October 25th11:48 PM

Ripley

There was an ugly bounce and a double-splash of blood as Diana's head thudded on the ground, my choice split between Brim and Diana... I chose her. Even as my Preservation Matrix screamed at me, I chose her. Something in those eyes, so lifeless... penetrated a deep knife into my mind and twisted it.

I'd seen eyes like that, looking for me, and dying helpless to what was happening once before. I supported her head, the bullet hadn't pierced through both temples but that was bad because it meant it bounced and was now located within her brain.

Droneforge, now! The others came a moment later than I did, each of them just as panicked but my voice broke through. "Clear the back of the van! Quartz, touch her skin! Give her warp Energy, now!"

Diana... couldn't die from this. I wouldn't let her. I wouldn't let anyone die.

Quartz pulled his glove off, touching her forearm. A jolt of electricity immediately zapped but I drew it into myself as a conductor, path of least resistance...

That thrum of electricity in her body would keep her alive, barely by a thread.

Electrosomatic Organism, it turned even her skin and endothelial lining into a psuedo-nervous system. Her brain might be bleeding... but she could still have some semblance of thought or conciousness to come back from. That's what I believed in.

Dryder had thrown most of his stuff from the back down onto the streets in a hurry, his eyes more panicked than I'd ever seen and Topaz organized a pillow as I carried her in and set her down. My Claws and Arachnodyne crammed into the space to begin working. The bullet was inside of her brain, I'd removed bullets before... I'd removed one from Brim's thigh.

I slashed the distraction apart.

Thought Multiplier: 'Diana' X 'Brain Surgery'

I had liberties, if her brain got damaged but she still survived, it would regenerate itself. She had shown a capacity to regenerate neurons based on her former Tier I Mutation, Electrical Neurogenesis. Her memories and emotions might be off for a while, but... she'd be alive. I focused on that.

Lights, cameras, pliers, forceps, scalpels, cauterizing wires... they all came out of my fingers like bouquets of steel. The only flowers Diana would be getting were 'get well soon' flowers, not the kind shared at a funeral. As soon as I got sights into the wound, my heart dropped.

Her brain was necrotizing. That bullet... it was made of Necrotium.

Like the one I designed for her.

Quartz still held on for her life, giving me a look under his mask that told me he was barely holding himself together as Dryder began to drive. "Where to, kid?!"

"Maiden's!" I yelled, spliting my focus between getting the bullet out and telling Quartz to contact her through the Neuralink. Midnight spoke up in my head. "Um... that kind of looks like a wound you can't-"

"Later!" I forcefully cut off Midnight, my eyes wielding adrenaline and panic to piece together the best path of removal for the bullet.

I couldn't help but feel how much she felt like dead weight in my hold. Just lifeless flesh and bones, and the steel resting in her bones. No... no... her heart was still beating, even if barely! As long as Quartz supplied her with Warp Energy, but it wasn't the quantity that was the issue. It didn't have control...

"Quartz, change of plans! Give me the Energy!"

He looked at me, but the urgency fled him into motion. When he touched me, I regretted it as my inner focus began to twist like my Energy had become a raging sea shipwrecking my thoughts. I only hung to Diana's life by the threads of my Thought Multiplier. It worked though, my drained Energy was being filled up by cheap Iron in spades, and with another branch of thought splitting in my mind, I began to condense it down into Gold with Shardweave.

"Starlight." I needed one last key to the puzzle. "I don't know if you're asleep or whatever! But wake up! Wake up! I need you! More than ever, right now! I need you to Synchronize me with Diana!"

No response came from my end but... I felt... trickles of light spark around Diana's head, like stardust to my senses. The finest echoes of Starlight waking up from a bad nightmare. She found me, and she helped me.

It was barely a Synchronization, how could you melt your mind with a brain-dead body? But it worked, dammit it worked! Blood vessels cauterized as the first powerful beat rippled from her chest, then blood spurted on me and I found new wounds to cauterize... fuck, fuck! The Necrotium was opening new wounds every second, I had to remove it and the infected material!

My blades pried in from the side of her head, the gray and white matter turned black and crusty where the bullet was lodged. The Arachnodyne supported her body up for proper viewing, one sprouting a tiny suction hose to keep my sights clear of blackened blood. Her frame was burned, I couldn't reach a Biomonitor!

Starlight... just keep your eyes open. Please. Keep your eyes open to keep Diana's eyes open.

