Steel is Forever - Part 4 (Commission for Xilimyth)

TAGS: Chee, Transformation/TF, Cyborgification, Growth/Expansion

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Now possessed of a much finer degree of control over the nanites inside of her body, it was easy enough for Xili to try and enact small changes over her body whenever no one was looking. They were small and inconsequential, but how could she get started on the big changes without mastering the small ones first? Her claws were lengthened while she typed on her keyboard, allowing her to move her hands further and further away before retracting them again, experimenting with how sharp and hard she could make them before it became too much, ending up seriously scratching the keys and scraping off the black paint. She looked beneath her desk, watching as the metal plates on her legs lengthened as the appendages themselves did, oddly enough growing more angular the bigger they got, before falling back down to their old size. More surreptitiously, she added a bit more mass to her chest, giving herself a wider, plumper bust for a few minutes before resetting it when people began to stare. She was lucky the clothes on her back weren’t actually there, or else there would’ve been a lot of ripping noises she wouldn’t be able to explain.

All of these steps put together, as exploratory and inconsequential as they were in isolation, all contributed to heighten the dracat’s control over her physical form. Every ounce of alloy moved from place to place allowed her to tune in with the nano-fluid coursing inside of her, giving it the strength and energy required to go back into full activation now that its host body knew what to do with it. However, there was a slight problem with her transformations, one that Xili had foreseen but never quite thought of a solution for: raw mass.

Though her newer and improved body was stronger and more efficient than her previous shell, the synth was well aware that it was less dense as well; she had grown outwards without absorbing any extra material, so while the metallic plates that made up her form were significantly sturdier thanks to the nanites’ actions, they were lighter and thinner as well, her internal components being streamlined so that excess parts could be cannibalized and put to better use elsewhere. If she wanted to truly become something glorious, a true synth-goddess like the one she imagined herself as, then more mass was required, unless she wanted to be lighter than helium. And at that moment, the biggest dilemma that Xili faced was whether or not she should succumb to her desires and just take the building for herself while she had the chance.

With most of her work done before lunch, courtesy of her cerebral processors being so well-optimized, the dracat had the opportunity to inspect the structure, truly take it in for the first time in her life. It was highly doubtful that she could make use of the glass or endless amount of cardboard and paper, but plastic and steel were always welcome additions, and there was a lot of the latter all around her. Her weird staring at the ceiling caught the attention of her coworkers, even more so than her sudden transformation into an amazon, but none were brave enough to ask her what she was looking at, correctly deducing that the answer might be something they didn’t want to hear. This carried on all the way to the cafeteria; while Xili didn’t really need to eat, she could still fake it, and the charade up until that point required that she did. Now though? Now the dracat was out of reasons to pretend to be normal, especially given how her synthetic side had slowly taken over the organic one; the chee no longer wanted to keep her true nature a secret, but derived a lot more pleasure out of keeping people confused about her than she would by just coming clean. Plus, the sight of dozens, hundreds of people all staring at her while trying to eat their lunches made her feel well and truly special, like she was the star of the show for once, as opposed to yet another corporate drone.

Xili wasn’t looking at anyone in particular though, but at the room itself. Her HUD was filled with reports on the constituent materials of whatever it was she was looking at, the log growing longer the more she swivelled her head around; by her calculations, there was enough raw mass in there that she could afford to grow to at least half the height of the whole building itself, if not even more… and from there, who knew where she would end up? Just the thought alone was enough to nearly have her spark with excitement, and the dracat had to be careful not to let her internal temperature grow too out of control, lest people start to wonder why her veins were on fire and her body was literally steaming. Nonetheless, the thought haunted her all the way to her cubicle and for the rest of the shift, to the point where she couldn’t even pretend to work any longer; Xili had to know if her ideas held true, she had to find out if it was even possible to absorb the building’s component materials into herself. Only then could she move onto the next stage of her plan.

The dracat got up, nearly taking half of her office supplies with her as she accidentally unfurled her wings in her barely-contained excitement, knocking a few people over in her panicked rush to get to the bathroom. Its simplicity would finally work in her favour, with the metal sinks providing an excellent testing ground for her hypothesis; it was then that Xili remembered that she’d never tried to bring the nanites out of her body before, nor did she know whether or not that was even possible… but she believed it was. And if her ability to give herself “clothes” was built entirely out of her subconscious desires being made manifest, then surely ordering the nano-fluid to go collect extra mass for itself wouldn’t be that hard, would it? This was the question she kept asking herself while keeping her hand outstretched towards the tap, occasionally glancing at the door while trying to stumble onto the correct sequence of thoughts that would let the nanites know what she wanted.

