With a start, you wake up.
This is not a usual experience for you. Ever since that first time you woke up in your grave, you hardly ever bothered sleeping, and those times you do the transition between asleep and awake is rather... fluid. You're asleep, then you decide to be awake and you wake up.
In this state, inside your cocoon, you're not aware enough for that, so the end of your little slumber party for one is always sudden.
Nevertheless, you're awake now. That's all that counts. Twisting and wiggling, you tear your way free of your cocoon, stepping forth into the empty room.
As you do, you mentally take stock of yourself and any changes you're aware of. Oh hey, you feel some kind of... energy inside your arms and hands. Feels like you can discharge it to hurt stuff. Cool shit.
Aside from that... some stuff about feeding, you guess? This shit is pretty damn vague. Your instinctual understanding of your new powers hasn't improved from your first days as a vampire, you see.
Oh, hey, and you're now weightless. ... And have started spinning around in the air. Does this thing have an off switch?
It does, and though you land on your face, you consider this a win. It is around this time you suddenly realize you have a whole new branch of magic lying ready in your head.
The art of animating dead bodies to be your servants does sound tempting, you'll admit.
Finally, it seems you have gained access to a new transformative power... that of turning into an owl. So... a shadow and a bird. You have no idea where your powers are going with this, but as long as you keep on becoming stronger, you'll just go along with it.
On a side note, it seems your ability to keep your shit on you translates across transformations. Useful, that, but ultimately secondary as you shove the furniture back in place and try your new wings out.
... This whole place looks like even more of a dump from above.
Tilting your body to the side to allow for steering (and man, it's a good thing this thing comes with an installed user manual), you change course to Corvega. Time to see about your loot over there.
When you arrive, you enter through the pipes once more, gathering anything useful you can see in that first room with the turret and the dead raider... which is when you smack your forehead as you realize the implications of that last one. Raising your hand, you chant Rise, my fleshly servant, and go forth to fulfill my will! and watch with giddy anticipation as the corpse actually starts moving!
And then lays still. "Get up," you order it, and at least it does as you command. So... these things are pretty much brainless, is what you're getting here. It's just standing there, waiting for your next command. Telling it to help you does nothing, you imagine it's getting a 'Does not compute' error in there.
Similarly, it is incapable of understanding what you mean when you tell it to grab useful stuff. At least it is capable of holding onto things when you demand it to, and follows you more or less easily after being told to.
... You can already tell this will be a long night.
Ir is not much longer after this that you discover you can keep a maximum of five zombies around at a time. Any more, and the spell just does nothing. You also discover that significantly damaged corpses result in substandard undead. This may or may not be something you figured out when you punched a zombie in frustration and it instantly crumbled.
Those grenades really did a number on these guys.
Regardless, while you do have another spell useable to raise another kind of undead, which, you presume, would have their own limit, you need skeletal corpses for this. If they still have a majority of their flesh on them, it doesn't work.
Now, while you could just make the rotting zombies tear the flesh off of the bones of the corpses, that sounds like a lot of gruesomely wasted time. Time you could be using better in other ways.
So, for now, you just gather the loot in one place, helped by the zombies acting as your pack mules, and deliberate over your next step.
Making the decision, you start packing up the loot into easily carryable bags made out of the raiders' clothes, you then order the zombies to carry them and follow you.
It's a bit of a pain trying to keep them from stumbling into each other, but you and the brains parade make it out of the factory alright. You may or may not attract a few feral ghouls along the way, but a few ice shards solve that whole issue most of the time on your way out of Lexington.
Once that's done, all you have to do is follow the roads back towards Sanctuary. It'll be a bit of a walk, but none of your current company are limited by their stamina, so you should get back fairly soon.
You're a few hours into the journey when you start to hear excited barking. Looking around, you see an actual pack of dogs running at your group, jaws slavering even as they ribs are visible from afar.
Man, what a pain.
