Stripper with a System

(Chapters 6-9)

Novus Peregrine

Disclaimer: Obviously, I don’t own Mass Effect, which belongs to EA/Bioware. Though Rylia is entirely my own creation.

Chapter 6: Summoning Help

It had, in fact, taken Rylia multiple late nights to sort through the possibilities in the ‘Help’ section of the Omniversal Marketplace for good options. In part, that was because she hadn’t looked at that section in fine detail previously, and had badly underestimated the options within it as a result. There were very literally tens of thousands of people whose contract could be purchased through the Marketplace, from dozens of apparently-not-entirely-fictional realities.

Almost invariably there were multiple versions of each person, too.

She wasn’t quite sure what that meant in regards to the overall multiverse. She supposed if you took the Marvel or DC view of such a thing, it made sense that there were multiple versions of each universe. Which likely explained the ‘Omniversal’ label on the Marketplace System, come to think of it. She’d originally just pictured that as a fancy way of saying ‘multiversal,’ but now she was very much thinking that ‘Omni’ was used instead precisely because there were many possible iterations of each universe. What that said about her current reality was something she consciously decided not to think about very hard, as it was likely to either cause migraines or an existential panic of some sort.

Best just accept it and move on, dealing with a single galaxy’s crisis was enough for her, thanks.

The sheer quantity of possible individuals, added to the fact there were often variants of them, had caused Rylia a serious case of choice paralysis. It would have been even worse if she’d had more Karma Points to work with. For better or worse, though, she’d accrued only a limited number of those so far. She’d gained a fairly solid amount for buying out and remaking in a fair fashion several hundred indenture contracts, and some more for setting her hiring policies the way they were. Yet, she still really only had enough for a single mid-tier summons.

Tiers weren’t actually how the Marketplace listed things. The system just went with straight point value calculations that took into account a, as far as Rylia could tell, stupidly huge number of factors. Big factors, just as two examples, were length of a person’s loyalty contract and what sort of roles the individuals had selected being okay with. You could, in fact, sort for individuals who were totally okay with being dropped into your harem. Since contracts with the Omniversal Market were entirely voluntary, though, versions of various people that were okay with that sort of thing were few and far between. That very rarity worked out to a supply and demand restriction that upped the cost of the ones who were okay with it.

Likewise, the longer the ‘enforced loyalty’ of the contract was set to last, the more Karma currency it would cost you too. On top of that, of course, were layers of ‘usefulness.’ The number of skills someone had and the amount of power they could bring to bear being just two of dozens of factors. There were versions of individuals like Supergirl, for example, but they were almost all hilariously far outside of Rylia’s price range. There actually was a Kara Zor’El that was just barely within her price range, and had even made her short list, but it was a depowered version. Meaning it was her technical skills and brains you were getting, not someone who could punch a Reaper in the face and make the Reaper cry for mommy with that one hit.

The entire algorithm was hideously complex, and Rylia had needed a way to mentally sort things more simply for her own sanity. She’d created little mental boxes she labeled ‘Tiers’ in the process, a total of four, and divided people of interest into her own sorting system. The highest, most costly tier was Tier 4, which Rylia wasn’t even close to being able to afford. It contained people like a fully powered and experienced Power Girl, who had also been running her own corporation for decades. In other words, someone who brought the combination of Raw Power and Diverse Skills into a single gloriously endowed package.

Continuing to use variants of Kryptonians for the sake of clarity, a young Supergirl with all the power but none of the experience and minimal relevant skills would be a Tier 3. The version of Kara Zor’El that had made Rylia’s short list, who lacked power but had very solid technical and scientific skills, was a Tier 2. A depowered rando Kryptonian clone with no knowledge of Kyrpton’s science to fall back on would be a Tier 1. That, of course, assumed they were all the same contract duration and general level of willingness in what they had signed up for. If that version of Kara she’d had on her short list had signed herself up for the harem lifestyle, she’d have been elevated at least one tier by default.

Rylia could afford a single Tier 2, so long as she didn’t push the boundaries of that tier too far.

Even applying that limit to her search, there had still remained multiple versions of thousands of individuals, and she’d needed to come up with additional ways to sort them. The first and easiest few filters had been making sure they had a ‘Heroic’ aligned nature, weren’t a personality type that would clash with hers (There were compatibility filters! How that worked, she really didn’t want to think about. Hopefully horoscopes and star signs were not involved…), and had at least a five-year contract. Those additional filters had pared the list down some, but not nearly enough, and Rylia had wrestled for days with sorting out what she actually needed and who fit the bill.

Eventually, with lots of agonizing, she’d produced a short list of individuals who had both skills she needed and the ability to look out for themselves. The fact that she’d still had so many options she could be a bit capricious and sort by details like ‘attractive female’ wasn’t lost on her, but she wasn’t going to apologize for it! She’d needed to pare down the list farther somehow, so why not make her working environment more visually pleasant?!

In the end, she’d winnowed her way through top candidates for several different roles. Science and Engineering help, Business help, Public Relations, Spycraft expertise, Bodyguard duty, and even Archaeologists, since that last group could be put to the task of proving the Reapers were real early. Versions of Lara Croft, Sage, and that depowered Kara Zor’El had all made the final short list.

In the end, however, the one she’d chosen was a version of Momo Yaoyorozu.

No, the reason why wasn’t her boobs! If it had just been that, Miss Croft probably would have won. Rylia wasn’t that shallow! No matter what anyone else said!

All kidding aside, the specific version of Momo that she’d selected did a better job of covering multiple bases than anyone else that had made it onto her final list. Sage had been the final major competition in that light, but some of Sage’s best points were being adequately handled by droid support for the moment. Had Rylia been more critically in need of counter-intelligence help, Sage would have come out on top. As it was, with her still mostly flying under the radar as a promising business owner in a non-offensive tech sector, a few R2 units with slicer modules could handle info security for the time being.

Of course, if the version of Miss Yaoyorozu she’d selected had been just a teenage superhero, even one with a Quirk that was extremely broken in its own way, she’d never have come anywhere close to that final shortlist. While the ability to turn greasy hamburgers into exotic materials was ‘much broken, pls no nerf,’ resources weren’t Rylia’s current bottle neck. No, the version of Momo that had made the shortlist wasn’t a teenager at all…

**********************

Name: Momo Yayorozu

Age: 25

Quirk: Creation

Professions: Semi-Retired Pro Hero, CEO Yaoyorozu Industries

Contract Duration: 5 Years

**********************

This wasn’t a teenage Momo at all. No, this was a Momo Yaoyorozu who had, in fact, become a Pro Hero, performed excellently in that role, then retired and went into the family business. Well, semi-retired, anyway. From what Rylia had been able to guess from context, it wasn’t actually normal for Pro Heroes in that reality to continue past their prime. Only perhaps a quarter of them made it to thirty without dropping out of the profession for one reason or another. Deaths, injuries, lack of popularity, or simple burnout. All seemed like likely possibilities.

In the case of Miss Yaoyorozu, it had been other responsibilities that had drawn her away from the life of a Pro Hero. Japan had apparently been hit rather harder by a much more violent war between All for One and the Heroes in her reality than the one which had shown up on a television screen. From the few details included in the profile, mop up operations and recreating stability in the aftermath of what amounted to two small wars, had taken several years, during which Momo had been an active Heroine.

Virtually as soon as things had stabilized, however, the now-older Momo had realized that she could do far more good by leading Yaoyorozu Industries into the rebuilding efforts than she could punching villains in the face. There were lots of people who could punch villains in the face, after all. Finding an honest CEO that genuinely wanted to help, rather than milking every disaster for profit, though? Yeah, that was sadly a fair bit rarer.

So Momo had semi-retired and taken the reins of her family’s holdings, bringing them to new heights even as she turned much of their focus onto helping with the rebuilding of Japan. Rylia didn’t know just what she’d gotten from the Omniversal Marketplace for her side of things, those details were private to the contracted ‘help.’ Whatever it was must have been extremely effective, though, as the date of her deal with the System coincided with a major upswing in Japan’s recovery. Momo had been granted five years after the deal to stay in her world and put things on track…and now she owed five years of indenture to the Omniversal Market in exchange.

Whether or not she stayed, after those five years were up, was considerably more up in the air. It would be up to Rylia to convince her to do so. But, given the woman’s fundamentally Heroic nature and the stakes for the Mass Effect galaxy, she figured she had a good shot. Besides, even if she didn’t stay, the skills she had would help Rylia position herself far better by the time Momo’s contract was up.

