shitposting rave 5: discount rejects from every genre

-flies up to examine Updraft's mods, awkwardly alternating between wing-flapping and little bursts from their jetpack to keep the same position in the air- -Kohaku is a heavy-duty dragon full conversion cyborg, has been mistaken for a beastformer a few times. One arm is a gatling laser with attached axe and their tail ends in a canon with a spike for melee. They're only 10 feet at full height, 7-8 most of the time because of posture, but they move like they're trying not to Godzilla all over Can Town. Their wings only work for gliding, hence the jetpack-

That's actually really neat. I've seen some technowizards near the border do things with sacred materials, but from what I heard it doesn't work once you reach a certain... complexity? If the device has too many parts it won't work, and it doesn't play nice with sentience so definitely not sapience. If I wanted to get anything like that it'd have to be surface-level only, I think.

I wonder if a dragon 'borg has ever been blessed by a Millennium Tree? Even getting a leaf worked onto our plating would look badass.

 

The first ones rejected pretty quickly but I worked around it - or my frame got used to it? It wasn't like I had anything else to work with, really - but now they integrate pretty quickly, I don't think it takes significantly longer than a normal replacement.

Precisely, yes. I do wonder if there is a colony out there started by stranded mechs left to their own devices.

[A small dragon! He's heard about beastformers like this before, but never seen one. Then again with the way it talks he's pretty sure it's not a beastformer.] Technowizards?
Most of the replacements are surface level, really, I was trying to use proper metal parts for the more finicky internal structures [He had to cannibalize most of those from his dead crew mates but he prefers not to think about that too much because it still hurts too much]

 

People who mix magic and technology. I saw one in a border village on a ley line who made a little generator powered by a ruby that stored magic from the line- as long as it wasn't moved too far away it had a constant charge. Not strong enough to power much, but it kept their tools going when they needed. Magic and technology aren't hostile to each other like they are in books from before the Rifts, but they do have complications. Technowizards can make them play nice- that's their power. If I were a psychic or a magic-user I'd have lost that power when I got the conversion. Ah- I'm organic. Or I was. I forget you guys aren't used to that being a thing. Anyway psychics and the like have trouble if they start replacing parts with tech for some reason. There's not a lot of interest in it in the Republic, magic is still pretty new for us! But on the border and in the Corp-States there have been some attempts at technowizardry cybernetics. They haven't really worked though.

I think I'd be able to use things for patching- I can stick duct tape over a ding without it messing anything up- but anything too deep and we run into issues even if we're not replacing moving parts.

I'd spend a year in the Zone if I could mother-of-pearl my wings, though.

 

That makes sense, especially if you kept trying after the initial rejections-- self-repair systems are pretty dumb, but they can learn over time to accept specific foreign materials! Makes the material less viable for widespread use, unless someone's willing to sit around for a few decades waiting the acclimatization period out, but that's still pretty cool!

 

...you have been out of contact for a while. Yes, there are. At least twelve.

Why? It might be more elastic, but that's hardly something you want in most airframes.

 

-glides over to Slipstream so their attempt at jazzhands (kind of hard when you're a dragon with a gun-arm) has full effect- Because shiny

 

Ah right [Part of that is still going over his head, obviously, but he tries to keep up] The main issue for us in replacing metal with organic matter is that our self repair goes a little haywire with it, though admittedly I have no idea if an outlier would have problems if they attempted to replace parts of themselves with organic material and experimenting with it seems somewhat unethical.

Yes, precisely. I also bred the organics I use for higher metal contents since that seemed to help reduce the rejection as well as make it more useful for what I need. [He gestures at his arm and the mi clinging onto it] The material was quite a bit frailer when I started working on it.

Three million years, yes. And well, it's pretty. [He flares his wings to cant them into the light and display the mother-of-pearl inlays on them] Though I wouldn't suggest doing more than surface decorations with them, as pretty as they are.

 

If you're meant to be a distraction, I suppose I could see why 'shiny' would be a good thing.

But 'pretty' isn't useful. Why waste the time?

 

Bred--? Oh. [Wiretap at least manages not to look disgusted, but he hadn't quite realized that 'organic material' meant it came from living things.] That's... Well, you work with what you've got, right?

One, some people like being pretty and 'because I like it' is a normal motivation.
Two, how much time do you think we waste tooling around in deep space after targets? Gotta do something to pass the time.

