Work Text:
Leon’s forehead creased in intense concentration as he stared at the incredibly complicated set of wiring and gears in the elbow rig set in the clamp in front of him… All he had to do was make one tiny little adjustment to tighten up the bending mechanism, but if he knocked anything else out of place while he did it, Togami would bitch and moan for weeks that his arm wasn’t up to scratch, and with the real one coming along to survey the work he’d sunk a fortune into investing in a few days…
But he wasn’t about to do anything dumb like that! He had his best pair of tweezers in hand, the room was quiet, he was calm, he was steady, he was…
“AH! Leon! You ARE in here!” Argh! Holy-FUCK how’d HE get in here!?
It was damn good thing he’d still been psyching himself up, ‘cause Leon’s arm spasmed upwards the second Kiyotaka’s voice boomed across the workshop and his best pair of tweezers were sent clattering across the desk… hell knows what chaos he’d have caused if he’d had them anywhere near Togami’s arm when that happened…
“Kiyotaka? How’d you get in here!?” Hell, he’d only just changed the code to the workshop in order to stop shit like this from happening!
“Oh, Mondo let me know the new code!” Oh for fucks sake… looked like he was gonna have to talk to Mondo about his dumb crush again… “Also, he said you were the person to talk to regarding hands!”
“Yeah…” That was true. He and Mondo worked together on getting the inner workings of the robot copies of themselves they were all being employed to build moving correctly, but the fine motor control needed in hands was pretty much Leon’s domain…
“Well, Ludenberg is having problems…” Urg, not that crap again…
“No, dude, If she’s bitching about how her nails look, that’s Junko job, not mine!” Leon corrected him… honestly, he swore to god her and Togami were using this upcoming investors tour as a chance to scare all the humans into fixing every minor god-damn thing that irritated them in the slightest…
“No, it’s not that.” Kiyotaka corrected him, “She’s having motor control issues. I saw her drop a large number of cards earlier, and given Miss Celestia’s love of card games, I suspect she might take issue with that if it happens when she comes to inspect our work…”
“Oh… shit, yeah. That is my job!” Dammit… he’d only just re-calibrated her a few days ago, why’d this have to happen now… “I’ll check it out once I’m done with Togami’s arm…”
“Ah… that’s still here?” Kiyotaka sighed disappointedly, “I guess I’ll be spending the afternoon taking notes for him until it’s ready…again.”
“Urg, good luck with that man…” Leon wouldn’t have to do that shit! Togami was annoying enough even during the few minutes when Leon had to attach his limbs back on, let alone dealing with him for several hours... He almost felt sorry for the Kiyotaka, even if he had just delayed the arm getting fixed…
“…And not to doubt your professionalism, but I can’t help but think your work would go faster if you treated your tools with more care!” Kiyotaka burnt all sympathy Leon might have had for him with a single sentence. “Not to mention the state of this workroom! I do hope you’re intending to tidy it before the investors arrive!”
“That’s Mondo’s side of the room, maybe you should talk to him about it!” That wasn’t exactly true, but he’d never get any work done if Kiyotaka stuck around bitching all afternoon…
“…Very well then! I’ll do that… err… after work… if I’m finished on time…” His thick black eyebrows (although not as large as his robot copy’s one, holy shit those things were crazy!) waggled as he tried to figure out his own schedule for the day. “Good luck with your work!” He added, before heading out of the door…
The door that was getting a new fucking code just as soon as Leon was done with Togami’s elbow… Now where had those tweezers ended up? Oh, there they were…
Aww, FUCK! They were bent! Now he was gonna either have to use his second best tweezers or go and traipse to the store and order a brand new pair, which would probably include trying to explain what had happened to Kyoko… And that fucking prick had the goddamn nerve to act like it was Leon’s fault he hadn’t managed to get done with all of Togami’s bitching yet!
Urrghh… He was too pissed off to do tiny adjustments right now… Maybe he’d go get more tweezers, see if he could figure out the problem with Ludenberg’s hands and then come back to this when he was calmer again...
Well, getting the tweezers had been easier than he’d expected… he’d barely had to say ‘I was concentrating with them in my hand when Kiyotaka…” and Kyoko had instantly approved the order. Hopefully he’d had all his bad luck for today and Ludenberg’s issue would be an easy fix as well…
He found her in the rec room, the first place he always checked when trying to look for her, practising throwing darts at the wall… and looking pretty pleased with the results. Huh… she certainly didn’t look like her hands were giving her trouble… Still, he’d best check. She might only be playing darts because she couldn’t handle her cards…
After waiting for her to finish her current set, Leon knocked on the door and headed into the room. “Hey, can I have a word with you?”
“If you must…” She sighed irritably as she pulled the darts out and sat down in a chair, only pausing to daintily brush the weird, giant spirals of hair Hifumi had designed her with out of the way. Honestly, it was kinda creepy how realistic these things were getting nowadays…
“Okay…” Leon sat down opposite her, “Have you been having any problems with your hands?”
