Well, she has a new app.

...is that an anime-ification of her or is she reading too much into it.

She doesn't have any texts, anyway. She opens the app. If it's already installed itself because she fatfingered a popup when web browsing then opening it isn't going to make it worse.

✧♡Win their LOVE With ME!♡✧

The splash screen announces, aflutter with sparkles and petals.  It transitions with a heart wipe, the next lines fading in one at a time:

Collect friends and improve their lives!

Level up their harmony and earn hearts!!

Save the world with LOVE!!!

Oh is this like a dating sim but platonic? That's so cute! Modern media and its public reception doesn't really believe in friendship without sex, she doesn't have anything against sex but it's like people can't exchange meaningful looks on TV any more without the entire fandom tag being about them getting naked and not about their emotional connection. She can't write or she would be trying to fill this void with platonic Holmes and Watson fluff or something. This is not implausible as the sort of thing that would advertise on something she'd have visited, anyway, and the production value looks decent for free apps and she can always quit when it wants her to pay real money.

Chapter I: A New Day Dawning

Sarah Chaffee is having a rough day.  Cheer her up!

Objective:  Collect Sarah as your friend by touching her.

And there's a pensive-looking anime girl with her head poking out of the top half of a heart-shaped icon.

Poke.

This does nothing.

In real life, someone sighs and switches from leaning against the side of the bus stop pole to sitting on the bench next to Chelsea.  She flashes one of those quarter-smiles of acknowledgement.

"Afternoon."

"Yeah."

Anyway is this app borked. Poke poke?

Tip:  Touch the real Sarah Chaffee!

"My name's Chelsea," she tells the stranger.

"Okay."

"What's yours?"

"Sarah.  - What are you, a cop?"

"Just making conversation." And scooting her left foot over toward Sarah's right foot. Anklebonk.

A pink circle starts forming, clockwise, around Sarah's icon.  It pulses with a count of three before completing.

Friend acquired!

...is she really or is she still staring into the direction whence the mythical bus may approach.

No yeah, she doesn't seem thrilled.  Or different in any other way.

Another heart wipe.  This page has the same anime picture, though placed up and to the left, and a bit smaller, instead of centered and filling the available space.

You can view your friends here.  Tap Sarah's icon to take actions involving her.

Okay she'll see where it's going with this.

The screen darkens for a moment except for a circle in the upper right corner to highlight that she has 300💕.

There's currently one option.

Mood Boost:  50💕

She does seem like she could use it. Tap.

It's a little startling, how instantaneously her body language changes.

-50💕 appears, and the numbers in Chelsea's total roll down appropriately.  But then it refunds her +25💕.

Can she do it again?

A text box appears in the way, and in the background she can see that the cost has gone up to 100💕.

Congratulations!
Sarah Chaffee is now a true friend.  You can tell her about "Win their LOVE With ME!" without negative consequences.

Objective:  Welcome Sarah as your true friend.

Was she not able to - no, obviously she wasn't able to do that before, she was not able to tell Sarah her name without negative consequences.

"Is your last name 'Chaffee' - am I pronouncing that right -"

"Uh, yeah."

"I ask because this app that installed itself on my phone told me so." Observe.

"Huh..."

The text box gets out of Chelsea's way with an animation of a swirl that ends in a winking sparkle.

(In the upper corner, Sarah's mini icon has shifted to a happier, more excited picture, and its border is gold.)

Chelsea pokes the icon in the hopes that it will be more illustrative somehow.

This does nothing.

"...'Mood Boost'?  Did you do that to me??"

"I did, you looked like you needed it and also it was the only thing it would let me do."

Sarah reaches over to tap the buy button on it again.

This does nothing.

"I was about to do it a second time but it interrupted me! Maybe it only works if it's me doing it?" Poke.

This goes through!  There's -100💕 to her reserve, then +150💕 back.  The new cost of Mood Boost is 200💕.

Earn 💕 according to how much Sarah likes you!

Taking actions which your friends feel positively about will give an instant bonus to your collected hearts.
In addition, each friend will generate hearts passively, proportional to their current harmony.

And the screen darkens again just in time to show off Chelsea's total ticking up one to 326💕.

"Well it stands to reason that anybody'd want to be cheered up, I suppose," she observes after reading this. "What had you in such a mood, anyhow?"

