Snake 5.0

January 13, 2011, Dev's House - Brockton Bay, 5:32 PM

Amy went on for hours. She really got into the role of the teacher, creating different kinds of common injuries, diseases and disorders in her clone, then fixing them. She constantly kept up a running commentary, explaining what she was doing, adding tips and tricks on variations of the methods. Once she was confident that I'd gotten a basic hang of healing most common conditions, she moved on to enhancements.

She demonstrated tons of modifications, some temporary, some that needed maintenance, some that were apply-and-forget, even some that could be woven into DNA and would carry on into offspring. Most of the modifications had secondary requirements/connections that I'd have not noticed without her showing me. I also asked her to show me the trick of making people unconscious instantly, it would make a much better incapacitating attack than the touch taser. She showed me more than one way to do it. I was lapping all the info up; just listening to her commentary while keeping an eye on the ongoing scan had leveled up Biology twice!

I had to refresh her a few times when she looked like she was tiring. Victoria soon got bored of listening to her and Aveek/I took her to the kitchen to help cook lunch. She did mention that she hadn't seen Amy this exuberant in years. After a while of chatting she also eased up around Aveek/me and apologized about getting defensive about the aura issue last time. That was nice of her.

Taylor spent her time between the two groups, sometimes joining the kitchen crew in their chitchat. Sometimes sitting with Amy and me, adding ideas or words of encouragement to our session. She also ferried a couple more rounds of tea.

We took a break for lunch, Maker/I recycled the clone for the while and joined in. Aveek/I peppered Amy with more ideas about modifications, quite a few of which apparently tickled her fancy and she said she'd need to experiment more before she could build working enhancements out of them. We figured out a date in the following week for our next session. It was Victoria who reminded us that they had to get back and Amy still hadn't decided upon the exact set of upgrades that she wanted for herself. We finished lunch, I recreated the clone and we got on to it.

It didn't take Amy much time to decide, she went for a number of cosmetic changes, added a few inches to her height, gave her figure a mild tuneup and reshaped it to a slightly more lithe frame. She also activated some key hormones to further boost and tone up her figure, enhance her... um, privates and assets (thankfully she was very clinical while explaining those bits), grow her hair out, and clean up her skin. It would be better for those changes to not happen all at once, otherwise a jarring visual difference would be just that, jarring.

When it came to internal upgrades, the changes were much more significant; some tissue types were completely replaced while others changed noticeably. Different kinds of muscles, a sturdy subdermal layer, fully redone CNS, heightened senses, much denser bones, some redundant systems (she mentioned she'd gotten quite a few of them from Aegis)... Most changes wired right down to the genetic level, she was playing for keeps. She also made a few changes to her neurotransmitter mechanisms which she didn't explain and gave me a pointed 'Don't ask' look.

Finally she edited her DNA to get rid of some disease markers and then made the statement which dropped all of our jaws:

"Hmm, I think we're done with the groundwork. Maker, if you would please apply these for now. When we meet next week I'll show you some 'real' upgrades."

Right... Biotinker much? I asked her to just remove the parts of the brain that she didn't want changed, including the whole comatose parts, that deletion would obviously kill the body, but it would help me make a delta scan for the scant few brain modifications which were required to integrate the new CNS, sensorium and neurotransmitter system. She also upped her brain's plasticity regulators. She was quite nervous about the whole brain thing, but I reassured her that I could restore everything in a flash if there was anything amiss. She didn't make any changes that would affect her personality or ego anyway if my neurology knowledge served me right.

I performed the final delta scan, then recycled the clone body. Then I asked her to lie down and took a fresh scan of her. It took me about 10 minutes at 5X multitasking to apply the delta scan on the fresh scan and make sure it was seamless right down to the atomic level. Then came the moment of truth, I asked Amy, "Do I have your permission to upgrade you?"

She smiled nervously, "Go on."

I took her hand and applied fleshcrafting with the upgrade file. A blue flash and there she was, I know she tried to be subtle with the cosmetic enhancements but the difference in attractiveness was still remarkable! Her Panacea robes were suddenly quite constricting. I checked her stats, CHA was up by 4, STR by 11, DEX by 13, VIT by a whopping 19! Even INT got a +3 boost, for the upgraded CNS and senses possibly.

She sat up with an unnervingly fast motion, blinked a few times, and frowned, radiating surprise and confusion, "Youapplied thechanges already? Ithought youwere justgoing toscan me?" She was speaking in fast forward.

I'd figured this confusion would happen, I raised my hand, "Wait, your memories have reverted to the last scan ten minutes ago. Here, watch this." I held out my hand, palm upwards, changed the armor glove construct to show a lens like thingy and just used a light construct to project the memory our last interaction before the upgrade like a miniature hologram. Got to maintain the tinker cover.