After all, this Momo was an international business mogul, whose company was large enough that her position as CEO was almost as much politics as it was business. She had the business chops, the press relations experience, the political handling skills, and a dozen other things that Rylia badly needed. Things that a mere knowledge upload couldn’t give you a feel for. Add in several levels of multiclassing into Heroic Badass, meaning she would also be physical protection? Oh, and just for grins, further add in the ability to produce exotic materials on a whim? Yep, she check marked an entire sea of boxes within the list of areas Rylia needed loyal coverage for.

Also, she did have really nice tits.

What? It may not have been the deciding factor, but it was still true! Better yet, there was some really interesting tidbits in the personal information sections! Like the fact that she’d only ever had a single significant other, due to being crazy busy, and that S.O. was Jirou! Bi-sexuality and relative innocence confirmed! Rylia was hoping to have some fun with that part, too. Though she wouldn’t push it if the woman wasn’t interested, of course.

Now, how exactly did buying ‘Help’ from the Marketplace even work, anyway…

… … …

The answer to that question turned out to be fairly simple, complete with one of the only honest-to-God tutorials she’d seen since first having the Marketplace shoved into her brain. She supposed, given that this involved a sentient being, whoever was behind the System decided it required an in-depth tutorial to ensure you didn’t fuck things up. Embarrassingly, the tutorial did highlight a number of things she hadn’t considered. Both things that the System did cover, like required immunizations for the safety in your local reality, and things that it didn’t cover, like the need for an official ID and background. Not to mention clothing, a place to stay, and other basic necessities.

Honestly, she was fairly glad to see that the System required you to think a bunch of things through and check off that you’d taken care of them, before your first time purchasing from the ‘Help’ section. She was certain it had saved both her and her soon-to-be companion/minion from a number of stupid mistakes or oversights. It had also, unfortunately, meant a couple of additional days had passed as Rylia sorted everything out.

She’d acquired some slicer-equipped R3-series droids, something she’d been slightly reluctant to do previously as they unquestionably broke the Citadel Space AI laws. Unlike her guard droids, analysis droids, and even her personal bodyguard droid, the R-series were considered so good precisely because Industrial Automation had pushed boundaries with them. They were far too capable of self-actualization for their code to be considered anything but a fully sapient AI.

Or, at least, they could develop into that.

They didn’t start that way, which was what had allowed them to be considered Class 2 droids. Regular data-wipes could prevent them from developing that seed of potential into a fully sapient artificial intelligence, but many people grew attached and didn’t bother. Meaning that the entire R-Series apparently had a reputation. One that was mostly positive. Though, admittedly, a few had gone on to commit war crimes…

She was going to have to keep an eye on that. Even if she’d felt their role was needed and probably wouldn’t push them towards the path of war crimes. Probably. There were admittedly a lot of traumatizing things out there on the extranet.

As for the exact model she’d chosen, Rylia had gone with the R3, in particular, as it had been built as a military upgrade to the R2 design, with a significant processing power boost. While they’d retained the ability to plug into a starfighter like the R2 series, they were truly meant for supporting capital ships, capable of hundreds of tasks at once. This multi-tasking ability made the small team of four R3s she’d purchased honestly a little overkill for both building up her own corporate info security and hacking into the records of the Systems Alliance to add a detailed background for Momo.

Having them work in tandem with a JN-66 loaded with criminal investigation software, ordered to make a background that wouldn’t trip flags if someone looked deeply into it, produced an identity that was extremely solid. Not perfect, as someone who went to the trouble of trying to track down anyone who’d actually met Momo would find nothing, of course. Yet, even that had been partially accounted for by her background detailing Momo having spent recent years in the Terminus Systems. Which would both make verification hard and help account for her combat skills. Anyone living out there that didn’t know the basics of how to look out for themselves was a fool.

Usually, a dead one. If they were very, very lucky.

With her carefully hidden and thoroughly secured bunker/lab/workshop, dug out below the former scrapyard, now housing hideously illegal AIs hard at work, Rylia had handled a bunch of the other details personally. A luxury condo just below her own penthouse, clothes that would fit the measurements provided by the System, human-appropriate foods not laced with eezo like many Asari dishes were, and so on. Only the basics for each category, really. Enough for Momo to get by until they went shopping for her, assuming the Creation Quirk holder didn’t just make a bunch of stuff she was familiar with.

After finally being able to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s, it turned out the that ‘summoning’ itself was pretty anti-climactic. She put through her ‘order,’ a door shimmered into existence with a 24-hour timer, and when that timer hit zero it opened up and out walked the stacked and statuesque form of Momo Yaoyorozu. Despite an apparent confidence in her movements and set of her eyes, something about the younger woman betrayed that she was more than a little nervous.

Well, that wouldn’t do!

Grinning brightly and focusing on the Extrovert Energy of Rylia instead of the Introvert nature of Hazel, she stepped forward with a hand out, even as the door faded away.

“Hello! I’m Rylia T’naai! Your new boss, for now, I guess! Though exactly how that will work out is something we can discuss once you’re up to speed. After all, I’m not exactly sure what you were told when coming here, but you’re a pretty long way from Earth!”

Rylia had chosen English, knowing from her profile that Momo spoke it fluently. The girl wouldn’t have a translator implant yet, after all. Thankfully, while it wasn’t as natural to Rylia as Thessian Standard, she’d actually known English properly even before Hazel had merged with her. Early translation efforts with humanity had been a little dubious, and Rylia had scored points with her simps by learning English, which was still one of the two most dominant languages of Earth and the official language of the Systems Alliance.

It really could do with being stated again, that Rylia T’naai had been (and technically still was) a first order genius. Learning a language just to make her streaming business targeting humans hit a wider audience had been a casual choice she’d knocked out in a couple of weeks. Seriously, the majority of her that was still Hazel really enjoyed the perk of being dropped into the head of a genuine genius. Her human self hadn’t been a slouch by any means, easily in the near-genius levels of intelligence in her own right. But Rylia was an entirely different flavor of monster in that regard, and the merger had left that intelligence fully intact.

Back in the moment, however, Momo appeared relieved at the familiar gesture of a handshake. It might not be the thing in Japan, where bowing was the customary greeting, but she’d clearly dealt with enough international business that she didn’t hesitate to take Rylia’s hand and give it a firm-but-carefully-measured shake.

“Ah…I’m sure you already know, but for the sake of politeness, I’m Yaoyorozu Momo. As for what I was told? Almost nothing beyond your name and the fact that this was, and I quote, ‘a sci-fi setting under threat of multi-species organic annihilation.’”

Rylia raised her eyebrows, painted on as they were.

“Yikes! That’s not much at all! But that’s okay. You’re the first ‘Help’ I’ve ever gotten from the System, so I assumed from the start it would be unsafe to assume anything. I’ve got plenty of information collected to help you get up to speed! As well as a way to speed that up somewhat via a brain uploader that can give you some history and other context. For now, though, I’ll give you the basics, starting with…”

Having put entirely too much thought into making a good impression with this meeting, Rylia reached over and tapped the button that would turn one wall of her penthouse transparent. She, as a budding business power, had of course acquired a penthouse suite in one of the major arcologies of the planet. Built along a towering set of cliffs, the view out over the alien ocean was gorgeous.

“…Welcoming you to the planet of Nevos! A six-hundred-year-plus old Asari colony world that’s a bit out on the frontier, but still within Asari space. Asari, by the by, are my species. Don’t fret, humans do exist in this reality and are part of the galactic community. They are, admittedly, the newest species to have joined the collection of governments that make up Citadel Space. It’s currently 2167CE, by the by. Quirks never happened with humanity here, so development continued without the disruption of that mess, and humans are a smallish but growing interstellar power. They only made First Contact, with a short conflict with the Turians, around ten years ago.”

Momo was gaping like a fish, which was way more adorable than it should be. Still, Rylia would try to take it a little slower, as she’d clearly shattered the poor girl’s worldview just a little.

“Right! I’ve got some excellent tea here we can talk over! I had to be careful to get a human friendly blend, but hopefully you’ll like it! I can give you a basic rundown of the situation and why I wanted your help, and we can generally get to know one another!”

Momo looked just a little overwhelmed as Rylia shooed her into one of the gloriously comfy leather chairs she’d set up to overlook the view, and darted off to get that tea…

Chapter 7: Introducing the Empire!

