forgot though. Tony scratched his chin and started thinking more about this but it seemed Karen had all of this under control. He may not have known Karen for a long time but on the times they would hang out and just be friends , Karen’s the person to have everything in order.

[Deleted]

It’s probably a good thing that spiral was already dead or Karen might’ve gone off and killed her right then. The fury that builds in Karen that moment subsides rather quickly because of that fact. It’s comforting to recall how spiral looked as she was being ripped apart brutally by karen’s savage strength and melted into goo by her acid breath.

”If I hadn’t killed spiral already I would probably get right up off this table and go find and kill her. What ever, I’m glad I figured it out.”


There is a momentary pause as she considers everything. Crunches numbers, analyzes data and information. Synthesizing an algorithm to fix her emotional state is going to be a more convoluted process than it sounds. To much or to little and she’ll become even more unstable than she already is.

”Without getting into the gorey details, it looks like, yes. I will be able to solve the problem. I’m rewriting the code right now, and drawing up some blue prints for changes in physical structure. Baby can you repair the damage done to my arm by the surgery, all the synthetics are fully repaired now.”

The arm was all back together except for the fleshy bits, which had needed to be cut to get to the synthetics. The way the two are interwoven through out Powergirl’s body is extreme.

Across the lab another set of arms is gathering parts and assembling an extremely tiny device. The arms working on her brain are unhooking things and rerouting things, it’s all perfectly planned though. It almost looks routine, nothing happens without some kind of backup system in place to change the load burden or ensure no damage is done as it works.

”None of this is really dangerous, since kryptonian physiology has integrated into the synthetics, it’s all as durable and powerful as the rest of me. The dangerous part is coming up though. I’m going to transplant a new piece, and while I do that I’m going to have to shut most of my brain down…My consciousness will be uploaded into spiral’s computers while that goes on. So uh, pray we don’t lose power or something.”

This is pretty much one of the only moments Karen could die through conventional means. But even then, this isn’t very conventional. She’d become a shadow of herself, there’s no way to recopy her memories and emotions, her experiences. The process that spiral used to do that was done in the future when all this tech was installed and the means to replicate that process doesn’t seem to be available in this lab. Tony likely is familiar with transferring emotions and memories to digital format, but that would be a flawed version of what has actually occurred to powergirl. Her memories, emotions and personality weren’t simply copied, they were literally transformed into digital form. The few parts of her brain left that are still organic house a great deal of these, but not all of them, thus the schism, thus the problem. What powergirl hopes to do now, is improve the connections and allow for a more cohesive integrity.

[Deleted]

Sakkara moved over to Karen’s body but didn’t heal her just yet. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot is not something I really want to do because it can be very dangerous. But I could take us into the future but we would have to go through hell first to reach the Nexus Of All Things. But I can only take the two of us it would take everything I have to keep you alive within the Nexus and get us there and back.” She had studied the Nexus Of All Things for hundred of years so she knew how to use it with out getting hurt. They didn’t have the same time to do it with Karen. “If it was done wrong it would rip your soul out and your body would crumble into nothing Kryptonian or not you wouldn’t live through it.”

“Then there’s the chance that we could run into our future selves which could cause all sorts of problems.” It wouldn’t destroy time or anything but something’s we shouldn’t know about what’s going to happen. She held her hand over Karen’s arm healing it back up good as new leaving no trace that anything had happened. She also left out the part where she had to kill a lot of people to be able to enter hell because she wasn’t renouncing her humanity to enter hell. She worked to hard to get it back and wasn’t ready to lose it again. "It's all your choice of course we don't have to do it if you can make it work with what you have."

[Deleted]

After hearing everything that was said, Tony knew this wouldn't be easy. The man wasn't a doctor or had a degree in health but at least he knew some of this stuff. Stark stood up and walked up to the two people. "Listen guys" I said. "You two do what you need to do and I understand. Nothing like this is ever easy but remember....i'm always here if there's help" he simply told them as he smiled at the two before stepping back and sitting down. Now the ball is in Karen's court, to make a decision...one that Tony would support even if he didn't have a chance to go.

