[Before we begin, may I ask you for permission to speak to you directly?]

"Yes," Blake said, tilting his head slightly in thought. "Is that not what we're doing now?"

"No," a voice said inside Blake's skull. The sound vibrated through his bones, crawled up his spine. His fingers curled against his palms, but he kept his breathing steady. The voice resonated with an unsettling duality - foreign yet intimate, like listening to a distorted recording of his own inner monologue.

"I apologize," the voice continued, settling into something far more normal and feminine as it did. "New wetware to figure out."

"Ah… Directly," Blake said as he regained a normal cadence to his breathing. "Not just through the UI."

"Correct," Chimera replied. "It's faster, more personable, but… We didn't start off on the best of terms, and I didn't want to overstep."

Blake's jaw tightened. "Smart move. If you'd just started chatting in my head without warning..." He let the thought hang.

"You'd have assumed hostile invasion or psychological warfare," Chimera said. "Possibly attempted to find ways to remove me, which would have damaged us both."

"Exactly." Blake leaned back against the wall, his muscles unwinding once more. "Seen too many good soldiers crack from voice-based psyops. I had to pull a few out myself when they couldn't tell what was real anymore. I do not welcome unknown voices in my head."

"Well, I'm glad we could work this out," Chimera replied. "Now let's talk. I'm positive that you're brimming with questions about, well, everything. But you want to talk about me, so let's do it."

Blake shifted his weight, considering his following words carefully. "What exactly are you? And I mean beyond just 'symbiotic entity.'"

"I'm an experimental cybernetic bio-morph created from a Leviathan core," Chimera said. "Think of me as a bridge between organic life and technology."

"A bridge." Blake's fingers drummed against his knee. "That's why you can interface with both the ship's systems and my body?"

"Correct. I was designed to bond with both a cultivator - that's you - and various forms of technology. I can enhance and modify equipment, merge with gear, and even repair damaged items given enough resources."

Blake's brow furrowed. "Resources?"

"Biomass, materials, energy. I need fuel to grow and maintain our bond. When you gain experience via the system, it's split between us. It slows your personal growth but accelerates mine, which in turn benefits you through enhanced capabilities."

Blake rubbed his temples. "How deep does this bond go? Are you reading my thoughts?"

"As of this moment, not really. Only unguarded surface thoughts or those directed at me. Keeping your mind hidden from me is a relatively straightforward task now that you've properly unlocked your attributes."

"And before I did that?" Blake asked, a touch of annoyance coloring his tone.

"Much more of an open book. Especially when we first bonded."

Blake's jaw clenched. "How much digging did you do in there? In my memories?"

"Not as much as you might think," Chimera said. "I kept to the surface, watching what bubbled up naturally. I needed to understand who I was bonding with."

Blake's fingers dug into his palms. The pressure helped ground him and kept his voice steady. "And?"

"I saw her." Chimera's voice softened. "The girl in Kabul. I watched your nightmare, felt every moment of it. I'm so sorry, Blake. Again. I never meant to dredge it up."

The muscles in Blake's neck corded tight. His breath caught, held, released. The old familiar ache spread through his chest, but he kept his face neutral. Years of practice made it automatic.

"That was private," he said. "But we've already spoken on the topic. It's in the past."

Blake cleared his throat. "Let's talk about gear. You mentioned enhancing equipment."

"Oh, now that's a topic I love." The enthusiasm in Chimera's voice brightened considerably. "Think of me as your personal armorer and weaponsmith. Any piece of gear you bind through me becomes enhanced. Weapons get deadlier, armor becomes tougher, and utility items gain new features."

"Define enhanced."

"Take your sidearm. I could improve its accuracy, add alternate fire modes, or increase its stopping power. Armor might gain regenerative properties or adapt to environmental hazards. Even simple tools could be upgraded with specialized functions - better cloaking, improved hacking capabilities, that sort of thing."

Blake's eyebrows lifted. "And the catch?"

"Resources, as I mentioned. I need materials to create the modifications. and mana to support them. Plus I can't spread myself too thin, so I can't just update your entire kit from the get-go."

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"Spread yourself thin?" Blake had a suspicion about how she would enact all these changes, but he wanted it confirmed.

"Right, I need to move part of myself into the actual item. From there I integrate with it to make the changes you need, then I slowly start converting the entire piece."

"That's kind of what I thought," Blake crowed. He knew there was a catch. "You turn stuff into more of you, don't you?"

"That's right," Chimera replied, unashamedly. "Unless there's a good reason not to anyway. The better integrated I am with the gear the more I can alter it. I can do the most work with an item made entirely of my own material."

"And if we lose bonded gear?"

"I lose a part of myself," Chimera said, her voice carrying a note of pain. "It hurts. But I can recover through salvage or by consuming new resources."

"Does the gear get better with your advancement, then?"

"Exactly." The excitement in Chimera's voice peaked. "Every bound item effectively becomes a growth item, scaling with our progression. The more resources we feed into our bond, the more powerful our integrated gear becomes. I can repair, upgrade, and customize everything on the fly. No maintenance crews or specialized facilities needed."

"And what happens if one of us dies?"

A pause. "The death of either would likely prove fatal to both. We're not just linked - we're becoming integrated. Separation would be... catastrophic."