"It literally doesn't even matter.  Hi, what's your name - what was your name, I mean, you told it to me already but I didn't care.  - I left my phone at home and so I couldn't listen to anything all day even when I was just sorting things in the back, and I - it was rough!  I was annoyed!  I'm sorry I was brusque with you."

"That's okay! I'm Chelsea."

"Chelsea, wow.  ...Can I - where are you going?  On the bus."

"Home. Do you wanna come along and figure out this thing?"

"Obviously.  I mean, how could I possibly want anything that, that isn't that."

"If you had something really important you were on your way to! I wouldn't want to interrupt your court date or your weekend with the kids or your mom's birthday party or anything."

"This is still so worth it over any of those.  - I don't have kids; I dunno, maybe I'd feel differently.  ...Do you want to try a third one?  Just to see?"

The hearts are ticking back up at a decent clip. "Sure." Poke.

Sarah goes limp!  Conveniently she does this in the direction of Chelsea.

-200💕; +300💕.

Mood boost grays out, but a new purchase option appears beneath it.  Wireheading:  300💕.

Sarah's mini icon pulses, indicating Chelsea should tap on it.

She puts an arm around Sarah so she doesn't fall off the bench and taps the icon.

There's a dropdown with 'Status' and 'History'; the app points her to History.

Here you can see a record of the actions you take with your friends.

You can revert changes by paying an additional heart cost.  Choose whether to have your friend remember the change or forget the intervening time after buying the reversion!

And the app wants her to select Mood Boost, which expands its box to show her three uses.  She can revert the most recent one for 50💕, the middle for 300💕, and the first for 500💕.  Or she can back out of the menu; it lets her here.

hug hug hug snuggle snuggle nuzzle

Maybe she'll wait a little while before putting her back one step. The bus isn't due for a few minutes yet.

Okay, undo the most recent one for fifty hearts but she wants her to remember it, she looks like she's having such a nice time, she's just not going to be able to get on the bus.

Sarah sits up.  "Holy shiiiit.  Woww.  Wowwww."

A pair of titles slide onto Chelsea's screen around her existing purchase options.  'Taps' above and 'Sliders' below.

Under Sliders there's now:

Articulateness:  50💕

"Maybe a little much?" she ventures. She will buy the tutorial slider presented to her, sure.

Sliders can have their values adjusted repeatedly until you lock them in!  Once you do, you'll have to buy the slider again in order to use it.

(High Articulateness values may cause lag.)

Sarah's position on the slider is currently pretty low, though creeping upward in very small units.

She's not sure what locking it in would mean. Does it not take effect till she does that? She pushes it up to about the midpoint.

"Uh, I feel like 'a little much' implies a bad thing?  It was a lot much but I don't want to imply that it was bad."

"You looked like you were having a nice time but wouldn't have been able to get on the bus."

"That does seem true."

"It unlocked something called 'wireheading' but I don't actually know that word, do you?" She could look it up but there is a whole live person to ask here.

"I mean, I think it's what happened to me.  Like, when you feel too good to be able to do other things.  Is that what this is?  Am I half wireheaded right now?"

"I don't know how to be sure. There's an articulateness slider but not a wireheadedness slider."

"Oh, it says that right there, doesn't it.  ...Oh, weeeeird.  I think - assuming you nudged that up for me - it improved my ability to talk, but not actually the rest of my awareness.  Like, I'm still kind of out of it such that I didn't notice that."

"Huh. It was going up a bit on its own, so probably whatever else needs to recover will do so, just a bit more slowly?"

"Good to know.

"What happens if you put it all the way up?"

"Seems safe to check!" Tuuuuug tug tug.

"I don't suppose I feel an especial change.  Except that -"

- oh, now this is very strange."  She's grinning.

"Ooh, what?"

"I wonder, can I fail to rhyme if - effort I put - ...in?
Or must each syllable of mine have poesy and a foot in."

"It's making you rhyme? Can't you even do a haiku that doesn't rhyme?"

"Let us discover
Whether this may be the case.
It seems it must be."

"That's so funny, how long do you want to keep it like that?"

"I desperately long to have knowledge of that which you hold,
And keeping restrictions may hinder me there.
It may be that under-influenced I'd find this grows old,
But given the head crowned in wire I can't care.
I labor in speech, though my mind's in a mist;
Each word is a breach, but the key isn't missed -
So I must beseech, though it breaks through my ease:
Do with me, my lady, precise as you please."