[Deleted]

As Karen works, she finds herself considering Tony Stark. The man has changed so much, he used to be this sarcastic egotistical nice guy, now he’s like a fluffy bunny. Maybe that’s the effect society has on a person. When there is no society to impress upon or influence, it doesn’t mater so much how you act. The end of the world changed every one though, Tony Stark included. This chain of thought gets her to thinking about how much SHE has changed, even without all the cybernetics and psychological trauma before spiral’s influence.

It was a very painful thing to endure.

”That sounds like a lot of unnecessary risk for a slim chance at reward baby, it’s not very economic. I can just replace this part of my brain and rewrite the code and it should work. If it doesn’t, there is a kill switch function programmed into me. I’ve decided I’m going to make a device for you, baby, that is keyed off of your DNA”


In that second the device that powergirl was building is brought over towards the operating table. It’s very tiny, about the size of a peny, it looks like a microchip made of glass with thousands of tiny little interwoven circuits running through it.


”I appreciate that Tony. You’ve been a really good friend through it all. Actually, I was thinnnkizzt Thazzt weerrzzzz hazzzz emrrrtzz atzzzzot”


As powergirl begins to do the intricate work on her brain, she removes pieces that look very important to the function, her voice begins to become extremely digitized, then it blasts out and sounds like something you’d hear in a beastie boys song (think intergalactic planetary). Completely unintelligible, then it goes quiet. Then it gets really loud, sounds horribly digitized and unintelligible.

”Hazzt Ot…emmzzzzgot Ahhhhzzzzzzzz hhhnggrrrnnnzzz-“

More distortion, then silence. The arms working on powergirl stop moving just as they were about to slide the chip into place, the space is very very tiny, the only thing that can fit seemingly is the robotic arms holding the chip, they seem specialized to this task.

Suddenly, all the screens in the room start streaming data, some of them flashing with red text that’s not really intelligible. One of them reads in huge bolded red font
CONNECTION LOST, PLEASE REINITIATE MANUALLY.
CONNECTION LOST, PLEASE REINITIATE MANUALLY.
CONNECTION LOST, PLEASE REINITIATE MANUALLY.
CONNECTION LOST, PLEASE REINITIATE MANUALLY.
CONNECTION LOST, PLEASE REINITIATE MANUALLY.
CONNECTION LOST, PLEASE REINITIATE MANUALLY.

[Deleted]

“Slim chances are better then none.” Sakkara raised a brow at what Karen wanted to do she supposed if Karen did go off the deep end she should be the one to stop her being her wife and all. Karen wouldn’t want anyone else to do it to her. “That’s fine I’ll give you whatever you need for it.” she took her eyes off of Karen’s body watching the arm come over with the chip it must be what was needed to fix this all it had to be she didn’t see the arms working on anything else over there. So that must have been the whole thing then.

She looked away from the arm when Karen’s voice started to mess up something was wrong but what she didn’t know. She caught sight of the screens that was bad, shit she had to do something she wasn’t about to lose Karen for a second time. She brought her hand up and pushed Tony out of the way so she could get around to the other side making sure she didn‘t bump the arm that was in Karen‘s head. She grabbed the arm extremely carefully she pushed the chip in hoping that would fix this otherwise she didn’t know what else to do. “Next time you have to work on your head let a living being do it and not on a machine.” she said as she freed the arm from the chip making sure not to damage anything.

She stayed crouched down near Karen's face waiting "Come on blondie open those pretty blue eyes or at lest say something from the speakers. Let me know your alright." she just wanted to know if everything was alright. And that this whatever it was didn't cause any damage to her in any way.

[Deleted]

The signs on the screens going red, this was all about to go to hell as Tony started to worry. Everything in life for him didn't go as planed as usual. He knew that it wouldn't be easy too, facing the enemies who want nothing more but to take him down since the day the world knew him as Iron Man. Now a life was hanging in the balance, it was Karen's life and Tony started to think that maybe he could save her life. Then suddely Sakkarah pushed him out of the way and it was better for Tony just to stay back a bit and give Karen some room.

Then Tony closed his eyes and prayed to the heavens to bring back Karen. After her wife putted the disc in, he silently looked at Karen and said nothing...still praying. No one from the dead could be brought back into his life, not even his parents or any deceased family/friend. Karen deserved so much better, Tony knew she would make an awesome mom and an awesome wife. The past events of the world proved different though. "Come on Karen...wake up....fight for all of us" he said quietly as they all waited and knew....something good was about to happen.