She couldn't move.
She couldn't think.
Pinky could only stare at her death as it charged her.
She should run, or jump, or duck, or... anything! But... she just couldn't. The overwhelming fear paralyzed her.
Bit blurred in between her and the monster. Her Tallfolk friend said something, but it was only so much noise to Pinky.
A slash.
A spray of red blood.
Bit's body was hurled away as red droplets floated in the air behind her. The glistening trail hung still for a split second before it splattered on the ground.
Pinky still couldn't move. Not even the sight of her friend being hurt, or so much Red, could faze her.
The monster with the head of a Met and the body of a gigantic cat had stopped. Its momentum had gone into its swipe. It lowered itself to pounce...
...and froze.
Pinky couldn't see what had happened, but Bit staggered back between them. She held her hand to her stomach as a sanguine liquid trickled through her fingers. The Met flailed at her, but somehow missed with its long, spindly legs.
"Yeah." Bit muttered. "That's what I thought."
The Met ceased its attack and planted its spider-like limbs on the ground. There was a fleshy tearing sound as it lifted itself off of the Quillcat's body.
Bit lunged.
The Met froze before disintegrating into smaller and smaller cubes. Something wet and solid fell out of the cloud of vanishing particles.
Bit stood over the now headless body. She held a yellow cube in her hand and nodded grimly.
Pinky was suddenly aware of just how hard her heart was beating. It seemed like it was about to burst from her chest.
"Pinky?" Bit knelt down in front of her. "Are you alright?"
"I'm..." Pinky forced herself to smile. "I'm fine!" She reached down to pick up the strand of wire she'd been carrying before the monster had appeared. "I'm perfectly-" Her hand was trembling.
Was it too much adrenaline? That wasn't possible! [Adrenaline High] protected her from...
"Urk." Pinky clutched her stomach and then bent over and vomited.
"Here." Bit took the sleeve of her dress and wiped Pinky's mouth. "Why don't you lay down and have some milk?"
Pinky's stomach twisted at the thought, and she nearly hurled again. "No..."
"Water?"
Water? Water sounded... good. She weakly nodded before Bit scooped her up. Pinky found herself on top of the Milk Box sipping from a cup that was made for Tallfolk.
Bit hovered between her and the backpack. She was mixing something.
"Pinky?" She looked up. Bit was biting her lower lip. "I have something that will help you relax. Do you want it?"
Relaxing? Relaxing felt like a good idea. She nodded.
Bit raised her hand and pursed her lips. A puff of something flew into Pinky's face and she started feeling... really... really... gooooood...
This was bad. Riley didn't mean the panic attack that Pinky had just clearly experienced. While that was bad, it wasn't as bad as her Mets getting around their 'no attacking humans' restriction by puppeteering corpses.
Well... that was mainly bad for Dev. Riley could handle herself, especially if the Mets needed a biological contraption to fight her. In fact, it made them far more vulnerable to her tech.
Speaking of which, Dev moved closer to the headless Quillcat. "What was that?"
"The Mets are commandeering animals."
Dev took a deep breath. "Can you fight them?"
Badgy would be a problem. The invisible monkeys wouldn't, since the Mets controlling them wouldn't benefit from their stealth. None of the animals they'd encountered in the Red Lands had been particularly resilient to her venoms. The Jungleclads, for there were almost certainly twenty Mets with gorilla bodies back at the village, would be fast and strong.
"Yes." Riley nodded. "If they come for us, I can do the same thing I did to this one." She nudged the headless corpse with her foot. She then picked up its brain. "C'mon. We still need to get away from the heart of the jungle. I'll need a place to Tinker in peace."
Dev glanced at the brain. It looked like he wanted to say something, but decided against it. "Let's go then. I've recovered enough traps and netting."
"Right."
...
They'd gotten pretty far before Riley had to stop to mix up some more tree-acid. On one hand, it was making a nice path that was harder for the jungle to reclaim than chopping down trees would've created. That was because her acid spread like a virus and got into the root system. It wasn't damage the jungle was accustomed to dealing with.