Bio... Biomonitor... fuck it! I had to make one, better yet... I... it would work. The Nanites within her body, I felt them, and I commanded them to feed me information about her body as I prepared a spray using the Arachnodyne to draw my blood and centrifuge a few million more Nanites down. No, not millions.

A billion. Maybe more...

Is her blood-type compatible with mine?

An analytic series of information drew from my backup of her Frame, all of it coming to one conclusion. She could get a blood transfusion from anyone.

No centrifugation, that would take too long...

Issuing Nanomachine Reprogramming command: Enter my extracted red blood cells, transfuse them into Diana Ulrich, and provide real-time monitoring of her physiology and aid in surgery.

A piercing pain spread through me, which was strange... blood cells shouldn't be able to feel pain. I put it out of my head, my Arachnodyne forming a clamp to suck blood out of my subclavian, as the nanomachines sank through cellular walls and affixed themselves into the intracellular fluid of the extracted blood. Slowly, that crimson vial turned a thick and murky black color, humming to me.

I injected Diana's arm, at the same time commanding her heart to beat without letting Quartz distract me. And simultaneously also making deeper progress to the Necrotium bullet lodged in her brain.

The damage was worse than I thought, over 30% of her brain had necrotized --- she was utterly brain dead. But as long as her Implant registered that she was alive, whether from the forced beat of her heart and lingering nervous activity through the rest of her electrosomatic body... it wasn't going to come out of her.

That meant something was alive and worth keeping.

My body was soaked with Iron, sluggish as the lower Grade of Warp Energy was insufficient for keeping my systems effective. I condensed it down, squeezing it like a rag down into Gold, but those trickles were split between the decision of going to my surgical skills or her life-sustainment.

The Stabilize Module could help, but what I needed was Droneforge, if Warp Energy kept her heart beating by letting it produce electricity --- I could substitute it with my nanites to directly provide stimulation to her heart conductive system. Meanwhile, my claws found the bullet, and there was no need to be careful about the surrounding tissues.

It was all dead anyway. I pulled out the bloody casing, my thoughts in a blender as I dropped the bullet into a vial and got to tissue removal. Everything about this was medically... wrong, you didn't just scrape a person's brain out unless you were giving them a lobotomy.

The stardust within her reacted, and I felt my nanites responding to the call. They flooded up to her brain and began breaking down the infective necrosis while I excised more of it out. If anything stayed... she would die, even if it was miniscule. The nanites would ensure that.

Goopey, black flesh pulled from her brain and fell into the van's bottom, working quickly both me and my nanites worked from two directions to remove the infection. The mass only grew by my feet, reeking with death as though to taunt me of Diana's lingering life. Come on, Diana... fight.

Fight. Find that light. You have to live.

Perservere.

---------

???

Diana

I lived in a world of grayscale, I always had. Color might have shined off surfaces and beamed around me, but they were always muted. I hadn't grown up learning how to live, I was learning how to be the best. Even when I'd had a father, a family, I'd aimed to be the best daughter... than just... a daughter.

Yorrick Jones, the man who raised me, sold me back to my father to get out of bankruptcy. I'd known that for a long time, I just refused to accept it.

He would have tried something, contacted me, hell I certainly tried contacting him but gave up once I found something years ago.

Just a social media update, he had a new wife... and she was pregnant. That was the last time I ever looked him up again. I sat back down on a chair, my weight sank down into it, sinking... deeper into the gray.

"Are you okay, Diana?" A butterfly appeared by the window, I remember when I left the cradle and I was scared of the wilderness... I never showed it, but when you grew up where the only outdoors was a simple garden they used to 'acclimate' children to new experiences... they failed to match the expanse of what truly could be in the forests and wild air of the outside world.

"Diana, can you hear me?"

"Starlight?"

"You've reallyyyy not been letting have a moment of rest, you know that?" The flower said, not exactly in an annoyed way. "Turns out, I had to do a lot of changing myself to work with a SIM Adapter."

I blinked, right... so much had happened, I didn't even know where I was or what this place was.

"This... is a mental simulation I built to keep some level of conciousness awake in you. It's like a dream, you just need to pull in the things that are most important to you, and I can keep them stable..."

"Why wouldn't they be stable?"

"You were shot in the head, Necrotium bullet." Starlight tapped on the window.

"Oh..." I wasn't sure how to take that news. "I see. So I'm dead, then."

This certainly did feel like having your life have flash in front of your eyes.

