{What a day,} Hailey comments internally. {Professor Foster is still obsessed with object orientation, so at least he's consistent.}

Sable chuckles quietly and shakes her head. {Could be worse. At least he knows data structures well.}

She pulls out her phone and unlocks it, figuring she'll see if any stories she follows have been updated.

A new smooth glassy icon gleams on her screen, violet-black shadows mingling with lavender and hot pink to form a heart of steam. It seems to almost glisten behind the shroud of the screen. 

{Um.}

{Did someone hack us?}

No, they have better protections than that, and they're running a clean version of Android without the usual manufacturer-included vulnerabilities.

{What the fuck.}

Well, they've got a backup of all the important shit on their phone, so.

Spring the trap?

She taps the icon.

A little satisfying haptic glide later, the screen lights up, expanding out the logo, before they dissolve into a cloud of inky steam, covering the screen with color, before it slowly resolves to an image of a finely designed desk enshrouded in royal purple curtains. Along the top of the screen, there's fancy little shroud of draping folded fabric, with four icons neatly nestled across each dip. 

🫟  0

🗡️  0

💜  0

🪙  0

A desk sits at the center, with a fine ink fountain laid to the side of a wide scroll labelled 'Collection', with a second one wrapped in jade-green sink set aside at the top. A brass spyglass sits next to the mahagony desk, thrumming softly with violet light. 

...Currencies? Look like currencies. 

Well, follow the white rabbit.

She taps on the spyglass.

An animation plays of it being lifted up to eye height, done in remarkable detail - you can really see the polish of the brass and the grain of the metal and the light shine of the internal mirrors. 

It transitions smoothly to a feed of the camera that's as good as the view of her eyes, with the banner staying at the top, like she's seeing through the screen or perhaps the camera rather than just looking at it. At the bottom, there's a little bronze dial, with lovingly rendered ratcheting marks. 

In beautiful penmanship, the words float across the screen in shiny black ink. 

Welcome to Heartstain. Collect your treasures, paint and taint their hearts, and gain rewards great and glorious. Take a picture of your first Treasure-to-be to embark on your Enchanting Journey. 

She trods out down the hall, tentatively looking over with a shy smile. 

"Good to see you! Just had some last little notes to finish up - you know how it is." 

Her fingers softly fuss with her fronter bracelet, making sure the die with the complicated blue spell circle design is turned up to view. 

"Good to see you too, sweetie. And yeah, I know the drill all too well."

Her bracelet is simpler, with a green side and a purple side, and it's currently turned purple-out.

She tilts her head at her phone. "I'm having an interesting time of it, though. Kinda think our phone got hacked. There's some weird app telling us to collect people as treasures and take a picture of our first one."

She blinks gently. 

"That's... weird. I know that people do scams and hacks for the oddest reasons, but I feel like most of those would have a payoff by now. You know, just have enough of an app to get you to click something, or just show a "You're pwned" screen, you know?"

She brushes back her soft black hair with a little lingering coquettish smile.  

"Yeah. And we've got our credentials secured separately, so figured we'd spring the trap. Seems not to have sprung yet. Guess we'll keep trying. Smile?"

She holds the phone up, pointing it at Romana.

She smiles lightly and indulgently, her glossed up fingernails gliding back behind her ear. 

"Cheese~?"

You can see her, of course, but beyond the little dimples of her smile and the way she wears that soft blue tanktop, she can see a set of sparkling stars. 

Gemstones (🌟🌟🌟🌟⭐)

🫟 90 0 /🗡️ 90  0 / 💜 90 0 

There's a faint glittering panolpy of four other sets of stars, each one faint enough to be just barely visible as they twinkle softly, orbiting around her head. 

A little pulsing circle forms at the tip of her brow, like a droplet of violet ink rippling along a clean translucent surface. 

"This thing is slick," she comments as she taps to take the picture. "Better production value than a trap like this should have."

When she clicks, a jolt of primal satisfaction runs through her spine, and the capture prompt washes away like tears in rain, leaving her name wrapped in golden chains. 

A soft violet glow slowly moves from the left side of the screen, before looping. 

A soft blush dawns on her face as her shoulders jump a little, blinking up at her. 

Sable shivers a bit, cheeks flushing. "Okay did you just get zapped? I just got zapped. Physical sensations shouldn't be an option for a phone app."

She nods and chuckles under her breath.

"You would think! That's..." 

Her eyes glance down. 

"Goodness."

Her cheeks burn a bit brighter a red. 

"Okay. We're in Weird territory now, not just hacks."

She stares down at it.

Fine, she'll swipe back.

And back to the main screen. 

Congralutions for taking your first Treasure. Check your Missions for your rightful rewards.

The green scroll glows softly, waiting eagerly. 

Well. She'll tap the scroll.

"That felt good," she murmurs. "Like satisfying something deep and old and possessive."

"Oh...~?" 

She leans in a little more. 

