CaramelTheMoo
Rat and Cow combined
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Ohohoh, yes, make these four eyes bastards pay!
Fabricated Hazards (factorio fanfic)
Orion Zete
[verify weaboo]
- Location
- Malaysia
Sadness that's pretty fucking cool, it's always awesome when the MC is pushed too far and shows everyone their power
- Location
- Europe
Personally, the moment those humanoid robots entered the picture, I found myself losing interest in this story.
Don't know why.
Perhaps because it started reading like Star Wars Clone Troopers?
The whole portal thing, I find myself also disliking.
Found the traveling planet more interesting, especially since there are several ways to go about it.
Thus you have natural and very unnatural ways to do it.
Shadow Raiders, Star Wars, Warhammer 40K, Transformers, ect, ect.
It's funny in how much overlap there is, there, you know.
Planetary Engine, T-Cog, Force Aware, Aeldari World Intelligence, ect, ect.
I mean, why would planets in Shadow Raiders, have Planetary Engines, at all?
But I do get inspiration and the like.
I guess I liked the pure build-up part of the story, more then all the interaction parts.
Probably because THE FACTORY MUST GROW!!!!!! that it focussed on, together with bug splatting.
Heh, in 40K I know a good location for this planet, right in the path of the main 40K bug fleet, that wants to devore the milkyway.
Would also explain why the planet doesn't become smaller, when the engineer starts to sling weapons out into space, they are eaten and turned to shit, that then becomes dirt, on a very rapid pace.
I actually wonder what happend if the Engineer his ship had not crashed on that planet, but was absorbed into one of those 40K ship swarm deamons.
Would be fun if the SI can then figure out a way to tell that Deamon to start eating a few starbases and other such things, like starforts.
Or said Ship Swarm Deamon already having a good load of them and the SI Engineer starting a factory with as main goal, scrapping the completely wrecked or corrupted ships and connecting those stations into a spine structure.
Hell, the Aeldari Bonesinging might actually explain how the Engineer produces his stuff, personally.
Subnautica would then also fit in, quite easily as well, as another ship this Ship Swarm Deamon has swallowed up.
What would actually happen, if that Ship Swarm Deamon it's nature, is reconstructured from the inside out?
Even funnier, lay six starforts in a honeygrid, then place two starforts on the upper and lower plain, then connected them all.
Use the upper and lower starforts for the joint placement.
Can even use two honey grids above each other, for a longer bone like structure.
Heh, could even be a nice starting locations for a Planetary Anniliation or Supreme Commander SI as well.
Funny how they share that rapid build technology, right?
All those stories might easilly be part of 40K's Golden Age, so quite a lot of fun, right there.
Because when you think about it, these Ship Swarm Deamons are actually the best way to counter that incoming bug swarm that wants to eat up the entire milkyway.
I think certain Deamon Warships need to be swallowed up, after purifying said Ship Swarm Deamon a bit.
Same for eating up other such Ship Swarm Deamons or their remains.
One Mechanicum Starfort might thus be very much wanted, but how to get it?
Sorry, just had this tribble idea suddenly bug me.
Don't know why.
Perhaps because it started reading like Star Wars Clone Troopers?
The whole portal thing, I find myself also disliking.
Found the traveling planet more interesting, especially since there are several ways to go about it.
Thus you have natural and very unnatural ways to do it.
Shadow Raiders, Star Wars, Warhammer 40K, Transformers, ect, ect.
It's funny in how much overlap there is, there, you know.
Planetary Engine, T-Cog, Force Aware, Aeldari World Intelligence, ect, ect.
I mean, why would planets in Shadow Raiders, have Planetary Engines, at all?
But I do get inspiration and the like.
I guess I liked the pure build-up part of the story, more then all the interaction parts.
Probably because THE FACTORY MUST GROW!!!!!! that it focussed on, together with bug splatting.
Heh, in 40K I know a good location for this planet, right in the path of the main 40K bug fleet, that wants to devore the milkyway.
Would also explain why the planet doesn't become smaller, when the engineer starts to sling weapons out into space, they are eaten and turned to shit, that then becomes dirt, on a very rapid pace.
I actually wonder what happend if the Engineer his ship had not crashed on that planet, but was absorbed into one of those 40K ship swarm deamons.
Would be fun if the SI can then figure out a way to tell that Deamon to start eating a few starbases and other such things, like starforts.
Or said Ship Swarm Deamon already having a good load of them and the SI Engineer starting a factory with as main goal, scrapping the completely wrecked or corrupted ships and connecting those stations into a spine structure.
Hell, the Aeldari Bonesinging might actually explain how the Engineer produces his stuff, personally.
Subnautica would then also fit in, quite easily as well, as another ship this Ship Swarm Deamon has swallowed up.
What would actually happen, if that Ship Swarm Deamon it's nature, is reconstructured from the inside out?
Even funnier, lay six starforts in a honeygrid, then place two starforts on the upper and lower plain, then connected them all.
Use the upper and lower starforts for the joint placement.
Can even use two honey grids above each other, for a longer bone like structure.
Heh, could even be a nice starting locations for a Planetary Anniliation or Supreme Commander SI as well.
Funny how they share that rapid build technology, right?
All those stories might easilly be part of 40K's Golden Age, so quite a lot of fun, right there.
Because when you think about it, these Ship Swarm Deamons are actually the best way to counter that incoming bug swarm that wants to eat up the entire milkyway.
I think certain Deamon Warships need to be swallowed up, after purifying said Ship Swarm Deamon a bit.
Same for eating up other such Ship Swarm Deamons or their remains.
One Mechanicum Starfort might thus be very much wanted, but how to get it?
Sorry, just had this tribble idea suddenly bug me.
Last edited:
- Location
- Your pantry eating cheese
Something Something Then Let The Galaxy BURN!
Oh wow, this was great lmao.
Can we get a part two? Cause I really want a part two now
Can we get a part two? Cause I really want a part two now
I just wish it was cannon. Maybe in a future setting the locals will fuck around and the engineer will let them find out.
CH. 57
- Pronouns
- That/Thing
Log #11
Year one Day 20
You know, sometimes I think Nauvis is trying to mess up my plans, I'd been settling in for some nice research into plasma for some other things I want to build, and it just starts raining slimes.
So I had to spend a while handling that, and it's probably going to cause more problems later. Not to mention I have no idea how it rained slimes, and given how much stuff I have monitoring the weather on Nauvis is utterly absurd. The slimes in themselves weren't an issue, just free resources. But the effect they are going to have on both the fish and the biters is of far greater concern to me.
Also it was distracting.
I did end up getting the plasma shields done, and made excellent progress on either improving or developing plasma artillery, turrets, and hand held weapons. The part I was struggling with, large scale shielding for ships and forts, was solved as well, the shields are actually millions of tiny shields overlapping, rather than just one big one. A bit like using a bunch of tiny light bulbs rather than one big one. This also allows dynamic movement of the shield, even if it's technically easier to pierce than the smaller tank portable shields are. Though that depends on how much its covering, as you can just make the shield overlap itself which readily solves that problem. That or position the smaller shields to intercept the attacks as needed rather than remaining static.
Work has already begun on installing that on every fort, with priority on ones that actually see combat or are of higher value. Part of a larger effort to overhaul my defense, at this point even reinforced concrete with shields is weak, and metal isn't economical for walls. Well the main base has a few metal walls but that's the exception rather than the rule.
I'm working on a solution for that as well, it's a bit biotech but I'm not really bad at that, just not good at it. A sort of fungus that'll convert rock into itself, capable of both generating and conducting electricity, and with my current understanding of ocean things, bug shells, and just general material science it'll be as durable as diamond on average, while it's outer 'shell' will be three times as hard and steadily grow thicker and more durable the longer it grows. Crystal and rock slime essence is really useful.
By manipulating the electrical signals it produces a terminal can guide it to grow in certain shapes, and while I can't yet get the stuff to grow machines like fruit or organs as I'd originally planned I can have it grow places for machines to be placed. Basically making a hollow factory.
The more energy I feed it the faster it grows and given I can produce an absurd amount of power this stuff can grow like a weed, still technically slower than Labyrinthine can build, and with the limitation that any internal infrastructure will need to be installed in it but aside from the seed it has no material cost.
My current plan is to have it slowly convert the lands around my factories, serving as static defenses, and given its conductive nature I will be able to just put laser turrets on it and not worry about connecting them to the power grid, as the ground itself will already be linked in. Walls can quite literally spring up within minutes wherever a mind wants them to be.
Of greater interest is it's underground applications, it's harder for the bugs to tunnel through it, and my terminals can tell me when it is being tunneled through, allowing me to either have the stuff grow around the intrusion, electrocute them, or just open a path to allow drones to go kill them. Giving me home field advantage wherever it is.
