IdeasGuy
patreon
The Good Life: Masterclass (ch. 75)
🕑 Added 2025-01-24 16:06:09 +0000 UTC“Very sneaky,” Yoruichi praised, walking along the platform in the form of a cat, while Cinder stood over Caitlyn to ensure that she was unconscious. “Did you appreciate the show, at least?”
Cinder's flesh crawled at the display that was still ongoing down below. Men and women mutilating themselves to further empower a monster that was more powerful than anything or anyone that Cinder had ever seen. Save, perhaps, for the cat woman making light of the situation. “It served its purpose,” Cinder replied tensely.
Caitlyn was too easy to manipulate. She was so genuine, so desperate to prove herself as something more than a pampered rich girl, that she could stand on her own feet rather than go through life relying on her family name. Making an invitation with such a simple code and ensuring it fell into her hands all but guaranteed that Caitlyn would take the bait. Cinder had underestimated the ghoulishness of the Cult, but that only served to help what Cinder was trying to accomplish.
Taking out a syringe prepared beforehand, Cinder injected it into Caitlyn to ensure that she remained unconscious before picking her up. Yoruichi followed them down the walkway into a storage room that was filled with long forgotten props. “You are certain that they won't interfere?” Cinder asked, setting Caitlyn down onto a table before she began undoing buttons.
“Nah -- even if they did notice, Joy won't have them asking questions. Though, I gotta say, you're taking a risk with this one. Sukuna plays nice with Law because he respects him deep down… Really deep down. But, you're meddling with how he's reclaiming his strength, and Sukuna doesn't exactly believe in mercy or forgiveness.”
Sukuna was the one in Law's inner circle that she was the least familiar with but understood the most. In a way, he was Cinder's own philosophy made manifest -- those with power were free to use it however they wished. He was strong, ruthless, sadistic, and cruel. Much like Law, he was driven by a hedonistic nature but that nature leaned heavily to sadism, making ingratiating herself with him a risky venture.
“It shouldn't be an issue. I don't intend to disrupt his rituals,” Cinder replied, taking off Caitlyn's shirt and bra to reveal her shapely breasts. They weren't particularly large, but they seemed big for her frame, capped with light pink nipples. Her body was slender, though with hints of muscle. Unsurprising given her natural athleticism. “If all goes well, then he won't even know that we were here.”
Yoruichi hummed, perched on the head of a half destroyed automaton. “And when Caitlyn finds her nerve? This place will be compromised. And they'll get an idea of how Sukuna is empowering himself.”
To that, Cinder flashed a seductive smile, “Then I'm sure Sukuna would be appreciative if someone were to warn him before any kind of raid could materialize, hm?”
A snort escaped Yoruichi, “Not sure if appreciation is something Sukuna is capable of, but sure, I'll pass the message along and say it's from you.” Yoruichi agreed easily while Cinder pulled off Caitlyn's boots, socks, and then finally her panties -- plain white cotton. The girl really was as dull and as boring as could be. Her pussy was a thin slit, crowned by neatly trimmed pubes that were the same hue as her hair. Spreading her pussy with her thumbs, Cinder gazed in and smirked when she saw a hymen.
“You are one twisted bitch, Cinder,” Yoruichi noted from above. There was no hostility in her voice. More of an idle comment, and one that wasn't entirely wrong.
“Don't make it something that it's not,” Cinder replied blandly. “Nudity induces a sense of vulnerability that is useful to my goals.” To that end, Cinder fetched out a pill of Joy -- a microdose of it with a thick casing that would take about thirty minutes to dissolve. The drugs Cinder already gave Caitlyn would wear off in about ten, giving about twenty minutes to ‘escape’ to a safehouse that Cinder had prepared in advance.
“Not really disproving my point,” Yoruichi replied, unbothered as Cinder forced the pill down Caitlyn's throat before strapping her down to the table. “I've been watching you two for this little gamble. She's crushing hard on you, you do realize that?”
“Of course, I do,” Cinder replied, brushing a lock of hair out of Caitlyn’s face. “That's why I'm doing this in the first place.”
Caitlyn wasn't Annie. Annie had stolen from Cinder -- taken a position that was rightfully hers, and had been stupid enough to drop on her knees at the smallest of pressure. That indignity had been repaid in full as now Annie was a perfect little slut that did whatever Cinder ordered to the best of her meager ability. Annie was straight, so she’d had to be broken with force over two long years.
