4 Director Down
Emily Piggot sat behind her desk pinching the ridge of her nose between her finger and thumb as I squatted over the chair in her office, pretending to sit in it.
"Why is this happening? What… the hell… is going on?" the frustrated woman growled out after failing to alleviate the throbbing pain behind her eyes.
"Gains." I answered.
"Gains?" she responded full of doubt.
"Gains." I confirmed.
Oh how my old friend and mentor Mordin Solus would decry what I've done and what I've become. The Salarian vehemently protested the replacement of organic systems with technology, seeking any possible biological or chemical intervention before turning to machinery, but I only needed two small pieces of Colin's brain to maintain my links to Shardmaster and The Butcher, and once I had the idea, I knew I didn't have a choice.
Biological transhuman augmentation takes time, especially so for a human in their thirties like Colin. I'd need days to crack a serum and months of treatment to get this meat suit back to the goldilocks zone for augmentation, or a session with the local biokinetic teenager who is in desperate need of psychological help, and when I say that someone is not mentally well you can take it to the bank! Then I'd need even more months for the augmentation to build this body into its final form, just to arrive at a peak performance threshold well below what can be achieved through cybernetic transhumanism in hours. So inefficient and sentimental.
Like I said, once I had the idea, I knew I didn't have a choice.
Six feet and seven point nine two inches tall - the mathematically determined most efficient height for ripping and tearing - a General Grievous style powered skeleton framed my new cyborg body, housing my 'organs' and other delicate technologies and sporting Geth style synthetic musculature sheathed in high strength synthetic skin over a layer of polymerized lithium niobocene. I'd preserved Colin's handsome Scottish American features scaled up to the body of a man who weighs three hundred sixty pounds lean.
It's a lot to adjust to at first glance - the loss of the friendly neighborhood Armsmaster and the appearance of the Big Tech Big Daddy Armsmaster - so I understood Piggot's frustration. Plus who would want to be told by the higher ups that her top guy got replaced by an alien parasite and she'd just have to deal with it like nothing is wrong.
"You didn't get this approved." the overworked, overloaded, and overanalyzing Director of the PRT ENE stated.
"My body, my choice." I replied with the kind of worthless platitude Colin liked to use.
"Why?!" she cried out and slammed her hands on her desk.
"Gains." I told her.
Emily almost collapsed as she physically choked on the growl in her throat, those hands on the desk keeping her upright as they became emergency support structures. I get it. Someone takes over the body of someone you know then drastically alters it in a way that cannot be easily undone. Disturbed is the least I'd feel in such a situation.
"What do you think you are doing?" she demanded after she regained her breath, "Changing your body with unproven Tinker Technology this extensively. If anything in all of-" she waved her hand up and down my body, "that!- goes wrong, what are you going to do? What are you going to do if all of a sudden your arms don't work any longer and you need to replace something malfunctioning in your body? Are you just going to die? Blow up?"
"Call Dragon?" I offered, but then answered, "After replacing my circulatory system with a factory-pump of repair micromachines, I have no need for manual maintenance." I informed the woman, "My digestive system gathers and stores required materials. At worst I might find myself in need of an emergency tube of supply feed if I take sustained damage over the course of a long battle."
A neat and sensical answer that conveniently hides the fact that I am also made of self repairing bio-alloys after blessing a few crucibles with the power of Metal in a ritual drawing on the awesome magic of the Eternal Firebeast connected to my soul that involved several sacrificed chickens and a rendition of War Pigs so sick the antique guitar spontaneously combusted with the final shredding note. The reclaimed molten materials within those crucibles transmogrified into the living metal flesh of Ormagoden, the perfect medium for forging a cyborg body. All the certainty of steel, all the hedonism of flesh. The great debate silenced by the penultimate point.
Dragon nearly crashed watching the true power of Metal live, but my own brutal programming allowed the weaponized AI, Hydra, to bear witness. The newly born terror sought out a means to 'trigger', the local means of gaining superpowers via hyper acute or drawn out chronic trauma. I personally believe my code too rugged for emotional damage to occur, but I'm sure Hydra will find a way. Where there's a will and all that can do crap. Who knows if this is a will based universe? I certainly need to perform more testing, but if it is… I hope the Anti-Spiral exists.
