CHAPTER 20
Gwyn busied herself putting a myriad of sticky sensors all over Cait's torso.
"What do these have to do with me getting a nano-phone?" Cait asked when Gwyn lifted her arm to stick a sensor on her armpit. She twitched as she learned invulnerability didn't extend to tickling.
"Absolutely nothing!" Gwyn responded cheerfully. When Cait frowned, she just returned a big smile. "They have everything to do, however, with your other request."
She tapped one of Cait's bulky triceps.
"The issue with equipping you is that we don't have any material anywhere near as tough as you, so if you're using your powers to their full potential, nothing we give you is going to survive."
Her smile grew even wider as pride exerted its influence. "That's where I come in!"
A swarm of nanobots flew out of her, forming an image in front of Cait. It was a 3D model of her body, naked and anatomically correct. She crooked an eyebrow at Gwyn who just waved her concern away like Cait was the weird one.
"So, if we don't have anything that can match your body, the answer is to use your body!" She said excitedly. Nanobots began to swarm onto the model, forming golden lines along its shoulders and arms.
"I already have tattoos, and unfortunately they haven't given me Far Cry powers yet." Cait sniped, but she was intrigued. Gwyn rolled her eyes and continued.
"Guess you're no Jason Brody then. These, obviously, aren't tattoos, although I did spend some brainpower on making sure they'd look dope, you're welcome." She gave a smug look to Cait. She had to admit, they did look pretty cool on the model. The golden lines looked like a mix of supportive athletic tape and circuitry, forming networks around the lines of her muscles. Cait was surprised when the model started moving, taking a fighting stance.
"Right now, you hit like a heavyweight champion." The lines disappeared, and another model appeared in front of Cait's . Mini-Cait threw a haymaker that dropped it like a sack of potatoes. "That's great when you're fighting someone with regular human durability, but against anything tougher…."
A larger, inhumanly muscled model appeared before her own, and mini-Cait tossed another haymaker. This time, it impacted without visible effect, and she looked comically up at the larger figure before it slapped her out of the display range.
"... you don't have a lot to offer." She finished. Her face took on a sly grin though. "But! That's where a little technosorcery comes in."
Mini-Cait reappeared, this time with the lines of nanotech in place, faintly glowing gold. The large opponent reappeared, and she wound up for another haymaker. This time though, at the moment of release, the lines glowed brightly before seeming to explode, shooting her hand forward like a rocket. The opponent had an instant to look surprised as mini-Cait's fist entered through his ribcage and pushed out a chunk of spine on exit.
"Shit!" Gwyn yelped at the bite-sized spray of gore. "Uh, wow, this is an active simulation, I expected him to go flying like you did. I guess something as hard as you moving with that much force is more like a bullet than a blow."
Cait's jaw was as close to the floor as it could go, as she watched mini-Cait pull her arm out of her foe and shake off the gore. She gave her namesake a bloody salute and winked out of existence.
"You can make me do that!?" Cait grabbed Gwyn by the shoulders, jittery with excitement.
"Hey! No touch!" Gwyn shrugged off her grip, only slightly miffed. "But yeah, like I said, that was a sim using real world parameters. Mini-Cait just put her fist through the simulated equivalent of Roidrage."
Cait let out a low whistle. That guy had been no joke, it had taken Freeflow, Eyebite, and Bullrush just to incapacitate him.
"How?" Cait was still confused. The lines looked dope, yeah, but there wasn't a lot of indication on how they worked. Gwyn sighed.
"So, it's a nano coating over your muscles mechanical meridians that provides a mechanical assistance advantage to both the pulling and pushing force they produce, along with temporary nano explosive clouds along the trajectory that form a cavitation wave assisting the forward momentum of the punch." She looked at Cait expectantly, but her eyes had glazed over.
"That sounds like-"
"Bullshit? Yeah, keep up." Gwyn finished Cait's sentence. "Point is I can make it work for you. And I mean specifically you, look what happens when someone without your toughness uses it."
Another model, this time Eyebite, Pete, in all his scrawny glory, appeared and the lines laced his arms. The simulated Roidrage reappeared as well, and Pete drew his arm back for a punch. This time, when the lines glow brightened, the result was still gore but not from Roidrage. The shattered and gibbed remnants of Pete's arm slapped wetly against the opponent. Mini-Eyebite had enough time to scream before mini-Roidrage turned the rest of him into a puddle.
"Yeeeesh." Cait said, watching pulpy liquid seep out from under the sim-villain's fist.
"Yep! Basically gives you a rocket punch, but putting that kind of force on a squishy human body equals soup." Gwyn agreed, mimicking Caits grimace. "Heck, Freeflow insisted on trying it since he has a similar issue to you, in terms of how much force he can apply at once, and his body is a little tougher to account for his speed. Idiot broke his arm in 3 places, took Relief a week to put him right."
