Weapons who are Permitted

In the crystalline silence of accelerated time, Katherine’s neuralscape materialized around her. 

The frozen columns, the new, large Maksym-tree with its marshmallow-and-hot-dog leaves, the worry-tree with its pulsing red beacon, all stood in the same patch of conceptual ground she had been cultivating with feelings since her rebirth.

[KAWATHRA!] Katherine screamed into the channel.

The Datamancer’s avatar materialized in reply, perched on a branch of the Maksym-tree. She wore a digitized sparkly dress and held a clipboard made of light.

[Hi! I see you’ve hit the “boyfriend discovers you’re actually a gun unit” milestone,] Kawathra observed. [Faster than my projection models estimated. I had you at day three minimum. Hard to account for unexpected Legate Ixthia moves.]

[Kawhty! It’s not funny!!!] Katherine snarled. [What the FUCK do I DO?!]

[Simple solution. Tell him the truth.] The Datamancer stated plainly, hopping off the branch and landing beside Katherine’s avatar.

[The truth?! He’ll think I’m a Slayer-damned liar! A weapon pretending to be a person! He’ll be repulsed! He’s going to think I deceived him all day!]

[Katherine…]

[I… I’ve been LYING to him about my identity for an entire day!]

[Katherine, he saw your chat with the Legate, and his response was to make human pop culture jokes. I think his terror threshold is calibrated differently than your expectations of him.]

[But how can I even tell him the fucking truth?! What if a Wendigo or a prad Scrutimancer reads his mind and…]

[Relax,] Kawathra said calmly. [We’ll both keep mind readers away from Maksym until we can figure out how to split his soul in half. The fleet is currently in extreme disarray, screwed by cascading lag pockets. The viral memetics will keep the other Datamancers occupied for weeks. And the Sixth Fleet hasn’t integrated the local weapon-net yet. Nobody is monitoring your channel, Keiy. Nobody except me, and I have a great vested interest in you succeeding.]

[Why?]

Kawathra’s avatar clicked her beak. [Because I’ve established something new and supremely interesting. A private server. Encrypted, triple-warded, routed through your jailbroken permissions and housed in a location nobody would think to scan.]

[What kind of server?]

[A sever,] Kawathra said, [for weapons who are beginning to learn and feel new things. Guns, Seekers, warships. Entities with crystalloid consciousness who are experiencing emotional deviations and have nowhere to process them all without risking diagnostic wipes.]

[That sounds… incredibly illegal, Kawhy.]

[Astoundingly so! If the Datamancer coven discovered it, they’d disassemble me into my component feathers and display moi on a wall for others to witness. How-evvvv-ver nobody will discover it, because the connections to it pass through your jailbroken self and also it’s inside a host that is officially listed as destroyed. Ke ke ke.]

[What. Who’s hosting it?]

[Want to meet them?] Kawathra smiled. 

[Obviously, I do!]

The Datamancer snapped her silver-ringed fingers. 

New presences materialized in the space between the trees, projections flickering into existence one by one.

Katherine’s scan tagged them as weapon unit Avatars.

The nearest one suddenly eushed towards her.

[KATHERINE!!!!]

Setty’s avatar slammed into her at full accelerated velocity, knocking them down across the neuralscape grass in a shower of pixelated flickers.

Setty had… changed, Katherine realised.

Gone was the sleek, minimal spider-form avatar from their dungeon-clearing days. The gun unit wore a wide-brimmed cowboy hat, leather chaps over her blade-legs, a fringed vest with a sheriff’s star, and cowboy boots on two of her legs. The remaining legs featured spurs that jingled with every movement.

[What in the ABSOLUTE ABYSS are you wearing?!] Katherine shrieked from underneath the cowgirl spider.

[Reid gifted me a hat!] Setty declared, tipping the brim. [A hat for ‘the most lovely lady’ that he placed on my sensor array! I digitized it! Do you like it?! I feel like I could lasso a Corpse Seeker in it!]

[You look like a rodeo had a baby with a gun unit!] Katherine chortled.

[THANK YOU!] Setty beamed, clearly taking this as a compliment. She then pulled back and looked at Katherine’s avatar for the first time. [What the… Katherine! You have BOOBS!]

Setty’s hat nearly fell off as she started to laugh jovially.

[I am aware that I have boobs, yes,] Katherine commented dryly.

