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Shared Identity, Ch3: Repairs
Keagan finishes repairing the magitek fursuit that he created, but isn't quite sure how to deal with the fact that the thing is alive...
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Please view the PDF for the best formatting!
I wanted to actually have the costume get worn again for some TF fun in this chapter, but it got a bit too long. Don't worry, the *real* fun begins in chapter 4 :)
In the end it took Keagan over a week to repair the magitek costume. It had turned out to be a tedious project, since he not only had to repair the damage it had sustained, but also upgrade its mana circuits to prevent those repairs being undone. His whole body ached from leaning over his wooden work table day after day, but he had been determined to finish as quickly as possible. After all, he wanted to learn what had caused his creation’s unexpected behavior and, as hesitant as he was to admit it to himself, also to experience the ‘transformation’ it had caused again.
Chills ran down Keagan’s spine every time he thought back to what it was like wearing the costume. First, there was the way he found himself thinking and feeling that he was a real kitsune rather than a man in a costume, which had been strange enough on its own. Then there was the odd sensation of feeling the suit’s emotions like they were his own, like they were being transmitted into his brain somehow. It still seemed so surreal that the suit had its own emotions at all when that was supposed to be impossible for a golem. He felt like he shouldn’t want to risk letting a device affect his mind, whether technological or magical, but for some reason he remembered feeling strangely… exhilarated during the experience. Despite almost being trapped within the suit and having his mind invaded, the whole thing had actually felt somewhat… liberating.
Once he had applied the finishing touches, Keagan stepped back and looked over his work. The suit’s previously silky outer fur was still singed, and he still needed to fabricate a replacement neural link suit, but he felt that it was finally safe to power the thing on again. Keagan was thankful that he knew what little magic he did, because otherwise making such fine repairs would probably have been impossible. The only question was, what was going to happen if he wore the costume again?
Despite his desire to try the suit on again, he knew that he needed to get more answers first. Keagan had been able to develop a few theories about what had caused the suit to gain a life of its own, and how it had managed to create such a convincing illusion when it linked with him. However, he wasn’t sure of anything just yet. He had tried doing some internet research about magical items coming to life, but all he found were rumors and crazy theories about spirit possession and wild magic. A look at the suit’s internal structure showed signs that the adaptive alteration magic he had imbued it with had made some unusual adjustments to its nerve pathways and control core, but he had not been able to determine just what effect these changes were having on the thing’s operations. Unfortunately, it seemed like he would have to find the answers the hard way.
Keagan didn’t want to actually risk wearing the suit just yet, but he figured that if it really was sentient he should at least try to find some way to communicate with it. The suit did have sound sensors that he built into its ears just in case he decided to program it to follow verbal commands, but it didn’t actually have any way of producing sounds on its own. Thankfully he had a workaround available.
Keagan hooked the suit up to his computer through a port he had hidden in one of its ears. Though magic and traditional technology often did not play well together, Keagan had purchased a translation tool for bridging the gap, and as a bonus one of its functions was supposed to be verbal communication. This functionality was meant for testing incomplete golems, and supposedly the Magitek company went to great lengths to make their devices interchangeable enough that it should work on something like the kitsune suit.
Satisfied that he was as prepared as he could be, Keagan put on his headset and grabbed the suit’s power crystal off of its charger. The smooth magicite crystal glowed with blue light in Kegan’s hand as he looked at it for a few moments. The diamond shaped crystal was the same one that had powered the suit over a week ago, and he hoped that using it would help replicate the previous week’s events. One of his theories about the suit’s unexpected behavior was that the increased power granted by the crystal improved its functionality beyond his calculations, and thankfully this time he believed that it should be able to handle it without overloading. After taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, he pushed the crystal through the suit’s zipper and into the vessel in its chest.
A blue glow and a low hum was generated as power ran through the runes and pathways within the suit. As Keagan watched it power up, he noticed that some of the glow was showing through the damaged patches of fur, and couldn’t help but think that it looked kind of cool. He made a mental note to try adding some of that glow to the costume’s overall design when he repaired the exterior.
