Arc 7 | Chapter 248: Some Kind of Masochist, seriously.

Sneaking a look at the syn, their long, pale lashes fanned over their cheeks as they concentrated on their learning… Yeah. Emilia couldn’t deny that Hyr was so attractive it physically hurt. Only a dumbass

wouldn’t

be open to hooking up with them, and—

And fuck. She’d never turned off the ability for this avatar to get horny—she

may

have occasionally disappeared into her Censor to relive sex with certain people, okay!? One of the best things about Censors, in her opinion, was the ability to replay memories—with consent, when it came to sex, of course.

Actually, her love of reliving memories was, in the end, one of the main reasons she’d joined the Data-Recovery Program. As much as a lot of her applying for the program had been the result of coincidence and alcohol, it hadn’t just been that. Yeah, meeting Beth and seeing that this young woman needed a friend—needed a place in the world—had been a catalyst for applying, a reason to accept her place in the program, Emilia had already known of the program, had already considered applying even before her chance meeting with Beth.

Memories were important, and for centuries, Baalphorians had relied on their Censors to record the most important moment of their life for them. Some of her earliest memories with her Censor had been using it to study, pulling up class notes that still existed inside her even now, or loving moments with her friends, their smiles so young and fearless.

Those of them who had been spared the full effects of The Flaming were fortunate in a way that was indescribable. Every one of her dead friends still lived inside her mind, and before the war ended, she’d made an effort to share those memories with their friends and family.

Even she hadn’t done a great job of that, however, given Janie’s daughter had only a few pictures of her mother, courtesy of Simeon. Emilia had left her friend with more memories of their childhood friend before they parted, but the fact that she hadn’t directly given her family—the child Emilia hadn’t even realized Janie had had until Mia mentioned her—any of those memories would weigh on her for a long time.

Emilia knew what it was like to know virtually nothing of her biological parents, and while she was sure the Van der Froom’s showered Janie’s child with love, just as her adoptive parents had her and her siblings, she also knew that not knowing left an unfillable void within everyone separated from their biological parents so young.

So, yeah, she’d joined the Data-Recovery Program not just for Beth or for something to fill her days with—although having something to focus on other than trauma had definitely helped ground her. Being able to pull together the scattered memories from The Flaming, fragments left behind in Censors, the OIC System, and even the aether itself, was something that could change the lives of people who had lost all records of their family, their lost loves and friends.

It was just a little thing—time-consuming and never enough—but if Emilia could give a little bit of the joy she continued to find within her own memories to people who had lost everything, it felt like it was worth it.

That said… the fact that she spent so much time in her memories reliving sexual things, never bothering to turn off her ability to feel arousal within her virtual body—not to mention said body being more than happy to prepare itself for a good time—was causing problems. It was all rather unfortunate—even within virtual space, her body would be unimpressed if left unsatisfied. While she could turn it off now—and while she was thinking about it, she did turn off several of the other body-reality options for each of them, such as the need to pee and actual hunger—it would be abrupt, akin to jumping into a frozen lake while a tad too warm. Better to just let it settle naturally, then, even if that would be frustrating in a whole different way.

Of course, her arousal could only naturally settle if a certain person would let it.

Finger nails dug into the soft flesh of her thigh, dragging a soft gasp out of her—Hyr’s hand, freezing in place before energy was slipping into her, soothing the ache of those little divots only to inadvertently rile up the arousal inside her.

Could Hyr feel it, the way her blood was pounding in highly inappropriate places? Probably. That made it all the more embarrassing, how much they could likely see of her without even looking—and a quiet glance over revealed they still had their eyes closer. Their face was still and content, nothing giving away the way their energy was dragging through her—not that the syn was doing anything overtly sexual within her.

Rather, Hyr’s energy was simply tracing the lines of her meridians in a way that was just… natural. They’d done it before, while she was napping or lazing against them, yet she couldn’t imagine they couldn’t feel exactly where all her energy was pooling. Still, they didn’t fall back, although something about their energy was different. More tentative, perhaps. Less ingrained into her, leaving the feeling that even the smallest push from her would send their energy toppling out of her.

Occasionally, the syn’s energy slowed as it observed some place where her energy was being particularly hectic, twinning through her own energy in a way that seemed innocent but also purposeful—like they were curious about the rage of her energy but also knew exactly what was happening and was perfectly happy to urge it along in the least obvious way they could imagine.

A smarter person would have stopped what was happening—would have demanded they talk about the fact that Hyr was effectively examining her while she was turned on. As previously noted, Emilia had never been particularly smart about sex. She liked sex, and even if this wasn’t exactly sex… it was still enjoyable, and if both of them were consenting…

Yeah, it still wasn’t smart. No, she wasn’t going to interrupt whatever this was to talk about it, not while they both seemed into it, and it wasn’t actually interfering with what they were supposed to be doing.

Even through the chaos of her energy and sex drive, Emilia was continuing to work, Hyr slowly working through their tutorials. It wasn’t the first time she’d worked under these sorts of circumstances—Olivier in particular had enjoyed riling her up, leaving her to read over court documents naked and aroused before returning, riling her back up and leaving again—and it was unlikely to be her last. Some people hated edging, but Emilia rather liked it, and almost naturally, she found herself falling to a strange rhythm—one Hyr seemed to have just as easily fallen into.

