The Wellspring of the Grey One

[Greycat]

Because why not?

[Greycat]

A Milo Story

"Hey!" someone's shrill and excited voice cut into your relaxation, almost causing you to upset the tea and saucer of little sandwiches you had made for your afternoon snack. You scowl, not just because of the near miss, but because you recognize the voice and it's tone. Sure enough, Milo was gamboling towards you, almost tripping over his paws in his excitement, his bag bouncing behind him.

"Hey, hey! Look what I made!" he says in that infernal cheer of his, pulling a slightly crushed and well creased excuse for large folded paper and pushing it into your grasp. It looked as if he had roughly crumpled and folded it before stuffing it into his bag and searching for you. He gave you those wide bright eyes of his and a look that begged for approval. It made you want to cuff him and ask if you were his guardian or something. Still, you took it, because the best way to get rid of Milo was just to smile and nod at his latest item of fancy.

Sighing, you shake the sheet open so you can look at the darn thing, make the proper noises and hopefully send him away and get back to your meal. It was a rough blueprint and theory sketch of something. Easy enough. But the casual glimspe turned into startled focus as details leap off the sheet and seconds stretch.

"Well?" Milo asked pleadingly as he dances in place from barely suppressed pride and excitement.

"... you designed a doomsday device?"

"Wha-NO!" Milo said, his indignation stilling him. "It's a weather stabilizer! It hyper ionizes the atmosphere around it and uses Luuc Nembhard principles to control the air pressure at a precise level. You can make it rain, or get the perfect partially cloudy day with just the right balance of humidity and even make the best cloud formations! Even adjust the temperature and the wind conditions and keep them that way for hours at a time between uses!"

"What about this part here," you said as Milo started bubbling again, tapping on of the graphs in the corner.

"Oh, that's the shunt projection. The hyper ionization builds up while you are setting things up, so you have to ground the energy. The earth is the best grounding ever, so I figured out how to using the geosphere's natural neutral charge to neutralize the energy before the backwash of it upsets the pattern you made."

"Milo..." you say in your 'I'm talking to crazy children' tone, trying to get him to see what you did, "how does the shunt work?"

"Well, it can either just be a slow continuous release at the other end of the pathway the field progagation subroutine sustains," he pointed to a few lines of calculations, "or an instantaneous discharge into the earth."

"Either a release of pressure or lightning?" you say cautiously.

"Right!" Milo said exuberantly, thrilled that you go his concept so easily. "I got the idea from pots. You know when you boil something? And the steam goes PSHEW! out from one little part of the lid? It's the same thing. The other one is from static. It sparks. The shunt's field is like a giant blanket and the ground is like your finger."

"Milo... you project a 200 kilometer range on this," you point out, resisting the urge to slap your forehead with your palm. Or slap him.

"Well, duh! Didn't you pay attention in geography class? Any closer and the microsystem the shunt creates would interfere with the one you make and you have to start all over again!"

"Milo... you can make freak weather or send massive bolts of electricity down on something from 200 kilometers away with this," you sigh, hitting the nail on the head.

"Um... maybe? That's only if you let it supercharge. You don't have to run the power cell that high to change the local weather. Hey! I can show this to professor Bedson! He can help me find someone I can make the prototype with!" Milo quickly snatches his work from you.

"Hey, Milo, wait!" you said in protest, trying to stop him, but he was already charging off on a new quest.

[Greycat]

A Weird Tangential Waste of Wellspring: A Splicing Story

Inwardly, I smiled as the wolfpup begged at my feet, trying his best to move my heart with his pleading eyes. I did so love it when they begged. Of course, his attempts didn’t hold candle to the looks one such as Fenix could produce when his heart was in it, but I pretended to be stricken.

“Very well,” I sighed, the frustrated roll of my eyes adding a sense of veracity to my performance. “I suppose I could prep biolab 3.”

“Really! You’re the best!” Wolfern said, his tail wagging with joy.

If only he knew, I mused to myself reaching into the mists that always surged around me, unnoticed by my friends as it caressed my being, ever eager to please my whims, ever whispering secrets and knowledge in my ears, offering power and promise of what could be if I let them loose again. It had been a long time since the last occasion when I did. But today would not be one of those times. Instead, I fetched a small marble; a crystalized sedation spell.

Wolfern and Yellow had slipped into a discussion on some campaign in XCOM in the meanwhile, not something I deemed really worthy of my attention. Instead, I quested through the mist’s connection with the internet and found a song to play.

The first chords of Rainbow Factory rippled out from around me as I approached Wolfern. He paused his discussion, a small smile on his face as his ears flicked, appreciating the music. I placed a hand on his shoulder, the spell marble between my fingers, glowing ever so faintly before is sank into his body.

