Ch. 145 – Fire and Brimstone Delivery Service

> Beepity Boop: Any country's history would make for a good movie; the question is, what's the genre?

> Norwegian Queen of Blood and Dramatics: Ours is a historical romance of a married woman cheating on her husband with her lover, only for the lover to later betray her, and the woman realising she has to become independent again, wild young and free like she was in her youth when she did whatever the fuck she wanted.

> German Author → replying to "Any country's history […]": this…is not a great mystery for us. >.>

> Norwegian Queen of Blood and Dramatics: "A History of Warfare"

> German Author: "That one time <insert period-appropriate name for Germany> picked up <insert period-appropriate weapon> and took a weeklong walk after spinning the bottle."

> Danish Eifer—Rødgrød med fløde → replying to "Any country's history […]": That one time we sailed over to visit out neighbours and threw a party

> Beepity Boop: Do you have any idea how little that narrows it down?

> Danish Eifer—Rødgrød med fløde: I'm sorry, I meant to say: all our neighbours, and their neighbours…and their...

– Recovered snippet from the German Author's Discord server, dated early 2025. Discord was a communications app known for its dangerously weak moderation of dissident communities until its forceful dissolution by the Joint Government And Commerce Regulatorum LLC in 2032

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I was whining under my breath as, a handful of kilometers away, three thousand eight hundred missiles completed their journey and burst into clusters of thirty-four thousand two hundred micro-missiles.

Streaks of glorious firework speared the swarms of model Ones, and thirty-four thousand micro-missiles violently spun up on gyrating jets to explosively convert themselves into tornadoes of aerodynamic razors.

Shivering from a special kind of pleasure, I hunched with my knees to my chin as glowing clouds of metallic particulate set the sky on fire and threw artfully curling veils of death, like a genius artist of smoke and aerosols let loose.

It was beautiful.

Shockwaves raced through the dense formations of flying aliens, made visible in the press of them against each other like grass flattened beneath heavy winds.

The anticipation of feeling the stroke of the sonic reverberations across my antennae, my skin, had me spellbound.

The points counter was already ticking up. Way up.

Fifty thousand points, and the first volley was far from finished murdering fake pigeons.

It's time, Tynea whispered into the echoing surf of shockwaves lapping against my senses, softened only by distance. I'll give you the top first, okay?

Whimpering from the sensual and emotional overload, I nodded and jerkily unfolded and held my arms out for my AI.

Purchased:

Total cost: 21000 Combined Remaining points: 29069

Dense, grey fluff met my fingers like a hug as I closed them around the comfortable neck of the top, and the bits of black fabric of the garment nestled around my wrists with a silken caress.

It was so small, so much smaller than any t-shirt I'd ever worn. And yet, it'd be enough. For me. For cuddly, soft, smol me.

I couldn't help the relieved smile that stole across my face, so powerful it was almost painful.

Tinea, would you like to increase the coverage of the canopy? It'll hide you from the cameras in the sky.

Tynea's voice had…changed over the course of the last few hours. It was a bit sudden, if 'sudden' could be applied to a process that took a few hours even for the AI. It wasn't a massively overt change, but there was an increase in warmth enough that I'd picked up on it.

And it wasn't just her timbre, but also the content of her speech. She wouldn't have cared enough, previously, to advise me to protect my nakedness.

Smiling, I let the Second Wind unfold more segments of the airfoil. My jets picked up the pace to correct against the additional drag and to make use of the increased lift, until I was quickly rising through the thinning trails of kerosene stink.

I set the myriad tiny scales covering my throat and boobs to loosen and fall away. Most of them were quickly whisked away by the wind, but the Chrysaora's fluff cradling my boobs from below caught a bunch and needed a little bit of grooming.

But before long, I had put on the top, marveling at the way it shaped me and made me feel like the epitome of femininity. It matched the Chrysaora's silken bottoms in color and texture, crushed diamond filigree and all. Altogether, I wore a two-piece, open-backed leotard beneath the battle skirt.

