(Rewritten) Ch. 59 – Xenocide Act II; The Eeeps And The Myriad

"When you're looking at material science in deeper and deeper detail, eventually you stop asking 'What is it made of?' and start asking 'How likely is it to be here, and not there?"

– Dr. Phunkwitch, head of the Department of Vanguard Esotech Research at the University of Once-Lost Atlanta

***

"Eeep!"

A buzz ran up my tail, followed by a sudden electric jolt at the tip that had me jump forward like a startled cat before I could catch myself.

And then it was over, leaving me with a new weight at the far end of my agile appendage. I brought it forward to get a look, studying the five new technological fingers that had added themselves to my spinneret, alternating with my natural ones. They were considerably more massive, presumably to do whatever needed to be done to the raw materials I'd feed them. Looked like they'd shield the smaller, more fragile organs from touch, too.

Just behind the spinneret, I found ten new sockets hidden within the fuzz, five of them in a line on the left, five on the right.

Slotted into them were ten round plugs, each one two centimeters across and five centimeters long. The installation of the sockets had the plugs sharply angled towards the rear, so that I couldn't really catch my tail on anything I brushed past.

Huh. It actually looked pretty good. The otherwise plain black plugs were lit up in a pastel pink with fuel-level indicators, and a rainbow colored ring of light rotated around the connection underneath my fuzz, tinting it with a tiny lightshow.

Yup, that works.

A ping against my aug told me the implant wanted to connect, and I opened a new tab for it. It displayed its current condition—nominal—what materials were loaded into each plug-tank, as well as their levels.

Four tanks of powdered ferrite, one tank of equally powdered carbon dust—ah, so I could make threads of varying carbon content? From pure iron, to pure monofilament graphene—hello Ripwire!—even threads of steel if I mixed the two. One tank of oxygen, one of water, one tank of, holy crap, napalm, according to the description of 'sticky flammable substance', and one of…concrete? And finally, one tank of copper powder.

"Won't the concrete dry and clog?" I asked, remembering how concrete trucks always had their drums rolling for exactly that reason.

No, Tinea, no worries. The tank keeps it in stasis.

Um. So. Aside from making 'small geometries' from steel, I could create conductive wires of copper alloy, and, uh, print small walls from concrete? Pillars? Small buttressing in enclosed spaces? And I had water, too, but for what? Um. Wet silk? Oh, that might be surprisingly useful for creating a sponge real quick.

Pure oxygen… Oh. Um, yes. Turn the torch into a super-hot, extra-nasty flame-thrower with that and the napalm, why the fuck not?

Oh! And the fingers could friggin' smelt tiny quantities of material with the oxygen, too! Just enough to let me spin alloys to reinforce my silk—or perhaps the other way around, considering that my silk had the higher tensile strength.

I was realizing just how versatile this spinneret-enhancing implant turned out to be. I'd invested barely any points into upgrading it, and the few basic ideas from the top of my head were already overwhelmingly useful.

Though some of that did depend on how much pressure these new spinneret fingers could withstand, didn't it? More force, more…weapon.

I pointed my tail at a tree ten meters away, letting the water run at maximum zip from one finger. The spinneret started to vibrate with an audible hum and quickly grew uncomfortably numb. Adding the other fingers reduced the vibrations as the forces counteracted each other and balanced out.

The water expelled itself as a very thin and seriously pressurized stream, but it quickly lost coherence and the spray turned into a fine mist about five meters away.

So, the implant was meant for close-up work, unlike, say, squirt guns? But it did have real pressure. I'd need to add abrasives to cut even thin sheets of hard materials—and I'd have a torch for that already—but I could project fluids and maybe even gasses over some distance.

I stopped the…ejaculation, heh, and the spinneret tingled like a foot that had fallen asleep. Massaging it carefully, I breathed with relief as the tingling receded. Tynea's voice brought me back to focus.

I'll table all the purchases in one go, if that's okay?

"Yes, please. Later, though."

Understood. Next up, the harness that will hold onto your tail and provide a base for the torch and the Sentinel to attach to. Ready?

"Ready!"

Hold out your hands again, please.

I did, and Tynea teleported a mechanical contraption into my waiting palms. It was an articulated pipe, made of interlocking scales colored metallic black with the glint of white diamond dust to it. They felt dense like steel, but warm, instead of metal cold. Attached to the inside was a meter-long sock, or, rather, a tube of some kind of stretchy, soft fabric.

