It is now 1973

The world's still turning and nobody has recreated Earth Fallout yet.

What, you wanted more details? Fine, whatever. The NAN is doing well as always, with a slowly stabilizing flow of income from its internal marketplace; turns out that even if you don't push for it too much, you can still generate wealth in the form of currency easily enough with complete control over the economy.

Seriously, Cryptic Solutions has a newly founded department of internal economy whose sole purpose is to regulate the flows of goods and money within the alliance, keep track of both to some degree to ensure a smoother organized exchange of goods. It was initially more just a way to continue reducing governmental oversight on the part of member nations as you reduce said governments' responsibilities and instead centralize them under the banner of CS, but it turns out that this approach actually makes a lot of stuff easier overall, so Henley decided to invest in it and make it a huge thing.

Considering overall living standards are up by a minimum of two percent ever since going by latest estimates, you don't really have any complains. And yes, you consider the overall wealth, free time and general liveability of individual persons or family units an indicator of the success of economic measures, what of it?

Meanwhile, the US are slowly leaning towards an extraordinary interim election to determine a new president, as both Nixon and his vice president Ford have 'proven to be untenable for this nation', as one television commentator you saw through the Thinker put it. Because yes, by the way, you watch a lot of television when nothing big is going on otherwise and all your friends, lovers and children are busy and don't have much time to chat.

And, y'know, aren't themselves doing anything interesting enough to watch.

Preliminary polls so far are really carrying James Smith, the candidate you're backing, as he's being put forward by the Democrats and the Republicans are still reeling from the whole Nixon thing, which to be fair was mostly on Nixon himself. Still doesn't stop you from making use of public perception, of course.

The USSR, on the other hand, seems to have become somewhat of a weird kind of 'will they/won't they' state in half-open rebellion; while the soviet government still claims control over the entirety of the USSR, a lot of Russia's client states are very obviously unhappy about the part where all their money and goods are being taken to sustain Big Daddy Russia, plus several insurrectionist movements that flared up after your little cursing stunt have been sabotaging the ruling party here and there.

It's no open rebellion anywhere, but all the same the stranglehold on everything required to run a country is starting to loosen. Whether that's good or bad for you and your guy on the inside remains to be seen.

Now, as for China's situation… Well, there's few really reliable reports, but a lot of the more rural places have either been turned into ghost towns when the inhabitants fled into the wilderness to live off the land now that soldiers enforce a complete confiscation of any food (or were shot because orders were given not to allow civilians to leave and scavenge) or turned to cannibalism, which as it turns out is actually a kind of Chinese staple when times get hard.

A crapload of people live there, so when there's not enough food, just use people as food. It does make sense.

Public sentiment is not exactly good, but the army is one of the few societal classes that still gets food, so the civilians aren't going to be doing much. You'd say a couple months maybe, then they'll be starving so much they all get to the point they realize they'll either die of starvation or of bullets, so they have little to lose and the fun can really start.

Taiwan has been mobilizing again, if very carefully and covertly. The initial generation of capitalists that lost against the communists is actually slowly being pushed out by a new generation of politicians, surprisingly, where you thought they'd follow the trends you noted by wiki-walking back on Earth Bet and stay a dictatorship until the people making it up die of old age and a new generation comes in to have an actual democracy, but it turns out your actions pushed things forward a little.

Mhm… Ah, as for Europe, the only non-CS affiliate nations not currently complete shitholes are West Germany and… That's it, everything else is still a pile of ruins financially after WWII. And a literal pile of ruins in some cases. Then there's Africa, which continues to be Africa and completely unimportant beyond the fact you're taking it over one bite at a time.

Amen.

Okay, new business quarter, new focus on a new market. Specifically, you are now looking at the twin markets of tourism and entertainment.

The NAN is covering a good chunk of the Middle East and around, what, a third of Africa? Somewhere around that benchmark. What you're trying to say is, there's a lot of space you're covering, a lot of cultures, landscapes- you have a product right there in great supply and, with a bit of finagling, all the demand you could ask for as well.

Holidays don't really exist as a thing that Cryptic Solutions is pushing, you mostly just take over any existing commonly celebrated days and give people the day off as appropriate, with yearly allowances for additional holidays and structured days off, all making sure you have a given person that can do a given job as much as possible. Simply because you like having things ordered nicely and it sure as hell sucks to have to cover three coworkers' jobs because they all just had to take a free day at the same time and your asshole superior stamped off on it.

Look, maybe it's a good thing you have a very good idea of how it feels like to be at the bottom of the consumer chain, if mostly through secondhand accounts you received during the time you were alive. You never did actually hold a job down beyond some tutoring you did in high school, come to think of it…

Anyways, back on track. Tourism. Guided tours, luxury hotels, you can do it all, and rest and relaxation are really just as much of a valuable commodity as ovens and coffee machines in the right context. In the end, it's just another way for your employees (which is all citizens in NAN territory) to also be your customers, your consumers, the people feeding your corporate machine with their money.

So that is a thing you send directives out for, to organize everything in appropriate regions. To be honest, you're slowly running out of aspects of your economy you can have entire areas be employed towards- you've kind of just taken towards making subsidiary towns and cities of a sort, that take over smaller parts of a bigger process and all.

It's still all organized to be reasonably efficient of course, but still, any new thing you can dole out and have people do is a good thing and tourism has been a long time coming as a field of industry, really.

Naturally, you also need to do a whole bunch of advertisement for this new product you're selling, but as with all things good made by CS, your ads are actually bearable to watch and don't get in the way of regular television programming. Which of course brings you to point number two, entertainment as a broader topic.

You want music, bands, TV shows, actors, all paid for by Cryptic Solutions and spread worldwide, culture defined by your money, consumed through your products, controlled by one single interest- yours.

Look, you've invested a lot of time and effort into this dimension. The least humanity in it could do is to let itself be entirely molded by your hands, really.

To this end, you go ahead and have a bunch of money invested into certain stocks, money directly moved to obtain all the advantages you may need and hire whatever actors it requires.

A couple movie studios are bought out. Cryptic Solutions level of funding are allocated. All in a day's work for you, come to think of it.

You even decide to get a little hands-on and, working with Iris and Ivy, compose a little music to be spread as a first pulse along your CS-sponsored nation-spanning entertainment sector.

'… so I held her hand in mine

And she told me it was fine

And I believed her.'

Soo… One of the good parts about taking time and dealing with everything you're dealing with segmentally, over time, is that you can watch and observe the results of your actions, at least over a timeframe of several months at a time, and consider them as a holistic whole before making your judgement as to your next move.

It's kind of screwy and a human mind just wouldn't deal with experiencing things quite like this quite as easily as you are, but it's pretty cool all the same, just one more of those little quirks of being an undead abomination against all that's good and right.

'We got in line to see the disco ball

We didn't care 'bout it at all

Something else had all our eyes

Something else without the lies'

Anyways, so you wrote a few songs, or really thought and mentally sounded them out, together with the twins, Iris and Ivy having both beautiful singing voices and an interest in using them. Then you had them sing them out and record them, to see whether they would work well.

And well, here you go, a global phenomenon where two girls singing about something deeply emotional, most commonly lesbian relationships, being a girl falling in love with a girl and, of course, being a girl that lusts after another girl, is being a massive hit. Also featuring older women and women and women and younger women and all that good stuff.

And besides the part where your twins are now considering making a living as professional singers with the cash they could rake in like this (if you didn't just give them any amount of money they could ask for anyways), people just absolutely eat it up, the catchy music, deep lyrics that you can just hum along with even if you don't actually understand them, it all just fits.

Everything slots into a greater whole that just clicks with the public, and combined with the added forced publicity you push for their songs because they're your daughters and you would literally establish concentration camps where you force people to listen to them 24/7 given half an excuse but as it is this is the least you can do for your beloved offspring.

And yes, it is completely normal for you to refer to them like that. It's a vampire thing, you think. Or maybe you're just weird and forcing reality to make it normal because yes, you have that power and you can use whatever words you want.

At any rate, the songs are great hits, actually written in various languages so more people can listen to and understand them. Note to self, make English the official globally accepted and used language and properly teach it to all of humanity just to remove any and all language barriers you can. Sure, it's almost a guarantee dialects will develop and slang terms with all but split it up into several languages in turn, but at least having a common root and business-level language in common would make this kind of thing a lot easier for you.

Something to keep in mind for the next couple decades of this dimension, you suppose.

"And the Lord saw that the flock was divided and misguided, praying to false idols and bowing to false prophets! For mankind is foolish and easily misled, with no path and no guide and no principle to show the way!"

Father Simon Wales was fully in his element, having long since recruited additional clergy amongst the ranks of the blessed, those who were granted the opportunity to serve at their god's side. Some were former priests and faithful like him, those that saw the light of the True Lord amidst the end of their lives, but many were just that, the souls of the dead that saw meaning in learning the vows and the words of the preacher.

"I, too, was once misled, brothers and sisters, I make no secret of it! For it is all too easy to trust, when you are taught to trust, and believe when you are taught to believe! But we, who have been blessed with sight and with wisdom, we know better! For our Lord not once told us to believe, and so instead we see! We see the truth through His eyes every day and every night of the loving embrace of His stomach and guts!"

They were organizing sermons now, blessing those of troubled hearts and speaking with whomsoever simply needed an open ear. Father Wales could feel how it helped, both the new clergy and the souls they administered, to be doing something, to be productive in their own ways. They all were still animals of social occupation, in the end, and so they sought to be part of a community, one whose framework they were building with their own hands.

He had to hold back a tear at the cloaked believers attending his own sermon as it was. Truly a moving sight.

"But the Lord is merciful and broad of mind! For he did not strike out to punish the misbelievers, no matter their heresy, and instead held out a hand of conciliation! He does not demand he be worshipped, but instead only asks that the flock not be led astray by false prophets and false gods!"

Now they came unto the meat of the matter, the proof in the pudding, the soul within the blood.

"True faith is not enforced! It is not demanded! It springs into existence among those receptive to it and draws others into itself, that they too may share the embrace of Mercy. It spreads throughout itself, it rewards faith with benevolence, and it disregards empty faiths that produce nothing but hollow self-satisfaction and self-righteousness! Pity the fools that have yet to loosen the chains around their eyes, for they cannot see the truth we can, blinded by false faith as they are! Ave Misericordia!"

""Ave Misericordia In Aeternum!""

"Falsum Deiice Et Verum Aspectum Salvete!"

""Ave Verum Aspectum Et Verum Deum!""

It truly was a pure joy, to see the faithful reciting the lines and raising the torches as they were. Ahh, but if only their Lord were to see them like this, surely he would be touched to tears as well!

Father Wales' eyes were shining, his hands raised into the air free from all weakness and feebleness, his voice reverberating in the air. This, he believed, was what he was born for.

Truly he was blessed, for his Lord had to love him as much as he loved his Lord. For why else would He send him to be a leader amongst the faithful, for all his failings and all his weakness?

Besides having fun letting your daughters use Cryptic Solutions to try out singing in a professional setting, you also do go out of your way to commission movies and similar kinds of entertainment that portrays governments in general in a very negative light and shows peasant revolts against the evil governmental organizations that force them to work away for scraps (the best of which you decide to have smuggled into the USSR and China once it's all done just to keep on needling away out of petty joy at the issues you're causing- provided the pieces of media in question are completed in time before you bring them both down, anyways).

You know, make sure the cultural understanding of government being a dangerous force that must be controlled by either its constituents or a reliable separate party, such as, say, a giant corporation. Completely normal stuff that people think about, isn't it?

The world's in for a happy fun time, once you properly control it.

That aside, you're also going ahead and widening the circles of your little conspiracy pet project, having current members compile lists of potential candidates for induction after leaving Nasser a bucket of your blood to thrall them with.

In all fairness, it's a very fancy-looking bucket, okay? Worthy of divine blood to be sure.

You don't really spend all too much attention on this part, this is all something you can just leave to the people working with each other on your stuff. You know, potential members around democratic nations that can proceed to hand important positions to each other for decades to come under changing identities, military dictators and relevant subordinates that can stabilize regions in your interests, those kinds of people.

You don't need to keep too close of an eye on it, chances are good that if anyone gets any stupid ideas someone else will notice before long and either deal with it or hand it up the chain to be dealt with by someone that can. Man, but actually working within an organizational structure you're personally ensuring works properly just does make everything way, way easier, doesn't it?

Research continues, as ever, what with your secret underwater laboratory's inhabitants having taken to kind of just do science as a hobby. And hey, in all fairness, if you actually cared to publicize even a fraction of the research being done at the Livsey Institute of Atrocities Against Humanity, you'd wager you'd be able to grab a good few awards for the things being discovered on a daily basis, particularly in the fields of biology, medicine and interdimensional physics.

The latter isn't really considered an actual field of science by most of the scientific community (yet), but you feel it should be counted and considered here all the same. Just because your people are doing some damn good work on it.

Currently, you have Curie helping you with alchemy experiments to determine whether a certain theory of yours is correct, that of more semi-permanently enhancing potions than you already have on hand. If your vague theorizing is correct, it should even be useful in the procedure meant to endow esper powers onto sapient beings; what you believe is that the reason as to why most adults with calcified worldviews do not get to actually do anything new afterwards is simply that, their understanding of reality has calcified.

When you manipulate gravity, you do not do so through logic and by calculating how doing so works- you do that, too, to make it work, but it's not the fundamental source of the ability. You manipulate gravity because you are, when you get to it, of the opinion that the world revolves around yourself, one way or another.

It's that simple. It takes determination, unshakeable belief that this is how physics should work, to get things going. Most adults believe that physic work how they already do, they just don't have that childish sense of wonder and whimsy that you believe to be of ultimate importance to the process of becoming a proper esper.

That's likely what really let you actually have a power through this whole thing. You know physics can be… malleable. You still do need to actually think and perform certain calculations in the back of your head to do anything advanced, but the core of the exercise doesn't change throughout. Not that it directly helps to know that, because telling people to stop believing in the laws of physics doesn't work, but if you had, say, potions that boosted lateral thinking and creativity, well…

That's pretty much what you're doing here.

Brigid Tenenbaum had seen a lot in her time, as she would agree in those times she took to reflect on her life and her works. Germany's descent into national depression, the events of Hitler's rise to power and swift descent into dictatorship; anti-Jewish propaganda she had not truly understood at the time, as it had been so obviously, quantifiably false, the persecution, being rounded up and driven to Auschwitz, where she would begin what she sometimes thought of as the beginning of her professional education.

Correcting the scientists, turning their senseless sadism towards a purpose, the one thing she believed they had understood, in the end. There was a reason she had been treated differently, of course, not killed with all the rest of the concentration camp's inmates one way or another- in truth, she still felt… nothing, about the deaths she had directly caused as well, in proposing and performing her own experiments. Executing them.

Things had made sense, finally. She was making discoveries, any cost to doing so acceptable whether to herself or others. Preferably others, even, as she could not continue to empirically document how much of a current a human brain could withstand before brain death.

It was, as always, only after the war that she realized she had killed her own family, ordered their deaths with nary a thought. And the nazis had done as she had told them, because that was how things were done in the end, any delusions to the contrary held by certain now themselves executed scientists aside.

Mengele really always thought himself so much smarter than he truly was. She repressed the urge to scoff. Preserving the eyes of heterochromatic twins, as though that made any use of the mildly unusual genetic disposition involved.

After the end of the war, the dissolution of Auschwitz, she had continued on being a scientist, the life of one the only thing she knew. Later yet came Rapture, her invitation on account of her supposed genius…

Once again she had not been thinking about much beyond her research. The discovery of ADAM, its adverse effects, the creation of the Little Sisters, it had all been just a project for her. A challenge to overcome, a puzzle to be solved- until she looked around and realized what she had done.

This time it had not been too late. She could never make up for what she had done to those children, could not even repent for it without a shred of regret over her actions, but at the very least, the literal least she could do, was to save as many of them as she could, she had thought.

The Little Ones, as she still affectively thought of them, had come to see her as a sort of mother figure, in time. She was a terrible mother, both her initial hypothesis and the result of practical observation agreed. Still, she had done what she could, and after Andrew Ryan, after Sofia Lamb, after Rapture…

After all of it, here she was, back in a lab. But this time, she thought, this time was different. She had her projects, her ideas, her puzzles to delve into what the world hid behind itself… But she was no longer the 'Wunderkind', no longer Rapture's brightest geneticist always meant to push its genetic wonders a step further at a time.

She was simply Brigid Tenenbaum now. Just Brigid, sometimes, when they all felt like foregoing the formalities and especially so when Gabriel was involved. And her Little Ones-

"Mama Brigid, it's time to play!"

Her Little Ones were not all so Little anymore, the second generation of Sisters created by Lamb having grown up to the point of puberty themselves, their minds and bodies stabilized through the treatments she and the Thinker and Gabriel and the team as a whole had devised.

"Just a moment dearie, I need to observe this last sample," she told the girl, just barely holding back a smile.

"You promised, Mama! You have to!"

"Ah, very well, I do believe I did."

In the end, Brigid Tenenbaum was a woman that had never learned from her mistakes. And strangely, as a member of this ragtag group of interdimensionally assembled people, she was still perfectly fine with this.

That said, Riley did have something she wanted to show you, so you go ahead and oblige her while you're at it already.

"What exactly did you do?" Your voice comes out of the speakers, as it usually does these days.

"I made a robot that runs off passenger crystal meat!"

The crystalline monstrosity that one of your basic Hammer robots has become twitches, spontaneously teleporting to the other side of the room.

"See? They're really limited but I can make them have powers!"

"You might want to take a closer look," you point out just as a glimmer of light goes through the crystalline material growing out of the machine's joints, whereupon it simply… falls apart, the stuff slowly crumbling away into dark green-ish sand.

"Oh poo, I was sure I had it this time." Waving her hand, Riley has the cleanup bots take care of the mess, kind of a requirement to have something like them in a laboratory that deals with biological experiments the kind of which not only Riley conducts on the regular. They come with standard plasma throwers and buzzsaws just to make whatever they're cleaning up stay dead while they do it, to say the least. "Ah well, we can still use it for other stuff."

Right, your littlest Biotinker has been working on ways to make use of the stunted passenger material she has been able to synthesize to date, still working on actually cloning the things proper. Note to self, you may have need of a somewhat bigger lab-space for that. "Oh, care to share?"

"This stuff can do great computation, and when I tried it out it produced a super laser that melted everything in the way. Slowly loses mass, but you can just strap it in place of an E.C. and it works like a charm. Also, we need a new west wing, it's flooded."

Another note to self, the massive walls made of titanium alloys are not enough, time to waste a bunch of productivity on generating the adamantium you'll need to replace all of that. "I'll talk to the Thinker about it."

Specifically, you will work together to determine how to make a better system of walls to ensure this kind of thing doesn't happen again. The AI you're pretty much mind-melding with all the time these days concurs. Maybe use some forcefields or something? Just plop down a couple generators and massive amounts of force can still overcome them, but it should work better against the lasers, at least. And chemical weaponry, disintegration… Yeah, you think you know where to start.

While all of this is going on, your de facto private military, the NAN one, you mean, the one you turned your corporate PMC into, is being reorganized a little- nothing too big, there's just a few people being elevated to the office of generals both to make up the supreme command of your armed forces and one each for the four divisions of force therein, ground troops, air, naval and intelligence divisions, then a proper command structure established and so on and so forth.

You're basically structuring the NAN's shared military to be easier for you to wield by simply passing orders to a few select pawns. May as well at this point, honestly.

You're also having some 'surplus equipment' 'lost' due to 'mis-transfers' in order to deliver a bunch of military gear produced in your oversized factory chamber of Saudi Arabia straight all the way to Taiwan. It's not technically standard NAN gear, but that's mostly to ensure deniability.

Now then, to get off your ass and do something in person or to stay in place?

James Smith had done it. There had been some hiccups along the way, as was perfectly normal, of course, but now here he was, having ridden the anti-Nixon sentiment all the way to the top.

Originally only loosely associated with the Democrats, he had dug into the party in short order, using his average charm to press in on anyone that had their own designs with the force of the voters he was generating, as politicians normally did. Ones in his position, at any rate.

The amount of money he was granted access to had allowed him to run a massive media campaign, to spread his own message. And it had been massively influential as well, as the average American truly just wanted a sense of normalcy after the apparent madness of the previous administration- and returning things to normal had been exactly what he had been promising.

The average American's voice would once again be heard, instead of ignored. America would pull out any active wars it was in, finally paying heed to the voices that (rightfully, in his personal opinion, though personal opinions had no place in politics) decried Vietnam as a waste of American lives and money. The economy would instead receive the lion's share of development, as well as governmental attention. Whether its constituents wanted to or not.

It was genius, too. James knew precisely that a corporate takeover was incoming, so growing America's economy merely meant that there would be more of it present to be taken over. It was an efficient use of time and resources.

The money he was given would be tracked eventually, but he had been assured there would be nothing questionable about it and, like any other American, James had simply nodded and left it at that. The small print was best left for the experts and perverts that actually enjoyed navigating the legalese.

So there he was, sitting in the oval office now, having moved in as was protocol. Truth be told, living arrangements in the White house were actually quite cushy, he would have to consider copying some of the style for his own home after his term was over. Potentially terms, depending on how things worked out.

How many presidents had served two terms as opposed to one again and what did that make the average? He would have to look it up later.

Now, days after his landslide victory as a relative newcomer in the highest ranks of politics, President Smith found… that this job was remarkably similar to his old one. Things were a little less personal and he had far fewer people complain to him directly, as the office of the POTUS had people to take care of such things for him, and he had to properly screen his cabinet and all such, but otherwise?

He was still just doing paperwork for most of the day. Much more impactful paperwork that he found himself reading much more carefully before signing off on anything, but the principle of the matter remained the same.

"Still, being the Average President does have a nice ring to it," he mused aloud. "Speaking of…"

There was a lot of legislation for him to implement and the day was still young, so he got right to it. A few of these proposed changes to established law had been with him since before he had joined the conspiracy that had catapulted him to the top, but now he could finally use the full power of the executive branch to make use of these old thoughts.

"The healthcare reform comes first, I do not care how many will scream about socialism. Then comes education and public works, including requisite investment into maintenance of infrastructure by those that built it."

The topics the average man was interested in were the costs of living, of having a family, of raising their kids and their education. This would be a first step along this path, but he had made a lot of promises on campaign… And as the average man rather than the average politician, he was intent on fulfilling at least a few of them.

It's been a while since it's just been you and Sarah, the nice one-on-one time you like to spend with your various lovers having been taken up a bit with the kids being around as well now. Well, and the world domination thing, but really that one's just business as usual in retrospect.

Not that you're about to blame your daughters about this or anything, of course. Having kids was and is a big commitment and you made it knowing full well that they would be a lot of work- if anything, your kids have actually been requiring a lot less of your attention than you'd anticipated.

They're still getting it, of course. Whether they want to or not. They're your kids and you refuse to let them grow up without knowing full well that you, as their dad, stand fully behind them no matter what they want to do with their unlife.

Even if they (and you shudder a little at the mere thought)) end up being vampire vegans and only feed on animal blood or the purely nonlethally extracted kind. In all fairness, you do the latter as well, but more as a matter of convenience as opposed to not wanting to casually kill living people for a meal.

"You should really stop worrying," Sarah says, looking up at you where her head is resting on your lap. "Everything's going fine, Big Gabey."

"Mhm," you make in agreement, fluffing up her hair a little before you stroke it smooth again. "My bad. You know how easily I get riled up when it's about family."

"Yup!" She grins happily, pulling your hand towards her belly. A little below her stomach… "You're the big brother that thinks so much about his little sister he knocked her up, after all!"

"And our daughter is such a beautiful baby girl I can't help but smile every time I think of her. Or of you," you smile, rubbing the place where Serena grew up into a healthy baby vampire once upon a time. "If we were in some fairy tale, this would be our happily ever after, wouldn't it?"

"Sure, the Tale of the Dark Kight and the Evil Princess," your cute Little Sarah snorts. "Ransacking the countryside and retiring with their ill-gotten gains in powers and souls."

"I'd love to read that kind of fairytale sometime." And you mean it, too, sounds like it'd be a blast and teach the really valuable lessons to whoever reads it.

Sarah turns her head and buries her face into your stomach, silently demanding more cuddles. Then, deciding to get them more actively, she twists and shifts, her whole body shrinking a little as she transforms and before you know it, you have a cute, slightly oversized fox sitting on your lap instead, her forepaws on your chest as her wet nose sniffs at your mouth. "Yip!"

You just chuckle and start to thoroughly scratch Sarah's fur, knowing exactly how to react. "Yes, you're a very cute fox, aren't you?"

"Yip!" The cutest, Sarah demands telepathically.

"Oh, I don't know, Serena may have a word to say on that one," you ponder, your crooked grin obvious to see. "She's certainly not as gluttonous as her mother, is she, and her fur does have that nice glow to it…"

"Rrrgh!" More aggressive cuddling commences. You have no regrets.

It's always nice, you think to yourself, when you can be constructive with your own two hands. You know, you're running around, laying additional objectively horrible curses on confused old Chinese people, but sometimes it just feels good to create instead of tear down.

Ah, no, that's a lie, you love tearing everything in sight down! It's, like, one of your hobbies at this point and Mao honestly had it coming already. Still doesn't change that you do enjoy the occasional change of pace.

Hence here you are, flanked by Iris and Ivy as the three of you make a family outing out of the usage of spray cans in as many colors as anyone could wish for. In the dark of night you come, to various cities all over the NAN, choosing walls and floors in public places that have the space to them you need to get creative.

In silent harmony, all three of you work away, spraying your very own murals all over everything in sight. You work three-dimensionally as well, where the opportunity beckons, creating two-dimensional landscapes and castles that seem like they might just be rising out of the ground at every corner.

There's a few amusement parks being erected right at the moment, in fact, whose surroundings are marked by you as well, sceneries of ferris wheels surrounded by bombastic, static fireworks when viewed from a spot down on the ground and small parades of colorfully dressed life-sized figures gesturing towards the park entrances also on your list of completed works now.

Naturally Cryptic Solutions will thoroughly leave these pieces of art be, not that you need to be in control of a given government to have it consider your street art valuable. You also do go right ahead and leave your signature at or near each and every one, your usual G L marking them. Together with, of course, the I I L of your daughters, shared among them like everything else.

