[Uh. Sure kid. What are you thinking?] He sounded amused.

[Fire. Lots of it. Napalm would be nice.]

<>We can do that. How many do you want?

[Two hundred points worth, and I don’t want them to seem them come in.] I shifted my rear to open a hole under my armor for the transport.

<>Done.

I carefully opened the box and moved the dozen grenades through my body before eating the box. Inevitably some of my mass shifted visibly, causing them to shift a bit as well. This sparked my decision to rush because all of them moved a little. I hate Mexican Standoffs.

They were rushing me even as I rapidly primed and threw all the grenades I could get out as fast as I could. The whole ramp and most of what I could see of the floor below me became a conflagration. I opened up with all my plasma casters next.

Plant matter burns quite well. The problem was the type of molten fuck you I threw down there.

“Uh. How long is that supposed to burn?” I moved back a little as my armor was losing Nanos from the heat.

<>One hundred twenty seconds. It doesn’t have fuel for more, but it’s hot enough to make the plant matter itself burn for some time. This will not kill the hive, only make it wish it was dead.

“Nice colloquialism. So I just wait for another…,” I checked the time. “Twenty seconds?”

<>The fire should be cool enough by then. Although I would wait for a solid minute for things to die down.

“Got it,” I agreed as I settled in to wait. On the floors above me, the buses were cleared one by one and moved to the surface.

As the last bus left, I moved down into the still heavily burning, but not nearly as hot, next level down. Some of the concrete and every vehicle that was down here were burning. It looked like there were city maintenance vehicles.

“I thought there weren’t any buses or city vehicles here.” I carefully made my way near to the center of the floor where there was a rather large hole going down.

<>They aren’t listed. After I cracked one I found they were part of a fleet stashed around the city for a company that has a half dozen subsidiaries that specialize in mass transit. Renting them to other corps or the city as needed, including two tour companies. They aren’t officially government vehicles and aren’t listed, so I ignored the government storage down here which is mostly just road repair and maintenance vehicles.

“Ah. Okay then. Just a little confusing is all. I guess we get to jump down there?” I used my bulk to stuff out some of the fire around the hole, losing a few Nanos in the process.

<>Indeed. You should be ready to chew a lot. Should I add some resonators to your queue?

“Resonators?” I extruded my two mouths and revved them up even as I jumped onto the still-smoldering bulk of the root system two floors down.

<>The loud grenades Bomberman used to melt antithesis.

“Yeah. Like a hundred points of them. I wanna melt this whole fucking thing down to sludge.” I hit, and even with the flight I landed hard and crushed a bunch of plant while I started grinding it up as soon as it was under me fully.

A box of resonators dropped on me, I opened it and threw them around the room for decent coverage.

<>Your token should be available in the next two minutes at this rate. Should I open up the catalog for dimensional storage we discussed when it’s available? It will be one thousand and a token for the catalog. An additional thousand for a storage device large enough, followed by five hundred for the new subframe. Then we just need to open up a biological facade catalog for seventy-five and another one hundred twenty-five to add the capability to your Nanos. The grand total is twenty-seven hundred and a token. You already just need the token.

“Yeah, how will install work?” I kept grinding away, extending my murder ribbons to cut at other parts to make them more chewable. Several new headless monkeys were trying to attack me now as well. I decided to just shoot them with plasma. It was super effective.

<>I’ve handled it all. You can change over whenever you choose. You simply need to select a body shape and face.

“That’s going to be a can of worms. Lemme finish killing stuff.”

I put my mind to making sure there was nothing left alive down here before checking if there was anything lower as we were only nine floors down. Even with my enhanced senses, I couldn’t find anything.

“Okay, that’s fishy. Wasn’t there supposed to be ten sublevels?” [Hey, the garage I’m in only has nine sub-levels. Shouldn’t there be ten?] Speaking over myself has never been easier.

[Yeah. City records say there should be. Can you not get lower?] The military person sounded intrigued, all the way up until she was snarky.

[Nope. Bomberman. Wanna come down and blow a hole in the floor? Hive’s dead.]

[Do it yourself. You can borrow my shaped charges catalog. I’m getting civvies loaded on the buses. With the green shirts here.]

[Got it. Did I lose track of time? Eh, be out in a couple of minutes. Do we need to escort them out or something?] I had apparently lost track of time while killing the hive. Not that it really mattered, except I should hopefully have another token.

[No, you two stay there and clear more buildings.] A new voice came on the military line.

[Sure thing Colonel.] Bomberman seemed to know who it was so I let him do the talking. [We have a few buses leftover up here so if we can clear multiple buildings we can get more out next time.]

