“Okay. Let's do this then. Fill any extra slots with Ribbons, and balance the limbs. We’ll go with the flight now, something for the whole armor, right?” I shifted one way, my armor the other, leaving me open for the process. The armor automatically shifted into a solid brick for storage.

<>Yes, your whole armor section will be supported. I shall begin. Sweet dreams.

I checked the time. 8:59 PM.

My optics went out and I was left in darkness for a while. Nothing new there, I’d taken plenty of time in maintenance like that. It was so normal for me I spent the time pondering the fact that I should probably be more disturbed like this, but wasn't.

When the lights came back up the time was 9:20 PM.

My armor was sitting rigid as a brick next to the gantry I was suspended in. It took a few seconds to coordinate with my new sub-brains to get out of the gantry, leaving behind a gutted shell with some electronics visible. An egg shape with cutouts for optics and tool attachments.

“Should I just leave this here?”

<>Actually, your class two Void Walker allowed my purchase of the second and third armor sets to be upgraded. You can now “eat” the leftovers, adding mass to your armor for repairs.

“Oh…” I dragged the word out a moment, it echoed in the vast empty lobby. “Let’s do it.”

While I had been distracted one of the sub-brains had come in contact with my armor and ordered it to move back into place. Once I was covered again I reached out to eat the gantry and old parts.

[Hey, you alive in there?] Bomberman seemed calm, bored even.

[Yes. I have a new chassis and a few new tricks.] I finished eating and glorped out of the lobby. Spreading out and extending everything, keeping the more vulnerable joints in the mass but the rest became tentacles of varying types.

[I see that. More arms?] He stood up from the camp chair he had been snacking on something at in the midst of his bunker.

[Among other things. How’s the evac going?] I approached him, moving much more smoothly and quickly than before.

[Evacuation is progressing at pace.] The military person on comms sounded almost bored. [The other two buildings are emptying now. It’ll be forty-five minutes before they can get back and work on that one. Perhaps you can clear more while you wait?]

[Was that console jockey just being passive-aggressive with us?] Bomberman smirked as he dumped his empty bag of whatever on the ground.

[I believe she was. But she is not incorrect,] I agreed. [Shall we split up? I’ll take the building to the northeast, you the one to the west?]

[Actually, I think that one is a garage.] He pointed at a building two down from us to the west. [How about you go clear it and see if there are any buses? I’ll hit the building between and then we can go the other way together. I’d rather stay in shouting distance for fire support.]

[Do you have mobile mortars yet?] I began moving that way, extending a ride spot for him as I went. [Lure grenades are handy too.]

[Ah. No. I don’t have that.] He hopped on, catching a ride over to the building entry.

[I have a basic combat drone catalog and a couple counter gravity sources. Use my catalogs to make something that you can use indoors and outdoors for a range increase. Later you’ll have to source it yourself, but for now, we need to stop wasting time.] I stopped to drop him off, focusing several eyes on him.

[Uh. Actually, I was gonna ask if you had anything. Thanks. You need anything from mine?] He hopped off, stepping back. It was obvious he was able to manage channels just fine because he was subvocalizing but I heard nothing. I was now a little jealous.

[Unless you have class two cybernetics, I think I’ll be fine for now. Though I wouldn’t mind grabbing four of your class three grenades for lures.]

[Uh. I do actually. And sure. You can have access to a few things from my cybers and grenades.] A rather large box appeared next to him, almost immediately disgorging a mastiff or small horse sized dog like bot with several barrels protruding from its back. Even its mouth looked to have a grinder reshaped in it. I could also see a quartet of short murder ribbons where its tail should be.

[I appreciate it. Naille, do we have enough for the cyber upgrades? I want those first.]

Points: 2435

<>With Bombermans help, yes we do. Two hundred for four class three lure grenades. An additional thousand for the Hecatonchires neural upgrade plus a replacement for that failure of a synaptic enhancer running an additional five hundred. Running out to a total of Seventeen hundred.

[Do it. Er, do I need a gantry again?]

<>No they will be nano grown for something so delicate. The upside is we can use the materials from the old ones to do it so it’s slightly cost effective. It will only take a few minutes and you won’t need to stop working.

A series of boxes had appeared, landing directly on my mass. I drew them in, ate them, and either used or stored what was inside. The new cybernetics were in brick form, just a pair of bricks of Nanos that were applied directly to a port in my hull.

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“Good luck with all the stairs,” I chuckled darkly as I started moving away.

“Like I need it,” he laughed back. His new drone dog extended a seating surface out of the back, just behind the barrels sticking out, he hopped on and rode the damn thing into the building.

I continued to laugh louder, and added all the effects in for maximum creepy factor as I oozed down to the garage building. Once I arrived at the entrance I stopped making noise externally. It was time to make my way up. The structure seemed to have thirty floors above ground, and the map the system provided added ten down.

