“Big corporations buying Samurai tech is nothing new. In a way we’re even encouraged to sell some of our stuff; it is kind of the whole point of uplifting humanity, so it makes sense. Most of us don’t pay too much attention to it either, we make sure nothing too harmful gets out there, but other than that very few of us give much of a shit. Problem is of course that sometimes things don’t go as planned. Shit that you’d think is entirely harmless gets used for some bullcrap that harms more people than it helps. Then it’s on us to go in there and deal with it. That said, it’s a rather rare occurrence. Most of the time they just use it to make more porn or something.”

- Samurai ‘Ben 12’ in an interview with ‘Samuraiz’, 2052

By the time we returned to the real world, we had spent a pleasant couple of hours just exploring the simulation together. We were a bit surprised when Jenna mentioned that she would like to return to the simulation at a later date. It appeared that she found the entire thing quite fascinating, even if it was clear that it wasn’t to the degree that she would consider becoming a proper Hive-Mind herself.

Chloe was equally enthused, once she got over her initial fears. Experiencing it herself had obviously helped her a great deal to relax, and she took her time to really immerse herself. From her comments she had no specific plans to return to the simulation once we were done, but it also was clear that she didn’t mind the idea should we ever end up here again.

Hearing that almost brought Us to tears. After all the dread we felt about it all, we were incredibly happy to be able to spend time with them that way. To see how easy it was for them to accept Us the way we were once they had a much better idea of what being a Hive-Mind meant.

Each of them quickly started to speak to all of Us, some conversations taking a bit longer, some only consisting of a few shared words. At first they were a bit hesitant to use all their different voices and bodies to that end, but once they got used to it and became more relaxed things kind of went from there. We had hundreds of conversations going on at the same time, exchanging experiences, stories, parts of our respective past.

One of Chloe’s voices compared it to a very strange speed dating session, which was a surprisingly fitting comparison and we did learn much about each other. Jenna was a bit more reserved, but even she opened up eventually, telling Us about herself and why she was hesitant about accepting a relationship with Us and the worries that plagued her regarding that.

In a way she was a lot different from what we had first thought, but it was also apparent that the reason she was so hesitant was rooted in a deep care both for herself and for Us. It made Us incredibly happy to hear, but we both decided that we would revisit that topic at a later date, when we had more time to properly discuss it. Probably over a good drink and a nice dinner.

Generally we learned a lot about the two, some of which was a bit surprising. For example Chloe later confided in Us that she had been orders of magnitude more anxious than she had initially led on, which was also part of the reason she had pushed so hard to talk about it. We didn’t know why exactly she was so anxious; she didn’t tell Us, and we didn’t push. We would wait until she was ready for it.

It did mean that the later half of our little mesh excursion turned into a very relaxed and long conversation about many different topics. But, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end, and so we decided to return to the real world.

We were of course the first to emerge from the dive, considering that we didn’t really have to dive in the same way the others had, and we took the time to admire the two women we loved more than anything else in the world. In this silence we felt content, even the gnawing guilt abiding just a little.

Feeling a little playful we climbed on top of Chloe who was still in the process of fully waking up, giving her a tight embrace and a peck on the cheek. We wanted to do more, it was honestly kind of hard to stop ourselves after all of that and the intense emotions it had engendered in Us, but we also knew that she still had reservations. Yes, she was more comfortable with Us now, orders of magnitude more comfortable really, but there was a little bit of anxiety that we felt at the idea of somehow messing things up with her.

It was different now, no longer a question about our nature as a Hive-Mind and simply the normal anxiety anyone who was trying to get into a relationship would experience to some degree sooner or later. In a way it was the kind of anxiety we welcomed, because it was something so normal compared to all the rest of our worries.

So we settled on a tight embrace, simply sharing this moment with this amazing person who had upstaged so many things in our life, while she slowly awoke from the induced slumber of the dive. It was kind of adorable watching her slowly come to, rubbing her eyes with a bit of difficulty, considering that we did take up her lap, before finally returning the embrace.

