88 – Patching needed?
Telekinesis, and most of my other psychic powers, weren’t just good for killing things. That was sothing I needed to hamr into my thick skull.
Just floating in our room, swimming through the air like a fish was making giddy. I held down my giggles though, Selene was sleeping, so I had to be quiet. I debated cuddling with her today too, but just seeing how she crashed into the bed right after stumbling out of the bath, I decided to just let her have so peaceful rest.
This pushed our foreshadowed conversation to the next morning which was quickly approaching. In the anti, I just played around. Most of my brain power was relegated to helping out my mind cores in deciphering the slew of new genetic templates I had with a primary focus on the Swarmlord’s.
That fucker was unnecessarily complicated in its makeup, so despite working on it for a good while, the percentage barely crawled up to 0.1%. I’d need to do sothing to speed that up once we were done here, maybe just spawning a bioship’s worth of brains and a week relegated to just this would do, maybe not.
Speaking of interesting applications of my powers. What else could I do that I never thought about? My imagination was so damned limited, I only thought about replicating stupid ani movies. Could I split atoms with telekinesis?
I squinted at a single mote of dust floating through the air and grasped it in my psychic claws. I tried pushing further in and feeling out molecules and atoms with my aura, but I barely got down to the molecular level.
That could still be useful. I an, my black flas basically ate away the potential energy that was stored in molecular bonds, so in a way, I was already making use of this. Though, I couldn’t think of a non-combat application for this thing.
I thought about biomancy next. What was biomancy, really? Was it just influencing biological functions? Manipulating living matter? Or even straight up controlling vitality?
In a way, I could do all the above, but only the first one through biomancy. I never really did anything with biomancy that wouldn’t have been possible to do through so technology.
I boosted self-healing, maybe added a bit of regeneration and so de-aging, but all those are things Mankind could do with weird sci-fi technobabble bullshit already. What made biomancy more than that?
Are the different schools of psionics even anything more than arbitrary designations humans ca up with to describe sothing they couldn’t understand? That was deep, a bit too deep for my reduced ntal capacities. Smooth brain ti. Anyway, Biomancy so far was able to replicate things my body could already do, or add so enhancents.
Could I just … change my body with it? Without using my eldritch shape shifting thingy? It’s not even shapeshifting, more like flesh morphing … yeah.
Back to experintation. I raised my palm, pointing my index finger upwards and stared at it. Soul energy flowed into it, and I wanted it to change. I commanded it to pull up the iron in my blood and turn the finger into iron.
I hissed, quickly shutting my mouth not to wake Selene as my blood-vessels burst and the iron inside was pulled to the surface of my skin and coated it in a film of tal. That wasn’t exactly what I was going for.
I shook my hand, shaking off the faulty finger and regrowing it as I reabsorbed the evidence of my failed experint. A clearer ntal image was what I tried next, I didn’t imagine iron from my blood going into my skin, only my skin becoming iron.
Then I pushed that image into being with the soul energy acting as the agent of my will.
The first thing I did after Selene went to bed was remaking my Soulbone skeleton. It was really a ga changer when it ca to my psychic powers, so even waiting this long was a bit of an oopsie. No matter, I lived, and so did Selene.
I wonder how the other two are doing. I thought, but quickly disregarded it with a shrug. I could feel Val still pulling on my Puddle for power and the joy radiating from his soul so there was little to worry about with him and Zedev was … reliable?
He was by far the one who I had to worry the least about. If he had a problem, he could have notified , anyway. I still had one of my tendrils in him so our telepathic link was stable even with him being a coghead and a non-psyker.
anwhile, I watched my skin turn tallic with a grin. It only took a few seconds for the transformation to complete, and this ti, there was no accompanying pain.
My grin quickly disappeared when I tried to move my finger, and it refused to budge. It was like I had a cast of solid iron around the digit.
“Fuck.” I murmured, waving the finger around and trying to bend it with my other hand. Okay, abort.
I reabsorbed the finger and to my disappointnt, the iron skin just dropped to the floor, my powers not being able to turn it back into bio-energy. Well, it wasn’t made with bio-energy in the first place so that isn’t much of a problem.
Going back into experinting, I was about ten iron fingers richer by the ti I managed to make the damned thing work.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” I hid my tallic arm behind my back and kicked the dozen iron fingers under the couch as I turned to a sleepy Selene standing in the door to the bedroom. She was staring at , a curious twinkle in her eyes, but I could tell that getting so food and the shitty dystopian equivalent of a coffee won out.
“Okay.” She drawled, shaking her head as she walked over to fish out so of the dry rations they left in the room. Then she slumped down on the couch and returned her gaze onto . “Soooo, what have you got in your hand?”
“Nothing.” I smiled.
“Right.” She looked at dubiously. “Why are you floating?”
