[That’s right,] Cut in a second voice. [Samurai north of you are having a hell of a time and several larger models are leading hordes in your direction. There are several other buildings with Shelters nearby but no one has been able to check them yet.]
[Yup. I got two buildings from our south on my way here, but there are at least thirty more shelters in this region. Plus active Antithesis all over.] Bomberman walked out the front of the building, looking like he was winded even at this distance.
[Understood. I’ll be down shortly to help secure the ground floor.] “Hey, Naille. Can the goop survive a fall? Can I?”
<>Yes to both, you intend to step off from here
I didn’t answer verbally, simply oozing off the edge. The fall was weird. My hover systems strained to slow the fall, while my ablative armor dragged down, causing me to bubble below my chassis for a few seconds before having to literally pull myself together after impact. I definitely lost some mass there.
<>I was going to say, but we should upgrade your countergravity to better compensate for the fall. Naille sounded put out at my antics.
“Sorry.”
“Holy shit! Did you jump off the roof?” Bomberman jumped out of his skin, nearly chucking a grenade at me.
“Sixtyith.” [Uh do we have any numbers on enemies?] The line was still connected so I hoped the Military person would give me something useful.
[At least three separate groups. The best number I can give you is Hundreds. Each.]
“Fuck.” We both uttered the same word at the same time.
[I’ve got self-replicating minefields for area denial. But they take a bit to set up and cost a lot.] Bomberman started for one end of the street.
[Best I can offer is lots and lots of plasma fire. But so long as they’re single digits I can cut through them fairly well. It’s a shame we don’t have access to monofilament weapons.]
[I do. Why?] Bomberman Stopped and turned to me cautiously.
[Area denial. Set them up in an area with power enough to blender lesser enemies, then we only need to deal with the bigger stuff. I’ve got a distinct lack of close-range options for lots of enemies. I can do one or two at a time right now.]
Naille joined the chat channel, surprising me. [<>Actually with the points you have and the catalogs you have we can do something about that. You did just upgrade your core catalog after all. Stronger, longer, more powerful arms are just a purchase away.]
[Honestly, I’d rather be able to extrude monofilament ribbons or something to cut everything close to shreds. Like something… a couple of hairs thick at the center, maybe an inch wide, as long as you can reasonably make them, with a fractal monofilament edging? Use some base graphene muscles inside it to make it moveable. Add some basic sensors to it for proprioception.]
[<>Thats… actually doable. Although you’d need another catalog it’s only fifty points. Fifty points per cilia. You can replace tool arms with them.]
[Sounds good to me. Load me up.]
Points: 222 → 22
“You know you’re still on group chat right?” Bomberman yelled over from where he was setting up a small legion of landmines.
[Yeah. Sorry. I’d rather stay on chat for when the shit hits the fan and I don’t know how to switch channels yet. Besides, losing track of you freaked me out a little. Which I thought was impossible but it still happened. Weird right? Anyway.] A box had dropped next to me, I extruded a few tool limbs to open it, pull out three replacements, and begin the quick process of switching them out. I stored the extras in my armor with everything else.
“I keep forgetting you’re not just a newbie but… childlike too.” He muttered that, but I still heard it.
<>Would you like me to continue adding replacements until your basic tool limbs are swapped out?
“Yes, please. I don’t want to lose my big manipulators but I need as many of the ribbons as I can get. This is going to suck. Also don’t ask, just add more mass to my armor the second we get enough points. Double it.” I made sure to speak quietly into the muffling mass of my armor rather than extruding a voice module to the exterior in order not to bother anybody on the channel.
<>Understood I’ll handle that on the fly while you’re fighting. I turned us in the direction I could hear a lot of movement from. I moved to the far end of the street from Bomberman. Better to get coverage since they may come from multiple directions and we didn’t need to be stepping on each other's toes. As it were.
[Here they come.] Three new ribbon tentacles extruded from my armor along with every weapon I had available, grinder mouth, guns, and all.
There were a lot, and as soon as I rounded the corner I could see the hoard. Mostly the doggy types but random larger ones including the tentacle bears and the sedan-sized armored ones. A couple of others I didn’t recognize.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
It was surreal, being swarmed by creatures that looked like plant-based animals, yet not one of them made a noise besides clawing on the blacktop. I had a brief moment to revel in the weirdness before I was buried in angry plant dogs. Things kinda blurred from there. Anything I came in contact with got cut at with a ribbon, if that or the ranged weapons didn’t work I hit whatever it was with the grinder.
At some point, I noticed I had more armor and no more tool tentacles. I vaguely remember snapping out for another grinder at one point. I definitely don’t remember asking for any more plasma casters but ended up with three more anyway. It was complete chaos and I subsumed myself in it. Not really thinking, speaking only as a means to get what I needed. Which was more carnage. I’m not certain but I may have laughed maniacally in my Eldritch Horror voice for most of it. Whatever happened, I had a fucking blast.
By the time I was the only thing on the street moving my internal clock said only twelve minutes had passed. Felt like more, and less at the same time. I also wanted more, but there was nothing in sight. It took me a second to shake off the battle craze.