A notification on his computer screen notified him that it had finished connecting to the suit. With a few clicks, he opened up windows that would let him monitor the thing’s power and control systems, and another for the verbal interface.
It did not take long for Keagan to notice some abnormalities. The suit was using somewhat more power than it was supposed to in a resting state. However, the far more concerning issue was that the control status window was being filled with errors. It was as if the computer no longer understood how to interpret the information it was receiving. It didn’t even seem to recognize the models of some of the components anymore. After messing with the settings a bit, he found that he was at least able to monitor the suit’s basic functions: motor, alteration, neural interlink, and processing. Interestingly, all of those functions were already showing more activity than they were supposed to for a resting state, but it was difficult to tell exactly what they were doing.
“Alright, let’s see if I can just talk to you then,” Keagan said in the suit’s direction as he brought up the voice command window on his computer. He had never actually tried giving the thing verbal commands before, so he figured he needed to enable the functionality. For a moment he thought he saw one of the suit’s tails twitching, but decided to ignore it and hit the ‘Connect’ button.
After a few moments, Keagan was dismayed to see an error message appear on screen. At first he was afraid there was another problem with the suit, but it turned out to be something… corporate instead. “Error. Your Magitek device does not have built in language capabilities,” Keagan began reading aloud in dismay, “Would you like to download fabrication plans for a language rune chip? Additional fees may apply. Great.”
Though Keagan had some misgivings about what might happen if he made the suit smarter than it was already, he brought up the website that the window provided and browsed through the options. The Magitek Company allowed customers to design custom rune chips on their website to fulfill their needs, and it appeared that language chips had a lot of options. It appeared that he could even choose to install multiple languages. American English was the first option that he chose, but he paused for a moment when he saw that Japanese was an option as well. “Well, I guess I’ll pick that one too since it fits your theme,” he said to the costume, even though he was pretty certain now that it wouldn’t understand him.
As he was purchasing the rune chip design, Keagan stumbled upon blueprints for a voice box which would allow a magitek device to speak if it had a control core that could handle it. Since Keagan was fairly certain that his suit was already smarter than most golems, he ended up with both the chip and the voicebox, and then immediately put his fabricator to work.
In the far corner of his workroom, Keagan’s fabricator roared to life. He couldn’t help but smile every time he watched the miraculous device in action; the way it was able to take basic elements and weave together incredibly complicated objects out of them was a joy to behold. It put the old 3d printers that he remembered seeing as a child to shame. Plus, Keagan’s fabricator was actually an advanced model that he was able to use to create cosplay gear and masks which he sold on his online store.
The fabricator only took about a minute to finish. He left the voice box it had created alone for the moment and picked up the hexagon shaped chip to inspect it. After verifying that the patterns on its surface looked clean, he picked up a magicite crystal to draw energy from so he could activate the chip. He spoke a quick incantation, and moments later the rune chip glowed with blue energy as it activated.
Even though he only knew a few spells, Keagan always found it satisfying whenever he got to use them. It almost made him feel like a wizard, though he knew that the overly dramatic and powerful magic users from the old fairy tales and tv shows didn’t exist in real life. Still, it was fun for him to dream about having real magical power.
Satisfied that he had activated the runechip properly, Keagan walked up to the work table the kitsune suit was lying belly down on to install it. After a few moments of searching, he found an open slot in the neck area. Satisfied with the location and a bit pleased by its symbolism, Keagan picked up the chip and began sliding it into place.
The suit suddenly convulsed as the rune chip locked into place, making Keagan gasp and jump back from it. However, before he got very far, one of the suit’s tails lashed out and somehow wrapped around his right arm. Keagan tried to calm himself to keep himself from damaging the thing by fighting it, but to his dismay the grip on his arm only got tighter. On top of that, he was disturbed to realize that the suit’s mask had turned to look at him! Somehow, the look in its golden eyes seemed… pained.
“So, I guess that woke you up,” Keagan said with worry in his voice. The suit wasn’t supposed to ‘wake up’ until it received a certain level of stimuli, such as from being worn, so obviously something was going wrong in order to cause this to happen. He began to worry that installing the chip had hurt it somehow.
