So we walked, and we talked. There were endless places to stroll to, and the destination wasn’t all that important... which didn’t mean I wasn’t being fed hints and suggestions from the cheering section all the time.

I told him to go first with the life story, as I pretty sure his was longer than my own personal one was. He sighed and unburdened himself of things he’d been keeping tight to his chest for more than twenty years.

It quickly became obvious he was a template, like me. He’d been self-aware from birth, identified as Briggs, had insisted on it since he was a toddler, and officially changed it when he was four. Briggs Ergen Rikkodivich, actually, although nobody ever called him anything but Briggs.

I listened to stories of his childhood, a poor family Underspire who really couldn’t afford a kid growing up an Ancient, and he’d escaped from them up to the streets of Downspire, where his size, strength, and Levels for his age carved him a place among the homeless and the street kids, and the fact he was way smarter than they gave him credit for helped in all sorts of ways.

Pit fights and street brawls soon evolved into nasty caged matches for money, while on the side he was building up funds and the knowledge and skills to be a tech armorer, as the levels of opponents who could fight him had to get more and more cybered, and he began to progressively armor up to face them.

He had a hard and very well-deserved reputation as a borg-smashing terror in the arena league he had graduated to, fighting in front of major crowds for big money, which led to where he was now. The only reason he wasn’t more famous was because he didn’t pander to the fight fixers, and indeed had some violent altercations with them. Unfortunately, there was no stopping his fans, and his fightviews dwarfed all his competition.

Money talked, and so he’d been relentlessly moving up the rankings, while the cyborgs ahead of him tried to think of some way to deal with him. Nothing organic was supposed to be that damn strong and fast, after all.

Then, of course, it was my turn.

------

“Well, damn.”

We were in a park atop Grumblespire, having strolled more than twenty miles along pedways and highways during our conversation, pretty much ignoring everyone. We’d gone off-topic many times, appreciated the sights, ridiculed the sights, and finally plopped down in a pair of public seats, chased off everyone nearby with mutual glares, and just chatted.

He wasn’t all that perturbed to find out he’d been Templated to begin with. As a matter of fact, he considered himself damn lucky, as Ancients like himself generally weren’t too bright, and he definitely put others like himself to shame. The template made him smart, insightful, and gave him access to knowledge and discipline early on in his life, which had profited him ever since.

He was a Ten Source, without a doubt the most powerful one in the whole city, and probably the Planet, given that his only rival was likely to be some other Ancient. The grimdark of this place didn’t get him down, it just gave him something to overcome. He had chosen a unique route, and was carrying it forwards to the end.

Which meant he’d sworn an Oath, to stand on top of the Arena Rankings, and pretty much nothing and nobody was going to stop him. I couldn’t rope him in right now, because of that Oath, but afterwards, well...

We were gonna do some abso-smurfly incredible shit together.

I sent him a file, and he opened it, poring over the specs for a Shield Focus, and grinning toothily. “Oh, nice. This will really supplement the Force Shield I use in matches nicely.”

“I see you have the full Mark IV Vajra. I don’t think that comes with the Briggs template, it’s something Ma worked out later. How did you figure it out?”

“Well, the psionic stuff came when some punk of a mindblade cut me with his little psychic knife... and my Sun didn’t unmake it. That kind of proved it was transpsionic and not subject to the normal rules. I beat his face in and had him cut me a dozen more times before I figured out how it was interacting with my Sun, used the logic that normal folks are psions who can’t use psi so they never develop it, and bink, there it was, sitting right there ready to be developed.

“And if we could amass a Psionic Reserve, it was plain we could do a magical one.” He did give me a stink-eye. “Four damn Caster Class Levels for free with each of your Racial Levels? That is insane, girl!”

“Ah, that,” I purred, and his big mouth pursed at the look I was giving him. “We both know Mithar plays the deep game, and Mom, well, she’s a pretty cunning bitch, too. There is only one reason you would be on the same planet with me at the same time as me, you know?”

He nodded agreement. “We were put here together to find one another and work together.” His nostrils were flaring, and he could definitely see and smell where this was going.

“Ignoring the fact that you look totally scrumptious and your Source Sun is so damn ticklish, there is absolutely no way either of them would want you to be categorically inferior to me. So I’m betting there’s a little something special that just might happen between Rantha Hags and Ancients...”

Even as he was grinning at me, he was still thinking. “What? A Rantha Hagspawn Ancient?”

I opened my eyes in delight. “You forgot ‘Advanced’. And maybe, for you, Exemplar Lite...”

He breathed like a bellows, full of fire swimming in the air. “You look like a moving statue. Your Null feels like this cold, pure steel my Source is just washing over, and you smell like a field of flowers, leather, and woodsmoke... in heat.” He grunted, obviously controlling himself. “My place or yours?”

I held up my hand, and a grinning Fyr dropped down in a modded flitter from above. “My place is gonna have a lot of ghosts watching.”

“I gather that’s by design?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then let’s give them a hell of a show.”