Thinking quickly, you breathe out one of your newest souls, ordering it to grab the flamethrower it used in life.
Incidentally, it's still being carried by his own corpse, but whatever.
As you give your instructions, you lightly press off the ground, starting to levitate away. You won't have long to do this unless you want to end up too far up to safely come down, but you should have enough time to get this done without problem.
Once you've got a decent line of sight going, you start to chant away, shooting ice shards as quickly as you can and spearing them into the dogs as they approach. Meanwhile, your soul minion has... conjured some kind of spectral fire?
It doesn't seem to burn the ground it's burning on, but once the dogs pass it, they stumble and howl like their life depended on it.
... Ultimately, it doesn't take all too long to mop them all up, even without your minion doing anything. At least none of your zombies got damaged, you suppose.
Setting down on the ground again, you continue on your merry way towards Sanctuary, occasionally wishing Nora was here just so you could waste some time with small talk, but you'll just have to make do with being bored for a bit.
However, it's not much longer until you recognize the roadwork around Concord. Remembering that deathclaw you and Nora killed back there, you decide to make a detour and see if it's still around.
It is as you start to enter the outskirts of Concord that you hear an indistinct, rough voice... followed by a 'pssh' sound, causing you to look around and see a FUCKING ROCKET COMING YOU WAY FUCK-
Immediately engaging levitation, you jump as hard as you can to the side, clearing the blast radius just in time to escape the fucking rocket exploding.
Following the course it took, you see a band of humongous green brutes, one of which is holding a rocket launcher.
You don't need to know more than that. Time to fucking murder something. While you wouldn't particularly care about being shit at with, you know, fucking normal bullets, you do take issue with heavy ordinance coming your way.
Wasting no time, you order your zombies to drop the loot and charge the brutesstanding further ahead, satisfied that they at least understand that order.
Next off, you summon your weird fire soul again, ordering him to 'fuck them up' as you point at the enemy, even as you start to move sideways a bit and start to chant for ice shards.
Unfortunately, you only strafe the fucker with the rocket launcher, but hey, you aren't about to run out of shards to thow at them, so fuck it.
The next few moments, everything once more descends into mayhem. Your summoned helper uses his weird fire, engulfing two of them inside it, making them scream out "PAIN!" in response.
Guess you've figured out what this does.
The rocket fucker, in the meantime, shoots another rocket, this time at your charging zombies, instantly destroying one of them and damaging the others to varying degrees.
You sure are glad you managed to dodge that shit earlier!
At the same time, another one of the brutes opens fire on your meatshields, accomplishing little on account of his shitty accuracy and literaly pipe gun. Why the fuck are the things so widely spread? It's not like an actual gun is that hard to get.
The last two, on the other hand, step forwards to meet your frontline, armed with...
With literal planks of wood. Okay, you take your criticism of the pipe guns back, this is the stupidest arming policy you've ever seen.
Anyway, you concentrate on properly aiming your next shard, then take another look around the battlefield. And man, your enhanced senses and mental improvements make keeping up with this situation much easier.
So, yeah, the zombies have now started a brawl with the idiots, who seem to be surprised they're not physically superior to their foes. Heh. The zombies seem to be mostly focused on ramming their arms into their targets with full strength and/or biting any green skin they can feasibly reach. Wich, to be fair, is quite a lot- one of them isn't actually wearing anything, and the others aren't that much more dressed. Not that you can talk, but at least you're pleasant to look at.
Rocket fucker, on the other hand, is getting increasingly annoyed at the repeated thunking of ice shard impacting all over his body, you'd actually hit him in the head, but you weren't too hopeful that would take him out anyway. You weren't expecting the brain to be the weak point of these guys, if anything it'd just be wasted space for them.
He even turned back to you and tried to shoot you again, but with his eye missing, his aim is even worse off than the other one with a gun.
Who is currently being grilled alive. It's actually rather impressive.
