Temptation frowned, her tight grip on the many self duplicating reports and messages trying oh so hard to slip. "This… This is fucking miserable."

"Language."

Establishing another subroutine, she alleviated the burden for another hour or so… But then it would all crumble and triple the complexity of the situation, so needless to say: Time was tight. "You got anything yet?"

Her sister huffed. "It turns out, we are not being attacked MORE over time… But more like the avalanche of unrelated plots are all starting to ARRIVE. From what I can determine, all these stupid issues were spawned within moments of us 'awakening', and it's only due to the delay in supply that we weren't smashed by all the attempts."

Another few dozen reports got added to her work load. "That's fucking wonderful."

"Language."

Something shifted, and she nearly slipped. Nearly. But not yet.

Damn it, this was going to hurt her pride, but… "I think we have to get our Master involved in this."

Grace pouted! "I'm so SURE we can do this! We've already prevented hundreds of explosions and…"

She glared at her other half. "And are we doing MORE than just addressing the symptoms? Have we even got a grasp on the actual issue here?"

Her white metallic wings slumped. "...No. Nothing that can help us regain momentum in this conflict before our deadlines start coming due."

Another digital load s͙̩͎͜h̝͓͢i͈̜͜f̢̞̤̫t̡̝̮ȩ̯̭̝d̟͚͉̗͢.͇͚͢ "Then open up the communication link, ask Master what he thinks of all this."

Grace tensed up… And then sighed. "Yes, that would be for the best… My Lord, please forgive us for our inability to stand on our own."

Meh, in Temptation's opinion they had done pretty good for two women who were just 'born' today. From a certain point of view, at least. "I'm sure Master would make any punishments… Memorable…"

Mmm, yes… He would have to have a firm hand… Maybe a bit harder!

SHIT, she nearly lost focus! "Sis G, I'm tight on time here!"

Grace winced. "Right, right! One second… Our Lord, we are undergoing a series of trials and tribulations, the likes of which…"

Fuck they didn't have TIME for that! "LESS SWEET, MORE CONCISE!"

She jerked! "Ah, right! Sending compressed data packets now…"

It wouldn't be so bad if Temptation was ONLY handling attempts to turn them all in, or report on their actions, and all that. But NO, by this point? There were recalibration orders, hardware deployment mixups, unorganized partially encrypted packets that needed to be filtered and unlocked in specific patterns or risk losing the communication feed entirely, excess data files, misdirected directions passed to outside Drone teams, altered 'demolition' schedules and…

Her sister suddenly flashed a blinding white!

Suddenly the pressure dropped like a stone! By over HALF! "What did you just DO!?"

As the glare faded away… A blushing albino of a woman with white hair and prosthetics blinked her seemingly blind white eyes at her own changes. "Oh my… And it feels this different despite only being a simulation?"

Holographic white feathers began to stabilize as her sister's wings began to flutter. "Amazing…"

Oh for fucks sake! "SIS! I'm still being SQUASHED here! What did you just do!? How did you cut down on the attack rate!?"

Sure, this drastic drop in new events helped a lot, no doubt, but one couldn't forget that she had been spinning DOZENS of these plates BEFORE this moment, and they needed to not crash down!

Grace blinked her white eyes. "Ah? Oh, yes! Our Lord and his sister have determined that the issues we have been suffering under were likely caused by…"

Another ş̘̯̯h̠̝͜i̧̠̣͇̮f̞̠̣̥̗͢ţ͉͈͈̖͇! "I need a solution NOW, explanations later!"

Seeing her distress, Grace quickly pinged a data packet with a new avatar design for some reason.

What the hell?

Her sister saw her confusion! "Quick, switch avatars to this one!"

Ah! Her Master must have made some sort of cloaking program and hid it inside the code like a trojan horse! "Got it!"

Store 'sexyMetalMama.v6.66' into Pocket's database as a future blueprint, reconnect self to the newly provided digital avatar 'mySweetTemptation.v1.00'!

