Riven nearly followed her items to the ground, catching herself just in time before sending a furious glare at Rae. Rae merely laughed, patting Riven’s lush black hair. "You’re being overly rude to our new awesome buddies," she chided playfully.
At that, Riven seemed to snap out of her focused trance. A blush crept up her neck and onto her cheeks as she realized the truth of Rae’s words. She quickly stammered out an apology.
"I’m so sorry..." she mumbled, bending down to retrieve her fallen glasses and tablet. "I... I was just trying to figure out what sort of inner mechanism the Association was hiding in that outer turret of theirs."
Nyx and Aria spoke up at once, voices overlapping with bright curiosity.
"Wait, wait! Did you find something?"
"We’ve been wondering about the bunker’s weird defenses, too!"
Despite Riven’s eccentric aura, or rather because of it, all three Valkyries found themselves oddly drawn to her. Maybe it was the dead-serious expression she wore beneath the comically oversized lab coat that barely concealed her extremely generous feminine figure, or maybe it was the vibe of a genius too consumed by curiosity to remember she was dressed like a girl who’d lost a bet. Either way... despite the very weird first impressions, they kinda liked her.
Riven pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and scoffed.
"Those bastards knew exactly what they were doing. There are too many safeguards wrapped around the sensitive hardware. I couldn’t break through more than surface-level diagnostics." She grumbled, then tapped a finger against her temple. "But I did learn one thing about those outer wall-mounted sentry arrays... they’re self-activating proximity-based mana-reactive laser turrets."
There was a beat of silence.
Nyx’s fingers tightened suddenly on Kaiden’s shoulder, her expression paling.
Aria clutched at Kaiden’s hand that was still stroking her juicy thighs, with a soft gasp escaping her delicate lips, eyes wide with shock. "Laser... turrets...?"
"Proximity-based?" Luna echoed, her gamer-girl instincts screaming ’danger.’
Riven noticed their worried expressions and waved her hand dismissively in response. "You don’t have to worry. They only fire on hostiles. If your mana signature’s been registered with the bunker’s internal system, you’re fine. You could walk naked out there and the thing wouldn’t so much as track you."
A synchronized sigh of relief came from the trio.
"That’s... good to know," Aria mumbled under her breath with a bit of color returning to her cheeks.
"Very good," Nyx echoed, letting go of Kaiden’s shoulder with a pat before she resumed his gentle but firm massaging.
Meanwhile, Luna leaned forward eagerly, eyes sparkling. "That’s so cool...! Like, terrifying, but cool. High-tech hidden weapons in our home? This place is like an endgame loot room with its many defenses..."
Riven’s entire demeanor lit up at the enthusiasm the Chaos Gremlin showcased. Her eyes sparkled behind her lenses. "Right?! High tech everywhere I look! And that damned cunt- ehem, I mean, Lady Grace, forbade me from studying them at length!"
At that, Kaiden couldn’t help but burst out laughing, and the Valkyries weren’t far behind. None of them expected this serious researcher oddball to curse like that.
"You really don’t hold back, huh?" he chuckled.
Nyx nudged her big chest forward as she leaned in, resting them on top of Kaiden’s scalp as she asked with a knowing smile, letting her social butterfly persona shine brightly, "Hey, Riven? If it’s not too much trouble... would you mind giving us a little tour sometime? Y’know, of the stuff you have figured out? Frankly, we’ve been recently thrown into the world of awakened, so if a knowledgeable one could educate us a bit about artifacts, well, that certainly wouldn’t hurt..."
The black-haired, lacey underwear-wearing woman blinked in surprise, then beamed. "You want to see it?" she asked, a little breathless, as if the idea of someone asking to hear her ramble about tech was the highest praise imaginable.
Before she could even answer, Rae slammed a palm against her back with a hearty laugh, nearly knocking her over again.
"Hah! Look at you, Riv. I knew you weren’t a hopeless hermit who could only get along with her twin sister." Rae grinned at her like a proud mom.
Kaiden raised a brow at the unexpected revelation, but before he could ask, the Valkyries shouted in perfect unison:
"Twin sister?!"
Riven’s entire body jolted forward after being slapped once again, her tablet flipping from her grip as she turned with a slow, glacial stare toward Rae. Her voice was pure ice.
"I do not appreciate being slapped like a malfunctioning golem. And I can socialize just fine! I simply prefer the company of my tools and creations..."
Rae just laughed, brushing off her sister’s death glare with an infuriatingly cheerful, "Sure, sure," before flashing a wicked grin toward Kaiden and the Valkyries, who still looked stunned at the revelation.
"I get your surprise," Rae nodded along sagely, raising a finger and pointing to herself. "A wild, sexy, tanned chick..." Then she pointed to Riven. "Pale as a ghost... All too pure like freshly fallen snow."
She then continued voicing the many differences between her and her sister by cupping her hands under her breasts and pushing them up, displaying her rather modest feminine assets with no shame, and gave them an appreciative look.
"Small boobies... but they’re perfect. Light, aerodynamic. I don’t need back pain in my life, though with my Strength stat, I probably wouldn’t anyhow, but let’s ignore such matters, shall we? I’d rather sprint through a battlefield feeling light and tight than lug around those giant udders of hers."
Riven’s jaw dropped, her entire face heating up like a kettle at her unabashed sister’s lack of a mouth filter. "Udders?!" she sputtered, arms folding over her generous cleavage, though it only made them look bigger under the open lab coat and sexy bras.
Rae once again ignored her sister as she wasn’t done noting her observations.
"Big, sexy muscles~" she declared with a proud flex of her biceps. "Years of training, no skipped arm days." Then she reached out with practiced swiftness and pinched a bit of squishy softness on her Riven’s lower belly.