AnnouncementI managed to break several of my tools for creating digital art, so the true cover for this is still, sadly a work in progress. Don't worry, It's still on the way, just not finished YET.

  "When you are surrounded on all sides by infinite nails, you start looking REALLY hard for a good hammer."

  - Master J. Cloud, to his students in Nevada discussing combat in "target rich environments"

  "Clear Space"

  Lovely. Clear objective. Easy to understand.

  Might as well have said "objective: Survive!"

  Make space to mount multiple razor-edged limbs which I wanted in order to make that space.

  "Damnit!" I roared as I whirled in a sharp twist, driving the alien bdes on my arms through the head of a model three, driving a bionic kick into another with a sharp roundhouse sending it careening off of the side, before I whirled and sshed again, dropping more model threes off the edge of the root walkway down to the floor.

  "Alright- I only want to deal with aliens from one direction - drop me some piranha juice on the downhill side Scyl!"

  A container appeared on the ground in front of me, and I sliced it open with one bde in the same motion I used to hack the legs off of a charging alien.

  The acid began to pour down the walkway, which had a bit of a lip guiding the aggressive material down towards the ground. Aliens began to stumble as the aggressive acid began to eat away at their limbs, and I turned to face the uphill slope again, barreling forward and trying my best to ignore the smell of acid burning Xenos flesh. Make distance, give myself time, give myself space. It became a mantra in my head as malformed monkey things flew through the air at me, as mishappen death chickens dropped from barely formed fruits above me, and as half- dissolved model fives and fours flopped down the ramp at me as quickly as they could.

  At some point, I found myself panting at the top of a spiral, looking down over the expanse of roots that was this hive, at the center of this superstructure.

  My eye twitched. I could see model eights feeding corpses into some kind of digestion pool, and could see model threes hauling their deceased brethren on the first floor to those same digesting pools. The hissing of my acid bath had stopped at some point, and I figured it wouldn't take long for this hive to adapt to what I had done. Action time.

  "How many points do I have Scyl?"

  You currently have 857 points ready to spend. Would you like suggestions?

  "Arms. And Acid. Lots of acid - give me the most aggressive stuff you have that won't dissolve the water tower, and at least one of those tentacle limbs had better have some kind of hook I can use to cling to this water tower. I have no desire to die today."

  Understood. T3 - CH PR-135 -T model offensive prosthesis deploying now.

  A rge cylindrical pstic crate appeared with a barely audible "womf" sound, and I opened it to see four mechanical limbs. They really did look like, well... a bunch of razor bdes and doc-oc's tentacles had a baby. Countless metallic joints gleamed with a faint azure shine, the st third of each limb resembling the spinal column of a rge beast, as each metallic segment of the limbs extended out into a bde, the longest of them easily the length of my arm. Each of the four mechanical tentacles ended in a cw-like hand as well, only four digits, but that clearly had strength to cling to the side of the water tank.

  Points now set to 120.

  "How do I connect to this Scyl?"

  Turn and position the G-9 spinal interface so it aligns with the central connection points of the combat prosthetics, they will attach to the interface and the protective armor pting will create a shell over the interface and mechanical junction along your spine.

  I did as instructed, and i couldn't help but feel a bit creeped out as the limbs twisted on their own so that their narrowest point was aligned with the interface. I gasped in shock as each one seemed to stab into the G-9 interface, which, being connected to my actual spinal column, felt like they were stabbing into my spine and then threading mechanical connections directly into my brain.

  A headache fred as I tried to make sense of the four new limbs, each one long enough to suspend me six feet in the air if I chose to stand on the ends of each of the limbs, and I stumbled back, the limbs twitching and filing, gouging massive chunks out of the woody hive structure around me as I gasped and tried to keep control of my breathing.

  "Scyl, help!" I gasped.

  Uploading pre-programmed learning package. I apologize for the quasi-authorized points expenditure.

  My mind cleared, as knowledge suddenly flooded my brain. In an instant, it was as if I had had these limbs attached to my back for years, each one as comfortable as one of my own arms. I steadied, letting my new battle-prosthetics lift me up into the air.

  I took a deep breath, and gred down at the hive below me.

  "Respirator."

  a box dropped into my waiting hand. I affixed it over my mouth and nose, please to see that my mechanical eyes were reading anti-fume protocols already.

  Point total now 110.

  I rolled my shoulders, and flicked each of my new bdearm tentacles.

  "Let's kill these fuckers."

