TechNoVore 2

TechnoVore

Chapter 2

By: BigToFu

TechnoVore...

Sitting in my human form, I tried to hide my humor as everyone in the office tried to pull off looking at me on the sly. Acting as if I was unaware of those taking peeks at me, I hummed a little tune as I thought over the possibilities that were available to me.

The things I could do would and could put all tinkers on the planet to shame. From what I could tell from reviewing my own systems was that I was a crazy cross between Cyborg from the Dc comics and a Transformer. Hell, I was the good technomorphic version of Cyborg before they nerfed him with all that angst shit and uncontrollable technological growth.

From what I could tell, I had access to weapons systems, energy systems, vehicles, boats, planes, jets, spaceships and so much more. Yet, most if not all of it was locked behind a cybertonium limit. This was a substance that I could only get by eating metallic substances with my secondary mouth with a combination of normal meals.

From what I could read, everything wasn't a one-to-one ratio because of course, super science bullshit was solving most if not all of my issues for me. That's what I wanted to call it but I knew better, Cyborg in the comics had his mother-box, but I had just as infinitely amazing.

Sitting in my chest where my heart you used to be was the all spark of all things, which means that I was a prime. Not just any prime, I was a primus of all things which was also one of the reasons why I could hold multiple vehicle forms.

Slowly letting out a breath, I pushed my will forward and summoned a holoprojector from my left forearm, and tried to hide my smile as it hung there in front of me. Looking at my cybertonium reserves, I had to hide the grimace on my face as I noticed that my meter wasn't even at the one percent mark with the truck I had consumed.

A few flicks of the wrist had my armor mode showing and made another motion of my hand to rotate the image to get a good look at my back. There was a deconstruction mode that would allow me to expand the thruster back and make my own improvements which was what I had selected while I waited in my little office chair.

Around me a few people took pictures, but I paid them no mind since I could always just troll PHO later. Hmm, I might have to be careful since I couldn't really snatch Dragon out from underneath Saint and Armsmaster without any kind of plan. Shit, was I about to become Mister Steal yo' girl?

Shaking away that thought, I worked on improving the thrust output of the wheel turbines while also bringing down their decibel levels. Setting aside that project, I decided to work on something a lot more fun.

I had an idea on the Ratchet and Clank groovitron and I was looking to see if any of my abilities might be able to assist me in creating one of them. Yet, halfway through my schematic process, someone cleared their throats. Looking up, I found a very tall man that clearly saw years of work if his build was anything to judge him by.

Danny Hebert was an older gentleman that looked as if life and fucked him hard but had too much of a backbone to just give up and end it all. He was tall, with wiry muscle on his frame with a pair of old school glasses on.

Getting up, I held out a hand, "Anthony Becket, at your service."

The man looked lost, but his grip was firm and I could respect that. "Danny Hebert, my assistant, told me that you were looking for me. Can I know why?"

"Ohh, of course, but not out here obviously," I commented with a wave of my hand. As he turned to lead me to his office, I couldn't help get the feeling that class was in session. Well, I did get all A's while attending Bullshit 101, so I guess it was time to put those skills to good use.

Danny led me to a nice corner office with a surprisingly good view of the bay. I took the seat offered to me with my sensors running at full incase the PRT decided to show up.

With thanks, I took my seat as Danny took his own seat behind the desk. Danny allowed the silence to stretch for a time as he gathered the papers on his desk, so while he did that, I took in more of the spectacular view of the bay. Time slowly ticked by before Danny finally gathered himself and cleared his throat to catch my attention.

"Yes?" I asked, turning towards him in my chair.

"Mr Becket, I'm unsure on how the Union can help you." Danny replied to my prompt as he looked me in the eyes, interesting.

I shook my head at the man, "Actually we can help each other a lot more than you think." I replied before tapping something on my left vambrace. Between up appeared my hologram and the images that it showed were the Brockton Bay Union charter and the Nepa5 laws.

"The Union charter states that you may contract anyone that is at least 18 years of age." I said with a chuckle. "Nepa5 can't be called into play if I am hired for a specific job that doesn't interfere with the local economy nor the countries economy."

Danny squinted his eyes at the Hologram, so I decided to send the information to the printer and continued my little pitch.

While Danny was accepting the papers from the printer, I kept pushing. "Working with the PRT doesn't come with any chances to clean up the city, but working here with the Union, I can see that happening."

