You're a month into life in Terminus City now. It's taken some getting used to. The city's a pretty massive place, an ever-changing sprawl of buildings filled to the brim with gangs, corporate scum, hidden mystical threats lurking in the corners…

Honestly. If it weren't for your loves, you'd have abandoned this shit-mire of a quag-heap weeks ago. This city's a disgusting place. Ruled by petty people with their petty desires, their boring politics, and their greedy worship of profit above all else. A dystopian nightmare that's overworking your poor loves.

Void Heart, Alice Takanashi, is a monster to be sure. But you're a civilized monster. Cute girls matter the most, above all else~! This is the fundamental truth of civilization, one that most humans these days don't appreciate.

Tch. Damn meatsacks can't stop squabbling over boring things like money, land, or fame. All at the expense of the cute girls that're languishing on the streets, when they could be put to good use elsewhere. Why, that's just a travesty of justice right there. It's sad!

And you need more adorable minions to dote upon!

Which is why… You've got a special order for your new minions!

"Alright, are my instructions clear?" You ask cheerfully as you lounge behind your new desk.

Honestly, you're not sure how your minions managed to secure a suite as nice as this, and frankly you don't care. Judging by the bloodstains that you saw your adorable maids scrubbing off the wall when you finally moved in, you're willing to bet it involved violence of some kind. The previous tenants of this office clearly didn't move out willingly.

Not that they could do much about it, considering you were the one who bought their company out~! Yes, you're now Alice Takanashi, CEO of Kyodyne Biotech, a new company dedicated to producing the best bioaugmentations on the market.

You'll have to do some rebranding later, get a product line set up, have your minions relay instructions down to the stuffy corporate suits, probably do some purges of all of the senior executives… Rename the company while you're at it. Takanashi Biotech, maybe?

A decision for another day. You'll ask your maids. Because that's what cute and adorable maids are for! They're there to handle all the things that're a bit of a pain in your adorable rear! And this takeover was a pain! Whew! You had to blow through almost all of the loot you got off of that one trash gang, there were all kinds of corporate loopholes you had to leap through. You even had to dip into your private cache!

This office is worth it though. Such an upgrade from the old, decrepit hospital!

You wriggle your adorable rear into your leather (real leather~!) seat as you study your minions, prop your legs up on your new magohany (mahogany!) desk, exposing the entire length of your smooth calves, the squish of your plump mouthwatering thighs. A nice glass of red wine's in your hand, you swirl its contents around as you inspect each and every one of your cat-eared maids.

"Yes, mistress Alice~!" Your cute, adorable minions cheer.

"I know that I'm asking a lot from you girls, but I'm counting on you all to kidnap as many cuties as you can in between cleaning up this corporation, okay~?" You reply. "Hmm… How about this! The squad with the most number of girls in the minion conversion pods at the end of the week… Gets head-scritches from me! How does that sound?"

Heh, that's got them excited. Ears perk up, eyes go wide, jiggly cleavage's set to bouncing.

"Eh~?"

"No way, headpats from mistress Alice!"

"Lupe keeps hogging all of those, I want pats too~!"

"Hey, mistress Alice, will you also give us belly-scratches? And other things?"

"Of course!" You cheer.

"Yay~!"

Ah, having a bevy of adorable pets who dote upon you… You really have missed this feeling. It's almost as nice as getting to spend time with your loves~! You watch your maids head down to the armory, excitedly chattering amongst themselves.

So cute~

Naturally, you keep your current favorite pet with you as you settle in for a bit more of a quieter evening.

"Are you okay, Lupe?" You ask your silver-haired head maid. Her wolf's ears twitch as she bows, the epitome of prim grace.

"I am well, my mistress. It is my duty to attend to you, so attend to you I shall!"

How stoic. What a serious face she's putting on. How energetic too! What an adorable puppy you've picked up. That deliciously defiant girl you've picked up has transformed into such a cutie~!

"If you insist," you shrug, reaching for the remote to your office's surround sound system. Nice classical music begins playing as you get out your kintsugi materials. Traditional lacquer, made from resin extracted from trees. Powdered gold, powdered silver, powdered platinum, and a few other powdered noble metals. Your good set of brushes. A small mallet, a protective mat so you don't scratch your nice new desk…

And finally, of course, the pottery. Hmm…

"Lupe, hand me that vase, won't you?"