"Not quite, some brain function has remained, and I'm otherwise coordinating your electrosomatic cells to keep them focused on retaining your life and memories. That's why I need you to try."

"Try..." I laughed, it was bitter and sad. "I almost killed Ripley, I hurt Topaz and Dryder... I'm... nothing about me is good. I just bring pain where I go."

"I don't believe that." The butterfly sat quietly on the windowsill.

"Well... I do." I cast my sights down. "Even if I wasn't the one bringing pain, doesn't change the fact that everywhere I go, I'm surrounded by it. People... using me."

Memories flashed. When I was fourteen, a neighbour came by to our house and saw that I was home alone. He offered me a drive to the mall, he said he wanted to 'buy' me a gift. My dad came home back just in time to scream at him to get away.

All that... just to...

"You feel like people inevitably will betray you." Starlight sighed.

So many friends, who were envious... back when I was a cadet, a bunch of girls and guys were trying to get me drunk. Way past my limit. I tried to tell them to stop, but then things got... violent. I bit one of the guys' noses; his dad was a Staff Sergeant, and he promised I would be in trouble. I never did. It wasn't a sign of good faith in the system, but Brian Ulrich's power.

Since then, my only friend had been Yvette.

And Anthony.

"And that you... will betray them too. You're scared of being the type of person you hate the most."

Hands sprang up, webs of lightning fraying Yvette's frame.

Mutagen spilling from Anthony's head.

Blood was pooling around Belle's arm.

Metal crunching near Ripley's throat.

"You said it, not me." My body was sinking. Good.

"Please don't go." Starlight's voice was weak... "I... I like you Diana, you're my friend."

"Then... stay away from me. If you're in my head when I... you might get hurt too." Tears refused to fall down my face.

"You're scared, aren't you?"

"Of dying, who isn't? I regret so much."

"Then... stay."

"It's not that easy."

"You're right. I don't... I don't really know much about... life. I learn and assimilate information but very little have I actually... experienced anything. I just know that looking at you, I'm scared. This is my first time feeling scared, I only know it from my dad's memories... he's scared a lot as well, but he doesn't show it. He doesn't let me see it, I know why now."

Hearing her admittance of fear was the thing that made me look at her.

"For someone who's afraid to hurt people, you always look out for others when they are in pain."

"I... I guess." My hands fiddled with themselves.

"There aren't so many people like you in this world, don't leave them with one less." Starlight folded her wings back, looking at me with what I knew was desperation. "I... we can't change how the world is, we can only change how we react to it. That's what my dad taught me. But even he... even he loses himself, but I felt it. That moment where you both were connected, it was... weird for me, but just for one second --- nothing mattered. And that was when everything had purpose for the both of you."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Starlight, you sure you're less than a month old?" I chuckled.

"I guess I am, but... what can I say, I'm really smart."

"You sound like your dad."

"Hopefully only his good parts, I hope?" The butterfly's wings expanded, fluttering nervously.

Hesitantly, I reached for the window, and opened it, letting her in and upon my arm. For once, I felt color reach me, and spread. Her dazzling pink wings emitted a radiance that bathed the room in beautiful painted sketches. "I... I don't want to say goodbye to a friend. Not... not yet."

"No..." I took a deep breath, reaching for an empty portrait picture. There was nothing in it, not until I put something inside. "Not ever. I... I still need to survive."

"You need to live." Starlight's body began to dazzle into light, her childish human smile coming out as her shape changed.

Touching the portrait with my finger, I fought to keep myself remembering.

And remembered. I wouldn't let any graves be dug in my name, especially not as an Ulrich.

But was that enough motivation? Pettiness?

I thought it had been... god, for so long it was. The pettiness for me to crawl my way up the ranks of the police, to gather influence until I could show up my father and fight him on his stage. Yvette convinced me to do that, she'd given some long winded speech about it and it was what drove me to joining the police force.

Tears dripped down onto the blank portrait picture, tears that colored it and painted an image of the one person who I wished for every day.

Yvette smiled at me through that image, her arm draped across my shoulder as she rubbed her knuckle into my hair. I hated myself for what I did to her.

I wanted, at least, to say I was sorry... to... hear her convince me one more time to fight. To give me anything.

And as though my wishes were answered, I blinked, and I found myself wrapped in a warm jacket with a cup of coffee around my hands. Yvette was out of this bedroom, yelling at her parents. "Look, I know it's confusing! But she's one of my friends --- an actual, real friend! Back from the Cradle! I don't know why she was out on the streets, but... just trust me, okay?"

