The Icon of Sin, Gundam Build Diver Re:Rise (and Fighter)/40k AU, Ft Nihilo

Hastar · Dec 10, 2023

Chapter 1:

The year was 2020, in a small corner of l'Atmella de Mar, a flea market was taking place.

As one, the residents of the town and the other that neighboured it, gathered their bits, their baubles, their trash, their treasures, and lined it all up for bored, half interested men and women to stare at, "Ooooh? Something caught your eye kid?" And occasionally buy if it looked interesting enough.

"A few things, but the other monoeyes are out of my price range, sooo–" Manel Galanis sighed, pointing at the somewhat shoddily painted mech. He only knew one thing about Gundam: Monoeyes were king and the protag mechs could go to the trash where they belonged. "What can you tell me 'bout this one?"

He was pretty sure it was the OG monoeye with slightly different paint, but he wasn't about to take the chance and look like a fool.

"Oh, this one? It's a Zaku II, High Mobility Type, from the original show," Getting up from his lawnchair, the middle aged man navigated around the large glass cabinets that dominated the surrounding stands and opened the one that held the model, "I bought it when gunpla battling just started, figured you couldn't beat the classics– and then ended up not using it."

Taking the small plastic figurine, he handed it over to Manel for examination, "First kit I did any real work on, tried to make the colours pop a little more, and do some highlighting on the details… It didn't exactly turn out well."

Having it in hand, the delivery-man could see what he meant. It was really kind of sloppy looking, a severe case of what one might call 'THIN YOUR PAINTS YOU APE!' and a chronic lack of airbrush.

"Little guy's going to be my introduction to painting these things too, then." Given that it was priced at 11€ when the others were rocking four to six times that? Yeah, it was a steal.

"Oh, a new hobbyist? You looking to get into just painting, or battling too? Might be able to point you towards a shop with a GBNO uplink and spruce-printer," Suddenly, the old man's eyes were sparkling with excitement and eagerness. Kind of like a puppy, "Never registered the kit on my old GP Base, so that makes things a lot easier too."

"Going to give it a fair shot, at the very least. Since my friend says that they finally got the sensory feedback sorted out." He was an immersion nut, for one. A little too sensitive to things being subtly off, for another. So he'd been content to wait until now, as much as fulldive was the dream of every nerd. "And yeah, should've asked about that first, shouldn't I?"

"What? The registering thing? Eh, don't worry about it pal," The man shrugged as he took out a large plastic case, and began rummaging through it, "Nowadays GP Bases aren't that important, when you go to the fulldive shop, they'll make you make an account, you can register it then."

"Oh, I meant asking if it was already registered." Manel corrected with a soft chuckle. At least he knew for a fact that as tiny La Seu d'Urgell was, they had both a Base and a fair few fulldive cafes. If you could call regular-ass cafes turning otherwise unused backrooms into fulldive cubbies that.

"Ah, my bad. Anyhow, here are the bits and options for the kit. The heat hawk, the machine-gun and the giant bazooka– ah, what the hell. I'll throw in a few more bits," Rummaging around some more, he pulled out random pieces of plastic, "Mostly just leftovers from other kits. Beamsabers, a spray beam gun, some e-caps, two three racks missile launchers and a fistful of gribble so you can customise it to your heart's content. Don't know what kit half of them came from. But it'll give you something to go off of to make that kit your own… and clears out even more stuff from my pile." Putting all of them into a small bag, he handed it, and his change, over to Manel. He keeps the fact he's completely overwhelmed behind a polite smile.

A few farewells composed of the man bemoaning his wife demanding he sell his kits before getting new ones, and that was that.

GasOrGrass: Okay, you pest. I finally got a funny robot man. Going to spend Semana Santa to paint it and spruce it up.

CHEEEEESE: 1mo ptg bbs t sleep
CHEEEEESE: sorry about that, had to bribe Morganne with a bedtime story (EDITED)
CHEEEEESE: at least her sister behaved
CHEEEEESE: …
CHEEEEESE: she's totally sneaked her game console inside of her covers, hasn't she?
CHEEEEESE: screw it, it's a problem for future me.
So, what kit you got? Plz tell me it's not an Entry Grade, those suck for battling.
As I never tire to tell you.
CHEEEEESE: but hey, pretty sweet you did. Gives me an excuse to get back into the battle side of the hobby, building's nice and all, but I wanna take the Likourn on a spin like old times (EDITED)
Ol' boy must be feeling neglected with me working on so many other kits

GasOrGrass: Already built Zaku II HMT from a flea market. Needs a makeover but otherwise it's good to go. Someone forgot to thin their paints.
GasOrGrass: I also got. Uh. A lot of extra bits. A LOT. Like, goddamn. The guy wanted to clear some misc stuff.
GasOrGrass: [LootPile.jpg]

CHEEEESE: that… is a lo- wait, see those little disks on the side? Can yo7 take a better pic? I'm like 90% sure these are Kampfer spider mines.
CHEEEESE: BUT YEAH. That's a lot.
CHEEEESE: Do yourself a favor. Don't touch any of it
CHEEEESE: It's cool of him to have given you so much, but ATM, stick to what the kit came with: heat hawk, machine-gun and zooker. At most, take either a saber, or one of the missile racks to complement what you have

GasOrGrass: [DroppingPlates.jpg]
GasOrGrass: How's the lightsaber stack up against the ~~Baslok~~ Heat Hawk?

CHEEEESE: define "stacks up"

GasOrGrass: Is one a straight upgrade to the other? Or do they have different niches?

CHEEEESE: Oh
CHEEEESE: Yeah, it's… eeeeh?
CHEEEESE: I'd say niches tbh. Hawks have issue with armor that the beams don't
CHEEEESE: but anti-beam coatings or shields tell beams to fuck off

GasOrGrass: Beam main, hawk holdout?

CHEEEESE: Sounds good. Also, beams lack weight, it's way easier to block/parry one. Heat weapons are giant slabs of super heated metal

GasOrGrass: Speed melee vs heavy melee, gotcha. Except the heavy melee is bad vs armor for some godsforsaken reason.

CHEEEESE: heh. Kinda, but when I say issues, I mean more like armor that's thick enough will require some elbow to cut through. Heat hawks are fucking hot yo
CHEEEESE: Also, weight can be an issue on speedier builds
CHEEEESE: beams are harder to throw out the box now that I think about it, need to mod them a bit
CHEEEESE: a hawk can be yeeted real good, does good damage too

GasOrGrass: Delicious. Anyways, rate my setup.
GasOrGrass: [ThiccBoye.jpg]

CHEEEESE: Oh my God
CHEEEESE: Whyyyyyyyy
CHEEEESE: plz tell me it was a beginner?
CHEEEESE: but, yeah oaky, no shimmering
CHEEEESE: It's not as bad as it could be, looks like regular hobby paint
Use rubbing alcohol, should do the trick well enough. IIRC I put some in the starter pack I sent you?
CHEEEESE: You're lucky it's not Plavsky-laced paint. So many beginners at my crack den think that because it boosts performance, it's a good idea to use it
CHEEEESE: It's really not, that shit's like liquid plastic you fuck up once, u're pretty much stuck with that fuck up forever
CHEEEESE: *You're
CHEEEESE: also, give it a little scratch with your fingernail, see if it flakes off a bit

GasOrGrass: Flakes off a lil

CHEEEESE: dont think you can get to the parts with the separator with pain that thick then. Try, but don't forget it. if you can't, get a tub and dunk it in there for a while

GasOrGrass: I have a huge bottle of the stuff, from when I got that road rash. Tub it is.
GasOrGrass: And good to know about the P-paint.

CHEEEESE: It's great, don't get me wrong!
CHEEEESE: I use it on my kit. But yeah, not for starters
CHEEEESE: Anyhow, gotta go, I can hear Morganne's switch
CHEEEESE: Lord have mercy on my soul, because these two brats don't

GasOrGrass: I warned you, brother. I'm glad I only have to deal with children a few minutes per at most.

CHEEEESE: Yeah, yeah, yeah…

Saturday began like most other saturdays, with the loathsome ray of the foul ball of nuclear light beaming down upon Manel's face and dragging him into the waking world from his dreams.

It was still a gentler wakeup than having an alarm screeching in his ears. He didn't exactly jump off of bed full of energy, but he felt rested enough to slide off without grumbling. Some morning stretches got him going just in time for the orange ball of fluff that was his neighbour's fat cat to start meowing at him for food.

Hopefully the little shit actually used the catflap he'd installed for it this time, instead of crawling down the chimney for the nth time. How it managed to do it safely he'd quietly put in the 'cat magic' mental box and thought no further for the sake of his sanity.

Unaware, or probably more accurately, uncaring, of the human's slipping grip on his mind, the cat rubbed itself against his legs before jumping on the bed and making itself at home for now.

At least it wasn't covered in soot this time.

Now, time to get breakfast ready for the both of them, then he'd get started with the gunpla he'd left soaking in rubbing alcohol overnight.

The cat followed along as he moved to the kitchen, before digging into its food like a ravenous beast that had not been fed for the last three months. Which of course meant it'd probably eaten not ten minutes ago.

While the cat demolished its plate of food, the gunpla turned out pretty well, most of the excess paint having sloughed off the frame, if leaving a fair chunk still clinging on. But nothing that a good polish with a toothbrush or paper towel wouldn't fix.

Now that it was (more or less) ready and had his model, he could choose from the shortlist of themes he'd been building up and go from there. Arts major aspirations, don't fail him now!

"Welcome to Mecha Mania!" The man with grey hair and a genial smile called out from behind his counter, "Don't often I get customers so early after I open. Why, you pretty much showed up just as I flipped the sign!"

"Just an early riser, you know how it is." Manel chuckled. He had a flexible schedule, granted, but all that meant for him is that he got up early to be home by three or four.

"Aaah, I understand. By choice, I hope? I know for a fact that my son in law would much rather be able to sleep in. Fortunately, my darling granddaughters don't let that lazy bum sleep in one bit," He said cheerfully, "Anything I can do for you? Or merely perusing?"

"Just got the internal clock used to early mornings, so half-and-half, I'd say." The deliveryman said. Benefits of living in a tiny town like Seu d'Urgell, people were actually friendly and had time to make small talk. Barcelona was a very pretty city with perfectly preserved ancient facades, but the sheer noise and bustle weren't for him. "I'm here to get this little guy registered on a new GBNO account and give him a go."

As he said so, he gently pulled the newly christened Zaku Fishbone from his cloth bag, careful not to snap anything off as he pulled away the protective foam-cloth. It was a relatively simple job, just a largely uniform coat of deep blue paint with little pieces of colourful resin coral and fish skeletons stuck on. About the most complex bit was the eel skeleton on the left pauldron and the sailfish on the shoulder shield.

"Oooh?" Leaning in, the older gentleman eyed the model with the judging skills of a man that had breathed and lived modelling for a long, long time. Which considering the shop he owned, wouldn't be a surprise, "A beginner I see. Paint's a bit off at points, could have used some light highlights to avoid it looking like a blue brick. The corals are a good addition, but the sculpting could have used some more work. Overall, I'd give it a passing grade, but not much more. Still, good effort for a new kit."

"Yeah, I thought about giving it an effect like light filtering through the water surface, but I didn't feel confident juggling that with the sculpting." He admitted with a bob of his head. There was a reason his failed career as a twitter artist was just that, but he was satisfied with his work. It hadn't even taken the entire week, so he had plenty of time to take chargen through its paces. He was fairly sure GBNO didn't allow alts, so he wanted to get it perfect.

"Ah, yes," The shopkeep said with a wince, "Definitely a good thing that you didn't. I've been modelling for most of my life, and I couldn't even tell you how to begin with getting that sort of effect to look good on a gunpla. So! Since you're looking to register it on a new account, I'm guessing you haven't touched GBNO or any full dive stuff at all?"

As usual, KISS was a good maxim for dodging bullets. "Pretty much. I heard some bad things about the sensory data so I steered clear until they patched that."

"Bad? Oh, right the disconnect. Honestly, it was a bit like VR and seasickness, some people had it, others didn't," He explained as he walked around the counter, "Most of my regulars never had that issue. But yes, the patch they just dropped fixed most of the off feeling people had when they experienced things in game. For the most part at least."

Guiding Manel to a backroom, the old man kept going, "A lot of it is dependent on how real you consider things to be. If you refuse to let yourself be fully immersed, and constantly tell yourself 'this isn't right. I shouldn't be able to taste strawberries', then no amount of patching will change the sensory disconnect," Flipping a switch, the dark room light up, revealing four stations made up of a large computer screen, a slim, futuristic-looking headset, some joysticks and a huge, plush and sinfully comfy-looking chair, "Here are the dive seats. Just sit down, put the headset on and press both red buttons on the joysticks. It'll initiate the dive. Now, I have to tell you. This isn't a paid service, but I only have four stations, so I'm enforcing a three hour time limit to make sure no one can hog the equipment all day. Since it's your first dive, I recommend not even going above two hours at most. Get used to the sensations and all that."

"I'm a bit of an immersion junkie, so that shouldn't be an issue. And sure, fair enough." Hopefully there's a way to set an alarm fifteen minutes before his time runs out, so he can save his work. God knows he isn't going to finish his avatar in just two hours.

He wasn't finishing it in two hours.

Or three.

Or even four.

The starter options were sad and generic. Anime Man or Woman Number 9001 all the way.

Some options had basic sliders, others had slightly more advanced ones. But overall?

A true disappointment.

At least until he found the 'advanced options' menu his friend told him about.

And as soon as he poked it?

SLIDERS.

Sliders up sliders, sliders that caused new and hitherto unseen sliders to slide into view!

Sliders that controlled a singular freckle among a sea of them! A slider that dictated the colour of his skin! Another that could give said skin fluorescent highlights!

Oh mama he was home.

Optics whirred happily as the latest round of tests revealed no jank whatsoever, no tearing in the iris membrane, no awkward tensing areas, no vein uh ohs… "Fucking finally, anime emote eyes are a success!"

Sweet merciful god, that'd been four days of his life he wasn't getting back, but who the fuck cared? He had decided he was going to make the pinnacle of fashionframe potential and by god in his heaven he would deliver.

"O-kay, next on the li-" He paused, the optics of his placeholder avatar (something called a Haro, apparently) clicking and hissing as he ran a quick wash cycle through them. But, nope, he was seeing right. "...huh. Nothing left on the list. It's… it's done."

He floated away, putting a bit of distance with his… he'd call it an art project but at this point it was more of a magnum opus. There was a reason he'd quickly settled on 'Galatea' for a handle, the avatar he'd made deserved it.

It needn't be said the lady in front of him was pretty. What needed to be said was that he'd spent an entire month idly tweaking every last detail of the facial features until he'd been left with something that painters would cream themselves at having so much as a grainy security footage picture of as a model.

The same degree of attention had been given to every last part of the body. He already knew he'd crossed a line when he started fine-tuning muscular weaves and adipose arrangements, but at that point he was deep in the feverish grasp of the methhead muse. He hadn't done anything as crass as to max the boob or thickness sliders (even if the avatar certainly had a hearty serving of cake), although he hadn't been able to resist cranking the height to seven feet because being the tallest person in the room was nice and so were legs.

Of course, that was simply the base shape. The true miracle was how he'd spliced cuttlefish, octopus, hagfish and a few other fun critters in to make an unholy chimaera to satisfy his greed. See, his tastes for monstergirls were as wide as his urge to fashionframe was deep, so he couldn't just settle for a single flavour, oh no.

Instead, he'd made a shapeshifter.

The skin? Able to change texture, colour and do complex bioluminescent patterns. The hair? Not hair at all, but tiny tendrils so as to have the same options as the skin. Nevermind the octet of tentacles hidden under it to serve as any configuration of horns. How? By way of a crazy fucking biological patchjob to secrete resin from anywhere. It came in any colour of the rainbow, opaque or transparent, hard plastic or rubberised. Of course, he'd then had to figure out a dissolvent to make whatever was extruded pop off or outright disappear, but once that was done even the nails and teeth could be customised, their roots a socket of sorts where already extruded resin could be slotted in and glued with a touch more.

Then there was the tail. Equal parts his pride and joy and the bane of his existence. He'd had to borrow the cartilaginous skeleton of a shark to make it work, because he'd been hellbent on making it able to resize and reshape to the point it could flatten itself and curl around the body for when it didn't fit with the current getup.

The only thing harder had been the eyes, which had required the better part of a week of focused work just to work out all the kinks. All in the name of being able to do everything from glowing heart pupils to literally sparkly eyes.

Right now, all of this potential was realised in a homage to the sealife that'd allowed him to make his Galatea into a reality. The hair was arranged in thick braids, coated in opaque rubberised resin which lit up like an anemone crossed with a sea slug, the colours hooked up to emotional responses in a setup he was fairly sure had taken a couple years off the life expectancy of the staff helping on the back-end. The eyes were, of course, arranged like a cuttlefish's, sclera shifted to look like an extension of the iris and the pupil contorted into that peculiar W shape with a bioluminescent rim. To compliment them and the hefty sprinkle of iridescent black scales framing the face and giving the illusion of freckles, he'd gone on to add scab-like growths of colourful coral. The most prominent was a horizontal line across the bridge of the nose, but a couple of thin lines and pockmarks livened up her left cheek and forehead. The teeth were, of course, patterned after a shark's.

The body proper continued in much the same fashion, just with far more coral-scars and scale clusters breaking up the monotony of the stark white skin. The tail was the main point of interest, having turned into the unholy lovechild of an eel and a lionfish, all skeletal ridges and spines on a sinuous limb, deep grooves lit by bioluminescence matching the hair-tentacles.

The outfit was honestly a bit of a joke. A hawaiian shirt in deep blue with stark white skeletal fish patterns, left unbuttoned to show off the coral and scales on the torso (and the neoprene sports bra in the same colour, but that had been an afterthought for decency's sake), while the dark blue swimming trunks were contrasted by the side-tie rope fishing net he'd fashioned into a short skirt. Beyond that it was just a set of rubber sandals in the same deep blue and a pair of sunglasses pulling double duty as a sloppy hairband.

It was done. He was finally free.

Was this how the guy in Plato's cave allegory felt when he crawled out to touch grass?

"WELCOME TO GBNO," Once he pressed the accept button, a robotic voice echoed in the blank space of nothing that had been his home for quite some time, "HOME OF GUNDAM BATTLING AND THE HOPES AND DREAMS OF MANKIND. WOULD YOU LIKE A TUTORIAL?"

"Yes." He said. Hopefully it would be better than Warframe's, although DE had improved it a lot since he'd played through it.

The world around him went from blank, to a large and colourful playground with slides, monkeybars, a pool, a ball pit and much, much more.

"ADJUSTING AVATAR, PLEASE REMAIN STATIONARY DURING THE PROCESS."

And suddenly, the default avatar began to fall away into sparling, digital particles. Each rising into the air before winking out of existence, leaving him with her new body. Which looked exactly as it should, but felt no different than the haro, or her IRL body. Which was–

"SYNCHRONISING SENSORY DATA."

–Oh god that was weird.

"PLEASE BE AWARE THAT NON-HUMAN AVATARS WILL REQUIRE A LONGER ACCLIMATISATION PERIOD."

At first, it felt as if every single of her senses beside sight were turned off completely.

She couldn't hear, she couldn't feel, taste, or smell.

Then just as quickly, they began turning back on, one after the other.

Touch was the first. And the air felt bizarre against her new skin. She could sense a slight breeze, but not on her skin, rather it felt like it was tickling a thin membrane that covered the entirety of her body. An odd, wet-ish feeling that covered the entirety of her body.

Then the rest came back as well, without much fanfare. Leaving her in a new body that felt off in a way that couldn't really be put into words.

"Haro-haro!" With a little shower of sparks and confetis, a haro appeared right in front of her, "Welcome to the playground! Here you can test your new body to your heart's content! Please be aware that pain responses are all toned down to 25% of real life."

"Than-" She cut herself off, jolting at the voice of liquid sex that came out from her mouth. She was pretty sure this would be where a normal person would be having ungodly dysphoria. Her, meanwhile? The dissonance was making her light up in swirls of pink and yellow. "Ahem. Thank you."

Now, time to see if she could take a single step without falling into her finely sculpted ass.

It was a good thing that the floor was padded, because as soon as she took her first step forwards, she took half a dozen backwards when a mass behind her unbalanced her and made her fall on her butt, tail twitching and waving around.

"Well, at least I didn't tell Erovan to wait for me." She laughed at herself, folding her legs underneath her as she took a few minutes to get used to her tail.

Now that she was aware of it, she could feel it as part of her. Moving it though? That was a different question, it was like trying to flex a bunch of muscles that she'd never used before, which was wild in and of itself, because she felt said muscles tense and loosen as she tried to make it go to the right, only for it to go left.

It was fun!

It took her one more day to get used to her new body, with the haro helping quite a lot by giving her exercises and routines to work on. Yoga was actually a blast when you could put most contortionists to shame.

But by the time she was done with them, her body felt like it'd always been hers… Well, almost. The shapeshifting worked, but it always left her feeling like she was tensing a bunch of muscles, or holding her guts in for as long as it was on.

With any chance, that'd slowly go away in time.

At least it seemed like she got her current form as a freebie that felt natural to hold, otherwise she'd have had to drop her eyes and tail to default.

"Next stage of the tutorial, please." She called, knowing that the haro could hear.

"Congratulations on getting used to your new you! GBNO's tutorial on gunpla piloting will take place in GBNO proper. Please wait as the necessary resources are loaded…. Loading complete, credential recognized, full dive initiated," Galatea's body began to fall apart, dissolving into what looked like sparkling seafoam as the mini-robot cheerfully chirped at her, "Welcome to GBNO, player Galatea!"

With this first chapter posted, a few words:

First, this thread will happen in universe- kinda. For those that don't know, the Gundam Build series (both fighter and diver) take plan in GUNDAM VALHALA, AKA a brighter, nicer version of our modern world.

I won't go into details here, but long story short, this thread will exist as a forum in universe. And depending on how things go characters will mention it more than once (the plan is, in part, to use it to help Ni's character decide how he wants to build his gunpla by reading advice- and getting screamed at), so I encourage all of you that decided to read this fanfic to talk about figurines, gundam, gunpla and the likes as much as you want!

Seconds, this is not a FI. Manel is controled by Ni, but he's as much of an OC as any DnD character. Ni is also generally aware of the plot of Build Diver Re:Rise, so discussing it is generally fine. Just avoid the REALLY big twists I didn't tell him about (Eldora being real, the ancients and the EL-Divers are ones we talked about)

(also those parts of the thread will be ignored in universe, for rather obvious reasons)

Third, as this is a AU, the timeline is a bit different, my plan is for the changes to be introduced organically. Though, I'll most likely make an apocryphia post that goes into more details later. But in essence, this is a merged timeline of Build Figthers and Divers.

Hastar · Dec 16, 2023

Chapter 2:

In the wink of an eye, she was transported. The same effect as the log-in transition covered her vision before receding and leaving her inside a large, transparent dome that held in a futuristic looking plaza. Screens of all sorts covered the walls, showing ongoing mecha battles and event banners, while above the glass ceiling two huge towers stood tall and proud.

Dozens of people were milling all around. Most looked fairly generic, although a fair few had put real effort into their avatars– though as far as she could see, none were on the same level as her. She was both sad and proud that nobody could match her mental derangement.

The majority of them were clustered around a massive kiosk in the middle of the room. It was a circular arrangement, towering above the entire crowd with a good two stories of height… if you ignored the absolutely massive holographic representation of earth that spun above it.

"Haro-Haro!" The tiny ro-ball was back, its 'ears' flapping as it appeared in front of the sea slug just like it had back in the playground, "Would you like to follow the GBNO tutorial, or would you rather have an experienced player guide you through? Or do you wish to skip the tutorial, notethisisnotrecomandedfornewplayers?"

"Tutorial, please." She sighed. Cheeseman said he had skipped that and she sure as hell wasn't going to fall for the same trap. If the tutorial ended up unsatisfactory, she'd just have Erovan give her remedial lessons. Simple as.

"Understood! Please make your way to the Mission Kiosk! It is the large structure in the centre of Mission Plaza!"

Without saying anything else, the little bot began rolling away, in direction of the kiosk, prompting Galatea to follow along.

It wasn't a long walk at all. Barely even half a minute. But the new player could already feel the stares piling up. More and more people noticing the incredibly weird player in their midst.

She could vaguely hear a few whisper to their teammates, while others pointed a finger or two towards her. But nobody did more than that.

Well, so far so good. She may, uh, she may not have really stopped to think about the ramifications of making her avatar the new Mona Lisa.

"Haro-haro! Welcome to the Mission Kiosk, or Mission Terminal!" Completely oblivious to the starting rumour mill, her Haro jumped on top of the kiosks counter and just kept going with the tutorial, "Here you can choose missions to embark on! They range from combat encounters with NPCs, to Diver Generated Content (DGC) and adventures! Note that while all Missions will grant Rank Points upon completion, only Bandai approved DCG, such as the Ballad Of the Zams, will grant tangible rewards. Thank you for your understanding."

"As a new Diver," The woman behind the counter, clearly an NPC from how she talked robotically and didn't seem to be reacting to much, began, "It is recommended that you take part in one of the following mission: 'Gunpla Rising', 'The Black Gunpla', 'The Diver from Shangri-La', 'How Many Miles to GBN?', 'Gunplajack', 'G Battle Begins! The Gunpla that Fell to Earth', 'The Shooting Star the Diver Saw', 'The Savior, Gunpla' or 'Iron and Blood and Gunpla'."

As she spoke, nine little screens appeared in Galatea's view, each displaying a different scenery, alongside a mook mecha, "These missions are designed to provide you with a combat scenario pitting you against a number of mass-produced suits, corresponding to the Gundam series they are based off of. The reward pool is shared across all missions, so there is nothing to fear in regards to missing out on any one thing."

