Absorb, then bail

Ivy felt control over herself slip again as Lucas decided to hasten things up! She trotted over to the Meteor V, holding her hands out as the slime started to do its magic again. James watched in awe as his robo-centaur girlfriend seemed to simply make the military android disappear with ease--at least at first. She seemed to strain a bit near the end. "Oof, this is getting tricky, I don't have enough slime to pull it in fully. Uhh... let's see."

Ivy's torso started to change again, this time it looked like the shiny black material that made up Project Ichabod and Meteor V spiraled up her waist, chest, shoulders... in moments, and with apparently no ill effects, Ivy and Luke were doing the impossible, as Ivy's head rested atop the Meteor V torso, which in turn was connected seamlessly to Project Ichabod! Now, she was more like a centaur-knight than anything else. Ivy herself seemed some mix between elated and frightened out of her mind--becoming more and more robotic may have been terrifying, but the end result was incredible! With that, it seemed like Luke was able to absorb the remaining bits of the Meteor V into Ivy's body.

"Not quite done yet," he said, sounding a little tired, but resolved. Ivy was practically panting as Luke made her trot over to the Angel hardware next, reaching out to absorb it. This time, Luke seemed very much strained, as the process went much slower--instead of just purely absorbing the hardware, the Angel components were 'growing' out of the quadrupedal shape, creating what essentially was starting to look like a pegasus with the motorcycle hardware fanning out like wings!

Ivy glanced over her metallic shoulder as Luke continued his work. She looked at James, who was partly up the steps with his eyes glued to the door. "Any sign yet?" she asked, in a hushed voice. James shook his head, but his eyes stayed fixed on the door. Ivy frowned, wondering how he could take his eyes off of her and all these transformations she was taking on...! She looked powerful, mighty, but still rather sexy with the Meteor V shape and her head atop it! Were the circumstances different, no doubt James wouldn't be able to stop looking at her...

Ivy felt the Ascend headset appear back on her face, feeling the hardware attach to her and displaying the default AscendOS screen in the process, hiding one of the few remaining human parts of Ivy. It seems Luke really was running out of room of things he could store in the slime. "This is tough, it's easier when I'm borrowing and then replicating one thing at a time, but it would be too tricky to replicate this tech without a lot of extra components I think! Still, almost to the point where I can compress..."

Finally, Luke managed to absorb everything in, creating a singular machine that looked impressive, to say the least--Yabusa wouldn't have been so creative on their own! The fact that Luke could do that so easily spoke to just how amazing Hideki's own technology was, to make combining those objects intuitive. Ivy trotted toward the door again, crossing her armored arms. "Uh, Luke, still a problem. I'm a giant half-horse and you'll need to dismantle me to get out of here."

"Actually, now that it's together, I can do this!" Ivy felt a new sensation, as her body started to crumple and contract in on itself, which was beyond strange! Luke really seemed to struggle again at this point, but the horse components became smaller, two sets of legs merging into one, everything shrinking down considerably! All the sleek metallic components formed into a single humanoid shape, as close as Luke was able to get it to a normal body type. James finally looked back, gasping a little at the hourglass figure on his new cyborg girlfriend! The metallic panels shifted carefully, with barely any seams at the joints. hints of orange slime seemed to sit in the seams, as a sort of buffer between the parts. To James, it looked like he was face-to-face with a robot in the shape of his girlfriend, cast in metal from the neck down, with a blank screen affixed to her face.

"Ivy, please use an actual face," James said, as suddenly Ivy's normal face returned in the Ascend screen. Seems the AI still followed orders just fine when attached! "Luke, she can't wander around outside looking like this, someone's going to think she's a killbot or something!"

"Uh, right... one moment." A slightly bulky hoodie grew out from between the seams of her 'armor', wrapping around the upper body. While Ivy's neck and hands still had a weird metallic look, that was easier to explain than the full body! Jeans also formed around her legs, wrapping the shapely robo-rear in tight fabric that extended down to her ankles. Below that, her armored feet still had a sort of rubber tire look to them from Project Ichabod, but they just looked like some very fancy boots.

Ivy looked down, patting her hands to her torso, feeling like she was at least closer to a normal shape... it surprised her that she had tactile senses at all, but that was apparently part of one of the projects, so it had integrated into her. "I'm ready, we can go now. But Luke, won't your dad notice?"