None of you speak a single word aloud while you do this, but none of you needs to, in all honesty. That's what telepathy is for. All in all, it's a nice couple hours of shared hobbies between you and the twins, and all of you (whether that makes two or three, you still can't quite say and they aren't telling) agree that you should do things like this more often.

Your artistic endeavors do not end there, however, for you have decided to once more express something using words instead of colors. And no, you don't mean writing another song, the twin had enough to do with the ones you already did and all.

No, instead you shall now direct your artistic virtuoso towards a field you have yet to dabble in at all, though you would like to think some of the dialogue you wrote for that one game you worked on, you know the one, IronCock, has prepared you for this one just a little. Indeed, now that you are looking into instrumentalizing entertainment as a whole and will naturally be directing a lot of funds towards movie studios, well, it follows that you may as well do it right, no?

And doing it right means doing it yourself, that much hasn't changed.

So… Fingers hovering over a keyboard you had constructed down in Rapture just for this very purpose (normally people can just ask the Thinker to do anything digital going on so you have little use for this particular bit of hardware on the regular), you think about what you are going to write.

Something snazzy, that will capture hearts and minds? Maybe some drama, or a comedy, people just do love to laugh after all…

Right. When in doubt, one thing art can always do is imitate real life in some way, the best stories happen naturally and all that. And would you look at that, you already have a very interesting story to tell… Though you will have to mix up the details a bit, of course.

Writing a movie script like you are attempting is a lot different from any writing you've done before (which, given you are an author of some small renown in a dimension or two at least a good bit, you'd say), you believe you can manage and adapt, as you always do. So, here goes…

Darkness. A bit of space at the start for the credits, the actors and the workers behind the scenes and all that, the usual, to the sound of scrabbling, pushing, maybe some grunting that slowly grow louder, as though the camera was panning in. Then, splintering wood, hurried breathing, digging through soft earth.

'When I woke up,' the initial inner monologue that will establish the scene goes, 'I was alone in the dark and confused, with no memories. A blank man, just a guy with no idea what was going on.

That changed quickly, of course.'

You'll have to find an actor with a nice voice for sentences exactly like that, but that's something to be left up to whatever movie director receives the privilege of working with your script.

A hand breaks out of the earth, camera shows the graveyard. A muddled, pale figure claws its way out of the ground, breathing hard- until it stops. It's a dark, rainy night, and off in the distance there's movement.

Instantly the protagonist here turns towards it, licking his lips completely unconsciously. He stalks onward.

Flashes of the next scene only. He rushes in, another man, surprised, drops his flashlight. A scream. Wet, tearing sounds.

The works for when you feed normally, basically. Those were the times, when you basically snuck around everywhere and only fought from ambush.

Next, the bloodied face of the protagonist, shaking himself awake, looking down at the mildly massacred body. He blinks, but then licks his hands clean of the blood now on them.

'That was my first kill. It wouldn't be the last. Far from it.'

Yup, you're basically writing a self insert, of sorts. The plot is simple, a suddenly sociopathic freshly resurrected man seeks to find out what the hell happened to him, why he feeds on blood now and of course how he will make use of his fresh and new supernatural powers, all the while he actually improves the world at large because the system, as it exists, is so broken even he is an improvement over what's there already.

'Slavery. Such a stupid concept. Not because I objected to it- I would have, before, but that didn't matter anymore. No, it's stupid because it's inefficient. Any slave does not earn their own money even though they could, meaning they generate no taxes, do much less work than they could… A couple hundred years ago, sure, it would've made sense. But unless you're stuck in those times, today it just makes much more sense to treat them like anyone else.

Hell, everyone is cattle when you're at the top anyways. That much hasn't changed, either.'

Yup, a very much sympathetic and unobjectionable protagonist you're working out here. There will be a rise to power, betrayals and unexpected turns along the way, a rags to riches type of thing going from petty crime to being the CEO of a powerful company turned politician… Pretty much everything you could want.

As per usual, of course, your crusade to slowly take over the world must be furthered while you're at it already, eventually more or less satisfied with the screenplay you put together to the point you decide you probably can't improve it by making more changes; it's a point any piece of writing eventually reaches, really, as long as you keep on going back and editing it.

You'll have it sent off to a convenient movie studio later. Interestingly, stories about a certain 'G. L.' have actually spread a good bit around certain circles, so you making sure to add your 'signature' like that should have people sit up and pay attention, at least.

There've been a few pretenders and fakes of your work already, by the way. You didn't bother doing anything about either, it's just part of this little myth you're looking to build up. Maybe you should paint a little again one of these days, see if you can't elicit a bit of a reaction somewhere…

But back to more world domination, you're looking at Britain next. On Earth Bet, the English royal family kind of got put into permanent quarantine when the Simurgh attacked London in 2003, but here and now they're still around and kind of a huge deal for most of the population.

Minimal actual political power, of course, but you can exert a lot of pressure as long as you get the current queen on board simply on account of her popularity with Britain's people.

So you go ahead and vet the royal family, but as it turns out the queen is and remains the most promising candidate for inclusion in your little club after some investigation; as long as you don't fuck with Great Britain too much, she'll generally cooperate and even work towards spreading your influence, it looks like.

You give Sarah a good, long kiss before you send her off again, as your cutest little sister did help you a lot with this whole thing. Her power is just completely invaluable for things like this.

Now all you need to-

Oh fuck you Mao, it's been less than twelve hours why are you trying to blow up your own capital with a nuke now you fuck?!

Okay. Going over events as they happened according to the Wraiths you have on China's government at the moment, your curse hit Mao just as you expected and almost immediately, things started to go sideways for him, as his already shaky mental stability was impacted by anyone he considered an ally to communism (as he started identifying as communism or something, you aren't quite a hundred percent sure here) leaving him one by one, from his point of view.

Most of them just took a step back and told him he may have been going too far with his policies in service of communism, but that was more than enough to trigger him at this point. In his defense, you have been making sure to tax his nerves whenever you could, including past curses that were meant to manipulate him into becoming the unstable mess that he is today.

Then there was the part of your curse where you tried to discourage him from doing anything about it. The exact wording was something along the lines of '(may) your resolution fail'. Sadly, it seems in his case it was the basic resolution to not completely explode and go nuts that failed the moment your curse pushed against him.

So now he's been ordering the executions of as many members of the communist party he is heading as he can while also instructing military personnel to prepare a nuclear warhead to be used to 'cleanse Beijing with the flames of our glorious revolution'. Yes, he actually thinks that way now, something you are mildly proud of even as it's kind of a minor issue.

Your Wraiths alerted you the moment this shitshow started and it's been, like, ten minutes at most since Mao started to lose his shit. You can still use this, you just have to act quickly now.

Luckily enough, you always did do your best work when improvising a plan on the spot, especially with the pieces moved into place well in advance as you have here. Within half an hour, or so you hope, you shall have everything moving as you need it to, now all that's left is your own part in this play.

Nora is already on her way, by the way, getting into position and killing off a few military officials while she's at it. Rely on her to have her priorities straight, huh?

Anyways, the first thing you do as you have yourself teleported right behind Mao is to eat Mao, tearing a few chunks out of his screaming throat as you go. A few people come in to investigate, but you've already overlaid him by this point, ordering them out immediately.

You do not even try to hide the dead body you kick off to the side. They still obey you without a second thought.

Arranging for a proper Address To The People, you soon find yourself standing in front of a podium, knowing full well that right this moment everything you're saying and doing is broadcast worldwide thanks to the efforts of your minions, every nation having access to this footage.

You have to hold back a smile, if anything. You can almost imagine the musical accompaniment to this moment, something fitting to the occasion and all.

https/watch?v=eduwBgDcMwY

"People of the world," you say in as clear Chinese as you can, to make it easier for the translators. "Today is the day of reckoning. For too long have despicable Soviet and American spies filled the ranks of the Glorious Chinese People. From this day onward, all of mankind shall be utterly equal, as Communism prescribes."

You do not stare into the camera. No, you glare into it, expressing such an utter contempt towards those on the other side of the screen you hope they can feel it. As you do so, you also consider gesturing, but no, not yet.

"Beijing and Hong Kong are full of Traitors To The People. All of them must be punished, eradicated and their very ashes wiped out. None will be spared. Man, woman and child shall be elevated to the status of Martyrs as this punishment is executed. Thus is the Will Of The People!"

A raised fist, now slowly lowered. You have a few more things to say.

"The Soviet Dogs have betrayed the Will Of The People, as well. They, too, must not be spared their just punishment, and thus it will be executed. The Americans, despicable foreigners, shall also be punished. All nations in this world that have refused the salvation of Communism, with no exceptions, must be cleansed of their impurity."

You know that, as you speak, nukes are being readied. You also know they will not fly under any circumstances, you literally do have people on it. Including Sarah and your kids.

"The so-called Neutral Nations, especially, will be punished severely for their refusal to accept Communism. For their refusal to stand Judgement. As I speak, Chinese nuclear weapons are being armed and readied to destroy all Enemies Of The Glorious Revolution Of the People. None will escape. Especially not those snakes that sought to spread their venom in the heart of Communism!"

Your voice has slowly been rising, but now you are downright shouting, presenting a completely deranged, if still utterly hateful demeanor, visage twisted by hatred.

"No punishment can be enough! Not for your crimes! You will die, and you will suffer, until all are made equal! This I vow in the name of Communism! In The Name Of The People, All Shall Be Eradicated! There can be No Peace, No Freedom, No Future! There Can Only Be Those That Refuse Our Guidance And Their Just Punishment! I, Great Leader Mao, Guiding Hand Of The People Of China, Hereby Declare That-"

Your aura is lowered. Your toughened skin, withdrawn as best you can. The bullets hit you in the side of the head, penetrating through your skull and exiting through its other side, high-calibre firepower resulting in clean penetrations. Two shots ring out, stopping your rant short, your body falling to the side as though completely dead.

Which it is, technically, as you weren't alive in the first place. Hah. Vampire humor. But really, playing dead is as easy as letting your eyes go all glassy as your control over your body ceases exerting any part of itself.

Nora proceeds to methodically eliminate a few more people while emphatically leaving several witnesses of the shooting, all of whom flee in short order- anyone that stays behind still does get shot. Then, shooting out the cameras and ensuring you are not being filmed live anymore, she gives you the all-clear.

You shake out your head, a few bone fragments falling off while your regeneration fixes everything. "Ugh, this seriously sucks, just for the record," you grumble, slowly transforming back to your usual self. "Not having a brain is shit, I basically had all sensory input completely shut off for a bit there."

"Oh don't be such a baby, I'll kiss it better later," Nora smiles, coming closer to give you a hug. "If it helps you feel better, you really nailed the performance."

"I didn't put it on too thick?" You ask. "I tried to do it tastefully and all, but it's always really hard to judge when you're the one doing it."

"People will eat it up, believe me. Now let's get going on turning China into Cryptic Solution's backyard kingdom, hm? Lots of work to do."

"That's what we have human puppets for, duh. They better be on the ball after I made such a big deal about all of this."

Within hours, things are in full swing. With China's command, militarily and otherwise, completely out of the picture, Taiwan launches an invasion, though it is being termed more as humanitarian aid and seeking assurance that no nuclear weapons are going to fly. After your performance, literally nobody is willing to trust a word coming out of China proper, such that the world at large supports this effort, even.

James Smith, your convenient puppet president over in the US, immediately launches into applying international pressure to de-escalate the Chinese situation, declaring that no troops from the United States shall be sent from Japan as long as all other nations in the area vow to follow suit until this entire mess is sorted out.

The Soviet Union grumbles, but ultimately has as little interest in seeing nukes blowing up entire cities as anyone else, so de-escalation is agreed upon as the overall response to Mao's stunt.

Well, technically you did it, but Mao caused it to happen so that's what you're calling it now and nobody can stop you.

The 'invasion' of China is as such actually more like the original Russian Revolution; the Taiwanese you've managed to indirectly whip into a frenzy (as they're very well aware they would be one of the first targets should the Chinese military begin nuclear bombardments) just kind of… walk in and take things over, with nobody really trying to stop them.

Naturally, NAN media is flooding the news with the whole affair, including footage of the sudden mobilization to save the world from the mad tyrant you portrayed Mao as (not that your acting was off the mark for him or anything, really). It doesn't take long for reports of the Chinese population to make its way back, of course, in no small part thanks to the reporters riding along with the Taiwanese troops driving tank and armored jeeps (some of which you may have been lending out, so what).

An official request from Taiwan come in for Cryptic Solutions not long thereafter; thanks to your immense logistics network, you can fulfill it, too, and source and deliver massive amounts of food to the entirety of China, a feat that is soon considered on par with some of the greatest organized operations in history, from the crossing of the Alps on down.

To be fair, not everyone has tens of thousands of planes and pilots for them literally lying around just in case. Or ships, or delivery cars, or preserved foodstuff that can last for decades just in case there's a famine or two going on. The official stance the company takes is that Cryptic Solutions is, at all times, prepared to undertake humanitarian aid missions, as despite their neutrality humanitarian aid remains one of the NAN's greatest interests on the global stage.

You do totally just rely on the Thinker to plan the whole thing out, though, not gonna lie. You could grab Henley and Sarah and personally plan this entire thing out, but damn you're glad you don't have to.

Once again, you are the hero of the day, even if nobody really knows it. It's almost a shame, but hey, at least you get to de facto own China, now, with official NAN-membership already being bandied about. In no small part thanks to the numerous contracts Cryptic Solutions is receiving, from securing food for any and all citizens of the nation to rebuilding and just completely building things from the round up.

Several Chinese cities certainly could use a bit of a dust-off, a few new and improved buildings, apartment complexes after the CS style you basically set out to optimize the concept of an apartment complex with contemporary materials, maybe some spontaneous city re-planning to ensure greater efficiency in the flow of people and goods…

Honestly though, you have to plan out where and how what stuff is being stored, to accommodate shops and restaurants and all those things which in turn have to accommodate the steady ebb and flow of traffic of those that wish to make use of them.

Honestly, though, if northern Africa didn't offer itself as such a great target at the time, you really could've considered starting out your world domination game in China instead, local culture and understanding of government basically has people comply with whatever demands Cryptic Solutions has for them, making the whole process of rebuilding and cultural integration procedures go much, much smoother.

The soviets don't exactly like this entire thing going on, but with your friend Mila running around talking to a few of the officials he has access to and international pressure to let things in China play out as they will so strong after the collective heart attack the world had during your short, but poignant speech as Mao, there's not exactly much being done about this entire thing other than to watch.

All the while you can pull your usual spiel. As it should be, really.

After all this work, however, you personally have decided to screw this entire noise and instead go back home to relax a little. You aren't being whiny about letting Nora blow your brains out, shaddup, you just figured you should use your time to be with your family.

So here you are, inside one of several rooms you set aside for your own use around the rebuilt parts of Rapture, enough space for an arcology or two being present by this point in the Thinker's apparent obsession with continuously expanding your secret base so you can have your own lavish bedrooms pretty much everywhere and nobody notices because you have just that much space to fill out.

And with you are all four of your daughters (or three if you count the twins as one, whatever). The ambience is pretty nice and cozy, with wide swathes of red silk covering the entire room, couches, beds, the carpet, even dozens of enormous pillows all over the place are in the same warm red, your choice of interior decoration made a lot easier thanks to being able to just fabricate infinite amounts of whatever materials and finished products you could want as always.

Lilian, Serena, Iris and Ivey, all of them are there with you, making themselves at home all around you. "If there's one thing I really regret about not being able to be awake during this extended visit to this particular dimension," you tell them, "it is that I can't actually cuddle all of you like you deserve to be. You know, be there for you physically as well as mentally."

"Aww, did you hear that? Daddy wants to cuddle~!" Serena grins, hopping up to throw herself at you. "Don't worry, we all get it. You give us enough love just by being there normally."

See, that's the issue. Your daughters consider it normal for you to be more just a voice in the back of their heads rather than a proper father hovering over them with a WMD in hand just in case. You are very discontent with this.

"Father, there is something we want that you have neglected to provide, in fact," Iris says, her and Ivy getting up to come closer, the two cooperating to left Serena out of your lap again and depositing her off to the side. Much to her pouting, but she's had worse, you must address this first.

"Say the word and I will do it," you declare. In response, one of the twins grabs the waistband of your loose cloth pants, ripping them in twain while the other does much the same to your shirt, violently stripping you. "Ah."

You can't get out another word as Ivy wraps her arms around your shoulders, sealing your mouth off with a kiss, whereas Iris kneels between your legs, slender hands seeking your now revealed cock.

"Ohh, look'a'that, our sisters are pretty forward, huh?" Serena nudges Lilian, who is quietly watching.

"I like what I am seeing," your eldest daughter comments, eyes refusing to leave the scene playing out before her.

You, meanwhile, are busy wrangling one twin's tongue, wrestling it into submission despite how slippery it is, all the while a moist, hot mouth is wrapping itself around your cock, easily taking your entire length into itself until Iris is deepthroating you, the vampiric prerogative of not being alive making it literal child's play for her not to gag.

You're slowly stripping both of them as this happens, of course. Their bodies are slender, but still cute and appealing in their own right, and both of them shudder at your touch sliding over their pale skin regardless of whose skin it is.

You're pinching Ivy's nipples, gently tugging on them, when Iris draws back, letting your now thoroughly lubricated cock free after just a few bobs up and down her throat. Then she leans down, holding your absolutely, fully erect rod up straight and licks your balls, Ivy swinging a leg over your lap to lower herself onto it.

She sighs aloud, moaning in unexpected pleasure, when your tip meets her slim, hairless maidenhood. Oh, wait, they're your daughters but they're also your daughters, you can just call it her pussy like normal.

"We love you, father," she tells you, looking you deep in the eyes. Then, shifting her grip on your shoulders for leverage, she gets ready for the next step. "We love you a lot."

Iris' hands take hold of her twin sister's hips so she can pull her down, hard, spearing her onto your cock as both their teenage-looking bodies writhe, Ivy's legs now crosing over the back of your waist.

""Daddyyyy!""

"Mhm," you make, hugging her back and groping her butt, lovingly covering her neck ad shoulder with kisses. "Take your time, get used to it before we get started."

""No!"" Both twins look at you, pleading eyes reminiscent of small felines. ""Do it now! As hard as you can! We want it all!""

You chuckle, shifting grips to better handle your daughter. "Pretty sure you get that from me, actually. But very well, here goes."

You lift Ivy and slam her back down onto your cock with full force, roughly driving a small flood of her natural lubrication out of her as you force her insides to become rather closely acquainted with the shape of your cock.

"You're my daughters. And if you want it so much, I'll make you my women as well," you growl, perfectly aware that this was a long time coming. It's just how things work for you.

The twins are very… enthusiastic in their consent, taking turns kissing either yourself or each other, one of them always bouncing on your lap, clinging to you as they go. You can definitely feel both of them (or both of their bodies, whatever) come around you several times throughout, your daughters' pliable flesh perfectly willing to respond to your every move as you pound up into them.

You don't exactly hold back yourself, either. While Iris and Ivy are throwing themselves at you, ravenously trying to get as much of your cock into themselves as they can, you also reciprocate, pulling them down onto yourself and letting their tight pussies milk your cock of load after load of cum, heavy seed pumped into them time and time again as they shudder pleasantly in your arms.

The advantage of doing it with your twin daughters is that not a single drop gets wasted, one of them always there and ready to lick it up as it is pressed out around your manhood, out of the tight orifice you spew your cum into, your moaning daughters all too happy to get rather very close to each other indeed.

They're slender young women now, pale but perfectly healthy-looking all the same, their usually dispassionate faces twisted into happy, lustful visages as they get everything they bargained for and more. At some point you just twist around, throwing Iris onto where you were sitting previously to really, properly pound into her, her arms and legs both wrapping around you as you lovingly piston into her depths with her back against soft upholstery. ""Daddy! Daddyyy!""

The real thing, as opposed to downloaded memories of it, still seems to be too much for them, eventually. Despite their undead endurance, Iris and Ivy wind up lying on the couch with their limbs spread widely sometime after orgasm number one hundred and sixty, silly smiles on their faces, blue and yellow eyes respectively still tracking you, but mostly vacant.

You chuckle a little at that, leaning over them to give each a brief goodnight kiss onto their foreheads, uncaring about your still hard and slick cock rubs against their bodies in the process. "Guess my little princesses are all tuckered out already, after all."

"Nn~!" The sound has you turn towards Serena, your second daughter standing there completely naked after having discarded her clothes while you were focusing elsewhere. Her blonde hair is falling freely down her back, fox ears perked up happily even as her tail is swishing in curious anticipation. "I'm still up, daddy."

"I can see that," you smile, eyeing her up and down even as you receive feelings of stoic patience from Lilian's direction. "You also want to play a little before bedtime?"

"Ehehe~! Of course I wanna!" A head or two shorter than you still, Serena's breasts are well past the stage you'd call them 'budding', her body physically somewhere between girl and woman; she has a little hourglass figure coming in already that distinctly reminds you of both your own female form and how Sarah look like these days. "Let's play lots and lots, daddy!"

She really does enjoy playing up that angle, doesn't she? Obliging, you take a step towards her, lifting her up into your arms with both hands on her well-developed bubble butt, only stopping midway through to give her a deep kiss, with tongue, your bodies rubbing against each other, before you lift her all the way to where you can nibble and lick at her puffy nipples, your blonde daughter cooing in delight.

"Ahh~, you like my titties, daddy?"

"I love 'em," you growl happily. "Just like your mother's. And just as sensitive…"

"Hehe, buuut, there's another place too…" Serena wiggles her hips, her hot honeypot rubbing against the head of your cock still covered in her sisters' fluids, a hard nub particularly standing out to your senses. Her ears are twitching cutely all the while. "Gotta make love to me properly…"

"Aww, my naughty little sweetheart, of course I will." And just like that you flex your own hips, your hard rod angled just right to slowly pierce into her depths, warm fluid oozing over it as you open her up.

"Ah! Ah!" Clawed nails rake over your back, twitching flesh engulfing your cock. "Daddy! You're so big inside me!"

"I'd hope so, wouldn't be any use being my usual size otherwise," you smirk, her folds spread over your girth, her body eager to gobble you up. "You feel very good for me, too."

You're balls deep inside of Serena before long, your daughter moaning and panting freely, snuggling up to you for all she's worth. She trusts you implicitly, letting herself be dragged and pulled up and down your cock, needily nibbling at your neck and upper chest, reduced to the desire for more.

You fuck her hard and fast, not willing to disappoint her, squeezing and groping her soft butt as you do. She lets out a small scream as she comes for the first time within your arms, only for your pace to keep her right there at the peak, wet, squelching noises ringing out every time you thrust inside of her while letting her fall upon your spear, splotches of her fluids splattering onto the ground even as her big, fluffy tail waves excitedly.

You seed her, too, just like you did her sisters. You look her in the eyes, lips locked in mutual lust, as you do, spurt after spurt of your approval filling her up.

She doesn't last any longer than the twins before her mind simply shuts down due to too much pleasure, but she did manage to wring a good few loads out of you beforehand. You let her rest with the already tuckered-out daughters, her cute little pussy on full display as it slowly leaks glob after glob of white.

That still does leave one more daughter left conscious, your eldest and certainly curviest to date. Not that it's a competition or anything, you just make it a point to keep track in the back of your head for fun.

Liliann has been watching along as you screwed her sisters into what amounts of unconsciousness for vampires, the scientifically speaking impossible phenomenon still persisting with your offspring. You do wonder how long it will take them to recover…

"Father. I have a request," the black-haired vampire says, shrugging her clothes off slowly. "I would like to clean you with my mouth first."

"You hardly need to ask for permission for that," you smile, watching as she gets on her knees. Your eldest has the figure of a young woman, decidedly, but where the twins are slender and lithe, Lilian has some massive curves, with a large pair of breasts expanding at her front each nearly the size of her head.

Her skin is just as milky pale as the twins' and equally soft, the added plush at strategically chosen parts of her body making her look exceedingly womanly in comparison; with a proper hourglass figure and wide hips that would probably be considered 'birthing hips' a couple decades or centuries ago plus legs that just do not quit, not to mention her soft, large ass to round her figure out, Lilian could be perhaps adequately described as 'sex on legs', except the legs are also sex and you will make the head of anyone objectifying your daughter that is not you or related to you explode on the spot.

She's also absolutely beautiful in terms of her face alone, perfectly symmetrical with pretty, pouty lips and sharp contours to her jaw, deep red eyes drawing in anyone that so much as glances them. In short, yeah, your daughter is a complete looker.

A looker that is now kneeling before you, giving you a questioning look as a slender hand takes hold of your slicked-up dick, her long tongue snaking from between said lips to lick along the underside of your manhood, showing a small flash of white teeth. "I was just thinking about how beautiful you are," you explain, fingers almost involuntarily coming up to stroke through her long, dark hair, its ends curled like there was no tomorrow. "Not that I'm surprised. Everyone is really a twelve out of ten, aren't they?"

"Nhn," Lilian agrees, dragging her wet tongue over your hard cock, the proof of you fucking her sisters stupid taken with it. Swallowing, she nods, a smile obvious on her face. "They are."

That take care of, she leans forward to lather your balls up with her saliva as well, absolutely thorough in her approach on this task she's set herself all the while keeping it fun. Working her away up along your base and shaft, she finally ends up where she started, pressing a chaste kiss against your tip before simply opening them and plunging forwards, her long tongue wrapping across your shaft even as she deepthroats your cock in one go.

Once again you are assaulted with the airless tightness of one of your daughters' throats, Lilian's mouth methodically slathering her saliva all over you, the taste of what you already did left behind as she pulls back, looking good even as her lips are wrapped around your length, finally popping open after a last lick over your head. "Mhm. Nice and slick," she declares, fingertips running over your veiny rod with a feather-light touch.

"I suppose so, yes," you say with a smirk, knowing full well that you were perfectly lubed-up already. She just wanted an excuse for licking your cock clean of her sisters' fluids. "What now?"

"You already know," she accuses you, casually letting herself fall on her back, the soft carpet cushioning her nicely. Vampires don't really need to care about that kind of thing, but it's still generally better to be comfy than to have hard surfaces everywhere, even if sex on them doesn't cause serious pain or damage.

"I know," you confirm. "I want to hear it from you anyways."