Caitlyn… as much as she might wish to, Cinder knew she couldn't go down the same path with her as she had with Annie. Too dangerous. As soft as Caitlyn was, she did have a spine that Annie fundamentally lacked, so she wouldn't crumble with a little blackmail. That meant that Cinder had to go with a softer approach -- to use Caitlyn’s crush on her and engineer a situation for Caitlyn to act on it while simultaneously making Caitlyn feel indebted to her.
It was said that there were few bonds as strong as those forged in fire. That was a theory that Cinder was determined to test.
“Right. Sorry, forgot who I was talking to,” Yoruichi said, hopping down from her perch and landing lightly in her human form, completely nude. She was unbothered by it as she crossed the distance, a hand slipping up her skirt to grab a handful of her ass. “Well, so long as I get to collect, I don't particularly care.”
A thin smile found its way onto Cinder’s lips, “Unless you want it to last fifteen minutes, I suggest you wait until the job is done.” She had no particular attraction to women, but Yoruichi did and that was something Cinder could use. After a month of near nonstop sex in El Dorado with Law, Cinder had gotten accustomed to a woman’s touch. Sex with a woman didn't excite her, but she could acknowledge that Yoruichi was exceptionally skilled when it came to sex, so it was hardly a bother when Yoruichi named her price for this gambit.
“Fine, fine,” Yoruichi said, giving her ass a light spank before Cinder got everything in position. She turned off the lights, except for the one that was directly over the table that Caitlyn was strapped to, plunging the room into a heavy darkness. While Yoruichi went to grab the unwitting pawn in this con, Cinder strategically tore at her own clothing to indicate a struggle.
With everything ready, it was merely a waiting game. Minutes passed relatively quickly before Caitlyn began to stir, turning her head one way, going to move her hands, only to find them bound. It was then that a spike of panic cut through the grogginess, a harsh gasp escaping her before she started to yank at the restraints with a growing urgency.
Caitlyn was a soft girl from a rich family, but she steel in her. That much Cinder would admit. There were no tears or denials as the reality of her situation settled in. She simply grit her teeth and started looking around for a way to escape, or for Cinder. And there was no small part of Cinder that wanted to step out of the darkness and reveal herself as the mastermind.
She wanted to see Caitlyn's expression when she broke. Just as Annie did. That moment of defeat, when Annie just gave up, becoming Cinder’s personal toy… it had been delicious. Intoxicating. It was something that Cinder wanted to see again and again and again -- particularly from Caitlyn. A girl who was born with everything that Cinder could have ever wanted -- money, a loving family, power…
Her musings were cut short by the sound of the door opening, rusted hinges squealing as Caitlyn stilled on the table. The leader of the Cult shuffled forward, moving with ease despite his lack of eyes, which told Cinder he saw through a different means. His scars were covered by a rough linen cloak, leaving only his face exposed as he entered the room. “A sacrifice,” he announced, striding forward.
“You- what did you do to Cinder? Where is she?!” Caitlyn demanded and Cinder swallowed a smile. How sweet.
“Ah, your partner,” the Cultist replied. Cinder had planned it all out meticulously -- as far as the cultist was aware, provided that Yoruichi obeyed instructions, then he would think that Yoruichi had captured two Enforcers while Caitlyn was just the first to be served up. “Worry not. She shall be joining you shortly.”
There was a flicker of fear in Caitlyn's expression as she gazed into the darkness, flinching when the Cultist revealed himself by stepping into the light. “W-what are you doing?” She was trying to keep it down, remain focused, but orientation hadn't prepared her for this. “Why are you doing this? I don't understand.”
“You do,” The Cultist continued, almost gently. “You just don't accept it. Not yet. We offer our lord our suffering, giving the sources of it and in return, we are delivered bliss. We are unburdened. We suffer as we learn to live without, but upon mastering what we are lacking, our lord restores us.” As he spoke, his scarred hand went to his empty eye sockets.
The bound girl's eyes narrowed, still treating this like a case and learning what she could. “Then why am I bound like this? Why has your Cult been murdering and destroying other people's lives? If suffering gives your life meaning, then suffer. Don't go dragging other people into your misfortunes!” She was trying so hard to be brave but there was a fatal crack in her expression that revealed the fear underneath.