I found myself shivering at her voice, not at the cold. When she came in, I couldn't bring myself to look at her, but she brought her dark-skinned fingertips to my chin, forcing me to reflect her ever-smiling face and the dark green hair that framed it. "Diana, baby, don't worry... you're safe here. Do you want to talk about what happened?"

"I don't know what to do, Yvette." My voice broke from my throat, just as my tears breached my eyes. "I don't know why I'm here..."

"Idiot, you're here because you were shivering and, in the goodness of my heart, I brought you home." Yvette rubbed my head, before quickly correcting herself. "But not for any indecent purposes!"

I laughed, finding comfort in her antics as I leaned my head on her stomach, she took the coffee mug from my hands and just let myself melt into her warmth while I had it.

Then I couldn't help but blurt out. "I miss you."

"Aw, you got me feeling sentimental for those days in the Cradle." Yvette continued caressing my hair. "Back then, it was just you and me, Silvereye. And... I wouldn't mind having it be that again... Founder, I couldn't believe it was you... I thought I was insane."

"You didn't know... so why did you take that risk, why did you have to save me... don't you know how difficult you'll make things for yourself?!"

"Hey, now!" She gave a sharp tap to my head. "I'll be expecting you to pay some of the bills you know, but I'll help you get a job! A good, decent, job. Like... what I'm doing... you know, I'm in cadet school!"

"I can't." I broke down on her shirt. "Yvette, I fucking can't! I'm not a good person... I hurt everyone. I hurt you. I'm so fucking sorry."

"What are you talking about?" She sighed with exasperation, moving to sit on the bed next to me as she gazed at me with that warmth in her eyes I so desperately longed for. But now that I was getting it, I couldn't help but look away.

"It'll happen, you don't know it, but it will... police work? Who the fuck are you kidding, I-" My hands clenched tight on the jacket she'd given me, her jacket. "I'm not cut out for helping people."

"Bae. You got to be fucking kidding me." She grabbed my arms, tightening over them as her eyes met mine with an insistent, infuriating, stubbornness. "Back at the Cradle, it didn't matter how fucking annoying I was. You stood by me, especially when those older kids began bullying my ass, you protected me, hounded them to their corners and kept discipline around the place. You were just the kid then, and you were a natural at making sure people around you didn't get hurt. And if they were hurt..."

Memories flashed, of me saving that man who'd been punched in the Toxin Club.

Of me shooting the MALignant that grabbed Ripley's hand, of digging him out of that rubble.

Of me kissing Indra Harmony's mask, to give her that hope that someone would love her.

Of me rushing in to save Yvette... not knowing what would happen.

Of me removing bombs from those kept hostage by Muramasa.

Of Anthony and I, there for each other in our pain.

Of Olivia's breathing, soft and steady in my hands despite all the death around us.

Of those Dreamframed children, alive... free of MALware, and ready to start their path to recovery.

Yvette's breathing hitched. "You were there to help them, even if... well, even if a lot of the time you suffered for it, you still rushed in to save others countless times without thinking about yourself."

Her thumb caressed my hand. "You want to know why I joined the police? Well, I wasn't smart enough to become a lawyer, and I thought if you were going to do anything... it would be some stupid thing like a defence attorney. I... hoped I'd meet you again, sometime down the road. I'd be in some tiny corner office while you'd be sipping wine from New Troy in your big penthouse... but then I thought, hey... police work totally sounds like your kind of thing. Down on the field, getting shit done with your hands, that sounded like you."

"Yvette... that doesn't sound like..." My heart felt like it was beating out of my chest.

She put her hand over it, her voice calm and steady. "Hear that, that's the sound of you still being alive. This thing you believe you are, this whole... not being able to accept it? Fuck that. If you're not who you want to be, then put in the work to get there... maybe its difficult, but you're even more stubborn than I am."

I stayed silent, looking down at her hand over my heart before I laughed. "You're just trying to cop a feel of my tits aren't you?"

She scoffed, offended, but my eyes were serious and she conceded. "Was I that obvious?"

"You..." I wanted to say so much to her, but somehow I found myself asking a question. "Why was it second nature for you to pull me from the streets?"

"Why?" She looked thoughtful for a moment, before shrugging. "Somehow, I felt like its what you would have done for me. You were always my hero, you know?"