"…" Her hands in the crooks of her knees, Lilian pull her legs back, her wet, puffy pussy on full display- just as her asshole, pink and twitching shyly. "I want you in my ass, father. You already did the others from the front, so I want you to take this virginity first."

"And?" You tease, following her to the ground, looming over your surprisingly shy daughter's form.

"And Serena enjoys eating out my ass, so I wish to make her fellate your cock afterwards," she admits, pouting. "Boarding school taught me a lot about her preferences."

"It's cute to see how close you are with your sister," you smile, kneeling and adjusting your angle. "Not that she doesn't enjoy eating you out normally, either."

"Mm," she makes, looking up at you impatiently. "Please fuck my ass, father."

"With pleasure," you growl. Teasing has its time and place, but you aren't going to not fuck your daughter like she wants, now are you?

You push yourself into her back entrance, slowly spreading the delicate muscle of her asshole open with your cock. Lilian groan and moans, her feet coming to a rest next to your own as you kneel in front of her, and her eyes tell you all the things she's too shy to say out loud.

Such as how much she loves you. Or how good it feels to feel her rectum slowly filled with the same cock that made her. You still do send some teasing thoughts her way as you go, it goes without saying, just because of how cute your silly eldest daughter is being.

Lilian's asshole is tight and sweltering, even compared to the orifices you've been fucking so far today, a vice-like grip trying to keep in place you have to fight against to make even the slightest bit of progress. That said, she still is a vampire- you can be a lot rougher with her than you could a human, and so you simply push into her using your supernatural strength, her own unnaturally strong inner musculature still not enough to hold you back wholesale.

She grunts every time you push into her, the mild pain she's experiencing only serving to make the pleasure better; her arms are stretched out, pulling at your hips as she wants more. Something she's rapidly losing compunctios about showing.

"Daddy," she moans sweetly before she can stop herself, "more! Please, more, do it harder, daddy!"

Your response is to bunker down, hands on her shoulders to keep her in place- then you start rutting, Lilian's entire body shaken with the force of your first thrust just as surely as every one that follows, pouty lips forming an 'o', eyes wide open as she quickly approaches her first orgasm under your attentions.

"I'm gonna- daddy, I'm gonna cum!" Clutching you close, she cries out, completely losing all restraint. "You're making me cum, daddyyyy!"

You stay still, almost your entire cock buried inside of her ass, as she clenches up, her entire body overcome with the rush she is experiencing. As a vampire, she could just suppress it all easily enough, of course, but… Well, that's only really useful when you don't want to feel good for whatever reason.

"That was number one," you whisper when she finally comes off her high. A kiss finds its way onto her forehead, between her sweeping eyebrows and her carefully laid-out hair, now messed up quite a bit. "Let's see how many I can fuck into you before we're done."

Lilian doesn't say anything. She just hides her face in the crook of your neck and nods. So cute, for all that she plays cold and unmoved normally.

So, suffice to say, to make good on your words, just keeping her from moving as you fuck her, too, completely silly, pumping your cum deep inside of her butt every time you feel yourself coming close. By the time she can't focus her crimson eyes anymore, Lilian sports a little belly, bloated just a bit from the amount of seed you came into her over dozens of times, considerable load undiminished during each single one.

You only pull yourself out once it becomes clear your sweet, sweet daughter isn't cognizant enough to really have fun anymore, her asshole, much like her lips, you smirk in absurdist humor, producing a little 'pop' when your head leaves it.

"So that was pretty hot," Serena comments, playing with the cum she's still leaking. She, as well as the twins, woke up halfway through, but they didn't wat to interrupt.

""Time for another round,"" the latter decide.

"Nuh-uh, first I have a cock to suck," your blonde daughter points out, completely unashamed about wanting to do exactly what Lilian wanted earlier. Not that she should be, you're all a very happy family, after all. "You can have daddy again when I'm done. Maybe."

You already knew your daughters would be insatiable. It goes without saying, seeing as they're, well, your daughters.

Time to sate the insatiable for a bit.

Now then, your own exceedingly horny daughters aside (and man, they are absolutely horny, you're pretty sure being undead and able to copulate theoretically indefinitely is a prerequisite to the degrees of unceasing desire they exhibited over the past couple hours by the time you finally managed to satisfy all of them), there is a lot of stuff going on around your place. Both in terms of general things happening and, well, more sex.

The Thinker, the artificial intelligence that may well be permanently fused with your subconscious with how closely you've been melding over these past couple of years, the many things you need to keep doing to keep track of everything going on filtered through her, has been quite busy, as ever, but so has everyone else- Curie has a couple of projects she is working on these days, seeking ways to cure or prevent ever more maladies of the human condition, Riley has been digging deep into ways to create more and more utter abominations against what's good and right and Brigid, for her part, is improving on the combined use of ADAM and FEV, among other things, to modify living beings in ever more and deeper ways, for instance.

Not that only research is being done, of course. Henley, who has made a sort of lair of parchment and computer screens in a corner of Rapture Reborn (one of several names you're workshopping for your base, don't mind it) by this point as he controls a significant part of this dimension's global commerce from afar, Sarah frequently takes trips around the world with Nora to see new sights and pick up souls here and there that seem like they might come in handy, and even Mark Meltzer has been working on improving himself, becoming a sort of competent teacher for the Little Sisters and later the Big Ones as well, despite his apprehension towards them that took literal years to resolve.

Which brings you to how the Sisters are doing, doesn't it? Well, good news first, the Big Sisters are still majorly affected by accumulated trauma and trend towards aggression whenever anything startles them or they're in any bad mood, but outside of that they've begun to use simple sentences, actually growing capable of verbal communication and all.

They're recovering, as you had been hoping they would. It's simply taking a really long time, but this is the safest way to help them get over what happened to them and the way they grew up. Most of them were actually born or grew up in Rapture, as best you've been able to find out, never knowing a world outside of this twisted underwater paradise you've since suborned and remade in your own image, even before the memory erasure procedures.

They've also taken towards using several arenas and battleground simulation areas you and the Thinker decided to build to 'work out' by way of fighting each other. It's certainly impressive to watch, if nothing else, and thanks to their significant regenerative capabilities there's little they can really do to permanently hurt each other, even before factoring in aura, despite the variety and strength of plasmids present on every side of those fights.

They basically derive pride from how strong they are, a sort of warrior culture developing from the mutated, slowly un-brainwashed young women you're taking care of. It shouldn't really surprise you or anything.

Meanwhile, the Little Sisters… have been growing up, just as the first generation did. While the mental alterations are slowly being undone, work you mostly attribute to Brigid on the scientific side and everyone together on the therapeutic positive environment side, to the point you're fairly sure they're nearly completely free of the mannerisms and behavior that were forced on them, the physical alterations continue to do their work still.

Not that any of them are all too bad. Yes, they're a bit clumsier than normal kids growing up into teenagers as their limbs are growing at an accelerated pace due to the amounts of HGR their symbiote-slugs are causing their glands to generate, but all in all they're actually doing a lot better than the first generation of Sisters did at their stage.

Mostly because you're actually feeding them lot of ADAM and whatever other foods they want, you reckon. Once they're out of their Little Sister stage proper, the amount of ADAM they regurgitate after drinking blood or other substances filled with it drastically lowers, so the 'previous administration(s)' just didn't do so, considering it a waste of ADAM, but as you don't exactly give a fuck, well…

Let's just say their development is going a lot easier and smoother, going by what records Gil Alexander put together before turning into Alexander the Great. Whom is mostly playing with robots these days, as engineering was actually always one of his hobbies, by the way. It's how a few good additions to the Big Daddy suits happened way back when and how Big Sister diving suits came to be, improvised out of available equipment at the time.

But back to the Little Sisters, who are not so little anymore now, having aged more or less normally within the past couple years. Not all of them launched into full-on puberty yet, but enough of them did that their… enthusiasm for certain activities seems to be infectious for the other ones, either way.

Yes, you are saying that they're all very horny (and arguably completely adult, in case you still missed the disclaimers and comments about this) girls now that they're growing up. Hornier than they were before, anyways.

All of this long-winded thinking and reminiscing ultimately brings you back around to the practical issues and challenges you see yourself confronted with. Though, granted, it's not so much a problem as it is you doing as you've always done.

"Big brother Angel~, ahhh!" The nickname the girls gave you way back when ended up sticking, your status as a corpse and their programming to seek out corpses only providing a starting point, of sorts. Not that you particularly mind, of course.

The Sisters are a far cry compared to the state you found them in, of course. The filthy, blood-caked dresses and hair are a long-forgotten memory, a healthy supply of everything their bodies need giving their pallid skin a healthy glow while still remaining unnaturally pale, their eyes shining a healthy, satisfied glow these days. Especially so, of course, when they are satisfied.

"You're so big, big brother! So big inside me! It's so gooood!"

So here you are, the Little Sisters steadily growing up having surrounded you to demand their satisfaction, most of them wearing nothing at all now, or else only very lacy suggestions of any clothing not meant to tease and entice rather than conceal.

"I'll make you feel a lot better before you know it," you grunt, your cock drilling into one of them pinned against the nearest wall, making a game out of seeing how quickly you can drive their eyes into going half-lidded, then unseeing.

You have an audience, of course, girls with blonde hair, black and brunette, all crowding around looking forward to a piece of the action, 'playing' or chatting with each other to kill the time. You happen to know the Big Sisters are currently determining who gets you see you when with gladiatorial matches, so you better have all of these girls lying in puddles with big smiles on their little faces before long!

As it turns out you can, in fact, counteract even the rapidly increased libidos of the Little Sisters clamoring for 'attention' with enough time and effort, the girls' happy giggling, sighing and cooing adding to the ecstatic screams of the ones you're fucking just as silly as you did your daughters.

They're growing up, but most of them are still fairly short and compact compared to yourself, happily letting you pick them up and cuddling close as you penetrate them, their pubescent bodies responding eagerly to your dick sliding into and spreading them open.

Burgeoning breasts require massaging and fondling, cute butts only just beginning to put on extra weight moulding around your cock as you fuck them as well, everyone getting a taste of you whichever way they want the most. As you do this, holding the Little Sisters that really aren't quite so little anymore close or else holding them down to their great enjoyment, the other ones nearby also rub themselves against you, their hands on your muscles or your balls, a pair of lips or two often kissing and licking the latter.

You also kiss and cuddle as you go, naturally, no matter how balls-deep you're buried inside one of the girls. They each take several rounds with you before they're satisfied and rest for a while, each time you're pulling out being greeted by a few of them licking you clean just like they (presumably) saw Lilian do it through memory transfer.

Stil, even dozens of growing Little Sisters are tuckered out eventually… Just in time for the Big Sister to come and extract their pound of flesh, or rather their portion of the fucking. You notice this by way of one of them jumping you from above (you saw it coming and were prepared, but still) in order to kiss you madly, the young woman's hand already wrapping around your cock.

If there's one thing you can count on with Big Sisters, it's their brutal enthusiasm, glowing eyes close to your own as she hisses pleasurably, muscles all throughout her slim body rippling as she lowers herself onto your cock, still hard as per usual, her tongue waving through the air momentarily. "Yeeessssss… !"

"Time for round two, now with extra fervour?" You ask, smiling as you get a handful of nice butt, the Sister's breasts rubbing against you, her hard nubs dragged over your skin. She just grins, leaning in for another kiss while your manhood sinks deeper into her, bumping against the hard spot of her womb.

By the time you're done, you add the sprawled-out forms of happy Big Sisters to the Little variants, many of them cuddling with one another. It's actually pretty cute and you'll add it to your memory album right away.

Finally, after all your trying duties as a husband, father and kind of weird foster father slash brother slash sugar daddy slash toy boy for everyone involved have been concluded for the day, you have a bit of a downtime, just an open space in your schedule you didn't bother planning out in-depth; Sarah is busy instigating a church-burning somewhere in New England and the company is running itself as it is meant to, so you don't even need to cuddle up to a foxy sister to keep her happy and calm.

You think she may have been extra motivated from the shared sensations of you screwing your daughters, or else she just felt like making people blow up a church. It could be both, really, she's always worked through her urges a little… differently.

Either way, here you are, with a bit of time on your hands and nothing particularly urgent to do. Hence you shortly find yourself sitting in a wide, mostly empty room with Nora, the two of you naturally gravitating towards each other over background telepathy.

The place is empty safe for a single table right in the middle, not too big nor too small, the exact right size for two people to share a meal in an intimate setting. There is no light, of course, neither of you needing it, and you're eating nice, crispy fries with a side of freshly pressed blood, taken from Riley's special mix of suffering…

Well, a bunch of people you kind of chose as a community activity. Most of them are the worst that humanity had to offer- you're feeding off of rapists, child murderers, fascists and idealogues of all kinds, USSR political prison wardens, lawyers and, of course, particularly active members of HOAs.

Homeowners Associations truly are the worst of the worst mankind has to offer. They're also easier to disappear than the kinds of people that profit off of throwing people into prison at every chance they get because privatized prison systems are a horrible idea. You had only so many slots to fill with types of people and they weren't voted highly enough, so they simply didn't make it into the flesh chunk of constant suffering Riley replicated in this dimension as well.

"So, you've been pretty busy, hm?" Your wifely lover is taking great joy in slowly devouring her fries, crunching them between her teeth and savoring the flavor. Not that you do any different- it took you weeks of acting through the Thinker to get your manufactories to do them right, but it was absolutely worth it. "All the girls on base, and you haven't come to visit me or Sarah yet? Or even Riley, the poor dear's pretty pent up."

"You know how it is, you let them dangle for long enough, they'll come back for more eventually," you shrug, smiling. "I don't mean to neglect anyone, of course, but it really was high time I sat down with the girls and took care of them properly."

It goes unsaid what girls you mean exactly- your daughters are so important to both of you it's self-explanatory.

"Oh, I'm not complaining, don't get me wrong- it's a good thing you're a proper father for them," Nora smirks, poking a finger at your collarbone. "They need a good, proper male role model, there's only so much I can do to keep the twins in line."

"Not Serena?" You ponder.

"No, not Serena. She's a sweetheart and she knows her boundaries." Nora takes a sip from the straw that leads straight to a blood tank outside of the room itself, one hanging ready for each of you. "She might go too far if she lets her fun go to her head, but the twins are the ones that will look at the line and step right over it unless someone points a stick at them."

You smirk, knowing full well she considers all your kids to be her own daughters- just as Sarah does, though your sister likes to portray herself a the more 'fun mom' between them.

"So it takes either Lilian or your 'stick', is all I'm saying. And I know full well you'd let them get away with just about anything."

"Can you blame me? All of our kids are absolutely adorable, how can I be lenient with if not them?" You take a sip yourself, taking a moment to enjoy the taste of misery, today flavored in the sweet, yet savory fear of a cowardly torturer now strapped to his ow rack and screaming before the tools even touch his skin. How Riley does it, you have no idea. "Just look at them. They're all such good kids, in their own ways!"

"Oh, no two ways about it," the mother of some of said kids agrees happily. "Lilian is just such a sweetheart, always looking out for her family… Though she can be a bit overzealous."

"Better too much than too little. Besides, she's been making sure to help raise Serena as well, hasn't she? There's a reason she insisted on going to that boarding school with her."

"And she absolutely is her father's daughter, they all are. Did you know they were planning on having all of their schoolmates seduce their parents and pass on what they learned in all those lesbian orgies to future generations by lower grade girls?"

"I'm certainly not surprised," you nod. "They'll be graduating soon, won't they? It'll definitely be a party, if nothing else. Serena wanted to go to Japan, make herself a home there, didn't she?"

"Oh don't get me started, she's been clamoring to collect kimonos for months now. She's really looking forward to it. Are Iris and Ivy still set on doing a world tour?"

"Yeah, just singing and recording themselves at different venues. At least they don't want to hold any concerts yet, can you imagine the kind of security I'd insist on?"

"They become superstars, but one of their moms has to provide parental oversight?" Nora chuckles. "I can see it, I really do."

Ahh, parental gossip about your kids. Nothing goes over just sitting back and chatting about how your sweethearts are doing, even as you know they're only just slowly shaking themselves out of the stupor you fucked all three to four of them into.

You have one last thing to do, a little errand, really. You could've gotten it done for a while now already, but, well… You suppose you were procrastinating.

Just a bit. You don't usually do so with anything that might actually be time-sensitive, but it is what it is, okay?

"I call upon thee, Reggie, to dwell in this place for a while, so come and arrive!"

It is worth a shot, isn't it? You happen to know, on an instinctive level, that souls dissipate in the afterlife if it's not set up to preserve them, but he could've been out there, couldn't he?

"I call upon thee, Reggie, to dwell in this place for a while, so come and arrive!"

You weren't really pinning any big hopes on it or anything. More a last shot, just in case it's worth a try, see? After all, it's not like you don't miss your lil' bro. It would've been… nice.

"I call upon thee, Reggie, to dwell in this place for a while, so come and arrive!"

One of those advantages you have over human beings again, your voice never really grows hoarse unless you want it to. You can keep on talking or screaming or chanting for hours on end and it hardly even bothers you. It's a small little thing, one of many that add up to the great advantage you have over being alive. Together with, y'know, immortality and all.

"I call upon thee, little brother, to dwell in this place for a while, so come and arrive!"

It doesn't work. It didn't for the first two hundred and thirty-eight tries and it won't for number two hundred thirty-nine either. You know this.

"I call upon thee, little brother, to dwell in this place for a while, so come and arrive…"

Doesn't stop you from trying anyways. It's fine, you have a couple hours. Even if nothing comes off it.

Even if he's… gone.

The graduation ceremony of a certain prestigious girls-only boarding school was a matter of some significance, being one of the events of high society used to signify the new (and totally over eighteen) generation of the rich, if not necessarily glamorous, becoming eligible for appearing in said high society, among other things.

It was not uncommon, these days, for young girls to aspire to more, signing up for university as the first generation of female architects, engineers, physicists, psychologists, neurologists and more was on the way, though this phenomenon was seen more commonly among the middle- to upper classes even within CS-ruled nations (or NAN-affiliated, if one preferred). Many young women simply chose to be traditional housewives, as it were, for the area they lived in, or else were directly employed by Cryptic Solutions.

The fact that woman would be hired just as surely as men had been struck many as wrong, at first, but the official response to any concerns on the matter was that as long as work got done, a three-legged dog could get hired to do it and Cryptic Solutions simply did not care what anyone thought on the matter.

That was usually enough to shut people up. When it wasn't, their water was cut until they did, as one example.

Getting the military involved was always a last resort, the paper pushers all agreed, in no small part because their superiors threw a gimlet eye on any such thing and they knew it.

But back to the boarding school. The parents of freshly graduated girls attended as a matter of course, as did alumni and their families and the families of still currently enrolled girls on occasion; it was more a social event than a school function most times.

And so it came that this year, too, parents and husbands accompanied new graduates in the school's dance hall used for these events, one of the few graduation ceremonies held after the founding of the NAN and introduction of CS-sponsored and regulated education. As in the years before, the students were over the moon to tell tales of advanced projectors used for classes, of new books every two to three years and an ever-increasing number of electives to be chosen, a trend present in public schooling introduced as a standard all throughout the NAN but spearheaded in sophisticated private schools such as this.

Not that any of this mattered in particular, however. Instead, a certain pair of students, sisters in fact, had entirely different plans, ones that involved no small amount of collaborators and all students present and future.

Step one of their plan for this evening, in particular, involved the reason they both were meddling with the ventilation system near the ballroom in question. Several chemicals and biological compounds were mixed right behind an opened grate, the elevated position barely an inconvenience to them.

"Aphrodisiac deployed," Lilian muttered, smelling the scent of the desired outcome. "Now to nudge them along."

"Ah, don't be so dry 'bout it, sis, it'll be fun!" Serena grinned.

"It being fun is the point. First we must succeed."

"They'll be easy to work with, it's what we got magic for!"

Illusion Magic had many uses. Applied smartly, it could confuse foes, mislead and misdirect, manipulate senses and thoughts alike.

When used right, it could also be applied towards more mundane pursuits; from changing the way a room, a building or even an entire landscape looked like, moulding perception and shifting the way the world looked like.

And finally, when in the hands of a particularly enthusiastic and lewd-minded vampire child, it could be used to cause certain sensations within targets, especially when trained to be used quickly and efficiently on several people at once in quick succession.

So it came that Serena did just that, quietly mumbling her spellcasting just like her daddy would and targeting all the people within the ballroom. Which, for the record, was incredibly pretentious for a school to even have and that was why she loved it. The spells she used were ones that did two things; one, they increased arousal in all targets present, each of them individually tagged.

The second spell, however, was not an illusion at all. Rather, it hailed from the mental magic she could also access, simply laying a 'field' of sorts out that lowered the inhibitions of everyone around the school.

Her daddy liked to focus on detailed work and technical expertise. That wasn't really what she cared about, though, all she wanted was to make everyone consider doing things they normally wouldn't, in this case, or more generally make simple, straightforward changes easily. So she'd invested into doing so over the years she had to practice.

Now all that was left was to leave their preparations to soften them all up while they waited. Serena nodded, satisfied.

Around half an hour later, the 'free socializing time' ended and what would normally be a period of time set aside for showing the parents around the school would begin, one of those parts of the event meant to motivate more sponsoring by private individuals to 'maintain rigorous educational standards'. Not really any point to it, after Cryptic Solutions basically took over financing schools of all kinds anyways, but traditions were traditions, in the end, not all easily removed.

This time, however, something was different. Graduating students had been whispered to, their choices made clear as well what choices they lacked. In addition, inhibition were, ironically, inhibited for the evening, and certain scents had been pumped into the air, parents looking at their daughters filled with certain sensations…

It took ten minutes before a girl was on her knees inside an empty classroom, showing her father what she had learned through 'self-study' while she was off to learn, confidently fellating his penis before taking it all into her throat, the man ejaculating straight down her gullet in short order. Her mother, strangely aroused by this turn of events, soon found her own clothes thrown off in part, her dutiful daughter eating her out enthusiastically, and certain expectations were forged over the course of the evening.

It wasn't long until the situation played out as was natural, all over the school's campus in small groups. Fathers and uncles double-teamed the ecstatic girls they were there to see, finding their assholes to be trained just as well as every other part of them, future fiancés had a try of the wares on offer and compared them around, friendships were forged as daughters were handed between men for a while like party favors, the entire area like under a spell.

Which it was, duh.

Throughout all of this, Lilian and Serena were quite busy, moving around and using the blonde sister's magical voice to ensure everything went smoothly while the elder sister kept an eye out for any disturbances that needed correcting; even with their mental states affected the way they were, not everyone was quite fine with what was going on, but after they had thoroughly indoctrinated the girls themselves into being horny little sluts, there was only one side of the equation that would be an issue here.

Less work for them, in other words. Sure, ensuring said indoctrination took hold may have taken a lot more time and effort, but could it really be called work when they were enjoying themselves so much?

Their casual walk once most fires had been put out led them past the principal's office as well, the rounded, grandfatherly man currently buried to the hilt inside one of the younger girls while another two were fawning over him, having been left here to 'entertain' him. Most of the faculty, in fact, were either currently around sharing in the use of their favorite students with their parents or else putting the moves on a few of the wives present.

"You know, this is a pretty wild orgy," Lilian casually commented. "I would argue it is a sucess by any measure."

"Mhm," her sister agreed. "Had to make sure all our old toys find a good home. We'd just be super irreponsible otherwise, right?"

Indeed. They had turned all of the girls inside the school into horny, needy little sluts, so they really had to ensure they would receive the appropriate amount of sex for their current libidos to be satisfied, at the very least. Being responsible about pets and toys was a fundamental part of being a modern vampire, as they had decided.

If you don't want to use it anymore, make sure it isn't neglected.

"I agree entirely. Now kiss me, you stupid fox."

Serena giggled, taking her sister's hand. "Daddy didn't tire you out enough?"

"That is that and this is this."

The United States of America were, undoubtedly, a truly great nation, that much could be said without a doubt. However, for all its greatness, it had from its infancy been fiercely argued about how it should be run and what policies were required to better the nation as a whole.

Political change was hard to create. For good reason, one could argue, because not every idea was a good one and legislators often did what they did with thought and care. Just as often, however, said thought and care were not applied for the sake of the nation, but rather to aid and secure certain interests, political or otherwise, or so the counterargument could be made.

All of this was a lot of words to say very little, however. When it came down to it, the movement widely considered to be 'hippies' used to have very little real say, the arguments made about the unnecessary nature of the Vietnam War undermined by the colorful clothes, the heavy consumption of weed and the music they liked to hear… Until, that was, the ploy to marginalize them, that had been working, had come to light.

Under President Smith, widely regarded as the perfect man to regain the trust of the people into the office of president that had been lost under the previous administration, much of the legislature meant to suppress and marginalize left-leaning voters and voices was repealed, instead instating additional regulation as to how to treat 'political dissidents'.

It all amounted to 'as long as no citizen of the USA is breaking a law, their rights as citizens are in place'. Something that should not need saying and indeed was generally how things went, but it had been put into law mostly to make a point. And empty gesture or not, the public did love Smith for it.

It all went further however, as far as the liberal scene was concerned. The police retained its wide-ranging rights to make arrests and investigate private citizens, but an independent panel of investigators scrutinized decisions made for political bias and similar reasoning leading to decisions made; if the proof simply did not justify actions taken, the local police force could and would lose members.

It was not a popular decision with the political right, but a reminder that this measure was meant to prevent corruption like that of Former President Nixon and the high-profile law enforcement officers and others 'in on it' was enough to silence opposing voices, at least for the moment. Should the current president lose the next election, it would still likely be undone, but for the moment he was in power and could effect these changes.

What all of this and several other things meant for the hippie scene was that it was time to party! And, more importantly, assess how to organize. After all, they had just as many differing opinions as any other group simply grouped together because of similar views on a few issues.

Ironically, the end of the Vietnam War saw the pacifist movement weaken, as it had received what it wanted- an immediate end to hostilities and senseless loss of American lives. Meanwhile, many that still wished to participate in politics based on their views and ideas were left behind in a smaller, yet still momentarily influential movement after the immediate effects of the 'Nixon Bomb' dissipated.

So some within it leveraged the attention still on it. Rallies were organized, new causes worthy of their attention, they believed, upheld, and so the hippie movement embraced rock music, psychedelic art and liberalism deeper than ever.

