[Lucky you. The ground floor is a shitstorm. Care to supply some direct fire support? Blast the central courtyard, I’m covered from flames.]

[Plasma breath incoming.] I shifted a little, extruding all four plasma casters. I savored the ominous hum for a moment before switching to the thoom of firing.

[Aren’t you two adorable! Communicating so well with each other!]

[I wish we would.] The vanguard still known as Alex-Chan sounded a little annoyed with Drag-On.

[All right then! You just had to ask!]

[Communicate! Not aggressively cuddle!] I could just imagine what was going on over there. I could only feel sorry for her. She didn’t seem like the sort who would do well like that from our interactions so far. Not that we’ve had much yet. Personally, not liking being touched probably had something to do with it. [Are you two chummy or military in your comms?]

[Depends. Like now. Kid, more fire to the northwest corner. Your plasma casters are about at the extent of their power and you’re only lighting them on fire. But They’re bunching up northwest!]

[Got it, Lowering height and shifting fire northwest!] I did as directed, sweeping the floor slowly enough to make sure everything was lit up. {Naille. Do we have points to upgrade my Plasma catalog? Tokens too?}

<>You do. I was just about to up your Exotic Nanotech. But I can wait and use the points for Plasma now? Or you can hold out for another few minutes and get both? You’re about two hundred… one hundred and eighty points shy. Dropping quickly as the burning Models die.

{Plasma now, then Exotic. Just buy them as they’re available. As soon as I have points after that I need to replace these Strohl’s with something more powerful.} As I lowered the plasma stopped just lighting them on fire and started doing actual damage. But I had to dodge some Models that were on the mid floors who started reaching for me or straight jumping at me. Model Three’s do not fall with any style.

<>Would you like to put off Exotic further and purchase some Strohl Munitions Burninators, basically the massively up-gunned and sleeker versions of your current weapons. Yet again with the free Ominous Hum, but costing a point for the added Thoom.

{Fuuuuu… Yeah. Let’s do it.} I quickly shifted the plasma casters into my storage, then had to frantically snatch the box with the four new Burninators out of the air. [Why is it always a race for new firepower and skipping on stuff for quality of fucking life?]

[Awe, it’s not that bad. It’s just that you’re in it now. If you’ve got points after you’ll be savoring them slowly because then you have to wait for the next incursion, or some random stealth to pop. Now that's annoying.] Bomberman sounded both amused and distracted as he spoke.[Why’d you quit firing? Oh… Nevermind. That’s way hotter. Switched up weapons then?]

[Yeah went from the basic models to new ones called Burninators. Not sure if I like the smaller sleeker package tho. The old ones had a gravitas to them.] I started having to use them on the floors around me just as much as the ground floor and I wasn’t even barely halfway down. [I’m hitting resistance up here. I don’t think I can help much more down there.]

[It’s fine, I’ve got the rest of this. You clean up there.] Grenades started spamming from near the huge ass vault door to the outside.

[Got it.] Switching focus I went to the top floor I could see plants on and started sweeping the weaker ones off. As soon as I could land I went full Shoggoth and started cutting loose.

The next few minutes were chaos and fire as I burned everything that looked remotely aggressive. The upside was the concrete didn’t burn well. So I just left a lot of scorch marks everywhere. And gouge marks where I was a little careless with a melee tool. Points went up nicely though.

Points 137 → 3482

Tokens 1

{Okay, let's buy that nanotech upgrade.} I shifted off the last of the upper floors and let myself drop thirty feet into the atrium.

<>You said buy it when available. All listed requests are purchased. These are unallocated points.

{Well shit. Do you remember the upgrade for my Nanos you suggested? How much for that?}

<>One thousand for the upgrade. Ten thousand for the blueprints. But I think we should save that for later.

{Ya think?} I instantly regretted the sass. {Sorry. Yes. You are correct. Let's grab the upgrade tho. Next, we need to look into shifting my consciousness into the nanites themselves I think.}

“There’s still plants here. I think they’ve got a hive started in those back shops but I haven’t confirmed it yet.” Bomberman trotted up next to me and as he spoke something big, ugly, and armored shoved its way through a storefront to orient on us.

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Thankfully, I hope, my new upgrade was software and not a box I’m waiting on.

<>That… is a model fourteen. You should fire everything as fast as you can.

“Fuck!” I pushed out all my weapons and opened fire on it. Even had to use my older Strohl plasma casters despite my most recent upgrade, not that they did much.

Instead, the damn centipede-looking, armored, gargantuan, monster charged straight at me, all but ignoring my plasma. Oh, it scorched it heavily, Burning through in places. But it was too damn big to really care. Instead, It crashed into my winnebago-sized ass and tried to trample me.

I took exception to that.