She nodded (it was more like a sharp jerk), "Oh, Isee, well, tenminutes oflost memoryis definitelyworth this. Hopefullynothing importanthappened. Youdon't needto speakslowly atme, Ifeel fine, betterthanfine actually!"

I shook my head, "No, Amy, I'm not speaking slower, your perceptions are faster, you need to speak slower actually."

Victoria chose to pipe in, "You're a budget Velocity now? He needs to deal with this shit all the time! By the way, looking real good there sis." She winked saucily at Amy. I groaned internally, how on earth was Amy going to recover from her addiction if Victoria kept giving out these signals?

Amy blushed, "Th-thanks, got amirror aroundhere somewhere?" She was still speaking rapidly.

Aveek/I nodded, "in the other room, come with me, and slow down. If your speech has gotten faster, your movements will definitely be affected."

Amy nodded again, "Oookay. Gooot iiiit" Now she was just trying too hard. Both Victoria and Taylor couldn't hide their chuckles.

Amy tried to stand up from the couch, ended up leaping three feet into the air. Victoria flew up and caught her. Aveek/I shook my head "never mind, no need to come with me, first get used to moving, I'll get you a mirror."

It took her about 15 minutes to get her movements and speech to any semblance of normalcy, they were still very jerky. But Amy was not worried about the transition, "It's okay, thisis tobe expected. My freshly plastic brain would adapt to this quickly. On that note, good work Maker. I don't feel any unexpectedchanges in memory or thoughts." She was getting hang of the speech tempo already.

I shrugged, "the good work is all yours, I'm just the executor. Do you want to do a check on your latest status?"

She was stretching and flexing her independent muscle groups at a controlled pace. She nodded. I took another scan of her and created a clone under the sheet again. She put a finger on it, concentrated for a while, and nodded, "All good, very nice job with the brain. Doing it in phases was a good idea. The progressive changes have already started to work, they'll settle by next week. Then we can move on to the good stuff."

I smiled, recycled the clone and nodded, "I look forward to it. It'll also take me at least that long to learn and understand all that you've taught me today." If not more, there was a ton of info to be gleaned from the hours long scans.

Victoria was getting impatient, "Cool, now before you guys start nerding out again, we should call it a day."

Amy turned towards me, "Yes, we'll make a move. Thank you again for this, Maker, I never expected to be able to circumvent my limitations like this. See if you can get Swarm to join us next time, we're used to case 53s, I promise we won't freak out. Also, you should join me in a hospital shift once you're confident of replicating the healing tricks I showed you. It'll probably help you learn more. And I'll help you with the certification process." Ah, so nice of you to help me grind, Amy. I was definitely going to take that offer up sometime.

I nodded. "After our next session then. I'll practice on clones and you can check the work before we do that. See you next week."

Victoria was already at the door, "Oh Taylor, don't forget, I'll call you when we take Ames out shopping, she'll need new clothes to go with her supermodel body." Taylor smiled and nodded. Then Victoria turned to where both of my bodies were standing, "Hey man, anyone who can cook that well is good in my books. Maker, join us for training and patrols sometime?"

Maker/I nodded. Aveek/I gave her a thumbs up. Further goodbyes were exchanged with Amy and they left. Once Taylor confirmed that they'd driven off, I inventoried my construct armor, switched primary to the Aveek body and recycled the Maker body. The flesh clone skill went up a few more levels.

Taylor left when she sensed Danny coming home. Dada came back from work soon after, I gave him the highlights of the day. He seemed contemplative for a while, then replied with a smirk, "Bro, you just spent the day with four pretty girls. Neither of them are your girlfriend, who is another pretty lady I met yesterday. You know what? I take back all the things I said about social interactions, keep up the good work!" He gave me a double thumbs up. I facepalmed.

I went to my room and eagerly dove into the scans from the day. It was already night when dada called to ask if I wanted dinner, I refused. Biology and Heal were leveling up like anything. Understanding the scans was getting progressively easier too. Finishing processing all these before the next session with Amy was a real possibility now.

The doorbell rang sometime around 10:33 in the night. I got the door, it was Lisa, she looked slightly nervous. I ushered her in.

She held out her hand, I cleansed us and refreshed her. Then she gave me a hug and a peck on the cheek. Have I mentioned how much I liked the cleanse skill? She was still slightly nervous though, "Ask Taylor to check if the tail has left?" I complied, Taylor messaged me back saying that a van with only two men had followed her car, they left once Lisa entered my house. Neither of us had gotten any precog scan warnings, so we were secure. I nodded at Lisa, "We're clear. What's up?"

Her nervousness increased a bit, "I may have messed up. Coil suspects something."