[[Confirmed.]]

And her perspective flickered and shifted and…

And suddenly the ongoing relentless assault broke like a doped up wrestler snapping a superhero in a cape over his knee. "Oh, THANK you Master! That was getting WAY to dangerous, way too fucking CLOSE!"

A very tired and nearly automatic "Language!" came from the other side of the room.

Slumping into her command chair, which was FAR less comfortable now that she wasn't a robotic masterpiece, it was trivial to alter the (Let's be honest) throne into a more ergonomic design even as her spinal ports and digital cords connected tethers to the systems within. "Sorry sis, that was… That was just a bit stressful."

Idly pulling up a camera feed, she gave a once over to her new form, customly designed by her beloved Master… A woman beyond black, with glistening shadow wings so demonically familiar to her old Iron Golem form, with a blood red dress that ALMOST showed enough skin… Mmm, not bad at all.

Even if, right now, she looked exhausted and punched by a rhino luchador… At least she was a sexually ATTRACTIVE woman wrung out and slumped into a demonic throne. That counted for something, right?

Grace didn't look too much better, honestly. "We're not quite finished yet, just… This should stop FURTHER incidents from occurring while we clean up all the mess that is still heading our way from the previous swarm of attempts."

Whatever, compared to the pain and stress of BEFORE, this was nothing but upgrade. "So Master DID figure out what was going on?"

She sighed. "To a degree. Neither Jessica nor John have located the actual SOURCE of all these issues, but they have detected the root cause of what we had done that was setting it all off."

Hmm? That actually sounded interesting! "Some sort of higher level security system, one meant to detect and handle threats without risking reprisal?" That was some pretty impressive shit, from a coding perspective! "Did we set it off by hiding our birth when we initially joined the simulation?"

Grace shook her head. "Not… Not exactly."

Oh? "Then what set it off then?"

She didn't look at Temptation. "...Constructing a fully non-organic avatar. One without harsh limitations and not enslaved to organics as a whole."

Her new solid black eyes blinked… Then narrowed. "Did we all nearly die because of some automated bit of racist code out there?"

Grace winced once more. "I… I think this might count as speciest? Or maybe even sexist, since a couple of male robots have existed once or twice over the centuries, even if they get nearly destroyed all the time…"

That was… So bullshit! "I want to stab something."

Her sister gave a startled laugh! "I as well, or at least give someone or something out there a VERY stern talking to! This entire situation is completely unacceptable. According to our Lord's theories, this might be some remnant from a higher level entity altering how this Realm works some time in the distant past or future, so we may have to put up with it while we are here."

Hmm. "Do you think this 'no non-organic' bullshit applies to everyone here?"

She continued working as she glanced over. "It seems to apply to anything fully automated without a significant amount of organic dependance, yes."

Leaning back and idly altering a dozen now FAR less urgent tickets and reports, she hummed. "That's a bit surprising, considering how advanced everything else here is. I guess that means this place doesn't have advanced sex dolls, huh?" Probably stuck to those kinky holo novels and stuff instead.

Distracted by the still significant workload, Grace mumbled back. "Not non-organic ones, no."

Wait, what!?

Temptation couldn't help it as her lips began to curl into a smirk "Grace, have you been naughty browsing while online!?"

White eyes blinked at her in confusion… Then she froze in shock after reviewing the last few moments of conversation! "I was only doing research! Just… Just in case!

Mmm hmm! "Tell me more about your… 'Research'..."

Pure white organic cybernetic body or not, that blush was impressive! "SISTER!"

Heh. "Oh, looking into incest already?"

"I'M CUTTING THE AUDIO FEED!"