Their new agenda was to argue for a reduction in military spending, a point the current president had refused to touch to date both as a way to stabilize geopolitical developments and as a political compromise, and an increased push to renew the sexual revolution already going on at the time; it was a 'new' development that matters of sexuality were discussed openly and candidly, or in any manner at all beyond hushed whispers, and sexual education, including as part of public education, become another contentious point to be made.

Not one that would be allowed nor accepted easily, of course, with opponents of one or both concepts often accusing left-leaning individuals at large of homosexual sodomy and the desire of grooming new generations into 'degenerate lifestyles'.

Notably, the President himself stayed silent on the matter, yet moved to arrange an easier, more open public discourse, increasing federal funding for schools as a general measure and ensuring all would hear what anyone with an opinion worth hearing had to say.

"The average American," one quote of his went, "is neither extremely opposed nor extremely in favor of most issues. It is thus that this office must take into account the silent majority that is open to changes that do not violate any of the principles of this nation, and consider closely which are acceptable and which are not."

It need not be said that President Smith's even-handed, fair approach earned him praise from both Democrats and Republicans, as all felt that their points were, at the very least, taken into consideration under his presidency.

In the end, general sentiment was that educating children on matters of sexuality in school was wanted, even necessary to a degree, as long as it was done tastefully, and regulations towards this end were instated over the following months, amidst a series of bills aimed at restructuring the market towards the NAN model, the unilateral success achieved by the African and Middle Eastern alliance's overall economy serving to demonstrate the reason why.

It was clear, in general, that the USA were growing closer to the NAN every day, though no formal alliance nor allegiance were mentioned or even openly discussed, as the balance of power between the United States and the USSR needed to be maintained still, old grudges and nuclear threats not easily forgotten on any side.

You now have 12 days left in this dimension

It is now the second half of 1973

Things are going good overall, 'nuff said.

… No, you are not pouting about how it didn't work no matter how long you tried for. You are quite beyond any such thing ever since you literally died and came back to (un)life. You just don't feel like going on and on about everything right now.

Ugh. Forming the USA into growing acceptant of your style of governance in advance is going well enough, President Smith is seeing to that, while the NAN is mostly concentrated on China right now, further growth throughout what you still have left to take over in Africa is slowed down in the meantime.

China itself is still a giant fucking shitshow, but you've been contracted to provide food, shelter and transportation for any Chinese citizens at a reasonable price you're charging the government directly, the democratically minded leadership that just kind of took over Taiwan while nobody was looking not exactly prepared to pull the nation out of the deep, deep hole Mao put it in. They will join you just as soon as their shit is in order and the chance of triggering the USSR (again) has been reduced a bit.

Your friend Mila Petrov is still working on getting himself a nice position inside the polit bureau, but he's been talking and making 'friends' of his own, so you don't see much of a reason to interfere with that entire mess right now. Taking down a nuclear superpower was always going to be taking some time, so any progress is good far as you're concerned.

… Yes, playing with your toy world is cheering you up a little. It is nice to see the humans dance around trying to outwit one another while you pull all the strings.

Alright, first order of business while you're at this whole business thing anyways, East Asia just kind of became your personal playground. With China and Taiwan reunited, even if they're still in the middle of properly doing the uniting part, and heavily dependent on Cryptic Solutions for the massive supply of food and expertise required to rebuild, you can essentially operate in the entire area with utter impunity for now.

Meaning you are once again expanding, sending Sinclair to tour the entire region as a herald of your corporation of sorts. The Philippines, Japan, the Golden Triangle, essentially any place with more than a thousand people living in it is being offered trade deals. You aren't pulling anyone in politically, not quite yet, not with the USSR basically right next door and giving the NAN the stinkeye over this whole affair.

What you can do, of course, is to get the people used to CS services and relying on your company for everything; you're taking over water utilities, selling one of those good old core competencies of Cryptic Solution as easily as pointing at everywhere else you're doing it reliably and cheaply compared to other alternatives, Cryptic Solution devices and household appliances get sold to every household, your vehicles take over logistics and delivery services…

You basically outcompete anyone and anything in most markets, simply because you have a massive, extremely efficient (on every level) multinational corporation throwing the full weight of your economical apparatus behind every move you make. The only way local companies have a chance at all is if their governments are passing legislation to stop you from walking in and taking over whatever you damn well please, which for the record often does include any employees and company assets that are up for graps.

Your reaction is oftentimes to simply apply pressure by raising prices of whatever resources or products said companies require and generally making everyone's life worse until the people in power give in. You don't have to do it often, but hostile takeovers are always fun, even if way too slow for your liking.

You're the guy that goes out and bites into an already halfway grown Lung because you want to. You can play the long game and do what you're currently doing, but you like to do things the hard and dirty way.

Anyways, lots of small nations to exploit in Eastern Asia, so you just leave this whole part to the people responsible. You literally have an office meant to oversee the establishment of new branch offices and all, Cryptic Solutions is more than ready to take over minor parts of the world autonomously with the sheer amount of logistical planning and manpower put into doing just that.

Oh, also, Europe. Europe is also being swamped with CS products, with some heavy hints of 'hey why not just join us, we have cookies and well-regulated capitalism that works like perfection itself' thrown in there.

What can you say, you kind of catapulted the Middle East into being a superpower of your own through nothing but sheer carefully calibrated market dominance leading to monopolies of everything you could want and some advanced technologies (for the time) thrown in. It's an argument that speaks for itself.

Meanwhile, militarily speaking, your troops are basically split into two groups, not counting intelligence which is its own deal you have busy elsewhere; one, training operations are being expanded, covering situations such as hostile guerilla forces and foreign insurgents planted among a populace, simply to have an easier time dealing with both. The plan is to absorb current Soviet nations once the USSR splinters and shatters, and some other Asian countries may also require pacification along the way, so it's better to have soldiers trained in dealing with this shit than not.

Incidentally, the general intended approach for when anyone suspects traps or the like to be present is to call in air support and bomb the entire area. You do not want a Vietnam War on your hands, if anyone digs underground tunnels those underground tunnels are to be summarily flooded with whatever is to hand, whether that's water or fucking chlorine gas.

Sure, you don't have any and are avoiding chemical weapons in general not only due to their general illegality (you could totally get away with it), but if any fuckers test you, you have to make sure they regret it, if only briefly. And you've made some good experiences with this kind of stuff back during your first visit to Thule, really…

Anyways, group number two, where soldiers and equipment are phased in and out between the two groups to give everyone a turn with both, is occupied patrolling the South China Sea at the 'request' of China's new government, your navy being given an opportunity to shine and all, and supporting the massive humanitarian mission one of the most populous nations on the planet has turned into.

You need pilots, drivers, people on the ground, and while you do have some excellent delivery services moving large amounts of products and raw resources from one place to the next on both a postal and corporate level, a few hundred soldiers showing up in every smaller town to distribute food to every household in person just does help with this whole thing.

It's a great PR show, too, you're getting a lot of shots of tearful, starving people being saved by African and Middle Eastern men in your uniforms. Gotta milk this shit for all it's worth.

Finally, as for your intelligence services, they too are receiving some additional training in part… Mostly to be turned into military police to ensure your armed forces don't get any stupid ideas. Or, well, don't put stupid ideas into practice without your okay, anyways.

Mila Petrov was busy man, with many busy days. Little vodka at work, so he had to drink twice as much at home, eh?

Not like he had to not drink on the job anymore, only, he had to keep on his toes. Didn't trust the shadows around him anymore, anyone could listen in through them now.

Or his new boss could, anyway. Maybe. And that was more than he liked to risk.

"So, leader of committee is hardliner, yes? Been calling for more nuclear bombings, to keep the east in line. Bad for business, and replacing him would be a friend, see?"

The shadow in the corner of his office nodded, moving off like jellyfish. Mighty nice of the boss to give him pet assassin, only Milo was sure his head would fly next if he tried to use it wrong.

A dozen party officials dead already, the most annoying of the bunch. Milo had been fine where he was, but he was paid to rise up and become secretary, so secretary he would be. Lots of positions between him and that, all filled with old men, so the old men had to go.

Least he could make a lot of friends. 'Oh, you want better job? Friend Milo will put in a good word if position get free, yes, you know him. He is reliable, he will never disappoint good friend that does not disappoint him, eh?'

The shadow came back, clawing over the wall. "That was quick. Not much of an accident this time?"

It didn't say anything, Milo was not sure if could speak. But Milo could, so he spoke just to have something to say most days.

Now all he had to do was get invited to official's home, see if he had to so or could stay. Always so hard to find good Ally of the People…

In other news, you've actually managed to win a little betting pool. See, Nora did 'kill Mao' when you did your whole skit, but her identity is entirely unknown to the public- all that anyone knows, as best you can tell, is that she is female and must have secretly infiltrated the building Mao was in at the right time to end him before he could fire nukes.

Not even the 'female' bit is sure as far as most speculations go. The only ones who saw even that much were fleeing Chinese and a short glimpse in the corner of some footage, and many are arguing that this much isn't conclusive evidence of her gender.

Honestly, how anyone could mistake her figure for anything other than very, very female is beyond you.

To come back to the bets you won, you claimed that sooner or later, someone is going to claim that it was a highly trained female NAN special ops agent empowered with supernatural abilities that infiltrated China to assassinate Mao because Cryptic Solutions foresaw him going mad. And would you look at that, an American paper is doing it (you deliberately avoided any mention of anything like that within NAN space so nobody could say you were cheating).

Because that's how far someone had to go to justify that it might not be an American that did it.

Other interesting thoughts were, not necessarily in that order, a magical assassin from the New World Order (a conspiracy theory that popped up somewhere around Europe and spread around since about some illuminati-style group taking over the world (*innocent whistling*)), a transsexual supersoldier sent by 'the libs' engineered to be impossible to defeat, a random chance shooting by a Russian KGB agent that accidentally infiltrated the wrong place, one of Mao's guards that saw the issue in Mao being… Mao and resolved it, there's a lot going on there.

At least it's entertaining to watch, though.

As for the betting pool you won, you are now owed an hour

The Sesshōseki had been broken. While there were many rocks all over Japan that were called the same, but anyone familiar with folklore would think of one of them in particular, in Nasu. The priests responsible for maintaining the shrine around it and ensuring no tourists were harmed by the gases that were sometimes emitted by it had not known, but after an obviously confused colleague had sent them several letters desperately asking for confirmation, one of them had noticed something.

The stone's shadow did not match up with the position of the sun. Telling the head priest, the men soon came to inspect the rock said to be the transformed body of none other than Tamamo-No-Mae up close, wearing safety equipment as was appropriate.

They normally made a point to keep a distance, both due to the poisonous gases and to maintain the mystique, but unusual occurrences such as this mandated a more hands-on approach.

The moment a stick touched the Sesshōseki, it was as if a veil was lifted. Only now did they realize that the stone was broken clean in two, having lain open like thus for however long with none of them the wiser.

Panicked, they sent messages to every shrine they knew of, describing the situation as it happened to them. It did not take long before whispers made their rounds all throughout the country, quickly dismissed by the less superstitious. After all, stories about Yokai and such were just that, stories!

That lasted until a big shrine was destroyed for failing to provide fried tofu and shrine maidens to an irate kitsune, its torii torn apart and all buildings burnt to the ground.

The Self-Defense Forces would be useless to deal with this threat, and so would the American soldiers stationed in Japan be even if they believed them. With no way to defeat such a powerful Yokai in modern times lacking heroic and wise figures, it was all the priests could do to appease the powerful creature, at the cost of shrine maidens and food offerings, as it demanded tribute in one shrine after another all over Japan.

None spoke of the things it forced the poor girls and women acting in service to a shrine's enshrined purpose to experience, least of all the shrine maidens themselves.

The solution that some came up with, then, came down to enshrining the Yokai itself, inside the capital where it had made its first appearance. Brave shrine maidens volunteered for the horrendous duty of soothing the spirit's moods, with many tourists wondering about the 'secret shrine' and what it might contain…

Leading to it paying for itself, after all. If the public could not stay away from it despite warning signs put up as well, it was the public's own responsibility to make it through the pranks and lost time as senses were confused and groups separated.

"Ah! Ah! Ahn!"

"Oh my, you're a married woman, should you really shake your hips like that?" Serena asked, grinning at the mildly busty Japanese housewife that had come to Tokyo with her husband. "What if your hubby hears you, huh?"

The woman whose snatch she was working over using the dildo she usually used for things like this (all parts of her collection were formed after her daddy, of course) gasped aloud, groaning pleasurably. "Let him see me! Let him see a girl make me come better than he ever diiid!"

"… You know, that's an oddly sentiment these days."

The depredations and capricious activities did not end there, however.

Before anyone knew it, the emperor had been forced, through some manner of dark power, to create a position in government for the kitsune that had been running roughshod over the shrines of Japan overnight, the prime minister similarly agreeing to the necessity of such to the panic of Shintoism at large.

There was nothing anyone could do, however, as one Serena Livsey essentially declared herself to be above the prime minister in terms of governmental power, immediately declaring that Japan would join the Neutral Alliance of Nations as a full signatory as soon as possible.

"You know, I'm pretty sure they'll thank me for this in a decade or two."

"Probably," Lilian agreed, moving a pawn forward by two fields. "Your turn, by the way."

"… Why is it that chess is associated with intelligent, diabolical masterminds again?"

"Beats me. It has nothing to do with actual strategy, as you know every move your opponent makes anyways."

"Eh, it's still an okay board game, I guess."

Beyond this, censorship laws were universally repealed, allowing all manner of pornographic content to be peddled freely. As Serena didn't actually have to care what anyone else thought about it, she could just make the change happen without needing to justify it to anyone, which made it a lot easier to just get these idiots to make proper porn already.

Seriously, pixelating the actually good parts? What idiot came up with that?

There she was, then, having essentially taken over the country within a couple months. Now… what else should she do with it, she wondered? It wasn't like the blondest of vampires (her mom didn't count) didn't have all the kimono and traditional Japanese sweets she could want at this point.

"I know, I'll make public indecency a non-issue first. Let them get used to not needing to wear clothes if they don't want to, then we can go from there…"

Next thing anyone knew, Akihabara became one massive orgy, cosplayers sought after and sex shops springing up in increased numbers. Truly, it was the one place within Japan that saw new trends ushered in at the most blinding of speeds.

Speaking of Asia and you waltzing in to take over a good chunk of it, there is kind of a massive issue with China, y'know, going through a massive famine, at least technically. Yes, you are delivering some of Cryptic Solution's massive food stockpiles over there, lots of canned stuff in particular seeing as it's just the easiest for you to store over long periods of time, but it's not like you can just keep this up indefinitely.

China has a huge population, even with as much of it somewhat wiped out as you are currently seeing, and you've seen the numbers. You need to reestablish food production locally, a task made much harder thanks to Mao specifically aiming at rural communities- farming villages included.

There is some fishing going on along the coast, and it helps especially with your improved transportation methods, but it won't be enough, can't be enough based on how much food you need versus how much you can get.

Waiting for things to stabilize on their own simply wouldn't allow the people you are currently saving to make it through the next two to three years, by your estimations. It's a rough calculation, but the Thinker agrees with your conclusion- if you cannot either significantly increase food production within the NAN to keep feeding China or get China to feed itself somehow, you aren't actually solving the current humanitarian crisis.

Now, you could go with that. It's not like you're desperately in need of a fixed China, and the survivors are liable to be thankful for the food you are currently giving out either way. But hey, you didn't set out to obtain a whole planet full of livestock just to lose millions of humans to something as stupid as a famine.

So you talk to Brigid, who no matter what else one may say about her is damn good at playing around with genetic codes, and to Curie, who is as ever interested in ways to absolve the human condition of some of its many flaws. The two eventually rope Riley into doing this as a group project and with the Thinker backing you up and of course your own help, it doesn't actually take very long to go from concept to testing.

There are a good few variants you declare a unusable due to flaws that weren't apparent from the onset, though Brigid's almost instinctive grasp of changes to the target organism's DNA helps you avoid a lot of failures of this kind still, and only a few weeks into this project you have a few prototypes you throw into several tests.

Said tests take some time, but what needs, must. And finally, after a few months, you have what you needed.

"This is almost too easy," is what your lead geneticist has to say on the matter. "Environmental factors are the most problematic with this kind of simulation, but as long as they do not change drastically this is a full success."

Rice. You are, of course, talking about rice, the fairly typical crop plant eaten all over Eastern Asia, the region's climate allowing for it to grow quickly and plentifully, even as it is just as labor-intensive as most farmed crops. And now, finally, after too long of humanity breeding plants through simple selection processes, you have…

Cryptic Rice!

It still needs as much water and sunlight as most normal rice would, as it can't generate biomass from nothing, but it does so fairly efficiently and with significantly greater yields; cutting off around a third of the growth period of the most common breeds you've analyzed before setting out to do this, it also grows around twice as much rice from the plant itself, with more and bigger corns of the stuff on average.

That sounds mildly impressive, but when you consider how much rice is usually planted and harvested in farms, this difference is huge as it adds up to entire farms and populations.

Additionally, it's less labor intensive to an extent, requiring less care when being planted (with an eye towards your plans to automate some of all of this stuff), is more nutritious and even tastier than most rice and is immune to the pesticides you are planning to employ to secure it against pests that would multiply massively with this more abundant food source available to them unless stopped.

It's nothing super hazardous or anything, you are planning to hand it out to illiterate farmers and all.

All in all, all you need to do is encourage people to take up farming and hand out the seeds, which are currently being mass-produced by the Thinker. Having been altered through your usual methods, your manufactories work a little wonky with them, but when in doubt you can always just actually put in the effort of having this stuff multiply naturally through being used.

Cryptic Rice: When the old food just doesn't do it anymore. Eh, you'll let the PR department come up with a better catchphrase.

It is not every day that you get to use the extra time you store up within your inner world to be used at your leisure with people that actually matter, as opposed to all of the dead whose souls you've eaten over time; normally, you just do whatever you can think of that requires doing and force whatever help you need out of whatever souls you see, something made a lot easier by the fact you can see all of them at once by sitting on your throne.

It never gets old to make Yoshi do whatever you damn well want. That plus you've been picking up a lot of actually competent souls in various fields, so you can just access a lot of expertise and thinking pretty freely. Super useful when you do any engineering or research or anything of the sort, you basically have them run in the background while you do so to support your own efforts.

But hey, that's not today. No, instead you're opening a certain set of doors and thinking certain thoughts, leading to certain people coming through.

That's right, you're having a vampire party inside your inner world this time! With all the vamps in this dimension at this time, in fact, including your daughters.

"Wooow~! So this is daddy's palace, huh?" Serena is the first to come through, shining, brushed hair waving as she looks around, her fox tail lazily swishing left and right. "Really dilapidated, but it has lotsa charm!"

"Jeez, glad to know you still like it," you snark, patting her between her fox ears. Bratty little fox.

Other first impressions are… more or less the same, really. Sarah is the next to come through. "Can I move in?"

"You have your own microcosm filled with your dead victims, but you can come for a visit whenever you like," you assure her.

"Feels pretty homey," Nora comments.

Now, as for Lilian… "I like it here. It feels very calm."

""This place is very diverse. Can we use the Library?"" No imaginary cookies if you figured that this was the twins.

Which of course leaves none other than Riley. "Sorry I'm late, had to process a bunch of those Chinese that got a taste for human now."

"Don't worry 'bout it, I doubt anyone minds," you say, long since part of a ball of vampire happiness as your entire dimensionally present family is gathering in one place. "Now, let's get going, shall we?"

The reason you asked everyone to come over today- aside from just wanting to see them anytime you can justify taking the time to, anyways- was that you had an idea for a bit of a small project, a minor one really, that you really wanted to work on with them all. Hence you invited them, simple enough by any measure, really.

You do take a quick detour or two to show them around a few of the nicer, less 'completely dilapidated, hahaha' (Serena's words, not yours) part of the castle inside of you, but soon enough everyone's gathered inside of your workshop at the very roof, only a few panes of glass between you and the night sky.

Said night sky is often there independently of what time of day you set the rest of your inner world to, by the way. You like to think it's an expression of how you tend to take things at your own pace more often than not- and especially so when you get going doing art, you suppose.

At any rate, all you want to do is to paint your lovely vampire brides (yes, Riley also counts as one ("Fueeh?!")) and your equally lovely daughters, one picture for each. So there you go, that's what you're doing, with various backgrounds they can chooe for themselves on top to-

"Lilian, why are you taking your clothes off?"

"So you can paint me, father," your eldest daughter smiles innocently. "That is how you do your best work, is it not?"

"Ohh, great idea!" Serena agrees. And not even Sarah is on your side here, either!

"Yeah, knowing him… Let's do some naked paintings, everyone."

"Dammit… I can't even claim slander, it's literally true…" Have your lascivious ways finally caught up to you?

""Don't worry father, we all love you anyways,"" Iris and Ivy remind you.

"I know, but I was really looking forward to making these paintings respectable enough you could show them around… You know, in public beyond our family," you explain your issues here.

"Do not worry, father." Lilian seems like she has a solution? "They can watch all they like and die of jealousy."

"… That's not my issue here…"

Truly your kids, though, can't even fault them for this.

It's a brand new day and you're excited to be awake once more! The year continues to be 1973 and the world continues to be your oyster, and you are not at all using the opportunity to escape the Sisters; both variants of them are pretty much constantly using your body for sex lately, ever since a couple of them started to show signs of pregnancy.

On the one hand, it's kind of hot to see a horny Big Sister walk around with the slight mutations, too swollen with child to fit into a diving suit and not about to wear clothes just because of that, or some of the halfway-grown Little Sisters in their little dresses letting the others put their hands on their big bellies. On the other hand…

Well, now that it's been proven that you can, in fact, impregnate Sisters, they all want to have a go themselves. Turns out being knocked up by you is kind of a status symbol amongst them of all things, so whenever your daughters aren't blocking access to your body, you have one of them riding your lap.

The fact that they very much enjoy this is a bonus, of course.

But alas, you must away! To distant shores and off your usual seat. You know, originally you had it made out of blank stone, but that was, of course, super uncomfortable- not really an issue for yourself, you aren't going to get back problems anytime soon being dead and all, but still, it kind of bothered you to the point you decided to do something about it.

Hence you've been having a new throne made every half a year of testing them out. Sure, you don't really feel your body when you aren't using it, it's all just a matter of principle, but you've ruled out a massive gold throne (too much bling), one whose surface was made of gemstones (way too much bling), one that was essentially a beanbag chair held in place by its structure (comfy, but you sank into it too much), a normal chair made of wood (not enough bling) and… A couple more, really.

None of them were super amazing yet, so your search for the best stately chair continues. That said, right now you're busy with something, so those idle thoughts will simply have to wait a bit.

You're in New York right now, Times Square. It took a bit to improvise things here, as you want to keep everything under control… Or, at the very least, channel the chaos in ways that are useful to you.

You didn't really do much, if you're going to be honest. You just went ahead and placed a few of Cryptic Solutions' intelligence officers all around the area and had strict instructions to help keep the crowd under control if anyone gets rowdy handed down, which really should be enough.

That said, public events like this do have a tendency to spiral out of control, so… Yeah, better safe than sorry. Sure, Iris and Ivy are strong enough they could, when in doubt, always just carve a path through the crowd with their bare hands in case they do go overboard, but yeah.

And yes, these two are why you're here. Your twin daughters mentioned they'd like to try singing a stealth concert right in the middle of Time Square, so here you are on Times Square, making sure they can do it.

Are you horribly indulgent of your girls? Yes. Is it a misuse of phenomenal cosmic powers and your power as the secret mastermind behind a global super-corporation? Probably, yeah.

None of that stops you, though. And as your daughters stand in place and begin to sing, you once again confirm that you have priorities- and the whims and wishes of your loved ones are far, far above any such petty concerns as those.

It starts quietly, at first, only slowly growing louder, a single, clear note held on for a long, long time, loud enough to reverberate in the ears of everyone present. people stirred, the ever-present traffic of Times Square slowing for what seemed like the first time in an eternity, but really just staying reminiscent of some times of day.

Then the second note sounds out, oddly quiet and clear for how loud it becomes, taking over, an almost physical force despite how little force there truly is to it.

The third note is varied. Only now do most of those present realize it is not coming from a singular source but is instead emitted by two of them acting in perfect harmony. the now two notes bounce off each other, held just as long as the previous ones, and cause a tingling feeling in the backs of everything present, like some primal memory hared between humanity as a whole on an instinctive level.

People are quiet now, not as willing to pollute the air with their noise. A sense of confused anticipation rolls over them, businessmen and -women, managers, office workers of all stripes, for once not rushing from one place to the next.

Then the singing begins. Two voices, raised in volume yet seemingly no louder than a conversation's worth to anyone amidst the crowd this day, swelling and bursting until it seems almost as if it music, played from instruments and echoing all around.

Words begin to form, an easygoing tone set towards, and Iris and Ivy Livsey begin to really sing, seamlessly switching between vocals and instrumental parts of the song a their whims dictate.

You, of course, sit far above, nodding along as you listen to what you can only describe as a song criticizing modern economics in America. Well, that or a song about becoming a scammer by way of pretending foreknowledge of the future with sheer confidence one lacked before, but you like your interpretation better.

It is not the last song your daughters sing. The crowd is slowly filtering in and out, more and more people simply taken out of their daily lives for a brief time, completely ignoring their appointments and how quickly they have to get to work for once, unable to see the source of the music yet enthralled by it all the same.

Overall, more people come and join than they get out, blinking awake as though rising from some dream. Sometimes they clap along, sometime they stomp in time with the rhythm, but most of all, people simply just want to listen.

And hey, completely halting traffic through Time Square to the point the police, which is called of course, can't actually hope to get in there and break this improvised performance up even if they weren't enthralled by it in short order themselves, is quite the achievement in your humble opinion.

You're proud of your girls. Of course you are.

While all of this is going on and your daughters are having their fun, you still have a lot of other stuff to do, all genuine joy at the wonderful singing the twins have been working hard on so as to improve it notwithstanding. Though it really does fill you with pride how hard they've been working and applying themselves to chase after their dreams, limited to their hobbies as they may be.

Hey, as long as your kids find joy in what they do and genuinely have fun every day, you couldn't ask for anything more as a father. With neither time nor money being an issue on account of you once again being richer than god and that little tidbit about not aging running in the family, it's not like there's any pressure on them to find paying jobs to fend for themselves one day.