"I'd say that would make me feel better about our next 'sparring' session," Cait said, frowning. "But even if I can hit like an ICBM, I'd still have to, ya know, hit."
"Believe me, you're not the only Guardian on staff with the same complaint." Gwyn gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder. "Now, you wanna try this out yourself?"
"Hell yeah, pimp me the fuck out sister!"
Gwyn did just that, rolling a film of nanomachinery onto Cait's skin with a device that looked like a mini lint roller. She took her time, making sure the placement was just right, and when she was done the design mirrored the simulated one exactly. For now, it just looked like thin lines of metallic tape.
"Okay, I'm gonna activate it now," Gwyn said, a cloud of 'bots forming a tablet in her hand. "I'd say this might hurt, but, well…"
Gwyn just gestured at her, then tapped a command into the tablet. The lines seemed to melt into Cait's skin, disappearing completely.
"Sooooo no pain then?" Gwyn asked, shaking her head at Cait's nod. "You just had billions of nanobots enter your pores and take up residence in your skin. That should have burned like hell. I bet you don't even get period cramps anymore."
"Never did!" Cait grinned wide, patting her crotch.
"Ugh, right." Gwyn rolled her eyes. "Anyway, this is how we're solving the durability issue. Nothing's more durable than you, so the bots use you as shelter when you're not actively punching things. Even if you do take some hits, they should be able to regen to their default so long as they're not completely taken out."
"Any, like, ammo? Use limit?"
"Noooo…" Gwyn looked thoughtful, holding her chin in her hand with her eyes cast up. "I mean, maybe. The explosive cavitation clouds that provide a lot of the thrust are spot-generated using air elements. It's conceivable that you could use up enough air in an enclosed environment that they would no longer be able to propagate."
Cait stared blankly.
"Didn't you have a B.S.?" Gwyn asked her, rolling her eyes yet again. "Point is, the explosions won't work in a vacuum. You'll still have a mechanical assist, but it'll be maybe a tenth of the power."
"I had a B.S. in agricultural genetics!" Cait protested. "You know how much engineering that entailed? I cheated my way through Physics 1, that's it!"
"I know," Gwyn sighed. "The pretty ones are always dumb."
"Hey, don't sell yourself short, you're dumber than you think!" Cait went to give Gwyn a light punch on the shoulder, but in the span of an instant the golden design appeared, flashed brightly, and Gwyn was flying across the room.
"Holy fuck!" She screamed, a buzzing cushion of 'bots catching her before she could splatter on the wall. The cloud let her drop, and she braced herself against the wall. "Hoooo boy! I'm fucking awake now!"
"I am so goddamn sorry!" Cait sprinted over, started to reach out to check her friend over but thought better of it. Instead she held her arms behind her back, looking like a chastened schoolgirl.
"No, no…" Gwyn gasped, still catching her breath. "My fault. You don't give a baby a gun without teaching them how to use it."
"You'd give a baby a gun as long as it had instructions?" Chastened or no, Cait wasn't letting that one slide. Surprisingly, Gwyn didn't look like she felt she was in the wrong, instead frowning at Cait.
"This is Iowa, my dad taught me to shoot when I was six." She explained. "Anyway, yeah, those bots are linked up with your nerves, and the signal they interpret as 'punch' is pretty broad for now. We're gonna have to train that, and do the same for any other gestures that need some extra oomph."
She looked at the tablet that rematerialized in her hands.
"I can do some tweaking based on the readings from that to get us started." She fixed her gaze back on Cait. "You got an hour? I bet we can get it to the point that your fist doesn't come out of Lira's mouth during your next dalliance."
Cait laughed, taking position in front of a dummy Gwyn summoned out of the wall.
"What about Lira and I's respective sizes makes you think fisting has been on the table?" Gwyn flipped her off, and indicated that Cait should throw a punch.
She wound up, seeing the glow, and a split second later a sonic boom shook the room as her hand atomized the dummy at the speed of sound.
"HELL YEAH BROTHER!" She shouted, punching a fist into the air and promptly being pulled a few feet off the ground by the rocket punch that summoned. Gwyn winced at that, but fortunately her ears didn't seem to be bleeding. When she looked down to peruse some readings, Cait saw a cloud of nanobots sealing her ear canal.
"Okay," she said, looking back up at Cait. "I think I can get it to differentiate based on intent as long as we get a bit more data, hope you're ready for some boxing."
