Steel is Forever - Part 2 (Commission for Xilimyth)

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

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First was the heat, slowly rising as the nanites began their work in earnest, just barely enough for her sensors to fail to pick up on; seeing as she was running off of a miniaturized fusion reactor and that different activities required the activation of different body parts, it was only natural for her internal temperature to fluctuate slightly over the course of any given day. It was only after it didn’t go back down following a prolonged peak period that her on-board systems began to relay warning signals that something was wrong, and for Xili to find some way to either vent excess heat or directly cool herself down externally. While normally this would be cause for alarm, given what she had just done for herself, the synth-chee felt it was only natural that her body would start burning up; can’t have sweeping changes without it releasing abundant quantities of energy after all, and her body was more than capable of withstanding it.

Hours passed where the dracat began to feel just how hot her insides were becoming, all while her vision was flooded by flashing signs and bright lights telling her that she was approaching a critical heat level and needed to cool down if she wanted to avoid a catastrophic system failure. Xili ignored all of it, knowing that she if wanted to scratch that itch, to feed the hungry beast that lay in wait inside of her head, then she had to pay the price; the nano-fluid was doing its work and restructuring her from the inside out, so assuming her handlers didn’t just lie to her, then everything would be fine. More than fine, in fact, if what they said was accurate and the tiny robots did their best to improve her rather than just send her back to what she used to be. The dracat, not needing as much sleep as her organic self used to, spent her whole night pacing around her house, staring at herself for the slightest sign of changes, hours wasted before she realized that whatever happened to her would be so gradual that she was wasting time with the effective equivalent of watching a pot waiting for the water to boil. Then again, by that point, the heat rising inside of her was so high that sleeping at all was no longer a possibility, leaving her in an odd position where she recognized the need to skip ahead a few hours… but really couldn’t do it.

The solution? Collapse onto the floor and close her eyes, waiting until the sun came up while her whole world turned into the rhythmic sound of her breathing, the feeling of pressure in her chest mounting whenever it heaved with each inhale, and the inside of her eyelids still being mostly bright-red, courtesy of the endless series of alarms going off trying to warn her she was about to experience a complete collapse. No such thing came to pass though; just as Xili predicted, the sudden rise in temperature was nothing more than a byproduct of the nanites working their sweet, delicious scientific magic on her, with the faint readings she was getting from her internal systems being so frazzled and nonsensical that there was no real explanation beyond the best one: luck had been in her favour. Either that, or the contents of the lockbox had always been intended as some sort of super-secret upgrade juice they were keeping around for some reason, and the hard reset story was just cooked up to serve as an excuse; whatever the case may be, the synth-cat was beside herself with joy once the endless alarms blaring in her head began to die down and her system finally shut up about being on the edge, a gradual process that coincided with something entirely new coursing through her.

It was hard to put into words, it being more of a subconscious feel more than anything else, like a slow, sudden realization that spread from the very core of her brain and across every tendon and nerve-equivalent she had, all of her wiring flaring with it simultaneously. It was comfort, a respite from having been thrown into the maws of oblivion, but it was power, the sensation of control and dominance, growing stronger with each passing second. The dracat wasn’t getting any heavier, and yet she felt as if all of her alloys were growing denser; not any taller, and yet everything she was wearing felt like it was dreadfully undersized. Her whole body had suddenly turned into a shell that she felt uncomfortable in, in the most physical possible sense, as if her body, her true body was somewhere underneath the cold, metallic surface of her synthetic form, which was now as big of a limiter to her self-realization as her old, useless organic meat bag. There was something within her that yearned for freedom, the true Xili that the nanites had fashioned from the old one… and she needed to get out.

Once the dracat got back on her feet and opened her eyes, it was clear that reality was firmly on her side: not only were the seams on her armour plating fully visible, they were glowing a bright white, with plumes of hot air dancing above them; all of her body was a furnace and those tiny, thin lines were the only vents that she had left. Most of her clothing was singed, and the smell of burnt cloth suddenly invaded her nostrils, all while the glow continued to grow in intensity and brightness. There were no warnings about excess heat, no constant blaring telling her that things were about to explode; an internal diagnostic revealed her systems were running just fine, and in fact the fusion reactor was operating past peak capacity, indicating the nano-fluid had done a fantastic job of upgrading her. Of course, this did mean that her current body was no longer sufficient to hold her in place; considering how intense the heat was, it was only a matter of time before her synthskin melted away, rapidly followed by the plating underneath, and the last thing Xili wanted was to look like a knock-off Terminator.