It's like nepotism, just better and with more blood sacrifice thrown into the mix. Really everything you could ask for in terms of silver spoons to be born with, to be honest.

But, well, other activities. One thing you did before you even went out to attend to the twins' concert was to make a few changes to the Thinker's power loadout, just a little tweak that has already allowed her to revolutionize certain things such as potion production.

Not immune to bullets anymore, but that really isn't all that much of an issue for the AI running your secret underwater supervillain base, plus company, now is it? Incidentally, the Thinker can use her remote-controlled robots to brew potions easily enough, as they count as a piece of her, and even her aura stretches to protect each of them equally, though the issue of a set maximum amount of it being present remains.

It really was worth it to check her for the presence of a soul, to be honest. You do wonder what kind of semblance an Artificial Intelligence may develop…

Then again, probably not all that indicative of her nature so much as her individual self, if you've learned anything about this stuff. Come to think of it, you probably should go ahead and make a little more use of your semblance yourself- you're criminally underutilizing its sheer utility lately, you've found.

You'll add it to your to-do-list.

For now, well, the Thinker did help you out a little in calculating a certain little something; now that China is de facto under your influence as well, you really want to ensure it gets some great weather for once, partially to help with the first harvest of Cryptic Rice and partially to indicate the 'Mandate of Heaven' has been regained by whoever is currently in control over there.

It really doesn't matter to you, you're pulling the string in the end anyways.

So to this end, your friendly neighborhood AI extrapolated current weather patterns into the near future and gave you a list of changes to 'correct' them a bit to ensure lots of nice sunny days in China, with just enough rain to maximize agricultural success and keep things open for two rice harvests before winter really sets in and it starts to snow just a little.

Always nice to have a machine that can literally predict the future in your corner. Sure, your magic and general being yourself can muddle her predictions up a little, but that's mostly due to general unpredictability; these days the Thinker can model the results of your actions decently well enough, in fact.

Well, no matter, you'll get China back on its feet quick enough at this rate, and you didn't even go around rounding people up inside political prisons. Progress!

One thing about vampires is that, fighting-wise, there are very few enemies that can really keep up with them. Baseline humans simply do not have the abilities to do so, they're too slow, too weak and generally too squishy to be any real challenge. This is not a bad thing, mind you, you quite enjoy not making a struggle to the (un)death out of every meal you have, but on the flipside, there's not many ways to really challenge yourself in a fight either.

Well, you could take it easy and deliberately avoid using your powers while mowing down large groups of trained enemies to see if any of them manage to get a lucky hit or two in, but really, that's not the point, you don't think. But as you said, you are no battle junkie by any measure, all your fights being easy and effortless is very much what you prefer.

Sure enough, you did enjoy the feeling of victoriously overcoming hard odds back when you didn't essentially win by being present, but you have a lot of other things you much prefer to enjoy instead nowadays. You prepare, you empower yourself and everyone close to you whenever you can think of ways to, you tinker with your robots and your weapons and your technology at large, but all of that goes toward making your battles as unchallenging as possible.

You sneak around, you act in the background, you arrange your enemies' defeat before any fighting happens and you use magic from afar precisely because fair fights are for suckers and those that actually like having them.

Cue Lilian, who is somewhat quite enjoying fighting as such in much the same way Okita does. You think. It's hard to tell either way, but you're going to go out on a limb and group them together to an extent.

So your eldest daughter just is into fighting, except there's nobody and nothing really challenging for her to fight sitting around; a bunch of people with guns could possibly be an issue for her, but well, she's fast, she can be stealthy when she wants to and she's capable of Flash Stepping, having extensively improved upon this power in particular in addition to her close combat capabilities and claws.

Now, you'd think that would mean she has little to no ranged combat options, but using Nora's bloodline power, as you've taken to calling them, she can simply throw whatever she has to hand to absolutely wreck anyone or anything that can't just shrug off physical force like that. It was apparently really easy for her to perfect her technique in that regard, too, and Nora wasted no time in copying as much either.

How do you know all of this? Beyond literally watching her train and practice all of this stuff, you are assisting her with the issue of not enough worthy fights to be had. You and Riley are hard at work using necromancy and her own bloodline power, as well as your semblance and some of your infinitely created materials stored in massive storehouses at the bottom of the ocean and a couple manufactories, to create well-suited enemies for her to test herself against.

Lilian is completely quiet as she dodges a Pinky's lighting breath, the giant humanoid sloth shaking the building this arena has been built inside of with massive downward punches of its massive fists as it shakes up the footing around, trying to drive your daughter into making a mistake. Several of your standard Ghouls are lying around as well, already dismembered by her claws as she kept on dodging around, outmaneuvering the pack you created to support your minion.

Ah, a flash of movement, too fast to follow for most, and she's going on the offensive, trying to tear off your creation's head. She doesn't quite manage it, just gouging rents through its neck, but you give her points for effort- and Pinky there won't make it much longer regardless.

"How's the next one coming along?"

"Adjusting its metabolism right now," Riley lets you know, elbow-deep inside of a giant humanoid, around fifteen meters tall (feet just don't do it for you), its skin gnarled and covered by scar tissue serving as simple armor. "The robot army?"

"Fabricated and lined up, we're good to go anytime."

Inside the arena, Lilian is supplexing Pinky, pushing forwards and up while lifting one leg to smash it down head first behind herself with a powerful jump. That's that for this group, time for the next fight.

"Robots?" Lilian asks, adjustin her stance, her generous bust wobbling a bit, yet always in perfect position; vampirism means no sag, with or without a bra. "Time to dismantle them. You did teach me how they are built, father."

"What she doesn't know, of course, is that any she defeats will be eaten by the next miniboss coming her way," you murmur, careful to be quiet both out loud and within your thoughts, can't give away the surprise. "The lengths we go to to entertain her, really."

"Hmpf! I'll make her acknowledge me as a big sister at minimum, just you wait and see!"

You look down at Riley, who still hasn't aged a day since you turned her, subconsciously having stayed at the same height. "Yeah, I'd give up on that if I were too. You kind of like it, you can admit that."

"I refuse to, though! Now get back to merging more bodies for the next wave!"

Violence: A huge, bulky fighter with large claws and two pairs of arms, the smaller ones bound up in cloth to hide hooked stingers lining them. Made out of easily a dozen human beings' bodies, this creature stands at around two and a half metres, entirely specialized into the application of brutal, straight-out force. No particular tricks, no notable special abilities, all it does is to bear down on and brutalize it foes, a permanent grin torn into what passes for its face.

Grabs, punches, kicks, smashes and more are its primary abilities. It is also naturally well-armored and, more importantly, regenerates to easily come out on top in the slugging matches it prefers.

Minor, Weak, Basic, Strong and Major Effects: Increased strength, Increased speed, Regeneration one each

In the end, you really have to go all-out to present any real challenge to Lilian, your daughter literally tearing apart SP1D3Rs you throw at her one after the other. She really does put in the work when she gets going, literally slapping projectiles fired at her out of the air and back to their sender, dodging past and redirecting lasers with her claws somehow; that's not to even begin with the ways she completely demolishes even the heavy military-grade robots you designed for heavy assaults and point defense.

Those poor mechanical joints you went to great lengths armor up without affecting mobility…

But yeah, you finally arrive at a decent sparring partner for your daughters when you and Riley put your heads together to design and create an undead, one without any incredibly special or elaborate tricks to it- it's tall, it's strong, and any and all magical abilities it has are meant to do one thing and one thing only, make a already deadly creature deadlier by enhancing its strength and speed even further with a side of regeneration on top.

Plus its 'natural' build and the obvious propensity for violence you built in there. Like, just look at this thing!

"Only one this time?" Lilian asks as you teleport the new model of undead, now nicknamed 'Violence', into her arena. "I hope you last longer than a minute this time."

Violence just grins as it always does and steps towards her, fast enough to more than keep up with her natural vampiric speed, massive, clawed hand whistling through the air, her immediate reaction of smashing her own fist into it just barely making it nudge- she pushes off and snaps her elbow back in to avoid having a limb outright crushed, briefly down on the ground before she twirls back up.

Just in time for the next charge to come at her. And the next. And the next. Violence does not stop. It does not reconsider and it has no mode of existence other than to run at whatever it is pointed at and kill.

It tears through anything in the way, too. Takes a bunch of bodies or assorted dead biomass to make them, but so far it looks pretty viable.

"How long do you think they will fight?" Riley asks, drawing you out of your deep thought of the inherent humor that using one of these things to chase down political dissidents would entail.

"A few days, I think," you shrug. "Unless Lilian manages to find a way past its regeneration, both of them can keep going until she gets hungry or bored."

On the screen, your eldest bares her teeth as she watches the grey-skinned, muscled creature grow the wounds she just hacked over its side closed again, rather than give even a single shit about something that would have probably outright killed an elephant.

Finally something she can work out on.

With Lilian supplied with a way to exercise some of her energy out on and the twins having fun touring New York at the moment (they're picking up some souvenirs while they're there, which is very nice of them), you have some time and attention to direct at the next thing to require both. Well, it's a bit rude to think of your sister as a 'thing', but she does require those things, so whatever.

Simply put, Sarah is pouting a little lately. It's not something she does openly, or gives off much of any signs about, but being connected to her as deeply as you are after literal years of pretty much living inside her head, you do have a much easier time picking up on her trace emotions, just like this one in particular.

Simply put, something needs to be done. And to do so, you teleport straight towards her inside the giant luxury dome built just for her use as part of your base to talk it out.

What you find are her and Serena already waiting for you, wearing sunglasses for some reason.

"I loved how you made our baby girl a woman, but I wasn't there," Sarah immediately explains. "So to make up for that, we're having a little family time with just the three of us now."

"I've packed sunscreen and skin lotion!" Serena happily adds.

"… Alright, where are we going?"

You're nothing if not spontaneous when the situation calls for it.

It's a bit, you imagine, like visiting your kid's school to have a look at it and all that jazz, see them participating in class and everything even though it's pretty obvious there's a whole production made around the occasion and they make the kids clean up after themselves for days beforehand so you don't see the shitshow classes usually are.

Just with a lot of additional megalomaniacal urges put into actual practice and sex. A lot of sex.

You're in Japan, in case that wasn't clear through this brief bit of prelude already, and Serena is proudly presenting to you the fruits of her labors so far, the fact you already know what she did completely irrelevant as a matter of course. Just because you're watching the world through her eyes pretty damn often doesn't mean you can get around taking a look in person, simple as that.

"Look at how big my shrine is! I used tax funds to have it expanded a couple times, now it's one of the biggest tourist attractions in Tokyo!" Beaming proudly, Serena waves her arms around, the wide area taken up by her personal shrine filled with several buildings serving separate purposes. "I even spread rumor that couples that pray here are blessed with deep love, so I get a bunch of donations and food offerings!"

"And every now and then you grab one of the girls or women that come," Sarah nods along, smiling happily at your daughter's success in life. "You get everything you could want delivered just by being here, if you could feed a few bloodbags in the basement."

"Eeeh, but daddy already took care of the blood supply, dun wanna!"

You just chuckle, rubbing your daughter behind her ears in that way you know she likes. "I'm more curious about that rumor. Did you actually go out of your way to cast a little magic?"

"Yeah, people get a little horny when they come here," your foxy daughter shrugs. "If that means they'll have some steamy hot sex afterwards, that's pretty much all the mortals can hope for, right?"

"Can't argue against that." One little fun fact, as long as you're careful with your claws and don't push them to be too sharp, you can use them to brush hair, something you do quite like doing for your family every now and then. "Oh, but what's that I hear from inside that building?"

You're making your way across the private parts of the shrine, where all the 'treasures' are enshrined, so you don't have to bother with any outsiders milling about, meaning the muffled sounds you can hear thanks to your enhanced senses can't come from any of them… You know exactly what's going on here, but you humor Serena anyways, she's just bursting with anticipation here.

"Hehehe~, that's the shrine maidens! Wanna see how hard they're working?"

"Oh, they're doing their best to 'appease' you, right?" Sarah smirks, her tail waving in amusement. You could write a book about how fox tails behave on your girls, come to think of it, not that you will anytime soon. Just a fun little thought. "They had better be working hard."

Opening the sliding door (this Japanese-style architecture may take a bit getting used to, not that you're complaining), Serena waves the two of you inside, the scent of horny chicks strong within. What you see is…

Two long rows of girls and young women, bent over with their wrists bound in place by way of iron manacles, just bands of metal fixed on long shelves of the same material, keeping them bent over and unable to move away. There are maybe two dozen of them, some of them wearing stockings and a few additionally accessorized by way of nipple piercings, the breasts of the older ones inviting you to go play with them, their skins a nice selection of tanned, pale and everything in-between.

No clothing beyond what you just described, of course, their bent-over behinds leaving nothing to the imagination. Several have thin trails of fluids marring their inner thighs.

"Ta-daah!" They stir when Serena speaks up, something she doesn't normally do. "This is my collection of the cutest mikos I could find. What do you think daddy?"

She's speaking Japanese now, presumably so they can understand what's going on, so naturally you follow suit. "Very nice. You really put a lot of effort into this, didn't you? They know their place, too."

None of the shrine maidens have dared to look in your direction as of yet, everyone staying silent.

"Such a good girl, Serena," Sarah says aloud. "Your mommy is very proud of you."

Brimming with elation, your daughter skips along, coming to a halt behind a pair of sisters you believe you recognize from her first visit to a shrine at all. "These two are the first I picked up, aren't they cute? Naughty sisters that kept doing naughty things with each other even while I was gone, see?"

One hand on each butt, one filled with soft flesh, the other just nearly so with the younger sister's cheek, she spreads them apart, showcasing the transparent dildos spreading their assholes for everyone to see.

"Oh my, just like you and your own sister, aren't they?" Sarah smiles. "I see why you like them."

"And how well you've trained them," you grumble in the voice you are told is sexy whenever you ask your lovers about it, several of the 'maidens' around the room shuddering. "Such a good girl, aren't you?"

"Ehehehe~!"

"Kitsune-sama?"

Serena looked up, tilting her head at the Miko that'd gone and approached her. Now wearing a loose-fitting kimono, she was back in her full 'yarr I am a big bad yokai' mode, her cute little toys allowed to move freely after she and her parents had appropriately molested them during the tour she'd give them. "Mhm?"

"What might your esteemed ladyship be reading?"

It was kind of fun to see the kind of lengths some of the mortals would go to to address her with the proper levels of awe and respect.

"Just a little thingy," she casually shrugged the question off, putting the plan her daddy had provided her to the side. It was really just a bunch of general directions, with lots of extra space for her own ideas and relying on her own judgement to decide when to take separate steps outlined to achieve the things she wanted.

Just like everything her daddy did. Great and really lewd, exactly how she liked it.

"Will Kami-sama be returning in the future?"

"Hah, want a taste of my Tou-sama that badly?" she grinned. "Maybe he'll be back, maybe not. Depends on if you live long enough."

Not that she was about to let any of her favorite Mikos die. She'd much rather have her daddy thrall them, keep them nice and fresh and pliable forever.

"Also, make sure to call the prime minister later, we got some new company policies to implement."

No time like the present to get started with daddy's advice, after all.

"Now, I don't want to be overlong with this- I know you are all very busy, after all. So let me keep this clear and short, hm?"

You smile at the Emperor of Japan and its Prime Minister, both of them stealth teleported to their current location, bound to chairs and gagged to make sure they can't interrupt you.

"Japan is a beautiful country, one that has many things to offer to its people. This is why my dear daughter Serena loves it here so much, see." It's fun to literally watch pupils dilate at the mention of her name. "It really would be quite the shame if she were disappointed with her stay. Or anything else than extremely happy, see?"

You stop holding back the pressure lesser beings feel at your mere presence, your primal terror unleashed just the slightest bit while the entire world becomes just a little… heavier, pressing down.

"And by this, I mean my first step would be to tear out the souls of everyone present, then make you watch your loved ones be tortured and violated for eternity. Are we clear?"

Muffled sounds of agreement come forth as the barely still conscious men nod and do their best to tell you they have in fact understood what you are saying.

"Good! With that cleared up, how do you feel about living forever and having untold power over the world, provided you do not cross my dear daughter? I do believe it is high time Japan comes to enjoy the many advantages Cryptic Solutions brings, don't worry about the Americans they've been taken care of already."

Nothing like clarifying the stakes at play to motivate future minions, after all.

You didn't 'just' leave after you were done with most of the things you came to Japan for, of course. No, you had one last little something to do, a little… delivery to make.

You do so by sending off a certain new minion you created specifically for this, meant to serve as a semi-permanent companion much like several of the ones you made back in Remnant. Hey, you were thinking you underutilized your semblance, now you're going ahead and fixing that, simple as that.

Going with the whole theme Serena has built up, it's a spirit made of foxfire kind of thing, designed to be ethereal and mischievous, with a healthy sense of lascivious powers and state of mind on top. In short, it's what both you, Sarah and Serena would do condensed into a single aura-fueled existence.

She's not the only thing you want to give Serena, however. You've actually been working on a few little gifts meant for your daughters for a while now already, it's just that you're only now putting the finishing touches on them.

Her gift is some rope. Well, not just any rope, of course, it's made of spun Thulian mithril and engraved with runes that make it much more durable than it should be… And, after a brief 'discussion' with a demon you summoned, a kind that prefers to securely tie up and torture its victims to harvest the pain in a very literal way, imbued with demonic essence to boot!

Now it can extend to autonomously tie up whatever the wielder points it at- and it even knows shibari to boot, for less violent encounters! Able to (slowly) creep about like a metallic snake and obey orders, it should make for a handy little tool.

Serena certainly is pretty damn happy with it, as well as with her new Kitsune-Bi underling that will stick with her for however long she can keep up its aura reserves. And before you know it, she's making use of the mildly mentally corruptive field said underling can emit capable of causing enhanced lewdness in wide areas!

Yeah, this one's a hit, you think.

The Heirloom Seal of the Realm, a chunk of jade carved into making for a bureaucratic tool, created in 221BC and for many, many centuries seen as a kind of legitimizing object in the many wars fought over control of China as an embodiment of the Mandate of Heaven which was a big thing for the longest time, historically known, even, to have been damaged to the point one corner of it broke off and had to be replaced with gold.

What you're saying is, this thing has some mad historical value, simple as that. Even after it was eventually lost in one of said many wars, following regimes creating dozens of other seals to kind of reduce its importance.

And here you are, having found it again after asking reality itself where the fuck it was. Just goes to show what kinds of funky things you can find if you dig down in the right sewers to excavate a little, really, though it's in quite the sorry state at this point, a couple chunks of it missing and deformed and the entire thing not at all usable as a seal itself anymore.

You were planning on handing this little thingy over to the new government of the Chinese Union Renewed (CUR) while properly taking it all over, but you wonder… Well, it is kind of worth a try. "Reveal This!"

… Admittedly, glimpses of ancient Chinese governing practices aren't necessarily the most applicable to the kind of work you usually do, but this is educational and entertaining all the same.

So then, after a few minutes of shaking out your thoughts and reordering them back into their original places, you're more or less ready to go again, enriched with additional experience and practice you didn't possess before.

Just a little bit, of course, but you've come as far as you have primarily through adding one piece to the next until you had a giant mountain-busting Mecha, to complete the analogy. That's just how you roll.

At any rate, your next appointment is a little meeting arranged between yourself and the leadership of the Chinese Union Renewed, though you aren't exactly interested in any of them in particular. rather just more wanting to firmly make it clear who is in control of the world as far as pretty much the entire world save the USSR is concerned.

Which is a work in progress in itself, shouldn't take all too long at this point all told.

When you arrive, you don't bother playing at human norms and simply speak up right away at the room full of leading government officials. "Alright, here's how this is going to work. You do as I tell you; you get to join Cryptic Solutions and grow to become immortal. You do not and you are replaced and possibly removed from among the living entirely. This should not come as a surprise, you've all been working with the NAN already. Also, here's a national treasure and proof of the Mandate of Heaven, put it in a museum or at least have someone fix it."

Priorities. China is a middling one at most, so if anyone has an issue with this, there's more than enough Chinese to replace them.

With that whole shebang taken care of, you have some space in your schedule to get back to the important things, by which you naturally mean your kids. Iris and Ivy are long done with their spontaneous little concert and the aftermath thereof (consisting of being very openly gay at each other while walking around the city and getting some ice cream to celebrate), so right now they're back home for some R of which there can never be enough for your darlings.

Also, eating your 'homemade' ice cream you store in these giant tanks you have topped up via manufactory regularly because it's just better, each tank filled with another flavor you asked the Thinker to help you perfect. You have to use these long periods of hibernation you're undergoing constructively somehow.

And speaking of being constructive, you did manage to complete the twins' little gift, not even needing to beat the demons you summoned to a pulp to get their essence. The two siren-like creatures, specifically picked out due to being twins themselves, were humanoid with big breasts and wide hips, but heads and limbs bearing a lot of fish- and bird-like features, took one look at you before you told them you're indeed immune to mental influence before they basically gave up and asked what you wanted.

What you wanted was to use their essences to put a gift for your twin daughters together, a matching pair of belts meant to help them modulate their voices when they really go all out singing. A short bit of 'negotiation' later during which you agreed to let the demon retain their consciousness in exchange for them actively supporting the enchanted items' functions in exchange for them getting to keep singing, if indirectly, through doing so and experiencing a lot of music in your daughters' possession, you're basically all set.

The belts come with the additional function of blinding people that see them on demand, by the way, just a fun little something you decided to add through engraving a few of your special runes while you were at it. Who knew that it was possible to basically decode reality and use these patterns to replicate the resulting effects like this?

Naturally, as you already created the Kitsune-Bi for Serena, Iris and Ivy also get their own new minions, a pair of ironically named Sirens as backup singers. They're basically just really great singers and their voices totally have a variety of effects, but that's their primary purpose, pretty much.

When you have them hand the belts over, your girls are immediately ecstatic, naturally without moving a single facial muscle.

"Thank you, father."

"We love them."

They look very nice with them on, soon departing for another walk around New York with what they soon decide to be their default outfits. You're just happy they like them.

You've long since been thinking about a certain, let's say 'issue', in regards to one of your hobbies. Not the engineering, you're still perfectly good to go on methodically improving on your robotics designs and subjecting them to trial and error, no, you're talking about the artsy side of things.

Simply put, there's only so many ways you can do things. Sure, you can carve and sculpt and paint and all that, but you usually do so with the thought that someone who sees your work will do so from the perspective of a person.

And that is what you feel is limiting you: Perspective. You need to do something from a different perspective, just to get out of that mindset- nobody likes to feel like they're about to get burnout, which you're pretty sure vampires can't actually get in the first place, but on principle if anyone exists that shouldn't get fed up with what they're doing, it's you.

You always looked down on this idea of the artist as this eccentric individual, weird and unreliable because of their work and the viewpoints they cultivate within themselves, but now you're pretty sure it's more just that it's much, much easier to run out of creative juice if you don't go out of your way to act out every now and then.

Or maybe you just aren't that kind of special snowflake, whatever.

So you go to Brazil, putting together a wide variety of large wooden planks painted in various colors, some lawnmowers, a couple of bits and bobs to serve as accents and add a bit of quirkiness, plus a really big buzzsaw.

With all of that, you get right to work, arranging all the colors and all the pieces at your disposal, creating, with some assistance from the Thinker, an area equivalent to about two football fields that when viewed from an airplane depicts Generals Ernesto Geisel and Golbery do Couto e Silva shaking hands in friendship, the background bearing the NAN logo.

With a little additional sign in one corner, a certain 'G L'. You don't expect that people will see this (or photographs of it at any rate) and be convinced it's what should be done, but it is what you will be having a few of your minions work towards… And it does help you alleviate that little problem with your artistic senses.

All's well that ends well and all that.

With that all done you (finally) get back to Lilian, the one daughter who still has yet to receive a magical accessory to complete her look- she's still fighting Violence, your creation more than proving itself worthy of its name.

You can't really fight violence as a concept head-on in a physical way. All you do is perpetuate it. Not that that's really an issue for you, of course, you're perfectly fine with perpetuating violence, otherwise you wouldn't have gone and made this particular brand of abomination with that particular name.

It's a nice bit of symbolism, you think. You may just need to make use of a couple of these things going forward, they're just pretty damn tough and strong to the point they're actually useful as minions should you need some backup yourself.

Back to Lilian, though, she's managed to actually tear off one of the smaller arms and keeps on damaging your undead minion faster than it can regenerate to keep it missing, as regaining lost limbs takes a bit even with it level of regenerative power, and you estimate she'll probably manage to destroy it in a day or two of work at this rate. Pretty good testament to its durability, actually.

Two Osteas teleport into the arena, your creature taking a step back. One of the bony ladies you created with your semblance hands your daughter her gift, a collar made of flexible black cloth, a brightly-shining ruby embedded at its front.

You let her know what it's for and how to use it. The ruby is the biggest thing here, imbued with the essence of a fiery demon of heat and light you bound into it and engraved with a fine net of runes to facilitate its intended effect.

Lilian shall literally blind any that look at her, as that is what her new bling is meant to do. She just needs to activate it and boom, everyone that sees the ruby is blinded. Works pretty well against just about anything, even things like robots or, say, undead, as she swiftly proves by blinding Violence.

Violence responds by charging at her last known location, but Lilian is busy dodging already, her new accessory cradled in her hands. She quietly thanks you over telepathy, so you just send feelings of love and contentment back over your link to her.

You don't often get to share your engineering work around, mostly due the nature of the things you tend to work on; not even mentioning your eldritch machinery that might well give less resistant people trying to understand it a brain aneurysm or two just from reading the schematics, you don't exactly want any Jack and Jill to see your blueprints for functioning and fairly advanced robots, to say the least.

That just means it's a bit of a special occasion when you're going out of your way to actually publicize some of your work, roundabout as it may be. You're writing a bit of a paper about it, just a dissertation on the effectiveness and utility of the Thorium Reactors you've basically had built all over the NAN to supply energy anywhere it is needed, with only just a little bit of bullshit mixed in there.

It's basically a list of the issues had with Uranium-fueled reactor, many of which would admittedly be shared with your Thorium ones as well if it wasn't for your hand on the design before any were ever built, and some warnings about potential effects of increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere (which is really just an annoyance to you) coupled with a review of the NAN's energy policies and supply.

