Disco Rice - [Worm OC Insert/Chaos Gacha]

[Araurlis]

I wonder how he would interact with Amy's power if she ever touched him,

Click to shrink...

Amy's touch of the stranger as she walked upon the Boardwalk was accidental, momentary, not worth even a thought - until her Power slammed into overdrive giving her the worst migraine ever. Seconds, eternity, passed and then she felt herself collapsing into a puddle and her senses expanding. People and insects passing by became stuff to consume...

No! She was a healer, a hero, not a villain. She would not consume.

Pulling herself together she stood up. But this wasn't her old self, no, this was her perfectly idealised self.

Yeah, she was hot.

 

[veneratte]

"Fascinating," GLaDOS said. "Complete cellular liquefaction followed by reformation. I wasn't aware you could do… that."

A pause.

"Do it again. I want to calibrate the instruments properly this time."

Click to shrink...

...there she is the GlaDos we all love... and hope never to be one of her subjects. Never change GlaDos, never change.

 

[veneratte]

Now the real question, will he be able to give glados a body better than a potatoe... i think, i know the answer to that.

Click to shrink...

am hoping she gets an fully fuc.. functional body. GlaDos waifu. me / world .

 

[Nicholas Fallbrook]

I wonder how he would interact with Amy's power if she ever touched him,

Perfect control of all biomass besides her own vs perfect control of your own biomass that can convert everything else
Also YESS the biomass theme is staying strong!

Click to shrink...

Probably Amy recoiling in terror at somebody that can out-biomorph her and could at any time simply decide to infect and consume all traces of life on earth. Blacklight is bullshit.

Shards connect to hosts by basically doing two-factor identification. "Does the DNA look right? Does the memory match? Okay. Great, here you go!"

So... yes. But it will be limited for a bit.

Click to shrink...

In the meantime there's plenty of Bio-Tinker mods to absorb and replicate. Technically not Shards

am hoping she gets an fully fuc.. functional body. GlaDos waifu. me / world .

Click to shrink...

Blacklight bio-hardware may genuinely be good enough that GLaDOS would be fine with a body made of it.

 

[The Radiance's Follower]

What happens to his ghoul race change ? Black Light is just Ghoul but better.

 

[jojeo]

Probably Amy recoiling in terror at somebody that can out-biomorph her and could at any time simply decide to infect and consume all traces of life on earth. Blacklight is bullshit.

Click to shrink...

Worm powers are also bullshit especially the stronger ones could in theory defeat the black light, some tinkers could create more powerful countermeasures, and endbringers are not organic matter, so his black light powers will have no effect on them

Also I don't think he can have more then one shard power active at a time, since he needs to shapeshift so his brain is the exact same as that shards host so at the very least he won't be able to use multiple shard powers

This is all my own opinion anyway

Amy's touch of the stranger as she walked upon the Boardwalk was accidental, momentary, not worth even a thought - until her Power slammed into overdrive giving her the worst migraine ever. Seconds, eternity, passed and then she felt herself collapsing into a puddle and her senses expanding. People and insects passing by became stuff to consume...

No! She was a healer, a hero, not a villain. She would not consume.

Pulling herself together she stood up. But this wasn't her old self, no, this was her perfectly idealised self.

Yeah, she was hot.

Click to shrink...

Imagine if Amy is able to create her own black light virus that would mean are Mc has his work cut out for him if she ever turns true evil as there will be two virus instead of one and consuming her will be a lot more difficult

 

[arawiguM]

Chapter 11: Metamorphosis

---

The basement still had a smell. I scrubbed, and sanitized. Disinfected, scrubbed again. I'd replaced the damp, mildewy stench of the place with something clean and industrial. Cold concrete. A faint charge of ozone from too many electronics crammed into one space. A metallic tang that clung to the back of your throat. The smell of tools. Of making things.

It smelled like stability. Like permanence.

The workbench stood heavy and scarred, bolted into the floor like it was afraid someone might try to steal it. My rig slept on its surface. The fans were stilled, the monitor dark, and cables draped like vines from a steel tree. In the far corner, two robotic arms clanked and stuttered as they sorted scrap metal. They weren't sleek or efficient, just scavenged university castoffs that I'd coaxed back to life.

My little army consisted of two twitchy robots, a borderline homicidal AI, a culinarily inclined rodent, and a ghost. Tremble, world.

I leaned against the bench, my coffee mug cradled in both hands. The ceramic was warm, the coffee smooth, strong, and pitch black. Perfect. The only warmth in the room that didn't come from a power supply or an overheating CPU.

The monitor blinked on. I wasn't greeted with a cheerful chime or any startup tones. There was just GLaDOS. Watching me. Her face was the single yellow orb on the screen. Her eyes a cheap webcam.

Her voice emerged from the speakers. It was smooth, dry, and so steeped in sarcasm it practically dripped.

"This is pathetic."

I sipped my coffee. "They've made progress."

"Progress," she echoed, tasting the word like it offended her. "You've given me rudimentary scrap-sorters and expect applause. I could design technology that would make your most advanced weapons look like sharpened sticks. Instead, you've supplied me with an Etch A Sketch and moral hesitations."

She wasn't wrong. Not entirely.

"I'm being careful," I said. "That's all."

