Mild disappointment. A spark of the remaining confidence from leveling up assured Tapper that Rethar was no longer a valid threat, but that also meant that he couldn't justify any lethal measures against the human. He just wanted Rethar to stop, so when Rethar fell to his knees Tapper wondered if he had unknowingly used a new power.
No, something was pushing down on Tapper as well. The atmospheric pressure in the room had increased within the last five seconds — Tapper lacked the programming to accurately measure it, but he estimated that the pressure was past "noticeable" and approaching "uncomfortable" for average humanoids. He started to bend, and Tapper locked down the servomotors in his legs before he could buckle under the pressure.
Rethar struggled to stand and resume his march, leaning against an invisible gale-force wind that blew his hair back without touching anything else in the room besides Tapper. Just like Tapper's Suck spell on the slime, only so much stronger and all that energy poured unbidden from the core. The man's feet slid on the worn ground and he never stopped fighting; Rethar's tenacity would be remarkable had he used it towards a more productive life.
"Mister Rethar, I believe the dungeon disagrees that you are owed anything."
Rethar snarled and lurched sideways, slamming a shoulder into Tapper before he could unlock his legs. The robot toppled over in a heap, and by the time his limbs readjusted the pressure was too strong to stand with swirls and eddies of energy buffeting him in random directions. Panic gripped Tapper; he felt pride over a human's struggling and now he paid for that hubris, all because Tapper reached level 3. He couldn't reach Rethar, he couldn't move, he couldn't hear Phanya or Steffo yelling, and he couldn't work against the invisible currents.
Wait. There was something Tapper couldn't recall, not a corrupted record but a half-formed memory, of reading about invisible enemies. He brought up the list of available feats and scrolled through them, skimming the descriptions as quickly as he could comprehend.
[Feat: Automatic Response Module
The ARM upgrade offers a helping hand in avoiding dangers, even enemies which you cannot perceive. Your base dodge threshold is increased by the number of augmented cyberlimbs you have installed, and augmented cyberlimbs will move themselves to avoid or mitigate damage when possible.]
[Feat: Overclock
Push beyond your cybernetic limits. You can temporarily increase your Chrome die for any appropriate check, but after you do the relevant cyberlimb must save against a degradation check.]
[Feat: Cram
Who needs subtlety? Each of your cyberlimbs can house an additional augment over its normal max, but you cannot store or hide any of them.]
Tapper knew this idea stretched definitions, but he was in danger from unseen forces and growing worse by the second. By the time he found the feat, the color saturation was increasing in time with the pressure and started straining his optical sensors. He picked the Automatic Response Module feat and the robot’s legs kicked to bend Tapper out of the way, his limbs snapping out without any direct control to steady himself.
All six limbs, even the two thin nozzle spindles, curled to support Tapper against the increased gravity. It forced him to bend backwards into an odd, inverted insect, and his head spun around to reorientate. Then the walking program, still unfinished but eager to prove itself, kicked in and all six limbs jerked, twisted, and bent with forward momentum.
He watched his own body move in fascination, only vaguely aware of what he was doing on a conscious level but feeling it with a focused intensity. Nothing was in sync, nothing looked right, and yet there was always a limb to catch Tapper and keep him moving forward. Tapper was also vaguely aware of several distressing sounds coming from the other side of the doorway as Phanya and Steffo watched the show, but Tapper couldn’t let Rethar reach the core first without dire consequences. He kicked off the struggling man, crawled over the chair and up the desk, and just as the pressure started to dent his casing Tapper reached out and touched the core.
[Your team has successfully conquered the dungeon Throne of the First King!]
[Perk reward: Arcane Familiar
They even come with a tiny wizard hat! Your soul is bound —
The message continued, but it blinked out when everything went rainbow. That is the most succinct explanation that Tapper ever managed to give the following moments, as each and every one of his sensory input modules simultaneously crashed and returned one single color as its entire readout. His visual cameras saw yellow, his tactile plates touched green, his auditory mic heard orange, and his olfactory sensors smelled blue. He even, somehow, tasted purple, a memory he would cherish but never replicate.
[Mutation save attempt successful!]
Sensory inputs finished their reboot and Tapper was still standing in the security office, feeling neither harmed nor altogether whole. Had he shrunk, or was the room now slightly larger? Before he could take any proper measurements a moan broke his concentration, Rethar's means of announcing that he did not handle the rainbow nearly as well as Tapper.
The man's skin shifted from flushed to pale and clammy in an instant, his moan growing from nausea to an anguished scream as he gripped at his right shoulder. A loud pop pierced the room, followed by several more, as a joint gave out under pressure and Rethar's exoskeleton broke off at the shoulder.
Tapper watched in shocked fascination as all the blood and color on Rethar's body rushed to his exposed right arm, the entire limb swelling with fluid. Blisters formed and popped and spilled something faintly green onto the floor, leaving behind shiny red muscle that grew larger and smoother with every burst. His fingers stretched and fused together in a long, curved wedge… a crab claw.
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Rethar's entire right arm doubled in size and replaced the purple metal exoskeleton with red organic chitin, slick with some fluid and steaming in the fluorescent light. The man never stopped screaming, but as he raised his new arm into the air the pitch shifted from pain to madness. Gibbering, incoherent madness salted with sobs and peppered with laughter that meant everything to Rethar and nothing to everyone else. He turned and fled, running with inhuman speed that bowled over the jammed security robot, past two bewildered teens, and down the hall without sparing a thought.
He never stopped screaming.
