Naille went silent for a long moment as I turned and began roasting the feathered worm things with the flame thrower adjacent tool I had ordered. It was effective within a few feet so I was able to reach the ceiling and roast the little bastards as I went. Soon enough finding the source of them in the form of a cracked open elevator door. A hand poked out halfway up the door, from where the floor of the internal section was obvious. Apparently, it got stuck between floors.
“Ohhh…. Looks like there may be a problem with the elevators. I should inform maintenance.”
<>You may want to wait until after this incursion. For now, perhaps checking down the shaft would be a good idea. I paused a minute as I flamed another wormy thing climbing out of the door.
“Yeah. I can do that.” I set my weapons down to pry the doors open wider on the single shaft below ground. Surprisingly easy with the new arms. Extending and tilting an optic stalk I looked down the shaft. It was poorly lit by emergency lighting along the way and at the bottom but I could see that there was a maintenance door under the floor level of the last stop. It was open and a pair of threes were trying to climb through the door into the bottom level.
“I think we found their entryway.” After a moment's pause to wait for Naille to answer, which he didn't, I decided to go with plan A. “Gonna bomb it.”
<>You’re what? Naille sounded almost like he was screeching as I began to prepare my improvised welding bomb.
“Gonna bomb it. Lots of fire, some overpressure. It’ll be fun!” I reached in and dropped the bomb before shoving the arm back into the elevator and letting the doors close. “Lots of dead plants.”
<>You could die from this too!
“Naw. I’ll live.” I picked up my weapons again and trundled off in the direction of the nearest janitor's closet as fast as my motivator would take me.
I had barely gotten the door closed before it buckled inwards unseating from its tracks. The explosion had rippled through the building's lower floors destroying less secured doors.
<>You realize there may have been someone alive down here still. Naille sounded upset.
“Looking at the bunch of angry plants I seriously doubt it. Anybody alive would have been in a secure room with defense against the pressure wave.” I gestured at the door, then promptly rammed it open again. “The lower floors are full of sealed hazard labs with airlock doors. They all have defenses against explosions from inside. This is a research facility after all. Anybody in there would be safe from the explosion as well as the… oh. That door is fucked.”
I rolled up to the elevator door and found its doors were on the far side of the hall and spread out as they had blown off. Moving up to glance down I spotted the top of the elevator at the bottom of the shaft.
“Upside, I sealed the entrance for a bit. Maybe fucked up a lot of angry plants.” I looked at my point total.
Points: 5,050
Tokens: 1
The tokens were new, but I think that’s part of the points thing. Maybe?
“Yup. Lots of them.” I giggled through my speaker so dementedly that it warped and crackled, exposing the damaged nature of some of my internals. “Also may have wiggled my brain box a bit… Think I’ll sit here and heal for a moment.”
<>Did you know that before you did that or come up with it later? Maybe while we sit here you might consider upgrades? You’ll need a few to get out of this place. There is an incursion going on.
“Oh.” I dragged the word out for a moment. Promptly ignoring the first question I went with the second. “Sure, upgrades are good. Maybe we should talk about goals first?”
<>That sounds reasonable
“I think I wanna be an eldrich abomination!” I think the cheer in my voice may have disturbed Naille given the choking sound I got back from him. “What?”
<>Why?
“Because they’re immortal fuck you levels of everything dies? I kinda wanna survive this and the enemy to die a lot. So a formless blob of mouths and tentacles and eyes and teeth and horror and hate… well that sounds like a good way to go. So let's skip the idea from before and go this route!”
<>Fair. I guess I knew going into this you would be… different. Picking a random card was a risk after all. It’s honestly more fun in the end, I think. Naille paused and seemed to be thinking for a solid minute, allowing me time to get over the worst of the punch drunk from the explosion. <>I think I have a path for you. You haven’t got nearly enough to start as one. But you can get there working with what you have. As to your request for formless, that’s going to have to wait a long time for true formlessness. But I can get you a budget version with the right build. For now, I would recommend purchasing and installing a new frame from your Void Walker catalog. There are a number of them, but for your previously stated needs, I think a maintenance and repair frame would be best instead of what I previously recommended.
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I would have shrugged had I better shoulders, as it was I raised both hands palms up without releasing my weapons. “Sounds fine to me. Would it be more mobile?”
<>Absolutely. It would also have far better life support out of the box, but I think you should open up a cybernetics catalog to increase that gain further. Allowing for better basic life support but also enhancements to your cognitive capabilities. And finally a medical catalog for an auto biological repair section. You don’t have much but it would be good to keep it in top condition. Especially considering the long-term damage currently incurred.
