(Rewritten) Ch. 36 – Punchy Punchy Hole

"Surprise, motherfucker!"

– Y'all know where this is from

***

I spent a few moments tracking the Four on the other side of the wall, less than a meter away. The tips of my antennae carefully sniffed and tasted and fluffed at every inch of concrete in range, and I was learning to differentiate between singular sensilla picking up vibrations and exciting its socket's nerve endings.

I wasn't able to see it, but I could tell where each of the Four's legs impacted the floor. I could track its tentacles dragging along the wall, and that was enough to guess at the location of its brain case.

The bushels of hair at the tip of my antennae picked up trace amounts of hallucinogenic gas seeping through the porous stone—the Four was certainly in attack mode. No surprise that, considering the smell of Antithesis death wafting everywhere.

I gently, silently placed the barrel of the Sentinel against the wall, and then I squeezed the trigger.

It was very quiet. The front load squirted itself into the wall with a quiet hiss, munched a bit of wall as it molded itself into a tube, followed by a tiny whistling whirr as the dart, well, darted across the gap and buried itself unceremoniously inside the Four.

The loudest part of it all was the thump as the alien slumped to the floor, dead, with its tentacles settling around it. Won't take but a moment for it to start smelling, too. On to the next.

Over the next few minutes, I played a strange game of chicken shoot, where I hunted down a dozen Threes through the vibrations in the floor and walls, as well as any sounds they made as they got more and more agitated and started dragging stuff around or digging into the landing pad.

Sometimes I'd very lightly knock against the wall, just enough for the beast directly outside to hear it. It would freeze for a moment to locate the sound, which was exactly what I needed to place my shot reliably.

Eventually, I sensed no more movement. I wasn't able to say whether another group was closing in, but at least for the moment, we were safe.

I sent Leah a message to join me, while I connected my antennae to the floor again, and watched as the fire slowly ran out of fuel and died down. What remained of the blackened doorway was slightly warped from the heat, but it hadn't been hot enough for the metal to actually melt. Just the paint on it, really.

There was a lot of soot all over the concrete though, and it had turned into a muddy rainbow of pinks, grays, and greens from the heat near the ex-door. The inside of the room was a bit of an oven, though the ventilation helped a lot. Good thing concrete doesn't like to burn. Wouldn't have been a fun way to go out.

Leah came up to me, hugged me from the side, and nuzzled her nose into my hair. After a moment, she spoke with a quiet voice, "Thanks Tinea. Again. I'm usually the one who does the protecting, but here you are, saving my ass again. Thanks."

I reached up to press a soft kiss to the corner of her eye, happy to offer comfort and affection. This is what I wanted to be a girl for, I thought with a smile.

"Don't worry about it, Leah. You're still injured. It's frankly amazing that you're able to move at all, you know? I'm confident you'll return the favor in time. Soon, even, considering how many aliens we're stuck with. Besides, I really, really don't want to lose you." I caressed her cheekbones with fingertips, as I watched that adorable blush traveling into the tip of her ears. She hid her face in my neck, and I'd never seen anything as cute. It made my heart melt all over the inside of my chest, and I couldn't help but cuddle her hard.

I grinned to myself. I'd probably caught her out a little and Leah was stuck between her duty to the safety of her children, and her maybe-desire for me.

Come to think of it, she probably loves teasing me so much because she's left with no other options to explore whether I'm a good…mate, or not, isn't she?

To see whether I'd keep my words, or give in to her metaphorical prodding and cross a line I'd all but promised not to.

Well. Strictly speaking I knew she didn't really need to, uh, test me at all. Rather, it seemed to me that to feel safe enough to explore a relationship with me, she needed to be in a stable environment where she was fully herself; a grown-up on her own two feet.

I was okay with that.

After a moment, Leah straightened up again, and cleared her throat. "How many points have we got? I should probably replace this thing. I don't fancy my chances if a single attack did so much damage to it," she said as she held up my old helmet, with the quill stuck through it.

"Yeah. How were the points split?"

As you'd requested, half-half, with the bonus going to Leah. You're at a combined total of one hundred and eighty-five points.

"That should be enough for decent protection, at least. The overall…isn't great after all, but it'll keep you alive, for now. Should we get something like my reactive protection for you?"

"Yeah. Another helmet that can cover the rest of me with those exploding things? It seemed to work fine for you."

"Wanna try for another combination? Your Warforged stuff, and my Esoteric Defense Systems?"

"Warforge Technologies's the brand name, sure. Sounds hella strong."

"Tynea, what have we got?"

I would suggest measures based on magazines. They are cheap up-front, with most of their running costs coming from the replacement of those magazines over time. As a slight upgrade to your system, Leah's new helmet could accept two magazines at once, and the cartridges offer varied payloads. One magazine of twenty basic reactive explosives identical to the ones you're already using, and another that could be set up depending on her needs as she discovers them.

"Sounds good to me? Say, my current magazine is down to six of those hexagon mines. Can I fill it back up somehow?"

Certainly. For now, I'd recommend just reloading with the other magazine, and filling that one up with the six of this one as they are used.

I guessed that made sense. That would waste the least amount of points. I switched them out, and glued the old mag to the horseshoe just above my tail, where it'd be out of the way.

"If I run low on this mag, too, please immediately buy me a new one. I don't wanna get stuck in combat with two mostly empty ones."

