I'll Upgrade the Performance Too
"Everyone seems to be settling in well. That's a relief."
"It is. Though things got a little weird toward the end."
They had adapted a little too well, in a rather different sense of the word — leaving anyone watching with a strange, hard-to-describe feeling.
Jessica was managing fine.
Meanwhile, as our Icarus and Jessica were going whoaaa at the New-Biomass Clan's maniacal market expansion, and as he was tinkering with this and that to replenish the mercenary fleets spent fighting the Date Palm Clan at Base B554, something else was unfolding in a secretive(?) room tucked into one corner of Icarus's Astral Base.
"Everyone's here, right?"
"Mm."
"Then let us begin the Commander Completion Plan… no — the Third Commander Shadow Council."
In an atmosphere thick with pure scheming, Icarus's superhumans had gathered in a tight huddle, pouring themselves into a plan to lock down their commander.
And at this meeting, with new members having swollen their ranks—
"You all already know them. Our new members, Dornea and Nero."
"Ah, hello…"
"…When did you even make something like this?"
"It was made long ago, according to the ancient laws."
—Dornea and Nero had newly joined as well.
But for all the talk of a "securing plan," the whole affair had in practice devolved into a kind of social club. And the reason for that was simple.
"Wait — isn't this supposed to be the place where we plan how to lock down the commander?"
"How are we supposed to do anything if the commander won't put out?"
"I-Is that so."
"That's the theme of this meeting, too. At this rate this isn't a Securing Council — it's a Friendship Council."
As Grianar wailed (after a fashion), the root of every problem was none other than their commander, Icarus, who hadn't been intimate with any of the other superhumans since Marian.
"Look, at first I figured if we just got the ball rolling with Marian, the rest would all fall into place, right?"
"Is that so…"
"But he didn't do it!"
Of course, the superhumans weren't completely in the dark as to why Icarus was acting this way.
"But honestly… Commander has been pretty busy, hasn't he?"
"That's right. Our Savior has been far too busy lately."
"And it wasn't just being busy — the scale of what he was dealing with was enormous."
"Yeah, fair."
"Right♡ There weren't just one or two things Commander had to handle, you know?"
Even the other superhumans — even Paschutra, driven by pure lust — said the same. Objectively speaking, the situation simply hadn't allowed Icarus any room for side activities. The superhumans gathered there nodded along, agreeing the point was fair.
But they'd thought that would end today.
"Still, it looks like that won't be an issue anymore, so that's good."
"Right♡"
"Even just the day before yesterday, all sorts of things kept happening, so he was still busy…"
"But there's no chance of that kind of thing coming up anymore."
The urgent problems had all been resolved. And it wasn't as if the situation was so chaotic that Icarus had zero room for anything else — something recently certified by the passionate time he'd spent with Marian.
"The time has finally come."
"You mean deciding who goes second."
"Exactly!"
Our superhumans lit up with energy, declaring it was time to push forward the next person to fall to Icarus's member after Marian.
At first, of course, everyone had taken an every-woman-for-herself approach — first one to do it, or get done, wins. But more than half a year of bitter experience had taught them that approach just meant nobody got anything. So they'd shifted goals: push whoever it was first, and work through them one by one until each of them had a relationship with Icarus.
The one problem remaining, as mentioned above, was: so who should be second?
At first the opinion sprang up that since Marian — the Pirate Queen — had claimed Icarus, the next one to fall into his arms should naturally be the monster princess…
"But isn't Princess Luca a little too small?"
"Honestly, if you put her next to our commander, it wouldn't look like holding her — it'd look like a parent-child relationship."
The problem was Princess Luca's appearance. In Icarus's own words, she had the build of a "not-even-ten-year-old little girl senior."
"It's true — when I transformed into a similar build and tried to seduce him before, Commander Icarus was thoroughly appalled."
"It wasn't that he disliked it as such — more the kind of fear that he himself might go wrong."
"Then unfortunately, we'll exclude using Princess Luca…"
The terrible, scheming, evil plan that had nearly turned Icarus into a pedophile without meaning to was, fortunately, able to sink quietly into the darkness before it even began.
And though Plan A had fallen through, they couldn't just sit still.
"Then who should we go with?"
"Commander likes breasts, so how about going in order of bust size~♡"
"Then you and Captain Lepant would go first."
"Ekyuu♡"
If not by faction-leader order, then by bust size. Or, since too many people would be disadvantaged that way, by hips or thighs instead — a full-blown war between the Breast Faction and the Ass Faction erupted, and the meeting plunged madly into a pit of pure chaos.
But that situation didn't last long.
In the middle of the fierce debate between the breast faction and the ass faction…
"…Can't we just go in order?"
Dornea, who had been silent until then, tossed out the line, and the other superhumans agreed it was absolutely right.
Well — more precisely, agreement didn't come the instant she spoke.
"In order? Meaning Ignis goes first?"
"Umm, I'm not ready for that yet."
"No — not order of recruitment. Order of meeting the commander."
"Huh?"
To the superhumans looking puzzled at her words, thick-thighed Dornea said:
"Jessica."
"Ah."
"Huh?"
"If we want a proper give-and-take relationship with Commander, we need things to get naturally tangled up, right?"
"Mm… that makes sense."
"But Jessica manages that completely, so the little schemes Grianar and the rest pull never work."
"Uh… mm."
"Mm."
As Icarus himself put it, Jessica thoroughly blocked every environment for "lucky pervert" moments while circling protectively around him. So if that Jessica herself fell to the flesh spear of her beloved commander, Icarus…
"In other words — all our subtle approaches to the commander would suddenly become acceptable!"
"Truly a sound argument♡"
"Then we can turn the commander's command seat into a twenty-four-hour continuous extraction machine and squeeze him until he makes girl-like noises?"
"Heheh… i-if Commander makes sounds like that… heheheh."
"No, not that."
"If you do that, both Grianar and Nero will be banned from ever going near Commander again♡"
"Now that you mention it…"
Excluding only the brain-rotted methods Grianar and Nero specialized in, every other approach had a very high chance of being permitted. Accordingly, our superhumans voted unanimously on the agenda of this meeting, then went straight to Jessica the moment Icarus looked away to secure ships for the mercenary groups, and explained their plan.
Of course, our bunny-bunny Jessica at first reacted with pure "what the hell are you talking about" disbelief.
"But if we keep going like this, none of us will ever get to do it with Commander even once."
"Besides, Jessica, you want to snuggle up with Commander too, don't you?"
"Oh my, oh my."
"Th-That's true."
"Jessica, you're the person closest to Commander in a different way from Marian, aren't you?"
"Weeeell… but still."
Everyone around her was pressuring Jessica to go spend sweet, sticky time with the commander. And even…