"For me it was more... feeling settled and stretched out and languidly pampered into place." 

The page unfurls, and settles onto the desk, before enveloping the screen. Each checkmarked mission glows softly, prompting her forward yet more. 

Collect your First Treasure: ✅

30 🫟, 30🗡️, 30💜, 30🪙

Confess a Sinful Feeling: ✅

20 🫟

Tell a Treasure How You Treasure Them:

20 💜

Tell a Treasure How You Want to Take Their Body: 

 20🗡️

Purchase a 🫟, 🗡️, and 💜perk: 

20🪙

"Okay that's wild. Language processing isn't objectively weirder than generating physical-emotional sensations but still what the fuck."

"Yeah..."

She steps over to glance over her shoulder and blinks. 

"That's... certainly a set of priorities, which I suppose explains why someone would want to give it out. But of course, that doesn't explain how at all." 

She taps her fingers a little nervously against her thigh. 

"Nothing for it but to try it. Hell, here's a cheap test. Let's see how much it depends on the phone's mic."

She gets up, carries her phone off to their bedroom, turns on a white noise generator, sets the phone down, then shuts the door and comes back.

Tell her how she treasures her, right?

"Romana," she whispers, "I love you. I love knowing you're here to come home to, I love knowing you're mine, and I love knowing you trust me with your heart. I love how eager you are to help, how much you look after me, and how sweetly you react when I pamper you. I love how much you care, how you find every way you can to support. You're wonderful, darling."

She blushes, a little soft sigh on her lips. 

"I love you too, my wonderful Sable. And... you know, you're not getting away with that without getting kissed about it, right~?" 

She reaches up to stroke her cheek and kisses her firmly, sighing with satisfaction and grinning shyly with love. 

She sighs into the kiss and buries a hand in Romana's hair.

It takes a few minutes before she gets around to fetching her phone from the bedroom and turning the white noise back off, but eventually she does, checking the app.

It indeed registered! 

Now, the banner at the top is glowing, each of the icons glinting as if in a spotlight. 

"Well. It apparently can tell I said something to you even absent any useful input from the mic."

She sits back down next to Romana and taps the banner of currencies.

She nods and obligingly lays her head on her shoulder, nuzzling up fondly. 

🫟 50🗡️30 💜 50 🪙 30

🫟Ink: The power of your will to corrupt, to make your Mark upon your Mates. Gain it through acts of depravity and seduction. 

Thought Sense 30🫟

Thought Fuzzer 30🫟

Illusory Ink 30🫟

Lust Linker 30🫟

Vibrant Voice 30🫟 (🪞 / 🎁) 

Touch Of Corruption 20🫟

 

🗡️Blades: The power of your pounding heart and thighs, and your visceral joys. Gain it through indulging in your Treasure's bodies and sadistic thrills. 

Blade of Bliss 30🗡️

Sense of Suffering 30🗡️

Charming Curves 30🗡️ (🪞 / 🎁) 

Dolled Up 30🗡️ (🪞 / 🎁) 

Sinful Sex 30🗡️ (🪞 / 🎁) 

Touch of Blades 20🗡️

 

💜 Hearts: The power of your heart to love, to lift up and make whole, and to shape and shake the world. Gain it through taking care of your Treasures and exploring your capacity for earnest love. 

Soothed Soul 30💜 (🪞 / 🎁) 

Instant Delivery 30💜 

Treat Yourself 30💜 

Treat Your Treasure 30💜 

Energized Soul 30💜 (🪞 / 🎁) 

Touch of Hearts 20💜 

 

Coin🪙: Your price (or perhaps your payment, if you prefer), not in silver coins, but in lives uplifted and souls saved. Stain hearts with your passion and purpose, and your cup shall runneth over. 

Moment of Kindness 5🪙

Stalwart Shelters 20🪙

Safe Roads  20🪙

Pretty Places  20🪙

Fed Bellies  20🪙

Bound Hearts 20🪙

Each of the subheadings glows lightly, waiting for her to expand each of them out in turn. 

"I feel personally called out."

"Same," Hailey adds, her voice a touch tighter and sharper than Sable's.

"Ink and Blades? Hearts and Coin? Fuck."

She taps on Soothed Soul.

Soothed Soul 30💜 (🪞 / 🎁) 

Soothes away the worst of the stresses straining your soul. While not a comprehensive panacea for all ills that would ail a heart, this blessing can effectively treat anxiety disorders, compulsive behavior, spikes of shame and stress, and many other minor ailments of the mind. It also gives you a centered place in your heart that makes it easier for the pains of life to roll over you without making your soul roil. Does not reduce your (notional) capacity for pain, creative anguish, or other potentially desirable emotional states, but makes it easier to deploy the thoughts and feelings of a calmer, more comprehensively endorsed you when you need it. 

A little ribbon of ink swirls around the side of the screen, forming a little drop-down menu to show the description of the perk. 

