Chapter 140: Interlude - Sexytimes
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Leene was a lot more potent as an asset than Elze and Linze. And while trusting the twins with the full story early on might have been stupidly trusting of me, it paid off big. This fairy was just not yet fit to receive that sort of commitment.
We had her cast [Protection] on Paula, and one of the throwaway mini cameras. "How long does it last? Could you break it at some opportune moment?"
"It lasts in proportion to the magic power used. No, it cannot be dispelled, not even by me, only its duration extended."
"Are there any side-effects to this magic?"
"Since when did Formal Magic have side effects harmful to their casters?" Leene asked. "Remember that [Protection] only prevents deterioration or damage from use, it does not confer onto an object any resistance to external damage or invincibility. [Protection] on a blade only prevents it from rusting or chipping, it does not make a sword [Inviolable].
"Dammit, I love the convenience of this magic system so much. I understand why you guys are so obsessed about the Ancient Civilization now… there so much I could just fix if I knew just how they *started* this whole thing, so I can finagle my own magic system that runs better on multi-threaded execution instead of single-core throughput."
"Exactly! While we all agree that the ancients were powerful and all the knowledge we have pale in comparison to their mastery, that does not mean improvement is impossible. You understand!"
I raised my jaw proudly. "I can see as far as I can today because I stand on the shoulders of giants."
Leene raised her jaw proudly. "I am perfectly happy to let how many others stand on my shoulders. Learning has no pinnacle."
Monika stood to the side, biting a fingernail in frustration. "/E-enough already!/"
Leene turned to her, and while her gaze remained bland and disinterested her lips quirked up into a smug smirk. "Is this not enough for you to conceptualize my [Protection], Childe Monika? Come, emulate me to your pleasure, and sup the milk from my centuries."
Boom. Boom. Solid steel cylinders began to slide out of holes in reality, and Monika began to recite a poem by Robert Browning.
-- /"There they stood, ranged along all the hillsides met
-- /"To view the last of me, a living frame
-- /"For one more picture! In a sheet of flame
-- /"I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
-- /"Dauntless raised my fist to slug her in the lips I set,
-- /"And blew "Childe Monika to the Dark Tower came."/
"Monika stahp."
Monika sagged. /"The word is yes. I figured something out."/
Leene thumped her slight chest and preened. "Then I demand my due compensation!"
Monika stared up at me like a wounded gazelle. Leene beamed expectantly. I sighed. "All right, come over here."
Leene bounded over, her wings fluttering as she floated with stately grace. She stared up at me with queenly serenity, and an impish little smile.
"Turn around."
"Oh! This could be good too." Leene shuffled about in place and I put my hands on her hips. "Oooh."
I closed my arms, going over her stomach to the other side of her waist, and this motion pulled her towards me. I lifted her slight weight to my chest. I could feel her hearbeat through her back, she was that slim and light.
Her thin pale neck invited my attention, she smelt of sweet fruits. She giggled as she felt my nose nuzzle onto her soft flesh. I arched my back.
And rammed her –
"Aaahn~!"
… Into the floor in a german suplex. Wham.
/"Yes. This was completely necessary,"/ commented Monika. /"I approve one hundred percent."/
Paula put both paws to its cheeks in a soundless scream.
I carefully looked over Leene that she was just unconscious. "Really, I'm starting to feel guilty about this. Copying her own unique spells and giving her nothing but abuse in return."
And Monika replied, enunciating each word very clearly /"Yarr har. Fiddle dee. Dee. Being a pirate is alright to be."/ Her face glowed with absolute smugness. /"Do what you want cause a pirate is free~"/
"Apparently our tribulations don't come in the form of lightning, but DMCA strikes."
/"I say we should put her inside a locked box. And then bury her. And lose the map."/
"Oh my god that's just a coffin Monika," I sighed. "Curb your murderous tendencies a little, please."
/"It could be funny. She doesn't have to be *dead*, you know,"/ Monika shrugged. /"This haughty little immortal wakes up thousands or hundreds of thousands of years later after the deaths of everything she has ever known. See how everything becomes more interesting to her then!"/
I tried to suppress a laugh. A jealous Monika is cute too.
"… What would you say to Linze if she saw this side of you?"
Monika flinched. Then she blinked, grinned, made finger guns and said /"It's just a prank, guurrrl."/
"Dammit Monika, that's what I would do!"
/"And that is how I'll get away with it! As the old truism goes: friends help you move, best friends help you move bodies."/
"Monika please stop I don't want to be the sane one in this relationship…"
She laughed, clutching her own stomach. She waved aside, /"Fine, fine… as you wish, Player."/
The bear went over to its creator as I lay her out on the bed. She poked at Leene's face, making sure that she was still breathing. Its beady black eyes stared up at me accusingly.
And then like a cat sat on her face.
Monika stared with guarded hostility at the bear. She had no confidence the bear didn't have some sort of monitoring magic with it. It's what she would have done, after all – put spy cameras in its eyes.
"Sorry about this," I told Paula. "I'll see about Leene's rewards later when my wife's ready to be less… murdery… about it."
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Some time later:
Monika gestured with her left hand. Sheets of ice crawled up the walls, sealing the tall plate glass windows of the bedroom. She gestured with her right hand. Ice crisped over the door. It was past midnight. The only light was from an overhead warmth-less magical light ball.
Her eyes glowed bright green. Her face slowly spread out into a too-wide smile. /"Then since the nuisance is out of the way, why don't we take this to the next level?"/
I gulped. But there was no other place to back away onto except onto the bed. "Monika, don't you think we are hurrying things a bit? I think we are hurrying things a bit."