Danny gave me a sour look at the mention of the PRT and I had to force my wince down. That could only mean that Taylor had triggered and I was far too late. Then again, this might be for the best since meddling could have screwed things up worse. Gotta love time traveling, multiversal consequences and all that jazz.

"If you can talk it over with the Union lawyers, I would like a warehouse and equipment to build contracted equipment to remove that ship from the mouth of the bay." I said shifting my holograms to show some of my anti-gravity modules.

"Son, we can't afford tinker tech." Danny replied with a sigh.

"oh of course not because Nepa5 makes any sale of tinker tech illegal to any parties other then PRT, but nothing stops you having them on loan or renting," I answered him with a shit eating grin. "I say, if the mayor were to know of a friendly tinker on payroll willing to help clean up the city instead of playing cops and robbers like the PRT, you might be able to wriggle a few more contracts out of him. Then again the boat graveyard is a massive job and sale of all that salvaged metal would all be under union control with a legally binding contract."

I could not only see the dollar signs in his eyes but also his hate for the PRT.

=) (=

Daniel Hebert

Danny to friends and family.

Trying not to just up and agree with the kid before him, Danny skimmed over the forms that came out of his printer. Ohh he knew of the Nepa5 laws alright. And like the kid before him he wanted to do this to spite the PRT also because as much as the kid was trying to pitch this as a mutual deal.

Danny could tell when someone was doing it out of vindictive need because he could see it in the few times he mentioned the PRT. Oh Danny knew that look and it was something the kid hadn't learned to wipe off his features.

It was the same look he had after coming to a realization that the PRT had fucked him well and truly good. Ohh he knew that that nondisclosure agreement they had forced him to sign in the hospital wasn't legally binding. Ohh he knew that the moment he came to a realization that one of their Wards had tried to kill his daughter, his little owl, the one thing good in his life after Annette had died.

Yet, he couldn't strike at them, they were far to dug in like all the other gangs in the city. The guys had wanted to pull their kids out of school in a strike of solidarity, but he couldn't allow that. Disrupting the city was never a good thing. Then again it had been a few months and nothing had come back about the investigation and that was impossible since he knew all about the PRT mandate. Hell, he heard it more than enough at town hall meetings from the chief of police and the police commissioner. So it wasn't a big secret that they were only allowed to intervene on Parahuman cases and only those that broke the law.

Back then, he couldn't do much but hang onto all hopes that Taylor got better and the school helped. Now though, someone that could help him fight back had fallen into his lap, but it wouldn't do to look like he was an easy sell.

He let the kid sweat some as he read over the Nepa5 laws even if they were barbaric. Danny let the kid continue to ramble on before holding up a hand to stop him.

"You keep mentioning how the union can help you but not how you can help the Dock Works Union." Danny replied, leaning forward cutting off the kid mid-rant. He watched as the kid paused, then took on a thinking pose.

He watched as the kid thought about what he was going to share, Then Danny saw when he finally made up his mind on what he wanted to share.

"Currently I'm a brute 4 to 5, but that's only going to go up so that makes me good muscle for things around here. Also if you haven't noticed, I am also a tinker of sorts. This means I can not only fix anything but also operate any of the machines that you might have around here on the lot."

"Well, that is a start," Danny replied with a nod of the head.

"The deal would be to split the salvage over the ships in the bay, but I can't do that all on my own. I need a team to work with and that's why I came to the DWU." Anthony said in a serious voice.

Okay at least the kid was telling the truth, but this was one of those things that Danny needed to think about. Taking in a tinker, hell any type of parahuman would see the PRT trying to come down on them. They didn't make it this far or lasted this long, so instead of giving the kid a quick answer. Danny decided that he would take a few looks around to see if they even had the space available. He could have Keith look around while he went through some of the paperwork to see if there were any ships in the bay or boat graveyard that would be worth its weight in salvage.

Standing up, Danny held his hand out, "I will have to take a look around to see if we have any positions that you might be able to fill, but like I told all of the other guys. Things are a little tight in the bay, but I will see what we can do. Before you leave, sign up with the Union at the front with Kathey."

Danny noticed how the smile slipped from the kid's face but his handshake was firm and that was important. The kid said no more as he left the office and went back to speak with the secretary at the front.