“Hey, calm down!” Keagan tried saying as the suit started pulling itself towards him, “I’m not trying to hurt you!” The pile of fur seemed to pause for a moment, but then lashed out with another tail. This one wrapped around his waist.
Seeing that there was no point in trying to talk to the costume when it could not talk back, Keagan tried to make his way over to his computer. Unfortunately, there was no way to get away from the costume, so after a moment’s hesitation he decided to take a risk and simply sling the entire costume over his shoulders.
The thing started wrapping around Keagan in a fuzzy embrace like some sort of furry snake, but he wasn’t terribly worried since he knew that there was no way it could actually force him inside of itself. At least he didn’t think that was possible. After reaching the computer he used his free hand to click the connect button and prayed that the language runes were working properly.
As soon as he saw the words ‘connection established’ appear on the screen Keagan tried talking to it again, “Can you speak to me?”
The suit seemed to tense up, as if it had become aware of the connection to the computer, but wasn’t quite sure of what to do with it. After a few moments some strange sounds started coming in through the headset.
“Dare,” said a robotic, but distinctly Japanese sounding voice in Keagan’s headset. Keagan looked down at the thing in confusion, but before he could ask anything it spoke again. “Who?” This time the voice sounded like it was spoken in American English. The mask’s mouth did not move as it spoke.
“I’m Keagan,” he replied, realizing it must have tried speaking Japanese first. Maybe giving it two languages had been a mistake. “I… made you. Can you let me go?”
Instead of letting him go, the suit’s grip tightened slightly while a desperate expression formed on the mask. Despite the situation, Keagan couldn’t help but wonder if it had learned those expressions while he had been wearing it. “Sore wa itai!” it said this time, before switching back to English again, “It Hurts!”
“Hurts?” Keagan repeated as he frowned. The suit’s nerve signals weren’t meant to be ‘felt’ by it, and the idea that it was capable of feeling pain now was a bit disturbing.
“It Hurts, it Hurts, it Hurts!”
“Alright! Calm down,” Keagan pleaded, now feeling genuinely concerned for the thing. “Where does it hurt?” Silence followed, as if the suit wasn’t sure about how to explain that. Keagan decided to take the thing back over to his work table while doing his best to avoid unplugging it from the computer, and tried to reason with it again, “If you release me, I can try to help you.”
After a moment, the suit reluctantly softened its grip, but continued writhing like a real creature in pain. With some effort, Keagan managed to lay it out on the table. “Can you point to where it hurts?” He asked it.
One of the suit’s vulpine tails lifted up and pointed. “Alright, that seems to be your left leg,” Keagan told it as he began pulling out tools. “Can you stay still while I work?”
For a few moments it tried to hold still, but soon it began writhing again. “It hurts,” it said through the headset again.
“I guess I’ll have to depower your leg so I can work then,” Keagan replied to it, feeling quite weird about having to calm down his creation like it was his patient on an operating table. He supposed that if it was filled with something it would actually look like a living thing, but right now it was just a chaotic mess of fur.
Since the suit’s zipper only ran down its back, Keagan decided he would have to open a maintenance seal. He picked up a magnetic tool and ran it down the back of the suit’s leg, causing a hidden seam to open up. The suit seemed to twitch in surprise when this happened, but it didn’t seem to cause it additional pain. Using another tool, he placed a blocker on its main ‘nerve’ channel that was running down its leg.
The leg stopped twitching, and the suit seemed to visibly relax. However, its mask watched Keagan with a look of concern as he began looking at the leg in more detail. Ideally, he would have liked to use his computer to pinpoint the issue, but Keagan didn’t think that was an option anymore now that it was having problems interpreting the suit’s status data.
“Why… hurt?” The suit asked. It seemed unsure about how to word its question properly.
“I don’t know yet,” Keagan replied as he looked over the various connections in the suit’s leg. “It might be some damage from when you overloaded.”
If the suit was able to understand the technical terms that Keagan was using, it didn’t show it. It remained silent as Keagan continued searching for the problem. After several minutes, he finally found the culprit: a short circuit in the suit’s ankle. Keagan barely kept himself from swearing out loud as he saw it.
