As I climbed through the tunnels I listened to the two women and the two ghosts talk. Most of it was what NUSA and Militech knew about me. At one point a question was thrown at me. "Hey, why did you… you know, go full borg? And why the big scary tank thing?" V asked. I spun to look at my passengers. "Full cybernetic conversion. I was a weak child with substandard chrome. I was locked away in an Arasaka project for my extreme talent with cybernetic hardware. Escape from the dangerous enslavement was deemed necessary for my and others continued survival. My flesh's was weak but my steel was strong. I converted fully then escaped." I paused to give the meat bags time to think. I spun around and started speaking again. "The 'big scary tank thing' was an act of necessity. The weapons that felled me from the sky damaged my body severely. I needed time to recover. I found the chimera and integrated myself with it."
I glanced at my passengers, V was staring into the distance, clearly stunned by my story. Myers was glaring down at her hands, a stormy look on her face. I could see silverhand pacing around blabbing into the air, likely something anti corpo. Songbird was looking at me like I was a puzzle to be solved, strange.
As we entered the abandoned hotel I unfolded long manipulator arms and snapped a few drug addicts like twigs. I tossed their bodies outside. I quickly welded the entrances shut with metal debris and fashioned a crude but secure door. I tossed lots of trash and detritus out alongside the bodies, leaving the main entrance room clean.
I sealed off the elevator as the multiple levels weren't structurally secure. I easily pulled up some water pipes and plumbing, and fashioned a bathroom and such. Rooms were easy to make with the metal and cloth lying around. The two women cleaned up and settled in for the night as I entombed myself to run self diagnostics while resting.
The next morning saw a discussion between V and Myers with Songbird convincing them to send V to get Reed. As Myers started customizing the new base I began customizing myself. I sent out my remaining drones to collect everything I'd need to do what I wanted. Flesh is weak, steel is strong. But flesh is what makes steel. Without flesh steel would never be made.
Two days and a paranoid addition to the team and I had the stuff I needed. The process would take a long time but I'd make a new body for myself. I started with the skeleton like always. Durasteel, placed with beskar. Hundreds of micro technologies filling the gaps. My bones were ringed with atomic valence radii oscillators.
My flesh was a near perfect fusion of meat and metal. My chest consisted of multiple tons of magically shrunken and lightened tech. Powerful compressed fuel, water, nutrients, and other physical resources were stored in the gut, inside heavily expanded space. My new brain box was a work of art. Seamlessly integrated magic and tech gave me and extremely powerful mind using tech and magic based on the Athena mk 5.
After completing my new body I started working on something I hadn't made in some time. The armor would be amazing. My new body was tall, buff and awesome. The armor would reflect that. My newest alloy was a mix of durasteel and beskar. The beskar and durasteel would give the armor extreme durability and strength while my new creation of electrum, through magical processes, would give it a beautiful and resilient finish. The secondary color of the armor would be a dark blue. Certain parts of my armor would have wood highlights, made of my own magical replication attempt at brylark wood.
The end result of the armor looked a lot like an ultramarine with the color palette switched. After finishing my armor I called in my three allies. With their help and some maneuvering from Songbird, I got a proper, trustworthy ripperdoc into our little base. Even with Reed vouching for the guy I made sure V and So Mi watched him. Simply looking for what V had done since she showed up here in NC told me she was trustworthy. So Mi had some trust as I knew she saw V as a way out of her situation.
With the two watching my back my brain transfer went smoothly. I quickly removed and scrapped my old body. Next was my tank. I completely disassembled it over a few weeks as the others did their stuff here. I payed my allies with hardware support and extreme security. With my tank body taken apart security dropped massively so I spent some time making turrets and bots all hooked up to an astromech AI core.
After that I focused the rest of my time on my tank. First was the frame. It was smaller than the chimera but had only two legs and was most importantly made of durasteel and beskar. The legs were based on the hydraulics and servo systems I found for Star Wars vehicles. It looked like a large, beefy AT-RT with arms and lightning bolt like legs. The armor was a thick durasteel shell with a beskar coat on top. Each arm held a weapon. The right was an HMG I designed with magical and technological spatial expansion.
The left arm held a large plasma laser that easily cut through steel. The main body carried a powerful SSM and SAM system and a main cannon in the form of a railgun. The main power sources for the mech were multiple hydrogen engines as they were clean and efficient. However I had a several backup jet fuel engines and a powerful fusion generator.
Beside the mech I made two weapons for myself, an automatic railgun with thousands of depleted uranium rounds and a powerful plasma blaster.
A week after completing my armor and mech I finally felt my transition coming. I stocked up on hundreds of tons of supplies and resources, all stored with tech and magic. I connected with my mech and prepared. As I connected to my mech I got a call. Songbird was asking me to exit the base and got to the stadium where V and Reed were fighting a chimera for some reason.
As I sprinted up the road annihilating anything in my way I went over my records, hoping to find out why they were fighting a chimera. Nothing showed in my records, not that I really cared. Let them fight modern tanks if they want. I scaled the stadium wall by carving a staircase into it with my laser and HMG. In the middle of the stadium, standing on the cargo containers of the crashed transport was a chimera. It had multiple additional HMG turrets and an actual cannon in place of the shrapnel cannon.
As its sensors detected me it blasted at least 30 missiles at me. I dove away as they exploded at my feet. A blast of my plasma cannon splashed its frontal armor across the opposite side of the stadium. Five missiles tore from my back and crippled a leg. It's back vent suddenly exploded as V shot a small chunky brick like gun at it. I charged it as Reed removed a leg with an rpg. I slammed my HMG into the front of its slagged turret and fired at the AI core's direction.
It collapsed as Songbird sent a warning to us of four barghest painted Militech attack helicopters encircling us. All four had two large missiles pods and a massive rotary cannon. These were the type of helicopters Militech used in war for hunting tanks and swarming battleships.
As I locked onto the copters hundreds of drones shot into the air. Each one began peppering me from every side. Missiles and 13mm rounds slammed into me, and dust shot up in a blinding cloud.