The fluff around my throat hid my cleavage and tickled the underside of my jaw. It was the kind of stuff that made me want to bury my face in it, and hidden from view as I was, I didn't resist.

Chrysaora's chiming voice sounded in my ear, "Warning! Material stores seventy-five percent depleted, Tinea!"

Mission Control responded:

– Condition met, executing Phase Two; Seeding Overwatch. –

Unlocked:

Total cost: 2400 pts, 2 tknRemaining points: 36024Remaining tokens: 1 Tinea, 2 Leah

Purchased:

Total cost: 12000Remaining points: 24024

– Diverting resources. –

– Advisory: Material resupply required in four minutes, fifteen seconds. –

"Tynea, I'll buy another set of tanks for the Chrysaora when we're loading up the Auxiliant, too."

Understood.

A different set of missiles began curling out onto my skirt's streamers. Sixty millimeters across and six hundred long, they were stuffed to capacity with a mixed payload of a tiny sintery, and the materials it would use to build even tinier scouting drones.

At the rear of the missiles sat two tiny rocket stages. The first one was a weak sustainer, meant to get the vehicle sailing gently on unfolding wings towards its destination. The second stage would create a massive impulse of acceleration on final approach, strong enough to rip the wings right off, and to let the missile dodge unwanted attention by virtue of being stupidly fast.

A third, equally tiny, stage would explosively release a drogue chute to let the missile survive its landing, along with a number of lines designed to entangle in the canopy of trees and catch the rocket out of range of any ground-bound units.

There, the sintery would produce a steady stream of tiny infiltrators. Clouds of camera drones floating like seeds wherever the wind might take them on their miniature gas bladders, and tiny strings of tremor sensors attached to drilling heads barely powerful enough to dig a centimeter or two into the ground. Their weak radio signals could just about penetrate that much cover to reach the communications antenna of their fabricator.

One missile would do little, their surveilled area too small and the drones not stealthy enough to avoid detection. But dozens of them per square kilometer, carefully placed to take advantage of local airflows and the geological data provided by Dervish, would create the dense web Leah needed to stay safe during the battle.

Perhaps sensing my satisfaction that our plans were proceeding apace, Tynea asked, Ready for the jacket?

"Mhm."

I caught the defensive piece of the Auxiliant, with its two cannonettes still tucked away in the pauldrons. It was a jacket made of ultra-tech machinery. True samurai stuff. There were the two panels in the back that looked like shoulder blades and would build the teleporting hexweaves to catch bullets. The rest of the jacket was made of articulated machinery that would feed the cannonettes their darts.

Ethereal lightshow diodes, much like those of the Chrysaora Plenum, ignited all over the linkages as the device activated. I quickly threw it around my shoulders, where it settled itself securely against my contours and unfolded the cannonettes.

Two discrete stings near my spine preceded a ping against my Quanta, a message that the medical ports were installed. Those would let me inject medicines, surgical nanites, or even drugs straight from installed plug-tanks, if I wished, or vice versa, let me supply bionites and other bodily fluids to be loaded into darts.

The ports would stay unless I told the Auxiliant to remove them prior to unequipping the jacket.

The pauldron's empty plug-tank cassettes immediately sprang open, waiting to be fed.

"Tynea?"

Here you go:

Purchased:

Total cost: 1830Remaining points: 33387

The cassettes of the Auxiliant's pauldrons as well as the Chrysaora's belt magnetically tugged the plug-tanks from my fingers as fast as I grabbed them out of the air. Tynea was kind enough to always give me the right ones for minimum hassle.

Holding one of the tinier tanks that would go into the pauldrons, I asked, "How do they hold the same amount of material as the bigger versions for the skirt?"

Their name is rather misleading—they don't hold the materials at all. Rather, they're shunts that connect to a reserved space inside one of my warehouses, where the materials are actually stored.

"Huh. And why are there different sizes, then?"

It's always a tradeoff between convenience and throughput. Your Chrysaora has more space for bigger gates, and its fabricators can make better use of a thick flow of materials than the Auxiliant's small pauldrons.

