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The next morning, the cybug king woke up feeling in much better health. He checked the places he knew he’d been lacerated and cracked in, finding sturdy scabs or even fully healed shell and synthetic skin. Still he wasn’t totally healed, so it wasn’t any sort of reset of his health. He brought his head close to one wound, looking closely for any signs of infection. He resisted his newer animalistic urge to lick or sniff it to double check.
He was healing so well, it baffled him. was it something about his new robotic insect body? Simply looking at some parts of his anatomy brought their name to mind, like the small bases of his energy-field wings. He simply looked at them, and the word tegulae jumped out as what he called them. He flexed his previously hurt leg, and again the database in his mind opened up, reminding him of the pressurized pistons inside that made launching into flight much easier than it should for his behemoth density. He rolled over onto his back, observing the plates - sclerites, he thought again - on his stomach, how it felt like a segment of his legs was operating under them, and how they felt softer and more elastic in responsive to poking and prodding them. He noticed how they tapered towards his … tail? There was a name for that part of his body, and for the twin tails that so reminded of his fine fashion choices in imitating a royal racer. It was like the terms were right on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t, or wouldn’t think of them?
The king grabbed onto the tip of one of the long tails, feeling a clump of fiber-optic wires inside the translucent lilac appendage. He noticed, right as he touched the tail - suddenly, the word broke free and he thought of it as a cercus, both of them cerci - his legs twitched. He pinched further down the bundle of electronic nerves, watching his legs walk blindly through the air. Curiosity overflowing, he reached out and grabbed his other cercus, and suddenly his legs were thrashing in the air like his life was in danger, and his wings were firing up on his back and he let go before they could tear up the ground below him. He was panting in his surprise. His legs had moved without any conscious thought of his own. He had reflexes before this, but nothing so powerful that he’d run without even thinking about it. He had a brief thought of competing in a foot race, and laying his new appendages down against a live charge in order to get a lightning fast start. Then, negative thoughts about his new body sprung up. He wasn’t in control when his light based homing instinct flared up, and his eyes narrowed at the thought he might not be in control of his body for another reason. He grabbed his cerci again, and concentrated, closed his eyes and focussed on staying absolutely still. The two impulses warred in his legs and his wings, tremors affecting joints at random as he fought the reflexes to bolt. He opened his eyes and suddenly his conscious thoughts won out. He closed his eyes again, and a phantom feeling of ground moving beneath the sharp tips of his legs flared up. So, it was easier to stop running when he could see it wasn’t doing anything? He would keep that in mind for later.
He noticed too that the speed of his escape response had intensified the further down his cerci he’d grabbed. Without a thought he reached out to test this new aspect of himself, but his hand stilled before it closed over the faintly luminescent appendage. There were words at the back of his mind, the tip of his striped tongue. It was almost like something in his own code was being kept from him. Insubordination, even from his own body, just would not do. He grasped a cercus right near its base, the glow inside it flaring up, and his eye were drawing to where- Words flooded through his mind: cloaca, hermaphroditic, parthenogenesis. He suddenly understood.
What made any sprite who he or she was, wasn’t all coded out beforehand. The code was like struts and supports, a bit of back troy over there, a bit of game related motivation over here, pre-programed lines dotted around liberally. Then, as the power flooded in for the first time, little spiderwebs of personality unfurled between the points of programming, building up over the years with support from the tiny, well used free spaces in the memory of the game, efficiently taking up the tiny amount of space between “ASS --- 3,674,112” and “JEW --- 1,985,005”. That’s why the being unplugged was terrifying. Eventually any small battery back up would run out, and the high scores and the spiderwebs of characters between them would be wiped out. It didn’t matter if the machine was plugged back in. The new connections that filled in the blank between the codes would be just as random as before, and it would be a (slightly or drastically) different character playing the same role.
But personality wasn’t the only thing completed in between the structures that had been put forth for the characters. From the perspective of the characters, eyes that were just one pixel on screen were brown or green or any color but black. Chewed fingernails, earrings under fringes of hair, personally fitting patterns on underwear. And under that? It was all a matter of what made the most sense. If they were programed as human characters, in a human world where people were children and could have children, then they got that behind the scenes detail, just like they had hair under their hats or feet inside of their shoes. Some characters who made less sense, weren’t as clearly human or animal, didn’t have anything. Turbo had learned that on his first day out of the game, asked about in his lack of tact, noticed his own grey skin and unnatural eyes, and had rushed back to his game in a panic. He locked himself in his car’s garage and unzipped his jumpsuit with shaking hands. He had all the parts a person would have. Because of the kind of character he was, he complimented his giddy relief upon finding out he had junk with a nice inaugural session of enjoy that junk in his car. Once he cooled down, it occurred to him, if he had a world of code structed around him that made him care about having a dick, then of course he would have one. He looked down at it, looked at the details of his skin under the suit, and he frowned. As much as all of this implicit detail was a given, it wasn’t hardwired into his code. There was no reason that anyone making a racing game would have programed his sprite with a dick. So it had been there, but not part of his code.