[Bomberman, you good?] I focused a cluster of sensors in his direction. He waved from behind a barricade of concrete and metal that hadn’t been there minutes before, flashing a thumbs up in my direction.
[Samurai. Verbal confirmation of survival?] The military comms person sounded nervous.
[Alive and kicking,] Bomberman sounded exhausted. [Though I need a few to sort shit and repair some damage. Do we have more incoming?]
[I have survived.] I didn’t bother with more about myself. As I could see the street was empty for the moment and heard that nothing was moving I decided to chime in. [If there are more, they’re still out of my sensor range.]
[Correct. You are currently clear of any open threat from the street, We’ve got satellite coverage of the city now.]
[How's the fight overall,] I couldn’t help myself from asking. Curiosity and all that.
[The incursion is in the second stage. We’re rooting out proto-hives now. No more incoming mass.]
[That’s a fucking relief.] Bomberman stood up and waved me over. [Hey, did you get bigger?]
[Yes. I have doubled my initial mass. Then I lost a portion of it. The nanites are mostly ablative armor still.] I quickly slithered down the block to join him. [I’m going to need to take a few for an upgrade cycle, is that all right?]
[Sure. We can hit the next building soon. Speaking of which, do we have evac for the ones we’ve already hit?] He leaned against his barricade while rubbing something on his shoulder.
[Give us twenty and we’ll have armored transport for two hundred there.]
[We have two fiftyish in just this one building.] I kept out of it as Bomberman argued. [Plus two others with a hundred or so in each.]
[We’ll have to take it in stages. If you could hold the region we would be appreciative.]
[Fuck. Got it.] He turned to me, “We’re gonna be here a bit so go ahead. I can hold out while you upgrade. Think I’m going to open up something with more direct-fire capabilities myself.”
“You know you don’t have to use regular guns. Mortars and Missiles are technically bombs, just like landmines.”
He stopped and stared at me for a solid minute. A dumbfounded look plastered on his face. Finally, he screamed rage to the heavens and stomped a few times before finally circling back on me.
“Six months I’ve been a Samurai and… fucking fuckity fuck. I feel stupid.” He sighed and facepalmed before running his hand down to cup his mouth.
“Sometimes it requires out-of-context sources for proper solutions. Mayhap you invest in some sort of power armor or drone to carry it as well?” I knew there would be facial ticks to add to my speech, but I had no way to express them as an amorphous blob. I was a little disappointed I couldn’t half-heartedly suppress amusement for his viewing annoyance.
“Can’t afford anything like that. But a mortar emplacement and ammo is a go for now.” He turned and started rebuilding his bunker.
<>You wish to purchase upgrades? Naille had no patience, immediately prompting me even as my attention flitted to my point counter.
Points: 6,735
I had built up a shit ton even after all the purchases.
“Okay,” I mumbled into my armor. “Chassis upgrade, I need more manipulator ports, better ability to use more at once, and better hover capability, just to start.”
<>Might I recommend waiting on manipulators and capacity until you’ve evacuated a reasonable number of people from the area? You will receive more points as well as tokens from that. Once you have tokens you can purchase a class two cybernetics catalog. For now perhaps simply upgrade your frame to accommodate everything. You have access to class two Void Walker now, so swapping for a stronger frame and upgrading your SMG might give you better options until you get the tokens?
“Or I could just wait overall. I did well enough there. Things are quiet right now. However, I am curious about the new shell. Maybe something without a face? Having omnidirectional capability would be nice.”
<>That would be a reasonable method. Especially since you tend to want to utilize your optics separately. Perpahse adding them to longer stronger eyestalks, allowing you to keep your core deeper in your armor?
“Yes. For now, can we extend the arms into fingers, each one a separate tool connector? Maybe have a sub-brain sort of setup to be able to use them?”
<>I… hadn’t thought of that. It’s a brilliant stopgap! Yes. I believe I can cobble together something from your catalogs that will be most effective. However, I would like to open up a drone catalog and a class one combat AI catalog to make the limbs more effective. Each would cost fifty.
“Do it. How much overall?” I shifted to move for the building door, expecting I’d need my surgical suite in the sub-basement.
<>You’re frame can be replaced here for four thousand. You needn't go back down for the surgery suite. It would triple your large arms, but you’d lose all the smaller arms from your core. That said each arm would have five sub sockets. Each set to a large arm size, allowing you to socket a branch to it allowing for each of them to house three smaller limbs. I can also apply stronger gravitic negation modules, not enough to fly but enough to move through buildings without causing floor damage and fall considerable distances without problems.
“Wait, so I don’t need the suit downstairs?” I stopped in the lobby. “Also, nice. Shame I can’t just get the flight capability.”
<>No. You’ll need a new gantry. So here should be fine. They are, on purpose, disposable after all. That four thousand includes the cost of the gantry as well as socketing all of your limbs. Including the pair of original human-like ones. If you would like true flight from Gravitics, that is possible now, but it would cost an additional two hundred points.