--- 6 - Better Than One ---
Flamescale had managed to sort out the loot they had gotten in the weekly event by the time Yellow-Glow arrived at her Void Base. "I'm keeping the containers," she informed her friend. "They are all good quality." Good containers were always useful for storing things you wanted to grab or sneaking items into targets.
"I have all I wanted from the data," the mechanical spider proudly declared. "It has some insights that at least indicate where I need to look for the next season. Oh, wait are those?"
"319 remote access cybernetics, with built in experimental security crackers," the semi-liquid snake said proudly and nodded at the find she was sure he missed them getting. "I don't have a good use for those anymore, so go ahead and take them."
"I take it you want all of the nanotech models?" Yellow-Glow questioned with a laugh, and Flamescale took a moment to look at the both of them. She was shaped like a viper with arms that was made entirely out of a bubble filled red toxic goo, and he was currently a massive yellow spider robot with a communications dish for a head. It was nothing like their human forms, but also so very much the way she pictured herself, although her friend was rarely the same thing two days in a row. "Your whole base smells like lava fruit now, by the way."
"I want two of them at least, and maybe some of the older models I found. Also the full size plasma rifle, those are fairly rare," she explained. "I'm also going to try out the first of the Multiform branch now," she decided with another glance at her total of ten points in the ST. "So if you want to stick around for that I'd appreciate the help."
"Yes, that sounds like a great use of my time," her friend eagerly declared. "Also what other skills are on that branch? I haven't had much luck yet finding information, but I can fine tune where to hunt for that knowledge with those details. Did you get a good amount of points from the weekly?"
"Did I get a good amount of points from a mission where we just needed to wait for the already present infiltration team to bring us the stuff?" she questioned with a somewhat sarcastic laugh as she took the Rhizo spike launcher skill off again. "I got three, I have exactly enough for it."
"Three for a shared simple solo mission isn't that bad," Yellow-Glow pointed out as she removed all of her points from the other branches. "Usually that cuts it down a bit anyway."
"Right, so they have things split a bit, first off there is a one level called Dual Form," she explained and then paused. "Wait, that is sort of like how the Liquid Mobility normally has Liquid Body at the top, isn't it?"
"If it has a unique ST somewhere that always has that skill then it might be a similar situation," Yellow-Glow agreed as she selected the skill.
"After that the only thing unlocked is the actual Multiform skill, which starts at twenty points for a third body, and has seven levels," Flamescale explained, and frowned at the strange sensations she now felt. As if she was pressed into herself the same way those containers had been somehow, only far more comfortably and completely. "Then I have two other five point cost one-off skills that require the Multiform skill. The first... requires Infected Control? Oh, it is a skill to make my infected victims into more heads. I'm going to need to check if more heads actually is useful for that one."
"I believe that is the giant monster part of the branch, to grow in size and be able to take on armies in theory," he responded with interest. "That would be, thirty eight points total to get that one?"
"Yeah, that's a bit much right now, but the other one doesn't require anything else. It, might have some dynamic text in its description," she noted as she read Material Movement's description and requirements. "I think it always lets you move through whatever you are made of, and I just have a lot of options there because I am made out of the infected material."
"I would need to check in more detail, but it is beginning to sound like this is a sub-branch of Liquid Mobility," Yellow-Glow pointed out with a nod. "Have you selected it yet?"
"Let me start with the head part," Flamescale said, mostly to get herself ready as well. The idea of pulling her head in two felt strangely natural now, and it was surprisingly easy to pull her snout in two different directions. The tip split first, giving an odd feeling in her mouth as it got notably wider, and then started to feel like two mouths. Then she was suddenly able to see the split down the middle from the middle, where she could look to the side, or perhaps to her middle, and see the orange glow of her changed eyes next to each other. From there it quickly spread down her neck, or necks as it continued, until she found what felt like a natural place to stop right at her shoulders.
"Huh," she attempted with both mouths at once, succeeded and decided, "Nope," "Not doing that anymore." One head after another was much better than both at once.
