A Bimbo Ray Points Both Ways

Anais Ali had spent her entire life in pursuit of knowledge. Mostly. Her entire adult life. Fine, a statistically significant portion of her adult life had been spent on mindless gigs and hook-ups, but the rest of it? All pursuit of knowledge, baby. And it wasn't just some sort of scholarly aesthetic type thing; possessing a wide-ranging breadth of knowledge had practical day-to-day applications in the life of a sexy adventurer. After all, it was impossible to know in advance which piece of knowledge might save her own life one day.

Though admittedly, Ali was not particularly thrilled with the realization that the piece of knowledge that might be saving her life today was the month in school she spent in that improv group. Ugh. Well, at least she was going to get something out of it now besides one selfish fuck from a D-tier aspiring comedian and a vague understanding that whatever Crazy Town was, it was a bad thing.

Whatever. Time to improv the shit out of this nonsense.

Luckily for Ali, that didn't require much more than staying limp and occasionally throwing in some sort of snort or mumble. The intruders seemed convinced, at least. Though the young woman's plan to play possum until they moved on were quite dashed when she found herself hauled off of the sofa, slung between two alarmingly well-armored sets of shoulders. Okay. Fuck. Just...stay limp, and wait for the chance to unleash some righteous tech on their asses. Someone, anyone else must still be awake, right?

The two intruders continued to chatter amongst themselves. "Nice, she's another hot one, right?"

"Meh. She's fine. Not like the elf, fucking hell. Even if the Stuff's a bust, she wouldn't need a drop."

The Stuff? Ali did not like the sound of the Stuff. Though at the moment she had other things to focus on, such as containing her murderous rage as a rough hand helped itself to a grope of her right boob. "Ugh, no way man. You can keep those gross blobs of fat. Flat Justice all the way."

Fl...Flat?! She was, like, a goddamn C-cup! Oh, these fucking animals. These fiends. Ali was going to improvise their horrible deaths.

Even with her eyes screwed shut and heart filled with rage, Ali didn't miss the sound of a door being thrown open or the sudden flare of sun on her skin. Okay, they were taking her outside. She didn't miss the clash of steel upon steel in the distance , either. Someone was still active, and they seemed to be fighting for their lives. Ali couldn't resist it any longer; she had to crack one eye and sneak a peek.

What she saw sent despair rushing in to mix with the rare still burning in her chest. Febee, the merchant and the Splicer mercenary were all strung up by their arms to the side of the caravan, the former two out cold while the latter was gagged and beaten bloody. He glared with unrestrained loathing at the source of the sounds of battle, the scene that more than anything else sank Ali's heart: Charlie, battered and oozing translucent blood from a dozen wounds, fighting for their life against two heavily armed bandits.

"Aww fuck, of course the robot didn't have any of the damn food." One of the two bandits dragging Ali let go of her, the scholar managing to collapse limply against the other as she continued to peep at what was happening. The bandit rushed to join his fellow cutthroats, drawing a pulling a heavy pistol from his side, only to jump back with a yelp as a cat-eared figure made of glowing blue materialized before him. "What tha--! Fuck! Fuck!" The bandit yowled in pain as the hardlight copy of Binxy slashed into him, drawing blood before the bandit could smash it into nothingness with a frantic pistol whip. He snarled in annoyance as one of the other bandits grabbed the tied-up mercenary by the hair and planted a fist into his stomach. "Fuck you, Bob! You said this would be easy!"

Ali could only grit her teeth and continue plotting revenge as she realized that not only was Binxy's partner on the scene, but he wasn't tied up. He was standing off to one side, grimacing in concentration as he fiddled with the control panel sewn into his uniform. "This has been easy. Just hit the damn projection once and it vanishes, okay? Now shuddup; I gotta get the tin can out of the drones' F.O.F system...there!"

The air filled with a terrible whirling as the arsenal mounted onto the caravan ground itself into activity, five thunderous shots cracking through the sounds of battle. Ali watched in horror as Charlie spun sideways from the sheer force of the gunshots, more and more clear life fluid gushing from their grievous injuries. The remake shakily pressed a hand to their chest, a cloud of nanobots swarming out of their wrist in a vain attempt to patch together Charlie's seemingly mortal wounds.

Whatever Ali was going to do, she needed to do it soon. But she knew that she would only have one shot.

And so despite her every urge screaming at her to muscle free from her captor and run to Charlie's side, she stayed limp. She stayed limp even as the bandit hauled her over to the side of the caravan, lifting her arms above her head as he set about binding it. She didn't miss that they were good enough to tie her up beside Binxy, the only other captive not fully incapacitated. Okay. That was a start.

Though the cat-eared splicer, who had just managed to spit out his gag, seemed more concerned with screaming at his erstwhile partner at the moment. "How could you fuckin' do this, Bob?! Partners for five years, and now then you fuckin' sell me out on our last job?!"