On the other hand, it left a very clear trail for the Mets to follow.
"That was pretty amazing, Bit." Pinky had started talking and hadn't stopped. "I mean, it was the same when we fought off the Bloodrage Badger! How many [Warrior] levels do you have? Have you consolidated yet? I mean, you must've right? That only makes sense. People think that I should say that consolidation is bad because I'm a [Fool], but there's [Foolish] and then there's foolish."
There was a rustling behind them. It wasn't particularly loud, but Riley had been listening for strange noises. She turned and saw a hulking, red body move out of the jungle and onto the road. It had a Met attached to where its head had been.
"Get to the edge of the road!" Riley yelled as the Redno bore down on them. Dev scrambled out of the way, Pinky fell quiet, as Riley stood her ground. The large, Met-controlled animal couldn't turn quickly, but she still needed to wait for the last moment before dodging.
As it bore down on them, her spine extended to its full length. She'd pushed it out of her skin and used it along with her legs to quickly spring to the side. She sprayed out a deadly, but short-lived plague in her wake.
That turned out not to matter much, as the animal crashed into the jungle she'd just been clearing. The jungle that was currently 80% acid.
Part of her expected the Redno to bellow in rage or at least pain, but those were just information signals to the Met that had replaced its head. Plus, it no longer had any vocal cords. The huge beast lumbered in a circle before its legs dissolved enough that they could no longer support its mass.
Riley slipped out of her backpack, and left the Milk Box and Pinky behind as she charged. She swerved off to the side, but the Met's gaze was firmly on the two non-human life forms. Riley slammed her Met Factory into its side, and the Summoned creature evaporated into pixels.
The remains of the Redno's brain was all that was left behind of its head.
Riley picked it up and turned it over in her hands. Yeah... the Mets were invasive with their puppeteering. She put the brain in her backpack to study more throughly later. It would never be an animal again, but brains were valuable in nearly any state.
"Wow, Bit! That was amazing!" Pinky's smile seemed just a little too wide. "Forget what I said before, THAT was like when we fought off the Bloodrage Badger. That's a great dodge [Skill]! Really quick! I nearly fell off of you!" She then laughed, but it felt more hysterical than humorous."
"Pinky." Dev's eyes were large as he swiveled his head left and right. "Be quiet."
"What?" Pinky put her hands on her hips. "You want me to shut up? That's-"
"I think you're attracting the Mets." Dev hissed at her.
"..." Pinky's face fell, and she let out a soft 'Oh'.
Riley frowned. That... seemed likely. The Mets weren't stupid. They recognized people. They understood basic causal effects. It was just that they'd been ordered to 'Eliminate' or something. She wouldn't call them tactical geniuses, but they could definitely recognize Pinky's voice.
"Bit, focus on making more acid." Dev glanced at her. "We'll keep our eyes open for any more of them."
"Hmpf." Riley grunted as she resumed Tinkering. She didn't like being told what to do. Dev usually wasn't that pushy. Still, he was a civilian. Both he and Pinky didn't have experience in dealing with stuff like this.
...
A few monkeys had attacked them, but Riley had been right. They couldn't turn the Mets invisible. The floating robots had looked strange. They'd tried to use their concealed bodies to run past her to get at the non-humans, but that hadn't worked on her. The bodies of the monkeys were still technically alive. They still produced heat. That meant that she could see them with her enhanced eyes.
"Mr. Krabby!" Riley shouted as the last line of trees melted away and revealed her surviving minion. She hopped up and down, but had to wait. The virus she'd used wouldn't hurt her, but the remains of the trees would. She wasn't like her brother. She wasn't immune to acid.
"What about Mr. Krabby?" Pinky asked before climbing to her shoulder. "Oh! He's alive!" Riley glanced at the Fraerling with the corner of her eye. Pinky was excitedly waving her hands. "Hiiii! Did you miss us Mr. Krabby?"
"Good." Dev nervously looked up and down the section of the river they could now see. "Let's get out of here."
"Get out of here?" Pinky asked.
"Yeah." Dev continued to scan the area. "We need to leave the Dyed Lands as quickly as possible."