They sat in silence for nearly a minute before Blake nodded his head and pulled out his pistol. His fingers traced the familiar outline of his sidearm. Eventually, he nodded to himself once again.

"Alright. Show me. What can you do with this?"

----------------------------------------

Blake discovered one of the system's fundamental benefits firsthand as Chimera tried to direct him in bonding his sidearm. Merely knowing about his Attributes made something connect for Blake. He could feel them now, the same way he felt the rest of his body. They were like new muscles and tendons for him to stretch and work out. Unfortunately, these muscles were brand new and as weak and unresponsive as an infant's limbs.

"I wish I could help with this part," Chimera said, continuing to coach Blake. "But for the foreseeable future, you're the only one of us who can integrate new objects like this."

"I'm trying," Blake responded tersely. "I didn't think the process would be such a pain in the ass. Isn't this the most basic application of our ability?"

"Oh yeah, it is," Chimera confirmed. "The thing is, our situation is just weird. Actually, this applies to normal Leviathans and their pilots as well."

"How so?" Blake asked, trying and failing again to wrap the pistol in his Will. He could flex his Willpower attribute, he could feel it changing and responding to his will, but it wasn't enough for him to encompass the pistol. Not yet.

"What our bond is doing is allowing you to mimic an ability that my full form would have intrinsically. It's a natural ability that you wouldn't normally have access to, and Demiurge doesn't recognize it as something it should step in and offer assistance with via the System."

"Ah, so because we're sort of cheating, I've got to do it manually?"

"Think of it this way: it's good for you! You haven't had to manipulate your energy manually before, and this is a practical, low-stakes practice."

Blake stopped struggling with his Willpower for a moment and let himself just breathe. Chimera was right. If he were going to learn to drive, he'd better learn to drive stick first.

"We glossed over it initially, but you brought it up again. Leviathan. What is that?"

"They're massive living starships," Chimera's avatar said, perching on the edge of Blake's bunk. "Creatures engineered in time immemorial by the forerunners to traverse space naturally. Each one has a Pilot - a being that forms a permanent symbiotic bond with them, similar to what you and I have."

Blake raised an eyebrow. "And you're what, some kind of miniature version?"

"Not exactly. I'm..." The avatar's form flickered. "I'm an experiment. The Tylwith took a Leviathan's core and engineered it into something new. They put in integrated cybernetics and managed to inject a spiritual lattice for advanced system interaction… Well, the idea was that I would be able to kit out their young masters in perfect living armor, serve as their corebound personal vessel, and otherwise act as their constantly evolving living armory."

Blake frowned at Chimera's casual description of her intended purpose. "That doesn't bother you? Being engineered to serve as someone's equipment?"

"Not really." Chimera's avatar shifted, legs dangling off the bunk. "Everything I'd be asked to do - protect my host, help them grow stronger, evolve alongside them - that's what I want anyway. My only real regret is that I can't fly on my own."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that you're spirit is nowhere near ready to integrate enough material for me to make a proper ship."

"Oh. I'm… Sorry about that."

"My previous host..." The avatar's form flickered with a soft blue light. "He was different from what you might expect. Sweet kid, gentle. All he wanted was to pilot a rescue vessel and help people in distress. The imperial politics and his noble rank forced him to the front lines instead." She paused, her ghostly form dimming. "He didn't deserve what happened to him. I'm glad you're at least more capable of defending yourself."

Blake realized he was starting to empathize with the symbiote. She really was stuck with him for lack of a better vessel. How long would it be before he could bond with a ship if he were struggling so much with a simple handgun?

What was his problem, anyway? He redoubled his efforts, physically picking the weapon up. He began to strip the weapon. He was slow and methodical, and he paid attention to the feel of each of his attributes being used as he worked. He felt his Awareness thrum ever so slightly as his Perception flagged foreign debris in the slide. Cleaning his gun was a damn near ritual for Blake after so many years, and in that strange American form of meditation, he truly began to understand how his body worked in this new reality.

By the time he reassembled the handgun, he felt ready. He didn't need to visualize anything wrapping around the gun—that wasn't right for him. It wasn't bad advice, but it wasn't right. He held the gun aloft. It felt familiar, like an extension of his arm.

"It is," he spoke aloud. It felt more tangible that way. His Intent flared as he spoke again. "It IS an extension of my arm."

He wasn't sure what exactly his Intent had to do with the process, but Blake could feel that he was on the cusp of success. He had only to Will that statement into truth. He pulled power from his core on instinct, focused on his Willpower, and focused very hard on the idea that his gun was just as much a part of him as the hand that held it.

Energy coursed through him in an irregular pattern, and it cycled through the gun as it did. As naturally as through the rest of him. He could FEEL the pistol, like a phantom limb. And he could feel Chimera's contentment.

Blake didn't say anything, and neither did Chimera. They sat in silence as Blake cycled his mana on an instinct he could only have borrowed from Chimera through their bond. A minute later, the cycle petered out. Blake felt drained but excited.

He looked at his gun.

[Sig Sauer P226 Legion +1]

His excitement faltered. Chimera laughed.

"What?" She asked, her voice thick with faux-grievance. "I've had less than 90 seconds to work on it. Take the +1 and be happy for the time being."