The vexing side effect of the presence of Samurai is the sheer technological advancement that can occur from their trash. Most scientists end up working as trite scavengers, and there isn’t much they can do otherwise. It’s an outrage.
* Dr. Poltime, head of the salvage team at the New Houston commune, 2056
***
I start somewhat regretting my quick decision as I step out onto the roof of the shelter, the ocean wind and moonlit night chilling me to my bones. Shivering, I hug my arm to my chest as I waddle my way towards the edge of the building, doing my best to not slip and fall. Upon reaching the end, I carefully sit down, and take a deep breath.
“I-I want the adaptation nanites now, please.”
Class-I Axonfin Technologies Catalog Unlocked!
Points reduced to: 339
New Purchase: Class-I Axonfin Forced Evolution Nanites
Points reduced to: 89
As a boxy needle materializes in my grip, I look down at the cocktail of change that my AI had convinced me to purchase. The liquid within was a murky brown, and I can’t help but grimace at the idea of putting this into my body. Something about the color makes me a bit uncomfortable, but also brings to mind something almost completely unrelated from about two months ago.
During the last family dinner before I had left for New New York, my grandfather was absolutely malding about something Longboard had done. The old man sent a video of the late samurai standing in front of a bunch of sewer pipes to everyone who was there, harking about how “young samurai didn’t appreciate the woes of the first generation”, and how “cybernetics served as the holy symbol of the saints”.
I didn’t know why, but the man definitely had something against bionics and biological upgrades. He didn’t try to make his own cult or anything thankfully, and I had been raised like any other kid in a very religious household. Not that either ideology really stuck to me in any way.
You’re going to need to take your pants and brace off. Your leg should be healing, but it’ll take a bit.
I groan, then proceed to remove my brace and place it into my bag. It could come in handy again, unlike my absolutely ruined pants and underwear, which I reluctantly also store. Trash in the ocean is bad.
It’s about a ten foot dive, but you need to be in the ocean for this to work. All you have to do is press the injector into your neck, and everything should go swimmingly.
I nod; I knew that whatever was about to happen would technically make me not human any longer but… something about that was almost comforting. I had lived my whole life, every relationship as someone I wasn’t. I went in with a mask simply because I didn’t know who the hell I was underneath it all. Now that I had a chance to be something more… I knew I had to take it. In one swift motion, I push myself off of the roof with an iron grip on my bag’s handle, taking a deep breath as I do. Slightly pulling my legs in, I hit the surface rather smoothly, dropping several feet down in the water.
As the world bursts into the familiar scene beneath the waves, I gawk at the clarity that the goggles I had gotten granted me. When I had gotten them, I had intended for them to just be something that protected my eyes from my lasers, but this was almost better than that. Below me, the lower levels of New Houston dip lower and lower, slowly spreading out as they do. As they reach the ocean floor, they sprawl considerably more, the tiny lights that dot its ceiling barely reaching this height. Putting the beauty of what was before me aside, I press the injector to my neck, flinching a bit from the pinch.
Then, agony incomparably surpassing anything I had ever experienced wracks my entire body.
Every single muscle in my body instantly contracts, and all control over my body is lost. My perception of time slows dramatically, and every single process in my body becomes a thousand times more sensitive. I know that my heart is slamming, yet it seems almost slow. The air I had so desperately stored vacates my lungs, and the overwhelming desire to gasp for air fills me- Yet I cannot, for I cannot do anything. I blink, and my vision stays dark when I open my eyes. The small bit of noise I could hear through the water in my ears vanishes. Water slowly begins to fill my lungs, and terror grips me at my core.
What feels like an eternity passes before I hear Anyvi’s voice, yet it is pronounced far too slow to comprehend. My legs slowly and uncontrollably creep together, and my head grows light. A foreign ticklish sensation slowly begins to envelop me, but primarily on my legs, feet, and arm. I feel the bones in my face begin to shift beneath my skin, and soon what feels like every other one soon follows. Then I notice that what I recognize as my toenails begin to grow rapidly, stretching beyond what I knew my nails could grow. Something that feels like skin then weaves between them, and I know exactly what I am feeling despite not being able to see.
I am becoming a mermaid, or something similar at least.
I am… surprisingly okay with that.
My heart begins to calm, and slowly but surely, starting from the tips of my “feet'' and hands, control returns to me. When the sensation reaches my lungs, I find that I no longer have the desperate urge to breathe, and relief fills me. My sensation of time slowly returns, and Anyvi’s voice is finally understandable.
Ah, your sensation seems to be back to normal. Welcome back. This is rather remarkable, humans are truly such interesting creatures. You should be able to see now, if you open the eyes you have been holding desperately shut.