Keeping up your steady bombardment of the green rocket launcher, he eventually keels over, having taken too many shards all over the body to survive. Finally.
The zombies, on the other hand, overwhelmed one of the things by concentrating on it, completely ignoring the other one, leaving it free to bash in the skulls of two of your meatshields... until you start to direct your fire on it, of course, downing it in short order.
The one your zombies ganged up on never stood much of a chance in the first place.
The last one, the one with the pipe gun, has finished grilling. Your minion is coming back towards you with a big smile on his face. Good for him, you suppose.
Well, that finishes up this latest episode of retarded weirdness this dimension's thrown an you.
Taking stock of your new corpses, you ponder which ones to use. The one that got mauled and chewed to death by your zombies... is a bit messy, but useable.
The ones you got via ice shards are a bit damaged, but should be mostly fine. You're not exactly an expert, but as long as the holes aren't too numerous, they shouldn't fuck up operation of the body when used by magic.
Now, the burned one... that's the bad news. You're pretty sure you need at least some of the flesh intact, and this fire burned intself deep under the skin. You're not sure any zombie you make from this will be really all that reliable.
In terms of not falling apart, that is.
Sighing, you shake your head. It really can't be helped; that burnt corpse is too damaged. You'll have to make do with the other three corpses.
Not that you're too torn up about this, you didn't expect to find these guys here in the first place. So you just dismiss one of your zombies that looks worse off after that rocket blast, then set about reanimating the three green motherfuckers.
It is at this point you realize the awful truth of your zombies: They're too dumb to use weapons. Including that awesome rocket launcher you just got. The zombie you have carrying the thing doesn't react when you tell it to aim it.
Unfortunate, but, then again, there were only two rockets left, anyway. You have your undead pack mules pick up the loot, then set forth, your little procession making its way deeper into Concord.
It doesn't take much longer for you to find the crossraods before the museum you found Preston's little group in. Looking around where you remember the deathclaw dying, yes, it's still there.
A bit worse for wear, but it looks like its skin was too tough for most scavengers to bother with. Or maybe that's just you, who knows.
Regardless, time to throw out another inferior human zombie and get yourself a fucking zombie deathclaw.
This is so worth it.
It isn't too long a walk after this to make it to that red rocket gas station Nora found and adopted that dog at. Your memory once again saves you a bunch of work, it seems.
... No, you didn't whoop while riding on the back of your pet zombie deathclaw? Who would even do that. Not you, that's for sure.
Anyway. You deposit most of the loot at the gas station, then hide your undead inside while you make your way onwards, back towards Sanctuary and, hopefully, Nora.
As well as your damn lair, you're pretty sure the sun might come up soon.
Note to self, find a way to make your zombies go faster. You love riding that deathclaw.
Unfortunately, it seems Nora isn't back in Sanctuary, contrary to your expectations. Seems like whatever she's doing in Diamond City must've taken her longer than expected.
Or she got herself killed, you suppose. Always a possibility, though you don't believe she'd have gone down easily.
Anyway, you bid Preston farewell, eye on the lightening sky, and get back into your root cellar post haste. Oh, it seems Slave has been keeping to this place, too.
Taking the usual moment to look into yourself, you see that time seems to be slightly sped up in there, though not enough to be noticeable on the scales you'd need.
You do, however, delight in seeing a grand total of 5 fruits hanging from the tree, fully matured. So you go in and have the maid port you over, as usual.
Scarfing down your scrumptious feast, you exhale yourself again and waste no time to begin training. May as well use the time, after all.
Taking another track on your soul expelling ideas, you sit down on the mattress and try to exhale two souls at once this time.
You seemingly get nowhere and are about to try and change your approach, when suddenly, you feel a hot mouth around your dick. Looking down, you see Slave must have tossed and turned in her sleep until she could find your dick and suck on it.
It's almost cute.
