"Still going by Emperor Thanaton, huh?" Karasuba asked, stepping into the onsen and settling down. Sure, we weren't in Japan anymore, but... well, I didn't need to live in Japan to enjoy a good, hot soak every now and then. And, to the Mormon college students reading this: no, I don't mean that kind of hot soak. I have actual sex with Karasuba.

"Well, I am undead, now," I said with a shrug. "Not even in a 'I have every essence and Perk thanks to some Grade A Shenanigans,' way, but in a straightforward... 'I paid two hundred points of a limited budget for the Undead Physiology perk and then used it to return from death as a liminal existence straddling the line between this world and another.'"

"So am I, but you don't see me flaunting a death motif," Karasuba said.

"Both Karasuba and Corvus straight up mean 'crow'- well, karasuba means crow feather, but- whatever, literally both of your names refer to the same animal that is a well-known omen of death."

She considered that carefully.

"Fuck," she said, articulately.

"Anyhow," I said. "I'm surprised you don't have more to say about my imperial ambitions. I was hoping you'd be playing a bigger role in keeping me honest about not ruining the lives of those I nominally rule over."

"Your rule is very nominal," Karasuba said with a shrug. "The Galactic Union is just using you as a legitimacy-granting figurehead, since you're technically the creator-god of this Warehouse. If you tried to get them to do anything they didn't already want to, they would absolutely tell you to sit and spin. You're just unlikely to find that out because you know better than to do that."

"Fair enough, I suppose," I said.

"Besides," Karasuba continued. "I don't have to yell at you out loud to make my feelings known. We're Sekirei and Ashikabi, psychically linked. And it turns out, The Force actually stacks with our existing psychic power, making our bond run deeper. So, Rose. You know me. Intellectually, carnally, and spiritually. And with our bond, you know, without even having to think about it, whether or not I'd have a problem with some course of action." She smirked. "Remember what you said to Matsu, when you first winged her? 'Together as one'? Well, the two of us are much closer to that ideal than you two ever were."

"Yeah, fair enough," I said, nodding. "Anyhow, I've been thinking about the next Jump."

"When is that going to begin, anyhow?" Karasuba asked.

"So, the way the Warehouse is set up, it gives us a month maximum between Jumps, which we can cut short whenever we get bored of waiting," I said. "But there's also up to 100x time dilation over everything, so really we get a hundred months maximum between Jumps- about eight and a third years. Ooooor, you know, if I'm willing to indulge in a lot of cheese-"

"Three hundred thousand years in your Pax Jumperia pocket universe," Karasuba said dryly. "I remember, yes. We already had that discussion. The relevant part is 'we have as long as we want, and no longer.'"

"Since when have I let silly little things like relevance stop me from monologuing about my hobby of powergaming?" I asked. "Anyhow! I have a goal with my Chain, and with this third Jump- and hopefully also the fourth and fifth- I think I'll be able to reach that goal, no problem. From there, we can just cruise through five more Jumps that pretty much exist just to pad out space before going into the final boss and crushing it like a grape."

"...Goal?" Karasuba asked.

"Did I not tell you about Skip and Jump-chan?" I asked.

"No you did not," Karasuba said, frowning. "Well. So much for that psychic bond and 'together as one.'"

"Okay, maybe we need to work on memory sharing," I said. "But I'll just tell you the short version: I was, originally, Joe Norman, the protagonist of Chain of Thorns. Then, another Jumpchain Protagonist, named Skip, entered my particular iteration of the universe and ruined everything. But! He took a Drawback called Norman's Revenge that meant I got my own separate ten-Jump Chain to accrue power, artifacts, and allies, before in my eleventh Jump and his next Jump, we would intersect, and fight." I sighed. "So, y'know. I kinda want to win that fight, because Skip is a solipsistic sociopath of a waifu collector, and I'm pretty sure the reason he used his own weird-ass Jumpchain bullshit to trans my gender because he thinks it'd be funny to forcefemme a harem protagonist into being simply another waifu in his own harem."

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

"As a Japanese woman with trauma around sexual objectification," Karasuba began carefully, "I would normally kick your ass up and down the length of the galaxy for using the word 'waifu.' But, given that you used it with a disgusted sneer to describe the maliciously intentional reduction of women into sex objects, well..." Karasuba shrugged. "I suppose we're on the same page."

I grunted.

"Anyhow," Karasuba continued. "Matsu told me a bit about Jumpchain, before I left. Said something about there being an inevitable power creep over time, accruing Perks and Items like a snowball down a mountain. And that most of these Chains tend to be longer than just ten Jumps. So, Rose, what precisely makes you think that you'll only need three Jumps of your choice to beat Skip?"