Neither of us said anything for a long moment, just existing and taking pleasure and comfort in the presence of the other. Chloe had told Us that she would not be against the idea of getting in a relationship with Us, that she wanted to learn more about Us and what it meant to be a Hive-Mind. And despite her fears, fears that had so obviously rattled her, she had done exactly that.

It made Us admire her greatly. Not many would go that far, stand face to face with their demons. Many would probably have run for the hills, some might even indulge themselves in any kind of distraction from sex to drugs or even more destructive habits to escape from it, but she hadn’t.

She had set out to conquer her fears, to give Us her full attention and to see where it would lead us both in the future.

Finally Jenna spoke up, stretching lavishly on the couch. With our echolocation we admired her for a moment, not turning our head away from Chloe.

“That was a lot different from what I expected,” she said, leaning back with a content sigh, “But in a good way.”

“Yeah…” Chloe agreed quietly, a bit of a dreamy smile on her face, “I’m glad I decided to ask.”

“Does that mean you’re finally ready to be honest with yourself?” Jenna teased, making Chloe blush ever so faintly.

“Shush you,” the taller woman replied, “You can start bugging me about it when you start to actually put your own effort in. And don’t tell me you don’t feel the same way, don’t lie to yourself.”

We chuckled at that, enjoying the exchange but remaining quiet. Part of Us was anxious to hear Chloe’s answer to Jenna’s question, although it was a much less intense emotion now.

Jenna giggled as well, “Everyone’s a hypocrite. And don’t dodge the question.”

“You’re annoying, you know that?” Chloe countered, with mock exasperation in her voice.

“One of my better qualities,” Jenna admitted shamelessly.

We all giggled at that.

“For what it’s worth… I think I still need some time,” Chloe finally said into the silence that followed, “It’s all… so much easier now. To understand and to accept. But it’s also a lot. I don’t wanna rush things… Sorry, Seraphine.”

“Boooo,” Jenna jeered playfully.

“It’s okay, Chloe,” we said with a smile, before finally pulling ourselves away from her. Giving the still relentlessly smirking Jenna a glance, we continued.

“And just so you know, I actually rather prefer this approach. It means she cares enough for me, and for Us, to actually give it the time it deserves.”

“Seraphine,” Chloe interrupted before Jenna could say anything, “You know you can stop with that, right? I’ve seen how you tick, how you feel, I know that it’s much easier and much more natural to speak differently. I may have my hiccups and I’ll tell you if I’m not comfortable with something, but you can be yourself. I’ve learned a lot today and I don’t want you to act differently just to make me feel better.”

We had in fact switched our way of speaking consciously to not push them too hard, especially Chloe. She was a lot more comfortable with Us now, that much was clear, but there were limits to that and we didn’t want to take any chances.

The fact that she was the one who told Us not to, who invited Us to be ourselves, was… For a moment we were left speechless in surprise. She probably didn’t realise how much that meant, but for Us that was a world of difference.

Burying our face in her chest we clutched her tight, not trusting our voice at that moment, but desperate to let her know just how thankful we were.

“Yeah,” Jenna agreed with a nod, her smirk finally dropping and making Us even more flustered and giddy, “At this point it’s kind of moot to try and play around it. You’ve been pretty much doing it for the last couple hours, I think at this point we both got used to it.”

Myriad was the one who stepped up in our stead, trying to remain calm and regal, but nobody would miss the underlying excitement and giddiness that she radiated.

“I do not believe that you realise, jusst how much that meanss to Uss. Thank you, both, for thiss. It hass been one of the major pointss of worry within the choruss.”

Chloe giggled, having noticed our inability to speak for ourselves, and clutching Us a bit more tightly to her chest.

“It’s different now,” she explained, gently caressing our back through our shirt, “A lot more… normal. Yeah, it’s a bit unusual, but a lot less… unsettling than it was before. Now that I know how you feel, it feels bad to ask you to stop and to act differently.”

Jenna simply nodded, obviously feeling much the same way.

There was another long moment of silence, before Jenna spoke up. “Maybe you two should get showered. It’s already pretty late and we still want to get some things done today.”