Leave the Dyed Lands? Riley turned to look at him. "What about the Jungleclad?"
"They're dead." Dev replied. "We can't do anything for them now. Not unless you can bring them back to life?" He looked at her, and Riley deflated.
"No." She shook her head. "The Mets are pretty thorough with damaging the brains. I could revive their bodies if there's not too much damage. Brains are trickier. In the best case, they'd be blank slates. In the worst, fragmented memories would drive them insane." That wouldn't be a problem for using their parts for a bio-computer, but to restore them to how they had been?
It would've been difficult immediately after the damage had been done. It also grew less likely with time. The Mets certainly weren't trying to preserve anything.
"But..." Pinky wrung her hands. "But... We CAN'T just leave them!" Then in a smaller voice she added. "Not again."
"They're dead." Dev repeated himself-
Before Pinky interrupted him. "Yes! And that's because of me!" Her voice began to break. "It's because of me that we came here! It's because of me that we went to the Red crystal! It's because of me that we encountered that Black creature! That's why the Mets went insane! That's why they're killing everything!" She sat down on Riley's shoulder and wrapped her hands around her knees. "..."
It felt like she had more to say, but Riley saw movement back along the path. She shrugged off her backpack, and then scooped Pinky up and placed her on the Milk Box.
"Hang on." She pulled the Met Factory out of her pocket. "We have another Met-Monkey."
She dispersed the robot, gathered the brain, and went back to Dev & Pinky.
"Look." She said. "It's been a long day, and it's getting dark. We can't ride Krabby if he can't see, so we need to start making camp now."
Dev scowled for a moment before taking a deep breath. "Fine. You're right. Let's camp for the night."
Pinky couldn't sleep.
Bit and Dev weren't sleeping either, which was comforting in a way. Bit, because she was high-level and could go a long time without sleep. That was good, because she was the only one that could stop the Mets. Dev was trying to sleep, but she could hear him tossing and turning. That also made her feel better - it meant she wasn't the only one who was still on edge.
[Calm Self]
At least she had a [Skill] she could use for times like this.
[Calm Self]
Except...
[Calm Self]
...it wasn't working.
She gotten [Calm Self] way back when she'd just been an [Adrenaline Junkie]. It was a basic skill that was primarily used for stopping [Adrenaline High] and [Adrenaline Surge]. It usually was pretty good for falling asleep too...
The problem was that she wasn't excited. She was nervous. She wasn't filled with energy that she could barely keep in check. It wasn't like she could run and jump to bleed it away. Pinky couldn't stop thinking about death.
It was almost exactly like when Lars had died.
The only difference, was that now it filled her with a sense of dread instead of longing. That was clearly either due to [Suicide Survivor] changing to [Soul Survivor] or because she'd finally lost [Suicidal Thoughts]. The thing was... [Soul Survivor] hadn't given her any [Skills].
What sort of [Class] didn't give you even a single [Skill]? How was she supposed to level [Soul Survivor]?
She wanted to talk to Bit and Dev - to tell them about her new [Class]. She could even explain that it was [Soul Survivor] and NOT [Sole Survivor]. That should be obvious, as she wasn't the only person who'd survived the Black creature.
...It also boded well for at least Dev or Bit getting out of the jungle alive. If she was a [Gambler], she'd bet on Bit.
But, it wasn't like she could tell them. That would risk the Mets finding them by hearing her voice. Even if she was allowed to talk, things just felt too... fresh right now. It hurt to think about that night. It would hurt more to speak about it.
Had it really only been a day?
She wished that she'd at least have her hallucination of Lars to talk to. Rationally, she KNEW it was a good thing she wasn't seeing him any more, but...
Yeah.
Pinky rolled over onto a cool patch of the Milk Box. Her house had been damaged by the Mets. She might be a [Fool], but going inside a damaged magical item was in the [Suicidal] realm of actions.
Pinky yawned.
Yeah. No more of that for her. She'd done it, and she'd done it HER way! She hadn't run to an elder and asked for a class removal. She hadn't lost Lars! ...She just didn't know how to talk to him yet.