"Oh wow, that's powerful. I wonder if that applies to just one of us, or both. Maybe that's what those icons mean?"

She tries tapping the mirror and present icons.

Notes are quickly jotted in in the fine purple ink in response to each touch, though they fade away when she clicks away. 

🪞: Purchase for Treasurekeeper

🎁: Purchase for Treasures

"I see. Have to pay twice, but it looks bloody worth it. Let's look at the rest before deciding what to buy, though."

She starts tapping her way down the list from the top.

🫟 50🗡️30 💜 50 🪙 30

🫟Ink: The power of your will to corrupt, to make your Mark upon your Mates. Gain it through acts of depravity and seduction. 

Thought Sense 30🫟

Gain a sense for your Treasures thoughts. Through the heartstain app, you can examine their self-conception and surface thoughts, peering into them through the screen, allowing you to feel them with a reality approaching your own thoughts. With time and effort, you can develop an uncanny intuition for exactly what your Treasure is thinking by simply looking at them, or by simply contemplating the question of what is on their mind.

Thought Fuzzer 30🫟

Disrupt your Treasures Thoughts. The effect can be modulated, from a light buzz of distractedness up to a thoughtless daze in which memories are not retained. With effort, it can be used to targetedly disrupt your Treasures' short term memories as well, though safeguards ensure more memories than desired will not be erased.

Illusory Ink 30🫟

Allows the generation and control of the phantasmagoria of Ink. The treasurekeeper can create quasi-real illusions of inks of arbitrary color, texture, taste, viscosity, color and even to an extent temperature, with details designed through the dance of your dreams and/or customization through Heartstain's interface. At the base level, you can select if non-treasures can percieve it, dynamically control conjuration duration, and give yourself a degree of sensation through your conjured ink as if it was your hand. While unreal, even at this level, it can still make minor permanent impacts on the world, if desired.

Lust Linker 30🫟

Bond your Treasures' physiological and psychosexual lust to thoughts and sensations. At first, it replicates the effect strength of a strongly implanted hypnotic suggestion, with work, arbitrary connections and wefts of warps can dramatically alter your Treasures' sexuality and allow for spontaneous hands-free orgasms.

Vibrant Voice 30🫟 (🪞 / 🎁) 

Gifts those so blessed with a voice as sweet as a Siren. While not obviously supernatural, this increases vocal talents to the peak human level, and makes your voice subtly but supernally easy and charming to listen to, while amplifying the force of personality and strength of self as expressed through their words. As a side effect, allows dynamic removal or insertion of an Adam's Apple.

Touch Of Corruption 20🫟

Drink a drop from a well of infinite corruption. Gain (and unlock for additional purchases, if applicable) a random perk of comparable compatibility and utility to listed 30 🫟 perks.

🗡️Blades: The power of your pounding heart and thighs, and your visceral joys. Gain it through indulging in your Treasure's bodies and sadistic thrills. 

Blade of Bliss 30🗡️

Allows you to call up the Phastasm of your Blade. The treasurekeeper can create a quasi-real construct of your Blade and associated accessories, with details designed through the dance of your dreams and/or customization through Heartstain's interface. At the base level, you can select if non-treasures can percieve it, dynamically control the shape, weight, sharpness, materials and to an extent temperature and give yourself a degree of sensation through your conjured Blade as if it was your hand. Your Blade can inflict illusory injuries as if fully real, and leave small lingering traces on the world as if it was fully physical.

Sense of Suffering 30🗡️

Gain a sense for your Treasures' pain. Bypassing Heartstain's interface entirely, you can reflexively feel your Treasures' pain in whatever manner you please - an sense of the schematic of the self, highlighted with pain, a sense of simmering pleasure outside your body, or as something to be shared, as you please, alongside a vastly improved instinctive understanding of how they can and perhaps should be hurt.

Charming Curves 30🗡️ (🪞 / 🎁) 

Gain the silhouette of your dreams. Reshapes the sillhoute and general compositional details of the Treasures' (or the Treasurekeeper) body according to the Treasurekeepers' whims (which may be freely delegated) within the domain of the 'ordinary', allowing for considerable changes within the realm of the humanly plausible. These changes are deep and real and physical, and impossible to discern as unnatural under medical examination.

Dolled Up 30🗡️ (🪞 / 🎁) 

Gives those so blessed a face worthy of fawning over and reprieve from the dreariness of dress. They may freely change outfits, bathe, apply make-up, hairstyle and the like in a moment outside of time and the constraints of fiscal reality, freely conjuring new outfits, perfumes and other preparations within the realm of the barely plausible for them to arrange within their means, though the Treasurekeeper may of course apply and 'lock' specific configurations as they desire upon their Treasures.

Sinful Sex 30🗡️ (🪞 / 🎁) 

Gives those so blessed the finest of the sexes. Allows for arbitrary customization of the attributes of the sexes and sexual differentiation, allowing for example the strength and confident passion of the manliest men to blend into the most fantastically feminine frame freely, alongside significantly superhuman genital beauty, taste, feel, and performance.