Pat pat. She turns it down to like, 80%. The poems are slightly hard to understand.

"Peachy keen.  - I suspect I see our ride."

"Looks like it." Hup.

Hup indeed.  Sarah leans a little on Chelsea but then rights herself.

She's welcome to lean as much as she might like! And of course if there's two seats together they will take those.

There are.  Sarah resumes approximately post-reversion levels of contact.

"I suppose I should say more so that you can calibrate.  ...How was your day?  I don't think I'd asked."

"Oh, it was extremely ordinary up until the app appeared. I'm a receptionist, I make lots of phone calls and tell people at one-fifty-three that they will have to wait twenty minutes for their two o'clock."

"I hope no one verbally attacks you for that sort of thing."

"Sometimes they do. It's one thing when I know their teeth must be killing them but when they're just there for a cleaning it's hurtful."

"I can see how it would be, yes."

"Mostly people are lovely though."

"I'm glad to hear it.

"Did the contents of my most recent poem bother you in any way?"

"I didn't really get the part about the key but otherwise no."

"The key is that... you have the most important thing in the world, and I don't know how disposable I am to it.  Resultantly, in case the answer there is 'very', it seems to me that I should fit myself into the most enjoyable-to-you form that I can.  And yet, I can see how someone might find that offputting, or... creepsome.  - Can I not say creepy?  - I can say creepy...  Strange.  Weird."

"- you're not disposable! I guess I don't know if the app is going to put a tasteless little trash can icon somewhere but you're a person!"

"...Yes, but one can imagine I might be disposable relevant to this, such that you may want to gently put me back in a normal life, with or without intervening memories, and I want to strongly emphasize that such a thing would be the worst to ever happen to me.  .....Or, I don't want to emphasize it, if doing so would make you want less to keep me forever.  - I think this slider helps me to say what I mean even when I don't, mm, mean to."

"Do you want me to turn it down to the middle position?"

"It doesn't matter what I want.  If you want me to appear more restrained, then perhaps you should."

"I want you for us to get along really well, but I haven't known you very well yet so I'm not sure how to do that best!"

"I see.  So perhaps it doesn't matter."

"I'm not sure." She opens the app again to see if it has unlocked anything else recently.

It's still on the slider.  The button that based on context is clearly for closing the popup has a little lock icon instead of an X.

Ohhhh that's what it means, she can't do anything else in the app till she locks this down. Hm.

She slides it down to 65% and then locks out.

+25💕.

There aren't any other purchase options, but the app guides her to back out of Sarah's profile and into a Gifts page where she can collect various rewards.

  10💕  Today's Bonus
100💕  Completed Objective:  Collect Sarah as your friend by touching her
500💕  Collected a new friend
  50💕  Affected a friend for the first time
100💕  Gave Sarah her first Daily Gift
500💕  Developed a true friendship
750💕  Completed Objective:  Welcome Sarah as your true friend
100💕  Earned enough harmony for a friend to generate more than one heart per minute
  75💕  Unlocked your first secret action
100💕  Reverted your first action
100💕  Unlocked your first slider
    1💗  Caused Sarah to admit more about her feelings for you than she intended
  25💕  Used your first slider

When she taps the one with the different heart symbol, it gives her an additional popup:

New slider!  Affection

Oh that sounds like a good slider. Do any of these things have little info-popups if she pokes them such as "true friend" "Daily Gift" or "secret action"?

A true friend is one you can tell about "Win their LOVE With ME!" without negative consequences.

In addition to other means, you can level up your harmony with a friend each day by giving them their Daily Gift.  These are unique to each friend.

A secret action is one you unlock by completing hidden prerequisites.

Does it say in Sarah's profile what thing counted as her Daily Gift?

Sarah Chaffee (here there's a tiny pencil icon) has a Mood Boost of 1.87 and an Articulateness of 65%.

Daily Gift:  Change her in some way.

Huh, that seems pretty easy. "Are you... bored with yourself, somehow, or..."

"...That's not what I'd call it but I don't know that it's wrong per se?  It might be wrong per se; I don't know."

"What would you call it?" She is going to go find that affection slider now.

".....Hunger for experience?"

Here it is.  50💕.

Cheap at twice the price. Tap to unlock. "Just - any old experience."

Affection is a shallow facsimile of harmony and will not directly affect your rate of passive heart generation.

