Jill had only spent about three minutes more chatting with Mia after sending Babu the dimensional customization skill before the young man sprinted into view, a grin on his face.

“That. Is. CRAZY!” He waved his arms about. “You have a TARDIS! Well except for the time bit and the space bit but the relative dimensions are there!” He went down on his knees into the muddy remains of the grass, hands clasped. “You have to let me help you design the internal layout. Please! The turrets could all be next to each other inside and there could be a maze for invading monsters and you could have a waterfall!”

“Told you,” Jill said to Mia, who was holding back laughter. “A waterfall, huh?” Jill made a hmming noise, one finger tapping her chin. “Too messy, you’re out.”

Babu clutched his chest, made a croaking noise, and keeled over face first into the mud. Well, mostly mud. There were a lot of ex-monster bits and fluids about, which splashed up upon his impact to get on Jill and Mia’s shoes.

“Oh gross,” Mia said, taking a quick step backwards. “I can’t believe you just did that.”

Ras, sitting on the edge of Bertha’s roof from his time as a lookout, shook his head and called down. “I’m not. He’s always goofed around.”

“Fucking committment to the bit is what it is.” Jill said. She prodded Babu with a toe. “Oy, you going to get up or drown in there? Also, meet Mia, she’s riding with us for a while.”

Babu raised his head out of the muck and spat to clear his mouth. “We already met. Hi Mia! And hell yeah, we got a chaingun!”

Mia tisked. “Blossom is mine, thank you very much. But…” she eyed Bertha’s turrets. “I really want to see if she’ll work up there.”

Jill grinned. “That would be wicked awesome. Go on in.”

“I’ll show her around!” Babu said, springing up from the ground, dripping.

“Don’t you dare get that shit all over -,” Jill began to say, but stopped when Babu shimmered, the muck evaporating off him and leaving him as clean as if he’d just showered. “Well. Ok then.”

Babu extended an arm melodramatically, and Mia took hold of it before following him into Bertha. Babu said something Jill couldn’t quite make out, and Mia laughed.

Jill tilted her head, watching them go. “Huh, well that might become a thing,” she muttered under her breath.

Ras, who apparently had exceptional hearing, snorted. “It always is, until it’s very loudly not. It won’t last.”

“Seriously? You’ve been ragging on him all day. What porcupine crawled up your ass and flexed?” Jill asked.

Ras opened his mouth, then clamped it shut. “Nothing. I just - he-,” he stammered, “I’m just worried about our family. We’re going soon, right?”

“Yeah,” Jill said. She didn’t think he was really telling the truth, to her or to himself. “Just a quick drive and then we’re off.”

“Ok. Well. Good.” Ras retreated across Bertha’s roof and out of sight.

Jill rolled her eyes, then dove back into her boxes. It was time to start thinking about what would help her most. She forced herself to think of the worst moment of the fight last night, when Bertha had been trapped by the Elder Boa. It hadn’t been crushing Bertha fast, as Bertha’s slow regeneration had blunted the worst of the constriction, but it had been powerful enough to deal serious damage to the armor, unlike a lot of the smaller monsters. If Mia hadn’t opened fire things could have gone very badly. Jill was definitely going to be adding a turret for her. She needed some way to quickly heal Bertha when they encountered a heavy hitter, and she had just the thing for it.

Hold Together - Active - Spell

Repairs 1400 durability worth of damage and for 1 minute increases physical and elemental resistances by 14% for soulbound modular vehicle ‘Bertha’.

Cost: 10 Mana

Numbers flashed through her head in a way they never would have before, a consequence of her increased mind statistic. In its base form, the spell had an efficiency of 100 durability per mana, the same ratio as Bertha’s durability to Jill’s mana pool, as they both scaled off of her Spirit: draining her mana completely would heal Bertha from nothing. But with the bonuses to her class from having exceeded its prerequisites and from having Bertha soulbound in the first place, it would only take 71% of her mana pool, which was… good? Jill sighed in annoyance. Mind made her better at math, but it didn’t give her any context. It certainly seemed like a valuable improvement.

Letting those thoughts fall to the side, Jill bought her first class power. It felt different than upgrading Bertha: where that was like something in the palm of her hand twisting and changing, this was like her hand itself growing an extra finger. She just had to flex the new digit, and the mana would do her bidding. It wasn’t a painful change, but it felt like she was becoming less ‘Jill’ when it happened. She didn’t like the feeling very much at all.

Remembering something Babu had said about unlocking new abilities, Jill checked her class powers screen again.

Available Class Powers

Hold Together, Upgrade (1)

Increase the effect of Hold Together by 14%.

Convoy - Passive - Spell

Allied vehicles within 120 meters of soulbound modular vehicle ‘Bertha’ gain 12% durability. Requires Level 10 Battle Trucker, Hold Together.

