In a certain alley, in a little trafficked street, the space-time continuum was torn asunder and reassembled. The area crackled with occult energy that was quickly dampened and absorbed into the bodies of the dark-haired man and orange-haired woman that now occupied the alley.

Margot and I teleported back to Provostburg, the city in which the St. Csilla academy was located. We didn’t return to the school directly. For that matter, we also hadn’t left the school directly. As a prestigious school that served as home to over thirty thousand wizards and witches the campus was warded to monitor things like teleportation and transdimensional movement.

Considering all the stealth suites I had running in my system at any one time, it probably would have been fine if we just teleported in and out of Margot’s dorm room. I just figured why risk it. It was a lovely day on the morning we were starting the job, and I hadn’t gotten to see the town yet. There was no reason to chance calling the school’s attention on Margot.

Returning to the school itself was a simple five minute walk. St. Csilla’s quickly appeared in our view. It was a large complex of castle-like buildings. All of the buildings built largely enough that you could see them regardless of where you were standing in Provostburg.

“And we’re back...I can’t believe we actually we did it.” said Margot. Blowing out a raspberry as we rode up the elevator to her dorm.

“Meh...You’re talented and I’m awesome by default. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind we’d be able to pull it off.” I said. Leaning against the back wall of the elevator. My arms crossed.

“Y-, You really think so?” said Margot.

“I know so.” I said.

We reached Margot’s floor. The elevator doors slid open. We both outside the elevator but instead of heading towards Margot’s dorm I walked in the opposite direction.

“Huh? Where are you going?” said Margot.

“The men’s showers are that way.” I said.

“Oh...Um. Okay. Do you need anything like soap or a change of clothes?” said Margot.

I waved and kept walking. Not bothering to turn around.

“I’ll figure something out.”

I honestly just wanted to stand under some hot water. While having soap would be nice, it wasn’t necessary. Infrared radiation and ultrasonic vibrations could be used to kill off any microbes and remove most detritus. Anything that was persistent enough to survive would be consumed by the nanites that made up the uppermost layer of my skin and hair.

*************************************************************************************************************

Forty-five minutes later we reconvened in Margot’s room. I saw that she’d taken a shower too. Dressing in a pair of comfortable looking yellow-duckie print pajamas. Her tv was on, ditto for the attached game console.

She was kneeling by the console with put a disc inside the disc reader as I came in. When she heard the door opened she jumped a little, then seeing that it was me she said,

“Oh, hi...Where did you get those pajamas.”

“The same place I got my suit.” I answered.

“R-, Right.” said Margot. Looking like she now kind of wanted to ask me exactly ‘where’ I was getting my suits since I was kind enough to bring it up.

The console loaded the game in the disc and the menu screen for a game that apparently took place in a big spooky castle occupied the television. She walked backwards and plopped onto her bed.

Margot pressed continue resuming a game she must have started before. The screen changing as she took the role of a blond man in blue leather carrying a whip and sword. Then for the next three hours or so, Margot and her blond avatar traversed a castle fighting all manner of monsters, from zombies to giant bats, to skeletons.

I was a little amazed that she could do this after coming back from the job we’d just done. In my mind, it was like an actual criminal playing one of the myriad crime sandbox games, or a farmer coming home from a day in the fields to play a farming simulator. Something that probably happened that gave me the sense that it shouldn’t be happening.

I sat down next to Margot because what else was I going to do. It’s not like I had anywhere else better to go. I watched her play and found it oddly relaxing, and even slightly entertaining, to do so, which was odd because I’d never really gotten into the let’s play genre.

Around the point, where she was facing off against this big boss monster, some kind of giant humanoid leech, she looked over at me. Her character jumped from platform to platform avoid the giant’s acid. Then just as her character got knocked off a platform, losing most of his health, she paused the game, got up, and then sat on my lap.

“....Um.”

“You need to be fed, right? Since you used all three of your limited actions today?” said Margot. Unpausing the game. Her thumbs assaulting the controller as her character went on the defensive.

