Chapter 21
Saturday 5 June
"Good morning Lauren ojou-sama and Kyla ojou-sama!"
As Lauren woke up and looked at her laptop, she bemoaned the fact that her tinker fugue self had decided to program her educational AI to speak like an Earth-aleph anime maid. Additionally, even though the PRT had immediately send all kinds of tinker materials to her home to prevent another situation like Wednesday, her tinker fugue self had still decided to change both her laptop and brand new mobile phone into tinkertech devices.
Power type: Tinker
Threat level: 1
Duration: 12 minutes
Synchronization: 96%
Wiki article: Songgyungwan
Power: Tinker speciality: education. Host is able to buid tools that help people with school and learning skills in general.
To be fair, the modification to her mobile phone was simple and only included an app which was apparently a perfect random number generator. However, her laptop was now home to an AI called Mercury. Lauren had originally given Mercury the ability to download pirated copies of various textbooks, analyze them, make clear and efficient summaries of any subject, and create relevant practice exercises and solutions with the goal to help her coarse through high-school.
Then, when Lauren gained another tinker power immediately afterwards, she had upgraded the AI to include data-analyzing abilities. Now, the AI was able to answer chance-based questions, although with the limitation that she could only use the data on her laptop to answer them. Lauren tested her out by copying Cameron's massive compilation on capes and their powers and asking how many capes had a trump rating, which was 4.2%.
Power type: Tinker
Threat level: 1
Duration: 48 minutes
Synchronization: 93%
Wiki article: Furio De Monaco
Power: Tinker speciality: chance. Host is able to build perfect random number generators, or devices that calculate the chances of certain things happening, given observations or datasets.
"Good morning Mercury! What is the probability it's going to rain today?"
"3.4% ojou-sama!"
Once she knew her AI worked well, Lauren tried to find ways to use her new helper. First, she asked Kyla if she could increase the capacity of her hard drive, as Mercury needed a lot of space to store all the school books and other data. Luckily, Kyla managed to create a few portable hard drives with surprisingly high capacity from Lauren's remaining materials which were easy to attach to the laptop.
Then, once Lauren was no longer worried about her laptop's capacity, she asked her AI to download all available data from the national weather service and keep herself updated with said data to see if it was able to make predictions, which clearly was a huge success.
"Ugh, big sis, why do we have to get up so early?"
"Kyla, it's no earlier than yesterday!"
"But yesterday was also early!"
Unfortunately, not everything was a success. Because Lauren had set the primary focus of the AI to help educate her and her siblings, Mercury had refused to do Lauren's homework for her, even though Lauren knew it was able to do it! Instead, Mercury told her in polite maid speech that Lauren wouldn't learn anything like that and that she should first make a serious attempt in doing the homework before the AI would even go over it and point out mistakes!
However, even so, Lauren was still happy with the AI she created. Now she would be able to keep up with all the smart kids that were going to Arcadia high! Even better, her siblings would be able to use her too! Cameron had already asked Mercury to create summaries of every subject covered in their year, probably to safe himself some effort for the end of term exams.
Once they got themselves dressed, Lauren told her sister: "Kyla, could you go downstairs first? I'm going to grab a few powers."
As this was not the first time this happened, Kyla just said: "Okay" and left the room.
Then, both because she liked doing it and to sate her addiction, Lauren grabbed two new powers:
Power type: Trump/Striker/Changer/Mover
Threat level: 4
Duration: 12 minutes
Synchronization: 50%
Wiki article: Youssef Gamal
Power: Host is able to change into a half-cat hybrid form. While in this form, her claws are able to cut through steel, she is able to sprint at ridiculous speeds (60 mph), has complementary reaction speeds and dexterity, and is unable to be hurt by any kind of power-projection or disease. Finally, host is extremely fertile in this form, and can temporarily (for a month or so) give a massive increase the fertility of women she touches. (I basically created Bastet-Lauren here)
Power type: Changer
Threat level: 4
Duration: Permanent
Synchronization: 33%
Wiki article: Nazxul
Power: Host is able to change into a Fellbeast from Lord of the Rings. (A evil-looking, Wyvern-like creature of 30 feet length and 35 feet wingspan which can fly at 120mph for hours) Power synergy: Transforming to a Fellbeast and back has the same healing factor as her animal transformation power. Host can also use her ice breaker power in this form.
Lauren rejoiced that she finally got another permanent power, although she didn't really know what it did exactly except for changing herself into something big. She should probably wait until she was at the PRT before testing that one out. However, the other power was more clear to her. Lauren immediately used it, as it seemed another changer power with a variety of additional effects.
