Euler shifts into a Huge gold-scaled beast with wings, teeth, and claws… that still looks largely human. She Shapechanged into a Gold Dragon, but due to Patricia's influence, she looks like a giant human with a dragon's wings, claws, teeth, and tail. I drag my eyes away from the coming carnage to contemplate.
Patricia, why do I suddenly seem to have a huge hooter fetish myself?
“You don't. Or rather, you always did, somewhat. Now you do... for Euler, and only her,” my pink companion responds as Euler bites the head off the first of the two remaining goons, triggering a brief blood fountain, drenching the area in red. The other shoots a lightning bolt from his rifle at the dragon-like giant wrecking face… but it doesn't do anything when it hits.
Keep going with the explanation.
“Okay, so… everyone has at least a very small seed of desire, it's built into the DNA of all living things: Anything without it doesn't breed.” Makes sense so far, Patricia, but you're clearly not done. As one of Euler's claws rips the heart out of the other remaining goon, I can see that she is, though.
“And that seed can go any of a zillion different ways. When we feast on a person's essence, we KNOW, soul-deep, what that person likes.” Nothing new here, Patricia. Euler roars in triumph.
Patricia continues as Euler takes another look around the room and reverts to a humanoid form, “And because we know what she likes, in an absolute sense, we know we're not hurting her when we indulge, and are even making her feel good in giving her what she truly wants; there is no doubt at all… so if the seed of desire in us can go that way, it will, because not only will that oh so annoying ‘conscience’ of yours avoid stopping our desire, it will even help us along.”
So it just brings background desires to the foreground when it's 'appropriate' to the person in question.
Unsurprisingly, Euler is the only person in sight as I dismiss my invisibility, “So is it everything you wanted?”
“And more, Captain…” Euler stretches her arms out to caress her chest, closing her eyes and humming in pleasure, still soaked in blood, “I feel so confident and strong now… they were like wheat before the scythe…” she opens her eyes and stares straight into mine, “They could be bigger… and do please look… I want you to look at them, and touch them, and suck them…” she shivers with a smile.
My eyes drift down, and I step in close, and whisper in her ear, “we're in public.”
“The laws are pretty light here…” she whispers back, “but I can wait.”
Good to know we're not going to have legal trouble with your chest hanging out like that, “Great. Let's loot these losers and get back to the ship.”
They don't have much; each has a credstick, the static arc rifle that did the lightning shots, a couple of grenades (smoke bomb and sticky bomb varieties), a tactical swoop hammer, and a plexiglass bodysuit II (with a grandchild's cloak, a forcepack, and enviro sensor upgrades - which could make them briefly invisible, let them briefly fly quickly, and will close their helmets for them if they're exposed to vacuum); these guys were decked out for capturing folks and running away from the police, it seems. Decent armor… I can’t make good use of them, and they need some minor repairs now, but they're fair choices for Cowbird and Euler… once we adjust them to fit. I mean, we'll want to trade out the flight and environmental sensors for other things (neither of them will need to worry about such matters thanks to permanent spells from me), but they give a decent amount of armor class and have little in the way of restrictions.
I take a moment to cast Disintegrate on the two corpses, reducing them to fine pink powder (it’s supposed to be black, but I guess that's Patricia's influence). Shaking my head, we head back to Stephanie as Euler cleans himself up with a cantrip: Token Spell. It's basically Prestidigitation (performs a set of very minor effects, cleaning included).
Cowbird meets us at the airlock we used to get in… she seems to have lost her clothes somewhere, and there’s a white sticky substance slowly sliding down her inner thigh. I choose not to think about it too much; she seems happy, at least.
We cycle the airlock and head back out to Stephanie, and this time Euler flies himself. As I'm in a group, we enter through the main airlock (Stephanie's mouth), and… okay, being swallowed isn't that disturbing… her teeth don't look so predatory, and other than the color she's a normal ship once I'm past those. I can ignore it… really I can.
As we board, though, Stephanie flags us: “All hands to the bridge; this is not a drill.”
As I run, I talk to Stephanie over the Datajack linked to my com, “Stephanie, situation report.”
“We're being actively tracked by a weapons lock. They're not shooting yet, but I don't expect that to last long.” Stephanie sounds worried.
“Get us gone, we aren't set up for a fight,” I really don’t want to think about getting shot.