It'll also allow me to build massive underground tunnels or facilities with extreme ease, connecting all my outposts and eventually allowing it to become just one giant underground factory. Which is rapidly becoming more appealing than continuing to build them on the surface, as most of the metal and raw materials are down here anyway.
That and it's harder for the deep fish to swim through, which will hopefully discourage them from breaking my magma drills so often.
Technically speaking I have a working sample right now, and could plant it. But I'm letting it grow so I can separate it out into more seeds so it can spread over a larger area quickly, ideally around my main base and the frontlines, the interior can wait for a while.
That was derived from my work on trying to make a self repairing ultra durable metal, which I had wanted for both my skeleton and all my vehicles and armors. As my current cybernetics are getting a bit outdated, even if my skeleton is technically a similar substance to the ground stuff. To bugs that isn't 'unbreakable'.
I want to update my blood, so it can function as my organs if the need arrives, I also want to completely negate my body's need for air, and…. Honestly with just those two and further armor around my brain there isn't much else I can see helping with my survival. If that's done then as long as my brain's intact I'll be both alive and cognizant. Which is about the end of survivability for my body, at that point we start getting into backup brains, which I technically already have with my android pseudo-clones.
But any of that needs more research, I figure once I get the fungus to grow machines I can get a different version of it to grow organs, which isn't quite what I want but better than my nanomachine attempt.
That somewhat leads into my next topic, Balistraia asked for me to build her a body. Not just an android one either, which she could manage on her own. No, she wants something custom built. Already my mind is boiling with ideas, pulling partially from my sentinel drones for the basic idea.
This is going to be the absolute best thing I can build with my current technology, and I know just what I want to do for it. And given I've finally started to reliably produce conceptual fluids out of plorts I can actually do it. It's rare that I just let myself go and build something absurd, haven't really done it since the tier four assemblers. And I'm going to be doing that again, because I'm not going to have any half measures.
Every conceptual fluid I can produce, I will be consuming. And then I'll build Balistraia a body. There are only so many ways this can go wrong.
Thats about it for development though, everything else is continuing apace.
The war front however has however done the thing it always does when it starts to rain. All fighting has stopped, because the rain hasn't. That means the oceans are rising, and given the abundance of monitoring equipment I have just for this situation I can tell this'll be a flood. Which means I couldn't plant my fungus even if I wanted too, and that all the outposts are going into lockdown.
I'm expecting at least a few tsunamis this time as well, something has been causing massive earthquakes down in the mantle and while that's a quarter of the planet away from me I've learned to expect the worst. I mean the earthquakes are probably just a territorial dispute, not something coming up, which would be the actual worst case, but…. Yeah just stop thinking about things I can't affect.
I have had some issues with androids trying to get off of the Far Far Range to go help humanity in the war, even with the fact that my singular ship has already slammed the Turians minor war effort to a halt, seriously they have forty thousand ships, and barely one hundred were sent to deal with humanity. If you're gonna do a war, do a war right, this is just odd. Though they also seem to think Eden prime is Humanities homeworld… Yeah the Turians just have awful intel, which explains some of why they haven't sent anything like enough ships even if it had just been humanity. Not helped by Balistraia feeding them awful intel via judicious hacking.
You do have to wonder what the Turians were thinking with this little 'war' though, and I did. So I had Balistraia do some digging and apparently this is practically standard Turian first contact protocol. They have 'client races' which aren't even citizens and really I'm starting to just dislike these arrogant little warmongers.
This whole 'conquering other races instead of saying hello' thing asks another question, why is the rest of the 'council' allowing this? I'd been lead to believe, admittedly though propaganda ridden media, that the Asari were diplomates by trade, and the Salarians were just a race of engineers and researchers.
The council is starting to seem more and more like a scam. Or at the very least a system designed to give those in power all the advantages over other species.
Which reduces my desire to actually form my own empire or announce my own presence at all. I have no desire to have these people in any way capable of planning against me, so for all intents and purposes I'm going to be a galactic bogeyman.
Android infiltrators controlling all government or scientific institutions I care about, and strike teams of androids with stealth ships to take out anything I want gone. With those powers combined I'll be able to slowly shape the galaxy into my ideal image.
Like a well maintained garden.
The slime ranching front has also been expanded rapidly by the storm giving such a large influx of slimes, mostly on earth as I don't have the facilities for so many on the Far Far range yet. Androids and machines taking care of the slimes and figuring out new and novel ways to use the plorts.
The moon base is putting out new ships, satellites, and space capable drones at an… acceptable rate. And my asteroid belt mining platforms are finally beginning to contribute to construction of more ship bays out in said asteroid belt, which will soon eclipse the moon bases' own construction.
I will be expanding said moon base, largely in a defensive capacity so it can shield earth, but I doubt it will reach the production capacity I'll eventually have in the asteroid belt, just not as much material. Ideally I want to turn it into a massive shielding unit to envelope the earth in a shield, though I don't know if I want it to be Plasma or Molecular stabilization just yet. With that, and covering the moon in as many weapon systems as I can, and its ability to house a sizable fleet and make an endless tide of disposable space capable fighters, I can safely say earth is adequately defended from space attacks. If the aliens who made the machines ever come back.
And once there is a space elevator to connect earth and the moon, or more likely just to space stations that then ferry you to one or the other I can say earths immediately space is sufficiently developed for work to begin on other planets in the system, and in preparation for that I've sent a few teams of spidertrons and drones to make habitats on mars, and some factories that will begin terraforming it.
Not through making plants and animals that can do it for me either, though I could. I'll be making factories that pump out ozone, machines to make a magnetic shield to keep it from being stripped away, oxygen and water farms… might not make the planet a verdant wonderland with green plants and blue oceans, but this is more like what I'd have built regardless.
Still debating if I want to try and introduce magic into the atmosphere, I need to on any off planet ships androids or machines will be on for any length of time, but I genuinely might not have any on mars. It's not like they've filled up earth in any capacity, given most of the cities are built underground at this point.
Still filled with plants and light while underground, which is jarring. At this point I have a few million drones just trimming plants. Kind of tempted to make a robotic bird that burns plant matter to run, if I make it out of crystal it'd be fairly pretty, add internal lights and I can get some flying rainbows.
For a magic world there aren't that many magic creatures, and I think Byzantine would enjoy fixing that. Can even add it to the program Balistraia made, have the animals the androids and machines will be living with designed by said androids and machines.
Just having dragons and slimes feels unbalanced.
AN-
at this point there are just dozens of giant underground cities that still basically look like they are outdoors, just based on how large they are and the amount of plant and animal life they have. Sure there are still parts of the cities above ground but thats not really the majority of it.
the engineer is basically his own ecosystem at this point, even making his own version of soil for his 'plants' to grow from. I just like the idea that everywhere there is an outpost the ground is turned into a metallic substance, like a spreading corruption.
comments and discussions are amazing, patreon is a thing.
Year one Day 20
You know, sometimes I think Nauvis is trying to mess up my plans, I'd been settling in for some nice research into plasma for some other things I want to build, and it just starts raining slimes.
So I had to spend a while handling that, and it's probably going to cause more problems later. Not to mention I have no idea how it rained slimes, and given how much stuff I have monitoring the weather on Nauvis is utterly absurd. The slimes in themselves weren't an issue, just free resources. But the effect they are going to have on both the fish and the biters is of far greater concern to me.
Also it was distracting.
I did end up getting the plasma shields done, and made excellent progress on either improving or developing plasma artillery, turrets, and hand held weapons. The part I was struggling with, large scale shielding for ships and forts, was solved as well, the shields are actually millions of tiny shields overlapping, rather than just one big one. A bit like using a bunch of tiny light bulbs rather than one big one. This also allows dynamic movement of the shield, even if it's technically easier to pierce than the smaller tank portable shields are. Though that depends on how much its covering, as you can just make the shield overlap itself which readily solves that problem. That or position the smaller shields to intercept the attacks as needed rather than remaining static.
Work has already begun on installing that on every fort, with priority on ones that actually see combat or are of higher value. Part of a larger effort to overhaul my defense, at this point even reinforced concrete with shields is weak, and metal isn't economical for walls. Well the main base has a few metal walls but that's the exception rather than the rule.
I'm working on a solution for that as well, it's a bit biotech but I'm not really bad at that, just not good at it. A sort of fungus that'll convert rock into itself, capable of both generating and conducting electricity, and with my current understanding of ocean things, bug shells, and just general material science it'll be as durable as diamond on average, while it's outer 'shell' will be three times as hard and steadily grow thicker and more durable the longer it grows. Crystal and rock slime essence is really useful.
By manipulating the electrical signals it produces a terminal can guide it to grow in certain shapes, and while I can't yet get the stuff to grow machines like fruit or organs as I'd originally planned I can have it grow places for machines to be placed. Basically making a hollow factory.
The more energy I feed it the faster it grows and given I can produce an absurd amount of power this stuff can grow like a weed, still technically slower than Labyrinthine can build, and with the limitation that any internal infrastructure will need to be installed in it but aside from the seed it has no material cost.