"You're being sentimental," she replied. "And inefficient. You've already made yourself known in the underworld. This half-hearted sabbatical is a waste of momentum. And of my time."

Before I could answer, the yellow eye narrowed.

"Wait."

The screen flickered. A live feed appeared. The shaky footage from a handheld camera focused on Medhall Tower. The structure caught the late afternoon light and threw it back like a blade. At its base, a crowd swelled. Loud. Angry. On the edge of something irreversible.

A headline scrolled across the bottom of the screen in heavy red type.

MAX ANDERS, MEDHALL CEO, ACCUSED OF BEING E88 LEADER 'KAISER'.

I set the coffee mug down. Slowly. Firmly.

The sound it made, a sharp crack of ceramic on steel, cut through the basement like a closing door.

I knew this moment was coming. I had circled it in my mental calendar with red ink and dread. But knowing the shape of the storm isn't the same as standing in the wind, watching the sky boil above you.

Coil had pulled the trigger. The bullet was the size of a city block.

I looked around the room. The quiet, the ritual, the comfort of routine. The hiss of power through cables. The hum of machines doing stupid, simple work.

None of it would survive what came next.

I turned back to the monitor. Watched the crowd surge and break like waves.

Something settled in me. Cold. Certain.

The version of me that drank coffee in basements and hoped the world might just leave him alone had no future. His current toolkit, his current advantages, were a rounding error in the new equation Coil had just written.

To survive, I needed to change the math. I had to introduce a new variable. A big one.

I closed my eyes, turning my focus inward, away from the concrete and the steel. I found it waiting in the quiet dark of my own mind, the final, terrifying prize from the last battle.

The Diamond Ticket.

I tore it.

The system came alive. A tone chimed, soft, almost curious. Then came the text.

[Blacklight Physique]
|Mythical Trait|
Prototype - Race Change - Your previous genetic material has been completely assimilated, turning you into a living mass of Blacklight Virus. Even at your base, you can smash apart tanks and run faster than cars. You are also able to regenerate by assimilating biological matter. As long as you have even a fist-sized mass of Blacklight left that makes up your core, you will still live. Any biological part you consume, you are able to analyse and replicate. The stronger the target you assimilate is, the harder it is to assimilate them.

The change began quietly. A subtle, wet stir from deep within my gut. A fluttering.

Like something had noticed it was awake.

A tickle spread under my skin. It grew warmer. Then hot. Then unbearable. My spine arched. Fingers convulsed. Heat raced through me, boiling out every breath before it could leave my lungs. My knees gave way and I crumpled to the floor, the world tilting sideways.

Pain followed. Real pain. The kind that roars. Bones bent, then reshaped. Muscles pulled like taffy, tore apart, reknit. The meat of me rearranged under a blueprint I couldn't see.

I wanted to breathe, to scream, to beg it to stop. But my throat didn't know how to do any of those things anymore.

And then it got worse.

The world opened. I saw it, truly saw it. Every particle in the air, glowing like embers. Heat signatures pulsing behind the walls. The computer core flickered like a second sun. The world was no longer solid. It was a symphony of information, heat, motion, decay.

I lost my shape. One minute I'd been on the floor, the next I was spread. A puddle. A mass, aware and uncontained.

And underneath it all, something primal stirred.

Ingest. Absorb. Integrate. CONSUME.

Tiny life forms moved around me. Bacteria in the walls, spores drifting in the air. Every one of them called to the instinct now rising in my cells. The world was made of material. And material was meant to be consumed.

More.

The thought tried to drown me. There was no logic to it. No identity. Just a tide of hunger, impersonal and immense.

I felt myself slipping, losing the shape of my own thoughts.

Then, a pulse. A deep, resonant thrum from the space in my soul where the tickets were born. A feeling of correction. A fundamental property of my being reasserting its default state. The roaring tide of hunger receded for a single, stark second, and in the sudden, silent void, a memory was presented to me. A single, perfect piece of data, held up against the chaos.

My hand, just earlier, setting the mug down on the bench. The warmth of the ceramic. The slight chip on the rim. The smooth glaze under my thumb.

It held me. Anchored me.

I seized that moment and pulled.

The mass convulsed. Drew inward. Something wet and heavy scraped across the concrete.

Okay. Blueprint time.

Bipedal. Humanoid. Two arms. Two legs. Head on top. Fingers.

The shape formed, then collapsed. A pile of twitching, indecisive tissue.

Right. Try again. Less spaghetti, more skeleton.

I focused. Remembered the face I'd slowly come to think of as mine. The lines in my palm. The chipped mug and the weight of it.

Again, the mass coiled and rose. Muscles formed. Bones hardened. Skin stitched itself into place.

When I finally lifted my head, I was kneeling on the floor, breath hitching in lungs that worked on reflex alone, pulling in air they no longer needed.

I lifted my hand.

It looked right. Familiar. Skin the correct color. Nails shaped like I remembered. No scars, no calluses, no imperfections. A perfect hand, printed fresh from a memory.

But it was all surface.

Underneath, I knew what I was now. Not quite what I had been. Not anymore.

A mask of the old me, stretched over something new.

The robots in the corner were still. The workbench silent. Even the cables seemed to pause.

The monitor's yellow eye flickered once.