No longer operating on reason, the dracat brought her right hand to the opposite arm, to a spot just beneath her elbow; it had a special joint that allowed her to open a large panel, giving her full access to the wiring in case emergency repairs were needed, but that wasn’t what she was looking for that time. She knew that, were she to pop the lid, there would be nothing but more plating underneath, the real her that was waiting to be shown to the world, and as such, something more… drastic was needed. Something more theatrical, something more affirming and absurdly dangerous; it wouldn’t be enough for her to remove the slab of blisteringly hot alloys, she had to rip it apart with her bare hands! Forcing her fingernails into one of the seams was the first truly painful thing she had to do, the heat emanating from it enough to leave them glowing about as brightly as that impromptu vent itself was. Her arm groaned and creaked with the sounds of twisting metal, sounding like a ship’s hull grinding against a large rock as it was torn apart and ripped into two. It bent hard, but it did bend; and Xili’s eyes went wide at the sight of her arm being pulled from her body, only for a large plume of vapour to billow into the air, obscuring her vision for just long enough that the synth-cat truly worried whether or not she had made a mistake. Moments later, just as the piece of metal she ripped from herself landed several feet away, the smoke cleared away just enough for her to get a good look at the damage, only to find nothing less than a silvery, perfectly smooth plate of metal, right there where she dreamed it would be. A new arm, one to replace her old one, right beneath the cocoon of her former self.

She was a butterfly.

All at once, the effects began to spread to the rest of her body, as if her visually confirming what she knew to be true kickstarted the transformation proper; Xili doubled over when the pressure hit her all at once, her insides seemingly expanding in every direction while the old, easily-discardable shell of synthetic skin and poorly-fitting metal complained loudly about how much it was being bent out of shape. She was exploding out of herself, and it was hard to tell whether or not it was the most painful experience she’d gone through, or if it was the mortal equivalent of divine apotheosis; the sensations mixed together in her confused mind, the electronic components of which struggled to process the mess of emotions they were being fed, until finally they just gave up and shut down until Xili was done with her metamorphosis.

It came in waves, each one stronger than the last, and with most of her former body falling off of her in stages. It wasn’t the glorious burst that Xili had imagined, but at least this way she got to keep her windows in one piece and wouldn’t have to scramble for a fire extinguisher once everything erupted into flames around her; instead, bits and pieces of herself just kept falling off once the body emerging from within her bloated and stretched to impose itself upon on the world, shedding her former synthetic frame in its glorious ascension. It was bright and glimmering, its silky-smooth surface looking more polished than a mirror, composed of some odd alloy that the dracat couldn’t recognize. Like her old self, its seams too were practically unrecognizable, giving her the appearance of a single, marvelously sculpted sheet of metal molded into the shape of an eight-foot dracat, her wings too unfurling and having their old “skin” fall off of them in waves. She was peeling, and it was the best thing in her whole life, to give up her old, inferior self for the sake of a newer, upgraded one.

The transformation lasted less than a minute after the first panel was ripped out, but Xili was left breathless and exhausted from it; she had, after all, just emerged from her pupa through sheer force of will (or so she told herself), so it was only natural that her body needed some time to readjust. Kneeling and with her arms shaking as they held her up, the synth-chee got a good eyeful of the nanites remaking her even more, with a brand new coating of synthskin appearing in the middle of her chest and spreading outwards, its colouring mimicking her old fur’s, before finally all of her was back where it used to be aesthetically… just much, much larger and built far more powerfully than ever. With her new form reaching eight feet in height and nearly double that in width if she unfurled her wings completely, it was also slightly more angular than it had been before; not too much to be immediately noticeable, but just enough for someone to see something was off if given enough time to look closely enough. This would be a problem… for future Xili. Present Xili had to enjoy herself.

Her trip to the bathroom gave the nanites enough time to get done with the extra additions, shaping her frame to give it a bit of an extra edge; some artificial pudge to her rear and a bit of size to her bust in order to pad it out and give her a figure to die for, as well as trying their level best to provide the dracat with a semblance of well-defined musculature. It was nothing more than an illusion, but a well-crafted one; Xili herself could barely notice the odd angles when she admired herself in her mirror, most of her body no longer even fitting on it. There was something to be said about outgrowing one’s ability to brush their hair properly, and the dracat was already making plans to install something on the ceiling when a certain idea hit her out of nowhere:

Why was it over?