My current plan is to have it slowly convert the lands around my factories, serving as static defenses, and given its conductive nature I will be able to just put laser turrets on it and not worry about connecting them to the power grid, as the ground itself will already be linked in. Walls can quite literally spring up within minutes wherever a mind wants them to be.
Of greater interest is it's underground applications, it's harder for the bugs to tunnel through it, and my terminals can tell me when it is being tunneled through, allowing me to either have the stuff grow around the intrusion, electrocute them, or just open a path to allow drones to go kill them. Giving me home field advantage wherever it is.
It'll also allow me to build massive underground tunnels or facilities with extreme ease, connecting all my outposts and eventually allowing it to become just one giant underground factory. Which is rapidly becoming more appealing than continuing to build them on the surface, as most of the metal and raw materials are down here anyway.
That and it's harder for the deep fish to swim through, which will hopefully discourage them from breaking my magma drills so often.
Technically speaking I have a working sample right now, and could plant it. But I'm letting it grow so I can separate it out into more seeds so it can spread over a larger area quickly, ideally around my main base and the frontlines, the interior can wait for a while.
That was derived from my work on trying to make a self repairing ultra durable metal, which I had wanted for both my skeleton and all my vehicles and armors. As my current cybernetics are getting a bit outdated, even if my skeleton is technically a similar substance to the ground stuff. To bugs that isn't 'unbreakable'.
I want to update my blood, so it can function as my organs if the need arrives, I also want to completely negate my body's need for air, and…. Honestly with just those two and further armor around my brain there isn't much else I can see helping with my survival. If that's done then as long as my brain's intact I'll be both alive and cognizant. Which is about the end of survivability for my body, at that point we start getting into backup brains, which I technically already have with my android pseudo-clones.
But any of that needs more research, I figure once I get the fungus to grow machines I can get a different version of it to grow organs, which isn't quite what I want but better than my nanomachine attempt.
That somewhat leads into my next topic, Balistraia asked for me to build her a body. Not just an android one either, which she could manage on her own. No, she wants something custom built. Already my mind is boiling with ideas, pulling partially from my sentinel drones for the basic idea.
This is going to be the absolute best thing I can build with my current technology, and I know just what I want to do for it. And given I've finally started to reliably produce conceptual fluids out of plorts I can actually do it. It's rare that I just let myself go and build something absurd, haven't really done it since the tier four assemblers. And I'm going to be doing that again, because I'm not going to have any half measures.
Every conceptual fluid I can produce, I will be consuming. And then I'll build Balistraia a body. There are only so many ways this can go wrong.
Thats about it for development though, everything else is continuing apace.
The war front however has however done the thing it always does when it starts to rain. All fighting has stopped, because the rain hasn't. That means the oceans are rising, and given the abundance of monitoring equipment I have just for this situation I can tell this'll be a flood. Which means I couldn't plant my fungus even if I wanted too, and that all the outposts are going into lockdown.
I'm expecting at least a few tsunamis this time as well, something has been causing massive earthquakes down in the mantle and while that's a quarter of the planet away from me I've learned to expect the worst. I mean the earthquakes are probably just a territorial dispute, not something coming up, which would be the actual worst case, but…. Yeah just stop thinking about things I can't affect.
I have had some issues with androids trying to get off of the Far Far Range to go help humanity in the war, even with the fact that my singular ship has already slammed the Turians minor war effort to a halt, seriously they have forty thousand ships, and barely one hundred were sent to deal with humanity. If you're gonna do a war, do a war right, this is just odd. Though they also seem to think Eden prime is Humanities homeworld… Yeah the Turians just have awful intel, which explains some of why they haven't sent anything like enough ships even if it had just been humanity. Not helped by Balistraia feeding them awful intel via judicious hacking.
You do have to wonder what the Turians were thinking with this little 'war' though, and I did. So I had Balistraia do some digging and apparently this is practically standard Turian first contact protocol. They have 'client races' which aren't even citizens and really I'm starting to just dislike these arrogant little warmongers.
This whole 'conquering other races instead of saying hello' thing asks another question, why is the rest of the 'council' allowing this? I'd been lead to believe, admittedly though propaganda ridden media, that the Asari were diplomates by trade, and the Salarians were just a race of engineers and researchers.
The council is starting to seem more and more like a scam. Or at the very least a system designed to give those in power all the advantages over other species.
Which reduces my desire to actually form my own empire or announce my own presence at all. I have no desire to have these people in any way capable of planning against me, so for all intents and purposes I'm going to be a galactic bogeyman.
Android infiltrators controlling all government or scientific institutions I care about, and strike teams of androids with stealth ships to take out anything I want gone. With those powers combined I'll be able to slowly shape the galaxy into my ideal image.
Like a well maintained garden.
The slime ranching front has also been expanded rapidly by the storm giving such a large influx of slimes, mostly on earth as I don't have the facilities for so many on the Far Far range yet. Androids and machines taking care of the slimes and figuring out new and novel ways to use the plorts.
The moon base is putting out new ships, satellites, and space capable drones at an… acceptable rate. And my asteroid belt mining platforms are finally beginning to contribute to construction of more ship bays out in said asteroid belt, which will soon eclipse the moon bases' own construction.
I will be expanding said moon base, largely in a defensive capacity so it can shield earth, but I doubt it will reach the production capacity I'll eventually have in the asteroid belt, just not as much material. Ideally I want to turn it into a massive shielding unit to envelope the earth in a shield, though I don't know if I want it to be Plasma or Molecular stabilization just yet. With that, and covering the moon in as many weapon systems as I can, and its ability to house a sizable fleet and make an endless tide of disposable space capable fighters, I can safely say earth is adequately defended from space attacks. If the aliens who made the machines ever come back.
And once there is a space elevator to connect earth and the moon, or more likely just to space stations that then ferry you to one or the other I can say earths immediately space is sufficiently developed for work to begin on other planets in the system, and in preparation for that I've sent a few teams of spidertrons and drones to make habitats on mars, and some factories that will begin terraforming it.
Not through making plants and animals that can do it for me either, though I could. I'll be making factories that pump out ozone, machines to make a magnetic shield to keep it from being stripped away, oxygen and water farms… might not make the planet a verdant wonderland with green plants and blue oceans, but this is more like what I'd have built regardless.
Still debating if I want to try and introduce magic into the atmosphere, I need to on any off planet ships androids or machines will be on for any length of time, but I genuinely might not have any on mars. It's not like they've filled up earth in any capacity, given most of the cities are built underground at this point.
Still filled with plants and light while underground, which is jarring. At this point I have a few million drones just trimming plants. Kind of tempted to make a robotic bird that burns plant matter to run, if I make it out of crystal it'd be fairly pretty, add internal lights and I can get some flying rainbows.
For a magic world there aren't that many magic creatures, and I think Byzantine would enjoy fixing that. Can even add it to the program Balistraia made, have the animals the androids and machines will be living with designed by said androids and machines.
Just having dragons and slimes feels unbalanced.
AN-
at this point there are just dozens of giant underground cities that still basically look like they are outdoors, just based on how large they are and the amount of plant and animal life they have. Sure there are still parts of the cities above ground but thats not really the majority of it.
the engineer is basically his own ecosystem at this point, even making his own version of soil for his 'plants' to grow from. I just like the idea that everywhere there is an outpost the ground is turned into a metallic substance, like a spreading corruption.
comments and discussions are amazing, patreon is a thing.
Last edited:
Orion Zete
[verify weaboo]
- Location
- Malaysia
Maybe we are the flood/zerg all along.
- Pronouns
- That/Thing
The factory must grow, the factory must assimilate, do not resist
I'm assuming the Engineer is effectively making a bio-engineered version of the Zerg's creep from the Starcraft universe, but instead of being purple, it's simply a grey-looking substance? Since, from the description it sounds like creep, but potentially biomechanical instead of being organic (and potentially psionic?).
Thanks for the chapter!
Question teacher is the robot aliens going to find you and get mad that you took their stuff and try to take it back in nier-earth
I really wonder how the mass effect humans are reacting to this war.
- Pronouns
- That/Thing
basically, though I had the flood in mind when making it. also not Psionic, it just has a rudimentary nervous system.
What do you think he's gonna do to mars and the moon? But tbh planet eating planet is inefficient, space locusts are a better way. The planets would just be the hives.
I wish I actually had a plot planned for this beyond three chapters into the future, but I have absolutely no idea where the muse will take me.
They don't even know about the Engineer's ship, so as they did in canon at the start and then a bunch of confuson as the turian ships just stop showing up out of no where. Though the engineer has made them aware of the council by hacking their systems and giving false 'stolen turian intelligence'
it can basically be summed up as 'very confused and somewhat worried'
Soo par for the course when dealing with the engineer, got it
- Pronouns
- That/Thing
Patreon has a 4.8k chapter about that for a dollar a month, or you can wait for Friday
Wait you have a Patreon? No shit, I'll think about buying a level
Interlude - An engineers poor decisions
- Pronouns
- That/Thing
I slowly come back to myself, my body somehow feeling sore in a way it shouldn't even be capable of as the cocktail of essence I'd ingested finally wore off.
