Maya's arm broke.
Which wouldn't be a huge deal, her augments were standard (if overdue for an upgrade) military tech from before she deserted, and replacement parts were a dime a dozen.
What was a big deal, was that Maya fucking hated being worked on, and refused to let any of the tech crew do silly things like "remove the arm" or "sedate her", and so they wouldn't work on her, and Jade had the know-how but got squeamish seeing the skin peeled off of her girlfriend's limbs, and so somehow Kat was the only person willing to do the repairs.
"I'm disengaging the link now, okay?" Kat said, gripping a socket wrench slotted into a port on Maya's shoulder, and Maya nodded, her eyes shut tight. She twisted, and Maya's arm went limp as she sucked a breath through gritted teeth.
"Okay, I'm leaving the wrench, if anything happens I can link it right back up."
"Yeah, mhm."
Maya was pale and drenched with sweat, a far cry from the hardened merc they all knew her as.
"I'm going to take the skin off now."
"Kat, don't-" Maya started harshly, and then caught herself and restarted as calmly as she could manage. "Don't talk me through it. Talk about anything fucking else."
"Sure, um, why do you have robot arms?"
"Standard military hardware. All the grunts get them. Why do you know how to repair robot arms?"
"Oh, uh, I mean I just read the manual, I've never really-" Kat started, and Maya tensed while she was removing her skin like a glove to reveal the synthetic muscle underneath, and Kat decided to pivot into a story that would perhaps be more comforting than 'oh, I actually have no clue what I'm doing'.
"I uh, my dad had this farm-"
"You're a farm girl?" Maya interrupted, and she was shocked, but she was amused-shocked instead of focusing on Kat picking through metallic strands of muscle-fiber, and so she continued.
"Hardly. Divorced parents. Spent Monday through Thursday on Tau Ceti f; Ever been?"
"Once or twice."
"So, Monday through Thursday there, in the city, and then Friday afternoons I'd get shuttled to one of it's moons, Tau Ceti f-3, to stay on my dad's farm."
Muscle-fiber all checked out, and she got to inspecting the actuators. Maya's breathing had steadied, even if she was still looking away and clenching her other hand into a fist.
"I did not take to farming well, and he did not take to having a gangly little nerd daughter well."
Maya cracked an eyelid. "He wasn't..?"
"Oh, no, I mean that hadn't happened yet at this part of the story but he was... fine. Didn't really get it but it was fine."
Maya's eye closed again, and Kat was somewhat tickled that Maya seemed ready to beat up her hypothetical transphobe dad.
"So yeah, did not like the farm. But he had this old industrial mech just rusting on the property. It was my granddads, hadn't run since before I was even born. I was fascinated by it, and so since I wasn't much help with anything else on the farm, he set me on getting it up and running."
Actuators were fine too. Faulty connection? She hesitated, but Maya seemed calm enough, and she had told her not to talk her through it. Maya winced as Kat started to decouple the arm from her shoulder socket, but didn't stop her. Kat kept talking.
"I was stoked, from then on every weekend I was working on the mech. Got all the rust off, started picking compatible components out of scrapyards, reading manuals when I was planetside."
The arm decoupled, and she placed it gently in Maya's lap and started inspecting the socket.
"And this took years, mind you. I was one teenager trying to repair a relic two days a week. Got into college, transitioned, and still every weekend it was back to the farm to work on it. I was living on my own at this point, the custody agreement didn't apply anymore, I just wanted to finish the damn thing."
Socket was fine, she'd have to take a look at the main control unit. She recoupled the arm first, for the sake of Maya's stress levels.
"Anyway, I finally get it running, all systems green, and the fucking thing still won't move. Screens just displayed a warning that the model was outdated and I needed to purchase a replacement. Which, fuck off?"
Maya smiled. "I don't think I've ever heard you swear this much in one conversation."
"Well, you're getting repairgirl Kat. She's gruff."
"I like her."
"You're not about to. I need to take a look at the control unit."
Maya bristled. "Gahh. Fuck, okay just turn the arm back on for a sec first."
"Sure." Kat said, and she slid the synthetic flesh back on to Maya's arm and twisted the socket wrench to re-engage the link. Maya wiggled her fingers, but the movement was jerky. "Yup," She sighed, "Still fucked. Control unit is between the shoulders, you'll be able to feel it over the spine."