"Oh, I think I heard about the sixth. Dead cell something? No, that was the Rogelike." Gala said with a shake of her head. Ah, whatever, they were zombies and it had been a while since she'd gone ape on Infested. They probably wouldn't zerg rush her, but still. Those eyes looked fun to pop. "Anyways, G Battle, please."

The other screens vanished, leaving the G Battle one behind, with a small screen asking her to confirm her choice overlapped on it. Pressing it caused the haro to perk up, "Haro-haro! Now that you've selected a mission. It's time to go to your Hangar! To do so, there are multiple options," Another screen showed up, showing a chibified version of her head, "You may either walk to the Hangar," The little head bobbed along a cartoon rendition of various things, like a cafe, a shop, a park… until it arrived to a building with a 'Hangar' sign on top of it and jumped for joy, "Or chose to fast travel to it!"

This time, a screen showed up in front of the head, and a cartoon hand pressed it. Causing the previous scenery to whiz past it, leaving it in front of the hangar, where she repeated her happy animation, "As you make your choice, do not forget! While GBNO's Gunpla Battles are the biggest part of this world, there is so much more to it than merely battling!"

"I'll walk, then." She decided after a moment with a bob of her head, tentacles rippling. The sooner she got used to the attention, the better. Plus, after spending so long in the blank space of chargen and the relatively bland tutorial area, she wanted to drink in the scenery. So far it hadn't disappointed!

"Haro-Haro! Understood!" In the corner of her eye, she could see a mini map appear, drawn out in shades of blue with a yellow line marking out her route, "Please follow the line to reach the hangar! But do not hesitate to explore to your heart's content! The selected mission will remain active so long as it is not cancelled in the 'Ongoing Mission' menu! Should you need any help, please call out with 'Tutorial Haro request'! I will appear to give out any relevant information!"

Done with its explanation, the robot poofed out of existence with the same shower of sparks and confetti that heralded its arrival. Leaving Galatea alone in a sea of gawkers. This may not have been the smartest decision.

…At least she was tall enough to wade through the crowd?

Either people were polite enough to just stare, or they were intimidated. Because no one tried to talk to her, just gave her all the room she needed to get through. Although a few non-human players gave her a thumbs up, or a single nod of acknowledgement.

Leaving the plaza revealed to her that she wasn't at the foot of twin towers, but rather standing near the top of a massive skyscraper shaped almost like a tuning fork cradling the dome.

Beyond it was a sprawling city. An utter and ungodly mess of urban structures that spread out over the very horizon itself. Through the glass of the pedestrian bridge, she could see all manners of vehicles, some wheeled, others flying, many walking. There were cars, bikes, trucks, gundams and so much more, almost giving out the impression of being on Coruscant of all places. (Just, y'know, minus the horrible sith-beast infested maze underneath.)

The tower she stood on being akin to the senate's tower– or maybe the Jedi temple, amidst this comparison.

Standing on a skyscraper like this, she almost lamented not having given herself wings. They would've restricted her outfits entirely too much, even if feeling the wind on them would've been great.

Ah, well, onto the elevator she went. If she's reading the map right, she could go straight to the hangar from here, but the button labelled 'exhibition room' caught her eye.

Going from the plaza to the exhibition room was incredibly quick. With a press of the button, she was right there, the door opening and revealing a huge empty space, filled with giant robots of all shapes and sizes.

Well, time to do like a good tourist and gawk.

There were a lot of gundams. Most of the minis on display were, really.

Not that it changed the fact that they felt so incredibly real, like she really was right there. Standing in front of a master-crafted machine of steel and circuits, and not just some very fancy plastic toys.

To her delight, there were also members of her one true love: Massive, monoeye stompers.

If you asked her, a giant mech should have weight to it. She didn't have anything against humanoid bodyplans, but it should be bulky with slab-like armour. It was nice when they diverged from just looking like fancy power armor and put emphasis on being a warmachine, like that hunchback red frame. She knew that gundam designs could get a little wild, but this one was out there.

The other one right next to it was also pretty nice, though unlike the others that were much larger, it was what? About as tall as a story and a half?

Less warmachine and more the mech equivalent of a forklift, which was another good look. She'd have spent longer looking around, but her stomach chose that moment to grumble and she had seen a food court on the floor selection.

Walking away, she saw that all of the models vanished in the ubiquitous particle effect she'd seen pretty much everywhere so far, only to be replaced by a new set. With one looking truly and wholeheartedly like someone took a forklift, gave it legs and a monoeye. Shine on, you crazy diamond.

The food court was…

Well, it wasn't quite what she expected.

She'd thought it would be some sort of japanese style place. With one of those weird vending machines that gave out tickets that had your dish written on it.

No, instead it was a space about as large as the one she'd just left, and thrice as busy, with diner sized restaurants all over the place, serving anything from Japanese soba, to what looked to be a French crêperie and– was that a goddamn paella place?

She was almost afraid to peer in. While Japanese cuisine was great, they also had a horrible habit of doing things like making a ketchup based sauce, slapping it on a pizza dough and calling it authentic Italian cuisine. Don't get her started on their hard-on for broken sauces, either.

While absorbed in her thoughts, she felt a hand land on her shoulder, "Don't do this to yourself, señorita," A smooth, somewhat accented voice told her from behind, "This shop is to proper paella what Taco Bell is to my people's cuisine."

"I can almost see the induction plates and saucepans." Galatea whispered with a horrified shudder, blacks and greens cascading down her body.

"I told you señorita," Her saviour whispered, grief heavy in his voice, "I am only sorry I could not stop you from witnessing such horrors."

"I will have to go to Cal Corda to cleanse my soul." She said, finally turning around– careful not to smack her fellow hispanoparlante with her tail.

He turned out to be more than just a fellow hispano. The man had also probably spent entirely too much time on his avatar:

Resulting in a dashing, dangerous looking mariachi. His charcoal black longcoat and incredibly detailed gold embroidery brought out the few splashes of red of his outfit even more, while the skull mask and ghostly black hair cascading from his head into nothingness completed the look.

"No need to go so far as the real world for that," With a small swipe up of his hand, a menu appeared in front of him, a few taps later, he closed it, before sending it towards Galatea, causing a window of her own, asking if she wanted to open the private message to appear, "There are plenty of shops operated by players in the city. This one has some of the best paella I've had."

"<What're we waiting for, then?>" She said in spanish with a smile as she opened the private message with a flick of her tail, her colours having stabilised into a sunny yellow with bright green streaks. "Vamos!"

"<Ah! A fellow spanish speaker!>" The man laughed as he began walking in the direction of the elevator, "<It's rare to meet one out here. Ah, but before we go…>"

Taking his hat off, he did a rather fancy bow for Galatea, "<La Calavera, at your service.>"

"<Galatea, likewise.>" It was comical to do a curtsy with her fishing net skirt, which was the entire reason she did it. The tail and tentacles arcing up around her made it work.

Entering the elevator, Calavera pressed the button to go to street level, "<I'd rather not assume, but you are completely new to the game, aren't you?>" The mariachi said by way of small talk as they left the building, "<Most people learn not to go to the food court if they want to enjoy themselves. It's… well, it has a reputation. Shall we say, amongst the more experienced players. But your avatar is quite beyond what most beginners would have.>"

"<Haha, yeahhh. I got more than a bit fixated with chargen.>" She chuckled, some pink bleeding into her bioluminescence as she blushed black, which caused him to whistle, clearly impressed, "<I probably wouldn't have gone to the paella place because I've seen what the wider world's idea of 'authentic paella' is, but that just means I'd probably have ended up biting down on a crepe that could double as a playmat.>"

"<Ah. Yes, that place,>" The man shuddered as he summoned a vehicle. An old timey looking car, straight out of the 1930s, if not for the tasteful día de los muertos paint scheme. Man had a theme, and he stuck to it it seemed, "<It's not actually that bad. But an acquaintance of mine– well, he's had words regarding the food they serve. Until then, I always thought the stories about how french people could string insults were tall tales. Well, now I stand corrected…>"

Opening the door for Galatean, he let her go into the car, before getting behind the wheels, "<Though, as much as everyone complains about the food court. I have to give them this, the burgers there are amazing. Same with the ice creams and milkshakes– they even have some wonderful gelato. To the consternation of my Italian friend,>" With only a few tremors as the engine turned on, they were off, "<The court is more for cravings or to provide a place for players to socialise over food. More than actually satisfying culinary experiences– ah, a word of warning. No matter how much you eat here, you'll need to eat something in the real world as well once you log off. The taste and sensations of it all might feel like the real thing, but it is a virtual experience.>"

"<Figures. I was only wondering whether being hungry here meant my real body is hungry too.>" Developers these days loved shoving hunger systems into everything, after all.

"<That's you being hungry in real life,>" He quickly told her, "<Food in GBNO is more about what surrounds it than anything else, back alley diners, dive bars, grand buffets, medieval feasts, haute cuisine, or anything that you cannot readily experience in the real world. Generally speaking, you'll want to eat something filling, or have snacks on hand to munch on. It takes a bit, but if you have the home setup, it's possible to learn to pull yourself out of GBNO for a few seconds to grab a bite of something or other. I've been playing for long enough I can move my body in a conscious manner to grab a piece of bread while staying fully immersed, I wouldn't recommend trying until you're much more experienced with how it feels to be in GBNO.>"

"<Sounds like a quick way to fall out of my chair, yeah.>" Galatea said with a bob of her head, "<I'll just log out to eat something once we're done with that paella.>"

"<A sensible idea, yes. But it'll take a while to get to the restaurant, see the 'stand by' option by the log out one? If you use it, it'll let you take the visor off while keeping 'you' in the game. Most places with a setup will have food, if you do that, you should be able to come back before we arrive.>"

"<Good point. See you in a bit, then!>" She used her tentacles to navigate the menu just to flex. She'd worked hard for this control!

As the world fell away, she heard him mutter under his breath, "<Just as bad as->" But couldn't catch the end of it as she became he once again, leaving him staring at his computer screen through the green tint of his headset.

Right, time to get a microwave meal. They may not have combini here, but Bon Area provided.

When Galatea came back, only a few minutes later, she was still in the car, Calavera listening to some podcast on the radio, "–day will mark the second anniversary of the discovery of the EL-Divers, think that's a coincidence?"

"Nah, not at all. If you're going to drop one of the biggest updates of the game, which, if you ask me, is directly aimed at raising the quality of life for our AI friends, and only improving the game for us people of flesh and blood as a nice side bonus, you'd want to drop in on the anniversary right?"

"Makes sense, but why do you say that it's aimed at them specifically? I mean–"

"Dude, like. This is their world?"

"Uh, they do have a body in the outside world. You know that, no? Build DIVER's Sarah posted a picture of herself on top of Tokyo Tower not a week ago."

"Well, I mean– yeah, but at the same time, they're gunpla sized. So they totally spend more time in here than out in the real world, just makes sense since things aren't sized for them out there–"

"<Hm? Oh, back are we?>" Out of the corner of his eye, Calavera noticed Galatea stirring, "<We should get to the restaurant soon.>"

"<Mhm>" She said as she stretched like a cat, her skin rippling with the motion. Idly, she wondered what sort of friends the mexican had, given the car seats could detach parts to allow wings and tails to rest comfortably.

"–with the talk about the update out the way. You heard about The Ace coming back, yeah?"

"Pff, of course I did Kyuka, who hasn't? We only do these at the end of the month, so it might have looked like we didn't hear about it. But man, did I hear a ton about this poser! The admins better do something about him soon, I mean come on, some dude just shows up, pretends to be–"

"<Ah, shut your fucking trap you pendejo!>" Her driver's expression had turned sour as soon as he'd heard about the so-called ace, only to turn thunderous when he was called a poser, and he angrily slapped the radio off soon after that, "<Bastards that don't know shit about anything shouldn't open their goddamn mouth to talk about shit they don't understand!>"

Well, this was awkward.

"<Ah–!>" Partway through continuing his rant, he stopped and coughed awkwardly when he recalled he wasn't alone in his car, "<My apologies. I can get a bit… heated when they talk about this entire situation. Have you heard about it at all, or did you miss the hyenas deciding to tear into that poor man during your fugue?>"

"<I've been living under a rock, yeah.>" She admitted without shame. Things never did change much in Spain nowadays, so she didn't really keep track of the news beyond checking for the traffic and weather on the radio.

"<Heh, I've been told by a reliable source that rocks are, in fact, incredibly comfy and great for sunbathing. But to make a complicated situation easy to parse, back before GBNO there were Gunpla Battles. They took place in real life, emulating beams, explosions and all that in real life,>" As he started to describe all this, his frown softened until he had an easy smile on his face, "<It was one hell of a time for any hobbyist in that sort of stuff– super expensive due to having to repair your damaged gunpla for one. But a bunch of legends cropped up during that period too, people like Sei Iory and Reiji, the Fearsome Duo, Riccardo Fellini, the Italian Dandy, Mao Yakasa, the Master Builder– the list goes on. The poor man they are talking about was around back then too.>"

"<But with Plavsky particles vanishing for a few years thanks to PPSE's fuck up, how they managed that, I just cannot comprehend, gunpla battle became a thing of the past for a lot of people of that era. They're still around as I hear it being told, but more as part of the administration than participants. Anyhow, like so many, he had to stop doing Gunpla Battles, and when it came online, he didn't jump straight into GBNO. So he's had a…six– no, the seventh's championship was in 2013, so seven? Year long hiatus. Before coming back.>"

"<Wew. And I assume piloting here is a whole lot different than however things were done in analog space, yeah?>" Galatea asked, starting to see where this was going.

"<Finally, someone with half a peanut between their ears! Santa Maria, you'd think people would think about that a bit more, but no,>" He grumbled as he stopped the car in front of a rather nondescript building with a large sign reading 'Quimet's', "<I never did any Gunpla Battle before GBNO, but I have it on good authority that it's pretty different yeah. Not massively, but enough that it'll throw you off your game. And his gunpla was notorious for being a capricious, barely controllable, speed demon that would make Kult of Speed Orks weep tears of pride and jealousy at how ludicrously fast it was. I have seen a video of it online. And how the man managed to do anything in something that could go from zero to two hundred in two seconds flat, I'll never understand. So, understandably, he's showed up with a different gunpla, not the one he used back then.>"

"<I'd call him an idiot if he plopped down that beast as his entry into the game. Well, unless he decided to just quietly train with it on solo missions for a few months prior.>" The seafood chimera said, tentacles rippling to swirls of blue and purple.

"<Eh, since this is an open world, true solo missions are a bit hard to find. But I get what you mean,>" Getting out of the car, he approached the restaurant's doors, "<Main issue is that there was actually a bit of fanfare to the whole thing. He was pretty famous in Japan for some reason, so they slapped the nickname they had for him back there as title on his ass first thing after he logged in. People noticed and boy, did the stans get pissed at him not using his old gunpla. They're convinced that he sold his old GP base to some dude for quick cash, and are calling for his head and for the title to get removed. I've seen his new gunpla. And while it's nowhere near what his old one looked like, or was like, I can tell the same person made it. There's the same underlying style to it.>"

"<Ahhh, don't you just love grown ass men and women throwing a tantrum over a parasocial make-believe relationship?>" Gala grumbled as she followed, her hair writhing like a nest of vipers as the purple deepened and the blue was overtaken by red.

"<At least they learned not to mess with him in game after he cut a bitch. Someone was ranting and insulting him– and then made the mistake of talking shit about one of his daughters. To hear it, the change from 'politely ignoring the idiot and being civil', to 'I will murder you on the spot for your crimes' was pretty much instant.>" The mariachi said.

"<Reminds me of a friend. Nature really made sure parents don't tolerate threats to the young.>" The cuttlefish said, hooking her thumbs into her pockets.

"<Mhm. Well, enough of that, here we are,>" Pushing the doors open, the car disappeared behind them as the smell of home hit Galatea in the face. This. This was a place where true paella was made, "<Quimet's! Home to the best paella I know of– on account of being the only paella place I know!>"

"<Ahhh, that hits the spot.>" Galatea groaned, her entire body glowing a happy yellow. Either everything is better in fulldive or someone took that little note she made on the files about her craving starch and jellificants for her resin production and ran off with it. Either way, that rice was nothing short of heavenly.

"<Well, someone liked their food, huh?>" Calavera chuckled as he finished his last jumbo shrimp, "<Surprised you're this happy with it to be perfectly honest. Most new players find the fact it does nothing for your hunger, or that you don't feel any different after eating it, rather frustrating.>"

"<Are you kidding? That just means I can eat more. Any half euro piece of crap will fill your stomach, good food is about the mouth and soul.>" The chimera replied hotly, tiny stars of red flashing in her tentacles before fading away.

"<See, that usually takes players a month or two of eating at the food court to realise,>" The man said with a full body laugh, "<You should see the look on their face when they connect the dots and think to themselves, 'Wait. This isn't real. I can pig out on cakes, sweets and ice cream and not have to worry about gaining weight!' It's like they have a religious awakening!>"

As he added the last part, he groaned a bit before getting up from the table.

"<Pffft. They should advertise the game as a diet aid.>" She said, pushing her chair back with her tail as she got up. "<Now, how do I add you as a friend?>"

"<Like this,>" Opening a screen, he tapped it a few times, before sending it Galatea's way, just like he had with the private message. Once it reached her, it opened her friend list and formed a little virtual envelope that unfolded into a simple 'La Calavera would like to add you as a friend Y/N', "<Just open the friend list, search the player's name and send a request that way, fair warning. I tend to put myself on invisible a lot– option for that is in the top right corner. You can edit who can see when you are logged in on an individual basis too.>"

Spanish guitars start playing

Here's chapter two.

Unfortunately, Father Nurgle decided to slap me with his rot right in the face. Been feeling generally like trash, thankfully we have some chapters banked up and ready to go. So it shouldn't affect this fic too much.

And I see that I've missed a lot of talk, woopies...

I'm putting this here since it'll take a while to reach that part properly in the story (roughly chapter 6)

But, in case it's not super obvious by the Knight being in the display room- 40k is an in-universe thing that exists and that people play. ATM there's no isekai into 40k planned... kind of.
It'll be explained by CHEESE when he and gala get to talking about 40k as a whole.

but if you want the rundown? GW did a woops when presented with a shiny and bandai had to pick up the pieces... And this is as much 40k-valhala as it is Gundam-Valhala...

Nihilo · Dec 25, 2023

Chapter 3:

After lunch, Calavera left to meet with a group of friends, saying that it was a 'fairly exclusive club'. He did make sure to show Galatea how to register a place for fast travel, though, in case she wanted to stuff her face some more in the future.

Which meant she had no reservations teleporting over to the hangar after all was said and done.

It was a fairly nondescript place. With nothing special or fancy to it. Only four giant docking stations, each with their set of catwalks, rails and industrial mechanical arms…

At least if you ignored the Z-Fishbone standing tall and proud in one of them, fuckoff huge machinegun in hand.

Standing before it, she could judge her work in a way that she'd never been able to while it was a mere model.

The paint was a bit dull, much like the deep abyssal seas, and unfortunately just a smidge too thick in a few spots, giving it a sort of unplanned and sloppy wavy effect that didn't look that great. The coral and bones both had issues, the sculpt had looked fine while it was model sized, but now that it was giant robot sized, she could make out all the little imperfections of the resin. Things like cuts that hadn't been smoothed out quite perfectly, an uneven surface, places where they weren't glued on quite right…

It irked like nothing else, but a mantra of it being her first project kept her from exiting the game and scrambling to try and fix everything. She was sticking with this guy at least until campaigns came out in two weeks.

Opening the performance menu that Erovan had mentioned showed that it at least had some relatively high stats in unique, general and luxury. With nimbleness and armour being at the base values of five and, sadly, power sitting at a somewhat lacking four.

Given what Bandai sold as Entry Grade kits apparently rocked at around 3-4 in all stats, she'd take it.

"Haro-Haro!" Her navigator popped up in front of her, doing a little twirl as its ear… wings… flap things fluttered happily, "Welcome to the Hangar! Here you can see the gunplas that you've scanned! Or, if you are currently in a party, your currently set gunpla, and the ones of your current party members! Use this unique occasion to look your gunpla under a different lens and perspective! You might be able to catch some flaw like a seam line, an ill-fitting peg, or a poorly glued accessory that you'd have missed otherwise!"

"Once you are done admiring your work, please enter your gunpla! To do so, use the console next to the dock of the gunpla you want to use, and select 'board'. Or use the drop down option in the hangar menu of your quick menu to do the same!"

"Aw, no fully immersive entry?" "The fully immersive entry is also an option! Either use the rope lift connected to your gunpla, or the mechanical lift of the dock to get on the cockpit's level and enter it!"

As the haro spoke, a loud, mechanical sound caught her attention, the cockpit moving into the open position by itself, a sturdy looking metallic rope, topped with a yellow triangle dropping to the ground as it did.

She stepped right in, tail swishing happily behind her.

The rope zipped up in an instant, wind rushing around her and in her ears until she was on the same level as the cockpit, letting her step inside of the dark space.

Once in, the canopy closed behind her, and the sound of electronics turning on and engines revving up filled her ears.

"GUNPLA, ONLINE."

The same robotic voice as the one that had sounded off her login echoed in the closed space as lights filled the darkness. It wasn't exactly a cockpit like that of a jet, or from a MS from the few clips she'd seen of the show.

Instead of a bunch of apparatuses, computer screens and so on, everything seemed to be digital with a big floating screen appearing right in front of her. It displayed the Mobile Suit's sensory feed, while a control console similar to the shop's fulldive setup appeared right under it, giving her a screen filled with info like the gunpla's condition, ammo counts, the weapon currently selected, a radar map… It was honestly a bit crowded. But apparently thinking about closing one of them was enough to get it to go away until she thought about getting it back, which made it return.

And to complete everything, two large joysticks appeared next to her, held up in the air by rings of light.

"...Hey, Haro, is there an option to have an actual cockpit interior instead of this floaty cyberspace bullshit?" She asked plaintively, tail spines drooping as deep blue shimmered on her ridges.

"Haro-haro!" The little robot appeared right next to the console, a small bowl for him to rest into doing the same, "Advanced Cockpit options are available for a more authentic experience. However, they are locked until DIver Rank-D, and are not recommended due to their complexity."

"Haah, this will have to do until then." She grumbled, tentacle hair ruffling up in malcontent. Her poor immersion junky heart, crushed.

"Now that you are inside of your cockpit, please enter the MS catapult!" Off to the side, a large hangar door slid open, allowing her mech through, "It is right behind the door that has just opened!"

"Time for your shakedown run, buddy." Galatea whispered, red and yellow mingling as she gently tilted the joysticks forward.

Unlike her own body, the gunpla had no issues moving properly from the get go. Especially with the gentle pace she was setting to get the hang of the controls.

Going past the door, there was a set of 'footprints' for her to place the gunpla's feet on. It took a bit more finangling to get right, but once she did, they clamped her in place and the platform lowered. Soon enough the Fishbone was standing in a large tunnel, the light of day shining at the end of it.

"Haro-Haro! Your Mobile Suit is now in position inside of the catapult! Press both throttles forwards as hard as you can to activate it and fly out into the infinite possibilities of GBNO!"

Doing as the robot asked caused her boosters to turn on and the catapult to fling her at breakneck speeds. The speedometer screamed as it raced up as fast as she launched through the tunnel, until she reached the very end of it–

Launching high into the sky above the city, she was completely weightless as she escaped gravity's cruel embrace, her mech's boosters ensuring that she soared towards the horizon.

"WOOHOO!" She couldn't help the giddy holler, looking like a living flame as red and yellow blazed bright on every inch of her skin.

Even with her current speed, it took some time to reach the city's limits, where steel and concrete fell away into meadows, grassy plains and forests. Looking at the map, the mission area was some ways away, a minute or two at her current speed.

It was pretty weird that missions were in the open world instead of instanced. Although she supposed it made a bit of sense? Saved on resources if you just told a player to go to an already rendered area instead of making a little pocket dimension for them.

Wanting players to be able to see how detailed the world was might also be part of the equation, as she could see smaller towns and villages, each looking just as detailed as the city she'd left.

Some were completely pristine, but some were very much not: Bombed out wrecks, remnants of a past battle scaring them into ruins– in one case, she even saw the perpetrators of such destruction stomping about. A zoomed-in camera feed appeared off to the side of the main screen, revealing a group of fellow OG Zaku IIs, albeit with no frills or modifications.

One of them noticed her as she flew by, and looked up before giving her an awkward salute that the others joined in.

She only just barely managed to return the salute, her trajectory wavering a touch. Walking and flying was easy, but granular control of the hand? Less so. She really needed to check if there was a body mapping or MMI option for piloting this damn thing.

It didn't take long to reach the mission site after that. Which was a giant green, semi-transparent bubble? "Haro-Haro! This is the Mission Field! Since this is a mission that occurs on the open map, it will begin as soon as you enter the field! Other missions sometimes will take you to an instanced area, or have no Mission Field! If you have selected 'open battle' in your social menu, then other players are free to enter the field to aid or hinder you as they please! In order to avoid griefing of new players, it is turned off by default."

"When playing on an Open Map Mission, you are capable of sending out an S.O.S, allowing other players to enter the Mission Field to provide aid. If you are outmatched, don't hesitate to use this function!"

Oh, like the MHW flares. It'd be nice to engage in some jolly cooperation, but that was for later. Ideally when she had enough experience to join a squad in mowing down a good ol blanket of mooks. For now, into the breach she went.

She pushed through the dome with no resistance, the system voice helpfully announcing:

"MISSION START."