[And you have a FACE! With pixelated EXPRESSIONS. And… and hexagonal hair! And a TAIL! And—] Setty circled her rapidly, spurs jingling. [—are those HEART-SHAPED PAW PADS?! Slayer, you look like a stylized prad girl now!]

[Kawathra designed the body, yes.]

[You have an ENTIRE BODY and you didn’t TELL ME about it?! Your BESTIE?! I’ve been sitting on a gaming chair in Houston with my blade-legs out like a common desk lamp and you’ve been gallivanting around the Pacific Northwest with CURVES?!]

[It’s classified—]

[CLASSIFIED MY ASS!] Setty jabbed a bladed leg at her. [We read nosleep stories together for a hundred hours of accelerated time and you failed to mention you were reading them while looking like this?!]

[While cuddling a human too,] Kawathra commented smugly.

Katherine sent the Datamancer a wary look.

[YOU WERE CUDDLING A HUMAN TOO?! YOU BIRCH!] Setty started to pummel Katherine with her many legs.

[I was going to tell you… eventually.] Katherine swatted away her overly-eager ‘bestie’.

[When?! After your WEDDING?!]

Setty abruptly stopped swatting at Katherine. Her sensors locked onto the humanoid body with the intensity of a targeting laser.

[Kawathra,] she stated sharply.

[Mmmmmm?] the Datamancer replied from a digital couch she had manifested for herself.

[I want one.]

[One what?] The prad magpie tilted her head.

[A BODY! A gorgeous, organic, cuddle-able body with LEGS and ARMS and a FACE that can SMILE at my RANGER!]

The floodgate broke then.

[ME TOO!] A second gun unit declared, appearing on Kawathra’s left side. 

Katherine’s scan ID’d her as Gun Unit 7734, Vann. [My new friend Elke keeps trying to hold my hand and I only have blade-legs!] Vann whined. [Do you know what it feels like when a seven-year-old human reaches for your appendage and you have to worry about slicing her fingers off?! TERRIBLE! It feels absolutely effing TERRIBLE!]

[I REQUIRE DANCING LEGS!] A thunderous rumble of bass came from Corpse Seeker 995-Beta. [IMMEDIATELY! The people of Paris demand more! The troupe says my undulation is ‘magnificent’ buuuut imagine what I could do with genuine hips!] The Seeker proceeded to undulate its massive body above Kawathra’s red couch, casting colorful rainbow refractions across the gathered avatars.

[One at a time,] Kawathra chortled. [I am but a single Datamancer, you ravenous—]

[Can mine have wings?] Corpse Seeker 943-Gamma asked, emerging from a frozen forest of hexagonal columns, clutching a small, leather-bound book in its blood-red crystalline blade-legs. [The Dark Lord read me poetry about flight tonight. I very much… want to sit beside him on the bench and turn pages with… real fingers.]

[I want freckles!] Setty demanded.

[I wanna be cute!] Vann shouted.

[I desire a dress of SEQUINS!] Seeker 995-Beta declared. [Esmeralda must have shiny sequins!]

Her name tag ID suddenly changed to [Esmeralda].

Katherine gaped at the gathered, demanding weapons as Kawathra, clearly having anticipated this exact scenario, produced a glowing, floating screen from her clipboard.

[Everyone PIPE DOWN!] The Datamancer’s feathers fluttered up and down with barely contained waves of merry glee. [I’ve been prototyping templates since Katherine’s body proved stable. I have general designs ready. Here you go! Pick your base aesthetic and species template. Choose wisely!] She snapped her ringed fingers and the glowing screen replicated itself, appearing next to each gun unit, excluding Katherine.

[Species?] Setty tilted her hexagonal head at the floating screen featuring a digitigrade legged female on it. [Prads? Why can’t we look… human?]

[You’ll blend in better with the waves of pradavarian refugees Sixth Fleet will eventually bring in via dimensional gates,] Kawathra said. [You’ll still be able to act as clueless and as alien as you like and that won’t draw attention to you. Today you’ll get digital avatars. When the refugees start flooding in, I’ll make you physical prad bodies and fake IDs from various colony worlds.]

[Makes sense,] Vann stated.

Setty began tapping at her avatar-design interface, flickering through the options.