“What wrong?” The suit asked as it saw Keagan’s expression.
“I made a mistake when I was repairing you,” he admitted with a hint of anxiety in his voice as he fumbled through his tools to find the right one. Custom magitek work sometimes required that connections be manually created by drawing the pathways by hand with a special ink made of quicksilver and powdered magicite. It was likely that his hand had slipped during one of the the long nights he had spent repairing the thing. He was lucky that the suit had not been burnt out by the uncontrolled flow of mana.
After carefully removing the bad connection with an eraser tool and making sure that everything else looked fine, Keagan reactivated the leg and closed it up. The suit seemed ecstatic, and flexed the leg back and forth to test it. “Thank you… maker,” the synthesized voice said through Keagan’s headset.
“You can call me Keagan,” he replied, still feeling distinctly weirded out by talking to a living costume. Some part of him was starting to worry that his housemate was going to hear him talking to the thing even though he had soundproofed his work room.
“Kea… gan,” it said, doing its best to sound out the name. It remained silent for a few moments before replying. “What is... my name?”
The fact that the suit’s sentences were getting more complicated was not lost on Keagan. After glancing over to his computer screen he saw that the activity on the suit’s self-alteration magic was quite high, and realized that the suit was using that spell as a way to learn and adapt. He had imbued the suit with that spell with the goal of having it slowly develop the nerve pathways to connect with its wearer and help him move like an anthropomorphic fox. However, it was apparent that the magic was now doing things far beyond what he had intended for it to do.
“You don’t have a name yet,” Keagan finally replied as he weighed his options. The safe and sane thing to do would be to remove the alteration magic so that the suit didn’t keep getting smarter. After all, there was no telling what would happen if he let it continue evolving like this. However, the idea of disabling the suit like that felt wrong somehow.
After a few moments, Keagan decided that the best he could do for now was to just treat the thing with respect and hope for the best. “How about we choose a name for you together?”
The suit seemed pleased by that, so Keagan slung it over his shoulders and sat down with it in front of the computer. “Since you’re supposed to be a kitsune costume, I think we should look up Japanese names,” he said as he searched for the appropriate website.
“Kitsune… costume,” it repeated, seeming confused by the term. “Two languages. I am a fox costume?”
“I use the word ‘kitsune’ because that is what some people call multi-tailed foxes,” Keagan explained. “And yes, you are a costume. Do you remember me wearing you earlier?”
“Yes, I remember,” It replied. Somehow, its voice seemed to be slowly sounding less like a computer was speaking. “Will you… wear me again?”
“If you are alright with being worn… yes,” he replied awkwardly. “I made you so I could look and feel like a kitsune.”
“Why?” It asked, while looking at him quizzically.
“That’s… complicated,” replied Keagan as he found himself oddly unprepared for that question. His excuse for making the suit was so he could showcase his magic crafting expertise at an anime or fantasy convention, and then make a small fortune by selling similar suits to other people. However, the truth was that he had been fascinated by legendary creatures like kitsune for as long as he could remember, and he often fantasized about what it would be like to become one. However, he almost never talked about this fantasy of his, because he was afraid that he would be called a furry if he did.
“Look, I found a list of names,” Keagan said in an effort to change the subject, “I think kitsune are supposed to like using names that are puns, so let’s find one that describes you, alright?”
The suit seemed excited by the prospect, and curled its tails around Keagan’s chest in delight as it replied, “Yes!”
They went through the list of names together for several minutes, which mostly consisted of Keagan reading the names aloud and the suit saying it didn’t like them. Eventually, there was one name in particular that caught Keagan’s eye. It reminded him a bit of a name that he used for a kitsune character he had fond memories of roleplaying as years ago. “How about Kazu?” he asked, “it means ‘The First One’.”
“Kazu,” it repeated as it considered the name, “Am I the first… costume?”
“You’re the first living one that I know of,” Keagan replied, noticing that the suit seemed more interested in this name than the others. “Personally, I think it sounds good and fits you pretty well.”
“I like Kazu,” It said as it wagged its tails like an excited dog.
“Alright, then, your name will be Kazu.”
