Chapter Text
After waking up, things had happened one thing after the other very quickly, but Knack had successfully taken most of it in stride. Between getting to know the Doctor and Lucas, running gauntlets in the lab, and learning everything under the sun about his new environment, then the expedition meeting and the first big test against Viktor's robots… and then all the chaos that followed, the whole team had been busy. But now a few months had passed, and with Charlotte on board and Ryder thankfully just fine, things had calmed and settled.
At this point in time, Knack was parked cross-legged on the floor in front of a large mirror, surrounded by a box of relics recovered from a newly-excavated set of ruins and a medical textbook flipped open to diagrams of human muscle groups and skeletal structures. The relics had been thoroughly examined by the team since their arrival a week ago, to confirm that despite their differing color and shape from others, they were still made of the same dense material and interacted with manipulative arcane energies the same as any other relic. The medical textbook had been discovered in the library and the descriptions of exactly how complex organic beings could function was simply fascinating.
All of that aside, there was something he intended to accomplish here.
It had grown increasingly obvious to Knack that his own body--as in, the way he arranged relics to create a mobile form--was inefficient. Viktor had been right about one thing from the get-go; Knack was delicate. The orb that held his consciousness was almost completely unprotected and could only take one hit before he was incapacitated for several seconds. He was also paradoxically unwieldy; the shapes that built his hands didn't allow good purchase on most human-made objects, and his body proportions were just… weird. It made him feel too visible in a crowd at best and like an honest-to-goodness monster at worst, and today was the day where he did something about it.
The 'old' relics were still usable, but he'd need to change how some of them were used. An arm seemed as good a place to start as any--and probably one of the more challenging parts to update.
Aside from the orb that held him together, his arms were arguably the most important part of him. They were deadly weapons, and efficient. Any redesigning would need to maintain that power, which likely meant that his arms and hands would have to stay much larger than any human's. But it would be nice to have actual palms. Currently his hands were each four fingers and a thumb that connected to a sphere, and it made picking things up a complete pain.
Sitting on the top layer within the box were several pieces that had been regarded with particular interest when they were delivered. There were a couple robust golden U-shapes, some bright red pieces that looked like rounder versions of what Knack used as fur, and a number of flat-ish stone semicircles that Lucas had almost instantly set out on the table and compared the arrangement to the structure of his own palm. Knack had stared at the comparison for long enough that the group had to call his name multiple times. And a week later, those three shapes had become the foundation for a new pair of hands.
The sphere acting as a makeshift palm was swapped out for a smaller one that slotted into the golden U. The configuration was flipped around and the tan stones were laid out to correctly mimic the palm of a human hand. As for fingers, Knack simply chose to alternate between gold spheres and tan cylinders, ending each fingertip with the gold and red claws he'd gotten used to. The strange and seemingly useless red pieces were placed at the base of each finger on the back of the hand, adding another pop of color and guaranteeing an interesting bruise pattern on anyone dumb enough to get punched.
Knack paused to turn the new extremity this way and that, bending the fingers and accustoming the relics to being manipulated in such a way. And it-- it looked like a hand. A huge hand, probably three times the size of anyone else who ever visited the Doc's lab, but still very recognizable.
He let out an amazed huff of laughter and immediately replicated the shape for the second hand.
Next up, arms. This would be easier. They would consist of four pillars of relics, in varying shapes. Technically he was already doing that, but he had new parts to work with. Case in point, some of the pieces from the new haul looked like quarter circles with chunks taken out of the two corners where the curve connected to the straight edges. They would pack in tightly and create the correct round-ish shape of the limb while also providing a sturdy structure and volume. To add a little variety and interest to the color and shape, Knack added a line of green-ish cubes with gold caps here, a couple of small jeweled cylinders there, more red pieces like his fingertips along the outside of the forearm and a similar one at his elbow. The spheres that acted as joints at the elbow and shoulder had no reason to go, so they didn't.
The new arms were solid, compact, and they certainly looked just as powerful. Maybe even more. He'd have to run the gauntlets down in the lab a couple times before he knew for sure, but he had a good feeling about this.