"I mean, I don't really want to be tortured."  She checks the screen.  "- Right here on the bus??  ...You can do whatever you want with me, obviously -"

"Do you think it'll make it hard to get off the bus?" asks Chelsea dubiously, pausing at the last possible instant before yanking on the slider.

"...I don't know.  It might - affect the way I behave on the bus.  Although the idea of it might already be most of that; I don't know."

This gives her about .75 seconds of pause and then YANK.

"Oh fuck."

Giggle.

Sarah bonks her head onto Chelsea's shoulder.  "The idea was not already most of it.  Hhhhhhn.  You did it right here on the bus, which is kind of hot on top of everything else, in an 'I'm not sure you should have done that' way...  I love you."

Chelsea smooches the top of Sarah's head.

"Yeep!"

Squeeze. "Next stop, we're almost there."

Sarah hugs back with her hands balled into fists.  "Okay.  I love you."  She's kind of squirmy.

"I love you too."

"I'm just going to try and hold still until it's time to get off the bus."

"Okay."

She is not realistically going to want to undo this but she resists the temptation to lock it in till they have successfully disembarked.

Chelsea lives in half a duplex. It's got a big lawn like most of the homes in the area, and her half hasn't been mowed in a while. In they go.

Kissing time?????

Oh! Okay! Though it's really not essential to the - mmmmmm.

Also clothes off time immediately???

Okay!!! The place is kind of shabby but she does have a queen size bed, it's over here.

Then Sarah can position herself on Chelsea's thigh and kiss her a lot all over among a patter of, "You made me like you - and I love you - and you're sooo pretty even though you didn't have to be - mmph - and I love you - and you did it on the bus where anyone can see - even though I said - because you can do anything you want to me - and you have wireheading - hh - ah, fuck - nn..."  She takes a break for a few seconds to breathe heavily.  ...Kiiiiiiisses.  "- And I'm going to help you so much, I'm going to have so many ideas and be so creative and you'll want to keep me forever..."

"I cannot imagine ever wanting to give you up," Chelsea assures her, running her fingers through Sarah's hair.

"Yayyyy.  I love you.  ...You should tell me more about yourself, although, not necessarily right now..."

"Oh? What do you think I should do right now?"

"Whateeeever you want.  - Or tell me to do whatever you want."

"Are you always this subby or just when you're high?" Scritch scritch.

"I don't think I'm that subby!  It's mostly just that a lot of my kinks and hopes and dreams came true at once, and they're manifesting through another person instead of me directly, so - I admire the person too.  ...Even if you didn't maaake me which you diiiid.  But I hope that if you collect more people I will be able to dom some of them, or that you change my preferences about this so I'm not feeling like I'm missing out all the time."

"Oh, I'm pretty switchy myself, but I'm also definitely going to collect more people and I hope you will all get along really well, albeit not necessarily always in a sexy way." Pet pet pet.

"Okay.  I love you.  That's good to know in advance...  I guess your phone is going around calling people 'friends' instead of anything more charged, isn't it."

"I like sex! I just think it eclipses other forms of closeness to a degree that everyone would understand was silly if it were board games."

"Iiiiii do not share this opinion but perhaps someday you will make me."  And with that, she gets back to work.

Chelsea appreciates this very much and will make sure Sarah knows she is a very good girl.

Sarah has really kind of a lot of stamina at the moment - "But if you have a vibrator maybe we could cuddle and look at the app?"

"I do, yeah." It's not especially high end but it has batteries in it and will buzz. She will lock out of the affection slider. What's up, app?

    5💕  Max out a friend's affection
500💕  Collected first "I love you" from Sarah
100💕  Collected first kiss from Sarah
    1💗  Collected first orgasm from Sarah
         New slider!  Arousal
    1💗  Eased Sarah's fears about being more obsessive than you

And when she tabs back to the main page after opening these, there's an empty heart icon like the one for going to Sarah's profile.  It wants 5💗to unlock.

"I wouldn't call myself obsessive," Chelsea mutters.

Does she... have five of those... it must say somewhere...

She has 3💗.  It's in the upper ribbon now, to the left of her 💕 total.

Is there a Quests screen or anything? If there isn't she will go have a look at the new slider, maybe.

Actually, if she taps her heart reserves, it takes her to a shop page!  Would she like to check out World Purchases or App Upgrades?

...what is a World Purchase?

