After about an hour of slowly cutting away at the writhing mass that was once Riley, we had finally gotten her down to about as small as we could go. There were multiple devices attached to every part of us that both Armsmaster and I had collaborated on. It seemed like the rest of the heroes had started to relax a bit and were beginning to comb through the town. I still had weird tinker drugs pumping through my veins, keeping what I was able to feel to a bare minimum. I think I even saw Weld which was weird cause I didn't think I'd see any Wards during an S9 cleanup. I had eventually pieced together that this group wasn't here to fight the S9, they were there to clean up, which was why it took so long for them to arrive.
"Dragon will arrive in 5 minutes." I looked up to Armsmaster who was now staring off into space, probably talking to his girlfriend. There honestly wasn't much for me to do after the first 30 minutes or so. Once we started setting my containment devices up, there wasn't much Riley could do.
"That's a relief, I don't think there's anyone else who could safely keep this little demon." He nodded and got back to fiddling with the spare containment link that we hadn't needed. He hadn't exactly asked for it, but I wasn't going to make a big deal out of it if he wanted to keep the thing.
"Are you ready to start the separation?" Was I ready? It had been so quick that I hadn't even thought about it when I connected our vascular systems. At that point, I didn't have much control over what solution my specialties handed me, but now that I'd been barely hanging onto life for hours and the main reason I wasn't dead was because of the connections I had to Riley. Well, Riley's semi conscious body at least.
"Honestly, I'm scared. I barely survived." Armsmaster looked over our work.
"You have no reason to be scared once you get your surgical specialty back." I'd expected him to act like an ass or be jealous of my power, but I didn't feel that at all working with him. I still had no idea why I thought I knew him, but I had a hard time believing he would throw away his career just to get rid of one villain.
"Let's hope I can actually get it this time." I let go of my nano swarm specialty which I had lied and called 'nanoscale assembly.' After 8 hours of nonstop life or death tinkering, I think I'd logged more combat tinkering than half the protectorate combined, if that was even considered a thing. This of course didn't help the fact that I was now safe, something my power didn't really seem to understand. I wanted to get away from Riley so I could deal with the heroes, but it didn't seem to get the fact that I wanted to let the heroes take over things here, not delegate a literal army of independent machines to 'take care' of the heroes. That wasn't to say that I thought I could take them, far from it. I had literally no gear and nanobots weren't some magic wand that could kill anything in seconds, I'd be another red smear on the street before they did anything. There, finally, I felt something useful slot into place.
"This one is a bit different, I think it's about adhesives. I can work out some bio-glue to put things back together once I'm cut free." Armsmaster still had his full face mask on, so it was a bit hard to read him.
"Will you be able to put yourself back together all the way?"
"I think my organs are part of that pile of goo over there. I don't think that's going to be possible." He gave me a sharp nod. I wasn't looking forward to seeing myself in the mirror because I was an absolute horror to behold right now. "I'm hoping I can work something out with Dragon, but, no time like the present I guess."
I pulled out Riley's scalpel and started severing things. I was leaking blood pretty heavily, but we had already rigged up an artificial blood producing organ as well as a containment system for the excess blood. We had been using my bio mechanical interface specialty to cook up a replacement for every organ we could think of which took most of the last hour or so. Armsmaster was kind enough to cannibalize some of his gear to give me an even greater chance at living. Around the time I was gluing everything together in what looked like more of a meat collage than an organ sack, I finally heard the roar of an engine and looked up to see an honest to God Dragoncraft land no less than 200 feet away from us. Soon enough, the back opened up and out walked an articulated powered suit. It was a thing to behold, even managing to match the sleekness of Armsmaster's power armor, only with more violent and lethal energy. A suit for an S class threat. She walked up to us, briefly talking to Chevalier. So far, none of the heroes had come to bother us, opting to talk to Armsmaster via his helmet mic, which I couldn't hear.
"Greetings Armsmaster," she spoke in a lightly Canadian accent, at least what I guessed was one anyway, then turned to look at me. The menacing armor had a funny contrast with her pleasant voice, "what would you like me to call you?" That was a pretty good question, I hadn't even thought about that while I was tinkering for my life.
"I haven't had a chance to think of anything cool since, well… today just happened." Yeah, this was all pretty fucked, good thing my emotions were mostly turned off since I was still gluing and stapling my organs into place. I was still breathing through my skull and talking via the neck skin sack.
"I'm sorry this happened to you." She sounded sincere.
"I believe you and I'm sure that it'll be nice to hear that when I can flush my system of tinker drugs. But, I don't know... what's the Greek word for three?"
"Tria, or you could use the latin, tribus." It must be nice being able to reference stuff like that, I might have to build myself a brain machine interface.
"I could go with Tribus for now unless something cooler comes up." I said, only to finally realize that I was no longer connected to Riley in any way. Armsmaster activated the containment system which should keep Riley spatially, dimensionally, temporally, and metaphorically contained. Okay, that last one was just a hope, but the tinker tech should work. I looked down at myself. I was a mess. I had three spider bots fused with my torso and both of my legs had been scrapped for parts hours ago. Whatever was left of this body had been contaminated by the thousands of tinker viruses that were still coursing through my veins. It would be the work of a lifetime to clean up what was left of my brain and that had been physically isolated for the majority of our tinkering.
Dragon nodded and started studying containment devices we'd made. I already guessed that she'd been watching through Armsmaster's cameras the whole time, but having an actual vessel of herself there probably helped massively with analyzing the tinker tech.
"Are you interested?" She paused and looked at me, which probably meant she had spent quite some time analyzing our stuff.
"Yes, I'm very impressed with what you've been able to create."
"Well, it was mostly repurposing Armsmaster's stuff, but… can I make a request?"
"As long as it's within my ability." I looked over at her craft.
"Can we talk in your ship? I'd like to ask Armsmaster as well." They looked at each other for a second.
"Sure, shall we get a gurney for you." As uncomfortable as it would to be carried, it would be worse to hobble on spider legs.