“Naille, gimme something with enough directed boom to go down and a spot to put it I won’t bring the building down with.” A crate appeared next to me, I flipped it open and found a rather large cutting charge folded up in it.

<>Place the charge directly under the other holes. It should be safe enough there.

Two minutes of fiddly work had the breaching charge placed, allowing me to ooze back away from it far enough to feel safe setting it off. When I set it off, giggling to myself as I could actually stand off and appreciate the explosion. It was rather anti-climactic, getting a disappointed noise from me. [Awe…]

[What’s wrong down there? You sounded upset.]

[Where’s my earth-shattering kaboom?] I pouted as I moved up to where the goop that was left of antithesis was draining into a new hole onto the plug that had dropped into what looked like a server room. [Also there’s some stealth servers down here. Somebody else can figure out what they are, I’m coming back up.]

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[<>We can crack them if you just plug into one.] Naille was apparently a part of the voice chat? On second thought that made sense.

[Meh, I don’t care. Anybody else?] I oozed my way up to the next floor, having to take the long way up.

[I’ll send down an engineering team on the next run] The colonel’s voice dipped into the line again. [Good job out there Samurai. Keep it up.]

My hindbrain kicked in. [Oorah.]

[Oh we got a mud leg here! That totally explains everything. Nutbar marines.] Bomberman sounded thoroughly amused.

[You should watch out Bomberman. Those old-school marines eat scrap and shit nails. And he’s an eldritch abomination now.] Our usual operator came back on the line chuckling.

[Thank you lieutenant snips] I let the smug into my voice. [ETA topside is five. Still need to clear the upper floors.]

[Negative Shoggoth. We droned it, it’s good enough. And my name is Lieutenant Butters.]

[I like snips myself. Gonna stick with it. Good to go on the next building then.] “Naille, just give me a generic soldier look for human form for now. Fatigues and balaclava.”

<>It occurs to me that you didn’t need the human form. You can simply shrink yourself into a smaller blob of goo. Sorry about that. But I’ve got one queued up.

“Variety is the spice of life.” I grinned under the balaclava with the generic Ken doll face as the rest of me sunk into its back leaving just a soldier with an SMG and basic body armor visible. “Let’s see how people react.”

I pushed it to hike faster up the inclined ramps to get out. Dropping a few more resonators on the way past dead plants. As I pushed out the walking door on the side of the building I caught a couple of buses driving away with military escort, but the rest of them were lined up out of the way. As I trotted over to Bomberman I resettled my SMG across my chest.

“I think I want to switch my human form gear up a bit.” Bomberman was startled as my horrific voice came out of the mask on what he might have assumed was a soldier who got left behind. “A heavier carbine, sidearm, and a few grenades and mags cued up on the flack vest.”

<>With your class two Void Walker you can pick up a mining laser or we can reskin a shrunk-down gravitic accelerated cargo launcher you wanted to work as an object launcher now. Two hundred points for that GAC, an extra sixty to fill six pouches with generic micro explosive ammo. Just name the spread of grenades you want.

“Add something with a grenade launcher that can lob standard grenades? And as those regular grenades I’d want two of my special lures, two resonators, and two thermobarics.” Bomberman just snickered as while I could speak simultaneously on two conversations I still couldn’t open multiple channels to not have to speak aloud to stay off comms.

<>Hummm. Yes. But you would need to open a standard kinetic firearms catalog to get it done. A box dropped next to me, and cracking it displayed the four additional grenades. I took a moment to think while distributing them as well as retrieving the other two from tool arms extended from my upper spine temporarily.

“Go for it.” I waited a second before another box appeared. Quickly Distributing things again I stood up looking ready to go. Ending in a quick point check.

Points: 488

Tokens: 1

“Here I bulked up and you slimed down. Where’s all that mass you dumped?” He stood up from where he was leaning and walked over to me. “Where are the arms coming from even?”

“Folded space. I got my very own pocket dimension to store my extra mass in. When the fur flies I can go full ugly. Until then I’ll use Ken Doll form for interactions. Less creepy that way.” I started moving to the building we had skipped so we could check it as I spoke.

“Ken Doll? Also if you want to be less creepy stop using eldrich voice.” He chuckled as he mounted his dog/gun platform and caught up.

“Eldritch abominations don’t need genitals. Plus I’ve known tons of Marines who let their dick’s get them in trouble. Fuck that noise.” We both laughed at that. I dialed the of tone my voice back as I spoke to something more bass and less creepy.