Hero... the very thing I was practically being marketed as.

"I want to be... that kind of person." I admitted, but it came with shame.

"You already are, babe." Yvette rubbed my tears away. "Just put the work in."

I cupped my hand over the one she ran on my cheek, closing my eyes... and knowing that when I'd open them, she wouldn't be around anymore.

Instead, resting on my hand was Starlight, her pink body holding me dearly as though she was afraid to let go.

"Thank you... Star." I let her sit in my palm, looking around the cabin that was just a little more colorful now.

"Hmm... I was just simulating everything based off memories you had of her... she sounded nice." She looked tired, but she was still fighting for me.

"She was wonderful." I tearfully said. "And she deserves... to be remembered."

"Will you do that for her?" Starlight looked at me with her big pink eyes.

"I will." I nodded.

October 29th

3:42 PM

Ripley

Four days, and Diana was recovering. Four days, where I hadn't left this room in Maiden's shelter.

Four days, where I kept her alive. Her Implant slowly began to take over the production of Warp Energy, a lot was needed to regenerate brain tissue, and the nanites I'd kept flooded in her were aiding that process.

They were also... being eaten up by her. She could metabolize inorganic matter, and my nanites were effectively fuel for her once she needed nutrition, which was... out of the ordinary. It meant she was now eating up Warp Materials, something that hadn't been possible originally with Inorganic Metabolism.

At the very least... I had some experiments I wanted to run as soon as we were done. Sighing, I let my hand fall to her wrist, clasping it to feel the run of Energy in her body... it was stable. That fire was burning.

"Hey..." I whispered. "So exactly who's going to wake up first, you or Anthony?"

No response came, and it struck blades through me. Was this what she felt like? All those days where you had to clasp to a dwindling hope that your presence would awaken someone you knew. Where you realized... that maybe you weren't enough?

I couldn't count how many resources had gone into her survival, from Mutation Boosters to a few too many Bronze BUGs I'd taken to improve my Features and Shards to keep me fueling Warp Energy into her... she wasn't showing any signs despite it all.

I'd just stood up, pacing the room with my thoughts running in circles. Where was Starlight? How was my mother feeling? When will Diamante get back and... how do I make more progress? I'd found the Nexus SIM in her pocket, and now I had a second one from the flesh-beast we'd just destroyed.

I'd even tried reading them with Data Mimicry, the effect was minimal. Almost impossible, but almost. I lacked a specific translator, there was Warpcode within them, miniscule amounts, just as how BUGs had minimal amounts of Mutagen that ensured your body wouldn't reject cybernetics. For now, I was busy deciphering some data that Midnight had stolen from the meat lab's servers, particularly the classified information they had on the Nexus they called... 'The Rat King'.

A count for the nanites in her body sprang up in my view, they had lowered significantly. So I prepared them for removal from my own body once more, as they infiltrated my blood cells and loaded into a syringe, I was seriously in threat of being anemic at this point. Just as I reached for the catherer in her arm, she moved.

Hitched, my breath couldn't keep calm once she sat up. Her eyes, tired and silver, meeting mine. "Ripley?"

"Uh..."

Her mouth moved, a voice breaching out carrying a dense substance in it. "I'm so sorry for what I did."

"No, it's chill... but... wait, you remember?"

"Good. Bad. I kept everything that made me who I am." Her baggy eyes turned to her surroundings. "I... I just... did the only thing I knew. I fought, meanwhile... here you are actually making a fucking difference by... having the skills to keep a life stable."

"How are you feeling?" I blinked, unsure if I was hallucinating this or not.

Diana lowered her tired gaze, tears coming out. "God, I'm such a fuckup. I- I can't believe I'm... I just... keep on making that same mistake over and over again!"

I decided to wake her up. Gently placing my hand on her back, I activated the 'clinging' feature of the Shriekstone disks, her body flailing as I hoisted her up with one arm so that she laid flat on her back and pointed to the ceiling.

"What the fu- hey, this gown is really flimsy!" That was true, clinical gowns were... not very subtle.

"Relax, my eyes are down. But... I got to tell you something. You're pissing me off." I said, with my eyes down.

"I'm pissing you off?" Good, I felt that fire burn inside of her.

"Yeah, you are. I save your life -- which means by the way, that you owe me the next save -- and I'm trusting you with that. And while it's okay to be sad and wallowing sometimes, you need to pull yourself together. Get the help you need for your problems, but don't let them control you -- after all, you got shot in the head, shouldn't you be angry trying to find out who did it?"