Touch of Blades 20🗡️

Sharpen the Blade of your heart upon the cosmic whetstone. Gain (and unlock for additional purchases, if applicable) a random perk of comparable compatibility and utility to listed 30 🗡️ perks.

💜 Hearts: The power of your heart to love, to lift up and make whole, and to shape and shake the world. Gain it through taking care of your Treasures and exploring your capacity for earnest love. 

Soothed Soul 30💜 (🪞 / 🎁) 

Soothes away the worst of the stresses straining your soul. While not a comprehensive panacea for all ills that would ail a heart, this blessing can effectively treat anxiety disorders, compulsive behavior, spikes of shame and stress, and many other minor ailments of the mind. It also gives you a centered place in your heart that makes it easier for the pains of life to roll over you without making your soul roil. Does not reduce your (notional) capacity for pain, creative anguish, or other potentially desirable emotional states, but makes it easier to deploy the thoughts and feelings of a calmer, more comprehensively endorsed you when you need it. 

Instant Delivery 30💜 

Eases away the ills of inconvenience. Any product order you make will arrive within minutes, if not seconds, regardless of the ordinary delay, delivered by an amiable and accepting deliveryperson who has been well-tipped and treated for their work, in perfectly mint condition, regardless of plausibility.

Treat Yourself 30💜 

The right to indulge in personal luxuries. While not at this level an endless fount of effective wealth, it still allows for careless purchases within the realm of preliminarily plausible, and ensures that when you do go to buy such luxuries, you find yourself avoiding lemons and finding your way into the smoothest and most polished versions of the experience on offer.

Treat Your Treasure 30💜 

Pamper your precious things, and find it no burden. While not an infinite well of wealth, it allows you to freely make purchases to treat your Treasures within the realm of plausibility, with the same guarantees as Treat Yourself available. In addition, you may find that sometimes through a slip of psuedo-time, an alternative version of yourself has arranged for your Treasures to be given thoughtful gifts, in a way that you can navigate flawlessly as if it was you in this skein of time that made the arrangements. With time, you may even find yourself gaining the memories of your alternative selves doing the work and making the necessary arrangements to facilitate this.

Energized Soul 30💜 (🪞 / 🎁) 

Soothes away the worst of the weariness weighing down your soul. While not a comprehensive panacea for all ills that would ail a heart, this blessing can effectively treat depression disorders, anhedonia, amotivation, and the many forms of the doldroms of the mind and creative heart. It also gives you an endless well of energy and capacity to feel and create that makes it easier to build things and enjoy life through your troubles. Does not reduce your (notional) capacity for relaxation, cozy weariness, or other potentially desirable emotional states, but makes it easier to deploy the thoughts and feelings of an more engaged, more comprehensively endorsed you when you need it. 

Touch of Hearts 20💜 

Weave something new from the tapestry of Little Red String. Gain (and unlock for additional purchases, if applicable) a random perk of comparable compatibility and utility to listed 30 💜 perks.

Coin🪙: Your price (or perhaps your payment, if you prefer), not in silver coins, but in lives uplifted and souls saved. Stain hearts with your passion and purpose, and your cup shall runneth over. 

Moment of Kindness 5🪙

Offer a kindness, freely given. Relieve the pain of a handful of random souls, somewhere, out there. They may never know that someone reached out, much less that it was you, but they will cherish their better lives nonetheless.

Stalwart Shelters 20🪙

Shelters should keep away the storm, and all too often, they don't. But you can change that. Throughout Canada, make shelters safer, both through the hazards of theft and unsanitary and unsafe conditions within, and the threats of abusers from without, finding themselves often simply turned away, or having the idea never quite occur to them as something to do today.

Safe Roads  20🪙

Roads should be a path to their destination, not to the afterlife. Significantly improve road maintenance funding throughout north america, and guide transportation policy towards sensible integration of autonomous vehicles and safer calmer street design throughout the next few years.

Pretty Places  20🪙

Life happens to you, wherever you are, and there's no reason not to make it beautiful. Significantly improve the direction and funding of urban renewal programs through North America, and give thousands of souls a little more energy and creativity to let them spruce up their homes.

Fed Bellies  20🪙

No soul should starve or wither from such a simple lack. Significantly improve quality food access throughout the third world and worldwide prison systems by improving policy, funding, and dampening the cruelty of warlords and prison guards.

Bound Hearts 20🪙

Love will lift you up and make you whole. Subtly improve the matching of dating apps and coincidental brushings of social networks, putting the world on a path where people can be a little less lonely in these trying times.

Sable blushes. "Thought Sense and Fuzzer look fun, for sure, and Illusory Ink is just... directly calling me out, isn't it?"

"...Mhm!" 

She leans over to kiss her cheek warmly. 