Alarms are baring, the base is entirely underwater, the tunnels around the base are also submerged, half the outer wall is gone and…..
What even happened?! Why are we under water!
How does our head even hurt! We removed the pain signals from it!
I think we're in our room, the tracker says we are but …. Why is it so dark?
Turn on the lights, and has no one mentioned the fact that out armor is gone?! We are on Nauvis! Underwater! Without our armor!
The lights flick on, letting my eyes see what camera should have revealed, the light breeze touching my skin for the first time in weeks as even my armored undersuit is just gone. What remains of the room is a mess, machines torn from their housing, wires and most of the lights ripped from the wall, the few remaining ones flickering for absolutely no reason, all my prototypes are just outright gone.
Owww thats back, factory sense is back
Everything is on fire, we are under water and everything is on fire.
At least we can hear the minds again… and hear what we did from them
I think we always could it had just been deafening
Well the head pains are gone so that checks out.
Did… did we go out and kill a giant fish?
For parts?!
Does it count if we were under the influence?
Yes yes it does, and that explains what happened to most of our armor. Then we must have broken it down for parts.
Like everything else in this room, where even is the body?
I think it's behind us
We still haven't turned around? And shouldn't we just be able to see everything around us? I feel blind and everything is ouchy
And we still won't be, moving hurts. Lets just wait until the minds see it.
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Bulwark wasn't often scared, they had been designed to handle anything with methodical ease. At best they got annoyed with the lack of needed resources, or frustrated with their losses. Rarely ever did the mind worry, though for something with as many selves as Bulwark had rare was still an hourly occurrence.
Right now Bulwark was both worried and scared, and the source for both emotions would be apparent to anyone who knew the minds in the least, the only thing that could ever elicit such emotions from the stoic mind. The Maker, doing something ill advised in the pursuit of 'progress'.
The mind couldn't even assuage its fears, one of the first things to fall to the makers ravenous search for components were the cameras in the room, not even lasting seconds after the conceptual fluids had been imbibed. Then the room had started groaning as the power conduits pulled more and more power into themselves, somehow more power than the conductors were rated for.
Balistraia had then tried to send drones in to get a view of the situation, but even with Bulwarks' attempt to shield them with projectors they'd fallen apart and been consumed before more than a few frames could be sent. What frames were seen only showed the armored gauntlet of the Makers armor reaching for the camera lens.
Then the farthest ranged sensors reported a rising wave, one that rapidly grew into a tsunami as the tide paradoxically rose rather than pulling back out to sea.
The wave crashed onto the shore, scoring the land down to the bedrock and uprooting boulders and trees. The debris hurled with the wave as it crashed into the outposts closest to the shore.
Every single outpost was more underground than above, with the majority of its structure built into or beneath the surrounding bedrock. The wave hit with such force that these deeply rooted buildings shook, as concrete and metal walls that had never been exposed to the sun had the dirt and stone surrounding them ripped away, only the shielding keeping the meters thick walls from suffering the same fate.
One might not think a wave carries much force, but that just shows how little most people understand. A wave of such size, hundreds of meters tall. Carries more force than can be easily conceived, crashing with millions of pounds of water to destroy anything in its path.
The outposts stood firm, the lights not even flickering. The only damage being done to weapons and the more fragile components. Even protected by shields the gears meant to move then could be overstrained and burn out from the force the water wrenched at them with.
What few drones and tanks that had failed to get inside were just gone if they failed to fly high enough to avoid the wave, and what few managed such a feat were soon torn from the skies by a combination of harsh winds and fish.
It was all perfectly within expectations. The Mind's had been expecting something like this to occur when the rain had failed to stop and the earth had begun to shake.
Within minutes the wave passed by the main base, failing to reach past the outer walls. Though Bulwark was immensely annoyed with the fact their well prepared minefield and static defenses outside of said wall had been washed away, the Mind had needed to disable all the mines before they could be thrown into said outerwall.
The water behind the wave was scarcely lower than the wave itself, reaching up three fourths of the outer wall's height, leaving all but a few of the above ground entrances submerged. Bulwark watched with growing concern as the water level grew higher millimeter by millimeter and the biter dug tunnels began to fill with water, slowly starting to flood any tunnel that had failed to be sealed off.
Thankfully that excluded the tunnels between the outposts, and there were multiple airlocked sections between the water filling tunnels and anything of true importance, but it'd be an effort and a half to eventually drain them, or deal with anything that moved into them.
A task for later Bulwark notes, there being no way they could remove the water when so much was actively flooding in. Not without a considerable amount of effort spent blocking the dozens of ways water could flow into the tunnels.
The mind shifts its attention away from the exterior, leaving the management of flood control to Labyrinthine and Byzantine and returning to the part of itself it left monitoring the makers situation, which had thankfully, and worryingly, remained stagnant for the several minutes the mind had been occupied with the flood.
One of Byzantine's selves was bust ferrying in a constant supply of both raw materials and advanced components through sacrificial drones and conveyor belts, while Balistraia was busy trying to prevent 13B from mounting an operation to check on the engineers well being. The android normally complied with all of the orders Balistraia gave, but the mind was now apparently having some trouble with her. Bulwark wished Balistraia luck in her endeavors in dealing with the android and began ensuring that nothing interrupted the Maker. Taking care to prevent any undue shaking or noises from reaching this deep within the factory, which was a simple enough task given the sheer volume of metal.
The Maker would not normally be bothered by sounds from outside the factory, the boom of artillery shells and distant earth shattering explosions common enough over the everpresent den of machinery, but Bulwark wanted to take no chances with the Makers current state, and the relatively unfamiliar sound of rushing water.
The last thing Bulwark needed was for the Maker to leave his workshop and 'investigate' the source of the noise. One might wonder why the engineer with his awareness of everything in his own domain wouldn't immediately notice, Bulwark had no idea, just like the mind had no idea what it even saw when it tried to see through the Makers suit, or even just skim the surface of his thoughts.
The mind had no idea what pain truly felt like, but it had to imagine that that sensation was approaching it. A paradox of conflicting and impossible inputs that more often than not simply poured from the minds memory banks before they could even begin to analyze the data inputs. What was going on with the maker while he was powered by the essence slurry was beyond what the mind was currently capable of processing.
Bulwark was jolted from its thoughts as it's sensors detected something rapidly approaching the wall through the water, something it could only see because of the wake it was generating as the radars failed to show any movement whatsoever. It was still miles out but far closer than the mind was comfortable with something getting without it being aware.
Still, there were defensive installations all around the main base, and Bulwark opened fire. Their weapon systems long past the point of being hindered by something as mundane as water. Bullets, missiles, bursts of energy exotic and mundane, mortars and shells, all puring in quantities that put the storm above to shame as the water surrounding the monster outright vanished under the onslaught.
The only thing it managed to do was disrupt whatever was hiding the beast from Bulwarks sensors, it was two kilometers from its longest point, covered in armor plating that still glowed and steamed with heat, thousands of serrated limbs dug through the bedrock like butter rapidly dragging its bulk across the ground as it continued to outright ignore the onslaught. Nukes not even phasing the beast, monomolecular missiles stuck in its armor barely leaving scratches before the missiles dissolved. Four meter explosive shells each capable of seriously wounding a command bug fell like rain as weapons both mundane and technomagical did little to even scorch the abomination.
The only saving grace was the creature's apparent lack of ranged capabilities.
It wasn't close enough for the truly powerful weapons to be unleashed, but with the main bases standard arsenal having so little effect Bulwark began to doubt that the weapons would even be effective, and immediately took priority control of the orbital weapons platforms. Individually one was capable of taking out entire hives and even mountain ranges would be leveled under sustained fire, Bulwark was going to fire all seventy that were in position to fire upon the hostile.
Even if the attack failed to kill the thing it'd bury it in a hole at least a kilometer deep, destroying a not insignificant portion of the factories underground transportation network in the process.
The weapons sighted, charged, and with a thrum that could be felt in the vacuum of space the storm around the factory was boiled away, the flooding water boiled away as miniature tornadoes formed from the extreme temperature differences, plants previously underwater rapidly burst into flame and the ground began to burn. The factory's shields activated to seal the interior off from the heat as the plasma began to pool in puddles outside, slowly flooding the land as the water once had.
And the thing finally began to scream.
Plasma continued to rain from the heavens, rods of supernaturally strong metal falling at a significant portion of the speed of light slammed into the ground shaking the earth, new storms and winds thousands of miles an hour tore at the already devastated landscape flying molten metal, stone, and Plasma throughout the air in Highly deadly tornadoes.