“They have us in a Drift Shadow, captain… I think they were waiting for us to board so they didn’t need to worry about station law.” Thanks Stephanie.
“Fine… engines hot?” I mean, we didn’t dock, so….
“Yes captain,” she acknowledges.
I nod as I sit at my station, jack in, and begin linking up to the Consciousness Uplink Drive, “Full burn, then. We don’t have weapons, and the cloak can’t engage when we’re actively tracked.”
“Understood captain,” Stephanie hits the gas… well, the accelerator… while I divert power to engines to give us some extra speed. We don’t want to be anywhere near that thing.
I find that Cowbird is doing her job with the panels, so I also send more power to the science equipment… shields are currently fine, after all. Euler’s… doing something… I’ll figure that out later. Hopefully she’s keeping the shields focused on the baddie.
I'm pushed to the back of my seat as Stephanie guns it, which apparently catches the other ship by surprise, as they don't immediately follow. Euler gives a report: “It's a Suskullion Whip under the paint job; almost as fast as we are. The guns we need to worry about are on the sides… so if they're chasing and we keep our distance, we're OK… at worst we'll soak a torpedo or two to the shields, and that only if they turn, which makes it harder for them to keep up. Their torpedoes… if we keep redlining the engines, they're just slightly faster than we are, but not by much. With the headstart… good odds. Side note: This is really easy now.”
Good to know that the ‘run away’ plan is a go, “Keep our shields focused on them, Euler. I don't want any torpedoes hitting the hull.”
“Aye captain,” Euler acknowledges without moving.
… I don't have any contracts… oh well. We'll pick something up on the next planet, I guess.
I keep the engines redlined by diverting power, and they only get one torpedo launched before they give up the chase… but they manage to hit twice with the plasma cannon on the turret, despite the massive range penalties for a weapon of that type… but between Euler rebalancing to focus the shields on our aft, Cowbird helping with panel access so I can divert power to both shields and engines at the same time… the shields soak it. Meanwhile, the torpedo eventually loses track of us and detonates in space. We all breathe a sigh of relief when we see the other ship turn around after we're out of their sensor range.
And if they'd had a long-range direct fire weapon on that turret or in their bow arc, we'd probably be sucking void right now… ugh. Which means while stealth gets me out of most fights… it doesn't help all the time, and relying on it entirely can leave us defenseless.
So really, we need some turret weapons ourselves. Well… we're going to have some budget when the baby's born, and I was looking at upgrading anyway… after we get a good distance from where we turned around, I address everyone, “Okay Stephanie, looks like we're out of the danger zone. Slow down a bit, and I'll engage the cloak.” As we both do our portion, I keep going, “Good job everyone, we played our roles well… and the encounter highlighted a problem with the current strategy of ‘run and hide': It's not always possible; today was closer than I'd like. I'm considering switching to a more offensive setup and dripping the ‘run and hide’ strategy entirely after you lay the next ‘golden egg’, Stephanie. Thoughts everyone?”
“I am yours to command, M… Captain,” Cowbird starts, “I've left my life of violence behind, but… there is no one perfect strategy, captain. There will always be occasional close calls, and eventually everyone meets someone better. We're doing fine.”
“You rescued me after I'd lost a fight before,” begins Stephanie, “I trust your judgment more than my own, Captain.”
“How about a hybrid strategy?” Suggests Euler.
I pause, “Explain, please.”
“We have a slow but steady stream of small ships thanks to Stephanie getting pregnant, right?” I nod, and Euler continues, “What about a stealth carrier setup? You can make basic crew members, so we get a bulk freighter, fill it up with shuttle bays, move the stealth unit over, and load Stephanie up with her children and/or ships we purchased by their sale, crewed by your manufactured servants. We avoid fights when we can, keep Stephanie stealthed whenever we aren't… breeding her… go back and forth to stations using shuttles for cargo, and when we can't avoid a fight… we throw the ‘kids’ at it.”
I consider, “Sounds fair to me. Any objections?”
I look at each person in turn… except Stephanie, because she doesn't have an avatar out… and nobody raises any objections.
I nod, “Okay then. We'll continue as we are until the next birth, and switch things up after that. Thank you all.”
We all go about our regular shipboard duties, as I pick a planet to see about getting work….
