Hybridization Novel Chapter 155 – Next Girl, Whatcha Havin?

Chapter 155 – Next Girl, Whatcha Havin?

“Look, I’m just saying, we have two bedrooms for us and plenty of couch space for guests. Why can’t we turn that room into a little pleasure cave?” – Val in the bathroom section of Ho Depot, shortly before getting spanked by an embarrassed Kristi.

“Alright, co with .” Kurt said after he put the last of the breakfast dishes out to dry. He began walking toward the basent and with Rindi following behind in her human form. Kristi and Val were following them, but Kristi had the extra basent room as her destination.

It was Saturday, the day after they had gone shopping and he had a few things he wanted to get done. Chief among them was getting a list of what Rindi would need for magical equipnt and then having her feel out so guns that she could use. After that, he wanted to take her to the training range they had in the Order to get her started on them.

“Mas… Kurt, I have a question.” Rindi said as she followed him down the stairs. “Where am I forbidden from going? And what can I do to earn my accommodations?”

Kurt could feel the discontent from Val through his necklace as well as hear it in her sigh. She was not tolerating Rindi’s previous upbringing very well. “I will give you the sa warning I gave the others. Go wherever you want, but it’s best not to fiddle with anything that has a lock. I have so rather nasty protections on so things.”

“Anywhere?”

Val spoke up from behind her as they reached the basent. “Rindi, this is your house as much as it is ours for the ti being. If you want to lounge in the living room then feel free, if you want to lock yourself in your room, go for it.”

Rindi pursed her lips like she was fighting off a frown. “Then what are my duties, my chores?”

Kurt unlocked the vault while Val explained and Kristi wandered into the unfinished extra room. “Everything is self-cleaning other than dishes and so appliances. Oh, maybe not the sinks and countertops. I have been finding an unusual amount of hair that wasn’t there before I t the fox.”

“Hair?” Rindi reached her hand up to touch her shoulder length hair like she was afraid it would suddenly vanish.

Val leaned forward a bit more. “Yup, I haven’t tested it, but I try to clean up after myself when so co out in my hairbrush and lands in the sink. Speaking of, how are the brushes that we got you? And the shampoo, was it ok?” they followed Kurt down into the vault with Rindi having to duck from the low entry ceiling.

“I, ahh… The brushes are very nice, but I haven’t used the shampoo.” She then whispered to Val. “I didn’t know how to… with the shower.” she said the word shower like it was a prescribed sort of magic or an ancient evil that she shouldn’t speak of.

That would also explain the sll that Kurt now associated with her. It wasn’t a bad sll, just a very feline one. He compared it to how the big cats he had seen at the zoo slled. Clean but with a distinct feline musk. If he were being honest, it slled nice to him, and he thought it fit her personality.

Val tilted her head, one fox ear flicking as she studies the large woman. “Do you know how it works?”

“No, mistress.” Rindi answered with a blush, seeming to revert to her previous use of honorifics.

Crossing her arms, Val stared at her. “Rindi, if you don’t know about sothing, please ask. You have a lot of things to catch up on that are different in this world and you wont do that by avoiding things.” She turned to Kurt and pulled out a pair of stools for them to sit on. “And here I thought cats were supposed to be curious.” Kurt snorted in amusent and pulled out his note pad and set a box of enchanted items on the work bench.

“But I’m not a cat…” Rindi looked very confused as she took the stool Val offered. “I can’t afford any of this, ma- Kurt. I don’t think I am worth spending the coin on to-“

“Shhh, just be a good kitty and listen to Kurt.” Val whispered as they sat down.

“Rrrrright.” Kurt gave the vixen a lot of side eye. She was having a bit too much fun at Rindi’s expense. He was hoping that she was just trying to break the ice and ease her into their ho life. Maybe her and Kristi had tead up, and they were all taking various roles while easing Rindi into things?