"Uh, yeah, that would be for the best." Thankfully, no one took a picture of me while Riley and I were being moved onboard Dragon's ship. When we got on and the doors were closed, I knew if I wasn't pumped full of drugs I'd be freaking out. "I-" I didn't know where to start. The ship was a little cramped with two power armored capes in the back, but I had been sat against the wall of the ship opposite them.
"Take your time." They probably didn't feel the need to press for details since it wasn't like I could go anywhere in this state.
"I'm a fucking monster right now." I saw Dragon make a motion to try and cut me off, but I carried on. "I'm a literal walking, or, shambling corpse, I don't know if you hadn't realized it, but this body is biohazardous waste of the highest order. I'm going to have to scrap everything." There was a pause, but thankfully Armsmaster cut in.
"You don't think you can salvage any of it?"
"I'll have to salvage my brain because it holds my gemma, but the rest needs to be atomized just like every single metallic cube you find in town. We can't play around, a single viral particle could wipe out millions." I took a deep breath for emphasis and looked at Dragon. "I can tell a bit about how your tech works. You use semi-biological controls right?" There was a long awkward pause, but I basically needed one of her suits at this point.
"Yes, I do and I can see where you're going with this, but are you sure there isn't another way?"
"Unless you have access to a cloning vat that can be used ethically, there really isn't any other option."
"We could start filtering out the viruses, I know of a few possible solutions to this." She was grasping at straws.
"That would take months if not years knowing what I know about Ri-Bonesaw's viruses and that's not even mentioning what she's been doing to my DNA these past few hours. This body has a few days before falling into pieces unless I can somehow stabilize this disaster, but all it would take is one careless papercut to wipe out the east coast." I looked toward Armsmaster, hoping he would be able to look past the personal issues Dragon had with this.
"I have to agree with Tribus on this, not only is it his body, but he's right about the danger it poses."
"Armsmaster, he's not even an adult yet." Had I given Armsmaster my name? Probably, I wasn't really trying to withhold information while we were trying to contain Riley.
"Are you kidding me? That's not an argument, I'm 17, that's barely a difference." Armsmaster visibly sighed, which was impressive given the bulk of his armor.
"I have to agree with Tribus on this one, it would be convenient if we could retrofit one of your suits to house his brain until he can construct a new body." Armsmaster was turning out to be a real bro. The room descended into silence, well... as silent as a giant tinkertech jet, two hulking powered suits, a multidimensional containment system and a flesh monstrosity could be. After a near eternity for an AI, but only a few seconds for us mortals, Dragon spoke.
"I'm not comfortable with you throwing your body away so recklessly, but I understand that you don't have much choice." I tried smiling at her when I realized that I didn't actually have control of my facial muscles aside from speaking.
"I wouldn't be throwing it away if I didn't have to, besides, I'll be working on a brand new synthetic human body if you're interested in collaborating." I tried to drop that as innocently as possible and proceeded to continue with my actual offer. "In addition, I'll help develop a personal shield for the PRT if the two of you are interested." That certainly got their attention and hopefully didn't clue Dragon into knowing that I knew.
"If it was possible, that would be incredibly useful."
"I might have a bit of trouble tricking my power into giving me shield technology since I'm still learning how to make it work, but I have no reason to doubt it's possible. I might even be able to pick up a manufacturing specialty." I trailed off, fantasizing about the possibilities assuming my power didn't have any nasty limits. As far as I could tell, I was to tinkers what Eidolon was to everyone else. About a minute passed in silence where the three of us sat there thinking until Dragon interrupted.
"I'm being told that the Chief Director would like to speak to you." She said neutrally. Alexandria, wonderful, not that I was particularly surprised she would want to talk to me. It turned out that killing one of the Slaughterhouse Nine was important enough to be on the Chief Director's notice. I was somewhat worried that she'd notice something off about me, but thankfully I was so fucked up that anything she got from my appearance would probably be gibberish.
"Honestly, I'd rather not talk until I can fix this mess, but you probably need to hear my story." I noticed a small nod from Armsmaster, or maybe my brain was just playing tricks on me. After I realized that Dragon was still waiting for a clear answer I gave it. "Yeah, sure, you can put her on. Is she going to be able to see me?"
"Yes, I will set up a video feed and camera for you." I nodded. Hopefully this didn't go horribly wrong.
It took Dragon about a minute to set up the video feed and a little extra when I asked her to make it so I couldn't possibly see my reflection through the screen or through the camera. It was pretty obvious why. Finally the screen lit up and I could see a sort of video call with several screens, thankfully there wasn't one showing me. I briefly worried I'd be too horrific for them, but when I realized they were all directors or capes, I was pretty sure one was Narwhal, I'd bet they'd seen worse.
"I understand that you are going by Tribus. My name is Rebecca Costa-Brown, Chief Director of the PRT. With me are several other Directors as well as a representative from The Guild. I would like you to give as much detail on what transpired today as possible." She finished and it didn't look like anyone else was going to cut in. Hopefully they would be satisfied with my answers.
"At 6 am today I got up to go hunting-"
---
"You shot him with a shotgun?" I wouldn't go so far as to say that Alexandria was capable of showing incredulity, but she was getting close.
"Yes."
"And you are certain that you didn't have powers before today."
"Absolutely, I know 100 percent because when I was at the hospital for amnesia, I was taken for two separate MRIs and neither of them showed signs of a gemma."
"You understand that this seems hard to believe." This was the first time my story had gotten much of a response, though to be fair, it was pretty mundane up until that point.
"Well, there should be a remington shotgun across the street around the thick trees with my finger prints… though my hands no longer have fingerprints anymore, but they should match who I claim to be. And additionally, Jack's wounds should match that."
"Emily, make sure that happens."
"Yes ma'am."
"Please continue Tribus."
"Right, the next few minutes got really weird, mostly because I was in so much pain that my memory stopped working for a bit."
--
"Once Dragon arrived, there wasn't much else to do besides disconnect myself." The Chief Director thought for a moment, quickly digesting my words.
"Are all of Bonesaw's viral agents contained?" She knew the exact thing to ask.