Just a bit of patting yourself on the back, pretty much, plus pointing at human error being so damn easy to happen with how everyone else does things. That you then have published in several scientific journals and all, to make sure everyone gets the message.

Just a bit of what you usually do, really. Another Tuesday in your life. And if it means you can pull the trigger on oil at a moment's notice in order to screw up everyone else's economy, as you yourself aren't really reliant on it, well, that's just a bonus now ain't it?

Nothing sweeter than being able to say 'I told you so'.

Sadly, while you totally could keep on writing on the topic of one of your somewhat numerous specialties for hours and hours on end, something inevitably has to get in your way midway through- that's just how the world works sometimes. Hence you tie it all together and complete the arguments you wanted to make as part of your dissertation, asking the Thinker to finish it up for you while you turn your attention to what is coming up next.

What comes up next, then, is none other than Riley, the blonde girl that doesn't look to have aged more than a week or two after you turned her into a vampire insistently tugging on your sleeve as you look down at her. "Gabriel!"

"What is it Riley?"

"We want to do science!"

"What kind of science?" Normally if there's any input you can give you just do so via telepathy, but every now and then some of your science team's members request a little more of your presence one way or another, but that happens pretty rarely.

"You'll see." Turning around, she pulls you along, something you silently endure as you walk behind her. Before long, though, both of you are teleported away, finding yourself inside of a room like out of a doctor's office; sterile, white walls, ceiling and tiled floor, a few cabinets to the side, a wide desk with comfortable chairs taking up the focus of the place and one of those padded examination chairs present on the other side.

You and Riley aren't alone, either. Brigid and Curie are sitting on one side of that desk, handling several monitors and exchanging muttered comments and thoughts between one another until moments before you arrive- telepathy once again tells you more than you would know otherwise without directly giving you an answer here.

Luckily you don't have to wait for long on that. "Gabriel. You have impregnated several of the Little Ones and the Big Sisters as well," Brigid begins. "Normally the ADAM-concentration within them would make conception impossible, but something about your biology must be interacting with this."

"It is most curious," Curie adds. "Both 'ow it is possible at all and 'ow the fetuses seem to be developing with their own slugs already inside them."

"So they will already be born with the symbiotic slugs, all naturally?" That's kind of a relief, actually- what would you have done if they were human children?

"Nothing natural about our kind reproducing," Riley mumbles, clearing her throat. "But yeah, that's what we all agree is happening."

"Previous tests have shown how very impossible it is for vampire sperm to impregnate living, non-vampire females," Brigid picks the conversation up again. "Extensive testing. However, there must be a link, somewhere, that allows this union to bear fruit."

"I just kind of assumed ADAM is some manner of reality-breaking itself, so there'd be some base compatibility there," you shrug. "Vampire biology just did the rest, I assume."

"The question is, 'ow," Curie confirms. "And to answer it, we must perform additional tests."

Standing up, the busty redhead promptly takes off her lab coat, her hand going up to swipe an errant strand of hair behind her ear.

"Additional tests that require your participation."

"Well if it's for science," you smile, literally casually ripping off your shirt, "then of course I'll cooperate."

"First we must acquire additional samples," Curie explains, the redhead ex-robot wearing nothing but a pair of black knee socks as she comes around the table to approach you directly. "Of your seed specifically, Monsieur Gabriel. Please prepare for extraction."

Her cool hands roam your body for a long moment, feeling up your chest, your abs, slowly wandering lower and lower, until she takes a second to lick her palm, securely wrapping it around your half-hard cock immediately afterwards, sliding it up and down with the lubrication provided.

"How pure do we need those samples?" You ask, possessively grabbing her butt and kneading it. You figure you may as well make this a bit of a show for the others.

"'ardly that pure," Curie smiles happily, licking her cherry-red lips. "We will certainly not be 'eld back by some contamination."

Hopping backward a little, she takes a seat on the desk, Brigid still just sitting there behind it watching inscrutably, and spreads her legs, tugging on your dick while she slowly opens her pussy's folds up with her other hand, two fingers steadily pumping into her pink opening. "Someone wants it bad, huh?"

"'ow did the saying go again? 'Draw me like one of your French girls'?"

"Something along those lines," you shrug, leaning forwards to kiss her, her fingers directing your cock. Without looking down, you slowly push into her, Curie's tight, hot cunt welcoming your rod easily, yet slowly as her folds wrap around you in 'resistance'.

Curie moans sweetly as you push into her, her big breasts bouncing a little to make the sweet little cherries of her nipples wobble tantalizingly. She leans back until she's lying on the table, letting you dart down to nip at them to her great approval, your hips starting to buck into her naturally.

You're making her grunt and moan now, starting to properly pound into her, your every accelerating thrust sending a shiver of pleasure up and down her body. You can feel her breath on your skin despite for far you are from her open mouth, her tongue lasciviously sticking to the corners of her lips as she smiles at you in half-lidded ecstasy, entire body moving every time you drill into her, harder and faster by the moment.

"Come for me Gabriel," she gasps out, soft hands holding onto your shoulders. "Come for me… Fill up this test tube!"

You chuckle, redoubling your efforts as you see her grabbing a piece of glass lying next to herself, a beaker with some annotations written on its surface. You will, but not before you've made her come properly and thoroughly, and so you speed up, your entire length driven into her again and again, in turn driving the air out of her lungs in pleasured screams all the while her fluids thoroughly soak your whole shaft, balls slapping against her butt as she lets you use her for all she's worth.

Curie comes in a wordless scream, nails scrabbling over your back nicely (and leaving not a mark). You make a point of holding back, screwing her straight through her orgasm, squeezing spasms tripping you over the edge as well, before you pull out, letting loose with a short delay to fire off several shots of cum straight into the receptacle hanging loosely in her hand, eyes rolling back as she wrestles with the pleasure you just inflicted hard and fast.

Your usual load fills up most of the beaker, so you just put it down on the desk again after you're done. Brigid quickly seals it with a purpose-made lid, easily sliding over and wrapping around its opening.

Then she moves it to the side, rotating the adjustable monitor from where Curie sat before to reveal two dozen more of the things, setting the next one down for you to fill up next.

She smiles at you and you smile back, bemused. It's the little things in life that make it worth living.

Then Riley pops up between Curie's still spread-out legs, her twitching lowly dying down, and looks up at you with a pout. "Don't forget me! I count as a vampire bride too, don't I?"

You chuckle at the little blonde, stroking the length of her curly hair almost on reflex just because of her hair color. "Absolutely. You also want in on this?"

She answers by opening her mouth wide, her vampire tongue, warm, wet and exceedingly long, giving the underside of your cock a long lick that tickles a dollop of cum out of it. "N-hn," she makes, promptly wrapping her lips around your cock and taking it as deep as she can.

Note to self, Riley definitely looked up how to suck dick over your vamp-net, happily and messily engaging in a sloppy blowjob that has her clean any trace of Curie off your manhood and replacing her with her own saliva.

You suppose you will be here a while…

The CUR, the Chinese Union Renewed, was quickly taking shape under the new guiding principles of its leadership's forefront, heavily influenced, unknown to the public, by a shadowy group also in control of Cryptic Solutions. Said company was still providing massive amounts of humanitarian relief, going so far as to deploy what many considered either unnatural rice or else a gift of the heavens.

Growing quickly and easily, it was projected to alleviate the ongoing famine immensely, bringing the CUR back into relative self-sufficiency within two to three years by itself. Not that there was any doubt about it joining the NAN as soon as it could anyways, after the sheer gratefulness of the populace and the open allegiance the new government was displaying in the heat of the current crisis.

Metric tons of food were being moved and handed out for free, new homes built in standard Cryptic Solution style and out of prefabricated parts, public order kept by Arabian and Middle Eastern soldiers in uniforms that would become synonymous with salvation for generations to come, with more than a few of the younger Chinese survivor asking if it was possible to sign up themselves after seeing the good being done by this army.

There wasn't yet, by the way, as only citizens of NAN member nations could enlist, but in the spirit of smooth transitioning leaflets were quickly written in Chinese, printed and supplied to be handed out, describing the reality of being a soldier in the Alliance forces and the kind of hurdles that existed for those wanting to apply.

That still left, however, former members and functionaries of the CCP that had survived throughout the period of Mao's madness, now largely wanted for varying crimes the new government was all too happy to persecute. Many were simply apprehended straight away in the early days of the Taiwanese 'invasion' of mainland China, being tried and in most cases sentenced to lives in prison (as death sentences were abolished in the same breath as said new government declared itself), but just as many swiftly escaped justice and set out to flee the country.

A rare few were found not guilty as they were able to prove they did what they could to avoid causing harm to the people under Mao's administration and even set out to undermine his policies, such as one soon famous case of a minor party functionary setting up a 'smuggling ring' with the help of a small number of military officials to try and mitigate the damage done by hunger by handing out food to what scant few areas they could without being noticed, fudging the numbers to make the rations in question disappear, but such circumstances were rare indeed; by and large, officers, officials and more would never again hold any position of note in China if the CUR had anything to say about it.

The respective manhunt did not require much time to begin, once the Chinese military was aggressively purged of those that had most actively held Mao in power. Most of its infrastructure was kept in place, however, as military power had to continue being projected for fear of a potential Russian invasion, triggering an American counter-invasion and a subsequent nuclear Armageddon, and so the vast majority of soldiers was either kept onboard or quietly retired in the case of particularly onerous individuals.

The resurfacing of the Heirloom Seal of the Realm, noted for its suddenness, was taken by many Chinese as a sign of the nation's fortunes being restored under a somewhat more benevolent leadership, the object in question itself being carefully restored and kept in a display case in the new parliament's headquarters before long. By far not all citizens were receptive to such, considering the 'Mandate of Heaven' nothing more than the usual empty propaganda, but some measure of nationalistic pride was restored overall nonetheless.

All told, the CUR was a clear improvement in the lot of most Chinese lives, save for a certain subset of formerly tyrannical suppressors now sentenced to a life of heavy labor inside of the same political prisons they had once kept 'dissidents' inside of, any survivors of such places long since released as a matter of course. As the volume of criminals was comparatively smaller, most of said prisons were decommissioned, either turned into historical monuments and memorials to showcase the cruelty and losses inflicted by a madman's dictatorship or torn down completely to be replaced with all manner of public service buildings; post offices, government offices open to the public and future schools were the most common of such.

A whole generation had been impacted by the full force of Mao's wrath, but those that remained were generally determined to put this period behind China as a whole and prove that their great nation, steeped in so much history, would not be destroyed that easily by any measure. Future generations, all agreed, shall never have to live through such events again, and 'communism' as a word became more reviled than it was even in America during the same time.

Some hotheads called for the deployment of nuclear bombs against the USSR, seen by many as the cause of the events during the period of time later known as 'Maoist China' due to the ideology espoused by it, but nobody else wanted to see the world go up in flames quite that badly… Even if they were tempted.

But alas, it would be quite awkward to join the NAN, given its stance on nuclear weapons, if they were to get rid of all of theirs by using them, and likely getting China reduced to rubble even as significant damage would be inflicted on Russia in turn. As it was, border security was renewed, checkpoints set up and general sentiment towards the place Mao had taken his ideas from plummeted harder than temperature during a Russian winter.

Well then, you've settled in pretty well, if you do say so yourself. Sure, the USSR still… exists, but you've got a couple things in motion to take care of that, so you sincerely doubt they'll manage to keep your brand of capitalism out of their borders for long.

Heck, you basically have a couple people overseeing large-scale trading on the USSR's black markets as it is. That's kind of just the natural result of them mismanaging their economy after deciding they'd closely manage all of it, really.

This is why your approach just works better. Cross the enlightened self-interest of a corporation in control of the whole economy with the planning and organization to properly make use of this control, all with the goal of generating both supply and demand to match with each other, and before long you can get humanity to actively embrace what is good for itself.

Wonders never cease. And here you'd have thought people would never wholeheartedly agree to anything on a large scale.

That's not to say there aren't any dissenters of course, but those tend to be easily marginalized through simple economic pressure; if anyone complains that Cryptic Solutions is taking away all the jobs, it's simple enough to say that it's not your company's fault those jobs just weren't competitive in the first place.

Sure, that doesn't satisfy the rabble-rousers that want something to complain about, but generally speaking as long as you can provide some other way for most of a given population to stay employed, it's not like those are getting anywhere.

Politics. It's all about managing appearances and expectations, when you look at it from where you are below the ocean.

Your daughters are enjoying themselves all in their own ways, Lillian particularly having fun fighting the Violences you made for her before going back to sleep- you basically stored a good couple of them inside one of your many, many storerooms and similar storage spaces just for her, given you don't really have much need for your undead capacity at this time.

Fun fact, you still can watch through and order around your undead even while hibernating, so you basically take the opportunity to teach her a thing or two by acting through them. Bonding time with your daughters is ever important, after all.

Now, as for Serena's continual improvement of Japan's culture and understanding of physical intimacy… She's making some really, really good progress in Japan. There's a few hangups here and there, the occasional snags, but it's more or less accepted, after just a year or two after her initial changes, that walking around in varying shades of nudity is acceptable, if not widely practiced at the moment.

Still lighter clothes that show off more skin are currently 'in', which you consider an important first step. Manipulating popular media according to the plans you laid out for her paid off for your daughter, who would've thought.

And with some of the same media bleeding over into general NAN territory thanks to you ensuring that kind of thing happens wherever possible despite the language barriers in place (note to self, make English universal for ease of everything already), the same effects radiating throughout the world, if to a much lesser degree than at its epicenter.

Japan is quickly becoming known for this 'doujin' thing they have, where independent artists draw lewd comics both with completely original ideas and of established works, essentially erotic fanfiction. Some of them are actually pretty good. But reputationally speaking, everyone is basically treating 'Nippon' (Serena really went and adopted the place and its culture) as a huge pile of perverts all quarantined to a single island nation.

Veracity of those rumors aside, it's an amusing development while you simultaneously prepare to twist America into being what it was always meant to be: The land of the free and the nude. With President James Smith dancing to your tune, you can affect a lot of changes fairly easily making use of the whole governmental apparatus.

While it still exists, anyways. Dividing administrative tasks between the Federal level and the State like it was done back when the US were founded was a stupid idea that made sense back then, but just causes more issues than it solves these days with improving communication and advancing technology making the distinction largely redundant.

Yeah, sure, have a local level of government that takes care of local tasks all you will, but having widely differing legislation because people back then were recalcitrant assholes that viewed their states as their 'nations' can go fuck off once you completely rewrite America.

Ugh. This really puts things into perspective, now that you think about it. You started out just looking to grab power for yourself, but by now you're just overcome with the urge to correct humanity's inadequacies because the sheer inefficiency and the failures simply bother you too much on a fundamental level.

You swear, it's just your luck that you'd end up taking over the world not because you want to (though you do want to as well, definitely), but rather because you can't trust people to govern themselves without your oversight. A benevolent global dictator is you, or will be anyways.

Le sigh.

You've instated yearly meetings with your little group of illuminati, by the way, just a bunch of holographic projectors connected via your private robot army network you have the Thinker teleport to them to give it all a nice flavor of mystery and advanced everything. The Board of Directors (name pending) is mainly tasked with advancing your agenda internally while maintaining the economic status quo within their respective territories, exchanging information and making adjustments as required. They can also request changes to Cryptic Solution's overall functions to improve on them, pending actual good arguments they can make for you.

This is how it's supposed to work, by the way. These guys have the autonomy they need and they answer to you in turn for the big questions and overall policy you're following, all within an oiled, perfectly adjusted machine of a government complex.

Seriously, you are what the USSR wishes it was in its wet dreams, just approaching everything from a drastically different standpoint. Which is why and how you actually work, to refer back to your earlier points on this topic.

Ah well, time to see where you can put a finger on the scales to further your agenda a bit going forwards, you suppose.

For the moment, your main concern is to ensure that you will be positioned properly to catch all the pieces you're about to create when you take the last real barrier between you and world domination apart with great care and gentleness- it would be laughably easy, truth be told, to simply destroy the USSR by inciting political unrest within the various nations Russia is in essence bleeding dry to keep itself afloat in the economic climate you've created globally (not that it didn't in Bet history either, of course), but you kind of want to avoid it falling apart violently.

That's honestly the hardest part in your whole scheme at this point. It's like trying to take someone down without seriously hurting them in a fight, which is much, much harder than simply beating their face in, just applied on a national stage and using a different set of fists, now that you think about it.

So anyways, your next step, as an organization at large, is to pull your usual shtick on South American nations, Brazil, Venezuela, the works. Penetrate the markets, outcompete the locals by abusing your massive logistics network (the parts of it not still dealing with China, anyways) and generous application of money to whatever governments get any stupid thoughts into their heads about protectionist policies.

It's really just a matter of time before you can extract that money back from them, once you have them all by the balls, so you like to consider it a temporary investment at most.

In the meantime, the members of your little illuminati club will be forewarned about your future actions- it's a good time to invest into your improved Thorium Reactors where possible, with the licenses for the design leased cheaply to any nation you have fingers in but that are not yet part of the NAN (and thus free to use Cryptic Solutions' intellectual property slash have it used within their nations according to the NAN's treaties tying all economies directly into your corporation).

That plus a few intelligence agencies in South America you're pretty much converting or at least taking out of the game for a while will do just fine for when you crash the price of oil and blow up Tschernobyl in quick succession. You know, everyday things you do, nothing out of the ordinary here.

Milo was doing much work, lots of business making him busy. He had big house now, big basement where he put the fancy thing. Like television screen, but it used whole room to show the people he was talking with.

Hologram, it was being called. Milo just thought of it as a fancy phone. Not like seeing them made a difference, they were all shadow-faced no matter how they looked. Just figures in the dark.

Heh. Worked for him. That was what they were.

Anyways, lots of work. He had to prepare a lot. Iodine pills, for when the power plant would go boom. Save up money from the state, da, was difficult but meant to let him buy up lots of oil for when winter came.

Milo did not care how they knew winter would be bad. Just that oil will be cheap and winter be cold, with no heat for anyone.

Opportunity. He was saying Mother Russia need Thorium, everyone else say R-B-M-K is way to go, then he will be hero when he keeps population from freezing to death. Foolproof. Only issue was getting in control of treasury, but he was managing- he knew some people and shadow removed the ones that would be big issue.

Many old men were convinced America was sending super assassins now. No proof, just saying it because people died. Idiots. This was Soviet Russia, everyone else around them had more reason to kill them than Americans.

Anyways, Mila Petrov was known CS advocate. Many did not like him because of this. Many would, what was the saying, 'eat their words'.

Tasted better than vodka. Becoming secretary was meant temporary stint, him just putting the Soviet Union to pieces. Mila did not mind, he was paid well and retirement package was a bigger house in fancy place for his family.

He talked with Smith, too, with the fancy holograms. Good man, that, the American president, family man too. Much in common between them. He never did get why national interests had to be personal opinion, too. They were all just people, in the end.

Report on Tonic Improvements made

Lurker 2: Grants 10 Stealth, negates the sound of the user's footsteps and their scent when sneaking

Lurker 3: Grants 20 Stealth, negates the sound of the user's footsteps, their scent and presence when sneaking (interferes with esoteric methods of detection)

Weapons Expert 1: Adds the 'Weapons Expert' Engineering perk

Weapons Expert 2: Grants 20 to Engineering rolls to create and modify weaponry and adds the 'Weapons Expert' Engineering perk

Weapons Expert 3: Grants 40 to Engineering rolls to create and modify weaponry and adds the 'Weapons Expert' Engineering perk

Muscle Power 1: Adds 1 damage to all melee attacks

Muscle Power 2: Adds 3 damage to all melee attacks and allows feats of enhanced physical strength

Muscle Power 3: Adds 5 damage to all melee attacks and allows feats of greatly enhanced physical strength

Heavy Blow 1: Adds a DC40 effect to knock enemies hit in melee prone

Heavy Blow 2: Adds a DC75 effect to knock enemies hit in melee prone

Heavy Blow 3: Adds a DC100 effect to knock enemies hit in melee prone

Freezing Hands 1: Allows the user to imbue their melee attacks (with weapons or otherwise) with cold and potentially freezing weapons or hands over, adding 1d4 cold damage

Freezing Hands 2: Allows the user to imbue their melee attacks (with weapons or otherwise) with cold and potentially freezing weapons or hands over, adding 1d8 cold damage

Freezing Hands 3: Allows the user to imbue their melee attacks (with weapons or otherwise) with cold and potentially freezing weapons or hands over, adding 1d12 cold damage and spreading ice and frost over struck targets, potentially decreasing physical rolls or shattering material

Vampire 1: Adds 1 lifedrain to all melee attacks

Vampire 2: Adds 3 lifedrain to all melee attacks

Vampire 3: Adds 6 lifedrain to all melee attacks

Machine Buster 1: Adds 1d4 damage against mechanical opponents

Machine Buster 2: Adds 1d8 damage against mechanical opponents

Machine Buster 3: Adds 1d12 damage against mechanical opponents and grants a 15% chance of instantly destroying them on hit

Short Circuit 1: Disabling effects against machines (such as Electrobolt) are twice as effective

Short Circuit 2: Disabling effects against machines (such as Electrobolt) are twice as effective and gain increased likelihood of breaking parts if toggled on

Short Circuit 3: Disabling effects against machines (such as Electrobolt) are thrice as effective, gain increased likelihood of breaking parts if toggled on or alternatively shut down electrical devices until repaired full stop

Electric Flesh 1: Adds 5 resistance against electricity

Electric Flesh 2: Adds 10 resistance against electricity

Electric Flesh 3: Adds 20 resistance against electricity

Walking Inferno 1: Adds 5 resistance against fire

Walking Inferno 2: Adds 10 resistance against fire

Walking Inferno 3: Adds 20 resistance against fire

Electrical Storm 1: Adds a 1/3 chance upon being struck in melee to expulse a pulse of electricity causing 1d10 damage to all attackers in melee range

Electrical Storm 2: Adds a 2/3 chance upon being struck in melee to expulse a pulse of electricity causing 1d15 damage to all attackers in melee range

Electrical Storm 3: Upon being struck in melee, user expulses a pulse of electricity causing 1d20 damage to all attackers in melee range

Fire Storm 1: Adds a 1/3 chance upon being struck in melee to expulse a pulse of fire causing 1d10 damage to all attackers in melee range

Fire Storm 2: Adds a 2/3 chance upon being struck in melee to expulse a pulse of fire causing 1d15 damage to all attackers in melee range

Fire Storm 3: Upon being struck in melee, user expulses a pulse of fire causing 1d20 damage to all attackers in melee range

Ice Storm 1: Adds a 1/3 chance upon being struck in melee to expulse a pulse of frost causing 1d10 damage to all attackers in melee range

Ice Storm 2: Adds a 2/3 chance upon being struck in melee to expulse a pulse of frost causing 1d15 damage to all attackers in melee range

Ice Storm 3: Upon being struck in melee, user expulses a pulse of frost causing 1d20 damage to all attackers in melee range

Elemental Storm 1: Adds a 1/3 chance upon being struck in melee to expulse a pulse of electricity, fire or frost causing 1d10 damage to all attackers in melee range

Elemental Storm 2: Adds a 2/3 chance upon being struck in melee to expulse a pulse of electricity, fire or frost causing 1d15 damage to all attackers in melee range

Elemental Storm 3: Upon being struck in melee, user expulses a pulse of electricity, fire or frost causing 1d20 damage to all attackers in melee range

EVE Expert 1: Increases the user's EVE by 5

EVE Expert 2: Increases the user's EVE by 10

EVE Expert 3: Increases the user's EVE by 20

EVE Saver 1: Reduces the cost of plasmid usage by 1, cannot be reduced below 1

EVE Saver 2: Reduces the cost of plasmid usage by 2, cannot be reduced below 1

EVE Saver 3: Reduces the cost of plasmid usage by 3, cannot be reduced below 1

Fountain Of Youth 1: Recovers 1 health and EVE per minute spent submerged in water

Fountain Of Youth 2: Recovers 10 health and EVE per minute spent submerged in water

Fountain Of Youth 3: Recovers 2 health and EVE per second spent submerged in water

Hackerman 1: Grants the user intuition on how to mess with machines in ways conducive to their self-interest

Hackerman 2: Grants 20 to Programming rolls to manipulate machines in addition to intuition on how to mess with machines in ways conducive to their self-interest

Hackerman 3: Grants 40 to Programming rolls to manipulate machines in addition to intuition on how to mess with machines in ways conducive to their self-interest

Hemingway's Helper 1: Cures writer's block and makes the user a better writer

Hemingway's Helper 2: Grants 20 to Art rolls made to write, cures writer's block and makes the user a better writer

Hemingway's Helper 3: Grants 40 to Art rolls made to write, cures writer's block and makes the user a better writer that can more easily analyze criticism, feedback and reader opinions

Slim-Down 1: Sheds the user's excess fat

Slim-Down 2: Sheds the user's excess fat and increases their objective beauty by means of increasing facial and bodily symmetry

Slim-Down 3: Sheds the user's excess fat and increases their objective beauty by means of increasing facial and bodily symmetry as well as granting permanently healthy skin and complexion, malleable and yet poignant hair condition and removal of general minor beauty defects

Baldness Cure 1: The cure to male-pattern baldness

Baldness Cure 2: The cure to all baldness. Also can be adjusted to modify what, if any, body hair grows.

Baldness Cure 3: The cure to all baldness. Also can be adjusted to modify what, if any, body hair grows. May adjust hair color, length and structure upon being used, changes are persistent even after removal of the tonic.

Total number of test subjects over a period of 10 years: 283197

Lethality Rate of test subjects: 78.16%

Prognosis: The rate of fatal mutation has been reduced significantly over the period of research covered, spiking with each new Tonic being tested and refined before rapidly sinking to normal levels. A lethality rate as low as approximately 40% was noted to occur over several particular trial phases.

Details adjoined in assorted appendixes. Rough estimation of total loss of life compared to potential lives preserved through use of this technology analyzed on page 64.

-Curie

The end of the Soviet Union is, by is very design, not a massive crash, no epic fight to the last stand to be had nor a masterstroke of politics and intrigue. If anything, it's an organic shift of its very existence, a slow, but traceable set of currents running back years and decades if anyone cares to look- which you do heavily assume they would, given the topic at hand.

'Momentous' is putting it lightly in terms of descriptions, really.

