White Bullet

A visible wave of discomfort rippled through Scarlett’s body. It began at the interface point of her right shoulder, spread to the back, and all the way down to her glutes. The artificial arm moved, to take the second limb from John.

“I should keep a robot within distance to…” She stopped, her jaw clenching shut with a second wave of nerves reacting to the reconnection to an arm where there had been none. Exhaling slowly, she exorcised the pain. “…make sure I can re-limb myself when necessary.”

“Could also just sleep in your own corner while ya got pokey bits on your arms,” Rave suggested.

Scarlett waved dismissively at the feline Lightbearer. She did not put into words that she preferred the pain in the morning over sleeping alone. Actions spoke louder to that end anyhow.

Handing her one of her legs, John followed the assembly process with some interest. Each of the integration sockets was shaped like a flat-bottomed bowl. The reddish brass material was Scarlett’s material of choice or perhaps simply the best of what she had on hand at the time.

She read that question from his puzzling gaze. “I’ll improve everything about this when we have time and resources,” she said and pulled the leg into place. Grooves guided the motion, assuring the conductors lined up on both sides of the connection. Scarlett’s mana was channelled into circuitry and runic networks, which worked in tandem with enchantments to allow the master class of artifice that the limbs represented.

Traditionally, artificial limbs of the Abyss only used electricity and mana for the typical arcano-tech mixture. Artifice of this degree was only viable because they had five geniuses in the fields of crafting, of which two were prodigies and one was Hailey.

“Think I could tickle, like, 10 or 20% more efficiency out of ya,” the enigma engineer hummed. “Big increase for ya, but you’re already a tornado goin’ through the town centre, ain’t no reason on focusing pumpin’ you up further.”

“Keep making bullets,” Scarlett agreed. One more pulse of pain went through her as she pulled the second leg into position. Standing, she stretched. The exo-spine down her median furrow moved with her, synthetic fibres between the metal plates elongating to accommodate. “And you!” She suddenly pointed at John. “Know some restraint!”

John had woken up three times in total and just used Scarlett as his convenient cumdump. Only the first one had been a prolonged affair, involving all the haremettes and some mild brat breaking. The other two had been over pretty quick. Something about having the technomancer available as a helpless cocksleeve had just triggered the dom reflexes.

“You don’t seem worse-rested for it,” John defended himself.

“Whatever,” Scarlett groaned, with a hint of that NYC rudeness coming through. It was always there with her, but typically restrained by her business priorities.

They moved on to breakfast and showers. John paid deliberately more attention to the women that hadn’t been in bed with him during that time. Momo, Delicia, Nahoa, Nightingale and the elementals had all done the night shift of keeping things in order. Apparently, there had been 12 more minor incursions found. 9 of them, Lyndell had taken care of before the haremettes arrived. The primordial Lorylim apparently enjoyed moonlit strolls and to linger around the Midnight Forest in particular. She definitely enjoyed slaying her former kin.

John was going to check in on the living ancient later. The first point on his program for the day was the contracting of Fianna.

Accompanied by Scarlett and Rave, John made his way to the crafting crew’s workshop. Delicia, Lee, Lorelei and Hailey also came along, for the obvious reason that it was where they worked. They did not stick around when John moved towards where the sniper was.

It would be wrong to give this more gravity than it had. The only reason he did this was to have a greater weapon at his disposal. All else that flowed from it, they would deal with in the future.

Fianna was in the same state that they had left her, except a little more gaunt. A metal flask filled with some kind of flavoured nutrient soup stood untouched in the corner. Her meditation included deprivation, it appeared.

“I’ve chosen to grant your request.”

The hovering bits and pieces of metal in the air slowly lowered to the ground. Only after they had settled did Fianna open her eyes. There was a brief moment where her pupils appeared as slits again, before reverting to regular human roundness. Tigers, in reality, also had round pupils, but when dealing with metaphysical cats such expectations did not matter much.

“Thank you, Sir,” Fianna answered, bowing her head as much as her position allowed.