“Cause it's fun.” I said as I stepped down from the air. “Have you been practising flying?”
“Yes.” She averted her eyes.
“I could give you so wings, you know. Not the ugly ones Tyranids have, but a nice feathery one. You wouldn’t have to worry about learning how to fly with Telekinesis that way.”
“I-” She looked thoughtful. “No. … Not yet. I want to do it myself.”
“Oh?” I raised an eyebrow. I was just testing the waters really, expecting her to outright dismiss the idea of getting so bio-mods — ‘biological modifications’. “Anyway, check this out!”
I revealed my hand to her, and she just stared at it, more confused than anything.
“Why is your arm made of tal?” She asked.
“I an.” I tilted my head. “Because it’s stronger than skin? And it’s cooler?”
“I doubt it beats the armour.”
I raised my finger in protest, mouth opening to retort, but … “You are right.” Still! “That doesn’t an it’s not cool! Plus, I did this without those flesh morphing powers! This is pure Biomancy!”
“I see.” said Selene with a smile tugging at her lips. “Congrats? It does look ‘cool’.”
“Right?” I flopped down happily next to her, glancing over at the thing she was nibbling on. “What’s that?”
“This?” She raised the thing that looked sort of like a finger thick sausage, but with the texture of a cracker. “I don’t know, but one of these keeps an Astartes going for a week.”
“Can I get a bit?” I asked, and she obliged, snapping off a bite sized part of the cracker sausage. “Thanks.”
She watched curiously as I popped the thing in my mouth and bit down on it. I coughed, trying to force the bites down my throat, but it felt like I had a fistful of sand in there that stuck to my mouth and dried out faster than being thrown into a star.
I absorbed it after a few seconds of struggling to swallow the thing and gave only a quick glance at the list of materials I detected in the substance.
“That’s not food.” I said.
“It is though.” She said as she bit down on it again and I think I could hear her teeth cracking on the damned thing. “It’s nutritious and barely takes up any space.”
“Weren’t you a noble or sothing? How can you eat that thing?”
“I was.” She drawled, looking down at the cracker weirdly. Then she just shrugged.
I need to get my hands on so edible plants and so cattle. I can go off of only bio-energy, but so actual food would be nice at tis. Unfortunately, Tyranid at wasn’t really the type you turned into steaks and the only plants I had were either radioactive or just glowing mosses.
I could have reverse engineered sothing out of the cracker, but there was nothing that even mildly felt like a plant in that thing. Nor was there any at in it. I didn’t know what so of the stuff in it was, but it was enough to let know it was basically so sort of artificial food supplent.
Well, not really a supplent when you don’t need to eat actual food along with it.
“Stop that!” I called out as she was about to flick a white pill into her mouth. “What’s that thing?”
“Want one of these too?” She asked, holding out the pill in her hand. “These are good for waking you up quickly.”
“Let see.” I just absorbed the pill this ti as I analysed its contents. “You take this thing every morning?”
“Not every morning.” She shrugged again, a bit confused at the glare I was giving the rest of the pills on the small table in front of us. “Just when I’m tired.”
“You could just use so bio-energy you know, that’d wake you up much better than this thing.” And that doesn’t have like 4 types of drugs and enough caffeine to kill an elephant in it.
“Wouldn’t that be a waste?”
“Would you do it if I asked you?” I turned to her pleadingly. I could heal her body, but drugs couldn’t be good for her. “Would you stop taking this thing?”
“If you tell why?” She was more confused than reluctant. “What’s so wrong with these pills?”
“Well.” How do I explain that ‘drugs are bad’ to soone who grew up in this shitty galaxy, where turning other humans into canned food was not only accepted, but a state controlled process. “You know what drugs are, right?”
“Yes?”
“Well, there are 5 different types of them in that pill, along with enough caffeine to kill a child.”
“Really?” She gave an interested glance to the pills. “I’ve been taking that thing for years though, and I never felt it all that much. It just gave that kick I needed in the morning.”
“You can get that sa kick from just a bit of bio-energy.” I rubbed my face at her uncomprehending look. “Look, would you do it for ? If not for you?”
“If you really think it’s that important,” she gave a languid smile. “Sure, why not?”
“Thank You.” I smiled at her. “This is how you do it.”
I touched her hand and sent a tiny droplet of energy into her body, it raced up to her spine and up into the base of her neck where it exploded into a myriad tiny motes that transmitted themselves along her neural network.
She shuddered, then blinked once and twice.
“How is it?” I asked.
“Yeah, that works.” She said, basically vibrating. “Thanks!”
“You are welco.” I said. “Thanks for listening to .”
“Speaking of!” She stared at seriously. “We have nothing to do right now, right?”
“Nothing urgent, or anything that can’t be pushed back.”