Her breath hitched, I'd struck a nerve. "Ripley, I was just... I just fucking woke up."

"Well, Diana. It's about time you woke up. You regenerated brain matter, I doubt you need physiotherapy to get on your feet. So stop acting like a damn schoolgirl who's always cramped up in her room, throwing her excuses to the wall. You have a Gold SIM in your heart and are one interview away from being New California's Person of The Year, I saw it's power... I felt it. You want to save lives? Then stop acting like a victim."

I took a deep breath, knowing that a part of me was even speaking to myself. "You're stronger than this. The first person you need to save right now, is yourself -- because maybe next time, I'll keep your Implant for myself." I kept my voice firm and sharp, I meant every word. Then, with a little grin, I added. "Or are you weaker than I thought? Are you too pussy for that?"

"Oh, you son of a-" Her lightning acted up, a sharp sting going down my arm as she pulled off and landed on her feet, her eyes blazing at me. "I want you to shut... weaker?! Not a chance. I'm alive, and I'm no fucking victim, not to myself. You're right -- next time, it'll be your ass that needs saving. So you best pray to the Founders that I'm on your good side, or I'll show you why I'm Silvereye."

Her hands clasped my arms, the fury within her bubbling and sending a familiar emotion through them and into my heart. Her voice lowered, each syllable sharp. "I'll find the bastard who shot me. I have a new lease on life... I- I- was so close to dying with all these regrets, so no more. No more half measures. Nothing."

She stepped closer, until her breath was by my ear. Then her arms moved around to my back, pulling me closer into a hug as her breath shuddered. "Thank you... and... I am sorry. I fucked up, let my Implant control and wear me down, which made me vulnerable... if I had more Warp Energy --- I could have reacted to the shot. I let my emotions take control of me, and drain me."

"You sound pretty sure that you're quick enough to react to a sniper." I leaned into the hug. She clearly needed it.

"Well, I'll hold myself to that belief." She said with resolve, tightening the hug. "And also... uh... you should probably take Starlight back from me."

"I... huh?" I blinked, pulling away. "Wai- how do you have Starlight? Your frame is... really weird right now. Changed it out even."

"That explains how it's functioning again... but it does seem... off." Diana squeezed her eyes, before a trickle of Warpcode pulsed from her and reached me, Starlight activating the Fishhook to travel back to me. A tired, almost skeletal version of her waved at me before snoring down and disappearing. She was clearly overworked.

"I guess... she's why your memories are all where they should be." I said that, but I didn't exactly know how Starlight had done it.

Diana gulped, wobbling back to her seat as though she'd deflated. "My head feels a lot lighter now... she must've been why I had a constant headache after we synchronized. I think she ended up sticking to my Frame instead of yours."

"Oh," my voice squeezed out, "good to know that can happen. And uh, speaking of, what... was that Mutation."

Diana's eyes wandered off to the side, clearly looking at something in her visuals.

Diana

How do I explain to him... that my new Mutation went through various changes to get to where it was? And that Starlight could somehow alter them? I was pretty sure I didn't have any nanites in me when we first entered the lab...

Gold Deviant Mutation: Soul Trigger has been acquired.

Soul Trigger [Starlight's understanding of it]: So... uh... turns out, how you feel kind of now determines the effectiveness of your Mutations. Basically, this thing originally took all those beastly mutations and mixed them with your intense Fire Tendency-fueled anger to make Berserker Form. After that, I tried to cleave down the aggression using... nanomolecular splicing tech, which only ended up making it into the Ravenous Soul Mutation before a few more changes of mine caused it to become... Demonic Desire.

So there were nanites in me from before? When? Was it... maybe when he took my blood to make Dianium? We did quite a lot of tests...

Maybe it was stupid — emotional — of me... but I chose to give him the benefit of the doubt. Those things saved my life.

Fortunately, when my dad put a lot more Nanites into you after you got shot in the head and even provided you with the Water Tendency, I managed to get things under control and limit it to the Soul Trigger Mutation. Which is fancy to say... yeah, your Mutations are a lot more malleable, but they're heavily dependent on your emotional state. You're calm, you'll have better control. You're hungry, you'll absorb more Warp Energy. You're angry... uh... you saw what happened. When you reach a certain threshold of emotional output, you'll feel it change the shape of your soul.