"Ah! That's the stuff that doesn't build a static charge, isn't it?"

Indeed, it's going to be in contact with your fuzz, after all.

On the outside of the scaly pipe were sets of rails, like those on a gun, but stronger and tooled for articulation. Tynea explained, I've set the torch and the Sentinel up so that they can wander along the harness. That should allow for ease of use, while keeping them out of the way when you're weaving things.

"Neat!"

I finagled my tail into the internal sock. Luckily, I had no grain against which I had to move the thing, but I wiggled it around until it didn't leave bald rings in my tail fur, either. The harness contracted once I stopped moving things, and held on tightly, then pinged my aug with a new command with which I could tell it to relax itself for removal. I added it to a new tab that would also manage the weapons and tools to be attached to the harness.

Waving the appendage around, I found the thing quite easy to move. It had some weight to it, and my tail was powerful enough to use it like a bludgeon, but I didn't think it would be heavy enough to be a strain over time. At least, not without the weapons attached.

Speaking of which.

"Wanna get me the next item?" I said, holding out my hands once more.

The torch, and the adapted Sentinel.

Both came in glittering and metallic black housings, lit up in that same decent pastel pink the plugs used. The housings had articulated hooks on them that looked like they could hold onto the rails of the harness, and compensate for any twisting and kinking I did with the tail.

I placed the gun on the underside, so that if I curled the tail to peek out from over my shoulder or head, its barrel would be on top. The torch I clamped onto the opposite side.

I let both connect to my aug, giving each its own tab, and readied them for combat. They immediately extended just beyond my tail's tip to prevent self-injury. The torch ignited with a blinding flame a quarter meter long, which my enhanced vision allowed me to study in a rich rainbow of colors usually invisible to the human eye. The gun disengaged its safeties, waiting for my command to fire at the crosshairs in my vision. Between the guided bullets and the Sentinel's limited ability to yaw sideways on its rail, it could hit targets my tail wasn't quite pointing at, and when I turned elsewhere, a screen appeared at the bottom of my vision to show me what the sensorium of the gun saw behind me. Easy enough, really.

I wiggled my tail and watched how the intricate mechanics of the fastenings let the weapons ignore the shape of the sock, always pointing where my tip did. Stowing the armaments again, I asked, "How tough are these links, really? I'm worried a good whack might bend something."

The material is an alloy used in orbit-to-atmosphere vehicles. You won't damage it.

Hmm…so, I actually had a thagomizer too, now. Sort of. Minus the spikes, but with extra burny hurt.

"Okay. Last item."

I will place it on the ground in front of you.

And she did. It landed with a slight whump, a long garment from the waist down that stood there on its own, shaped to match my hips and butt. At the rear, it plunged in a vee to fit my tail, and it was beautiful.

Metallic black with a dusting of diamond glitter, it looked like a flaring battle skirt. It had pastel pink lights breaking up the lines, creating panels and elegant shapes, highlighting contours without being overbearing. It wasn't shy to show off, but it didn't feel like it had any particular need to, either.

"Nice."

Why, thank you! Tynea replied, and I could hear the satisfaction in her voice as the Myriad split at the rear and readied itself for me to step into.

Um. Yeah. Maybe not with soggy, soaked DIY panties?

I'd just bent over and was about to step out of my misshapen bottoms, when breaking wood to my left sent me whirling around.

Silk does not rip easily. Especially not mine. Not even against my strength. Wet silk is not weak silk. It's just swollen, soaked fiber, as strong as ever.

So…pulling on it with all the force of my ten thousand point body could generate just wrung out the water almost explosively, and squirted it everywhere. Like my eye.

Half-blind and spluttering, my feet got tangled up with the silk, my step to catch myself didn't, and I smashed face-first into the muddy grass.

More noises. My head whipped back up, and I saw a Four with a few Threes stare at me, frozen like they couldn't compute what just happened.

I could. I didn't want to.

The mud and water running off my face made me blink. I'd missed the warning and timer in the visual ring that would've told me they were incoming. My gun wasn't in my hands, which were still grabbing a soggy piece of silk, which was still snarled around my legs.

The last thing I needed was Tynea barely holding back laughter, as she reminded me, You have a tail. It has weapons. I suggest you use them.

