I wiggle my legs around. This is going to take some getting used to.

I don't have any way to repair any damage to all of these plates, so after I burned away all the soft tissue and replaced it all with wood, I replaced all the metal tendons with vines also. I'm not sure how long I'll be able to get some use out of this body, so I built a new vine body designed for ultimate speed, with only barely enough room for my cores and hive, the wheels, and the flamethrower for thrust. There's no arms, and it looks like a medium sized dog when I don't fold up the legs. I shove it in the space where the organs of the centipede used to be, and leave it an escape hatch into the digestive organ area, and another escape hatch in the front and rear,

I link it to the centipede body with easily severable vines, and feel a lot more secure in the fact I can easily bail if I get into trouble.

My vines are not nearly as good as the metallic tendons previously moving the beast about, but I don't need a mouth or digestive organs, so I can compress the metal plates a bit and reduce the size and weight of the body by a fair amount, so I think I can go almost as fast as it could.

And this thing is fast. The mechanical advantage provided by all of these interlocking metal plates and cams is amazing. A small amount of force in the right places can throw around even the enormous weight of this creature's armor. I am amazed by the efficiency! Is it natural, or was it designed? I feel like answering that question is key to my future.

I'm a bit disturbed by the feeling that this is what my power was made for. Am I going to be stealing bodies often? I hope not, this is both creepy and gross.

The best part, which makes up for all the flaws, is that this centipede possesses metallic eyes which integrate into my senses quite easily. They appear to see in some other spectrum of light, since I can't see color, but I can no longer tell the difference between light and dark, so it balances out.

Getting used to all the legs is going to be a pain though.

I grow fern leaves all down the spine of my new centipede form, mount my flamethrower-limb between the eyes, and detach both the big beefy vine arms I painstakingly crafted recently, and the smaller original vine arms I made, and think about where to put them. I want arms, but I don't want to look dumb. After a while, I give up, and mount both the smaller arms under my chin, and one beefy arm on each side. I don't fit through the hallway very well with them out, but the vine arms are very flexible and can lay flat when not in use.

Satisfied, I turn around, chewing at the rock with surprising ease, and stumble crookedly down the hallway, wobbling back and forth as I headed back to the cafeteria.

.................

I've arrived, and the battle is still raging, if you can call it that. The centipede is missing more metal than it was before, but it has killed angry rodents by the score.

Bob sends me a quick message. "You're not used to this, yet, and the centipede is ignoring you. Didn't you want to go get the Sun Orb?"

He's got a point. As much as I want to grab another massive soul orb and mana core, I haven't even added the others to my system yet. I'm not sure what will happen if I add a soul to my body that's stronger than mine, but given what happened when I was born in the zombie, I can guess that I wouldn't like it.

With a little reluctance, mostly thinking about all those rodent cores the centipede has painstakingly harvested for me, I line up next to the barricade and begin digging through the wall.

...........

A great while and some rodent chewing later, I make it to the place where it all began.

Once I reach the Sun Orb, I'm struck by how odd it looks in my new vision. It only glows faintly, and I can see weird paths across its surface resembling very fine circuitry. After studying it for a while, I'm a bit less sure of what I'm about to do. What if it doesn't like being stolen? Does it have defenses?

I've come this far, might as well follow through, but a little caution might be in order. I make a psionic connection to the, what did Grimal call it? Defense core? I make a psionic connection to the Defense core, and it loudly shouts at me. "DEFEND"

"Ey, stop that! You startled me!"

A quieter voice follows. "Defend?"

"Um, sure, let's defend. Want to kill some monsters?"

"Command not found. Help?"

"Help?"

"Commands available:

Defend: Unrestricted

Attack: Administrator only

Construct: Unrestricted

Manufacture: Administrator only

To see more commands, please use the command "login"and enter your credentials."

I know Grimal described this like a computer but this is a little eerie.

Let's try the old standby.

"Login"

"Username?"

"admin"

"Password?"

"password"

"credentials invalid."

Aww, damn, it was worth a try.

Suddenly I recieve another transmission from the core. "defend?"

It's very quiet and there's a definite plaintive air to it. It definitely sounds like a question.

Is this thing alive?

Holy Crow, the poor thing. How bored is it, after sitting here for who knows how long? And I killed its zombies, that had to have made a bad situation even worse. I get a sour feeling. I was the bad guy here.

If what this little dude wants to do is defend, then we'll defend, I can spare a little time to help clean up some monsters if the little dude will come along.

I muster up all of my enthusiasm, and send it to the core, along with a single word. "Defend!"

I can feel the happiness roll off of it as it responds "DEFEND!" "DEFEND!" "DEFEND!" "DEFEND!" "DEFEND!"

I rear up onto my hind legs until I reach the height of the Defense Core. "We defend!" I say, as I open my new jaws and swallow the core into the rather large empty chamber in my middle.

It briefly gets nervous but settles down as it realizes I'm not going to do anything.

Together we go back into the lair of Moleratmadillows to finish the job. I gently wrap the core inside me with leaves and hold it snug next to my escape hatch, where I can have my tiny escape body grab it on the way out if I need to bail.

I click my razor sharp metal mandibles together, and prepare for combat.