=)(=

Anthony Becket

TechnoVore

Filling out the form and accepting my dismissal, I roamed around the city for a time. Once I found a location that looked nice and inviting, I would pull over and create a blueprint or two. Then I was off again until I was about to find a park that looked nice and inviting. With a grunt, I took my seat in the park shaded with some trees and from the view of the rest of the park. Pulling out that hover tech that projected a hologram, I was about to start up a project until someone decided to butt in. The little peace that I had found was interrupted as someone sat down beside me as if they owned the bench that I was seated on.

Letting out a sigh, I turned to my right and sighed once more as the blonde chick smiled at me with a fox-like grin on her face. Urgh, it's her, frowning, my left hand shifted to my sonic blaster as I stared her right in the eye.

"What do you want?" I asked slowly, my voice coming out in a growl. The smug smile on her face shifted, but I caught her eye flashing to my left hand that was not sporting a sonic emitter cannon.

Lisa, also known as Tattletale kept up her fake smile and spoke as if she wasn't about to get blasted. "Well, I couldn't help but see that you are in need of some help."

As she spoke, a partition of my mind shifted towards my sensors and picked up the obvious tinker tech communications in the surroundings. Holding in my sigh as I picked up the team, I would be a fool to think that Coil didn't have his mooks keeping an eye on his little chatterbox.

Then again, it was also clear that she was using them as backup with how she blatantly approached me with them at her back. Ignoring the smug grin on her features, I leaned back on the park bench with an arm over the back. I made no compulsions on hiding the sonic canon. It was best that she knew that I was damn well going to use it if she pissed me off.

"My team and I are looking for some extra muscle and I can't help but see that a case 53 like yourself could use some friends." Lisa spoke with a vulpine grin which was wiped off with a quarter impulse blast from my sonic canon. She had another thing coming if she thought I was going to simp for her flat ass. I was a breast and thigh man all the way, hell, she didn't even have sexy long legs to at least make up for her flatness.

Getting up from my seat, I turned away from her groaning form as I transformed back into a bike. My sensors picked up the approaching tinker tech communications which meant that the team in waiting was on approach.

Before the merc team could approach, I was already popping a wheelie and tearing out of the park with a screech of my tires. I had no need or care to hear the rest of what Lisa had to say. Fuck all that, the moment I woke up in this world canon was thrown out the window. I wasn't about to Simp for the Undersiders and FUCK that bastard Coil.

As I was driving through the city, I started to formulate some plans. My original was Danny and the Union because why the fuck not, I just didn't realize that what was in the original story might just be exaggerated shit. Then again hindsight was twenty twenty since no one in his position would be any kind of a pushover. You don't live years in Brockton Bay in one of the worst jobs around and not grow a fucking spine. Then again, Worm was a typical teenage angst fest railing against the man. The author probably had shit relations with his father and took it out on Danny.

That was alright though since my backups were either Amy of New Wave or Dragon after tracking down Saint. Amy was here in the city but was a snarky little shit while Dragon was an Ai trapped in her own servers. That seemed to have triggered a subroutine as the options for a protus-seed came to mind, the only thing stopping me was that there wasn't enough cybertonium in my reserves to form one.

Not only that, but I also didn't have enough Energon to power the protus-seed. My own power systems were reading infinity which I was happy about, but that still left me to worry about my cybertonium levels. Grumbling at what I could and couldn't do, I took a left towards the boardwalk and ran a few lights since I was coming from the docks area.

Those fools at the lights thought that I was a moron, but I visited Detroit back home and I knew what was what, not about to gank me at the light. Two trucks drove out in front of me with guys hopping out the back, yeah I wasn't having any of that shit and with the look of them, druggies the whole lot.

Hopping the curb, I transformed mid-jump, then with a blast of turbines, I took to the air.

"So long sucka!" I yelled back over my shoulder speakers on blast. Being in the air was freeing in a way but also worse in its own way. You would think that the air of the city would be alot better at this height but it wasn't, I would need to fix that. Not liking what I was smelling, my face plate deployed to filter it all out.

Dipping between two buildings, I enjoyed the wind on my face as I blew past the Med-hall building towards the open water as an absolutely mad idea floated through my head. If I wasn't flying so fast, I would have facepalmed from being such a dunderhead.

I was a technomorphic being that ate not only technology and added it to my own, but I also ate metal in its many forms. I wasn't restricted to just the boat graveyard and Brockton Bay. No, there was a location that was not that far away with plenty of metal and tech that I could munch on as if it was an all you can eat buffet.

