"Matsu-tan is curious," Matsu said, after Shabbat had ended, when it was still too late to start doing anything productive. "How many Jumps has Rose done before?"

"Zero," I said. "This is my first one; I just, uh... more-or-less tricked my malefactor into looking the other way while I grabbed the most potent supplements I could with both hands. Which I felt I kinda needed, because the Sekirei Jump does not have very much personal power to offer an Ashikabi."

"Hrm..." Matsu tapped her chin. "...What kind of potent supplements did Rose-tan grab?"

"Are you doing the baby-talk thing because you're mad I wouldn't take you into a warehouse to have sex?" I asked.

"What?" Matsu asked, feigning innocence. "Matsu-tan would never be annoying in response to Rose-tan being annoying. After all, Rose-tan is the Ashikabi, and Matsu-tan the Sekirei, and the Sekirei is supposed to just take whatever the Ashikabi gives her with a smile and no complaints."

"So, translation: yes, you absolutely are, and if I complain about it or ask you to stop, I'm engaging in the sort of inappropriately controlling behavior I complained was the big problem with being an Ashikabi with Sekirei," I said.

"Well..." Matsu trailed off. "Matsu-tan is aware she's speaking like a little girl, but she's also aware that this kind of talk just wouldn't be right, coming from someone who's had sex. So..."

"Tough shit," I said. "Anyway, I grabbed Personal Reality to replace the usual Cosmic Warehouse- the budget for my Warehouse supplement was set to infinite, because Jump-Chan thought it was boring and didn't want me wasting time making choices on it. The Body Mod, however, was some degree of personal power in its original incarnation, and so I didn't have an unlimited budget for that one. Still, I did replace it with a way more powerful variant called Essential Body Mod, and then I... didn't use it very much."

"Oh?" Matsu asked.

"I mean," I said, "I did take Shapeshifter and Morphic Form to the point where I could grow limbs, so like..." I thought for a moment about how to best demonstrate this, and then decided that some honesty was in order, and sprouted a bunch of tentacles from the base of my back, where they fanned outward away from me, trying to be very visible. "I mean, I can grow bespoke tentacles pretty much whenever I want. But aside from making you very happy one day, and in the meantime even more horny and frustrated, it actually doesn't have that much utility, especially in the context of the Sekirei Plan."

"Point," Matsu said. "For the Sekirei Plan... Hrm... Well, if you can shapeshift into other people, that'd be a useful disguise tool? But I think that, overall, you'd really want something for espionage, or just so much raw power that you can just do what you want to any organization, and there isn't really anything that anyone can do to stop you."

"Eyup," I said. "The second one just straight up isn't happening in the first jump, and the first one is... well, hard for me to do any better than you are already able to do without any Jumpchain bullshit involved."

"Our abilities can complement each other," Matsu said. "There's room for us to not overlap."

"Mm, true," I said. "After all, you're more about getting into information systems, whereas my ability to shapeshift seems more suited for getting into places."

"Also," Matsu added. "Portals."

"Right, the Warehouse portals," I said, nodding. "I, personally, can open those at any time, but I can also pass people some portal keys, and they can open portals, too. With that... if I can get a single mole on the inside, then I can get portals open that'll let all of us inside, detouring through the Warehouse."

"Also," Matsu said. "What's in the Warehouse?"

"An entire galaxy of soulless, person-shaped automatons, loyal to my will," I said. "Which are just feedstock for the creation of a rapidly-growing population of free-willed, soul-having people with the same access to Essential Body Mod as me, some of whom end up bored enough to humor me and my requests. As for what the contents of the Warehouse can do for us... well, aside from some of the people in there getting bored and creating community colleges that can give you a Bachelor's education in two hours and a world-class expert's education in twenty, we could also go in there and get just about any object that could be gotten. I bet someone in there has cracked the secret of building fighter jets by now."

Matsu hummed quietly.

"Really," I continued, "I'd bet we could go in there and get some tech that's better than even the cutting edge of this reality. I've got a population of uncounted tech geniuses in there, living in post-scarcity, with nothing better to do than figure out some even better computer chips."

"Would it be possible," Matsu said carefully, "for me to get access to the Essential Body Mod?"