Blood suffused my face and I blushed furiously. I whipped my tail forwards, nearly conked myself in the head with it because I wasn't quite used to the new weight yet, and told the Sentinel in it to fire at the Four, at the same time as I realized that I'd never checked what ammunition, if any, was loaded.

It went brrrrrrt, and, in an extremely fast echoing staccato, flames shot out of two or three dozen holes all over the front of the xeno. It fell to the ground, quite dead. The gun pinged empty, and the Threes charged.

"Ammo!"

On the ground! Touch the Sentinel to it.

A magazine appeared right in front of my face. I whapped the underside of my tail against it, which meant it had to twist one-eighty degrees along its length. That reversal was just about the limit and quite uncomfortable, but I made it work and the Sentinel grabbed the magazine.

Another two-second burst, and the Threes lay dead in front of me before they got close enough to taste the cutting sizzle of a plasma torch.

All was still.

I suppose those must have slipped away from Leah before she got the lure going on her end.

"Yes. I suppose so. Hey, Tynea?"

Yes?

"If I'm not picking up a visual signal, warn me next time? Please?"

I shall. Apologies, Tinea.

"...'s alright. I guess it coulda gone worse."

I got up, finally stepped out of the misshapen and mishandled piece of clothing, and kicked it into the trees.

I looked down at myself and sighed. I was dirty all over my front. And actually, my back, too. I was dirty everywhere, and not just from the spill I'd taken.

Well, I came with a shower built in now, didn't I?

I let water spray out of all five artificial spinneret segments, and carefully modulated the pressure so it wouldn't hurt even Leah's less tough skin, then tested it on myself.

Oh? This worked quite well! And five streams of water, too! With good pressure! Yes, indeed, this was better than the shower in my apartment!

I removed my top, and got busy washing all the mud off of me everywhere, ignored the stimulation in certain fun places with extreme discipline and Oh god that feels amazing!, before I finally returned to the battle skirt, which still stood there, waiting for me to equip it.

So I stepped into its breech and lifted it, until it closed to hug my hips and posterior very snuggly to hold itself in place. It felt amazing. And a little naughty, with the way it almost caressed my butt.

There were armor plates like, uh, pauldrons, but for the hips; pretty thick, exaggerating my natural curves by roughly a palm's width at the widest. More armor panels hung from them to create a full skirt, everything following the same aesthetic of exaggerated feminine curves. It reminded me a lot of action figures of ladies in impractical bell skirts done up for battle…except as I took my first steps, nothing impeded me. Somehow, the whole thing was eminently practical, with the panels responding and articulating exactly as I required.

Wondering at the massively fascinating juxtaposition of looking like a Lady and moving like a warrior, I found myself smiling and approving wholeheartedly. Another aspect of preferences I'd newly discovered.

Anywhere I couldn't easily reach with my hands—mostly at my rear and down the skirt—segments with twenty-millimeter-wide holes were integrated. Only the thick plates at my hips had none.

Those are the launch batteries. They can tilt from seventy degrees down to seventy degrees up. The faulds—Faulds, huh? Not pauldrons—also contain most of the fabrication machinery that resupplies these launchers, and the minor shunts within which finished parts are stored until use. Please take a few steps.

A series of sturdy covers suddenly snapped open along my upper thighs and hips near where my hands naturally hung.

I recognized the round sockets within, a few of which were already occupied. More plug-tanks. These sockets were illuminated in different colors, and each one had a label appear in my vision to tell me where each type of resource should go. Gasses, Liquids, and Solids, they read.

I started a new tab and connected the Myriad to it. There was a battle-panel with a readout of its sensors, available missiles, a switch to toggle on autonomous battle mode to detect and eliminate threats based on tens of thousands of settings I could configure and which Tynea was already adjusting, bless her. And there was another less combat-focused panel that gave information on manufacture, materials and their levels. I could build around a thousand high-explosive mini-missiles with what materials I had, but only ten nanite ones. Designs available for purchase…

Okay. That was a lot, way too much to really explore right now.

"Tynea, can I trust you to handle the administrative stuff?"

Indeed, that is my role, Tinea. Please leave it to me. I will clean up these panels and combine critical information into a more readable format for you.

I blew out some air. "Alright, thank you. I think we're ready, then? Anything I missed?"

Ahem.

A downward arrow blinked center-of-vision.

I looked down.

I jiggled.

I wove a silk top-sports-bra-thingy.

***