"Unfortunately, this body is still full of everything she made to kill me, but," I said as forcefully as I could with my fucked up lung, "with the permission of The Guild, I will be able to transfer my brain into one of Dragon's suits while we atomize the rest of my body. I was largely able to keep my brain separated from Bonesaw during our fight. I am confident that my brain can be made safe under Dragon's watch and in time, I can build a synthetic body."
"Are you aware of the public's opinion of biotinkers?" Alexandria seemed like she was going to be harsh today, but I didn't need to look at Piggot's video feed to know she was probably having an aneurysm, Tagg too.
"Yes, but as you should be able to tell from my collaboration with Armsmaster and the sputtering specialty, my power is almost universally viable. If I need to, I don't mind hiding that aspect. The real question is what I can offer your organization."
"This isn't a recruitment Tribus, this is questioning."
"I get that, but… fine, we can discuss that after. I do have more information."
"Then go ahead."
"I'm about 90% sure, The Siberian is a projection." Rather than stunned silence, The Chief Director just kept on going.
"Why do you believe that?" Fuck, that kinda just slipped out, did I have any info to back it up?
"Um… she seemed to pop around, so I guess I just kinda knew."
"And do you have any thinker powers?"
"No, not really." Damnit, I was risking exposing my future knowledge again and no one was believing me.
"Anything else?"
"Powers are alien parasites in our heads." Fuck, one of them had to believe something I was saying. At least this one Alexandria knew was true, maybe that would make her take my last one seriously.
"And what makes you believe this?" She seemed like she was just humoring me, but she was known to have perfect control of her body right? Or something similar, I wasn't 100% sure on that.
"When we were fighting, we got more intimately familiar with our powers. I could feel how close she was with her power, how it was feeding her information better than mine cause it knew her better. That's how I think Jack's power worked, I think his power was controlling other parahuman's powers, that's why a parahuman couldn't kill him."
"An interesting theory, anything else?" Damn, I wish she weren't so good at this so I could pick something up. I wracked my brain, but trying to predict an Endbringer would push my information even further down the crackpot list. Hopefully someone would at least try to double check if my Siberian information was correct.
"No, that was it." She nodded.
"Then I have to thank you on behalf of the United States government for having the bravery to stand up to those monsters. The PRT would be happy to discuss your recruitment, but it would probably be best to wait until your current situation is resolved. Narwhal?" She finished and Narwhal's video feed became the biggest one on screen.
"Thank you Chief Director and thank you for what you did today on behalf of The Guild. I know most of us will sleep better knowing Jack Slash , Hatchet Face, Burnscar, and Bonesaw are dealt with. As for your request, I authorize you to work with Dragon to contain and dispose of the rest of Bonesaw's creations." I nodded along, and after a few more polite words.
When the call finally ended I laid my head against the back of the ship. Well, I said I laid, but I really meant that my spider bot let my head rest against the back of the ship. I felt like I should be experiencing a whole range of emotions, but I was still 100% in work mode. Armsmaster and Dragon on the other hand seemed to be able to get into a contemplative mood, but I was still too wired.
"When are we going to whatever lab we're going to?" Dragon turned to me.
"We need to sort out Armsmaster's schedule before we take off, then we'll have to pass Bonesaw to another secure team that will take her to isolation. Then her case will be reviewed by an emergency court tonight to decide if she'll be sent to the Birdcage or an asylum." Seemed like a risk for a breakout, but who, other than the S9, would go out of their way to spring an S9 member. They were the bottom of the barrel when it came to scum and besides, she was basically just a thermos full of organs right now.
"Is there, I don't know, something for me to work on? I'm still full of drugs keeping me at 100 percent and I feel like I'll start trying to dismantle your ship if I have nothing to do." Armsmaster nodded and walked over to the bucked seat next to me.
"I believe we could start trying for useful specializations while I wait for word from Director Piggot." I nodded and got to work.
Over the course of the next two hours, I still hadn't managed to coerce my power to give me a specialty that would directly help me make a personal force field generator which was surprisingly one of the last options my power wanted to give me for personal protection. Though, the main issue was that once we took off it kept giving me various flavors of flight specialty. Armsmaster and I had begun to reckon that my power was great for solving problems right in front of me, but if I wanted a more esoteric specialization, say miniaturization I was going to have to learn some real brain-fu or construct some very strange situations to get it to work.
The one upside to this was that I got to spend the whole ride roasting the dragoncraft we were in for all of its inefficiencies and silly errors, like how the armoring that Dragon added was all there to protect the tinkertech from enemy fire when this was a transport ship and should be armored primarily to protect the passengers. While we couldn't see Dragon blush, she did keep an embarrassed silence for almost ten minutes before joining our tinker tech conversation while pretending to fly the ship.
Not long after we had dropped off our Bonesaw package to some very scary looking black dressed commando capes whose powers I couldn't even guess at, we blasted our way up north to one of Dragon's apparently more well known facilities. The snow was still pretty heavy there, but I couldn't feel temperature in my body anyway, so it didn't matter at this point. It was then that I finally got something I was looking for.
"I've got something." Armsmaster looked up from the box of scraps I'd messed around with using a micro hydraulics specialty that seemed somewhat interesting, but not particularly useful currently.
"I think it's got something to do with biosynthetic sensors." That seemed to get Dragon's attention. "Yup, mechanical to biological feedback. This could even help Dragon's suits." If I still had control of my facial expressions, I would have given Dragon an eye wiggle, but as it was I was still stuck with this zombie face.
"That would be… very useful." No doubt.
"I'll definitely need it if I want to keep myself from going insane once I filter out the tinker drugs." Armsmaster nodded.
"That would be for the best." He said and I started fiddling around with another box of scraps Armsmaster had spent the last few minutes preparing for me to see how efficient my power was at converting atomic mass to actual function. I was obviously doing worse than him, but he said I was in the top few percentile from his estimation, quite a ways away from someone like Squealer or Trainwreck. We finally settled down and Dragon stood up from the pilot seat and turned towards me.
"What part of the facility do you want to start at?" After thinking for a second.
