(Rewritten) Ch. 108 – Unto The Breach Once More

"Alright, kids. Listen up!"

Road Rash sits in front of a class of teenagers. They're orphans, all of them, and they're old enough to become parents. But too young to be smart. Or responsible.

"Y'all are old enough to know where the bee goes and what the flowerpot looks like. That also means the lot of you are dumb enough to employ that knowledge, yeah?"

"No, you!"

"Low effort sass gets the foot." Road Rash lifts his landmine-integrated prosthetics. Both of them. It looks a bit silly, him lifting his feet and holding both by the ankle.

But only one idiot laughs.

"A'ight," Road Rash says. "Come up front, smartass."

A large boy gets up from his seat on the floor. He's around sixteen years old and quite tall. Muscly, too. He walks up to Road Rash with the typical idiot's swagger.

Road Rash doesn't prevaricate and, faster than the unenhanced eye can see, shoves the teacher's chair into the boy's knees from behind. The kid collapses onto it and Road Rash slides his seat right into position, in front of the demonstrating table.

Everything is quiet but for the echo of the chair's squealing legs, including the idiot. The boy blinks, dazed by the sudden translocation.

There are several dismantled landmines on the table. Road Rash pats him heavily on the shoulder, then points at the various landmines.

"So, this guy over here is called 'Unwanted Debt'. That one over there, I call 'No Hobbies'. And this one," he says, indicating the messiest pile of disassembled landmine, "goes by the name of 'No Sleep For The Wicked'.

"We're going to assemble them all. Here I have several tools for the job." More finger-pointing. "This guy's 'Long John', for example. Notice his phallic shape. And there's 'Pretty Betty'. She's got a hole there for Long John to be inserted into. 'Tiny Tina' works nicely for the detailed work and requires a steady hand. We'll use them to put the mines together.

"By the way, the payloads are hot. Don't blow yourself up. Let's see if you will learn to consider the consequences of your actions before it's too late, eh?"

Road Rash grins at the whole class.

"Don't worry, I got Class III Medical Utilities. I can fix just about anything."

The orphans' faces are a mix of horrified fascination. Road Rash pats the boy on the shoulder once more, who blanches more than anyone else present.

– Road Rash's practical application of Explosively Effective Pedagogy, July 2056

***

I was floating on clouds. A silken hanging mat, really, but whatever. Clouds. That was what it felt like. I also cried softly from all the new experiences and powerful emotions, and petted Leah's hair with both hands as I let them run their course.

A soft, glowing euphoria coursed through my torso and left my body a limp mess as I rested quietly, deliciously weighed down by Leah on top of me. I'd dragged her up my body and we'd almost fallen off the mat before my tail flashed out to stabilize us. We'd giggled, but since that almost needed too much energy, we'd quickly fallen silent to relax instead.

Now her head was resting on top of my left boob, and her free hand cupped and gently stroked the swell of my right. She stayed away from my nipple. It would've been arousing earlier, but now it was just really, really intimate and filled my need for touch on a level I hadn't ever had before. Enough to make me cry.

All was right with the world. Even if the tears kept flowing from my eyes, and even if my nose was clogged and I had to breathe through my mouth.

Could use a bath, though.

A few minutes later, Leah groaned and sat up. She rubbed her face with both hands before she looked at me. Seeing my tears, she reached out to wipe them away and asked, "Are you okay?"

I hooked an arm around her waist as I kissed her, luxuriating in the knowledge that I could just do that without worrying about anything. I loved how her lips curved against mine.

"Yeah. I'm good. Really good. A lot happened, that's all."

She smiled and nodded at me, tracing my eyebrows with her thumbs. Then Leah patted me until I let go of her so she could climb off the mat.

"Nature calls," she said, tugging on her bodysuit with a sniff. "And I need to wash up. I'm all soup inside this thing."

I snorted. "I could use some hygiene myself. We've got a few eyes to keep watch," I said, thinking of the Scout's Quartet. "Saves time if we don't wait for each other."

"Okay. Let's see…we've got thirty minutes for a break, if we want to get to a good spot ahead of the returning Antithesis."

"Yeah, that'll suffice."

Leah smiled and hopped back into her piloting creche. The big spider slowed and stopped, and she let the pod fall from the bottom of it. I didn't bother with the little airlock and just hopped through the big square escape hatch myself.

Holy crap. I cringed away from Daddy-Long-Legs. He stank terribly of rot and death. Somehow the reek of stinking, brackish water from the toxic swamp had stuck to him despite his hydrophobic nature.

Well, there goes my plan to ride the thorax. I'd thought I could maybe add my own arsenal to our fighting power, but that would've required some intense cleaning, which we didn't have the time for. Unless we spent points, and…

That seemed like a bit of an unnecessary waste, right now. I still had guns to buy, and wings, too.

