Iron Drumbeat Chapter 3 (Patreon)

I woke instantly. There wasn't any of that slow, painful crawl into consciousness that normally came with regaining it. More by habit than anything else, I reached for the dented and weather worn steel canteen of water I kept beside my sleeping mat. Instead, I got a handful of dirt, along with something cold, hard, and rough.

Pushing myself up into a sitting position, I stared down at my hand like a confused and bedraggled alley cat. It was definitely dirt, plus a rusted old iron bolt.

I let the rough, dry soil fall through my fingers and grasped the small, aged piece of metal more firmly between my thumb and forefinger. They looked strange… thin, perhaps even dainty, and, well… transparent.

My arm was worse, all fucked and wispy, like— like fog. I scrambled in place, staring down at my own body as it continued to coalesce out of the eld-fog. I was coming back! I was alive, which was crazy because if I was right, I'd croaked back there in the fog.

A neon. Me, a bloody neon. How? What made the fog choose me out of all the countless unlucky bastards who'd just regular-old died in the fog?

Even as I freaked out about it, I watched my new weird pretty fingers solidify. My arms followed close behind, and down their length from the tips of my fingers curved a series of stylised smoke-like markings. They stopped at mid forearm, then pulsed with a gentle red light before fading from view.

I stared down in wonder and utter bafflement at my arm. Neons were legends. Mercenaries, kings, celebrities, and so much more. They were universally unstoppable for two simple reasons. First, they never died permanently, and second, they were the only people capable of wielding raw arcane power.

Magic was a fact of reality in the world since long before I'd been born, but for the overwhelming majority of humanity, it was inaccessible. A fair number of folks could interface with machines on a deeper level using a gift called mechanomancy. Others could see and shape echoes, the afterimages that the living could leave behind when they died or underwent an emotional event. Fabricans were the most common, with their innate and uncanny ability to improve an object, tool, or machine.

But, it was the neons who could bundle magic up into a tight little ball and punch a hole in half a metre of steel plate. It was neons who could launch a car fifteen metres into the air with nothing but a gesture and a thought. They were beyond powerful, given the time to grow and learn.

Now, I was one. A neon.

I sat there in some unknown place, staring at a rusted bolt as my body rebuilt itself out of the fog. This time, my legs decided not to multiply, but rather to just not show up at all. They ended at mid-thigh, where the flesh twisted like it’d been turned to putty and pulled off. Honestly, it was an improvement over having altogether too many legs.

It wasn’t just my legs that’d mutated, though. My whole body felt off, like my very bones had moved subtly during the fight with the abomination cops.

Carefully, like I was teasing an ord-chip from the pocket of a merc, I patted myself down. Hips were a tiny bit wider, waist was a little off too, and I could tell by the way my simple synthetic t-shirt hung that my shoulders were smaller. It was like everything above my belly button had shrunk by a smidge. Including the hands that were doing the feeling. The weirdest part was my chest, which felt… raw.

Pulling my collar away from my body, I anxiously peered down at myself. Then, as quick as lightning and with a fuckton more terror, I pressed the garment flat again. Gods, were those really what I thought they were?

I took another peek, and then slapped my shirt back. That sent a whole world of pain sizzling up my nerves, and I yelped in surprise. Oh no! Why did I have tits? What the fuck?

A sudden thought tiptoed into my head like a combat mech trying to sneak into a corner store. Which is to say, it wasn’t subtle, and neither was I when I clasped my smaller, feminine hands to my crotch. Nothing, not a single damn thing was down there. At least, nothing external… but now that I was paying attention…

Deep breaths, Skit, deep breaths. It’s not like having your bits swapped out is the worst mutation that could’ve happened. There were even people who did it voluntarily in the upper districts!

Yeah, nah, yeah… this was fine. Buuuuut— I’d better do a visual check just to make sure.

I pulled the elastic of my pants away from my malnourished hips and squinted. Oh. Yup. Yes. Uh huh. That was exactly what I thought it was. I’d seen a few so far in my life, although not in a sexual setting, and that was about what I’d expected to see. Funny, though, that I actually thought it looked sorta better than the bits I’d had earlier. Like, it was smoother, more streamlined, you know? I guess it was probably not very manly to think of a dick as a weird growth between your legs… but come on. I know other guys never said anything, but they had eyes.