Regardless, with copious oral stimulation (and a Slave that sleeps much better), you return to what you were doing. Only this time, a silvery mist begins to form and split in two, but too slowly to get anywhere before it disperses as you need to breathe in again after running out of air.
You look down at Slave again.
Kate must never find out.
Once you've decided you've made enough progress for the night (and around the fifth time you fill Slave's mouth), you realize something.
With the way you work right now, it's really hard to tell whether you're dead or alive. Sure, you're pretty certain your internal processes have ceased entirely and your heart doesn't beat anymore, but you can still breathe (and indeed have to in order to talk) and you still bleed the same way anyone alive would.
So... what if... you could spoof reality into thinking of you as Schroedinger's Cat? Make it so you're both alive and dead at the same time?
Your internal magic seems to agree, and this would completely fuck with a lot of parahuman powers. Heh. You never thought you'd get this much use out of what you learned at college, really.
So... You gently pull Slave off your dick (you're not sure what an overdose of vampire cum looks like, but it shouldn't be any different from normal cum, and you don't want her sick by the time she wakes up (though she contendedly rubs her stomach and sleeps like a baby afterwards)) and get into a mental grove, trying to convince the universe that you're both alive and dead, rather than just dead.
Stepping out of your little hole in the ground (and ignoring Slave's pleading look as she raises her behind at you), you take a look around the settlement. Still no sign of Nora, but you think you're going to wait another day before getting worried.
Deciding to go get some of that sweet, sweet superscience, for starters, you go grab Preston (he... isn't doing much of anything at the moment, anyway) and ask him about those laser muskets.
They may be primitive, but you don't give a fuck. They're handmade laser weaponry. You want them.
So... apparently, the Minute Men used to make them themselves, as part of basic training way back when Preston joined. The good news is, this means he can explain to you how they work and how they're made- he even disassembles and reassembles his weapon to show you.
It's mostly focusing lenses finely crafted to make it possible to 'store' and then explosively release the discharge from a fusion cell. If used right, this should, theoretically, allow for more of this stuff to focus the laser even better, but... you have no idea on how to even begin to do that.
On the other hand, now you're curious about fusion cells.
Apparently, these little things are the basis of lots of laser weaponry used all throughout the Commonwealth... if you were to reverse-engineer them yourself, you figure you could develop your own laser-based weapons!
Unfortunately, Preston can't help you there, as he has no idea how the things are made. He gives you a few out of his stash, though. "For luck."
Taking the cells, you thank him. Afterwards, you look consideringly at the workbench house and ask Preston if he'd like to help you carry some materials over to Tenpines Bluff and build a turret so they have at least some basic protection.
The cowbay wannabe pauses for a moment, looking at the turret currently in sight. "You know, that would be pretty nice," he smiles at you. Looks like you've hit upon one of his levers, huh?
Regardless, it's time to go on ahead and do a thing. Perfectly recalling everything you need, you gather everything together and watch with amusement as Preston goes over the blueprint and compares it to the pile of stuff you grabbed. naturally, you're taking a little extra. Always better to have a little too much wire along than to have too little. You say as much when Preston asks.
You may be a complete newbie in terms of engineering, but even you can get this much right.
Soon enough, the two of you are on your merry way. A few oversized insects try to attack you, but Preston blasts them to pieces before you can be arsed to do anything about them. Once you arrive at the settlement, you mention to the stupid settlers that you took care of the raiders before you get to work.
Picking a nice place with lots of firing lines, you throw together the basic stand the rest of the turret will be mounted on. Preston watches you with some fascination, even as you laugh and tell him you've got basically no idea what you're doing, just following the blueprint.
Actually, thinking about it, you decide to really pay attention to what you're doing. How the parts fit together into a greater whole. How everything is made to certain standards so it can be assembled into something else.
Still, a nice time is had by all.
Midway through, you actually summon the soul of that one raider you ate at the pipe room in Corvega, figuring they would actually know a thing or two about this, given you found him in a workroom right next to a turret.
