"It worked!" Akane squealed, hopping up and down and waving her arms. "It worked!"

I patted her on the head affectionately. "Congratulations, Akane, on finding Rattlesnake Dick's buried treasure."

"Do I win a prize?" Akane asked.

"You mean aside from the scanning study session we've been doing where I taught you the rest of what I know about scanners, bringing you up to par with a particularly skilled demiurge?" I asked. "Well, you also located an abandoned cache of gold bullion worth like three million dollars, which will pad out our household funds very nicely, as soon as we send Nicky to dig it up out of the Trinities."

Akane's scanning apparatus was big. About the size of a car, really. It was imposing, looming, menacing, its silhouette cold and intimidating. And yet, it was plastered with bright, almost garish colors, like it was trying to be cheerful and beautiful and art nouveau instead of, say, 'H.R. Giger knocked up Lisa Frank.'

Was it as refined and elegant as I would've built it? No. Did I like looking at it? Hell no. Did knowing that I had helped bring this electromechanical monstrosity into the world fill me with guilt and shame, knowing that this, if nothing else, would justify my damnation to hell? Absolutely. But the point was that I didn't build it myself. The point was that Akane built it, and was therefore responsible for its upkeep and maintenance, because she has more spare headspace than I do, even after my maintenance tricks, simply as a consequence of me having been in this game for a lot longer and built a lot more things that need to be maintained.

And, now, Akane could use it to search for the things I asked her to search for.

"Of course, with reward also comes punishment," I continued. "Which is, more work, of the sort that will make you use this damn thing."

"Right, the leads we have to follow up on," Akane said, nodding. "Read off the first item on the list?"

"Computer, locate all half-demiurges in the Austin Metropolitan Area," I said.

"Half-demiurges?" Akane asked.

"Remember those mooks Dr. Skinner sent after us the first time, along with 8-Ball?" I asked. "You know, back at that gas station in Round Rock? Those were half-demiurges. People who've touched the godhead of inspiration, but... not completely. They can safely handle mad science, and even assist full mad scientists in their building processes, but they themselves aren't capable of inventing their own mad science. They're hardly capable of producing new opinions. Oh, they've got enough initiative to follow open-ended orders, make plans and execute on them, all that jazz, but they lack their own world-view, and just borrow it from whatever demiurge they're working for at the moment."

"Kinky," Akane said.

"Please keep your fucking hypnosis fetish out of my laboratory," I said.

"Make me," Akane said, primly.

"It makes me very uncomfortable when you casually sexualize something traumatic that has happened to me personally," I said.

"...oh," Akane said, very quietly.

"You couldn't have known, but... well, now you do," I said.

"Sorry," Akane said. "...Uh, anyways, how do half-demiurges happen?"

"There's a few ways of doing it," I said. "Spending a lot of time around mad scientists doing mad science things has a strong risk of it happening naturally. It can be inflicted on purpose, though, which Doctor Skinner had a habit of doing to fill out the ranks of whatever cult she was running this week. Skinner may not be able to equip all of them with scan-blockers, so it's my hope that we'll be able to find some of them, out and about. What's the progress on the scan?"

"Stalled out on sixty nine percent," Akane said. "Nice."

"...You purposely made it not update its completion readout until it got past 80, didn't you," I said.

"You can't prove that."

"You had me check your programming for errors," I said.

"Oh hey now it's moving again. Eighty two... Eighty five..." Akane hummed a little ditty as the progress tracker progressed. "Aaaaaaaaaand... We got a scaaaaaaan!"

"Find anything?"

"Nope! Nobody!"

"Son of a bitch. Not even the two dudes we arrested?"

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

"Maybe jailbroken, dead, not half-demiurges anymore... Can you stop being a half-demiurge?"

"In two ways," I said. "Recover and become fully human... or find your voice and break through into a full demiurge. The former is... probably healthier, in the long run. I chose the latter. And while this path has its ups... it has most definitely had its downs. Why do you think I can't hack it in a real job, and kept doing this bounty hunting shit? But, that's not really relevant. We can't find the fuckers. Move on to the next one on the list. I... am going to go get Lisa and pursue a different avenue."

"Good luck," Akane said.

"To you as well," I said, heading up the stairs.

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

"Do you think I need bigger boobs?" Lisa asked while we were driving to Valiant's office.