“Like Val said and I had told you earlier, just make yourself at ho. However you are comfortable, just go with that… and I an it. That sentint extends to your physical shape, I know you said your other shape was more natural for you so feel free to be in that. As Jay once said, ‘Let your para flag fly’.”

“Thank you, mas-.” Rindi bowed, getting about a quarter the way before catching herself and sitting upright again, blushing a little. “-Ah, Kurt. I would use my other form, but the clothes get…umm.”

“We got her several sets of clothes for both sizes, but the problem is that she has to change clothes when she shifts.” Val explained. “I don’t think you would mind her stripping down, but it would be a little problematic if she did it every ti she went to the bathroom.”

“Went to the bathroom?” Kurt wondered aloud.

Rindi’s ears and neck were now very red and she looked away. “The human shape is more appropriate for your modern… eh… toilets.”

“AH.” Kurt cleared his throat and looked to his whiteboard. “Enough said. But that puts one thing at the top of the list for you.” He wrote ‘clothing shift’ right under where he had written ‘implant’. “I think I can make a device to add to your storage ring that would allow that. Probably pretty close to what I put on all the wolves’ rings. But we also need to get you an implant like, soon.”

“Kurt.” Rindi raised her hand and spoke when he looked to her. “What is an implant?”

Kurt blinked at her. He didn’t think he would have to explain this but then rembered that she was a complete outsider. “Right, new plan.” He tossed the marker to Val. “Val, hon, please get her up to speed on all our enchanted gear and make a list of things you think she needs and anything she wants, if you can get that out of her.”

He then left the two won in his shop and quickly moved up the stairs toward the unfinished room that Kristi was in. He was cutting his planned activity short after hearing a crash and feeling disgust and annoyance through the necklace stemming from Kristi.

Opening the door, he poked his head in and saw the dragoness sweeping up a tile that was in many small pieces. “Kristi, what’s going on?”

“Just fumbled a tile sample.” She answered before dumping the pile of ceramic into the trash can she had pulled into the room. “At least it wasn’t one of the front runners.”

“Okay, next question; what exactly are you doing in here?”

She set the broom down and turned to face him as he entered the room. “Well, since we have a permanent new resident, for all intents and purposes, I figured we should get this room ready. I know it has been on our list for a while but now seems like a good ti.”

“Oh, well in that case, need help?” Kurt went to stand in the middle of the room, just beside the magic circle Jay had put in the foundation.

“Maybe.” Kristi shrugged. “The more I look at it, the more I say we blend the features of the rest of the house.”

Kurt looked around the room. “How so?”

“Let’s match the upstairs bathrooms for the tile and vanity, but a single instead of a double. Then you can do your enchanting magic for the shower stall with matching hardware and fixtures. It will be like the main one but without the separate tub and you could do a linen nook behind the door.”

“I like that, keeps things simple and looking consistent.” Kurt had a note pad out and was writing in it. He was pretty sure he had all the invoices for the other bathroom to match hardware and tiles. “How about the rest of the room?”

“Carpet to match the basent or we do hardwood and a rug like the ga room?” Kristi asked while coming to join him. “And does that thing need to be exposed or can we cover it? Not sure if you need access to it for maintenance.” She pointed to the warding circle.

That really made it simple and Kurt had a good idea on how to handle it based on what he had done to several spots on the main floor. “Wood flooring and area rugs it is. I can make a panel of the floor co out as one unit to access the circle if needed. I did a couple like that in the laundry room and our closets to access power cables and pipes.”

He looked around the room again, this ti focusing more on the framing. “All the electrical and HVAC is run and the rough plumbing is in for the bathroom. All we need next is drywall and flooring. Then we can buy furniture and paint.”

“Val and I got that stuff picked out a while back.” Kristi admitted. “Yellow paint to make things seem bigger and brighter. And we should be good on a bedroom set, assuming the furniture store hasn’t changed much.”

Kurt snorted in amusent. “It hasn’t. They have had the sa styles and product since I moved up here.” He then reached out and took Kristi’s hand. “Thinking of putting Rindi down here?”