------------

After a performance where even the ghosts are cheering...

I stretched out slow and hard, muscles crackling, ligaments sliding, sinews popping, working everything precisely and evenly after that night... and day, and into the night.

He watched it all, but even with full physical control, he couldn’t bestir himself right now.

Pretty much nothing living was going to be able to watch me right now, but he wasn’t looking away, and he didn’t have any problems, his Source fully effective against the transmagical effects.

That didn’t mean he didn’t want to get right back up and start anew, but he just didn’t have it in him.

“I so gotta learn them Night Rose disciplines,” he mumbled under his breath, unable to tear his eyes away.

I turned around with just enough hipswing to make him groan, but lo, he was defeated, and just laid there sprawled in the mass of cushions, pillows, and sheets that had been spread, gathered, spread, and gathered over the course of the night-day-night.

I had silently instructed the ghosts to vent the place into the building’s air supply, and the reports that had come in had proclaimed last night a very healthy and active period for all concerned. Pheromones ftw!

“You just became a dad 256 times over,” I congratulated him, gliding up to him and sliding up his hairy chest, to stop at his face. Like sliding over an air conditioning vent, the perfect temperature.

The expression on his face was quite comical. “Are you kidding me?” he asked slowly, hands coming up around my waist. He could almost circle it with one hand, and his thumbs stroked my navel. “I mean, you can’t... can you?”

“Well, I probably couldn’t keep up with the food requirements, but with compression tech it’s technically possible.” I bent down and nuzzled that wonderfully flat nose. “But no, I’ve got the Vats ready to go. Same ones my girls grew in.”

“Huh. Haaaah...” He looked up at the ceiling, which had also suffered some excited abuse from fists and heads. “Still, 256?”

“I have to empty out the ovaries, but fast healing regens them all in minutes. And the ghosts who definitely want to enjoy themselves like that provided the souls. There’s going to be a whole lot of Briggs’ coming out for my girls to play with.”

“What... won’t they be, like, half-sisters, or something?”

“Going through the Rantha Curse means they are no more genetically related than an annis is to the girl they used to be. They look like me because they are Rantha Hags, not because they inherited anything genetically... except for the Advanced Template, and that’s because I’m an ExLite.”

“That’s a lot of sons and daughters...”

“Sons.” He blinked. “Hey, can only have sons OR daughters by others, depends on race. The world obviously needs more Briggs!”

His expression worked again. “It most certainly does,” he agreed finally. “But they’ll be my sons, right? How’s that going to work with you?”

“The Hag Curse nominally gives Hagspawn the Advanced template and a modified version of the Hag sisterhood, making the sons obedient to mom. They’re already going to be Advanced, because their folks are ExLites, so I think you lads get the Briggs template dumped on you instead.”

He tilted his head, and grinned. “Well, at least I can add something to the bloodline!”

I sat up on his thick waist and traced my nails down him. It was like scoring steel plate, and the severed hair regrew basically instantly. Point to point to point... he groaned and closed his eyes. “Goddamn, I have GOT to learn the Night Rose shit...” He peeked up at me, lights dancing in his eyes, in more ways than one. “So, what’s the story with those?” His hands spidered up my sides and converged on That Bust, out there and defying physics. His hands were more than large enough to swallow them, but I grabbed his thumbs and put them down on my Dragon Heart Tattoo.

His thumbs pressed down, and the pyramidal Tat de-Powered one by one. As it did, That Bust and all the aural effects centered on it rapidly faded, shrank down, and when the Tat was suppressed, he had bigger tits than I did.

“Those... are for you, and for people who are about to die,” I told him, as his hands wandered over my smooth pecs.

“Plus Soulcaster Level to Health means you get cleavage? Do they shrink if you take damage?” he wondered aloud, distracted by the mechanics.

“Yes, but they fast heal, too. And I don’t have to carry around gravity-defying SSI’s that cause accidents wherever I go. I’m pretty sure all the girls who want cleavage are going to stay at one bar on the Tat once they get their Mark IV, and it’s still going to turn heads.”

He poked my Tat, and the first bar lit up. My cleavage swelled in response.

“You know I’m going to have tons of fun with that,” he said shamelessly.

“Oh?” He winced as he heard the smile in my voice, and my Tats hummed again. Like the Dragon Heart, the benefits couldn’t be ephemeral or ectoplasmic anymore, so the Arakne Arms flowed out from my ribs, and the primary succubus tail and four lilithi tails arced up over my head and shoulders like feather trains, because all five were poofy white, and the center one was glowing red. No manticore spikes around any of them at the moment, however.

His lips made an O.

“Would you like me to spread my wings?” I asked him, as my second set of arms began to dance over his belly, caressing a steel drum.

He swallowed. “The answer is ‘Yes, please,’, and ‘You were going easy on me’...”

I smiled toothily. “You start taking those Rantha Hagspawn Levels I’m sure you can now, and we’ll see about who is going to have fun with who...”