"Two things, which are really just one thing with two facets," I said. "One, Skip is an idiot, and also he prioritizes sexual dominance over combat dominance. Jump-chan, the weird god-like being that powers both his Chain and my own, sends him to harem-focused jumps so he can collect more elaborately-accessorized pairs of breasts from fiction, along with more and more Perks that make it easier for him to do so. But two..." I reached out with the force to a holo projector, and conjured a screen with my character sheet on it. "...Norman's Revenge explicitly gave me an absolute game changer of a Perk, that nobody can take away."

"Prince of Void," Karasuba read aloud from the top of my Perks list. "The universe doesn't care what anyone thinks, least of all your enemies. Prophecies, magical contracts, truths spoken into the fabric of reality, even Jumpchain Fiat; none of these are unbreakable when you're in play. These things still have power, but it's concrete power that you can counter, circumvent, or break if you've got skill and power of your own. If you ever come up against any power that does similar things, rather than the two canceling each other out, or one canceling the other out, they both work in tandem, and neither you nor your opponent can benefit from these sorts of unbreakable arbitrary powers."

"That Jumpchain Fiat bit is the important part," I said. "What it basically means is that, anything at all with a guaranteed outcome that I don't like?" I grinned. "That guarantee suddenly isn't worth so much anymore."

"Alright," Karasuba allowed.

"And, fun fact," I continued. "Guaranteed outcomes? Actually a very common mode of operation for Jumpchain Perks. And even though most people interact with Jumpchain as a fictional toy to play with on the internet, they still vastly prefer Perks that guarantee outcomes over Perks that instead give you narrative permission to do something you normally wouldn't be capable of. Apparently that feeling of security is very alluring, even though it's a story not even being written and they can just imagine any uncertain situation as going whatever way they want."

"I think I see the shape of it, then," Karasuba said, nodding. "You're betting that Skip has a whole bunch of guaranteed-outcome Perks that are going to be useless against you. But what exactly makes you think that your three chosen Jumps are going to be enough to trump whatever's left?"

"Well, now we get into the fact I'm picking different Jumps than he is," I said. "He picks Jumps on the basis of how fuckable the babes are. And I'm going to pick them on the basis of how obscenely potent the Perks on offer are, because Jump Docs are written by different people for different settings with wildly different ideas of balance and power levels. I mean, think about it- the two of us were nearly unchallenged gods in Sekirei, but in Star Wars, the power level and the scale of action was a lot higher, and so each of us met something capable enough to kill us at least once, before pouring on a lot more cheese and acting more cautiously."

"So you're going to pick Jumps for the most high-power, big-scale settings you can find," Karasuba said carefully, "with the most insanely potent Perks to offer."

"Precisely," I said, nodding. "Which I've narrowed down to two Jumps, actually, both of which I'm very confident Skip hasn't taken, but just to check my work, I'm doing a preliminary Jump that offers its own very potent- but not quite so insane- Perks, some of which are going to be very useful in finding the best way to power-game my remaining resources."

Karasuba shrugged. "My turn is over, anyhow. Spend it how you want."

"I may ask for three consecutive turns, just for peace of mind."

"Huh. Here I thought you were going to say I only got one turn."

"That'd be a shitty thing to say. Just because the metaphysics favor me as the Jumper with you as a Companion doesn't entitle me to completely ignore your input on where we spend significant chunks of our life. Even if I didn't regard five of the eight remaining Jumps as extraneous fluff to be idly sleepwalked through."

"Let me rephrase: I was hoping you'd say I only got one turn. I don't watch a lot of nerd media, and Star Wars was the one idea that I had. I love you, but I'm not watching anime just so that you can feel like this process is fair and democratic when I reach into a hat and pull out Trigun or Fullmetal Alchemist as the Jump I want to do next."

I blinked.

"...Well, okay," I said. "I mean, you don't have to decide where we go if you don't want to, but... I'm still going to invite you to share your input whenever you've got it."

"Fair enough," Karasuba said, nodding. "So. What's this preliminary Jump that's so good?"

"It's for a superhero comic- which recently got adapted into an animated show I enjoyed- called Invincible," I said, indulging in the habit of thirty-somethings everywhere to forget that things which happened in their early twenties were actually a full decade ago. "For me, it has Perks for enabling comic book tech genius as well as comic book intricate plans genius. And for you, it has a fascist empire led by a species who's drunk so much 'survival of the fittest' 'might makes right' koolaid that they've killed each other down to less than fifty or so monstrous war criminals. So, Karasuba." I grinned. "Excited for your next chew toy?"

"You really do love me," she said fondly, before launching herself across the onsen at me, with the intent to utterly ruin this current batch of hot water.

Oh well. We could always refill it.