"Nah, he hasn't gone down here for months. If we can get upstairs and lock back up, we're set."

James led the way, as Ivy followed soon after. However, upon her first step on the stairs, there was a problem... the stairs groaned heavily, creaking under immense weight! Ivy paused, biting her lip. "Luke, this isn't gonna work..! How much do we even weigh right now!"

"Probably around seven hundred pounds. Yabusa uses ultra-light materials, but when there's three projects together... just go carefully, if we get up and outside it won't be a big deal!"

Ivy winced at each step she took, where the stairs creaked more and more. Again, she wondered how anyone wouldn't hear this, and realized if she didn't start moving faster, they were definitely going to get caught! The noises didn't get any louder as she moved faster, so she took quicker steps, feeling at times like the stairs might collapse outright under that weight... surprisingly, everything held, and the two were out the basement door, locking it up quickly! They continued walking along toward the front door, but the weight of Ivy's compressed mechanical body still caused the whole house to creak and groan. They heard footsteps coming from elsewhere in the house, and decided rather than try and explain things to whoever was going to ask, they would just hurry outside, to stand on pavement where the creaking would stop at least!

James and Ivy walked along the driveway, pausing when they heard the garage door open. Out walked Gordon, his arms crossed with a wrench in one hand, as a half-dismantled Yabusa Eclipse SUV sat in the garage. Mr. Grisham's project, fortunately, had been loud enough to distract him from the noises from inside, and his classic rock radio did the rest of the work.

"Going so soon?" Gordon asked, an eyebrow furrowed. "I thought you two were going to stay for dinner, we were gonna order pizza."

James turned around, as did Ivy, whose hands dug into the hoodie's kangaroo pocket so Mr. Grisham couldn't get a good look at what he would likely recognize as very Yabusa-like tech. Even his car was done up in the same sleek black.

"Oh, yeah, uh... we'll be back soon, Mr. G," James said, as Ivy nodded in affirmation. "Luke said he wanted to play the new Ghost Gunner game, so Ivy and I are going to walk down to the game shop and pick it up for him. He said he needed some rest anyway." A bead of sweat ran down his forehead, it felt like Mr. Grisham knew something...

After a long pause, Gordon stood up again, taking a rag in one hand to clean the wrench in the other. "Okie dokie, kids. Luke is lucky you two are watching out for him. I'd give you a ride, but..." Gordon motioned to the SUV again.

"It's no problem, we want to get out and walk anyway," Ivy said, rocking nervously in front of Luke's dad. Here she was, wearing basically technology she had stolen from this man, right in front of him! As thrilling as it was, it was also gut-wrenching. "C'mon, we gotta hurry before they sell out, Jim!" She turned around, nudging at James. James recoiled, as said nudge felt like his arm had been struck by a hammer! Ivy didn't know exactly the sort of strength her body had, it seemed.

"You kids have fun," Gordon said, as he turned back to stare at the mess he'd made so far in the garage. Ivy and James hurried to the sidewalk and started to jog down the street, ignoring the fact that each thud of Ivy's foot on the ground was like a miniature earthquake, even Gordon briefly registered the strange thudding sensation in the ground. He didn't think much of it as he went back to work though.

Excited by their daring escape, Ivy and James grinned at each other once they rounded the corner and ducked behind an abandoned gas station just beyond the way.

"What now?" James asked.

"Well you could go for a ride, or make out with your robo girlfriend," Luke's voice said with a snicker, as Ivy and James looked over her body once again to try and figure out where he was even speaking from. "By which I mean, we could stay here and go into the gas station and play with the humanoid shapes... or, we use the Angel module, you ride Ivy up to one of the warehouse areas that are under construction, and we try out the Ichabod frame and the Meteor frame in more detail? If you do want to stay, just keep in mind that it probably isn't wise for Ivy to be on top like this... we can shed weight later, but for now let's keep everything contained so I don't lose any parts."

A tough choice--tech demos, or letting Ivy show off her sleek body as it is now with whatever other abilities came with that possibility..! Each was appealing to James, and Ivy herself didn't care, as long as she was trying something new.