Extending everything I tried to pry, cut, crush, grind, laser, and plasma and generally damage it in any way I could while engulfing its head in my armor. I found that my nanos now had strength enough to apply mechanical pressure all on their own, as well as harden sections and move them. Trying everything was a good plan because it let me figure out I could turn nearly my whole body into an ore grinder. Between that and the bombs and mortars on its ass, we killed it. It was not fast nor pretty, but it worked. A battle of attrition that I couldn’t lose.

[You made a mess. Are you okay over there? That looks like it hurt!] Bomberman was trotting across the room to where the fourteen had slammed me into the entry's armored vault blast door.

[Yeah. I’m fine.] I pulled my armor up on top of the beast where I had shifted my core functions. It took a moment to get some of the pieces pinned under it. [I dodged. It hit armor. Which I shifted to take and do most of the damage.]

[Oh dear. What did you two find?] Drag-On sounded worried, but I could only imagine an western dragon ripping one of these things in half like it was nothing when they spoke.

[Fourteen tried to trample Shoggoth. Upside, he’s amorphous so it’s impossible.] Bomberman slowed to a trot as he arrived. [You want to melt that so we can go check where it came from?]

[No. I’m going to eat it. Gimme a minute. I’ll meet you over near the spot it barreled out from.] I shifted down to engulf it as much as I could and set my Nanos to scavenge for resources. Unlike with the boxes before, just being able to bring armor up to maintenance levels I could now gain extra resources for storage and building ammo and drones. [The higher the level it is the tastier they are. Full of useful minerals and vitamins.]

[Oh god that’s gross.] Alex, the other newbie sounded like she was actually imagining things and getting kinda sick from it.

[Way more disgusting than you’re thinking.] Bomberman was a little green around the gills as he turned and walked away. [I did not need to see that.]

[Oh see what sugar?]

[He’s got this… I dunno a grinder thing full of teeth, that he uses’ to chew up antithesis at close range. He just made a bunch of them and started chowing down. I don’t think I’m going to be able to eat, or sleep, for a while after that. Really growing into your eldritch horror schtick there Shoggoth.]

[I think we should avoid that subject, poor Alexandra seems to have a sour stomach.]

We couldn’t hear the retching, but even I imagined it. Poor girl.

[Sorry. My bad. It’s just that ammo is not cheap and I can make a bunch of it from the remains of this thing. Even a bunch of resonators to melt what's left.] I didn’t stop or slow down, just kept grinding away for resources.

[It's… It’s fine.] She definitely sounded sick. [Just imagined me eating a model three… so gross.]

[Yeah. Sorry Alex, can I call you Alex?] She gave an agreeable grunt in response. [I’m literally a brain in a jar. My whole existence beyond that is a machine. When I say eat, I really just mean I’m using nanites to disassemble the beast for vital resources. I mean I’ve just managed enough to completely refill my stockpile of explosive shotgun shells and build about thirty resonators. All for the low low price of getting class two matter rearrangement and a few blueprints. Well, okay that was expensive as hell but in the long run, I’ll save on points massively. I mean something like three kay in points down now for the catalog and blueprints, yeah. But I saved myself about a thousand worth on restocking just now. Do it again two more times and it’s paid for itself. Every time after that is gravy baby!]

[Oh?! That’s actually kinda genius.] She sounds much better now. [Do a lot of people do that?]

[No. Not really, it is a smart idea and most of us older Samurai either have the catalog or bought a matter rearranger from somebody else. But you newbies, you all generally live outbreak to outbreak to incursion for points until you hit your full stride.] Drag-On seemed kinda wistful, talking as if they were thinking of someone from their past. [There are even a few who specialize in providing use of or manufacturing for other Samurai. A niche for everyone after all.]

“You finally ready you giant slug?” Bomberman turned as I schlorped off what was left of the Fourteen and started his way.

“Yeah. I’m coming. Don’t get your knickers in a knot.” [Anyway, I needed it partly for the reloads but mostly because I’m going Nanomachine. Eventually, I’ll upload myself into a distributed network across all my machines with redundant backups of my redundancies. Trying to be as unkillable as possible here. Like, you have to take ten different steps to kill me, sort of immortal. I’m not close to human anymore as it is so I may as well go the full way. So Don’t go imagining yourself doing anything I do. It would not work well for you Alex.]

[That’s fair.] She sounded small. [I just wish I could come up with a gimmick.]

[HA! I half lucked into mine and am enjoying the hell out of it,] I retorted.

Bomberman overran everybody else, [I got stuck with mine and have been trying to come to terms with it for a while now. This guy’s lucky he got me, some of the others out there would have saddled him with a much worse Handle.]

[True,] agreed Drag-On. [You needn't rush yourself, child. You seem to be vacillating between drones and directed energy weapons, perhaps you should decide on one or the other?]

[Why not both? What’s wrong with drones? Go Ship girl or something?] Bomberman gave me an inscrutable look when I mentioned Ship Girls in chat. [What does nobody know what a ship girl is?]

[No clue.] Bomberman shook his head bewildered.

[Same.]

[I vaguely remember something about the term sugar. Why not explain to the others?]