"That is an interesting result," Yellow-Glow said, now entirely focused on her. She twisted one head to face him with the other looking over her other head and neck. "How are you handling that?"
"I can't tell yet," she had the head facing him say while the other determined that it was fairly likely this setup of necks wouldn't work for something made out of biology instead of goo. "I literally am just starting out with it." "Let me try going all the way first," she added with the second head.
Pulling apart more wasn't any more unusual feeling than it was to split to being two headed, or even from staying together actually. It didn't take much more to start feeling two new shoulders in the gap, followed by arms and hands that pulled apart easily, and left her to pause and see her entire upper body with actual life instead of just the character creator model for once. It took about the same amount of time to pull the rest of her lower bodies and tails apart as it took to split off her upper bodies due to the length of her character.
With deliberate action she moved both bodies away from each other, then smiled at herself twice over as she could finally really see the body she wanted in motion. See her form move with a long tail-like body, that did not stay entirely solid as it bobbed and wiggled a bit from being made out of goo instead of flesh, with two arms still but without the legs her human form needed. Then as another test of things she had one body slither over the top of the other, and felt goo against goo in the moment. Similar to the pools around her, but also different in key ways.
Then what she was easily doing caught up to her, and Helen looked over at her friend's character with a pair of serious expressions. "Mark, I know Synch-Tech. I make support bots for the disabled," she said deliberately stating the obvious, because the problem was obvious to her now. "You need them from the accident. They can't handle two bodies of the same kind at once like this. It needs to be delayed to keep the commands from going to the wrong one."
"It would be much easier to maintain mine if I could use two at once to this degree, but even what can be done is enough to let me stay independent," Mark's character agreed tightly. "Void Strike is really exceptional, isn't it," he said and Helen took three deep breaths at once. That sentence was a coded phrase between the two of them. It meant to drop the subject, because they both wanted to avoid thinking too hard about how far ahead the game was compared to the rest of the industry. To avoid thinking of the implications there. "So, can you actually handle that this easily, Flamescale?" Yellow-Glow added after a pause.
"What do you think I mean, Yellow-Glow?" she asked despite the phrase, because it should have been obvious to him from that aborted discussion.
"I mean that being rare is not the only complication with that branch," her friend pointed out. "It can be harder to handle than being able to melt, and most of the discussion I have found is about how hard it is to experience even just in the extra heads situation."
Flamescale moved her two lower bodies over each other more and let them meld back together so she only had two heads again. "Yellow-Glow," "I have used multiple Synch-Tech bodies at once before," "The issue is that they aren't usually the right level of responsive," she said, alternating which head said what.
"That is going to be a thing with you... That is already a thing with you, isn't it?" he questioned tiredly.
Helen paused in thought, realized this was not in fact the first time she had pulled that trick, and sighed three times over. "Maybe?" Flamescale said in two voices.
"I think I will just leave you to try out this one yourself," Yellow-Glow said tiredly. "I have a feeling it is going to stick given this reaction."
"You say that like it is a problem," she said with both heads. "No, still do not like that," she restated with only one again.
"I cannot tell which of those is more unnerving," her friend admitted, and took his loot from the last mission and started to leave. "Have fun with that, and be safe, Flamescale."
"Be safe, Yellow-Glow," Flamescale agreed as he left. Then she pulled her heads back together. Which wasn't really any different from melting down or turning solid, if possibly a lot like doing both at once. She simply stood there for a moment after that, and then moved to the mission console for a distraction.
"... that one requires two people to pull off," she said aloud with excitement. "I know that one needs two people." A mission that was basically intended to have you find another Void Entity to partner with, but didn't require it. A Girant facility was the target, specifically the goal was to aid a Slink rebellion so you were being paid by the rat-like creatures. The goal was to open a well defended depot while also creating a distraction for the Slinks as they took the weapons or other supplies out with the lower utility tunnel network. In theory you could help set up something to open the locks remotely, but the Slinks usually struggled with the Girant guards if you weren't down there, and the Girant reacted too well if you convinced them to try and be their own distraction.
