The last few hours were a blur. The mission was dead simple, the guild wanted some data packet from some huge rustbucket they took down which fell into a Corpse City. At the first chance of being able to finally leave the trenches Ferrin had practically jumped to volunteer. After all if not for massive formations channeling the Si of dozens of Cultivators well into the Mutant Realm and above it was likely everyone here would have long since been slaughtered or driven mad by the sleepless nights punctuated by the nightmarish cacophony of war. Indeed this was the closest thing to hell on Earth, but there was another reason besides preserving her sanity. To Ferrin Scavin, who had already once failed to prove herself, this was also an opportunity of redemption, with her cultivation slowing to near nothing in the past few weeks the desire to do anything meaningful at all had grown into a yawning abyss.
Replaying events in her head, she had wanted to tell the others about a small headache she was beginning to feel gnawing at her skull when suddenly the world shook with light and noise. After a lengthy waking nightmare she found herself stuck with a bag full of valuable intel behind a ruined building far from her team and the safety of the defensive formation shields. Cursing her own brashness and bad luck she took several deep, steadying breaths and focused on the present, her family had been in the business of war since before the first bombs fell, if they could make it through the Age of Ash, Unification Wars and the Red Star Conquests surely she could survive a few battles with some fucking rustbuckets!
“Scavin, come in! Scavin, are you there?” A cracked voice screamed into her earpiece. Her team leader’s voice was shaky with the type of exhaustion no formation could fix. She could practically imagine his bright green head turning brown with exertion just from the sound of him.
“Yes… fuck…” She panted, leaning against the cracked concrete wall and gripping her bleeding side tightly.
“What happened? After the ambush we lost your signal!” Her superior asked.
Slowly, painfully, she managed to make out words. “Hit by shrapnel… ran through the dust… damn curse burning up inside…”
“Shit! Hold on Prive, we have already requested backup. Keep the data packet safe, try not to die, and stay where you are!” The lieutenant ordered.
Despite it being against every scrap of training she had received and the agony rushing through every cell she had the urge to laugh at the absurdity of the order, as though she could be doing much else. Still she managed with a weak “Aye sir.”
A spider-like drone scurried its way towards her position scanning around with its array of glassy eyes for signs of life. Before it sensed her presence she silenced it with a well placed shot from her standard issue rifle, only realizing her mistake moments after. The sound of the shot inevitably attracted more attention, even through her pounding headache many more mechanical footsteps drowned out every other thought she could spare. She quickly counted her bullets… not nearly enough, shit! Desperation fresh and raw pumped into her veins, she felt every heartbeat pound at her skull almost louder than the constant staccato gunfire and the ever louder clicks and hums of enemy drones. She had come this far, she was not going to die like a fucking nobody in the corpse of a city that hadn’t seen life in nearly a thousand years!
She felt something in her burn, a headache unlike anything she had felt before sending her to her knees while it felt like every vein in her body was lit on fire. Meridians flush with fresh power burned black like a thousand branches of a terrible tree while she puked the few rations she had imbibed several hours ago out. Vulnerable and helpless, she watched with horror as a hole was blasted clean open through the concrete wall.
Without even realizing it a wall inside her cracked and a thousand tiny threads of power converged into her core and spread out into every cell in her body.
Bone cracked and skin tore from the force of the transformation, new flesh exploding outwards from various points on her body and wrapping around her in a blood red cocoon. In an instant she was covered in a second skin of burning muscle and oversized bone, her tiny shelter crumbling from her new form’s sudden expansion in size until she well and truly towered over the building. Wasting no time the drones let out their barrage, but now the deadly bullets felt little more than irritating, and without really thinking she smashed her fist into the ground silencing three of them and sending the others scattering to the winds. She blinked, or at least tried to, her eyes did not seem willing to move, and slowly she realized exactly what had happened.
A truly massive machine walking in an abject parody of life informed her of its presence with the thunderous steps of four legs that reassembled in shape and stature castle pillars. Belching gray steam from smokestacks around two eyes of pure red glass and malice was the unmistakable image of a, albeit likely unimportant, War Platform. Before her only goal would be to run as far away from the thing as possible towards the safety of the defensive formations, but high on the feeling of fresh power did not do wonders for her rational thought. She charged at the thing, vaguely feeling its powerful guns tear giant holes through her new body which stitched shut almost as fast as they opened, and tackled it. With the force of the impact metal that would simply bounce off mortal weaponry crumpled, and the machine slid several yards before coming to a stop against the husk of a building. Not wasting any time she tore off one of its guns and jammed it into what could almost pass as a face for the thing, simply shaking off the drones scampering off their master’s body in order to attack the new threat. She felt in that moment invincible, unstoppable!
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Reality unfortunately had different plans.
The second the adrenaline wore off some exhaustion was expected but this was something else entirely. The world suddenly went black, the dulled sensations she was experiencing becoming quickly nothing at all. All of a sudden she was acutely aware of the fact her body was bent into shapes it was never meant to accommodate in a tight cocoon of flesh and panic set in. She felt the vibrations shake her to her teeth when her outer body collapsed onto the floor, she struggled in vain to tear herself from the ropes of sinew, muscle and nerve chaining her to this prison of her own creation. She tried to breathe but there was no air, only the crushing embrace of dark flesh. For a moment she was taken back to her childhood, lost in a cave when it began to rain… and began to flood… she wanted to cry or even scream but even that small mercy was not afforded to her.