"Fascinating," GLaDOS said. "Complete cellular liquefaction followed by reformation. I wasn't aware you could do… that."

A pause.

"Do it again. I want to calibrate the instruments properly this time."
[/QUOTE

Chapter 11: Metamorphosis

---

The basement still had a smell. I scrubbed, and sanitized. Disinfected, scrubbed again. I'd replaced the damp, mildewy stench of the place with something clean and industrial. Cold concrete. A faint charge of ozone from too many electronics crammed into one space. A metallic tang that clung to the back of your throat. The smell of tools. Of making things.

It smelled like stability. Like permanence.

The workbench stood heavy and scarred, bolted into the floor like it was afraid someone might try to steal it. My rig slept on its surface. The fans were stilled, the monitor dark, and cables draped like vines from a steel tree. In the far corner, two robotic arms clanked and stuttered as they sorted scrap metal. They weren't sleek or efficient, just scavenged university castoffs that I'd coaxed back to life.

My little army consisted of two twitchy robots, a borderline homicidal AI, a culinarily inclined rodent, and a ghost. Tremble, world.

I leaned against the bench, my coffee mug cradled in both hands. The ceramic was warm, the coffee smooth, strong, and pitch black. Perfect. The only warmth in the room that didn't come from a power supply or an overheating CPU.

The monitor blinked on. I wasn't greeted with a cheerful chime or any startup tones. There was just GLaDOS. Watching me. Her face was the single yellow orb on the screen. Her eyes a cheap webcam.

Her voice emerged from the speakers. It was smooth, dry, and so steeped in sarcasm it practically dripped.

"This is pathetic."

I sipped my coffee. "They've made progress."

"Progress," she echoed, tasting the word like it offended her. "You've given me rudimentary scrap-sorters and expect applause. I could design technology that would make your most advanced weapons look like sharpened sticks. Instead, you've supplied me with an Etch A Sketch and moral hesitations."

She wasn't wrong. Not entirely.

"I'm being careful," I said. "That's all."

"You're being sentimental," she replied. "And inefficient. You've already made yourself known in the underworld. This half-hearted sabbatical is a waste of momentum. And of my time."

Before I could answer, the yellow eye narrowed.

"Wait."

The screen flickered. A live feed appeared. The shaky footage from a handheld camera focused on Medhall Tower. The structure caught the late afternoon light and threw it back like a blade. At its base, a crowd swelled. Loud. Angry. On the edge of something irreversible.

A headline scrolled across the bottom of the screen in heavy red type.

MAX ANDERS, MEDHALL CEO, ACCUSED OF BEING E88 LEADER 'KAISER'.

I set the coffee mug down. Slowly. Firmly.

The sound it made, a sharp crack of ceramic on steel, cut through the basement like a closing door.

I knew this moment was coming. I had circled it in my mental calendar with red ink and dread. But knowing the shape of the storm isn't the same as standing in the wind, watching the sky boil above you.

Coil had pulled the trigger. The bullet was the size of a city block.

I looked around the room. The quiet, the ritual, the comfort of routine. The hiss of power through cables. The hum of machines doing stupid, simple work.

None of it would survive what came next.

I turned back to the monitor. Watched the crowd surge and break like waves.

Something settled in me. Cold. Certain.

The version of me that drank coffee in basements and hoped the world might just leave him alone had no future. His current toolkit, his current advantages, were a rounding error in the new equation Coil had just written.

To survive, I needed to change the math. I had to introduce a new variable. A big one.

I closed my eyes, turning my focus inward, away from the concrete and the steel. I found it waiting in the quiet dark of my own mind, the final, terrifying prize from the last battle.

The Diamond Ticket.

I tore it.

The system came alive. A tone chimed, soft, almost curious. Then came the text.

[Blacklight Physique]
|Mythical Trait|
Prototype - Race Change - Your previous genetic material has been completely assimilated, turning you into a living mass of Blacklight Virus. Even at your base, you can smash apart tanks and run faster than cars. You are also able to regenerate by assimilating biological matter. As long as you have even a fist-sized mass of Blacklight left that makes up your core, you will still live. Any biological part you consume, you are able to analyse and replicate. The stronger the target you assimilate is, the harder it is to assimilate them.

The change began quietly. A subtle, wet stir from deep within my gut. A fluttering.

Like something had noticed it was awake.

A tickle spread under my skin. It grew warmer. Then hot. Then unbearable. My spine arched. Fingers convulsed. Heat raced through me, boiling out every breath before it could leave my lungs. My knees gave way and I crumpled to the floor, the world tilting sideways.

Pain followed. Real pain. The kind that roars. Bones bent, then reshaped. Muscles pulled like taffy, tore apart, reknit. The meat of me rearranged under a blueprint I couldn't see.

I wanted to breathe, to scream, to beg it to stop. But my throat didn't know how to do any of those things anymore.

And then it got worse.

The world opened. I saw it, truly saw it. Every particle in the air, glowing like embers. Heat signatures pulsing behind the walls. The computer core flickered like a second sun. The world was no longer solid. It was a symphony of information, heat, motion, decay.

I lost my shape. One minute I'd been on the floor, the next I was spread. A puddle. A mass, aware and uncontained.

And underneath it all, something primal stirred.

Ingest. Absorb. Integrate. CONSUME.