Momo, who she’d officially gotten permission to call Momo after blowing her mind in the second most fun way that Rylia could think of, had settled in nicely over the course of several days. Rylia wasn’t stupid enough to have expected Momo to be able to hit the ground running, and had prepared a decently comprehensive set of lessons and data packets that would get her up to speed.

Some of those were purchased packs of knowledge from the Marketplace, including local information. Those had been specifically so that she could let Momo absorb a lot of general information about the state of the galaxy from use of the unimaginatively named ‘Knowledge Uploader MKIII.’ Which was, of course, the rapid-learning device she’d acquired via Dimensional Barter.

Other information, such as everything Rylia had been able to remember about the Reapers, was sadly unavailable in the Marketplace. Yes, she’d checked. On literally the second day of having the System, with the first having been a bit busy dealing with her two selves being merged. Apparently, finding information on the Reapers wasn’t going to be that easy, which left just what Rylia could remember from playing the games as Hazel. Given both the danger of the information and the dubiousness of how accurate it was, Rylia hadn’t put it into a knowledge transfer. Instead, she’d written it all in galactic basic (the Star Wars version which Momo had gotten an upload of) and let Momo study the Rylia hand-written notes.

Understandably, Momo had been a bit overwhelmed by the idea that they were trying to save the entire galaxy, rather than just Japan or the planet Earth.

What Rylia very carefully hadn’t included in the packets of information intended to get Momo up to speed were two critical bits of information. First, left out because she wasn’t yet sure how someone Hero-minded would react to some of the details, where Rylia’s long-term plans on how to prepare the galaxy. Well they would do a lot of good, it would also mean killing a whole lot of people that deserved killing, and a Superhero from a world where killing was a last resort might find that a bit hard to stomach.

The second thing left out had been entirely for Rylia’s own amusement.

She had, very pointedly, excluded any mention of how she was making her own ‘starting capital.’ That wouldn’t have lasted much longer, since Momo had now caught up to the basic details needed to function in the Mass Effect universe and Rylia had just given her an unrestricted Omni-tool to play with. Which was, of course, why Rylia was busy making sure she got to see Momo’s reaction to the revelation personally.

“…and that is how I’m in the process of securing us billions in funding! Right now, most of it is going back into rapid infrastructure buildup, so that we can eventually actually keep up with demand. Even with that fact, though, I’ve skimmed off over 100 million credits for supposed R&D that no one will think twice about. I have already started showing off a second product line, after all, so clearly I’m doing further research! Outsiders just have very little idea how little I’m currently needing to invest on the research side, since I’m getting blueprints from the Marketplace and adjusting them!”

Rylia was doing her absolute dead level best to keep a straight face as she enthusiastically chattered, despite desperately wanting to burst out laughing at how beat red Momo was. Had Rylia needed to provide physical samples of the products? No. Had she needed to include choice snippets from her first ‘advertising stream?’ Absolutely not. Had she done so anyway? Of course she had!

The effect was absolutely worth it, too! She’d already managed to figure out in their previous interactions that Momo was physically attracted to Rylia at least, possibly Asari in general. She’d also, however, discovered that the girl was still surprisingly innocent. An odd lack of body modesty certainly, which might well be explained by having a body even most Asari would cheerfully murder for. But otherwise? It was very easy to get her flustered with a bit of light flirting. Which was so adorable.

Now, Momo’s reaction to Rylia’s presentation was everything she’d hoped for. The younger woman had been bright red since pretty early on…but her nipples were also diamond hard from the visible dents in the comfy bodysuit that Rylia had stocked her wardrobe with. Said bodysuits were extremely common spacer-wear, as they fit perfectly under most hardsuits, and Asari in general liked them as casual wear.

The fact that Rylia had gone out of her way to make sure Momo’s bodysuits had amazing support built in had just made it less likely that the woman would bother replacing them. She could easily have made her own clothes or requested something else, but Rylia didn’t think the younger woman would until she needed business or lab wear. For all her background of wealth, Momo didn’t seem terribly materialistic. Possibly a side effect of being able to just make whatever you needed? Well, Rylia wasn’t complaining, given the view.

The fact she did like the view wasn’t even something she’d bothered hiding. Which was part of how she’d discovered Momo’s lack of body modesty, as it didn’t bother the younger woman at all. Rylia supposed she was used to it, particularly given what she wore as a ‘Hero costume’ was far more revealing in its own way. For now, it just added to Rylia’s enjoyment as she waited for Momo to get enough control over herself to ask questions.

It took her a couple of minutes, much to Rylia’s amusement.

“U-um…no offense meant, but did you have to make a Sex Toy Empire specifically? It just seems a little…”

Momo trailed off, seeming not even to know how to put it without coming off as crass or offensive, something which made Rylia giggle. Her giggle brought the red creeping back into Momo’s face, but Rylia ignored it and treated the question seriously. There was fun to be had with this, yes. But she also needed to bring it home for Momo that it hadn’t been only a hormone-derived decision.

“Yes! Well, technically no. I didn’t have to do it this way, but it was arguably the best choice. There is a huge market, obviously, and it was a sector that I could move into without raising red flags. If I’d jumped straight into advanced weapons technology, it would have been an interesting to see who managed to kidnap me first. The STG? A Spectre? Possibly the Shadow Broker? Without a big power to hide behind, I’d have been either kidnapped or assassinated inside a week.”

Momo grimaced, the heat in her cheeks fading as she internalized that statement and the much more serious tone Rylia had delivered it in. Seeing she was getting her point across, Rylia continued.

“I don’t have any proof of the Reaper issue, and the Marketplace would be even more dangerous to let anyone know about. That means, in order to make a difference, I needed to become a power in my own right. The first step was money, and I needed a market that was safe for me to make that money in. If someone looks into my previous background, the picture currently adds up. A talented Asari engineer, with a degree from a prestigious college, who spent the last several years working as both a Stripper and a Streamer that did occasional adult content. No one will even blink at that combined history producing a line of sex toys, right?”

Visibly a little reluctant, but unable to deny the obvious truth, Momo nodded. The red was, sadly, fading almost entirely as the other girl’s gifted intellect stopped being short-circuited by the subject and started picking out the same angles Rylia had.

“The net result is that my rise to wealth and my buildup of industrial capacity isn’t triggering any red flags at all. I’m making product in an inoffensive industry to the powers that be, in what appears to be a straight-line progression of my known existing talents and profession. I look like a talented new business owner, but not one that needs attention from spy agencies or oversight committees. Setting up on Nevos, a frontier world that specializes in low-oversight industry and tourism, only make that truer.”

Momo’s blush had faded almost entirely now and she was looking reluctantly impressed.

“Now I have money. Lots of it. As well as a fair few credits in the Omniversal Marketplace that I gained by liquidating an entire scrapyard into it. Enough that I can not only buy things like the droids I’m using,” Rylia waved at the KX-Series droid she used as a bodyguard, “but also technology packages. Some of which will be things we can spread to other industries to naturally increase tech levels in places like the medical sector. Others which I can use in the hidden factories I’m building or acquiring, building up a military force.”

Momo nodded…then frowned. Mentally chewing on something for a moment, playing with a lock of hair that had escaped, the younger woman eventually proved just how intelligent she was.

“You’re not intending to just give the military tech improvements to various governments, are you? If you were, you’d only need R&D facilities, not manufacturing capacity. Not beyond what you needed for prototyping, at least.”

Rylia leaned back, grimacing as the fun was over for the moment. Time to rip a few band aids off and hope for the best.

“Correct. Oh, I absolutely will be selling some military tech eventually. Frankly put, however, we don’t have enough time for a slow uplift. Sure, if we supplied the human Systems Alliance with energy weapons that virtually ignore kinetic barriers, they’d jump on manufacturing them as fast as they could. But, with their current industrial base, it wouldn’t be fast enough. Whereas everyone else? Giving it to them would either see them bury it out of a desire not to upset the status quo, or else building it in moderation within their current military budgets.”

Momo’s grimace matched Rylia’s own as she obviously pictured the truth. Without a known threat, no one was going to move to a war footing to rush something like new weapons tech into mass usage. At best it would upset their allies, at worst the massive increase in military budgets required would upset their own electorate and see them thrown out of power. Under ordinary conditions, unless they could prove an existential threat so clearly even politicians couldn’t stick their heads in the sand, it would take decades to upgrade an entire fleet to a new tech standard.

“Then…no offense, but how are you intending to build up fast enough? Even with the Marketplace, you can’t build a fleet powerful enough to see off the Reaper threat privately.”