"Oh wow!"
As Lauren looked into the mirror, she saw that the power had transformed her into a real life catgirl! She immediately tried to grab her phone for another selfie before remembering her very sharp claws. Instead, a forcefield clone with gloves was put to the duty of making pictures of her catgirl self.
Once the most important thing was done, Lauren tried to figure out what made this form special. Obviously, the claws were way sharper than those of normal cats, and she also felt a lot faster than normal in this form. Then, there was some sort of protection that came with the form, although Lauren had no idea what it protected her against. Finally there was …
…
Lauren blushed as she suddenly remembered a very awkward talk with her father. Why did this form have to come with that stuff?! Making babies had nothing to do with catgirls!
As Lauren came back to her senses, she suddenly realized something very important. Mindful of the limited time on this power, she immediately ran downstairs in record time, somehow without tripping or running into a wall.
"Sophie, can I talk to you now, privately?!"
What Lauren hadn't realized was that she just stormed into the kitchen looking like a catgirl, with her whole family watching.
"Lau, why do you look like a cat?"
As William asked the obvious question, Lauren realized this had probably not been the best idea. Tia's giggling only confirmed that.
Sophie however, realized Lauren was serious and immediately walked over.
"Your room, Lauren?"
Lauren nodded as she led Sophie back to her room.
"Lauren, what is the problem?"
Hmm, how to say this.
"So Sophie, you wanted to get pregnant right?"
Sophie, looking confused answered: "Yes, but why do you want to know that Lauren?"
Lauren took a breath before saying:
"For some weird reason, this power allows me to make women a lot more fertile by touching them."
Lauren could see Sophie's eyes light up when she said that.
"Lauren, sweetheart, could you please use that power on me?"
"Sure Sophie!" Lauren said as she touched her stepmom with her hands? paws? whatever. Lauren felt something happen when she did that, which was probably the power activating.
"Did it work, Lauren?" Sophie asked
"Uh, I think so? At least something happened."
She was immediately engulfed in a hug by Sophie: "Thank you so much sweetheart! I won't know how to ever pay you back for this gift!"
As Sophie said that, Lauren got an idea. It was probably stupid, but Lauren couldn't think of a better moment to do that than now. She didn't really like keeping secrets and this one still made her feel guilty.
"Uh, Sophie, could you promise not to get mad when I tell you something?"
"Of course Lauren, you can tell me anything!" Sophie said as she continued to hug Lauren.
Lauren took another deep breath before saying the dreaded words.
"Sophie, the day I triggered, I also got a temporary master power. That power could make someone feel guilty for something bad they did, and in my anger and fear for being forced into the wards, I used it on you. I'm so sorry for doing that!"
Sophie's arms stiffened as Lauren said that. However, she didn't immediately push Lauren away or started screaming like Lauren had feared. Instead, after a few seconds, Sophie continued the hug.
"I can't even say I'm surprised that was what happened. I did deserve that after I almost permanently disabled you. So no Lauren, I'll not be angry at you over that, and I forgive you. However, please don't do something like that again!"
Lauren was flabbergasted by Sophie's easy forgiveness for being mastered.
"But … Why do you forgive me so easily?!"
"Sweetheart, I did promise you I wouldn't be angry at you, no matter what you told. To be honest, I think you actually did our family a favor by mastering me to feel guilty. I finally realized I was being a bitch to you for no good reason and our enmity was only hurting you and your siblings. Furthermore, you could have ruined me by telling what happened to your father, but you didn't. For that I'll always be thankful!"
After Lauren's power ran out and Sophie finally let her go, they quickly went back downstairs, as Lauren didn't have much time to eat left before she was expected at the PRT building. Lauren was also determined to go to bed early today, as she suspected she didn't want to be awake when her parents were going to retire for the night.
AN: We have a rather short chapter this time because I thought this was a good ending point. Next chapter will be a lot longer and will see Lauren use her new permanent power.
A note on the Bastet power: This power was one of the hardest ones to create. The wikipedia page was about a random Egyptian footballer and I first didn't have a clue how to create a trump/striker/changer/mover power from that. In the end, I just focussed on the Egypt part, looked at Egyptian gods, and decided on this power.
A note on Mercury: Lauren's AI doesn't even come close in capabilities to Dragon and also isn't sentient. Additionally, she is stuck in the tinkertech on Lauren's Laptop, and the only things she can do on the internet is download stuff. She does however have a very developed personality matrix from datamining all the anime on Lauren's laptop.