The nanites were a proof of concept, not an end. They were evidence that her design, while already quite good, could still be improved upon if one tried hard enough, not just in overall looks but in function as well; her internal fusion reactor was running more efficiently than ever, her hydraulics were capable of far greater feats of strength than before, and if the material analysis on the metallic alloy making most of her body up were any indication, she was just about bulletproof rather than simply resistant. And while she looked positively gorgeous, the dracat couldn’t help but shake the feeling that it wasn’t all that… complete. That it could still be improved upon, that her journey wasn’t yet over, and that the nano-fluid coursing inside of her circuitry wasn’t at all done. After all, her electronics had been upgraded to the point where they actually picked up its existence, and if she knew it was there, then it was only a matter of time until the chee finagled a way to manipulate the substance.

A devilish grin spread across her lips once that thought crystallized inside of her; sure, the experimental material may very well be inert, believing itself to be done with its task, but it wasn’t dissolving or being reabsorbed into her, nor was it leaving for the nearest waste ports to be removed during the next maintenance cycle. Instead, it for some reason decided to stick around, sticking to whatever surface was nearest to it while its constituent nanites sat there doing absolutely nothing. It stood to reason, then, that if they were still there and making themselves available, then the substance had always been designed for multiple uses, perhaps as a safety feature; if the synth they were injected into required a hard reset, odds were good that keeping that reset button around might be genuinely useful. However, given those things could be just as easily subverted for other purposes…

Xili’s mind was awash with images of herself, of potential futures she could walk towards. Assuming she could assert full control over the nanites inside of her, there really was no end to the possibilities; as long as the necessary materials were supplied, her body could be remade in whatever image she so desired, limited only by her very hyperactive imagination. Already the dracat could see herself looming over the city she called her home, casting a shadow over every building, a single wind enough to cause hurricane-force winds if she ever flapped it with any degree of strength, her eyes glinting high up in the sky as she blessed the tiny ones with her predatory smile… for whatever reason, that idea led her to lick her lips without even realizing it, something that caused no end of blushing once Xili took notice of it. Perhaps it was best to curb her enthusiasm for the time being; right now she had better things to worry about, such as how none of her clothes fit or how she was supposed to explain to her boss why and how she had grown to become a small giantess made up of odd, almost imperceptible angles.

… right after she finally slept.

Xili woke up by lunch time, just barely enough to let her system reboot properly and deal with the changes wrought upon it. Things seemed even better than before, and while the rapturous joy captured by the transformation had long-since vanished, the feeling of overwhelming comfort and peace was a good substitute; not exactly mind-wracking, but the simple act of being fine with herself was a far better reward than the greatest of climaxes, and thus the synth-chee spent most of her afternoon with the dumbest, most gleeful smile stamped on her face. She radiated childish glee, enough for it to feedback loop into herself, and multiple times the dracat found herself giggling for no reason, often while absentmindedly running a finger over a part of her body or accidentally bumping into something while getting used to her new size. Going back to work the following day would be… interesting, to say the least, but Xili couldn’t wait to see everyone’s reaction!

This, of course, was predicated on her finding some clothes for herself, which was easier said than done giving her new dimensions. No store would ever be able to deliver custom orders to her under twenty-four hours, and just finding one that even offered the option was already difficult; as much as Xili didn’t like it, she knew the only realistic possibility was for her to try and improvise something herself. Amazingly, and despite the fact that the synth-chee had a direct link to the internet via her on-board router, she did a fantastically poor job of stitching together whatever bits and pieces she could find into something vaguely resembling a button up shirt; it was more of a Frankenstein’s monster of the clothing world, and not at all something that she would even wear in private, much less in public.

It was then that something clicked inside of her, a memory of what had happened during her transformation that could potentially be turned into something of use for her current predicament. Her real body wasn’t the colour of her fur, and neither was it made of skin, but rather a smooth, silvery alloy that just happened to have a coating thrown onto it, courtesy of the nanites that had made it in the first place. Surely, if they gave her such an amazing paint job in the first place, they could be coaxed into doing it again, no? It was a wonderful opportunity to learn how to control those things in a way that, theoretically, wouldn’t do much harm, all while fixing her clothing issues without having to spend a single dime; it was genius!