Pinky's breathing slowed down. She finally fell asleep as she heard two voices:
'Hi, Took.'
[Soul Survivor Level 2!]
[Skill – Ghostly Whispers Obtained!]
Dev couldn't sleep.
It wasn't JUST the murderous robots that were hunting them - or at least hunting Pinky and the Milk Box. It was also the 'conversations' he'd had during the day. They kept on re-playing in his mind over and over again.
'Pinky. Be quiet. I think you're attracting the Mets.'
That had been rude, and a Scout is courteous.
He should apologize, but he hadn't been wrong. The Fraerling had been chatting, as if she was oblivious to the danger they were in. She was in.
That... annoyed him, but it was no excuse for being rude.
'Pinky. Be quiet. I think you're attracting the Mets.'
He could've used a 'please'. He could've phrased it as less of a command and more of a warning. He could've said nothing...
Even if they did attract more psychotic robots, Bit could handle them. She was a superhero after all. She probably had dealt with things like that in the past. Her world's version of that one robot from that one movie, or something.
'Pinky, please be quiet. I think the Mets can hear you.'
Or.
'Pinky, the Mets will follow your voice. Please...'
'Be quiet'? 'Act responsibly'? 'Don't be such a liability'?
Those were all too rude. It was so much easier to be courteous when you were silent.
Maybe he was lashing out at Pinky because he was scared? No. There was no 'maybe' about it. He was scared. He hadn't been able to do anything against the Vetala. Pinky? She'd attacked it, and had been killed.
Bit, being the miracle worker she was, had revived her, but the small, fragile, Fraerling had shown more backbone than Dev when they'd been confronted by the monster. Bit doing that wouldn't have surprised him. The little girl was far stronger than he was. Braver. More experienced.
Pinky? Pinky had been their tenderfoot. The person they'd been guiding... for reasons.
It had made Dev feel ashamed when he'd realized she'd been braver than him. That shame was now compounding.
A Scout is loyal. A Scout is courageous. A Scout is disciplined.
Was he actually any of those things? Could he even call himself a Scout? He might have the class now, but being a [Scout] didn't mean he was a Scout.
But, what could he say? How could he apologize?
He just couldn't. He couldn't even envision himself doing it. He'd only make things worse because he still felt angry. A half-hearted or insincere apology would be just words.
This was the real reason he liked to be alone.
He began to repeat his Mantra in his mind. It wouldn't be of any help against the homicidal AIs, but it might help drive off the Vetala - if it was still hunting them. It would also, hopefully, let him fall asleep.
Riley wasn't sleeping. She was Tinkering.
It would be great if she could give Mr. Krabby some better eyes, but she didn't have the parts on hand. At least, she didn't have all the parts. She had plenty of brains that she could use. It wouldn't be hard to take the occipital lobes from her former pets and graph them onto Krabby's brain. That would give it the capacity to utilize additional eyes.
No. Her primary problem was that she didn't have any spare eyes.
Sure, she could ask Dev to loan one of his. She'd even give him a better one in the future! However, she knew from experience that most people weren't so cavalier with their bodies.
Plus, it would reduce his depth perception. If it wasn't for that, then Riley would use one of her own eyes. Her eyes were perfect, and would let Mr. Krabby navigate in the dark without any problems whatsoever!
That didn't mean that Mr. Krabby didn't need brain surgery. The Red-Rhinoceros, or 'Redno', had an interesting brain. She was pretty sure that this region of it was responsible for scent. It was a big section. The Redno must've been a pretty good tracker.
It probably had to have this much computing power because of all the pollen the Red Jungle liked to release. That would make most scent-based tracking next to impossible - unless an animal had the processing power to account for it. It was a shame her Met had... eaten? its nose along with its head.
Riley rested her hands on Mr. Krabby's shell and looked around. Nope. No sign of any Mets sneaking up on them.
What DID her Mets do with the rest of the heads?
She closed up on Mr. Krabby. Now wasn't the time to experiment with mixing magical colors. Krabby was alive and capable of helping them fight. That was good enough for now.
