(Rewritten) Ch. 88 – Xenocide Act VII; Seriously, Hella Weird Experience
Bois, bitches, bitchbois, welcome to Alternative GarageNews! Make life your bitch, bitch!
One of y'all asked a bitchin' question the other day, and so I went and looked for the answer! Whiffcake asked, and I quote, "The fuck's up with Canada's penis ring up north?"
And here's what I found, me bitches!
There’s a crater with a ringlake several hundred miles north north-east of Montreal. Was a mountain with a ringlake, once upon a time.
Some thirty days ago, samurai Fuck My Life—bitch be bitchin' by him very identity, bitches!—discovered that the entire area, but 'specially the mountain in the middle, got clogged with Antithesis.
He bitched about there being too many critters to kill with conventional arms, and that he didn’t wanna, quote, "just blow the whole place up." Smart too, that woulda just scattered the Antithesis matter for miles, seeds large enough to start new bitch nests everywhere.
So him used acid instead. A, quote, "big, huge, fuck-off flood of acid" that ate through hundreds of meters of rock and Antithesis nest to dig a new crater. Forgot our favorite adjective, the bitch, didn't he? Nerd!
Anyway. The ringlake still exists, it does, me bitches, but it’s been lowered by dozens of meters and has become a toxic swamp. The terrain still exists too, but there's no penis mountain left. The acid spent itself near instantaneously, but them toxic byproducts remain. And shit, they'll eat ya like a bitch. Don’t go anywhere near the place for the next fifteen hundred years. Ya’ll bitchin' ta die.
He tryna, quote, "fix it by covering the whole place with millions of tons of fresh soil and seeding it with modified trees."
Them scientists say, quote, "it appears to work, but the water is noxious, and so are the fumes around the lake-cum-swamp."
Heh. Cum.
They don' figure the trees gonna stay healthy, but claim that, quote, "they might end up cleaning the place up anyway. Eventually."
– Alternative GarageNews, a "bitchin' amateur radio" show that, perhaps unsurprisingly, never made it very big. July 2029
***
The ground bucked beneath Leah's claws, and the blastwave almost dislodged her, as the fifth 150 mm shell tore a two-meters-deep crater into the middle of the circular clearing. Dismembered alien bodies went flying, ever more pasted shell after shell.
"Let's see."
Leah lifted her belly from the ground and unlocked her claws, and trudged forwards through the muddy sludge. The rainwater trickled into the crater again, but she caught a glimpse of green plant meat exposed at the bottom, shivering and twitching from the injury.
"Got it! Ypsi, I'm gonna need shells that can dig into that and do a lot of damage."
Um! If we ask Tinea for her acid missiles, then we can use chemicals that react with the acid to make it a lot worse!
"Oh?"
Yeah! It'd be like the bomb that made this crater! But, you know, smaller.
Leah's eyebrows jumped.
"Uh. The bomb that melted a good hundred meters of bedrock to turn a mountain and its ringlake into a crater with a ringlake, which then turned into a swamp too toxic for unprotected life?"
Yup!
"Whacky. Sure."
Okay! And Tynea's sent an acknowledgement, already! The, um, Third Degree is gonna get given, Tinea says.
The wordplay tickled a smile from Leah as she watched a video stream on the pod's inner wall. It showed Tinea twirling through the air in pirouettes and barrel rolls, mincing a dozen Antithesis with her double-bladed spear as she jumped across them. Her Myriad flung several rockets up into the air, tube after tube, like a human gatling gun.
Leah grinned wryly as she saw the absolute ecstasy on the girl's face as she murdered alien after alien. You'd think she's got a vibrator in her or something.
"Alright, Ypsi. What are we buying?"
This! Um. Should I use Tinea's bullet points again?
"Yup!"
Okie!
Purchased:
Total cost: 90Remaining points: 8411
"No-vee?"
Mm! No velocity! They'll plop into the crater after the missiles, and then make the acid from the missiles better.
No kinetic energy required, huh? “Alright, load them up, please.”
Roger!
Leah smiled as she sank into her pod's virtual environment, and the sequential clunking of six shells falling one after the other into the magazine filled up her belly.
This sure is a hella weird experience, she thought as she ruminated on her dual existence as a human and a machine, delivered by the prosthetics-controlling implant.
There was her own body, mostly flesh and blood; sometimes with four limbs, sometimes without; and then there was the walking egg, full of sensors and tactile feedback translated into a cohesive, natural experience by the implant.