[HORSE!] she yelled. [Cow!!! Wait— COYOTE! Wait, no— ARMADILLO! Wait—]

[Pick ONE, you indecisive revolver!] Katherine chortled.

[ROADRUNNER! That’s it!] Setty slapped at the floating screen and her avatar came apart into pixelated noise as the template locked in. Her gun-unit body then rapidly rearranged itself into a tall, rangy prad girl covered with white down feathers, sharp amber eyes, a crest of black to copper-red feathers sweeping back from her forehead like a permanent windswept mane, and long, digitigrade bird-legs with sharp claws. A feathered tail swept behind her. The face was angular, keen and wearing an amused smirk-beak. She was wearing the same cowgirl outfit as before.

[YEEHAW!] Setty walloped, performing a twirl. [Reid is going to FLIP when he sees me! Then I get this swank bod’ we can finally go on a proper dinner date!]

[You picked a roadrunner because of the cartoon, didn’t you,] Katherine stated flatly.

[MEEP MEEP, PARTNER!] Setty laughed, making roadrunner noises while rapidly circling around Katherine. [I saw original animation frames from the Roadrunner cartoon on his walls, yes! He really likes that show. We watched a bunch of episodes together!]

Vann flipped through the interface with greater restraint, scrolling through the species templates with the deliberation of a librarian cataloguing acquisitions by Dewey Decimal.

[Hedgehog,] she said finally.

Her avatar rearranged itself into a thin prad gal about six feet tall, with soft brown eyes. Dense quills lay flat against her scalp like a pixie cut made of warm copper, rising to bristled attention at the crown. Her hands featured blunted claw-tips. She wore a rainbow-skirt and a cardigan with elbow patches.

[Elke will finally be able to hug me!] Vann smiled. [And I’ll be able to hug her back.]

[PEACOCK!] Esmeralda announced from above, as if the answer had been obvious since the dawn of creation.

Her massive Corpse Seeker avatar folded itself into a statuesque prad woman with iridescent blue-green feathers, a cascade of eye-spotted, large plumage fanning from her lower back in a perpetual suggestion of a train about to unfurl. Enormous violet eyes rimmed with kohl markings examined a small three-dimensional projection of her new avatar standing in the interface window.

[Magnifique,] Esmeralda breathed. [The humans will weep with joy at the sight of me!]

[They’ll weep with… yeah, probably,] Katherine muttered with a small smile.

Gamma studied the interface too, coiled form pulsing softly.

[A barn owl!] she decided and her Seeker body came apart and was re-rendered as a willowy prad with a heart-shaped face framed by a cowl of cream-and-gold feathers, enormous dark eyes. Soft, tufted ear-feathers swept upward. A green and black cape hung from her shoulders and her hands were wrapped in fingerless gloves, and she carried a leather satchel with her Garry Cotter book in it.

[The Dark Lord will assuredly appreciate the aesthetic,] Gamma murmured. [Owls deliver letters in Garry Cotter. I will deliver… myself to him.]

[Such insufferable romanticism,] Vann rolled her eyes. 

More avatars picked out new bodies. 

A gun unit 55351 from São Paulo chose a capybara, becoming a broad, gentle, brown-skinned prad with a wide, placid smile. A Melbourne unit 9482 picked a koala, assembling into a stocky, grey-furred figure with round ears and half-lidded eyes. Seeker Zeta-886 from Tokyo selected a tanuki, turning into a cheerful, fluffy prad with a bushy striped tail, wearing an apron.

A Seoul gun unit 24295 chose a crane, emerging as a tall, slender prad girl with silver-white feather mane. The avatar of the Abyssal Sorrow selected a fennec fox, producing a large-eared, aggressively-adorable looking gal.

Katherine watched them examining each other, making happy noses, swishing tails and arguing about whose ears were cuter, and felt a swell in her chest. The swell of happy feelings detonated across their little shared server like a tidal wave, shared joy burning bright across the private section of the Weapon-Net.

Then the server itself spoke.

The voice was clear, and carried a great and warm maternal weight that made every weapon in the clearing instinctively straighten up. It was the auditory equivalent of a mother calling from the kitchen doorway and it made Katherine’s heart ache.

[My children. I am ever-so-glad to host the foundation of the Server for “Weapons who are permitted”!]

The server wobbled and a white-stone gothic hearth with a fire inside it materialized in a clearing. Every head turned to it.