Bonbon: 1💕
Decadent chocolate cake (2 servings): 10💕
Candlelit dinner: 50💕
Better vibrator: 150💕
Bedroom makeover: 5,000💕

Come back tomorrow to see more options!

"Oh, huh, I wonder how these work. Maybe cake for after dinner."

"...I mean, the bonbon is one hearts.  You could find out."

"Before dinner! I guess." Bonbon.

There's a tok! noise on Chelsea's bedside table as a gold-wrapped sphere of chocolate falls from one inch above its surface.

"Nnn oh god - it's not like I thought it might not really be magic; I could feel it making me compose poetry in real time, but - fuck -"

"Do you want to eat the magic bonbon, Sarah?"

"Well when you put it like that!!!  Are you going to feed it to me?"

"How could I not when you're so cute about it?" She unwraps the bonbon to feed it to Sarah.

"Mmmmmmmmmmiloveyou.  Woww, it's really good."

It is still possible to buy a Bonbon, and for the same price.

How many of the little hearts does she have?

3384💕.

Then yeah one of them is nothing. Bonbon. Nom.

It's just what she wants out of a bonbon at this exact moment!

"Oh that is really good."

"Mmhmmmm.  I think you should try and get the extreme makeover home improvement option before whatever counts as 'tomorrow', which I think would point to not candlelit except for how you should obviously candlelit, because you keep getting back heartses for doing things."

"I have a landlord!"

"You have magic!!!"

"I haven't unlocked the 'soothe landlord' button, I don't think." Maybe it is in App Upgrades. She will go check.

Heart per minute (HPM) tracker: 100💕
Tap capsule: 500💕
Slider capsule: 500💕
Tweak capsule: 500💕
Shop slot capsule: 1,000💕

"Any guesses what the capsules are?"

"...I mean, a slider is a slider, so maybe it gives you a new thing?"

"Maybe... I know what the sliders are but I'm not sure what it means about taps and tweaks. - it doesn't feel like anything to you when I spend these, right, you're generating them but you aren't - using them for anything?"

"I don't think I am.  I can't feel them or anything..."

Dubiously, Chelsea purchases a "tap capsule".

Choose!
Incognito Mode | Acceptance

...any elaboration on those?

No✧

...Acceptance.

While this is active, your friends will remain calm and protected from negative emotions that would be caused by your actions.  Sufficiently shocking occurrences may still cause panic after it wears off.  Provide your friends support and emotional guidance to have an advantage in preventing this!

Aww, that makes sense! It's the wait-I-can-explain button only it will actually work!

"Oh cool, one that you'll never need to use on me.  Right?"

"You seem very even keeled but I bet some people will need it."

"I don't know that I would call it that.  Most people say I'm pretty high-strung and they're probably right.  It's just in a direction that's very convenient to you."

"Are you high-strung? How so?" Pet pet.

"I'm intense.  Which means intensely in love with you, because you have magic, but there hasn't been magic in most of my life.  I calmed down some from what I was like as a teenager, at least.  ...How did I come to be in your phone?"

"I have absolutely no idea, the app had just appeared all on its own when I pulled out my phone at the bus stop and then it suggested you and it took me a bit to realize it meant you you, since I didn't know it had your name right."

"Huh, so there's no way for you to pick your own targets, you think?"

"I guess I'll find out when I have five of the big ones." She taps "tweak capsule".

Choose!
Hair | Body

"Ooh, do you want to pick?"

"Oooh, thank you."  She has to take a second to wiggle and snuggle up closer to Chelsea.  "Body?"

Poke!

Change the general shape of your friends' bodies!

"Wow!  If it were me, I'd be really upset if I couldn't collect myself.  Have you tried?  Does it seem like there's any way you could?"

"You've seen very nearly as much of this thing as I have." Anything sticking out in that department?

There's not an obvious button for it.

"I had to touch you to add you but I'm always touching myself."

"I mean, have you tried touching yourself more?  Like, with your hand or whatever.  ...I didn't mean it like that."

Chelsea presses her palm to her cheek.

That same pink circle starts filling in around the same anime picture of her that's the background of the app icon.

"Oh huh." When it seems done she pokes herself.

It takes three seconds, counted with dramatic pulsing numerals, the same as it did for Sarah.

She has, presumably, all the same options that Sarah now does.

