"Sacrificing oneself for the sake of science and technology — it is our bounden duty!"
Since Ruan Mei had already agreed to personally handle the collection, and with that irresistible smile of hers, Caelus could only suck it up and suffer a little.
He skillfully dialed his flexible moral bottom line down a few notches, to match the moral integrity of a mad scientist.
The Herta puppet beside them, little mouth slightly agape, took in the entire scene of Caelus and Ruan Mei striking their deal, and flames of unwillingness instantly ignited in her eyes.
With rapid little steps frequent enough to whip up a gale, she scampered to the desk and yanked open the dimensional drawer used for teleportation.
The Stelle-Asta fusion poked her head over curiously, only to see Herta plunge both hands deep into the drawer, and — like pulling up a radish — Ber~ she dragged out yet another Herta puppet.
"Here! This works now, right?!"
Herta pinched the armpits of this freshly-baked puppet and, with the same hurried little steps, went pattering right up to Caelus, deftly holding the puppet up before his eyes:
"I want some too! A sample of gonad secretion carrying genetic factors — not a single drop less!"
"This isn't the Abstinence Sect..."
Caelus's brows slowly pressed down, settling into dead-fish eyes.
"Don't you like Ruan Mei? Then I'll give you Ruan Mei — that works, doesn't it?"
Herta swept back her hair with a little hand:
"What, still not satisfied?"
Caelus set the puppet that had been forcibly shoved into his arms down beside Ruan Mei, pointed at the Herta puppet, and asked the coolly elegant, stunningly beautiful Ruan Mei:
"Is this puppet you?"
Ruan Mei was about to speak when she received Herta's materialized stare; no emotion could be read on her flawless face, and in the end she gave a light nod:
"It's me."
"Is that so?" Caelus's brows twisted into a pretzel.
"Yes."
Feeling Herta's gaze gradually intensify the pressure, Ruan Mei glanced again at the puppet's face:
"Back then, I was very small."
"Then this isn't you."
Caelus jabbed the puppet hard with his finger.
"You're saying she isn't me?"
Ruan Mei's voice was still like an oriole's song.
"She isn't." Caelus said with iron certainty.
"I say she isn't me either."
"Hear that?"
Having secured Ruan Mei's denial, Caelus looked at Herta: "This is fucking not Ruan Mei at all!"
"How is she not Ruan Mei?"
Herta got flustered, her exquisite little face puffing up.
She grabbed the puppet's hem and displayed it excitedly, like a peddler hawking unsellable goods.
"Look! Look at these clothes! Same as Ruan Mei's! Even the size is a 1:1 replica!"
The puppet wore a dark cyan navel-baring qipao identical to Ruan Mei's, and the size was indeed the same, but because the puppet's frame was so petite, the qipao's hem dragged straight onto the floor.
"And take a look at this—! Uh..."
She stretched out her little finger again and forcefully poked the soft, utterly unsupported patch of fabric on the puppet's chest.
Herta's voice stalled for a moment, seeming to realize this lacked persuasiveness, but she immediately steeled herself and moved her finger up to the puppet's jarringly incongruous face, poking it hard:
"...This soft, tender little cheek!"
The puppet's head was still the standard Herta puppet head, but the face modeling had been swapped out for Ruan Mei's face.
"Then how do you explain the hair and eyes?"
The Stelle-Asta fusion pointed at the puppet's iconic brownish-tea-colored locks coiled into Ruan Mei's signature style, and the crystal-clear amethyst eyes.
"So Ruan Mei dyeing her hair means she's not Ruan Mei? Besides, purple eyes are so pretty."
Because the re-molding time had been tight, The Herta hadn't changed the hair color, and had used ready-made eyes.
"Is this puppet ripe-guaranteed? Is it the genuine version?"
Caelus's features scrunched into a ball.
"Guaranteed genuine!"
Herta patted her flat chest, producing a bam-bam sound, wearing a 'you doubting my credibility?' expression:
"I run the Herta Space Station — you think I'd hand you a bootleg Herta?!"
