No… there's still that slight discomfort in the back of your head, like wearing too-tight leggings with too-big underwear: something you only notice if you move in a specific way or pay attention to it.
Sounds like a fairly specific metaphor...
… which sounds like something you've read in one of those bad capefics about Taylor, actually. Weird. Maybe you should look that author up after all this.
Hope it's not Greg is it?
Eyes still closed, you shift from your seiza position on the loose dirt and bring the bottoms of your feet together in one of the stretching positions that Bladedancer had you do during warm-ups. It's not especially comfortable, but if your charms are going to stop popping out of your everywhere then you'd rather keep as much space free as possible - your butt being largely free of Charms except for those glowing circles on the sides, while your calves and thighs have some glowing circuitry and metal reinforcements that you wouldn't want getting trapped.
I was going to ask about the injector when I realized she had that taken out earlier.
Hmm, the sides should be elements of Emotive Aesthetics. The legs are probably Industrial Survival Frame and Alloyed Reinforcement of Flesh sections.
Oh, you can still see your old charms that are inside Lord Grasp!
(You will allow yourself this one instance, otherwise you're just going to keep getting distracted: [/size]Lewd.)
Right. Traded-in Charms still visible. Though… they're not as… bright?
You can't stop at one Saki. It's impossible!
...also, lewd.
Huh. Now that you're looking at all of it again, you can see they're not in the same order as before. Is that because Lord Grasp shuffled them around when he was stuffing things inside you-
LEWD okay last one. For real.
See?
You know, you're surprised Lord Grasp hasn't actually hit on you given how much he talks about lewd stuff. Though his stories about his previous owners didn't seem to imply that he was interested in them, either, so maybe he's only into… other... buildings? How would that even… work?
Ask the one who invented an adaptor for a mountain.
Power lines may be involved.
I figure Lord Grasp is like Saki: Distinctly interested in being an audience more than anything else.
Five of the hazy orbs start to vibrate, but as you focus your attention on one at a time, they stretch and warp… slowly… into…
Glass mannequins, standing atop glowing blue pedestals - each's respective wire plugged into its glowing base.
Handy visualization, though it makes sense since she had already seen them displayed in that manner before, she will be inclined to use that reference image.
Perfected Lotus Matrix is the charm you noticed earlier as a circular disk at the back of the skull. Why does that seem… familiar-?
"I know Kung Fu."
Matrix datajack?
First time I realized it.
As you're focusing on it, however, you notice it's not just a stand-alone Charm - it's actually got some sort of overlapping starmetal-and-adamant filagree set into the skull-facing side, their combined designs forming some kind of fractal-like flower. Maybe if you try pushing a little bit more essence into it you can see what it does?
Not a good idea Saki...
Mentally, you pull at the spiral of power above and drag it down the line towards the charm… except… there's… resistance…?
Whatever, just shove-
The whole charm surges and crackles with power, blasting away any other conscious thought as-
-two familiar hue three nothing to see four out the door-
-you are bombarded with flashes of-
-step angle pause step angle pause step angle pause-
-insight, mantras, katas, forms, mnemonics, positions, attitudes too much too much-
…ssssSSSS-FZZT
I didn't even know you could jam extra power into a PLM!
Well… now that you're looking at it more critically, you can tell that the circuit running from your Personal essence reserve looks far more solid and vibrant than the others - the only possible exception being the one you're pretty sure runs to your Safe Space Charm, because that one looks like a firehose instead of a circuit.
You… aren't looking forward to repeating what you just did with that one. Probably… save it for last? Mmmhm.
Hmm, so permanent installations look solid.
Some pretty amusing names… and some… kind of disturbing names… huh.
Good thing that Style doesn't exist, because the PRT would definitely have reason to panic if it did. Not that you would ever use it's ability to cause people to [/size]suddenly dissolve into a screaming puddle of corrosive acid weeks or months after you hit them…
Maybe. There are uses!
But… you remember the drawings Taylor had of their cities! They looked huge and tough and awesome… not like what you'd imagine nations of super-evil people would make. If everything was twisted and wrong there, they'd look more like… China or North Korea, right? Things falling apart everywhere, the highest government members living in luxury while everyone else suffers and dies in poverty…
Appearance. It's an important stat.
Inside the transparent copy of your own body, you notice this charm is also installed in your brain - making you wonder just exactly how everything actually fits in there without squeezing your brain into the size of a raisin - looking like three tiny white-metal circuit boards lined up together.
They replace the brainmeats.
But Saki does have a very crowded head certainly.
Nice to see that her self identity is secure, and that Sakura is so integral to her self identity that it's similarly protected.
Uh… maybe something to do with… "greater good"? Concepts? Ideals?
Well, [/size]smut is obviously for the greater good-
...sss-zzt...
… you do not feel at all ashamed by how easy that was, because yes, smut is truly the way to the hearts of the people. And their minds. And their pants.
Well...she can probably swap it out any time she visits the vat.
For now she's impossible to persuade out of smut.
Ironically, you're reminded of a line from an Alexandria/Eidolon fic: "The Big Picture is made up of lots of Little Pictures, after all. Without them, there'd be no Picture left."
Is there anything fics can't do?
... might be a while before you can get the rest of the Assembly behind your second ideal, but it's a noble cause - they'll come around eventually.
If she puts her mind to it, resistance is futile.
Industrial Survival Frame? Hmm, well, both Taylor and Prayer have this one so it's as good as any to start diving into…
You know...she kind of needs this operating while in Brockton Crater right?
Oh well, it's not toxic in a manner that she needs to be concerned about while in robot form.