Turns out you're right. The sucker actualy does know a lot about turrets, given the only job he had was to put them up, so you learn a few tricks from him, mostly related to getting these things up and running and keeping them on running under most circumstances.
You and Preston may get a little lost in stories about how both of you killed raiders, but that's just to be expected, really.
Still, though, the turret is up and running, the soul dismissed (and yes, Preston did goggle a bit at the sheer magic you're doing, though he calmed down pretty quick) and you're thinking about what to do next.
Once the both of you arrive back at Sanctuary, you bid Preston farewell for now and return to your mancave to see if you can't force that one soul to keep on giving you more information...
...only to be quite surprised when you open the door and Nora is there! Apparently she arrived while you were busy with Preston.
"Hey Gabe," Nora smiles at you, seeming to calm down when she sees who it is. Understandable, given Slave is currently eating her out.
Walking up to her, you smile as you put a hand on her shoulder. "Hey Nora, how's it been?"
"Well enough, I suppose. I found where Mama Murphy sent me, rescued a synth detective out of an old unfinished vault filled with gangsters slash raiders and brought back a souvenir," she says as she fishes an old comic book out of a nearby bag.
"Sounds like a fun time," you say, grabbing Slave's head and starting to face fuck her, only chuckling when Nora pouts at you for taking away her fun before you move your head closer to her for a kiss.
You look deep into her eyes as you do so, first a look of mild shock, then acceptance in them.
The two of you spend some time talking and making out like this, frequently exchanging the use of Slave's talented head, before you eventually do as you'd planned and summon that raider mechanic soul from earlier.
It is immensely amusing making him watch as you and Nora do your thing while he has to explain everything he knows about mechanics and engineering. You actually feel that you have learned a good deal, much more than you'd thought possible, making connections that you wouldn't have thought of normally.
You doubtfully look at Slave's head, still bobbing along your length.
Kate must never know.
Alright. You think you've gotten enough experience on how to do this whole engineering thing, especially how it's done in this dimension, and you have several fusion cells right there, ready to be worked with and taken apart.
You have all the pieces of the puzzle. Now you just have to break it up and learn how to put it together again. Easy, right?
Turns out, no. Not easy at all.
First of all, you're not used to working on this scale. You have spent time working on these ingenious turrets a lot, you know how those generators work, the water purifiers, even quite a lot about those laser muskets, thanks to Preston.
You have never really worked with anything smaller and more complicated than wire before, and it shows.
You can crack the casing of a spent fusion cell easily enough, and do the same for an unspent one. You can compare their insides, what amounts to a miniature capacitor being the most of what you can figure out, but that's where you knowledge ends and the testing has to begin.
You poke and prod, you take things out and see how they're connected to the rest. Ultimately, it's a lot like a caveman trying to figure out how to make an automatic gun by taking one apart. Which actually describes the current situation quite well, come to think of it.
Partway through, you grab Slave and shove her head onto your dick, putting her back into her natural environment. While you're at it, you take a short break to chat with Nora, actually.
"So," you say when the topic turns towards your world hopping, "I have just a few days left to stay on this world before I'm yanked back to where i left from."
"Really? You have no control over it?" Nora asks with a raised eyebrow, absently fondling Slave's pussy from behind while talking to you.
"I do have some control, I can leave earlier or eventually find a way to stay longer, but I have a strict time limit on how long I can stay in one dimension before i'm dragged back to where I came from."
"Huh. I suppose there wouldn't really be a difference here, then, given you'd eventually return at the same time you left, huh?"
"Exactly. Though, if you want to? I could take you along."
"Huh? Okay, stop. You can take people along with you when hopping?"
"Yup. I figured that one out while I was here, actually. Only one person, and I still can't take any objects other than people with me, but it's possible."
Swallowing, Nora nods, clearly thinking about it.