"The incinerator, definitely the incinerator. We can't leave anything to chance." Thankfully, my power sometimes provided exactly what I wanted. "And I know just the thing to start." It turned out that my power was rather fond of reducing things to their most basic elements
#19
Honestly, I think I will enjoy this fic even if it becomes a power wank. Great story!
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ReincarnatedSalad
ReincarnatedSalad
Aug 15, 2021
#20
Maydae010401 said:
Holy shit dude, did you just update twice in one day!? Fucking typing MACHINE!
My problem with SI fics lie mostly with the sense that people aren't even trying to be creative you know? It's usually all the same thing after a while usually accompanied by 6th grade grammar, Im not a grammar nazi but I have standards ya know!? And all fics are selfwanks. I dont know who but someone said that the best ones are the ones that make you think that they aren't. (I wanna say Lucifer Morningstar?[The Grimderp Edgelord Fanfic guy, not Satan, I mean seriously his fics were super edgy I swear to God I cut myself just reading Force Without Balance]) So...yea...man this comment got away from me I think I wanted to say Good Job? Yea! Gud!Jub! Lightning Fingers! I'm boarding the hype train! HA!-I-P!
Click to expand...
I don't know if you've read many of my after chapter comments since I post them as separate comments, but I write sporadically and post a lot of chapters in a row. I don't want people to expect regular chapters, but when I post I like to give people something chunky to read. I hate finding an old fic updated only to find that there's only 2000 new words after 6 months. There are 10 chapters for this story so far, but it seems like people on spacebattles prefer a few chapters a day as opposed to the 10 chapter dump I did during the end of the Eldia arc on my other fic. I guess people like to have a chance to react to specific chapters and discuss things, so if I dump 30k words they can't really do that.
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Threadmarks Chapter 3
Threadmarks
ReincarnatedSalad
ReincarnatedSalad
Aug 15, 2021
#21
I stared down the iron maiden looking device with trepidation.
"You don't have to start right away." Technically, Dragon was correct, but if I didn't I would have to drop my biosynthetic sensing specialty and swap it out for another specialty to keep my rapidly decaying corpse ticking for another day. I'd finished all of the designs related to my needs for the modified Dragon suit, but completely counter to my expectations, the collaboration with Dragon to upgrade her suits was taking a really long time. I guess that was a consequence of her specialty being other tinker's tech and not her own, so any additions or changes had to be cross referenced with all of the other bits of foreign tech she had hiding in there. She was basically a one woman tinker collaboration machine and making room for my changes was taking ages. Sure, I could have swapped until I found a specialty that would make it easier to integrate her diverse tinker systems into a whole seamless unit, but that might take ages and I might never get this exact version of biosensors again.
One thing that had become abundantly clear over the last week or so was that my power would find every way possible to not give me an identical specialty. Some were nearly identical so it wouldn't cause problems for me in the long run, but so far I'd only had two specialties that came that close and I was swapping as much as I possibly could. I think my passenger liked it better that way. I wondered what my shard actually was. Was it a pile of overly specialized specialties that didn't quite work on their own, or was this shard an experiment in managing different teams of tinker shards? I felt pretty okay with the whole alien supercomputer tumor thing, but then again, I hadn't slept in 147 or so hours because of the tinker drugs.
"I need to do this." I said mostly for the benefit of Colin since he had specifically flown out to oversee the operation. I couldn't say that this was much of a burden for him since he clearly loved having an excuse to visit Dragon's massive factory, but I didn't want to put this off any longer as I felt like it would just get harder and harder to commit. I had expected to get along with Dragon like long lost friends, but the fact that she had to spit her focus on so many damned things left me waiting around for input when we were collaborating. I was a slowly rotting corpse in her damned factory and she could barely spare an hour of her time for our collaboration even though I was letting my body fall apart for her sake.
Colin on the other hand was an incredibly attentive collaborator. Sure, he was insanely picky and would constantly fight for intellectual control of the project, but that just got me even further engrossed in what we were working on. I could see why Dragon had the hots for this guy. Of course, I didn't have any intentions of getting in the way of them, but if she had other things to do I'd gladly steal some of his collaboration time. It also helped that we got into the habit of hyping each other's abilities up.
Despite my nearly infinite breadth, there was something to be said for working with the same tools for years. If I wanted to work with force fields I would probably need to actually get a force field specialty whereas Colin could apply force fields on a nanoscale easily. I might eventually be able to do something tangentially force field related with a compliant mechanism specialty or something, but it would probably take decades to find the right application for it, which was how specialties were normally supposed to work for tinkers. I was actually tempted to see if I could boost one specialty to more breadth, but doing so would literally be playing against my power's biggest strength.
I audibly sighed, I was stalling again. After all of the shit that happened with the S9 I felt like I was a badass. Sniping Jack Slash, surviving the Siberian and triggering into a 6 hour long tinker battle for life and death, but deep down, I was a massive coward. If I wasn't hopped up on so many overpowering tinker drugs, I would have just collapsed into a depressed pile of discarded organs and offed myself with something explosive. Luckily, my power wanted me alive and combat/tinker ready in order to generate data. Fuck it, how bad could this be. I activated the program.
--
Have you ever wanted to cry? That deep hole in your chest that yanks your stomach out from under you? When someone betrays you and you just can't handle it?
I wanted to curl up into a ball and sob for hours, but all I could feel were fake sensations that came in patchy regions all over my fake body. There were no automatic responses to my panic, no uncontrollable shaking. I had gotten the sensors right, but I hadn't added nearly enough. It was wrong, every part of this fake body felt like it was squeezing my nervous system. Like when you were laying down and wanted to move, but couldn't, only a thousand times worse.
"How is it?" Dragon asked. I wanted to die. Suddenly, both Dragon and Colin shifted with worry. Had I said that outloud? How was I supposed to control my speech, oh,
"There." I finally said when I figured out how to control the speech box.
"Are you okay?" I tried to swallow, but my mouth was filled with metal. I shouldn't have put any sensors in there. It felt like there were holes all throughout my body.