“Sounds good. How much will it cost?”
<>A basic cybernetics catalog is fifty points, but the cybernetics will cost about two thousand.
“I’m following you.” I shifted a bit, absently using my floor-cleaning undercarriage to mop up some of the green splatter on the floor.
<>Next is the medical catalog, which is fifty. But for the whole shebang, you need to buy the class two version. Which will come with the ability to have Nanos that will continuously be available for organic healing. The upgrade is three hundred. So the total is two thousand four hundred. But you need to spend an additional for a temporary surgical suite. It’s two hundred. Add on the five hundred for the new exo-frame will run you three thousand one hundred.
“And plenty of points left for more later. So what are the token things?” Stopping my cleaning, having only managed about five feet before my tanks were full of muck.
<>Oh, yeah. You get those for special feats like taking out a hive or saving lots of people. There was a hive in the sub-basement or city works under the building, so you got one. You should go find another closest to hide in for the surgery.
“Won’t be any. I blew up the lower floors and all the doors on this floor are trashed. Just do it here.”
<>Are you sure? I need confirmation for three thousand one hundred points worth of medical costs.
“Yeah. Let's do this.” I centered myself in the hall better.
<>“Very well. This may pinch.
The lights went out. At 4:56 pm.
The clock in the corner of my vision opposite the point total read 7:23 pm when the lights came back up.
“Should have said something about better sensors….” A mecha dendrite reached around and rubbed at the side of my chassis. It didn’t alleviate the headache I had. I had immediately noticed a massive increase in my optical acuity, which was what sparked the thought.
<>We can do that now if you like?
“Uh…Yeah. How much and how long?” I decided not to try and move much just in case I needed the gantry I was currently housed in.
<>I would recommend class one sensor systems for fifty points as well as class one cyber warfare systems for one hundred. Each has several useful utility systems, including multi-spectral sensors and a hardened communications system that will allow you to override most corporate security. One hundred each. Installation can be done on the fly and will only take a few minutes. If you remain in the gantry they can be done in less than sixty seconds.
“Do it. After that, we’ll discuss weapons.” I watched numbers tick down.
Points:1,950 → 1,600
Tokens: 0
I had to not jump as several arms on the gantry swung into the frame and removed my eyes. The time ticked down and a minute passed before my sight came back up. If they had been an order of magnitude better before, it was double that now. Three times better than the grainy glitchy shit I’d been living with for years.
“Oh… that’s nice.” If I could grin I would. I began to push the gantry away, noticing I had four large mecha dendrites as well as a myriad of smaller ones that seemed to sprout from my back. “I can’t help but feel like I should have a memory about this right now….”
<>I found something close to what you might recognize in your Void Walker catalog. A few modifications and it’s suitably less than human for now I hope. You’re now something close to what would be recognized colloquially as a Matrix Sentinal. Or as close as I could get. You even have basic flight ability, although the repulsors aren’t that strong.
Naille sounded so cheerful at getting something right I didn’t have the heart to tell him I couldn’t remember anything about what he was talking about. It did tickle something back there, but not strongly enough to remember. Instead, I floated forward, using the main ‘arms’ to flex their claws in front of my eyes. Shifting them to look down the front as it were, only to find two of the larger ones had some sort of barrel on them.
“What are in these things?”
<>The large ones are split between a multi-tool, welding torch, cutting laser, and what are colloquially known as the ‘Jaws of Life’. The smaller ones have more specialized tools. All of them can be outfitted with weapons of varying sizes.
“Good.” I turned and found my cracked-open salt and pepper shaker of a shell. It took me a moment to get back on task.
<>Are you okay?
“Fine. Just weird being out of that. I feel kind of like an egg that has hatched. Bigger and better than before even.” Reaching over I snagged the weapons lying in the now useless arms. Indicating those very arms. “Can I take these with me?”
<>You have the tools to recover them. Shall I direct you?
“Make it quick, I wanna go up the elevator shaft and see what else there is to kill.” Instead of speaking Naille simply took over several of my smaller arms and quickly detached both arms, moving them to the rear of my current body to store for now.
I didn’t argue, simply took off in the direction of the elevator shaft a few meters away. Which was wide open, the doors off as I previously noticed. Peering down I checked the previous entrance but there still didn’t seem to be any movement there. Turning instead up, I moved to the floor the shelter was on and pried the distended doors open.