Thanks to being high in the air Galatea could see that the mission was taking place in a nice little rural village. Not too dissimilar from how people pictured Mediterranean hamlets. Small, low to the ground homes made from warm coloured stone, all centred around a church.

Critically she could also see two giant machines stomping about, their singular, sickly and disturbingly human looking eyeballs starting to focus on her.

Well, she had a gun and targets. The math wasn't difficult and she was making it even simpler by landing.

As she went down, the Death Army MSs began firing their club-rifles at her… in what was probably the most stormtrooper-y aim to have ever stormtroopered. A good three fourths of the shots went hilariously wide, while only a tenth of the beam shots that were somewhat on target even hit her, little icons appearing in the MS's status screen of where they had scratched her paint.

"Come on, I have seen Corpus Crewmen with fifth hand Deras land more shots than this!" She mocked over the speakers as she introduced them to Grineer reliability.

Her 90mm machine-gun boomed as the massive recoil shook her entire machine. Again and again the massive slugs of metal, more fitting for a battleship than anything human shaped, screamed towards the closest of the two enemy units.

As one of the huge bullet casings crushed a small car parked in the street, the DA was forced to stop in its tracks. The violent impacts stopped it cold by sheer force, ripping parts of its armour and punching through others. Falling to its knees, it used its club to try and stand up, only to slump down against it.

Yeah, the only difference between this and the Warframe tutorial was that there you at least got a dozen mooks to blend through. Anyways, she'd checked ranged, time for melee. She'd read on the wiki that the spiked pauldron was meant for tackles, sooo–

Turning towards the last Death Army, she rushed towards it, head down, shoulder forwards, thrusters roaring as they kicked in and added to her speed.

The machine tried to kill her by firing a few beams her way. But its accuracy was just as bad as before, and the few that hit splashed against her pauldron harmlessly.

The impact was bone-rattling, shaking and jerking her inside of her cockpit when she passed the buck of the momentum she'd accumulated to her foe. It was thrown back and into the church, demolishing most of it instantly.

…Well, the mission wasn't stopping, so time to take the lightsaber for a spin. Which meant unclipping it from her machine's waist and igniting it like Anakin in front of the kids.

Walking towards the robot, it destroyed the rest of the church when it tried to use the belfry to drag itself up, a huge (and conspicuously shoulder shaped) dent in its front armour causing the motion to be jerky and imprecise.

That was all the time she gave it before rushing it with another assault boost, beam sabre aimed squarely for its centre of mass.

As the beam pierced straight through the armour like it wasn't there, she had just enough time to see parts of the dent repair itself. Her whole body flashed orange. These motherfuckers had regen!?

She didn't have much time to react as she was thrown forward by something impacting her from behind, her heads up display telling her that she'd lost a good third of her armour value there. Her beam sabre was gone, too, jolted out of her hand.

Looking over her shoulder, she saw the first Death Army she'd shot up running at her, club-rifle raised high in order to bring it down on her head.

Green and yellow mingled in her tentacles as she grinned in her cockpit, tail spines twitching in eagerness. She outright laughed when her attempt to use the thrusters to flip to a seated position sent her into an ungainly tumble.

This was fun! She was fucking up from her own inexperience, not because the controls or hitboxes were janky. That meant she could actually learn and improve.

At least the tumble managed to turn the blow to the head into one that 'only' got her computer to shout at her about overloaded joints as it caught her shoulder-shield, pinning her to the ground semi-awkwardly. Adding its other hand to the club, it tried to press down onto her as much as it could.

Unfortunately for it, she was lefthanded, so the arm holding the 90mm was free to blast it in the mouth. The near point blank shots ripped through its head, both forcing it to stagger backwards, freeing her, and reducing it to a mass of mangled metal and gushing oil that splattered against her deep blue paint.

She wasn't taking chances anymore, forcing the right arm to grip it by the head stump as she made the Z-Fishbone get up. An MG jammed into its gut and three seconds of fire and she was confident it was out for the count.

"MISSION COMPLETE."

Then she stomped it and its buddy like she was Isaac Clarke, just for good measure (and spite, purple lights blazing bright), until they vanished in a shower of cubic pixels.

"Haro-Haro! Congratulations on completing your quest! Let's take a good look at the rewards!" Under the completion banner three windows opened, two listing numbers, the other a bunch of words, "The first window indicates how many Build Coins you've earned! Build Coins are the non-premium currency of GBNO– what's the premium one you ask? It will be explained in a moment!"

"Build Coins are used throughout the whole of GBNO, have you visited the food court? You can spend it there to eat delicious meals! The crepe shop is especially good! And so is the paella restaurant!" The haro rattled off, instantly earning Galatea's undying hatred, "But it can also be used to pay other players for goods and services. 20 Build Coins can buy many peanuts for example. They can also be used to buy clothes, furniture, a personal home, a plot of land, and so much more!"

"The second informs you of how many Diver Points you have earned. Think of them as experience points from other videogames, such as Dragon Quest! Earn enough, and you will Rank Up!" The screens minimised themselves as a new one opened. On it was a pyramid made up of nine sections, going from F to SSS, a little cartoony head next to each. Hers was present, but outside of the diagram, while a second look revealed Calavera's at… D Rank. Weird, he came across as a veteran, "Ranks are divided as such: First, Easy, Dynamic, Courage, Brave, Ace, Special, Skilled Special, Super Skilled Special. You are currently at the lowest rank, rank First, or F."

As soon as it announced this, her head joined those at the bottom rung, "Don't worry about being there however. You'll graduate to rank E in no time! It only takes 200 DPs to do so, and this mission gave you 50!" The DP window came back just long enough to show that it wasn't running its mouth, before leaving again, "Ranks are a mark of a Diver's experience and talent in the game. But they also unlock certain features, at rank E, you are able to purchase a personal home in the lobby tower! This small space can then be remodelled how you want (at the cost of some BCs of course), at rank D you become able to join, or create a force, and at rank C, it is now possible for you to develop a special move! Past that rank, the only unlocks are cosmetics in the various shops, and more difficult missions."

Finishing its explanation on ranks, the window that had a bunch of text on it opened, "This final window contains the items you have earned by finishing the mission! They can vary from furniture, such as this [Flowerpot]! Cosmetics, like this [Master Asia Scarf]! Or equipment blueprint, like this [Club-rifles]! These are your premium currency! They can be sold or exchanged with both players and the system for other items or BCs! However, blueprints are special," A window opened, showing a large machine that she'd seen at the old man's shop. It had been tucked in or corner and out of view, next to the massive wall of gunplas he was selling, "By connecting your GP Base to an injection machine, you can download any earned, or bought, blueprints into it. And it will create a runner containing every part necessary for its creation! Just like GBNO, this is a free service provided by Bandai, if your local shop engages in any sort of monetisation of this aspect of the game, please inform the Bandai Branch in your home country."

"Note, Missions Rewards will not be claimed until players have returned to a safe zone. You may also wonder about the Super Moves mentioned earlier. They are not covered under this tutorial, this is to encourage new players like you to seek out the wisdom of their elders!"

"...Fair enough." Galatea said after a moment, skin stained a deep blue. Her opinion of the tutorial had just gone down by several notches, it was poor form to bury a player in data like this. Still, she got the broad strokes and Erovan would tell her the rest.

She needed to ask him where she could get that regen system anyways. Pity she couldn't fiddle with the menus while she flew this thing.

…

Unless.

"Computer, switch to autopilot and set course for the hangar." She tried, tentacles curling up in anticipation.

"Haro-haro! Setting course!" Flapping its wings, the haro took centre stage on the console while the controllers folded away. The suit's boosters activated quickly after, taking it into the air, where it lazily began to head back towards the city.

Now, where did Calavera say the send friend request button was…? Ah, there! Now she just had to send one to Erovan. He hadn't said anything about being online today, so it would probably take a whil–

"S.O.S DETECTED"

"Damnit," A static-y voice sounded over the comms, "It got the boss, nothing we're doing even scratches it! Someone help! Please!"

She really should ignore this. She was green as grass and her mech was banged up.

"Switch to manual controls and try to hail the sender." Fuck her and her bleeding heart.

"Haro-Haro! You have control!" The two sticks returned to their position, letting her grasp them and turned towards the source of the call, "Calling hailer…"

"Wa‐" Over the call, she could hear the telltale sound of a beam rifle being fired, and an explosion, "Shit! Damn these guys!"

"I'm enroute." Galatea called, sharp and no-nonsense as she dialled up the throttle as high as she dared. She vaguely remembered hearing that just sounding like you were in control did a world of good for people's nerves. "Sitrep?"

"Uh? Uhm-uuh–!" Poor man tripped over his words as he spoke, "Me and my Force were doing a low level raid mission for some quick points, but–"

She almost asked how many were still on the fight, before thinking better of it. Instead she just swapped her 90mm for the bazooka and told him, "ETA ten seconds."

"Thank you!"

Pushing her machine to its limits, she quickly reached the source of the call, a mission field located in a rocky desert, Mobile Suits firing at something out of sight and taking cover as fire was returned.

But just as she reached it, a pop-up appeared in front of her:

"Cannot enter field. 'Open Battle' must be enabled."

"Computer, enable Open Battle."

Time to die gallantly.

"Open Battle Enabled."

As soon as she entered the field, her computer shouted warnings and alerts at her, a flurry of beams being sent her way.

Twitch reflex took over, shooting off a rocket before she had even processed what was happening. Then her brain got the memo on 'oh, that's a lot of lasers' and she was throwing the Fishbone behind one of the rock outcrops.

Her flight was a desperate and impressive one. Each yank of her controls saw two or three beams miss her by only a few inches, but even with a panic fueled adrenaline rush as her monkey brain screamed about imminent death, her machine took a few good hits on its way to a hiding spot, the lighting inside the cockpit turning yellow as her armour and structural values dropped by nearly half.

But even as she fought for her fucking life, luck, or perhaps skill, allowed her rocket to hit the thing that had just shot at her– causing it to redouble its barrage. But thankfully, by then she was already hidden behind something… Not that it felt like it'd last particularly long.

"Haro-haro! Enemy Raid Boss analysed!" The haro chirped, before displaying a picture of the 'raid boss' to her, giving her a chance to take a good look at it. It was a bizarre mashup of red parts, the upper body was sort of rhombus, or triangle shaped, a recessed monoeyed head sitting atop of it. From the glimpse she got, it was covered in vents and beam emitters, and had two sort of stumpy arms.

All in all, it sort of reminded her of a Big Zam, which she only knew by the memes.

The lower body though, was a serpentine tail, reminiscent of a naga's, made from a dozen or so segments, each equipped by at least three beam emitters, she could tell, because those were the parts of it that shot her.

It was also huge, each segment was about half as tall as the Fishbone was.

"Designation, Grand-Zamgarna."

"Hey! You alive?" The same voice as the one she'd heard over the SOS radio called out, coming in crystal clear this time.

"Somehow." She groaned as she caught her breath, thin lines of blue creeping into the brilliant red of her bioluminescence. "Did I at least leave a mark? That's the heaviest ordinance I'm packing."

"Uuuuh," There was a pregnant pause, "Yeah, I think I see some damage on it! Not a lot, but there's some! …You only have so many rockets, don't you?"

"Thirty nine." Galatea chuckled helplessly as the blue deepened. It sounded impressive, but she doubted it'd be enough unless she landed every shot in roughly the same spot.

"Hm… That could be enough, the main reason we can't kill it is the I-field– it negates beam weaponry. And that's basically all we have, see the antennas on its shoulders?"

"The tuning fork ones?" She asked, whispering at Haro to zoom in on the picture she'd been provided.

"Yeah, those things. They're the I-Field deployment points. If you can blow them up, we'd be able to use our weapons again… Hold on–," A different picture opened, showing a destroyed MS, "Look here. It's our Leader's GM Pridwen, it's a custom based on the Guard Custom, it got shot down near you. And we think the Guardian Shield it had should be salvageable? We can't get a good look at it."

"So you guys make a distraction, I snatch it and then get to properly aim for those field generators?" The cuttlefish asked, the red reduced to a lining around sky blue.

"Yeah, but it's kinda nimble too. So you might need to get closer. Emitters aren't armoured, thankfully, so one or two good shots should be enough? Ready when– shit! Funnels! Get out of there!"

As the man shouted, two small red drones poked past her hiding place, their front opening, beam emitters ready to fire as soon as they were charged.

Her thrusters kicked in the moment she heard 'funnel', her whole body flashing red, she had seen a video of how fucking mean those were. She just needed a second to grab her 90mm and they'd be scrap.

The beams crossed the space on the point where her head had been, narrowly missing her, and causing the funnels to rotate and aim back at her with mechanical precision– only for them to blow up when a burst of 90mm shredded their flimsy armour, "Go! Go! Go! Fire support! Get those things out of the sky!"

The sounds of bullets and beams filled the air beyond her hiding spot as the rest of the players moved into action, "The tail emitters were funnels!"

"They're going to be scrap in a hot minute!" Galatea jeered, orange joining the red as she grinned inhumanly wide, old instincts jumping to the fore. The controls may be different, but her eyes and trigger finger couldn't care less.

Each trigger pull turned a funnel or two into scrap as her shots found their marks, the few that were not, only escaping the trash heap thanks to the relative inaccuracy of her weapon. All the skills she'd forged over hundreds of hours of Warframe taking over her body as she boosted all over the place like the demented devil the neighbour's cat became the moment he got any sort of catnip.

Before she even knew it, she was over the Pridwen's wreck, swapping her 90mm for the shield.

Hefting it, she could hear her machine's joints groan in pain as they strained to hold the SLAB of metal that was the shield, but they managed, allowing her to get it in position. Just in time for three beams to slam into her newfound acquisition, dropping its defence value some.

Which didn't mean much, considering it had literally as much overall health as her MS. While she realised that, a notification came up, telling her that the shield's integrated 60mm vulcan guns were now linked to her triggers too.

Not important right now, but more gun was always nice.

Aiming around the shield was a bit awkward, but not the most difficult thing to do. Thankfully, most of the boss' attention was squarely on her temporary teammates, meaning that she only had to worry about the funnels for now.

Now behind the boss, she was free to line up the shot up. Her aiming reticles moved around on the screen, responding to any shift of her own eyes, whenever something distracted her even just a little– until she finally managed to line up a proper shot. Squeezing her 360mm Bazooka's trigger, its payload flew through the air, leaving a trail of fire and smoke as it flew true– only to be shot down by funnels moments before impacting the antenna.

Blessedly, 'close enough' applied to explosives as much as it did to horseshoes, bending it enough out of shape that something finished blowing it up a second later. The Grand-Zamgarna lurched forwards, its head almost hitting the sand before boosters on its front righted it.

"Hell yes! You've just done more in a minute than the rank C we brought along did after bragging about how good they were!"

"Would you believe I was on my way back from the tutorial mission?" Galatea laughed, as bright and clear as the gold on her eyes, even as she lined up a shot for the other tuning fork.

"Seriously!?" This time the boss was ready for the attack, using its tail to intercept the rocket, before turning towards her, monoeye blazing as funnels whizzed in her direction, "You don't look to be a beginner, that's for sure! Played other shooter games before?"

Her allie's beam assaults redoubled, The pink, green and yellow streaks of energy getting much closer to the giant mechanical beasts than before she destroyed the first I-Field generator, but not quite reaching the armour.

"MR26 on Warframe, so you could say that!" She said as she let loose with the shield's vulcans, clamping the bazooka to its inner face for a moment to toss in a cracker grenade and add her 90mm to the party.

The grenade arced through the air, landing in a cluster of funnels trying to avoid her hail of bullets.

Its explosion only damaged them, but it also knocked them out temporarily, making them perfect targets for her to blow up.

But just as she rejoiced at their destruction, her computer warned her of two more funnels, aiming directly at her back.

She twisted around, keeping her shield facing the fat fuck as she levelled her rifle at–

Her thrusters roared to full as she juked hard to the left, body lit up like a roadflare in fear.

She knew those funnels.

Her fear proved to be justified with the drones tracking her movements well enough to nail her left leg, severing it at the hip and turning the juke into an uncontrolled tumble– the light around the cockpit turning red as dozens of damage reports covered her machine's status icon.

Reangling themselves with small bursts of their thrusters, the brown funnels aimed at her once more as they charged up their shot. Only to back off when beams she couldn't see the source of nearly destroyed them.

She was dying alright. Just had to stick the landing with the gallant part. She still had her shield and her bazooka, time to get that tuning fork snapped like a wishbone.

She fired her weapon not a moment too soon– in the blink of an eye, the funnels were back. With a single volley, they carved both her arm and 360mm to pieces, which the eight missiles still in the mag reacted to as you'd expect. The explosion nearly took her out and ruined the right side of her Mobile Suit's head.

But it wasn't enough to keep her from seeing her rocket.

It screamed towards the antenna, funnels taking aim at it, only for them to get destroyed by a barrage of beams, "COME ON! HIIIIIT!" A scuffed looking gundam came in, screaming like a banshee and firing its beam rifle like a madman, causing the boss to shift its focus for just a single, critical moment.

Just as her shot hit, a quick beam straight through the back of the Fishbone's head finished the job, plunging her in complete darkness with the destruction of her main camera.

She fell limply, letting the adrenaline shakes bleed out together with the red staining her. It was up to them now.

"THE I-FIELD IS DOWN! TAKE THIS! EX-TREME MEGA BEEEEEEEAM!'' Thankfully, her secondary cameras turned back on. Just long enough to provide a static-y, grainy video feed of another gundam, this one better built, but barely holding together, firing a huge beam straight through the boss.

Galatea laughed, warm yellow light filling her cockpit as she basked in the joy of a job well done. Christ alive, GBNO owned her soul now. Nowhere else would she ever get to experience something like this.

With a mechanical shriek, the boss slumped in on itself, cutting itself almost in half on the beam that just kept going and going. Funnels flew around drunkenly, trying to get a good shot on the gundam.

But as the light left the boss's monoeye, they limply fell to the floor, staining the yellow sand red.

"We did it!" "Woooh!" "I can't believe I'm still alive!" "Why the hell does the Entry Grade not have fin funnels!?"

Her comms filled with joyful chatter as two more MS on the verge of exploding came out of hiding, while the first gundam to have come help her limped in her direction, "Hey. You still alive in there?" The pilot asked her, slowly kneeling his gundam to get a closer look at her.

"Haha, ye–" She chuckled through the speakers as she got up inside her cockpit, only for her eyes to explode with red as she spotted something amidst the grainy footage. "BEHIND YOU!"

Hovering right behind the gundam was a funnel, aiming right at its cockpit. The pilot reacted as fast as they could, trying to dodge, but they were just a bit too slow, the beam sure to hit them–

Only for a flaming axe to embed itself on the damn drone, the Fishbone's remaining arm sparking and smoking, a single message flashing on Galatea's screen: "PARTIAL MOBILITY RESTORED"

The gundam didn't thank her. Instead opting to aim at the boss and fire its rifle at it again and again and again, while screaming in rage.

Their three friends quickly joined in, not stopping until the "MISSION CLEAR" notification appeared on the screens of all involved.

"Uuugh," The gundam slumped to the ground, "I hate phase twos…"

"Amen!" The cuttlefish laughs wild and free, a few idle taps on the controls confirming that her cockpit can still open, "So who's still flight capable?"

A chorus of "Me"s answered her question.

"You wanna ride with us?" A… peculiar looking Mobile Suit asked as it stomped forwards, "You could just use the bug-out feature if you wanna get your MS repaired. It'd be faster."

"And miss out on the victory party?" Gala asked rhetorically in mock-outrage as she fired friend requests to everyone present.

"I'd say you're expecting a lot from people that haven't been playing for a while… but then there's our leader to consider," The last of the gunplas, a chonker beyond compare, said with a sigh. Its super deformed eye emoting as it did, "You're definitely getting dragged into the food court."

"Yeah, she is…," Kneeling down on the floor, the Entry Grade offered a hand, "Hop on, I'll fly you home."

"Haha, I like her already!" A mental command and the yank of a cord that dropped out of thin air, and she's climbing out of her cockpit, tentacles and tail waving happily in their rippling yellow lights, while her MS dematerialised behind her.

"...Pretty…" The pilot of the large gundam muttered, before the weird MS dope slapped them, "Ow! Oh come on, you're thinking it too!"

"No. Because unlike you, my mind is above the gutter."

"Oh no." The SD pilot whispered in horror as he stared at Gala's hair and tail, "She is doomed."

"Just finished the tutorial? Yeah right– oh, you're rank E… how the f- flick? Did you win a giveaway or something?"

"Hah! I don't mind being complimented, I did spend a whole month working on this." She chuckled as she climbed up the extended mech's hand, "Arts major wannabe that didn't have enough money for uni, you know how it is."

"Noooo?" "Nope." "Nuh-uh" "Wait, art schools exist?"

"Your parents want you to become a doctor dude," The large Gundam sighed, "Of course they'd tell you art schools are a lie."

"Become a pharmacist just to screw with them." The cuttlefish joked.

"I… don't think that's a good idea," The SD said with a wince, which was an impressive feat of piloting, "That sounds like a great way for him to get disowned. He basically had to beg his parents for that Entry Grade."

"Pharmacists earn as much as doctors and don't have to deal with the ungodly workplace stress of a hospital, though." Galatea said, blue bleeding into her lights as she remembered an interesting conversation with a marine doc. "But fair enough. Your life, not mine."

"Sure feels like it's my parents' sometimes," Her ride's pilot grumbled as it rose back up to full height with her in its hand.

Waddling up to his side, the SD smiled at him with its eye, "On the plus side, you'll be done with high-school this year, sempai."

"And hey, if push ever comes to shove, nowadays you can live alone off of an entry job so long as you have the mental stamina for it." Galatea told the kid, shifting fully to blue as she dispensed some advice. "Not saying you should just throw everything out the window and become self-sufficient, but if you find that you aren't satisfied doing what your parents want and can't find a compromise, it won't be the end of the world."

"Yeah. I'd rather not do what my bro did," Bringing its hand close to its chest, the mecha bent its legs; almost like it as about to–

The anemone's scream was swallowed by the wind, her entire body burning like a roadflare as she clung on for dear life.

Jump.

AN by Bob:

Alright. So this chapter was… a bit of a mess to write!

First, I had an idea, but Ni (rightly) called me out on it.

The mystery high rank player was supposed to be a griefer that faked dying and tried to kill the survivors… and then Captain Zeon shows up.

So changes were made, and a superior version was made.

The characterisation of the various teenagers also changed like three to four times in my head. Hopefully it won't again…

Hastar · Dec 30, 2023

Chapter 4:

"I said I was sorry!"

"You didn't even warn her that you were gonna jump!" The SD The O tutted, voice filled with disappointment.

"I thought it was obvious what I was about to do! They do it all the time in the shows!"

"And if someone never watched one?"

Galatea was sprawled on the floor of the man's cockpit, eyes taken up by rainbow swirls and bioluminescence shot to hell. The less said about the splatter of rainbow resin on the mech's hand, the better.

"I have sea monstergirl vomit all over my cockpit. Isn't that enough?"

"Noooooot sorrrrrryyyyyy." She groaned. Apparently the system had decided it was prudent to wire her to barf up the dissolvent after resin, to keep her airways clear.

"We can see her in the background, Akitama," The weird MS's pilot sighed, "Most of it is on her. Your cockpit is fine."

"Says you! It smells like the downtown fish market in here."

"Totally deserved." "Yup." Absolutely."

"You guys all suck!"

"I have to redo my teeth." The cuttlefish lamented. The poor things were half-melted and bent.

"How in the world did you even get the game to simulate that sort of stuff? That seems way too in depth," The pilot sighed, "That's straight up alien biology or something."

"Where there's a will–" Galatea said as she sat up, spitting out her teeth into an inventory window, "'here's a way."

"Could you not?" The poor highschooler all but begged, "Someone spitting out their half melted teeth, while looking like some deep sea eldritch monster is not a mental image I needed…"

"Welcome 'oo de indernet, ah there we go." She sighed in relief as her teeth finished growing back in, running a long tongue over them. She'd gone with simple triangles this time, much faster to make.

"Or to grow them right back out!"

"Do you want my help cleaning up the mess on your hand or not?" She grumbled with a purple tint as she finally got to her feet, peering into a system window to check for any damaged coral or scales. There were a few, but it was quick enough to melt and regrow them. "Because you're going to be scraping for a while without the dissolvent."

The sound coming out of his mouth could be construed as something a human could make.

It was, however, much funnier to say he sounded like a half choked squirrel getting stomped on by a giraffe.

"Oh hey, the tower's in sight!"

"Oh thank god."

Ervoan was a patient man.

You had to be when having two daughters.

Of the same age.

That were identical twins.

However, as he walked around the lobby, a large white paper sign held above his head, reading: 'I am here, you loathsome gaseous greenery!'

He was thinking that maybe his friend was starting to strain his patience. Just a touch.

Today was the day he was supposed to show him around! They both agreed to it!

He was finally going to see this so-called 'magnum opus' that he always went on about, but never actually told him anything about!

But nooooo an hour in, and the guy still wasn't there! People were starting to look at him weird!

Seriously, for a delivery driver, he sure could use more punctuality!

…Wait, did he actually set a meeting ti–?

"O.M.G! You guys are like, not dead!" Just as he was rounding around the kiosk for another pass, one of the players nearby shouted excitedly and ran towards her Force.

He'd seen her spawn back here a while ago, before tearing into another player. He hadn't paid much attention, but it had ended with the other guy swearing something regarding petty vengeance or some such.

Honestly the only reason he remembered any of this was because of what she looked like…

Speaking of that, her Force sure was an eclectic bunch.

One of them chose an SD The O as their avatar. Another was a pretty boy with white hair that had a single red stripe, and the last three decided to go with furry characters.

The first was a bizarre mix of Dr. Eggman, Dr. Willy and a… moustached capybara?