Rylia sighed. Well, at least Momo was following the same logic, even if she suspected the girl might not like Rylia’s genius solution.

“The Terminus Systems. No, before you think the worst, I’m not going to sell to them. That would light a fire under the various powers, but it would be more likely to result in surgical strikes against whatever warlord we sold to. No, we’re going to have to conquer the Terminus Systems and uplift them.”

Momo blinked, that statement not seeming to process for her for long moments. Then, she gaped.

“W-what?!”

Rylia shrugged, feigning nonchalance she honestly didn’t really feel.

“Think about it. On the surface, no one can protest a take over of the Terminus. It’s outside Citadel space and considered lawless, with various Warlords and criminals controlling nearly all of it. Something like half of the entire Turian fleet is dedicated to either protecting from raids by pirate and slaver groups operating out of the Terminus Systems, or patrolling along the borders of the same. Hell, the Turians themselves have been arguing for centuries to be allowed to go in and clean it up.”

Rylia, with a little regret, tapped in commands to replace the glorious images of her and other models ‘testing’ the various sex toys lines, with maps and figures. Much less sexy, but sadly more important.

“In reality, the only major issue with them doing so is infantry numbers. No one in the Terminus has ships bigger than Cruisers, with the majority of even those suspiciously being ‘outdated’ Batarian hardware. The Turian Navy could crush the various Warlords on an individual basis…but there are a lot of people in the Terminus. Actually pacifying the worlds to bring them into the Citadel fold would be a nightmare.”

Momo was frowning even as she nodded. Surprisingly, she seemed not to be having a knee-jerk negative reaction just yet. Something which made Rylia hopeful.

“Then how would you…the droids!”

Rylia smirked.

“Not just the droids. Droids, power armor, and mechs, all using tech pulled from more advanced tech bases. Force multipliers that will make rolling over the first few Warlords easy. The Citadel Council will be concerned, of course, but if we’re actively less of a threat and start suppressing pirates and opening positive relations with the Citadel, they don’t have a direct justification to act. Meanwhile, seeing all that tech on display…”

Momo got it instantly.

“They won’t have a choice but to race to catch up, regardless of the expense of overhauling their fleets. Even if we’re friendly, they can’t risk what will look like a new Warlord having a higher military tech level than them. They either buy it from us, or steal the designs. Either way, it kicks off an arms race they can’t escape, so long as you get established fast enough. They are forced to build up to compete, raising the tech level and numbers of every major power just in time for the Reapers to arrive.”

Rylia beamed at Momo getting it, even as she internally worried that the protest she’d expected wasn’t coming. Tentatively, she tried to bait that possible reaction out.

“I know the solution is a bit…bloody. But it’s the only thing I can think of that might work, unless we can get either irrefutable proof or a lot more time to work with.”

Ah. There was the sour twist of expression that didn’t belong on such a beautiful face. Thankfully, it vanished quickly as Momo sighed.

“I understand. We had to…escalate a bit…toward the end of our confrontations with the Meta Liberation League and All for One. Not everyone, on either side, came out alive. Not even close.”

Momo’s eyes went distant for a moment, a flash of pain crossing her features. Right, this version of her had seen things get a lot uglier than the anime her Hazel half had watched had made things out to be.

“What you’re proposing is a more violent solution than I’d like, but I’ve long since learned to take reality as it is, not as I wish it to be. If these Reapers are real and we really have less than a decade and a half to work with…while I hope we try to keep the body counts down, I understand these are steps made toward resolving an multi-species existential crisis. Not just a police action against criminals.”

Rylia wasn’t completely convinced, but Momo also wasn’t someone she really intended to be deeply involved in that side of things anyway. Neither she nor Momo were military commanders. It was their job to handle the logistics and politics. She would find someone else, in time, to handle the bloody work. Whether that was via the Marketplace or simply finding the right people already within the Mass Effect universe was a question she didn’t know the answer to yet. Nor did it particularly matter at this stage of things. For now, it was enough to know that her first companion/minion wasn’t going to stage a revolt over Rylia’s long-term goal.

“Excellent! Now, getting back to the fun parts of leading a Sex Toy Empire! We still need to get some human models, for the sub-lines that we’re producing for humans! They may be a smaller market than the Asari, but getting our fingers into the human economy will only help several future plans! Now, how do you feel about modeling~?”

Ah, there we go! Momo is back to being that adorable shade of red! She probably wouldn’t actually agree to model, but Rylia was really angling just to get her to try out all the toys, so she would start high in negotiations and let Momo argue her way back down. She was clearly just testing Momo’s negotiation talents! That was all, obviously…

Chapter 8: Working Together

Rylia was in complete and total awe as Momo vanquished her foe. A foe that frightened and intimidated Rylia to the deepest and darkest depths of her soul. Both her souls, as Hazel had possessed a visceral terror of the beast as well. Even more than spiders. More than thresher maws. Possibly even more than Reapers! Many were the epic battles waged against her timeless, immortal and unkillable foe, which now seemed to pathetically whimper before Momo’s determined expression and skilled hands.

Apparently, Momo was really good at paperwork.

Well, technically Omnitool form work and emails, but same things, different tech base.

“You’re seriously done already?! Is this some secret aspect of your super powers?! You must teach me, sensei! Even if I have to buy powers from the Marketplace!”

Momo’s lips twitched in amusement as Rylia knelt before the Paperwork Goddess and plead earnestly with hands clasped together.

“It, unfortunately, requires the one thing which is your greatest weakness, Rylia. Attention span.”

Urk. Rylia fell back, slain, as Momo’s shot pierced both her lives with vicious accuracy. A moment later, she did her best to rally.

“Attention span is the bane of creativity, Momo! If you focus on just one thing for very long, you’ll never have time for all the new thoughts!”

Momo’s twitching lips were joined by a snort, before breaking out into a proper grin.

“I suppose there is some truth to that. I struggled with more creative uses of my Quirk, and training it to be usable at all was mostly an exercise in extremes of focus.”

Rylia pointed dramatically.

“See! It is part of your superpower! Your Quirk clearly warped your mind towards extreme focus!”

Momo rolled her eyes, but a small smile remained as she moved onto a new topic.

“Now that we’ve got you caught up on your formwork and handled critical decisions, we need to talk about production efficiency.”

That…sounded very boring, but probably important, so Rylia sighed as she waved for Momo to go on.

“Honestly, you and the small team you put together did a fairly decent job of setting up initial production lines, at least for amateurs. The analysis droids helped, as did the fact you had a couple of decent logistics people among those you hired or picked up from…indenture.”

The word ‘indenture’ came off Momo’s lips with an odd note to it, but Rylia already knew Momo was struggling to process that bit of culture clash. The younger woman had been appalled when she first learned about the indenture thing being common, but once she’d examined why the system worked for the Asari she’d accepted it for them. She’d had a much harder time with the fact the company currently held indenture contracts for members of other species. Ones that were up to twenty years long in some cases, representing a significant portion of those individual’s lifespans. Going over how generous Rylia had been when she’d rewritten those contracts had eased Momo’s discomfort, but she was still struggling a bit with the concept.

“Nevertheless, I spotted several ways you’re not taking advantage of things like common components between toy models, or common doping steps for some of the meta materials in use by virtually all of them. If I spotted a half dozen such places things could be tightened up, then a real expert would find double that number. We just need to find an expert we can live with, one that sticks to hardware recommendations rather than trying to idiotically trim fat by treating the workers like drones. Find the right experts and we can probably get at least a 15 percent output increase across all lines with virtually no negative impact on the workers.”

Rylia grimaced at Momo’s acid tone as she commented on ‘trimming the fat,’ though the opinion behind it was one she honestly agreed with. It was, in fact, part of the reason why she hadn’t hired such an expert yet. Rylia wasn’t informed enough to be able to tell were good sense suggestions bled into the sort of well-poisoning and worker abuse that Hazel had hated getting caught up in as part of corporate America. Self-destructive bad business habits like trying to squeeze worker time management to the point your employees hated your guts.

Asari corporations were less prone to that, in some ways, because of how social the species was. But if you were unlucky enough to work for one of the Matriarchs that tended to see younger Asari as lesser? It could legitimately be worse, too. Rylia hadn’t trusted that she’d be able to tell the difference between needed changes for better efficiency and changes that went too far and abused her work force. When she explained as much to Momo, the younger woman nodded.

“I’d hoped that was the problem. You’ve put a strong focus on worker loyalty, for reasons I can completely understand given long-term goals. But you do have someone who can spot the difference now, and it would be better to get on top of this before we talk to investors.”

