A Bio-Weapon's Rhapsody

Chapter 309: BURN IT! BURN IT WITH HEAVENLY FIRE!

And with that small extra event that Ale hadn't expected to happen this early, they ended up cleaning up their sleeping spots. Big Sister had it easier since she merely teleported her things back to her room, that was cheating of course.And Ale made sure to remind her that she was cheating in the most obscene and ridiculous way possible to mankind.

Big Sister, as they do, ignored her complaints and merely watched Ale as she dealt with the spare inflatable mattress that she had ended up not using since SOMEONE had apparently teleported her into a hug.

At least Ale had slept comfortably... or so she guessed, since most of the night was spent within the mindscape, perhaps that was why she hadn't been woken up?

She had assumed Main Core would have wake her in case something was happening with her body, but apparently a kidnapping hug was not relevant enough.

[Mistress was incapacitated, and most of the computational power was spent trying to restart her awareness. No spare computational power was spared to the alarms going on in real space.]

Oh right, the whole thing that happened during her visit to Alexa Mindscape.

That was a thing that happened.

*Knock-knock*

"Is... someone knocking on the office door?" Ale asked, confused, as this was Big Sister's apartment.

And that door did not go to the outside, but to the living room. So there was no way someone could knock on this door unless they walked all the way into the apartment.

"Probably someone on the apartment door." Big Sister said shrugging and walking to the door, opening wide to showcase that no one was there. "I have a thing going around me that lets me hear the knocking on my door."

And to make a showcase of it, she widened a small portal. It was barely wide enough to let sound pass... Originally.

But as Big Sister widened it out Ale could see the door to the outside of the apartment on the other side of the portal.

"It is a neat application that lets me know when someone knocks on the door, in case I am asleep." Big Sister then walked to the living room closing the door behind her, probably going to see who was knocking this early on the morning.

[Current time: 11:25 AM.]

"Yes, clearly it is still early in the morning." Ale said, returning to her work, folding the inflatable mattress. "... Main Core... can we..."

Ale had started to make a joke when she stopped midway, her original intention was to point out how since it wasn't above 12PM it was still morning and not afternoon.

But she stopped short when she put strength into the inflatable mattress to push out the air, feeling the material, she almost could instinctively know what it was made of (mostly rubber, probably).

Taking a deep breath, Ale sent a pulse of Mana into the material, getting something she hadn't seen before.

Analysis result:

External shell:

-Thermoplastic Polyurethane

-Nylon

Internal layout:

-Internal threads connecting external layers to keep pressure and form.

-Multiple air chambers with internal sensor to redirect pressure and adjust to user.

Air Pump system:

-Internal valve to distribute air between chambers.

-Exhaust pump to expel air as needed.

-Internal Pump to inject air as needed.

"...So yes, I now know how to make one of these, great." Ale said in a sarcastic tone.

[Do you wish to cannibalize the materials?]

"That would be a no." Ale said as she started fiddling with the feeling from the Mana she was getting.

A prompt here, a tug there, and she found that she could modify the make of the pumps and the internal makeup of the thing. For now, she made use of this to deflate the thing in one go.

Then a new pulse was all it took for Ale to get the thing to shine in blue light, a second it was deflated and the next it was folded neatly, like new.

"That was the most useful way to use this since ever." Ale said, ignoring how she had wasted two mana points on this experiment.

[....]

"Shut it." Ale said preemptively, "I needed to know if my powers were working right or not, so far... I can still interface with materials around me and change their makeup. Then why can't I change my form?"

[Unknown.]

"Either there is a block somewhere around in how I think about it..." Ale said looking at her arm, now armor free, it was a fleshy normal human arm, "...Or the stupid marble that prevents the ND0 System from affecting me is also affecting how our powers work?"

[Mistress' power is working as normal.]

"You say that," Ale said trying to change the form of her arm again to no avail, "But this isn't shape shifting."

Then, on a whim, she searched her mental library for the blueprint for the flesh aberration she released that time in the sewers. It was right where she left it, in the corner of 'DO NOT OPEN AGAIN'.