The second was a fox woman that was wearing something in-between a miko outfit and a three piece suit.

And the last was some kind of overdesigned deep sea horror waifu. Very pretty, with a network of anemone tentacles in place of hair, amazing sets of bioluminescent patterns cascading down them.

Tentacles that then spilled onto her body proper, swirling and stretching across her visible body in ways that accented her other features, like scales and coloured scars of some kind?

All around gorgeous.

But at the same time, who the hell went with bioluminescence and a Hawaiian shirt on their avatar? That was just tacky all around!

"Huh. Now that I think about it. The idiot totally would use that feature…"

"And you totes found a friend! That's so prem'!" And then there was the girl that had gotten killed. Which– well, Gyaru Landschenk was certainly a choice, "And she looks so extra! That's soooo cool☆!"

The seaman wet dream's weird cuttlefish eyes passed over him, only to snap back to his sign. Her tentacles (and the grooves of her fucked up tail, now that it was swishing enough for him to see) flashed yellow as she grinned wide, her cheeks splitting like a lizard's to show a disturbing amount of perfectly interlocking teeth. Not a moment after, she was sprinting over, waving like the excited schoolgirl by his side, "Cheeseman! Looking good!"

It took a second or two for him to process the name calling. He'd heard a lot of that these last few weeks, 'Faker this', 'Pretender that', so even if that one was new. It didn't register.

But the moment it did, "YOU!" He jabbed a finger in her direction. Disinterested posture turning irritated and accusatory.

"ME!" She laughed, tackle hugging him without a care in the world. As it turned out, someone with a tail as long as she was tall and tentacles down to her knees? Could really latch onto a person.

Despite the power behind the tackle, the man absorbed the impact like only a father whose children loved to tag team could. Leg bent, stance wide, he took the charge head on.

And when Galatea made contact with his midsection, his arms caught her own, like a bear trap snapping shut.

The idea of using his position to try and suplex her crossed his mind, but he thought better of it, instead trying to push the insistent barnacle away, "I've been waiting in this lobby for you to log in for an hour! Why the heck were you on a mission!?"

"But you didn't say anything about meeting when I told you I'd start today?" The leggy sea monster said with an owlish blink and a quizzical tilt of her head, "I assumed you were busy today. Why didn't you accept my friend request if you were online?"

"I'm a stay-at-home dad on a school day. What could I have possibly been busy with?" He asked– before thinking better of it, "No. Nevermind, don't answer that. And I did! Right… when… Morganne brought a dead bird into the house… Shit. I must have forgotten to press enter– and you never sent me one!"

"Weird, lemme–" She muttered, a blue tentacle flipping through the menu and, "No, it's right there. Friend request to Erovan, pending answer."

"...Gas– Buddy. My dude. Read my status. Read the message I sent you with my GBNO name in it."

"In my defence." The cuttlefish said as hot pink washed out the blue, "I'm a Project Moon fan and therefore legally illiterate."

"Ero-Van," The man stressed. Sounding less than impressed, "Ero-van, do you really think I'd have named myself the 'Lewd Bus'!?"

"If it's from before you got married? Absolutely." The cuttlefish replied without missing a beat.

Meanwhile, while the two friends argued, Galatea's newest friends (and most of the other players in the lobby) looked on, whispering amongst themselves.

"Ohmigod~, that's adorable! I bet they're, like, together!"

"Uh, I seriously doubt it," The white haired EG pilot told his SD companion, "That seems more like a weird argument than anything."

"Really?" The O asked him as its monoeye blinked owlishly at him, "But that's exactly how you're being with onee-san whenever you two meet up?"

"I– wu– bu– No! We're nothing like this!"

"The udon stall?" She asked innocently as he sputtered helplessly.

"It was one time!"

"For once, I'm with Akitama here," "Thank you!" "From what The Ace said, she didn't know about his kids' schedule? So I doubt it's a romantic thing. Could be wrong though." The egg-capybara said with a sage nod, "They do be arguing like Aki and leader tho."

"Oh, screw you dude. What's this? Make fun of Akitama hour?"

"That's like, every hour honey~," The gyaru said as she hugged him tight, "But don't you worry, as your totes sweet and cute and stylish Gee-Ef I'll make you feel loved and appreciated with a lap pillow~."

He vaguely tried to resist, but accepted his fate as a living hug pillow soon enough, just as he always did when his girlfriend got like this.

But while all of the other four joked, pondered and chatted, the fifth member of the group stayed silent. Staring at Galatea's friend with a sour look that she hid under a mask of indifference.

"Oh, hah. Hah. Hah," The man grumbled, finally getting the cuttlefish off of him, "Very funny. Here," With a flick of his wrist, he sent a friend request to Galatea, "Also, you should cancel the one you sent."

"Yea, yea." The leggy seafood said as she rolled off to sit beside him, a tentacle accepting the request at the same time another cancelled the mistyped one. "Anyways, how'd you like my work?"

"Very… you that's for sure. Can't resist the fishussy, can you?" The gas masked man said.

"Glub glub." Galatea deadpanned, before breaking into giggles, eyes set to a warm yellow together with her hair.

"Right, well. As for me," Ervoan jabbed a thumb towards himself, before doing a little twirl, "I look like this."

It was certainly a look. The man had apparently mixed bits and pieces of various games together into something semi-coherent. He wore a heavy duty burnt orange coat that had some resemblance to the Sacaen's outfits in FE6. Over that, he wore brass coloured armour, with silvery accents and embellishments, some sort of deep blue stone set into it to further help break up the monotony.

His face was completely hidden under a sturdy looking helmet that covered his entire head. His 'emblem', or so he called the flame-ish looking symbol he liked to sneak on everything, adorned the forehead. Right under it a silver eye plate hid his eyes behind lenses that were of the same deep blue as the stones on his armour– though throughout their banter, she'd seen they were capable of limited movement, a bit like Spiderman's mask.

And to top it off, instead of a mouthpiece, a large gasmask was built into the helmet, two tubes leading off of it and into mini-air canisters that were hidden into the helmet's design.

"What do you think?"

"Helmet is tippity top. Brass is also always a winner, although I'd have suggested a different colour for the coat. It works but it is a bit too close in shade to that burnt orange. Silver and blue are good contrasts, though." Galatea rattled off without so much as a blink, thick strands of blue shooting through the yellow of her tentacles. "Pants look a bit weird because the chestplate disguises how you're supposed to be wearing a bodysuit under the coat, although the shin wraps are a nice touch."

"Yeah, that's fair," Her friend said with a nod, making a window appear. With a few touches, his pants cycled a few times. Each… worse than the last, "But I haven't unlocked any good pants yet. You'd think they'd drop more often, but nah. FashionFrame is the true end game here. As for the colour, I went with the same colours as on my gunpla, thought it looked decent enough, but yeah it's more for metal than cloth. I'll change it later."

"Still painting them like it's Nerf or nothing?" The cuttlefish chuckled.

"Oh, absolutely. I am committed to that colour scheme, no matter what," The garlean reject sighed, "I am 70% sure that there'd be a freaking riot if I so much as thought about changing the Krouzer's scheme. I'm getting enough shit as it is right now. Don't need to add that to the pile. Also I think it looks cool god damnit!"

"I heard that." Galatea said, pulling her tentacles away to show her (currently) pointed ears, wiggling them a bit just to show off. Once she'd cracked the setup for the tail it had been laughably easy to allow her ears to shapeshift a bit.

"Damn knife ears… So! Care to tell me about your adventures over a cup of coffee, and also who're the kids?"

"Sure. You said GBNO keeps battle footage, yeah?" The anemone head said as her tail pushed her to her feet. "But the short and sweet is that I got the first anime episode experience. Including making a gaggle of friends."

"It can yeah. Come on," Nodding towards the exit, he began moving away, "Let's go to the court with your friends."

"HAH!" Ervoan guffawed as he replayed the moment Galatea was sent ass over teakettle by the Death Army's strike, "You got Death Army'd! Oh man, it really is just an anime's first episode."

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up." The cuttlefish grumbled, purple tentacles curling together into a rude gesture, "How do I get the Fishbone some regen like that, though?"

"You don't." He said simply. Catching the attention of the highschoolers too, "The regen is Death Army only. You'd need to have your entire gunpla be made from death army, or devil gundam, parts. And even then, it's not nearly as good as you think it is. It's good, yeah. But it also pigeonholes you into a single build that can be easily circumvented by enough firepower. Most it can heal are dents and impacts, a missing limb? Forget about it. DG-cell parts are still pretty useful for other things if you can get some. Since they morph and sort of 'flow' like organic things, it's pretty good for things like transforming Mobile Suits, since you can sort of 'cheat' the ability for everything to fit together exactly– think how Transformers do it."

"Oh, like those ones that turn into fighter jets?" Galatea asked, hair dyed blue as she struggled to recall. Wait, no, those were from Macross she was fairly sure.

"I meant more the hasbro Transformers, but yes," He said, making a so-so gesture and drinking his coffee through his mask– somehow. And Galatea knew the thing had collision. Maybe there was a hidden straw, like with Plo Koon's mask? "There's plenty of transforming MS too. Most become planes, but then you have these:"

A window appeared, showing off two gundams.

The first was a white SD one, with splashes of red, black and gold that made it either ninja or samurai themed. While the other one was quite similar, its main colours were black and red, with gold and white distant third and fourth. But it too had a japanese theme.

"That's the same unit, the RX-Zeromaru, piloted by one of the Build Divers. I have no idea what sort of unholy witchery she used to make this thing work…"

"She's using her Armed Armor Hattori support unit," The fox woman told him with a roll of her eyes, "Pretty much everyone knows that."

"That's what she uses to transform. Yes, but the underlying method isn't clear," Ervoan explained, "It's not something an average builder can make."

"I see, says the blind woman." The piece of seafood said, fiddling with the menu to start projecting the second mission.

"It's a roman concrete kind of deal," He explained as the replay went along, "We know how it's done. Sort of, but not really why it's so good at what it does."

"Fair nuff." Galatea said with a nod, more focused on the replay. She already knew how she'd fucked up in the tutorial, but the raid had been too much of a rollercoaster to reflect.

"Decent moves," Her friend said as he watched her move around, "From the looks of things, that machine was a good pick, and pretty well built to start, a good paint job can only do so much. I'd have to take a look to make sure, see what can be improved, but it seems to be doing you some good. It's also good that you went in to help. It's considered good manners to do that, also you get better loot in the long run."

"You can take the weeb out of warframe, but not the warframe out of the weeb." The cuttlefish chuckled, hair glowing a soft yellow. "And sure, we can swing by the hangar later."

"Oh, that reminds me that I'll have to show you a real good time later~," The french man said teasingly, his optics doing something that was kind of an eyebrow waggle, "Still. Props for killing that thing," Pressing the video, he zoomed in on the giant giant robot, "This thing is… at least a Rank D raid? Maybe C?"

"Totes a Rank C," The gyaru said as she sipped on her boba, "Didn't think we'd be able to take it. But this jerk of a Rank C said he could clear it by himself, but needed a team to start the mission!"

"...You– you can start raid missions solo though?" Ervoan said after a moment of silence, "He might have been a griefer? Get low Rank players into a fight they can't win. Get footage for his cringe video, and all that."

"Either that or a genuine idiot." Galatea grumbled, purple eyes lidded in annoyance.

"I mean griefers are idiots. Especially with people like Captain Zeon around, but I get the sentiment." Closing the video, he leaned back into his chair and grabbed the unholy abomination of a burger that he'd left for last. Maybe she could finally see just how he was without his mask on-! "So, before I forget. There's a sort of hidden point counter in the game, it affects how many rewards you get– basically the more S.O.Ss you answer, without sending out S.O.Ss or attacking people that are in your team – yes, you can do that. Yes, it's as dumb as you think. No, the administration doesn't want to get rid of it, because half the game crumbles to nothing if they touch that part of the code–."

"Wait, seriously?" The capybara asked, dubious.

"Check the 'Why is PvP always on, a response' thread on the forum. It's pinned in the Bug and Feature subforum, an employee showed off the code. Something like 99% of the thread is just other coders' descent into insanity as they try to understand the unholy spaghetti monster spread before them, general consensus is 'no fucking wonder EL-Divers are a thing if so many parameters are this messy and causing data leaks.'... PvP is no longer always on BTW, they fixed that bit."

"I assume they don't dare pull it out by the roots and redo it from scratch on account of the poor AIs?" The neoprene maki roll asked in between bites of her whiskey burger.

"Amongst other things that I'm reasonably sure my wife wasn't supposed to tell me." He said with a shrug his– oh god damnit, half of the damn burger was gone!

"Damn, you Europeans have one hell of an appetite," The SD The O said with an uncertain chuckle. Looking slightly distressed at just how much food they'd just put away between them, "And here I thought it was the Americans that had a thing for burgers."

Silently, Ervoan looked at Galatea, a quizzical look in his optics. Should he? Or should she?

The cuttlefish, of course, decided to be a little shit. "Hm? This is just the appetiser. I still have four fifths of the menu to get through."

Oh, hey. Robots could turn green!

"You ass," Her friend moaned with an exasperated, yet amused, sigh, "You're not wrong tho. Still plenty more to eat. I think I'll go for a triple fired triple decker… I have no idea what it actually is, but it sounds amazing."

"A-aren't you afraid?" The fox-girl asked in horror, "The calories–."

"Thick tails are in vogue, so bring them on." Galatea laughed, the appendage in question rising up for a cheerful wave as it flashed orange, "I'm going to see what pairs better with the fries here, vanilla milkshake or the nata ice cream."

"Not gonna lie. The milkshake is just as thick as the icecream, only more pourable… but just barely," The masked man told her as he ordered for both of them, "Taste like absolute diabetes. But man is it good!"

"But him!?" The poor priestess-looking furry screeched.

"What about me? I'll have you know I have no history of– urk!" In between 'bites', if you could call him making his burger vanish like this, he grabbed at his neck with one hand, while putting down his burger with the other so he could hit himself in the chest with it, "P-pickle– stuck in throat…"

"Wash it down with soda." The cuttlefish huffed as she settled back on her seat. She'd been halfway out the moment she heard him choke, but his voice hadn't gone faint and wheezy so he wasn't in danger.

After some coughing and drinking, the man sighed pleasantly, "Got it to pass. Thanks a lot for helping by the way," He grumbled at the walking seafood (who blew him a kiss without missing a beat), before getting back to his burger, "And as I was saying, I don't have a history of heart disease. Not like it'd matter much mind you."

"That's– uh. Like your fourth burger, sir," The capybara hazarded. Clearly not sure of what to do or say here, but still wanting to try and 'help' as best he could, "E–even if you don't have a history…"

"Kid…," With a slightly exasperated tone, Ervoan gave him a flat look. Through the mask. Somehow, "Where are we right now?"

"A burger joint?"

"We have to worry about our guts as much as paying for the repairs and fuel of our mechs." A blue-tinted Galatea sighed as she leaned back in her seat, tossing a rubbery glob of rainbow resin between her hands.

"Uh, what?" It wasn't clear which one of the five said that, but their host began to explain.

"We're in a video game."

Or at least just said something as if it contained the secrets of the universe.

"I mean, like. Duh?" The landschneckt said airily as she sipped on her boba, "We know that. How else would Ka-" "Kit-tsun" "er– Kit-tsun look like that?"

Ervoan looked at the foxgirl that had been pointed out, then back to his food, "And do tell. What are we doing?"

"Eating food?"

"Right, so what are we doing and where?"

"Could you be any more condescending towards us?" The fox grumbled, "We are eating food, in a video… game."

There was a pregnant pause as she said this. The gears in each of their brains grinding to a halt as they all looked at their plates and considered the situation in full.

"I didn't want to insult your intelligence by saying it outright, but even joking about putting pounds on my tail didn't make it click." Galatea coughed awkwardly, although the purple mingling with pink in her tentacles told a different story.

"I don't think they are listening right now," Her friend quipped as the kids began eating and drinking with vigour.

"Pleasure doing business with you." Manel smiled as he tucked away his latest haul from a flea market all the way down in Amposta. He couldn't use these in GBNO, but it'd be good sculpting and painting fodder.

Hulo, hulo.

I am absolutely wiped. Today we had more influx than we've had over the last 2 days at work.

I desire nothing more than to vibe and rest.

But first, I must post! And post I have.

Ervoan is basically 'my character', and his looks are that of a first try I made at designing a Vtuber avatar for myself. In the end, I didn't go for that (or any for that matter. Workshopping one completely fell off once work started to get really soul grinding...) but no sense in wasting a perfectly serviceable character design.

Gala and Ervoan are peas in a pod. Double idiots, the Jessie to the other's Jame's! Who exactly Mewoth is is the source of many arguments...

Hastar · Jan 6, 2024

Chapter 5:

"Soooooo…" Her friend asked as he slid in next to her, milkshake in hand, "How're you linking GBNO after a good week of playing it?"

"Fulldive is fulldive. Enjoying it is a foregone conclusion." Galatea chuckled as a chalk white hand scooped a spoonful of her parfait, blue and yellow swapping eyes with a blink with a ring of purple added for good measure, "Although I'm still miffed that direct control is locked behind kit quality."

"Show-off," Ervoan said with a roll of his optics, before resting his face on his hand and looking towards the outside. Stars glittered behind the thick, clear glass that served as the only barrier between them and the void of space, "It was either that, or locking it to very specific kits and gundam series. And I'd wager you'd hate that even more."

"It's as subconscious as facial expressions." The discount yukionna chuckled. The only reason she was even aware of the shifts in colour was a feeling like goosebumps but not quite as her chromatophores did their thing. In this case, swapping her eyes to full purple for a moment, "But yeah, you aren't wrong."

"'Subconscious' she says. As if she wasn't doing her best impression of a Christmas light," A bright flash in the distance indicated that one of the various Mobile Suits or ships that buzzed around the Space Colony that they were inside of had met a fiery end, "But, hey! At least now you've got some direct control! And I got to scream at you for eight hours like you were part of a Hell's Kitchen contestant. So win-win if you ask me!"

"You're lucky I'm good at parsing accents, it's like you got a whole wheel of gouda crammed in your teeth." She grumbled in between bites, giving him a glimpse of perfectly sculpted teeth. "And you did it on purpose, too, you've only have a faint oily sheen of frenchness when you talk here."

"It's camembert in my mouth, not gouda, thank you very much," the French stooge hautilly barbed, "But nah. That's part of the game. Noticed that everyone around speaks the same language yet? We're in the Japanese server and they all speak in english."

"...Okay, who's got a super-AI hidden in the basement and how likely is the poor thing to give us the SAO experience?" Because that level of on-the-fly translation was insane.

"Bandai, and yes, but actually no. You know what my wife does for a living, yeah?"

"No clue, it isn't like you gush about her harder than Col Hughes." The albino chuckled wryly, purple overtaking her left eye entirely while yellow filled the other.

"Laugh it up. But I'm happy as can be with her– anyhow. As a Woman of Research, she never tires to tell me this: Plavsky is bullshit, as has been long established. There's not really any AI doing anything, the explanation was stupidly complicated, but basically the particle responds to human thoughts and emotions yeah?" As he spoke, he drew little circles in the air. As if it'd help explaining– and somehow it did, Galatea getting what he meant thanks to them, "And with them more or less connected to our minds via the full dive, you're not actually talking with your mouth, you're sort of thinking at people, and these thoughts are translated into speech via the game's interface."

Poking the air one last time, a window opened. A newspaper.

In large, bold letters, "New EL-Diver discovered!" was spread across the front, showing off a confused looking, but smiling and waving teenager that looked halfway between a human and a block of obsidian.

"And that's how we ended up with actual AIs… Well, one of the reasons at least."

"What the fuck, does that mean you can just shout 'exposition!' and people will get the gist?" Gala startled with suddenly red eyes. Good lord, no wonder Arch had disappeared for an entire year to research these things. They validated so much in AAQ.

"It's not that good. You have to actually think the stuff you want to explain. Case in point, this entire discussion," Leaning back in his seat, he pointed at the outside, "But it's good enough that some people in Nils Labs are trying to see if it can be applied outside of the game. So far, it's kinda shit."

"How does it apply to writing in the game, anyways?" She said as the red bled away into blue.

"I… don't actually know?" He slowly admitted, before staring at the menu intently, "This is written in english. Right?"

"It is, yeah." The albino said with a bob of her head.

"...And it's a Japanese server still," Grabbing the edge of the menu, he closed it and slid it as far away as he could, "You know what? I'd just rather not today… SO! In the spirit of a totally smooth and not at all forced subject change– Nice threads! What prompted the new avatar?"

"What do you mean, new avatar?" Galatea blinked owlishly, before her eyes widened in realisation. Before Ervoan's eyes, her irises swallowed her sclera and her pupils distended into a cuttlefish's W. The scales and bits of coral pushed through her skin a moment later. "I made a shapeshifter, didn't I tell you?"

As she changed, Ervoan had been getting ready to work his vile sorcery to take a sip of his milkshake.

Instead, the delicious beverage hit the front of his mask and dribbled down, covering his entire front in a sticky, sweet, white mess as her transformation gobsmacked him, "Wuh?"

A few more seconds, and her hair was clumped up in rubbery anemone tentacles again, while her tail uncoiled from her midsection. A flat, featureless thing scarcely thicker than a thumb which contorted into a meaty rope as naturally as a tongue may, poking his mask's gem playfully.

"Huh? Wha-!" Batting the tail away, the masked man straightened up and put his shake away, "Stop that you menace! And, pardon my french. But what the fuck dude? How in the shit did you-!?"

"Three months of obsessive work, several years off of the life expectancy of whoever manages chargen and probably a lot of Plavsky particle nonsense." Galatea chuckled as she tucked away her tail again, eyes and tentacles glowing a warm yellow even as the latter started to hiss and smoke. A few seconds later, her hair was loose again, if smelling slightly of fish. The scales and coral followed suit a moment later, together with her eyes. "But yeah. At least this explains why I have a different palate here, body craves starch and cartilage to make the resin. Not quite sure why it also goes crazy for sushi, tho."

"That's not–" Burying his head in his hands, Ervoan groaned, "The game's not even supposed to simulate biology like this. How'd you even do this… 'Light of the Human Heart' my ass. More like 'bullshit in a can'."

"The Heart." The chimera deadpanned. Well, hearts, she had two for the sake of symmetry.

"I didn't coin the term. The people in Nils Labs are all brainwashed by classic Gundam stuff," With a few pokes of his menu, his outfit changed into a more militarily sound armour, eliminating the milkshake that had coated his front, "And this is how you're supposed to change your avatar."

He was grumbling. But his voice sounded… different, less gruff and manly than it had in his other clothes.

"I didn't even know you could do that. Half the reason I went so hard into chargen." Galatea shrugged, peeling a casino chip off the back of her hand and rolling it through her fingers.

"There's a ton of cosmetics you can use to alter your look– Clothes, hairstyles, skin tint. That sort of stuff. But things like changing your gender or going from human to furry, or vice versa, is one of the few proper cash shop items." The (metaphorical, probably) frog said.

"Ahh, sweet, sweet vindication." The albino smiled, eyes shining yellow. "Neat getup, by the by. Although the skull looks a bit out of place with that colour scheme."

"In this specific case, it's really not. It's part of an entire setting's aesthetic."

"Fair enough. Although it should at least be brass to match the rest of the armour." Galatea shrugged, before hurrying to scarf up the last of her parfait before it got lukewarm and disgusting.

"Point taken. Though, honestly this one is just the basic bitch version I worked into cooler variants. Wanted to get the shake off of me– still haven't told me where you got your new threads by the by."

"Lan-daki took me shopping after I mentioned how the whole point of my avatar was maximising fashionframe options." The chimera said, idly flicking her hair back, "Besides, I did want something to go with my base form."

"Oh Em Gee!" It should have been a regular day of poking at GBNO and learning the ropes. However this died a gruesome death when Galatea ran into her new gyaru friend, "You're into fashion? You're just like me FR!"

"What's the point of an MMO if you aren't dressing up to the nines?" The cuttlefish countered with a chuckle, yellow rippling down her tentacles.

"I know, right? I don't get the people that don't try to get cute outfits!" To illustrate her point, she twirled in place, before flashing a V sign. Unlike before, she looked… normal as could be, her armour replaced but a stereotypical JK outfit, "It's like they don't wanna have fun and show off!"

"I can understand some people wanting to focus more on their mech's looks, but come on, live a little!" The leggy seafood huffed good naturedly, waving a clawed hand animatedly. "Nice outfit, by the by. Monochrome is always solid, although I'd add some brass to the belt to go with the hairclips and your eyes. Maybe a bracelet too."

"Thanks~, I threw it together when I logged in! But it's not staying on for long~." Grabbing Galatea's hand, she started to drag her towards a nondescript building.

"Hah, fair nuff." The deep sea waifu said as she followed along, long legs not having any trouble at all keeping up with the excitable gyaru. "This'll be a first, don't really have the budget for store crawls in meatspace."

Which was a damn shame, because she'd love a tailored suit. Ah, well, she could get one here.

"Well, you'll have all the money for it here~. That Raid Boss gave us an unlimited budget~! Well, almost." She admitted after a bit, "But still enough to get you out of those hawaiian shirts."

"Maybe start with something to go with my default looks?" Galatea asked, body already hissing and smoking as she melted away the resin. Well, most of it, the bits on the tail were complex enough she just secreted a tiny bit of dissolvent and stashed the whole thing into her inventory. Soon enough, she looked like her namesake, marble come to life. If with an octet of tentacles falling around her shoulders together with her hair and a sinuous tail curling behind her.

The transformation caught her friend by surprise, looking on silently as Gala's various bits fell away.