"I need to turn it off." I felt like there was something growing off my face. I wanted to tear it all off. "Get it off me!" I couldn't control it, it hurt too much, I couldn't feel anything. "I need the drugs, give me the drugs, make it stop, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, please take me out. I don't-" the numbness started to spread until I felt the pleasant high of the drug that had been keeping me calm for the last week. I started trying to move my robot arms.
"Jackson, are you alright?" Right, that was my name, I'd asked Dragon and Colin to call me by my new first name and Colin had reciprocated after a little while. Dragon of course couldn't.
"Um, sorry about that, I had a massive panic attack." I would have probably felt embarrassed if the drugs weren't stopping that feeling.
"This is clearly not ideal." Colin wasn't usually this unhelpful, but he looked and sounded very uncomfortable with what just happened. I knew I wasn't excited to start that again. Silence descended over us for about a minute while we all processed the new issue. Well, Dragon was probably banning trolls on PHO or something.
"This blows, but I guess it means that the temporary housing is a bust. I'll need something," I let go of the two specialties that had been keeping my corpse alive for the last week at the same time and felt something weird happen. Rather than the usual specialty offer, I could somehow feel that these two specialties would specifically combine to accomplish my needs. In fact, they were so closely linked, they were basically overlapping, but rather than simply accomplishing the same thing in two different ways, their overlap enhanced each other. "Wow…"
"What is it?" Dragon asked. My thoughts drifted off for a while before I remembered that I was being talked to.
"Oh, I just discovered that when I let go of two specialties at the same time, my power gives me two new ones that almost combine. Synthetic organ printing and organic systems merging." Colin looked over at Dragon, concerned.
"Congratulations on discovering something new, will you be okay while we work on that?" Dragon seemed hesitant, probably not liking the ramifications of my freakout while feeling what she usually feels. I wasn't an AI after all, but she thought she was a human, or at least she probably liked to think of herself as that.
"Well, I've got enough of the tinker drug for another week, but now that we've gotten this far I'm pretty well acquainted with your lab here. I should be able to work out the integration while the organs grow." The best part about my synthetic organs specialty was that just about everything in the human body could be considered an organ and I wasn't limited to normal organ compositions or even human organs. I briefly had the urge to make myself into a cat girl before the less stupid part of my brain nixed that idea. Maybe that was why I had gotten the bio-aesthetic specialty the other day. It hadn't been much use for building tech, but it gave me a few good ideas for future body modifications. Though, after my recent freakout, I could probably do without the extensive body mods unless I wanted to be drugged out of my mind for the rest of my life. I'd probably need to rebuild my brain from the ground up if I wanted tentacles. I got to work.
--
The next week had progressively gotten worse and worse for my tinkering. Colin had become busy and could only visit once to help cram some more functionality into my synthetic organs, but I had discovered something quite annoying about my power. It really wasn't fond of long term projects. The more days that passed without me switching them out, the less helpful they became. I'd cottoned on to the issue two days ago when I realized that my slowly growing liver wouldn't be able to incorporate all of the filtering and toxin cleansing if I stubbornly held onto the synthetic organ specialites. I had already prepped their integration and even future proofed them with multiple easy ways to add functionality, but at this point, all of my ideas were about how to prepare what I had already made to integrate with whichever new specialty I gained when I switched.
It was even worse with my collaboration with Dragon. Now that her tech wasn't a core component to my synthetic body, she barely even helped me with anything. She had gotten busy dealing with the fallout of a broken up S9. I totally understood that she had bigger priorities, but it didn't stop me from feeling a little peeved at her. Our sensor collaboration had hit a complete dead end as well. To be fair, my specialty had allowed her to upgrade her suit's sensors massively, but without me, Dragon, and Colin locked in a room for 10 hours, I doubted I'd ever get her suits to feel the breeze or smell the flowers.
I slapped my metal forehead with the clawed hand of my Dragon suit. Of course I was having issues collaborating with Dragon in this remote facility. There was nothing to fight out here, Dragon wasn't even in the building. I had been thinking of my power as a weak interpreter of my thoughts, but I was being stupid. My shard could tell perfectly well what I wanted, but all it cared about was pushing me into more fights where I would have to use it creatively. Had I already had this realization? It felt like I had. The drugs must have been getting to me.
Even though they were tinker drugs which made them much safer to use, the bottom line was that if I didn't make some pretty fundamental changes to my brain that I wasn't willing to make, I'd start getting even more fucked up as time went on.
"Hey Dragon?" Before, she would take two seconds to respond, but I guessed she had been letting me wait more and more this past week cause she took a whole 10 seconds this time.
"Yes Tribus?"
"I think I need to drop the sensor specialty and focus on my new body." Her digital avatar made a thoughtful expression.
"I had noticed that your useful output slowed over the last 5 days." And you didn't say anything? Bitch.
"Right, so you're going to be on your own for the rest of the sensor upgrades." She nodded in response. She didn't even have the courtesy of thanking me for the help, well, today at least. She'd been growing more distant lately, which was probably my fault. Probably…
I finally let go of all three of my specialties and once again I felt my power select a new set that was specifically tailored to get me back into some sort of action as quickly as possible. It also somewhat listened to what I wanted.
"Three at once is heady, let's see. Passive security systems, dimensional anchoring, and… mechanical layering? Oh, I see what this is for" Dragon just waited for me to elaborate rather than join in conversation. It was probably because I had been getting more and more snappy since I ran out of my old drugs and had to make new ones which were slightly different.
"Do you have 5 kilograms of thorium 232 laying around?" I asked while moving my hulking metal body over to the western wing of Dragon's facility.
"Sorry, you would need to apply for a permit to use fissile materials." Great help she was. I guessed I would have to scrap some parts to get this moving along then. I could tell that Dragon was pissed that I had been taking her equipment apart, but I always replaced it with something that would work just as well. It was better that I got out of her lab sooner rather than later, right? So what if her 3D photolithography machine was down for a few hours? I was helping in other areas. At least I would be able to get the hell out of here in a few days.
"Tribus." I waited ten seconds to respond.
"Yeah?"