But this. As he understood it, this opening on the end of his body, this was the new equivalent (plus more). But it wasn’t like his previous fill-in-the-blank turbo-tool, this was part of his code. It wasn’t detailed, but it had to be there, he could feel that just by looking at it. The cybugs copied or recombined their blueprints and genetics in the course of Hero’s Duty, laid eggs even as the game was going on, and their ability to multiply was part of the game play. Hero’s Duty wasn’t the most child-friendly game in the arcade, so having animal NPCs that had the ability to breed was nothing compared to some of the brutal ways a cybug could take down a soldier. That he suddenly had the subconscious memory of the violent cybugs and the hardwired, guaranteed junk from a very rated-M game was mind blowing to the king. He’d started out rude and through that somewhat lew, he assumed from his competitive nature, and covering that up like he’d been programmed to be sugary sweet like the rest of his new kingdom had been hard. That he had an excuse now, that is was part of him and it wouldn’t go away, filled him with the same giddiness as before. But this time around, the recourse wasn’t so clear.
He knew from his programing what these parts were, what a cloaca did, but the code didn’t tell him anything beyond that. Nothing about how to … interact with it. He stared down his new junk, contemplating. Then he laughed. There’s wasn’t anything he loved more than a challenge, apart from acing that challenge.
He cracked his knuckles, grinning. The purple talons grasped at both cerci, and he gasped, taking both into a full grip as the sensations ramped up again. Breathing heavy, the king watched as the cerci shook and snaked up his arm and twined around them like some sort of creeping plant. Disturbed, he let go and fell onto his elbows, panting now of terror rather than arousal. That was new. He’d never touched himself and been touched back. His laughed again, letting go of some of his nervousness. It was his own body. It wasn’t going to hurt him. But, instead of going for the apparently prehensile (though not consciously) cerci, he pulled the end of his abdomen towards his face to get a better view. It was a better view, if a shocking one. A cross shaped opening in the hard plates surrounded the bases of his cerci, and in between the two tails there was... Well, it was hard to see. He reached up his thumbs, trying to push the cerci out of the way. His jaw dropped as they easily parted, pulling the harder parts of his exoskeleton out of the way and showing him the mirrored opening beyond the first. It was pale lavender and rubbery, like the cerci themselves, but lighter and softer looking. He stared closer, still slack jawed, and noticed that the cerci seemed to also lead into the lateral corners of the inner cross. He tested the cerci’s give with the fingers still against them, and they gave no resistance. He must have just stopped pushing at them once he had seen what was between them. He held his breath, eye wide and unblinking, and finally pushed the cerci out further. It was like a seal broke, and the cross slid open longways, then opened fully. He could feel the panels pull out and lie flush against the outer sclerites they were attached to deeper down in his abdomen. The inside glistened, moist with trails of clear fluid trailing between walls, pooling around the bumps that matched up with and built up the soft passage’s anchor to his exoskeleton.
This part of him was clearly fully organic. It was confirmed from the pheromone laden smell. He took a deep breath, analyzing it, and then released. He could feel his own breath on his own - cloaca, he would have to get used to having a cloaca - and it made him suddenly aware of just how close he was to it. He looked down at his abdomen, no more curled up than was comfortable, and looked further, back at the base of his candy chain neck. He’d stretched so far out on the cord without even realizing. As he twisted slightly to look back at his extended neck, his grasp on one of the spread cerci twisted too. The point of his talon jabbed barely into the fleshy panel nearest it. The king cybug let out a high howl of pain, wimping as he let his cloaca close up a bit while he toughed (blubbered) through the pain. While he calmed down, he let his head rest on top of the opening. Or he would have, but to his surprise, even the pressure of his head pushed the cerci outward and his cloaca opened up before him.
He remembered again, back to the time when his name had been Turbo and he hadn’t needed to hide that. Sitting around Tapper’s, trying to strike up conversations with ghosts and zombies and anyone else who didn’t bring friends with them from their own games. He remembered the guys from Yie Ar Kung-Fu would gather there, and the jokes they made about that doofus snake, Coily, from Q*bert, which he didn’t understand. Until this very moment. If the thought had occurred to him sooner, he was sure he would have tried it, no matter how impossible it seemed at his previous proportions. Hesitation held him back, looking into the mouth of madness. Years in Sugar Rush had made him very careful of anything he put in his mouth. He’d cobbled together a character model that actually had clean teeth and he was going to keep it that way. The two urges pushed against each other, but one inevitably won. He laid his monstrous striped tongue out over the top of the opening, looked down at it, and grinned eagerly as his hesitation vanished.