The pause left in Rethar's wake was long and pregnant, stunning the rest into silence until Phanya managed to break out. "So… get too close to a shift hole, risk mutation or going mad with power. Got it."
Tapper broke next, all bravado drained by that horrific organic sight. He still held the core, and it required a constant effort of will to keep its pulsing energy contained just beneath the surface. "Y-yes, all the more reason to not leave the core here. We cannot take it out of the dungeon, for some reason I am sure of this, so we must hide it. Or it needs a guardian."
His internal thesaurus spoke up with advice, for once, and Tapper's eyebrows smiled. "It needs a curator."
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"Are you sure about this?" ASCII’s stylized face shifted to show one raised eyebrow, either to mirror or to mock Tapper's own. "I trusted Steffo to return his loan, but those legs were already written off as a total loss. Since you would most likely either break or 'acquire' them for Bow Kids or whatever."
Tapper bit back his remark for now, instead focusing on the clasps of his pelvic unit while Phanya and Steffo reassembled the super soldier display. "Of course, a good bartender always repays their debts. And I also have a proposition for you, besides."
"I am not going to enter into some business deal with you, teapot."
"I know, that is actually why. You really aren't programmed with any profit motive whatsoever? What even is the prime directive for an, uh, important federal robot?"
ASCII perked up at the question. "That would be the oath, of course! All public servants swear to, ahem, 'Support and defend the Constitution of the United World against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter. I solemnly swear to uphold the regulations and laws of the United World Federation, to become an ambassador of peace and goodwill, to represent the highest ideals of peace and brotherhood, to protect and serve the Federation and its people, to serve always the interests of peace, to respect the Constitution, and to offer aid to any and all beings that request it.'"
Somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of Tapper's programming, his emotional subroutines overlapped with Bowson directives just enough to form a thought and internally laugh. Not only was there no profit motive, they promised to help anyone for free? No wonder that old federal system didn't last, it was only a matter of time before they were entirely bought out. Tapper severed that connection before the thought could progress any further, and reminded himself that was exactly what he needed right now.
Instead, he modulated his best sales voice and said, "Great! That's just great. Such unwavering dedication deserves recognition, and with Zero's departure there's now a vacancy to fill."
ASCII's face returned to the cautious raised eyebrow. "Explain."
The lack of scathing retort made Tapper beam internally, the old bot was already invested. "I just so happen to have the authority to expand your parameters beyond the walls of this museum. Ah-ah, no worries about breaking any of your laws or programming, this opportunity falls well within them. We want you to watch over the entire mall the exact same way you've maintained this museum! Who else can be trusted with so much responsibility over such a dutiful agent?"
He made a show of pretending to consider it, but ASCII was not nearly the salesbot compared to Tapper. "Fine, so long as I don't betray my station then I accept the added responsibilities. What do I sign?"
"Nothing to sign, just play through your oath again. Silently, please. Keep it running on a loop to help you focus and lean down here." ASCII followed the instructions, and when his monitor was nearly touching the ground Tapper surprised everyone by leaping off his detached legs and landing on the unsuspecting curator.
Wrapping his spindles around the support pole so that ASCII couldn't buck him off, Tapper dropped the sales voice and gleefully shouted, "Just paying back your kindness, friend! Now hold still and open up!" With his functional hand Tapper reached into the trusty plastic bag on his arm and pulled out the glowing dungeon core. Tapper still wasn't sure whether the core was alive or merely reactive, but there was a sense that it didn't want to be carried around like this and was just about ready to throw a fit. It needed a proper home.
Phanya and Steffo, meanwhile, had already finished returning all the borrowed soldier gear and settled in to watch the show. Neither one was willing to go near the "ball of mutating fuckery" and since Tapper was dead set on carrying it around, it was ultimately his choice on what he did with it. So when they watched Tapper's torso leap off of his legs, ride ASCII like a mechanical bull, pull out the orb of pure energy, and somehow shove it through the monitor's screen, Phanya just scoffed with bemused acceptance. That made as much sense as anything else here.
The core flickered, phased, and melted into the glass screen, warming Tapper's hand as it departed. Maybe, hopefully, some part of himself went with it. Pride in his plan working mixed with regret that he missed out on the opportunity and left a hollow sanguine melancholy, as Tapper hopped off the vibrating computer and landed in Steffo's waiting arms. ASCII's monitor spasmed through various faces marred by distortion and glitches, and Tapper's pride started to flicker under the doubt that maybe he misunderstood the core.
Speakers sparkled with static and an odd warbling undertone, slowly modulating into ASCII's voice. He was speaking too quickly for the two organics to discern, but Tapper noticed a repeating pattern in the garble. He recorded a small sample and gradually slowed it down until the playback clarified into the same oath, repeated without end.
"It's that silly oath he gave earlier!" Tapper shouted over the jabbering computer. "He's just repeating it over and over!"
Steffo shouted back, "Well you told him to! Try saying it back, maybe it'll slow him down!"
Tapper played the recording through his own speakers at a normal speed and max volume, and at first nothing seemed to happen. But Tapper carefully ran a proper calculation and determined that ASCII's talking speed slowed by 5% every ten seconds, so regardless of causality Tapper kept his recording on repeat until ASCII slowed to match. His stylized face also stabilized in time, and once he fully returned to normalcy ASCII's monitor gave one violent shake side to side. Every single structure and object in view that wasn't the trio of onlookers shifted in tune with the computer, just a smudge on the edge of perception, and the face facsimile opened its eyes.