"Who said bootleg Herta? I'm talking about this bootleg Ruan Mei!"
Caelus frantically rubbed the cheeks of the Ruan-Mei-Herta stitched-together puppet with both hands — soft and full of springy give, like kneading jelly and clay.
"Did you get authorization from Ruan Mei?"
"Ruan Mei's right here! She's giving it to me now, right?"
Herta turned to look at Ruan Mei, who was watching quietly on the sidelines, and said with total righteousness.
As the bosom friend who, every time an experiment of Ruan Mei's failed, would be the first and only one to immediately rush over and congratulate her, she was certain the other wouldn't hold her — her one and only friend — accountable over a copyright issue on such a trivial matter.
Without waiting for Ruan Mei to state her position, Herta immediately spun back to Caelus, hands on hips, little chin tilted up:
"Just say it — do you want it or not?"
"If your puppet's guaranteed genuine and ripe-guaranteed, then of course I want it."
"Definitely ripe-guaranteed! I even thoughtfully added internal and external reproductive modules for you — now you can use other spots too, be grateful."
Herta added smugly.
Caelus showed dead-fish eyes.
So his own face doesn't get a reproductive module, but Ruan Mei's face can, huh?
This little brat had no scruples either.
"For real?!"
The Stelle-Asta fusion, who'd originally been kneading the puppet's cheeks along with Caelus-cub, had her ice-jade eyes instantly light up with stars.
Stelle went without saying, and Asta too was a fanatical collector of Herta puppets.
Her thin-wisteria-purple long hair swayed gracefully with her sudden crouch; the Stelle-Asta fusion swiftly bent down like a cat and nimbly flipped up the ill-fitting dark cyan qipao hem draped over the puppet.
"Whoa!"
She abruptly widened her eyes, as if she'd discovered a never-before-seen mysterious new star in the depths of the universe!
"NICE!"
"What material is this? How's the realism? Is it molded from your own body?!"
"You wouldn't get the material anyway — oh right, you've got Asta's components, so you should be able to follow... My product, so of course it's a hundred percent lifelike."
As for molded from your own body?
Herta didn't grasp the meaning of that question.
Still, she had indeed replicated it based on her own past body structure — after all, there was no one else's data.
It's a puppet anyway~
And it has Ruan Mei's face.
It doesn't matter.
Hearing the Stelle-Asta fusion's words, Caelus immediately caught on.
"Holy shit! Then I've got to inspect this thoroughly!"
Without another word he crouched down, his head pressing together with the Stelle-Asta fusion's, both wearing the serious, earnest air of academic inquiry.
One gray head and one purple, thus buried beneath little Ruan-Mei-Herta's skirt, began an extremely rigorous close-range observation and study.
Screwllum, that elegant Intellitron gentleman, had already maintained his silence for quite some time.
Though a mechanical lifeform, he was often lauded as the being of the most humane radiance and the peak of moral standards within the Genius Society.
And at this moment, faced with the content of these few people's exchange, he rarely found himself trapped in a certain dilemma of ethics and etiquette, genuinely at a loss for what to say.
He gazed at those two backs of heads buried in Ruan Mei's skirt hem — the gray-haired one had even pulled out a microscope, while the purple-haired one was reaching in and prying at something.
Silence alone was the last shred of dignity Screwllum could maintain at this moment.
"Permit me to interrupt your... academic enthusiasm."
Screwllum's slender mechanical fingers lightly stroked the pocket-watch chain across his chest; his voice remained elegant, yet seemed to carry a barely perceptible stiffness:
"In terms of efficiency, the time we've spent 'discussing' here is already enough to complete the research on a standard Grade IV subject."
"Proposal: it is time to initiate the test procedure for the Simulated Universe · Swarm Disaster."
"Hear that? You two, quit playing around."
Herta charged forward without any ceremony, grabbing the back collars of Caelus and the Stelle-Asta fusion, one in each hand, and hauled them up out from under the puppet's skirt hem by force, like lifting a pair of disobedient kittens.