She did not know how long exactly she remained in that state of raw animal panic, time didn’t exactly have meaning when all your senses simply failed to connect with anything. For a time the headset fused to her ears with a long cord of flesh would buzz out half formed words but even that had stopped, did anyone know she was alive still? Was anyone coming to save her?
Unknown to her outside a long wire jammed through thick unresponsive flesh, probing for signs of life. Soon it found its target and jammed into a mass of nerves connected to the immobile form of Ferrin.
[BREATHE] She “heard” in her head, seemingly half thought half sound. [WARP SPASMS TAKE SOME TIME TO GET USED TO, I DON’T SUPPOSE ANYONE HAS TAUGHT YOU THE ROPES LITTLE ONE?]
Get me out get me out get me out! she screamed in her own head.
[I CAN PROBABLY CUT YOU OUT, BUT IF YOU DO NOT WANT THIS TO HAPPEN AGAIN YOU MUST LEARN TO CONTROL YOUR FLESH YOURSELF.] The mysterious voice explained.
Whatever, please, how do I get out of this thing? She pleaded.
[YOU OVEREXERTED YOURSELF, YOUR BODY IS NOT YET READY FOR THE POWER YOU DEVELOPED AND IS CONSTANTLY EXPENDING MORE ENERGY MAINTAINING THIS NEW FORM. YOU MUST FIRST SETTLE DOWN AND LEARN THE BOUNDARIES BETWEEN YOUR NORMAL BODY AND THIS ONE]
With little other options she took what could have been several deep useless breaths if there was any proper air where she was and looked inside of herself. She felt the Si flow through now widened meridians, the living breath of countless Atomos traveling from her core and spreading out across her body. Except, it seemed too tall and wide to be her body, and now that she was properly paying attention she could feel channels of particularly dense Si almost as thick as her core in spots that roughly outlined her form.
[ONCE YOU HAVE ACHIEVED THAT YOU MUST DRAW YOURSELF BACK INTO YOUR USUAL FORM. NOW FORGIVE THE CRASS ANALOGY, BUT FROM MY STUDIES THE CONSENSUS IS IT SHOULD FEEL LIKE… DEFECATING IN REVERSE]
It was as if the world stopped once more. WHAT?
[DO YOU WANT TO MOVE AGAIN OR NOT?] The voice asked.
Pulling her shock aside she focused on drawing the power back into her core… and felt perhaps the most disgusting sensation she had felt yet. It was like glow slugs crawling into parts of her skin, worms wriggling their way inside of her, and indeed… that analogy the voice had suggested. She gagged but did not stop, already she was feeling the flesh binding her loosening, once more she could even feel where her limbs began and the flesh surrounding them ended. She couldn’t afford to stop now, she had to keep going, she had to-
Abruptly a massive blinding shaft of light hit her in the face as the cocoon finally retracted. Cold wind battered against her slime coated body as the last of it retracted back whence they came and she collapsed on the floor heaving and gasping for breath.
“I do believe you needed this," A strange metallic sort of voice called out to her. Weakly turning her head she almost froze in shock once again at the sight of a huge metal man covered with so many instruments she had no idea if it was even possible to learn what each of them did. It was more human-like than any other walking scrap she had ever seen, made of sleek shiny metal with a distinct R-17 painted on its chest with inhuman neatness. It’s “head” was a mostly featureless metal dome adorned with a spider-like set of lights and “eyes”. Instinctively she tried to reach for her weapons, only to fumble uselessly with her exhausted slime-covered fingers. It moved its arm and she clumsily braced for some sort of attack-
It placed a slime covered data packet in her outstretched hands and lit up in what was probably the rustbucket equivalent of a comforting smile. “For the record, you never saw me.”
While she was still struggling to comprehend the situation it began to walk away with loud clanks. Before it could get very far though she stumbled forward to ask it one more question.
“Why… why are you helping me?” She asked through desperate gasps for air.
It stopped and turned its head towards her. “A number of reasons, some of which are distinctly unpleasant and others that I would like to ideally keep secret a little while longer. Suffice it to say both your kind and I stand to benefit from that data packet you have, and as a little bonus I get to deny the Hegemony a Homunculus with a mutation as potent as yours.”
“Homunculus?” She asked, the foreign word rolling strangely on her tongue.
“I wish I could say that hopefully you will never have to find out, but likely you will learn exactly what they are soon enough.” It answered cryptically, taking a few more steps forward and somehow disappearing into the maze of rubble and ruin.
Not long after the thing left an airship emblazoned with the eagle shaped insignia of the Libera Guild soon appeared above her and a group of soldiers slid down a rope to meet her. One of them bearing the most elaborate insignia and a custom uniform fitted to a body shape more beast than man addressed her. “Private Ferrin I presume? I am Major Owen McConnel from the Libera Guild and were sent here upon receiving a distress signal from your recovery team D-33. Truthfully until you sent us the coordinate data on your location this was going to be a body recovery mission so I admit I am impressed you are still alive, and with the data packet intact as well it seems!"
She wanted to say so much, not least of which being she never remembered sending any coordinates, but through the exhaustion she could only make out a mute nod.
“We will brief you about the details later, let’s get out of here, you did well soldier. You’ll be at least a Corp after this,” The man said comfortingly while communicating something with elaborate hand signs on his six fingered arm. The one that was closest to mortal anatomy.
Two soldiers helped her limp her way towards a stretcher while their leader took the data packet from her hands. That was about all she remembered before she collapsed bonelessly into an exhausted heap, what little thoughts she could spare dominated by the memory of that strange metal man.