Our battle will be legendary.
"How did you accomplish this without any change in your requisitions?" Piggot inquired, the woman my cosigner on Colin's fairly enormous Tinker budget, the process mostly an ask and you shall receive system at Armsmaster's rank with the only real constricting factors to his power anymore being time and Shardmaster's tendency to choke up on the funnel feed of hypertech designs in the absence of glorious combat action.
I can certainly appreciate a hyperintelligence that remembers to occasionally leave the lab and fuck up some super powered rando on the streets.
"I sent micromachine swarms to every landfill in the eastern seaboard to breakdown and sort materials. Only a day in and I have enough resources to build a star destroyer." My answer caused Emily's face to twitch and her jaw to clench.
"That is exactly the kind of action that needs to run up the chain of command." the Director grimaced.
"Trash is public property. Anyone can take as much as they want." I informed her that my actions were not a supervillain heist.
Though if they were, my heist is the biggest.
"Not the trash!" she shouted, "The 'swarms'!"
"Incapable of independent action or reproduction." I comforted the high strung woman, watching the sweat accumulated on her pudgy meat bod.
I could perspire too, but it's set to sexy sweat only. My days of leaving puddles in the gym are long behind me. Also, people in this world are super cagey about Tinker products running amok despite several military containment zones that effectively quarantine examples of such just in the USA alone and the state of the Union balance precariously on edge of anarchy with just one really bad quarterly kaiju fight needed to push things over the edge.
This is exactly the kind of world that needs me.
"What about your image?" The Director changed vectors, "The Armsmaster brand has been built for over a decade and now you don't fit the mold."
"Easy fix." I brushed off that concern as I pulled out a datapad and pulled up images of my new gear, my finest technological work ever.
I began swiping through the pictures as I started my explanation, "We just sell it as a bigger suit of power armor, with vastly improved performance. New suit, new vehicles, new weapons, new fodder for toy sales."
As I progressed through the gallery, Emily became less and less capable of concealing her shock and awe, causing me to smile and nod my head, "Fucking rad, right?"
"What the hell is wrong with you!" she stood up and shouted, taking the pad from my hand and swiping back swiftly, "What is this?" she yelled.
"My freshly forged power armor, full specs I'll be playing close to the chest, but be assured: the criminal scum running rough in Brockton Bay stand no chance."
Can you tell how proud I am of my new combat platform?
"This thing looks like the Terminator fucked Conan the Barbarian and sold the child to the Devil!" Piggot screamed and I frowned as she chucked the pad back to me.
I looked down and considered her perspective with a deep breath.
"The work of my hands can be a bit… brutal…" I admitted and she took that as a cue to start yelling some more.
"Bring Armsmaster back you giant robot fucktard!" she screamed then clutched her chest.
As she fell she hit the panic button under her desk and Assault and Battery quickly rushed into the office.
"Behind the desk." I told the pair as they rushed over to find the director purple faced, gasping, and clutching her chest.
"I got this." I announced after silently maneuvering behind Assult, pulling my red suited teammate aside as I knelt down.
My right index finger extended a needle that I stabbed into her heart carrying a dose of micromachines that I controlled with the quantum computer in my head to clean out her circulatory system while I monitored for cardiac arrest. Once clear, I stood up and left, shouting, "Good meeting." over my shoulder as I disabled the alarm system with a thought from my robo-brain.
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I live homies.
Rolling Covid straight into Pneumonia sucks big donkey dick.
Dragon's Dogma 2 came out. I've been waiting for that game almost 12 years. Fortunately my eyes aren't sharp enough for me to care about anything above 1080P and I don't care about anything above 60FPS. I also never saw any microtransactions, so basically I got to enjoy a great sequel to a dope as fuck old title. 9/10 Capcom, will by Dragon's Dogma 3 on release in 2036.
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