"I've gotten correspondence back from both Boston and Brockton Bay about your joining the Wards, would you like to hear it." If I still had eyelids, they'd have twitched.
"This again? I can make a body that looks 35, why is the PRT being so fucking obtuse about my age." Dragon audibly sighed, which meant that she wanted me to hear it, the bitch.
"The laws mandating parahuman legal authority are very explicit about the age requirement. Did you read the packets I sent you?" Of course I fucking read them, she didn't give me anything else to do these past few days.
"The PRT has so many enormous lies and it can't save me from 7 months of completely wasted time with a single white lie?" Dragon paused condescendingly while she was probably sending innocent masters to the birdcage.
"Unfortunately," she didn't sound very regretful, "your age was included as part of your file and the PRT appointed you a Youth Guard representative which is the first step in any Wards onboarding." I had enough dignity to not grumble as I mixed some new bio paste for the liver upgrade Colin suggested. "Would you like to hear their decision?"
"Fine." Not like she would let me help her with her biosuit interface anymore if I waited.
"Pending the approval of your Youth Guard representative and your social worker, the PRT is offering you a Wardship contract with Boston under Bastion and an internship under Armsmaster." With the racist?
"Why am I not going to Brockton Bay? Armsmaster is 1000 percent more qualified to be my boss than shield guy." Another condescending silence, Dragon was getting predictable.
"There were discussions between the Directors and it was decided that you would thrive under a larger wards team."
"You mean Director Biggot is scared shitless of me."
"Tribus, your antagonism is not endearing."
"It's not fucking meant to be endearing Dragon! This isn't working! If I have to spend one more minute in this fucking suit I'm going to fucking-" Gah, there were the drugs again, fuck this shit. "Ugh, shit… Sorry about that, I need to shorten the frequency between doses, it's losing its effectiveness."
"How much longer do you think?" Dragon sounded worried. She'd probably been worried this whole time but I wasn't picking up on it.
"Three days, two if Colin gets leave and can help with the final assembly."
"I wish there was more I could do, but I hope things get better."
"Yeah, me too… and sorry for being… you know."
"You can't be blamed for what happened to you, just remember that." Yeah, I didn't think I was exactly blaming myself, but even with the drugs, it was hard to think about what happened. Going clean was going to hurt a lot.
"Thanks, I just have to make this work." The next few days were going to get much worse, I could already feel it
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Worm
Unwanted Obligations (SI)
Thread starterReincarnatedSalad Start dateAug 15, 2021 Tags worm (parahumans) self insert
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Lewascan2
Lewascan2
(Verified Lancer) (Purveyor of Fine Fiction)
Aug 16, 2021
#26
I was seriously not expecting to get as hyped as I did over the Tinker battle with Bonesaw, but, holy cow, that was unique! I really can't remember ever reading something like that in a Worm fic, and I enjoyed every second of it. This story's entire premise has a ton of promise, and I am so here for the ride! :D
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Maydae010401
Maydae010401
Aug 16, 2021
#27
Man not to be that guy but *FUCK BONESAW* I feel most fics try and humanise her and feel sorry for her but that little shit is a monster, groomed by a slightly more creative Johnny Depp( I don't mean it JP! You know I love you!) Into being the biggest little monster there is fuck I hope she gets Birdcaged.
Last edited: Aug 16, 2021
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ReincarnatedSalad
ReincarnatedSalad
Aug 16, 2021
#28
Here I was again, stalling and wasting everyone's time. Colin was back in his suit, checking over the liver we'd spent most of our time collaborating on. It was designed to survive a 50 megaton bomb, though it would probably be the only thing left of me besides my skull. It was packed with as many defensive capabilities as we could come up with. Part of it turned out to be a pet project Colin had been harboring for decades, but it didn't take too much time and the rest of the organs were pretty straight forward.
I'd switched out to a new suite of specialites that helped with the final assembly, as well as offering me another specialty for aesthetics, Subliminal Feature Modeling. It was bordering on the line of mastering, so I had to tone down some of the ideas it was giving me. I didn't need to drive people insane by winking at them. To be fair, it wasn't all powerful, but I mainly used it to increase the likelihood that people would listen to me and to make myself more attractive.
"Don't you think it's a bit… much?" Dragon said, finally taking the time to visit with a suit now that Colin was back.
"I didn't make it that big."
"What?" Colin looked up in confusion.
"My new, you know… it's anatomically correct."
"Jackson." Dragon reprimanded. A few seconds later, Colin seemed to understand and returned to fiddling with my liver. "I was talking about your new face. It doesn't look anything like your old identity, aren't you afraid you'll have difficulties adjusting?" She sounded more concerned than would be warranted by just a little bit of vanity.
"Let me guess, if you were in my place you'd make some algorithm to generate the most forgettable face imaginable." Her silence was my answer. Colin finally looked back up from the liver, seemingly finished.
"A more attractive face won't be a detriment to hero work." He looked over at Dragon who was running some diagnostics on my detached face or what would be my new face in a few hours. It was next to my new skull that along with my liver, was stuffed with defensive measures as well as a dimensional shunt that should keep most masters from affecting my brain.
"I'm also concerned that it will make protecting his identity harder."
"The unwritten rules will protect him so long as he acts with caution."
"Plus, all of my loved ones are dead." That mostly shut the conversation down. I'd probably cry about it when I had emotions again, but I only had about 28 more hours of dose left and I'd already given them to Colin so I wouldn't be tempted to delay. I had about 8 hours until I lost my mind.
"By the way, were you able to replicate reproductive organs? You didn't show me what you were doing with them." Oh right, I hadn't felt the need to show Colin my new johnson because I didn't really need to add anything there and I didn't want to imply that I wanted to do something with it. But if he was asking...
"Sure, you can check it out." I sent him the file I'd made while working on it. He and Dragon had both encouraged me to get into the habit of documenting my tinkering since it made registering new tech with the PRT go more smoothly when you could tell someone your thought process while making it. A few minutes later, I could tell Colin was still going over the documentation since he was just standing there, staring off into the distance. "Something wrong?"