The map in the corner of my eye updated but I was not happy with that ten hour of flight time that it gave me. Setting my body on autopilot, I settled into the passenger seat of my own mind as I started to go over any options that I might have. Looking over everything that I could do, transforming into something else was out of the equation since I didn't have enough cybertonium stores.

The next thing that I looked at was improving the turbines on my back some more which was possible, but would also tear into the rest of my cybertonium stores. I wasn't happy about that even though I had not even a full one percent available. From what I could read my cybertonium was sitting somewhere around 0.0023 percent and that was only because of the bike and truck I ate.

Wincing at what it was going to cost me, I dumped it all into advancing my turbines before hitting the upgrade toggle inside my mind. That was a stupid thing to do as the turbines on my back folded away. Okay, maybe that was a bad idea….

"No! No! No!"

"Transform! Transform!"

None of that helped me as my turbines cycled through their functions within my body's sub space totally out of my control. As the water from down below came rushing up at me, I had the fleeting thought about how I would die flash through my mind. Well, technically this would be a bad way to go with the way it would pasteurize me on contact with the ocean.

None of that came to pass as the turbine reappeared twenty feet above the water. They spun to life with ten feet to go and kicked in half a second later exactly three feet over the ocean allowing my feet to skim along.

"Yyyyyyyeeeeaaaaaahhhhh!!!!!!" I screamed out, my heart hammering in my chest. Letting out a full belly laugh, my smile was from ear to ear as I watched my flight time drop from over ten hours to just over three.

=)(=

Landing after my long-ass semi-international flight, I couldn't help but rotate my shoulders for a bit. Still didn't have a clue about all that my body could do, but it would seem that stress in my robot form was also carried over to my human form. Now that was a good thing to find out before I started to jump into combat.

Sitting on one of the few skyscrapers that survived the sinking of Newfoundland, I looked down in the nasty water below and tried to shove down all of the distasteful feelings that kept welling up inside. I had to do this, so this had to happen. The only other recourse was to die at the hands of the golden idiot and I did not want to die at the hands of the golden bastard.

So my options were to either grave rob or sit around with my dick in my hands. And I was not about to count this as a wasted trip. My spirits shifted as my sensors picked up a speed boat underneath the waters. The speed boat was sandwiched between a busted tanker and a store front, okay I can work with this.

Wanting to test something, I shifted back to human form then noped out of that damn quickly because fuck the cold. Shifting back into armor mode, I leaped from my perch into the waters below. A cool sensation ran over the surface of my body but beyond that, I was alright. Smiling inwards to myself, I smiled behind my faceplate as I swam down towards the boat my sensors were picking up.

My range meter rang out, 100, 50, 30, 20, until it started to count down from ten. Once I was within five meters of the boat and hundreds of feet underwater, I smiled as my HUD pinged. This time I was ready for the subroutine that pinged for assimilation as I neared metal.

Jagged lines appeared across my torso before ripping open to reveal a mouth that carried rows upon rows of teeth.

Chomp!

CHOMP, CHOMP, CHOMP!

Ohh yeah, I was totally going nom nom all across this fucking city. I kept eating and eating with one eye on my cybertonium counter which was not rising as rapidly as I wanted it to. What did make me happy though was that my second vehicle mode was that of the speed boat.

Swapping over to the boat, my body made that chu chu sound that all nerds knew. What I wasn't expecting but should have been was that the broken fiberglass hull of the speed boat was not replaced with something a lot more durable and I honestly couldn't complain.

A triple rev of my engine told the silent world around me that it was party time right before I took off at speeds. For a time I didn't know where I was headed as I just zipped around and ate anything with metal that pinged on my sensors. A downside I had learned was that I couldn't eat buildings even when they were clearly destroyed and had metal sticking out of their interior.

Another thing that I found out was that even though I was a transformer now, gasoline, oils and all the other things that a vehicle would need did not taste good at all. I had chomped on a tanker that was turned over at a fuel station as I made my way around the city and did not like the burp that followed. Hell, I thought that since I was in what would commonly be known as a breaker state that I would not have to suffer certain human reactions but I guess things worked differently for my body.

After that had happened, I decided to follow one of the main streets while looking up old maps of the city. That was what led me to this abandoned car park which I had set my sights on to raid. The car park was a nice one that belonged to a luxury apartment where everyone had their own individual parking, and elevator access.

There was no helping the fact that I was already salivating at the prospect of getting some amazing vehicles that I could transform into since so far I was only finding those ugly European cars. Well, that was a lie, I did find the odd jaguar and Ferrari here and there, but I honestly didn't want to transform into those.

