(Rewritten) Ch. 137 – It’s Super Effective!

> fykmahlyfe: nietzsche would tell you to piss on the toilet lid to assert dominance

> MangoSaint: And Descartes would advise you to proudly sprinkle the central pond to establish your presence.

> fykmahlyfe: spinoza says pee the sides of the bowl for stealth

> MangoSaint: How's that?

> fykmahlyfe: dude was basically atheist before it was cool but never straight said god don't exist

> MangoSaint: Ah. Diogenes questions authority and waters the tiles next to the toilet.

> fykmahlyfe: kant transcends toilets altogether and pisses in the sink

> MangoSaint: Hah. And Niccolò Machiavelli?

> noFeetGang: probably explain that if you pissed on the seat, you could ensure your own exclusive toilet. but you should do it only once, lest the unwashed masses decide to dunk your head in it.

– Road Rash's Twitch chat during an adbreak, 2057

***

Leah just could not bring herself to say no to those big, sparkling eyes. There was no keeping secrets from Tinea. She'd crack soon, she knew it.

Tinea was leaning against her side, one of Leah's arms clutched with both of hers, squished between the tiny murder machine's boobs. Their size informed her that Tinea was currently running low on healing bionites.

Leah thought about the timeline of the last few days. It'd been, what, three days since Tinea found her?

Fuck a duck, things are moving fast.

It sure didn't feel like it. To Leah's sense of time, it was as though a month had passed.

Maybe it's the contrast between the activity and the, Leah swallowed heavily, captivity.

She saw Tinea's brows furrow, and got squeezed tightly when the smaller girl noticed Leah's sudden tension. One of her hands slipped down Leah's arm to entangle hers with gently caressing fingers.

Surprisingly, the cold sweat and clawing, helpless panic Leah had expected didn't follow the thought. Instead, it felt like the whole episode was years old. Years during which her thoughts hadn't circled the events at all.

That Memory Seal's no joke, is it? But then, Ypsi gave it extra potency.

Nonetheless, she drew solace from the distraction of Tinea's attentive care. The tall redhead's heart already beat for the adorable angel of retribution and she looked forward to decompressing with her for a few hours.

Wonder where we're heading, though, Leah mused. Can't say we met in the most auspicious of circumstances…

Her fingers absentmindedly traced Tinea's cheekbones, her mind caught half-way between reflecting on the internal forces that had compelled her to accept Tinea's love so quickly, the uncharacteristic lack of self-doubt and agonizing over her responsibilities that usually accompanied her romantic interests, and the warm softness of her killing machine's modest breasts.

From the slow rumble of thoughts, Leah gleaned the insight that it was a good thing they'd have a day's time before the next battle; it'd give Tinea's breasts the time to fill out a little again. She'd regenerate her healing resources.

Leah snorted to herself. Boobs for the win, indeed.

When the moth-girl-to-be rose on her tiptoes to kiss her, she ignored the tangible wall of barely-constrained Nerd commentary that radiated from Dolores and focused fully on her girlfriend instead.

Tinea was a package of graceful violence offset by impish seduction. The cute curiosity of young puppies that she displayed every other step kept tugging on Leah's heart strings, and her wholesome wonder at being a woman was… Leah grinned inwardly as she borrowed a thought of Tinea's style: They were splashes of revitalizing color on a canvas stretched beyond tearing by the cold and careless greed of kidnappers.

She stuck her nose into Tinea's hair, between the antennae, and breathed the girl's scent. It consisted mostly of the shampoo Leah had loaded into her arm, but there was that note of something she couldn't place. Her brain insisted it was familiar, and yet she'd swear she hadn't smelled it before. She wondered if maybe the scent was engineered, too? It'd make sense, considering how Tinea's entire body was clearly made to be hugged, designed to lure affection.

War crime levels of huggidity, most certainly, she thought. Intentional innocence—manufactured, yet somehow genuine. But how?

Leah hadn't had to deal much with manipulation. None of her relationships were troubled by it, and the profit-driven corporate agents that had tried, more than once, to uproot Sister Lana's St. Viktor to get at that rarest of commodities: daylit space within a megacity; could never get personal. But even so, she felt she'd know and/or be weirded out by manufactured, and thereby manipulative, innocence, usually. So how was Tinea different? Why did her arguable manipulation feel…so pure?

Maybe it's just the context? Tinea was exploring herself and the world through fresh eyes, through a fresh way of existing. The childishly cute vibes of hug-me-please that came with it were almost incidental. Wanted, intentional, but also necessary in a frank way? They weren't being used to hide anything.

It never felt like her affection came with strings attached. Yeah.

Leah often found herself drained by the hysteric mood swings of teenage girls—try as she might, caring for the prepubescent was less effort by far. But something about Tinea's previous adulthood alleviated a major element of her second puberty. Something that meant that, somehow, it was no chore at all to be the rock for Tinea to cling to whenever her emotions rattled her.

'Tis the unreserved intimacy she shares, surely, Leah thought smugly as she absorbed the near-kinetic energy of Tinea's hug. What a heady cocktail of oxytocin she doth generate.

Tinea'd gone back to orbital bombardment levels of begging puppy-eyes, big saucers with bigger pupils shimmering with unreleased tears. A trembling pout finished the one-two combo.