“With that build, you should lighten it a bit more. You sound like a huge guy. Maybe shoot more for a baritone?” We entered the building, immediately looking for stairs.

“How’s this? Also, Naille, map me?” I had shifted again to more of a mid-baritone level that seemed to fit better.

“Much better. Did you get the map? I don’t have hacking tools.” He followed as I turned to where the stairs should be, not trusting the elevators.

“Yeah, Naille share it, please. Also, You should pick it up if you have points. Really useful.” I paused with my hand on the door. “In fact in the spirit of teamwork, you should see what upgrades you can make off my catalogs as a stopgap. Did you grab better sensors for you mutt?”

“Uh. Yeah, I did. But you’re right. You have anything good for cyber warfare?” We stepped into the stairwell, his hand on my shoulder as I led. The dog bringing up the rear. There was no access down here, but the maps showed ten floors down so we’d have to find another way later.

“Just one of the class one catalogs. I’ve not bought many class twos yet.” Surprisingly he took the first flight up without mounting up on the drone. I popped the door and extended a sensor cluster in to check before moving on. “Hell, most of my cybernetics came out of your class two catalog. You really should just drop the hundred for the upgrade on the cyber warfare catalog. Everybody should have at least class one cyber warfare. It makes life so much easier when you can just tell the corporations to go fuck themselves.”

“Yeah. My AI says the same. I’ll take it if you're offering.” I stopped at the next door.

“Already did. Go for it.” I waited for him to get a box, inject himself in the neck, and then grab my shoulder again.

A quick check left me with no signs of antithesis so we moved on. This went on for a full twenty floors before we got to the only bunker listed above ground. There were twenty more floors up but the place seemed to be cleared out.

“You wanna take this one? I’ve been on point so far for talking to people so it’s only fair.” He grinned as we stepped onto the floor, which was a bank of elevators letting out to a room with a big fuck off door again. The door was shut but there was blood smeared on the walls. “Oh shit.”

“Yeah.” I crouch walked quickly to the door access panel, letting the other two, man and dog, watch the elevators.

The panel was smeared with blood too. I used the Nanos in my hand to clean it enough to start punching at the access, before giving up and sticking my finger in the interface socket. It had power but was locked out from external use, so Naille had to hack it for me to get the internal cameras up. They wouldn’t even display I had to project them via AR.

“Well, this place is fucked. Also a budding hive.” I channeled the video feed that still worked to Bomberman.

“Yeah. Open it and drop some melt bombs in?” I nodded at his suggestion, triggering the door to open. The Robo-dog let out a ploop sound like a grenade launcher, twice. The inside fire started immediately.

I took a knee and raised my rifle, a Strohl plasma caster extruding from my back on a full-size tentacle to extend around my side and add to the weapon coverage. We kinda needed it as several visually flickering creatures charged at the door flailing scythed limbs at us. We lit them up and they didn’t get close. Yet another mad minute of shooting at anything that moved and we got a Token ting noise this time.

Points 488 → 622

Tokens: 2

“Wait how do I have two tokens? Plus the numbers seem funny for that one.” I stood up while reaching for the door control again. “Gonna shut this and smother it by shutting down the vents.”

“Good idea. And the points would be because we split ten Model nines. Tokens were for getting enough people out and probably this stealth hive.” He shrugged and turned around to watch the room. “Should get another token for the three hundred that just went out sooner or later.”

“Check the elevator shafts,” I said after grunting in agreement. The door was already swinging shut. I closed up the vault, shut down, and locked off the air, damn thing could even pump it out so I did. The one camera that still worked showed me the fires going out. I left it sealed as a tomb when I finished.

“Left bank clear,” Bomberman called before heading over to the right bank.

“Hey, Naille.”

<>I have opened a second channel for you to communicate with me solely.

{Okay? Right. Can you hack the building and unlock the elevators, get us one to the sub-basement? I wanna make sure there isn’t another hive down there.}

<>I can. It would certainly be easier than entering through the hidden server farm. I discovered while I was in the shelter system that the two are linked.

“Fuuuuuucccckkkkk….” I was finally able to facepalm and have it understood.

“What? We’re clear right. Did you spot something in the vault?” He turned back to watch me, my finger still in the vault controls.

“No. The servers, they connect under the street to this building. I bet to a couple of others.”

<>Indeed. There is a building on the north side of the road behind us that connects as well. Another subsidiary of the same parent corporation that owns this building and the garage.

“Well… Elevator down?” As soon as I said it one of the ones on the right bank Dinged and opened. “Express straight to sub one.”

“After you,” Bomberman made a sweeping bow, using his extended arm to hold the door.