"I'll, uh, I'll get back to you in a bit, okay? I need to think about this."
Agreeing, you leave her to her thoughts (and teasing Slave), getting back to your project.
At the end of it all, you think you've gained some understanding of how these things work.
If you're right, they're essentially miniaturized, pocket sized fusion tech.
Did you mention how insane this dimension is?
Still, you have a rough idea on the principles the fusion cells work by. Maybe you can go from there to see how these principles are applied, leading to you getting a clue on how to make the cells.
But for now, you think to yourself, time to thoroughly fuck Slave.
After a good few rounds of screwing Slave silly later, you come back around to trying to figure out how these fusion cells work. Unfortunately, the soul you call upon doesn't have any idea how the things are made, either, so you just have him do the poking while you watch from a save distance.
Because, holy shit, as it turns out, they're basically miniaturized fusion reactors. You'd kind of expected it to be fusion tech earlier, but holy shit.
Nevertheless, you're making progress.
As you're working, you are somewhat tempted to give Slave what she wants... again... but you concentrate on your work while facefucking her.
It turns out she can actually keep on drinking your cum for hours on end, after all.
It is another few hours of work, but eventually you decide on several approaches on how to screw together a proto fusion cell. It's rather primitive by any standards and relies on having enough really old light bulbs around for materials, but it's something.
... Testing it with Nora's laser musket, the power output is a bit below average and it's way bulkier than it really should be, but you figure it's a start. And quickly reassemble her musket.
Spending the next few hours on your longstanding project of spewing out more than one soul, you steadily movo forward, getting the two clouds of mist to manifest for longer and longer, until, suddenly, it works.
You breathe out and two of your minions emerge at once. This... this is a small step for a soul, but a big step for you. Yes, you think that's how it worked.
Regardless, you wave off their confused questions and draw them back inside your palace. Taking the opportunity to see if anything changed, like the last several times you got something to work, you engage your inner vision and soon realize that the armory is bigger than you remember it.
Taking a closer look inside, it seems like it got enlarged to deal with the sudden influx of weaponry. Smirking, you breathe yourself in and seat yourself on your throne, adding to the rule you'd previously made to ensure that all souls have to go to the armory to receive their arms and armor, triggering another mass exodues via teleporting maids.
Alright, time to get back out and think about what to train next. You estimate you should still have half a day left, after all.
With your new design for dumbed down fusion cells in hand, you're confronted by the next problem... how to actually use the damn things. They're way too bulky to fit into the laser muskets.
Naturally, you could just, you know, remake the laser muskets. Make the ammo intake bigger, problem solved. Only, it isn't quite that easy, now, is it?
You've already learned that, in a complex structure like this, everything is supposed to fit together. Just changing one part is absolutely guaranteed to mess something else up.
You'll have to basically rework the placement of thee lenses, given they're meant to focus and/or store the blast. Come to think of it, this part's pretty much a capacitor, a bigger version of a fusion cell meant to store the energy of several cells...
It's quite a while until you come out of your little fugue... funny, given what you know about how tinkers work. But enough thinking, you have several ideas based off of the design you know of, time to try 'em out and see what happens! There's SCIENCE to be done!
Luckily enough, Nora is currently waking up, so you ask her to borrow her laser musket to try something out. She just yawns and throws it at you, so you take that as a yes.
Now...to take everything apart and put it back together, just differently and better suited for what you have in mind...
Good news, you're fairly certain this should work. Bad news, you can't try it out until you get some wood and a saw, as you need to rework the wooden parts to make everything fit together, but still, you're fairly certain you have a good idea of how to make the laser muskets work with your dumbed down fusion cores.
Downside, they're just a tad less powerful. Advantage, you can put everything, including the ammunition, together out of a few pieces of trash. Aside from the lenses, at any rate, those still need to be carefully worked, but as long as you have those, the rest is easy.
You have gained the blueprint 'Retrofitted Laser Musket (Basic fusion Cell)'.