Hesitantly, I let my eyelids flutter open.
You have changed more than I expected, to be honest.
Taking a look down at myself, a deeply fluttery feeling rises through my entirety. I was so, so different then before, and it was… exhilarating. My entire body was noticeably thinner; my shoulders losing a bit of their broadness in the process as well. Overall, most of my masculinity was simply gone, though I hadn’t grown breasts or anything drastic like that.
Bringing my hand up to my face, the slight webbing between the bottom of my fingers was not the only change there. My hands had changed their structure, becoming more slight, and I had gained a set of silver scales shining with a prismatic sheen up and down my forearm. A thin fin traces my upper arm till right below my elbow, with a few scales at its base.
Speaking of scales, my legs had indeed become a long tail with a fin on the end, the entirety of which was covered in the same scales that made their appearance on my arms. It was quite beautiful if I had to be honest, with a pattern not unlike some koi fish that I had seen in some vids one time, the splotches of darker silver creating the image. The fin at the tip was not as long as I had expected when I felt it growing, but the way light flowed through its semi-transparent material was all sorts of entrancing.
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Of course, the first thing I try to ask is the question burning a hole in my tongue, but find that I fail to make any noise.
You’re going to need to subvocalize while down here. Move your throat muscles to speak, and I will reproduce the sound of your voice inside of your head.
{“Ah… Ah… Oh, this is strange… Why is my voice so high? Did I actually turn into a girl?”}
It’s complicated.
{“Okay, sure, whatever, let's come back to that later. Tell me about the important changes first.”}
You have not gained gills, so you do not have any of the natural weaknesses that would occur from their presence. Instead, your lungs can naturally filter water now, and breathing will be perfectly natural in and out of water. When you surface, excess water within your body will be naturally expelled through your sweat glands. It’s actually quite novel.
{“Okay, what about the tailfin? Losing my ability to walk on two feet seems quite, you know, terrible. ”}
My best hypothesis is that the tail fin arose when the issue of your broken leg came into account. The nanobots likely determined that it would be too dangerous for you to go onto land with your movement capability essentially crippled when they could just give you above average capabilities underwater. It won't be hard to regain your mobility above ground once you regain some points.
I wiggle myself around a bit in the water, still feeling a bit uncomfortable in my own skin. Moving the tail feels almost natural, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the adaptation had something to do with that. Pulling the center of the tail to my chest, I rub my hand down its scaly exterior, feeling every movement of my fingers as if it was just normal skin.
As a matter of fact, those scales are actually a keratin metal compound, far stronger than regular human skin. They were the last thing the nanites formed, using themselves alongside the various materials that had remained in your system from the medicine you had taken earlier. You should have little to no excess metal left in your system, alongside any plastics that you have previously ingested.
{“Huh. Interesting.”}
A bit of surprise fills me as moving around takes little to no effort, and I laugh to myself as I perform a little spin upwards. I sort of didn’t want to admit it, but this was actually kinda interesting, in a screwed up kind of way. Losing my ability to walk was a big downside, but at least this wasn’t permanent. As I start looking for my bag, I hesitate, then ask a question that was bothering me.
{“Um… Can you explain the reason behind the whole um… sex change thing now?”}
Strictly speaking, your genetic code as a whole was scrambled, and it seems to have ended up at a middle point between male and female. It is a bit strange, but I expect it to be a good opportunity; It will not be difficult to change this in the future to represent however you decide to present yourself.
A bit flustered, my tail flails around a bit, and I take a good look at myself again. I had never really thought about who I wanted to be before, it had always just been getting out of the place I had been. Now that I was being given a choice… What did I want to do?
{“I can decide that later; Where the heck did my bag go?”}
It’s most likely on the roof of the lowest floor beneath you. Thankfully, you should be able to go deeper than any human naturally should be able to thanks to the nanites. I will warn you if the pressure is going to cause problems.
“{Fuck.}”
With a groan, I propel myself downwards, moving quite a bit faster than I thought I possibly could. Unfortunately for my grumpiness, it vanishes quickly and I can’t help but grin as the water rushes past me, almost similar to the breeze you feel while running.
It didn’t take much movement in my tail to get to that speed, probably because I was working with gravity, and I could quickly dive deeper and deeper. A few minutes later, I spot my bag, which had lodged itself right onto a steel pipe near the top of the last floor.
It doesn’t take me long to reach it, and with a sigh of relief, I take my OCLE out and reattach it to my body. As I zip up the bag though, I flinch when the OCLE flashes at something behind me, and I twist myself around to get eyes onto it. At first, I initially think it was just a fish and the weapon had just misfired, but then I notice something very off about the corpse.