Dutifully, your wolf-girl maid slides the piece of porcelain onto your desk. You inspect it, hum as your fingernails run over this piece of bone-white china. Handmade, from the Robinson collection? What's something like this doing in a corporate office?

Oh well. This'll make for a good starting point, it's been so long since you've indulged in this particular hobby…

The vase shatters as you bring your mallet down, its pristine surface cracking into a dozen pieces. Your mallet hammers down again, and again. A dozen pieces become two, three dozen. The broken remains of the vase litter your desk, utterly smashed to pieces by the sudden violence you've just inflicted.

Now comes the fun part!

You stick out your tongue, concentrating carefully as you begin to stick the pieces of this vase back together. To make it whole once again. You twirl your brush between dextrous fingers, dipping it in lacquer. White does pair so nicely with gold, and it is traditional.

Silence fills the room as you carefully mend this vase. Your hands are as steady as any surgeon's as you carefully layer each piece lacquer, right around the cracked edges… And start sticking the disparate shards of this vase back together. One by one, piece by piece, you begin to reassemble the porcelain.

Of course, that's not all you're doing. With your other brush, you dip into the pile of… Hmm. Powdered gold for this piece. It's traditional, after all. With your gold-powdered brush, you begin painting over the mended cracks in the vase, decorating the cracks, highlighting the imperfections of this vase in gold.

It's a slow, laborious task. Kintsugi's not something you rush. The art of restoration's far more painstaking than the art of destruction and breakage. Perhaps that's why you love it so, for the challenge…

It makes for a good meditative exercise too. A great way to refocus the mind and rest your mana reactor. Maybe tinker with its efficiency too while you're not using it... Why, you can just feel your essence replenishing at a much faster rate! A rested mind and mana reactor are just that much more effective!

Though admittedly, you're cheating a bit here. You're using lacquer that dries fast so you can powder the vase with gold more quickly. The end result'll be the same, but it does take a bit away from the process of kintsugi. It really is such a laborious process when done traditionally. Fulfilling, but you just don't have the time…

… Unless you leave this piece half-finished? Work on it another time?

Hmm…

Lupe breaks the silence.

"… Mistress, may I ask a question?"

You hum, concentrating as your fingers press two particularly small shards of porcelain together. "Yes…?"

"What is the point of this exercise?" Lupe asks.

"It's kintsugi!" You reply.

"… I do not know what that is."

"Well, kintsugi – Hold on," you reply, frown as you survey the shards you've collected. Are you missing a piece, where did it… Ah, it flew across the desk! You reach over to grab it, ignoring how your breasts shift and sway. "Kintsugi's the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery. Like what I'm doing now. Traditionally, you'd mend the pottery using lacquer mixed with powdered gold or silver…"

"So I see."

"It's a hobby of mine!" You explain. A damn tricky hobby at that. You picked it up… Hmm. Was it during your corporate days? An overseas trip to the Pan-Pacific Defense League? That corporate tour of Korea, Japan, Taiwan… You had such a different outlook on life then…

Lupe blinks. "Forgive me, mistress, but I still don't see what the point of this exercise is."

That's something you're happy to explain!

"It's a zen thing. The whole process is about highlighting the imperfections of the pottery, of finding beauty in the imperfections in the pottery. The pottery is broken… And then it's born anew, and becomes even more beautiful!" You explain as you get back to work. This vase isn't going to mend itself!

"… So I see. But why…?" Lupe gropes for words, clearly not understanding why you're so into this particular hobby.

"Why Kintsugi?" You chuckle. "Hmm… Hey, Lupe, do you know how easy it is to break something or someone?"

"I'm not sure I follow, mistress."

"It's ridiculously easy," you reply flatly. "All you need is five minutes and a heavy hammer. Breakage is easy. Destruction is easy. Stripping someone down to their constituent bits is easy. Anyone can do it. I can do it, you can do it, a dumb monkey with a hammer can do it. Pain, pleasure, it's all the same in the end. Apply enough pressure, and anything breaks."

And life's full of enough pressures as it is. You're born, you live, you're broken. Then you die. Or so most people would have you believe.