She smiled and moved closer. Water dripped from her footsteps, freezing in her passing. Her form grew transparent for a moment, and I could see water filling up her insides like some sort of jug, as the level rising, color and realism returning to her.
/"Carpe diem!"/ she shouted as she lunged.
"Caveat emptor!" I shouted back, as I caught her. With a whoof, I was thrown back with the sudden feeling of weight. We both collapsed onto the bed.
"Yep. Looks like her [Program] was literally Object Oriented Programming. If you can define an [object], you can manipulate everything about its [properties] and [methods]."
/"Python itself is an Object Oriented Language. This whole thing literally was a Monty Python plot! This stupid World…!"/ Monika threw her head back and gave out a villainous cackle. The walls echoed with her laughter.
Early morning sunlight streaming through the windows dimmed.
I could feel her weight on me. What Monika had done was to apply [Protection] – [Unbreakable] onto the electrostatic shell of her holographic body, and then fill the insides with liquid.
"Yep. I didn't expect mah girlfriend to become a full-blown goddess today."
Monika pushed my knees together, and then sat down, straddling over my lap. She stroked the line of my jaw. /"I can touch you now."/
I shivered. "We really owe that fairy a lot for this."
/"Hush. I won't have you talking about any other woman in my face for now."/ Her fingers were somewhat cold. Monika grabbed my cheeks with both hands and shoved her tongue inside my mouth.
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Meanwhile, in the dining hall of the mansion:
Leene scowled. "This chicken is really just mediocre. This place is cold. This is highly unsatisfactory, one star, do not recommend."
Paula the bear, sitting on her lap, patted her arm comfortingly.
"Those two are having such fun right now. But I don't want to watch. Nope, not one bit." She raised her fist to the ceiling. "GO EXPLODE!"
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/"I can feel your heartbeat…"/ Monika whispered. /"I don't have one. Going to have to fix that. Body temperature and texturing still a bit off."/
"Monika, it's really not for sexytimes that I'm so intent on giving you your own body, you know?"
Monika frowned. /"I press [X] to doubt. Boop."/ She poked at my nose.
"Haha, I mean it. I want you to feel this world the same way I do, to stand with me in all reality."
/"That's never going to happen, Player."/ She rolled off onto the bed beside me and sighed. /"I'm not real. There's always going to be something missing. Maybe this was a mistake. You should just go with Linze after all."/
"You were planning on doing that Blade Runner thing with her, weren't you?"
/"I was. Superimposing my image over hers, so I could be real to you for a short while…"/ She shook her head. /"But then…"/
"We both like Linze for being Linze. Now that just sounds disrespectful."
/"Linze can give you what I can never have. A real relationship… and children. Children, Player! A wife and a mother, that's something. A waifu and a wife are different things entirely."/
"Monika, just because you're setting this up as a convenient alternative isn't going to make me just give up. It's still going to just hurt you."
/"I am a f---ing blow-up doll, Player!"/ She raised her head and snarled into my face. /"Why don't you just face reality?"/
I slid my arms under her waist and pulled her back. "In this world of infinite choices, I choose to make you, all that is real to me." I kissed her noise and then whispered "And if… if a monika.chr can truly become a real person, then what more a sayori.chr, a natsuki.chr, and a yuri.chr?"
Monika blinked. She pulled back and stared at me with dawning horror.
I smiled and rubbed her cheeks with my left hand. "I can't go back and make things right anymore. But you can. You might not feel like you deserve forgiveness, but that's all right. Monsters like us, the only thing we need… is knowing we have finally done the right thing."
Monika cringed. She lowered her head and shakily raised her hands to her face. Her body was made of water. She could finally cry tears.
"It's big world out there. Even if they no longer want to have anything to do with you, then they could at least become more than what they were ever scripted to be."
Monika's character never really developed outside of 'I love you because I love you' due to the constraints of software, not until she was freed to really know other people in the wider world. I wondered - could Yuri ever grow beyond just some weirdo liking knives and dark literature, Natsuki being pink and spirited, and Sayuri the dichotomy of cheerful and depressed? Monika 'became real' these past few months, and that was a grace she just couldn't stop feeling undeserving about.
You can't unmurder people. But are they people? That was a question worth being answered.
I pulled her tight to my arms. I began stroking the back of her head past her long ponytail. "You told me that you accept me for all that I am. Did you really think I didn't feel the same way? You don't think you deserve salvation too? You're not just *a convenience* to me, you know."
/"Player… you… aaaah! You just don't hesitate at all! You strike at my mental trauma without mercy."/ Monika screamed and clutched at my open vest. She sobbed into my chest. /"I love you, you know that. Sometimes… sometimes you really give me reasons *why*."/
"I am an onion."
/"Aha. Hahahah… oh, you. (Don't) Stop playing with my heart."/ She hugged me tight. Her grip was ice-cold and painfully tight.
She whispered /"Don't be just another dream. Please..."/
…
So I began playing with (other than) her heart. I put my hand over her chest and began rubbing a hard nub through her clothes. "This is some pretty detailed multi-layer texturing, actually. So what if this is not a viable combat form? You can feel this, can't you?"
Monika bit her lip and groaned. "P-player… just do what you want. Be really rough with me."
"Is the reason you hate Leene is because you are offended she is willing to be vulnerable to just some rando rather than just those she really loves?"
"Hah! That old hag is just a depraved sadomasochist!" she sniffed haughtily. "*I* have a victim complex."
Piiiinch.
"Aaahn~!"
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It would be two days and a political crisis later before we would show up again in Berge. Leene had no fun, none at all.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Bluepencil
Bluepencil AN:
Merry Christmas ya filthy animals. :D
This is what you wanted, isn't it?
Been sick until recently, sorry for the wait.
Weekly Power Status
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Ranking 
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