Penny woke up just as early as normal, did her exercises like normal, showered and ate breakfast like normal and was grinning the entire time, which was totally abnormal. She was happy after her second date with Jenny, until she tried to think about what to do for two days and her smile melted. She was forbidden from tinkering, so her only solutions were boring ones or… going out into the sun. Maybe now was a good time to visit some exotic dimension and explore or maybe learn blacksmithing from some master smith. Or she could always just stay at home, play or program video games and read the latest comics… nah!
-A.I.C.A. help me program a chess game for the new game console. I want you to research the figures from the original Indian game and how they were used for war. I want to have the game animated with attack moves, killing blows and natural movements. We will use the modern rules, but the oldest pieces as models. When the game is done I want it to look like a turn based strategy game. You know what else would be fun? Piece customization. Let’s make an interface where the player can customize every piece and their equipment. There probably are a few people that would love to put their face on a king piece and command an army. When the chess game is done, program a second version of it, but this one should be real time strategy. Something like the chess game from episode 3 of No Game, No Life. Meanwhile I would be in another dimension, exploring.-
Penny went to the laboratory and programed a new pair of multi tools to be fabricated, while she got ready for her two day vacation. She packed a few days’ worth of food, water and toilet paper, a tent, sleeping bag and compact gas stove then she marked the bodyguard body of Aica and went to the DTR, equipped her all black dimension travel suit and started thinking about which destination to choose. She could go to a fantasy land and find more magic to learn, a science fiction world, a combination of both or even outer space or an alien planet. In fact, if she got her hands on a powerful enough telescope, she could visit other planets in this world by just visually teleporting there. But for outer space travel she would first have to choose a spaceship to steal from somewhere.
-Aica, if you had to choose one gun for bodyguard duty from all of fiction, which one would it be?-
-Programmable micro bot handgun with the knockout effect from the Psyklo blaster in Battlefield Earth, regulating magnetic acceleration of bullets in parallel with the chemical one of regular bullets and a compartment where to store I.C.E.R. neurotoxin for both bullets and close quarters combat.-
-So, a gun that can use any bullet ever created and when there are none, it can fire pieces of metal and has non-lethal mode. I will program it to also have an infrared or ultraviolet laser for when there is nothing to use as ammunition. Ok, a quick travel to a few dimensions, a few modifications of the multi tool in the fabricator and we are set.-
Penny again put a breathing apparatus and visited the Battlefield Earth dimension, where she stole a fully functioning, loaded, alien gun which she then proceeded to scan once she was back in her lab. There were two very distinct systems at work here, a lethal blast that would be fired from the gun’s barrel and something that looked like a last minute addition to the design, a non-lethal blast that originated from a short barrel at the end of what could be called the handle of the gun. Penny dismantled the gun and paid very close attention to the non-lethal part. She studied how it was connected to the energy supply, how much it consumed and how the components were arranged. She carefully calculated if she could construct it from specialized micro bots or if she just had to construct it as a permanent addition to the weapon. In the end The Author decided that she should make it out of carefully programed micro bots that would act as the gun’s components.
Penny programmed the fabricator to start on the newly designed micro bots, before going to the DTR and traveling to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. where she could find all kinds of interesting goodies. It was easy to infiltrate with her selective invisibility and even easier to download all of their research and development over the years, with the help of her infiltration AI. When she got back to her lab, Penny started researching how viable was the toxin in the I.C.E.R. bullets. After all, it was not the first thing that she has seen on TV that worked just fine, until you had to support it with real world physics or chemistry or biology.
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After hours of research, simulations, synthesis and fabricating, Penny finally had in her hands what she considered the best gun on the planet. Good thing she designed her micro bots with another power source and not her batteries, otherwise she would have to carry around kilograms of the stuff. Looking the gun over, studying every seam, edge and nook, she was impressed again by how advanced technology could become. There were a few, but very important, differences between this gun and the multi tool designs. The gun didn’t have external control module and was directly connected to A.I.C.A. allowing Penny to discard the need for a handle in which the micro bots were stored and which contained all the controlling technology. A.I.C.A. could control their form without the handle limiting her actions. Another difference was the materials used in the construction of the micro bots. There was more superconducting metal, more graphene and more alien metal alloys, but less of the iron, silver and steel. It could still function as a multi tool and kill fae, undead and other fantasy creatures, but it was made to overwhelm them instead of relying on their weakness to certain metals to kill them.
Penny took the two finished guns and four blocks of extra micro bots and gave them to Aica. Next, Penny fabricated a few magazine shaped lumps of iron and also gave it to Aica, after which both of them went to the DTR and traveled to the world of Orario in the dimension of Danjon Ni Deai.
The two arrived at the first floor of the labyrinth and had a quick look around. At first glance there was nothing, but then Penny heard a noise and when she turned to find the source, she was attacked by a green something. Before she could get a better look at it, Aica appeared before her and punched the creature away.
-Aica, lethal force is authorized against non-sentient creatures and monsters. Also, remind me when we go back to include a back facing camera on my protective glasses and to learn some martial arts.-
Penny took her two multi tools out of her pocket dimension and transformed them both in wakizashi, Japanese short swords. She should have had them ready before arriving, but she thought she would have more time before being attacked. Now she was ready and expecting the next attack.
Meanwhile, Aica was right behind Penny, watching her back while also sliding the iron clips into the handles of her guns. Right away the weapons transformed into a new form and Aica began shooting the incoming enemies with what amounted to a handheld coil gun. The micro bots in the handle were separating parts of the iron clip and accelerating it through the magnetic chamber at subsonic speeds. ‘Why subsonic?’ you may ask? Because they were in a public space and didn’t want the police to be called because of noise complaints, or something like that. Can’t remember what the reason was exactly, but there was one.
Penny and Aica continued eliminating goblins and as they were moving deeper in the floor, kobolds, while testing all the functions of the new guns and exploring the dungeon. From time to time, when the creatures disintegrated, they dropped items other than mana or magic stones or whatever they were, but Penny didn’t have the patience to stop and collect the loot. Maybe next time she would bring a robot pet with an enchanted access to her pocket dimension, so it could follow her around and pick them up. For now they continued exploring and searching for the way to the second floor.
Little by little the two made their way down the labyrinth floor by floor. When they came across others, Penny cast selective invisibility on both of them and they continued on their way undisturbed. When they reached the passage to the tenth floor, Penny looked at her clock and decided it was time for them to go back. They had taken too much time to get ready for adventuring, so they had only a few hours to spend on the actual activity, which they did arriving here. Now it was time to go back, implement the changes she thought she needed and then try again tomorrow.
The next day was spend almost the same way, but this time Penny knew what she was doing, or at least she thought she did. She spent the entire night in the Learning Machine absorbing fighting techniques and battle strategies. She now knew how to fight with all kinds of swords, hammers and ninja weapons in addition to the most effective forms of unarmed combat. And again the question, ‘How does she know they are the most effective?’ She had the AIs research the most successful MMA fighters and what martial arts they knew, as well as the ones that were used effectively against them and then learned them all. Now all she had to do was gain experience using them and she could do it in 3 ways. Practice against simulated enemies while wearing the haptic suit, get in real fights somewhere and possibly get arrested for violence or kill a bunch of monsters and gradually gain muscle memory. She choose to spend the entire day practicing number 3.