Euler shifts into a Huge gold-scaled beast with wings, teeth, and claws… that still looks largely human. She Shapechanged into a Gold Dragon, but due to Patricia's influence, she looks like a giant human with a dragon's wings, claws, teeth, and tail. I drag my eyes away from the coming carnage to contemplate.
Patricia, why do I suddenly seem to have a huge hooter fetish myself?
“You don't. Or rather, you always did, somewhat. Now you do... for Euler, and only her,” my pink companion responds as Euler bites the head off the first of the two remaining goons, triggering a brief blood fountain, drenching the area in red. The other shoots a lightning bolt from his rifle at the dragon-like giant wrecking face… but it doesn't do anything when it hits.
Keep going with the explanation.
“Okay, so… everyone has at least a very small seed of desire, it's built into the DNA of all living things: Anything without it doesn't breed.” Makes sense so far, Patricia, but you're clearly not done. As one of Euler's claws rips the heart out of the other remaining goon, I can see that she is, though.
“And that seed can go any of a zillion different ways. When we feast on a person's essence, we KNOW, soul-deep, what that person likes.” Nothing new here, Patricia. Euler roars in triumph.
Patricia continues as Euler takes another look around the room and reverts to a humanoid form, “And because we know what she likes, in an absolute sense, we know we're not hurting her when we indulge, and are even making her feel good in giving her what she truly wants; there is no doubt at all… so if the seed of desire in us can go that way, it will, because not only will that oh so annoying ‘conscience’ of yours avoid stopping our desire, it will even help us along.”
So it just brings background desires to the foreground when it's 'appropriate' to the person in question.
Unsurprisingly, Euler is the only person in sight as I dismiss my invisibility, “So is it everything you wanted?”
“And more, Captain…” Euler stretches her arms out to caress her chest, closing her eyes and humming in pleasure, still soaked in blood, “I feel so confident and strong now… they were like wheat before the scythe…” she opens her eyes and stares straight into mine, “They could be bigger… and do please look… I want you to look at them, and touch them, and suck them…” she shivers with a smile.
My eyes drift down, and I step in close, and whisper in her ear, “we're in public.”
“The laws are pretty light here…” she whispers back, “but I can wait.”
Good to know we're not going to have legal trouble with your chest hanging out like that, “Great. Let's loot these losers and get back to the ship.”
They don't have much; each has a credstick, the static arc rifle that did the lightning shots, a couple of grenades (smoke bomb and sticky bomb varieties), a tactical swoop hammer, and a plexiglass bodysuit II (with a grandchild's cloak, a forcepack, and enviro sensor upgrades - which could make them briefly invisible, let them briefly fly quickly, and will close their helmets for them if they're exposed to vacuum); these guys were decked out for capturing folks and running away from the police, it seems. Decent armor… I can’t make good use of them, and they need some minor repairs now, but they're fair choices for Cowbird and Euler… once we adjust them to fit. I mean, we'll want to trade out the flight and environmental sensors for other things (neither of them will need to worry about such matters thanks to permanent spells from me), but they give a decent amount of armor class and have little in the way of restrictions.
I take a moment to cast Disintegrate on the two corpses, reducing them to fine pink powder (it’s supposed to be black, but I guess that's Patricia's influence). Shaking my head, we head back to Stephanie as Euler cleans himself up with a cantrip: Token Spell. It's basically Prestidigitation (performs a set of very minor effects, cleaning included).
Cowbird meets us at the airlock we used to get in… she seems to have lost her clothes somewhere, and there’s a white sticky substance slowly sliding down her inner thigh. I choose not to think about it too much; she seems happy, at least.
We cycle the airlock and head back out to Stephanie, and this time Euler flies himself. As I'm in a group, we enter through the main airlock (Stephanie's mouth), and… okay, being swallowed isn't that disturbing… her teeth don't look so predatory, and other than the color she's a normal ship once I'm past those. I can ignore it… really I can.
As we board, though, Stephanie flags us: “All hands to the bridge; this is not a drill.”
As I run, I talk to Stephanie over the Datajack linked to my com, “Stephanie, situation report.”
“We're being actively tracked by a weapons lock. They're not shooting yet, but I don't expect that to last long.” Stephanie sounds worried.
“Get us gone, we aren't set up for a fight,” I really don’t want to think about getting shot.