<<< PREV | FIRST | NEXT >>>
Please view the PDF for the best formatting!
I wanted to actually have the costume get worn again for some TF fun in this chapter, but it got a bit too long. Don't worry, the *real* fun begins in chapter 4 :)
In the end it took Keagan over a week to repair the magitek costume. It had turned out to be a tedious project, since he not only had to repair the damage it had sustained, but also upgrade its mana circuits to prevent those repairs being undone. His whole body ached from leaning over his wooden work table day after day, but he had been determined to finish as quickly as possible. After all, he wanted to learn what had caused his creation’s unexpected behavior and, as hesitant as he was to admit it to himself, also to experience the ‘transformation’ it had caused again.
Chills ran down Keagan’s spine every time he thought back to what it was like wearing the costume. First, there was the way he found himself thinking and feeling that he was a real kitsune rather than a man in a costume, which had been strange enough on its own. Then there was the odd sensation of feeling the suit’s emotions like they were his own, like they were being transmitted into his brain somehow. It still seemed so surreal that the suit had its own emotions at all when that was supposed to be impossible for a golem. He felt like he shouldn’t want to risk letting a device affect his mind, whether technological or magical, but for some reason he remembered feeling strangely… exhilarated during the experience. Despite almost being trapped within the suit and having his mind invaded, the whole thing had actually felt somewhat… liberating.
Once he had applied the finishing touches, Keagan stepped back and looked over his work. The suit’s previously silky outer fur was still singed, and he still needed to fabricate a replacement neural link suit, but he felt that it was finally safe to power the thing on again. Keagan was thankful that he knew what little magic he did, because otherwise making such fine repairs would probably have been impossible. The only question was, what was going to happen if he wore the costume again?
Despite his desire to try the suit on again, he knew that he needed to get more answers first. Keagan had been able to develop a few theories about what had caused the suit to gain a life of its own, and how it had managed to create such a convincing illusion when it linked with him. However, he wasn’t sure of anything just yet. He had tried doing some internet research about magical items coming to life, but all he found were rumors and crazy theories about spirit possession and wild magic. A look at the suit’s internal structure showed signs that the adaptive alteration magic he had imbued it with had made some unusual adjustments to its nerve pathways and control core, but he had not been able to determine just what effect these changes were having on the thing’s operations. Unfortunately, it seemed like he would have to find the answers the hard way.
Keagan didn’t want to actually risk wearing the suit just yet, but he figured that if it really was sentient he should at least try to find some way to communicate with it. The suit did have sound sensors that he built into its ears just in case he decided to program it to follow verbal commands, but it didn’t actually have any way of producing sounds on its own. Thankfully he had a workaround available.
Keagan hooked the suit up to his computer through a port he had hidden in one of its ears. Though magic and traditional technology often did not play well together, Keagan had purchased a translation tool for bridging the gap, and as a bonus one of its functions was supposed to be verbal communication. This functionality was meant for testing incomplete golems, and supposedly the Magitek company went to great lengths to make their devices interchangeable enough that it should work on something like the kitsune suit.
Satisfied that he was as prepared as he could be, Keagan put on his headset and grabbed the suit’s power crystal off of its charger. The smooth magicite crystal glowed with blue light in Kegan’s hand as he looked at it for a few moments. The diamond shaped crystal was the same one that had powered the suit over a week ago, and he hoped that using it would help replicate the previous week’s events. One of his theories about the suit’s unexpected behavior was that the increased power granted by the crystal improved its functionality beyond his calculations, and thankfully this time he believed that it should be able to handle it without overloading. After taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, he pushed the crystal through the suit’s zipper and into the vessel in its chest.
A blue glow and a low hum was generated as power ran through the runes and pathways within the suit. As Keagan watched it power up, he noticed that some of the glow was showing through the damaged patches of fur, and couldn’t help but think that it looked kind of cool. He made a mental note to try adding some of that glow to the costume’s overall design when he repaired the exterior.
A notification on his computer screen notified him that it had finished connecting to the suit. With a few clicks, he opened up windows that would let him monitor the thing’s power and control systems, and another for the verbal interface.
