In This Isekai All My Girlfriends are IP Violations Pt. 08

"No, different Jeanette," Jean said, as Jeanette grinned, cracking her knuckles.

"So, I hear you got an ancient unknowable evil to kill? I gotacha!" She said, then unzipped the duffle. She stood, holding up a sleek, metal weapon that practically thrummed with inner energy. "This bad boy can atomize gods at a rate of three per pantheon on half a magazine! Self tracking magnetic bottles with contact fuses!"

"Contact fuses?" Luz asked.

"For the antimatter!" Jeanette beamed.

Aiden sprang backwards, almost knocking Thirsha over. "Antimatter!? Are you insane!?"

"It's not loaded, you dork," Jeanette said, annoyed. Then she looked at the weapon. Then she hastily stowed it back in the bag. "Next, we have my mono-filament webber gun and the omnibomb and, oh! Oh! I talked to Anna Triumvir and she had this great idea for re-purposing the Melding Plague-"

"Jesus Christ, no!" Aiden exclaimed. "No! No! We are not using any of those! I...this universe has the fucking Melding Plague in it!?"

"A contained strain, yeah, why?" Jeanette asked.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" Aiden said. He turned to face the rest of the Steampunk Club. "Official order from on high, we are getting in a van, and we are driving to Jeanette's house, and we're making sure she doesn't kill us all with a virulent, self adaptive fucking nanovirus!" He turned to face Jeanette, who was looking mulish. "What else do you have down there? A...a..." He groped his brain for something of similar badness. "A...that...that Cetaganda virus that makes your bones melt!?"

"What's a Cetaganda?" Jeanette asked.

Aiden breathed a sigh of relief.

In the end, the van just barely managed to fit the whole nerd squad. For some reason, this required Jean to sit directly on Aiden's lap while Luz was squished into the back seat between Manny - who was still in his robot suit and contorted wildly to actually fit within the now very back heavy van. Giacamo drove like a...well, like an Italian - which meant they managed to arrive at Jean and Jeanette's house in record time and with only four or five close calls with the reaper. As they piled out of the van, Aiden saw that there was someone on the front lawn of the house: A drop dead gorgeous, tall, muscular, busty hybrid of a human woman and a sleek, spotted cheetah. She had her arms above her head and was soaking in the sun in a lurid display of long limbed strength and sensuality.

Jean ground her rump against Aiden one last time before standing up, gesturing. "This is my other sister, Jessica."

Jessica lifted a lazy arm to wave.

"You have a rad family," Luz said, grinning brightly. "Elf, cheetah girl, nerd genius!"

"Oh, Jeanette isn't an elf. Uh, Jess and I got targeted by a curse, so we made a blop of protoplasm that had both of our genetic sequences mixed in to trick the curse. It kinda worked - the blop became alive and turned into Jeanette, and we adopted her."

"Yeah!" Jeanette said, beaming brightly as Manny unfolded himself from the side of the van.

"So. Cool!" Luz squealed. "Why can't my family be so neat!?"

"Your mom is a witch!" Aiden said. "That can detatch her hand!"

"True..." Luz rubbed her chin.

Jean, Jeanette and Luz led the way - Luz mostly because she stuck to Jean's arm and excitedly asked her questions about her extended family, while Aiden, Manny, Giacamo, Aggy and Whispers ambled over in a big blob. They came to the side of the house, which had a basement entrance that Jean threw open with a dramatic flourish, leading down a set of stainless steel stairs to large, gleaming laboratory full of tubes of frothing liquid, half finished science devices, and banks of computers that thrummed softly.

"So, here's the strain," Jeanette said, tapping one of the tubes. "It's contained. And modified. Now it only impacts people I target. I've improved the leathality and reduced the spontaneous cruelty."

"Okay, cool, incinerate it," Aiden said, frowning.

Jeanette pouted, then touched several controls. The beaker flared bright red and then white, then blue, then faded back to normal colors. The liquid within was gone now. Aiden breathed a slow sigh of relief - then blinked as he looked around the room, brow furrowing slightly. "Wait. Wait, wait, wait!" he said, holding up his finger. "I got an idea. Like. This is the best place to plan the attack on the Chathurian. You have tracking devices and probes and scanners and stuff!"

Jean beamed. "Yeah!"

"And all of us," Whisper said, stepping forward, her eyes whirring and clicking as she focused on Aiden. "But the only question is, how do any of us get the probes, let alone you, into the Chathurian's dimension? We're all kind of stuck in here."

Luz gasped excitedly. "I know how! I know how! I know how!" She waved her arm excitedly over her head. "Aiden just needs to ask my mom to borrow her portal! Then we can modify it to punch into the Chathurian's dimension!"

"Ahh, ask her, I see," Jean said, wiggling her eyebrows.

"Yeah, with his words," Luz said, nodding.

Aiden sighed. "Okay. Everyone, get to work on prepping the portal chucking experiment." He nodded. "We want every kind of technology and magic." He shot a look at Manny, who grumbled under his breath. "That we can send into the Chathurian's dimension. Also, uh, someone should check out where the horrible handbeast attacked. Like, if it ripped through reality, right, it should have left holes, and scars and stuff, right?"

They all nodded.

"Now, I'm going to go and get the portal," he said. "...okay, wait, actually, Jean, how are you on surgery?"

"Pretty good!" Jean said. "I use nanorobots."

"I can also handle it," Whisper said. "Why?"

Aiden jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "I am sick of these dang wings! They make it so hard to actually fly, you know?" He asked, nodding. "My brain has two different flight systems and they're not meshing!"