The other guard's smile was still disturbingly affable as he offered Binxy a rueful shrug. "I've cherished our time together, Binxy. That hasn't changed. Our friendship is incredibly valuable to me. But not priceless. As it turns out, our friendship had a high but very specific price. And they're payin' it."

Binxy spat, Bob not even flinching as it splattered against his shoulder. "So that's it for us, then? You goddamn honeykisser? A shallow grave in the desert for me an' these unlucky pricks, and a slightly wealthier retirement for you? You're pathetic."

"Yeahhh, not quite. That would be unfair to you, and doesn't this seem like a lot of fuss for just 'slightly' wealthier?" Bob stepped to one side as the bandit who had tied you up joined him, some sort of syringe gun clutched in one hand. "You and the rest of these saps'll be much more valuable alive than dead. After a bit of a make-over, that is."

The bandit pulled a glass vial of something silver and swirling out of a case slung over his shoulder, roughly attempted to rack it into the syringe gun. "You're sure about this shit?"

Bob nodded in annoyance, then hissed as he saw the crude treatment the substance was receive. "Careful with that, idiot!" The judas guard snatched the vial out of the bandit's hand, momentarily turning his back to Ali and Binxy as he gently slotted it into the gun. "You do not want to break this, okay?" Binxy stiffened as Ali carefully extended her foot, quickly tapping it against the mercenary's. Bob continued to lecture the annoyed-looking bandit, both of them completely unaware of the small nod Ali snuck Binxy or the vicious flare of hope that briefly erupted behind the splicer's eyes. "The needle's just to make sure it goes where it's supposed to; if you crack that vial and the Stuff gets out? It's gonna shoot straight up the nearest available hole, and then you're fucked."

The bandit did his best to hold back a sneer. "Whatever."

Ali darted another hopeful peek towards Charlie. They were still holding on, but only because their two assailants were toying with them. The remake's tech and nanobots were keeping them alive, but they were still on the ground and practically helpless. Charlie was going to run out of tech soon, and then Charlie was going to die.

Satisfied that the syringe gun was properly prepped, Bob turned back towards his one-time partner with a gloating gleam in his eye. "You're gonna do him first, right?" The bandit nodded, drool beginning to seep from the corner of Bob's mouth as he grinned lasciviously. "Fuck I can't wait to see this. I want you to know, I'm gonna come find you when this is all over. Once you're all nice and trained like a good lil' kitty cat. I'm gonna find you, and I'm gonna buy you, and I'll spend the rest of my retirement and the rest of your life stuffing you full of babies. Doesn't that sound nice, Binxy? Doesn't that sound like the perfect retirement?"

"Yyyyeah, about that."

Bob frowned, annoyed at the bandit's interruption of his fantasizing. That annoyance turned to shock as he felt the needle sink into his shoulder, then horror as the syringe gun injected its payload directly into him. "N-no! No! Why?!"

The bandit shrugged as Bob stumbled backwards, ejecting the spent vial as the guard clutched frantically at his shoulder. "You know. Loose ends, and all that shit. Don't worry; you'll still get to enjoy that retirement. Just not exactly as you'd planned."

Bob groaned in terror as his shoulder began to throb, a faint hiss seeping into the air as steam expelled from his pores. The bandit whistled jauntily as Bob collapsed to the ground, plucking another vial from his case as he callously stepped straight over the writhing man. "So! Who's next, then?" The bandit sloshed the vial around in Binxy's face, grinning nastily. "Any volunteers?"

The sound of Ali's wrist compartment snapping open drew the bandit out of his cruel taunts, the man cocking his head quizzically as her omnitool emerged. "Eh?"

-DROP IT-

The bandit's entire body seized up a split second after he felt the vial slip from his fingers. He managed to shriek in dismay, arms shooting out to snag it before the delicate glass could hit the ground, only to choke on his scream as Binxy's freshly summoned hardlight projection tore into his back. The bandit flailed in thoughtless reaction at the more obvious threat, his first wild swing going wide but his second striking home to shatter the fragile projection. But it was still distraction enough for the bandit to miss Ali's pre-summoned Hovering Hand catching the vial as it fell. And it was distraction enough for the bandit to be taken completely by surprise when the nanobot-formed hand pressed the vial against the small of his back, holding it it place long enough for Ali to swing up her legs crush the bottle under her boot, smashing the Stuff into him.

Swirling silver splattered across the bandit's back as he squealed frantically, fruitlessly attempting to wrench his arms backwards and claw the Stuff off of himself. Too little, too late; the frenetic goop had already swarmed up his neck, begun forcing its way through his clenched teeth and into his mouth. Not that Ali cared at that moment. She flailed her legs, yelling desperately at Binxy as her Helping Hand floated up to start fussing at her bindings. "Go save Charlie!"