Taking a moment to calm ourselves down we nodded, giving Chloe a loving smile. “Do you wanna go first or should we?”

To our surprise she blushed faintly, “We could go together…”

“We could…” we allowed with a faint smirk, “Although we might get a little handsy… You sure you want to?”

For a moment Chloe thought about it, actually thought about the idea. “It depends… How handsy are you going to get? I don’t mind a little looking, maybe a little bit of groping, but I’m not sure I’m ready for more yet…”

Stolen novel; please report.

“It is a bit hard to keep ourselves in check with two ladies as lovely as you around, but we think we could manage, if we tried hard enough. Just let Us know-”

We were interrupted by a call. Glancing at the meta-data in the virtual realm we realised it was from Snapshot.

“Hold on,” we told Jenna and Chloe absently, pulling them into the call just as we accepted.

“Snapshot,” We said, giving him a small nod. Of course in our virtual realm we still wore our Samurai outfit. “Glad to see you. Why’d you call?”

“Myriad,” he returned with a nod of his own, “Hope you all had a good morning. I’m calling because Pipeline found a few things during the cleanup.”

“Pipeline?” Chloe asked, also giving him a nod.

“Jordan. He goes by Pipeline now, don’t ask me how he got the name. Anyways, remember that whole lure fiasco at the gates? Well, after we came around to clean up all the dead xenos, thanks for the help with that by the way, your drones were quite quick with that. Anyway, we found some leads. Pipeline took some time to go over old blueprints and such, while I looked around any corp that might be involved. He found some rather interesting connections to various companies.”

“Oh?” Jenna asked, attention glued to his words. “Anything actionable?”

He waved his hand so and so, “Kind of. We’re still going through all the info, will probably take a little while, but there seems to be some kind of group at work. Not sure what exactly their goal is or why they put the lures there, but it reeks of backroom deals. It’s unclear how they are all involved, some are more sitting on the sidelines.”

“Then what can you tell us?” we asked, quickly going through our own recollection and all the data regarding the lure we still had saved.

“So, from the few things we could gleam it seemed to be some experiment of some kind. Not sure exactly, but tracing the physical and digital trail we found a couple labs dealing with Samurai tech. Some of the stuff has been noted as going missing some time ago, other was sold by one Samurai or another on the open market. We don’t have any definitive proof yet, but it seemed like they were trying to build some kind of weapon system. Pipeline posits that the lures were supposed to draw xenos in for testing. Not sure how that was supposed to work, this close to the Inner city gates. The danger is just way too high.”

“Probably so they have the defences to fall back on if things went sideways,” Chloe mused, “If they were trying to build a weapons system, they might want to have a backup plan in case it failed. And what better way than to use the defences already in place.”

“Why in the city though?” We countered, “That’s just asking for trouble.”

“Good question and not one we have an answer to. Considering that the lures were salvage, it might just be that they didn’t have any other way to get them out of town, but honestly I doubt that. Maybe they wanted to hide the fact that they had xeno lures, considering that that’s crazy dangerous tech. I really don’t know though.”

Rubbing our face we shook our head, “Yeah… It also still leaves the question of why they were turned on in the first place. From what we could see there were no weapons or any kind other than what the defences had. Fuck… Well, no point in trying to make sense of it until we know more. Thanks for the heads up though, let us know if you figure out more. We’re having a bad feeling about all of that.”

“I’m with you on that. And will do. There’s one lead that you might be able to follow, one corp that goes all the way out to the old industrial district. You know those folk better, so maybe you can have a look?”

“Will do Snapshot, already have scouts in the area. We’ll let you know what we find.”

We hadn’t even finished the sentence before a good part of the Meerkats still in the redlight district took off into the direction of the old industrial district. It did kind of ruin our mood a little, but it was important to check up on.

“Thanks. I’m really hoping we can find them sooner rather than later. If there are more of those hidden around town, things could very quickly go wrong if another incursion shows up.”

“Indeed,” Chloe muttered, face dark, “We already lost enough people in this one.”

