Looking them over, Alpha was the only one in the group with scars. When he was alone, I pulled him to the side. He looked at me expectantly. I asked him "Where did you get that scar, Alpha?" He looked down at it and frowned. "There was a physical training session. There were many exhibits to show our skills for the clan. However, it was not good enough. None of the officers came to see us." He added the last bit bitterly. I just stood there to listen to his story. "I did my best out there, but there were lots of PEA units with more drive to win regardless of the cost. Some have bigger scars than me." he said, a bit sad. I did not even know that they all actually trained by themselves in the lab until just now. I pat him on the back. "Alpha, you've worked so hard. You know you can use the pods to fix the damage, right?" Alpha looked from me to the row of pods and them back to me. "Really!? I can use it?" he asked. "Who else has completed so many missions in such a short time frame. You've earned this and way more." I told him. He then went over and stepped inside. He was fine getting out.
The squad might have been done, but Eta and Theta had just started. I wanted to do this all at the same time. I was able to start work researching the sexual upgrade. It was a piece of hardware that needed to be installed. Just like with the PEP units. While I was sending the 2 of them on clan missions, I was fabricating them using all 3 labs. That made the process go faster. I stopped when I had 10 of them in my inventory. I had Eta and Theta rearrange the gardens, give me the inventory reports for the labs, and do coffee runs. Erin, Finian and the humans at the guild building brought the total to 12. I had them go on perimeter patrols. When they were done with that, enough time had passed that I could assign them to more inventory duty. That brought them to 15. It was now time to do the surgery. There was a small with it problem though. I had no clue what the hell I was doing. I had to get on the phone with the librarians. They did not like me, and I did not like them either. After what felt like hours of pulling teeth, I finally had a manual detailing how to do the procedure. A small victory.
I was fussing over the group and told them to get ready for surgery. There were simply too many of them. I was going to have to send some of them to the AEP and PEP labs. I decided to go in order of my recruiting them. I looked at Alpha and said "I hope you're ready. Today's the day." He shook his head. "Sorry, I don't think you should do it, Brianne." I just blinked. Did he change his mind? "What happened? We came all of this way. What changed?" I asked. His eyes widened a bit. "Sorry. I do want the upgrade. I meant that I think you specifically should not be doing the procedure, Brianne." I was not getting it. "Your human hands have tine spasms and tremors that can cause error. This is a precious piece of hardware. And my sensitive body parts." I sighed. I could understand where he was coming from. Surgery was not something I expected to have to do. I actually liked the squad I picked out. I had also invested a lot of time and energy into them If something went wrong now, that would be pretty bad. I held both my hands up in surrender. "I get it. I'm an engineer not a surgeon." I said.