Kristi made a face then, her lips curling and her eyebrows scrunching together. “No but it’s hers if she wants it. I don’t want her to feel like we are shoving her aside or trying to hide her. This is more for if we have other guests like Anna or your parents again.”

“Makes sense.” Kurt bobbed his head.

“What… ah, what do you think about her?” Kristi asked after a mont of silence between them.

“Don’t know yet, it has only been a couple days, and she hasn’t co out of her shell yet.” Kurt answered honestly. “I think she is strong enough to roll on our team though. Not like she has a choice in the matter with the whole slave mark.”

“Yeah, that is not ideal. I guess we will see how it all plays out.” They then took asurents for all the materials needed to get the room mostly finished and made plans to go pick everything up on the weekend.

It was as they were walking to the vault that they heard what Val had been up to in his absence. “… then he just sticks it in you, and it only hurts a little bit at first. After that it actually feels good-.”

“What in the actual fuck are you talking about?” Kurt asked as they ca into the vault.

Val turned to face him with a big smile while Rindi answered. “Mistress Val was telling

about the implant that lets you communicate telepathically.”

“Yeah, the implant. What did you think we were talking about?” The kitsune asked while bouncing her eyebrows at him.

“Just behave around her. Giver her at least a week before you start up with your gas.” Kurt said via the implant while making a face at her. He then moved over to the whiteboard and the list that was written there. “Right, what have we got?”

“Implant. Storage ring with clothing enchant. Identify ring. Switch blade. Magical amplifier. Shape shifting armor…” He read the list and stopped as his thoughts seized on one item. “Magic amplifier. Rindi, what kind of magic do you do? What are your abilities?”

“Dinsional magic. I can walk in the shadows as a Valkyrie. Well, not the shadows but the realm partly associated with them. It’s between layers of reality where the soul is exposed but not exactly vulnerable. I can pretty easily dispatch soone with a weak soul by dragging that part into the subdinsion and leaving their body behind.” She explained. “I have a movent ability in that form as well, but it takes a lot of mana to enter that layer of reality and to use my movent skill.

“In my felitaur form I have a sort of blink skill, but it builds montum and is instantaneous. I only really get two, sotis three good shots with that depending on the range and if I had to… you called it shifting, right? If I have to shift into that form.”

“Does it have a reduced cost for shorter distances or is it a flat rate of mana consumption?”

Thinking for a mont, Rindi eventually answered. “It seems to be a flat cost no matter the distance I want to travel. As long as it is within range.” She quickly added the limitation. “I have a range of about fifty paces with the blink ability.

Kurt was taking notes while she talked and was already forming so plans. “And your natural ability to heal?”

“It is decent, I guess.” Rindi hedged. “I don’t have the constitution of a dragon or heal as fast as a lycan but I can regenerate a bone deep cut on my biceps in a day. Shifting really hurts during that ti though. The would also transfers but remains proportional.”

“How does that work?” Kristi asked, clearly curious about the strange ability.

Rindi shrugged. “No idea. All I know is that if I don’t lose too much blood or an organ, I will likely survive.”

Snapping his notebook shut, Kurt moved over to his locker with his enchanting supplies. “So, we need to work on efficiency rather than straight amplification.” He pulled out the lock box with his grimoire and the one with so of the high value items he already had made such as the storage ring and the implant.

“Well, let’s get your implant first so you can get used to it while I quick knock out your storage ring.” Kurt said and opened the box with tiny implants. He pulled out one of the prepackaged devices and popped the lid on the container. “Hold still.”

Freezing in place, Rindi watched him, eyes dilated and focusing intently on his hands. Kurt cast the numbing spell then ford the magical construct to direct and implant the device. He saw her wince sightly after the little silver chip vanished from his hand.

“There we go. All set.” He said and tossed the empty box into his bin with other empties to be reused at a later ti. He then looked back to her as she rubbed her head, gingerly touching the spot with her fingers. “Val, Kristi, can you get her settled with that while I knock out this ring?”