“Yes. As I told Junko, the nails on my right hand are…” Guh, he wouldn’t wanna have to be Junko, having to listen to her moan about whatever she was bitching about this time…
“Yeah, Junko’s working on that…” At least, hopefully she was… “I mean have you had problems with the movements? Like fine motor control?”
“No. They work well in that respect.” She put on that creepy smile of hers… “I almost built a four storey card house earlier…”
“Almost…?” Why would she be proud of almost doing something? It wasn’t like she was Naegi, who was the first built and so shoddily made it was a miracle he could walk from one end of a room to the other with falling apart…
“Hmpth… Well, I was about to put the final two cards on, when…”
“Wait… lemme guess…” Leon suddenly figured it out… why Kiyotaka thought she had problems holding her cards… “Kiyotaka burst in and scared the shit outta you!”
“…I was merely startled.” She said after glaring at him for a moment, “But you are correct that his sudden, loud presence caused me to knock over the rest of the cards.”
“Hah! I knew it!” So that was twice Kiyotaka had ended up wasting his time with his inability to talk quietly, or notice when people were obviously concentrating… And he had the balls to complain about Leon’s working habits…!
“…I take it he’s done something similar thing to you?”
“Yeah… made me throw my best tweezers across the room and bend them outta shape…” Leon summarised, “Then told me I oughta take better care of my tools… fricken jackass…”
“Hmmm…” Ludenberg’s mouth twitched upwards into a devilish smirk… “Would you like to get revenge…?”
The next day, Leon was gently moving the elbow joint of Togami’s arm up and down to make absolutely certain the rich asshole’s facsimile wouldn’t have anything to bitch about this time, when Kiyotaka came back into the room, just a suddenly and loudly as before…
“Ah! Leon! Ludenberg asked me to come and check how much longer it will be before her hands are ready for re-installation!”
Of course, this time, Leon was expecting this, right down to Kiyotaka’s question. He also knew full well that Ludenberg’s hands were currently hidden behind those bottles on the shelf in there, but telling Kiyotaka that wasn’t part of the plan…
“Well, they are… but I gotta go do Togami’s arm first…” Leon held it up to show him the finished version. “Buuuut… She knows how they go on. You could take ‘em up for her and she could talk you through it, if you want it done quicker…”
And chances were good that he would want it done quicker, because Ludenberg had been planning to be extra-demanding ‘until she got them back…’
“Well… that sounds like a good plan!” Kiyotaka fell for it. “Where are they?”
“Right here!” Leon picked up a fancy-looking box, which contained a purple velvet cushion for ‘Ludenberg’s hands’ to sit on. Of course, what was sat on the box wasn’t actually her hands, but one of the fake models Junko had made in order to show what different skins and nail types would look like in 3D.
“Thank you!” Kiyotaka took it off of him, “I hope Togami’s installation goes smoothly!”
“Should do, it’s not too hard to put these things back on…” Leon shrugged, “Just don’t drop ‘em! Those babies there break if you look at them funny, and they’re probably worth half a year of your salary to boot!” Leon let out a chuckle… partly because he had to in order for the prank to work, and partly because Kiyotaka was already turning from happy to completely terrified at the task he’d just been given…
“Err… I see…” He gulped, “I shall be incredibly careful with them then!”
“I know dude!” Leon told him as he held the door open for him, “See you later!”
He nodded, slowly, and then carefully made his way through the door, eyes full of fearful dread…
Leon almost felt a bit guilty. The guy was in so much debt that the thought of having half his salary docked for a year was probably making him want to scream and flee in terror, whereas those hands were just a piece of junk that Junko would have thrown out months ago if she was more organised and had been happy to have Leon take off her hands… but, as Kiyotaka had no real clue how these robots were actually built, he was convinced he was holding a delicate, multi-thousand-dollar prototype and his life would be ruined if anything happened to it…
But, this was probably gonna be the best way to get him to quit scaring the crap outta everyone…
As soon as Kiyotaka had slowly passed in front the stairs like Ludenberg had expected, probably thinking the lift would be safer, Leon headed out of the room himself and up to the stairs, making his way up one floor normally, before starting to race up the next few floors and to the Rec room as fast as he possibly could…
He managed to get in the room and hide in the locker, as planned, without Kiyotaka seeing him… perfect! Now all he had to do was wait for Kiyotaka to arrive and come to present the hands to Ludenberg…
Finally, after about five minutes of trying not to laugh at the thought of hat he was about to do, Leon heard the sound of the Rec room door being awkwardly opened, and then watched as Kiyotaka, sweating buckets and with shaky arms, nervously made his way past the locker…
Which was when Leon burst out of it, shouting “Hello there!”