Cinder rubbed her thighs together, knowing that she was getting wet from the scene. She wasn't fond of others playing with her toys, but seeing Caitlyn in such a state excited her in ways that she hadn't felt since Annie first crumpled under the blackmail. All the while, the Cultist spoke. “It is because our numbers are few, I'm afraid. Our meager offerings are not enough to restore our lord to his pinnacle, so we must collect the impure suffering from others. It is regrettable. I wish that we alone could sustain him, alas…”
“Restore?” Caitlyn questioned sharply, her eyes narrowing as the Cultist picked up a knife that was arranged near the table. “What I saw- that building that was erased… that wasn't him at his best?” It was time, Cinder decided, stalking forward through the darkness as she picked up a wrench.
“Of course not,” the Cultist said, sounding downright insulted. “He is a god, you foolish child. Not a mere mage as your ilk have labeled him. Take heart -- you shall learn his truth first hand, as you become part of something… greater,” the Cultist continued and Cinder waited until his knife drew it's first drop of blood from Caitlyn, who clenched her eyes and braced for pain, before she lashed out with the wrench.
It struck the Cultist with a wet thunk, his skull caving in from the blow and he limply fell to the side. Caitlyn tore her eyes open, looking to Cinder, “Cin-?!” Caitlyn started, only to be silenced by Cinder covering her mouth with a hand.
“Shh,” Cinder urged, a note of frantic panic in her voice. “There are others. I just barely managed to escape, but it won't be long before they notice something is wrong,” Cinder urged, undoing the restraints that she had put on Caitlyn, and was met with a tight hug from Caitlyn the moment her arms were free.
“Thank you,” Caitlyn whispered, a sob lodged in her throat, making her voice thick with emotion.
“You can thank me when we're out of this nightmare,” Cinder urged, freeing her partner and shoving clothes into her hands. Cinder had deliberately chosen clothing that would be fast to put on, even with Caitlyn's adrenaline induced trembling. “Come on, follow me,” Cinder urged, grabbing Caitlyn's hand and dragging her behind her as they went about the escape route she had planned out.
All of it was prearranged as they snuck out of the theater. When someone was high on Joy, they didn't bother asking questions -- like why Yoruichi asked them to stand at the end of a hallway, talking to another cultist, but deliberately instructed to not look one way. Or why they were told to walk somewhere at a specific time. They just did it, allowing them to craft the illusion of escaping by the skin of their teeth.
“They're going to be looking for us when they realize we've escaped,” Caitlyn pointed out, saving Cinder from having to say a line as they entered a back alley.
“You're right,” Cinder admitted. “I don't trust the Enforcers in the Undercity -- there's no way that the Cult could operate without their notice, but they're going to be looking at the rail cars.”
Caitlyn gripped her hand tightly, “Then what do we do?”
After a brief few seconds of pretending that Cinder had to think of an answer, she spoke, “I know a place that we can lay low at for a bit. Long enough that they'll think we got away and we can slip by them.” With that part of this farce done, Cinder began to usher Caitlyn down another predetermined path, complete with the occasional cultist seemingly looking for someone.
Some minutes later, Cinder was pulling off boards to an abandoned house that she had previously nailed the boards onto a week ago. The two of them climbed inside with Caitlyn looking around at the dilapidated building with eyes full of uncertainty. At least until her gaze landed on an edited photo that was covered in dust in the living room.
She picked it up, “This was your home? You lived here?” Caitlyn asked, surprisingly shocked. It would seem that she hadn't read the background check that her mother had done on Cinder. She showed Cinder a photo -- a picture of herself as a young girl held up by a titan of a man while a woman was pressed against his side, all of them wearing bright smiles.
The photo was fake, created using deep fake technology found in Law's home world. The child version of herself was just the current her aged down, while her ‘parents’ were a split of features that mixed together in Cinder. Given that deep fake technology wasn't even a dream in this world at this point, the possibility that it could be fake didn't even enter Caitlyn's mind.
“... I did. A long time ago,” Cinder lied, taking the photo and giving it a lingering, guarded yet fond look before setting it to the side on an end table. Face down. Something to insinuate that troubles lurked in her past, which would appeal to Caitlyn's nature in thinking that Cinder was overcoming them and working with the Enforcers.
“I didn't know,” Caitlyn admitted, her voice soft as she took a seat on a half-rotted couch. “I… I thought you were from Piltover. Sorry, I… I…” Cinder saw the adrenaline wearing off and what happened sink in. Caitlyn's breathing got ragged, her voice got thick, and despite clenching her hands together so tightly, she couldn't stop the trembling. “I really thought I was… that you…”
Her expression was a delight, Cinder thought to herself, taking a seat next to Caitlyn and counting down the seconds. She placed a hand on her trembling fists, “It's okay. We're okay. We just need to lay low for a few hours before we can get you back home. Then the real torture can begin when your mother finds out about this.”
