Bioshock 6.1
January 28, 2011, Brockton Bay, 5:42 PM
[Confusion] "Aveek! What the fuck are you saying? Confirm and reply to this message!"
[Message-Memory of a bug-map version of me adressing a bunch of insects] "Swarm, we're friends right? Trust me. Maker is fine. Bring the Cargo lift down, let Noelle go up and check on her teammates. Maker would be released."
[Frustration] "Aveek! Are you alright? I think that's one of your clone bodies, but it's not you. My party screen shows your HP has recovered. Reply dammit!"
[memory of a bug-map version of me] "Wait a minute. You're Taylor! How could I have not made that connection? Heh, good job on concealing your cape id from me till date... C'mon Taylor, I'm telling you to unlock the doors, just let me go up. Whatever's up with Coil is not an issue. Or just call Lisa, she'll help fix this mess."
[Concern] "Yeah, that's not your clone. I guess this is Noelle's power. It's a perfect clone of your default anonymity protocols. It figured out my id from its civillian memories. You need to change this default ASAP. Reply already!"
[memory of a bug-map version of me] "Dammit you bitch! I befriended you, saved your ass and this is how you fucking repay me? I'll stop being friends with you. You'll go back to being alone! You're just a pastime project for me you hear? Just a broken toy to be fixed!"
[Amusement, bitterness] "Holy fuck you can be hurtful when you want to be. Anyway, I'm speaking to Trickster. I tranqed Ballistic before he could go ballistic. It was hard to reach them, they've holed up in a room and Sundancer kept burning up the swarm clones. He's skeptical, but he's listening. I'm also telling him that you'd heal Genesis. They'd want to see Noelle soon. Wake the fuck up!"
[memory of a bug-map version of me] "I swear Noelle will Kill Maker if you don't listen to me right now! Maker was wrong! Noelle isn't dangerous... Maker tried to kill Noelle! Please, Taylor, listen to reason! I.. I'm begging you! Let us out!"
[Anger, pity] "That's enough, I'm tranqing this knockoff. If you don't respond in a minute, I'll have to let the Travellers come down to the vault level."
I woke up to a slew of messages. Whoa, it made sense that Noelle would have a ridiculously high threat rating if this was her power. Thank Rob Taylor kept her head cool.
Phew! I'd thought I was a goner when I was being eaten. I checked the time, I was out for three minutes, my status had been 'asleep', the Heal had worked on my HP, but Noelle's belly juices had something that had put me under. The construct armor seal worked, but I was still down for the time that my HP regen worked through the remaining fluid inside the armor or something. Stupid game mechanics.
Anyway, first things first. "Taylor. I'm up now - sedatives in Noelle's gastric juices. Feel free to take that clone down. And give me a minute or two. Her healing did not work last time, but I know what to fix. I'll work on her from the inside."
And yeah she was right about the protocols, just having a civilian me without cape knowledge would not cut it anymore. I was chuffed to know that I was smart enough to figure out Taylor's ID just from the half-baked memories of the protocol but that was not a good thing. A clone of this kind could cause substantial damage out in the open.
Anyway, all that was for later. Lisa's clue had given me more ideas. The heal was failing because the core was dimensionally anomalous and it was linked to Noelle's brain, or ego; first step was to get rid of that link. It would also be a good test of the theory.
I was going to need a lot more mana for this. I had 50 stat points in store after the last round of hospital healing had pushed my level to 22 from reading all those new scans. I dumped 48 points in INT to push it to 100 and the remaining 2 points in WIS upping it to 54, every drop counted. Oh! I got a new skill! Telekinesis, sweet! My MP bar filled up within a few seconds to 3450 MP. That should be enough.
"Thank goodness. I was beginning to panic. Do whatever you need to, but fast. The clone has been tranqed. Noelle has ripped open the cargo lift doors and is trying to climb up the shaft, I've brought the lift platform to the level above her to block her way but it won't hold if she wants to go through it. The travelers are getting restless, I've already told them about Lisa, I'm running out of stalling fodder." Taylor Messaged.