Blockade Runner - Active - Spell

Increases the speed and decreases the detectability of soulbound modular vehicle ‘Bertha’ by 14% for 1 minute. Requires Level 10 Battle Trucker, Hold Together.

Cost: 10 Mana

A Deal’s a Deal - Active - Spell

The next agreement you enter becomes a system contract.The other party must be of sound mind to enter into a System Contract. If the other party breaks the contract they will receive a penalty of 12% that lasts for 1 system year. You may waive the penalty at any time.

Cost: 100 Mana

Battle Hardened - Passive

Increase physical, elemental, and mental resistances by 12%.

Jill almost reflexively sent the new powers to Babu to look at, but held back. She didn’t want to distract him after all.

The new available powers, Convoy and Blockade Runner, didn’t excite her very much. While they were both potentially useful, the first would only help if they came across other functioning vehicles. The second was more interesting, and Jill snorted at the sudden vision of Bertha done up in ninja clothes. But she didn’t think that a fourteen percent reduction was going to stop anyone from noticing what was now a sixty ton machine going past. Her truck was loud and proud. It might eventually become something worthwhile, but in the meantime those class power points would do far more being applied to Bertha directly.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a feeling of detachment from Bertha, and a notification:

Tier 1 shotgun addon from ‘Bertha’ small arms turret 2 removed.

Babu and Mia must have gotten around to trying to install her chaingun.

Integrating addon to ‘Bertha’ small arms turret 2.

Tier 2 soulbound rotary cannon ‘Blossom’ detected. ‘Blossom’ exceeds turret Tier, statistics reduced to peak Tier 1. Mana crossfeed enabled. Mana cost per discharge: 10.

“Fuck yeah!” Jill said, hurrying to climb into the truck and try the gun out for herself. Right after getting into the cab she heard the rapid fire hammering of a machine gun firing. A glance at the mana gauge showed that the draw was about double the regeneration rate though, so while Bertha could drive forever, it would have to pause occasionally while firing. With the rate at which the gauge was falling however, it looked like she could support many minutes of continuous fire.

Jill scowled at the mana gauge. While that kind of estimation had been alright with her before, it wasn’t anymore. Exactly how long they could fire when still, or fire when driving, could be a matter of life and death, and if her thoughts earlier showed anything it was that her new mind score could handle exact numbers. A flex of will, channelled through the customization power, changed the gauge to a digital display. Bertha had a regeneration of 95 mana per second, with an idling consumption of 9.5, which spiked to 209.5 when the gun was firing. That came out to twenty rounds per second, a healthy rate of fire for a person portable machine gun, but below what a true multi-barreled weapon could do. As for how long they could shoot: with no other factors, 498 seconds of continuous fire. Which was incredible. But she would have to see how much mana driving and repairs cost to get a more accurate battlefield estimate.

She went to go into the trailer and stopped, staring at her sad little living area. Now that it wasn’t the heat of battle, having to step over her bed was ridiculous. There was a long road ahead of them and they’d all need to sleep, so she purchased the habitation module’s upgrade to tier 1.

Upgrading Habitation Module to Tier 1! Prepare for mana integration.

Jill felt the changes happening through her bond to Bertha, but this time she was standing in the epicenter. Waves of gold mana shimmered just below every surface as the interior of the truck shifted and changed. Her bed popped up to its normal height, momentarily blocking the door to the trailer, before it bulged, growing wider until it split in two. The back of the cab ballooned sideway as the beds snapped to the outer walls. Pipes snaked into being and near each bed a sink, shower, and toilet grew. Partitioning walls sprung up and doors formed. When the process finished Jill was left standing in a corridor from the driving area to the trailer, with one door on each side.

Habitation

‘Bertha’ has a habitation module with basic amenities and capacity for 2. Life support capacity for 4.

Includes: Single Beds, Unisex Washrooms, Workspace

Addons (0/1): None

Habitation Upgrades:

Restful Sleep (0/1): All allies who rest in the Habitation Module receive increased physical and psychological healing rates.

Unseen Servant (0/3): Weak manifestations of force will see to the maintenance of the Habitation Module and resident’s possessions.

Bunkroom (0/5): Increases the capacity, life support, and volume of the Habitation Module by 2.4x, and by 1 addon slot.

She opened the door on her right, peering into one of the rooms. It was spartan in appearance and mostly made of bare metal, but the toilet, sink, and shower were in their own little sectioned off room, and there was enough space next to the bed for a desk to extend from the wall with a chair tucked underneath it. Basic was the right word for it, and Jill wouldn’t want to spend all of her time there, but as a place to crash and have a little privacy it was perfect.