That got a ghost of laughter from Caitlyn as she looked at Cinder. “You saved my life, Cinder. After I dragged you into this… this disaster.”
“That's what partners are for,” Cinder rattled off a generic but good-natured reply, a line she had been given in the movies that never manifested from her contract with Vought. That earned her a watery smile as she clutched at Cinder's hand so tightly. “The only issue now is what we're going to do for the next few hours.”
She couldn't have timed it better if she tried -- it was exactly that moment the pill of Joy dissolved, hitting her with its full effects. It wasn't a full dose, not like what most of that trash that Sukuna collected got. It was a micro-dose, so small that Caitlyn couldn't realize she had been dosed in the first place, but just potent enough to have an effect on her mood.
Love was an illusion. A carefully crafted delusion that was made up of brain chemicals assigning meaning to words or actions. What's more, it was an illusion that could be crafted with the right set of words, actions, and circumstances. By mixing intense emotions with a moment of weakness…
Caitlyn lunged forward, pressing her lips to Cinder's in a lightning fast kiss before Caitlyn yanked her head back. It was impressive that she still had the presence of mind to realize what she just did. “That was- I- sorry,” the words came out of her mouth in a jumbled mess.
Cinder silenced her by pinching her chin and leaning forward, kissing Caitlyn back, and she clung to Cinder like she was afraid she'd fade away and vanish.
All exactly according to plan.
…
“Interesting,” I muttered, taking advantage of a pause in my experiments to look over the initial results of my latest bet -- the sales of the Pipboy vs Asami’s radio. At long last, she had taken a page out of my book and shamelessly stole another world's intellectual property to pass off as her own. I was rather proud of her for it, because it showed she was at least taking this little game of ours seriously and hadn’t checked out of it entirely.
Piltover was rather taken with the radio. Even beyond entertainment, it was a fantastic piece of tech that had wide-sweeping applications. I was used to the radio being a way to listen to my choice of music, but historically it had started off as a military tool. Or it could be used as a way to connect the world, allowing for far easier communication with places like Noxus Prime, Bilgewater, etc.
Honestly, Asami had a real chance of beating me there. At least until the advertisements and production started to ramp up, tipping me off on what she had planned, and I made a last-minute addition to the Pipboy to restore its radio function. The bet was still ongoing, but so far, I had a very strong early lead on Asami that I didn’t see her bridging so easily.
A sigh escaped me as I set the report to the side, “What a disappointment she turned out to be. Oh well, at least I get to play with Rumi,” I mused, looking at the centrifuge as it slowly ramped down its spinning. I had really looked forward to colliding with Asami on a completely new battlefield, but so far… My excitement had cooled off, and now I was left disappointed. And bored.
Which had me turning my attention to other more interesting endeavors to fill the void. Especially seeing as Robin had departed for her expedition and wouldn’t be back for months.
Once the centrifuge finally stopped, I removed the top to reveal the contents -- vials filled with a pink liquid of various hues. Pink represented Love, but love had numerous components: pleasure, attraction, and affection, for example. But even beyond these, there were several types of love: familial, friendly, and romantic. I was collecting the hues, gathering them for further experimentation and to aid my other projects.
Gathering each vial up, I added them to a bag for storage. It wasn’t much, just a trickle, and the entire thing was pretty time-consuming on my part, but I found the hassle was worth it. And, as if to prove it, as I returned the labeled bags back to the freezer that was stuffed full of them by this point, I heard a beep that told me that another experiment was ready.
Walking over to a Memory Lounge I had installed into my secret laboratory, I checked on the synth that was currently laying within it. A monitor read out that the memory transference was complete after an odd twelve or so hours since AI had started it. So, I grabbed the Synth and Shambled him over to the operating table.
The Soul Noodles were an interesting project that I was slowly making headway with. The first variations were pretty weak, admittedly. However, in the months since, I’ve slowly found ways to increase their quality, bit by bit. A freshly printed off Synth had a weak soul, which was why the Soul Noodles were so weak and fragile. In the end, if your foundation was made out of sand, it was only natural that it would crumble under pressure.