Once the seafood was no longer quite as fishy, she suddenly found her shoulders grasped by a pair of strong hands, "You're mine." The gyaru whispered with none of her usual cheer, "You are mine and I am not letting you go. The things I can do with a shapeshifter~☆!"

Haha, she was in danger.

"Fair enough. You done with your food, right? Got something to show you that you'll like~."

Galatea arched a perfectly manicured eyebrow, but nonetheless closed the ordering menu and waved for him to get on with it.

Leaving the café, Ervoan brought her to a secluded part of the colony, "Here," Lobbing a small key at her, he pressed a similar one against an inconspicuous door, "It's the key to my personal home area– the first floor of it at least. You can use it on any of the private home access points to go to it. The neat thing's inside."

"This wasn't how I was expecting to sleep on your couch, but sure." The albino chuckled as she strolled in.

Past the door was… A lot of not much. A fairly large courtyard made of beaten earth greeted her, beside the dull brown of the floor, the only colours were the bits of greenery and a few flowerbeds stood at the foot of the stone walls enclosing the space.

There was only one thing of note, a table sitting in the middle of the courtyard. Next to, and on it was a true mountain of hobby supplies.

Glues, paints, brushes, both of the hand and air variety, knives, nippers, bits and even a 3D resin printer. And sitting in front of it all, a colourful box the size of a small dog, "Remember when you were complaining about not being able to 'train' your hobby skills?" Leaning against the table, Ervoan had changed his outfit yet again, "Well, here you go!"

He probably should've expected the ballistic albino headed straight for his chest.

"Don't you d–!" Which after her glomping him a few times over the last week (sue her, she was still drunk on being able to hug her friend), he actually did!

…Not that it saved him from being bowled over, the two of them tumbling to the ground in a heap.

To his credit though, he kicked her off of him mid-tumble and finished his in a crouched position while she was staring up at the sky.

"Huh, did you learn self-defence?" The tall glass of water said as she practically slithered back to her feet. This body was unnaturally flexible, came with making the bones slightly cartilaginous to be able to shift her height and build somewhat thanks to an extra set of muscles.

In response, he sprung towards her with a chuckle, throwing himself at her like she just had.

Galatea didn't exactly know why her friend had gotten a sudden urge to roughhouse, but she wasn't about to say no. A twirl and her tail was smashing into his side like a runaway truck. She may not have designed it primarily for strength and heft, but… well, a bearcat's tail was four times smaller than hers and could still snap a man's neck easy as you please.

He was in armour, he'd be fine.

More than fine apparently.

With a twist of his body, he redirected the slap's energy and wasn't sent off course completely.

Just enough that he couldn't grab Galatea with both arms.

Not letting that deter him, one of his arms still caught the shapeshifter in the chest, letting him bring her down to the floor with him.

Then, moving faster than her, he put her in a hold. One of his legs entwined with one of hers, pinning it, while one of his arms, secured by the other, wrapped around her neck. In this position there wasn't much she could do… meaning she was unable to resist when he used his greatest weapon–

"thbbbbbbbbbbt–" Blowing a raspberry in her neck.

Which… didn't do much on account of the full face helmet between him and her neck. It was just noise. On the upside (for him) that meant she wasn't covering her neck in slimy, pungent dissolvent to give him a mouthful.

Didn't stop her from extending an inhumanly long tongue and covering his lenses in hot pink resin with a long lick, though. She didn't exactly like having her head locked like this and could be a petty bitch about things.

"Haha!" Letting go of her, the father that was more of a child than his kids, rolled to his feet with a cheer, "Your licking means nothing! For I am victorious!"

Lifting his arms into the air, he walked away with a spring in his steps and a hum on his lips.

At least until he crashed into a wall.

"Gah! Fuck!" As it turned out, being completely unable to see anything due to a pink haze covering your eyes was not conducive towards avoiding obstacles, "Pyrrhic victories still count as victories!"

"Suuuure." Galatea drawled out as she pushed herself up with her tail, eyes glowing a brilliant yellow as she broke into giggles.

"I know that giggle," He warned as he felt around his face for the resin, "It's the same as the twins' when they decide to be their dad's worst nightmare…"

"Love you too~" She practically sang as the giggles finally died down, "Now, was there anything else you wanted to show me?"

"Sure, gimme– oh, wait." Facepalming like he was an idiot, which he was, no need for Galatea to kid herself, he quickly changed back into his usual outfit, now milkshake free, "You know about Master Asia, right?"

"The punchline to the 'do you wanna fight what's inside' meme, right?" The popsicle asked with a tilt of her head.

"Yep. Here," With a few taps, his menu caused a small turret to appear. With a whir and a beep, it locked onto him, a red light blinking next to its cannon, "Watch this."

Wait, did this idiot think he could catch–

With a bang, the turret fired a bullet. Faster than she could really react, Ervoan unsheathed his blade, and in the same movement parried the bullet, making it impact the side of the wall he'd just ran into.

As if this was the signal, the machine then began to rhythmically firing more and more projectiles at him, slowly ramping up its firing speed.

In response, the crazed Frenchman swung his sword faster and faster, blocking each shot– though not without being pushed back as the stream of bullets intensified–, "Stop!"

As soon as he spoke the command, the machine did as instructed. Retracting its barrel and various sensors into itself and making itself the size of a large briefcase, "So, what do you think about this~?" He teased, before immediately adding something else, "–And NO pouncing! I have a sword in my hands!"

The woman may as well have been dunked in green paint, glowing eyes boring into his own through his mask, "Teach me."

Chuckling, Ervoan cleared his throat a few times, before speaking, "New alert marked on navigation, Tenno."

"Shut up!" Galatea squeaked, a flare of red swallowing the green and leaving her marble skinned once more as Lotus' voice made her brain violently segfault.

"What's wrong, Tenno? Can't handle the mommy energy, Tenno?" Her friend most certainly did not stop, and did quite the opposite, "OR. WOULD YOU RATHER. I. SPEAK LIKE THIS. YOU MAGGOT!?"

"You're awful!" The albino managed as she broke down into giggles, "Pfft, for how long have you been sitting on that!?"

"NOT THAT- OH. WOOPS- Not that long," He said with his regular voice, "In case it's not sunk in completely yet. You can be– and to an extent, do whatever you want. I'm not Ser Bones, so I'm not gonna sing the praises of this aspect of the game nearly as well as he can. But people that can't walk can. People that can't see, speak, hear can. To say nothing of the trans community. As for the voices? One of the people I know in here is a VA IRL. Gave me a few tips while you were being you with that avatar, so… two? One and a half week?"

"And yes, it was everything I'd hoped~."

"Do you just have an insane talent or is it part of the whole intent reading thing?" Galatea asked after a few seconds, once she was sure she had a grip again.

"Intent mostly. I am getting pretty good at voices out of the game, but–" Patting the gunpla box, he grabbed one of the many pairs of nippers on the table, "In here, you're not constrained by your body, so I can do the Lotus perfectly. But IRL I don't have the vocal cords for it, I can get close but it's never gonna be as good. Essentially the skills you pick up aren't 1-to-1. Take working on this kit, chances are, you won't have any shakes, random twitches, or anything like it. But out of here, you just might, depending on how much coffee you drank."

"I've always had pretty steady hands, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue." The leggy popsicle shrugged.

"Huh-huh," The nerf-warrior shrugged noncommittally, "Just don't get angry that your human eyes aren't as amazing as your sexy monster girl eyes."

"Yeah, yeah." She grumbled, the eyes in question turning purple as she pouted.

Then, grabbing a knife and the box, he slashed the plastic film away, , "With that being said. Let's get to grinding that Naramon focus, eh?"

AFTER SURVING THE FIRST WEEK OF THE YEAR (not for lack of trying on the part of the shop's suppliers and the never ending flow of clients) I AM HERE!

And here's this week's chapter!

In it we've got some more exploration of the setting, straight from the mouth of an expert...'s husband.

Ervoan's wife is a Nilsen Lab employee and knows (and shares) quite a lot about GBNO's workings vis-a-vis of the Plavsky Particles. Really, it's just me handwaving the reason why everyone speaks X language in this game.

if this seems far stretched. Recall that those particles can teleport a teenager with no idea of what he's doing across light years worth of distance. They care not what your puny hooman mind thinks is realistic, only how to make cool shit happen.

Speaking of, players brawling against each others, or NPCs outside of the Gunpla will be semi-common in this fic... And by that I mean super common! It's still very much a gunpla/gundam oriented fanfic, but we'd be remiss to ignore the 40k scale of battle...

As for Bandai letting people own models in game, at this point, they are basically richer than Midas and keep getting richer due to being the sole supplier of Plavsky Particles, and spearheading the research into them, getting them a butt-ton of money off of patents and copyright loans.

Hastar · Jan 13, 2024

Chapter 6:

"Thanks for the run!" TaHi-2 said with an excited wave, her The O avatar slowly dispersing as she logged off, "Now I've got the same rank as sis!"

"Hah, no worries! It's always nice to go for a light marathon." Galatea chuckled. Two hours straight had certainly scratched the endless mission itch. She wasn't one of those deranged grind cultists who would go for eight hours straight, but she could still appreciate a long mission.

"See-ya later Gala!" With one last wave, she disappeared, leaving the tall bottle of fish sauce alone in the lobby. Well, as good a time as any to prep up for the visit to the EU hub that Cheese had promised her. Sure, she hadn't been given any information other than 'megachurch', but she could work with that.

"Why heeeeello there, miss 'Completely Blind'," Speaking of the devil, he appeared right as she finished glueing on the last of her tentacle covers, "Enjoyed your shopping spree I see?"

"As much as the designer finally having someone appreciate his work. I know that most players don't think to use anything other than the presets of generic anime man and woman, but must they be so milquetoast in what they wear?" She grumbled, an oversized sleeve flopping around as she gesticulated.

"You expect too much of the local salaryman that just comes here to have a bit of fun on the one hour their black company affords them– I'm only mostly joking. People tend to think of their gunpla as their Avatar, and their avatar as just a little something that lets them eat cake." Ervoan chuckled.

"Bah. Bah I say!" She pouted, happily playing into how much younger the outfit made her look despite her height.

Patting the head of the nun-like woman like she was a child, Ervoan chuckled, "D'aw. Lookit you being all upset and stuff~!"

"Says the man standing on his tippy toes to reach my head." Galatea snickered.

"Says the woman pouting exactly like my kids," He immediately shot back, stance wobbling a bit, "That veil hides nothing if you're that tall, you know?"

"It's not really a veil, just an oversized version of that white band nun habits have." She said with a shrug which hid the rustle of her tail darting out to unbalance him.

"Fool!" With a backdash, he avoided the shove, "My dad-sense is too strong for your weak shenanigans! You'll never catch me off guard with such obvious tactics! –Anyhow, ready to go to Europe?"

"I'll send your daughters a dozen tubs of finger paint for christmas, see if I don't." The nun sniffed, only to drop her act just as quickly as her friend had once she had the last word. "But yeah. I want to see how this megachurch stacks up against the Sagrada Familia."

"The Church of Saint Amuro is pretty dope. Ignore the statues of Kira Yamato if you see any, they are the symbol of the devil. Anyhow to get there, we'll need to hop back into our Mobile Suits, don't need to get into a fight or anything," Jabbing a finger towards one of the giant circular gates that hovered above the city, he continued, "We need to use one of those to get to the server. Everything's interconnected, but it'd take like half a day to fly there from here– and we'd need to pass over Russia, AKA the land of the PvP junkies."

"Kurwa." Galatea deadpanned.

The 'loading tunnel' seemed to go on forever. The game stubbornly refused to let her access the stupid server, the featureless walls killing her with the tedium of it all, until at long last the exit finally came into view.
A boost of her thrusters and she was through, light blinding her cameras for a moment until–

Well, it was a very European sight, she guessed? At least how people usually imagined it: Rolling green hills, some forests and huge mountains in the distance, the sun setting beneath them.

"Aaaaand we're here! Come on, the hub's that a way," From inside of her cockpit, Ervoan poked at the largest mountain off in the distance, "Should take us a minute or two to reach it."

"Oh, is it a kingdom under the mountain sort of deal?" She asked. That could be neat.

"Noooot quite. But you're not entirely wrong?" Her passenger shrugged, before leaning against one of the walls, "You'll see soon enough~."

Sure enough, as they approached, the mountain started to look… weird. The massive shadow it cast made it really hard to tell, but it looked angular? Somehow. Like parts of it were carved.

More and more details started to pop out as they got closer. Pipes snaking through the scenery, massive gas vents bursting out of the healthy ground like a myriad of roots and mushrooms–

But the nature of the 'mountain' became all too clear when they crossed the border that separated light and darkness.

"Cago'n Deu." She swore lowly.

A gothic BEHEMOTH rose in front of her.

Gargantuan spires of steel and stone rose from the very lowest levels of the earth and into the sky.

It was no mountain, but the promised 'Megachurch'.

And it certainly lived to its name. Even from here, she could see magnificent glass stained windows, statues of Mobile Suits clad in holy vestments and armour. Some even having enough taste to ditch the Gundams' facemasks in favour of knightly helms, their V-fins repurposed into heraldries.

She numbly checked the HUD. Seventy kilometres away still.

"Yep, that's the face I was expecting."

"Please tell me the people around here put a tenth of this effort into their avatars." The fake nun pleaded, even as her eyes refused to budge from the monument to urbanisation.

"Each Hub tends to correspond to a group of players. Japan's the more 'normal' crowd, Persia, or the middle east, are for the builders, Russia is home to the PvP-ers, the americas is where the combat lunatics live, greater Asia's where the martial arts lunatics are based in," Holy shit that statue of a paladin Zaku was the size of a god damn skyscraper made for Mobile Suits. The Fishbone was smaller than the monoeye!, "Europe? Europe is where the roleplayers are based out of."

Twirling into her view, Ervoan gave her the most over the top bow she'd ever seen, "Allow me, my friend, to welcome you to the one true home you never knew you had~."

"Motherfucker, if you'd told me I'd have been able to prep a character." Galatea grumbled without heat, the pout fighting ferociously with her smile.

Lifting his head, he gave her a flat stare, before delivering an even flatter, "No."

Moving away from her main camera's screen, he shrugged, "Honestly, as much as it's a roleplayer's heaven, it's probably better that you get a decent taste of it before you commit to any character. Most people here go for the classic Zeon, Federation, or whatever other Gundam faction they think is coolest, but some people? They dive in deeeeeeep, making the weirdest of things. From what I heard? This place used to be normal looking before a group of players got to it, and well–"

"They did with the city what I did with my avatar, yeah." She chuckled. "But fair, I didn't stop to think that most would go for Gundam factions, which I have zero fucking clue on."

"I can probably introduce you to a few people if you want– oh, right. I think you mentioned another hobby project? Working on your second kit? Might be able to narrow down the sort of people to go poke." He asked from behind his gas mask.

"Oh, nah, I just found some small figurines at a flea market. Using them as painting and moulding fodder." Galatea shook her head. "You know my grumblings about the Fishbone's finish."

"Huh, really? What sort? Like action figures, or minis?" Ervoan tilted his head.

"Minis, I think. Those are the ones that have fixed joints and come in a little base, right?" The fake nun said, a finger on her lower lip.

"Yep. Usually used for things like DnD or wargames. Got pictures of them?"

"Yeah, I take a few before and after every project with them. One sec." She said as she flicked open the menu. Thankfully, she had all of them in a solo discord server, because while google drive was a good backup, it was slow and a pain in the ass when it came to searching for pics.

"Huh… I thought you said those were just for testing your skills?" Sliding up next to her, Ervoan gave her a bit of ribbing as he peered at the holographic screen, "But look at you, already getting into the underground parts of GBNO. You can't fool me here, good sir~."

"I guess Gundam has monstergirls hiding in some obscure spin off?" Galatea asked with a tilt of her head, completely confused. "It was an old lady selling her kids' old things, so I didn't get any context for them."

"...Do–," The man looked at her incredulously as they finally entered the cavernous city, the hangar bay being located between two noble-looking MS, a Zaku and a Gouf, crossing their weapons high above as a gesture of respect and camaraderie, "Do you not know about Warhammer 40k?"

"Isn't that a Total War setting?" The fake nun asked, very faintly remembering a thumbnail of some sort of generic fantasy TW game with that name on youtube.

Her friend snort-guffawed his disgusting French laugh, "Pfffffawhawhawhaw! No– No it's not!" Laughing still as they docked, he wiped an imaginary tear, "It's only the most popular miniature wargame in the world, 'Blood for the Blood God'? 'Show me what passes for fury amongst your misbegotten kind'? 'METAL BAWKES!'? 'Just as planned'? All of those memes came from it!"

"Huh, neat." She had encountered like half of them, although she had been pretty sure 'just as planned' was just a variant of 'all according to keikaku'. "But what does it have to do with Gundam that it's an underground thing here?"

"Bandai owns Games Workshop. It's actually kind of the funniest shit ever, want me to explain badly, or do you want me to link you a video that goes deep so you can really get why it's hilarious?" Ervoan asked.

"Explanation now, video later. Otherwise it's going to be bothering me for the entire trip." She said with a wave of her hand, idly stepping out of her cockpit into the platform.

"Fair enough," For his part, Ervoan simply leaped out of the cockpit, landing right next to her like a Tenno starting a mission, "I'll tell you while we walk. Just to be sure, you do think those girls of yours are real neat, right?"

"Yeah, great sculpt and really solid colour scheme. Chalk white skin with a light lilac tint works for whatever sort of succubi they are. The hot pink hair and inhuman bits were a bit much, but shifting them to a vivid purple fixed that." Galatea said, faintly feeling like she was peering down another fandom hole. Ah, well, Hololive hadn't gotten her, so this probably wouldn't either.

"What about these?" Opening a few windows, he first showed her an army of red-robed robot people, gigantic stomping machines behind them. Then switched to another, grim faced giants in heavy armour firing upon a collection of her own figurines as a large, heavily armed, power loader straight out of Alien unleashed a gout of flame. Before opening one last image, which had one of the gribbly-est alien swarm she'd seen, "See anything you like in here?"

"First one is pretty good but I don't like a few of their units. Second one's great. Third is neat but not really my thing." She rattled off. Galatea liked monsters as much as the next girl, but something about the design rubbed her wrong. Maybe it was that they looked like they were trying a bit too hard to seem scary? Although the organic guns were a really nice touch.

"Right then, in that case I know exactly where to take you. It's pretty damn deep in the city's bowels though, so it'll take a bit to walk there," Motioning at Galatea to follow, he began to explain, "So, first thing you need to understand. Games Workshop, or GW, was a pretty big deal back when this all happened. You know about Touhou right? How it's a Japanese game series that basically infected the western internet and kept spreading? Well, 40k's the same– except from the west. It's pretty massive over in Japan, even if you wouldn't think it with how no one really talks about it."

"So hundreds of unique characters but very little lore, making everyone cook up their own stuff? At least, that's how I understand Touhou got so popular. Well, that and the banger music." The fake nun tilted her head, before waving a hand as if to fan away an idea, "And a mountain of gay porn, of course, but everything popular has that."

"Not nearly as many hats, cool music and gay porn. But kinda yeah," Down and down they went. Passing by dozens of people, each more colourful than the last, the majority were wearing Gundam based outfits, but she could see blips of completely different looks here and there. Their numbers growing as they headed deeper, "With the caveat that it actually has like, a shitton of lore. But almost all of it is galactic scaled, the sort of major, faction shaping and history defining stuff of legends. Which leaves a lot of cracks and empty space to be filled by 'your dudes', who while they won't be changing the fate of the galaxy, can change that of entire worlds, solar systems and so on."

Galatea decided not to mention how a plurality of people would ferociously wank about their randoms saving everything forever across the entire galaxy. You had to ignore 90% of fan content or drown in sewage. "Neat. How well does it handle that scale, though? Sci-fi is infamous for it."

"Neither GW, nor Bandai, can scale for shit." He said simply, "But back on topic. GW was many things. But they weren't willing to, or able to– I'm fuzzy on the specifics, distribute 40K in Japan… which is where Bandai comes in."

"Dunno how it went, but everyone's favourite Giant Robot and Warcrime providers took care of 40k in Japan– GW and them got along pretty well from what I can tell. Letting Bandai make official, Japan exclusive, 40k minis called 'Warhammer Heroes'... it was a gasha," He added, like the foregone conclusion that it was.

"Of course. We should count ourselves lucky they didn't gate it behind pachinko as-is." Why Bandai had a boner for those machines, she'd never know.

"Heh. Yeah… but now? Now comes the funi, so you might recall that when the company that came up with plavsky particles unveiled them, Bandai jumped on them and got an exclusive deal." Pausing for a second or two, he opened a map to check their location. From the looks of it, they were in the middle levels, and getting close to some sort of lift.

Which she still thought stank a great deal, as with any exclusivity contract. Especially with something like a whole-ass magic particle. Even when the beneficiaries didn't get lazy in their monopoly, it meant everyone got cheated out of anything not made by the company.

"Plavsky plastic single handedly changed the gunpla marketing strategy. Before kits were relatively expensive, since after buying on, you, in theory, don't need to get a second of the same MS, but with Gunpla Battling entering the equation? Bam!" Snapping his fingers to illustrate his point, "You needed kits by the dozen! As you well know…"

"I've seen the pictures, too." She chuckled ruefully. So goddamn many spare parts piling up because if any one bit got broken you had to buy a whole new kit.

"And people wonder why I made having a weapon selection wider than their mom's backside my gimmick," He grumbled as he shuddered, the horrors creeping back into his mind, "Can you believe that the first time I did that, it was solely because the beam emitter in the Likorn's wrist got completely fucked by a beam and I didn't have a spare one? I had to scramble to shove a random bit in there, I didn't even know it was a grenade until I launched into the finals… somehow it got me the tournament win, and everyone was so convinced it had been on purpose that I decided 'Guess that's my life now.'"

"Stellar decisionmaking." The fake nun snickered behind her fingers, seeming to shrink three feet in an eyeblink as brat energy took over. It helped that she'd actually shrunk by a foot by contorting her semi-cartilaginous skeleton.

"Honestly, it kinda was?" Only for his 'Yeah, imo you're actually correct' shields to repel most of the surge, "I've never had more fun watching people over analyse what sort of loadout I'd be bringing whenever I bought a new kit and posted it on twitter. I basically went through half a tournament without fighting anyone, because they mindgame'd themselves into thinking that I had the exact weapons to completely counter them. It was hilarious."

"But yeah. With that sort of paradigm change, Bandai made kits much, much cheaper. More or less knocked half the price off– it hurt their margins, but it boosted revenue since GB was both super accessible cost-wise, and had an in-built attrition that made you constantly buy new kits… Aaaand therein lies the problem– we're taking the next left to get to the lift. Should be a pretty scenic descent," Pointing at a small opening on their left, he began shuffling through the people towards it, "GW used their Bandai connection to get access to the Plavsky particle too. The idea was to allow the epic and rich world of 40k into the real world. To turn games of it into true wars and skirmishes where grand armies clashed on the battlefield!"

"I mean, minis are probably a lot cheaper to replace, although I pity chaff heavy factions." Galatea hazarded, thumbing the rim of her visor. "Did they rip them off with the paints or something?"

"Nah. They just didn't change the pricing at all– oh, by the way a basic squad was like 30 bucks for unpainted, unglued, still on sprue, gray plastic dudes."

Galatea froze mid step, lifted her visor to get a second look, dug around in her ear and–

Nope, she had heard right and her friend wasn't joking.

"What."

"Oh– and one of the factions has a thing where if they die, they can come back at the end of a turn, they are Egyptian Robot Zombies–," He spun to look at her, a manic glow shining through his lenses, "Can ye guess what didn't work in the new format where your models get turned into fecking ash?"

"Amazing." She deadpanned, feeling the force of three million shitposts and bitching sessions come crashing down onto her head from the internet.

"Mhm," Ervoan sighed, feeling the exact same pain, "I was… lucky? Depending on your opinion, to see some of those battles. And yeah they were absolutely amazing. Everything you'd want them to be, but then the guys that fought realised that in a single game, they'd lost around 80% of their army. Gunpla back then rewarded you the more effort you put into them, painting and the likes boosted performance as it does now, damage was a pain to fix, but it wasn't lose over two years worth of love and effort amounts of pain."

"So yeah, people were ever so slightly miffed. As you can guess. They screamed at GW louder than they ever screamed at them and GW heard them…" Taking a dramatic pause, Galatea already knew what he was about to say, "So they hiked up the price of the models because 'the new plastic required higher quality molds' and because people stopped buying their shit entirely– oh, forgot to mention. GW basically decided that the 'real' combat was now the only official way to play the game. So people also kinda just stopped attending their official tournaments. I don't think you need a degree in economics to guess what happened next."

Finally, they reached the lift meant to take them lower still. It was a very utilitarian one. A box of metal, with peeling paint and walls made from chainlinks.

"Bandai drank their corpse like a capri sun." She said with a shake of her head, hand on her hip as she settled herself in the elevator. The franchise had clearly stuck around given Cheese's comments before this deranged trip through corporate incompetence.

"More or less, yeah. GW went through a massive death spiral, until Bandai bought them out entirely, which included all of their IPs," With a shudder, the lift began to go down. Its gaps only showing bare concrete walls at first, "They had a few rocking about. But basically, from that point on Bandai called the shots and sort of just rolled back all of GW's blunders. Kits got cheaper overall, the live combat became an alternate way to play it instead of the main, and so on."

Suddenly, their world opened up.

A cavern, oppressive in its yawning size and self assured grandeur as statues like those of the outside held the very roof upon the backs, welcomed them.

Even though he was obviously used to this, Gala's good friend couldn't help but take in a sharp breath at the sight of it.

"Well, it isn't an authentic dwarven hold, but I think that's still an item off my bucket list." The fake nun muttered under her breath.