The surface battle was a bit tougher than she usually attempted without a solidly leveled ST, but she had just gotten a new full sized 319 plasma rifle, and could always make it a slightly different kind of distraction. If she spent a bit to check out the area she might get lucky and have the variant with a nearby vehicle depot where she could swipe one of their hover combat units. Yellow-Glow had often made good use of that option when they tackled this mission together on one of those variants.
The Tarp was put away a bit forcefully for once again surviving, and replaced with one of her worst riggings. This was an attempt that was risky, and while the new rifle was a nice thing to get it wasn't something she wasn't willing to lose immediately. The various devices, the nanotech security crackers in particular, were put away and two mid level 319 made security crackers were added to the rigging. Two because it was just good practice, and the last time she only took one to a mission where the Girant were shooting at her it ended up smashed while she still needed it. Finally she made sure to have her usual pistol on hand just in case, this time a silenced model used by the Leaf that was a bit tricky to hold but easy to find.
Flamescale emerged out of the Void Rift into the Slink tunnel meeting zone, and cringed at the reaction of her contact to her appearance. Which honestly was not worse than normal, Slinks tended to assume she would want to eat them normally. Still she had hoped for a radio contact instead of in-person.
"Lava fruit devourer?" the Slink questioned with the tone of somebody who had just summoned the most unusual demon they could have seen. "Why, who came up with the idea of a lava fruit smelling great devourer?"
"I can just eat you if that is what you are actually asking for," Flamescale said somewhat insulted, but happy enough that it wasn't clear that she was toxic in nature.
"No, I, ugh. We need a distraction from secured bunker 19, and someone to open bunker 19's electronic security, preferably at the same time," the Slink finally explained. "Is there someone else coming?"
Flamescale split her head again, pulling both heads away from each other smoothly to look at either side of her contact's head. "I can handle that," one head said. "It is something quite simple," the other added. Flamescale then realized she wasn't entirely paying attention to which head said what. "You wouldn't happen to know where a vehicle depot is?" she asked with one of them.
"I know of several, but we are hoping to use one to get the equipment out of here, so please pick one we won't be using," the Slink declared, in that still far too smart way that locals' AI always managed, and in a way that did not help with what she wanted to be distracted from. "Do- can your kind use automap data? I can give you the location of the ones we want to try and use, please avoid those. I also have the signal beacon for you to use to indicate the bunker is opened."
She took the small device from them easily. "Yes, we can open your electronic security after all," she pointed out with the other head from last time. The Slink seemed appropriately worried about that, and quickly transferred the map data. "Depot 7 should be far enough, right?"
The Slink looked back and forth between her two heads, then nodded. "Ah, yes? That should work as a distraction, just make sure to open the bunker too," they said and scampered off clearly wanting out of the conversation more than anything else.
Flamescale chuckled at that, and re-checked the map. There was what looked like a good place to split apart to reach both of her objectives more easily not too far away, and she made sure to mark her Void Rift. Automap data was valuable, but required either access to the instance's mapping systems, or to get a map from a local. In an arcology that was easy, but Girant areas were only accurately mapped by the Slinks that lived in the tunnels. Finding a Slink that was intact enough and stayed still long enough to get a map out of them was often harder than it was worth.
The rough industrial area was easy enough to travel quickly when you could just scare anyone out of your path with your appearance as you traveled down tunnels. Two heads actually helped out a lot with that, as you often needed to keep an eye on multiple angles at the same time when trying to go through the tight tunnels that fast.
The small area she planned on reaching was cleared out soon after she arrived there, and with that she started to pull apart more. Then ran into her rigging, and then had one body awkwardly flow through her rigging and gear in order to fully split apart, and then the one of her without any gear looked the one with all the gear in the face. Then she swore and with a grumble started to take the rigging apart so that she could make sure both had at least some of the kit.
"Okay, do I take the rifle to the bunker or the pistol?" she asked herself, then realized there was another herself there to technically ask.
"Rifle for bunker, pistol for depot," she decided with the other her. "That way if things go wrong we have firepower there."