That led me to figuring out how I could strengthen the soul, and there were several answers. First and foremost was addressing why the Synth souls were so weak -- they had no experiences to speak of. They were short lived, their lifespan usually lasting a couple of hours when I needed to experiment with them. So, the natural conclusion was to give them some memories.
I had already floated the idea to Shaun before -- using a Memory Lounge to essentially copy and paste my memories into a Synth. The entire process had me sitting in one of those lounges as my memories were uploaded into a hard drive that I could then use to upload a copy of them into a Synth's brain. From birth up to the point of me making a copy of my memories, all of it was stuffed into their noggins to give them a more robust soul.
The effects were obvious as I went about draining the Synth of emotions. Unlike a freshly printed off Synth, the volume of emotions gathered were significantly more. In short, even if the container was the same size, the reserves were far greater. Three times as much depending on some of the emotions. That, in turn, allowed for a greater quality Soul Noodle.
Another little innovation I pioneered was that I shoved a Hexcrystal, one roughly the size of a marble, into the Synth upon creation. By doing so, not only was I able to streamline the process, but I was able to identify the markers that allowed for a more… efficient absorption of ambient mana. Which, in turn, allowed me to design more efficient Synths for the process of creating Soul Noodles. And, as if to agree with me, as I drained the emotions from the Synth, mana flowed into the empty space left behind.
As it did that, and I stored the bags of emotions for future use, I headed to the storage room to retrieve one of the dozen Synths that I had stored in cryopods taken from the Vault 101. All of them had been drained of emotions, their souls full of mana, which led me to my final innovation when it came to the Soul Noodles.
Much like apes, a single noodle was weak. But together, apes were strong. And so too, were the Soul Noodles.
“Here comes the hard part,” I muttered to myself as I began to pull upon the Soul Noodles from the dozen Synths. I took the strongest of them -- rage, love, and will -- and began to knit them together as I extracted them. The three Soul Noodles became one, then I began to weave the dozen individual Noodles into a single more powerful Soul Noodle by repeating the process once more.
The end result was more of a… Soul Thread, in practice. But the results spoke for themselves as I held the improved Soul Thread aloft.
“That's quality,” I noted, pleased with myself. I had established a grading system for the Soul Noodles. The first variations had been the weakest by far, so I used them as the lowest rank by measuring both how much mana they could absorb, the rate of which they absorbed it, and the output that they could maintain without signs of degradation.
E-rank was the lowest rank of Soul Noodle -- poor input, absorption, and output. Overall, trash, and barely functioning trash at that.
D-rank was better by every metric. D-rank is where I put the average, unremarkable, and normal quality Soul Noodle that you could expect from any average Joe.
C-rank was where things got interesting. That was when I started weaving the Soul Noodles together to double their quality.
The same held true for B and A-rank -- both of which essentially doubled the quality of the former rank. Which left the final rank that I was calling S Rank. Which my latest result seemed to breach for the very first time.
“An output of a hundred units of mana, the absorption rate is point-three units of mana a second, with the max capacity of the Soul Noodle being three hundred units of mana,” I noted down my findings after running through a few tests. “My best work so far,” I mused happily.
Mad science was fun. I thought it'd be more monotonous, but even when I had to rerun the same tests over and over, it never really got dull.
This was a Soul Noodle that I wouldn't mind grafting onto my own soul once I’d perfected the transplant operation. I had succeeded with Synth souls, but unsurprisingly, the soul was very finicky. Especially when it came to foreign Soul Noodles -- I had tried grafting a Noodle onto a Synth of Cinder, and the aftermath of that experiment was messy. Which had made it pretty clear that, like an organ, there were rejection issues if the Soul Noodle and its would-be host weren't compatible, so I would only be able to graft Noodles that came from my own Synths to my soul.
I was rapidly approaching the point where I could look to implementing them. I just needed to fine-tune the whole process. Until then, I was stocking up on high-quality Soul Noodles with the S-rank one joining fifteen A-rank Noodles that I had in storage before I went about collecting the rest from the Synths for further experimentation. Waste not, want not, so to speak. After all the Synths were tossed into the recycling vat, and the Hexcrystal was back in storage, I left my lab content with my progress for the day.
Shambling myself back to my decoy lab, I walked out with my arms stretched over my head as my back popped while I was hit with a cool wind. “Long day at the office,” I remarked to myself, realizing that I could probably use a coat. The weather in Piltover was generally hot and humid, but it dropped down to the mid thirties for winter. Which made it a wet cold, and that just sucked.