A second of tangled and conflicted thoughts later, and something else occurred to me. Was I hot? Had my face changed?

Pulling my small hand mirror out of my pocket, I angled the carefully bound shard up and turned it this way and that. I looked… the same? Mostly. My eyelashes were thicker, I think, or maybe it was my green eyes that were bigger? My lips were sorta curvier too, but not by much. My nose was still a bit too big, and my eyebrows were still threatening to join forces, so it was definitely me, but just a tad girlier. Even my short, messy dark hair was the same. Evidently the eld-fog didn’t even give me a brushing before it put me back together like a distracted toddler.

Right. Yeah, this all made a whole ton of sense. As much sense as a god damn— a damn— stupid thing. Blasted fog was fuckin’ with me! That had to be it. What in the hell other reason could there be for my bits being swapped while the two coppers fell apart and turned into creepy monsters. Actually the second part was arguably just a physical transition. I’d always thought them coppers were a little sus. Nobody puts on a helmet that looks like a literal bell-end unless they’re at least a little fucky upstairs.

Alright Skitz, what’s next? You’re somehow still alive, you’re a girl, and you’re a neon. None of those things are inherently bad, not even the first one. A girl though. There’d been times in the past where I wondered idly what my friends and crew would do if I just walked into the hideout as a pretty lady. Just to entertain myself on a stake-out or whatever.

A metallic groan cut my rampaging thoughts short, and I suddenly became very aware of my immobility. Oh man, I might not be able to stay dead, but that didn’t mean dying again would be a wonderful and peaceful experience. With that in mind, I focused on my surroundings.

Oh.

Towering over the surrounding area was a small mountain of scrap and trash. Small on the scale of actual mountains, not piles of trash, which meant it was the biggest scrap heap I'd ever seen.

The air was thick with the smell of rust and the distant sounds of machinery still attempting to function despite how buggered it was. Long shadows seemed to twist and dance over the debris, making it hard to focus on any one thing. The mountain was a scrum of discarded items from every imaginable place and time.

Ancient relics mixed with modern crap, creating a dizzying collage of rusted gears, broken screens, and shattered neon signs. The whole thing looked like an art piece by some trustafarian pretending solidarity with lowers like me.

Up high, I could see half of a spaceborne cargo transport. Its flimsy skeletal frame was bent in a dozen places, while the small hab module was breached and corroded. Solar panels lay shattered and broken around it, their filthy surfaces only just able to reflect the light from the eld-lands black sun.

Closer to me, I recognized a high-end fridge, although it was missing a door and long-decayed food was stuck to the inside. A dozen or so metres away, the burned out husk of an armoured copper's airtruck sat on its side. Then just beyond that was a vehicle that didn't even look like it'd been designed by a human mind.

The entire scene was enveloped by the eld-fog, obscuring the outer edges of the scrapyard and cloaking the whole place in an eerie, lonely vibe. Like it was trying to tell me something, a pulsating tendril of moisture arched and pointed deeper into the pile. That sent shivers down my spine. Surely the eld-fog wasn’t alive, right?

“Oh? You’re new!”

I squealed, my legs kicking like mad as my heart attempted to jump out of my chest. Of course, my kicking was fruitless, and my thighs just wiggled oddly.

Hovering in midair was a strange and rusty drone. It sat on a trio of gently humming thrusters, bobbing up and down while it automatically adjusted its balance. Out of either side of the orb that was its body, two misshapen arms hung, both of which had clearly been installed far after it left the factory. In the centre of the main body, a cracked screen displayed two simple cartoon eyes which were currently staring at me in fascination. Balanced precariously on the top of the strange drone was the jagged bottom half of tin can, which made it vaguely resemble a crown.

“A little damaged, but that’s fine,” the distinctly digital masculine voice said excitedly. “After all, I’m sure we can find you some spare parts somewhere in my kingdom!”