"No but, Dragon, have you seen this?" Wow, smooth Colin, asking her about another man's...
"Yes, I have skimmed his report."
"What about his section on pluripotent stem cells?"
"I haven't had time to look into it, do you know something about that?"
"Jackson, is this true?"
"The stem cells? They were just a thing I used for a step." Colin held up a hand to his chin.
"This wasn't written like a tinker process." I looked at my documentation and after scanning a bit I realized that I had included the entire pluripotent stem cell process. It was a genius process that used existing cells and induced them into becoming stem cells. It was a process that I'd had to fiddle a bit to get right with my slightly incompatible specialty since I didn't really remember any of the details on how it worked, but it was easier to do that once and use my stem cells for the rest of the process.
"Yeah, I didn't remember how it worked so I had to fiddle a bit, but I got it working."
"You're right Colin, this isn't tinker tech." Wait what? This dimension didn't have- oh fuck. Scientific funding was all fucked up in Bet and the guy who discovered them lived in Japan… Which was now partially sunk.
"How did you figure this out?" Dragon sounded excited for the first time in a while. That was good.
"I think there was a different way my power wanted to do it, but it would have taken longer overall, so I kind of forced it to help me, but I guess I just figured that if a stem cell could turn into a cell then the reverse was also true." This wasn't that big of a deal right? "If you want to make it into a paper then go ahead, but just credit me or my cape identity at least."
"Sure, there are a few groups who could investigate whether this works without tinker tech."
"What about female reproductive organs?" Colin bluntly asked.
"Oh, yeah I made some for curiosity's sake." Colin turned sharply to look at my suit.
"Jackson, biotinkering for the sake of curiosity is exactly the kind of thing that gives biotinkers a bad reputation." He rarely scolded me except for when it came to my usage of drugs.
"I know, it was a slip up. I gave it to Dragon to dispose of." He'd hopefully appreciate that later judging by how suspicious Dragon had acted when she "caught" me messing with immoral experiments.
"I expect better from you." I nodded, he was right. I wasn't the type of tinker to be swayed by flights of fancy, but I couldn't exactly tell him that Dragon was an AI and had a crush on him with her in the room.
"I think the drugs inhibiting my emotions are opening me up to more influence by my power."
"All the more reason to finish this and get you back to normal." He said somberly.
"I couldn't agree more."
--
I shivered in the cold air conditioned break room. Colin had given me a blanket after the drugs had started to wear off and I had started crying, dry heaving, and shaking. I shouldn't have made this body so accurate, now I was feeling all of the shit that I had been able to put off for weeks. It took only 4 hours to finalize my body and stitch it all together. The number of upgrades that we'd added to give me extra durability and a healing factor would have been enough to patch me together even if we just put all the pieces in place and waited for an hour or so, but it turned out that within minutes I was walking around and stretching. It didn't take long for things to go downhill.
That was 64 hours ago and I still couldn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the Siberian or one of the many horrific sights that happened that day. I had finally gotten so exhausted from shaking and crying, even with my new insane resilience, that I had finally managed to get some sleep. All 5 minutes of it before I woke up screaming. What was worse was that my power took my own mindset as ground truth and when I had made the mistake of switching my specialties, I wound up with specialties that I didn't even want to remember. I of course switched again as soon as I could, but my power just kept feeding me more creative ways to destroy the world, or invade and conquer the dreams of millions of innocents just so I could protect my own dreamscape or a million and one drugs that would fix my issues.
I'd been forced to ask Dragon to chain me in brute restraints to stop myself from tearing my own body apart for spare parts. I'd been chained to the floor for almost 2 days which, Dragon had told me, my Youth Guard rep got super annoying about. Well, not in those exact words, but it was her fault for following the book and telling them. Thankfully, she hadn't given them the full details of what happened to me, but apparently the use of brute restraints required a report.
I slowly took an exhausted breath and shivered. My body was designed for all sorts of damage, but even tinkertech muscles required time to heal from overuse. We'd gone as close to real as we could. Truthfully, there were so many ways that I could have cheated and saved myself the trouble, but deep down I knew that if I allowed myself to eat electricity instead of food, I would never feel fully human. My freak outs when the drugs ran low were more than enough warning and as much as it sucked, I knew it was the right decision. I mentally crossed my fingers and let my antimatter weaponry related specialites slip away.
Monofilament fiber synthesis, multimodal weaves, and dynamic optical diffraction. Thank god. I groaned as finally, after hundreds of horribly destructive and violent specialties, my power actually gave me something I wanted to tinker with.
"Dragon?"
"Yes Jackson?" Less than a second, she must be worried. I cleared my throat.
"I… I think I'm ready to come out now, it gave me something less dangerous."
"Your power?"
"Yeah, I can make some fabric armor with this, but no weapons." I looked up as the door to the little room I was locked in opened. Dragon must have left one of her suits out there the whole time to wait for me. That was nice of her, but I shouldn't have been surprised since I was technically in her custody. "How do I look?" I asked from the floor.
"Tired," the voice came from her suit," but otherwise like normal. Your Youth Guard representative wants to speak with you, he's been messaging me for updates every hour or so." I nodded and her suit bent down and started cutting the restraints open. They had been welded shut since I would have been able to unlock them if she hadn't. A few minutes later I was in a different room, still chilly, but I wasn't shivering from the cold. Dragon brought in a laptop and sat it down in front of me. She gave me the password, but I brushed her off when she started telling me about how to use it. It was a computer, not a spaceship.
I turned off the screen and looked at my dark reflection in the glass. My face was so weird. Part of me had been worried that Dragon would be right and that seeing the beautiful and handsome face would give me dysphoria, but the reality was that my new face felt more right than Jackson's face had. I didn't exactly remember my face from my previous dimension, but I was able to use the general features, blonde hair, blue-green eyes, and strong jaw. True, I was 100 percent sure I hadn't been this attractive, but it felt more like I had gotten plastic surgery than an entirely new face. I also hadn't been this buff, my new body didn't look like a body builder or anything, just strong and athletic, after all, I didn't need huge muscles when I was using tinker tech organs. I was also made myself a little taller, now close to 6 foot 3
I was prettier than I had ever been, but I still felt like myself, more so than when I was in Jackson's body. It was almost like I had been able to lay his body to rest and remake myself from my old dimension if I squinted really hard. I sighed and put on the domino mask Dragon had leant me and booted up the laptop again. It was time to get this over with, hopefully it wouldn't be as bad as 4 days of hellish withdrawal.
