(Rewritten) Ch. 130 – Night Bus

"Well, boy. We don' get ta choose our feels. Or our thoughts. They non-optional. Yer brain just magics them to happen.

Can't blame ya for what ya think or feel. Ye didn' choose 'em. Yer parents, yer carers did for ya. Other people did for ya, put them there in yer head.

But you sure can change what ya do with 'em, yeah? Learn and all that. Can change 'em slowly."

– Aunt 'Auntie Care' Carroll, giving advice to her young shadow, June 2056

***

I dragged myself up through the tiny airlock in Daddy-Long-Legs's butt, thinking that I've had entirely too much ass-traversal for one day already, and heaved a sigh of relief when Leah smiled at me.

Virtual stuff just isn't a replacement for the real thing, is it?

Even Leah lost some tension when she saw me. Her shoulders dropped a smidge and the frown lines between her eyebrows disappeared.

They came back when my savaged leg made it through, but there wasn't any of the pressured stress we'd been operating under for the past…hours.

Fuck, how long's it been? How long have we been fighting just this battle? It's past dawn now, and we started, what, some time after midnight?

It felt longer.

"Hey, love," she said softly. Her words quietly filled the privacy of the cabin and washed through me. There was something really, really nourishing about them.

Between my good leg and my tail, I had zero issues reaching Leah. I leaned down, wiggled my arms between her torso and the pod's cushioning, and gave her a good, solid, crushing hug while I kissed her. She squeezed me right back and let me bury my nose in the crook of her neck.

After I'd soaked in the physical intimacy, I released her.

"Loads to unpack," I said. "Let's talk?"

"Mm," Leah replied with another warm smile. She was all sorts of soft right now. I supposed that made sense, considering she'd just gotten her Littles-fix. "Maybe sleep first?" Leah continued, "I've identified a nice, quiet corner near that village you mentioned. We can get there well before the Antithesis will. That'll be a good place to relax and talk while we wait."

That was probably a solid idea—I could feel my attention fraying at the edges despite all the wake-up drugs and foods I'd consumed over the night. Leah, freshly relaxed as she appeared, could probably use some shut-eye, too.

"Fair enough. Autopilot?"

"Yeah."

"Wanna join me in my bunk?" I asked, eyeing the amalgamation of silk swing and bunk bed above her pod. There was space for two. If we hugged tight. I could be the little spoon, maybe? Oh, but having a Leah in my arms to squeeze sounded nice, too. Body pillow yum.

But she shook her head. "I'd love to, but since that Twenty-Eight…" she grimaced, "I want to be ready to react as fast as I can out here. I'll sleep, but Ypsi's given me something that'll just let me doze, really. No deep sleep, no wakeup confusion if something triggers the alarms."

I nodded. Played with Leah's bangs, traced her brows. "Okay. Um. Rotate guard shifts, then?"

"No," she shook her head again, "not worth it. We'll be traveling down the highway at maximum speed until we need to skip around the horde. It's just, like, two or three hours until we'll arrive and I'll wake you up again anyway. Maybe four."

"Ah… Tynea, can I have something that'll let me wake up rested, even with so little sleep?"

Certainly. A Cleanse for your system to neutralize the boosters, and a Nightwatcher's Pill to stimulate regeneration. Might I add a Memory Seal? It will accelerate the natural distancing from today's traumatic events. That seems like it'll be necessary, if you wish to unpack recent events during the downtime later?

"Distancing?"

From the trauma. Memory dulls, until remembering something painful doesn't feel like it's happening all over again. It's not safe to treat trauma that's too fresh. It risks retraumatizing, flashbacks, and worse.

"Oh… Yes. Let's take advantage of being Vanguards, yeah? Since we have to deal with the downsides, too." I kicked the suggestion over to Leah as well, who immediately started murmuring to her own AI.

Good. Please eat, then rest, Tinea. Your vitals indicate severe stress and fatigue.

An involuntary yawn all but confirmed Tynea's diagnosis.

"Right. Food." I stood up and slipped onto the bunk. The Chrysaora Plenum shifted smoothly for comfort. I stared at my fucked-up leg, finding myself stunned again by the damage. I could literally count the bones inside my toes.

"Fuck. Yeah, healing. Alright, gimme what I need, please."

Three different sandwiches appeared in my lap, sealed in edible plastic. The special kind, the sort that wasn't supposed to be bad for you. I chuckled. It was rich-people food. The stuff was so expensive the wrapping alone cost more than the standard meals I used to eat.

Samurai luxury, huh?

The sandwiches were insanely good. Satisfyingly filling like the heaviest of food, yet they left me feeling light, like…I didn't know. I thought vegetables might've been like that, once, before the climate went to shit. Samurai food seemed to lack that artificial something that always clogged the body.

I wasn't sure if I could stand going back again.

"Tynea?"

Yes?

"Do you have chef catalogs? Food production catalogs?"

Certainly. Plenty, and plenty for other non-combat necessities.

"Earmark those, please. I want to look into them once we're safe."

Understood. I'll remind you.

I sat there, feeling a slight itch set in throughout my leg. Beads of blood welled up, the torn flesh bubbled here and there. My breasts ached slightly. They were sensitive when I massaged them with my free hand, like a weird form of muscle fatigue.

I've set your bionite production above recommended levels to speed up your healing, Tinea. It would take days to heal your leg, otherwise.

"Oh. Is that not dangerous?" I asked, after swallowing the tastiest bit of synthesized salami I've ever had.