That time, however, Xili would not give up. Everything up until then was proof positive that what she wanted was possible, and everything else was just a matter of “how”. Frowning, the dracat worried about giving herself wrinkles from how intensely she was staring at that horribly tacky piece of bathroom equipment, but carried on regardless, utterly convinced that not only was she right, but she was so right that she’d surprise herself with how right she was. Did that make sense? Probably not, but then again, the chee had somehow metamorphosized into a better version of herself via a nanine injection, so the concept of things needing to make sense in order to exist wasn’t as solid as it used to be. Again and again she threw her hand forward at arm’s length, almost as if casting a silent spell, while occasionally mumbling encouragements to herself as if they’d have any effect. She lost track of how many times she did so, and how amazing it was no one had come into the bathroom to look for her, until finally, after what felt like a whole hour, she saw it.

It was a tiny trickle, barely noticeable beyond the tiniest disturbance in the air around it; Xili herself was about ready to try again when she noticed it emerging from one of her fingers, slowly encroaching upon the sink. It was thin and black, fluid in appearance, and the longer the dracat stared at it, the more she came to realize what it truly was. Grinning widely by that point, the synth-chee practically lunged forward in her manic attempt at grabbing the tap, hoping to give that floating glob of nanites a target to work with… and like a precision-guided missile, suddenly a torrent erupted from the many seams in her hand, the metallic plates making it up practically rattling as the fluid burst free from between them and enveloped not just the sink Xili was at, but stretching out to cover every other, their dull, silvery sheen replaced with the thickest black. Within seconds, they were gone, with the covering of nanites retreating back into her body, hitting her with enough momentum to make her stumble backwards against one of the bathroom stalls. It ended about as quickly as it began, with her hand being exactly the way it used to be… and the line of sinks, as well as the piping underneath them, being completely gone.

She could barely believe her eyes, and yet there it was, clear as day: every bit of metal in those things had been consumed by a flood of nanites emerging from her body, and a quick internal scan revealed that her weight had shifted accordingly, with most of the materials being stretched out and deposited all over her internals in order to avoid any massive changes. She wasn’t taller, she wasn’t bulkier, hell, she was exactly the same as she had been the whole day… but now she knew that it was possible. And suddenly, just like that, her office building was looking far more like a snack than it was her workplace.

The Xili that emerged from the bathroom looked so unbelievably happy that it freaked everyone out, many of her coworkers stepping back when hit by the beaming joy emanating from the chee. They knew better than to assume that whatever happened was remotely good for them, and they’d be right; the dracat had finally convinced herself to do what had to be done, and that meant making sure everything around her was placed safely inside of her. Not that she wanted to harm anyone, of course; it was important to keep all of her friends and acquaintances safe, not just for its own sake, but also because she sort of kind of wanted a crowd to admire her once she unfurled herself into her true, titanic form. It was a private thought that the chee rarely allowed herself to have, but the idea of having others worship her had been a closely-guarded secret for the past several years, coincidentally around the same time she began to seriously consider undergoing her transformation into a synthetic lifeform. Coincidence? Probably not.

If that’s what she wanted though, Xili needed to act quickly; her shift was almost over, and the office itself would be deserted in the next couple of hours, apart from the odd janitor or accountant running extra hours. If she wanted to show off to as many people as possible, now was the time; not only would the dracat catch the office at its fullest, but her emergence from her steel cocoon would be visible to everyone else in that section of the downtown area. She could picture it already, whole throngs of workers, tired from a full day of honest labor, making their way to their cars or the nearest subway station, when suddenly, out of nowhere, one of the tall buildings next to them explodes in a shower of glass shards chunks of concrete, and from it… emerged Xili, colossal, enormous, her wings blocking the sun as she unraveled her true self!