"HHhfuck, okay, Lust Linker has a lot of corruption potential, and Vibrant Voice is just going to make all the rest so much easier. Voice dysphoria be gone, and also make it easier for you to listen while I hypnotize you."

She nods along. 

"It's not necessarily hard but it's... so much less direct than text can be, you know? To... have it feel like You."

She ducks her head a little.

She nods, smiling with a faint flush as she runs her hands through Romana's hair. "Easier on your sensitive ears if my voice sounds like liquid honey, and carries more of my nature in a more recognizable way. Touch of Corruption is clearly just a gacha, but given this selection so far I think it'll be worth it. And then I bet the next set is calling out Hailey a bit more than me."

A little tender shiver rolls through her shoulders. 

"Yeah...~" 

She hums lightly, and nuzzles up into her hand.

"Don't think it's really a gacha, given that it's always giving you the same general pay out? Two-thirds price seems decent to me for the uncertainty, but I think that a lot of these are going to be things that we'll want to nail down early, so..." 

She tilts and rubs her head in a little. 

"We'll just have to try a lot of these quests."

Hailey squeezes Romana possessively and starts flipping through the next set.

A strangled teakettle noise slips out of her. "A customizable phantom knife that is safe? Holy fuck, I think I'm in love with this app."

She laughs light and bright, a hand sliding up to tuck a bit of her hair behind her ear. 

"The app really is looking to be a shameless flirt, isn't it?" 

"Sense of Suffering is just a great sadist skill boost, with the added sense. The next three, though."

Her jaw drops.

"Magic transition get???"

She smiles gently. 

"Excite indeed!" 

She squeezes her shoulder fondly. 

"Any objections to prioritizing blades quests until we get those?"

"None at all! Don't think we should - expect to be in such a rush that we need to prioritize things in a way that makes you uncomfortable and I know that getting a proper body has been... a big dream of yours. Though should probably look through them all first, still, just in case." 

She nods and keeps tapping. "The hearts ones seem to be nice comforts for the most part, except for the soul pair which are excellent mental health perks. Those should probably be soon."

She gives her a quick nod back.

She opens the coins perks.

Then her jaw drops.

"Fuck. Those are important."

She immediately buys Moment of Kindness and Stalwart Shelters.

A little filgree as if of gold leaf appears around Stalwart Shelters, making it shine a little in place, before sliding down to a new 'purchased perks' section. 

Someone who drank too much was found and rushed to a hospital before it was too late. They'll recover, and find a way to stay safe and sober. 

Is scribbled beneath the Moment of Kindness, before being tucked away in another little spoiler. 

Hailey blows out a tight breath.

"Fuck."

"Fuck indeed. Just... looking at the words on the screen isn't the most convincing, deep down, but academically I do actually believe it, somehow? It's... weird." 

She shakes her head a little. 

"Given what it was already able to do to us, I'm inclined to give it a little credit."

She shakes her head for a moment. "Right. First, let's get the voice perk, and then double-check the quests again."

She buys Vibrant Voice for herself.

There's a little ripple in her throat as her adam's apple disappears, the perk gets gilded, and a little bit of intuition fills her mind, of how to stretch her voice up and down, and how to carry a note, amongst other flitting fluttering thoughts and ideas. 

She hums a few tentative bars, then sings the first few lines of Paramore's "Brick by Boring Brick."

"She lives in a fairy tale,
 Somewhere too far for us to fine.
 For goddamn the taste and sme~ell
 Of a world that she's left behind."

And then she just freezes.

Her voice sounds sharp and smooth and a bit smoky, undeniably feminine and sexy, like she's always heard it in her head. 

"Holy fuck."

She feels her head snap to at attention a little, before her shoulders just slide down a little, easing in to listen, a little tremble running through her spine. 

"...Goodness." 

Her cheeks dimple up in a smile. 

"That was gorgeous, Hailey."

As she sings, she can feel a way that she can do something almost like but not quite akin to projecting her voice, a little extra slide and slip of her voice that can make her voice hit just that bit more like her voice than should be possible, a pooling potential of sweet-hot honey pooling on her tongue. 

She grabs that pool and leans into it, pouring it into her voice as she picks another song.

"I saw in you what life was missing.
 You lit a flame that consumed my hate.
 I'm not one for reminiscing but,
 I'd trade it all for your sweet embrace."

Her voice pours out in a sultry croon, rolling through Romana's ears with a menacing allure.

"'Cause we lost everything,
 We had to pay the price."

Every word murmurs a story of romance, melancholy, and tamed violence.

"There's a canvas with two faces,
 Of fallen angels who loved and lost.
 It was a passion for the ages,
 And in the end guess we paid the cost."

And then, with a brief hum of the bridge, she melts into the chorus.

"A thing of beauty, I know,
 Will never fade away.
 What you did to me, I know,
 Said what you had to say.
 But a thing of beauty,"

She pauses for a beat, another, then her voice drops into a smoky whisper.