The thing continued to scream as it was hammered into an ever deepening hole slowly being filled with an ocean made from plasma, but Bulwark watched with ever growing concern as it started to… swim, its limbs burning and disintegrating while its armored core remained largely intact, if heavily marred and damaged.
The ground wasn't stable enough to hold it, the plasma shouldn't have been dense enough to support it, but on it swam. Bulwark couldn't even see what limbs it was using to swim, or if it was even using them to swim in the first place. The plasma scrambled a fair portion of its own sensors.
And worse, in the few moments the mind had let its attention falter from the Maker he'd managed to vanish from his workshop. None of its other instances or even the other full minds had yet found him, and if they ended up needing to evacuate the maker they couldn't. Already what few androids actually stayed in the main base were being shipped or teleported away as the minds prepared for the worst case scenario. As they always did when a significant threat arrived at any base, with no exception being made for the largest and grandest of them.
Bulwark was currently the Bulwark with the largest amount of processing power, as it was both the one guarding the main base and the base the Maker currently occupied. But even with that much power it still failed to find a solution rapid enough before the situation once again devolved.
The worst case scenario, ones the mind hadn't even thought of until now, had occurred. Bulwark found the maker, walking ontop the plane of Plasma towards the wake the approaching monster left behind it. The mind's processing rapidly increased in speed as it backtracked it's sensors which even now failed to register The Maker as The Maker, watching as he just appeared suddenly in a section of tangled machinery close to the outerwall.
The maker was muttering to himself, pulling components from the machinery he walked past as he shoved the melted components into what looked vaguely like a gun barrel without anything else attached to it. Bulwark deciphered what the Maker had muttered, confused as to why it could even be heard through the armor in the first place. "Fucken fish's messsssss-ing with my stuffs, we gotta fight the ocean. Gonna do it, gotta get the fish bits, need em for the meats and bones and fishy bits for the bitty part with the swimming, serves em right breaking all my stuff. Fair to turn it into stuff' Which only raised the minds panic further as the maker proceed to descend into mindless giggling as he started to wave the gun barrel like a baton, Bulwark sped up the tape even further but nothing else happened until the Maker just phased through the wall like it wasnt there, melting and rebuilding its components as he passed through them.
Bulwark started to increase the orbital satellites power to unsafe levels as it desperately tried to kill the fish before its maker reached it, drones pouring out to try and pull him back not even reaching within a dozen meters before being melted by the sun like heat, the more durable tanks and spidertrons falling through the molten ground.
The Maker just walked through the stray arcs of plasma, ignoring the fact that he should have fallen through the ground, the plasma and even the heat itself being diverted with more precision and skill than Bulwark was capable of. The hellish environment simply rendered irrelevant.
Bulwark had to stop firing the orbital cannons as the maker rapidly approached the pit the fish monster was trapped in, not willing to risk harming the maker itself even though the maker was putting himself in such grave danger, far outside of the safety its wall represented.
When the Maker arrived at the molten and dripping edge of the crater the mind watched him simply point the gun barrel at the fish before a lance of nothing arced out and fizzled away before reaching the creature, and The maker promptly leapt into the now multiple kilometer deep hole to get within range with his new experimental weapon, firing again as he fell closer and closer towards the beast, the new beam pierced deep into the beasts armored hide, the flesh it hit simply vanishing as the beam cored deeper and deeper into the meat, before with a flash and a pop a column of flesh identical to the vanished part appeared falling through the air next to the maker, where with a glance it started to separate out into piles before condensing into small spheres of flesh, blood, bone, and armor before the spheres liquefied and disappeared into the Makers storage.
The weapon seemed to have a considerably slow fire rate, with only one other lance lashing out before the maker hit the ground, each removing a few hundred square feet of the creature's flesh, but it was still two kilometers long. The wounds were significant but not crippling, and Bulwark grimly noted that the Maker had presented himself as a perfect target for the beast. What few limbs had been shielded under the fish's bulk lashed out, stretching an absurd distance in moments, before slapping the maker into the wall at speeds well beyond the sound barrier. The molten walls barely slowed him down as he was entombed.
The maker barely seemed to notice, a lance firing from within the stone and into the creature before he dashed out the resulting tunnel, the resulting wound he dealt the creature was minor, the stone seeming to have absorbed the bulk of the bolt.
And with that the dance had begun, armor and beast meeting in combat as the engineer wove through what attacks he could, shrugging off those that hit and carving apart more and more of the creature, but Bulwark knew the Makers armor's shield capacity and with the sheer earth shattering force of the attacks, combined with the constant heat draining at them, the Makers shields would be falling before long. Shield tech just hadn't been considerably improved, the current shields still comparable to versions months old.
The suit's speed and weapons were astounding, the mobility and agility it was capable of beyond comparison. But it was made to run away, nothing the factory made could last in a melee where it actually got hit. And the maker was getting hit, while he was faster than the bulk of the beast its tentacles whipped out faster than he could move, even if his mental speed was more than enough to see them coming. The beast would cage him with numerous limbs, leaving him no choice but to take one to avoid the others.
Eventually, after less then ten minutes, the Makers shields broke, the beyond razor sharp tendrils ripping through armor that was fifteen times harder than diamond and cutting off a chunk of the makers arm. Worse than that, his flesh was exposed to the molten air and began to boil and melt before a lump of molten metal poured into the gap from nowhere before rapidly hardening. All of that happening before the maker even impacted the ground as he was flung into from the force of the hit. The maker took no true notice of his injury or his rapidly reddening armor as he dashed straight towards the beast's head, firing a beam into one of its sensor nodes as the tentacles tried to force him to change his course, he ignored them as his own robotic limbs lashed out and pushed himself off of them using the momentum to fling himself even faster, said robotic limbs shattering under the strain or outright tearing out and leaving new holes in his armor that soon filled with more inert metal. Another lance lashed out into the hole the previous had left in the beast's head, finally seeming to pierce its skull.
The beast wasn't dead even with a large portion of its skull missing, but it's armor had been pierced and the heat began to pour into the gap, rapidly boiling its brain and blood as more and more lances of nothing arced out and the Maker calmly walked towards it, sorting through the piles of flesh while still it still tried to struggle, the trapped monster unable to do anything as its thrashing slowed into twitching before finally falling still, its body with more parts missing than there before it finally seemed to die.
-----------------
Labyrinthine hadn't been nearly as concerned as Bulwark and the other minds had been, partially as the mind had no true doubt in the makers capabilities, and partially because it was a simpler mind, not dumber in any way but less burdened with the stress of could have beens and maybe's. The mind was rooted in what was happening, the physical state of things, no theoreticals graced its thoughts, and so it did not worry. Whatever happened would happen.
It waited and watched as the maker won, beginning its efforts to repair both the ground outside and the destroyed sections of underground and above ground infrastructure while the Maker entered into the now exposed sections of underground rail and began his trek back towards his workshop. The only thoughts on the minds mind were about what the Balistraia's body would look like and what work it needed to do to bring the factory back to one hundred percent.
Though the mind was quite cross with the fact the myriad of decorations upon the main base's outer wall had melted, that just meant it would get to rebuild them. Its mind is already drafting plans while its legions of drones set to work fulfilling the repair blueprints at its direction, rapidly closing off the exposed tunnel before the vulnerability could be taken advantage of by anything. Unlikely as that would be.
It wasn't long into its work, barely three hours which was an eternity to the other minds, before the strange interference it felt around the engineer began to slowly wane, and over the course of a few more hours it began to be able to understand it's makers thoughts once again. Which were filled mostly with soreness and confusion, but the Makers mind rapidly processed the information from the last few hours from each of the minds. Labyrinthine got into a short feedback loop as it saw and then thought its own thoughts as the maker saw them. Not something that tended to happen but did occasionally occur shortly after the maker awoke from an especially deep sleep.
Still, the mind heard the makers request and sent a drone into the now safe room, idly noting that all the equipment in the room will need to be replaced now that the mind can actually do so without just losing both the replacements and the drones sent to do the replacing.
When the drone finally laid eyes on the room the body was the first thing Labyrinthine noticed, it was massive, at least ten meters tall and its joints and limbs didn't look like metal. It was humanoid as well, no extraneous limbs that the mind could see, nor any mounted weapons. Just a large body with metal filigree seamlessly embedded in its light blue flesh. The head and face were human, and for some reason when Labyrinthine looked at it they thought of Balistraia even though she had never had a face to compare it to. Its shape and structure just slotted seamlessly into their mind as 'Balistraia'. A closer inspection revealed more of what the harvest materials had gone towards, the joints were the pale blue flesh but the less flexible areas were armored with the harvested carapace. All of it seemingly treated through an unknown process to have a matching color contrasted with the black metal, which in itself was so dark it didn't even leave a reflection.