“They have us in a Drift Shadow, captain… I think they were waiting for us to board so they didn’t need to worry about station law.” Thanks Stephanie.
“Fine… engines hot?” I mean, we didn’t dock, so….
“Yes captain,” she acknowledges.
I nod as I sit at my station, jack in, and begin linking up to the Consciousness Uplink Drive, “Full burn, then. We don’t have weapons, and the cloak can’t engage when we’re actively tracked.”
“Understood captain,” Stephanie hits the gas… well, the accelerator… while I divert power to engines to give us some extra speed. We don’t want to be anywhere near that thing.
I find that Cowbird is doing her job with the panels, so I also send more power to the science equipment… shields are currently fine, after all. Euler’s… doing something… I’ll figure that out later. Hopefully she’s keeping the shields focused on the baddie.
I'm pushed to the back of my seat as Stephanie guns it, which apparently catches the other ship by surprise, as they don't immediately follow. Euler gives a report: “It's a Suskullion Whip under the paint job; almost as fast as we are. The guns we need to worry about are on the sides… so if they're chasing and we keep our distance, we're OK… at worst we'll soak a torpedo or two to the shields, and that only if they turn, which makes it harder for them to keep up. Their torpedoes… if we keep redlining the engines, they're just slightly faster than we are, but not by much. With the headstart… good odds. Side note: This is really easy now.”
Good to know that the ‘run away’ plan is a go, “Keep our shields focused on them, Euler. I don't want any torpedoes hitting the hull.”
“Aye captain,” Euler acknowledges without moving.
… I don't have any contracts… oh well. We'll pick something up on the next planet, I guess.
I keep the engines redlined by diverting power, and they only get one torpedo launched before they give up the chase… but they manage to hit twice with the plasma cannon on the turret, despite the massive range penalties for a weapon of that type… but between Euler rebalancing to focus the shields on our aft, Cowbird helping with panel access so I can divert power to both shields and engines at the same time… the shields soak it. Meanwhile, the torpedo eventually loses track of us and detonates in space. We all breathe a sigh of relief when we see the other ship turn around after we're out of their sensor range.
And if they'd had a long-range direct fire weapon on that turret or in their bow arc, we'd probably be sucking void right now… ugh. Which means while stealth gets me out of most fights… it doesn't help all the time, and relying on it entirely can leave us defenseless.
So really, we need some turret weapons ourselves. Well… we're going to have some budget when the baby's born, and I was looking at upgrading anyway… after we get a good distance from where we turned around, I address everyone, “Okay Stephanie, looks like we're out of the danger zone. Slow down a bit, and I'll engage the cloak.” As we both do our portion, I keep going, “Good job everyone, we played our roles well… and the encounter highlighted a problem with the current strategy of ‘run and hide': It's not always possible; today was closer than I'd like. I'm considering switching to a more offensive setup and dripping the ‘run and hide’ strategy entirely after you lay the next ‘golden egg’, Stephanie. Thoughts everyone?”
“I am yours to command, M… Captain,” Cowbird starts, “I've left my life of violence behind, but… there is no one perfect strategy, captain. There will always be occasional close calls, and eventually everyone meets someone better. We're doing fine.”
“You rescued me after I'd lost a fight before,” begins Stephanie, “I trust your judgment more than my own, Captain.”
“How about a hybrid strategy?” Suggests Euler.
I pause, “Explain, please.”
“We have a slow but steady stream of small ships thanks to Stephanie getting pregnant, right?” I nod, and Euler continues, “What about a stealth carrier setup? You can make basic crew members, so we get a bulk freighter, fill it up with shuttle bays, move the stealth unit over, and load Stephanie up with her children and/or ships we purchased by their sale, crewed by your manufactured servants. We avoid fights when we can, keep Stephanie stealthed whenever we aren't… breeding her… go back and forth to stations using shuttles for cargo, and when we can't avoid a fight… we throw the ‘kids’ at it.”
I consider, “Sounds fair to me. Any objections?”
I look at each person in turn… except Stephanie, because she doesn't have an avatar out… and nobody raises any objections.
I nod, “Okay then. We'll continue as we are until the next birth, and switch things up after that. Thank you all.”
We all go about our regular shipboard duties, as I pick a planet to see about getting work….