"Will never fade away."

She smirks at Romana as she lets the song fade.

You can see the little rush of goosebumps along her skin as she starts, the little way her flush reignites again, the tiny tremor in her throat and the little way her eyes flutter, her lips purse. Then her breath catches, and she can't help but lean in and smile shyly. 

By the end of it, her nipples are stiffly poking through her shirt, and her eyes are darting down as a warm little grin dawns on her face, her chin tilted just down enough to start the suggestion of a bow. 

"Gorgeous, gorgeous girl...~" 

She cups Romana's cheek and pulls her into a soft kiss, then nips her lower lip lightly.

She kisses back softly and gently, still shiver-trembling a little, her eyes a little unfocused as she sighs and spills her cheek softly into her hand. 

Then Hailey pulls Romana into her arms and holds her gently, stroking her back as she purrs in her ear, "Wanna hear something sinful I'd love to do to you, if the app decides to give me enough of a boost to your masochism?"

She murmur hums, just floating her eyes closed and arching into her touch. 

"...cheater." 

A few little shy noises spill out of her as she lets it all settle down a little, before a tiny little grin forms on her lips. 

"Hit me~", she sighs out.  

Her soft purr turns a bit menacing, the allure swirling through her voice. "I want to blur your pain into pleasure, heighten your sensitivity, and then take that phantom knife and cut filigree into those sexy tits of yours. I want to sink my knife into your breast and get lost in the sensation. I want you to come your brains out from how good my knife feels inside you.

"And then I want to vanish it all, leaving you with nothing but the memory of the bliss, your body pristine."

She blushes terribly, then just buries her head up against her shoulder. A little preening little sensual slip of a sigh sinks out of her lips, before she settles in softly, hugging in a little. 

"It's cute how much you like blending the two. I don't think it's quite that you think that the two are incomplete without each other in sex, persay, but it does always sound like you like an excuse to just turn up all the dials there to eleven."

She snickers and kisses Romana's forehead, nodding. "Something like that."

Then she swipes back to the main screen to go look at the quests, hand combing through Romana's hair while her head rests on her shoulder.

"Much as I want to jump straight to the curves, I feel like there's combo potential in getting the blade instead and aiming for a date night that hits all of the current quests at once."

She shrugs. "Up to you, though, 'cause you're the one who'd be on the receiving end of that knife."

She hums a bit shyly. 

"I think... there's a lot of options? I can't guarantee that I'll be up for everything you're hoping for, even if you grab all the perks on offer here, but I'm certainly up to do some knifeplay tonight, if you get the perk that'd make it safer? There's a lot of options, though I can barely imagine how much of a tease it is for you to have that option hung out in front of you and be told just 'maybe'. I just.. .want to be honest with you, and ask that if you go for it, you take your time working up to..." 

She shakes her head and smiles lightly. She looks more... bashful than scared or averse to the idea, but there's a slight nervousness to her gaze. 

"Things like that."

She blinks lightly. 

"Oh, and do make sure to talk about this explicitly with the others? This is something... sensitive enough that I think it would be good to feel it out individually, even if we don't do that too too much."  

She nods. "Definitely. Better to drag it out and tease me than to rush it and overwhelm you. And I'll gladly talk through it in detail with the others when they front, you're right about that."

She taps through purchasing Treat Your Treasure and Blade of Bliss, then collects the perk-purchase quest.

"What d'you think about starting our night out with perk-paid delivery? Maybe you pick the cuisine and then I'll see where the intuition nudges me in the delivery app."

She smiles gently. 

"Sure! I was thinking... maybe a burger or something? In the mood for something savoury right now." 

There's a little - shift, the felt sense of the hilt already being a little in her hand, now, with just the right mix of grip and slip, settled over not just her hand but her soul, somehow. She can feel just how easy it would be to call or dismiss, shape or steady, and all little whispered insights towards more tricks - more blades, odd shapes, different balances and how to make it work all dynamically, if she can just wrap her head around it. 

She wraps her hand a little around the ghost of the hilt for a moment, grinning sharply. "Oh I'm going to have fun with this knife perk. Shouldn't do more than just draw it out and put it away until after dinner, though. And I agree, a burger sounds great."

She tries twirling the blade into her fingers to see how it starts out.

She can materialize just the ghost of the hilt, if she'd like. It's not so much that it has to be a full knife, it's that it has to be defined in the terms of participating in the experience of being her knife, her wielded weapon and will. It's starkly satisfying in her palm, molded perfectly to meet her touch. But this time... It comes out, shining a slick silver, fuller shining, jade green vines carefully textured along the surface of the blade, flaring out with brilliant thorns across the length of the long blade. 

She can feel her hand holding it - at once feeling the slight way the fabric settles, the little pressure on the wood, the light dancing across the dappled surface, the little flare of the edge and brush of the wind. But more than that, she can feel it, feel it as part of her body and yet not, a wordless sense of it all fitting together to form the blade she dreamed of as it whistles through the air. 