Its more feminine features were covered with the same black metal, and the mind was genuinely uncertain if the addled maker had made Balistraia's body anatomically accurate, though it did note that the frame's overall shape would have been decidedly uncomfortable if it was actually a human body. Muscle groups were clearly defined, though not in the corresponding place's they'd have been on a human, leading it a vaguely uncanny appearance. Even closer examination upon the skin and metal revealed what the mind had known would be there, miniature impressions where the skin could part to allow tools, weapons, or manipulators to exit.
It was, in essence, exactly what Balistraia had wanted. Almost. A body close enough to humans and androids to be compared, but different enough to not be confused for them with mechanical features being plainly obvious, and while the mind couldn't yet tell what weapon systems it had installed, Labyrinthine had no doubt it would be a deadly machine. It was just far larger than Balistraia had asked for, she'd requested a body ideally three meters in height, and no larger than three and a half. Not this ten meter titan.
The Maker, who was watching the same drone feed as Labyrinthine had a similar reaction, and with a brief spike of an emotion vaguely related to shame or disappointment actually turned his own body around to get a proper look at the armor with his own eyes. Walking over to it was slow and deliberate steps as The Makers mind raced with confusion before realization struck and he sent a mental signal to the armor, which rapidly began to shrink, keeping the same proportions as it rapidly shrank to five, and then three meters. Still keeping the same weight, before with another thought the armor grew once again to fifteen meters.
Willing the armor to shrink once again the Maker poked its arm, and both the flesh and armored sections were soft and squishy before another ping from the maker caused both to harden. The maker spoke to himself in a quiet voice 'well that's a thing' and Labyrinthine felt vaguely amused at the engineer's bafflement.
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Balistraia wasn't quite sure what to think of her new body, It wasn't that there was anything wrong with it, that was part of the problem. It fit her too well, whenever she was using the body she felt like it was her, that she was just a body controlling billions of drones, and not an AI without a true form. It was disconcerting,but she'd only been within it for a bare few minutes; she was rapidly acclimating to the sensation. Everything was just so vivid.
Controlling the body was fluid and easy, far easier than controlling tanks or drones and she did that without any true effort. Even the body's form was easy for her to change, the moment she wanted too her size, figure, and proportions would change. Even making limbs longer or shifting how muscled her body looked, the only stagnant parts being the color and what bits were armored.
Even her armament could be moved throughout her body, though the amount and type of weapons seemed to remain stagnant, and not truly in her body in the first place. She could feel her weapons but unless she brought them out she had no idea where they were. Two of those new pseudo teleporting guns that had apparently been custom built for her body, two plasma repeaters, two plasma mortars, every mundane turret, canon, or artillery piece, missile launchers, grenade launchers, oversized hand held laser rifles, mounted laser cannons and enough ammunition that she could fire for four hours straight before running dry, with power generation to make her plasma and laser weapons functionally limitless.
Add in the fact she could harden parts of her body to the point laser cutters or monomolecular blades failed to cut them and that she had both Plasma and Standard shields her body was one of the most durable and deadliest things she'd seen. She didn't even seem to have any vital systems that could be damaged, it was just the same mix of flesh and metal all the way through. It was both running her processes, moving itself, and generating the power needed for her weapon systems.
And her senses! She could see microscopic details, through a fair portion of materials, all the wavelengths of light, even sound and echolocation, scents, tastes, touch, warmth and cold. Not just numbers either as she used to use to interpret the world, but actual sensations. She could actually see her commander in front of her, see the heat he emitted, the subdermal modifications made to his body, the metal patterns traced throughout that matched her own down to the smallest molecule. Before she'd only been able to feel what the commander had felt, and this wasn't filtered through his own mind, it was undiluted, pure. And Balistraia loved it.
Shrinking herself down to a bare three meters, Balistraia took one last look at her new body before getting a wonderful idea.
She reached out towards her creator with arms that radiated a steady warmth, and ignoring the brief flash of nervousness she felt from his mind she rapidly pulled him into a hug, her malleable form pressing against his own while his feet dangled nearly a meter from the ground and she ran her brand new fingers through his hair, marveling at the sensation of her first time giving another a hug.
AN-
tried to have both giant monster fights and wholesome moments here, engineer and balistraia both got their first hugs..... I think. Don't actually remember if the engineer has hugged someone before.
also Balistraia in that body is a threat to android and engineer sanity. She will tease, and know exactly how too. Also imagine baymax for how squishy she is.
let me know what you think of the chapter, POV a a Batarian ship getting invaded next. gonna try and get some horror vibes. which will be new for me.
drunk engineer makes decisions not necessarily bad ones though.
comments and likes are great, Patreon is a thing.
Alarms are baring, the base is entirely underwater, the tunnels around the base are also submerged, half the outer wall is gone and…..
What even happened?! Why are we under water!
How does our head even hurt! We removed the pain signals from it!
I think we're in our room, the tracker says we are but …. Why is it so dark?
Turn on the lights, and has no one mentioned the fact that out armor is gone?! We are on Nauvis! Underwater! Without our armor!
The lights flick on, letting my eyes see what camera should have revealed, the light breeze touching my skin for the first time in weeks as even my armored undersuit is just gone. What remains of the room is a mess, machines torn from their housing, wires and most of the lights ripped from the wall, the few remaining ones flickering for absolutely no reason, all my prototypes are just outright gone.
Owww thats back, factory sense is back
Everything is on fire, we are under water and everything is on fire.
At least we can hear the minds again… and hear what we did from them
I think we always could it had just been deafening
Well the head pains are gone so that checks out.
Did… did we go out and kill a giant fish?
For parts?!
Does it count if we were under the influence?
Yes yes it does, and that explains what happened to most of our armor. Then we must have broken it down for parts.
Like everything else in this room, where even is the body?
I think it's behind us
We still haven't turned around? And shouldn't we just be able to see everything around us? I feel blind and everything is ouchy
And we still won't be, moving hurts. Lets just wait until the minds see it.
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Bulwark wasn't often scared, they had been designed to handle anything with methodical ease. At best they got annoyed with the lack of needed resources, or frustrated with their losses. Rarely ever did the mind worry, though for something with as many selves as Bulwark had rare was still an hourly occurrence.
Right now Bulwark was both worried and scared, and the source for both emotions would be apparent to anyone who knew the minds in the least, the only thing that could ever elicit such emotions from the stoic mind. The Maker, doing something ill advised in the pursuit of 'progress'.
The mind couldn't even assuage its fears, one of the first things to fall to the makers ravenous search for components were the cameras in the room, not even lasting seconds after the conceptual fluids had been imbibed. Then the room had started groaning as the power conduits pulled more and more power into themselves, somehow more power than the conductors were rated for.
Balistraia had then tried to send drones in to get a view of the situation, but even with Bulwarks' attempt to shield them with projectors they'd fallen apart and been consumed before more than a few frames could be sent. What frames were seen only showed the armored gauntlet of the Makers armor reaching for the camera lens.
Then the farthest ranged sensors reported a rising wave, one that rapidly grew into a tsunami as the tide paradoxically rose rather than pulling back out to sea.
The wave crashed onto the shore, scoring the land down to the bedrock and uprooting boulders and trees. The debris hurled with the wave as it crashed into the outposts closest to the shore.
Every single outpost was more underground than above, with the majority of its structure built into or beneath the surrounding bedrock. The wave hit with such force that these deeply rooted buildings shook, as concrete and metal walls that had never been exposed to the sun had the dirt and stone surrounding them ripped away, only the shielding keeping the meters thick walls from suffering the same fate.
One might not think a wave carries much force, but that just shows how little most people understand. A wave of such size, hundreds of meters tall. Carries more force than can be easily conceived, crashing with millions of pounds of water to destroy anything in its path.
The outposts stood firm, the lights not even flickering. The only damage being done to weapons and the more fragile components. Even protected by shields the gears meant to move then could be overstrained and burn out from the force the water wrenched at them with.
What few drones and tanks that had failed to get inside were just gone if they failed to fly high enough to avoid the wave, and what few managed such a feat were soon torn from the skies by a combination of harsh winds and fish.
It was all perfectly within expectations. The Mind's had been expecting something like this to occur when the rain had failed to stop and the earth had begun to shake.
Within minutes the wave passed by the main base, failing to reach past the outer walls. Though Bulwark was immensely annoyed with the fact their well prepared minefield and static defenses outside of said wall had been washed away, the Mind had needed to disable all the mines before they could be thrown into said outerwall.
The water behind the wave was scarcely lower than the wave itself, reaching up three fourths of the outer wall's height, leaving all but a few of the above ground entrances submerged. Bulwark watched with growing concern as the water level grew higher millimeter by millimeter and the biter dug tunnels began to fill with water, slowly starting to flood any tunnel that had failed to be sealed off.
Thankfully that excluded the tunnels between the outposts, and there were multiple airlocked sections between the water filling tunnels and anything of true importance, but it'd be an effort and a half to eventually drain them, or deal with anything that moved into them.
