"Alright, we've got something," I said, grinning. "Tooth and Nail picked up the thumb drive, and we can trace the spirit scent of the person who gave them the thumb drive. Now, since this is probably Skinner, and she's got a weekly routine, we just have to wait for her to go about that weekly routine while we track her, and we'll be able to hit her lab next Wednesday."
"That's the day before Thanksgiving," Nicky pointed out. "We've got plans with Silas and Akane's mom, remember?"
"We're making stuff that can afford to either sit around in the fridge for a day or two, or be made the day of," I said. "Also, and I cannot stress this enough: yes, even my fairly opinionated religious doctrine that has rules for everything agrees that stopping Doctor Skinner takes precedence over observing holidays. Everyone involved will understand 'something came up and we had to deal with it as soon as we could.' And then, Thanksgiving can be a victory feast."
"...Fair," Nicky said. "But, like... at least tell Silas about it beforehand."
"Who do you think I am?" I asked. "I already emailed Valiant the good news and our tentative timetable, and he has begun arranging for backup to help secure our perimeter. We'll be going in alone, though, on account we're already a team and need the freedom to let loose with wolfsbane without fucking over our allies."
"Don't those selective wolfsbane immunity bands work for others?" Lisa asked.
"Kind of, but... well, I can only support two of them," Akane said.
"Anyhow," I said, clapping once and rubbing my hands together. "We've got a week to prepare. And, good news of good news, I just got the results back from Arachne, which were very comprehensive. I'll show you the full report if you want, but the conclusion is, the historical evidence suggests that idea-based implants were the most successful in fully integrating into half-spirits and not causing problems with shapeshifting or other spirit powers. And since I do nothing but idea-based implants, I've got plenty of stuff I can give to amp up Lisa and Nicky, and also possibly improve quality of life, if the fact that computers aren't yet telepathic is something you've lamented in the past."
"Will I be able to produce Blender-compatible 3D models with the power of my imagination?" Nicky asked.
"You will if I spend some time working at it," I said.
"So I know Lisa's promised to suck your dick twice a day as thanks for the collar and the laboratory-tested titties, but-"
"If there does exist a schedule for my daily gratitude gobjobs, I'm not going to be the one who puts it together," I said dryly.
"I mean, I had to offer," Nicky said. "How else would you know the thanks were sincere?"
"...The fact that you have a good point is alarming to me."
"Also!" Akane said. "I might be able to wrangle some strong transformations to help everyone out even more! I'm really close, I think, I just need a bit more time, and maaaaybe some help from Roxy."
"Tell me what you need after this meeting, and I'll make sure you get it," I said, nodding. "Unless Lisa and Nicky want to stay and listen to mad science jargon?"
"I'm good, actually," Nicky said.
"Not unless I'm getting headpats," Lisa said.
"Then yeah. Let's see, what else... oh, also, Nicky, I'm going to be training you in the very basics of Kali, also known as Arnis or Eskrima or Filipino Stick Fighting, and you are going to be using this with a stun hammer I've made for you, because weapons improve general combat performance and there won't be any credible witnesses to threaten your image for fighting with anything other than your bare hands."
"...Stun hammer?" Nicky asked.
"It doesn't do lethal damage unless you seriously overdo it," I said. "Between the efficacy of mad science weapons and the strength of your own arm, you should be able to put down pretty much anyone in one clean hit."
"Mom never let me have weapons," Nicky said.
"I would like you to tell me when I have ever given even the faintest impression that I respected your mother's opinion."
"No, no, I'm just saying... this is awesome. I wasn't even allowed to join fencing club back in high school or college, before I even got powers!"
"Yeah, well, now you live with a well-trained and well-seasoned martial artist, and it's past time I started passing some of that training on to you. What else... what else... I think that about covers it."
"Will I also be learning how to use a stun hammer?" Lisa asked.
"Conventional martial arts training for druids is basically worthless," I said. "You've already got the instincts of a predator from your spirit half; from there, you pretty much only need practice. Which... mostly will come from some fairly frequent sparring matches with Nicky. After I outfit the both of you with some armor and healing implants, that is. Which, incidentally, if you're not planning on doing anything for the rest of today..."
"I'm not doing anything you're not dragging me along on," Lisa said with a shrug.
"I don't have a stream scheduled tonight," Nicky added.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
"Alright, fantastic," I said, clapping once and rubbing my hands together. "Fair warning: you're gonna spend two hours unconscious, because otherwise the recovery process sucks. Not, like, unbearably, the healing implants take most of the edge off, but that second hour would be spent with a bad headache as your brain adjusted to the Virtual Machine."
"I could go for a nap," Lisa said.
"Let's get started," Nicky said, nodding.
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"And you're sure that I can't use my new toy to shrink down to the size of a tardigrade and implant the Virtual Machine myself?" Akane asked.
"If you want to be inside your girlfriends, grow a dick and let them ride it," I said flatly. "The Virtual Machine is a pattern of psychic energy created by stimulating the mind in particular ways most achievable with my existing psychic equipment. Your latest gadget, as impressive as it is- and I am proud of your achievement- is not the right hammer for turning these bolts."