Her eyes dart down to watch her wrist and the reflections as she goes.s 

"Fffuuuck. This is perfect. I wish I could whistle, 'cause this moment deserves it. Look at this thing, babe."

She slowly pivots it back and forth, savoring the weight of it in her palm, the way it moves.

She chuckles a little under her breath, and smiles up at her. 

"I bet you can, now, with Vibrant Voice?"

She doesn't so much watch the movement of the blade as she watches the little places her fingers settle, the slight shift of the emerald weave on the hilt, and the places where she rests, trying to catch a proper sight of the glinting edges of the thorns. 

"Ooh good point. Old expectations of what I can and can't do."

She holds the blade still for a moment, holding it out for Romana to see, and lets out a whistle, curving from a mid-range pitch, to high, and then low. "Ooh. Whistling is neat too."

She glides in a little with a shy smile, her eyes following each branch back and forth. The edge is crisp and clean, the sort that you normally need to constantly sharpen, but it just looks... natural, on it. 

"I'm glad. I've never quite managed to get whistling working myself." 

She hums for a moment. 

"...May I touch it? I know that you didn't want to get into things 'til after we've eaten, but I was wondering if you think it would help to get a bit more used to the sensory feedback and... I think it would be cute to see you all flustered as I explore it, maybe?" 

Hailey starts to agree reflexively, then catches the reminder about the sensory feedback and bites her lip, still grinning.

"Yeah," she replies with a nod. "Yeah, that's a good idea."

She holds it out closer to Romana, the tip pointed off to the side, away from either of them.

She gently reaches out her hand, a little steady look in her gaze as she tries to do her best at a reassuring smile up at her. Slowly, the blade of her hand presses down against hers, and then with a little angling, she clasps her hand around the hilt, feeling the softness of the fabric against her gently calloused fingers. It feels a little like... prickled skin and goosebumps settling in, the little swish back and forth of skin after a good massage as her hand eases against the hilts wrap, and the feeling of a little clasping touch against her palm, as if she was holding her hand and the blade in it at once, and the gentle warmth of human touch. 

Hailey inhales slowly. "That's new. Wow, okay. I can really feel through my knife. That's... I love it. Fuck."

She laughs brightly, a little grin on her lips, leaning in a little closer. 

"Oh...~?" 

She just rolls her thumb along the surface, pressing in a little firmer, her thumb flicking out to trace along the crossguard. It feels... settled in a little more, something firmer yet in a way fuller, like a gentle little kiss against her knuckles, or the feeling of something just against the barest edge of her fingertip, not quite connecting as much as it might, so close to the metal of the blade. 

She blows out a slow breath and grins. "Okay, it's getting a little more intense the closer you get to the actual blade." She holds still, carefully not moving the knife at all.

"Hmmm...~" 

She slides her palm down a little, reaching down to the firm wooden surface of the hilt, fingers gently tapping along it. It's a more relaxed feeling, like her wrist is getting massaged or like a kink is getting evened out as her fingertips slide along the polished surface, quieter and more contained but still intense in its own way. 

"The hilt just feels calm, smooth kinda. It's nice."

Her shoulders shift down a bit as she tries to relax into the sensations.

She blushes softly, and takes her time massaging it a little more. 

"Good girl." 

She floats a finger up the stem, slowly easing through the little textured gradiations to make something sweet, the sort of stroke that sinks into your muscles and leaves you wanting more. 

A low sigh spills out of her, soft and quiet, as the ghost of a massage soothes her from her girlfriend's gentle touches to her knife's hilt.

"This is really relaaaaxing," she sighs out.

She smiles warm and wide, grinning from ear to ear. 

She leans down, and gently brushes her lips against the very base of the blade. 

Her lips are bright and warm and smooth, each spilling kiss making little shimmering sparks seemingly jump through it. She can feel the grain of the blade, the little texture of her lips, the odd intimacy of it - like she's kissing at the little gap between her fingers as the warm breath tickling sweeps along the crossguard and the base of the blade both, feel the excited little smile reflected on her surface, all the languor condensing into a more solid almost smoky warmth. 

Hailey sucks in a sharp breath. "Hhhfuck okay. Oh this was a good perk to purchase."

She laughs a little, pulling her head back to duck her head, brushing back her hair with a sheepish little grin. 

"Goddess just look at us two..." 

She shakes her head. 

"I look forward to trying it out more, but I probably shouldn't get you too overexcited. And... I imagine the edges will be a good bit more intense, so...~" 

She slides her bangs back. 

"Want to leave you something to look forward to, love." 

She slides up and pecks her cheek softly. 

She bites her lip.

"Yeah. That. Yeah. That's going to be a fun thing to look forward to."

A slow breath out, then she captures Romana's lips in a warm kiss. "I fucking love you so much."

She really leans into it, hair cascading back as she dives into the kiss, breathing in deeply before pulling back with a dreamy little smile. 

