A strange visit from King Enterprises

Lucy carried the two other girls up a back ramp into the trailer, and they immediately hopped off her quadrupedal body to collapse on a couch. The trailer was quite roomy--it had to be, so Lucy could fit her whole body within it. Lucy herself wandered up to a cushioned counter, some specially modified furniture so she could lie her organic upper body on something soft and cozy while her lower half connected to the charging panels on the ground, which each of the three girls would connect to if their feet remained on the ground.

"You seen the super-charger plugin the Yabusa electronics team is proposing?" Lucy asked, grabbing a hoodie to wrap her upper body in as she leaned forward onto the cushions in front of her, turning to look at the big TV as she hit a button to turn it on. Due to the inhibitor chip on her neck, she couldn't just ooze out of the robo-centaur form, at least until the next model that would let her detach part of the unit into a bipedal mode.

"That thing that looked like a gas pump nozzle?" Ivy asked, glancing over as she stood by the wall, where her 'wings' were automatically detached . She slipped on a jacket, herself, as the trailer was a bit chilly. "What about it? I think the trickle-chargers in the floor are pretty good, even if it means having to sit upright for a while."

Jamie slipped into a hoodie and some jeans, all over the top of her armored exterior. Her hands and feet still had that mechanical glint to them in the light, but the clothes hid the rest of it, where it wasn't obvious that she wasn't human underneath with all the sleek paneling around her. Though, if they were to feel her, the legs, hips, and arms would feel clearly inhuman--only her stomach and chest were squishy enough to provide a sense of a person underneath the fabric. "I know where this is going... they're talking about inductive charging techniques, and some pervert on the electronics team is trying to decide where to put that port..."

"I don't get it, what does that mean?" Ivy asked, puzzled. "Why would it matter how they are charging?"

With a snort, Lucy propped herself up on her shoulders. "Inductive coils involve electromagnetism, where the charging rod has a powerful magnet in it. A moving magnetic field creates an electrical field, so they're actually recommending this charging rod move in and out constantly. And if you can think of anywhere else on a girl's body that something long and rod-like moves in and out at a regular pace to put those coils...!"

"Oh. ...oh..." Ivy's face went a little red at that thought. "That can't be serious, right? They're just joking! Just some sort of dumb joke by the electronics team."

Lucy snickered. "I dunno, they seemed pretty ssssss--" She stopped talking, her eyes wide for a moment, her whole body frozen. She spasmed once or twice, before suddenly relaxing, her upper body righting itself fully, as she looked down at herself all of a sudden, patting her chest and waist. "You know, for a girl stuck to a mechanical horse, this isn't a half-bad body."

Ivy and Jamie paused, glancing at their friend. "Lucy, what are you talking about?"

With a growing smile and a slow shake of her head, she looked back and forth between the two. "Oh, Lucy's a little dormant at the moment. But, you can call me that if you want, since my real name isn't important. But, I'm very practiced at slipping inside bodies and taking charge, me and my husband enjoy this kind of stuff. But, that's not important. I'm here on behalf of King Enterprises." While Lucy talked, her hands seemed to be lifting up on her hoodie, touching the bare skin underneath, slipping under her sports bra with a little pleasant sigh.

The other two girls were stunned. Had someone hacked Lucy's inhibitor chip? They didn't know how else Lucy could be controlled by outside forces, without an active Ascend receiver integrated into her, that remained with Ivy to keep Hilda and Jamie's apps present through her. Lucy, as far as anyone else knew, didn't have any sort of other means of losing control. "King Enterprises? As in, Emilia King, the billionaire shut-in? The Witch of Spiral City, that Emilia King?"

Lucy frowned, crossing her arms. "Those are some pretty hurtful nicknames, but yes. I'm here to make a business proposal, a deal if you will." She walked out of her little stall area, to approach the other two rather frightened girls as they looked at her. Lucy, in this state of control, seemed somehow far more menacing... Jamie looked ready to spring forward, since she still had on enough Meteor power armor to possibly subdue Lucy for long enough that Ivy could bolt, if need be, since without her wings Ivy was fairly unprotected. Nobody seemed to know how Lucy might behave, but Jamie was prepared for the worst. "Okay, so. I want you to deliver to me either the Phase Binder device that Yabusa is using, or the blueprints and material list to make one. End of day, tomorrow. Or I'll take some samples of my own."

"...that's not a business deal, that's just ****!" Jamie remarked. Lucy only giggled.

"Why us?" Ivy asked. "If you can hack like this and take over Lucy, why not just get into the hardware at the Yabusa booth and take it all for yourself?"

More giggling, as Lucy kept toying with her body a bit while talking. "Oh, a couple reasons. One, this is more fun! Two, what better person to carry a heavy machine than a four-legged horsegirl? And three, if you don't comply, then if I understand the physiology of Lucy right, she's already got a lot of what I need contained inside her... so, we'll just take her instead."

Ivy and Jamie looked at each other. "Got what... nanoslime?"

Lucy started to laugh loudly at that one, covering her mouth. "Oh goodness, is that what you kids are calling it? Hideki calls it Biopolymer Revision M, Yabusa calls it the Phase Binder interface gel, which I know they didn't just reinvent that substance overnight. You kids already are used to stealing company secrets, so here's a new secret: all these gels, including Revision M, originated from Emilia King's reserve of distortion gel that she has kept at her mansion for decades. If anything, she's just looking to reclaim some of the unauthorized derivative works! There's so many other things to bind together than people and lawnmowers, or whatever Yabusa Robotics is planning to do with this."

As the others watched silently, Lucy stepped back to her little corner, glancing at them. "So, just make it happen. And don't do anything rash, I know you're all super-charged with these power armor machines, but I've got a half-dozen Geistknights on standby who won't hesitate to clean up messes, or make some of their own, whatever's needed. We're not looking to hurt anyone, so don't **** our hand. Just get the stuff, and bring it to the south side of the convention center, you'll see a van waiting for you tomorrow--bring what we want, or I'll bring in Lucy here instead, and she'll make a nice long-term inclusion to my team even without horse legs. It has to be done by tomorrow, I've got good intel that Hideki's thinking about doing the same thing and I plan to beat them to the punch. Toodles."

Lucy blinked again, and then she leaned forward, gasping for air a bit as she put her hands on the padded countertop. She looked down, as a bead of sweat ran down her forehead. "Holy... what WAS that? It felt like whoever that was really was in my head..." Lucy shivered, as Ivy hurried over to hug her arms around her friend.

"I don't know. And I don't know what we do now," Jamie said, crossing her arms. "We don't know how they got in you, so we can't just block that from happening again. Do we just give up the Phase Binder and bring it to them? Maybe we just go tell someone what happened?"

With a shake of her head, Lucy slumped and shivered a bit. "I don't think whoever that was has actually gone..." Everyone went quiet at that, realizing they were probably still being monitored. "Look, I don't feel like they're lying about any of that, just I have this sense from when they were talking through me that they were being truthful. If we don't do what they ask, and we tell someone instead, then something else will happen, either with those knight-people they mentioned or I'll just, I dunno, end up walking out of here. I, uh... I don't want that."

All of them went silent again. None of them knew what to say. Commit to theft and try their luck with the wrath of Yabusa? Or resist, and deal with whatever other consequences arise with this King Enterprises representative?

This story branch continues in Phasebound.