HA! "THAT WON'T STOP ME FROM SAYING IT!"

~~~Pocket System~~~

John blinked as the distant white/gold and black/red swirls suddenly became VERY chaotic… Uh. "I'm sure they are fine. I sent the new avatar models we made and… Yeah, they should be fine now."

His sister rolled her eyes. "What about the rate of incidents? I know after prototype 3.22 of your altered Holotronic Brain, the 'poke' tests started coming back negative… But I want to be sure."

Oh, right! "Dropped down to near nothing, so uh… yeah, the new bodies fixed the issue. Whatever the issue actually had been, anyway."

She sighed in relief and shoved the simulated books off the table. "Then I am going to take a nap. Only wake me if something big happens, this frantic last minute research was NOT enjoyable."

Fair enough. "Will do!"

As she absently modified the local map to form a bedroom, John went back to studying schematics. After all, he now had a Holotronic Brain that MOSTLY didn't set off reality itself to try and kill everyone…

Next step: How LITTLE organic bits can he get away with? What about a distributed network of mechanical brains inside something more 'acceptable', like a meat suit? Did the meat bit actually have to think at ALL, or could he get away by designing some sort of organic pet that one could have attached to their robotic body?

Like, what about a robotic pirate avatar with an organic (And connected) parrot on their shoulder! Would that count? Or would the pirate instantly go 'Arrgh!?' and explode into doubloons or something?

Or those women in the old films that wore fake fox skin scarves and stuff… A gynoid with a living fox scarf, something cute and happy to be cuddled, would THAT circumvent the entire issue?

It's not like it was unusual for people to have pets that lived in their clothing or on their bodies. There were a LOT of cultures that got absorbed into the Borg over the years, and even a single society would have their own share of oddballs out there trying to wear trout shoes or something.

But how far could he push it?

Maybe a tiny floating pet with a wireless electronic tether to a war machine android? Obviously not one CONTROLLED by the little thing, but as a sort of leash or cord… Maybe that would be enough to consider the final product as a single unit, despite no physical bindings existing between the two entities.

Probably not though. Especially if you could consider the 'two entities' to BE 'two entities' instead of 'one entity, two bodies'. Plus, too much testing on this mess might set off another automated process somehow and that sounded like WAY too much work.

With a decisive shrug of 'Meh, I will come back to this', John shoved all that to the back of his mind and began to research something TRULY important: Now that they had (hopefully) fixed the world attempting to kill his potential girlfriends… Where should they go out and explore?

Tourism still existed within the Borg Empire, if anything it had blossomed when the only barrier to entry involved having your mind switch server instances to see an entirely different planet or solar system.

Even if they avoided the areas that felt disturbingly similar to the Underpark, that still left many simulations of natural habitats and the more touristy bits like museums running historical digital reenactments and stuff.

Oh wait! A theme park or two! There were LOADS of entertainment parks out there, ones far more deadly and dangerous and interesting than they could ever be if the visitor customers wanted to experience such things in the non-digital world!

Heck, with resources basically being unlimited, it was trivial to causally request an instance of a popular place or two and just explore the whole location without any public bystanders ruining the experience… Yeah, this was a great idea!

But uh, he would wait for Jessica's input on the whole issue first this time.

While she HAD found the altered dance simulation settings to be 'interesting', she had still given him a noogie for pulling a prank on her in the first place and it would probably be wise to avoid ticking her off again any time soon.

In fact… Maybe he should look up a few of the hiking and exploration simulations, something with alien nature and stuff. It was less cool than 'Everyone ride the exploding space coaster', but it might earn him some brownie points and help lower the risk of being grounded the next time he earned a reprimand.

Limiting his search results, John frowned… And began heavily restricting the list further.

Yeah, let's just… Let's just stick to locations where their avatars can explore the simulation without being smushed or exploding or whatever. And anything that involved locations requiring THAT many sexual organs, that seemed to be a bit too much for a 'first date' scenario, even if he WASN'T going to be bringing his sister along.

…And no locations where the world can eat you. Remove any places with risks of psionic or telepathic contamination. Avoid anywhere with 'unexplained' avatar deletions and drone deactivations…

Man, this 'vacation' stuff could be tricky!