It appeared the cutest brunette in Leah's life wasn't beyond learning tactics of advanced cajolery from a pair of six year olds, even if they'd only interacted virtually, and only for a few minutes.

It's super effective!

Leah relented. "I figured out a theretofore undiscovered exploit that let me solo a Major Order that was only hours from failing."

Tinea, lacking context, tilted her head and raised her brows.

"The Major Orders of the Helldiver series are massive sets of individual campaigns and require tens of thousands of players to participate over the course of a few days to a few weeks to complete, usually. They're tuned to be a close call even if the entire community participates."

Tinea's lips made an O of comprehension.

Dolores added her two cents, "In all the decades of the IP's existence, Blind Eyes over there is the only one to understand the second game well enough to find such a massive exploit. During one of the biggest community events ever. Without access to any of the source code, or indeed, experience with code at all. Especially code from pre-AI times." She pointed at Leah with a huge grin, before continuing, "My personal hero. Inspired me to Nerdify myself."

Leah groaned and covered her face with both hands when Tinea turned her glittering eyes back on her, perfectly aware from Leah's reactions that she was hiding more. Cringey stuff more. Edgelord stuff more, to go with the edgelord name. All she'd have to do was search the Mesh a little. The girl clearly cherished the blackmail worth a megatease or two.

Suddenly, Leah's head jerked up in realization. She could just ask Ypsilon to purge all traces of her dark edgelord days! Yes! Salvation!

Tinea's eyes narrowed dangerously. The pout transformed from adorably sweet to sensuously threatening. The dark-haired woman with the rose-petal lips rolled onto her tiptoes again, curled graceful arms behind Leah's neck and pressed the full length of her body against Leah. Then she whispered slow words into her ear.

"Leah," she said, and Tinea's svelte, sensuous rasp gave her goosebumps, made her heart jump with nervous anticipation even as a fuzzy tail tickled the sensitive back of her knees.

"The cute, hot and bothered girl in your arms wants to know more about her girlfriend. She might've discovered she's slightly possessive."

Leah almost moaned.

"And I'm sure she'll let her girlfriend…embarrass her in equal measure." A nibble on Leah's earlobe sent a shudder through her while the honeyed seduction dredged certain fantasies from the depths of her imagination.

Then Tinea softly dropped all the heat and enticement, gently enough for it to not be jarring, slowly enough to let Leah follow the change. Her hug turned pure and friendly, her expression lost the teasing edge. When she continued, her voice was entirely free of sexual promise, free of demands.

"Fun aside, Leah, I don't want you to feel like you owe me your past. I'd…love to know your, heh, origin story," she said with a twinkle in her eyes, "but I have no right to it. None except that which you are comfortable extending to me."

Leah could tell that she meant it, too. It wasn't an act, a pretense of virtue, but an actual understanding of boundaries. Of propriety. Of limits the woman was willing to tease, but not break unbidden. It was a trait that had already thrown a lasso and snared Leah's interest and infatuation without even trying. A playfulness that tickled her and had smoothly slotted itself against the shape of who Leah was and what she wanted.

She just knew that Tinea would be a lifelong delight to discover and experience.

If things work out that way…

Sudden anxiety pierced Leah at the thought that samurai tended to risk death a lot. That she might lose Tinea.

But, she soothed her fears and tucked away the horrible sucking in her gut, we're well past the initial weakness that gets so many of us killed. We've answered every threat, and returned every injury a thousandfold. We've made it. We'll be fine.

When the two lovebirds surfaced from their mutual absorption, they found that Dolores had replaced herself onto the plinth. The samurai had further stuck a sticky note to her forehead, protected from the mild breeze by the cowl. Tinea reached out with a snort and tugged it off.

In surprisingly neat cursive, it read "Seems like y'all are bizz. Don't need no 3rd wheel, do ya? No worries, fair enough. Figure ya'll want yer hours off to yer own. I put the Memorial in privacy mode, nobody'll disturb ya, not even me. No sensors active and whatnot, 'xcept for touch if ya wanna wake me. Otherwise I'll talk to y'all again in 10. Beasties come in ~17. Be'll plenty time ta plan. XOXO, Dolores"

Leah found herself snorting again, this time at the way old "XOXO".

Looks like she decided to dip. Too much sugar, maybe?

"Welp, there ya go. How 'bout we chill?" said Tinea, borrowing Dolores's slangy vernacular, and unceremoniously ordered an entire picnic from her AI. Leah let her drag her down onto the new, checkered blanket and oophed a chuckle when her girlfriend plunked herself on top of her.

She found peace again, in the tiny weight of Tinea, in the rich scent of nature that surrounded them, in the dappled shade that played across Tinea's hair, and in the sweet taste of Vanguard-class pastries fed to her by the dancing fingers of a brilliantly smiling brunette.

I kind of want to see those nails grown out. I'm sure they'd be fantastically beautiful.

Maybe, she figured, recognizing the unlikely chain of events that had led to freedom found and love seeded. The chances of becoming a samurai, getting kidnapped, being saved by yet another kidnapped samurai, and that samurai being who Tinea was, must've been less than one in a gazillion. I really am the luckiest gal on the planet.

***