EXTRA CHAPTER, AS PROMISED.
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After he brought me my robes, I asked Mordo to wait.
"You want me to help you test your body? Sounds a bit gay." He teased.
"Well, if you put it like that anything can sound gay." I said, "Besides, do you want me to accidentally put a hole in the wall because I underestimated my power. You'll be held responsible for it after all."
He frowned.
"Yeah, on second thought, I will stick around. Where do you want to start?"
"Lets start from the outside and work our way in." I started stripping, removing my shirt to reveal my back, "Look here, what do you see?"
"What do I-Why are you stripping?" Mordo asked, flustered.
"Well, there's no mirror in this room, is there now?" I pointed out the obvious, "And I can't see my back, so…"
"Check it in the bathroom."
"That tiny ass mirror won't even go past my shoulders; and why are you so up in arms over this? We're both dudes and I don't think I even have a dick now." I laughed, "Actually, do I have dick?"
I peeked under my apron to check and saw nothing, but I could feel a mechanism down under if I focused on it.
"Don't even think-"
"Nevermind." I got my spank bank, "Gimme a second, and turn around will you? You don't want to see this."
"After this, I don't think I want to see anything at all." He groaned and turned around, closing his eyes.
With a thought, I focused on my groin, thinking of some hot, goth babes, specifically Raven and-
SHWAP!
A mechanical dick popped out.
"A retractable peen, and ribbed for her pleasure. Whoever made this body spared no expense, huh?" I noted, flicking it, only to feel nothing, "No balls though. No tactile feedback either. It's a glorified dildo."
"Ugh, you know your inside thoughts should remain inside, right?"
"And where would the fun be in that?" I retracted the peen module back, "Besides, this is from a purely scientific standpoint, don't get your panties in a bunch over it."
"Ah, yes, penis science, what a noble pursuit." He said, snarkily.
"I'll have you know andrology is a perfectly valid field of science." I huffed, "Now, back to business. You can turn around now. Check out my back."
"There's no business after this." He complained, "You can do the rest on your own, I'll wait outside."
"Sheesh, just snap a pic and show me. You do have a phone, right?"
"Oh." It finally dawned on him what I meant, "Yeah, hold on."
Maybe I should have been clearer.
"Here." He handed me the phone, "And delete that picture when you're done. I don't want my girlfriend to have any misunderstandings."
"You have a girlfriend?!" I gasped.
"You want to get punched?" I could see his eyes twitching.
"You'll break your hand." I said.
"It will be worth it." He said without skipping a beat.
"Fine, prove it. What's her name?" I asked but he saw through me.
"Why? So you can send it to her? No thank you."
Well, I wasn't really going to send it. Just threaten to…
"Ak! Foiled again. I'll get you one day, Mordo, and your little dog too." I croaked in a witchy voice.
I looked down at the picture and saw that the fake skin covered only until the base of my neck where it ended in a sign curve, exposing a bronze exoskeleton, lustrous ribs shimmering down a meticulously crafted spine. As it went further, the skin began to converge again, till it rounded around a row of four by two steam vents on my lower back, reforming completely by the pelvic bone and covering the base of the spine snugly around the last three vertebrae.
"Why leave the back exposed though?" I mused out loud, "What do you think? See any structural flaws here?"
Mordo leaned over and swept a keen eye through it, before coming to a conclusion.
"Maybe its like an opening hatch for ease of maintenance. See these ridges, on the side, where the skin begins to expose?" He poked at my shoulder blade, "There seems to be a locking mechanism that flows along to…" He poked my lower back right above the vents, "here."
"Hmm, that makes sense. There's probably some way to open it. We'll have to check later." I nodded, "I know a guy. But first, we're getting you the latest I-phone. That camera quality is so shit, I couldn't spot a clown in a funeral with this."
"If you want to see a clown, the mirror's right down the hall." Mordo replied.
I dialed a number and brought the phone to my ears.
"Hello, 911? I've been murdered." I said, "Yes, it was a big, black man, right here…he's armed-"
Mordo snatched the phone from my arms and stowed it away.
"But seriously, you don't want a new phone? It's a gift, you know, not a favour or anything." I said.
"Do you even have the cash for that?" He asked, "You have been in this world for what, an hour, two maybe?"
"Its called having good financial sense." I preened, with a smug grin, "And I borrowed some money from Tony Stark while I was there, so I have some spending money."
"Borrowed would imply you plan to return it." Mordo said, crossing his arms.
"With interest, prevailing market rate." I replied, crossing my non-existent heart, "As soon as I get settled. Come on, I'll need help picking out other necessities- I did arrive here buck naked- and you know this place better than me."
He sighed in resignation, or perhaps it was at the bombshell I had just dropped but he ultimately agreed.
"I will accompany you, but I am not taking any gifts. No judgement."
"Saying that after judging me is like saying you pay your taxes after shovelling money away into your Cayman account and donating 'art' you bought on the penny for tax benefits."
"You want to finish the testing or not, because I have an early class to teach." He asked.
I nodded.
After that we ran a couple more tests to see what I could do. First off, the senses.
