should have made the keyboard on this thing bigger

i mean i love a dinky micro travel computer as much as the next superscience genius girl

but this is a bit

annoying

i am writing from the field. i said i probably wouldn't do that. and yet here we are. life comes at ya. i am not in a cosy biscuit fort. with a roof. i am beneath a real sky. the weather is. normal? there is a sky. clouds. apparently the weather is a thing people like to talk about. today i saw a cloud. it looked like a cloud. the sky was blue. oh blue you say? yesterday it was blue also. but the day before that it was grey. gosh how interesting. do you think it will be grey tomorrow? who can say. i am excited to find out.

well anyway that's enough normality practice for. like. ever. let's get to the meat of the meal. the gooey caramel centre. the potatoes of the night. waterfactory assault.

more like

waterfactory yessault

my most successful mission yet

didn't lose even one bodypart

all my stuff worked so good

betternewshield still untouched and pure

could've gone in naked

no hit run

cannonball pistols so effective. so efficient. where have incendiary explosives been all my giant ant fighting life.

especially for indoor fighting

i mean you shouldn't use explosives if you are in the doors

but if you stand out the doors

and put a buzzer in the doors

and wait for a bunch of ants to all try to come out at once

and fire a cannonball into the middle of that mess

from a safe distance

that experience is

*fun*

i mean a lot of stuff in there got exploded or lit on fire. a lot. of stuff. but y'know those ants already chewed that place all to pieces. they were making these weird crystal things. like spiderwebs. except. antwebs. not really webs at all. more like. yeah i don't know i'm just gonna go with webs. all glittery and glistening and weird. got scavenger drones to take some back to my base anyway. gonna turn it into. dunno. some kind of. jetpack. yes. i will fly with the power of antweb.

also

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

one bonus eyespider benefit

ants totally ignore that thing

can literally get it to climb on an ant's head and ride the ant around and the ant is just like. what. tiny eyespider on my head. big deal. like i'm gonna even regard that as a thing. whatevs.

the nihilism of these insects re: tinybots may be their downfall

as for ant variants eh. if there were any i didn't notice. i mean they did not get much of a chance to pull any weird ant variant tricks. too busy exploding.

can say almost for sure there were no acid ants. they leave a puddle of acid. no puddles. no acid ants. good good.

no fire ants either because no fire ant gems

deductive reasoning in action

haven't actually taken over the whole thing yet. just cleared upper levels. there's a whole hive underneath. all creepy tunnels and stuff. partially flooded which is gross. all splashy and muddy and yuck. didn't expect a sewer level. guess that's the downside of a waterfactory. close to the river. ants don't mind water and grossness apparently. tempted to just send a few scrapbags down there and be done with it.

but no

want to finish this thing. properly. that's why i'm out here. setting up like a base of operations. got superhammer drones destroying buildings. got scavenger drones gathering the stuff. got construction drones building walls. making a fort around me while i just sit here writing my nonsense. very satisfying. i mean i can't really make anything more complicated than walls. but it's still pretty good.

asked computer if a mareo can make another mareo. and computer was like 'come on girl'. and i was like well why not? and computer was like 'you think a matter reorganiser can reorganise matter into another matter reorganiser?' and i was all well yeah that would make sense. and computer was like 'you tripping jin you don't even know how wonkers you sound'. and i thought about that for a bit and then i was all like computer you better stop gaslighting me and computer was like 'hey hey don't get all uptight and uncool about this i thought we were friends' and so i was like okay well just tell me why a mareo can't make a mareo and computer was all 'capitalism' and i was like ooooooh yeah that makes sense. if the thing a company sells can make itself then that company has no reason to sell the thing etc etc

anyway that was just a fun little interlude i had while sitting here waiting for my crudfort to get built around me. i mean maybe i could make my own mareo? could i though. that's a big project. whole lot of new areas i never even looked at before. maybe i can't make a new mareo. maybe i couldn't even fix my one if it broke. flip. what if my mareo breaks? i use that guy for everything. oh great now i got anxiety. thanks a lot my own brain.

sent eyespider out to have an explore. watching his progress will relax me. no ants nearby. just like. terrain.

hope the antibacterial coating on my socket holds up

eyespider getting pretty grubby out there

i mean i put some cleanshield antiyuck tech on the thing

i'm not stupid

still

brain infection from a grubby eyebot would be embarrassing as flip

oh the things i must deal with in my cute little life

should maybe put it through a cleansing series of portals and washes before i let it back in

mister you better take off those shoes and wash your hands before you get back inside my head

i embrace my new role as eyespider mum

actually if i'm heading on down to blight town i might just keep the thing locked in my skull with a secure eyepatch sealing it in

you're staying in your room until we get through the sewer level

you can come out once we're in. like. the cloud kingdom level. or whatever. laundromat level. the clean worlds.

oh yes. almost forgot. field test of freeze grenade went well. such a solid test. did the thing i wanted. froze a river. didn't try crossing because i'd probably just slip over and break my nose or something. also still a bit nervous about those dark energy blobs. they remind me of like. raisins in porridge. gross and unnecessary.

anywoo. should probably call back eyespider. wipe it off and shove it back in. get on with this thing. i had my rest. i played around building a sandcastle. crudfort. could send #4 down into the tunnels first. but then it'd probably just be a thing like where he goes down and then i lose contact and it's all

oh probably just the undergroundness of the situation cutting off sensor link

but actually he totally got eaten by a mutant sewer ant

so i'll probably just send him ahead of me a bit

that way at least i get to see a mutant sewer ant eat a drone