"I see," Lupe blinks.

"There's beauty in destruction, in tearing someone down, but it only lasts for a moment," you sigh. "And then you're left with the pieces. And it'd be easy to move on, and let go… But isn't it more fun to see what you can make from those pieces?" You hold your half-finished piece up to the air, admiring the way the light reflects off of the golden highlights that join the disparate shards you've reassembled. "Isn't this vase more beautiful now that I've put those pieces back together and added my own… Decorations?"

"I suppose it is, mistress. Though I can't see the appeal myself."

"Don't worry, I'm not expecting you to. You're my cute puppy, that's good enough for me~!" You say.

Your old hobby lines up pretty nicely with your new ones. Destruction? Breaking things? Gosh, that was the kind of thing that lost its appeal pretty quickly after you Fell.

Corruption though? Putting pieces back together just the way you want?

That made things interesting again.

In a way, it all ties back to why you're here in this city.

Three pure souls, bright shining stars in a city of filth and inequity. Paragons of virtue and justice… And the absolute cutest girls in existence, to your own eyes. Nobody else can even compare. Not any of your pets, definitely not the filthy meatsacks that infest this city. Nobody.

Three pure souls, souls that come… Pre-broken, to be honest. The stress of the world's mired these beautiful souls. The weight of their duties, their obligations to the grime and scum that clings to their gorgeous forms… It drags them down. Takes away from their beauty. Forces them in directions that're just uncute.

Despite all that, these girls remain the cutest girls. The girls you fell in love with because of how brightly they shone, because of how beautiful they were despite all their imperfections.

So, now you have to ask yourself…

… How beautiful would they be after you corrupted them? After you inserted your own little touches into their cute souls and personalities, papering over the cracks that this cruel world's left on their delicate psyches? After you've dragged them down into the depths of depravity to live happily with you~?

Ah~!

Just the thought's getting you all wet and excited…!

Hee.

"… I do have one more question, mistress."

"Eh, what's that?"

"Why do you not just… Force the pieces back into the places they're supposed to go?" Lupe asks.

"Eh? Isn't the answer obvious?" You blink. "Because if I did, the vase would stop being a vase. Sheesh, you're so silly Lupe~! Change the shape of something too much and it stops being that thing. And then where does that leave you?"

You might as well get a new toy, or try to find a new love interest at that point, that's where that leaves you. Breaking then reforging something's fun and all, but it's a lot less fun if the thing you end up with isn't as adorable as the thing you started out with, isn't it? It's a pretty delicate balance you've got to strike here, same as this vase.

Too much lacquer, and the whole thing starts to look kind of lumpy and gross. Too little, and the pieces fall apart again. Too much gold layered too thickly, and that just looks tacky. But get everything juuuust right?

And you end up with a work of art that'll last a lifetime. Something you can admire for days and days…

It's fun~!

Your phone chimes, you quickly take it out to check your texts.

Ooh~!

That's Kaina! Hee, what a good girl, she's been so diligent about responding to your texts...

Kaina: Are we still meeting tomorrow?

Alice: Of course silly~!

Kaina: Okay.

Kaina: I wanted to confirm that the date was accurate. Thank you for informing me.

Alice: it's fine, it's fine~

Kaina: I look forward to seeing you again.

Alice: I do too~

Alice: Here, have one more pic for the road...

Well, of course you have to reward her diligence! Gosh, what an adorable cutie. Oh, you can't wait for your date tomorrow!

… You also can't wait to start ramping up the lewdness of all these photos you're sending her. Kyah~! Sending lewd photos of yourself to your love is the best! Get her acclimated to you, and then, and then…! Oh, the fun you'll be able to have together! She's such a cool beauty too! What'll it be like to sleep with her?! What kind of adorable face will she make when she cums?

Ah~!

You sigh blissfully, hugging your phone to your chest. Oh, you can't wait to see her again. You miss her. You miss her, you miss her, you miss her…

Well, nothing for it then. You've got to make absolutely sure that you get tomorrow right. Everything's got to turn out perfectly…!

This is your pledge. Kaina's going to have the absolute most wonderful time with you.

And you'll kill anyone that tries to get in the way of that good time.

Anyone.