I was looking for American muscle and if there was anything I knew about Europeans and was that the wealthy liked to import their cars. With another set of chu, chu, chu, I transformed back into armored mode before rolling over and diving down. The first sign that I was on the right track was the glass that blocked the outside from the in, the second sign that I was on the right track was the gate that blocked off the entrance to the car park.

Landing lightly, my spikes activated with each step making sure that each time my feet touched I had a solid grip. Dual floodlights came form my chest and both sides of my head illuminating the gloomy darkness. A quick transformation of my right hand into an ION cannon relieved the gate of its lock.

"Ahhhh!"

With a cough, I straightened my back and brushed aside the decaying corpse that decided it wanted to float right on the other side of the gates. Forcing another cold shiver away, I pushed forward ignoring the other body's that floated about. Letting out a sigh, I pushed my way into the garage and instantly ignored the few cars that I found on the first floor. I didn't even want to nom them on pure fucking principle they were so damn bad.

A mere thought was all it took to transform my air turbines into underwater turbines, pushing off from the ground. My underwater turbines pushed me forward as I tried not to show my distaste.

I flowed up past the second floor, took one look and kept on going, this happened once more at the fourth and fifth before I finally came across an old school boss mustang. Happy with my find, I closed my eyes and checked to see if the blueprint had stuck. Smiling at the confirmation, I also decided to check over the transformations and noticed that it came with a twenty five feet form.

A form that I might not actually use for some time, but that was alright. Sooner or later I would run into Lung which meant that sooner or later I would be using this form. What I really wanted was a fucking fire truck, one that matched what I knew from the cartoons because I damn sure was going to Optimus Prime someone in the fucking face.

The few fire trucks that I did find around the city were not up to my standards so I of course dumped their blueprints. Shifting my focus back, I decided to eat the cars that were also on the top floor before busting out one of the windows. Hovering outside the car park fifty feet in the water above the pavement, I took a nice look down the block and could only smile at the sight before me.

Ohh yeah, even if this only twigged my percentile only a little bit, I was going to make sure that I had my fill. Instead of going to the gates at the street below, I just started to rip-off the topside covering and enter through the top floors.

Car after cars were chomped on before I found the one. I found this sexy GTX Plymouth with a big block engine still underneath its covering just sitting there. Two spots over I got my hands on a 69 Dodge Charger with another big block engine and boy ohh boy was I excited like a kid in the candy store. Then I really hit the jackpot as a few more spaces down, I found Eleanor, the 1967 Ford Mustang that everyone has seen in Gone In Sixty Seconds. Okay, now I had died and gone to heaven because there was now way I wasn't about to drive around town in these forms.

Unfortunately, my joy was short lived as something pinged on my sensors. Checking the readings from my sensors, I could only roll my eyes at the obvious dragon shaped craft flying overhead.

Since she was here, I gave myself a nice once over before bringing up a hand and releasing a communications node. Since I was going to face Dragon, I would let the preprogrammed node crack her carrier signal to piggyback on the Dragon Slayers on signal.

Once the communications node was launched I swiped through my armor mods before finding one that was nice and blocky. No need to give away exactly hope advanced me and my tech was. Not only was the armor nice and blocky, but it was also angular with nice blinking blue lights that said tinker tech. WIth one final mental command, I made sure that my stealth systems were partially activated.

This wouldn't make me invisible to sensors but it would make it a lot harder for Dragon to scan me which would mean that little to no information would make it back to the PRT, Guild and the DragonSlayer.

Happy with everything, I kicked off hard heading upwards. I breached the surface with a nice whoosh of water sending out a nice sound which Dragon of course picked up.With my turbines kicking out some nice sounds to break the silence, I watched her form snake around blazing blue eyes locked on my form.

There was a ping over the open radio frequency which I accepted while also making sure that it was isolated. From What I read Dragon wasn't very big on personal privacy and liked to hack shit regardless of if it belonged to her or not. So yeah, I wasn't about to let her do that to me, not today.

"You must be Dragon." I spoke over the open radio bands.

"And excuse me, but who are you?" Dragon asked with some appraising in her voice. "And what are you doing here?"

There was no stopping the smugness that was my voice, "I was minding my own business while doing some salvage in a place no one would miss it."

Dragon sputtered for a moment before she let out a gasp, "You were grave robbing, that's illegal."