“I guess…” I said. The situation was so befuddling that it was causing errors in my both my software and my wetware.

“Then...feed. J-, Just be gentle alright...After all those hospital visits when I was a kid, I’ve kind of developed a thing about needles.” said Margot.

My eyes closed as I considered what to do in that moment. I decided the first thing I needed to do was shut down certain nervous responses in my lower-body to avoid the situation getting real awkward.

I wondered if I should take the time to clarify that while I ‘was’ a blood drinker, and had indeed been a vampire in the past, I was no longer a vampire now.

Then my stomach grumbled and my view was preoccupied by a big flashing warning window telling me that I was ‘x’ amount of minutes away from shutting down for a week or two. Thus I simply decided that as old as I was, I didn’t need to be freaking out about situations like this as if were some virginal protagonist from a harem anime.

I leaned forward and my already carnivorous-looking teeth became sharper and narrower. Growing more needle-like. I triggered a process that I hadn’t had to use in quite a while and had my body turn my saliva into a localized anesthetic. Then I gently sank my teeth into the smooth pale flesh of the nape of Margot’s neck.

The young woman shivered and between that, and the fact she was apparently the kind of gamer that liked to fidget in place a bit as they got into the game, I was glad I’d shut down my lower body.

That was the day I learned that Margot was either: a) was the kind of person that just completely lowered all her defenses once she got used to you, b) was the kind of gamer lost all sense of personal space or situational awareness once things got rolling on screen, or c) see a catastrophic A and B.

Whichever the case was, as soon as I finished feeding. I picked her up. Plopped her back onto the bed. Getting a few grumbles from the girl because the maneuver had interfered with her play. Then I got out of there because I suddenly really needed some air and to not be at the dorm right then.

I couldn’t help laughing at myself as I left the room, wondering exactly how old I’d have to be for things like this not to fluster me. Unfortunately, I was the kind of eternal, cherry-boy, idiot that had never really been good with this sort of thing. It was a wonder I’d ever managed to become king of the incubae.

*************************************************************************************************************

The next day, just as Margot woke up I appeared. Rising from the nothingness in which I usually slept, ready for a day of physical activity.

“Um...Why are you dressed like a 1970s high school coach?” said Margot. Sitting up in her bed. Rubbing her bleary eyes and yawning.

“Because today is montage day.” I said. Briefly looking down at tight t-shirt, whistle, and short-shorts I was wearing and deciding that I was rocking the hell out of them.

“...Montage what?” Margot. Tilting her head up at me, her long wavy orange-brown hair looking a bit like a bird’s nest.

I clapped my hands.

“Montage day!”

Margot jumped and then she frowned as she realized that the setting had been changed dramatically.

“Huh?! Wait, I thought you said it wasn’t safe for us to teleport inside.”

“Yes. That’s why I didn’t teleport us. I just used all my limited actions for the day to freeze time and create a short lived sub-reality that’ll last till the end of this song. The sensors can’t detect something that technically never happened. And all this technology won’t have happened once the song is over...at least as far as the main timeline is a concern. Just listen to the music, M.”

“M-, Music? What music?” said Margot. Slowly getting out of bed and looking down with confusion and a little embarrassment as she realized that she too was now suddenly wearing work out get.

“This music.” I said. A luscious, melt-your-face-off, guitar riff resounded from the heavens announcing the beginning of one of the greatest hits by a band named for firearms and flowers.

“Wait, are we inside the special training facilities for physical mages, cultivators, and superhumans? We’re super not supposed to be here….” said Margot. Looking around and finally noting her surroundings. The young woman finally realizing that we were standing inside the space-aged looking fitness center that was located below the school’s main fitness center. Her sleepiness was quickly forgotten as she realized where we were standing.

“No worries. The scope of this particular feat of magic is so beyond anything that could be perceived by the spells and tech in the school that it’d be like cavemen somehow figuring out that their planet has been captured in a jar.”

“I...What?”

“Alright...Let’s go!” I said. Clapping my hands once more to increase the volume of the 1980s rock anthems I’d chosen for the occasion.