Tackling his torso next felt a little intimidating. It could be skipped for now. Legs and feet it was.
Re-doing his legs was the easy part. Just follow the same pillar pattern used for his arms (thankfully there were enough of those quarter-circle pieces) with an additional bold stripe of red down the back of each limb. The spheres worked as knee joints, but he just didn't like the way they connected his legs to his hips, and decided not to add them. His legs now took up a slightly larger chunk of his total height than they previously had--at least at this height mark. He'd have to figure out what exactly that height was when he was done. But the tips of his fingers were a little farther away from touching the ground when he was standing normally, which was one of the goals he'd set out to achieve.
It took a moment of digging through the crate of relics for him to find the pieces he'd set aside to use as a basis for new feet. They were slanted slabs of ornate sandstone, a little arched, with room for a small sphere to fit towards the heel. Similar idea as the sturdy back of his hands, and there was really no improvement to be made with how his toes were configured--just swapping out the duller orange for the bright red. He really liked this red.
And yeah, okay. That looked pretty good. He set both feet on the ground and shifted his weight back and forth from leg to leg, hopped in place, paced back and forth a couple times… really anything that would act as a stress test and simultaneously postpone having to completely disassemble his chest cavity. Just… leaving his core exposed, even alone and in the safety of the mansion felt wrong.
Unfortunately, the desire to get it over with and fix the airiness of his chest cavity was also pretty strong. This is where the medical textbook came in.
The most important structural parts of a human's torso were the ribcage and spine: a literal cage formation of strong but thin bones that protected the delicate internal organs such as the heart and lungs; and the line of short cylindrical bones that protected the nervous system. The ribs were arranged in a curved, slightly diagonal formation and all attached to the descending vertebrae in the spine and an ovaline bit of bone in the center of the chest. As well as bone structure, muscle structure was considered: pectorals, abdominals, the muscles along the shoulders, neck, and back.
The basic shape of ribs and pectoral muscles were already in place--three curved rings of cylindrical relics on either side of the cavity that held his core and large gold pyramids hugged the top of his chest. It was simultaneously a bulky and unprotective situation. Arranging both new ribs and new musculature at the same time was going to be a pain.
Spine it was! That would be easy, especially since he didn't have one. The green-ish cubes capped with gold were perfect. Rotating them so that an edge of the cubes were pointed outward, away from the back. Seven of them was enough to reach almost all the way down his back, stopping just above his hips. Shoulders would also serve as a good kind of frame… as would a collarbone… Smaller green cubes formed the collarbone, while four sandstone cubes formed each shoulder. Right beneath the line of each shoulder went a red rhombus shape like the ones attached to his elbows, mimicking the shoulder blade (the medical book claimed the official name for that bone was the scapula).
There was a big open space in the lower center of his torso, where a person's stomach and digestive tract would be. It was easily filled with a sphere the size of Charlotte's fist and an arch of small sandstone cubes above the sphere. The top of the arch actually nestled against his core, and with some careful adjusting two of the smaller gold pyramids from before were placed close against the three and nine of his core. The bigger pyramids were… too bulky. Putting them back in their original spots at the two and ten wouldn't fit in the space between the top of the orb and his collarbone. Knack once again took to digging around in the box of spare parts, throwing huge handfuls of relics out onto the floor and almost climbing in the box itself when he wasn't immediately finding any good substitutes.
Aha! Two pyramids made from the same studded gold as the last ones, and roughly the same size, it just looked like they'd been grabbed by one of the bottom corners and stretched several inches in that direction. They were curved enough that, with a little rearranging, they fit snugly over the top of his core and underneath his collarbone.
By filling in some smaller things first, there was now a manageable amount of space to insert ribs into. A human had about ten pairs of ribs that reconnected at the sternum. Knack did not have enough working space to manage ten pairs of ribs at this height, but he could manage a couple. One line of wide stone cylinders capped on one plane with gold extended from the third highest of his vertebrae, paused because his scapula was in the way, and then continued to curve downward until the line terminated just below the small pyramids directly left and right of his core. The next line went one vertebra lower and terminated on either side of the cube arch in the center of his abdomen. There was room for one more pair of full ribs, and they were made of the gold cylinders inlaid with ovaline turquoise jewels. The lines started at the third vertebra from the bottom of his spine and terminated when they reached the arch. A quick check in the mirror said that there were two identical empty spaces on either side of his spine, below the jeweled ribs. A couple more stone cylinders filled each gap, giving the illusion of floating ribs--which were an actual thing human bodies had along the bottom of the back of the ribcage.