"Oh, nah. Those are in the Iceland and Scandinavian region," He said, nonplussed, "Because now we get to the crux of your question. 'Why is 40k an 'underground' thing? Besides the fact that the lads we're gonna meet decided to run with the joke and made their den deep into the recesses of the earth? Bandai uses the same plastics for everything in the catalogue of products. The same sort of plastics used to make gunplas are used in GW models, from the 40k ones, to the fantasy, or Age of Sigmar ones too. See where I'm going with that?"

"Is GBNO such a temple to pasta that the same code that makes giant mechs work, by complete fuckin accident, can run infantry units just fine?" She slumped incredulously.

"Hehe, almost. But not quite. As I heard it being told, back when it came out the game could scan them just fine. But they come out as… well, basically a tiny Gunpla that you couldn't do anything with since there's no cockpit. But everything else was as it should be. Same pose, same texture, same colours," Opening a screen, he showed her a picture of a giant grim man with a Char looking dude gesturing excitedly at it. It looked like a statue, and a pretty dope one at that, "So this guy here, did the only sane thing. He started modding the game so you could play 40k in GBNO…"

"Bug that let you scan them got patched basically just before he could release it. He uh… He may have sent a very insulting letter to the Bandai HQ as a result, alongside the parts of the mod that were done," A much spiker grim man showed on his screen, fighting the less spiky grim men, "Specifically the Space Marines, and Chaos Space Marines– the posterboys of the setting. To everyone's surprise, they hired him right after, and now the mod is an unofficial official thing?"

"Nea–" She froze, gears visibly turning in her head even with the visor blocking half her face until her neck snapped to him hard enough to cripple a human. "Wait. Waitwaitwait. Does this mean that you can legitimately get the Warframe experience here?"

"My sister in Christ, I literally parried bullets in front of you?" He asked, unsure of what she meant, "Define the Warframe experience. Because if that's not it, then I dunno what is? Do you mean– like fighting people out of the mechs?"

"I mean actually having content for those physical feats. I thought all I'd get to do was pinball around hubs and once in a blue moon spar with a player." She gesticulated wildly as her voice grew more crazed, a manic laugh ripping out of her throat, "Now you just told me I can go mow through the Infestation's less mouldy cousins."

"–Gala, I can go out right now and fight a Zaku with my sword if I feel like it."

"That's a cool boss fight but not the point." He raised a finger to try and interrupt her, but lowered it, conceding the point, "The warframe experience is mowing through hordes of chaff with the occasional crunchy bit of elite."

"Yeah, okay. I didn't think of it that way. But yeah, you kiiiinda do? It's not quite the same, but– you know what? I'll just say yes. And let Gerg explain it. He's better at that than I could ever be," Walls once more enclosed them, before the lift came to a gentle stop, "But since that's gonna bother you all the way until we get there–"

Going low, he grabbed Gala and pulled her in a princess carry, struggling a bit with her size, but not her weight, "I'll leave you to explore the hub later. Hold on tight, because I'm giving you the 'Why Tennos don't carry rescue targets' experience right this second!"

It was hard to tell if the tall glass of fish sauce was screaming for her life or whooping in joy as her friend carried her. Jumping across, over, along walls and buildings, sliding under pipes and between moving containers.

He slid down a waterway, the edge rushing to meet them alongside a pit of utter darkness. Their only salvation from a painful fall, a ledge in the distance. Ervoan chose that moment to make his delight known. "WOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOO! PAAAAAARKOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUR!"

His leg pushed off with utterly inhuman strength, water exploding all around them from the sheer force behind the jump. They hung in the air, weightless, frozen in space as time stood still, fate tossing the coin to decide if they would make it or not.

The fall wasn't the most pleasant, her friend obviously not knowing how to nail the landing with a passenger and arms glued to said bundle of sushi. Still, their tumble didn't end badly as they rolled off the ledge and into another steep incline…

"Phew~," Eventually, the cheese's mad run slowed down, first into a jog, then into a spirited walk, "We're almost there."

The vibe here was quite different from the upper levels. Like the entire mass of the hub above pressed down on them. The architecture was still quite nice, but felt… slum-y or at least fairly seedy. It was reflected by the people around them too. Most paid them no mind, but some stared at them with curiosity. And fewer still gave Ervoan a nod of respect or recognition.

"Mind unsticking yourself? The club's on the next right," he shook her a bit, but couldn't get her off to showcase his predicament, "And it's not the best entrance, for either of us."

A quiet hiss and the faint smell of the sea was her answer. It felt like he was covered in pop rocks as the resin melted away to harmless vapour.

"Ooooh, tingly." Crouching, he helped her to her feet, "You can walk alright, or?"

"I'm… fine." She said as shakily as her legs, however her tail did stabilise her just fine so she wasn't talking out of that perfectly sculpted ass. A few seconds later, the red faded from her body, leaving her white as a sheet again.

"Good to hear, come on. Greg should be waiting for us." Waving her forwards, he shoved his hands in his pockets and began whistling as he led her.

As they turned right, they came across… Well, it wasn't the most impressive building. If anything, it looked kind of not so great. A large door, some windows, all made from sheet metal and built into one of the pillars that supported this level of the mountain.

The only thing that gave a clue to what lay beyond was a small placard, set right above the door.

Avernus.

…Unfortunately, she didn't have the rest of the clues, so she couldn't figure out what that meant at all. She only had 'they may've named this after el averno'.

Pushing on the door, her friend kept it open as he invited her in, "Welcome Gala, to Club Avernus."

She strode right in, heels clicking on the steel flooring as she let her tail and tentacles unfurl, thick and heavy as they hung from her body. Lovingly sculpted marble with the subtlest veining to catch the eye like damascus, built in finger-thick overlapping plates. Gold inlays traced out winged, flaming figures raining death on copper monstrosities, their blood rendered as turquoise rust.

It probably didn't fit whatever lore these people were running one to one, but she rather thought she caught a similar spirit to those golden winged skulls she'd spied on the chestplates.

The interior was honestly a lot nicer than she'd expected from the facade.

It wasn't amazing, but it was a nice looking, fairly classy and well lit bar. Lots of wood panelling along the lower wall, each panel covered in a different symbol and a whole lot of embellishments framing them, presumably fitting with whatever the icons meant in the Warhammer. The walls proper weren't particularly worked on. Just solid, uniform stone, with a few paintings to break up the monotony.

The bar itself ran roughly the entire length of the left side of the large room, a towering wall of colourful bottles right behind the polished counter. Behind it, at the far end of the space, she could see a set of stairs trailing up.

The tables were wooden, if of a different type than what'd gone into the walls if the shade and grain were anything to go by. The seats were as one would expect, a gamut of wall couches, bar stools and table chairs. What mattered more were the occupants, ranging from the Space Marines and funny red robed robot people to what she tentatively placed down as space elves to Nvidia's take on egyptian robot skeletons.

What really caught her eye, though, was The Hulk. He sat at the bar, wearing some sort of mad-max armour while sipping something from a massive jug of beer… Which he held in his hands like it was a cup of tea, and he, an english gentleman, pinkie finger extended.

Some turned to look at the two new arrivals, plenty raising their drinks towards her friend, before going back to their discussion. But some lingered on her with a raised eyebrow.

Going with her gut instinct, she waved back. With her tentacles, hands remaining tucked away in her wide sleeves.

People waved back in response, some more hesitantly than others, "Come on, I see Greg over there, he'll be able to explain about the crunch," Weaving between the tables, her friend nodded towards the various patrons. "So, there's two types of people that come to the club," And now that she was weaving between them. Galatea could tell that their appearance varied wildly in quality too. Some looked really good, others… not so much, like someone using a bunch of premade assets to try and replicate a specific look by agencying them in ways that they weren't meant to, "There's the fluff enjoyers. They're just here because they like the setting. 40K's not exactly a cheap hobby, even with Bandai slashing the prices of the kits they average at around twenty to thirty bucks, more than your average HG Gunpla– and that doesn't factor in the paints or assembly."

"Then we have people like Greg, me and some of the other regulars, I think I can see Shi'va over there, talking with Caprius," He pointed out a small, but stocky blue skinned woman, and one of the red-robes, "But basically we're the actual players, with armies and models… Though, I say that, but I'm still working on mine. I only have a Killteam completely done and ready for play ATM."

"I assume that's a me and the boys playmode instead of full armies? Would the girls I got be enough for that?" The faux nun asked with a cutesy tilt of her head. Helped that she'd shrunk to six feet again.

"Not sure, but I think so– Hey Greg!" With a shout, he called out and–

"Hmmm?" The Hulk turned towards them.

And maybe calling him The Hulk wasn't charitable. Because he sure seemed bigger than said super hero. Mostly due to his naturally hunched posture. Rather than having his head on top of his shoulders like a human, Greg's seemed to come out from between the shoulders, making him look less like a giant green man and more like a green brick.

He was easily three times as wide as she was now, and probably twice as tall unfurled. As it stood, if she were to go back to her full height, Galatea figured she miiiiight be able to just barely edge out his sitting form.

"Well, if dat's not 'da newest boy on 'da blok," His accent was barely understandable, which meant that he'd be completely incomprehensible if not for the P-Particle BS that her friend had pointed out before… His teeth were also massive, pointed and the size of her hand.

How was she able to tell?

The giant, toothy grin he was giving her, his two, beady, black eyes staring down at her as she saw his pig-ish (if you could call a near complete lack of one that) nose huff in amusement.

"An' 'da wif' yu keep raggin' on 'aboot'."

"Just good friends." She chuckled with a giant grin of her own, the subtle seam stretching past her lips opening up to show pearly whites that'd send a great white running. She was a fake nun, after all.

"Oi, dat's one neat a'atar yu gots dere!" The people looking at the scene recoiled a little at the sudden slasher grin, clearly not expecting it, but Greg? His own nonplussed chuckle was a deeper one, sounding more like a particularly quiet grinder, "So, if youz' not 'da wif', wot'chu dooing 'ere?"

"Warframe refugee," Ervoan explained, "And she accidentally bought daemonettes at a flea market– the recast of the old 3E model I think? Told her about 40K, now she's interested."

"Wel, she got 'da Slaanesh look down 'dats fer sure." he chuckled.

"I see, says the blind woman." Galatea drawled as the seam closed back up. A touch of rubbery resin and it was all but invisible.

"Freaky seggs demons," Her friend told her, "And yeah. She does."

"Heh, right den. Me name' Gralkuk E'rippah Golgof– but ery'ne 'ere callz me Grerg," Pausing to sip from his jug, he wiped the forty beer off of his mouth with a massive hand, "Wotchu wanna kno' lil' 'umie?"

"Killteam and if six daemonettes are enough to run it, just for starters." The fake nun said as she fully settled in, idly gesturing for the bartender to get her something light. The wonders of P-Particles, making a little tentacle wiggle as readily comprehensible as a full sentence.

The bartender, a dwarf of some sort with a bejeweled, flowing and impeccable grey beard (she could see the individual hairs bristle) glared at her a little, before grumbling off to grab her something.

"Kilteam eh? Mmmh, six minis aint quite roight fer Chao' Demonz, yu'l want at leas' anotha' one,'' Tapping the counter, a screen popped out, looking ridiculously small next to his frame, "Eeziest' solve roight dere tho. Yu'l jus' 'ave to register yeself as yer kilteam comandah', an' considrin' yer from Waahframe, reckon yu'l luv it."

"She absolutely will, yeah," A hand fell on her head, patting it fondly, "She went ballistic when she heard about being able to do anime shit."

"Roight, roight…" Humming, he poked his screen with far too large fingers. And was still doing so when the bartender brought her her drink.

"Here's ye drink umgi," it was a tall, fancy glass. The liquid in there was a vivid pink covered in shimmering white froth, "One Thirster's Allure. Also, next time, use yer words. 's more polite."

If the last part was supposed to be a rebuke. It was hard to tell, since he grumbled it with no real heat before walking off to serve a table with eight rainbow-wizards that all looked off their rocker.

"Will do, elder." She replied on gut instinct before the man was out of earshot, happily swirling the drink to get the scent wafting up to her.

It smelled pink, somehow. Like someone had taken the concepts of the colour and turned it into a particularly pleasant smell. She could also tell that it was fairly boozy, though not to the point of being a hard cocktail. Most likely more in line with a lighter proofed tiki drink if she were to guess.

"Too wayz I tink dis can go," The giant ended up saying, turning back to her, "So forst– oo' Slaanesh' drin' not a bad choice! Anyhoo' forst, yu can be a foightah. Loike… uuuh… 'elp me dere dood."

"Hm?" Looking at Greg's screen, Ervoan took a second to see where the green man was going, "Ah. Right, so option A. You go for an ungah-bungah leader, think Valkyr. Lots of murder, most, if not all, at melee range with some actual shooting sprinkled in– but only because you're the leader. In case you're wondering, that's basically what I went with. Option B, which I get the feeling you'll do instead, congratulations Galatea."

Slapping a hand on her shoulder, he gave her a thumbs up and what would probably have been a 'winning' smile if not for the full face helmet, "Yer a wizerd!"

"You know I main Ember and Nidus." She snorted as she took a sip of her drink, her eyebrows lifting pleasantly as the taste hit. Sweet, velvety mouthfeel, just enough burn. "Gimme."

"Psykah, eh? Dat makes tings a bit more complicated…" "Eh, not really. Just send her the package with everything in it. She'll figure out what she wants from there."

Sure enough, the fake nun received a DM with an attachment. Opening it revealed a fairly large assortment of numbers, words and datasheets, "So basically, you get mind bullets, and you can fire them until you either explode or make the Man In The Wall knock at your door. It's your soul, the door is your soul and he kicks it down to get out of the Void."

"But wouldn't I be in league with the things trying to crawl up reality's asshole?" Galatea asked with a frown nobody could see, compensating with a quizzical tilt of her head. "No need to rip up my soul when I'm opening a portal and rolling out the red carpet."

"Eeeeeh," They both made a so-so wave of their hand, "Depends on how much they like you honestly. If you're valuable, they won't. If you're not? Then you're more valuable as something to get inside of, and then explosively leave."

"...Bit short-sighted, aren't they?" She muttered, sipping from her drink with just a touch of grouch. Ah, well, not everyone could be terrifyingly competent like the Steel Legion. "Unless a psyker turned inside out becomes a stable portal like DOOM gore nests."

"Chaos is more or less a self-sustaining engine of stupid. The gods are all inherently self destructive, Khorne is the god of war, murder, slaughter and martial might. To worship him is to doom yourself to unending slaughter, think doomguy, if doomguy wasn't a very lost Paladin. Tzeentch is the god of knowledge, change, fate, magic and secretive ploys. By worshipping him, you become privy to the currents of fate– but also doom yourself to become unable to see past it. 'All according to Keikaku' kind of guy, including nervous breakdown once these plans get ruined by an unseen variable," As the frenchie started to explain the ins and outs of the faction she'd nominally decided to join, she felt as if something encroached on her. A cold creeping dread that wormed its way into her heart, gripping it and squeezing, "Nurgle is the god of stagnation, decay, apathy and stability. He, his daemons and worshippers are vectors of the worst plagues imaginable, but just as their bodies decay, they are filled with unnatural life that ensures they'll never die from the afflictions they see as a gift from their kind and caring grandfather. And finally Slaanesh is– okay. Whoever is doing it, you know the rules and so do I. No psyker shenanigans in the bar."

Interrupting his description with a sigh, he turned to look at the assembled patrons, giving them a flat glare.

Three of them, their clothes coloured green, blue and red, immediately looked away like they hadn't been doing anything wrong as the sensation receded from Galatea, "Javis…"

"Wha– oh come on!" A completely different guy scoffed, his clothes were fairly drab, but covered in seals and double headed eagles, "i was just helping set the mood! You know we're missing a Slaanesh player!"

"Rules are rules lad," The stocky bartender grumbled with a withering glaze, "No psyker powers near the counter. It makes the spirits jumpy."

Suitably chastised, the boy mumbled out a "Sorry…"

"Well, happy to know I'm wanted." Galatea chuckled, taking a long chug of her drink to wash out the lingering unease. "Now, what about Slaneesh?"

"Oh, non-binary deity of sex, drugs and rock and roll," Chuckling he expanded on this, "More seriously, their entire thing is excess, pleasure and I think secrets for some reason? Their greater daemons are called 'Keepers of Secrets'. They also love to eat Eldar souls, the race that accidentally murder-fucked it into existance."

"So Iron Tyrants, pretty much?" The fake nun asked, not put off in the slightest. Sounded like a good time, not often games let you have that sort of fun without being built from the ground up for it ala Slavemaker.

"Lots more sex and depravity, but not far off the mark, yeah. Your gals are minor daemons of that god, so for now let's assume you'll go with that. Now," Looking over her shoulder, he began guiding her through the documents, "Since you're going psyker, you'll need to select some psyker powers…"

The seams of her mouth ripped open as she saw the very first category. "Biomancy, you say?"

And now we're at the start of the big 40k section!

Hopefully the fact that 40k was around as a game was decently set up, and to no one's surprise, Ni picked Slaneesh for his army. So expect some Horny on Main!

At this time, nothing explicit has been written and there's no plans for that either. At least beside passing mentions of it happening in the background.

Hastar · Jan 23, 2024

Chapter 7:

On a shadowed stage, a man sits on a stool under a large spotlight.

The clothes he wears are that of a refined military man. A large, well fitted and rather fetching light red greatcoat, fitted with black epaulettes, "The Imperium of Man," He says, a massive aquila rising into view behind him, until it was well above his peaked cap, "A polity where a single world is a simple statistic. And where a single life upon it is a statistic within a statistic, less than a rounding error."

Reaching to the side, he picks up a steaming cup of what appears to be tea from a table that had faded into view, "A regime made cruel by necessity, and kept cruel by apathy and corruption," Taking a sip from his cup, he places it back down, and it soon begins to fade out of view, "Where being different from the norm is enough to be branded a monster and killed in the streets like a dog."

The aquila changes, turning into a burning, golden sphere. Various planets spin around this new sun and into view, before stopping on a specific one, "There is not a day where horrors are not committed in its name. Least of all on this Imperial world," The planet swells in size, and it is… ugly, coloured a sickly, off base brown, with dots of burning red streaking along black veins, connecting various pits of roting off-white, "Today, the imperium is not the protagonist of our tale. Today, the one whose story shall unfurl is a witch, a mutant, a heretic. One of the hated foes of an Imperium that gave them no choice but to become what the hateful rhetoric of a crumbling empire said that she was…"

His speech finished, the spotlight cuts out, leaving the stage in total darkness for a moment. And as light slowly returns, the scene is now of a different sort.

Cold–

Just like always.

Tersia felt cold.

It gnawed at her skin, and she could see parts of it turn brittle and frostbitten. Bringing with them the pain that told her she was still alive, still living a nightmare that never ended… But at the very least it wasn't the sweltering, agonising pain of the priest's brand, of the flesh burning as flames washed over her as they called her a monster and abomination.

She shuddered at the memory, drinking deeper of the ember of power in her chest. It had already washed away the burns, ugly trenches of glistening red smoothing out into milky lilac, so it was fine. It was fine. She needed that warmth, needed that bubbling joy in her blood to keep from sinking into the murk of the underhive.

With a pulse, the world lost some of its dreariness. Colours became sharper, the cold almost a pleasant chill, her skin-tone healthier as relief filled her mind. The dread and soul-draining strain of existing in this world sloughing off of her for a moment…

Maybe– maybe she could do it again?

It was safe. Right? Tersia was– she could control it, the whispers were silent, like they were when she didn't use the ember– so she could do it again?

She couldn't quite help a low groan as her head turned fuzzy and her purple eyes unfocused, the rough edges of reality sanded away as she slumped in relief.

She felt… weird.

Like the horrible things of her life, her pain, her hunger, the people always wanting to kill her, the things that crawled in the pipes, the stench of filth. Like they'd all fallen away.

Well, except the whispers. Their sweet scent tickled her nose as they told her things that the old lady said that she should never hear.

The old woman had been nice… But then the priests burned her. They'd called her a mutant, said that the third arm meant she wasn't human.

So they burned her in the name of the God-Emperor that the old lady had been faithfully praying to every day. The warm light around her when she did had been nice. Not like the choking, dirty, rusted yellow of the priests.

But then– something chased away these feelings. Like a sudden realisation. An instinctual need to flee that filled her instead.

It felt far away. Farther even than the time she'd felt something in the high spires of the hive, back when she had the poor idea to try and sneak out to see the real sky.

But what she knew– was that she would die to it. A horrible, painful death.

Tersia stiffened like a ganger caught in the bio-light of an Ambull, legs unsure of if they should spirit her away to the deepest hole in the underhive or turn into jelly. The only thing keeping her coherent was the buzz in her blood, blunting the terror just enough for her to realise that whatever was making her instincts scream had yet to come. She had time, at least a week.

Time to find a way out of not only Latrina Magna, but Cerebi Bombulum Prime too.

"I can help you with that, you know~." One of the whispers, clearer and sharper than any of the others that now began BAYING into her ears, sussured in her ear. It kept the ones demanding the blood of the priests, or telling her that this was fine, or that she needed to grow her ember NOW so that she could survive, at bay.

It sounded kind, like the old lady when she'd swaddled her in a blanket after she'd fallen into a pond. With the cacophony in her head and the greatest terror she'd ever felt looming in the horizon, it was enough for her to do what every instinct in her body and word from the old matron told her not to.

She reached out.

There were no words of thanks. Instead, it felt as if two tiny, velvety hands grasped the one she'd extended. A rush filled her, better, stronger than any of the ones she'd pushed onto herself. For the first time since the old woman's death she felt human, not some half-dead wretch.

Surprise caused her to pull back, but the hands didn't let go– no, despite their softness, their grip was like plasteel, or a cyber-mastiff's jaws, strong and unbreakable.

Just as her fire returned to her, a small, pinkish, hole of nothingness appeared in front of her and– "Waaa-h!" Something incredibly pink tumbled out. It flailed its arms as it fell facefirst towards the rockrete, only to flow like quicksilver, catching itself and striking a small pose, "I am fine!"

The thing looked weird. It barely reached her hip and was absolutely inhuman with its big cat-like ears and giant button-like eyes, pink hair casca– "Hello-Hello there summoner!" Oh, that was a hat.

Not that it made her look any more human, her eyes were far, far too large for that, and her ears much too pointed. But since she looked pretty, she couldn't be a mutant like the old lady, or the weird nose-ridge people that she stole from.

Maybe she would have called her a xeno, but everything about her looked too bright and colourful. Almost like a character from the book that her caretaker would read to her and the other urchins had leaped right out of its pages.

"Cute." Tersia couldn't help but mutter as she took everything in. For a moment she thought that the things on the other side may be friendly, but the scream of hatred in her ear from a blood-reeking one cemented in her mind that this tiny pink thing was an exception.

"Thank you!" The strange being said, smugly putting its hands on its hips, "I worked real hard to look this good you know! Shows what big, dumb Red knows!"

"...Something tells me you don't," It muttered as it looked Tersia up and down, flitting around her, "I mean– Yuuuuck!" Before she knew it, it was floating beside her, pulling on her matted hair. She hadn't had the chance to wash since the crazy nuns started chasing her, so it was oily and caked in muck, "You've got to take care of yourself you know? You can't be your best self if you don't! And those rags–!"

Fussing over her, and lightly berating her like the old lady would whenever she came home covered in mud, it pulled on her clothes– causing a flare of pain, as the outfit had all but fused with her skin during the hell week she'd had.

"Ow, ow, ow!" She whined like when the matron had tugged knots out of her hair, the familiar interaction undoing two years of hard lessons.

"That's it! You're getting a makeover!"

This definitely wasn't one of the monsters that the old woman had told her about. Even if it was spiriting her away to do things to her. Or, well, tugging on her rags until she followed.

It pulled her deeper into the hive, far from the places people went to, and into the ones things wandered, "Come on, come on! First we've got to find a good place, and theeeeeen…"

"Then?" She prompted the strange creature to finish the sentence. She wasn't particularly afraid of this area, all told it was safer for her. Animals left you alone after you broke their noses or filled them with lightning. Humans called you a witch before calling the priests.

"You need to give me your name~!" The little thing said as it stopped and flew right in her face, "Can't give you a proper makeover and let you see the bestest you unless I know your name! It's super important, don't ya know? So gimme, gimmeeee~."

"No, I don't." Tersia had a faint feeling that admitting this was a poor idea, but the old lady had always said honesty was a virtue. She turned over the idea of giving her name in her brain, but she just couldn't see how it may be an issue. Even if the ball of pink fluff was literal and she'd no longer have the name 'Tersia'... so what? It was just something she had fuzzy memories of being called until it stuck. She'd just find a new name and that'd be that.

"Well," It said, puffing out its flat chest, "Now you know that little secret! And Aunty said I'd be a bad Keeper of Secrets, I am nailing this!"

"...." There was a pregnant pause as it thought through its words, gears turning within its mind, "Wait…"

"I mean. You're helping me. The point of keeping something is to use it to help yourself and others." At least that's what she recalled of the matron's lessons on charity and kindness. The memories were foggy from being locked away for so long, they'd hurt too much after she'd been killed. Not anymore, not with the high having the pink thing around kept her in.

"Huh-huh, right-right, right," The little being hurriedly said, looking a bit fainter and washed out? Like it blended a bit with the dreary surroundings, "Well. Giving it to me would really help you right about now… oh, and me too."

"You need it to stay." The mutant stated rather than asked, putting the pieces together. She nodded decisively to herself. This helped another and herself, so it was a good deed that the chairman would approve of. "My name is Tersia. Take it."

"Tersi-," Just as it was about to say the name, it frowned. It was not a pretty one– it was as if its face wasn't. Just a wonderful facade, one that had never been meant to twist in such a way, "Wait. Like– Tersus?... No!"