 

We had something of a similar problem when we first started working with artificial limbs. Our bodies really don't like anything that doesn't come right from us- even blood transfusions can be finicky. Organ transplants for a long time had trouble with rejection, and that was human to human all organic. Eventually we figured out drugs that tricked our bodies into thinking things were supposed to be there, though I don't know how they work exactly.

Because it's nice! If you want to look at it from a purely tactical perspective it's good for morale as well. Both the person who looks pretty, because looking how you want feels good, and the people who get to look at them. And when people are happy they fight better, with more enthusiasm. Morale can make or break an army, win or lose a war. -they land and stretch their wings out, tuck them back in, stretch them out again and leave them at 'neutral'. A nervous gesture- We know that very well.

 

Travelling from one assignment to the next isn't wasting time. Updraft was stranded; after completing basic repairs, he could have better spent his time repairing his ship and finding a way to get back in the fight.

There's only one war, and morale had nothing to do with its end.

 

Adaptus's rusting cog, Stream. Engineering and medicine might be related but they're not interchangeable. I might be able to jerry-rig some quick fixes, but that doesn't mean any given medic could rebuild an entire ship. Let the pretty flier be pretty if he wants, it's not like one more body would've won the war for us.

 

-it is not, just wet- Pirrpirrpirrpirr

 

-considering headtilt- Sounds to me like it had everything to do with morale, just the other way. Sounds like both sides got sick of fighting.

For us, if our morale dropped and we lost the will to fight we'd be overrun. The oni don't work like we do, and they're not structured or centralized- hundreds of independent groups that we're all fighting. I don't know if we can fight a battle of hearts, and if we could if it would even do anything. They fight with each other even as they fight us- I don't think they really care about the ones we kill. But we feel our losses. So we take care of each other, and the Republic takes care of us, and we care about looking pretty and wasting time so we have the strength of heart to keep our people safe.

...

...

Shit. I sound like a fucking anime. I swear if I've fallen into a universe where I'm actually a character on Demon Hunter Tsunami I'll eat the producers.

 

Because I was stuck on an organic rock for three million years and it gave me something to do, never mind that life is marginally less depressing when you can exert control over some of your circumstances, such as the state of your own frame.

Yes. Not my first choice, but extracting metal from the planet's crust would have required even more complicated machinery and resources of refinement, both of which I was severly lacking, while organic things were growing around me [He shrugs. It's been a long time since he's considered organic anything 'gross']

Oh, that does sound interesting, do you think I could acquire some papers or similar on the topic? [His wings perk up high, fluttering a little bit in excitement. Sure organic systems do work differently but a new research venue could prove useful even if he can only follow through in part, since his equipment is... less than ideal]

[Updraft chirrs back at it softly, trying to mimick the sounds the little fluff is making best he can] Aren't you just an adorable little... what are you even? Fur suggests mammals but sort types of feathers look just as fluffy.

 

Mi? Am a mi! Mis is furry. Never seen a feather mi. Seen fin mis? Still have fur.

 

If I can figure something out then sure! I'm... actually physically here, instead of dreaming so it might take some work. Fell through a rift. Occupational hazard.

 

...right.

Maybe. Or maybe Lord Megatron got himself killed again, and while High Command started fighting over the throne again Prime took advantage of the chaos like any half-decent strategist.

You do sound like an anime, though.

...what's 'depressing' mean in this context? You're pretty obviously not physically crushed.

 

Yeah, I'll bet. Looks like good work for what you had to work with! Were you a medic before, or did you just pick it up out of necessity?

 

A mi then. [These are so cute he needs twenty] Wait, with fins? Like, living in water? [That's fascinating please tell him more!]

Oh. Ah, my condolences, I hope you find your way back to your proper... plane? [That seems like the right terminology when talking about rifts and odd dream spaces]

Spoiler: depression talk

Oh. I mean the mental condition of depression? It is a malfunction on the emotional level, can be prompted by prolonged stress or trauma and the symptoms are somewhat varied but usually include listlessness, low mood and low motivation, neglect of one's frame and can go all the way to suicidal ideation or even attempts at suicide.

It was a very expected reaction in my case, and letting my carrier protocols focus on taking care of myself or the organics I kept helped me to deal with it.

I was a medic before, but the paint hasn't held up to the test of time [He chuckles] I think I can by now add 'xenobiologist' to my resume, and I certainly wasn't that before.