“What do you think Naille? Up or down?” I continued using my armor to muffle speech for a more private conversation.

<>Down. I suspect any above us would be local traffic. Whereas down would be storage and bulk transports.

“What about plants?” I started for the ramp down, ignoring the robot service station that was blaring something dumb about paying at me.

<>They likely were drawn out by the recent combat, whereas any still below may be covering for a hive.

“Down it is then.” I sped up, using the large open space to move in now that I was the size of a large SUV or small bus with all the armor and larger core size. “Being so big is going to make it difficult to traverse buildings now. Maybe we should look at folded space storage? And an interaction frame? Maybe pull a terminator. Wait, what? I… remember what a terminator is?”

<>Which one? I’m assuming something like what you are doing now, which would be Rev-9. Also, your memories should be coming back more and more as time goes by. You’re biological repair nanites are working slowly but surely to fix all the damage and rebuild what needs it.

“Oh. And yes. Like this, but a normal endoskeleton with a nanite facade.”

<>That is doable as an arm extension. But to store all of the rest of your mass would take a class two catalog you do not have access to. I’m afraid that Dimensional storage starts as a Class Two, you’d need to build a makeshift variant with a dozen other catalogs or get to Class Three in one that has it already. I would recommend waiting until you have another token, now that you don’t need to buy cybernetics yet, and purchase the Class Two extradimensional spaces catalog for one thousand.

“And we get a token for saving a bunch of people?”

<>At the current rate you should get one in approximately twenty-five minutes. As that is how long it will take the military transport to exit the zone.

“Nice. Oh. Look. Plants,” I rumbled fully aloud as I extended a plasma caster to burn down the dozen strong mix of dogs and hentai bears. The Thoom those things make is always satisfying, especially when added to the crackle of burning plants.

<>There must be another hive started down here. I’m not seeing any sufficient transports yet either.

I silently agreed as I moved to go from subfloor two down the ramp to subfloor three. Upon which I found a double surprise. There was an array of over thirty passenger buses on the back wall, and about fifty plants of varying types charging up from lower floors still.

[I’ve got contact on subfloor three of the garage, but I also found a metric fuck ton of buses down here too.] I immediately moved to block the plants from backstopping my shots with the buses even as I reached out with shredder ribbons.

[I hear you, this building is clean so far, I’m on the only shelter and it’s at capacity but safe. Want backup?] Bomberman sounded annoyed. Probably the survivors bitching.

[I got this. Think there’s a hive below me. I’ll pop some drones with AI to get the buses to the surface if you wanna go sit on them while we wait for the military? Though I think I should sweep them for sevens. We’ve seen plenty today.] Things were way easier now, my new parts plus the help from the sub-brains I was able to focus on more than just killing stuff. Which was super easy with all the extra damage capability. [Wow this is easier than before! New body is go!]

Points: 875 → 2085

<>If you get the token from below instead you can open up that catalog.

“From below?” I shifted to see if anything more was coming up the ramp.

<>The hive. You receive a Token for special feats. Taking out a hive, especially single-handedly, has a high chance of receiving one.

“Got it. But I need thirty-ish basic driver drones to get those buses ready to be used. They need enough optics to check for smaller models like sevens as well.”

<>A half dozen spotter drones and a single wrangler will work. It’s fifty for the spotters since they’ll have upgraded sensors and a hundred for the wrangler which will pilot all the buses for you.

“Auto-deploy them, I’m going down.” I didn’t wait, I just started moving. I heard skittering behind me, an optic glanced back spotting seven boxes opening and disgorging six things covered in legs and eyes and a beholder. What was more was that I was receiving all their sensor data as well. They were an extension of me. “Surreal. Surprised it doesn’t hurt.”

<>Your Hecatonchires system is fully integrated at this point. You can run far more than you are now with little strain. Up to one hundred sub-brains can be linked, each with its own “body” capable of operation.

“Any chance of being able to just become the mass of nanites like a T-1000?” Since I had started using Nanite armor, that franchise had been flashing bits and pieces into my mind, it was good to put a name to a concept.

<>Yes, but you will need to open a higher class catalog for that. And you can’t open any class three until you’ve got enough twos open which will be necessary for your build later. It’s like building a pyramid, you must have enough base level to build to the next.

“Shit. Okay, end goals. For now, we’ll work with what we’ve got. Rav-9 and pocket space for extras is the current goal.”

<>Understood. You should have sufficient points provided you do not spend much in clearing this hive.

I had been uninterrupted descending two floors before I came around a corner and found hive matter blocking off my further descent from floor five. There were several mobile plants down there, which all stopped moving to look at me. I found myself in a Mexican Standoff.

Nothing I hadn’t seen yet, almost like this hive was going for hive mass rather than diversity.

[Hey, Bomberman. Can I borrow some exotic grenades? I need something for mass defoliation.] I kept absolutely still, the plants did the same for some reason.