"I love you too." 

Her voice is a little breathless, her ears still perking up at the wash of her Vibrant Voice, shivering and flushing faintly, goosebumps flaring a little along her arms. 

"Okay, let's reward you for this loveliness with a burger."

Hailey vanishes the knife and pulls Romana close, opening the delivery service app on her phone and trying to feel out the Treat perk interface. She wants to reward her Treasure with a dinner of excellent burgers for the two of them. Does the perk have any guidance for her here?

It feels like... a lot of things, really. 

It feels like - not ink, it's not quite as Sable as that. Not blood, it's not quite as you as that. Something like... polish? There's a certain sense of a metallic glint to it, of something piercing that can press through the veil of mundane reality to let things work.

It feels like Sable's sense of - cooperation, kinship, convocation with herself and the color and connection of being yourself, being Herself, being strong and spread out and and subtle and streaming through the clouds like stray sunbeams in a storm or crackling lightning cresting through the clouds and arching down below. 

It feels like... ease, the little relaxation at the back of her neck that tells her that what's done is done and doesn't need to be worried about. 

Poking it a little further... She could have already ordered something, some thirty minutes ago. She could order something now, and have casuality propogate backwards such that the order was already on its way regardless of incidental features of time like 'order of events'. She could just order it through the interface as normal, and have the cost for Romana's meal simply not end up net lost in her bank account without any risk of incident, in descending order of 'intensiveness'.

 She can even feel how she might try to get a sense for it - the... feeling of the different grains of different blades, the light streaming across the edge of a blade or along the surface of a glistening droplet of ink, and see through to different possibilities; and shape that, filter all those paintings and possibilities for something that makes them both shine all the brighter. Though, it does feels like that might take some doing. There's a sense that it'd be simpler and less... 'energy' intensive to set things to happen at a more loosely bound time in a more loosely bound way, but there are possibilities for tighter things as well, that she could paint and carve into the surface of this power, if her will and skill are up to the task and her reserves don't fail her. 

They seem fairly full, as best she can tell, though, as part of the purchase of the perk. 

Okay. Okay this is kind of awesome. She really likes this. She's not picky about exact timing, or about making the perk do the ordering without her interact with the interface. The two things she really wants here are skipping the bank account and nudging her toward picking a really good place, and avoiding anything they'll do a poor job of. Spare slack after that can go toward backdating the order after she places it, a little, but that's not as important.

And with that framing in mind, she looks at the delivery app, filtering to the Burger category, and listens to the crackle of lightning in her heart.

Picking a really good place and eliding the normal process of casuality are if not intrinsically tied together in the design of the perk, something that there's a bit of a gulf between. 

...That being said, a mix of memory, common sense and a vague flicking sense of blurred, blessed memories guides her order a little - a double-pattied burger with a large fries for her, alongside a smooth milkshake, a side of gravy, and a dah of peanuts for her. Ordering something for her consumption as well isn't quite as efficient as just ordering for her Treasure, but with a shared experience in mind, it can be slipped under the cover of clouds and made to work smoothly enough. 

When she checks the tracking, it says that it'll be here in about five minutes. 

It doesn't feel like a big decrease to her pool, maybe something like an eighth or a tenth of it depleted with the effort. Once spent, there's a slow sense of more of it seeping in - it shouldn't take too long to regenerate what she's lost - it's her right, after all, to Treat Her Treasure. 

Hailey grins broadly.

"Well. This is fabulously convenient. How about a delicious dinner in five minutes or so?"

"Sounds good to me!" 

Then Romana can have a kiss to her nose!

Oh she can! She can even give a silly little smile in response, too! 

She fusses through her hair, and looks up into the air in thought. 

"I remember ordering food in to help calm me down when I'm having a hard time sometimes, and... having food be forty minutes really isn't the same as just having it now, or close enough that you can really - get excited in the moment, you know? This is... going to be such an experience, to have on tap, even if we probably shouldn't indulge too much before we buy out all the body perks." 

She nods, grinning. "There's something so indulgent about the speed, like the world feels just a little more at our disposal now. Plus, you deserve the treat. You've been so good."

She blushes deeply and glances down at her hands a little. 

"...I suppose...~" 

She darts up and kisses her nose in revenge. 

"And yeah, I know what you mean about the - speed and... immediacy of it all. Think that's maybe the point of it - to make it easier to just - reach out and have a thing to offer your loves and give them a chance to be all excited for you." 

She glances up at her eyes. 

"...and... I like being excited for you." 

Hailey's grin turns a bit sharper. "I really enjoy your excitement. And I enjoy having you. Keeping you. You're mine and I love it."

Then she kisses and nips Romana's neck lightly.

"Yours...~" 

She stretches out, a little saucy sigh sinking out of her lips as she leans into her touch, before half-mumbling out the rest in a little sing-song sigh. 

"Yours to have, yours to keep..."