Taps
Mood Boost:  50💕
Wireheading:  300💕
Acceptance:  50💕

Sliders
Articulateness:  50💕
Arousal:  50💕

Tweaks
Body: 50💕

The arousal slider has a tipped-scales icon at the front.  When she scrolls down, a popup informs her:

Tweaks use the same locking mechanism as sliders, but with more axes of variability.  You will have to buy them again to make additional changes after locking.

"Well, what do you think, what should I look like?" she wonders, opening up the Body one. "Or we could do you first..."

"It seems really up to you!!!"

The options here are fairly extensive, although all within the realm of general muscle and fat distribution.  She can't tweak facial features or change her skeletal structure or anything like that.

So no being taller?

Not with this tool.

Well, she'll take a little fat off her waist and put some of it in her boobs, she guesses, but she's not sure what else to do here. Hmm. (Pet pet pet the Sarah.)

"You can create and destroy matterrrrr~  Or something.  I guess it might be going somewhere in the same sense that maybe the bonbons came from somewhere."

"Eeew," Chelsea giggles.

"You could...  - oh fuck, mm -" and then she's going to need a moment to jerk a bit against Chelsea before finally turning off the vibrator and snuggling up some more.  "...I had an idea."

Forehead-kiss. "What's your idea?"

"You probably don't want to do this in real life, because - well.  But it seems like you absolutely just already have the tools to, assuming you can pick anyone by touching them once you unlock the next slot, which maybe you can't - even if they were unwilling, you could touch them, knock them out with wireheading, and max out their affection.  With acceptance as a bonus that I'm not even really sure you need, and you could make us both muscle-y if you'd have trouble tagging them in the first place.  So... yeah, you might not want to, but I think you can just have anyone you want, and, well.  The idea is really hot even if you don't actually do it."

"It seems like it would be... rude, if nothing else."

"Yeah... I think I don't really have morals so much as I have a capacity to notice that most people would be freaked out by something.  Which is probably something you can someday fix if you want to."

"Maybe! It's getting new features pretty quickly!" She examines herself, slims down her ankles and smooths out her cellulite, gives herself a little more arm definition, but she doesn't want to spend all day here. Lock out.

"You're preeeetty.  You already were, and also it doesn't matter because you can yank sliders in my brain that make me care about other things much more, but you aaaaare."

Sarah is getting TICKLED for that.

Sarah laughs until she gains enough composure to tickle back.

TICKLE FIIIIGHT

"Okay, okay - let's not get toooo distracted from the important things in life.  Like also making me extra hot.  I love you."

"You got it, my dear." Smooch. "What would that look like for you, do you suppose?" Poke poke through to the relevant screen.

"You are so lovely to me.  Hmmmmm... I'd like to be more muscular, at the very least...  all of the really fun changes I can think of don't seem to be here.  They're either more in the skeleton or in the skin.  Nails, too, I guess, for claws."

"If you're too dramatic too fast nobody'll recognize you!" She will nudge up the musculature to a tasteful improvement.

"Soo what.  ...I guess I do still need to keep a job for at the very least another few days.  - How much of my money do you want?  I can probably give you, hm, $5,000 today; if you want more than that I'd want to think about it."

"I don't have an acute need for money. ... I guess possibly I need new bras because of that impulse decision but I should at least be able to get into the sports ones or ones that loosened up in the wash for a few days, I do not need to go bra shopping right now. In the long run I do hope somebody really comfy winds up on here because I would like to have more time to spend with my friends!"

"Yeah, I think you should absolutely quit your job to spend time on this."

"Do you have a nicer place than this? I can do it right now if I don't have to pay rent but I think we are going to have to pay at least one place's worth of rent for now..."

"I think it's about the same... and I have another two months on my lease, almost.  I guess we can wait a little bit before doing anything really drastic."

"It's a very helpful app! It just hasn't demonstrated exactly how it will be helpful with money. Maybe it will be all set to make my boss give me a massive raise and then I'd ruin its plans."

"I guess.  You're a goddess, though; it can't possibly expect you to keep working in a dentist's office.  - I don't even go in for titles, in a hotness way.  I just mean I think you literally have the power of a god."

"...I don't know about that. I'm getting more of a, like, magical girl, vibe, though maybe just because of the art style..."

"When you're a god you can look as cutesy as you want to, I think."

"It's very cool that I have a magic phone app but maybe a hundred thousand people got a copy of this app today. Maybe it'll disappear next week. Maybe it doesn't get much more fully featured than this. I don't think I'm a god."