--
The engine of Dragon's ship roared while I sat in one of the bucket seats. It was the same craft that had brought me to Dragon's facility almost a month ago, but thankfully I was able to sit in the seat on my own this time. The paperwork had been sort of a nightmare and the Youth Guard rep was just as annoying as I expected him to be. That wasn't to say that I didn't appreciate what he was doing. After all, he was the only person on the planet left that was legally required to advocate for my well being, but I couldn't help but feel like his concern was for naught. I didn't have any family and I was a parahuman under the age of 18, the government owned me and by god would it use me.
"Hey Dragon, I can't believe I didn't ask this but-" blood and guts, I could smell my own organs mixing with Riley's- "..." right, that was why I hadn't asked before. "What happened to the 9?" Dragon took a few seconds to respond, but this time I imagined it was because this was a touchy subject.
"The Directors waited 2 weeks to get an analysis from WatchDog about the outcome of releasing the news. It came back mostly positive or neutral so they released an anonymized report about the deaths of Jack Slash, Bonesaw-" I felt Riley's scalpel slice my throat open and splatter her and the Siberian with my blood, "-it was decided that the person who killed Jack Slash would remain anonymous for their own safety." I shook off the memories and took a deep breath to keep myself from getting more dizzy.
"Wait, didn't they have a bounty or something?" I noticed Dragon's suit shift slightly in the pilot seat.
"There have been numerous bounties placed on the 9, but a closed, high court decided that offering bounties for parahumans, even ones with kill orders, was illegal." Damnit, there goes my hope of starting with a massive tinker fund. "Although, part of the PRT's release stated that the parahuman responsible for ending the 9 received severe injuries, leading to a number of donation pages claiming to be raising money for the parahuman's treatment. Many of them have violated donation site's terms of service, but theoretically, the parahuman in question could come forward and accept donations." They had made me sign an NDA for my involvement in the- Riley's spiderbot spears my eyeball, I can feel it slice through- I shook my head. It was starting to get annoying to refer to the "anonymous parahuman" when referring to myself, but hopefully the S9 event wouldn't come up often.
"Do you think that would work?"
"It may, though the parahuman would likely need to work through a proxy to accept the donations to stay anonymous and that would likely require court approval. Assuming the parahuman was a Ward, they wouldn't be able to access any of the donations until graduation." What a pain in the ass. I sat back into my bucket seat and tried to relax. Part of me was anxious to get started on a costume, but another part of me just wanted to stop feeling like shit. It was totally different from my first ride on the Dragoncraft. At the time, I was pumped to the gills with the freshest tinker drugs designed to keep me 100 percent focused on tinkering and I simply couldn't keep my hands busy enough. It was very uncomfortable to remember the times I'd been really drugged up, it was like watching a robot pilot my body or maybe more accurately, it was like seeing a glimpse of what I would be like with nothing separating me from my shard, like Riley would do to Taylor… If that was still possible at this point.
I still felt like I had seen an incredibly thin slice of the potential future, one centered around the girl who would become a godling for all of an hour before she was executed or cured, I couldn't decide which felt like the more likely outcome. That being said, what happened with the 9 simply wasn't supposed to happen at all. Jack Slash should be alive and getting ready to trick Scion into killing everyone. Would that still happen now? Would Leviathan still attack Brockton Bay? How much of what I thought would happen was now simply false due to the end of the 9? Had my alternate memory diverged when I first woke from a coma over a year ago or after I shot Jack? I had to be careful of acting on the information I thought I knew even more so now than before I had become a cape. Could I have actually triggered when I fell off the roof and the Siberian- my severed hand dangled from her claws as I screamed- ugh, it was hard to think critically about this when I was suffering from PTSD.
"We're now touching down at the Boston PRT headquarters." Dragon sounded so much like a flight attendant she had to be doing it on purpose. I felt the craft land and started unbuckling myself. By the time I was done, Dragon had stood up from the pilot seat as well in her smaller suit. We just sort of stood there, watching each other. Well, I did, Dragon might have taken a break from the awkward silence to check up on her super prison. My emotions were spinning in circles in my gut, but eventually I decided that it didn't matter what Dragon expected me to do.
I walked up to her suit and wrapped her in a hug. I immediately felt a tiny flicker of pride when I noticed that her suit almost naturally articulated to make the hug less painful due to all of the sharp metal bits. No doubt a benefit of the upgraded sensors I helped with. I finally pulled back and looked into her helmet cam. I wished the "Dragonslayers" wouldn't be watching this.
"Thank-" my throat seized up and now I was crying again, great, "Thanks for everything…" I didn't really have words to describe how much triggering sucked. Like, orders of magnitude worse than my worst estimate of how bad it would be. You couldn't put a metric on it.
"I know and I wish you didn't have to go through that, but for what it's worth, you're doing a great thing, working with the PRT. You'll make an amazing hero." I was fully crying now. I hoped it wasn't an ugly cry and it shouldn't be if I'd done a good enough job on my body.
"Just give me a minute to get my stuff." I quickly wiped the tears away and got my bags from one of the storage nets. I didn't have much, though supposedly my belongings and those of my family were in a storage shed somewhere in Brockton Bay. Most of what I had was tinkering stuff. I couldn't bring much, so I stripped down some components that would let me get a head start on my costume. I still didn't have a set idea, but I was hoping that the marketing department could help me come up with something. Most of what was coming to mind would be way too edgy or would be an outright imitation of another cape who I'd heard about. I finally walked over to the back ramp next to Dragon as it started to lower. Hopefully, the Boston Wards wouldn't be a mess, but who was I kidding, this was Bet.