“AAAAARGGGHHH!” Kiyotaka shrieked as the tray, and the cheap model hands, went flying up into air. Then he flinched as they landed on the ground with a crack as the plaster smashed. And finally he stared and moved his hands to his mouth in silent horror at the pile of large pieces of what he thought was a piece of equipment worth six months of having to try and teach a group containing some of the world’s more annoying bunch of robots…
“Pfft… Ahahahahaha!” Leon could help but laugh at the look of terror on his face… heck, even Ludenberg was smiling and chuckling quietly to herself… Which looked kind of weird because she was holding her arm in a position where her hands would have been covering her mouth, but she didn’t have her hands on…
“This… this isn’t funny Kuwata!” Kiyotaka wheeled around to yell at him, “Do you have any idea how important those were!? Or how long Leon…” He blinked as his eyes presumably picked up on the lack of Kuwata’s goatee and piercing… “…Leon? What are you!? Why did you!? You just told me…”
“Pahahaha… That’s was all bullshit!” Leon guffawed, “Those were just some of Junko’s old models that she hadn’t thrown out yet. Ludenberg’s hands are fine…” He pointed over to the row of bottles they were hidden behind. “And besides, they’re pretty hardy. How’d you think Oowada would manage to punch anything if his hands broke that easily!?”
“W…What!?” Kiyotaka stormed over to the hidden hands and looked at them. “So… this was just a prank!?”
“Partly…” Ludenberg started.
“Really!?” He yelled in annoyance, “Do you not think I have enough work to do before this inspection, without you wasting my time!? Do you really have so little work that you can mess about thinking up pranks!?”
“No!” Leon snapped, “I’ve got tons of shit to get on with! Enough that I could really do without you barging into my workspace to report a ‘motor control issue’ that only happened because your dumb ass startled her!”
“What…!? But… all I did was come in the room and say hello!” Kiyotaka exclaimed, “If that’s enough to startle her, then her ears must need recalibration!”
“No, it ain’t her ears!” Fricken prick, couldn’t possibly think it might be his fault… “You did it to me as well right afterwards! And I’d bet my ass you’ve done it to Kyoko to at some point, ‘cause I barely had to say your name before she approved my request for some new tweezers to replace the pair you made me drop across the table! Hell, the only control issue we’ve got around here is you not being able to control the volume of your own dang voice and being to dumb to stop and wait for a time when people aren’t busy concentrating to try and speak to them!”
Leon panted slightly as he finished his rant… hah… that actually felt pretty good… But now Kiyotak was just glaring at him, with his lips drawn into a thin line, probably getting ready to launch into a rant of his own…
…probably a long one, given how long he was taking to start…
…Yeesh, come on! Leon didn’t have all day…
…aaaannnnyyyy second now…
Shit, had the dude broken?”
“…Hey, you gonna say some…?”
“…I’ve been causing so much trouble...” Kiyotaka’s announced in a hollow voice, his lips starting to tremble. “It’s all my fault everyone’s overworked and busy, isn’t it!?”
Aww, crap… he was crying… Geez, how the hell did Leon managed to make a grown man cry!?
“No… dude… It ain’t that bad…” Leon sighed, “It’s just fucking annoying! Especially when you then add insult to injury by moaning at me about the thing that you caused!” Kiyotaka cringed at Leon’s reminder, “That’s why we set up this prank, because we wanted to make you realise how startling it can be to have someone suddenly come up behind you and shout at you while you’re trying to concentrate on something important!”
“Oh… I see…” Kiyotaka’s tears slowed to a stop, “So… this was a teaching moment, then?”
“Yeah, if that’s how you wanna think about it…” Nerd… “This was Ludenberg’s turn to teach you something!”
“Wait… this was Ludenberg’s idea? Not yours?” Kiyotaka suddenly turned super-serious…
“Uhh… yeah…? Why’s it matter so much?”
“You don’t see why it matters!? Coming up with independent plans is a huge developmental milestone! The investors are bound to be impressed with this!” So, what? He was gonna tell Celestia he’d pissed off her double so much she’d sworn revenge on him? “I need to go tell Makoto about this right away!”
And there he was, striding out of the door ready to go burst into someone elses room like he always did… “Hey, Kiyotaka!”
“Err… yes?”
“Just… make sure he’s not busy concentration on anything first, alright?”
“Ah! Yes! Of course!” Kiyotaka nodded, “And… I apologise for my action yesterday… both of you! I’ll do my best not to repeat the same mistake!”
“Thanks, dude. That’s all we need!” Hah… maybe Kiyotaka wasn’t as much of a pain in the ass as he’d thought…
“…But you need to clean up that mess from your prank! The investors won’t be impressed if they come here and see that all over the floor!”
…Y’know what? Never mind, Kiyotaka was exactly as much of a pain in the ass as he’d thought!