“So, how does this work? Like I jump your bones and then you do your presto power stuff and we end up joined at the hip or something?” Cecelia asked.
Jay just stared at her for a second and then shook his head. “First off, I’m not sure that you would survive fusing with me now. I had a bit of a bad experience earlier with Trudi…”
“What? You fused with her? Mia told me that I was gonna be next,” Cecelia said as she interrupted him.
“No, I agreed to abide by the choices of my fuses. You will soon learn; I take that sort of thing very seriously. But you need to let me finish explaining if you don’t want to waste our time,” Jay snapped back.
She nodded, and Jay continued. “Bonding is a lesser connection but when I tried to do it with Trudi the results nearly killed her. I want to make sure that we get you refined before we try a fusion. Because of that I am going to push harder with you than I did the others. It will hurt but it is necessary. If it works though then I am willing to fuse with you today.”
“I saw how much stronger and tougher the rest of my cluster are now. If you can do that for me then I am more than happy to bear a little pain. I know I act silly sometimes, but I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. I can be tough when I need to. We wouldn’t have survived otherwise,” she responded.
“Good. I know what leading a cluster takes and you have my respect for that. I just want us to start out on the right foot here,” Jay said.
“Fair enough, so how does this work?” she asked.
“You know out of all of the new members of Team Jay, you are the first person to ask. Quick version is that I used an evolved assessment skill that allows me to scan into your body combo’d with a skill that allows me to be exceptionally precise. Then I used a skill called Body Modification to make changes to your body. I make the muscles stronger, with enough time the fibers become more resilient, more flexible, and able to bear more weight. I do the same with bones, ligaments and tendons, your organs, and eventually your channels that control the flow of PSI and Stamina in your body.
“Something you may not know is that as you are leveling up these changes are already happening. The entire process is one of evolving you into something more than simply human. That is why each time you pass a threshold it becomes more painful. For example, you now have tiny duplicate copies of your organs attached to each of your organs. As you evolve, they will grow and ultimately you will have backups to everything inside your body from hearts to kidneys. All of them will be smaller and more efficient but you will have duplicates. What I am doing just greatly accelerates the process.”
“That sounds sorta creepy. Does it affect our brains?” Cecelia asked.
“Another good question. No, I have avoided trying to modify brains. I worry about making changes that I can’t undo, and to be blunt, I won’t do anything to any of you that I haven’t already practiced on myself,” Jay answered.
“That makes me feel better. I don’t want you to think that I don’t trust you. Just consider this a trust but verify moment,” Cecelia said.
Jay chuckled. “Okay, well time is burning, we need to get you ready. Actually, now that I think about it, I do have a question for you. Would you be agreeable to me modifying the time distortion we are in. I’ve never tried to change the rate of time distortion in an active field, but I worry that I won’t be able to refine you far enough in just one session, for fusion to be safe. And it would allow me to work on another skill.”
Cecelia didn’t answer him immediately. She clearly was thinking over her answer and Jay could respect that. Eventually she said, “So I would get more time with you and get stronger than the others. I like the sound of that. But how long would we be stuck in this little area? I do admit that I get bored easily.”
“Well I have to see how far I can modify it but I made sure to set this area up with a terminal in it so we can still get whatever food or water we need out of the system. Also, once I figure out how to modify an active field there is nothing to say that I couldn’t modify it further.”
“How much time do you think you need to refine me enough? Or maybe I should ask how far you can extend the field. It might actually be cool for us to have a long time together. I know none of us girls are spoiled for choices and what I’ve seen and been told about you so far really paints a great picture of you. You got some real cheerleaders for you on Team Jay, especially your wives, but the one who actually is most persuasive is Rosa. As I understand it, she isn’t even decided about if she wants to fuse with you and she still thinks that you are the catch of a lifetime and would have been even back on Earth, after you get past your uncertainties,” Cecelia said with a smile.
Jay considered what she had said. The nugget about Rosa was definitely something he would file away for later. “I guess it is time to find out how far I