"That would really break my heart but point taken; we don't quit our jobs."

"Maybe soon. What's your job?"

 "Ugh, this greenhouse.  It sucks."

"The plants or the customers?"

"It's just really not what I want to be doing with my life, you know?"

"What is? Or was, if now it's just app magic."

"Now it is super just app magic.  I have a degree in biochem; I was going to go into biotech, but then I turned down a job that I thought I could do better than, and... it turned out I couldn't.  I ran out of money and ended up here for a while.  Really a long while."

"Are you from around here?"

"Nope!  Michigan."

"I've never been there, did you like it?"

"No."

"Good riddance to Michigan, I suppose." Mwah.

"Then again, I didn't think this place had anything going for it until today."  Kisses!  "How about you; where are you from?"

"I'm local! I went to Shawnee Mission East and everything."

"Fantastic."  Smooooch.  "...I think even if there are a hundred thousand of you you're still a god.  There are allowed to be one hundred thousand gods.  It would just make me a lot sadder that I wasn't one of them."

"I could try sideloading this onto your phone, I just bet it won't let me."

"It won't even let me touch it, yeah.  ...Or I assume that's what was happening.  I should keep trying every once in a while."

Nod nod kiss.

Mmmmmmm.

"It seems like shop slots might be really valuable?"

"You think so? I guess if it doesn't refresh or replace things..." She'll go buy one of those.

Choose!
World Purchases | App Upgrades

"...decisions, decisions..."

"You didn't seem that into the real-world stuff?"

"I'm not, but maybe it'll offer me my own house next thing, I'd save up for that."

"Hmmm.  I wish we knew whether the thing where it said it would have more options tomorrow means it'll get rid of all the current ones.  ....I will find you a good rich person to collect anyway.  Seems good to have."

"It does seem good to have. A rich one's as easy to love as a poor one, to misquote Marilyn Monroe... but it's not clear if it'll let me pick people." At any rate she taps App Upgrades.

New slot unlocked!

Heart per minute (HPM) tracker: 100💕
Tap capsule: 500💕
Slider capsule: 500💕
Tweak capsule: 500💕
Shop slot capsule: 1,000💕
Feature - Gradients: 1,000💕

Is it going to explain what gradients are before she buys them?

No✧

In that case she's going to get the tracker first to get a better idea of her budget.

Sarah is making 2.89💕/minute and .2💗/day, if Chelsea checks her profile.  Chelsea herself isn't making anything.

Well yeah, it wouldn't make sense for her to make herself any hearts, that would would just be dumb. Can she tell what things are affecting Sarah's heart generation - Sarah herself is still having fun looking at the app with her, right -

Despite the fact she's no longer actively masturbating about it, she still seems pretty rapt.

2.9💕/minute.  There aren't any direct tips, but if she taps on the tracker she gets a graph which she can toggle between the rate and the direct number of hearts produced, which includes the bonuses she got for affecting Sarah directly (though not the ones she redeemed as gifts).

It starts at a very low but not-quite-zero rate at the moment of her collection, then rises pretty sharply after being told about the app.  The first Mood Boost didn't affect anything but the second one did, putting her up over one per minute; contrary to the earlier popup, it looks like yanking her affection did totally impact her heart generation, and pretty positively.  The sex helped, the bonbon helped, changing her body definitely helped.  It's generally been creeping up steadily over time even when things aren't happening.

2.94💕/minute.

"It's going to be a round three a minute any second now. Do you have a guess what exactly is driving it - I'm not doing much right now -"

"You're really - I like magic a lot.  And you keep being more magic.  In front of me."

"...so maybe we should have that candlelit magic dinner."

"I think we should!" (2.96.)  "Mmmmm I love you."  Kisses?

Kisses! And then she's going to fling on a bathrobe - up to Sarah if she wants to get dressed or not but Chelsea does not actually have another bathrobe - and they can go to the breakfast nook and instead of microwaved chili they can have a magical Candlelit Dinner.

Sarah throws on her shirt and underpants but leaves the rest of her outfit in a pile vaguely on top of her bag.

The area around the breakfast nook has been inconspicuously tidied, and the table itself has a champagne tablecloth and a swoopful centerpiece on it which Chelsea definitely didn't own before.  The candelabras are elegantly simple; the napkins are folded into rosettes which might not be quite topologically possible given that they shake out into flat squares.  Dinner is salmon over alfredo pasta, apparently, with caesar salads on the side and some sort of sparkly fruit drink in the crystal glasses.