"Aww," Jean muttered. "I liked the wings."

"Speak for yourself," Luz muttered, rubbing her nose - clearly thinking unkind thoughts, memories of her smacking earlier today flickering through her head.

***

Aiden slept. The oxygen mask on his face hissed softly while Whispers and Jean finished getting into their scrubs. Jean pulled a small scanning device over. "Okay," she said, softly. "We'll start by determining his skin thickness and strength and then we'll settle on the bonesaw or the laser cutter."

Whisper glanced left. Glanced right. "No one else is here," she whispered. "We could..." She lifted her knuckles, then extended her personality spike with a snick. "We could check, you know?"

Jean huffed behind her surgical mask. "Do you know how incredibly unethical that is?"

Whispers put her palms down on the edge of the operating table. "Okay. Unethical? Yes. Also, necessary? Possibly." She frowned intently - not wearing a surgical mask because, as a magitech robot of quickened clay and gleaming starmetal, she didn't actually breathe and had no need to keep her lips covered. "We're putting our dimension on the line for his plan and his scheme. What if he's just not up to it because he's also some construct?"

"If he was a construct-"

"Then we'd know?" Whispers asked, frowning more fiercely. "You saw the same news update broadcasts as I did! This entire dimension was thrown together by slapdashed hurry by some hacks without any support from the Caretakers. Could they even get a prime dimension human? And, like, what do we know about Aiden?" She ticked off the points on her fingers. "The physical stuff, you can explain by him being isekai'd here. But he's supposed to be a teenager who also would have any ethical compunctions against banging every girl in this place? Like, does that sound even remotely plausible?"

Jean looked down at the sleeping Aiden.

"I just do a tiny bit of checky checky, and then we;ll know for a fact we can trust him to be able to handle this," Whispers said.

"...you said your original job in your fictive origin was public relations?" Jean asked.

"Yeah, public relations in Autocthon," Whispers said, as if that explained everything. Jean shook her head.

She hemmed.

She hawed.

She looked at the ceiling.

"...okay, fine, just...don't look anywhere private," she said, nodding a bit, her hand going to her throat, rubbing nervously. "And don't change anything."

Whispers nodded. Clenched her jaw.

The tip of her personality override spike pressed to the base of Aiden's neck. She shoved...and then scowled, drawing the spike back. "His skin's too tough," she whispered. "That's not good. Nothing in here can cut as good as my spike - it's designed to punch through anything someone might wear on their neck."

"Wait, duh, he's got Hyperman's powers!" Jean said. "We just need to synthesize some Hyperite, and then his powers weaken and then..." She turned away, tapping at the fabricator. When she returned, she held a sliver of greenish crystal in her palms, biting her lip. "Okay, do it now."

Whispers tensed, then thrust her personality override spike into the base of his neck. She twisted it, her eyes half closed. She frowned, slightly. Then she drew it back. "Well, fuck me," she said, quietly, retracting the spike with a click.

"What?" Jean asked, tingling. If there had been a seat, she would have been on the edge of it.

Whispers explained what she had seen in Aiden's brain.

Jean dropped the Hyperite on the ground with a clatter.

***

When Aiden woke up, it was with a throbbing headache, a full body buzz, and a sensation like someone had been working him over with hammers. He opened his eyes, sat up, and groaned - then blinked as Luz pushed him gently onto his back. She had been sitting next to him in the small recovery room. The faint sound of conversation could be heard from outside, soft and concentrated. It was like...well, like a bunch of nerds working on their latest project. Aiden sighed softly, then groaned out: "Why do I feel like total garbage?"

"O-Oh, uh, to cut the wings off, they needed to use Hyperite to make your powers less, uh..." Luz gestured vaguely. "You know. A-Also, the surgery took longer than expected, so, um, I got the portal. Of course, now my Moms are out there, bothering everyone. Mom Ada is helping with the magitech, and Mom Camilla is making snacks." She giggled. "Moms! Am I right?"

Aiden chuckled. "Yeah."

"...so, um..." Luz rubbed at the back of her neck. "...Jean and Whispers read your brain."

"What?" Aiden asked, his brow furrowing. Confusion. Was that why he had such a big fucking headache?

"Y-Yeah, um, while you were out..." Luz said, looking down at her lap. She looked ashamed.

"Hey. It's not your fault," Aiden said, sitting up, but Luz held up her hand. She drew in a slow breath.

"Aiden," she said, quietly. "Um...they...found...something."

Aiden blinked, then slowly leaned back in the cushions of the hospital bed.

"It's kind of important," Luz said, biting her lip. Hard.

"What?" Aiden asked.

"But, uh, also, kind of...um...bad!" Luz said. "But, um, we had a vote about telling you or not. And I voted that we're gonna do it. And there was a deadlock. So, I won. And now I'm here, telling you. The thing. That. You...should know! Before we...um...do. Anything."

Aiden bobbed his head slowly. "Well, spill! Tell me! Because, uh, every single delay is making me more and more existentially terrified."

Luz closed her eyes. "Right." She bit her lip. "...Aiden..."

The silence in the room made it clear that the conversation had dimmed outside. Aiden suddenly became aware of the faintest sound of clicking buttons. A whirring camera. His senses were so finely attuned that he could sense the faint thrum of something beneath his bed. Terrible energies, contained, ready to be released. Cold fear grew in his belly as Luz looked down at her lap.

She lifted her head, and her eyes were full of fear and sadness. Deep sadness.

"...you...are the Chathurian."

TO BE CONTINUED