No, not really. Not with the bionites themselves capable of handling any complications that might pop up from the process itself. It'll just be mildly uncomfortable, and you'll need to eat a lot. I've also halted the growth of your wings for the next few days.

"Aw. Makes sense, I guess. Keep me in best shape possible."

Yes, ma'am.

I smiled at her humorous tone. Maybe our relationship was mending again?

Well, I thought, sighing, there's still lots of stuff to consider.

The Daddy-Long-Legs swayed lightly as it stepped onto solid land. We were finally leaving the battlefield behind.

A sudden thought jolted me, and I sat up and went, "Oh! Leah, stop a second!"

"Hmm?" she asked, but the spider mechs halted.

"I almost forgot, we wanted to handle the remains of the battlefield! There's too many Antithesis corpses to leave lying around, maybe some radiation from your twenty-mil's fission shells? Tynea?"

The fallout from those is negligible. The amount of irradiated mass left over is too small to impact the environment noticeably, and the shells weren't energetic enough to become an issue. The quantity of biomass is a far bigger problem. There's enough to feed a dozen fresh nests.

"Can we handle that?"

Yes. There's two options I'd suggest.

You could use your Chrysaora Plenum to plant Flesh Melter payloads around the battlefield, which would completely sterilize it down to the smallest bacterium. It'd take a few decades, but nature would reclaim the barren soil eventually.

Alternatively, you could lean on the Apocalypse insect idea I presented at the start of the battle. They'd eat every last scrap of Antithesis matter.

"Oh, the ones that are programmed to die when they encounter non-Antithesis DNA?"

Yes. They'll be a bit slower to get going and there's a risk of some half-dead unit sneaking off before they get to it, but then they aren't stuck within a fixed radius from a dispenser like the Flesh Melter nanites.

"So they can actually go sniff out buried corpses, or those not directly on the battlefield?"

They'll be more thorough, yes. Dead Antithesis come with the advantage of not adapting to them, either, so we don't need to sterilize life itself around here.

"Let's use those, then."

Understood. Would you like to see the purchase and your battle results, too?

"Nah, fuck that. Sleep first. And food, I guess," I said, munching away.

If you'd throw this out the airlock, please. Open it up, first.

A small glass bottle popped into my lap, plugged with a stopper. There was a blue, glittering liquid inside, within which several catatonic insects floated. They looked like wasps grown around dragonfly-shaped drones, and their mandibles screamed feeding frenzy. Occasionally, a wing or leg twitched.

I didn't want the insects loose anywhere near our bunks, so I hung myself upside-down out the airlock by my tail instead. Then I grabbed the stopper, and found that it was made of a strange rubbery substance—almost liquid enough to be a gel. It pulled out with a wet plop.

The insects will go active in about ten seconds. You can just drop the bottle as is. The stopper too, please, it's their first food.

"Gotcha."

I let the gel stopper and the bottle fall to the ground and the blue juice inside spilled out as it tipped over, along with several of the Apocalypse insects. Over the next few seconds, the wasps began reacting, with the ones closest to the gel beginning to crawl towards it. I closed up the airlock before they'd start flying.

Our mechs resumed moving as soon as I was back in my bunk, after I'd divested myself of the Chrysaora—still couldn't remember buying it—and the tail harness. We picked up speed across the old, cracked asphalt, and the pseudo-wasps receded from my view before long.

Probably should've left a comms drone, huh? Get a sense for what they can do… Eh, whatever, I thought, looking up at the increasingly patchy cloud cover. The sun slowly burned holes into them. The battlefield's big, maybe we'll get lucky with spy sat footage.

I pulled my wing arms forward as I finished off the last of my food and studied their tips. It looked like the elbow joints had thickened, perhaps building strength to support further growth. The second segments were still a bit anemic by comparison, and the third joints were all just little knobs at the ends.

Yup, plenty of growing still to do.

The bones beneath my left knee, on the other hand, were already fully covered with freshly developing muscle. I could see the process in real time, like…

Yuck.

Like a sausage filling out beneath the skin, flesh creeping into the void. I quickly looked away before I'd throw up the sustenance I'd just consumed and let myself fall onto my back, then wriggled around to figure out where to put my new limbs. They didn't naturally fit into the curve of my butt like my tail, after all. But splaying them akimbo worked okay, and I could even keep the Second Wind equipped for rapid response stuff.

Leah quietly dimmed the lights and the cabin gained decidedly cozy vibes. My tail, a beautiful two or three fuzzy meters long, snaked its way into her pod. She giggled and patted it when it wound itself around her shoulders and pooled on her belly. I shivered with delight from the warm comfort of floof-noodle hugs.

Pacified and loath to violate the increasingly sleepy quiet, I asked Tynea for the medications via the Quanta, who teleported a small see-through satchel with three pills onto my chest.

Amused, I stopped a second just to appreciate that my bust elevated the satchel resting on it, and looking at it was less eye-muscle straining than it would've been as Aden.

Then Tynea chimed in. The blue is the Cleanse, please take that one first. Give it two minutes to work. Once it's lost its potency, you can take the Memory Seal and the good night pill without them getting Cleansed, too.

"Alright. Thanks, Tynea. We've got plenty to talk about, too, don't we?"

If you'd like, yes. It would be good to clear the air, I think? I've been increasingly worried that I have done irreparable damage to our relationship with my handling of the Quanta sale. But perhaps resolving your memories and the Quanta's logs should come first?

"Yeah. After I've slept."

After you've slept.

"...Talk to you later."

Good night, Tinea.

***