He nodded, then looked distracted for a moment. “Alright, gotta bolt. Some other stuff came up, I’ll keep you in the loop. Talk to you later.”

Before any of us could reply he hung up. With a sigh we returned to the real world, rubbing our face. “Well that sucks… Good that they are starting to find some leads though. Hopefully we can nip this one in the arse before shit gets worse.”

The other two nodded, expressions much the same as our own.

“Okay, let’s hop under the shower real quick. Sounds like our schedule is getting more and more packed,” we muttered, getting up.

Chloe followed us and together we quickly made our way into the shower. We were a bit distracted by the news, partly keeping an eye on everything our scouts found, but we still wanted to enjoy our shower with Chloe.

Both of us undressed quickly, although we did make sure to give her a little bit of a show, as much as we could considering that we only wore that shirt that Kaysa had gotten Us after we had gotten up.

She obviously enjoyed it, openly admiring Us even if she was blushing a little. We returned the gesture in kind, appreciating just how beautiful she was. She had this aura of confidence about her, with a figure that spoke of a woman who took great care of herself. Someone who was dedicated to her job and her training.

It was almost shocking how easy it seemed to come to her, like some god had made her to be exactly right. She was so different from all the topmodels you found online, making them all look so… grotesque with their oversized proportions and obviously unhealthy bodies. The way she managed that without even needing to try, at least outwardly, was straight up out of this world.

If someone would ask Us what natural beauty looked like, Chloe would be the example we would give them. We were confident in our looks, we knew we were sexy and we didn’t mind using that to our advantage. But now that we’ve seen her in all her glory, we almost felt small.

Not to mention the small little detail that our looks were not exactly natural.

She noticed our enamoured look, giving us a smirk and putting on a little show of herself. With a sensual gait she made her way into the shower, inviting us in, hiding nothing and appreciating the hungry look we couldn’t stop ourselves from giving her.

We didn’t speak, simply following her lead, smiling like an idiot the entire time. Under the hot water she looked so incredibly good, and we both glanced at each other frequently, taking each other in as much as we could.

We both helped each other wash, hands roaming freely, although only to a degree. Despite our desire for the woman in front of Us, we made sure to not go too far. At the same time we fully enjoyed the way her wet skin felt under our hands, the feel of the well trained muscles underneath.

Watching Chloe was intoxicating, and we took our time in helping her clean up. She didn’t mind at all, almost encouraging Us with her frequent smiles. There was a desire there, the same one we had for her, although it was clear that her desire was a little less intense than our own.

After we were done helping her, she turned her attention to us. In the same way we had kept our hands away from anywhere that might be a step too far, she too was reserved, but nobody could have missed the way she touched Us, even with that hint of hesitation in her expression.

Her fingers running over our skin was enough to make Us shiver, and if it had been any other time and place, we probably would have reacted a lot more eager towards her gentle ministrations.

All in all the both of us probably took a little longer than was necessary, but neither of us was inclined to hurry up. It made Us curious just how much she was still hesitating. She might be a lot more eager than we had initially thought. But we still didn’t push, knowing that she wanted to take her time and we respected that.

When we were finally done we dried each other off, which just resulted in more explorative groping. But again, neither went too far, firmly keeping our hands to ourselves in certain regards.

Chloe was blushing quite fiercely after we were done, opening the box of clothes that Atlas had gotten her. We turned our attention to our own box of stuff, curious to see what Kaysa had managed to put together for Us.

For today we had decided on something a lot more casual than we typically wore, much more in line with Jenna’s outfit. Chloe seemed to follow our example, considering the clothes she was quickly putting on.

The underwear that Kaysa had procured was sinfully comfortable. She had gotten Us something for two points, which already denoted a certain level of quality, but we were still surprised by how naturally it all fit.

The panties were a bit thinner than what most would probably wear, both in terms of fabric and the way they were cut, even if they were quite prude by our own standards. We could almost forget we wore any at all, they were this soft. The same went for the bra we pulled out of the box. We didn’t wear one often, and those that we did have were a bit iffy. Bras had that bad habit of becoming more and more uncomfortable as the day went on, but this one was almost entirely unnoticeable. We were pretty sure that we could wear this one for days on end without too much trouble.