*************************************************************************************************************

“Alright, we’re going to test your strength first. You’ve got tons of safeties in place to keep you from going overboard when it’s not situationally appropriate but it’d probably be best for you to have some serious idea what you can actually do.” I said. The overclocking of my CPU to play host for this temporary timeline causing me to feel loopy. My high spirits causing me to suddenly start doing jumping jacks.

“I...I guess so.” said Margot. Looking disoriented as she found that the setting had changed again.

Margot looked up and found herself standing in front of a machine that looked a lot like a flat punching bag that had been attached to a large pneumatic armature.

“Okay, when I say punch. You give it all you got with your right arm.”

“Huh?”

“Okay, punch!” I said.

Margot froze. Not entirely certain what she was supposed to be doing at the moment.

“Non, non, non. That’ not enough spirit at all, M! When I yell punch you give it all you got!”

“Now punch!”

“I-...I’m sorry. I don’t...I’m not sure what’s happening anymore…” said Margot.

“Punch!” I yelled. My voice a divine and infernal mixture of ten trillion stars being born and ten trillion solar systems being sucked into the dark heart of a black hole. My aura surging with my high spirits. My will shaking the world from its lowest depths and highest heights.

“Eiiiyaahhh!” said Margot. Making a scared animal noise.

I probably should have noticed that I was probably going too far, but by that point, I was too far gone and Margot actually did punch as she’d been instructed to so the machine part of my brain just saw it as mission accomplished.

For the rest of the objective three minutes, forty-five seconds and the subjective nine hours. I ran Margot through a gauntlet of tests where we found out what she was really made of. You’d think I’d know exactly what she was made of seeing as I was the one who was responsible for remaking her body.

Unfortunately, I’d sort of just been winging it when I made her and I was the kind who did his science more like art. Creating things to fulfill a purpose but not caring too much about the hard details once that purpose was met.

Over the course of nine hours, we discovered that Margot had a maximum strength of five thousand pounds. The equivalent of five Olympic medal-winning weight lifters...pre-ENE.

She had a six-foot vertical leap. She had a ninety-foot horizontal leap. She could run for over five hours straight at an average pace of fifty miles per hour.

She could respond to stimuli at eight times the human average. Her sensory acuity was five times the human baseline. Her skin, musculture, and bones had all been heavily reinforced. Her internal organs had also been reinforced as well. On top of all this reinforcement, she also had a moderate healing factor.

In other terms, she was equivalent to a C-rank hero. Equal to a certain chiropteran comic book king, and his flag wearing counterpart, if you stripped away all their skills and training. She wouldn’t be dodging bullets or throwing tanks any time soon but she was still quite formidable just in terms of the raw capabilities of her body.

We learned all this before the singer finished telling us that the jungle was a place for fun but theft or obstruction of said fun and freedoms would not be forgiven.

I added a few extra details to the report I was preparing for Margot. Details I’d picked up by scanning Margot while she worked out. Things that she either wouldn’t have been able to test on her own or that wouldn’t have been apparent until something went wrong.

Her spiritual density had been increased a hundredfold, and she had strong affinities with pretty much all the elements. Her already high intelligence had been further heightened. I’d somehow ended up boosting her inborn true-sight. Last but not least Margot now possessed a super-adaptive autoimmune system that was extremely resistant to toxins and disease.

It was all just Basic stuff. All the things you’d want to include for a magically attuned supersoldier, plus a few extras because damn it if I didn’t believe in customer satisfaction.

Then the montage ended and the timeline collapsed. Margot and I found ourselves back in Margot’s bedroom.

Margot found herself blinking at yet another scenery change. She looked down and was befuddled to find her pajamas had returned.

“Um...Was-, was that a dream or…?” said Margot.

“Cool...Montage over...See you next week. I have a fucking headache.” I groaned. My high spirits dissipating almost immediately as the price for my heavy expenditure of power finally hit me. Crashing into me like an extinction causing asteroid.