“Well.” She took a breath, calming herself before she continued. “I have noticed sothing that I wanted to talk to you about, so I’d appreciate it if you listened to this ti.”
“Is this what you were talking about yesterday?” I raised an eyebrow. “That ‘sothing serious’? You certainly know how to make a girl nervous, you know that right?”
“Sorry.” She grimaced. “That wasn’t my intention.”
“I know.” I gave her an understanding smile. “So what is it?”
“I’ve been thinking about what you’d told , when you … you know.”
“Yeah?” I nodded.
“So, with that in mind, I’d like to ask you whether you still want to keep that … morality of yours as it was?”
“Of course.” I frowned. “What would be the point of being alive if I beca another Tyranid Hive Mind? There is no enjoynt to be had as an endlessly hungry eldritch thing.”
“Okay.” She nodded gently, looking straight in the eye despite the nervousness clear in her expression. “I think you are losing that. I don’t know why, but with every day, you are becoming more and more detached. You were doing better right after that Necron kidnapped you, but once you remade this body, you were back to being almost emotionless.”
“That can’t be right.” I frowned. Thinking through the last few days. “I’m pretty sure I showed plenty of emotion when I was with you.”
“You did.” She said, disappointingly not blushing at my remark. “But only then, never with anyone else. You only showed empathy for and to nobody else. Everything you did seed to be based more on cold logic than anything else.”
“I was trying to be less spontaneous.” I said defensively, trying to think of anything that could prove her wrong. Was I really spiralling back again? What did I do wrong? Why? Was fate playing tricks on ? Was I destined to beco a mindless monster despite everything I was trying? Despite trying to be better?
“And that’s good.” She placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed it gently. “Being thoughtful and thinking about all of your options is good, but I feel like you were starting to entirely disregard life that wasn’t or the other two.”
“That-” I grimaced, her words ringing true. “Why?” Why? Why was even just acting normal so hard? Couldn’t I just live my second life peacefully? Wasn’t it enough that I was dropped into the shittiest setting imaginable, but I also had to constantly worry about my entire self turning into sothing that was just not ?
I thought I was doing good; I was caring for soone now. Shouldn’t that have been enough?
A life as a failure, a death as a failure, and even death rejected at the end. Then I was dragged here, shoved into a body so alien it could be the villain of a horror movie.
I thought this was my second chance, to be soone more, soone that mattered. Striving for that, I almost forgot that there wasn’t such a thing as ‘free power’ in this galaxy.
It was trying to twist every step of the way, relentlessly working to pull down into the abyss of its madness and I even played into it. Naming myself ‘Echidna’ the Mother of Monsters.
“Hey.” Selene said hardly, snapping out of my brooding. “Calm down, you can fix this. We can fix this. “
I didn’t even notice there were tears running down my cheeks. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Why did I start spiralling? I was doing so well just a few weeks ago.
“Wait.” I opened my eyes and turned my gaze on Selene. She looked at with eyes crested in worry. “You said I was doing better … back in the cultist cave? When I had that base human body?”
“That was what it was?” She asked. “Yes, at least it felt that way to .”
So this form does sothing to . Sothing that is … not dampening my emotions, I have plenty of those, but my empathy.
[Notice: Genetic sequences have been found in the Aeldari samples that lock down any form of empathy felt towards those they view as lesser than them while enhancing their sadistic tendencies. These sequences have been used in the ‘Psyker Form’ as they proved to be useful for enhancing the overall psychic conductivity of the body.]
“Fucking hell.” I swore. “Next ti tell about the side effects before I start using sothing!”
[The knowledge has been transferred into the main mory segnt. You have had access to it.]
Fuck. I released a trembling sigh. So I’m just a moron, that’s it? “Alright. I think I have a way to alleviate this, if not fix it outright. I don’t know how much I fucked myself over with this already.”
“So?” Selene asked. “What is it?”
“I was using an Eldar body as the base for this.” I motioned down at myself. “And as it turns out, those fuckwits are genetically wired to be sadistic and to feel barely any empathy towards those they consider ‘lesser’.”
“Oh,” she said. “And you can fix that?”
“I hope so.” I took most of my mind cores off of their current task, and assigned them to purge the parts from all of my forms that I needed gone. It wouldn’t be that simple though, I relied on the Eldar psychology to enhance my waning emotions, so that part had to stay. “The worst thing that could happen is just going back to using a simple human body.”
“Okay.” Selene deflated, tension I hadn't noticed draining out of her. “Good. I was … worried.”
“Sorry for worrying you.” I grimaced in sha. I was supposed to make her worry less. What sort of partner was I?
“I’m just glad it turned out well.” She smiled, a genuine, brilliant smile that pulled on my heartstrings.
“So am I,” I murmured. “So am I.”
This can’t happen again. Never again.
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