Jill closed the door and reached out with her customization power to engrave her name onto it. The others would probably want rooms of their own, but there was a risk to spending too many of her class power points on options that didn’t help Bertha to survive. Plus Babu and Ras might be leaving her very soon, so it didn’t make sense to add more rooms just yet.

“Wait, is this new? This seems new!” Mia said from behind Jill. She and Babu had come down from the rear turret and were standing in the doorway to the trailer gawking at the changes.

“Habitation?!” Babu said. He darted forward and reached towards Jill’s door, hesitated, then opened the one on the other side instead. “Coooool! Well, it's actually kind of bland, couldn’t you have spiced things up a bit?”

“What do I look like, a goddamn interior designer?” Jill said, smacking the man on the shoulder. She turned to Mia. “How's the gun working? I got a notice saying it was too high a tier and was reduced to one.”

Mia’s eyes went wide. “Oh that's what it is! I was wondering why the fire rate was so much lower. The unlimited ammo is amazing, but being stuck at tier one is, like, lame. You should upgrade the turret so that I can really hose things down.”

“How?”

Mia tilted her head to the side, then gave a shrug. “For me it just popped up when I was level,” she paused for a moment, “I want to say nineteen. I’d put most of my class power points into Blossom and had just maxed the fire rate and was feeling bummed.”

Babu squinted in thought. “So it could have been the number of points you put in. Or maxing out a module. Or something else.”

Mia shook her head. “Blossom doesn’t have modules. She gets gun upgrades and special powers, but nothing like, well,” she gestured to the hallway and still open sleeping quarters, “nothing like this!”

Jill nodded. “Bertha’s pretty special, but we’ll figure it out. Until then I can still upgrade the turrets some more if we need more firepower.” She sent Mia the box for the superchargers upgrade.

The woman’s eyes grew wide. “Omg,” she said the letters aloud, “does it stack?” she clasped her hands together. “We have to try it! Please?”

Babu sidestepped next to her and copied her pose. “Extra pretty please? Think of the bullets!”

Jill snorted. “Fucking adorable, the pair of you. Fine, I’m buying the first level, go see if it works.” She pushed her mana towards the ability. It resisted for the shortest moment, then let go with a rush that dragged even more mana along with it. Something shifted in Bertha’s turrets, like a pair of animals perking up on hearing prey.

Mia grabbed Babu’s hand and dragged him down the hallways and through the door, back towards the trailer and the awaiting experiment.

Jill waited until the door had sealed before whistling. “Oh they are so going to bone,” she muttered to herself as she went forward. She went through the new door to the cab, then hopped out the passenger side door. Just after she did, Blossom fired again into the air, the long burst noticeably faster than before. The gun was painfully loud without Bertha’s insulation between Jill and it, but she still couldn’t help but smile. She might tease the younger pair, but there was something exciting even to her about excessive firepower, and the tracer infused stream of bullets arcing away certainly qualified.

“Hooah! Hell of a sight!”

“Sugardick!” Jill yelled as she jumped in shock, her heart pounding. She swung her gaze around to see who had spoken and nearly swore again when Amelie suddenly appeared in her vision, leaning casually against Bertha like she’d been there all along. Given how the pregnant woman was grinning, she probably had been doing so, using some sort of power to avoid notice, and had enjoyed Jill’s reaction.

“We good to roll out? My squad will be here in five.”

“Almost,” Jill said. “Just a little bit of slimming down to do.” She gestured towards the new section of the truck between the cab and the trailer. The truck would probably drive just fine - magic made a lot of bullshit possible after all - but it was now much wider than a single lane, wide enough to block the view from the side mirrors and cause problems if they needed to thread any gaps.

She purchased the dimensional customization power, and her connection to Bertha surged yet again. For a moment her vision twisted and her stomach screamed in protest; Jill nearly puked. Luckily the changes weren’t happening to her body, but to Bertha’s, and their bond offered a degree of separation. Through it the truck seemed to be twisting inside out, spinning, and turning to jelly, all except for the outer skin which remained firm. From the doors, windows, and turrets that feeling of stability bled inwards, pinning the truck back into reality.

“You ok?” Amelie asked.

“Yeah. Class power. A weird-ass one,” Jill said. Her stomach still felt like it was going to try to crawl out of her mouth, but at least now it would negotiate before doing so. Jill ignored it and pushed mana through to dimensional customization, an image of Bertha as she’d been ten minutes before in her mind. The bulge of the habitation section shrank bit by bit, and the truck grew shorter, dragging its wheels through the mud as it went, as the outer dimensions went back to normal.

The new power had amazing potential, but she’d have plenty of time to explore that later. Now it was time to get things done. As for other upgrades, she’d have to wait and see exactly what was needed. As it stood, her girl could take a beating and now dish one out right back.

“Ready when you are, Captain.”