But she still had only one brain. She could see with the eyes of the egg and her own at the same time, yet when she forced herself to focus on both, her attention would always, inevitably, narrow to one. Multitasking was less seeing twice, and more rapidly switching between either. Situational awareness was a skill one had to train.
Two bodies, but only one brain—and one that can't naturally multitask. A limitation of hardware, huh? Of my own, and perhaps the implant? Or of the pod’s computers? I wonder…
She opened her real eyes again, inside the pod, and looked at the timer ticking down as it tracked the arrival of the acid missiles. She switched to the spherical field of view of the pod to check her surroundings and then studied the smallish bomb crater the shell had left in front of her.
"Ypsi, I'm gonna want a mental upgrade, I think. Something to keep up with all the possible input from the pod and the implant?"
Um! There's, like, a hundred different ways for that! It's, uh, difficult to narrow it down better. Sorry.
Leah giggled at the adorable contriteness in Ypsi's voice and could almost imagine the little girl wringing her hands sheepishly.
“Fair enough. I’m dealing with multiple inputs, right? Wouldn’t it be best if I could process all of them at the same time? I wouldn’t be playing catch-up constantly, even if I’d be really fast at it with the right upgrades.”
Yeah! Parallel thinking is good for that. But it's also really, really expensive. Thousands of points! Can I suggest a, um, strategic computer, instead? It’ll feed you tactical suggestions, to help you decide where to focus next! Which is really useful with parallel thinking, too, if you still want that some day.
“Oh, is that like one of those AI trainers for real-time strategy games?”
Ah, yes! But much better. Because it’d be from me. And I’m much better!
“Aww, yes you are,” Leah laughed. “Sure, that sounds very useful.”
Um, you don’t really need it yet, though. Daddy-Long-Legs will have his own computers to run that kind of thing, so you can buy upgrades if he's not enough. It’ll still be a little bit expensive, too!
“I see.” Leah’s attention turned upwards as the pod’s microphones picked up the familiar hiss of Tinea’s micro-missiles. They streaked in from overhead and before Leah could so much as take a step back, they’d already dived into the shallow pools of muddy water and liberated their payloads.
The crater started boiling immediately.
Leah, we can add the grenades now!
“Alright. All six?”
Yup!
Ypsi painted a circle of six equidistant spots around the crater, and Leah lobbed one grenade at each, and leaned in to watch.
Um! Let’s skedaddle now, please! Leah!
“Ah, huh?”
Now!
Ypsilon’s rather more somber and serious voice knocked the mental cobwebs loose. Leah jumped several meters backwards, just as a pale, yellow taint flashed through the bubbling crater to convert the water into more acid.
And then, the entire mass burned through the ground. Heat plowed into Leah’s metallic skin as steam erupted from the new hole, ejecting acidic mud and rock. The stone smoked wherever it landed, though the hissing acid evaporated in seconds.
The entire clearing shook as a stuffed foghorn blared from below. Stringy plant matter joined the toxic dreck being puked into the sky.
“What the fuck?!”
That’s the Twenty-Two!
“What? I thought the Antithesis made no sounds!"
There are exceptions! Anyhow, Leah, the acid’s burnt out already! You can check on the hole now.
The ground bucked again, but the expulsion of matter had ceased.
“Well, shit.” Leah looked at the former crater. It had widened into an almost circular hole several meters across, with steam still billowing out from it. “Somehow, the thing is still alive, huh?”
They are rather large.
Leah hummed and gingerly stepped forwards, leery of the ground giving out under her.
Ypsilon cleared up the visuals and Leah finally saw through the rising water vapor.
“Whoa.”
She stood above the neck of a large cauldron. The acid had dug into the ground, and then spread to eat a huge spheroid a few meters down. There was still mud boiling at the bottom, releasing steam and cooking the surroundings like a fuck-huge pressure cooker, to which the hole was the valve. The heat released by the reaction would take quite a while to dissipate.
Most of the cavern revealed just earth and dirt, but the top quarter consisted of a lot of shivering green plant flesh, and two huge plant legs riddled with melted holes.
Leah studied the damaged limbs waving around weakly. "The Twenty-Two, huh?"
Indeed.
She felt the tremors through the ground and watched as part of the meaty wall flexed and the nasal foghorn hammered at her microphones again.
