Omake Tantacles!

“You know that’s not where those are supposed to go.” A frankly annoying voice rang out from behind as he tried his level best to ignore it. Cyan the street rat turned student had better things to do than be goaded into another ‘challenge’ right now from the self-professed troll who liked nothing better than to stalk him out at the worst possible times.

Unfortunately, Kokichi was nothing if not persistent and resilient.

‘I’m going to make them go somewhere the sun doesn’t buzz off…’ He was tempted to say as the hoodied little devil practically breathed down his neck, the boy’s breath tickling lightly against Cyan’s neck even as Koa sat on the table watching with a light smirk. No, unfortunately, it was not a set of words to be uttered to the still often mysterious young man who plagued Cyan whenever he felt a sexual itch needed to be scratched.

Those words would have just encouraged him.

“Look I just need to finish this, then I’ll come play with you or something once I’m done here. I just need a bit of peace for this one. Besides... how did you even find me up here anyway?” Cyan asked instead, brushing off the effeminate young man in his attempts to rile him into a more combative mood. Kokichi merely gave a mocking smile before blowing hard against the hairs of Cyan’s neck. Ugg... the book that Cyan was studying was hard enough as it was, all things considering the messy notes and meandering manner in which it was written. Still it was starting to get into some of the more advanced ideas. Ideas more concentrated on the mindset and utilization of the bindings than they did the actual process of creating them itself.

Kokichi however was not one to easily relent. “Aww, my, my... it certainly is cute when my little Kohai gets all serious about everything. Maybe next time I win I’ll make your forfeit something special. I do owe you one for the tournament, you fucked up nicely, but it wasn’t nearly as funny as I’d been hoping.”

Cyan simply sighed and rolled his eyes, trying his best to ignore the older boy’s prodding. There were more important things to be dealt with. Like working on this particular issue of either strengthening the projection which he’d used. As far as the book had to say the visualization used for the binding had more than a simple cosmetic effect to it, the very magical resonance of ‘seeming’ like a thing gave something ‘features’ akin to that thing that they seemed like. In Cyan’s case the visualization had been that of Tentacles, a distinctly reactive ‘animal’ form, something that could act on its own accord in some ways even as you reacted to a situation; not like if it had been the cold metal inflexibility of chains, or the growth movements of Vines and roots.

As such, he’d discovered both though his own experimentation and the advice of the book, that this was not a straight forward manifestation.

In a very real way every single one of these bindings which he produced was a psudo-entity all its own, running according to the plan and rules of the beings which he’d envisaged when creating them. And one important fact seemed to dominate as he’d done deeper research. Octopi’s tentacles were each an intellect onto themselves. Not in a full manner, just that each one contained a large amount of processing ability which then reported to a centralized figure, autonomous in a way that was hard for a person to imagine.

They’d do exactly what he wanted, but left alone they’d act and react on their own.

But they were naturally limited, as masses of will made material they only had ontological inertia so long as the mana poured into them was enough to keep the construct stable. In a way, the visualization which he’d used was slightly wasteful, where Iron chains would have used that extra bit of power to reinforce their hardness and solidity, the tentacle design reinforced intellectual responsiveness and anticipation of what you wanted from them. It meant however that they would always seek optimal positioning, when grabbing a target they would shift and squirm and maximize leverage without a single thought directing them to do so. Given a small physical puzzle they could shift grip and optimized based on Cyan’s desires.

It was this very Animal nature to them that Cyan wanted to further explore and more importantly exploit.

After all, as a very creature like construct, he couldn’t help but wonder how it would be if he gave them a more direct connection to himself, using them not simply as binding