"Ohh honey, none of this falls underneath any chapters, I checked.Not only that but Newfoundland is gone with the government devolved, so the question is how did you know that I was here?" I asked before making a hand motion towards the building I perched on with I first arrived. "Was someone maybe abusing their powers to pull surveillance of the area?"

And there she went sputtering once more, acting as if I didn't hear her. I kept an eye on the communications node as it worked on chewing through her encryption. So far it was only thirty percent through and the conversation had barely started.

Once her sputtering stopped, Dragon landed her gigantic craft on the building and I had to say damn.She really went all in on this whole dragon namesake bit because the rig she was piloting was fucking imposing. Hell, if I didn't know that I could change into a larger form I would be pissing myself right now.

Dragon huffed and her suits shoulders shifted as if she was uncomfortable, "Be that as it may, grave robbing is illegal."

Of course, I gave no quarter, "And this isn't your jurisdiction unless the guild can claim that anywhere." Okay, maybe I was being more than snarky and going into the territory of being an asshole. Yet the point stands, I was not about to just roll over for her. I still wasn't finish collecting cars and metal damnit to convert into cybertonium.

From what I could get from my scans, Dragon was using some sort of organic computer interface for her suit. Okay, that I not only didn't need to know but also did not want to know.

"Must you be so rude?" Dragon asked with a huff her suits tail showing agitation.

I shrugged while keeping an eye on the progress bar that just went over fifty percent, "Actually no, but when was the last time the world's so called greatest tinker Ben put on the back foot?" She was silent for a minute and I watched as her suit reshuffle on its perch. "So finished scanning my breaker form yet?"

Dragon paused as if she was caught with her hand in the cookie jar. "Breaker state?"

"Well yeah, am tinker, breaker, shaker from what I can understand, but that's besides the point. So since your a self respecting tinker of a sort, that means you at least have a few scanners in that suit of yours. Tell me, you enjoying that peek underneath my chassis."

"Wahh, no, I would never," Dragon started to sputter once more and this time her suit shifted with embarrassment.

My smile was one of a perverted leer, "Ohh come now, we are both adults here and from the rumors floating around. You don't get out much so you must have a few hard drives full of interesting scans. Planning to add me and my sizes? Maybe a place easy to find for replay maybe?"

"What? I would never!" Dragon said, shocked with clear embarrassment in her voice.

"Well, your name is Dragon and you create containment foam, maybe a little BDSM play?" The progress bar was past 80% now and rising.

"Stop that and tell me why are you here." Dragon commanded plainly, but her suit shifting gave her away.

I shrugged, "Minding my own business obviously."

Ignoring the Growl of frustration, I sat down and brought up my blueprint hologram. Humming as if I had no care in the world, I brought up the badass GTX Plymouth that I found and placed that in my vehicle mode before adding it to my favorites list.

From there I had it expand outwards letting the transformation play out for Dragon to peek it from over my shoulders. My HUD read a full one hundred percent and I had to stifle my joy.

Flicking the car to the side, I then pulled up the F16 that I found drifting over a mall. That was a nice find even if the pilot inside of it was still ripe. My grin widened further as I gave the F16 the Starscream treatment. Once I was finished with that, I let my body operate on autopilot as I partition a portion of myself. My body held up my hands and made a gesture at the hologram, "Want to tell me about that drone suit?"

Dragon shuffled with a huff, "Only if you tell me about that suit."

"Sounds like a deal, maybe." I replied with a tilt of the hand.

Dragon shifted with a look, "Why maybe?"

"Because almost everyone knows about your suits, you don't keep many things on the down low you know." Was my reply.

Leaving my weeb self in control of the body, I allowed my main conscious to recede into my mind. Humming the power ranger's tune, I looked around until locating the virtual portal that led to my communications node and I took it.

Arriving in the communications node, I noticed that the link to Dragons systems came with rails and that was perfect since all it took was a thought to conjure a maglev shuttle. The trip to Dragon's systems was smooth and man the guy who had made her was definitely a next-level tinker. Well, from what I could see, I wouldnt call him a tinker, no he was a fucking mad man.

It was clear with only a glance that her creator had not only used earth's languages which surprise, I could not only read them all but also speak them all. No, he didn't just stop at earth's linguistics, this man not only created his own, but might have been fed alien languages by his shard.