And just like that, the hard part was done! From there, it was smaller things. Cylinders that acted as the cordlike muscles that moved the neck, adding lines of cubes, ridged quarter-circles, and sphere joints to actually make it look like his legs connected to his hips, a couple more cubes under his shoulder joint that made the arm look more attached. A few swapped pieces for the belt of small pyramids that circled his waist. Filling in any open cavities around his core that could potentially pose a problem.
That… was all of the structural stuff that had been bothering him. And with as many leftover pieces as there were, he had some room to make aesthetic changes.
There was some discrepancy between the reds on his limbs and the reddish orange that decorated his head, so that was a quick fix. Messing around with the placement of the pieces and adding a few more managed to actually fully cover the area directly below his ears, instead of leaving some significant bald spots. The red was pulled in closer around the rest of his face, giving a clearer frame. He didn't even try to deny the fact that he was full on smirking at his reflection. He looked good.
Knack was trying to find the best placement of a couple leftover 'fur' pieces on his upper back and back of his neck when there were three rapid knocks on the door and Lucas let himself in without waiting, talking all the way. "There you are! We couldn't find you in any of the normal spots so the Doc actually pulled out the relic scanner and it told us you were up here. Is everything okayyy…" he trailed off as his eyes landed on Knack's form, brown eyes wide as dollars as the kid took in every new detail, from the hands and feet to the ribs to an extra-long look at all the new red that framed his face. Knack opened his mouth to say something excusing the awkward position he was in and how weird it must have looked, but Lucas beat him to the punch, grinning so bright to challenge the sun and yelling "COOL!" And then he didn't stop there.
"Knack, you look amazing! Is this what you've been doing all morning? Giving yourself a makeover?"
Knack simply stood still and held his arms kind-of out of the way so that Lucas could circle him and look over all the details. "Upgrades," he shrugged. "I felt like some things weren't working out anymore, so I changed them."
"Just some things? You look completely different, but you still look like you. Hey, didn't I point out how these kind of looked like my palm in this arrangement when we unpacked them?" Lucas was now holding Knack's powerful left in the air with one of his smaller hands and pointing at it. He gasped. "Is that why you were staring at them for so long?"
"I can neither confirm nor deny," Knack responded, standing up a little straighter and gently easing his hand out of Lucas' iron grip. The kid's immediate flat look was impressive for someone who'd been beaming like the sun for the last two minutes, and Knack let a laugh escape him. Lucas rolled his eyes, but smiled. Knack turned back to the mirror for a moment and found a good pattern to begin placing the red fur along his upper back, and when he glanced at Lucas's reflection, the teen was wearing a smirk that got Knack really worried for a second.
"What's wrong?" he asked, swiveling to face his friend again, only to be tackled around the chest.
"You looked huggable," Lucas said, not relenting his embrace at all. "You weren't very huggable before, when half of you was empty space and the other half was all sharp edges."
Oh. Well, that wasn't one of the goals, but it was definitely a bonus. Unable to form a coherent response, Knack just settled with a simple "okay" and returned the hug.
Lucas held on for just a moment or two before pulling away--Knack was still in the process of overcoming his surprise--and nodding towards the doorway. "You wanna show the others? I can't wait to see the look on the Doc's face. Come on!" And then he dashed out of the room, hollering when he wasn't immediately followed. Knack sort of stumbled into motion, shaking off the shock as he went. Lucas's excitement was infectious, and when the teen pulled out a small device for recording video, Knack couldn't help but snicker along conspiratorially.
(The amazed, strangely proud looks on Charlotte's and Dr. V's faces were worth sneaking the little camera into the room. Their reactions fueled him for months afterward.)