It did not take long for Keagan to notice some abnormalities. The suit was using somewhat more power than it was supposed to in a resting state. However, the far more concerning issue was that the control status window was being filled with errors. It was as if the computer no longer understood how to interpret the information it was receiving. It didn’t even seem to recognize the models of some of the components anymore. After messing with the settings a bit, he found that he was at least able to monitor the suit’s basic functions: motor, alteration, neural interlink, and processing. Interestingly, all of those functions were already showing more activity than they were supposed to for a resting state, but it was difficult to tell exactly what they were doing.
“Alright, let’s see if I can just talk to you then,” Keagan said in the suit’s direction as he brought up the voice command window on his computer. He had never actually tried giving the thing verbal commands before, so he figured he needed to enable the functionality. For a moment he thought he saw one of the suit’s tails twitching, but decided to ignore it and hit the ‘Connect’ button.
After a few moments, Keagan was dismayed to see an error message appear on screen. At first he was afraid there was another problem with the suit, but it turned out to be something… corporate instead. “Error. Your Magitek device does not have built in language capabilities,” Keagan began reading aloud in dismay, “Would you like to download fabrication plans for a language rune chip? Additional fees may apply. Great.”
Though Keagan had some misgivings about what might happen if he made the suit smarter than it was already, he brought up the website that the window provided and browsed through the options. The Magitek Company allowed customers to design custom rune chips on their website to fulfill their needs, and it appeared that language chips had a lot of options. It appeared that he could even choose to install multiple languages. American English was the first option that he chose, but he paused for a moment when he saw that Japanese was an option as well. “Well, I guess I’ll pick that one too since it fits your theme,” he said to the costume, even though he was pretty certain now that it wouldn’t understand him.
As he was purchasing the rune chip design, Keagan stumbled upon blueprints for a voice box which would allow a magitek device to speak if it had a control core that could handle it. Since Keagan was fairly certain that his suit was already smarter than most golems, he ended up with both the chip and the voicebox, and then immediately put his fabricator to work.
In the far corner of his workroom, Keagan’s fabricator roared to life. He couldn’t help but smile every time he watched the miraculous device in action; the way it was able to take basic elements and weave together incredibly complicated objects out of them was a joy to behold. It put the old 3d printers that he remembered seeing as a child to shame. Plus, Keagan’s fabricator was actually an advanced model that he was able to use to create cosplay gear and masks which he sold on his online store.
The fabricator only took about a minute to finish. He left the voice box it had created alone for the moment and picked up the hexagon shaped chip to inspect it. After verifying that the patterns on its surface looked clean, he picked up a magicite crystal to draw energy from so he could activate the chip. He spoke a quick incantation, and moments later the rune chip glowed with blue energy as it activated.
Even though he only knew a few spells, Keagan always found it satisfying whenever he got to use them. It almost made him feel like a wizard, though he knew that the overly dramatic and powerful magic users from the old fairy tales and tv shows didn’t exist in real life. Still, it was fun for him to dream about having real magical power.
Satisfied that he had activated the runechip properly, Keagan walked up to the work table the kitsune suit was lying belly down on to install it. After a few moments of searching, he found an open slot in the neck area. Satisfied with the location and a bit pleased by its symbolism, Keagan picked up the chip and began sliding it into place.
The suit suddenly convulsed as the rune chip locked into place, making Keagan gasp and jump back from it. However, before he got very far, one of the suit’s tails lashed out and somehow wrapped around his right arm. Keagan tried to calm himself to keep himself from damaging the thing by fighting it, but to his dismay the grip on his arm only got tighter. On top of that, he was disturbed to realize that the suit’s mask had turned to look at him! Somehow, the look in its golden eyes seemed… pained.
“So, I guess that woke you up,” Keagan said with worry in his voice. The suit wasn’t supposed to ‘wake up’ until it received a certain level of stimuli, such as from being worn, so obviously something was going wrong in order to cause this to happen. He began to worry that installing the chip had hurt it somehow.
“Hey, calm down!” Keagan tried saying as the suit started pulling itself towards him, “I’m not trying to hurt you!” The pile of fur seemed to pause for a moment, but then lashed out with another tail. This one wrapped around his waist.