“I'm afraid I already wrecked all your buddies, bitch. Ain't no help coming. Alright, Ypsilon. Looks like the thing's mostly dodged the bullet, so to speak.”
Yes, though you’ve ensured that there aren’t any roots to remain hidden underneath it. That should make for a straightforward kill. May I suggest fire?
“Sure.”
Purchased:
Total cost: 30Remaining points: 8381
Another six shells clunked into the magazines before Leah moved all the way to the edge of the hole.
“Ypsilon, based on those legs, what’s the orientation and size of the monster?”
You’re standing on its back, a little to the rear. Its head and vocal organs are across the hole from you.
Ypsilon drew an outline onto Leah’s screen. The Twenty-Two was larger than a house and the hole drilled through it had destroyed barely a quarter of it. Not enough to kill it, but from how it was twitching and bucking under Leah, it had been injured rather grievously.
It appears to have lost its mobility already.
“Mmm.” Leah tilted her head as she studied the fleshy and muddy hole some more. “Might have to climb in there to really get all of it, I guess.”
That seems likely.
“Well, nothing for it.”
Leah tilted her pod downwards until her cannon pointed halfway down the opposite wall of the hole, and fired.
The recoil shoved hard against the egg, and she nearly flipped over as her front legs left the ground. She scrambled with her extra-long hind legs, digging in far behind her center of gravity.
Leah oophed as the pod crashed back down.
She groaned. “That was hella stupid. Forgot to lock down.”
Ypsi’s polite, little girl voice answered her.
Um, I can remind you next time, if you’d like!
“Yup,” Leah giggled, “please do.”
Okay!
Leah crawled back to the lip of the crater, and checked out the results of the shell she’d shot.
It had penetrated several meters before its fuze went off and set the plant matter on fire deeper inside. A brilliant white flame was spearing its tongue through the entry wound, which ejected more burning plant stuff from it like a fireworks rocket motor.
She could see the green flesh dry, wilt, and blacken from the heat around the impact site.
“Well, that does seem effective.”
It is! The fuel is the, um, long-lasting type. It’ll burn for about a minute! And really hot. Above three thousand six hundred degrees Fahrenheit!
“Oh my. Can my pod survive that?”
Uh, no! Better not try. At least not without more upgrades! But as long as you don't touch the white fire, you'll be fine.
“Well, then. I’d better be careful, huh?”
Yes!
Smiling, Leah adjusted her heading and walked a few meters around the former crater to angle another shot. She dug in her claws and popped a few barbs into the meat to secure herself.
She raised her butt again, and fired the second round to much the same pyrotechnic result, without almost sending herself flying. Her barbs had ripped through several inches of Antithesis flesh, but she'd remained steady. Unperturbed, she continued moving around the hole as she shot the third, fourth, and fifth shells.
The Twenty-Two heaved under her claws with every additional injury, but it couldn’t shake her loose.
Ypsi had drawn the trajectories of each shell and added shading to show the estimated damage each would do over time. The last remaining shell would complete the circle of flaming punctures grilling plant matter, but the fires seemed too contained. She'd need to add more fuel to overcome the alien hive's resistance to fire.
“Still looks like I’m gonna be climbing, yeah?”
You don’t absolutely have to! There’s other ways to kill it from up here. But they’ll cost more.
“I’m more worried about this whole thing collapsing on me, to be honest.”
Oh, that’s not gonna happen, no worries! It got so hot in there, the earth turned into bricks!
Huh. That was worth checking out, Leah thought.
Once the first shell’s jet of fire sputtered out, Leah shot the sixth round, reloaded for another six, and then hooked her front leg around the lip of the hole and shoved it deep into the trembling meat.
She carefully transferred her weight to it, until she was sure the claw's barbs would hold, and then repeated the same with her other limb.
Seriously, hella weird experience, Leah thought again as she began to climb head-first, down past the organic bits through the billowing steam into the huge cauldron of boiling mud.
***
Ladies and Gentlemen, here are two sketches of Leah’s egg. The first is a quick hand-drawn one by me, and the other one was provided by Rabiator, (shoutout for his story!) who had fun with it in Krita.
They’re not 100% representative of the real deal, especially style-wise, but they should give you a solid understanding of dimensions and proportions, at least. Imagine something more scarily elegant, but also more alien and uncanny. Warforge Technology is both the brawl and the dance, in a fuck-off alien package.