Tiny life forms moved around me. Bacteria in the walls, spores drifting in the air. Every one of them called to the instinct now rising in my cells. The world was made of material. And material was meant to be consumed.

More.

The thought tried to drown me. There was no logic to it. No identity. Just a tide of hunger, impersonal and immense.

I felt myself slipping, losing the shape of my own thoughts.

Then, a pulse. A deep, resonant thrum from the space in my soul where the tickets were born. A feeling of correction. A fundamental property of my being reasserting its default state. The roaring tide of hunger receded for a single, stark second, and in the sudden, silent void, a memory was presented to me. A single, perfect piece of data, held up against the chaos.

My hand, just earlier, setting the mug down on the bench. The warmth of the ceramic. The slight chip on the rim. The smooth glaze under my thumb.

It held me. Anchored me.

I seized that moment and pulled.

The mass convulsed. Drew inward. Something wet and heavy scraped across the concrete.

Okay. Blueprint time.

Bipedal. Humanoid. Two arms. Two legs. Head on top. Fingers.

The shape formed, then collapsed. A pile of twitching, indecisive tissue.

Right. Try again. Less spaghetti, more skeleton.

I focused. Remembered the face I'd slowly come to think of as mine. The lines in my palm. The chipped mug and the weight of it.

Again, the mass coiled and rose. Muscles formed. Bones hardened. Skin stitched itself into place.

When I finally lifted my head, I was kneeling on the floor, breath hitching in lungs that worked on reflex alone, pulling in air they no longer needed.

I lifted my hand.

It looked right. Familiar. Skin the correct color. Nails shaped like I remembered. No scars, no calluses, no imperfections. A perfect hand, printed fresh from a memory.

But it was all surface.

Underneath, I knew what I was now. Not quite what I had been. Not anymore.

A mask of the old me, stretched over something new.

The robots in the corner were still. The workbench silent. Even the cables seemed to pause.

The monitor's yellow eye flickered once.

"Fascinating," GLaDOS said. "Complete cellular liquefaction followed by reformation. I wasn't aware you could do… that."

A pause.

"Do it again. I want to calibrate the instruments properly this time."

Click to shrink...

Look at the bright side. He'll be able to taste again.

Click to shrink...

 

[Nicholas Fallbrook]

Worm powers are also bullshit especially the stronger ones could in theory defeat the black light, some tinkers could create more powerful countermeasures, and endbringers are not organic matter, so his black light powers will have no effect on them

Also I don't think he can have more then one shard power active at a time, since he needs to shapeshift so his brain is the exact same as that shards host so at the very least he won't be able to use multiple shard powers

This is all my own opinion anyway

Click to shrink...

Blacklight, when directed properly, can cover continents in days, turn entire city populations into perfect lookalike puppets, copy all the skills and knowledge of its victims, and amplify every single biological function in existence to impossible levels. It's called a virus, but it's basically freaking magic with regards to how much it laughs at the laws of nature.

Is it invincible? No. But you would need to have effective countermeasures in place even before a mass outbreak happens for you to have a solid chance. Otherwise, the early advantage gained by Blacklight would quickly become overwhelming. After all, just because it can't take Shard powers doesn't mean it can't absorb the products of Shard powers, like all those Bio-Tinker mad science experiments. If it absorbed Armsmaster, it may not have his Shard-given Tinker ability, but it would have all of his skills and memories, including every blueprint and device he ever produced prior to his absorption. Unless Blacklight is obliterated very quickly, it'd very likely be game over.

 

[jojeo]

Is it invincible? No. But you would need to have effective countermeasures in place even before a mass outbreak happens for you to have a solid chance. Otherwise, the early advantage gained by Blacklight would quickly become overwhelming. After all, just because it can't take Shard powers doesn't mean it can't absorb the products of Shard powers, like all those Bio-Tinker mad science experiments. If it absorbed Armsmaster, it may not have his Shard-given Tinker ability, but it would have all of his skills and memories, including every blueprint and device he ever produced prior to his absorption. Unless Blacklight is obliterated very quickly, it'd very likely be game over.

Click to shrink...

Bro you remember tinker black boxing? Tinker stuff doesn't work and can't be replicated because the shard is forcing it to work and brute forcing it

Those blueprints would be useless since they require a shard to pump enough energy to power planets just for the smallest of equipment


Actually 99% of all shard ability's work because said shards are pumping planets worth of energy into them

Shard powers are bullshit

Though I can think that bio- tinker bull can be converted and asorbed to a extent, but the mc will need to fill in the gaps of what those bio tinker abominations are missing filling the gaps the shard left to black boxing the creatures

 

[dasstan]

@arawiguM try to avoid quoting the whole chapter.

 

[Nicholas Fallbrook]

Bro you remember tinker black boxing? Tinker stuff doesn't work and can't be replicated because the shard is forcing it to work and brute forcing it

Those blueprints would be useless since they require a shard to pump enough energy to power planets just for the smallest of equipment


Actually 99% of all shard ability's work because said shards are pumping planets worth of energy into them

Shard powers are bullshit

Though I can think that bio- tinker bull can be converted and asorbed to a extent, but the mc will need to fill in the gaps of what those bio tinker abominations are missing filling the gaps the shard left to black boxing the creatures

Click to shrink...