The girls all disappeared as he turned to his bench and pulled out a ring and the grimoire. He had recorded several instances of the enchantnt he used for the werewolf rings that removed and resummoned clothes. One of those was a sort of ‘mory’ enchantnt that he found unsuitable for his needs at the ti.

He reviewed the spell construct and how it would likely work in conjunction with the storage ring. He had found in his testing that the spell was rather quick working but didn’t have much in flexibility. A simple explanation would be that it would morize ‘sets’ of clothes and the default to whichever one fit best after the shift.

Rindi would need to essentially get dressed into an outfit then make it a preset by forcing mana into the enchantnt. When she shifted, she could focus on recalling that outfit and it would be resummoned as it had been before she shifted. The process wouldn’t be automatic like the werewolf version, but with a little practice it would be fast enough to protect her modesty.

He quickly copied the program into his CNC machine and tooled it up to run the program on the edge of the ring. Once he hit start on that, he moved on to his next problem and returned to his work bench and notes. It was ti to make another focus.

The enchantnt wouldn’t need to amplify her powers so much as make her more mana efficient. She might get a small boost, but it would be secondary to her using less mana on the skill. “Rindi, do you want a ring or bracelet for your amplifier? You are already going to have a couple rings on when I am done so I was thinking bracelet.”

There was a shriek from the other room followed by the sound of sothing softly thumping to the floor. He faintly heard talking before Rindi responded via the implant.

“A-a-a bracelet w-would be fine, mas-Kurt.” ca the shaky ntal response not long after.

Kurt decided to ignore the ntal tone of voice that Rindi had. It sounded very different than how she appeared. But then again, she had two different voices depending on which of the shapes she was in at the ti. ntally, she sounded about half way between the two, coming out more like a younger woman than the raspy sound that she had in her felitaur form or the deeper tone of her ‘human’ persona.

It was strange for him since everyone else had pretty much the sa ntal and physical voice as far as the people on Jays teams were concerned. The only thing the implant didn’t carry over was any sort of distortion from the environnt or if soone had a stuffy nose.

Pulling out one of the titanium bands that he had been experinting with as a base, Kurt began laying out his runes. He was just glad that he had a few leftovers from a failed project since making sothing from scratch sounded awful at the mont. He had already made a plan to create sothing that was partly casting focus and partly a battery for mana storage.

While he couldn’t solve the overall cost of her spell activating, at least by the way she described it and what he saw, he could make it activate in a different way. This particular way was going to need a lot of gold and the strange crystal that he had been using in many projects.

He carved the runes for the focus and casting on the outside of the semi dod band after laying them out. He was sure to be careful in how deep he cut them since he had a plan for the back and didn’t want to ss it up.

After those were cut, he placed the band in his vice and began to scoop out the inside, turning the flat side of the band into a concave shape. That concave shape was left rather rough in its finish because he wanted the lted crystal to bond and adhere to the surface as much as possible. He then filled the concave surface with the crystal material in its tallic format, hamring it into place hard enough to ensure there weren’t any gaps.

Once he was done with that, he inlaid the top surface with gold, using so of the wire he had for that very purpose. Then he sanded everything smooth and buffed it to a decent luster, just on the dull side of a satin finish. It would be attractive but not attention grabbing, especially after the enchantnts were activated and it was semi concealed by the runes he carved.

After a couple hours, Kurt was left with a slightly shimring titanium and gold bangle. He inspected the item with his jeweler’s loop and found that everything was stable and holding nicely without any mana leakage. Sighing in satisfaction he placed it next to the modified storage ring that he had made, doing the inlay and activation at the sa ti after the mill finished.

Kurt stood up and stretched, rolling his shoulders after hunching over his bench for so long. He then picked up all his tools and put everything away before heading out of the vault. He was on a mission now and that mission was a hearty lunch before getting into his other interests… firearms and firearms accessories. Oh, and maybe even a knife… a magic knife.