Rylia grimaced. That was probably the biggest bubble of hers that Momo had popped. With brutal efficiency that hadn’t been all that pleasant. Rylia had wanted to keep everything privately held by her, and Momo had encouraged her to retain at least controlling interest in the various businesses so no one could pry into their operations. But she’d also disabused her of the notion it was a good idea to stay entirely held by herself personally.

Bringing in at least private investors would allow them to expand operations far faster than they could otherwise, and they weren’t exactly blessed with an abundance of time. Not for the sheer scale of the task at hand. The fact that many of the rich investors would have political connections they could leverage later, when they expanded into military markets, also made it a form of networking. As Momo had walked her through it all, Rylia had realized just how right she’d been to pick a business/politics specialist as her first ‘Help’ purchase.

There were a lot of things like that, behind the scenes maneuvering to get far better purchase deals, sales contracts, and access to hiring pools that weren’t available just by accessing the extranet. Momo had already managed to trade minor pieces of technology that Rylia wanted shared out anyway, in order to open doors for buying more manufacturing capacity that had started closing here on Nevos. Rylia had bought up everything that people were actively looking to sell, plus a little more she’d managed to haggle for, and then hit her limits without having to build from scratch. She hadn’t had an understanding of how to leverage what she had to pry loose more of what existed from those that didn’t want only money.

Apparently, it was a lot easier to get big corps to sell you existing manufacturing space if you were making under-the-table deals with the owners. Deals like allowing them to privately invest in your wildly profitable business. Since Erotic Delights wasn’t publicly traded and never would be, it wasn’t even an insider trading issue. Cutting some ambitious Matron about to hit her Matriarch stage into a massively profitable business if she could ‘just see her way to letting us buy that one factory from you?’ Apparently a very effective way to pry lose more of the existing manufacturing capacity than Rylia had been able to get at.

Deals like that, as well as some doing those previously mentioned tech trades to pass off the secrets of new ways to use Mass Effect fields to various corporations, stood to increase their production capacity by something like seventy-five percent in less than two months. Most of that spent retooling the new facilities for what they needed. Even with losing some profit to the new investors, the ability to get far closer to meeting actual demand would still increase their own profits by several hundred percent.

Momo was much better at this build-a-business in detail thing than she was. Thankfully, Rylia wasn’t overly devastated by that, as she’d found that she was still far better than the younger girl at creative vision. It had been Rylia who came up with a list of uses for the various bits of tech at Momo’s request, even if Momo had then sweet talked the various corporations in the required fields into wanting the tech. Such as selling the Security Field generation tech she’d employed in the Cyber-Tentacle Bondage Frame to actual security companies that made prisons and police holding cells.

That had been an obvious use, since it was something the Protheans had used it for. More creatively, Rylia had pointed out that the same fields had massive usage for construction, and Momo had leverage that for something like forty percent of their new deals. Some for acquiring more factory space, others for getting much cheaper deals for raw materials that increased their own profits significantly without lowering quality.

“Alright. So we need an efficiency review of the production lines, presumably before we retool the new factories for more production. I take it you have an idea who we should get to do it?”

Momo nodded and launched into her explanation of several options…

… … …

As she watched the ASP-19 droid accept yet another in the stream of blasters that had come down the production line and run it through basic firing tests, Rylia had to admit she was both impressed and pleased. With Momo having taken on more and more of the day-to-day high-level management of Erotic Delights, Rylia had been freed up to work on conversion of other technologies into something the local tech base could mass produce. With a lot of thought and more than a little lively debate with Momo, she’d selected two areas to expand into.

The first was for public consumption, or would be eventually anyway. Medical technology was both relatively inoffensive and tangentially related to some of the second-generation sex toys that Erotic Delights was starting to put out in limited numbers. Specifically, Rylia had managed to adapt direct nerve stimulation taken as a relatively minor purchase from Star Trek’s tech base, and use it in a sex toy that could directly trigger nerves to send specific signals to the brain.

The reason that it hadn’t been a huge cost, despite coming from a much higher tech base, was that technically the Mass Effect universe knew how to do that. Direct nerve manipulation, or at least communication, was required to make even vaguely decent cybernetics work. Even as Hazel, whose memories ended in the early 2020s, several cybernetics projects had managed to map and connect to nerves well enough to allow something like an artificial arm to achieve a sense of pressure. In 2167, with access to far more than just humanity’s cybernetic tech, prosthetic limbs that could achieve near-total fidelity in reproducing sense of touch were readily available on the market.

Oddly enough, currently it was one of the few areas that Turian medical science legitimately outperformed everyone else’s. Though the Salarians came a close second. More normally it was the Asari and Salarians who were usually at the top of most medical fields, if for very different reasons. For cybernetics specifically, however, the Turians were king. When you dug down into why, it even made sense.

Asari cellular regeneration meant doing enough damage to cause loss of a limb, without also killing the Asari in question, was somewhat rare. Said regeneration wasn’t the same sort of visibly-fast regen as a Krogan or Vorcha, but it still existed, and was actually more complete than either species on a micro scale. Even when limb loss did occur, that same cellular regeneration meant it was hilariously easy to clone an arm and stick the cloned arm on the stump. The regeneration would then kick in and, in a bare week or so, the cloned arm would be 95 percent of the way to a true replacement for the lost limb.

Asari just…didn’t really use cybernetics all that much as a result.

As a general rule, the only three cybernetics common to find in Asari were universal translator implants, omni-tool implants, and Biotic Amps. The first two were in use by virtually every species and so commonplace as to be unremarkable. Biotic Amps, on the other hand, were rarer than one might expect with Asari, as they were the only species known to not need them. Day-to-day biotics use by your typical office-worker Asari wasn’t even remotely intense enough to demand an amp. Unless you were a seriously weak biotic by Asari standards, you could manage just fine with what nature gave you.

No, Amps were only installed by those whose life revolved around the use of biotics, as a general rule. Every Asari commando had an Amp, so did most Asari mercs, and Bioti-ball players almost always did too. That last fact was actually the only reason that Rylia herself had a Biotic Amp, and hers was an Armali Council model that was specifically tuned for Bioti-ball players. It was legitimately faster in activation than most military models, leaning into the reflex needs of an athlete, but didn’t boost power output as much as one tuned for military use would.

It did have to be said that the Asari were obviously the best at making ‘space magic’ amplifiers, as the Hazel part of her insisted on thinking of the bullshit that was biotics. That, however, was simply the weight of how long they’d been doing it for and how much larger their population was. Even if the average Asari didn’t have one, even the percentage that did likely outnumbered every single biotic of every other race in the galaxy, combined.

When it came to other cybernetics, though, the Asari had very little use for them. They weren’t, as a species, generally militant enough to have ever seriously gone into cybernetic augmentation. Nor did they have much use for medical cybernetics with how good their cellular regeneration was. The Salarians were better, having some pretty good cybernetics used for both combat augmentation among the STG and for medical purposes when limbs were lost. Yet, in truth, Salarian medical science expertise leaned more toward chemistry and genetics than cybernetics.

The Turians, on the other hand, were more than militant enough to have run hundreds of different cybernetic super solider projects. With the side effect that they’d gotten very good with cybernetics in general. In fact, the laws currently in place in Citadel Space for how far you could go with such augmentation had basically been written for the Turians, so they would stop trying to make super soldiers.

So, the Turians had excellent cybernetics. There tech was more than capable of mapping and stimulating nerves…with physical contact. The difference with the Star Trek tech she’d purchased from the Omniversal Marketplace was that it didn’t need physical contact. Requiring some sort of direct contact with the nerve meant that the only previously existing way to induce pleasure in nerves was with an implant. Those did exist and, as one might expect, some Asari did in fact have them. Being able to practically trigger an orgasm on demand was fun, after all.

Still, most Asari considered such things a little boring compared to doing it the ‘manual’ way, and there was a bit of a cultural stigma against cybernetics too. Not a strong one, but enough that generally getting an implant for that sort of thing was restricted to specific kink communities, even with Asari, let along with the more inhibited species out there. Star Trek medical tech, which could generate fields that allowed remote stimulation of nerves? That was a jump up, and one Rylia had employed to make a second toy line. One that they were currently only selling to exclusive clients, on account of their already overstrained production capacity.