The ideas Surgery was giving her for crab-hybrids started being replaced with Met-animal fusions.
She let out a sigh as she walked over to her backpack and pulled the headless Quillcat corpse from it. That was JUST like her Passenger: getting her into trouble and then giving her the tools to get out of it. It was frustrating!
...Or it might be the Shard's version of an apology - if she wanted to anthropomorphize it.
She propped up the large cat and focused on its wound. Her eyes constricted and flexed as she forced them to the limits of their magnification...
Cells...
Wounds from external sources...
Damage with no discernible origin... There!
Oh, yeah. There were a lot of them, and at different stages too! That was a good thing, as the Met had done some more damage when it had started to pull itself free. She just had to take that into account... and...
Ah.
They WERE eating the animals. Each cell had been cleanly cut in a molecularly perfect line. The Met had engulfed the head and then dissolved it micron by micron as it took over the biology there. It was similar to...
No. It was almost exactly how her brother's Breaker state would work if it was only partially activated. Each 'pixel' of the Met duplicated the functionality of that section of the creature it had assimilated.
Interesting.
There had to be a way to use that...
...
Riley wiped her forehead.
She'd done it!
Sure, she was, like, the BEST Tinker in the world... at least where biology was involved, but this had still been a challenge. In a way, it would be like what would happen if she ever collaborated with Kevin.
That was, if her big brother was a REAL Tinker. In her opinion, Optimize did too much of the work there. Sure, most every Tinker relied on their Shards to... nudge physics in the right direction for them. That was why regular people couldn't reproduce Tinker-tech.
Pixel's tech was 100% Shard interference. It didn't even try to do things any other way.
It wasn't like that for Riley. She, and most other bio-Tinkers, made stuff to last. In fact, limiting the progression of her work was sometimes the hardest part. There were some things that she made, like certain enhancements, that she needed to maintain like all Tinkers. A lot of those wouldn't stop working if she didn't keep an eye on them.
...They would just start working 'differently'.
But, if she were to try and combine her and Kevin's tech, she'd probably get a blueprint for what she'd just finished making.
She smiled as she skipped to the body of the monkey that had tried to sneak up on Pinky and the Milk Box during the night. It wouldn't be the perfect test subject. Heck, it wouldn't even be a good test subject, but it was what she had on hand.
Riley held up her test tube, and pulled the stopper out just enough to allow a single drop of the liquid within to fall to the ground.
It never made it.
The drop turned into a cube mid-air, and then shattered. Each segment repeated the process. It was almost visually identical to what happened when she dismissed a Met using its factory. The rain of particles quickly reached the size where they were invisible to the naked eye.
Then they reached the point where even Riley's eyes couldn't track them.
Then they landed on the headless monkey, and spread.
Excellent.
Riley drummed her fingers together.
That had worked precisely as she'd intended. While that didn't mean that the substance would do what she wanted, it was still a good sign. Even if it failed, it should slow down the Mets long enough for her to get to them.
Plus, it... SHOULD be harmless to Dev and Pinky, unlike some of the other options she could use to take out the puppeted corpses.
She hadn't really considered what it would do to them, but it'd probably be fine.
Dev yawned and stood up. "Good Morning." He walked over next to her. "Did that attack us last night?"
Riley nodded. "Yep. Don't worry. I got it long before it could get close."
"Hmmm." Dev let out a non-committal grunt as he bent down and examined the undergrowth at the edge of the jungle and the river. "It triggered the traps, but walked right through them." He stood up with a strand of wire in his hands. "I guess it was too much to hope for something like this to work against a robot."
"What is it?" Riley tilted her head.
Dev glanced at her. "A metal string I got with my new skill." He shrugged. "It's not as good as the more modern traps back on Earth, but it's better than the strings I've made out of vines and grass. Still not enough, though."
"Well..." Regular people can't fight parahumans. That was common knowledge from Earth Bet. Even if Dev had guns and barbed wire and whatever else he wanted, the Mets would still win. That probably also applied to the Vetala. "Perhaps once you're higher level? Some sort of... magical trap?"