"Get over there and test the Simulated Universe! Now! Right now! This very instant!"
"I'd also like to observe whether the fused state triggers new variable parameters within the Simulated Universe; this is indeed... rather interesting."
Ruan Mei's eyes glittered with fascination.
She knew the fusion lasted only one hour, and the Stelle-Asta fusion would disintegrate within the Simulated Universe; at that point, catching the Simulated Universe should allow her to observe data that not even Bronita had obtained.
"Aiya~ Stop pushing! It tickles!"
The Stelle-Asta fusion was shoved forward by Herta; owing to the height difference, Herta's little hands were pressed right at that extremely sensitive, ticklish spot just below her and Caelus's lower backs, making her squirm helplessly.
"Quit dawdling."
Herta straight up unleashed a Theresa Apocalypse-style Herta flying kick, landing precisely on Caelus's knee, forcibly booting him onto that giant Simulated Universe access platform that radiated a faint blue glow, its structure intricate and complex.
"You get on too, hurry up!"
Having dealt with one, Herta rode the momentum and gave a hard shove, sending the still-tickled, still-yelping Stelle-Asta fusion staggering onto the instrument platform as well.
"Yes, boss, no problem, boss~!"
Cheerfully tucking away the Ruan Mei puppet made from Herta's mold, Caelus held his head high and puffed out his chest, his work enthusiasm already maxed out.
In truth, he couldn't wait either!
Last time, while helping Herta test the Simulated Universe, a quest had triggered, and one of the rewards was Simulated Universe · Friend Support.
Because of the Simulated Universe's inspection and maintenance, he still hadn't gotten to try it out.
Standing on the familiar entry device, Caelus took the Stelle-Asta fusion's soft, slender little hand and shouted the entirely unnecessary login slogan:
"Link Strat!"
The next second.
The world was torn apart like fragile glass, shattering and splitting into blocks large and small; from within the pitch-black, lightless curtain fell the glittering shards of sun, moon, and stars, and everything flowed into a vortex.
"Link Strat!"
The Stelle-Asta fusion shouted along too.
Because Asta wasn't much good at combat, the Stelle-Asta fusion was probably among the weakest of all the fusion girls, yet she was still a rather powerful Pathstrider.
Add to that Stelle's memories and the experience of two prior Simulated Universe tests, and she quickly shook off the head-spinning vertigo.
"Wow! So this is the Simulated Universe?"
What met her eyes was an endless starry sky, and stars and constellations like hundreds of millions of pearls scattered across a black down blanket, until her ice-jade eyes seemed to reflect the twinkling stars and sparkle too.
It was a cold, tranquil, yet soul-stirring, breathtakingly beautiful scroll.
Stars filled her vision, so many it was hard to believe.
"So beautiful!"
The Stelle-Asta fusion murmured to herself.
She was mainly under Asta's influence.
For the girl who was an astronomer, the starry sky was the most familiar thing in the world.
But the Stelle-Asta fusion thought carefully — for a very, very long time, Asta had not truly witnessed the boundless beauty and depth of the starry sky with her own eyes like this, instead only rendering the sky into data on a computer through layer upon layer of giant star-observation facilities.
Although the girl loved her work as an astronomer just as much, this unprecedented immersion in the universe, this meeting with the myriad stars, let the newborn Stelle-Asta fusion experience the girl's very first heart-flutter for the starry sky.
Just then, three more figures appeared beside the two of them.
The Stelle-Asta fusion turned to look.
It resembled a piece of cotton candy soaked in pale purple ink — a round, plump little body, a purple flower atop its head, looking soft, adorable, and lively.
"I'm especially curious about one thing: why is guiding the Simulated Universe pinned on my head? When did it become my duty?"
Herta sneered:
"You two get in here with me and do some real work!"
The cute little sprite waved the slightly protruding arms on either side of its body, exerting force in the vacuum of the universe — swish, swish — and two similar cute sprites popped into being.
One was mainly blue-green, topped with a little flower of white petals and a golden core.
The other was mainly silver-gray, with a butterfly perched on its head.
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