Lisa and Nicky were unconscious in a pair of (figuratively-)off-the-shelf recliners, already under the noetic knife for the installation of Virtual Machines, the psychic framework upon which all of my implanted gadgets were built, and I was... monitoring the process, really. It was automated pretty damn well, honestly- it turns out that having a specialty for automatons makes you very good at making gadgets attend to themselves without any human hand-holding.
"Anyhow, what help did you need?" I asked
"Right! I need to try to teach you something," Akane said. "Partly to help me understand transformation better- teaching is a great way to learn- but mainly to figure out if the teaching methods I've devised actually, like... work."
"Alright, fair enough," I said. "You said I'd be learning how to turn things to stone, right?"
"And to project holograms," Akane said.
"How are those tied together, anyhow?" I asked, frowning.
"Thus begins the lesson," Akane said. "Alright, so. Transformation isn't just the simple alchemy of turning one thing into another. There is an inherent element of deception, of smoke and mirrors, in the science of transformation. Yes, you use your basic understanding of transformation to expose your truth, but more often, people use that basic understanding of transformation to project lies. To disguise themselves. Hell, the basics of transformation can do camoflage!"
"Ahhh, I see," I said. "That does actually make a degree of sense, and... thinking about it like that, I haven't really been utilizing transformation to its fullest extent, given that I've got a shapeshifting module for the Virtual Machine that I just, like, never use, and instead rely on mundane disguises."
"Mundane disguises can't be countered by Stopwatches-" You know, the gadgets that automatically disable mad science gadgets in a certain area. "-so what you're doing isn't dumb," Akane said. "It is, however, an incomplete understanding if you've really just never considered it."
"Fair enough," I said, nodding. "So, transformation involves some amount of smoke and mirrors, and properly learning it means learning the smoke and mirrors, as well."
"Exactly! Also, there's some very crude functional biosculpting available at this level of skill, but the way it works is basically trading some of your strength in for agility or stamina, or some other way around, and it's pretty zero-sum and generally not all that useful, unless you can make it permanent and then combine it with a physical training regimen focused on one aspect of your physique so that you can distribute the gains from that into other stuff, but... I mean, that's really long-term, and I don't think either of us cares that much."
"My body is already a carefully-honed weapon, and fucking with it like that doesn't sound like a good idea to me," I said, nodding in agreement. "But that's, like, a secondary function of the material transmutation, right?"
"Right, exactly," Akane said, nodding. "Now! I want you to spitball some possible working principles for a hologram projector. No wrong answers, just get 'em out there."
"Okay, so... Hrm." I considered this carefully. "...Okay, first, lemme spitball what a hologram is, make sure we're on the same page for what I'm trying to accomplish, here."
"Go ahead, although I'm not going to correct anything that isn't an egregious error," Akane said.
"Holograms aren't solid, and are fundamentally just 3D images," I said. "You can walk through a hologram or wave your hand through it or throw a rock through it, and there will be a wholly negligible effect on your inertia, because the hologram is only as solid as the medium it's projected on. Okay. So... I primarily frame my stuff as some sort of psychic or psionic, and this is actually an ideal case. The hologram projector, because there is a hologram projector, I've seen them, produces a very low-level mind-altering effect radiating out from the spot the hologram appears in. This effect radiates out to line-of-sight, convincing everyone who sees it that they are seeing the projected image, from the correct angle. And that correct angle is being done through... y'know what, through the observer's own visual cortex; they're subconsciously fed the orientation and form of the image, and told to render that into a visual image."
"I see, I see," Akane said. "But... what about photographs, digital or otherwise? Observers without a visual cortex?"
"...That'd be a flaw in an otherwise workable device," I said with a shrug. "That it doesn't work through digital cameras, and anyone wearing nightvision goggles or watching through security cameras is functionally immune to it. But, since every gadget has some kind of flaw, and this one is at least predictable..."
"Yeah, that is workable," Akane said, nodding. "And since we've got to wait for Nicky and Lisa's installations to finish, you might as well try bashing out a prototype, see if you actually learned anything."
"Alright, well," I said, rolling my shoulders and grabbing a fresh, empty notebook- we kept many of such as raw materials in the lab. The fact that the nearest repository was fifteen feet away wasn't an obstacle to me, considering I had tentacles. "Let's do this thing."
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Nicky and Lisa woke up at the same time, with Nicky being the quicker to get past the grogginess and mild, fading headache and push herself upright.
"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi," the hologram said. "You're my only hope."
The projector had been built inside a novelty salad bowl Silas had picked up at a flea market before realizing it'd be wholly unusable for its intended purpose thanks to some serious defects alongside wear-and-tear from being old and shuffled around the back of several cupboards. That salad bowl, now upside down and parked on top of a small rolling trash can I'd temporarily recolored with transformation to be white and blue, made for a recognizable-yet-scuffed-as-fuck facsimile of R2D2, the (allegedly) foul-mouthed favorite droid of tumblr's Star Wars fandom.
"...You have way too much time on your hands," Nicky said blearily, before closing her eyes and leaning back in the recliner.