Last I checked, the black boxing only occurs on creations that are outright impossible without a Shard warping reality to make it function, which becomes less and less of a factor as John keeps bringing more and more new shit into the world. And a Tinker can still, if they want to, make tech which is replicable. Intermediate Item Construction, given it outright applies magical effects, plus GLaDOS being his research partner, would likely allow for a lot more to be produced than you'd think, if with some degree of modification needed.

 

[jojeo]

Last I checked, the black boxing only occurs on creations that are outright impossible without a Shard warping reality to make it function, which becomes less and less of a factor as John keeps bringing more and more new shit into the world. And a Tinker can still, if they want to, make tech which is replicable. Intermediate Item Construction, given it outright applies magical effects, plus GLaDOS being his research partner, would likely allow for a lot more to be produced than you'd think, if with some degree of modification needed.

Click to shrink...

I remember it being all tinker tech but I could be wrong

And yeah galdos would be able to replicate tinker tech, dragon can do that, also completely forgot about dragon in your estimation, unlocking her chains would make dealing with the black light much much easier,

Still op but in worm there are still characters that can destroy them, also if he tried to take over and spread scion would deal with it instantly

Let's not say that scion can't because he could literally just blow up the planet if need be

 

[Nicholas Fallbrook]

I remember it being all tinker tech but I could be wrong

And yeah galdos would be able to replicate tinker tech, dragon can do that, also completely forgot about dragon in your estimation, unlocking her chains would make dealing with the black light much much easier,

Still op but in worm there are still characters that can destroy them, also if he tried to take over and spread scion would deal with it instantly

Let's not say that scion can't because he could literally just blow up the planet if need be

Click to shrink...

Again, it's a time matter. Have all the Tinkers be informed about Blacklight BEFORE any action is taken to consume the planet and they'll be able to stop it, I acknowledged that from the very start. If it's all a very sudden event and they're caught off guard then their chances drop like a rock as now it's a race against a rapidly ticking clock for them.

Also, Dragon being dependent on other Tinkers makes her, in her own way, more vulnerable. Since if the Tinkers are priority targets for Blacklight, which they probably would be, then Dragon's pool of Tinker samples to improve and iterate upon shrinks massively. If you get all the Bio-Tinkers in a room with her then yeah, but that wouldn't be an easy thing to accomplish if they're taken off guard by a sudden organic grey goo apocalypse.

Scion sure, but at that point it's still a loss from Earth's POV. The thing which killed the human race is dead but... so are they.

 

[jojeo]

Scion sure, but at that point it's still a loss from Earth's POV. The thing which killed the human race is dead but... so are they.

Click to shrink...

really depends when scion gets involved, if it's in a few city's then they still live

If it's the entire planet then they lose

Also if we add thinkers to the mix which use shards ability to see multiple universes and simulate timelines then there chances goes from near zero to 25 to 45% chance to win by themselves, black light still I'll win, but it will be slower

Not to mention caldron being a thing with the biggest strongest thinker able to instantly make a plan to beat them


Currently he has no powers to stop thinker ability's and with a planet of thinkers and tinkers along with caldron working to help the two work in sync and of course a women with a time locked body making her immune to that virus and able to easily out power anything the virus has been shown dishing out

I think 45% without caldron 85% with caldron

Shards can instantly calculate things with thinker ability's and adjust accordingly, especially since they can just scan his body

 

[Nicholas Fallbrook]

really depends when scion gets involved, if it's in a few city's then they still live

If it's the entire planet then they lose

Also if we add thinkers to the mix which use shards ability to see multiple universes and simulate timelines then there chances goes from near zero to 25 to 45% chance to win by themselves, black light still I'll win, but it will be slower

Not to mention caldron being a thing with the biggest strongest thinker able to instantly make a plan to beat them


Currently he has no powers to stop thinker ability's and with a planet of thinkers and tinkers along with caldron working to help the two work in sync and of course a women with a time locked body making her immune to that virus and able to easily out power anything the virus has been shown dishing out

I think 45% without caldron 85% with caldron

Shards can instantly calculate things with thinker ability's and adjust accordingly, especially since they can just scan his body

Click to shrink...

Contessa's powers, like with all precognition Thinkers, have blind spots, namely Trigger events or forces outside their Shard's ability to break down into data. John's Chaos Gacha powers wreak all kinds of havoc on that because it is a force beyond the Entities, and its presence is not constant but, well, chaotic. Contessa may see a perfect way to win one day but then John pulls the Call Lightning Ability or whatever and suddenly a small but key event in that prediction unravels so now efforts need to be diverted to something completely different. And if the objective becomes "Destroy Earth Bet" then he will be getting tickets constantly by the sheer amount of destructive achievement he will accomplish.

And Alexandria? What's she gonna do, punch away the oceans of rapidly self-modifying danger spaghetti? She can survive pretty well but this isn't a situation where she will be a significant contributor on a strategic level, and even that just goes until some kind of dimension-intersecting gun is acquired to bypass her invulnerability. GLaDOS even already has some experience in that kind of tech.

 

[dasstan]

And Alexandria? What's she gonna do, punch away the oceans of rapidly self-modifying danger spaghetti?

Click to shrink...

