It took several hours for the trio to carve the new head. The eye in the center took the longest to create; Shock made it fairly detailed with a slitted pupil and fiery iris, cut in at different depths to create a mildly shaded effect. Lock made the left eye into a jagged swirl. Barrel did a pretty basic crescent design for the right eye, pointing to the side like a confused bulldog. The mouth on the front was a similarly simple wedge smile with two fangs pointing down. The mouth on the back was made from three vaguely horizontal but irregularly shaped slits. By the time Carver’s non-vision-based spatial sense recognized the lines together as an implied pair of thick kissy lips, it was too late. The trio reveled in the mock-tantrum and dramatic vine-slaps that followed that realization. Finally, Barrel painted a long up-turned “nose” and curvy “mustache” above the hind-facing mouth. His siblings broke down in cackles for a few moments upon seeing it, but refused to tell Carver why. His spatial sense couldn’t make out the flat painting, so he simply had to trust that they at least wouldn’t disrespect his autonomy enough to put something on his head that he explicitly wouldn’t be okay with.

When Carver returned to Jack and Sally’s house that evening, the Pumpkin King tried to gently inform him of the nature of the drawing. Carver’s response to that information -- and Jack’s innocent confusion regarding said response -- set Sally into a short fit of giggles. The rag doll then came as close to blushing as her physiology would allow and hurried herself to bed to avoid explaining to her boyfriend why exactly she was laughing.

Jewel was ready and waiting for them the next day. She had some short notes already prepared for the basic design of the framework, such as the main structural material and the types of joints needed at specific points in order to maintain stability while allowing for reasonable range of motion. Carver was happy to give his input on what he would consider upgrades from his previous endoskeleton design. 

The biggest request was for a sort of swiss army knife -esque shifting tool set for each arm, including a saw, a scoop, several sizes and shapes of blades (both serrated and not), and chisels of various types. The old frame had only had one retractable double-edged straight knife for each arm, and he always had to borrow other tools from the trio or Behemoth when making heads or jack-o-lanterns. 

Carver sneered. “It’s no wonder Finklefart always loses the contest. It never occurred to him, even as he was making what he intended to be the ultimate pumpkin-carving machine, that you might need more than one kind of tool for the job.”

Jewel sighed. “I… am just now understanding the context behind that time he made you help out in the lab, and no matter what tool he asked you for, you always brought him a hammer.”

Carver’s middle eye narrowed from the bottom as his front mouth closed and widened a bit. “It was worth having the hammer thrown at me. Wasn’t surprised he didn’t catch on to my point, though. I learned… pretty fast, not to expect much from him.”

“...I--”

Carver waved her off. “You jammed his wheels and let Shock duct tape his mouth shut. Any apologies on your part would be redundant at this point.”

Jewel visibly relaxed at that. She nodded. “Anyway… Back to the new body. I assume you still want detachable limbs?”

“Yes. Please,” he added. He bunched up some of his vines into shoulder-like shapes and shrugged them. “I mean... It’s fine if it takes more work to detach them; I expect the arms’ll be a lot more complicated just by necessity. I can manage having to decide whether it’s worth twenty minutes to disassemble each limb for whatever reason. The biggest thing is that my vines need to be free to separate out and move on their own as easily as possible. I’d rather have arms that dangle uselessly but don’t come off at all, than ones that can be removed but which vines are stuck inside whenever they’re attached.”

“A completely fair desire.” The scientist jotted that down under the ‘requirements’ section of her notes. “I have some ideas, but it will take a while to implement them all. How about I make you a base structural framework first, with attachment points for the tools and tool-swapping mechanism to be added later?”

Carver nodded. “Sounds good to me. About how long will that take?”

“Well... “ Jewel hesitated, making calculations in her mind. “First I have to design the entire thing, so that I know where those initial attachment points will be and the form they have to take. If I do the creation process [i]properly[/i], I’ll also then need to make at least a few scale models and prototypes to catch any design flaws early on. Igor is a dear about retrieving tools and laying out plans, but… Well, Harold didn’t create him to be particularly intelligent. The design process isn’t something he’ll be able to help with.”

She lifted her skull cap and rubbed her brain half thoughtfully. “I’m also… [i]unused[/i] to working alone, except on minor projects that my husband thinks would be ‘beneath him’ in some way. I’ll… probably be rather slow, starting out. Even if I skip the scale models -- which I really shouldn’t -- and put you in the first prototype… Perhaps three days to a week?”