My eyesight was far improved in both visual acuity and dynamic vision. In layman's terms, I can zoom and see far and deep. I could even see the oil in Mordo's pores with this and the ants crawling into a crack in a wall halfway across the city. That and what can only be called Bullet Time. With focus, everything slows down and my reflexes increase, but with infinite stamina, I can keep it up all day. Its less a toggleable feature and more just a fixture of life, like breathing, which happens automatically but with a notice, boom, you're breathing manually.
My normal hearing was just about the same as before, just with less tearable eardrums than before and marginally better sensitivity, but I can also parse different frequencies of sounds from among a wide range, some of which even dogs can't hear, which is good, even though it requires actively focusing on it.
I can't smell or taste- I tried with a hard candy Mordo had on him, didn't work; I could discern the texture, but not the taste or smell- which is a shame, but understandable, quality assurance wise. So the prospect of not losing another sense is precious to me. Greatest super power ever, two times the hearing sensitivity. I think if it weren't for the inability to feel pain, well physical pain at least, my ears would have itched constantly. A horrible, horrible thought.
As a corollary to that, I also found out why I have bellow-like lungs, and its not just so I can blend in better. Its there to dislodge solid matter that can choke my windpipes. Like slippery hard candy. Good to know.
My sense of touch was vastly muted, like when you sit on your hand for um…completely logical reasons, and then use it to touch stuff. I could feel when someone touched me, but it wasn't very sensitive.
It was probably some combination of pressure sensors and capillary action. The same capillary phenomenon allowed me to recognize temperature too. Real efficient design. Mordo sensed hundreds, if not thousands of tiny tubes running all throughout my body, close to the skin to achieve said effect.
Standing up, the same sensors in my legs helped my get up and down and with an internal, analog gyroscope, and the hydraulic differential on the muscles, I could even get a feel for the texture and elevation of the terrain. And my balance was legendary. I could beat a ballerina at her own craft with but one leg.
Fascinating. I wonder if I could glean the methods that the Church Of The Broken God used to engineer stuff like this from the amulet; a bit of divine inspiration perhaps? That's how they learned, by worshipping things like the amulet and receiving divine inspiration for new tech. Mekhane was the god of machines after all. If I could learn their techniques…
Imagine the applications for prosthetics, vehicle design, even space travel and asteroid mining. I could get rich!
I should really get back into engineering once I'm on stable footing here.
Next came the precision and accuracy test, which was off the charts. The strength control of the arms was precise enough to hold a hair by its ends between two fingers, and accurate enough to pluck a single one out, a fact Mordo patently disliked, on account of it being his hair I had ripped out.
Glad to know I don't have to worry about accidentally breaking thing with my excessive strength.
Finally, Mordo had had enough and retired for the day, but not before giving me a dirty glare that promised bloody vengeance.
Dude it was one hair!
But what to do now?
At first, I had thought instinctively to sleep, of course, but infinite stamina is a double-edged sword. I can't sleep.
It's a good thing no doubt, survival wise, since it removes the most prevalent period of weakness and vulnerability- sleep. However, there is something to be said about the rejuvenating effect sleep has on the mind. And rejuvenation of the mind is something I am in dire need of right now, what with the psychic headache that was still pounding in my head.
I couldn't help but sigh, one of the few affectations left of my now lost human nature.
Which brought with it another realization.
I can't feel anything anymore. Human feelings are mostly chemical in nature and a machine body does not work like that.
It made me wonder- how long till I begin to lose what little emotion I have left?
Right now, through a combination of my psychic powers and my memories, I can still simulate feeling, but what if one day my memories of humanity fade as memories do?
Will I become a psychopath? An emotionless murderer? Or will I just turn into a regular old robot?
Like a monster born of a faustian bargain, would I be changed so utterly and completely, divorced from who I was and unable to even tell it had happened, that I couldn't even recognize the need to muster up a response to it?
The thought thoroughly terrified me.
Can I hold on to my self long enough to get a new body? Or will I lose all reason to strive for it before I even saw the hope in it?
A panic began to set in.
No. My plans are too slow. I can't wait till Infinity War. I need to get this done, before Civil War, which might not even happen because I stole the sceptre.
I'll have to prepone those plans. 2015. That's the longest I can hold on to my self. If I can't get a new body by then…No lets not go there. Maybe there's another way.
I calmed myself down.
There has to be, this is Marvel.
Yeah. There has to be another way.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, if only out of habit and rested as much as I could. Lets hope the headache goes away by tomorrow morning.
Note to self, learn magic meditation to see if it helps with quicker psi regen.
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Thanks guys!
We reached rank 48 on the monthly ranking today, so here's the extra chapter I promised. I wanted to do a double update but I realized I needed time to reorganize the ancient one talk.
so that will come tonight.
Well then, ya know the deal.
Add the fic to your library, it don't cost you a thing and you can always remove it later if you feel like it.
Donate your powerstones. We just need 100 more stones to get to the top 25 or 200 powerstones, whichever is sooner. Then EXTRA CHAPTER Part 2 : Electric Boogaloo!
So get going, what are you waiting for, do your duty and donate today.
Over and out!