Then once I finally got my head wrapped around what he might have done to create Dragon, I turned my attention leading away from her systems. The connection back to the Dragon Slayers was a burning red and it was wrapped around Dragon's program like burning chains.

Following the red chain, I tried not to marvel too much at the way the lights twisted and curved like that of the nebulous clouds of space. Once I had arrived at the end, I was treated with a massive sword that looked as if it was poised to strike. Hmm, it was interesting to see how my mind interprets code as a representation of the three dimensional world.

With a raised brow of interest I cast my gaze around into the Avalon systems and didn't like what i was seeing. Most of it was made with out dated hardware and software, but it was the odd connecting bits that had me worried.

With a jump, hop, and a skip, I was into the systems connecting to the hook up to Dragon and I honestly had to shake my head. The dragon system should have been air-gapped and could only be connected to her, but no, they had their system hooked up to Avalon.

From what I could read in their internal logs, Saint was in contact with someone inside the Birdcage. Reading more of the logs, I found out that teacher got his hooks into Saint right before he was locked away and that the man was only using the birdcage as a solid defense to run his plans around the world.

Through saint, teacher had his hooks into a lot of pie and I gotta say, getting rid of Saint would give me some measure of pleasure in this dark and cruel world. It was about time that these villains had not only their hearts broken but also their hopes and dreams. The smile that spread across my face was one of pure evil as I not only started to download all of the data that the Dragon Slayers had collected over the years, but also all of the bank accounts and cash that was part of teachers current cell.

Then I not only set up my own accounts, but I also subverted the wireless network in their base before pinging myself with their current location. The map shifted to that of an east coast bunker off Canada.

Now that I Had their location, it was time to find out where they had placed the suits that they had stolen from dragon. Pinging those had my butts cheeks clenched because these assholes were ten fucking miles out from my current location.

Hell, I would have known that if I had pinged Avalon, but I honestly didn't think that they would let something that fucking important out of the bass, but I guess that was the wrong assumption to make.

Scrambling the passwords on everything, I then took full control of Ascalon before pulling myself out of their systems and back into dragons. Making a few snips here and there, I made sure that I had full administrative control over her before then jumping back into the conversation. And before I left the systems, I made sure that Dragon would be able to say no to those in authorities instead of letting certain shit happen all over again like it did in the original.

I guess the Dragon Slayers were about to fuck around and find out.

)O(

"Well, I really would like to take a look to see how you made your servo motor operate that way. If I could understand that then I could make so many improvements to my own systems. I promise that I won't steal the patent on it." Dragon gushed as I came back to find that I had a part of the shoulder armor off to display the insides for her.

Shaking my head at her ramblings, I held up a hand. "Not right now Dragon, I picked up three fast movers on my sensors heading right at up."

Dragon was stunned for a moment before looking around. When she picked nothing up since they were still cloaked from her sensors she turned and asked a simple question. "You can pick them up from here?"

"Yep, and soon so shall you." I replied then sigh as I turned towards Dragon. "Do you have anything in that armor that can take down brutes? Or at least fight underwater."

Dragon shifted and I could tell that she didn't even realize that I had moved her restrictions to be more open. I watched as Dragon flexed the armor she was inside of as the weapon emplacements made themselves known before deciding back in.

Dragon shuffled at where she stood while looking off into the distance. "Are you sure that they are our enemies?"

She got a shrug out of me, "Last I checked, you weren't very buddy buddy with the folks who call themselves the Dragon Slayers."

There was a crack of wind as Dragons head snap towards me. "I… wha?" She stuttered clearly confused.

"Ohh don't gimme that look, it wasn't hard to figure out even if I didn't want to tip my hand so soon," I grumbled with a shrug of my shoulders. "Maybe if you had, you know, actually mind your own business, but I ain't mad at you."

Okay, now she huffed at me before turning her head to focus on my form. "And what does that even mean?"

"You did show up in Newfoundland that's been sunk to peek around after I came to snag some easy metal, that's clearly not minding your own business." I shrugged then continued. "Not trying to be an asshole or anything, but am pretty sure about my stealth tech which means something else tripped you off and here you are."

Dragon leaned her head closer to my location . "Well, what else was I supposed to do when picking up a strange reading?"

"Easy," I said with a shrug. "Don't stick your nose into other people's business if it's not an Endbringer." I returned with a wave of the hand. "Now, I have to deal with the bullshit that comes with associating with you."

Ignoring her sputters, I turned towards the approaching Dragons Slayers, it was time to rock.