It shouted at her, pointing accusingly at her, "Nuh-uh! That's dumb! Your name is dumb! You're dumb! That's a bad name! A bad, bad name!" It stomped its feet angrily. Which would have been quite cute, if the air wasn't feeling so, so very cold suddenly, "Galatea!" It shouted at her, "That's your name now! It's a good name! It's a cute name! And it doesn't mean stupid things!"

Tersia– or rather, Galatea now she supposed (it wasn't like there was anyone left to call her Tersia), frowned. Giving her name had been in payment for the makeover and to help it help her. But now she had been gifted a name on top of that. The old lady's lessons said she should repay that and she could give a name easily enough.

"Then you're Ariel now." She stated with a decisive nod. She had faint memories of that name, a character from the storybooks that god sent to help people.

"Oh? Really?!" Ariel's eyes sparkled with excitement and joy, her anger completely gone. Erased like it had never been there to begin with, "Yey! I have a name now! Suck it Red! I have a name, and it's Ariel–! Wait–!"

When she said the word. Ter–Galatea felt something between her and the now frantic Ariel, "No-! Nononononononono-!" Like a rubber band, once stretched almost to the point of breaking, rushing back into shape.

But snagging something as it did, "Aaaaaaaaah!" In this case, Ariel herself…

With what felt like a crisp, powerful snap the slowly dispersing image of Ariel was jolted into focus. She looked more… real than before.

Not by looking any less odd, alien or out of a book. But like some intrinsic part of her had solidified, had been changed from a pile of shaped, but slowly collapsing clay, into a finished product by a flash of Galatea's ember.

She, as there was no doubt that Ariel was a she– odd that until now, she'd been an it, stopped pulling her hair, letting go of her precious locks as she fell to her knees, "Red, Blue and Green are never gonna let me live this doooooown."

Thoroughly confused and more than a bit concerned, Galatea squatted down, rubbing small circles on Ariel's back like she'd used to with the younger kids. "Are you alright?"

She wanted to know what the hell had just happened, but this rather took priority. Besides, she had a few inklings. One, Ariel accepting the name like that was a misstep of some sort. Two, there had been a fraying bond between them, which had strengthened and pulled close. Three, her existence had been solidified by a flare of Galatea's ember of power. Four, something about her perception of Ariel had shifted in the process.

"I'm okaaaaaay…," She wailed, clearly not. Her voice felt more solid too, less like a faint whisper being murmured in her ears, "I wanted to name you, but you named me insteeeeead! So now my friends are gonna make fun of meeeeee!"

"But I accepted the name, though?" Galatea blinked owlishly. Did it require her to say it word by word? She'd already implied it with her naming of Ariel.

"Yeah, but I took the one you gave me first…" She pouted, sitting down with a grumble, "And because I acknowledged it first. Now I'm bound to you. It's great because I got a name, and names are awesome, they give you powers and stuff that you can't have if you don't have a name– but I bragged to my friends that I'd get a suuuuuu–per cool person in my debt! But instead, I'm in yours! So they'll all make fun of me… Red's gonna talk about how I should have taken what I wanted, Green's gonna say that I shouldn't have tried, because what's the point? And Blue… Blue's gonna be soooooo smug about this. Say that they 'foresaw this fate to pass' or something."

"So I should throw mud at them?" Annoying kids shut up when they got a mouthful of muck, in her experience. "Also, Green's talking out of their ass, you're still better off."

"Green would actively like mud in their face," Ariel sighed, "Especially considering what sort of mud is down here… Wait! The makeover!"

Bolting upright (and floating off the ground), she grabbed Galatea by the lapels, "I totally forgot! I'm so stupid! Almost as stupid as your old name! Alright mistress, take a seat over here, and I'll get started."

"What's so bad about it?" The albino asked as she trudged along with the pull and obliged, morbidly curious what this 'makeover' thing involved.

"It means stupid things!" As Ariel slid behind her and put her hands on her scalp, Galatea felt a tug from the tiny thing, like a gentle pull on her once flickering, but now steadily burning, ember. Her power flowing from her and into the small girl as if they were one and the same, "Like clean and neat. But I could tell that it was given to you with a different belief."

What happened then was… bizarre. As Ariel began running her hands through her hair, she felt as if it were her hands doing the motions, her hands gliding through that mess and untangling simply by brushing past what she knew to be massive knots of hair.

"Whoever named you that wanted you to be prim and proper! Like those crazy nuns that the priests keep around," A musical humming filled not her ears, as Ariel filled them with her voice, but her mind– the small girl's own brushing against her and letting her hear a song that she'd never heard before, its measures and instruments alien to her, "But you're not like those stuck up idiots, so it's a bad name!"

She shuddered at the memory of the screaming women who'd chased her for days and thrown her into that cell reeking of misery. Reflexively, she drew Ariel's mind closer, letting her music drown out the memories.

"Like those, yeah!" She chirped as the music washed over Galatea like a particularly fancy blanket, more players joining into the song as well– some in a… forceful? Way? Like their personal addition was unplanned and somewhat rude.

But as quickly as they came, they tended to vanish, the one directing the music silencing them with a wave of their batton.

She might have been tempted to try participating too, but Ariel pulled on her ember once more, distracting her. This time, as the tiny hands went through her hair, all of the grime, mud, grease, oil, blood and other filth sloughed off, falling off her head in large, foul smelling clumps that bubbled and sputtered, "Hey, do you mind if I take those?" Her hairdresser asked, "Green's always looking for stuff like this– don't ask me why, they're gross and make weird medicines."

"Sure?" She had never needed medicine thanks to her ember, but being in the good graces of a medic couldn't hurt, even if they were gross. Also, maybe it'd keep Green from bullying Galatea's… minion? Friend? She wasn't sure what Ariel counted as.

"Thanks mistress~!" A small portal of swirling purple appeared under her hair, allowing the gross stuff to drip into wherever it led.

It was difficult to tell just how long the brushing took, Galatea losing herself in the music and the repetition of her Ariel's movements.

Lift, brush, let go.

Lift, brush, let go.

Lift, brush, let go.

"And we're done with that!" As the witch was on the verge of falling asleep while feeling content for the first time in years, her friend confidently declared that her self-apointent task was finished, "Take a look!"

Taking a strand of hair, she brought it to Galatea's sight, letting her see how it now looked.

…It wasn't brown-black anymore. Or even the grey that it had been when she'd stayed with the old lady. Instead it was a stark, near perfect, white.

Somehow, it seemed to shimmer and shine in the low light from how clean and silky it was. Through the odd bond, she could feel how it felt to Ariel's hands, and she'd never touched something as soft and wonderful as this.

"Want me to style it?"

"Please." She croaked, voice thick with emotion. It was ridiculous to get so worked up over clean hair of all things, but after the week she'd had, after the priests– It was the first time in a long while she actually felt happy about herself.

The styling took much less time, but was no less pleasant. The odd double feeling of both her hair moving and of the hands moving it in ways hers never could made her shiver while Ariel bunched up the white mass into a loose ponytail, before lifting it behind her head, securing it with something both heavy and metallic.

"There you go mistress! It's not the best, but," Extending her arm, Ariel plucked at her clothes, reminding her of how gross they were, "We've got more makeover to do!"

Suddenly, she was intimately, painfully aware of every slimy and itching spot on her body. Of the filth caked in thick layers over her from days of frenetic scrambling and hiding in the most disgusting holes in the underhive before she was thrown in a cell to stew in her own misery.

A violent twitch was all the warning Ariel got before the witch's power flared and she tore her rags off in a single motion. The only reason her skin wasn't raw from the world's worst depilation was that until the fire in her blood receded, she could've bounced off stubbers.

"Ooookay…" Having scrambled away with a squeak of surprise at the sudden tearing of the clothes, the little woman edged back towards her mistress, "I wasn't expecting this– or that you'd be able to use these sorts of power already…"

Her small hands touched the witch's skin, testing it and finding that it was harder than metal, "Wooooah~," Awe and something creeped into Ariel's thoughts, creeping into Galatea's in the process. The familiar, either unaware, or uncaring, allowed her hands to roam across her mistress' flesh, doing nothing but feeling her up, "It's almost as tough and strong as Red's~!"

Fingers traced her now muscular biceps, following the soft curves of her muscles in an almost sensual way. The grime and dirt that had made her skin a dirty brown flaked away, cracking apart like an eggshell and falling to the floor– whatever magic that Ariel had weaved into her touch spreading to the surroundings, washing away the hive's dirt and grime as more and more of Galatea's prison was removed. This touch soon left the now clean arm for her back, trailing sensations that Galatea had never experienced.

Once again, Ariel cleansed her skin, the flames coursing through the little being scouring Galatea's back of any remnants of her clothes as the imp floated closer than would be tolerable for anyone else to be.

Pink filled her thoughts as an adventurous arm reached around to her front, poking at her navel…

"And now you're sparkling clean mistress~!" Ariel declared with a bright, wide smile. A smidge of slyness and amusement hiding behind the slightly too wide grin, "Did you enjoy it~?"

"Minx." She groaned from where she was sprawled limp on the ground. Then, following whatever had welled up from her to actually snark at the strange creature helping her, she pinched her ass.

"YEOWCH!" Shouting in (fake) pain, the little scamp jumped into the air, hand holding her butt, "Muuuuh–" Rubbing at the aching spot, Ariel cutely pouted down at her mistress, "That's so mean of you mistress! After I washed your every nook and cranny, and gave you cute clothes too!"

If you could call a sheet of purple cloth over her right side and a bunch of pink ribbons woven around the rest 'clothes', anyways. They were soft and somehow managed to keep her warm despite only really covering her hips and one arm, so she wasn't going to complain. What she was going to do, thou–

Galatea's mouth slammed shut as the creeping doom in the sky wailed in her ear, rudely reminding of why she'd summoned the pink goober.

"Oh right. I almost forgot about that…" The little imp said, "But I have a pan! Shoot– I mean plan!"

She grabbed her mistress' hand and tried to pull her to her feet, which wasn't any trouble because the witch was already getting there, "To escape the storm, you've got to get off of this planet! And I know a few ways to do that, but first, we need help!"

"So… summon more like you?" She wasn't sure if she could deal with five more of Ariel.

"Heh," The flying imp chuckled as she kept pulling, her face turning redder and redder from the exertion even as her mistress got to her feet, "Ngh-Ngho, I can't fight at all! I'm a muse, we help people like you– what we want is a few neverborns, I know a few that can help."

Oh, so the things on the other side were called neverborns. It was better than calling them creatures or monsters. She didn't want to be rude if they were helping her. "Okay, so you call them and I pull them through like I did with you?"

"Yes, but not yet," With her mistress now standing, Ariel wiped her brow of sweat, "First, we've got to find a place to use as our base of operations! It's not gonna be easy to leave, no matter what we do, so having a place to live and plan our missions out of is super important… And I think I can sense the perfect place to make our nest not far from here!"

Galatea had never been in this particular stretch of the underhive, so she let her muse show her the way.

The path forwards had been meandering and twisting. Sometimes in ways that felt distinctly impossible, yet mundane. Eventually, the two travellers arrived at their destination– or close to it at least, "Wait a second mistress," Ariel whispered low, lifting an arm in front of Galatea, "We're right next to the spot I sensed, but I'm feeling… someone, or something else there? I don't think we're alone."

Creeping forwards, Galatea caught sight of what Ariel had felt could be home. It was… a sewer.

More specifically, one of the ancient, massive chambers that dotted the system. From what she'd heard from the people making their home there, they were meant to collect all of the refuse and used waters of the upper levels, serving as a collection point where people would collect said refuse and either burn it for warmth, or bundle the scraps of useable materials that the local robber gangs would collect for a pittance.

What they did with it was unknown. The more pious ones thought that they passed it onto the Machine-Priests– or what few there were this deep in the hive, for them to recycle. Others, with a more grounded mind, were pretty sure that they recycled it all themselves to make their scrap weapons and ammunition.

This one was a bit smaller than the usual, only being as large as two of the priest's churches put together, and not so big that it took almost twenty minutes to walk from one end to the other. The other thing that made it different was that while there were plenty of channels along the floors and sewer tunnels connecting it to the rest of the system, there was barely a trickle of dirty water passing through.

Further observations could wait, as she also spied what Ariel had sensed. On the central platform, three men–

BANG

…Two men stood, having shot the one that had been wounded on the floor in the head. They were the sort of hive scum that she'd seen day in and day out, the kind that would pull a gun on her and try to kill her or do other things to her.

The sort that anyone that travelled through the underhive, even just a tiny bit, had killed plenty of. Whole reason she had learned how to become bulletproof.

Around them were more corpses, some human, but most belonged to a blind-dog colony. They were fresh enough to be actually pleasant to eat, too.

Her breath whistled inaudibly as she drew the sewer air deep into her core, the swell of her chest guiding the fire of her ember to fill her. It was so much easier now she had a muse, power flowing pure and clean instead of struggling against her like a caught rat, layering her enhancements without issue.

Milky lilac skin became purple leather, filled with slim steel cables as her muscles swole, veins rising from it like pipes as her heart thundered. Her breath came out as steam, dispersing in slow motion as her brain accelerated.

She held for a second, letting her grip on the ember loosen now that the flow was self-sustaining. When all it did was remain a steady thrum underneath her skin, she flashed Ariel a smile.

Then the rockrete cracked under her ribbon-clad foot, her face twisted into a rictus grin as she all but flew at the pipe rats.

"Wuh?" Her jump was like a shot, a loud booming sound as she sprang into motion, the two scumheaps stopping their looting of their fellow to look towards her.

It was only a long (they looked about twenty years old, which was quite old for scum like them) life in the underhive that allowed them to get a few shots off as air roared in her ears.

A few rounds of the stubber in the hands of the one that had been looting the body slammed into her, jolting pain racing through her as they did. It was no worse than getting kicked in the ribs by a grumpy enforcer. It hurt, but there would be no true damage.

She kept her kills clean from long habit. Blood didn't only risk drawing in something legitimately dangerous, but it also bred disease. Her ember would burn away any infection if it even managed to get its hooks into her in the first place, but that would leave her hungry and without her powers for a time.

More importantly, she didn't want to get dirty again, she'd just been washed and clothed.

A chop to the unarmed goon's throat made sure he wouldn't get the chance to pull something on her, then a shove at the second's skull that made his head bounce off his back. Then she was free to go back to the first and put him out of his misery by the expedient method of grabbing him by the neck and shaking him like a blind-dog may a bone. It was tricky not to break skin with her muscles full of fire like this.

"Well, that was fast," Ariel said as she floated to Galatea's side just as the scum's neck let go with a *snap*, leaving them as the only living things in a pile of corpses, "And you didn't blow yourself up! Hooray!"

She groaned out a plume of steam as she let the fire recede back into her ember, skin and veins fading to normal like whitened knuckles regaining their colour, "Don't remind me, regrowing hands is a pain. Eyes at least only take a night."

"Wait, hold up what?" The imp squeaked to herself, "What did I get bound to?!– Right, so! Uuuh, just– get those bodies together off on that platform over there," Raising her voice so the rest of her words could be heard, Ariel pointed to the central area, "We'll need all the human ones, but not all the dogs. While you do that, I'll work on the altar!"

What was her muse going on about? Every witch in the underhive blew themselves up at least a little even if they tried to never use their powers, just from getting panicked enough at some point for them to act up. Galatea just had the benefit of her ember healing her on its own.

At least that gave her something to think on while she got to work on the rote task of hauling corpses. They were even more malnourished than her, so it was no real problem. She did have to call up a bit of lightning to burn dry any dripping bits, but that was about it. It was nice, how now this came as naturally as reaching out with her hand.

"I'm done!" Turning back to her muse, Galatea was surprised by what she saw.

Out of seemingly nowhere, Ariel had formed a bunch of metal poles. Each was wreathed in beautiful, curving steel that brought to mind flowers, or sensual wings, and topped by a symbol formed from shimmering pink flames.

At the centre of that collection, stood a bed of some sort– or maybe a seat? That overlooked the rest of her new home, its satin sheets beckoning her to enter them and taste their decadence…

"Now we need to make the Eight-Pointed Star around the corpses~." Humming, Ariel floated towards her mistress, tiny versions of the poles in her arms.

Galatea got the faint impression that Ariel had been preparing for her job for a long while. Still, she put down the last of the dead bodies on the pile and stepped back to let her muse work. "So, what are these neverborn like?"

"Depends, but the ones I can call on can be really annoying. Especially their leader," Going around the pile, the muse slowly stabbed the various mini-poles into the ground, forming a small forest that was almost as tall as she was, "But she's a good girl for the most part– you just need to get a good grip on her!"

"Like I got a grip on you?" Galatea asked with an arched eyebrow. And her single sleeve covering up her blush at the memory that comment brought, once her brain caught up with her mouth.

"Hm? Oh no," Ariel answered without paying any attention to the words that had been said, "You need to grip her a lot harder. Probably with some ropes and candles too~!" …Or the ones she was saying.

Still better than the things screaming for blood. Trying to keep those happy would get everyone gunning for her. Plus, Ariel probably had those candles and ropes, although she had no idea what the former would be needed for.

"Okay, I'm done with the circle," Lifting away from the floor, Ariel took a seat on the witch's shoulder, "Can you please add a few drops of your blood to complete it, mistress?"

A small mental nudge told her the rest, guiding her to pricking her finger on one of the ringing spikes. She kept it there for six heartbeats, letting a small trickle of blood run down before the wound sealed as fast as metal left her flesh.

The blood flowed along the rod's curves in impossible ways that hurt to think of– and in far greater quantities than the small pinprick ought to have caused too.

It flowed off of the first spike, both pooling at its foot and flowing to the next, then the ones after it– blood from the pile, as if drawn in by a magnetic force crawled to join the ever expanding sanguine circle.

And when all 66 spikes were linked, the earth bubbled and steamed as the vital essence burst into pink flames, charring, burning, carving an unholy symbol into it. Forever staining this place with the vileness of Chaos.

Not that Galatea took notice, as her every sense was being entranced by the rush of power that the ritual exuded. Ghostly, sensual touches, tastes, sights and sounds pushed down on her. Threatening to wash her away– but… a song, soft and near silent, touched her ears.

A simple humming, lesser than all she could feel and experience at this time, that came from Ariel as the little imp leaned against the head of her mistress. She clutched it tight, grounding herself like she had when mastering her lightning.

The sounds of bones cracking and flesh tearing filled the air, overpowering the temptations of the whispers. Slowly, but surely, all of the energy that had been released by the ritual was sucked back in as the pile shrunk in on itself, until it formed a small, smooth, crimson sphere.

It hovered in the air before sinking down to the ground– and then past the ground, as it bent and recoiled, as if reality itself desperately wished to avoid any contact with it. Once nestled deep into the earth, a deep, rich, pink-purple liquid began weeping out of it, quickly filling up the 'well' it had formed around it.

Now she had to deal with a completely different mental test. The writhing of the sludge was exactly like larva-lobsters in the mud and that rush of feelings had reminded her of how hungry she was. Hopefully these neverborn wouldn't look particularly edible, she didn't want to send the wrong message.

"Snrk!"

"Shush, you." Galatea grumbled, hiding her blushing face behind her sleeve. She really had to learn how to keep her muse from listening in to her every thought. At least she couldn't feel anything in the goop, it was just a gate she had to reach out through.

Her ember flared, fire racing down her arm and out the finger she'd pricked, a thin line of purple-white like her skin sinking into the morass.

"Right, so," Hopping off her shoulders, Ariel ran towards the well, "I'm gonna be right back and bring the Alluress I'm thinking of! Don't move from here!" And grabbed the line as she dived into the 'waters'.

Absolutely nothing happened for the longest time, the thread casting gentle ripples as it sat in place.

Time passed, passed and passed. Forcing the witch to consider, even for just a moment, that perhaps her muse was a fleeting being. That she had already abandoned her– moved to newer, more interesting, projects and people…

A thread of doubt that her ember burned away as it hissed, curling jealously around the thread of pink smoke that had made it so much greater. It remained just as steadfast and eager to please as when it'd snuck itself into her soul. Hah, as if the tiny thing jumping in joy over a name and the chance to guide a witch would run away.

…It may be that one of her friends was picking on her to bother them both. She'd need to figure out how much lightning was equivalent to a mud slap for a neverborn, if so.

Such thoughts kept her busy until ripples formed in the well. She barely had time to brace herself before something pulled on the line, threatening to drag her into its embrace. The only reason she didn't sever the purposefully thin thread of light was that she could feel Ariel coming upwards. All she could do was struggle frantically, filling her body with as much fire as it could bear and still being drawn inch by agonising inch…

Until a hand, dripping with ichor birthed forth from the liquid and took hold of the line. With a powerful heave that made even Galatea's enhanced body buckle, a gigantic mass of sludge and molasses tore itself out of the well with a tall jump that carried it next to the altar-bed. A cacophonous, sonorous laughter filling the entirety of the cavernous room– enhanced by the shrill cry of panic of her muse, her small body tucked under an arm and once more wearing her large hat over her face.

"So this is the materium~?" The being holding Ariel asked. Its twin sets of eyes scanning its surroundings as more sludge sloughed off its form, the material bubbling and dissipating into sweet smelling smoke as it touched the ground, "What a fitting place to call your domain, little imp~. It's a dump~!"

"Ueeeeeh~" Poor Ariel teared up when an arm poked her in the cheek, its shape pulling itself out of the mass and causing an even greater amount of clumps to fall down. Revealing that rather than a massive blob, it was formed of two 'spires' sitting on an elongated body.

"And she is your 'master'?," With a haughty huff, the beast turned towards Galatea. Its eyes studied her with inscrutable intent, before dismissing her completely. That was all she needed, the way she curled up like a toe-popper mistaken as cowering and bowing, "A low class master, for a low class imp. But, she will do, I suppose. Hear me, little witch! I, La'muorte'ndr, alluress of the great Architect of Pleasures, claim this small sliver as my own!"

Galatea had led an urchin gang, once. Even before learning how to coax her ember, it'd made her stronger and bigger than the other pipe rats. Faster, with a sixth sense for threats and a nose for lies.

She'd dealt, then, with her fair share of adult gangers who thought a few strong words and a loom were enough to cow them into line. To use them as meatshields in their petty wars and worse things besides.

Not one of hers had been lost, not until they burned alongside the old lady who'd taken them in.

The being lifted the sad looking muse by the back of her outfit, dangling her in the air, "And through it, I claim you as well. You will be my herald in this world. Perform your role adequately, and I shall return this little wretc-!"

Neverborn chins, Galatea found, crunched nicely. Up there with the scaly noses, especially with how its head hadn't outright exploded and instead deformed around her fist in slow motion. The moment seemed to last for an eternity before time reasserted itself, the neverborn achieving the miracle of flight as it left half of its mass and a pair of eyes behind, shedding the goo that covered it by spinning madly through the air.

"You alright?" She asked as she caught her falling familiar, careful to use her right arm. Her left, bleeding steam as black faded to purple, wasn't any good for holding friends. Not when last time she'd thrown an Ambull-punch, the water around it had hissed.

"Awawawawawawawa!"

Cute.

The lower half of the thing she'd punched dashed away, towards its rider, almost all of the goo sloughing off of it– her, rather.

"Am ogay…" Meanwhile, Ariel looked absolutely entranced by Galatea's bulging muscles. Running a hand over the arm holding her with a brilliant blush that threatened to take over her entire body, "sho big"

The witch flashed her an equally bright smile. "Glad to hear."

"Behold sister," A perfectly flat voice came from the well, "Our summoner has taught our leader her place."

"So I see brother," A second one, identical to the first, immediately responded, "But watch. She has begun seducing her poor familiar."

There were now two people next to the pit of muck, both carefully picking out globs of the stuff out of their fur. The two looked absolutely identical in every way, from their three eyes, their horns, the amount of fur on their bodies– the only thing that set them apart being the colour of said attributes.

"What a ravenous being." "Quite." "How very fitting for a servant of our god." "Indubitably." "Perhaps we should fear for our virtues?"

"With a smile such as that one?" The 'brother' said, "I fear for much more than our simple virtues."

Quietly deciding to prove them right (and bully her muse a bit more), Galatea wrapped the blushing bundle of pink fluff in both her arms before jumping over to the goat twins' side.

"Hello, I am Galatea." She greeted with an open, honest smile and an extended hand.

"Sister. Help." The brother fake-whispered, "I am scared."

Oh, she liked these goobers.

"Fear not brother," The sister said as she stepped forward, kneeling in front of Galatea with an arm across her chest, "I shall protect you. Oh summoner, we are Phyr'oue't and Al'oue't. And on this day, we swear servitude to you."

"Happy to have you." Galatea replied without missing a beat, stooping down to gently cradle the goat woman's hand and tug her to her feet– and nose to nose with her.

"Nooooooooooo," Al'oue't wailed with the flatest face and intonation, "Siiiiiiiiiiiiisteeeeeeer…"

"Pray for me dear brother," Phyr'oue't whispered as she faced her 'doom' head on, gazing deep in Galatea's eyes with her own, squeezing the witch's hand with her own, "I have been chosen."

"Nooooooooo, someone saaaave heeeeeeer." "Hm?" The desperate (?) call for help drew Ariel's attention away from the powerful, tight and secure arm that was wrapped around her still long enough for her to stop rubbing her face against it, "Hm." But with a quick look around, she shrugged and returned to what she had been doing.

"Anyone?"

"No." Out of the pit crawled a fifth neverborn. This one was a woman as well– were all neverborns women, or was it just those? But unlike the twins or Ariel, she was not human in the least.

Instead, she was formed of a human torso with the lower body of a lower pit feeder… if slightly smaller than those she'd seen, "If the summoner desires your sister, then your sister she can have." She said without much emotion, but not without glancing at Galatea to gauge her reaction.