"At least I can't-" Ale said smirking and punching the metaphorical button to print, when she felt the Mana drain from her mana pool, "Huh?"

And the next second, there on her open palm a small tentacle grew out, it even had a small cute ey-

"BURN IT!" Ale almost screamed in a panic when her Mana flared again, and this time the thing turned into ash right there and then. "What the heck? I thought..."

"Ale! Everything okay?!?!?" Big Sister came running into the room, kicking down the door.

"Enemy?!?!?" Behind her, Golem rushed in as his form slowly was bulking up; he was in his normal humanoid form, but chunks of rock slowly came moving towards his arms. "Where?!?!?"

"Ah... Morning..." Ale said scratching the back of her head, "Sorry about the scare... I was..."

Ale looked at her open palm, no remnant of the flesh tentacle besides some primordial matter...Or as old man Alexander called it, ash.

utterly destroyed." Ale commanded inwardly.

[Moving out Mana Nanites, command seek and destroy.]

And with that, yet another flare of her Mana was gone.

That thing had taken almost 10 mana units, and this latest command (And the one that destroyed the thing) took almost another 15. Leaving her quite low on that.

Mana: 8/47

She would probably need to find a way to stop wasting Mana.

Ale left that command and turned her full awareness to Golem and Big Sister, who were looking around, still unsure about what had happened.

"So, what happened?" Golem asked, turning to Big Sister, "Did someone attack you two during the night?"

"Nothing of the sort," Big Sister said shaking her head, "I was paying attention, I also left a few nasty surprises in case someone tried to sneak in."

She did?

"So... What spooked you?" Golem turned to Ale as he asked, "Or what did you see?"

"Can we leave that aside?" Ale asked, imploring with her eyes for some mercy.

"No." "No."

She was getting none though, dang it!

"I... am having some issues with my Powers." Ale said turning to Big Sister, "As Big Sister can attest to, some are working as usual, but others... not so much."

"...You could do that already?" Big Sister asked moving her eyes to Ale's arm, "Really?"

"Yeah." Ale said nodding, "More often than not, I ran a few of those modifications 24/7."

Ale thought about all the modifications she had done internally before, and how she adapted some of those to work in tandem with her bodysuit.

"When I got the Mk 1 custom armor, some of those became redundant, and only a very few remained... But what I did before was not something particularly new." Ale said shrugging, "Which is why I said that this was not something new."

"I see..." Big Sister said nodding, "You hid it better than I did then."

"Then the problem was...?" Golem asked next, "If you think your power was working as usual."

"That some of the things that I used to do externally, I can't do them as well as before." Ale said, sighing, extending her arm forward and willing it to grow into the muscular gorilla form, "Before, just doing this would have given me the bigass muscular gorilla arm."

"That looked hideous." Big Sister said nodding as she shuddered, "You are better like this."

"...That is still an issue for me." Ale said, frowning, "Anyway, I can't do those shifts, so I was going through the things I used to do to check what worked and what didn't."

Ale pointed at the inflatable mattress that was folded neatly behind her, "I checked some stuff and some worked... Then checked on one of the... nasty things I used... And they worked too." Ale sighed, "Almost wish that one hadn't."

"So in a nutshell, you got surprised because something you thought wouldn't work, worked?" Golem asked as the pieces of gravel and stone that had been climbing on him fell back to the floor.

"Yes." Ale admitted blushing slightly, "I really didn't think it would work, but it did, and scared the hell out of me."

"And where is it the thing that did that?" Big Sister asked eyeing around with caution, Ale felt a pulse of Mana coming from her, but it would find nothing.

"I destroyed it." Ale answered back, "Trust me, you DO NOT want that in a place you live."

"... Do I want to know what you did in my office?" Big Sister said with some suspicion in her eyes.

"You probably should," Ale answered with a thoughtful look, "But you will be happier if you never find out."

".... Please don't release eldritch horrors beyond our comprehension on a place I sleep occasionally." Big Sister sighed.

"Glad you are okay then." Golem added from the side, "Have you eaten already?"

"We just woke up." Big Sister answered for them, "Long day yesterday and all of that."

"Then sit down, I'll prepare the Herrera morning special." Golem then moved to the kitchen, "You stocked up the spice cabinet like I asked before?"