Looks like the next battle will be up to Leah, huh?

I moved several dozen meters upwind of Daddy-Long-Legs, and Leah followed me with a grimace after opening her egg and taking a single breath.

A mint… I ordered a tube of candy and pressed a piece against Leah's lips, giggling when she happily licked it from my thumb with a saucy wink.

Leah set up her pod to guard us, and I nudged Mission Control to initiate overwatch. I attached a bit of gratitude to the request-slash-order, just to see how the bud would receive it. It/she/I/whatever reacted with a burst of happiness and worked with Tynea to send the Scout's Quartet into the trees surrounding the crumbling highway.

Looking around myself, I mulled over the bud's reaction. The emotion had felt a little more…distant. Like there was more separation. The intrusiveness of it had lessened, too.

Still me, though. Still my own quasi-autonomous thought complex.

"Tynea?"

Yes?

"How do people handle the whole budding thing? When does a bud differentiate, and when is it no longer…me? When do I start considering them separate from myself? When do I start referring to them, instead of myself?"

That depends on the technology used, and therefore the nature of the alternate or quasi-selves. In the case of your Quanta, there'll come a moment where the bud will have a thought or consideration that is clearly and recognizably foreign in a tangible way. It's been described as the shattering of a mental mirror by some. You can't miss it, not even by accident.

"Huh. Is that a function of the Quanta, too? Or just something that would happen regardless, because we're talking about multiple selves in one brain?"

It's a fundamental feature built into the Quanta. The "shattering"—I could hear the quotes—is the symptom of a feature that empowers a bud to delineate itself, once it becomes aware of its own existence in a way that makes it a viable self. That delineation is a conscious decision by the bud and you will easily sense it.

"And that's not supposed to be confusing as fuck?"

No, it won't be. It won't be painful or traumatic, either. But it's also not something that can be described appropriately, only experienced. It would be easier to explain colors to a person blind from birth.

"I…see. And, I guess, that's when I'm supposed to address them as…personalities that aren't me?"

Yes.

"Huh…"

A scent I was getting to be quite familiar with hit my antennae, and I quickly restrained them before they'd go sniffing Leah in certain places again. I turned to her and found she'd finished stripping off.

"Tinea," she asked as she washed out the suit's insides, "would you mind if I upgrade from this thing? I really could use something with inbuilt hygienic functions, I think."

"And give you better protection, too. Sure, go for it," I answered with a thumbs-up. It would delay my purchase of wings, but considering we'd soon be killing thousands of Antithesis, that really didn't matter.

Some fluffy silk bindings for my sensilla later, I'd freed up my hands and tail to help me wash myself. And learned that there wasn't much of a difference between men's and women's sensitivity after the act. Careful touch was required. But, finally, I was clean, and so was Leah.

We still had fifteen minutes, so Leah bought her upgrade for five hundred points. Almost three times the price of the first version.

The new Quasi-Newtonian Bodyguard from Warforge Technologies looked mostly the same as the old, but it had a lot more goop to work with and the goop itself was more capable. It could  form crystals and prisms to refract non-kinetic attacks—lasers, for example—or create ablative layers of a self-regenerating gel to absorb pseudo-kinetics, such as jets of molten metal from high-explosive warheads.

Nice. I wasn't sure that Antithesis used that kind of weaponry, but…our kidnappers might.

The suit had one last critical function to rectify a problem that we'd not even thought of before Ypsi mentioned it: Leah sat a lot in her pod, not moving. That meant that without upgrades to her physique, she had muscles that would suffer eventually. Maybe not atrophy, at least, not anytime soon. But they weren't getting the exercise they needed, a fact exacerbated by her lack of natural limbs. Her entire musculature was unbalanced.

And so, her new suit would interface with her body through a suite of specialized nanobots meant for long-term pilots. Their catalog name was rather fancy: Nanomachinae Magistrales. It sounded kind of over the top to me, but then, they were Warforge Technologies.

They would primarily enhance her ability to sense her machines by copying more machine-signals over into chemicals and hormones her brain could understand, and also stimulate her muscle groups. They'd even block certain nerves responsible for proprioception, so that Leah wouldn't be distracted by any induced twitches.

I was very happy with that upgrade. Leah in good hands, figuratively, was a great thing, and I made sure she knew that. With lots of kisses. Which gave me an opportunity to test how tickle-resistant the new suit was.

Turned out the suit still didn't care about getting poked, but Leah was extra sensitive to soft, feathery touches. More than before. I had a feeling that was intentional, considering how she smiled and blushed when I tickled her ribs.

Looking forward to another tail-tastic session eventually, huh? I thought with a giggle. Something to keep in mind.

I did intend to have a more…direct tasting of my Leah, after all.

Maybe once we've got a new cocoon? That might be a nice way to break it in…

***