Your man on the inside, Mila Petrov, does his job perfectly, about as good as you could expect from any one man. Well, mortal man, but still- it's not like you're about to completely discount the power a determined (or well-paid, for that matter) human can wield in the right circumstances.

There's a reason you even bother to manipulate them towards your own ends, after all.

First, the oil. You are, directly or through intermediaries, in control of most nations that pump significant amounts of oil out of the depths of the earth, granting you a lot of leverage over a significant part of the world's economy as far as this resource is concerned- the NAN is largely independent of it, your entire economy set up to be more or less self-sufficient, but as for the rest of the globe?

Well, it's a nice oil price nations all around the world got there. Would be a shame if someone… crashed it. By increasing the amount of it brought forth and thrown onto the market, of course, massively stacking up the supply all the while demand remains the same.

Simple understanding of market forces suffices to predict what happens next.

The prices for oil go up, a bit of a slight stranglehold on its production held on by you causing some serious concern about the 'issue' of such. Then… Then you stop squeezing, stop pushing, and instead you begin pulling.

The price for a gallon of oil i cut in half. Then a quarter. An eighth. Down to ten percent of what it was the previous week before anyone knows it.

A single week is all it takes to lie up all major suppliers of oil all around the world and basically make their product… worthless. Or, well, not worthless, oil is still incredibly important and used for many things, it's just literally worth vastly less than it was beforehand. Quite a pickle a lot of people have just landed themselves in there.

Whatever shall be done about this, huh?

Well, step one is complete. You have things where you want them to be, the stage arranged for the scene you want played- all that's left now is to pull a trigger or two and watch it play out according to your stage directions over a backdrop of chaos as self-ascribed businessmen scramble to keep their investments worth something or else sell off shares entirely, causing no end of trouble for people left and right.

Ironically, the Soviet Union is hit even harder than the US, despite lacking an internal market for this kind of thing. After all… it was financing itself partially through the oil trade, selling to what nations required it that weren't directly ideologically opposed to it, having begun selling Russia's oil in the face of the economic challenges you've been throwing at it on and off for a couple years by this point.

Simply put, while this glut of crude oil is pretty great for anyone that needs it, it presents a serious loss of revenue for oil-producing nations. Saudi Arabia is taking the opportunity to basically shut down the production of the stuff entirely, all relevant workers being reassigned quickly and easily thanks to your planning ahead.

The US? Bit of trouble there, but it's more an oil consumer than a producer, so not that much. Russia, on the other hand?

Russia's 'economy' is getting wrecked. Without the level of income they receive through oil they'd expected, everything is harder to get because imports are a massive minus for them now, meaning they lack raw materials, meaning they lack food, they lack civilian products even more than they already did beforehand…

Shit is going down bad over there. Additionally, with some help from the Thinker, you are manipulating certain weather patterns while awake around that time, totally safe and nonintrusive. All it does is cause a record-breaking winter to break out all over the USSR.

There's snow going down in July and it only gets heavier from there, literally burying the populace under a blanket of deadly white cold. Some people freeze to death inside their homes before your good friend Mila Petrov pushes through provisions to use the now much cheapened oil available to heat said homes to weather this winter, an alternative to selling it for literal pennies at this point.

There is opposition of course, there always is, but for once the politician with the intent to help people manages to get something done, incidentally elevating his popularity among the common folk quite a bit. After all, when you have the guy that's allocating resources to keeping you alive on the one side and people that don't want to bother and keep on making at least some money off of the global market instead on the other, people don't really have a hard time deciding whom they like more or anything.

Then, of course, Chernobyl blows up like a motherfucker.

It's a meltdown, triggered by what would later in history be considered human error just like your own paper slash opinion piece warned about, and it's quickly causing what happened on Earth Bet as well. The nuclear catastrophe of Chernobyl is at hand and there is nothing that can stop it now.

… Well, you could go out and deal with it personally, of course, but eh, let people be irradiated a bit, it just builds character.

To recap what the Russian people, particularly those around Moscow, are going through, it's so cold outside their skin may freeze and fall off if they don't cover themselves more than Islamic women did before you went and basically made hijabs optional over the course of your secularization campaign all over the Middle East, to establish the exact levels of 'fuck me that's cold' you and the Thinker unleashed- you actually waited a whole year to get the air currents required for this just right, in fact.

In addition, food is extremely scarce, especially in the cities where any supply is quickly bought and used up by whoever can get their hands on it, and even clothing is at a premium in the current economy; people literally rob and murder each other over whatever warm clothes the other person is wearing, on a fairly large scale and all.

Now enter Chernobyl, the nuclear power plant that just melted down and whose radioactivity is spreading by ways of a pretty huge series of clouds, blowing the issue all over Russia's very own capital. If it was at all advisable to go out of the house at this point, that would have just changed- a combination of lethal cold and radioactive hazard greets your every breath, sapping body heat and replacing it with genetic damage.

Suffice to say, these various factors all playing into each other are making people's lives rather miserable. Luckily enough, however, there is one man that had the temerity and the wits to think ahead and prepare for the very worst: Mila Petrov!

The functionary of the ruling party moves the government to subsidize heating for any regions hit by this record winter (hint, it's all of Russia and a chunk of the Soviet Union at large) so as to let people not freeze to death in their own homes, sending messages far and wide advising them to huddle up inside single rooms where possible to save on gas, and hands out massive amounts of Russian-produced iodine pills against the will of the rest of the party that's still stuck trying to make the problem look much smaller than it really is.

Having none of it, Petrov slams in a second homerun in announcing the situation as it is and what is being done to address it on national television, adding in that distribution centers for the medicine meant to minimize damage to human lives are being set up where possible under the massive snowfall burying roads and settlements alike.

Suffice to say, he is making enemies… But far, far more friends among the people as well. The KGB tries to assassinate him over the whole affair, but a quick application of a certain Wraith or two foils any and all of their attempts even as all other political leaders are rapidly losing popular support.

After all, where were they when that one guy stepped up to defend the Russian people against catastrophe, whether natural or self-made? He had been warning against the dangers of typical nuclear reactors for years before his warnings proved themselves all too true, after all, and even now he had been the one 'secretly' stockpiling preparations for just such an occasion.

Mila Petrov promises to give the people what they want, returning to the roots of the revolution that ousted Tzar Nicholas and overtook the country by storm. Popular referendums for vassal states, even as he points out they are very likely to leave the Soviet Union, a thorough restructuring of the economy, closer relations to the Neutral Alliance of Nations and the United States of America, not, as he says, due to blind pacifism but imply because the world can ill afford a neverending arms race, all these and more are what he proclaims should be done.

The party is, politically speaking, split in two. One side supports Petrov and his vision of a new future for Russia and the Soviet Union, the other side maintains that the West is the enemy and must be fought on all fronts to prove the superiority of a true Communist Utopia.

Elections are… chaotic. The opposition tries to cheat, of course, stacking false ballots to try and secure victory no matter what in complete conviction of the righteousness of its beliefs, but your side cheats harder, simply throwing out the vast majority of ballots that show the wrong vote on them behind everyone else's back.

In the end, you have Mila right where you want him: The President of the Soviet Union, all the way at the very top.

And thus the Soviet Union, the perhaps largest failed attempt at putting an ideology into practice in history, comes to an end. Mila naturally goes ahead and lets all the countries that were part of it leave, something they do one after the other, and arranges for several deals with Cryptic Solutions to 'modernize the Russian economy'. Peace talks are held with America, him and President Smith meeting in person in Berlin, the German capital the perhaps largest monument to the split between East and West; split in two by the wall separating the nation that was split up into halves after getting it ass kicked at the end of World War Two.

It now becomes the site of the end of the Cold War instead, the two presidents filmed in a beautiful shot shaking hands in a show of friendship, a strict cap on nuclear weaponry being negotiated even as both nations vow to reduce military spending now that the time of disunity is over.

Naturally, observers of other, ahem, Neutral, nations, that may or may not be in an alliance of such, are also present, and over the course of the following two years overtures are made and accepted in short order. China joins the NAN and becomes part of Cryptic Solutions' sphere of influence the moment Russia is officially non-hostile towards both of course, and before long more and more of humanity joins together under your banner in the name of peace and prosperity.

The PR department literally makes that your slogan, by the way. 'Cryptic Solutions: Peace and Prosperity'. Add a pretty much nonstop bombardment of this idea through as many of your products as they can brand with it and, well, there you are.

A few South-American nations don't follow up on this 'trend', despite having been hit hard by the oil crash you masterminded; in those places, coups happen without your input as the angry populace demands to be part of the prosperity legitimately everyone enjoys under your banner, blaming whoever's in charge for trying to keep the wealth of their respective countries to themselves.

Which, to be fair, is true more often than not.

Well, as it turns out, using your satellites to ensure everyone, literally everyone, with a TV can see how things are like inside your territory, and then also delivering cheap, affordable satellite-receptive TVs all over the world is a bit of a hammer combination. It does help you actually do deliver everything you promise, to paraphrase another marketing slogan, 'always good, always on time'.

Let's just say world domination is only really hard in the beginning stages, once you're set up the rest is really just waiting and letting the world do what you want anyways. Both America and Russia officially join the Neutral Alliance of Nations in 1979, just about ten years after you set out to take over Earth Rapture, and a world-wide holiday is instated on the occasion.

Both James Smith and Mila Petrov have since ceased to be presidents of their respective nations, but instead they're still parts of the Directorate, which is arguably way better, in exchange.

The world looks a lot different from how it did before you began to weigh in on its development. Well, you and your daughters, truth be told, but hey, same difference.

First off, the economy is truly global, now, with well-defined and standardized supply route for just about anything you need anywhere; you effectively can have anything delivered anywhere all across the world within at most one week and individual post is covered within that. Even better, you have almost complete control over shipping, trucks and even emergency deliveries via airplanes, which really tickles the control freak in you.

More importantly, even, is the effect you've been having on cultural developments as of the time you properly exercise your grasp on the entirety of Earth Rapture; international television is less of an oddity and more a matter of course, allowing people to view and take part in whatever they desire, and the launch of the internet proper only serves to renew this change when you finally pull the trigger on it. Simply put, people can connect and are connecting with people from all over the world, language barrier or no.

Speaking of, you've actually gotten around to introducing English as a standard language for CS and the NAN. There's no particularly deep reason for why you chose English in particular beyond being closely related to most languages spoken in more prosperous nations and you kind of identify with it due to growing up with it, nothing more and nothing less.

It's being taught in schools literally everywhere now. Hopefully you'll have it properly used by everyone a couple generations down, but that's all you can do or say about it for the time being.

Speaking of the cultural implications of your actions, though… With Japan being how it is and Serena being herself and also de facto in control of it, combined with the help you're giving her to smooth things along, Japan is quickly becoming the epicentre of a rapid wave of change, remaining the epitome of what others would have described as 'moral degeneration' under your daughter's benevolent guidance.

It depends on where exactly you are, but within most civilized places inside of the island nation in question, clothing is strictly optional by now and public intercourse is, while not necessarily encouraged, perfectly acceptable to have. Sure, most people will still wear shoes and socks at a minimum for reasons of practicality alone, but otherwise?

Well, the government fully embraced the pretext of falling birthrates that must be fought back. So you have entire districts of people, grown adults and kids, casually living almost complete nudist lifestyles during the summer, freely engaging in sex just about wherever they want to.

Being Japan, a few schools also introduce a system where some of the students are designated as sex objects for the day with schedules and all, whereas other ones are more of a free-for-all in terms of who gets to screw whom; apartment complexes become sexualized communities, relationships have to either branch out into polyamory or both partners determine they will not fuck anyone else for however long they're together- Curie calls it an 'interesting opportunity for sociological studies into the effects of sexuality on human behavior'.

You just call it a very friendly place, really.

That's not to say that outright public depravity is somehow limited to Japan, of course. With media shared all over the world (with subtitles specifically to overcome language barrier, of course), pretty much the whole world gets to have an eyeful of what's going on there, though censoring is applied as appropriate still.

Where it is pretty much never needed, though, is in one very special place as well. Much as you'd halfway intended, halfway just stumbled into, The US of A are rapidly becoming your perhaps second-most favorite nation at around this time. While you weren't looking, the left-leaning movements that make up a significant portion of the demographic you targeted during your interference with the US has kind of, how do you put it… taken over a bit.

Not overly problematically so, mostly more in a cultural slash sexual revolution kind of sense. After the deep distrust for traditional values you created while dealing with Nixon (and any potential opposition to your actions going forward), they had more or less free reign on shaping popular culture for a bit, at least in parts of the country, and things just kind of went from there.

With President Smith not really opposing particular legislative changes being enacted left and right.

End result is, there's a lot of new cultural stereotypes arising from what people do all the time nowadays, as a lot of the 'free love' ideology has infiltrated newer generations; combined with aforementioned legislative changes, America basically followed suit to Japan, pretty much.

Oh sure, there are differences. Public sex is still kind of frowned upon in most places, but as long as you at least make a token effort at staying hidden, well, can't nobody say much about it. Especially among teenagers and the younger generation in general, it's become fashionable to show off as much of their bodies as possible while still 'technically' wearing clothes, in a sort of race towards the ultimate point of exhibitionism before just walking around naked entirely.

Suffice it to say that few people beyond the older generation really disapprove, and with politics locked down to prevent any action against this… Well, the results are obvious.

Schools, bowling alleys, malls, cinemas; anywhere young people like to gather and meet they show off as much of their bare flesh as possible, few of them keeping their horny hands off each other for any length of time. Of course then President Smith, being the average American, gets it in his head to legalize incest and, well… The problems adult Americans have with this state of affairs seem to severely diminish overnight.

With the genetic modifications Cryptic Solutions Hospitals and Healthcare Facilities provide, it is entirely possible to avoid genetic issues through incest, so before long rather… closer relationships between families become much more common than before, strapping young lads wearing nothing but a codpiece seducing their mothers just as surely as teenage girls wearing less than nothing do their fathers- or mothers, or boys that get it on with their dads, whatever floats their boats, really.

Of course the sheer spread of possible modifications to perform on themselves isn't lost on the more adventurous, and so you soon see a few curious trends… Overt changes, such as obviously 'unnatural' natural hair color, pointed or otherwise modified ears, inhuman eye mods and all such things are a more 'Japanese' thing, following their own kind of fashion styles whereas American consensus is to more or less keep it hidden how far you've changed yourself- to a first glance, that is.

Lengthened tongues, changes to bodily fluids, general beautification and skin treatments, as long as it's not obvious that it had to come from a gene mod it's 'in'. Everyone does it before long of course, and it's no secret, but libido enhancers are naturally one of the more popular choices all around. Everyone loves getting the engine revved up quick and easy and making it last a couple turns, after all.

Funny story about that, too. A little more than a year into this new status quo, the news pick up on a certain family; father, mother and daughter, the latter of whom is a teenager that just has to always get the last word, kind of a real karen as it becomes clear fairly soon if you look into it.

Now, here's the fun part: In order to get themselves gene-modded with anything beyond easily reversable treatments, anyone under the age of sixteen has to get their parents' permission, to get themselves changed. Of course without them themselves being in full agreement on the matter, parents can't remodel their kids on the fly either, but it is entirely possible for them to suggest certain mods at any point.

So cue an annoyed father that has to deal with his daughter's shit, getting into what mods are available and adding a few additional ones she can easily and simply refuse to have made- except being a massive karen as already mentioned, she doesn't bother actually reading through the list of gene mods about to be applied to her when she gets to have the hair she always dreamt of having.

Two weeks later her father has divorced his wife and is focused on boning his daughter all day, her libido ratcheted up to the point she's spreading her legs at the slightest touch for him or anyone else he points her at. Successful attitude readjustment made, and while the whole story is very much controversial, it opens up a lot of… possibilities.

And proves that she can still be a bitch even afterwards, you can just shut her up by bending her over at any time. Pretty much exactly what you wanted here, ideologically speaking- if you can call 'have sex all day' an ideology, anyways.

Beach parties, you've heard, are a favorite pastime for tourism purposes by now. A bunch of naked or almost naked teenagers getting drunk and having sex all night? Throw the tourists in there, all of which are appealing enough for anyone's standards, and well, California's beaches are just as wet with cum as they are with water some nights.

Progress!

Jenny wondered, not for the first time, how she'd gotten herself into this situation. It couldn't have been normal, right? Only a week or so ago she'd been just going about her day like she would every day, after all!

Looking back, that day in particular she'd been walking to school, watching, idly, as foot traffic had been held up by a couple of other kids she knew from school; it looked like they were taking their time with it, too, and something about the scene made her think for just a couple minutes.

She remembered when times were different, years ago, if a bit dimly. Sex didn't use to be such a casual thing, right? It was always more a private kind of affair between two people, something you were ashamed of if it became a big topic. Even today, she was wearing a short skirt and a nice blouse instead some of the… things she saw other people wear around school.

Then there had been the changes to the laws, people getting funny ideas… And now she was looking at one of the teenage girls in her grade getting a train run on her, one guy after another jamming their dicks into her from behind as she stood there, hands spread against the wall and moaning aloud, the back of the boy rutting into her rippling with every thrust as her whole body mirrored the motion.

STDs had been completely wiped out over a few months back when gene mods were first introduced, pretty much every hospital in the country (and the world over) sprouting the facilities to let people make changes to their own bodies, with a choice between keeping them to within their own generation or making them inheritable. There'd been controversy about that, of course, but in the end the choice was simply up to every individual person themselves.

Freedom was valued oddly highly in a world ruled by a single super-corporation that determined pay, gave out equal health benefits to everyone and all around controlled everything, Jenny thought.

But anyways… she knew about the various things you could splice into your body, just from osmosis, hearing others talk about it, but you didn't really know the possibilities until you tried it out yourself- something she hadn't done so far and something she was kind of wary about doing. Like, it was a fundamental change to your body, right? Kind of scary to think about when you got to it.

Still she recognized that this one girl had to have 'Slimfit', the modification that made your… orifices tight and capable of stretching to fit any member put inside of it, one of the more popular things the girls at school that were into this kind of thing all used. Apparently, it made every fuck feel like it was just big enough to stretch you out regardless of whether it should or not. She'd heard.

It was one of those mods you got as a matter of course when you started to mod, just like 'Sag-B-Gone' that made it so you didn't need bras and could support bigger breasts easier, a bunch of skincare and haircare ones, and of course there were some that gave you bigger boobs, made you prettier, changed your figure…

It was basically like makeup would've been ten years ago, to hear her mom say it. Not that any of it mattered to her, Jenny wasn't like that.

She was perfectly happy with her brunette hair, decent enough figure ad sense of modesty intact. Sure, her skirt was short, but at least she wore panties under it!

She passed by the blissed-out, eyes-rolled-up form of her yearmate, a couple of unrelated adult men now joining in on the 'fun'. Her parents may not think of it as a big deal, but she didn't believe in just randomly splicing yourself into a horny slut and letting everyone have a go at you, okay?!

At school, Jenny was dragged off by one of her friends as soon as she arrived; Jennifer, a fellow member of the 'J-Brigade' and cheerleader. "Hey J, I need your help?"

"… What about?" She knew her friend, this was going to be either child's play or outrageous.

"You remember how we won the football game last week and we were gonna celebrate?" Jenny vaguely remembered something along those lines. "One of the girls won't be able to come and we need someone else to make up for the numbers."

"… Correct me if I'm wrong, but does that 'celebration' involve the entire football team and a bunch of sex?" She raised an eyebrow. "Because you know what I think about that."

"Uh, yeah, you're being a super prude and won't splice or anything," Jennifer groaned. "But I really, really need to find someone for this so we can take care of all the boys at once, you're my only hope, Jen!"

"Can you seriously not ask anyone else? Like, there's enough other girls around, aren't there?"

"Nobody I know has time this weekend, they've all got plans already- I wouldn't ask you if I didn't have to, you're right about that." This would sound insulting if it came from anyone else, but Jenny knew what Jennifer meant. "Pleeeaaase?"

She sighed. "Come on, Jen, you know I can't."

A couple hours later, Jenny was walking into the local hospital's genetic modifications department, Jennifer right behind her. "How did I let you talk me into this?"

"Aww, don't get cold feet now! We got your mom's permission and everything, no backing out at the last second!"

"Remember, you owe me sweets and dessert for a month after this. And I get to do anything I want to do to you."

"Didn't know you liked me that way, sweet J!" Jennifer grinned, her cheeks puffing up in that way that only she did.

"If I'm going to do this, I'm doing it right, and that means you are my exclusive-use personal bitch as soon as we're done with that 'party'," Jenny grumped.

She may as well get something out of it, right?

And that was how she'd found herself making extensive use of the catalog of gene mods available to the public, giving herself a little bit of a makeover. They took a day or two to grow in all together, but now there Jenny was, inside a locker room but without any clothes.

"Heya guys! Ophelia couldn't make it, but Jenny here's here to fill in her spot!"

"Hey," she awkwardly said, looking around. There were a couple more girls around, most of them already 'occupied' making out with one or more naked members of the football team, but they were decidedly outnumbered by the latter; it was pretty clear to her now why Jennifer had been so insistent on getting another girl to join in.

It didn't take long for her to be surrounded either, muscular boys glistening with sweat coming towards her from all sides. There was a heady scent in the air, probably because of the sheer concentration of the pheromone packages people could get, and it was kind of affecting her already.

Some of the guys greeted her, running their hands over her body. Jenny had gotten an upgrade, of course, because if she was already doing it, she wasn't going to half-ass it; the full 'basic' package, plus a few enhancers to sensitivity, a libido upper, the works.

That was why as the horny jocks swarming her felt her up, squeezing her ass and tits, she didn't take long to produce a steady flow of clear liquid to let of trickle down her thighs, the hard cocks of the guys around her somehow straining in the air at the sight. It actually looked like everyone was coming around to say hello, given she was a new 'participant' in this stuff, but they quickly got the message that she had no idea what to do and overwhelming her with numbers wasn't getting anywhere.

Soon enough her hands were on two of those cocks, giving them a few strokes and feeling how hard they were for her (and every other girl in the room). Still kind of clueless about what to do next, though, she let them lead her towards the benches in the middle of the room, where towels had been laid out to make for softer seating; Jennifer was there already, being spitroasted on her back by two of the jocks even as a third was standing next to her, jerking off onto her tits.

Jenny quickly knelt on the bench, knees and shins on the seating, to keep on watching her friend as she lifted up her butt, hands on the backrest in the middle. "I'd ask how you want me, but I have an idea," she snarked, eyes glued on as the actual cheerleader that had gotten her into this whole thing milked out a load from each of the boys fucking her. "Just get to it already."

Heh. She really was putting on a way braver face than what she felt like. She wasn't really a virgin, she'd torn her hymen experimenting with a vibrator long ago already, but this was still the first time she was in any situation like this.

She heard them jostle around behind her, but something about her uncertainty had to be showing on her face; Jennifer saw her and pushed herself up, saying something to the boys near her Jenny couldn't make out over the sounds of ongoing sex all around. Then, though, she got up on the bench opposite from her, smiling at her.

Just as Jenny felt something big and hard slap against her butt. Guys used gene mods just as well as girls did, which was half the reason she'd let the cheerleader talk her into getting mods just to make it through this whole thing to begin with. Then, though, he didn't slide it under her undercarriage or anything- the oversized, drooling rod drew back only just a bit, her butt cheeks spread by big, strong hands.

It was all she had time for to open her eyes wide in surprise, then he was pushing in; she could feel the precum soaking her back entrance and getting it just slick enough it couldn't hold out for long. Her asshole was slowly spreading around the intruder, a long groan leaving her throat as she was anally penetrated.

His hands on her hips now, she only realized her mouth was standing open, elongated tongue slipping out almost down to her chin momentarily, when Jennifer giggled, moaning and licking it up and back into Jenny's mouth with her own tongue as another jock positioned himself behind her.

"You're sho cute when you're getting fucked, J," the fuckdrunk cheerleader grinned, her breath panting and eager as she was fucked like a bitch in heat. "Wuv ya!"

"Nngh! Argh!" The boy behind her was thrusting hard now, forcefully sheathing his entire cock inside of her asshole. She felt so very full back there, like she could feel his every throbbing vein, excited heartbeat echoing through his pleasure rod. Not satisfied with just this, of course, he got right to imitating an industrial piston, ramming himself into her and letting his heavy, swollen testes lap against her wet pussy with every thrust.

Jenny was holding onto Jennifer's hands now, fingers entwined as they were leaning against each other for balance now, both being mounted and fucked hard. They were making out wordlessly, an indescribable emotion hanging between the two of them like a haze.

Didn't take long before the football player behind her growled out his orgasm, slamming himself balls deep into her ass and spewing a hot load inside of her guts. Jenny idly wondered, then, if there weren't any mods to let her grow a dick and do the same to Jennifer as well, make her feel what she was feeling and claim her ass? Either way, she could feel herself coming as well, the hanging teats of the cheerleader's chest bouncing as her guy, too, finished, she thought.

She took a breath to look at the other girl again, properly, noting how beautiful her blissed-out face was. "I'll make you mine," she promised, then and there.

Then another pair of boys took their place behind each of them, a third rising up on the benches to tick his dick between their faces. Not missing a beat, Jenny got right to licking and lavishing her saliva all over it, her compatriot leaning to the side to do the same to his smooth, hairless balls.

First she had to fuck and keep fucking until everyone in the room was down and out, then she could claim the girl she'd decided she liked nice and thorough, she thought.

That was how Jenny and Jennifer got together, becoming and remaining girlfriends for a long, long time to come.

Your secondary ocean facility, set up inside the Marianas Trench to let the lights you installed around its outsides provide a nice backdrop of deep-sea life and otherwise completely lightless rocks and water, is used pretty much once a year as an easily available meeting spot, provided the people to be met activate their teleportation beacons as they are instructed to.

You pretty much built it so you could have your secret illuminati meetings in an appropriately foreboding and technologically impressive place, yes, so what? You have the technology, you may as well make some actual use of it, and if it's just to show off you can just do this, build a massive skyscraper-sized underwater base deeper down than most u-boats can travel for the heck of it.

You don't go around advertising it of course, but there are windows and the 'guests' you have once a year have eyes. It's really just a matter of letting them make up their own minds as to how very ill-advised it is to try and rebel against you at some point.

It's the little things that keep the minions in line.