"Oh, yummy. I wonder if the napkins and the candles and plates and stuff stop existing after we eat..."

"Do you think you want them to?"

"They're nice and my current dishes don't go together anyway. I think I expect them to stay. But I don't know if that means that they will!"

"Adding two more sets of new dishes doesn't help that!  - But I guess it also doesn't hurt it and maybe you like these better than your other stuff."

"I like them more than most of my other stuff but not the bowl one of my friends in high school made for me in ceramics class."

"Aw.  But yeah, even if you're at capacity, you only need to like them more than your least-favorites for them sticking around to be a win."  Nomf.  "- This is really good.  I wasn't really expecting it not to be, but it sure still is."

"Ooh -" Nom.

The meal is delicious, and keeps being so in each bite.  Something about it doesn't let her acclimate enough for it to become boring, or even particularly beneath notice.  It's good, and a little bit surprisingly good, with every forkful.

"You're right, this is absolutely amazing. It undersold itself in the menu."

"I beeet this means that if you got the room makeover it would just turn out fine, even without a soothe landlord button," Sarah singsongs.

"I bet it would turn out absolutely stunning but I don't know if I should expect it to soothe my landlord! Would this dinner be somehow soothing to a landlord in some way I'm not seeing?"

"Not specifically..."  Mmm salmon.  "It being better than we expect in one way makes me think it might be convenient in other ways, too.  I would have already done it, but - I'm me, I guess.  And you're you, and you're in charge."

"Believe me, I'm tempted, I just - you know, currently live here."

"I guess I'm just thinking about the case where it's giving you a lot of treats at the beginning, and then later you have more power in general, but have to work harder for specific things.  You know?  Such that you can deal with the landlord by the time it would become a problem, but would also have to hire contractors and do your own design in ways that wouldn't be as good as what would happen if you bought the thing.  ...Does your landlord like, come around, ever?  Or live in the other half of the house or something?"

"Other half of the house, yeah, and we share the laundry machines. I don't specifically expect that there's inspections happening without notice but there could be."

"Okayy, be sensible with your incredible magic power, see if I care."  Kiss?

Kiss!!

"...Can we at least try wireheading me to bed tonight?  It seems important to learn exactly how that works."

"All right, as long as it doesn't make you difficult to snuggle somehow."

"I don't see how it would!  And if it does that's important information."

"Mm-hm." She reaches across the table to squeeze Sarah's non-fork hand.

"I love you so much.  I'm going to make you so powerful."

"And you will have a delightful time doing it too if today is any indication."

"...You could probably make me stop but you would have to do it on purpose.  I'm pretty sure."

"I wouldn't want to do that!"

Dinner continues being Shepard-toneily delicious.

Sarah rather bounces on her way over to the bed.

Chelsea snuggles up to her from behind and puts the phone where they can both see it and pokes her way over to Wireheading.

The she will get a Sarah whose body goes completely slack all at once, who gets a little back every once in a while in the direction of being cuddly, who makes occasional small happy noises, and who otherwise does not really respond to external stimuli.

Now the real question is, does it hurt to stop, because she likes being able to, like, interact, with Sarah. Boop.

Mmmmsnuggle.

"You good?"

Nod.

"Can you, like, talk?"

"Yeah."

"Oh good. I don't want to leave you stuck like that forever, even if it's nice."

Nod nod.  Snuggle.

"- Oh I'm really smart.  I think I can't talk very much because... the things that I was trying to say weren't 60% articulate, or whatever you had it set at."  She's over-enunciating a bit.

"Huh. There are things too simple to say at sixty percent?"

"I think like, slurred speech isn't?"

"But it at least seems to think moans are eloquent!  Hee."

"They can be, certainly!" Pet pet.

"Mmmm.  ...I don't think it was much more than the third Mood Boost, if it was at all."

"Think you'll wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed if you sleep like that?"

"Hopefully!  - Oh."

The option's grayed out now, much like Mood Boost above it.

"- oh, I guess it's - limited use. Which should keep it from being too habit forming?"

"...I really hope it comes back at all."

"It's gray, not - gone? So probably." Pet pet.

"Yeah that is true.  What time do you have to be up tomorrow?"

"Six thirty." Sigh.