"Yeah, of course," I said, nodding. "But, well, you only get one shot at it, so... you might wanna write up a build and your rationale for all of it, plus your overall goal, and hand it over to the review board. Let 'em chew on it for a while, and hold off until then." I patted her head. "You don't need to be a slimegirl for me to love you, Matsu."

I paused, then patted Akitsu's head, too.

"Neither do you, Akitsu," I said. "Both of you are plenty lovable as-is."

"What about me?" Musubi asked.

"Again, not necessary, but I won't say it wouldn't be appreciated," I said. "After all, slimegirls are hot."

"They are," Matsu said, nodding. "But maybe... maybe, we should go visit the Warehouse, and check in?"

"Sure," I said with a shrug. "I bet we can even leave 'em a wishlist of priori- who the hell?" I pulled out my buzzing phone- someone just texted me.

"Hoo boy," Matsu said.

"Unknown number... oh, wow, someone left a hot slice of beef in my inbox," I said.

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

Unknown Number

can you maybe get off kagaris goddamn back already

let a man live

"I'm pretty sure I know who this is," I continued. "Someone who knows Kagari, has opinions about his conduct, can get my phone number..."

"That's the personal phone number of Sahashi Takami," Matsu said. The canon protagonist's mom.

"Yeah, that's what I figured," I said. "Well, two can play at this game."

Rose

Hello to you too, Takami. Congratulations are in order- I hear Minato passed the entrance exams this year. What about Yukari, how's she doing?

Takami

oh, right, matsu

look, just stop giving kagari a hard time about his aroma. i dont get enough smoke breaks in the day.

Rose

I told him, as part of a broader conversation about me being a lesbian, that he smelled like an ash tray, once.

If he's taken that to heart and is so committed to quitting smoking that he won't let you smoke while he's in the car, well, that's his fault.

However, as someone who once worked at a grocery store, I am more than happy to support the crusade against smoking, mostly because of how deeply annoying and inconvenient it was every time a customer wanted to buy cigarettes, and so I do still fully support him preventing you from smoking.

Takami

huh, usually the anti-smoking talk is about how bad it is for my health.

Rose

You can die in a fire for all I care. But you smell like an ashtray and having to unlock the cigarette case and look for the Lucky Duck Puce Special Select Extra-Virgin Low-Fat Fair Trade 100s you demand is annoying as hell.

Takami

aw, i also dont care if you die in a fire <3

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It was a week later, now. Last Saturday, we'd poked our heads into the Warehouse, gotten an abbreviated accounting of our assets from the Chief of Staff- an ordinary-looking human woman named Adrianne- and left a wishlist of priorities. It was Saturday evening for us once more, but while, for us, it had been seven days, for them it had been seven hundred, very nearly two full years.

"Hi there!" a cheery-looking elf said. She was as tall as I was, with broad shoulders, narrow hips, and subtle curves. Her ears were particularly long for an elf, and on the lapel of her suit was pinned a nametag, reading "BUNNY - Admin Asst". "I'm Bunny," she introduced herself. "I'm one of the administrative assistants here, and I was assigned to show you around for your inspection!"

"Lead the way," Matsu said, nodding.

"So, first and foremost, there's the matter of computing technology," Bunny said, looking down at her clipboard. "We do have a lot of world-class geniuses working on semiconductor fabrication, but unfortunately, even once all the hard engineering problems are solved, there's still a lot of lead-time on chip fabrication, and fabricating the machines to fabricate the chips."

"Can I ask for some more details, there?" I asked. "Photolithography is difficult, cutting-edge tech, sure, but how it's taken this long to get working..."

"We aren't at that stage, yet," Bunny said. "After a lot of research, it was concluded that a carbon substrate was the best way forward, and right now, they're still refining the techniques for working with carbon, and producing the graphene and nanotubes necessary."

"...Oh," I said, blinking.

"We do, in point of fact, already have silicon chip fabrication up and running," Bunny continued. "It's attracted enough researchers that it's already produced results better than what you can get on the outside, but they're hitting more bottlenecks than a home-made wind chime, which is why the shift to carbon is happening."