A task for later Bulwark notes, there being no way they could remove the water when so much was actively flooding in. Not without a considerable amount of effort spent blocking the dozens of ways water could flow into the tunnels.
The mind shifts its attention away from the exterior, leaving the management of flood control to Labyrinthine and Byzantine and returning to the part of itself it left monitoring the makers situation, which had thankfully, and worryingly, remained stagnant for the several minutes the mind had been occupied with the flood.
One of Byzantine's selves was bust ferrying in a constant supply of both raw materials and advanced components through sacrificial drones and conveyor belts, while Balistraia was busy trying to prevent 13B from mounting an operation to check on the engineers well being. The android normally complied with all of the orders Balistraia gave, but the mind was now apparently having some trouble with her. Bulwark wished Balistraia luck in her endeavors in dealing with the android and began ensuring that nothing interrupted the Maker. Taking care to prevent any undue shaking or noises from reaching this deep within the factory, which was a simple enough task given the sheer volume of metal.
The Maker would not normally be bothered by sounds from outside the factory, the boom of artillery shells and distant earth shattering explosions common enough over the everpresent den of machinery, but Bulwark wanted to take no chances with the Makers current state, and the relatively unfamiliar sound of rushing water.
The last thing Bulwark needed was for the Maker to leave his workshop and 'investigate' the source of the noise. One might wonder why the engineer with his awareness of everything in his own domain wouldn't immediately notice, Bulwark had no idea, just like the mind had no idea what it even saw when it tried to see through the Makers suit, or even just skim the surface of his thoughts.
The mind had no idea what pain truly felt like, but it had to imagine that that sensation was approaching it. A paradox of conflicting and impossible inputs that more often than not simply poured from the minds memory banks before they could even begin to analyze the data inputs. What was going on with the maker while he was powered by the essence slurry was beyond what the mind was currently capable of processing.
Bulwark was jolted from its thoughts as it's sensors detected something rapidly approaching the wall through the water, something it could only see because of the wake it was generating as the radars failed to show any movement whatsoever. It was still miles out but far closer than the mind was comfortable with something getting without it being aware.
Still, there were defensive installations all around the main base, and Bulwark opened fire. Their weapon systems long past the point of being hindered by something as mundane as water. Bullets, missiles, bursts of energy exotic and mundane, mortars and shells, all puring in quantities that put the storm above to shame as the water surrounding the monster outright vanished under the onslaught.
The only thing it managed to do was disrupt whatever was hiding the beast from Bulwarks sensors, it was two kilometers from its longest point, covered in armor plating that still glowed and steamed with heat, thousands of serrated limbs dug through the bedrock like butter rapidly dragging its bulk across the ground as it continued to outright ignore the onslaught. Nukes not even phasing the beast, monomolecular missiles stuck in its armor barely leaving scratches before the missiles dissolved. Four meter explosive shells each capable of seriously wounding a command bug fell like rain as weapons both mundane and technomagical did little to even scorch the abomination.
The only saving grace was the creature's apparent lack of ranged capabilities.
It wasn't close enough for the truly powerful weapons to be unleashed, but with the main bases standard arsenal having so little effect Bulwark began to doubt that the weapons would even be effective, and immediately took priority control of the orbital weapons platforms. Individually one was capable of taking out entire hives and even mountain ranges would be leveled under sustained fire, Bulwark was going to fire all seventy that were in position to fire upon the hostile.
Even if the attack failed to kill the thing it'd bury it in a hole at least a kilometer deep, destroying a not insignificant portion of the factories underground transportation network in the process.
The weapons sighted, charged, and with a thrum that could be felt in the vacuum of space the storm around the factory was boiled away, the flooding water boiled away as miniature tornadoes formed from the extreme temperature differences, plants previously underwater rapidly burst into flame and the ground began to burn. The factory's shields activated to seal the interior off from the heat as the plasma began to pool in puddles outside, slowly flooding the land as the water once had.
And the thing finally began to scream.
Plasma continued to rain from the heavens, rods of supernaturally strong metal falling at a significant portion of the speed of light slammed into the ground shaking the earth, new storms and winds thousands of miles an hour tore at the already devastated landscape flying molten metal, stone, and Plasma throughout the air in Highly deadly tornadoes.
The thing continued to scream as it was hammered into an ever deepening hole slowly being filled with an ocean made from plasma, but Bulwark watched with ever growing concern as it started to… swim, its limbs burning and disintegrating while its armored core remained largely intact, if heavily marred and damaged.
The ground wasn't stable enough to hold it, the plasma shouldn't have been dense enough to support it, but on it swam. Bulwark couldn't even see what limbs it was using to swim, or if it was even using them to swim in the first place. The plasma scrambled a fair portion of its own sensors.
And worse, in the few moments the mind had let its attention falter from the Maker he'd managed to vanish from his workshop. None of its other instances or even the other full minds had yet found him, and if they ended up needing to evacuate the maker they couldn't. Already what few androids actually stayed in the main base were being shipped or teleported away as the minds prepared for the worst case scenario. As they always did when a significant threat arrived at any base, with no exception being made for the largest and grandest of them.
Bulwark was currently the Bulwark with the largest amount of processing power, as it was both the one guarding the main base and the base the Maker currently occupied. But even with that much power it still failed to find a solution rapid enough before the situation once again devolved.
The worst case scenario, ones the mind hadn't even thought of until now, had occurred. Bulwark found the maker, walking ontop the plane of Plasma towards the wake the approaching monster left behind it. The mind's processing rapidly increased in speed as it backtracked it's sensors which even now failed to register The Maker as The Maker, watching as he just appeared suddenly in a section of tangled machinery close to the outerwall.
The maker was muttering to himself, pulling components from the machinery he walked past as he shoved the melted components into what looked vaguely like a gun barrel without anything else attached to it. Bulwark deciphered what the Maker had muttered, confused as to why it could even be heard through the armor in the first place. "Fucken fish's messsssss-ing with my stuffs, we gotta fight the ocean. Gonna do it, gotta get the fish bits, need em for the meats and bones and fishy bits for the bitty part with the swimming, serves em right breaking all my stuff. Fair to turn it into stuff' Which only raised the minds panic further as the maker proceed to descend into mindless giggling as he started to wave the gun barrel like a baton, Bulwark sped up the tape even further but nothing else happened until the Maker just phased through the wall like it wasnt there, melting and rebuilding its components as he passed through them.
Bulwark started to increase the orbital satellites power to unsafe levels as it desperately tried to kill the fish before its maker reached it, drones pouring out to try and pull him back not even reaching within a dozen meters before being melted by the sun like heat, the more durable tanks and spidertrons falling through the molten ground.
The Maker just walked through the stray arcs of plasma, ignoring the fact that he should have fallen through the ground, the plasma and even the heat itself being diverted with more precision and skill than Bulwark was capable of. The hellish environment simply rendered irrelevant.
Bulwark had to stop firing the orbital cannons as the maker rapidly approached the pit the fish monster was trapped in, not willing to risk harming the maker itself even though the maker was putting himself in such grave danger, far outside of the safety its wall represented.
When the Maker arrived at the molten and dripping edge of the crater the mind watched him simply point the gun barrel at the fish before a lance of nothing arced out and fizzled away before reaching the creature, and The maker promptly leapt into the now multiple kilometer deep hole to get within range with his new experimental weapon, firing again as he fell closer and closer towards the beast, the new beam pierced deep into the beasts armored hide, the flesh it hit simply vanishing as the beam cored deeper and deeper into the meat, before with a flash and a pop a column of flesh identical to the vanished part appeared falling through the air next to the maker, where with a glance it started to separate out into piles before condensing into small spheres of flesh, blood, bone, and armor before the spheres liquefied and disappeared into the Makers storage.
The weapon seemed to have a considerably slow fire rate, with only one other lance lashing out before the maker hit the ground, each removing a few hundred square feet of the creature's flesh, but it was still two kilometers long. The wounds were significant but not crippling, and Bulwark grimly noted that the Maker had presented himself as a perfect target for the beast. What few limbs had been shielded under the fish's bulk lashed out, stretching an absurd distance in moments, before slapping the maker into the wall at speeds well beyond the sound barrier. The molten walls barely slowed him down as he was entombed.
The maker barely seemed to notice, a lance firing from within the stone and into the creature before he dashed out the resulting tunnel, the resulting wound he dealt the creature was minor, the stone seeming to have absorbed the bulk of the bolt.
And with that the dance had begun, armor and beast meeting in combat as the engineer wove through what attacks he could, shrugging off those that hit and carving apart more and more of the creature, but Bulwark knew the Makers armor's shield capacity and with the sheer earth shattering force of the attacks, combined with the constant heat draining at them, the Makers shields would be falling before long. Shield tech just hadn't been considerably improved, the current shields still comparable to versions months old.