Even the limited production was mostly an excuse. They were using the new toy line as a supposed jumping off point to logically explain why they were getting into medical tech. Rylia had purchased knowledge of how to repair or rewire nerves from the same source, after all. Star Trek medical science was advanced, and the ability to repair or even outright regrow nerves was a more expensive but massively more useful medical technology. It would help in the treatment of hundreds of conditions…possibly even including the condition among Asari that created Ardat-Yakshi.

That particular problem was caused by a genetic condition, but its effects were on the nervous system. The ability to rewire and modify nerves would be quite likely to lead to a treatment that could both identify and cure those who had the condition. Which, while it definitely wouldn’t be shouted to the heavens since Asari collectively pretended the disease didn’t exist, would absolutely raise the proverbial stock of any Asari who pulled it off. Curing that and hundreds of other nerve and nervous system related issues in various species was a good excuse to push into the medical tech sector.

It was also, as an eventually public-facing project, something that she was largely handing off to actual scientists she’d hired. She provided them with the ‘breakthrough’ and how to make it work, they would go through the proper steps of using the tech to make cures and treatments. Which they would, honestly, most likely partner with major medical companies to actually manufacture and deliver, rather than trying to do it themselves.

As a result of that hand off, and getting back to why she was watching the end result of their first hidden production line being test fired, Rylia had personally put more focus on the second thing they’d decided to make. After lively debate and careful consideration, it had been decided that one of Rylia’s very first thoughts on how to combat Reapers was something they needed to start following up on, soonest.

Energy weapons.

Despite her mentally thinking of the weapon she’d engineered as a ‘blaster,’ Rylia had not reached into the Star Wars tech base for the design. Star Wars weapons were, almost universally, plasma weapons. While considerably less affected by standard kinetic barriers than traditional kinetic energy weapons, plasma did have enough kinetic mass that it would detonate against a kinetic barrier rather than bypassing it fully. The damage that got through would be heat transfer, but without physical contact, that heat transference would be somewhat mitigated. Not enough to save someone shot by a decent Star Wars blaster if you were considering current-gen kinetic barriers, no.

But…Rylia was not considering current-gen kinetic barriers.

No, she was remembering that Reaper main weapons were magnetohydrodynamic canons. The Thanix cannon that the Turians would eventually design was the same, being based on what they learned from Sovereign’s corpse. The problem was that said weapon fired a stream of molten metal instead of a normal mass effect round. The Thanix cannon would prove effective against Reapers…but only with consecutive hits.

Worse, she also remembered there were upgrades you could get to shielding tech for ships like the Normandy that would help it shrug off such fire. The Reapers, logically, had developed a counter to their own primary weapons. Not a perfect one, but one that meant indirect heat transfer from something breaking on their barrier wasn’t a silver bullet.

A very large part of Rylia had wanted the Star Trek phaser technology instead.

Unfortunately, unlike the minor medical tech, phaser technology was apparently far in advance enough of anything in the Mass Effect universe to be ruinously expensive. If Rylia sold the entire arcology her penthouse was in, it might be enough to buy a single handheld phaser. It wouldn’t be enough to buy the knowledge of how the bloody thing worked. Which, sadly, meant that Rylia had been stuck looking farther afield for something more readily attainable.

She’d gone through an embarrassing number of other universes desperately trying to avoid the one that terrified her, even if she’d known it had the solution.

Finally, she’d gritted her teeth and risked acquiring technology from Warhammer 40k.

She may or may not have been audibly chanting ‘please don’t bring chaos with you, pleased don’t bring chaos with you, pleased don’t bring chaos with you…’ the entire time she was making the purchase. She also might or might not have made a few dozen warding gestures and prayers before she uploaded the knowledge of how Lasguns in their many iterations worked.

Thankfully, as far as she could tell, she’d gotten the technology without side effects.

She was still calling them ‘blasters’ just in case, though. Memetic threats from other dimensions are scary!

Thankfully, once she’d accepted her fate about the source, the option had proven to be exactly what she’d wanted. Not only did the ‘Lasgun’ technology produce what amounted to bolts and streams of massless photons that would totally ignore kinetic barriers, but it scaled extremely well. The current test production run of infantry weapons was a great testbed, but the tech could and would scale up to something suitable for ship use, easily.

Even better than that, it also wasn’t a truly radical departure from the Mass Effect weapons tech. Guardian Arrays on most military ships used laser technology to shoot down fighters and missiles, for example. The problem that no one in the Mass Effect universe had been able to crack was how to pack enough energy into a small enough space to make them viable at any other scale. For use as an infantry weapon, you needed a power pack that could produce a meaningful level of output, crammed into a man-portable gun. On the other end of the spectrum, you needed materials that could survive the output energy requirements to make a ship-based laser weapon viable.

The Mass Effect universe had not solved either problem, but Warhammer 40k had.

Which meant that the ‘blasters’ that her droids were testing, coming off the first production line that was being run by a mix of automation and hands-on assembly by ASP-11 labor droids, were everything Rylia wanted. They would completely and totally ignore kinetic barriers, deliver enough power to punch through hardsuit armor, and yet wouldn’t look like a radically alien technology. They would just look like some genius, be that her or a minion she might attribute it to, had cracked an old problem to make an known weapon type viable in new ways.

Rylia was extremely pleased with how it was all working out. Assuming that she really had avoided bringing anything else from that Eldrich Horror of a Reality along with the knowledge…

Chapter 9: Extra Curriculars

Rylia smiled happily as she watched Momo stare out the space station window, gazing down at the planet below. She’d witnessed a similar, shocked-silent in the best way, reaction from the younger woman on the way up from the surface. She hadn’t deliberately kept Momo away from exploring her new universe, but she admittedly had dropped her a bit in the deep end…and there had also been some minor concerns about her identity. Not that she would be outed on technical details, but because her identity-as-created should be intimately familiar with space travel. Reacting this way to it was a first-timer thing for most species that had reached the level of even current humanity, let alone the Asari.

Of course, that was also how she’d pitched this little mini-vacation from the serious stuff to Momo. As much as she hadn’t deliberately kept Momo from it, the Hero at the heart of her new companion had dived into ‘saving the galaxy’ with a will that hadn’t really stopped to breathe. Part of that, Rylia suspected, was also burying the fact that she was cut off from home for at least the next five years. Diving headfirst into the familiar task of self-sacrificing heroism was likely, partially, a comping mechanism. Though one with a genuine, powerful, desire to help people fueling it.

Rylia hadn’t stopped her.

They were on a schedule, after all, and in the early days as they were, everything they did would compound. Getting their shit together when that compounding factor would have the longest to build up might be the difference between victory and total annihilation. Knowing that, Rylia had just focused on making sure that Momo wasn’t pushing to burnout, rather than try to rein her in at all. She leveraged everything from outrageous flirting to earn adorable blushes, to slowly introducing Momo to practical experiences she should be familiar with from her ‘known’ background. Couching stuff like visiting high-quality dining or spending time blowing off steam with a shopping spree, as ‘building up her background knowledge to fit in,’ had proven an easy way to get Momo to agree to relaxing a bit.

It was also how she’d managed to pull her away from working on anything entirely for a day or two of genuine time off.

It had been just over a month and a half since Momo had arrived and thrown herself into helping, and she’d done an amazing job of revamping and improving everything related to Erotic Delights. So much so that Rylia herself had been able to dramatically reduce the amount of time she needed to put into managing things. Which had, in turn, allowed her to get a team together for the initial push into medical fields…and to much more quietly build their first factory that was turning out the Lasgun based ‘blasters.’

She’d also continued to do the fun parts of the Erotic Delights job, of course. Things like signing on new models, testing new toys, and continuing to casually promote their products on her Stream! Even if she wasn’t streaming quite as often any longer, her numbers had grown! Nearly quintupled in fact! Something that was, admittedly, due to a lot more Asari suddenly knowing about her from her sex toy products...

Even if she knew logically that it was a drop in the bucket of the total galactic population, having over 250 million followers of her Stream was kinda a heady feeling. It was also something which, if she was careful to continue cultivating it and slowly changing its focus just a touch, would eventually prove amazingly useful. Despite a not-insignificant number of her followers obviously being there for her tits, it had to be restated for clarity that her stream actually hadn’t originally, and still wasn’t even now, a porn stream.

No, what it had been and still was, despite her co-opting of it for selling sex toys, was a geek-centered channel. She’d spent a fair bit of her streaming time gaming, for example, or talking about tech. Despite being in her wild years, original Rylia hadn’t gotten top marks and graduated Uni fairly young for an Asari because she was uninterested in the engineering she was studying. Even if she hadn’t wanted to get stuck in a lab, following some dusty old Matriarch’s plans, she’d genuinely enjoyed tinkering and geeking out over engineering. Humans had been an amazing target for her in part because, frankly, they were still learning about a lot of the tech Rylia loved and understood.