The chee had to stifle a moan at the mere idea of it, and if not for her quick thinking, would have been caught blushing furiously, enough that her temperature would rise to near boiling point. Not that it really mattered in the end; the pretending would soon be over, and everyone would be made privy to her true self within a few short minutes. Indeed, the only reason the dracat went back to her cubicle at all was so she could have some privacy while preparing for the next stage of her ascension, given that the scales involved were ever so slightly larger than those in the bathroom; the dracat needed to focus in order to tell her nanites where to go and how to act, and most importantly, to make sure that they provided her with a continuous trickle of materials with which to improve herself. It wouldn’t do to coat the whole building in the nano-fluid only to then absorb it all at once, she needed to do it more gradually, to let everyone enjoy the ride as much as she did… and besides, Xili had her doubts whether she even had enough nanites to cover the whole structure.

First things first: making more of them. The dracat flattened her palms against the table she sat at, instructing the myriad of tiny robots to expand from those two contact points and make good use of everything they could find. Slowly, but surely, two black smudges appeared underneath her hands, growing in every direction in misshapen blobs before climbing up every piece of electronic or electrical equipment they could find. Her computer monitor was devoured in seconds, the accompanying tower in under a minute, while the printer and phone vanished beneath the tide just as easily as the sinks had. The dracat’s HUD filled with new menus, denoting controls she never saw before, odd expressions that were very clearly functions that no one bothered to give a proper name: she was seeing her nanites’ internal coding, and she now had permission to not only access it… but change it however she saw fit.

For once in her life, Xili thanked the heavens for being such a computer nerd that she took up coding as a hobby in her free time; whether it be her knowledge, the mechanical parts of her brain or a glorious combination of both, what she was seeing made sense to her. It was instinctual, even more so than the nanite absorption or her own growth had been, and without much hassle the dracat reprogrammed her nanites to focus on producing more of themselves in preparation for the oncoming storm. New functions were added, instructions on how to properly return the stolen materials to her in a stream rather than in bursts, limits and targets for her own measurements, such as height, limbs and other, more private areas that would need attention later on. Everything was made explicitly clear and laid bare for her to exercise her control over, and by the time she was sitting in an empty cubicle, all of its office supplies, electronics and appliances having been successfully absorbed, it was time to get started.

The first person to notice something was strange was one of the new hires, who happened to be walking by Xili’s cubicle when he noticed it was not only completely empty barring the chee herself, but covered in a thick layer of paint that seemed to be melting onto the ground. It took him a few moments to realize the “paint” was not only oozing onto the ground near him, but seemed to be climbing up the sides of the cubicle itself, while pouring onto adjacent ones and scaring the everliving spirits out of his coworkers. Even then, he only knew to run once he felt the “paint” lap up against his foot and try to latch onto it, at which point the canine’s survival instincts kicked in and he made good use of his two legs. The office was rapidly filled with screams and panicked yelps as the nanite covering expanded in every direction, the flood consuming as much raw matter as it needed in order to multiply itself, just to give itself the coverage needed to provide for Xili’s next growth spurt.

Plastics were broken down into individual molecules and siphoned back to the synth-dracat, while various metals were simply torn into miniature shreds and recycled as necessary, with the grains floating through the semi-fluid goop and depositing themselves onto whatever part of Xili needed to be improved next. The chee’s “clothes” were gone, replaced not by the bright silver of her true body, but by a facsimile of her organic self again, a nude version of what her old organic form used to be like. The chee figured it was the best move for what she had planned next; there would be no shame where she was headed, so why not kill two birds with one stone and not only give herself that injection of worship she so desired, but provide her future supplicants with the kind of show they too wanted to see? After all, who was going to arrest her for public indecency when her final form would be so immensely powerful as to be effectively indestructible?

The floor began to creak underneath Xili’s feet, the chair vanishing into the black goo the moment she got up from it; the nanite storm practically worked on its own, needing only the most basic of instructions before resolving the details for itself. As long as it continued to feed her and leave other organics unharmed, that’s all the dracat really cared about; the building was hers to gorge on, as was anything else that might be remotely useful to her becoming a mechanical goddess. With her tiny helpers doing everything on their own, this also freed up her mind to thoroughly focus on simply enjoying the sensations coursing through her; it was the first time in goodness knows how long that Xili truly thanked her organic, squishy brain for existing, because only something like it could derived such unbridled, carnal ecstasy from being given exactly what it wanted. It was pretty clear to her that she was losing control over her emotions, and it wouldn’t be too long before she was making a fool of herself with a lot of very undignified noises, but the dracat didn’t care anymore; this was her day, her ascension, and if anyone wanted to take offense to that, they were welcome to get in line to be ignored.