“Good Choi….” Wolfern’s voice wavered and faded as the sedation spell wasted on time knocking him own and keeping him that way. As he slumped, I caught him. My slight shifted slightly as a chuckle, laced with the faintest bit of malevolence, escaped me. Before megalomaniac could make itself pronounced, I misted away, the world swirling into incoherency, navigating with my mind and will rather than senses as I dove into my pocket reality.

I had some work to do.

-------

“Oh, I do so love it when they come willingly,” I said to myself as I emerged in the third biolab, Wolfern slung over my shoulder and the boundaries of the time dilation field tugging at me. I’ll admit; I lied when I said I needed to prep it. It was already waiting. Dimly lit, but generously supplied with technology, even a few spinning things and glass tubes with mysterious fluids bubbling inside to add atmosphere.

Four lesser stood in the room, their stares vacant; blank and devoid of all will and thought. Perfect for what I created them for. Clones, but imperfect ones; developed in body, but lacking in all but the most basic of mental capabilities, just enough to keep the body alive. Empty heads just waiting for someone with the right credentials to control.

I had the will and intent to spare, and more than enough lives to sustain the connection. I reached out with my mind, ridding tendrils of mists, touching each one, imparting a small kernel of will and instructions as I casually walked over to the circular pit in the room.

Singing softly to myself, I lay Wolfern down and gestured. The Lessers got to work, manning consoles around the room. Slender cables and tubes snakes from the roof and up from the floor, following the leading of the low powered sensors that pinpointed veins and arteries. They slid across Wolfern’s fur, piercing skin and flesh in multiple places. I myself fitted him with the muzzle mask just before the glass of the tube started forming.

There was a slight gurgle as the nutrient mix started filling the chamber Wolfern was in, the level raising rapidly. Those were the standard procedures; something even the most absently directed Lesser could manage. I focused on the genetics. I slid a claw into a port, and channeled the data I collected from the Mark 2 body into the system.

A three dimensional projection surrounded me; one part well spring, one part mist, one part control interface. Around me graphical representations of gene sequences, traits and more drifted in a chaotic dance that I took a moment to revel in. Readings from the sensors, mundane and magical alike, danced with them, telling me of his condition and prospects.

Before me Wolfern floated, suspended in the fluid that took over keeping him alive, healthy and sedated. Much like all the equipment in the room, it was a formulated mix of advanced technology, and advanced magic, all working to keep that precious little body alive, tissue fed with nutrients and energy, blood and spirit circulating through his form, the little heart beating…

“Alas, let me not waste time,” I murmured to myself, reaching out and touching the first representation, making it unfold, unveiling its secrets to me. “So many changes, so little time…”

-------

By the first week, the internal changes were well on their way, and the external ones were only just beginning to become apparent. His fur was changing, becoming denser, and that blasted blue pigmentation he wanted, dermal denticles weaving in amongst his strands.  

A few days later marked the completion of the mostly retractable webbing between the digits and the start of the gills under his ribs. I did spend some time ensuring the third eyelid was perfect, no use making someone capable of surviving beneath the waves if he couldn’t see anything. I even added a few neurons that would compensate for the worse of the distortion the water would cause.

The vocal chords and eardrums were tricky, but those were fully developed by the third week. His tail; now that was something I spend a lot of time thinking about. I settled on one strong and muscular, able to propel him through the water while the fins on his arms and legs did the steering. Unfortunately, I did have to give him flaps to close his nose, otherwise he would choke at higher swim speeds. The nasal cavity was only so wide, after all.

The new muscle mass through his core that would regular his temperature developed slowly, mostly because it developed alongside the new set of lungs, as well as the water bladders that would help regulate the saline levels in his blood and air bladders for buoyancy.

The hard part was balancing all those with his existing morphology and physiology. There was a reason sharks lived in water and wolves on land. Nothing a little chaos and creativity couldn’t overcome. The water sacs would keep him from dehydrating too quickly on land, the parallel lungs from suffocating.

All in all, the dance of biology and genetics, chaos birthing order took only four and half weeks. Ahead of schedule, if I did say so myself, which I did. I suppose I would have to come up with a name for this new pattern.  A form suited to both land and water had such… potential.

The last day came, and the fluids drained away, the intricate spellcraft around him breaking down, his suppressed consciousness flicking back to an active state. I didn’t let it, not yet anyway. Instead, I snatched him away with the mists, myself along with him, surging back through bubble of greatly accelerated time, and into really time. By my math, we were gone for less than an hour. Not quite at the level the Asgard could pull off, but still impressive.

“Wakey, wakey,” I chuckled at Wolfern as we reappeared in the chatroom. “Yellow has a cookie for you.”

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