Chapter Text
Sir Pentious rummaged through the toolbox, his face set in an expression of mild confusion and annoyance. He looked up from the box and over towards a gaggle of his egg bois.
“Have any of you lot seen the 5/16" socket?”
One of the egg bois looked around at the others before responding.
“No boss, we haven't. Did you check the lid of the box?”
Sir Pentious looked annoyed.
“Of course, I checked the lid of the box!”
He then proceeded to check the lid of the box and found the socket he'd been looking for. As he fitted the socket to the ratchet he'd had in his pocket he muttered to himself.
“I really need to put a shadow board in there”
He then slithered across the workshop to a large machine with a tarpaulin draped over it. Pulling a bit of the tarp away to get access to a small section of panel he started to remove the bolts holding It in place. He took special care to place each of the bolts down in a small tray by his side. Once they were all removed he carefully pulled the panel off and laid it down next to the bolts. This exposed racks of circuit boards. His hands flitted over them one by one searching for the right one. Finally, he found it and gently pressing on two catches at the end he released the board from the rack and pulled it out. The board slid out like a drawer from its cabinet, till it was clear of its runners.
Once it was free he carried it over to a different part of his workshop. This time it was a clean well-lit bench with all sorts of devices covering it; Avometers, oscilloscopes, low and high-voltage power supplies and an illuminated magnifying glass on an articulated arm. He swung this in front of him as he slid himself into place in front of the desk. Peering through the magnifying glass he closely examined both sides of the board. Following the wire traces that ran like roads through the maze of components. Capacitors lead to relays, relays lead to valves, valves lead to resistors and so on it went. All coming together to provide precisely calculated outputs that were fed into the greater whole of the device. He muttered under his breath as he inspected the board.
“Capacitor 32R is blown, replace it with a 100mF… relay 5B is fused and needs replacing… replace the diodes in the half-bridge rectifier”
This carried on for a good few minutes before he placed the board down on the bench and pushed the magnifying glass up and away. He picked up a pencil and quickly scribbled down a list of components and handed it to an egg boi who was standing nearby.
“Hurry along and fetch these would you, we should have them all in the store room.”
As they hurried off Pentious turned back to the bench and pulled open one of the drawers pulling out a spool of solder and a solder sucker. He then turned to the soldering iron and flicked a switch to turn it and the nearby extractor fan on.
While it was heating up he slotted the circuit board into a frame that would hold it in place but would allow him to easily flip the board over when he needed to. His attention was caught when a light flicked off on the soldering iron indicating it was ready.
He fluidly removed the soldering iron from its holder and gently dabbed a small bead of solder onto its end it melted quickly forming a shimmering pool of molten metal on the tip. He moved over to the board and gently dabbed the solder onto the legs of one of the components he had to remove. Quickly the solder holding it in place turned to fluid and with his free hand Pentoius quickly jabed the solder sucker in and removed it. He repeated the process again on the other leg.
Once the solder had been removed he gently pulled the component from the board, inspected it and placed it to one side. He then carried on removing the rest of the components he needed to his soldering iron moving like a conductor's baton, he hummed a little tune while he worked away.
As he plucked the last component that He needed to remove from the board he saw the egg boi come back carrying a small box full of components which he placed at his side.
“Thank you very much”
He turned back to bored and started to replace each individual component he'd removed it was like watching a rewind of the previous act.
Once he was done he cleaned the soldering iron off and turned it off. He then returned the board back to its rack in the machine pushing it in till it gave a gentle and reassuring click. Then bolt by bolt he resecured the panel In its place and returned the ratchet and socket to the toolbox.
“Alright, egg bois safety goggles on!”
He pulled down his own goggles and made his way over to a control panel protruding from the tarp. Pressing several buttons the machine began to thrum with power. Lights illuminated on the console.
“All readings are nominal”
Then suddenly an alarm sounded.
“Power surge in the secondary battery bank shut it dow….”
Before he could finish there was a great bang and Pentious was sent flying.