“Hey Lou” he shouted above the clanging hammers, rasping files and clinking metallic noises in her workshop. “Hey Lou, you have to see this!” he stepped over a skeleton of a metallic cat, rounded a large claw that still shuddered from an earlier test and squeezed past an array of roving eyeballs on rods, until he found her in a corner where she seemed to be welding a furnace into a humanoid chest cavity. Sparks fizzled, smoke rose and she was humming a gay ditty behind her pitch-black face mask. And as usual she was completely naked, except for the thick leather gloves, welding apron and steel-capped boots.

He approached from behind, admiring the curve of her buttock and the suggestion of a well-rounded breast. Realising only now that she could not hear him, he gently touched her shoulder. Startled she shut off the oxy-acetylene torch and turned to face him. With a annoyed flick she opened her visor but immediately her stern look softened as she saw him and he blurted “You have to see this. Bring tools!”