If you were a human geek, who was fascinated by all the new engineering and technology the aliens were bringing to your world, who would you rather learned about it from? Some stogy Turian, a Salarian who you had to slow the video speed down to even understand, or a drop-dead sexy Asari who had legitimate credentials, knew how to talk the talk, and had a casual disregard for little things like nudity taboos?

Yeah. Thought so.

Honestly, with Hazel now merged into Rylia, she was in a position to realize that the only reason Rylia hadn’t had even more followers was because humans had a mental disconnect between ‘sexy’ and ‘seriously competent.’ For humans, ‘sex sells’ conflicted a bit with ‘hey, this person actually knows their shit.’ Had Rylia focused on one or the other, she might well have done even better, though she’d made a pretty successful niche out of the combination. With only a little effort and some channel splitting of her content, she would eventually have a pretty nice platform to spread critical data to the masses with.

Which was a mental side trail she wrenched herself back from with a little effort. Now wasn’t serious time, now was Momo time! She’d arranged this ‘clandestine’ trip, one where it would just be the two of them, on the excuse of familiarizing Momo with awesome stuff such as views from space! Now, after letting her companion soak in the view a little while longer, it would be time for a Zero-G playroom (the fun, but not extra fun sort, sadly), then off to the low-gravity spa! The latter of which would let her take shameless advantage of Momo’s Asari-like lack of body modesty!

No, that wasn’t the whole reason for her bringing Momo up here. Get your mind out of the gutter, anyone listening in on her thoughts! I mean, just look at how much Momo was enjoying the view. Clearly, raising the Momo happiness quotient was the primary agenda! That way lay the possibility of mutual headpats in the future!

… … …

“Ugh!”

The breath was forced out of Rylia’s lungs, again, as she was thrown a couple of meters and landed on her back again. Gasping to get her breath back, from both it being forced out by the impact and the fact that Asari stamina was not as good as a human’s, she lay there trying to remember why she was putting herself through this again.

“Better, I can at least tell you’ve had training at some point now, and your basic stats are exactly as good as I’d expect from a former high-level athlete, at least everywhere but stamina. You’d still be in trouble if anything more serious than a common thug jumped you, though.”

Right. That was why. Rylia might not have any intention of ever trying to pull a Shepard and take a Reaper out from the ground. Preferably, she’d never even have to punch a husk in the face! Nope. She fully intended to leave the husk-punching and Reaper-blasting to others, thank you very much!

Unfortunately, that didn’t mean she was any less of a target.

Right now, she was only a minor target, the same variety that any rich genius might be. There was only a very minor chance that some Matriarch or other would try to black-bag her and make her work for them. Rylia was, thankfully, just a bit too much of a known public figure for that to be an attractive option. Particularly so now that Momo was carefully letting specific, well-connected and politically neutral, Matriarchs invest in their efforts. Some in Erotic Delights, others in the promising medical startup looking into ways to use the nerve healing and manipulation tech. Each of those investors was also a shield against anyone else deciding to try and force-recruit Rylia.

The bigger Rylia’s efforts got, though, and the more military-adjacent they became, the bigger the target on her gloriously bouncy buttocks would be! By the time she pulled the whole ‘Empress of the Terminus’ thing, either directly or through proxies, she’d have a big target on her. Likely up to and including a number of nasty bounties and, in the worst possible case, possibly Spectre attention.

She fully intended to surround herself with oodles and oodles of security, a lot of it things like Kix, her KX-4 droid bodyguard, which wouldn’t be at all familiar to locals. Kix was far, far more capable than any mech in the Mass Effect universe, and would already be a nasty shock to anyone trying to grab her. Given she was fully intending to upgrade him with some HK and IG series assassination programming as well? That would only get more true with time.

Yet, even if she surrounded herself with droids, turrets, and possibly a loyal superhero or two beyond just Momo, the fact remained that there was always a chance Rylia herself would come under direct attack. As such, having at least solid fundamentals, such as knowing how to shoot, when to get under cover, and how to use her biotics to buy herself time and space for rescue?

All of those were potentially critical life skills.

“I think that’s enough for hand-to-hand today. Once you recover, we’ll spend a bit of time on the range, then call it good.”

Rylia let out a huge sigh of relief with the air she’d managed to get back. Even after taking up her role with her family business, Momo had only been semi-retired as a Pro Heroine. She’d never patrolled, but she had stayed in training and had been occasionally called on to help with specific missions. Meaning that, despite Rylia’s initial hopes that this would be a bit more even with the advantage of her Biotics, it hadn’t even taken Momo a single session to begin tossing Rylia round like a ragdoll.

Heck, despite Japan having a thing against guns, Momo was even better than her there! Which was just unfair! Apparently, her Quirk making guns such an obvious and easy solution to many problems meant that Momo had been trained thoroughly with them, even if she’d only rarely used them against villains.

Oh well, at least Momo’s badassery was another layer of protection between Rylia and the need to punch a husk in the face. She’d take that as a positive, even if the bruises on her posterior after their twice-a-week lessons were painful. Thank goodness for Asari fast-healing rates. If she was going to have trouble sitting down, she’d prefer it be because she got the bruises from a very different and much more fun sort of recreational activity…

… … …

-Lemon Starts Here-

Rylia was doing her absolute best to at least pretend to be professional as she ogled a naked Momo and prepared to execute a series of very fun tests. The way Momo had reacted to the constant bombardment of advertising for the Erotic Delights product lines Rylia had made sure the other girl had gotten regular exposure to had been…telling. The young woman had very obviously been interested, both in the toys themselves and in the women/Asari using them.

There had been plenty of completely legitimate reasons to cheerfully share the latest advertising with Momo before it went live, given how involved Momo now was with running the company. The fact that a good two thirds of that advertising was suggestive in the extreme, with a full third of it including images or video of the toys actively in use, was merely a fun side effect that allowed Rylia to gauge Momo’s interest. Such advertising wasn’t even something Rylia had needed to push for. After all, the bulk of their ad targeting was aimed at Asari right now, who had absolutely nothing against sex in advertising.

The effects on Momo had been cumulative, and while she’d blushed quite a bit at the suggestion she give the human version of the toys a try ‘so she’d better understand the products,’ she also hadn’t turned down a full set. Technically, Rylia didn’t know if Momo had used them, since she wasn’t about to violate Momo’s privacy on the level needed to find out. She’d have been deeply shocked to discover she hadn’t, though, given her obvious interest. Also, of course, was the fact that she’d agreed to today’s experiments.

Which, as it happened, were aimed at testing their newer Neruostimulator toy line on human anatomy.

The new line of toys had, of course, already been tested on Asari anatomy and were being sold in limited numbers. Equally of course, pretty much every other species in existence, possibly even across multiple universes, would state without reservation that Asari nervous systems are bullshit. Even Rylia, with the outside perspective of Hazel to view things from, was forced to agree with that sentiment. Seriously, your nervous system enabling what amounts to touch-based telepathy and gene sequencing, regardless of the species you were doing it with?

Totally OP, please no nerf.

Of course, the fact that Asari nervous systems were stupidly high bandwidth and very much broke most of the usual rules over its metaphorical knee with a dismissive sneer? That made ‘well, it works for Asari’ an extremely poor proof of concept for the tech working safely for anyone else. Add in the fact that humans weren’t exactly common out in Asari space, to the point that strip clubs had specifically hired Rylia with a mind to drawing her human fans to them as an attraction of their club? Well, that had given Rylia all the ammunition she’d needed to pitch today’s testing to Momo.

Objectively, Momo had to know that it wouldn’t have been that hard for Rylia to bring some humans in for testing. Not even with Nevos being out on the frontier. It was, in part, a tourist world. Hardly a tragic place for a few ‘adventurous’ humans to be willing to take a paid vacation to. Less objectively, Rylia suspected her threadbare reasoning had given Momo an excuse she could use, even if just to herself, for going along with being the first ‘Human product tester’ for the Neruostimulator product line. The fact that Rylia had arranged for it to be only herself and Momo involved in the testing, and she knew she was steadily gaining ground on Momo’s interest with her open flirting, had likely helped sell the idea.