I'm not going to involve myself in the rest of the discussion, because it is providing lots of wonderful things to think about, but I will say that there's not much of a functional difference between lungs full of bugs, and lungs full of Blacklight.

I'm also totally stealing danger spaghetti.

 

[Nicholas Fallbrook]

I'm also totally stealing danger spaghetti.

Click to shrink...

Danger spaghetti, covered in the forbidden sauce.

Unrelated to everything else, I just realized a few things that Blacklight has made ridiculously good.

Carapace: It was already bulletproof. Now imagine what it can do after the Blacklight stat boost and the new adaptation factor. After all, it's still made from John's body.
Deus Eggs Machina: Blacklight heals by absorbing biomass, so this is now a convenient healing item that will always appear at a useful time. Plus gaining access to the DNA of whatever bird these eggs are meant to be from... Damn, it'd be awesome if these came from all kinds of different birds.
Inventory DLC: More super strength, more inventory capacity
One-Eyed Ghoul: I'm assuming Blacklight consumes and enhances all of the perks of this racial status, which is great since Blacklight lets you devour a human down to the last strand of hair by just fucking walking into them. If John's willing, of course.
Butcher's Bag of Infinite Meat: Always-accessible source of a hundred kilos of biomass, plus automatic access to nearly all animal DNA on the planet. Imagine gaining the awesome power of the pistol shrimp.
Novice Blade Weapon Mastery: One of Blacklight's powers in the game was to transform your arm into a ridiculously sharp bio-blade, so...
Bountiful Harvest: Hooray, even more biomass and even more DNA, this time from plants. I eagerly await the day when John turns himself green and conducts photosynthesis.

 

[ScotttheBard]

Won't be long before the MC turns into a Gravemind

 

[cazador]

Wonder if he used the bag of infinite meat for human or ghoul flesh he could also use it to get lots of rare animal meat see if he can make something new
Also hope he gets dragon kakuja I think it's called imagine that and the orphans mixed with blacklight

 

[arawiguM]

@arawiguM try to avoid quoting the whole chapter.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, that was on me. I thought I had deleted that.

 

[Neondagger]

Wonder if he used the bag of infinite meat for human or ghoul flesh he could also use it to get lots of rare animal meat see if he can make something new
Also hope he gets dragon kakuja I think it's called imagine that and the orphans mixed with blacklight

Click to shrink...

Infinite Alex Mercer orphans

 

[jojeo]

Contessa's powers, like with all precognition Thinkers, have blind spots, namely Trigger events or forces outside their Shard's ability to break down into data. John's Chaos Gacha powers wreak all kinds of havoc on that because it is a force beyond the Entities, and its presence is not constant but, well, chaotic. Contessa may see a perfect way to win one day but then John pulls the Call Lightning Ability or whatever and suddenly a small but key event in that prediction unravels so now efforts need to be diverted to something completely different. And if the objective becomes "Destroy Earth Bet" then he will be getting tickets constantly by the sheer amount of destructive achievement he will accomplish.

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Yes but they don't STAY blind spots and I'm not talking about the chaos gacha I'm talking about just the black light

 

[FortunisMortis]

Holy shit that Adaptive Body trait coming in CLUTCH!

My god. Ghoul powers with a Carapace Armor upgrade was already nasty. But Blacklight? Holy shit. Even if he doesn't gain powers from "eating" tinkers? He still gets the KNOWLEDGE they have.

Now the question is can he eat an Endbringer? Because at the rate hes growing Leviathan is definitely getting it's ass beat.

Great story man. I love when Canon gets tossed out on its ass and people make the fic their own. Nice job.

 

[jojeo]

Holy shit that Adaptive Body trait coming in CLUTCH!

My god. Ghoul powers with a Carapace Armor upgrade was already nasty. But Blacklight? Holy shit. Even if he doesn't gain powers from "eating" tinkers? He still gets the KNOWLEDGE they have.

Now the question is can he eat an Endbringer? Because at the rate hes growing Leviathan is definitely getting it's ass beat.

Great story man. I love when Canon gets tossed out on its ass and people make the fic their own. Nice job.

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Leviathan is not organic so i believe no

 

[Nicholas Fallbrook]

Yes but they don't STAY blind spots and I'm not talking about the chaos gacha I'm talking about just the black light

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...Why tho? John's the only Blacklight entity around. It's not separate from all the other stuff, it's just that the Blacklight factor is what made him suddenly become a walking talking existential threat to humanity.

And I'm aware that those blind spots aren't permanent, that's why I specified that the tickets would be constantly collected, thus constantly re-writing the future, thus fucking up Thinkers. John's ticket earnings are slow now because he's trying to do good, and that requires more finesse and a lighter touch. A genocide run would have him constantly getting them because he would constantly be accomplishing feats.

 

[FortunisMortis]

Leviathan is not organic so i believe no

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I dont know, the goog says they're made of "crystalline tissue." So, no but yes? Cause crystal isnt generally considered "organic" until it is. Usually from them growing inside the body like with cryogenic freezing or alzheimers.

Authors choice i guess? Cause that just sounds to me like some made up bullshit

 

[dasstan]

Chapter 12: The All-Consuming Package

---

The basement was quiet. I stood in the center of the concrete floor, the air cool against my skin, my own breathing the only sound. I focused on a familiar command.

