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Shuri's made a few changes to the last version she'd had him test, and has sent him back out with instructions to try smaller things with the new arm this time, as she is looking for fine nuance and haptic feedback results.

As a result, Bucky's decided to settle in the bar at the ends of the worlds for a bit with a good cup of coffee and see what he can figure out to test next.

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"Hey, you," Bucky exclaims, openly pleased. He holds out his right hand to the white cat, checking to see if he'll be allowed to pet him. "Haven't you learned not to hunt the waitstaff? That's no way to get fed, pal."

"Mrrpt?" The cat is, it seems, unrepentantly enthusiastic when it comes to the potential for pets, and likewise unrepentant or uninterested in learning not to harass the wait staff. It sniffs Bucky's hand for barely a perfunctory second before leaning its head into the curve of his fingers.

"The kitchen staff were getting a bit nervy and I thought Ivanhoe was going to tackle him any second. Luckily this guy's not above bribery."

Scratches and possible free food? That'll buy his good behavior. For a while.

Edited 2021-10-13 05:49 (UTC)

He scratches the white cat behind the ears, working his way down to the spot behind its jaw with a series of rubs. "Anyone looking out for him?" he asks her. "Or is he a stray who wandered in somehow, do you know?"

"I've seen him around from time to time for as long as I've been coming here," Rae admits, letting the cat - who has a keen sense of who's willing to give up the good scritches - leeeeeeean towards Bucky, purring as steadily as a well-tuned motor.

"No clue where he might have wandered in from, but he seems to have settled here. He's friends with the forge cats, I know. They hang out and nap together, and go harass the demon rabbits together."

"You're something of a survivor, huh?" Bucky asks the cat, scratching him beneath the chin. "Gotta respect that."

He grins at Sunny. "I haven't forgotten the texture testing, especially not after you brought all this stuff. But first things first, right?"

The cat purrs decadently, pressing his chin down against Bucky's fingers, leaf-green eyes half-closed in pleasure. It is true, though, he has survived a lot. He is small for a full-grown cat, and a faint ridge of scar tissue in the skin under all that white fur circles his neck from where a collar once held too tight for too long.

"Well, I admit part of my excuse for bringing the cat was as another potential texture," Sunshine chuckles. "He is very soft."

"He is that," Bucky agrees, and holds out his left hand as well, palm up. "What d'you think, pal, huh?"

"I'm sure he's well aware, and uses it to his advantage," Sunshine chuckles, watching the cat. The white cat sniffs more thoughtfully at the metal hand, curious as to its unfamiliar smells and interesting nature and construction. Eventually, though, the cat is satisfied and presses its chin insistently down upon one of the metal fingers, purring.

Carefully - very, very carefully, Bucky scratches under the cat's chin with his left hand.

"Okay, that's ... huh," he says, after a moment. "I can tell a difference between this and my other hand, but I'm picking up more sensation than I thought I would."

A thoughtful pause, and he adds, to the cat, "You're white as the snow up on the high mountain peaks, you know that?"

The cat gazes up at Bucky with its leaf-green eyes mostly closed in pleasure, purring up a storm. It seems contented enough to assist in tactile testing.

Yrael is a Helper.

"What sorts of sensation come through?" Rae muses. "I imagine... the give of the fur, and maybe the way it brushes against your fingers. How about its texture?"

The white fur is quite silky, offering next to no friction against one's fingers, and holds the warmth of the cat's body quite well.

He frowns, considering. "I can feel it move, but it's hard to say what's moving. If I had my eyes closed I wouldn't be able to tell if it were coarse or rough or anything like that, I think."

"So... you can feel it's there and feel it move, but it sounds like the hand doesn't give quite a good idea of the, uh, amount of friction or drag there'd be against the metal in this case," she paraphrases, considering. "The cat's fur may just be too soft a test sample."

Yes, Yrael. That's all you are. Sorry.

This clearly has nothing to do with the curious nip the cat gives the nearest metal finger a moment later. Just testing.

"Hey, careful," Bucky cautions him, shifting to pet him along his shoulders with his right hand. "Don't break your teeth."

He nods to Sunny. "Maybe. Probably. I felt that nip just now, but it didn't hurt. I think that's by design, though."

"I think you're right," Rae remarks dryly, watching the cat happily accept the additional pets and insinuate his way over onto Bucky's lap. "I get the feeling the cat is an old hand at charming people and redirecting attention."

"Like I said before, he's a survivor - aren't you, pal?" Bucky asks the white cat. He seems perfectly at ease with being used for a feline perch. "There you go."

He grins up at Sunny. "Okay, what d'you want me to try next?"

Sunshine eyes the selection of items she's gathered, her hand brushing the soft woolen mitten and the ridged corduroy. "What're you feeling like - more textures, or some fine motor control tests?"

He's grateful that the choice doesn't have particularly high stakes. It means he doesn't have to struggle with himself before he can say, "Either one's good... maybe texture? I don't even know how much of that could be programmed."

"Differentiating fine changes in texture may just be a question of testing out different textures and getting more familiar with the new arm's senses, too," Rae agrees, handing over the woolen mitten. The fabric is quite soft and mostly smooth, except for the strongly ribbed cuff and the back of the mitten, which is decorated with small twisted cables that offer a number of places where the fabric is slightly thicker than elsewhere.

"Like..." and she pauses. "I can't really remember if I've mentioned this to you, but, ah, I can see in the dark? It's not a... natural thing, but an unintended side-effect of something that happened. It took me weeks to get a handle on its effects on my depth perception, months to be anything approaching comfortable with it, and even years later it still can mess with me a bit from time to time. Human eyes don't have a way of parsing information they're not built to take in, so it's only through, like, just working to get used to it that I've been able to figure out what it tells me."

"Useful," he observes. "But yeah, I get how that could take some getting used to.

Bucky pats the white cat in his lap and reaches for the mitten with both hands, frowning in concentration as he starts to trace the surface of it with his fingers, comparing. As he does, he tells her,

"I mean, I don't expect this new arm to feel everything the other one does in the same way. It's more about knowing what's possible and how it's supposed to work, compared to the way it was before... and before that too, I guess."

"The Dark Sight's still sometimes more of a hassle than it's worth," she remarks, dry. "I think you have the right of it, though - it's unlikely any new arm will feel everything just like your other one does. I just imagine getting used to its quirks and becoming familiar to how sensations do manifest with it can only help."

"Is there anything you notice that you don't get through the prototype?"

"Well, pain, but that's by design," he tells her. "It's more an awareness of damage instead."

He scratches at one of the cables and swears tiredly as his left index finger jerks, pressing harder than he'd intended and pulling a hole in the fabric.

"That... is probably another aspect that'll just take time and familiarity," Sunshine says, sympathetic and a little wry. "How much pressure is enough, or too much."

"Also adjustment, probably. This is the kind of thing Shuri wants me to tell her about."

"Probably a good idea," she agrees, taking back the mitten without grief for its loss - its match had been lost years ago - and offers instead the small bowls of fine flour, flaky salt, and smooth grains of wild rice. Each bowl is big enough for someone to reach into and sift or grasp some of the bowl's contents between their fingers.

He gives the cat a few scratches as Sunny swaps things around, then reaches for the rice. Bucky picks up a handful and pours it back and forth between his hands, feeling the flow of each grain as best he can.

"Okay, weird. I can distinguish with each one, but it feels ... different. I don't know exactly how to explain it."

He tries picking up just one or two grains of rice between his left index finger and thumb and watches as they puff into dust. "Yeah, that's definitely going to need a tweak."