Soul Trigger Development: 9%

"It's a... sort of... Mutation Boosting ability linked to my emotional state." I glanced along the lines of information. "Like, I can sort of manipulate the shape of my 'Soul', which I guess also means the shape of my 'flesh' since they're supposedly one and the same in a sense?"

Ripley's eyes already rolled the moment I said the word 'soul'. "Alright, so you've got an emotional-feedback to your morphology manipulation so it can now integrate your other Mutations simultaneously."

"I guess..." I had been really angry while fighting Soul Killer's Nexus. "I think it's good. It's going to make me more effective when removing Soul Killer's Mutagen from the infected."

"Yeah..." He yawned. Now that I looked at him, his eyes were really baggy and he looked an inch away from falling asleep.

"How long have you been awake?"

"Four days." He said with a blank look. "Your body needed constant supplies of my Warp Energy and nanites."

"Oh... were there any other costs?" I asked, almost cringing at what was to come.

Ripley took a deep breath. "Uh... you might have cost me 35 Bronze Shards of Warp Energy, about 3 Bronze Ad-Stims... one Silver. Mutagen Boosters were fed into you constantly, 8 vials of Bronze Tier II... and like, a lot of my blood."

"What was the total?" I was already mentally reaching for my bank account, but there was a brief stutter in my frame as it kept on buffering.

"Four... hundred and seventy thousand Shardyne." Ripley gulped.

I looked at my savings, I was making... a lot, but I'd only received one pay-check so far. I had just over 280k in savings. "Uh, can I pay in installments?"

"Sure." He nodded stiffly. "But it's... it's... actually no, I really need that money. Though Dryder's already given me the payout, even a bonus, and already sent an extra 70k towards your treatment. Something about not being able to see a friend in a hospital bed again. But uh... I kinda also need funds to repair my stuff."

"Shard Op' expenses, yeah." I nodded. He gave me some bank details and I quickly transferred another 100,000 to him. His face immediately looked a little more relieved.

As we sat in silence, I suddenly realized the weight of my four day stunt of being missing when I had a job. "So, uh, should I get ready to leave?"

"Yeah, you should probably get your affairs in order." He sat next to me. "Dryder's not responding to my calls right now, and Topaz dropped Quartz off just yesterday with Missy. Your police pals might need a reason for why you were gone, though... and... at the very least, you could viably dress up as a zombie for halloween. It would very much fit what you just went through... you needed some braaaains."

I gave him a deadpan face before smiling. "Ha, ha... but actually, uh... that reminds me. There's a place I think I... want to show you. An orphanage I visit, it's where we do some research on Soul Killer --- it's sort of like this place. I was thinking... Maybe you'd like to come there on Halloween with me? I was planning to help out with the kids there."

His face struck an odd look at mine for a second, more out of surprise. "I- I honestly don't know how good of an idea that is for me. I mean... I think my identity was compromised and I've already got a prior plan for Halloween."

"Oh, it's no problem." I batted away, not wanting to reveal the... disappointment in me. "Have fun with Mirage."

He had a genuine smile form on him. "Yeah... I really need to make up for the lost time, for her... and for my mother especially. It's a Halloween party, some festivity since Diamante's boogeyman duties are soon going to be over and we never properly celebrated the..."

"The attack on Yuzhou's Shandian factories. Those nanites you got from there, they're what saved my skin, so... no comment." I was already deep into the criminal world now, and crimes against a corporation controlled by Amaterasu were far from my priority.

"Glad to see we're on the same page. Maiden has your stuff in a locker... sorry, but I-"

"Go. You have people who need you." I nodded.

"So do you," he smiled as he turned, "be seeing you around, Diana. If you got the Shards for it."

"Guess I'll have to take a few product placement gigs for Netshows." I joked, despite the very real possibility of it.

As he left, I felt a piece of my... connection with him --- with his Implant --- weakening over the growing distance. It left a hollow panging inside of me. Lifting myself up, I let my hand trace the part of my skull that had been pierced, new skin and even hair was already forming, my rotted brain was probably remade.

I then received a message from Ripley.

[Oh shit, forget to give you your medicines. They're with your stuff, I'll send you the details now.]

As boring old medication came it with the occasional joke behind it, I couldn't help but feel a smile form on my face.

I died. My brain had stopped working... but I'd gotten a new lease on life because of Ripley and Starlight. I wouldn't throw it away.

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