Speaking of the Auxiliant, are you ready for its final piece?

"Sure!" I said with enthusiasm. Pretty clothes might feed my softer side, but serial application of high-velocity kinetics was a feast for my other side. The one that turned battle into a mad, whirling waltz or a blooming bouquet of fire and shrapnel.

Just as it had in the simulation, the bismuth geode popped into the air next to me. Unlike in the simulation, I was already in motion and instantly left the thing behind. Nonetheless, I heard its impellers spin up as it arrested its fall.

By the time it had caught up again and begun keeping station relative to me, it had already transformed into its generalist configuration, handles ready for me to grab.

"Greetings, Tinea! I am Auxiliant, and I have activated my profile as preserved by your personal assistant. I am keyed to listen to your voice. If you wish to alter our method of communication or otherwise change my settings, please indicate so at your leisure. Detecting combat events, but lacking a designated role, I have assumed the Universal Soldier configuration and loaded basic ammunition. Please grab my handles if you would prefer to handle me manually."

Giggling, I did indeed grab those handles. The Auxiliant reconfigured itself automatically and moved much of its bulk onto my back to improve our balance. I recognized the small backpack for the little ammunition factory from the simulation.

"I am battle-ready!"

Its chime also informed me that she had barely one magazine's worth of materials. But Tynea was on the ball, and as soon as the Auxiliant had revealed a bank of slots for plug-tanks along the belt carrier, she spawned in another set of those close enough for the magnets to grab them.

"I come with several default ordnance blueprints preinstalled. But to let you truly delight in using me, Tinea, may I recommend purchasing a few, more explosive, options?"

⁂

A few minutes earlier

Leah stood staring at the hologram map, arms crossed, expression severe as she tracked Tinea's ascent and the Antithesis' reaction to the walking war-crime's deployment of what she could only describe as horrifically uncompromising, well, war crimes. Those payloads were not at all concerned with clean killing.

Next to her, Dolores had also crossed her arms, but unlike Leah, she was doing it to hold her tummy as she laughed at the atrocity Tinea had unleashed, hard enough that if she'd still been made of flesh, she probably would've had tears streaming down her face.

"Your gurl is batshit insane," she heaved between chortles, "it's a fucking wonder the bitch critters didn't pursue a treaty against that shit the moment she showed up with 'em skyfires. Fuck, I'd ask her out myself if she weren't taken!"

Leah just grunted, sorely tempted to kick the Nerd's ass. She would've done it too, if she wasn't sure that, faced with the strange alloys of Dolores's body, it'd be her dinky prosthetics that'd come away dented with suspiciously glutes-shaped impressions.

Even Leah couldn't quite prevent the twitching of her lips against the hilarious picture—there was absolutely zero chance she wouldn't give the Nerd more reason to laugh.

Sighing, she stepped back. The red covering most of the map and certainly surrounding them would only creep closer. Her largest gun was already spitting shells, and Leah ought to be getting in her pod.

Dolores straightened up and looked at Leah, who found herself caught by the twisted something in the other woman's eyes, mixed in with the humor. There was a certain…alien, predatory focus there that Leah wasn't entirely sure she could identify. It felt like it wasn't Dolores, exactly, who was looking at her.

Or maybe, it wasn't Leah the strange samurai was looking at?

She'd seen it in Tinea, too, a time or two when they were about to go into battle. Especially the last, big one. There'd been the echo of separation, of worlds not shared. Of a kind of worldview Leah was wholly unfamiliar with.

It was the very thing that poked at her irrational fear of losing Tinea somewhere and somehow she couldn't do anything about, because Leah didn't understand. She wondered if she was just too…civilian.

"Gonna get going?"

Leah shook herself. "Yeah. Seems we'll be hella busy in a hurry."

And then she was automatically facepalming the moment that particular grin stole onto Dolores's expression.

"For Super Earth!"

"Yeah, yeah…good hunting."

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