A GHQ watermark constantly glowed in the corner of Tsugumi's vision to remind her where she was. The holographic console in front of her was the same as countless others surrounding her in a cylindrical arrangement. The new CPU enclosure was like a manic contractor had broken into her old one and renovated the place by pasting corporate iconography everywhere. Her jumpsuit, likewise, looked the same as what she usually wore inside the module, aside from sporting a few extra company logos and Antibody emblems.
The inside of the chamber was similar the one Tsugumi had scratch built when she was part of Funeral Parlor, only this one was illuminated in a constant algae green hue, and the higher-wattage holograms surrounding her gave off a slow "bubble" effect as they periodically refreshed. It had a distinct underwater motif without having to actually drown her in hundreds of gallons of toxic liquid.
Funeral Parlor had been reduced to a pile of cinders and flesh scraps months ago—rubbed out in a brutal system purge moderated by Tsugumi herself. She remembered doing it. She was fully conscious of her actions while it was happening. Her modified brain impulses and her desensitized conscience simply didn't care. But her first assignment had only been the start of something grander and more insidious. GHQ always had enemies that needed to be traced through the grid and eliminated.
An array of jumbled electrical wires came out of Tsugumi's headset and hardwired her brainwaves to the digital recording panel on the wall behind her. This combined with the complicated series of electrodes taped to her body and modestly tucked out of sight underneath her jumpsuit sent every byte of neuro- and bio-feedback she produced to the prying eyes of her employers, intensely monitoring her for anything that could be even remotely interpreted as deviant vital patterns. Fortunately, she'd be released from probation after a few more missions. Then everything would go back to normal, or at least what constituted as normal in her new GHQ-enriched life.
But even as a neurological branded combat doll controlled by a cold, faceless, multinational machine, Tsugumi still kept plenty of her familiar quirks. The dreary grey of her holographic surveillance screen was interlaced with smaller, much more colorful tiles that reacted to each of her gestures. Health bars and scoreboards twinkled brightly in front of primary directives. Tiny sprites of cartoon fairies and forest creatures overlapped with turret crosshairs. Puzzle pieces flickered in matching colors and disappeared as a muzzle flash blinked across her screen.
Kenji abruptly buzzed in through her headset.
"Hey. Slimycheeks. No mobile games in the command pod."
"But it helps me concentrate!" Tsugumi complained into her mic.
"What did you not just say at the end of that statement?" Kenji barked back at her.
"I told you she wasn't going to work," Daryl mumbled across a separate channel in Tsugumi's ear. The low hum of his cockpit computers echoed through the broadcast.
Tsugumi groaned and rolled her eyes as she remembered her strict behavior tweaking. It was hard to forget after it had been so traumatically burned into her brain.
"Ugh. It helps me concentrate, Game Master God-ji."
"That's better," Kenji said in a more patient tone. "Your wiggling little tail gets to stay dry for today, so why don't you use it to scoot those extra pop-ups out of the way so you can focus on the mission parameters? We've got some killin' to do."
Tsugumi cringed at the thought of having to breathe Endlave hydraulic gel even for another second. The sensation of nitrogen particles settling in the bottom of her fluid-filled lungs left her nauseous to the point of blacking out, while all of those serial cables and life support hoses tangling so tightly around her interface suit that they sliced and wedged their way through every tiny corner of her body made her feel unspeakably worse. This holochamber GHQ provided her during missions was a luxury suite by comparison.
Still, having her moral inhibitions deprogrammed so she'd become the perfect cyberassassin with loyalty to no one except the Antibodies did leave a nice tingly reaping feeling in her neurons. The threat of more mental training didn't completely terrify her.
"Well I don't know about you, Lord Boobsquisher, but I do my killin' after I beat Black Pierrot in Magical Drop III and finish building all five Simon's Quest mansions in Minecraft!" Tsugumi snapped in response. With a small "Hmph," she thrust her hips in reverse and bumped only one holographic monitor out of the way: The one displaying the sound graph for Kenji's audio-only transmission.
"Fine, deal with it!" Kenji bitterly conceded. "Just stay within the time limit. Mess this one up and you'll find out what it feels like to be a baked potato wrapped in aluminum and left in a bucket of grease for a month."
"Hah, that's easy. I thought you were going to tell me to massacre these guys all on one Continue."
Tsugumi cracked her knuckles and went to work.
Author's note: stukasa was disappointed by the level of banter in this scenario, so now she has more banter or something.