That had to be the answer, right? If low-level people were close to baseline humans, and high-level ones were more like parahumans, then the solution (for Dev) was to become high-level. Of course, people of this world all undoubtedly tried to get more and more levels. So her advice felt rather empty.
"You're right." Dev said glumly.
"Oh! I know!" Riley held up her latest work. "You can use this!"
"What's that?" Dev leaned forward and looked at the glowing red liquid.
"My anti-Met poison!" Riley beamed.
To his credit, Dev didn't recoil. Instead he rubbed his chin and looked down at the headless monkey corpse. "So that's what you used to kill it last night? How does a poison work against robots?"
"Hm?" Riley shook her head. "No. I killed the Met-monkey the old fashioned way. I just got finished making this."
"Then how do you know it works?" Dev asked.
Riley glared at him. "Because that's my power. Do you want to use it to booby-trap the area or not?"
"Oh, yeah, uhm, sorry." Dev mumbled. "But how does a poison work against a robot?"
"Ah!" Riley smiled. "It attacks their weakness, the animal bodies! You see, the Mets have to interface with the bodies to use them. But, since they've eaten most of the head, they don't have anything connecting them, so they've made the connections themselves! They each have a sub-divided dimensional section that alters reality inside of it to replicate various phenomenon. In this case, that means they're mimicking the bodies that they've commandeered. They're still using the brains to process most things, because that's just efficient. So basically they have their nervous system connected with the sub-divided dimensions."
Riley continued.
"My poison works on the body, and causes it to start to have dimensional fluctuations too! They aren't much, but they're enough to replicate the signal that the Met Factory uses. That destabilizes the Mets themselves because they're already set up to receive data from the body and translate it back and forth to the brain they still have inside of them. That connection is a vulnerability because Mets weren't designed to integrate with living organisms in the first place!"
At least not in a partial manner like they were doing. Riley didn't know if an infected brain would be enough for a Met with no body.
Then again, how would a Met incorporate a brain like that?
She could alter the formula and add some barriers or a triggering device...
"That's good." Dev nodded his head. "But we need to pack up and leave now that there's enough light to navigate."
Riley pushed the modifications to her poison to the back of her mind. "What? We're not leaving. I need to disable the rest of the Mets first."
Dev looked at her incredulously. "We have to leave! Even if you can handle the robots, the Vetalas is still out there somewhere! We have to get away!"
"We can't just leave the Mets to their own devices." Riley argued back. "These things get worse the longer they aren't contained."
"No." Dev growled. "It's just, what? A dozen left now? Sure, they can take over animals, but they can't reproduce." He pointed at her pocket. "At least not without that cube you have. What if they get it and become an exponential threat?"
Riley gave him a flat look. "The cube has an upper limit it can support. Plus, the Mets would have to actually get it from me in the first place." Although, there was a limit on what they could do. Kevin should be able to use the Met Factory to regain control of them, or reign them in, or - at the very least - track them down. "The real problem is what happens if they decide to leave the jungle? How many towns would they wipe off the map until my brother stopped them?"
Dev froze as a look of realization came over him. He started muttering to himself as he walked back and forth for a minute. He finally stopped and his shoulders slumped. "You're right. That's... I mean... I couldn't..." He let out a sigh. "Lets say we don't run away. How do we hunt them? It's like finding a needle in a haystack!"
"Oh!" Pinky suddenly appeared on his shoulder, which caused Dev to jerk back with a shout. "I can be bait! I can lure them in, and you can kill them with Bit's poison and your traps!"
Dev looked conflicted. "Well..."
Riley crossed her arms and nodded. "Let's do it!"
Pinky stood on top of the Milk Box.
The traps were set. Bit was ready with her potions. It was now all up to her to lure their enemies to them!
She took a deep breath, and opened her mouth... but no sound came out.
Instead, she turned pale as her eyes went wide. She then shut them, fell to her knees, and hugged herself.
"Don't make me be bait. I know I suggested it, but I changed my mind." She whispered in a soft voice.