"Yeah yeah," Big Sister said waving away at Golem, "Can't blame a girl for having girl dinner."

"Girl dinner?" Ale asked confused, as she walked into the living room, she had not heard of such a thing before.

"The greatest invention of mankind." Big Sister quickly said as she followed after her, "You only need-"

"To ignore whatever she says." Golem screamed from the kitchen, "You don't need to buy expensive crap like this by the way, if you aren't cooking, then they are wasted here."

"... Imagine!" Big Sister ignored Golem and turned to look at Ale, "It's eleven, you should be asleep already, but you get hungry. You don't want to cook something this late into the night, so you move to the kitchen."

Ale nodded, she probably would just burn some biomass straight from the tank to deal with the energy requirements...

She could still do that right?

[Affirmative, it is possible to decompose stored fat for energy, it may be an inefficient way to solve the satiation issue, as it will burn Mana instead, but it is possible to achieve.]

Good.

"What do you do?" Big sister asked, looking straight at Ale.

"...Eat something from the fridge?" Ale said in a questioning tone, "Get some snacks?"

"Exactly!" Big Sister said nodding enthusiastically, "You grab a plate, get some snacks, perhaps a dip you got from the takeout food you got yesterday, grab a can of beer, and return to your room to eat in bed."

That... did not sound healthy.

"That's girl dinner!" Big Sister continued speaking as if she was spreading some kind of gospel, some weird, beyond inefficient gospel, "Girl Dinner is whatever you want to eat when you can't or will not make a complete meal."

Something was... odd. Was... Was big sister this kind of character?

Wasn't she the cool, beauty-type? The capable adult?

Ale had memories of Big Sister being a capable adult, granted, most of the memories of whenever she interacted with Alexandra had been blocked behind parental control, so Ale had no access to those, and she did not want to invade the privacy of Alexandra, so she had never asked Alexa for said memories... Assuming they remained.

As far as she knew most of those memories had been lost, at least what Ale had managed to salvage were mostly memories of Alexandra watching over them from the mindscape at least.

"Ignore her," Golem said, coming from the kitchen with a breakfast plate. "She just doesn't like to cook, mostly eats takeout, and orders food using whatever money we earn from missions."

"Money is to be used." Big Sister complained as she walked to the table, two plates had been put on the table, while Golem sat in front of... Nothing. "Come Ale, he is a very good cook... even if he can't actually eat."

"He can't?" Ale asked surprised, she had... seen him eat right? Ale had vague memory of that too.

Or... not?

She hadn't paid much attention during the time they had been eating after the first mission did she? They had been more focused on eating and the new data around them.

"Not really," Golem shrugged, "Not in an actual 'efficient way' as Vulcanus would put it. I can, of course, shove food down the gullet. And that can be broken down into sustenance for me, but it's more efficient for me to get high mana minerals for sustenance."

"...That sounds... expensive." Ale did not know how expensive that sounded, since most of the things she had access to had not been bought, or bought with her own money anyway.

"[Hephaestus' Forge] subsidies my food expenses, they get me enough to achieve results during our missions. If I achieve more than what they expected, I get extra mana dense food as reward." Golem said with a shrug, "It is not that bad, I just need to be frugal outside missions and I can build up a stockpile of extra energy for emergencies."

So like what Ale and Alexa used to do?

Smart.

Ale moved on to the table and sat at her spot, looking at what she was about to eat.

"It looks good." Ale said as she grabbed a spoon (Alexa was probably having a fit about not having a spork at the moment).

The plate was, simple, but even so it looked tasty enough, some scrambled eggs, a few fried potatoes cut in small squares, triangles and whatnot, a pair of bacon strips, a scoop of beans and a pair of toast at the side.

As a drink Ale saw a cup of orange juice for herself and big sister, while Golem had a cup of black strong coffee.

The man was sipping it like nothing, even though it looked quite hot, but then again, advantages of having stone for skin.

"It tastes good." Ale said nodding after the first test taste. "Very good."

It was still second to the best breakfast she had ever ate before, Alexandra had a gift for cooking after all.