He took a first lick at one of the wettest, taking a moment to roll the taste around in his mouth. It was sweet, of course, but also a warm flavor, like a lighter version of caramel. He went back in for a second taste, tracing every panel’s edge, shuddering when his tongue ran over the line of bumps where the flexible cloaca was connected with the sclerites around it. He tried lapping at the base of a cercus, noticing that the main whip of it pivoted at a joint where it grew out of the side of the cloaca, also noticing that the joint felt the same as the bumps. Feeling he had figured it out and too riled up by the journey to the center of his new junk, he began to rapidly lick at the spots he’d discovered. His ragged panting breath kept the walls of his cloaca warm and moist. It felt better than anything he’d ever done to himself before, and he felt a bit of pride before the pleasure blanked his mind again. It felt amazing, but it also began to feel frustrating. He’d get into it, and his coordination fell off. His hands clenched around his abdomen in frustration.
Mind entirely focussed on the task at hand, and lacking the mental power to look elsewhere, he saw immediately the sides of his cloaca close back up with the squeeze, get closer together. All of the pleasurable points in one spot. He stuck his tongue in as deep as it would go, then squeezed his abdomen around it. His eyes rolled back in his head at the overwhelming sensation of all of those points in contact with his tongue, and broken high pitched whimper sounded loudly around his den. He moved his tongue and his legs twitched in ecstasy. Now, that wasn’t a response he had hoped for. As he had progressively curled in upon himself, getting his arm and head and everything involved, all that that had propped up his wheel like posture had been the tops of what was now called his tibias, what he would normally consider his knees. When these skittered and flailed out to the side, he barely caught himself with one of his hands. Well, it was only one more problem to solve. And he was nothing if not a quick learner (if he wanted to learn).
He lent back in, fighting for calm as he slid his tongue in deeper. Finally, the cerci bowed out around his temples, he peeled back his lips and pressed his teeth into the hard exoskeleton framing his cloaca. It didn’t hurt much on the softer belly sclerite, and he couldn’t feel it at all through the harder one towards his back. He closed his lips over his teeth, further securing the grip. He lowered his hands, shaky and uncoordinated as he fought the pleasure radiating from the end of his body, to the ground, claws digging in and stabilizing himself. As soon as he felt the fudgey mud between his knuckles, he jolted at the sensation of something coiling against his head. Again it seemed like his cerci had moved without his volition, crossing behind his head and pressing lightly against the sides of it. They also seemed to be glowing a bit brighter. The King, eager to finish after what would be a marathon masturbtion session by his normal standards, let the strange occurrence slide. Nothing was stopping him from doing what he’d planned on doing: fucking himself with his own tongue.
Frantically he thrust the wet striped muscle in and out, over and over in the matter of seconds against the joints and ridges that were screaming with joy at each pass. He could hear his speric fans whirring at an alarmingly high pitch, saw even the upclose view of his own body blur out in front of him, and felt his panting struggling through his nose. As his climax approached, he felt the walls and panels of his cloaca begin to tighten, pressing stronger around his furiously lapping tongue. He couldn’t help it. His mouth jolted open in a low, lilting moan. Without his teeth as leverage, his tongue no longer moved properly in his canal. His moan transformed into an open mouthed whimper of frustration, but his agony was premature. As he left off licking, his abdomen began to erratically thrust and thrash upwards, the cerci holding tight to the back of his head. He couldn’t stop the whimper though, and the timber of it followed each sharp twitch of his abdomen against his tongue. His eyes unfocused further, and the only thing that registered in his view were his cerci, glowing bright and brighter. When his orgasm came crashing over him, they flashed bright pink and let off a warm prickle of static electricity. Seconds later, still in the mental white void of climax, the king was surprised by a rush of warm, viscous fluid over his tongue and even into his mouth. It was stronger than the caramel taste from before, saltier and a lot like butterscotch. Dignity left behind, he simply celebrated his joy that some things about his private parts had stuck around by licking up what he’d missed of the pleasant tasting semen.
His cerci, now dim again, shakily uncurled from around his head, flopping out limp as he used up the last of his energy to gently lower himself and lie out flat on the ground. His tongue was sore and imprecise, but something about the act, letting loose and eschewing kid-friendliness, had made him feel like his old self. So through horrible lisping, he whispered what sounded like,
“t-Turbo-tastic.”
After that, he let himself pass out.