Rolling my shoulders, I started to take a step before I Shambled myself a couple of blocks away onto a roof top. Holding my hands out, I uttered, “Rooms.” In response, two bubbles formed in my hand, one of which I threw like a baseball. Both expanded, overlapping, but that was fine as I Shambled myself again -- I was just doing it for the practice. With my focus on my experiments my personal training had fallen to the wayside, so I tried to fit it in where I could.
Creating two Rooms was something of a recent development. They weren’t great. Or, rather, they were pretty damn terrible in comparison to my normal range. But I had an itching feeling that I had better master it sooner or later -- Asami and the Corpo Espionage War had proven to be a great big wet fart, but Rumi was cooking something up. Her, I had faith in. She wouldn’t let sleeping dogs lie, especially now that it looked like she was going to lose another bet.
From my vantage, as I made my way down into Zaun, I could see the developments Piltover was implementing. I saw radio towers going up, small protoversions of a true radio tower that could broadcast across continents. However, as I made my way through the city, I saw significantly more Pipboys adorning peoples’ wrists. For the initial launch, I sold them at a massive cost that took a big bite out of my savings, but when the demand skyrocketed, so did the price.
The Pipboy had enough practicality to appeal to the business-minded while being enough of a novelty that someone could buy them on a whim. Combined with the budding radio tech, people were finding that they could communicate with each other across the city instantly. And that, naturally, put Asami’s ‘new’ channel of communication in high demand. So, I had probably ended up helping her as much as she helped me.
Forming another Room, I lobbed it down into the trench that marked the entrance to the Undercity. With a hop and a jump, I dropped down inside of it and landed on a rooftop as light as a feather.
“I’m probably being too free with my powers,” I noted to myself, but I couldn’t stop myself. Asami had blue balled me, and Sukuna, so I was just itching for some action, and this was the closest I was going to get to any for the foreseeable future. That being said, I did take a few precautions, such as the familiar mask that was on my face. No one in this city would recognize it, but it felt good to wear the mask again.
Heading down into the depths of the Sump, where the air grew thicker and harsher until it was borderline unbreathable, I went straight to my destination. I was greeted with the sound of music that bounced off the cavern walls as I fell straight down, landing lightly on a thin walkway that was adorned with colorful drawings that hinted at a chaotic mind.
Jinx’s lair was a sight -- at the heart of it was some kind of airship that was secured in place and halfway built. There was a small alcove on one side where there were some creepy-looking dolls with drawn on faces that didn’t at all seem happy. A record player was on, which was the source of the music, leaving Jinx to bounce lightly as she worked on the newest addition to her lair.
Suspended above the crevice was a foundation secured by thick cables, bubblegum, and spite. It was upon that foundation that an almost hodgepoged ramshackle fusion reactor was being built, made almost entirely of improvised materials.
Jinx was currently welding something together, swaying with the music as she worked. I inspected it, seeing that it was really coming together. I’m not sure if Jinx had the raw intelligence as Asami, someone who managed to breach the fabric of reality with the Dias, but one thing was clear -- Jinx was brilliant. The kind of brilliant that meant she could take a look at some blueprints, understand fission technology with a glance and a few questions, and then build a reactor with what she had on hand.
I waited until she was done to announce myself, “You’re making good progress.” I noted, a little wary at how the rope bridge to the reactor bounced the foundation to it ever so slightly.
Jinx looked over, a cog in hand falling to the side. “Law! You ever going to tell me how you keep getting in here?” Jinx asked, and I felt a surge of affection for me. Happiness. Joy, even.
I hadn’t intended it, but helping Jinx that one time had put me firmly in her good books. She proved as much as she haphazardly tossed the blowtorch over her shoulder, skipping over to me, and grabbing my arm to bring me to her latest work. “Nope,” I answered easily, not minding the development. “What’s the timeline?”
“Hm? Oh, it’s got a couple more months left,” Jinx answered, pulling on a lever that had an angry face drawn on it. “Could be sooner if I get some decent scrap. I’m just waitin’ on some parts for the core, so I’m working on the cooling system.”
A couple of months, hm?
“I’ll see what I can do to speed things along,” I decided, looking at the reactor as I chose to drape an arm over Jinx’s shoulder. Perhaps not as fast as I had hoped, but quicker than I feared.
And once it was done… I think it would be time to bring this little game with Asami to a close.