Okay, maybe not that long. But it was in stark contrast to what was typically available to us.

It made us wonder how proper Samurai grade lingerie would feel like. Something to test out with Chloe. Or maybe on Jenna? She would totally be able to pull off some really sexy lingerie with ease. The thought alone was arousing.

Something to note for the future.

Kaysa had gotten Us a short sleeved blouse in that now familiar black and soft fabric, although this time it was a lot thinner than before. Not that it was transparent in any way, even if a normal shirt this thin would at least show a hint of what was underneath. It had ‘Myriad, the huggable Hive-Mind’ printed on the front in a stylised font, and a cutesy version of two drones hugging on the back. Of course with Kitsune features.

At first we weren’t sure if we wanted pants or a skirt, but we decided to go with a skirt since the weather was still pretty good, even if Kaysa already mentioned that soon the normal rainy weather would return to our little corner of the world. Sunshine was a rarity and had to be properly enjoyed.

The skirt itself was a lot longer than our usual choice, reaching a little past mid thigh, almost to our knees really, and was in a similar, although slightly lighter shade of black, more a dark grey really. It reminded us a little of those old schoolgirl skirts that we’d seen in some posts online somewhere before. Maybe we could pull off that look for Chloe and Jenna in the future?

We put it on the list of things to try later.

Our poots left our legs uncovered, only reaching a bit past the ankles. We didn’t have the best looking legs in our trio, that honour belonged to Jenna, whose legs were very nice. But we in no way had to hide and were pretty proud of our look, even if we couldn’t boast with the same full thighs the others had. Something we might adjust once we got our shapeshifting abilities.

Last but not least we attached another tail at our back. It was purely decorative and fit neatly over the rim of our skirt, which had a small cutout for it that we hadn’t even noticed before. It fit us very well, we thought, and we’d gotten used to having it. It made us wonder what a real tail would feel like? Probably a whole lot better.

Chloe was already done by the time we took a look at ourselves in the bathroom mirror, adjusting our blouse and skirt slightly. Her gaze was all we needed to know that she very much appreciated our new look. Not that she looked any worse.

She had chosen a shirt and pants ensemble that fit her very well. The pants weren’t quite as tight as Jenna’s, but they underlined her figure nicely. As did her shirt, a simple thing with a logo that resembled her helmet quite well printed on the front. The design was chosen in such a way that it would work well with the nanite amulet that we had gotten for them.

Giving her a very appreciated once over we smiled, “Damn… You look gorgeous. Never thought we’d go that hard for casual dress up, but both Jenna and you fucking nailed it. We might have to adjust our own clothing choices.”

She chuckled, “I wouldn’t say that. You look really good in those skimpy clothes. Bit surprised you didn’t go for them today. Almost a shame, really.”

Her smirk did distract from her blush a little and we returned it with a smirk of our own.

“If you prefer we can switch it up. We don’t mind showing off for you. Having you watch Us feels so nice.”

With a bit of an embarrassed giggle she motioned Us to follow her out of the bathroom.

“Oh, I will watch. You look damn sexy.”

Taking great pleasure in her comment, we pushed our more dirty thoughts aside. This wasn’t the time for that.

We made our way back down, finding Jenna still on the sofa, immersed in her augs. She didn’t notice us until we sat down next to her.

With a bit of confusion she looked up, finally recognising us. “Oh hey. You took your time.”

The teasing undertone was hard to miss, and we gave her a smirk.

“Once you see Chloe naked you know why. It’s almost a sin how good she looks.”

“I bet,” Jenna replied, both of us enjoying the fierce blush on Chloe’s face. “Alas, as much as I would like to spend some time imagining that, we do have things to do today.”

With a fiercely blushing Chloe and a relentlessly smirking Jenna in tow we made our way outside. Today would probably be a bit busier than we had originally hoped for. Still, we were looking forward to what the day would bring. If it meant spending more time with the two of them, we didn’t mind having to run from A to B and trying to put some fires out.