"I... generally don't have strong feelings about your boobs one way or the other," I said. "But if you think you need bigger boobs, then Akane and I are both perfectly capable of performing long-term yet reversible transformations of the sort on you, with zero judgement. From me, because I get it, or from Akane, because she wants to motorboat you."

"Heh. Yeah, she would, wouldn't she?" Lisa said.

"So, what brought this on?" I asked.

"Oh, y'know. I was thinking about boobs, as one does, and it occurred to me that while I do have a perfectly serviceable pair of tits-"

"What makes tits 'serviceable?'" I asked.

"Depends on what service you need them to provide," Lisa said. "In my case, making me feel like a woman. And yeah, ordinarily they'd do that just fine. They're big enough to be noticeable, and I definitely couldn't be confused for a guy this way, but..." She shrugged. "Well, for some reason all three of my roommates are ungodly tittymonsters and I can't help but feel inadequate, compared to all that."

"Makes sense," I said. "Although I'd object to being described as a tittymonster. Mine are big, I'll give you that, but they're very much within the realm of reason, especially for a person as tall as I am. Akane and Nicky, meanwhile, are both the products of genetic engineering."

"Wait, I was there for Akane's mom revealing the thing, but Nicky?" Lisa asked.

"Well, admittedly, that's just a guess," I said. "But also, she's supposedly half space-alien, and her mom is from a world with super-advanced technology, so... Eh? I mean, either way she definitely cannot be judged by the standards of real human people without a scrap of magic in their life."

"Fair enough," Lisa said. "So... Hrm. How big should I go?"

"A tricky question," I said. "Personally, however, my suggestion, based on my brief stint as an indie game developer is to go as big as you can at first, because that'll almost definitely be too big, and then from there slowly ratchet it down, until you reach the sweet spot between too big and too small."

"What the fuck does making indie games have to do with knowing how big my tits should be?" Lisa asked.

"Well, aside from the fact that having characters with impossibly big breastesses isn't unique to AAA games, the process I just described is a good way for balancing any variable and trying to find the most appropriate value for it. You don't just need to know how much is too little, you need to know how much is too much, and once you've bracketed that range, then you can start to slowly circle in on the ideal value."

"Uh huh..."

"Which is, you know, what you're trying to figure out," I said. "I mean, yes, there's definitely some irony in giving you fat honkers and calling it 'balancing,' but that joke aside, you are trying to figure out which size of boob will make you the most happy, so..."

Lisa snorted. "You know, speaking of balance, maybe you should give me tits the size of my head, and then record me trying to walk around like that. Pratfalls are always fun, right?"

"Even for you, in this case," I said. "Quite aside from you being supernaturally durable, this way you'd have airbags."

She burst out laughing, and I grinned.

"Alright, we're here," I said, pulling into a parking space and killing the engine. "Let's pretend we're professionals, and we weren't just talking about the inherent comedy of watching my pet foxgirl trip over her own fat knockers."

"Hey now, I'm not..." Lisa trailed off, frowning. "Huh. Shit, I guess I am your pet foxgirl. This mean you'll buy me a new collar?"

"Now where the hell did you get an idea like that?" I asked, affronted. "Do you not know who I am? I'm not buying you a collar. I'm a demiurge, and I'll make one." I patted her head, and finally got out of the car.

For today's outdoor excursion, Lisa and I were dressed in as close to business casual as we could manage. In my case, that mostly meant wearing a business suit with the suit jacket being replaced by my customary military surplus trenchcoat, and in Lisa's case, that had involved first convincing her to not wear a skintight jumpsuit into an office, and then fabricating for her an outfit that could be called many things, such as 'secretary chic' or 'plausibly-deniable sluttiness.'

The 'downside,' if one could call it that, to helping Lisa learn what gave her gender euphoria was that she was frequently unwilling to do anything else, which meant living with a foxgirl who was, at all times, trying to be sexy.

"Honestly, you've got enough practice walking in heels," I said as she got out of the car and closed the door behind her. "You're probably not gonna fall over for anything."

"What happened to professionalism?" Lisa asked.

"I decided that I'm allowed to tease you for plausibly deniable reasons just to watch you squirm," I said.

"Why are you so mean to me?"

"You make funny noises."

Lisa spluttered and coughed as I walked past her towards the door.

"C'mon, girl, we've got a varmint to hunt," I called, grinning.

Of course, six hours later, that grin would be gone, on account none of the leads we followed with the spirit hounds led anywhere immediately useful, but I wouldn't know that until I experienced every excruciating minute of those six hours myself.