Wriggling beneath the dead fish’s skin, a smaller but two similar looking creatures casually pop their heads through the side of the corpse’s stomach. Then I realize what it actually is, and target the OCLE at it immediately. Two blue lasers later, and I begin to swim away; I need to check the fish farms immediately.
Targets Eliminated!
Model 9-T: 1 Model
Model 7-T: 2 Models
Reward: 35 points
New Total: 124 points
~~~
When the first farm comes into view, its metallic cylindrical body floats slightly beneath the surface just beside the main structure of New Houston. It’s still entirely intact, which has me hoping for the best, but about a thousand alarm bells go off when I look at the top of the cylinder. From my experience, the fish were bred to collect at the top of the farm to feed, where a intricately designed system would harvest eggs, sperm, and the fish themselves.
What I originally thought was just normal fish on my first glance are in fact a mix of normal aquatic beasts and uncanny doppelgangers. When I look to where the farm’s mechanical arms usually harvest their resources, I pale and my blood runs cold at the sight of a slow moving thick vine reaching up, grabbing a fish and pulling it back down into the center of the farm.
This was really bad.
After a few seconds of pondering, I realize I only have one option to prevent the situation from getting out of hand.
{Anyvi, can the OCLE cut through the cords holding the farms up?}
Unfortunately, the OCLE’s beam is not hot enough to burn through steel. I would recommend either purchasing the Class I Esoteric Single-Use Explosive Devices catalog to blow them up, or you could purchase one of the many melee weapons in your catalogs with the capability to cut through the wires.
{I don’t like the idea of explosives, too risky when considering collateral. What melee options do you recommend?}
There is one in your Class-I Axonfin Technologies catalog and another in your Class-I Light-Based Weapons catalog that I think would suit your needs. The Laser intensifying general heating tactical saber is a device designed to emit a deliberately short laser along its plasteel edge that can cut through most materials in seconds. It would cost you forty points. On the other hand, the ANR Harpoon-Halberd is a harpoon with a monofilament edge that is designed to stab into any non-biological material, reconstructing whatever it stabs into a large monofilament axe blade that is designed to shatter when entering into an enemy. It will run you eighty points.
{That ANR Harpoon-Halberd sounds sick! Let’s go with that!}
New Purchase: ANR Harpoon-Halberd
Points reduced to: 44
A wicked harpoon taller than I am appears in the water just above me, and I grab its handle to feel its weight. To my pleasant surprise, the spear-like weapon doesn’t seem to suffer from water resistance, so I can’t help but laugh as I spin the thing like it’s a baton around me. My moment of foolishness is not wasted by fate, as I unfortunately move my tail fin into just the right place for me to cut slightly into its delicate scaled side and I have to hold back a scream as a short trail of blood emerges before the cut is quickly healed.
I apologize for not warning you of the potential self-harm danger of the monofilament blade, as I thought it was obvious, but I shall remember to do so with future weapons.
{Haha, very funny. Uh, how did I already stop bleeding though?}
It is possible that the nanites increased your natural ability to heal to a certain degree.
{Really?}
It is possible.
{You do know that isn’t a yes, right?}
I do in fact, have several thousand languages that I am proficient in from the various worlds that the Protectors have helped, and somehow English is one of those languages. One of the odder languages I have spoken.
{... I’m not even gonna ask. Highlight the cables for me please.}
Taking a deep breath to calm my heart, strange as that action is underwater, I spin my harpoon so it is facing forward and propel myself forward, aiming for the nearest illuminated cable to me. Preparing myself as I approach, I ready my blade, then swing when I feel it is in range. I lose all of my momentum, and the harpoon ends up embedded halfway through the wire.
Congratulations, you have successfully learned your second lesson about monofilament blades for the day- They barely work if your alignment is off.
Grumbling at my AI’s sass, I fumble with the blade as my OCLE constantly fires at the quickly increasing number of fake fish rushing at me. I eventually get the harpoon out by slowly angling a cut out, and in the process I successfully sever the cable, causing it’s two halves to slowly begin to float downwards and the closest fish farm to shake violently, sending reverberations everywhere. Deciding on a new plan, I carefully hold the harpoon horizontally then begin to swim toward the next cable. Instead of swinging and losing all the speed my tailfin let me build up, I simply let the blade pass through the steel as if it wasn’t there. It works perfectly somehow, a rarity in a case like this, and the second cable snaps. Like magic, the first fish farm begins to sink, fish and antithesis alike chasing after it and I giggle a bit at sight.
You’ve done well, now you just have exactly thirty six more cables to cut before the farms will have been successfully relocated to the bottom of the ocean.
Groaning at the long task ahead of me, I continue my course, cutting every wire in my path.
{“Hopefully, this will be worth the effort.”}