"Got it." Kat said, and picked a scalpel off her tray of tools. She gently ran her fingers across Maya's well muscled back, feeling a slight bump no bigger than her palm between her shoulderblades. She made her incision.
"So, uh, I was already almost graduating with a comp-sci degree, I wasn't going to let some stupid DRM lockout stop me."
She peeled away a strip of synthetic flesh, and the problem was thankfully immediately apparent. A single red LED blinked at her in a line of green ones, and she checked the manual.
"One of your control chips is fried. I just need to turn the unit off for a minute so I can fab a new one and replace it."
Maya grumbled. "Don't wanna hear that. The DRM lockout, what'd you do?"
"Right, sorry. So the DRM lockout." She pressed a tiny switch, and both of Maya's arms powered down. She pulled the chip and checked the serial number, and punched it into the fabricator. "It was simple enough to get around. I did some research and the next time I visited it was trivial to hack past it and get the suit up and running." She paused for a moment, watching lasers etch tiny circuits into a new chip. "That's where I fucked it all up."
"Hm?"
"I didn't hack it right. Corporate security force showed up the next morning. The system had pinged them, I was in violation of the terms of ownership. 2.5 million credit fine for bypassing the lockout."
"Jesus."
"And- And we couldn't pay that. Not if we sold everything we owned. So they were gonna take me away, and I was screaming, and- and-" She had a white knuckled grip on the fabricator console, and her voice quieted.
"I didn't even know my dad had a gun."
The fabricator chimed, finished. Neither of them moved.
"He shot the one grabbing me, and the other three turned on him, and I just ran. Made it to the mech. They couldn't shut it off remotely with my bypass in place, small arms fire just dinged off it. It- It was just a small team sent to grab one farmer in the middle of nowhere. They came up in a van for fucks sake, they couldn't touch me. And they got back in the van, they tried to get away, and I just picked it up and I-I-"
Maya thumped her shoulder against Kat's back in an armless approximation of a hug. Kat hadn't heard her get up.
"It's okay, Kat."
She didn't know when she had started crying, but her face was wet with tears.
"They killed my dad."
"I know. It's okay."
"They weren't a threat to me. I could've ran."
"You don't have to talk about it."
"I want to. I want somebody else to know."
"Okay."
"I- The mech didn't have any weapons. It was for hauling, or building barns, or- I don't know."
She took a shaky breath.
"I just picked them up and smashed them into the ground. Again and again. For- For far longer than I needed to. The wreck was unrecognizable."
"We've all done things we regret."
"I know."
"I don't think less of you for this, none of us would."
"I know. But-"
"No buts. They would have put you in the dirt and never lost a minute of sleep over it."
"But I was so angry-"
"Because they ruined your life! Kat, I would have done the same fucking thing. Freaking out when some assholes show up and kill your dad doesn't make you a bad person."
"I know, I- I know. I just... I just needed to hear it from someone else."
She sniffled and picked up the new chip.
"Turn around, let's get you fixed."
Maya did as she was told, and Kat slotted in the chip and flicked the switch. Maya's arms came to life, and a row of green LEDs shone from the control unit.
"Okay. You'll need to get a medic to sew your back up, but everything looks good."
Maya flexed her arm and wiggled her fingers, checking everything was in order, and then wrapped Kat in a powerful bear hug from behind.
"Eep! Maya, you don't have to-"
Jade crashed through the door, with Isa hot on her heels. "What's going on!? Maya messaged us that there was an emergency!"
"There's no-"
"Kat needs huuuugs." Maya said warmly, and Kat wished she could break her iron grip and at least attempt to hide that she had been crying. Jade and Isa didn't need to be told twice, they were already clinging to her and reassuring her.
"It's okay, babygirl." Jade said.
"We've got you." Added Isa.
"Girls, really, I'm fine-"
"You need to tell her you loooooove her." Maya continued, and Kat turned red.
"Seriously-" Started Kat, who was then drowned out by a chorus of I love yous and started tearing up again.
"I... I love you too. I'm really lucky to have you all."
...
"Now please let go of me this is really embarrassing."
"Nope."
"Nuh-uh."
"Not gonna happen."