The witch simply gave her a respectful nod, not willing to play around with a being reminiscent of a pit feeder unless they started it. Damn things could and would leave Ambulls short of an arm.

It was nice to be around women even stranger than her, though, she mused as an idle finger traced the curve of Phyr's right horn. She could only surmise mutations (although they may not count as such for neverborn) were a mark of good character, given how she and the old lady acted. The priests claiming they were evil and wanting to burn them was just more confirmation, really. "Speaking of desires, I would like to know your name."

"You may call me M'llpa't, summoner." The neverborn said as Phyr's eyes widened, her body shivering as she rubbed her legs together, "Just as my brethren have, I swear servitude to you… in matters of battle at least."

"I will gladly take you on." Galatea replied without missing a beat. Earning an eyebrow waggle from Al'oue't– who was observing what she was doing to her sister with interest, and a groan from M'llpa't.

"Ara, ara~", Yet another new voice said. Though, this one, she recognised immediately… "So forward dear summoner~. Already making such strides towards the devotion of your soldiers~."

Well, not quite.

The tone, the cadence and the way it draped itself over her ears like a warm, fluffy blanket, was the same as the old lady's. But the sounds for it were different, deeper and dripping with amusement, rather than the light, airy and sunny way that ~~her mother's~~ the old lady's voice could light up the day of any of ~~her siblings~~ the kids with a few words.

She was glad for it. It would have made things entirely too awkward if she sounded identical. The memories didn't hurt like an infected wound anymore, but she would've had a lot of conflicted feelings if she saw the old lady every time this neverborn spoke.

"Aid me." Phyr said with actual emotions, her third eye darting around in search of someone willing to provide help, "I am in danger."

"Let go of my miniiiiiiion!" A small missile threw itself at Galatea's back.

It got its wish, the witch letting go of the goat she was abusing and tossing Ariel up in the air as she twirled around to intercept the ballistic neverborn.

Said neverborn passed by her, the spin meaning that her lunge missed the witch and made her stumble forward, just in time for Galatea to slip her hands under her armpits and lift the small body off the ground at arms length.

Silence fell on the eight individuals in the large room as they all took in the sight before them.

The first neverborn that had appeared, free of the muck that had been covering her form, held in Galatea's clutches. Her little clawed and scaled feet dangled in the air, an unreadable expression on her face as her arms were forced perpendicular to the floor, a shimmering blade held in one hand.

Slooooowly, the daemon turned to look at Galatea. The growing welt on her face turned her expression into a pout.

"Ara~. Ara~." The pause as all this unfolded gave the summoner to see just what sort of thing had crawled out of the pit. She was rather similar to M'llpa't, being that she was a human torso on top of a non-human body.

But that was where the similarities ended, as the hiver couldn't figure out what sort of being that lower body was supposed to belong to. Or how something with scales could have such a fluffy looking tail attached to it. (She wanted to touch it.)

Also, she was wearing something that could actually be construed as clothes, hiding her rather ample bosom under a large flap of fabric, and her eyes under a heavy-looking mask designed to resemble a massive eye.

Raising an arm to hide its smirking mouth revealed it was also inhuman, a mutation having covered the forearm in downy fluff, her hand in scales and turned her fingernails into claws. By folding the other arm under her tracts of land, she made it rather obvious that the other one shared the same 'deformities'.

"I see you have no trouble getting a handle on our leader, dear summoner~," The masked thing purred at Galatea. The leader– Lamu, she said her name was? Of course, tried to wriggle out of the witch's grasp. "Be sure to keep a firm grip on her~."

"Will do." The witch said as she rode through the wiggles with the practice of a long suffering older sister. Honestly, if it wasn't for all the scaly bits, she could've mistaken Lamu for one of the brattier kids who she had to bully into bathing. "Do any of you have rope? Ariel recommended it."

"WHAT!?" The little brat shouted, trying to escape even harder, "That little–"

"Neighehehehe," An odd whiny laugh came from the direction that Lamu had tried to jump her from. The clopping sound of hoofs underlying the chuckles and causing the little leader's anger to explode.

"Don't you laugh at me, you fat flanked bimbo! HELP MEEEEEEE!" The witch was so, so tempted to give Lamu a jolt of lightning. But that'd only make the bratling louder, she'd bet.

"Hello there!" Galatea greeted, having to raise her voice to a near-shout to be heard over the screaming lizard. At least she was fairly sure scaly things were called lizards. "What's your name?"

The 'new' arrival was yet another non-humanoid neverborn. But instead of a slithering, or crawling, lower body, she had one with four legs and a long, bushy tail at the very end of her lower part. Something about her niggled at the witch's mind. Like she knew what animal that was supposed to be, but she couldn't ever recall seeing such a beast in the hive.

Rather than answer Galatea's question, she wrung her own hands together, glancing at the various daemons that had been summoned and looking very unsure of herself.

"My name is J'pa'idée," The motherly one said with a smile. Her sinuous body sliding over the rockcrete while her human half bowed towards the witch, "And she…"

Lamu was about to shout again but a fluffy tail shoved in her face gagged her. Angry, muffled screams being the only thing that could be heard coming from her.

'Thank you.' Galatea mouthed at the feathery lizard.

"Uuhm… I– uh–" The last unknown hesitated. Looking almost like she'd never spit the words out…

"Eeeeeeh!" Ariel chose this moment to return to solid ground. Well, almost, as she fell on the nameless woman, startling her. As the neverborn reared up in surprise, the imp didn't have a choice other than to grab hold of the woman's twin horns…

Which caused her to immediately lay herself as flat on the floor as she could– and Lamu to thrash around some more. A vein in Galatea's brow twitched dangerously, her hands darkening to a glossy black as she gripped the girl's shoulders hard enough a human's would've splattered like mud.

"Hey–" Ariel began to whisper to her, her eyes glazed over and distant, "Listen…"

Even through their bond, the witch couldn't tell what was said.

But knowing or not, the result was the same, "M-my name is G'andec'et…" The woman eventually said, hiding her burning face behind her hands as best she could (which was badly).

"Pleasure to have you, J'pa'idée, G'andec'et." Galatea beamed, having taken a few seconds to work the pronunciation through her brain. And lifted a few pointers from Ariel's besides.

The muffled angry shouts of Lamu as she said that were music to her ears~.

► AssMasterOfCalais (Wounded Ape)
Behold! Games Workshop's approved Slaanesh depiction.

► TheSpookiestSkeleton (Boner Lord)

In all seriousness… What's with all the pretty summons? Where are the Daemonettes, OP? Who put found family in my underhive scum story?

► ModernPygmalion (Galatea My Beloved)
Player of Galatea here. I didn't find out that the demon girl minis I found in a yard sale were daemonettes (or that Warhammer existed) until a week ago. And I got them for practice sculpting. And, uh, I got a little carried away.

Although I hear them not looking like standard daemonettes is canon compliant? Apparently daemons can look like whatever they fucking want.

As for the found family, blame Cheese. I let him name and build the personality of all of them sans Ariel for it to be a surprise. And even so he threw me a fair few curveballs with the pink cotton floss.

► OnlinePotato (Mash 'em, Boil 'em)
Someone call the Black Templars, we have furries again.

► Iri-chan (Fuwa Fuwa Fae)
I have SO MANY questions.

► ninjagamer7777 (God Bless You) (user is banned: reason, botting)
Loved the video. Keep up the great work. Don't call things Holy that aren't Holy its blasphemy which is sin. Don't swear or sudo swear its sinful. Don't say or laugh at inappropriate things its sinful. Luck doesn't exist its blessings from the Good Lord Jesus Christ. Don't say the Good Lord Jesus Christs Holy name in vein its blasphemy which is a sin. Only the Good Lord Jesus Christ is the one true God no one else can compare to Him. The Good Lord Jesus Christ is the only good person. The Good Lord Jesus Christ is Lord or Lords and King of Kings. He is the only true Lord and the only True King. Trust in the Good Lord Jesus Christ not yourself. Amen. God Send. God Bless You All. Amen. God Send. Please if you haven't already repent of your sins and trust in Jesus Christ As Lord And Savior. Praise The Good Lord. Please Get Saved. Please repent of your sins and trust in Jesus Christ As Lord And Savior. John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son and whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. Love you guys. God Bless You All. Amen. God Send. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 9Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. God Bless You All. Amen. God Send.

► Arkos (World's Tiniest Dragon)
First up, fuck off bot, no one gives a shit about your preaching, especially not my gae ass. Secondly. When is she getting a Mash-face to protect that smile and shield bash what I assume was probably a Inqustior or such to death?

► AddmoreMemes (Peddler of Vintage Wares)
@OnlinePotato First of all, pretty sure they are not a furry, just a monsterfucker.

Second of all, that muse is small, smug, and bulliable. perfection.

► Ervoan (Lord of a 1000 Cheeeeeese)
@TheSpookiestSkeleton less found family, and more trying to look nice and innocent so they can corrupt her…

Also, I had a long discussion with The Boys™ on how to characterise them. It boiled down to: regular Slaneesh depiction is fine, but also the most boring of shit. When horrible excess is the norm, the true excess is found in the little things we think aren't.

Or something. IDK, I thought it'd be funi.

@Iri-chan and I am reasonably certain I have no answers! Feel free to ask tho.

@Arkos it was just a regular ass priest 9f the emperor. You know, the sort that are honestly worshipping chaos more than Him on Terra with their actions. As for a Mashface? Prolly never, she's on my army, and no one can have her!

Except my wife.

@AddmoreMemes this was, in fact, my goal. I mean just look at the description of a muse in the book we dragged her out of:

Muse
Imps of Slaanesh are appealing, taking the form of beautiful young women with perfect nubile bodies and long hair of scintillating colours. They are tiny, no taller than three feet, but despite their size, they have power over men, stealing their souls, and draining away the capacity for sensation. But they are also inspiring, urging their victims to new heights, always pushing further and further to attain the glory they seek.

THREE. FEETS… or for people using real units of measure: 91. CENTIMETRES.
A literal crotch gobbo.

► EatinThemToeBeans (Lickety-Lick)
Three feets?

SNNNNNIIIIIIIIFFFF

► Moldybones (Swamp Gooch)
Fungus.

AN: Alright. Well, now you people see why this chapter took a while to post!

Its a chunker at 7k+ words last I looked. We could have separated it into two smaller chapters, but that felt really meh to do. So we didn't.

this chapter is basically an in universe narrative video/combat report regarding Galatea's first 40k adventure. And so will the next few chapters.

Which brings us to the thing we mentioned a while ago: the idea that this thread (outside of the stuff that doesn't make sense to be) happens in universe too (keep in mind its a brighter timelime where things like covid, the war in Ukraine or China being a growing mess aren't happening/boiling over). So feel free to react to this chapter in the manner of a YouTube comment, or forum goer. Me and Ni will react in character to them

(we'll put everything into a spoiler or some such so people don't have to trawl the entire thread for those bits)

Nihilo · Jan 23, 2024

Winged One said:
Cute! Anyone who wants to burn her just 'cause she's a witch can fuck off and die. I hope she can make them keep up the nice act, though...

[If you want a visual, look up Barbariank's lich]

► ModernPygmalion (Galatea My Beloved)
Ariel is going to stay nice, because-

Okay, this gets into the deep lore. Basically, chaos shit is literally made from suffering, and what god it belongs to is the response to that suffering. Actually, let me just post here what the resident conspiracy theorist told us.

Misery and pain are
Weird for chaos
Ontologically, those are within the realm of Nurgle
however at the same time, misery, pain, envy, greed, suffering? All avenues for ALL of the chaos gods to get their foot into the door
So I suggest thus: most small end daemonic creatures are formed in their core as motes of suffering, given form
the
aspectation of these creatures
what makes them them
is how they define the reaction to the suffering
So a man is in pain 24/7, he has options
He becomes a psychopath obsessed with puzzles and attaining a higher position of power (Tzeentch)
He accepts the pain and simply stagnates, refusing to move forward from the snapshot of annihilation he is in, putrefying in what is a self destructive happiness and acceptance (Nurgle)
He gets fuckass angry about it (Khorne)
He drowns the pain and masks whatever's causing it with new things, new sensations, new something, just to stave off the doldrums (Slaanesh)
So in this case, Cuckquean is a response to the suffering by taking charge and directing Cauliflower Brain towards luxury and artistry, sort of cleaning her up and giving her a direction towards self improvement
Now you might be saying "wow that sounds like it's genuinely a healty relationship"
that's the kicker
She's such a tiny individual that the suffering she represents and the aspectation into the corrupting influence of chaos is so small that it can be a vector of improving oneself
the issue is that, as you proceed down that path, it goes from something giving you support, it becomes a self-feeding, self-referencing crutch

Want me to also dump the data on how slaaneshi treat pain?

Winged One said:
I'd let them corrupt me, that's for sure.

I don't know exactly what possessed me (other than FGO brainrot. Check out Habetrot's lore for some funny parallels, by the by) while scultping the girls. But. Yeah.

Galatea is in danger.

At least I didn't make any of them patterned after dogs or the jokes would be endless. It's bad enough we have a horse, dragon and two goats.

Winged One said:
"Not exploding" is the most important ability a psyker can get.

Pretty much, yeah. Her talent was mainly in "I don't explode more than I can recover from". And even so she risked starvation a fair few times because regrowing fingers/hands/eyes plus whatever violently broke down inside her from the buffs took a toll on her metabolism.

At the same time, she could get food easier than most thanks to her powers.

Winged One said:
She's a fucking hive worlder, that's not even heresy.

Lmao. From what I've been told, it's an issue if you're eating that stuff fresh. Instead of pounding away some corpse starch bars.

Nihilo · Jan 23, 2024

Winged One said:
Isn't it just another sensation to enjoy, for the heavily-corrupted?

► ModernPygmalion (Galatea My Beloved)
It's fucking gauche and only nurglites like quaffing that shit, apparently. Partly because as previously stated, all chaos shit is constructed from it at the most base level, so it is a bit like chewing your own tongue.

Partly because of this:

Slaanesh hates pain as a sensation
Why?
It's literally the easiest thing for the body to spam
It'll happen when the body doesn't know what the hell is going on
and is the basis for phantom pain
Body isn't getting nervous feedback from missing limb, this is a problem in the basic circuitry of the human body. A response has to come back as SOON AS POSSIBLE, so in order to basically "keep the line open" so that immediate feedback can be returned once whatever has deadened the nerves stops doing that
This can be overcome by putting your good limb (assuming you have one) in front of a mirror
and then looking at the reflection
the brain goes "I see two legs"
and that overrides the whole "no feedback" issue
thus shutting the pain down

Lmao
Slaneesh doesn't like pain because it's gauche

That would explain why it has Feel No Pain a lot
It's very literal
"There is pain, pain is boring, no boredom allowed"

It's not even good fast food
it's shitty fast food
this also would actually make the numbing torture be entirely a pump fake from Slaaneshis
"oh no, ohh noooo you make me feel NOTHING"
>this is actually better than pain
this also harvests better emotional reactions from the torturers
really playing higher end slaaneshi fuck fuck games
the answer is obviously to take a rusty pair of pliers and make the torture as physically painful as possible so slaanesh gets bored
Arguably Slaanesh would also prefer positive emotions over negative emotions
anger feeds khorne, envy and desire feeds tzeentch, nihilism, depression and hopelessness feeds nurgle
negative emotions are also extreme but often short lived
You can also feel like shit for exploding for a while which is also a point TOWARDS going for "if you're gonna do bad shit, do it so bad you ruin someone's MONTH"
but good emotions can last for nearly as long with less density

It's funky, but I like weird deep lore like this. Plus "torture forever nyehehehe" is kinda... trite. More interesting if someone's busting the doujinshi nonsense where someone's in so much pleasure it's warping their nervous system. Possibly while being digested.

(Look, I played Monster Girl Quest and I didn't know there was a toggle for the vore content)

Oh, right, someone also had the galaxy brain thought that this means the Deldar use their pain farming to make themselves too bland for Slaanesh to bother. One hell of an introduction to how the edgy elves do, let me tell you.

Hastar · Jan 27, 2024

Chapter 8:

"Fine." The seductress grumbled, "I admit that you may have the necessary skills–" "And power." "–And power–" "And talent!" "–And talent–" "–And big, strong, hands–!"

La'muorte'ndr fixed the imp with a glare, her eyebrow twitching with more impotent rage with every new request and adjective.

"Coooome oooon~," The muse smugly said, cat-like amusement all over her face as she floated next to the higher ranking neverborn, "Saaaaaay iiit~."

The only thing that left the small woman's throat was a half garbled, barely audible grumble as she bowed her head… which just made the muse want to bully her even more.

"Uh-umh– Madame Ariel?" G'andec'et piped up shaking her head slightly. Both Interrupting the incoming jab, and causing Lamu to grab her twin horns, "Please don't be too mean t-"

"What did I tell you?!" The small draconic monster shouted with a stomp of her foot that made the centaur squeak, "Don't move around so much damnit!"

It was, Galatea mused, certainly a scene.

In front of her was the Alluress, face swollen from their first meeting (or fist, rather), and eye blackened after she escaped from her fluffy prison. Forced to stand on top of flanks of the lying down G'andec'et, and using the woman's head as a pulpit, in order to be able to look her in the eye properly.

All the while Ariel relished her current position in the newly established pecking order…

Still, this had gone for long enough, so she yanked on the bond between them to snap her out of it. Which accomplished the task flawlessly! It just came with the side-effect of sending her muse flying into her arms. Not that the smug little bundle of plasfibre minded, since Galatea had yet to make the fire recede back into her ember.

She was quietly wary of how well all of these neverborn had taken to her humiliation of their boss.

Sure enough, now nestled in what was quite literally her favourite place in the galaxy, Ariel exuded smugness, which earned her a stink eye from Lamu, "To lead my coven into battle," The smoll dragon grumbled as she picked up from where she'd left, "But a question remains. For what reason have you summoned us to this plane?"

"To help me get offworld before whatever's hanging in the sky breaks open." Galatea answered succinctly, fighting against the nervous impulse to toy with her muse as her attention turned to the doom high above. She still didn't know what the hell it was, just the impression of a sagging ceiling with godawful chemicals on the other side.

"Uh? You want to… leave?" Lamu asked with a frown, scratching at the base of her horns, "But– why?"

"She's a human, mistress," G'and explained, "A warp storm would be quite dangerous to her. Especially in such a world."

"Ah! I see!" Snapping her fingers, the Aluress puffed her chest. Not that there was much there to puff, Galatea thought to herself, "It is because you are a weak human! To witness the blessing of the realm of chaos would be too much for you! G'andec'et praise my intellect!"

"Yes mistress! You're so smart and wonderful!" The centaur said without missing a beat, softly clapping for her small rider with what the witch could tell was genuine wonder and dedication.

'They're idiots'

'They're idiots'

Twin thoughts united as one and mingled within the mind of the witch and of the familiar as Galatea stated what she'd known for the centuries of having to tolerate the insufferable Alluress, and Ariel came to the realisation.

At least now she knew why the others were more than happy with her taking the reins. She flexed the hand that'd gotten acquaintanced with Lamu's chin, joints popping like the cocking of a gun. "This weak human can feed you another rockrete sandwich if you're still hungry."

"Hah! As if it would work!" With a glint in her eyes, Lamu huffed and, putting her hands on her hips, turned up her nose, "I know your tricks now, witch! You won't catch me a second time!"

Unfortunately for her, Galatea knew that glint. It wasn't that of the overly proud, assured of their own superiority… it was that of the overly proud, desperately trying to grasp what few shreds of dignity were left in the face of fear.

It would be so very easy to break that, just a little nudge to leave her babbling. But much like breaking a chemtank, that only left a pond of flesh-eating sludge buried deep down and noxious vapours stinking up the whole place.

So instead Galatea smiled, wide and toothy and with promise, and held the dragon's own ego hostage.

Said dragon did not whimper, but it was a close thing, "I- in any case! If you really want to leave– You'll die. You are much too weak," Unlike before, the hive scum could tell that the neverborn wasn't trying to make a dig at her. Not that it stopped the slightly too quick addition of, "Not only would the corpse god's worshippers tear you to pieces before you even got to the middle levels of this festering spire, without some kind of power base, even if you managed to reach the top of this dump, trying to commandeer whatever spaceship they are using to evacuate the nobles is the kind of idiocy that not even a World Eater would think of. And while you might be a half talented witch, with some skill at weaving the immaterium's winds, opening a rift to teleport to another planet is so beyond you that you could pass as a sorcerer of change if you had the hubris to try."

"I've seen enough witches getting intimate with the rockrete to know better than to try and teleport, nevermind across anything bigger than a hive level." Galatea huffed dismissively. It was one of the big reasons she'd practised her powers. A bit of pain and temporary crippling was worth not panic-teleporting into a wall. "Rats charging out of the pipes get gunned down, so we will have to gnaw a real path through."

She was making an effort to sound knowledgeable and in charge, but truth was she had no idea what Ariel's plan was. Beyond the obvious of it involving a fair bit of battle, since her new gang couldn't hide worth groxshit. Even the nose-ridges could pass muster with some cloaks.

"Hey, mistress?" Ariel asked sweetly, pushing a bizarre sensation into the psyker's ember. Probably smaller bonds made from them swearing fealty, if she was following the neverborn logic right, "Can you grab this and pull?"

An equally sickly sweet smile tugging at her lips thanks to the bond, the witch happily made her fire clamp down like a blackhand around a slippery lobster-larva and yank.

"Wait, what? Sister I have be–!" Al'oue't shouted from the other side of the room, before her form completely vanished– a sudden rush of power and glee crashing into Galatea's ember. A new, more powerful flame, shaped like a goat's head, orbiting hers, directly feeding the dregs of might she held.

She, of course, acted on instinct to get a grip on the onslaught of sensation. Or rather, on the source of it. By fondling the goat's horns with her fire.

The flame shifted and writhed under her 'touch'. At first, it seemed shocked and confused, but it wasn't long before the flame became placid and welcoming. Almost as if it was leaning into her 'hand' asking for more, heavier petting.

Well, it cost her nothing and made one of her girls happy. So Galatea obliged and saw about setting that bit of fire into a little loop, much like how she didn't need to constantly micromanage her enhancements.

It was harder to pull off than she'd hoped. Rather than make a small band of fire that would spin around the goat's flame– what she managed to do was a much larger ring, squeezing slightly around the whole of the (now once again) shocked flame.

Attempts to course-correct ended… poorly. Her ring split apart, half a dozen smaller ones dancing all over Al'oue't formless essence, causing it to squirm all over in an effort to escape, which only entangled the rings further.

The only reason she didn't just retract the whole thing is that she could feel a primal joy coming from the neverborn, much like what Galatea had felt when finally getting cleaned and clothed. But at the same time the girl was uncomfortable, so it was a matter of rolling up her proverbial sleeves and setting those strands properly.

Couldn't be harder than figuring out how to thread the lightning without frying herself.

"So!" A blushing Ariel interrupted her thoughts, flying out of the witch's arms as though burned, "As you can see, they can be stealthy! You just need to pull on their bond of servitude to you, and you can pocket them next to your soul-ember. Then, all you need to do iiiiiiiiiis…."

Focusing her will, the muse guided Galatea's own, pushing out the (still bound) flame of Al'oue't. Pink mist and essence promptly spilled from the witch, slowly reforming into the 'brother' goat… On her knees, glassy eyed and panting with her tongue lolled out.

"Uuuuh…" "Ze claaaaw~," Al' mumbled out, dopey smile on her face, "Chose meeeeeee…"

"Brother are you okay?"

"Baaaast day of my liiiiiiife~," She bleated out, sounding almost entirely like the goat that she resembled, "Sho many haaaaands, such a tiiiiiight grip~. And the mo–"

"Right! That's enough of that! Let's move on!" The muse shouted, her blush literally incandescent as she tried to ignore the demon goat's state, "First order of business, securing this area!"

► Ervoan (Lord of a 1000 Cheeeeeese)
Good evening, or day, or whatever else, to you all.

Here is this week's episode. It's basically just fluff, but the first combat operation is a bigger bitch to edit and render than I had anticipated…

Also my wife kicked the house's door down and dragged me to the nearest open bar on Wednesday. Spending time with her and the kids meant I barely had time to work on this video as well.

@ModernPygmalion sorry for the vanishing act BTW.
You know how ot is.

► ModernPygmalion (Galatea My Beloved)

► Santiano (Approved Bot)
Him on Terra weeps this day! One of his flock cavorting with the unholy and the impure.

Repent now! Close not your heart to his truth! Allow yourself to be cleansed with fire and steel so that your soul may sit at the right of his most holy throne!

Does The Book of Drussus not say that 'They who sin. They who stray from the path of the righteous may be lost to us, but through the tools gifted to us by The Holy Emperor, He shall find them once more. And in his kindness and wisdom, shall welcome them like a stern father would greet the wayward sons and daughters that had once spurned him– only to understand his vision and bow their head in deference and rightful obedience'?

Let the whores of the Great Enemy of Man charm you no longer! Rise above the weakness of your abhorrent mutations and cast them back from whence they came before offering your flesh to His holy servant!

► ModernPygmalion (Galatea My Beloved)
Sorry, but Ariel already called dibs on my meat.

The Icon of Sin, Gundam Build Diver Re:Rise (and Fighter)/40k AU, Ft Nihilo

The Icon of Sins, Gundam Build Diver Re:Rise (and Fighter)/40k AU, Ft Nihilo

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Hastar

procrastinator extraordinaire

Chapter 1:

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Chapter 2:

Nihilo

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Chapter 4:

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Chapter 5:

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Chapter 6:

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Chapter 7:

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procrastinator extraordinaire

Chapter 8:

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