She worked on the hacks, leaving her arousal to fade until it was barely a whisper. Then… it wasn’t even that Hyr would do anything different with their energy or the fingers still dragging over her thigh, it was simply that her mind would drift back to them, arousal rising back up until she almost swore she’d be able to peak, if she focused just a little harder, if Hyr’s fingers trailed even a little higher.

By the time she was done fiddling with her hack, customizing a collection of functions for Hyr, programming a few new ones for them, and translating the interface into Brylish, Emilia felt like she was about to explode. How long had it been? Too long, the Virtuosi System allowing sleep to be pushed off for several days, although most people couldn’t focus long enough to make use of that particular function. Emilia was all obsession, though. Once she was into a project, it was nearly impossibly to pull her out. She’d nap and work, shift onto another obsessive project in the moments her brain needed a break, then do it all over again.

For over a year, she’d done just that, forgoing sleep for weeks at a time—a convenience of her physical brain only experiencing minutes of time. These short days were nothing, but the fact that Hyr had just spent pretty much that whole time with their hand on her leg? Their energy inside her?

Fucking stars did she feel like she was about to explode. Her only breaks had been when the Free Coloniers had been testing things out, Conrad constantly bouncing off to do one thing or another—seriously, the man was always in motion, and that was a lot, coming from her—before returning and glancing at their physical connection with sharp eyes before he plopped down and summoned them more drinks.

Honestly, she was a little surprised he hadn’t forcibly removed Hyr’s hand, or dragged her off for a chat, and although there had been a few messages about the two of them needed to talk, they had been few and far between. Instead, the most Conrad had done was occasionally get a little snippy with Hyr’s energy, his own blackness snapping out at Hyr’s every so often. It had been… silly, breaking her concentration far more than the arousal because she couldn’t help but imagine Conrad’s energy as spanking Hyr’s.

Neither had looked particularly convinced by this description of the pair using her meridians as a battleground—and that was essentially what it was, she supposed, even if their scuffles did nothing but make her laugh and give increasingly ridiculous descriptions of what their energy was doing inside her. Seriously, it felt like they were having a weird stand-off, the main result that her core was more secure than it had been before, as though they both needed to prove they could keep her core more stable than the other.

Ironically, she’d never bothered to update her avatar to have a cracked core—it had never seemed relevant and would have set off red flags if someone, like Rafe, bothered to look at it too closely. In other words, they were fighting over securing a perfectly fine, virtual core, something that just made her laugh harder as she worked on installing Hyr’s hopefully final hack.

“How’s that feel?” she asked as it settled into the syn’s mind. She pushed herself up from her slouch into the chair, rotating towards Hyr to assess them without much thought, only to realize the movement had effectively forced their hand between her legs. That definitely hadn’t been her intention!

The northerner either didn’t notice or didn’t care—or was fucking with her, which was an increasingly likely possibility—continuing to drag shapes into her inner thigh. Just a little higher and—

“It is more responsive now,” they said, letting Emilia into their Censor to assess their ability to use each of the functions and walk them through using the ones they knew nothing about.

Eventually, when she was satisfied that nothing needed to be altered immediately and Hyr just needed a little practice with their Censor, Emilia sank back into her body. Long enough had passed that she was no longer so aroused, only a lingering feeling of dissatisfaction remaining, Hyr’s hand still dragging over her inner thighs, occasionally switching sides.

“That was fast,” Hyr noted, although they’d been inside the Virtuosi System for several days—had she really just spent days edging herself while she coded? What sort of masochistic freak was she!?

“Uh… yeah,” Emilia replied, sending off a query to Payton about whether there had been anything in her knots that might explain why she was suddenly so frisky. Sure, she’d always been a sex-inclined person, but this was honestly a little ridiculous! “When I created the hack for my Censor, I enhanced a bunch of its coding skills—and it was already pretty good, when it wasn’t glitching out. Between me and it, all of these alterations weren’t that much. Plus, I already knew what I wanted to do to you, so I’ve been thinking it through on and off throughout the day.”

Hyr’s golden eyes caught hers, calm and steady and just a little… curious? Teasing? She really needed to learn to read their emotions better. “Do tell me if there’s more you would like to do to me,” they replied before vanishing, their mind pulled into the training system so they could test out their Censor and make sure nothing was seriously amiss with it.

“Seriously,” Conrad groaned, having spent the majority of the last day dozing and reading his smutty novels, having apparently grown bored with testing out his new skills, “you two need to talk.”

The fact that this was the first time he’d bothered to vocalize his concerns was impressive—the guy just seemed the sort to not care about what he said most of the time, and the fact that he seemed to care in this case was a little worrisome. Seriously, though… Yeah, Emilia got that they needed to talk. This was all so weird, and she had no idea what to make of it. It just felt like a conversation that would be… a lot, and she’d never been good at not putting off heavy, important conversations.