Certainly.

"Okay, Tynea," I continued, "let's send your recommendation to Leah and Ypsi. She'll have better passive armor than we do. Actually, I should probably add my silk to your armor, Leah."

Eventually Leah answered with a packet pinging against my aug, which showed a sleek black helmet, with some very elegant golden filigree drawn along the side, in a mixed pattern of stylized hair and feathers. Its faceplate was a bit…scary.

It managed that uncanny balance between being a blank mask and a person's face, digging into one's psyche and making you feel judged somehow. It wasn't human, yet it most definitely was. Empty eye holes misted with white vapor that traveled up to the crown of the helmet, where it formed a crest along the top, reminiscent of, but sleeker than those antique Roman or Greek helmets.

It looked very Warforge, I guessed, from the aesthetics I'd seen so far between her cyber-eye and this thing. Blackest bodies in either graceful alien arches, or unsettling not-quite-human shapes, golden filigree, and capped with white vapor highlights.

Scary, intimidatingly beautiful, and a tinge of understated legionary badass.

"That'd be one hundred and fifty points. It can protect my entire body with those teleporting plates, and has some basic options for expansion further down the line, but mostly it's a temporary solution that should last me until we can get a whole setup. Is that okay?"

"Go for it, Leah."

She gave me a thumbs-up and waited for the box to appear. Hers wasn't the bland off-white plastic I got, but followed the same colors of the Warforge catalog.

When she noticed me looking, she flushed a little and said, "Sorry, forgot to ask Ypsi to not customize the boxes."

When I tilted my head in confusion, she explained, "It costs an extra point to get custom delivery."

"Oh! Yeah, let's not do that for now. But I feel you, it's a fun thing I'd like to do, too," I said with a thumbs-up. My newly discovered vanity needed feeding, after all.

With another smile, she finally slipped on the helmet and I watched as it turned itself on, with the mist appearing and making it look terribly dangerous.

Could that mist actually be weaponized? That's an idea. I sent it as a text to Leah, who read it with a waggle. Maybe something for when we had more points to play around with.

I still preferred to see Leah's face, though, so I asked Tynea to repeat what they did earlier and make the faceplate see through for me, until I could find Leah's eyes again and smile at her, who mirrored it right back at me.

Yep, that immediately made me feel happy. I was such an addict, already.

"Okay, silk. I'll just start creating sticky patches of silk that I'll then cover with non-sticky silk patches."

Leah lifted her arms and I got to work, as fast as I could. I followed the outline of the overall's hexagon armor plates and simply added strong silk hexagons above them, until Leah was all white up to her chin.

"What about the helmet?"

It has sensors across its surface, Tynea warned, covering those up would hinder it from working properly. Further, it is of a tougher material than your silk, already.

Leah gave me a thumbs-up and said, "I guess we're ready to go, again? Um… What are your bionite levels? Got enough in reserve?"

"Yeah," I answered, with a glance at my chest with a mild blush. "I've got enough. They'll keep producing more, anyway."

I knew that we should hurry, that the longer we spent inside the facility, the less predictable the situation outside would become, but I really, really wanted another hug 'n' squeeze, and Leah was perfectly willing to provide. This time it was me to shove my face into a bosom, and I most definitely was going to have a repeat of that.

Once I let go, I looked up at Leah, who patted my hair with a soft grin that made me melt all over again. Yeah. I'd die to protect her. But I wouldn't die, 'cause I didn't want to cause her pain.

"Tynea, are there some sorta fail-saves we can use, if the situation gets too dangerous for us? Something that'll get us out no matter what?"

Yes, there is a single-use teleportation device that can be worn like jewelry, locked to a designated evacuation site. It costs around a thousand points, but the teleport is extremely resistant against interference, and very, very fast. Other methods involve the creation of surrogate bodies, clones, drones, or simply being so deadly that everything around you dies before it can kill you. The list is figuratively endless and quite expensive.

I sighed. More stuff out of our reach, now and for a while yet. We needed to get home first, and that'd cost us points, too.

Determined to get going, I grabbed Leah with one hand and started walking us towards the scorched doorway, rifle and Sentinel in my other.

"Tinea, we should probably bring along some of the food before we leave. Or even if we use points for that instead, we'll want to destroy anything we leave behind."

I shook my head, "That sounds like a good idea, but it's actually not. What do you think our kidnappers would do if they came back here in a few days or weeks, and found that all the resources for Antithesis had been systematically destroyed?"

"Ah," Leah went. "They'd immediately know that we weren't panicking, which means we'd be hunting, and that'd send them scurrying into the deepest hole they could find."

Leah was pretty unhappy with that realization, but I just squeezed her hand when she let her shoulders fall dejectedly.

"We have time to figure something out, Leah," I said, and she nodded with a sigh.

Meanwhile, I couldn't help but notice the similarities to certain…operations during my childhood, against twitchy, paranoid targets whom I couldn't afford to tip off before I'd cornered them.

Much like those, our kidnappers had been extremely careful not to leave anything we could use to track them down. If they so much as got spooked on their next visit to the facility, they'd be gone for good, and break any link or clue leading to the real decision makers.

It didn't make me happy, but I knew my brain would come up with a solution before long. I was just…good at this stuff. And…I had alien tech now, on top of my own talent.

Even if that cost more points.

***