Seeing that there was no point in trying to talk to the costume when it could not talk back, Keagan tried to make his way over to his computer. Unfortunately, there was no way to get away from the costume, so after a moment’s hesitation he decided to take a risk and simply sling the entire costume over his shoulders.
The thing started wrapping around Keagan in a fuzzy embrace like some sort of furry snake, but he wasn’t terribly worried since he knew that there was no way it could actually force him inside of itself. At least he didn’t think that was possible. After reaching the computer he used his free hand to click the connect button and prayed that the language runes were working properly.
As soon as he saw the words ‘connection established’ appear on the screen Keagan tried talking to it again, “Can you speak to me?”
The suit seemed to tense up, as if it had become aware of the connection to the computer, but wasn’t quite sure of what to do with it. After a few moments some strange sounds started coming in through the headset.
“Dare,” said a robotic, but distinctly Japanese sounding voice in Keagan’s headset. Keagan looked down at the thing in confusion, but before he could ask anything it spoke again. “Who?” This time the voice sounded like it was spoken in American English. The mask’s mouth did not move as it spoke.
“I’m Keagan,” he replied, realizing it must have tried speaking Japanese first. Maybe giving it two languages had been a mistake. “I… made you. Can you let me go?”
Instead of letting him go, the suit’s grip tightened slightly while a desperate expression formed on the mask. Despite the situation, Keagan couldn’t help but wonder if it had learned those expressions while he had been wearing it. “Sore wa itai!” it said this time, before switching back to English again, “It Hurts!”
“Hurts?” Keagan repeated as he frowned. The suit’s nerve signals weren’t meant to be ‘felt’ by it, and the idea that it was capable of feeling pain now was a bit disturbing.
“It Hurts, it Hurts, it Hurts!”
“Alright! Calm down,” Keagan pleaded, now feeling genuinely concerned for the thing. “Where does it hurt?” Silence followed, as if the suit wasn’t sure about how to explain that. Keagan decided to take the thing back over to his work table while doing his best to avoid unplugging it from the computer, and tried to reason with it again, “If you release me, I can try to help you.”
After a moment, the suit reluctantly softened its grip, but continued writhing like a real creature in pain. With some effort, Keagan managed to lay it out on the table. “Can you point to where it hurts?” He asked it.
One of the suit’s vulpine tails lifted up and pointed. “Alright, that seems to be your left leg,” Keagan told it as he began pulling out tools. “Can you stay still while I work?”
For a few moments it tried to hold still, but soon it began writhing again. “It hurts,” it said through the headset again.
“I guess I’ll have to depower your leg so I can work then,” Keagan replied to it, feeling quite weird about having to calm down his creation like it was his patient on an operating table. He supposed that if it was filled with something it would actually look like a living thing, but right now it was just a chaotic mess of fur.
Since the suit’s zipper only ran down its back, Keagan decided he would have to open a maintenance seal. He picked up a magnetic tool and ran it down the back of the suit’s leg, causing a hidden seam to open up. The suit seemed to twitch in surprise when this happened, but it didn’t seem to cause it additional pain. Using another tool, he placed a blocker on its main ‘nerve’ channel that was running down its leg.
The leg stopped twitching, and the suit seemed to visibly relax. However, its mask watched Keagan with a look of concern as he began looking at the leg in more detail. Ideally, he would have liked to use his computer to pinpoint the issue, but Keagan didn’t think that was an option anymore now that it was having problems interpreting the suit’s status data.
“Why… hurt?” The suit asked. It seemed unsure about how to word its question properly.
“I don’t know yet,” Keagan replied as he looked over the various connections in the suit’s leg. “It might be some damage from when you overloaded.”
If the suit was able to understand the technical terms that Keagan was using, it didn’t show it. It remained silent as Keagan continued searching for the problem. After several minutes, he finally found the culprit: a short circuit in the suit’s ankle. Keagan barely kept himself from swearing out loud as he saw it.
“What wrong?” The suit asked as it saw Keagan’s expression.