"Talking to myself like this is probably a terrible idea," she then admitted with both bodies despite how she disliked that way of talking more than possibly having full conversations where it was just her. The security crackers and data chips were easy to split up, and the rigging would work with only about half of it each. The her given the pistol took the smaller part of the rigging, while the other her kept the larger part. "Next time I need to plan for this."
Going in two different directions at once wasn't an entirely new thing for her, but there was a lot more ground to cover and she actually needed to do two different things as well. It was still too easy to look at the tunnels that led downward into the bunker and the ones that would lead to an alleyway by the target vehicle depot. Even with her experience outside of the game this was a new sensation that was far too simple to deal with.
Flamescale's more well armed body made it to the bunker first, and that gave her the time to investigate the details. The bunker itself was at the bottom of a large gap with cranes to lift and lower supplies, with a large number of tunnels and lesser storage areas on the various levels. It did not appear to be a typical Girant armory, and in fact looked more like a secure storage facility for a research facility. A research facility that which appeared to be built on top of one of the ledges, with a parking area full of visible transports on the other.
A familiar smell also was coming up from the bunker. One that made her wonder what exactly this particular rebellion was planning, and if she really wanted to help them. It smelled heavily of either the original infection, or maybe of the Rhizocephala, and either of those seemed a bit extreme to try and use in an uprising. Then Flamescale remembered that she was entirely made out of that kind of infection, and only couldn't use it at the moment because she traded out that capacity to be in two places at once. With that reminder she made her way towards the security center she could see on the level above the main door.
Her other body reached the alley next to the vehicle depot she had selected before then, a surface facility at the crossroads of two major roadways that were reinforced to handle the heavy tanks she could see inside the depot. The vehicle mechanics of Void Strike were simply to give you fully detailed controls accurate to the vehicles in question. For the Girant that was something she could handle, they were generally fairly rugged and redundant, which meant that while they were made for someone with four arms they in practice could be used with two and a lot of not caring about using them properly. Their hover units would be more mobile, but she felt a tank should still work.
Then she was in a complicated moment where she was both trying to find an actual air vent large enough to let her try and carry her stuff into so she could get into the security center discretely, and also trying to recall which of the Girant vehicles would be the easiest to cause a complete disaster that lasted long enough. The former ended up with that body instead just staying in a Slink tunnel with a number of the creatures that clearly knew something was coming to help, but were not happy with what exactly. The latter instead involved going for a two gunned monster of a tank that Flamescale was fairly sure nobody thought was actually a good idea to make.
From there she focused on getting into the monster tank, which had a layer of dust thick enough to make Flamescale realize that it probably wasn't going to work too well. A check of the computer system, which took an uneasy amount of time to boot, revealed that the micro-fission reactor module was still online at minimum capacity. The rest of the tank, however, was a mess of yellow and red errors.
So, she reluctantly left it behind for a more modern looking model right in front of it, which had an interesting security feature compared to the older hunk of garbage. Someone had welded a number of bars over the battle damaged access hatch, just wide enough to drop her stuff down. Flamescale happily started to melt into the opening. Then realized to her dislike that she had not tried to do that without the first level of both of the mobility skills, and it took a bit too long and was a bit too slow to move, as if she was a thicker blob than she wanted to be.
That made her decide that until she got those skills again she wasn't going to rely on that ability. Which would be after this mission, as she wasn't giving up two bodies either but definately wanted that back. Two bodies was a complicated thing to think about clearly, but to actually use it had turned out to be exactly the sort of thing she wanted now that she knew it was an option.
The modern tank started up, with a newer superconductor battery power system that was at half charge, and even had some ammo. With a familiar amount of awkward movements Flamescale put a round into the second best looking tank, and then took off towards the nearest space port as quickly as the tank could go. The sound of alarms and warnings was just what she wanted, and it was very nice to hear scrambling inside the security center with her other body too.