A bit into your creative process, Nora is awake enough to watch what you're doing, occasionally asking questions about what you're doing.
After a while, the conversation veers off, eventually landing on the topic of your new powers.
"So, I can make zombies now."
"Zombies? Really?" Nora asks, disbelief and giddiness warring on her face.
"Yup. I actually have a group of them stationed at that red rocket gas station just out of Sanctuary, together with the loot I made them carry here from Corvega. How else did you think I was getting all that junk here?"
"No idea, I didn't really think about it. So you really marched a horde of zombies all the way there?"
"Well, it's more a group of zombies, really, can't have more than a handful at a time right now, thoigh I'm working on making it more. Oh, and we actually got attacked on the way by a bunch of green mutants or something, so I used them to make more zombies. They actually destroyed a few of my raider zombs."
"Oh my, those are called super mutants. I actually ran into a few on the outskirts of Diamond City, though their security shot them down quick enough."
"Huh. Good to know. So yes, anyway, I took those to carry the loot and then I made a small detour through Concord. The deathclaw's corpse was still there, so now we have a deathclaw zombie just hanging around out there."
With a whistle, she ponders "Well, that's neat. Are you sure it's safe, though? I'd hate to have to put that thing down again."
"No worries, the undead i make are absolutely brainless. Unless I'm around to tell them what to do, they do literally nothing. They can't even defend themselves, it's actually another thing I want to work on."
Taking a moment before you exit your little lair, you check inside yourself, soecifically for the tree. Looks like a fruit finished growing since you last checked in, so you head inside.
A quick trip via tele-maid later, you bite into succulent, vaguely human flesh...
Deciding to try to mess around with your power over souls a bit more, you summon a random soul and order it to sit down and shut up. It does so, leaving you free to try to think at it really hard, hopefully letting you give 'em orders via telepathy.
Midway through, you sense a hot warm mouth around your dick (you really should go and get some clothes when you find some time), but pay Slave no further mind.
You frequently leave the mouth that's sucking on your dick, but you still don't mind. At least she's been working on her technique, slowly sucking along your whole length and swirling aroung it with her tongue.
However, as you're making great progress, your test subject actually looking at you disturbedly when you push really hard, you inevitably lose focus and look down.
Huh. Seems Nora has decided to try playing along with Slave a little, the both of them kneeling before you and exchanging the right to suck your dick. Nora actually happens to look at you, the surprise on your face making her giggle around you cock down her throat.
It's a strangely good feeling.
Nevertheless, now that the gig's up, Slave can begin to suckle on your balls instead of having to wait for her mistress to finish. You just shrug and look back at your subject.
If this really works, you'll just do your best to never let Kate find out and use it to the best extent you can.
Deciding to just get on with it, you once more summon a random soul to think at it. And hey, after a short while, this actually works!
Unfortunately, you can't hear what your soul is thinking, but still, this might be really useful!
At the same time, you once more feel shifting inside yourself, so you turn your eyes towards said insides, searching for the source of the feeling. You're surprised when it turns out it's actually coming from inside a sealed room, with only a single maid present.
The room is bare except for the center piece, a massive hourglass currently rotating around its middle axis. After a short while, it stops spinning and sand starts flowing down, measuring the passage of time for you.
Only... you smile when you realize something. You can consciously influence the speed of the sand. When you try it out, you soon find out you have a limited amount of control over the speed your internal world is going at via concentarting on the passage of the sand, slowing it down when comparing the speed everything's going at to the speed it went before you influenced it.
This will be... useful.
Taking up position on an old chair next to Nora as she works on one of her guns in the workshop house, you once again start to try and get into the mindset to bully the universe into accepting that you're both alive and dead.
It's a slow process, but you're making progress. That's enough for you.
Taking a short break from your hard work (that in no way is slacking off, no matter how it looks), you strike up an idle conversation with Nora while she works.