Yeah, I could feel her tentacles drilling into the shaft walls and trying to climb up. Yeesh! How big had she gotten? The cargo lift shaft was big enough to carry two container trucks side by side! Anyway, time for action, I pushed out mana around me, scanning as it went out, as usual, by the time it reached the core, I was down 450 MP, I waited another few seconds for it to top up. I was in some kind of cocoon-womb thing inside Noelle, I tried to apply fleshcrafting to see if it would still fail, it did. The core was within my 3 metre mana projection range, I created the construct in my mind first.
I materialized the construct in phases, a basketball hoop-sized diamond ring around the core, which spun while extruding itself to form a full diamond sphere around it, cutting it off from the rest of the body. That cost me 2500MP, I could hear her multiple heads shrieking again as the tentacles went limp and we fell down back to the base of the shaft.
I had to work fast, pressure was building inside the sphere. I applied fleshcrafting to the rest of the body, absorbing the extra biomass into the inventory and using the last template of healed Noelle that I had, no need to retain her memories of my botched heal and the clone mess.
There was a blue flash, and it worked! Q. .D! I spent a smidge of mana to materialize a silk smock around her, nudity was always an issue even in the direst of times. The pressure inside the diamond sphere was still steadily building, I was pumping all my spare mana into thickening the shell. Its label had also changed.
(Mother of Janus)
Noelle's Mutated Gemma Core
Lvl. ? ? ? Shard link
And the girl sitting beside me, blinking blearily:
(Freshly DeZiz'd)
Noelle Meinhardt
Lvl. 12 Professional Gamer
Bah! Talk about coincidences, Noelle was still disoriented, "Wha... You're Maker! What have you... WHAAA!"
The pressure inside the diamond shell had reached ridiculous levels, so I opened a hole on top of the sphere before it could explode. Biomass gushed out as it started forming more chimera legs that tried to make it stand, it was also starting to form something that looked like her, oops! I closed the hole again and quickly biomassed and inventoried the stuff, pressure started building again.
I turned to Noelle and shifted my faceplate to half-mask, "I healed you, that's what, now quickly go to your teammates and get Sundancer down here, I can't deal with this by myself."
She was still gaping at it, "What the fuck is that?!"
"That's your mutated power core, I separated you from it, now it's trying to rebuild a body. It needs to be destroyed. Follow the arrows! GO!"
"What arrows?! Oh!" She noticed the arrows made of fireflies pointing to the passenger lift corridor, Taylor must have taken care of the mercs inside already. Noelle gave a shaky nod and ran out towards the pointed direction.
The shell was again feeling like it was going to burst. This time I opened two holes on two sides, biomass sprayed out again, forming tentacles, which were coming for me! I sharpened the edges of the hole as much as I could, then used my newfound Telekinesis to make the sphere spin, pushing half of my initial mana into a burst of torque. It was a nice little skill, as usual a mana hog at Lvl.1 but all it did was the same thing that I did with kinetic conversion of mana into force, only instead of having to think up a dozen force vectors - it let me concentrate on the effect I wanted.
The tentacles sheared off, biomass kept spraying out in more tentacles but got severed as soon as it grabbed hold of something. Sadly that something was me, I got tentacle-slapped into the wall again for a quarter of my HP, the sphere fell away from my projection range but didn't disintegrate, thank you construct persistence. The spin slowed down as it kept spreading and forking tentacles like a spiderweb originating from the sphere, I flew back into range with full boost, created a construct sword and started cutting off the tentacle web, pushing the sphere to spin again.
The tentacles stopped coming out, I quickly chopped off the rest and inventoried the extra biomass lying around, this place was beginning to look like a slaughterhouse with all the blood and flesh bits lying around. The sphere slowed down again, I scanned it, the bloody thing was counterspinning inside!
Okay, I really had no clue what to do about this, I turned all the scanning mana I had in the core into pure thermal energy... yeah I took a cue from my enraged self, sue me. There was a flash of fire and the smell of cooked flesh... eugh, I closed my mask back to the sealed mode.
The core was pretty much undamaged it seemed, but it had stopped doing anything. I went in closer and gave it another scan, yep, undamaged, but dormant. I didn't remove the shell, it would be stupid to be caught in a fake-out. Even if this was a fake out, It had given me time to prepare, I touched the sphere and dropped into an ID.
It didn't work, the core didn't come, I got a warning that the core was dimensionally anchored. Of course it won't work, bloody high level bosses. I opened a hole, created another Maker Avatar outside and switched primaries, there, backup body in place, I closed the hole. Then checked the message Taylor had sent me while I was trying to contain this abomination.