"Right!" The splicer furrowed his brow, determination on his every feature as his hardlight copy sprinted towards the three remaining bandits. All the commotion had drawn them away from their heartless tormenting of Charlie, still unsure of what had actually happened but certain that it couldn't be good. Though in truth, the sight of Binxy's hardlight projection charging in for another fruitless suicide assault did little to convince them of the seriousness of their situation. The lead bandit turned to his compatriots with a snicker, beginning to ask who wanted to take the first crack at the practically immaterial manifestation, only to be rudely interrupted when a flash of pixels arched between the Splicer and his clone, the two swapping positions as the very material Binxy screamed in wrathful triumph and smashed into him fists-first.

The two standing bandits stared dumbly down at the scene of their comrade being beaten senseless by an enraged cat-man, looking back up in time to see the still nearly naked Ali sprinting their way. The closest one managed to get his gun up in time to fire off a shot, but Ali didn't even flinch as the bullet grazed across her exposed shoulder. She simply surged forward, pressing her still-bound hands into the bandits chest and releasing an ominous throb of condensed code into his body. The gun dropped from the bandit's twitching fingers as he gurgled, mouth frothing as his cybernetics shook and spasmed, black lines spreading across his exposed flesh at the point that Ali touched him. Under normal circumstances, Ali preferred using her techs to heal wounds? But in this case, it was very much a pleasure to be inflicting them instead.

The final bandit had no interest in going down without a fight, raising his machete to strike at Ali's exposed back. But then Charlie's unyielding hand grabbed him by the ankle, and wrenched him to the ground. Ali's hand pressed into his chest long before he could right himself, and then all three of the remaining bandits were left quivering in an unconscious pile.

Ali had other concerns, however. She dropped to her knees beside Charlie and gently spread her hands across his wounded body, pulsing a much more soothing code into the remake. His wounds immediately began to knit back together, but a strange little buzz she'd never heard before was rumbling out of Charlie and she didn't like it one bit. "Are you okay, Charlie?" She sniffed, half a question and half a plea.

"Yes." It was almost more than Ali could bear to hear the usual flat tone coming from Charlie's featureless faceplate, utterly incapable of expressing what they must have been feeling. At least that buzzing had tapered off. "I'm okay."

Binxy let out a low whistle. "They're not." He jerked his thumb back towards Bob and the other bandit. "Check that shit out."

Ali managed to rip her eyes away from Charlie to spare a glance towards their betrayers, only to be left unable to look away. The bandit was still in the early throes of the Stuff's apparent effects, his body visibly pulsing and warping as he thrashed and groaned. Bob, however, had entered what must have been the final stages. The former guard had positioned himself on his knees, shoulders slumped and arms dangling at his sides as he reared backwards, face pointed towards the sky and jaw spreading open inhumanly wide. The portly man shuddered once, twice, and then a beam of heat and fizzling matter and what Ali could only describe as pure tech, all fizzling neon and visible code, erupted from his throat as his body began to remake itself.

The first thing to go was the layer of pudge weighing down his frame, momentarily leaving behind a very slender Bob before all of that excess mass set about repurposing itself. His temporarily baggy shirt was soon straining under the mass of a pair of swelling breasts, firm new flesh bubbling and wobbling as more and more tit bellowed from the former man's otherwise petite chest. The uniform creaked threateningly, then all of his buttons gave way at once to reveal a jiggly line of scientifically perfect cleavage, the tatters of his shirt held in place by a pair of massive, throbbing nipples. His pants fared no better, shredding under the combined assault of Bob's newly sprouted bubble but, waspy hips and tremendously thick thighs. His eyes glowed and his face shifted as it was resculpted into a more pleasing form, lips turning fat and pillowy around the beam that expelled everything that was Bob and left behind only what was needed to create a brand new overripe bimbo.

The bandit had begun to release a beam of his own as Bimbo-Bob's sputtered out, the newly-christened sexpot cooing in tired confusion as she rubbed at one big, sparkly blue eye. Fuck. Every inch of this person had been remade, but the resemblance was still there. If someone had shown Ali a picture of this girl, and she hadn't watched the guard transform into her before her very eyes? She'd have assumed that Bob's motive to betray his partner and the caravan was to buy another wardrobe of clothes and dump truck full of condoms for his delicious little slut of a daughter.

What a mind fuck. The New World never ceases to amaze, even as it simultaneously titillates and horrifies.

Binxy wasn't quite so philosophical on the matter, hawking up a glob of blood and spitting it onto the ground. "Happy fuckin' retirement, Bob."

Bimbo-Bob yawned cutely. "Thaa~anks.." Then she curled up on the ground and went to sleep, blissfully unconcerned by the upheaval of her plans and her life and the transforming bandit at her side swiftly joining her in bimbo-dom.

Charlie shakily pushed themselves up on an elbow, faceplate as expressionless as always as that odd buzz quietly pulsed in and out. "Ali."

"Yes, Charlie?"

"This job stinks."

"Yes it does, Charlie. Yes it does."