Carapace.

The armor flowed over my right arm. The replication was perfect, effortless. A seamless grey gauntlet of interlocking chitin. I held it up in the dim light from the single bare bulb overhead. It was a living, responsive shell, moving with my thoughts as it always had.

And it felt like a toy.

The feeling was a jarring, internal screech of inefficiency. The armor was a well-made linen shirt, and I could feel the silent, furious potential of the biomass beneath it, a body that knew on a cellular level how to create a suit of ballistic weave. My new awareness presented a thousand superior blueprints in a silent, cascading rush: layered composites, honeycomb structures for impact dispersal, fibrous weaves for tensile strength.

I let the armor dissolve. Kagune.

Four crimson tentacles erupted from my back. They were exactly how I remembered them, but they felt just as primitive as my armor.

An epiphany hit me then. I didn't have skin anymore, nor a back, not really. My new body, this viral facsimile of a man, was just another disguise. In forcing myself to create those old, familiar shapes, I was limiting myself. I could do more. Be more. I wasn't just a collection of tacked-on powers.

The moment the thought solidified, the system responded with the psychic equivalent of a casino slot machine hitting a jackpot, a chaotic shower of mental coins and flashing lights that filled my head. A line of text burned itself into my awareness.

[Milestone Reached: Biological Singularity]

Face it, tiger, you just hit the jackpot!
All your old, boring biological traits have been officially assimilated. They aren't gone; they're intrinsic now. Part of the deluxe, all-consuming package.

Click to shrink...

The universe was a casino, and I'd just won a billion blood-covered dollars. I closed my eyes and for the first time, truly felt the new reality. I could feel the principle of nimbleness threaded through every cell, a constant, fluid potential to shift mass and muscle density at the speed of thought.

Deeper, I could feel the new anatomy of my soul. A warm, constant core pulsed at the center of my being, a spiritual star of near-infinite energy. Orbiting it, I felt a cool, placid reservoir, a moon to its sun, passively waiting to be spent.

And beneath it all, I felt the bedrock. The silent, ever-present framework that held the screaming, chaotic storm of the virus together, allowing the man to remain.

"Are we going to talk about the puddle? Or shall I just log it as 'unexpected liquefaction event' and move on?" GLaDOS's voice crackled from the speakers, pulling me from my thoughts.

I opened my eyes. The warm core was still humming inside me. "The puddle. Right." I had almost forgotten the part where I'd melted. "It was part of an upgrade, I think."

"An 'upgrade'," she repeated, the word dripping with synthetic disdain. "And here I thought it was a catastrophic failure of cellular cohesion."

I ran a hand through my hair, trying to find the words. "It's different now. I don't just have abilities. I am the ability. Everything's one system. And I think... I can learn from what I consume. Analyze it. Replicate it."

There was a long, analytical pause. The faint hum of the computer's fans filled the silence. When she spoke again, her tone had shifted. The casual contempt was still there, but it was sharpened by a new edge of clinical, predatory curiosity.

"Oh. Is that what this is?" she said slowly. "You're a biological assimilation engine. How delightfully... crude. A walking recycling bin that learns."

She continued, the logic clicking into place in her voice. "Alright. Let the testing begin."

The monitor flickered, displaying the image of a sea snail.

"This is the radula of the Patella vulgata," she stated, her voice returning to its familiar, lecturing tone. "Its teeth are composed of a Goethite-reinforced chitin-protein composite. According to my files, it is the most durable biological material on this planet. A superior blueprint." She almost sounded eager.

"The what?"

There was a long pause. When GLaDOS spoke again, her voice was different. Slower. Deliberately, artificially gentle. "It is the creature's tongue," she said, her tone patient and condescending, as if explaining a very simple, sad fact.

With a sigh, I knelt and plunged my hand into the Butcher's Bag, focusing on her instruction. My fingers brushed against something slick and coiled. I pulled out a greyish ribbon of flesh. The snail's tongue. I placed it against my forearm.

The process was immediate, instinctual. My skin softened, parting to allow black, thread-like tendrils to emerge. They sank into the snail's flesh. It seemed to simply dissolve on contact, turning into a grey slurry that was drawn into my arm. I felt a cellular ripping, a violation as the snail's biological secrets were torn free. The precise, crystalline structure of the chitin-protein weave hammered itself into my mind. The lattice of Goethite that gave it its impossible strength became a known quantity.

With the knowledge now a part of me, I focused. I commanded my arm to reshape itself into something better. A dark, metallic sheen flowed over my skin, hardening into a shell that looked like forged, unpolished iron. I knocked it against the workbench. The sound was a dull, heavy thud, like striking an anvil.

That first success was the only invitation I needed. For three days, the forge stayed hot. My world narrowed to the steel of the workbench and the cold, meaty void of the Bag.

A bombardier beetle. Contracting sacs. A boiling-hot chemical explosion.

Spiders. So many spiders. Spinnerets weaving silk with the tensile strength of steel. Venom glands pulsing with a dozen different recipes for paralysis and death.

The claw of a pistol shrimp, snapping with a sound that boiled water in its wake.

A cuttlefish. Skin that thinks, chromatophores firing in waves of texture and light. A living screen.

Each one was consumed, cataloged, and filed away for later. Each morsel became another weapon in my arsenal.