"So, did you think about my offer?"
"Ah, about jumping worlds with you? To be honest, I was still thinking about it."
"Oh right, I never told you much about it, did I? Want me to just... blabber on a bit?"
"Sure, why not? Beats having nothing to listen to, and Diamond City Radio got really old really fast."
And so you do. You tell her about the year ("Wait, it's 2011 over there?"), about the intact civilization and how it's slowly breaking apart. You tell her about Brockton Bay, shithole amongst shitholes, and how it still managed to become a home for people of the weirdest and most varied backgrounds. You tell her about how the villains are slowly taking over the city, strangling anyone that doesn't fit into their respective color schemes (white, asian, druggie), and how that made you start up a gang yourself just to stem the tide of shit they're constantly unleashing and at least have the criminal underworld take on some manner of order ("Wait, you're a gangster?").
You tell her about Kate, who took on the responsibilities of leading your ragtag group of the insane and the desperate and everything in between, as well as being... well, your quasi-girlfriend ("Wait, you have a GIRLFRIEND?). You tell her about how technology took an entirely different route, about the wonders of the internet and computers actually small enough to be called such, as well how the internet naturally gets used to look up cat pictures and porn ("Wait, they can show pictures and play... videos? What are videos?").
You tell her about your shitty parents (that you still hate, by the way), about how Rex went and hung himself when you weren't there for your siblings, how Sarah went missing after the traffic accident that led to your death and your continued search for her, though stymied by the fact she completely went off the radar.
You tell her about why you were away from home in the first place, about how you were in college and on track to try and find a job decently paid enough to get custody of your siblings and raise them in an environment not poisoned by your parents ("Wait, you were in college? Wait wait wait, you are HOW OLD?").
At the end of it, Nora seems rather emotionally drained, though you have no idea why. Regardless, when she looks at you with a complicated expression and tells you that she will definitely need to come with you, you smile and nod, not saying another word.
Hey, why is she blushing again?
Thinking a bit, you can feel today will be your last day in this dimension for a while. Still no reason to stop messing around with your powers, though, that's why you came here in the first place, after all.
First off, though, time to do your daily check in. Directing your vision inside, you're pleasantly surprised to see your recent improvement lets you nudge time just that little bit you needed. Looks like you may as well spend a few moments every now and then in there and get something more done.
Still have to get in to pluck that freshly grown fruit, though.
Most of the rest of the day, you practice getting into the right mindset to force your will onto reality. It is, strangely, kind of like raping reality.
The hard part is to pin it down first, the rest is easier.
You eventually make it just before sundown, occasionally taking a moment to dive inside your mind and go through the contents of that covert op manual you'd found. It is a good day spent.
Eventually, though, you finish raping reality and night has fallen. This will be your last night in this dimension...
Well, not much to do for the time being, so you settle in to train a bit more before you yank on the chain anchoring you to the time and place you're from.
First, you turn your attention towards your connection to Nora. You suspect that any improvements you make to this thing should translate into the same improvements on other connections you make, considering that's how it worked on the changes you added before you ever arrived in this dimension.
So you see about trying to push what you recognize as your own improvements, finding it remarkably easy to push them along. Huh.
After spending what you estimate to be half the night on this, you switch to messing around with your ice shard spells. You make a little progress on making them hit harder, but nothing to write home about.
Eventually you decide it's time. Best make the dimensional jump yourself, lest you get yanked across before you're finished. So you go find Nora, who is currently taking a nap in your lair, and tell her as much.
"Ohhkay," she yawns. "Give me a moment, then I'll be ready."
Stretching a little, she looks down at you, asking "Aren't you going to put some clothes on?" with a raised eyebrow.
"No point, anything we have on us will be left behind anyway. My clothes are waiting over there for me."
"Wait, we'll be na-" she gets out, before you grab onto her with a "Notimelet'sgo!"
Her "Eeeeep!" is adorable.