“The process is fundamentally simple.” John pulled the final Sylkarion out of the Guild Hall Inventory. “Complicated slightly by your lack of arms, but not in a way that should stop this. The needle on the handle needs to draw your blood. After that, your soul will be consolidated into a crystal. After that, you shape up your new form.”

As John explained the process, Scarlett and Rave manoeuvred a large crate of metals and other materials into the room. The typical mixture for a new Artificial Spirit under his employ.

“I understand, Sir.”

“Your current body will remain. Bodily functions will cease as the soul dies. We haven’t tried resuscitating it and I don’t intend to make this a change of habit. Does incineration agree with you?”

“Affirmative.”

“Then that is what we’ll do.” John scanned the woman one more time, looking for any hint of hesitation in her demeanour. All he found was the steel-nerved dedication of a woman who, well and truly, had committed herself to his cause. “I think you might have an image of me that is too grand.”

“Do I?” Fianna’s gaze snapped to the women with him. “I believe King John Newman is an individual of intense power and charisma. It is my opinion that he is a prideful man too paranoid to become narcissistic. He is gracious, perhaps too gracious at times, and commits himself to causes even when it hurts him. He is a schemer. He is constantly torn between his ambitions and his morals, like we all are. He’s conflicted. He’s a man that smiles in times of danger and falls into brooding silence in times of peace. He is not perfect… but he is lovely.”

“She’s got ya down pretty well, tiger,” Rave teased.

John almost felt bashful at that string of analysis. With a final sigh, he stepped forwards. “I’m not the tiger here.” He held the Sylkarion out in front of her. “It won’t be pleasant, but I’ll need you to cut your tongue with the needle.”

Fianna gave him the last nod of her human existence. Her tongue extended towards the device of swirling metal and enigmatic magic. A pin prick drew blood, then, mana rose from her skin. A simple blue at first, it gradually turned grey, then white, while it was siphoned into the device.

Lifeless, her former body slumped back, kept in place by the shape of the resting place. The Sylkarion shattered, the handle breaking into a myriad of shards, while the bottom broke into its constituent Celexiums. John caught the golf-ball sized core that was Fianna’s consolidated soul. It was white, almost entirely. Only a few dark grey and black streaks ran over the surface, giving it the striped look that was the penultimate confirmation of John’s theory. The final one came when he extended his will towards Fianna’s.

John confirmed.

‘Doesn’t seem like bad choices,’ John thought. It was hard to say without the options given. That the robotic half of them were vague on their effects did not aid in him knowing how good or bad they were.

Before John could dismiss the windows, the pieces of metal around the room began to fly towards the core. Releasing it in an instant, he took a step back. Ten pieces at a time, the metal from the crate and on the floor were pulled into her.

“Is this a good use of Celexiums?” Scarlett asked, when the remnants of the Sylkarion were pulled into the mass.

“Can’t think of a better one,” John responded.

The pieces liquified under the combined pressure of Fianna’s magic and her new state of being. What was a formless mass at first gradually shaped up into the naked form of the woman he had just contracted.

John could not lie, the sight of her nudeness was arousing. On the day he had first met her, he had thought that she had maid-worthy curves. She had maintained herself well, even for an Abyssal, and it had harmonized with her gorgeous genetics to shape a flat midriff and pleasing proportions. Her breasts were of a medium size, a solid handful that held their shape wonderfully. Pale pink nipples crowned them, harmonizing with her skin and the colour of her lips. Her hips were wide, her thighs of prestigious squeezability. All of that was apparent just by looking.

There were changes, of course. The rounded, feline ears of a tiger sprouted from the top of her white mane of decoratively messy, full hair. A striped tail curved behind her plump derriere. Her arms were fully mechanical, beginning with the white-plated shoulders and continuing down to her clawed fingers. Gaps at the joints showed the barebones black mechanisms within. For her legs, only the lower parts were fully replaced. Up from her knees, it was only the outwards side that was mechanical, retaining all the pale thighs that framed her clean-shaven womanhood.