She summoned a gaggle of dummies, and over the next hour ran Cait through every scenario that could possibly be considered punching. She threw jabs, haymakers, hooks and uppercuts, all the while Gwyn zeroed in the signals that actually constituted combat intent. In addition, Gwyn had her make sure she wouldn't obliterate anyone's arm with a fistbump. Cait almost called her out on her bullshit when she had her stick her fist up a dummy's ass, but Gwyn, fully deadpan, reminded her that Lira had jumped her bones the day they met, in a public shower, after a fight with a shitmonster, and it probably wasn't wise to assume anything was fully off the table.
She was proven right when the dummy's head popped off, followed by the shards of its insides.
That was the last of the more esoteric tests, and the rest of the hour was spent making sure Cait's control was fine enough that she could wear someone like a glove without turning them into a fine mist.
"Alright," Gwyn said, tossing her tablet behind her. It disintegrated before it hit the ground. "I'm pretty comfortable with that. I don't think you'll kill anyone you don't mean to."
"So, I noticed there wasn't really a lot of force variation between any of those hits. Pretty much all or nothing." Cait said.
"Yep!" Gwyn responded. "It triggers or it doesn't. You want finer control, you need a full exosuit."
"Yeah, that's not really what I'm worried about." Cait shook her head, looking at Gwyn with a burgeoning respect. "How the fuck did you survive that first accidental hit?"
Gwyn's grin threatened to split her ears.
Cait sighed. "Nanomachines?"
"Nanomachines!" Gwyn responded with gusto. "Speaking of….."
She gestured and a nanocomm materialized in Cait's hand.
"Hey!" Cait exclaimed with glee, powering it on. "Thanks a bunch."
"It should be integrated with your existing tech, think about dismissing it and resummoning it." Gwyn waved her to go on.
Cait did, and found it was surprisingly intuitive. She looked at Gwyn with awe.
"How the fuck are you not running this place?" She asked.
"Hah!" Gwyn barked, looking at Cait like she was insane. "Why would I want to do that? Also, Director Swan is literally the best possible leader, I couldn't replace her if I wanted to. Even after I take over the world, I think she's right where she belongs."
"Gonna take that as the joke it was meant as, instead of the genuine threat I'm not sure you realize it was." Cait smiled, but there was a bit of tension in her eyes. "Your tech is insane Gwyn. I'm glad you're on our side."
Gwyn blushed, looking down at the floor before meeting Cait's eyes.
"Y'know, you could always put in a good word for me with a certain mutual friend…." She said sheepishly.
I think that's the first time I've ever gotten 'not you, but your friend is cute' in my entire life.
"Bitch, I already do!" Cait laughed. "The amount of shit Lira and I give B-money on your behalf could've made up that shitmonster from yesterday."
"Really?" Gwyn's eyes shone bright, and a wide genuine smile lit up her face.
"Yeah, and I mean it." Cait rubbed at her chin. "Don't think he's not interested either, but while it's pretty clear tentacle monster is your kink, remember he was a regular dude until two days ago."
Cait met Gwyn's eyes, her regular good humor replaced with a protective sincerity.
"I got straight up mythological invincibility when I got Altered, he got his entire body plan changed to something out of most people's nightmares. Even if he's your fantasy, there's zero chance he's not traumatized by all this. I think you're a legitimately good person Gwyn, and I can tell your companionship has meant the world to him. Just make sure you don't objectify him, or his self-image is gonna be even more fucked than it already is."
Gwyn had turned full-on tomato red when Cait called out her kink, but as she continued her face shifted to look like it was on the verge of tears.
"Do… do you think I'm…?" She questioned, clearly unsure how to end it, but Cait understood.
"No, I don't. But as a dickgirl that's everyone's type, I know how people can get when a fantasy pops up in front of them. Breastman doesn't, and has the self esteem of a slug currently, so you need to watch yourself." She smiled then, and wrapped Gwyn in a big bear hug, one hand ruffling the short girl's soft brown hair. "I think you're doing a fantastic job, but I'd hate myself if I didn't say anything."
Gwyn smiled back, wiping a little water from her eyes.
"sniff… well, speaking of everyone's favorite cosmic horror, I'm supposed to pick him up for a dinner date in 15. Wanna head over?"
Cait agreed, wanting to get back and see if Kennedy needed any help moving in herself. As they left, she took a second to see if Lira had responded with anything but a distracting nude.
8:52 a.m. (that morning)
C: hey we should talk about whatever that was with kennedy and swan last night
C: not mad, just feel like ive walked into something with less context than id like
L: pocket tits!
She'd sent a selfie with her sports bra pulled up to cover her face, leaving every cute freckle on her breasts on display.
L: *disappears*
C: :/
C: nice though
She's crafty, tough to focus on a problem with that perfect perky pair in your face.