“I made a mistake when I was repairing you,” he admitted with a hint of anxiety in his voice as he fumbled through his tools to find the right one. Custom magitek work sometimes required that connections be manually created by drawing the pathways by hand with a special ink made of quicksilver and powdered magicite. It was likely that his hand had slipped during one of the the long nights he had spent repairing the thing. He was lucky that the suit had not been burnt out by the uncontrolled flow of mana.
After carefully removing the bad connection with an eraser tool and making sure that everything else looked fine, Keagan reactivated the leg and closed it up. The suit seemed ecstatic, and flexed the leg back and forth to test it. “Thank you… maker,” the synthesized voice said through Keagan’s headset.
“You can call me Keagan,” he replied, still feeling distinctly weirded out by talking to a living costume. Some part of him was starting to worry that his housemate was going to hear him talking to the thing even though he had soundproofed his work room.
“Kea… gan,” it said, doing its best to sound out the name. It remained silent for a few moments before replying. “What is... my name?”
The fact that the suit’s sentences were getting more complicated was not lost on Keagan. After glancing over to his computer screen he saw that the activity on the suit’s self-alteration magic was quite high, and realized that the suit was using that spell as a way to learn and adapt. He had imbued the suit with that spell with the goal of having it slowly develop the nerve pathways to connect with its wearer and help him move like an anthropomorphic fox. However, it was apparent that the magic was now doing things far beyond what he had intended for it to do.
“You don’t have a name yet,” Keagan finally replied as he weighed his options. The safe and sane thing to do would be to remove the alteration magic so that the suit didn’t keep getting smarter. After all, there was no telling what would happen if he let it continue evolving like this. However, the idea of disabling the suit like that felt wrong somehow.
After a few moments, Keagan decided that the best he could do for now was to just treat the thing with respect and hope for the best. “How about we choose a name for you together?”
The suit seemed pleased by that, so Keagan slung it over his shoulders and sat down with it in front of the computer. “Since you’re supposed to be a kitsune costume, I think we should look up Japanese names,” he said as he searched for the appropriate website.
“Kitsune… costume,” it repeated, seeming confused by the term. “Two languages. I am a fox costume?”
“I use the word ‘kitsune’ because that is what some people call multi-tailed foxes,” Keagan explained. “And yes, you are a costume. Do you remember me wearing you earlier?”
“Yes, I remember,” It replied. Somehow, its voice seemed to be slowly sounding less like a computer was speaking. “Will you… wear me again?”
“If you are alright with being worn… yes,” he replied awkwardly. “I made you so I could look and feel like a kitsune.”
“Why?” It asked, while looking at him quizzically.
“That’s… complicated,” replied Keagan as he found himself oddly unprepared for that question. His excuse for making the suit was so he could showcase his magic crafting expertise at an anime or fantasy convention, and then make a small fortune by selling similar suits to other people. However, the truth was that he had been fascinated by legendary creatures like kitsune for as long as he could remember, and he often fantasized about what it would be like to become one. However, he almost never talked about this fantasy of his, because he was afraid that he would be called a furry if he did.
“Look, I found a list of names,” Keagan said in an effort to change the subject, “I think kitsune are supposed to like using names that are puns, so let’s find one that describes you, alright?”
The suit seemed excited by the prospect, and curled its tails around Keagan’s chest in delight as it replied, “Yes!”
They went through the list of names together for several minutes, which mostly consisted of Keagan reading the names aloud and the suit saying it didn’t like them. Eventually, there was one name in particular that caught Keagan’s eye. It reminded him a bit of a name that he used for a kitsune character he had fond memories of roleplaying as years ago. “How about Kazu?” he asked, “it means ‘The First One’.”
“Kazu,” it repeated as it considered the name, “Am I the first… costume?”
“You’re the first living one that I know of,” Keagan replied, noticing that the suit seemed more interested in this name than the others. “Personally, I think it sounds good and fits you pretty well.”
“I like Kazu,” It said as it wagged its tails like an excited dog.
“Alright, then, your name will be Kazu.”
Category Story / Transformation
Species Fox (Other)
Size 120 x 120px
File Size 139.4 kB
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