The suit's speed and weapons were astounding, the mobility and agility it was capable of beyond comparison. But it was made to run away, nothing the factory made could last in a melee where it actually got hit. And the maker was getting hit, while he was faster than the bulk of the beast its tentacles whipped out faster than he could move, even if his mental speed was more than enough to see them coming. The beast would cage him with numerous limbs, leaving him no choice but to take one to avoid the others.
Eventually, after less then ten minutes, the Makers shields broke, the beyond razor sharp tendrils ripping through armor that was fifteen times harder than diamond and cutting off a chunk of the makers arm. Worse than that, his flesh was exposed to the molten air and began to boil and melt before a lump of molten metal poured into the gap from nowhere before rapidly hardening. All of that happening before the maker even impacted the ground as he was flung into from the force of the hit. The maker took no true notice of his injury or his rapidly reddening armor as he dashed straight towards the beast's head, firing a beam into one of its sensor nodes as the tentacles tried to force him to change his course, he ignored them as his own robotic limbs lashed out and pushed himself off of them using the momentum to fling himself even faster, said robotic limbs shattering under the strain or outright tearing out and leaving new holes in his armor that soon filled with more inert metal. Another lance lashed out into the hole the previous had left in the beast's head, finally seeming to pierce its skull.
The beast wasn't dead even with a large portion of its skull missing, but it's armor had been pierced and the heat began to pour into the gap, rapidly boiling its brain and blood as more and more lances of nothing arced out and the Maker calmly walked towards it, sorting through the piles of flesh while still it still tried to struggle, the trapped monster unable to do anything as its thrashing slowed into twitching before finally falling still, its body with more parts missing than there before it finally seemed to die.
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Labyrinthine hadn't been nearly as concerned as Bulwark and the other minds had been, partially as the mind had no true doubt in the makers capabilities, and partially because it was a simpler mind, not dumber in any way but less burdened with the stress of could have beens and maybe's. The mind was rooted in what was happening, the physical state of things, no theoreticals graced its thoughts, and so it did not worry. Whatever happened would happen.
It waited and watched as the maker won, beginning its efforts to repair both the ground outside and the destroyed sections of underground and above ground infrastructure while the Maker entered into the now exposed sections of underground rail and began his trek back towards his workshop. The only thoughts on the minds mind were about what the Balistraia's body would look like and what work it needed to do to bring the factory back to one hundred percent.
Though the mind was quite cross with the fact the myriad of decorations upon the main base's outer wall had melted, that just meant it would get to rebuild them. Its mind is already drafting plans while its legions of drones set to work fulfilling the repair blueprints at its direction, rapidly closing off the exposed tunnel before the vulnerability could be taken advantage of by anything. Unlikely as that would be.
It wasn't long into its work, barely three hours which was an eternity to the other minds, before the strange interference it felt around the engineer began to slowly wane, and over the course of a few more hours it began to be able to understand it's makers thoughts once again. Which were filled mostly with soreness and confusion, but the Makers mind rapidly processed the information from the last few hours from each of the minds. Labyrinthine got into a short feedback loop as it saw and then thought its own thoughts as the maker saw them. Not something that tended to happen but did occasionally occur shortly after the maker awoke from an especially deep sleep.
Still, the mind heard the makers request and sent a drone into the now safe room, idly noting that all the equipment in the room will need to be replaced now that the mind can actually do so without just losing both the replacements and the drones sent to do the replacing.
When the drone finally laid eyes on the room the body was the first thing Labyrinthine noticed, it was massive, at least ten meters tall and its joints and limbs didn't look like metal. It was humanoid as well, no extraneous limbs that the mind could see, nor any mounted weapons. Just a large body with metal filigree seamlessly embedded in its light blue flesh. The head and face were human, and for some reason when Labyrinthine looked at it they thought of Balistraia even though she had never had a face to compare it to. Its shape and structure just slotted seamlessly into their mind as 'Balistraia'. A closer inspection revealed more of what the harvest materials had gone towards, the joints were the pale blue flesh but the less flexible areas were armored with the harvested carapace. All of it seemingly treated through an unknown process to have a matching color contrasted with the black metal, which in itself was so dark it didn't even leave a reflection.
Its more feminine features were covered with the same black metal, and the mind was genuinely uncertain if the addled maker had made Balistraia's body anatomically accurate, though it did note that the frame's overall shape would have been decidedly uncomfortable if it was actually a human body. Muscle groups were clearly defined, though not in the corresponding place's they'd have been on a human, leading it a vaguely uncanny appearance. Even closer examination upon the skin and metal revealed what the mind had known would be there, miniature impressions where the skin could part to allow tools, weapons, or manipulators to exit.
It was, in essence, exactly what Balistraia had wanted. Almost. A body close enough to humans and androids to be compared, but different enough to not be confused for them with mechanical features being plainly obvious, and while the mind couldn't yet tell what weapon systems it had installed, Labyrinthine had no doubt it would be a deadly machine. It was just far larger than Balistraia had asked for, she'd requested a body ideally three meters in height, and no larger than three and a half. Not this ten meter titan.
The Maker, who was watching the same drone feed as Labyrinthine had a similar reaction, and with a brief spike of an emotion vaguely related to shame or disappointment actually turned his own body around to get a proper look at the armor with his own eyes. Walking over to it was slow and deliberate steps as The Makers mind raced with confusion before realization struck and he sent a mental signal to the armor, which rapidly began to shrink, keeping the same proportions as it rapidly shrank to five, and then three meters. Still keeping the same weight, before with another thought the armor grew once again to fifteen meters.
Willing the armor to shrink once again the Maker poked its arm, and both the flesh and armored sections were soft and squishy before another ping from the maker caused both to harden. The maker spoke to himself in a quiet voice 'well that's a thing' and Labyrinthine felt vaguely amused at the engineer's bafflement.
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Balistraia wasn't quite sure what to think of her new body, It wasn't that there was anything wrong with it, that was part of the problem. It fit her too well, whenever she was using the body she felt like it was her, that she was just a body controlling billions of drones, and not an AI without a true form. It was disconcerting,but she'd only been within it for a bare few minutes; she was rapidly acclimating to the sensation. Everything was just so vivid.
Controlling the body was fluid and easy, far easier than controlling tanks or drones and she did that without any true effort. Even the body's form was easy for her to change, the moment she wanted too her size, figure, and proportions would change. Even making limbs longer or shifting how muscled her body looked, the only stagnant parts being the color and what bits were armored.
Even her armament could be moved throughout her body, though the amount and type of weapons seemed to remain stagnant, and not truly in her body in the first place. She could feel her weapons but unless she brought them out she had no idea where they were. Two of those new pseudo teleporting guns that had apparently been custom built for her body, two plasma repeaters, two plasma mortars, every mundane turret, canon, or artillery piece, missile launchers, grenade launchers, oversized hand held laser rifles, mounted laser cannons and enough ammunition that she could fire for four hours straight before running dry, with power generation to make her plasma and laser weapons functionally limitless.
Add in the fact she could harden parts of her body to the point laser cutters or monomolecular blades failed to cut them and that she had both Plasma and Standard shields her body was one of the most durable and deadliest things she'd seen. She didn't even seem to have any vital systems that could be damaged, it was just the same mix of flesh and metal all the way through. It was both running her processes, moving itself, and generating the power needed for her weapon systems.
And her senses! She could see microscopic details, through a fair portion of materials, all the wavelengths of light, even sound and echolocation, scents, tastes, touch, warmth and cold. Not just numbers either as she used to use to interpret the world, but actual sensations. She could actually see her commander in front of her, see the heat he emitted, the subdermal modifications made to his body, the metal patterns traced throughout that matched her own down to the smallest molecule. Before she'd only been able to feel what the commander had felt, and this wasn't filtered through his own mind, it was undiluted, pure. And Balistraia loved it.
Shrinking herself down to a bare three meters, Balistraia took one last look at her new body before getting a wonderful idea.
She reached out towards her creator with arms that radiated a steady warmth, and ignoring the brief flash of nervousness she felt from his mind she rapidly pulled him into a hug, her malleable form pressing against his own while his feet dangled nearly a meter from the ground and she ran her brand new fingers through his hair, marveling at the sensation of her first time giving another a hug.
AN-
tried to have both giant monster fights and wholesome moments here, engineer and balistraia both got their first hugs..... I think. Don't actually remember if the engineer has hugged someone before.
also Balistraia in that body is a threat to android and engineer sanity. She will tease, and know exactly how too. Also imagine baymax for how squishy she is.
let me know what you think of the chapter, POV a a Batarian ship getting invaded next. gonna try and get some horror vibes. which will be new for me.
drunk engineer makes decisions not necessarily bad ones though.
comments and likes are great, Patreon is a thing.
Noice
CaramelTheMoo
Rat and Cow combined
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I fucking love it. The engineer getting drunk off funny metaphysics slurry abd defeating a fish monster in order to use its pieces to build his daughter a body. Amazing