Even stressed as he was by circumstances, he almost drooled when Fianna struck a military salute. All the squishy parts jiggled on a woman who beheld him with slit pupils. Iron discipline was in her gaze and obedience in her voice. “I thank you for the opportunity to serve you beyond the fullest capacity, Sir. May I ask a question?”

“Yes, I did suspect you were chosen by the White Tiger,” John told her. “That was why I chose to grant you this boon. Did the Cardinal Beast speak to you?”

“It did, Sir.”

It had been less than a minute between her soul consolidating into the sphere and this current moment. Pulling the metal towards her was a much faster way of forming a body than eating all of the metal, unsurprisingly. Plus, spirit journey matters often had odd time dilations. “Anything you can share with me?”

“Not gonna lie, thought it’d appear here,” Rave reported. “Kinda disappointed it didn’t. Patting the White Tiger is on my bucket list.”

“Since when?” Scarlett asked.

“Since last evening.”

Fianna waited until the interruptions stopped, then continued, “Nothing to report, Sir. It was a short, personal talk. I was informed I was chosen due to my efficient approach to ending the task it was summoned for. That was all. It also wasn’t my question, Sir.”

“Really?”

“No, I managed to glean the answer to it from your surface thoughts.”

“You’re figuring that out quickly,” he complimented her. Fianna had indeed joined his mental network and was currently getting observed by the others who were in range to do so. “Then what is your question?”

“May I be at ease and find some clothing, Sir?”

“…Right, yes.” John’s brain lagged for one moment before his answer. ‘God, I am a horny man to the core, aren’t I?’ he thought dryly. Naked women saluting for him was a new variation on his pronounced preference for being in charge. “Scarlett, do you have spares for her?”

She did – in the form of a machine that sprayed the body with synthetic fibres. It was designed to coat cables for artificial limbs, but the substance was skin friendly enough to be used for that purpose. She did it with some regularity. The outcome was something fitting, unenchanted, but reasonably sturdy. It barely covered anything, but the bodysuit worked well enough for now.

“Before I move onto the Skill Focus side of things, can you tell me what the Claws of the White Tiger are? They sounded important,” John directed the conversation.

“Affirmative.” Fianna raised her right hand. Even compared to the white bodysuit, the five pieces of metal that made up her claws were intensely colourless. John guessed that they must have been pure Mithril at base and changed by whatever historical or metaphysical value they had to truly embody the concept of White.

The claws separated from the robotic digits they were attached to and hovered in the air. There was, however, a small smirk on Fianna’s face, most likely because what had been a task of difficulty for her before was now relatively easy.

“These pieces of metal are steeped in the energy of the White Tiger. They are incredibly sharp and I can control them at great distances. I will most likely use them to bolster the effectiveness of my bullets, Sir.”

“Oh, that sounds fun!” Hailey made her drawling entrance into the conversation. The country gal had her coverall on her, which was itself a sign that she was working with some truly volatile materials. If something couldn’t damage her skin, she preferred running around topless. That her face was covered in smudges of grime and oil betrayed the rest. “I guess I could design the casings so these can hook inside and then…”

“Before you start theorizing on the way to best use a gun, we should do the Skill and Stat things. She might end up too strong to even make use of a rifle.”

“With all due respect, Sir, I have already been amped in speed and strength.” Fianna swung her left, still clawed arm to demonstrate. A powerful motion that rattled the screws and other small metal bits on a nearby table. “I do not possess the stopping power of a bullet.”

“You’ve gained less than 10% of what I am about to grant you,” John told her. Courtesy of the White Tiger, Fianna was already at his level but her Stats remained undistributed.

Fianna gave him a prolonged, confused stare. That he was telling the truth was something he had to impress on her via the mental connection.

“…I knew there was a gulf between our capacities, but I underestimated it thoroughly,” Fianna muttered.

Scarlett grabbed a chair and pushed it towards Fianna. “By the time we are done here, that thing on the rooftop will be a minor obstacle to you.” This time, John caught her typing something into the Harem Comms. Hailey’s appearance had not been spontaneous, it turned out. “We’ll see about what we can cram into your chassis after John goes through his Gamer bullshit.”

Bullshit that John pulled up the next moment.