That second her saw about half the local Girant soldiers then start to run out of the pit quickly, and that Flamescale got the plasma rifle ready. The security center door opened, and she waited for the first Girant to leave up a ladder before she surged forward into the space they left behind. Her security cracker got through the door lock in an instant, fresh credentials ready to be exploited in an electronic lock not made to high tolerance. Then she shot the first Girant she saw, threw the weight of her tail over the second to hold them to the ground, and fired again at the first in a movement that she had done a few times before, although usually with a far more complete set of ST stat boosts.
There were quite a few Girant yelling at the tank by that point, and a few stray shots to try and get the other her to stop, but she was more concerned with how the Girant she had landed on was sinking into her. Rather, how the taste of Girant was coming to her from where they were starting to dissolve inside of her, which was technically a thing that Liquid Body allowed, but also something she thought she had more control over. Admittedly she wanted them dead, but she didn't want something to eat at the same time.
"Glad I didn't stick anything edible in there I wanted to keep," she complained and moved to the control console. A quick check with the security cracker on both the device the Slink had given her and then a configuration of the built in jammer contained within the security center let her start a jamming signal to all other communications lines, and then she triggered the device and the seals on the large bunker door at the same time.
The Slinks moved immediately, and Flamescale was barely fast enough to get back out to try and help take out the remaining Girant around the bunker. The cranes also began to move rapidly towards the lowest level, and the smell of the original infection strain grew stronger as the seals opened.
Her body in the tank turned quickly to divert down a side road in response to a Girant medium combat shuttle moving to intercept. That was probably a sign that she wasn't getting that body back to the Void Rift intact, but the next vehicle depot she had noticed was well out of range of the raid, and more importantly was not the one marked as the destination of the transports she could now see were going to be loaded with the same containment units she had gotten the Skill Tree out of.
"Do I want to know what you are doing with this stuff?" she actually questioned one of the nearby Slinks that was also watching for any reinforcements.
"Do I want to know why I can see a Girant skull and some fur inside your tail?" the rodent replied cautiously.
"The last time I saw one of those I ended up like this," Flamescale pointed out given the context of that detail.
"The Macrophylla have promised us 319 weapons in exchange for these," the Slink admitted with a cautious look at her. "I take it I would more likely end up like that Girant if I touched the stuff?"
Flamescale did not answer that, because she did not know. It was one of those things about how these worlds worked that Yellow-Glow liked to find out in his ample free time, but those were also the sort of thing she didn't try and test herself very often. "Do you know how to move as a puddle?" she considered aloud to the Slink.
"I do not want to find out," the Slink said and slinked away, clearly done with talking with her after that response.
The depot she ran the tank into was full of the light hover vehicles she had originally planned for, most of which were meant to act as air support for ground forces and thus were not armored against tank cannon or tread. Flamescale then started up the loudspeaker on the tank, made sure her translation was set to Girant, and started to rant a bit about the uselessness of air support that didn't arrive when it was needed. She didn't think she was very coherent, but that wasn't really the point.
It meant that the shuttle attempted to argue with her instead of just shooting immediately, which bought them the time to load all seven of the containment units before the tank took an anti-vehicle missile and reduced her to just one body again.
"We're good, scramble!" one of the Slink leaders said once the loaded transport set out, and Flamescale followed that instruction and went straight to her Void Rift.
She returned, and felt the pressure of being able to form another body return with her as the mission rewards appeared. A massive seven points greeted her, which would let her take the Liquid Climb skill along with the two other Liquid Mobility skills she was putting back first, along with a fair amount of resources, a note on the gear she had lost, and a few new skills. A one-off skill that she frowned deeply at was labeled "Control Digestion", and apparently given the description whoever or whatever was responsible for skills had considered that you might eat things you could, but didn't want to, digest.
"Right, I guess I do know why someone would need that one," she commented as she reluctantly selected the skill for use, which ended up giving a configuration menu, and then because she was still uneasy with the objective sent a recording of the mission to Yellow-Glow for him to check when he had time.
---
[Author's Note]
Here we have Flamescale's newest "oh, I really like this" moment. Let me know if the narration gets too confusing here, because the intent is that the viewpoint character is going to have at minimum the ability to be in two places at once.