"Well," Matsu said, shrugging. "As long as I can upgrade my setup while I'm here..."

"Naturally," Bunny said, nodding. "If you'd like to move onto the next topic?"

"Sure."

----------------------------------------

"Now," Kitty said. She was another administrative assistant, and had taken Bunny's place for this segment of the inspection. Much like Bunny, she wore a simple black three-piece business suit, but unlike Bunny, she actually was a bunnygirl, with those big fuzzy ears sticking straight up from the top of her head. Her build, too, was shorter, with narrower shoulders, wider hips, and more noticeable curves. "The Warehouse Worker's Corps has grown a lot, with our primary focus being on summoners, for maximum versatility."

"Why are you named Kitty, and the elf was called Bunny?" Musubi asked.

"The name on my official documentation is Katrina," Kitty explained, a smirk tweaking at the corner of her mouth. "But everyone calls me Kitty. Bunny, meanwhile, was born to a culture that names its children for plants and animals."

"Ohhhh," Musubi said, nodding.

"Explain the summoners to me," Matsu said. "Why are they all..."

"Angels and demons?" Kitty asked. "Well, I'm glad you asked. You see, by being associated with beings from the afterlife, this allows them to, with the right theming, qualify as technically undead, which is very efficient for the general summoner build. Using the Essential Body Mod perks Minion Creation and Minion Empowerment, they can summon bespoke demonic or angelic servitors from the ether, equipped with powers perfectly suited to the problem at hand."

"And the corsets?" Matsu asked.

"Being the closest thing we'll have to wizards until we visit a Jump with real magic is no reason to not be stylish and fashionable."

"...Where can I get fitted for one?" Matsu asked.

"I would like one as well," Akitsu chimed in.

"I know a place," Kitty said, slipping a business card out of her sleeve and passing it to Matsu. "Any further questions?"

----------------------------------------

"This was done on purpose, wasn't it," I said dryly.

"Can't imagine what you mean, ma'am," a shortstack catgirl named Elf said. "I'm just Ellen Fox, administrative assistant to Chief of Staff Adrianne. But please, call me Elf."

"And if things had worked out differently, so that you were trading places with a foxgirl named Katherine, you'd be asking us to call you Fox, wouldn't you?"

"I can neither confirm nor deny any allegations of puns," Elf said. "Now, Miss Matsu, you were interested in military hardware as well?"

"I hope we won't need it, but..." Matsu shrugged.

"Better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it," Elf said, nodding. "Well, thankfully, this was very easy for us to accommodate. We had just about every type of gun and bullet churned out in spades on day one, and the more interesting problems only took another few weeks."

"More interesting problems?" Musubi asked.

"Armor," Elf explained. "Armor is always complicated. There are so many different sorts of attack that have to be defended against, after all; and while some sorts of attack are more likely than other sorts, the probability is never zero, and we couldn't bear the thought of someone getting killed from our negligence. But! With some creative thinking, we've managed to create..."

She pulled back a curtain, revealing a series of mannequins patterned exactly after ourselves, and wearing inky black skintight jumpsuits. Very sexy, but also, possibly, very uncomfortable. Materials that shiny tended to not breathe very well.

"These! In addition to being low-profile and easily-concealable-" On cue, the jumpsuits turned perfectly skin-toned, and suddenly the mannequins were us except naked. "-they also render you nearly invincible, receiving only ten percent of incoming damage, as well as granting you an insane regeneration factor, letting you heal from what little damage you receive in moments!"

"Those are perks from Essential Body Mod," I noted.

"Good eye, ma'am! Indeed-"

"These jumpsuits are people with that Minion Empowerment perk that lets the user grant other people Essential Body Mod perks, aren't they?"

"W-well... yes. They are. B-but I promise they weren't forced into this!"

"Oh, I have no trouble believing that," I said. "Wanting to be someone else's living clothing is a fairly common kink." I sighed. "Do you have something to offer that doesn't involve bringing voyeurs into our house?"

Kitty wilted. "...Yes, Ma'am. Right this way..."

The mannequins all started moving on their own, walking dejectedly away as we moved past them.

Sorry, ladies. I am not into that shit.