This entire 'meeting people in person' idea came up a couple years into your tenure as the richest motherfucker (yes, still literally so even if you left her on Bet) in the world, mostly as a way of reinforcing the thralling you got on various leaders all around the world, as well as to unify the minion you use as glorified administrative drones pursuing whatever agenda you set for them.

A bit sleight of hand and blunt application of supernatural powers whenever you're here and you can fairly easily manipulate any and all of them, string them along while actually following up on your end of any deals you made with them.

Your healthcare plans are pretty extensive to say the least. You actually let Curie draw up the whole list of services and securities in place as part of it and the whole document you mailed out to your human leadership thralls is thick enough its weight is capable of spraining a baseline human being's wrist if improperly handled.

Normally, the various people you've essentially hired to run the various franchises of the NAN trundle in over the course of a couple hours as the time allows, milling about and engaging in conversation with each other, if only to spend the time productively. More than one backroom deal is brokered during this time, though as long as they don't fuck with the company's red lines you don't exactly care.

There's a lot of administrative work going into regulating an entire planet's worth of resources, getting everything that's needed where it needs to be, keeping track of resource extraction and generation from mining to farming to production of various products using processed resources along various steps each of which has its own requirements and resource consumption… Look, you like a good bit of corruption as much as the next immoral corporate overlord, but you went through a lot of effort to make all of this work out exactly how it's meant to.

You're not about to abide by any fucking around that messes with your system, okay?

Anyways, before long, you tend to arrive, drawing the gentlemen that embody at least some amount of power and influence to take a seat around the tables arrayed inside of the main 'audience' room.

Naturally, you're standing on a stage, the entire thing built to resemble a standup comedy routine with you as the comedian. Because hey, you absolutely understand and enjoy humor at your own expense, and this little setup says a lot about what Earth Rapture is to you.

You clear your throat. "Hello and welcome to yet another of the Directorate's annual meetings. Incidentally, this is also the tenth meeting of its kind, so as a special anniversary I took the freedom to prepare more refreshments than usual."

Uncomfortable shuffling ensues as the august personages present glance at the wall the small buffet you usually leave them with will appear from at the end of your part in this show. You have the Thinker employ your manufactories to make this stuff using your best recipes, so it usually tastes amazing given the sheer breadth and depth of the knowledge on cooking you can access.

"That aside, however, we have a lot to talk about this year as well. Integration of genetic improvements among the populace is going well globally, if a bit slowly around the Middle East and Europe, exactly as forecasts predicted. Resource spending on the military is steadily approaching the status quo we envisioned as it rises and popular culture is within expected parameters, so let me first say that you have all done rather well this year a well."

A polite applause rises, led by none other than your old friend Sinclair. He's been doing rather well for himself personally as well by the by, last you heard he's living in a lavish mansion near a nice Hawaiian beach where he's housing half a dozen of his 'sweethearts' while he's off doing your work the rest of the time.

You wouldn't have been anywhere near this fast with your complete takeover if it wasn't for him, credit where credit is due.

Well 'ere he was, doing the devil's work. He called it way back when in Rapture, sweet ol' hellhole that she was, but he was fine with it then and he was fine with it now.

Turned out all ol' faithful wanted was to spread depravity while he lead humanity into becomin' better, a regular well-oiled machine, and that was what they'd done well enough.

Now Sinclair had a small nation's net worth before he got into the priceless stuff, and he had the whole world to use his money in. Wasn't his business that afforded him as much, but 'ey, he was no man ta argue with results.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. And being second in line to the prince o' darkness wasn't no mean feat, no sirree.

You also continue to do some research of your own before returning to Earth Bet, specifically on the manipulation and refinement of what you have come to call the esperization process. It's a lot of very fine-tuned and delicate work where even slight changes introduced at any point of the process can have massive and sometimes explosive results, but with a virtually unlimited supply of fresh orphans and other younger test subject, you eventually arrive at a line of tonics you can work with.

All the exploding heads and extinguished souls are annoying, but it does prove that esper powers are somehow related to souls. You think. The exact science involved here remains unclear, it could just be a side effect of some sort- it's just that you like to think it takes more than a particularly funky brain to manifest superpowers.

Let's be honest, it would've happened at some point in human history and someone would've noticed, right?

Anyways, some more exploded orphan heads later, you finally have a fairly reliable mix of tonics that, when administered to a test subject, do not lead to spontaneous death when they're subjected to esperization and instead have them show a marked increase in the number of successful and verifiable esper powers resulting from the whole ordeal compared to test groups not injected with the mix of tonics in question, even decreasing the total amount of time required for it show results to about a day or so.

Sometimes they still need a little extra afterwards, but that's more just making sure their powers don't jumble out of control too much. It's generally more or less a day.

Cleaning all of the detritus eventually becomes such a hassle you go out of your way to get Riley to make you a specially effective solvent to deal with the stuff. Blood isn't really an issue, you just need to use your hemokinesis and all and you can even use it to clean the room after every 'participant' of your 'study', but let's be honest, you were never going to waste your own time on that.

Successful test cases are, naturally, short-lived, as you do not plan to have any baby espers running around potentially making an issue of themselves- you're not that kind of supervillain, thank you very much- but no general tendency as to their newly gained powers can be observed before they are automatically liquidated so far. You'll put that one up to the process working as intended, just that the results continue to be generally all over the place.

That said, this isn't the only thing you've been working on…

While you weren't quite sure about how possible it was, you did go ahead and put forward a certain hypothesis; what if, instead of using your own esper power over gravity and its various effects, you made a machine that can do so for you?

Basically try and disprove your thoughts about needing a soul to use this kind of thing. Of course if you can get it to work, you're also kind of a genius simply by virtue of doing so. It's a win-win either way.

And lo and behold, after just a few… minor… accidents that grew out of control… and pasted a couple of whales outside of your separate laboratory in yet another location at the bottom of the ocean… You managed to do it! Turns out that no, you were wrong, after all, though you just kind of kludged together prototypes until one worked properly.

Then you kept going when you realized you'd created a freezer-sized engine that works off of gravity it is subjected to, effectively amplifying and maintaining it almost indefinitely. Well, according to the Thinker it would run out of energy if exposed to weightlessness in about two to three weeks and is likely to break within a day or two, but now that you know it's possible, you can take what you have and refine it, as you are wont to do.

The AI literally capable of predicting the future (if not always correctly when you start to mess up cause and effect through any of a wide number of means) supporting you in doing this does help, of course. In fact, the Thinker is absolutely invaluable to minimizing development time and testing phases of your iteratively improving new technology.

You eventually settle on two major lines of development, all your other ideas self-destructing rather than accepting that they should work. Quite inconsiderate of them, but hey, you can make do.

That still leave you with a device that allows for a burst of increased effective mass of, say, someone carrying it or a robot or machine it is built into, with a few possibilities for fine-tuning to shift the exact results- you can keep it from instantly killing or at least harming the human body, for example, by increasing the density that is already increased upon activation disproportionally highly, or go all-in on the density to make the one receiving the effects significantly harder to hurt through, say, a bullet being shot at them.

It's not complete immunity or anything, but a test subject proves that even weak, flabby human flesh can stop bullets with significantly reduced penetration when it is dense enough. You consider this a significant win once again, and your robots will probably be even more unstoppable now with these things installed.

Now, as for the gravity engines… You could use them for vehicles, essentially driving them like traditional engines would, and with a bit of engineering, well, hoverboards, flying cars and similar are entirely possible to create with these things. That said, you could also see them used to propel rockets, generate electricity and generally do anything that engines would normally be used for, the principles on which they run is a different one but the end result is similar enough to make it work.

All in all, trying your hand at putting what comes naturally to yourself these days into practice turned out surprisingly well. It's a whole new world of possible technology you just kind of… realized exists.

Things are pretty nice for you, to be honest. You've got a good thing going on with the whole world domination gig, now that the vast majority of humanity is under your thumb, and the perks that come with all of it are pretty dang nice.

Like, as many horrible criminals as you could want to eat being delivered to your doorstep levels of nice. Having introduced the death sentence for certain levels of crime through the NAN Standardization Act (take that Brits, you have to drive on the right side of the street now), specifically those in which clear criminal and malicious intent has been determined, humanity essentially filters the worst of the worst out through actually somewhat decent rulings, in turn give you free access to prime meals at your whim.

Anyone actually sentenced to death is simply put on ice inside one of those cryopods, courtesy still of Vault 111 even if you did go ahead and make a few changes to the design, and fed on at your whim, becoming easily available happy meals. Hurray for the conveniences of modern technology you suppose, by which you naturally mean teleportation.

Nobody outside of certain circles knows about that, of course. Not the judges, not the juries in those places that have them, nobody except the people operating the machinery. As far as anyone else is concerned, anyone sentenced to death goes into the facility and nobody comes out, end of story.

Of course you do sometimes have false positives, people that weren't actually guilty or not vile enough in life to make for a decent taste in death, but thanks to your sorting system, you can fairly easily tell if it's just an occasional issue, someone slipping through the net as it were, or if someone or several someones are being a tad bit too quick to call for others' deaths.

Reprimands and demotions can really ruin people's days and you're the damn emperor of those these days. Half the world is literally directly working for Cryptic Solutions in one capacity or another, more if you cut out the bullshit you go through to obfuscate this fact, so being considered an untrustworthy employee can be an issue for years if people are unlucky.

You also did take over running the prisons, while you're at it, but mostly because privately-run for-profit prisons are a retarded idea. Prisons do not generate revenue unless the state pays someone for running them and they keep part of the money for their own pockets, and while entrepreneurship is something to be encouraged, you don't want private business interests or even your own company business interests invested in filling useless institutions that do not actually make money for you.

Prisons exist to put people into them that can't be let out amongst the populace, the special place behind the barn where you take the unruly livestock, essentially. They aren't meant to be stuffed to capacity to rake in the cash from the government that you also own. Oh, and the less is said about charter schools, the better.

Just give them a proper fucking budget, America! Seriously, you're as American as can be, given you did marry your sister technically if not officially or anything (note to self, look into that at some point), but sometimes people need a few punches to the damn face in the great nation that is sometimes a bit too free with the actually important things.

Hence why you made love free. That's enough freedom for anyone, right?

Anyways, back on topic. Cryptic Solutions standardizing everything from measurements to judicial systems all over the world was met with a measure of distrust, especially among those that have been decrying your totally honest company as being some dystopian nightmare, but as it's been a couple years since then and the only real effect most people feel in their daily lives is that it's much easier to figure out what's going on when abroad, that standards of living have once again been raised by way of ensuring any product from food to apartment buildings actually meet your standards and that the cost of living has gone down a bit, all that really came of it were a couple of actually pretty interesting books and some minor 'cultural preservation movements' that try to cling to national identities you've been making a point of preserving anyways.

Just, y'know, not pushing in classrooms as heavily. People are allowed to have pride in their country, they're just supposed to have more pride in Cryptic Solutions and the part said country is within the greater whole you're running.

And yeah, you did have a read of those sci-fi cyberpunk novels a couple of writers got together and put into writing. Probably something to do with already existing sentiments that boiled up after the Second World War and the following Cold one, really, but it's not like you're actually putting barcodes on the population or anything.

That's what IDs are for, duh.

So when you throw a massive party to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of your corporation's founding, blood and chocolate flow in fucking rivers, long story short. Yes, you went out of your way to make a massive chocolate river that you then laced with blood so anyone with hemokinesis could move it from afar, just because you could. You don't do these kinds of things half-assed when you have the means to really live it up like this.

Also included with the catering are a couple thousand suckers on death row, surplus you just kind of accumulated over the years and decided to have everyone rip through on the occasion. It's pretty neat, and even Sinclair, whom you've since turned into a vampire himself, is eating his fill on this day.

He's been doing pretty well and really did earn himself a promotion, you thought. Not to mention how well he dealt with the transition, he was basically acting the very same even though he had a near panic attack when you told him you'd kill and resurrect him as an unholy abomination.

Never showed it openly of course, but once he was vamped he was right as rain right away again.

Ah fuck ah fuck ah fuck he was a duddin' demon or sumthin'. He shoulda known, he woulda expected it, but Augustus Sinclair had jus' kinda let his guard down after a decade an' some change of workin' for the devil.

That's what was so dangerous 'bout him. You let your guard down, 'cuz you got used ta how he ran things an' he went outta 'is way to make it easy, then ya looked back an' realized you became his creature without no thinkin' 'bout it.

So there he was, finally slimmin' down those last few pounds an' with a new sun allergy plus a thirst for the good stuff to his name. He looked in the mirror, pokin' at his new set a' chompers.

Would he be allergic to holy water as well now? Maybe burn when 'e touched a cross? An' wasn't there sum little thing 'bout garlic as well?

Beyond dealing with all of that (and working with the Thinker to organize a bunch of stuff- a literally precognitive machine with her updated computing power can do one hell of a good job running a global economy as it turns out, unsurprisingly), you of course also made sure to invest some of your time into assorted family activities whenever the opportunity presented itself- what few days you were actually active and awake, at any rate.

Deep sea fishing takes on a whole new dimension when you don't need to breathe and can just run around exploring the bottom of the ocean at your leisure, the water pressure weighing you down notwithstanding; thankfully, vampiric biology is just as much bullshit within your daughters as it is within yourself, so it all came down to you abusing the fact vampire vision is entirely unaffected by darkness to swim and bounce (because walking normally is kind of a chore on sandier ground) around to find new and interesting aquatic lifeforms and the like.

You also make it a point to gratuitously murder any giant squids and octopuses that so much as nudge into the direction of your daughters who very much enjoy accompanying you on these occasions. No tentacles that are not part of your own body shall be allowed to touch any of them.

Speaking of your daughters though, they're all doing rather well for themselves these days. Serena is still essentially the queen of Japan, oftentimes monopolizing food from the region and making it a point to change age and shape every day or two at her whim, making her little stable of mikos serve her every which way she wants. Not that they tend to complain, naturally, your daughter knows how to pick 'em and took lessons from you on how to both train and treat her toys, so they're kind of just a big ball of happy lesbian priestess energy at this point.

Daily orgies certainly do seem to be a theme with Serena, to say the least. She's extremely proud about it all, too.

By comparison, Iris and Ivy have made it a habit to pick up any girls and women that catch their interest as they tour all over the world for fun, turning the process of training them into pliable little toys over the course of a single day into a game to be played. And play it they do, very well too; using magic, manipulation and their own neverending libidos, on top of their downright miraculous use of their voices, it's perfectly easy to have their fun before moving right on again.

More than just a few dozen women and girls are ruined in a very good way in this manner. Mind-melting pleasure applied judiciously does have a tendency towards making it easier to convince others of whatever you could want to, whether it be that girls are great and being a lesbian is their true calling in life or to create a desperately angry woman whose daughters have been put through this process searching for the 'bad influence' that made them treat their whole school's female population to the joys of sapphic pleasure.

Only to be promptly mind-broken. Just a little.

Last but certainly not least, Lilian is often taking some time out of her training regime (she's upping the challenge every now and then as she gets better and just plain stronger) to visit the girls she and Serena got acquainted with back when you sent them to try out going to school. Naturally, semi-frequent lesbian orgies ensue as they have their little get-togethers, even and especially some of them that married early become pregnant and need some additional care to be taken with them.

By which you mean your firstborn has fun teasing them and absolutely ruining their bodily integrity on occasion. Funnily enough, her powers let her estimate extremely precisely at which point anything she does would be dangerous for the unborn children inside of them and she's careful enough about that none of them ever are to suffer any kind of prenatal damage.

It goes without saying that plans are already made to introduce any daughters born to this group of Arabian girls (and young women at this point) into the circle of horny they have built up relatively early, whereas any boys are to become either submissive rapebait for their fathers and whatever other men their mothers interact with or else dominant 'bulls' trained to thoroughly seed whatever girls they see. Which, hey, whatever floats their boat you guess.

Good times all around either way.

Then there's the littles dates you go on with the others, your non-daughter vampires in this dimension consisting of Sarah, Nora and Riley, with Eleanor, the Sisters both Big and Little, Eleanor, Curie, Tenenbaum and even the Thinker, as none shall claim that you don't give credit where credit is due given all the work the last one is doing for you.

Yes, sure, as an artificial intelligence capable of processing the sheer quantity of information she can, the Thinker doesn't really consider it an issue to act as what amount to your secretary as well as Cryptic Solutions' mainframe and all, but that doesn't change the fact you're grateful about it all the same. Good workplace relationships are of utmost priority when it comes to long-term prosperity, and give your long term tends to be 'eternity'…

Just saying, you consider it both a responsibility and a requirement for your position to ensure everyone is doing well and emotionally positive. If that means breeding dozens of modified Thinker bodies to grant her improved ones born from them (and have lots of fun while at it), then so be it.

Not like you don't have fun doing this. And the same goes for her, really.

Well, while all of this is going on between you and the girls, an impromptu gathering of male colleagues also manages to assemble itself, Sinclair, Mark Meltzer, Johnny Topside (Delta whose humanity has been restored- he found out Rapture gave him its own name when he discovered it before being turned into a Big Daddy prototype and subsequently made it his own on sheer principle alone) and Charles Milton Porter, the equally restored creator of the Thinker, all have monthly meetings where they exchange information, hang out, drink scotch and do all those manly guy things they can think of at their own leisure.

You are aware you have very few male friends. Johnny making it a point of telepathically inviting you in each and every time is very nice of him, for the protocol, and you appreciate it.

It's pleasant living, down inside your newly rebuilt Rapture. Really can't complain about it.

New Painting

Empty Shrine: A painting of an empty Japanese shrine, emanating a foreboding air or an inspiring one seemingly at random. When summoned, it can be used to create independent illusions that may cover a wide area, hiding things such as objects or entrances to buildings or else making it appear as though one type of object was another. Alternatively, it may take a 'snapshot' of a small area and create the illusion thereof, hiding any changes made to it. Illusions last until the painting is unsummoned or moved more than one mile from them, but only one may be active at a time.

But alas, all good things must come to an end- and truth be told, the peaceful part of your peaceful world domination is kind of cramping your style, really.

The most of a conflict you can get these days is the Vatican warning the world against the open and depraved debauchery prevalent in those two nations you've been giving a little extra attention in that regard, something something Sodom and Gomorrah and all that. There are a good few Christians that actually care about that, but well…

Religion has been methodically removed from all matters of governance for years by now and people are, by and large, better off for it. You don't actually need to do anything, this will all die down eventually- the church is already splintering in fact, with differing opinions on what, if anything, should be done about the fact public nudity and sex are completely legal in several places by this point.

Really, though, not like any faith has anything to do with what you're doing here.

"AND THUS THE WORLD WAS PREPARED FOR THE COMING OF THE LORD, THAT MAN MAY RECEIVE THE BOUNTY OF HIS BLESSINGS! THE FIRST SIGN, TO CAST OUT THE FALSE PROPHETS AND IDOLS IN EVERY PLACE, THAT NONE MAY BE MISLED IN THE FACE OF HIS GLORY!"

""AMEN!""

Father Simon Wales was, as the kids said these days, on a roll.

"THE SECOND SIGN, TO COME TOGETHER IN UNISON! ALL THE PEOPLE AND ALL THEIR KINDS SHALL BE AS ONE, FOR ALL ARE ONE BENEATH HIS WATCHFUL GAZE!"

""AMEN!""

This was important knowledge to have, as well. None could demand anyone knew the new holy book by heart, but the Three Signs of His Coming were of great significance, shall be one of the cornerstones of the faithful.

Cast out false religion, seeking to misled the truthful. Be united as one amongst the faithful, that none shall tear the Family apart. And, lastly…

"THE THIRD SIGN, TO LET THE PLEASURES OF THE FLESH AND OF THE SOUL OVERFLOW! COPULATE WITH WHOMEVER IS SO PLEASED, INDULGE IN THE SATING OF ALL APPETITES! ENJOY SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE AND FIND THE TRUTH IN YOURSELF THROUGH ARTISTRY AND GRACE! FIND GRACE!"

""AMEN!""

Thus was the trifecta of the great calling complete.

"HIS GRACE SHALL DAWN AND SWALLOW ALL LIGHT! IN HIS GRACE ALL SHALL BE REBORN! IN HIS GRACE ALL SHALL BE REMADE! ALL THAT IS WEAK SHALL BE STRONG; AND ALL THAT IS WRETCHED SHALL BE SAVED! WE ARE PROOF THAT NONE ARE BEYOND SALVATION, BROTHERS AND SISTERS, NONE, FOR MERCY IS UPON US; MERCY IS THE NAME OF OUR LORD AND THE NAME OF HIS GRACE!"

His voice had grown loud, of late, his words eloquent and easy; they came flowing as though a great river, to carry his message far and wide, let all that would hear them understand.

They were beyond salvation, for they had been saved already.

"IT IS IN MERCY THAT WE SHALL DEAL, FOR IT IS THE EXERTION OF OUR FAITH! WHETHER IT BE A SWIFT END, TO BE SENT ON THE WINDS OF CHANGE, FOR THOSE NOT YET READY; OR A SACRIFICE TO BRING UPON THEM SALVATION ITSELF, WE SHALL INFLICT IT WITH MERCY IN OUR HEARTS AND DEATH IN OUR HANDS!"

""AMEN!!!""

The voices of the believers shook the ground and traveled like a force of nature; had there been any dust in their magnificent temple of stone and darkness, it would have been blown out through their avowal alone.

"THESE ARE THE TENETS OF THE FAITH, AND THE GUIDING DARKNESS OF OUR LORD! THE LITANY OF MERCY IS READY, OH LORD, AND YOUR FAITHFUL KNOW WHAT TO DO!"

Sensing the completion of the task he had received, Father Wales (for he was Simon no more in these moments) breathed out, sagging over the altar with a smile on his lips and a light in his eyes.

"We stand ready, Lord," he promised in the quiet of a man that was merely shouting, his quiet words no less heard than any that came before. "Your faithful stand ready to do your will. All that remains is to wait… Wait until the time is right. And when the stars align, Your Mercy shall spread beyond all borders, beyond what is real and what is not. Thus we swear, not because we must, nor because we were told… but because it is right."

""AMEN!""

There were tears in his eyes, now. He did not wipe them away, feeling not a shred of shame.

The faithful were assembled, determined, prepared. Truly, could there be any greater reward for a humble shepherd such as himself?

All of which leads you back to here and now, with preparations made and everyone you need to have on hand assembled. Money isn't really of any use between dimensions, seeing as you did introduce your very own currency and all, and you don't really need to pack anything you would have found or made on Earth Rapture into your shadow- you already returned all the material samples you brought way ahead of time back to what amounts to your interdimensional pocket, so you're good to go on that front almost by definition.

You've seen Nora pull some pretty impressive tricks using the same spell you use for storing things inside of your shadow, of course, launching previously stored objects as projectiles and stuff like that; with her ability using umbramancy (as you've just kind of collectively settled on calling this branch of magic), she can basically bend and stretch her shadow to have stuff shoot out right under the target, leading to potentially lethal, but almost always painful results.

She's taken to storing sharpened metal spikes the size of an outstretched arm inside of there, both to make for more effective ballbusters and as convenient throwing weapons to make use of her powers. All she needs is a handful of the things and she can effectively fence and have a firefight at the same time, pretty much.

The joys of her power, really. Lillian has taken to improvising her own weaponry on demand of late, but honestly nothing beats the twins literally using their voices as weapons- they've managed to fine-tune them enough they can actually destroy things by shouting at them in the right frequency.

Well, it' more of a scream in practice, but hey, same difference, really. And the less is said about their ability to cause internal damage to living beings by thoroughly abusing their gifts, the better.

Back to the matter at hand, though, all you need now are the people you will be taking back with you. This includes, of course, everyone you brought to Earth Rapture to begin with, your vampire brides including Sarah, Nora and Riley, plus Curie and Henley, now with the addition of Henley' personal assistant whose name you really need to look up at some point, with your daughters capping it all off.

Normally it would be all but impossible to carry so many people along with yourself as you move between dimensions using your usual means, but you've actually been 'holding on to' your daughters from the moment they were born; as technically connected as they are to your real body, it shouldn't be too much of a problem for at least one journey across.

Oh, and then there's also Codsworth and Jezebel, of course, both stowed away inside shadows, respectively. Your sweethearts really like the robot butler, come to think of it, he really made it a point to dote on and raise them like he would have wanted to with Shaun if it wasn't for surprise nukes to the face happening.

Heck, he personally mixed them their favorite blood mixes before they grew up enough to taste the souls rather than the blood containing them. He really did a good job, for all that you barely bothered being cognizant of him all this time.

Plus he wrangled the Little Sisters during your months-long absences. You're pretty sure Brigid may have considered drastic measures if it wasn't for him helping to teach them, what with the Thinker not being the greatest with kids.

"Everyone ready?" You ask for one last time. "Because I don't care, we're about to make the jump."

Just like that, you cease existing within physical time and space.

In a place that was not a place, where light could not exist as a physical phenomenon and causality was as alien as the absence of it would be within physical reality, a pair of twins that was the same person yet not sat around a table, enjoying morning tea.

Neither the table nor the tea should be able to exist, but that was the advantage of the absence of the laws of physics; nothing could tell these things not to exist, either.

"A heartening change, that. Not every day the world turns out for the better."

"Especially one as weary as this one."

"Not too weary, however."

"Perhaps even less so than most? What with the demographic that disappeared below the surface."

"It seems encouraging, to see our involvement was confined as it was."

"It was never in question. There was very little contact, all in all."

"Butterfly effect only goes so far when it goes against a wall."

"Especially a wall the size of the Atlantic Ocean."

Robert cleared his throat, taking another sip of tea. For something that did not not exist, it really had something to its taste.

"And there the boy of the hour comes by."

"He really keeps on putting on weight."

"I imagine it is less weight and more natural growth."

"There is a reason he is a boy."

"Quite lumpy, however."

"And out of shape."

"Physically speaking, that is. Barely a shape at all."

"Excusable for what he is."

"I wonder, is that sentient vehicular accident sapient enough to be petty?"

"It certainly appears to be. It does keep on aiming for him."

"Too bad for it there are more players than it is aware of."

Porcelain that was impossible to quantify clinked against itself.

"Imagine the chaos if it were to succeed."

"We do not need to. It happened once already."

"Still, at least the dedication to transportation as such is admirable."

"An entire genre's worth of concepts."

The advantage to being at any and all times and places was that they could always be here, talking to themselves about what they saw. It was quite entertaining, in some ways.