Oh, nice, it was an update on her side of things, I viewed the memory in my backup body's mind at thought-speed.
[Four people, one male lying down, one female sitting, one male and one female standing, the Travellers, there was a swarm clone forming outside the room, it spoke to them.]
"Stop burning me! I mean no harm! I just want to talk!"
[The standing male, presumably Trickster, replied]
"Why did you attack Ballistic if you wanted to just talk?"
"Because he was shooting through the walls randomly! He could have injured anyone!"
"Don't come in, talk from outside! You're Swarm?"
"Yes, yes I am. I'm the one who took down Coil and I have taken control of this base. But I have nothing against you guys!"
"How do we trust you?"
"If you know anything about me. You know that I'm a bunch of insects. I have been in this base since the last three days. If I wanted to, I could have pumped you with lethal insect venoms while you slept."
[Trickster balked as Sundancer and Genesis shuddered.]
Ah, Taylor, you really have no idea how to do subtle or diplomatic do you? A fraction of a second had passed, still no move from the core, I continued speed-watching the memory.
[Trickster spoke up again.]
"Then why attack now?"
"Because Coil had my close friend assassinated a few minutes ago. So Maker came and killed him."
[Trickster seemed agitated]
"Maker? The healing tinker Maker? Are you working with him? We were warned about him."
"I am now, the girl who was killed was also Maker's Girlfriend, Coil had her abducted on gunpoint just because she was a useful cape to him. Also, Coil was lying, Maker had done nothing to him till today and Coil had no intention or connections to heal your friend."
On the other hand, Taylor had her own heavy handed methods of manipulation. Meh, who was I to complain? I used the shocking infodump trick often enough...
"Shit, okay. Listen, no harm done, we'll just leave. We grab our friend from downstairs and drive out. That okay with you?"
"You don't have to leave. Maker is a healer, he has already offered to deliver what Coil promised you the moment he learned that you were here. In fact he has also offered to heal Genesis here."
"Why the fuck would he offer that? What does he want in return?"
"I wouldn't know. But from what I know of him, the most he will request of you is that you don't harm civilians in your activities. He's a healer, he heals people for free, why the fuck would he not heal you?"
"Because we're villains!"
"Who told you he was a hero?"
"He's a Villain?!"
[Swarm's buzz got louder]
"No you idiot! He doesn't give two shits about heroes and villains until you guys start harming civilians and destroying property!"
Aww Taylor, you do care!
[The Travellers stood dumbfound for a while. Genesis whispered.]
"I'm taking the deal."
"Shut up Genesis." [Trickster hissed.] "Sounds good, then we'll go down and meet our friend, Maker can come and try to heal her."
"Yeah, you'll need to go down there, but not for your friend. Maker has already healed her, she's coming over to explain things. Don't burn her when she enters."
"What?"
"Trickster!" [Noelle ran into the room]
"Noelle! Noelle?" [Trickster took a step back.] "Prove it's you!"
"You hit on me with the lamest pickup line after I handed you your ass in Age of Empires the first time we met."
"You were not supposed to tell anyone that!" [Cue emotionally charged hug]
"Wait, Sundancer needs to go downstairs right now, Maker has separated and trapped my power core, it needs to be destroyed!"
"What do you mean?"[That was Sundancer.]
The core chose this time to react, it again sprayed biomass, but this time it was from one hole only, It shot off like a rocket towards the other side of the lift shaft. I stopped viewing the memory and sped after it. It started growing explosively again. This time it formed Noelle's body first...
Dammit! I lunged and sliced the body off, It plopped down with a shriek, then I was tentacle slapped into a wall again for a third of my HP. I was getting tired of this, the severed body started decomposing. I jumped back in and closed the holes in the sphere again.
I messaged Taylor while cleaning up the biomass... again. "Any time now Taylor! By the way, nice handling of the Travelers, make sure they don't approach this area. Only ask Sundancer to come."
"They're almost there! Trickster insists on coming along!"
"No! That bloody Simurgh Bomb! He's sure to fuck things up!"
The pressure suddenly rose in the shell, before I could do anything, it exploded. I was slammed into the wall again as my HP dropped to zero.