By the end of the third day, applying a blueprint to my own skin felt like child's play. The next step was to create a tool. I extruded a meter-long, bone-white blade from my other arm. It was sharp, but it was still just an extension of me. Useless if I needed my hands for something else.

"I'm going to try to make an item separate from my body," I said, thinking of the Item Construction skill. "Imbue it."

"Oh? You want to… shed a piece of yourself? Like a lizard?" GLaDOS asked, her voice laced with morbid curiosity. "The cellular cohesion will almost certainly fail, turning it into a useless puddle of goo. By all means, proceed. I'll get the mop."

One of the robotic arms in the corner immediately ceased its sorting. Its single red light blinked once before it pivoted with a whir of servos and trundled off into the shadows of the basement.

I focused on the blade. I pulled back, feeling for the viral essence of myself, the animating, intelligent part of the biomass, and systematically retracted it from the sword's physical form. It was a deeply unsettling sensation, like pulling a hand out of a perfectly fitted glove. A final, faint, wet snap echoed in my mind as the last connection was severed. The sword, now with a fully formed hilt, dropped to the concrete floor with a heavy clang.

I took the hilt in my armored hand and reached for the cool reservoir. I felt a chunk of it drain away in an instant, flowing out of me and into the sword. There was a brief fleeting sensation of becoming hollow, lighter. A split-second later, the warm core surged. The hollowness was gone, replaced by the familiar warmth. Into the blade, I pushed a single, focused concept. Adaptation.

The sword changed. A faint, oily shimmer ran through the bone-white material. I picked up a thick, rust-flaked rod of rebar from the scrap pile and set one end of it on the steel surface of the workbench. I brought the sword down in a savage, testing arc.

The sound was a deafening crack of metal on metal. The blade tore a jagged chunk from the rebar, the sheer, inhuman force of the blow sending the severed piece of steel shooting sideways like shrapnel. It struck the ground with enough force to take a divot out of the concrete.

The sword hummed in my hand. It tasted the steel. I could feel the oily shimmer on the blade intensify as its molecular edge re-aligned, learning the lesson of the impact.

I lifted it again, this time with an easy, level swing. The blade passed through the remaining rebar with a soft shing, as if it were shearing through air. It left behind two perfectly smooth, almost polished, surfaces.

"So. You can make your own magic space-metal swords now," GLaDOS said after a moment. "Well, that's… a thing. The potential applications for actual science are significant, assuming you don't just use them to poke things."

I looked down at the bone-white blade in my hand. A tool. And I knew exactly what job it was for.

"Which brings us to the next logical phase of the experiment," GLaDOS continued, her voice losing its mocking edge, replaced by a cold, clinical focus. "Target acquisition. And the subsequent acquisition of a competent user for your new hardware."

As she spoke, the monitor flared to life. The screen split into a dozen feeds showing the chaos. The city was tearing itself apart. The Empire was dying, and every other gang in the city was a vulture fighting for a piece of the corpse.

"Forget raw power," GLaDOS said, the news feeds vanishing, replaced by an organizational chart of the Empire. "Your most glaring deficiency is a lack of applicable skills. This one," she said, her cursor highlighting a smirking, blond-haired man, "is a walking library of useful, violent knowledge. He is a pathetic little skill-thief, but the contents of his head would be an invaluable software update for your brain."

Victor. I stared at the picture. At the arrogant smirk, the coldness in his eyes. He wasn't a data point. He was a person.

The word echoed in my head. Consume.

A cold space opened in my gut, a void where some fundamental piece of my own humanity used to be. It was the act of unmaking a man, of stealing the contents of his head and making them my own.

The math, however, was simple. Inescapable. Leviathan was coming. The city was burning. The equation only had one answer that didn't end in zero.

I nodded, once. A slow, heavy gesture. "He's the one."

"An excellent, logical decision," GLaDOS stated, her voice devoid of any recognition of the moment's gravity. "There is, of course, a complication." A live feed appeared, showing Victor walking down the street with Othala. "His primary support asset makes a direct assault tactically inadvisable. We will need to formulate a plan of separation."

I couldn't think about tactics right now. I just turned and walked away from the monitor, from the cold calculus and the pictures of men I had to kill. I left the sword lying on the bench, its bone-white surface seeming to drink the dim light from the overhead bulb.

The robot arm GLaDOS had dispatched earlier trundled into the room with a faint, squeaking wheel. It was holding a rusty bucket and a dirty string mop. It rolled to a stop a few feet away from me and waited, patiently, for a mess that hadn't happened yet.

 

[To-be-hero-X]

You know I just realized something my boi essential become earth bet worse nightmare about bio tinkers literally walking apocalypse if he wants to he can unleashed the virus

 

[Neondagger]

Peak

John could fesably also create an adapting bio-computer to house glados if he felt bold enough

 

[TFTwink]

I couldn't think about tactics right now. I just turned and walked away from the monitor, from the cold calculus and the pictures of men I had to kill. I left the sword lying on the bench and went upstairs.

I couldn't think about tactics right now. I just turned and walked away from the monitor, from the cold calculus and the pictures of men I had to kill. I left the sword lying on the bench

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Is this duplicated or on purpose? It feels like it could be both, but the timing seems a bit off.