Zavier's heart sped up a beat as he crossed the threshold between his lawn and the woods. He was alone in a wildly dangerous, potentially deadly area surrounded by god-knows-what and had no plan.
His grin of excitement spread wide across his face.
The sounds of the woods were such a low-level hum of ubiquitous, staticky noise that it didn't stand out until it was gone. Zavier had walked fifty or so feet past the tree line when the sounds all around him died out. He stretched his senses as far as he could but his vision was incredibly limited, the trees standing out as darker shadows amongst an already dark background. He heard a scrabble to one side and pivoted. He peered into a darkness that felt thick enough to swim through when, suddenly, two points of light appeared in front of him. The Arcane Scamperer's eyes had caught an errant beam of moonlight as it shot towards him.
Zavier leaned back on reflex and the Scamperer landed on his chest instead of his face. It bore him to the ground and chomped down towards his face, catching Zavier's chain-wrapped forearm instead. Its jagged teeth gnawed at the chain uselessly as he struggled to push its head away. He held his other arm up and activated the gauntlet. The projectile launched so quickly it looked like a muzzle flash, the gauntlet lighting up in a complicated pattern and a spinning disk flew out of the top of it right over his clenched fist. The Scamperer's head jerked and it almost flew off of him, falling in a meaty thump to the ground at his side. He could see the energy moving between the gauntlet, the pen, and him before sliding smoothly into the pen that was anchored in the tip of the chain.
Zavier didn't have any time to consider. In the flash of the gauntlet Zavier had seen other Scamperers climbing down the trees, their faces eager. He didn't know which would come first but he knew where they were going to land, so he rolled to his side and up onto his feet in one smooth motion. He heard multiple thumps where he'd just been and threw his chain forward blindly. He wasn't sure how best to use it so right now the best he could hope for is that the pen would stab into something hard enough to kill it. He felt it hit something solid and heard a pained chittering. Strafing to the side, he fired the gauntlet while repeatedly whipping the chain into anything he could see. The chain had been absorbing energy and instantly releasing it in bright static bursts every time it hit something. Clouds of ozone and burnt fur were accompanied by streaks of spinning light from the gauntlet that left meteor trails behind them.
His desperate, clumsy swings were missing as often as they hit, but when they did they stunned and stung the creatures. The strobing sparks were enough light for Zavier to target with the gauntlet, each shot hitting something solid. Zavier had realized that if he just pointed his finger at what he wanted to hit his aim was perfect. The gauntlet didn't have any sort of tracking but it fired perfectly straight every time and was fast enough to make dodging almost impossible.
Soon enough Zavier heard the silence return, the only sound his breathless panting. He watched in interest as the last of the spare energies from the creatures sped into the gauntlet, then the chain. He realized that it was following the path of least resistance towards whatever was considered the most empty. The gauntlet launched a frightening amount of power but needed constant refilling in the heat of the action. The chain only absorbed small amounts but it released them almost instantly.
The pen, though… Zavier reached out mentally for the pen and realized he could essentially "see" it in his mind. It had siphoned off small amounts from each of the kills but hadn't absorbed so much as to make his weapons inert. It seemed to know how much energy it could take before it became detrimental to the other items being used. He wondered if there was something more he could do with that, but that was a question for later. He smiled as the last of the giant squirrels disappeared. "Fucking R.O.U.S.'s" he muttered before moving further into the woods.
He stalked forward as silently as he could but was under no illusion that he was escaping the notice of anything near him. As he walked he spared some attention for diving further into the pen, trying to tease out its features. He knew there were functions and abilities that he had absolutely no way of accessing yet, but he also had a strong impression that it was a multi-tool that was meant to evolve with its user. Frustration welled in him and he almost gave up on analyzing it for now - until something occurred to him; he'd been approaching this like a programmer and engineer, trying to determine what its capabilities were and how to turn them on.
What he needed to start doing is thinking like someone in this new system. The System didn't give up a lot in the way of functionality because the functions were both infinitely customizable and almost purely reactive. It responded to what you did, what you needed, and what you wanted, then created an answer to a question you didn't even know you had. Maybe instead of trying to figure out how to turn it on he could instead just express a need and let the pen do whatever it could to help him achieve that.
Zavier paused and held the tip of the chain at eye level, barely able to see its glint in the darkness. He took a meditative breath, released it, then focused his will on what he wanted in this exact moment. Nothing too expansive, nothing grandiose. What he needed was small, feasible, and able to be given with the energy stored in the chain if he could just figure out how to do it. He focused on the desire and pushed will into it until it felt like a tangible thing, then he broke through and an understanding was gained.
** Congratulations! You have formed a bond with 'Sonic Screwdriver.' **
Zavier smiled as a silvery light began to glow from the tip of the chain, illuminating the Moonshadow Howler's lupine form just in front of him.
Zavier leapt to the side but was flung into a jumbled roll as the Howler's claws raked his side. Pain stung his ribcage but he could feel the wounds were light and he wasn't in immediate danger. He sprung to his feet minutely faster than the wolf was able to pivot. The chain flashed out in a straight line and stabbed into the wolf's flank and Zavier quickly followed with two shots from the gauntlet. The creature howled and spun to bite at the chain. Its razor teeth weren't able to dent the hardened links but it did pull Zavier forward in a stumbling rush. Seeing that he was falling straight into a hungry wolf's mouth he decided not to fight it, instead using the momentum to push himself even faster. He'd grabbed the Toxic Weaver Dagger with his gauntlet hand and managed to get it up just as he reached the wolf. He aimed for its neck but stumbled and slid under the massive head, scoring a deep cut down the front of its throat.
No luck on it bleeding out soon, though, it instead jumped backwards in a reflexive leap to get away from the knife before jumping forward again the instant its feet hit the dirt. Zavier rolled backwards onto his feet and began swinging the chain around him in patterns he didn't know he knew, the light creating spinning whorls of silver that illuminated the small patch of grass they were in. Zavier knew he shouldn't be this proficient but realized he felt information flowing into him from the chain itself.
No, not the chain - the pen. It was feeding information directly into his consciousness and Zavier's System-enhanced body was interpreting it into muscle memory. Zavier gave the wolf a wolfish grin of his own.
"You're about to get Neo'd," he said to the wolf. "This thing just taught me Kung-Fu." Zavier plunged in, chain swinging around him in increasingly-complex patterns.