  I surged around the space. The metalic talons on my new limbs sank deep into the pasteel and concrete of the structure as I danced across the ceiling, severing half-formed fruits, carving entire limbs of the root structure free of the main mass to the distress of the swarm of aliens below me, snapping their jaws and futilely trying to reach me. I could see one bulbous egg fruit that had some kind of three-headed monstrosity inside, forming on the ground, away from my bdes, so I dropped a vat of acid directly on top of it, dissolving the skin of the fruit, revealing tentacles that filed as the creature in side actually levitated out of the acid that was rapidly eating away at the roots on the floor.

  It was clearly damaged. One of it's heads had been destroyed. I could see though that it had -- at one point- six tentacle limbs of it's own, one with a massive club, and one with what appeared to be a razor sharp metallic bde.

  I soared up towards me, careening into the wall as it tried to navigate with a barely formed and then very dissolved nervous system.

  "Let's dance bitch!" I yelled, dropping down like a needle as I readied my many bded limbs. Something about the re-wiring Scyl had done in my brain to allow me to use the mechanical limbs had allowed me to have the reaction time and multitasking ability to even manage six appendages at the same time, and I was deeply grateful for that now, as one limb gripped a root to swing me away from a bded tentacle, another hacked down to sever the club end of a filing limb directed at me, as the fourth limb gripped the creature by one of it's heads and began to squeeze, servos grinding as they tried to overcome the strength of the alien bone.

  I lifted my right arm, the missile uncher opening up.

  "Exotic - thermite, or other high-temperature long burning upon delivery."

  The rocket loaded.

  I grinned.

  the rocket smmed into the creature's chest, and immediately set fire. The three headed monstrosity began to writhe in agony as it filed around the space, whatever force it was using to fly clearly out of control as it nearly careened away, only held in pce by my grip on it's third head, until it was ripped off by it's own straining. It smmed into the water tower, and I unched myself after it, smming feet first into the second head- the one that had taken the brunt of the acidic dissolution of it's egg-fruit - as I began to hack into it with all my bdes.

  I am fairly certain I was ughing like a madman as we spiraled down to the ground. I knew that bde after bde was driven into the creature, two bdes always occupied in fending off attacking tentacles, severing three more before we hit the ground, while the other two and my bde arms were driving mercilessly into the monster's faces, leaving them a bloodies mess of ichor and pulp as we smmed into the ground.

  I rolled, turning myself into something of a roll cage by wrapping my new mechanical limbs into a crude sphere, the bdes on my limbs biting into antithesis bodies around me.

  I charged forward, new limbs reaching up past my head to dig my talons into the water tower, hauling me up with my back to the smooth surface as I began taking shots with my missile uncher into the crowd.

  "Alright Scyl, give me that super acid."

  I will remind you not to breath or touch this material, my foolish samurai, or all that will be left of you will be your disembodies bionics. It would be rather traumatizing for whichever Vanguard is sent to retrieve you if all they find of you is a headless shell of a body.

  Ah, right, I was basically a torso and head now.

  "Copy that."

  I found myself at the top of the water tower now, my mechanical limbs allowing me to circle the cylindrical structure without needing to actually stand on anything.

  I began to adhere packets of chemicals to the side of the main structure, each timed to go off at once.

  "Could i cut a hole into the roof, and get out of this room before the fumes kill me?"

  Purchase a psma cutter after the first antithesis begin dying. That Model thirteen was valuable, but not as much as it would have been at full strength.

  "Understood."

  The canisters each burst, sending a torrent of acid down along the sides of the water tower. They worked fast, the roorts dissolving, leaving the woody structure peeling away from it's main support, leaning and tipping towards the ground. Kill notifications flooded my consciousness, and I kept my focus, purchasing a ser cutter as quickly as I could, shearing a hole in the roof above me. My respirator had kept the fumes out of my lungs, but I could feel what little skin remained on my body start to itch just from the acidic smoke boiling up from the dissolving hive below me.

  I dragged myself up through the hole, appearing in an empty hallway.

  I picked a wall at random, and started running.

  The Laughter of the insane filled the halls, and it didn't take long for me to figure out I was the one ughing.

  This was probably a lot more fun when it was the only thing you knew. That was the impression I got as I began to bst and cut a straight line to the outside of the building, seeing fresh air for the first time... ever. The sky was blue, clouds drifted overhead, and plumes of smoke billowed up from destroyed buildings all around me. People flew, fired missiles, fired sers, and shot genuine bullets into antithesis farther downtown, the pristine white facades of the buildings here now marred with smoke, rubble, dead bodies- alien and human, and ruined helicopters and fighter pnes.

  I took in a deep breath, and grinned.

  "What a day to be alive!"