“Right. As we discussed, the first set of tests will use the cradle for precision. We can move on to the actual toys and self-guided use of them after we’ve made sure we’re getting the results we want out of nerve activation. Starting by randomly sending nerve impulses that might generate pain instead of pleasure to your most sensitive bits isn’t something either of us wants.”

Momo winced at that idea. It wasn’t likely to happen, given that the original tech Rylia had copied the neurostimulator design from had been designed by humans and regularly used on humans. Since Rylia had needed to make significant changes to the technology to get it working with the much lower Mass Effect tech base levels, though, it was still possible. Which was the whole point in these tests.

“Everything is ready, go ahead and hop in the cradle.”

Momo, only having been very lightly blushing up until this point, went quite a bit redder as she took a short step up and slid into the cradle sideways. The ‘cradle’ wasn’t part of their sex toy line, instead being something entirely intended for testing and calibration rather than sale. Its base consisted of a bed inclined at a 30-degree angle, with a C-shaped apparatus interrupting the flat plane of the bed. Momo swung one leg over the opening in the C and let gravity pull her down so that her most intimate bits were pressed against the apparatus. Said apparatus was, of course, basically one large bank of neurostimulators, which would allow that entire sensitive region to be tested.

Of course, that wasn’t the only part of Momo to be tested. After Momo placed her feet into cups that had been adjusted for her height, flushing a bit more as straps auto-secured her ankles and knees so she didn’t move too much during testing, Rylia engaged the upper portion of the cradle. With a tiny hiss, a torso-shaped bed of additional neruostimulators dropped down from above.

The upper portion had already been calibrated with a scan of Momo they’d taken a few minutes before, so it fit seamlessly onto her body from just above the C she was resting on, to just below her neck. In order to limit possible claustrophobia, it didn’t seal to the lower bed, nor did it include Momo’s arms. Her arms being free and a bright red stop button in easy reach kept this out of the realm of quite being a bondage device, but it certainly looked like it could be the start of one.

Mentally making a note of that for a personal-use bit of equipment rather than a product line, Rylia otherwise attempted to stay professional.

“Alright, Momo. Everything is coming up green. So I’m going to start on less sensitive areas, as planned. Engaging Test 1…now.”

Momo jerked just a little bit as she felt a neruostimulator come online, but this one was aimed at a random spot between her belly button and breasts. Not a particularly sensitive area for most people, and the output was set quite low.

“How does that feel? Any pain? Tingling?”

Momo shook her head, then remembered she needed to verbalize things for the recorders.

“No. It feels a bit like the aftermath of a massage, if I had to put a description to it. Though that’s not quite right.”

Rylia nodded. That was a close enough match to what was expected. While Asari bodies were, once again, bullshit, and could get a measure of pleasure from nerve simulation nearly anywhere, for humans most nerves would only deliver a ‘pleasant’ sensation. Regular random nerve endings were mostly designed for pressure and temperature sensing. Absent other context, what Momo was reporting was about the best you could expect.

“Good. Moving to something more sensitive with Test 2…now.”

Momo gasped a little this time, causing Rylia to blink and double check what she’d selected. It was just a random spot on Momo’s left breast? Not anywhere near a nipple.

“That feels…good. Better than expected, actually. U-umm definitely actual pleasure, not just pleasant.”

Huh. Momo must just flat out have sensitive breasts. Which only increased Rylia’s deep and unending desire to get her hands on them! Still, professionalism! Well, fake professionalism, anyway!

“Good to know. No adverse effects? Even if I do this?”

Momo ‘meeped’ as Rylia increased the intensity, but shook her head, verbally confirming a moment later. Rylia grinned but let her off the hook for the moment. There was plenty more to come, after all.

“Good. So far the mapping is as accurate to expectations. The next set will test various forms of sensitivity! Test 3, Part 1, start!”

Momo moaned this time, unable to help herself as Rylia skipped a few steps and activated basically all the nerve endings in both nipples at once. She started at a low level, watching the map of Momo’s brain activity and prompting her for a response. She got a rather squeaky, breathless answer a moment later.

“Good! Very good! Oh…fuck…”

Rylia grinned at hearing Momo curse for the very first time, ever. Time to push things a little more. Not bothering to announce the test changing, she keyed a command that caused Momo’s nipples to register temperature…

“C-COLD!”

Grinning at the shocked-but-pleasure-laden shout, Rylia grinned and reversed the temp. This time, Momo was only able to moan as the sensation of heat in both of her nipples replaced the cold. Time to abandon pretense at this point. The recorders monitoring Momo’s nervous system with scanners were the actual important feedback and would throw up alarms if anything went wrong. So Rylia leaned into the fun and selected another setting. Momo gasped, then squirmed, as what should be the sensation of feathers swirling around her breasts as a whole, then flicking across her nipples, replaced the temperature tests.

Humming and letting that go on for a few moments, Rylia discretely tapped at her omnitool instead of the controls for the cradle, suppressing her own moan a moment later as the Pleasure Squid she’d inserted in her azure hours earlier activated. No way was she going to listen to those incredible moans without discretely getting off herself! Her own slow build toward climax set in motion with a pre-programmed set of commands, she switched her focus back to Momo’s ‘testing.’

Strictly speaking, if this was more than just a basic function test, she should go over every sensation over all the major nerve groups. But that wouldn’t be nearly as fun and Rylia could eventually get other humans for the comprehensive testing. For now, she just wanted to play with Momo under the threadbare excuse of legitimate testing! With that in mind, she switched off the feathers swirling around her tits but left a low grade ‘pleasure’ stimulation going. One that would feel, to Momo, like ghost fingers caressing her breasts and flicking her nipples. At the same time, she sent the ‘feather’ program tracing lines and swirls down Momo’s belly instead, noting with a grin which places made her moan and which made her giggle.

Both of those would be useful information in the future! She was sure of it!

Eventually, the feather program she’d set to trace downward reached something quite a bit more sensitive, and Momo’s hips tried to buck as a ‘ghost feather’ darted across her mons. Of course, bucking wouldn’t do a damn thing, as there wasn’t any real pressure to push against. Grinning, Rylia deactivated the ‘feathers’ and ‘activated’ all the nerves endings in Momo’s outer and inner lips. There weren’t nearly as many there as in the clitoris, of course. But there was more than enough to make Momo cry out in bliss as they all triggered at once.

Of course, such a brute force approach wasn’t really the best way, and Rylia quickly switched to a cascade. The new pattern would feel something like invisibly fingers impossibly tracing every curve and dip of both sets of lips simultaneously. It, at least for Rylia doing the Asari version of this testing, had lack something compared to real touch…but had still been very potent. All the more so for being unique in the combinations it could achieve.

Wanting to tease Momo more, Rylia kept an eye on what she privately labeled the ‘Orgasm Meter.’ An ongoing, continuous scan of the region of Momo’s brain that controlled when Momo would tip over the edge and actually cum. Instead of letting her do that, Rylia spent several minutes switching between heat, cold, ‘direct’ stimulation, and more feathers, pushing at the edge of that release without letting Momo quite tip over. It was a delicate art and she could easily have misread it at any moment…but she managed to hold Momo at the cusp of orgasm for a good five minutes before admitting she was courting a failure.

Instead of pushing and letting a random thing trigger that last little distance, Rylia went for the kill, activating all the nerve endings in Momo’s clit in a single, brief pulse. The effect was spectacular, Momo’s back arching, managing to push the upper cradle slightly out of position despite its weight, as she howled her release. To Rylia’s delight, the cradle reported her ‘victim’ actually squirting a bit! My, my, how promising! Now, how long for her to…

Oh, how fun. The scans showed she wasn’t experiencing overstimulation yet! It might be unique to this type of manipulation, but at least in the cradle Momo appeared to be fully multi-orgasmic! Asari all were such, of course. See previous statements about busted, overpowered nervous systems! But it was quite a bit more unusual in humans without some tweaking. Of course, it might be the nature of this type of stimulation at work, something she could hopefully test later!

For now, though…

Rylia grinned and cheerfully announced the next stage of testing.

“Alright, Momo! You’re doing awesome! But we still need to test the internal nerve endings for safety! Deploying additional test devices!”

Momo was much too busy trying to mentally recover from her climax to protest as the cradle shifted, with two self-lubricating dildos pressing into sensitive places. Renewed moans from Momo got a huge smile from Rylia. After all, she hadn’t even turned them on yet! Humming as the Pleasure Squid inside her kicked things up a notch, she decided to try and time Momo’s next release to synchronize with her own climax…

-Lemon Ends Here-

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