A Special Manual for the Lazy Hero
The figure reflected in the mirror carried a strange, unfamiliar air — nothing at all like the lazy girl who, mere moments ago, had been sprawled under the covers with the air conditioner blowing over her.
All Luce had done was set the rounded mecha part atop Sonia's head. Yet with a sharp metallic click, it latched on of its own accord, clinging like a magnet.
As if that spot had always been its rightful place, the piece sank into Sonia's soft golden hair and locked into position perfectly.
Something inside the mechanism engaged with a soft snick. By some principle neither of them could begin to understand, the tiny lamps fixed along the bodysuit's shoulders, waist, and thighs all flared to life at once.
The lamps that had been sleeping in darkness lit up in a clean, vivid green — and in that instant, the pure white bodysuit wrapped around Sonia's body looked as if it had been given a life of its own.
The most startling change was in her eyes. Sonia's irises, which had always glittered with the warm gold of sunlight, shifted the moment the accessory on her head began to glow — turning cold, inhuman emerald. They were the eyes of a mineral jewel, stripped of all emotion.
"Uh… that's incredible… isn't it… Luce?"
"H-hee…♡ That tickles, Luce!"
"Th-this is weirdly soft… kind of amazing, though… Sonia. This is that thing, right? What was it called — pay something? That… that barcode you scan with a terminal to pay…?"
"A barcode?! Uh? Uh… uhh… a barcode…? Barcode… nn…♡ Yeah, I think that's what it is. The Association said it was custom-fitted, so… come to think of it, it doesn't seem to have any pockets or anything."
On Sonia's soft cheek and just below her navel — places where nothing of the kind had existed before — barcodes had risen into view as clearly as holograms.
A dense cluster of black lines, settled so perfectly it looked as if an intricate tattoo had always been etched there. The skin of her lower belly, where the barcode sat, gave a strange little throb — kyung, kyung — but Sonia crushed the sweet, indecent sensation under a hero's willpower for the time being.
There would be plenty of private "time" later to enjoy it alone.
In the mirror, the nipples of the busty hero in Association-style combat gear had swollen hard with irrepressible excitement, their shapes beginning to show through the skin-tight white bodysuit.
Luce, completely oblivious, was still groping her way across Sonia's soft belly and the springy white latex with pure fascination.
Earth's tech is more advanced, so if this is the latest trend… it wouldn't hurt to learn about it, right…? I could even ask Sonia to get me one later… It is pretty revealing, though…
Someday Sonia might be the one running her hands over Luce's body in a bodysuit — but for now, Luce was studying this world's new form of armor with purely academic interest.
"…The performance looks genuinely good. Maybe they're just too expensive to see around much?"
"I-it tickles, Luce… nn…"
Stroke, stroke. Working her fingers over the clinging bodysuit, Luce carefully checked the thighs and hips for any hidden seam that might conceal a thin pocket.
Every time Luce's curious hands made contact, Sonia's skin shivered with a pleasant tremor.
Neither Sonia nor Luce knew it, but this world held every variety of bodysuit imaginable — from external-power models with a power source mounted on the back, to ones that could light simple lamps on the wearer's body heat alone.
Of course, the ones that drew the most public attention weren't the armor-category suits at all, but the lewd fetish costumes and the base-chassis bodysuits used by drones and androids.
"Hehh… heh-heung…♡"
Having thoroughly felt Sonia up to her satisfaction, Luce gradually moved her hands to the mecha part she had been holding earlier — the one now sitting on Sonia's head.
"I still don't get how the eye color changes… Anyway, I'll just pull it — pull it off, I guess? I'm taking it off, okay, Sonia?"
"…Do as you like, Lu… Luce…"
Nod, nod. Oblivious Sonia's mind was already full of other fantasies.
That provocative design leaving the navel completely bare. If someone were to shove a finger straight into that navel plug port, the shock might short her out like a blown circuit — her whole body going numb as she climaxed on the spot. Flushed scarlet, Sonia dipped her head and gave a tiny nod.
"Ah… it won't come off? Maybe the person wearing it has to pull it herself…? Feels like that might be it…"
Luce gripped the part and yanked hard, but it refused to budge — as if it had put down deep roots in Sonia's skull like a stubborn weed.
The green lamps only sparkled on, making Sonia's transformed green eyes look even more mysterious.
Pop!
Just as Luce had guessed. The moment Sonia pressed her own fingers — sheathed in smooth white latex — against the part and pulled, it came free with a light, cheerful sound like a vacuum seal releasing.
The way a computer's power lamp lingers for a moment after the switch is flipped, the green lights on the accessory winked out one by one over a slow stretch of time. With a tiny tick, Sonia's eyes returned to their original warm gold.
"…It's wild how the lights just flare on. In a dungeon, it'd definitely pull aggro from monsters and party members alike… So what's the verdict, Sonia?"
"…What changed? What changed… what changed…"
There was none of that dramatic effect from Nebulix videos or movies, where changing clothes transforms a person's entire personality and way of speaking.
Just as Luce had assessed, it was closer to a fetish outfit — no panties, no bra, the upper half of an E-cup bust left brazenly exposed. The only real changes were the barcode running from the corner of her eye down her nape, and the payment barcode that still flickered into holographic existence over her faintly throbbing lower belly before vanishing again.
Of course it would never happen… but if a complete stranger shoved a finger into my navel on this bodysuit that leaves me completely defenseless… and p-pressed…♡
Press. Sonia slipped a finger once into her navel — no, into the navel plug port — and pushed.
What came back was, naturally, nothing but an error signal triggered by a foreign object with no system connection: a powerful pulse of pure pleasure.
…♡
It was merely a neural circuit's foreign-object detection response. But to Sonia, who had felt it in her own body, it could only register as a "lewd button that makes you climax the instant you press it."
Design aside — whether from a desire to save on raw materials or for some "other special reason" — the Association-issue hero bodysuit was a bizarre piece of gear: tug the chest down even a little and everything would spill free, and the navel was engineered to stay permanently exposed to outside threat.
Whap…! Whap…!
Luce playfully smacked the gap-riddled white latex of Sonia's back with her open palm. From the sound alone, you'd have expected a bright red handprint — but all that happened was Sonia's half-exposed, ample breasts bouncing and swaying. There was no pain at all.
"Ah… that didn't hurt? I hit pretty hard…? Ooh… hey, hey, Sonia! Think you could get me one of these later? No pressure — later! If the chance comes up!"
"A-all right, Luce… I'll ask sometime. I requested both black and white and they only gave me one, but I'll still ask."
"Thanks, Sonia! I've got nothing to give you, so take this!"
With that, Luce playfully set the mecha part Sonia had just pulled free back on top of her head.
The piece drifted in as if drawn by a magnet, settled into Sonia's golden hair, and locked home again with a click.
Whirrr… flash…!
Payment barcodes bobbed up over her soft lower belly and beside her cheek. Sonia's eyes turned cold green once more.
Unless she took a serious mental shock, Sonia's eyes normally held a lively light — but thanks to this peculiar bodysuit, they looked set to glow green all day.
Right now, green-eyed Sonia was beginning to nibble at the bait angler Luce had cast.
"…Didn't you say you had something to show me earlier? You said there was something. What is it, Luce?"
A week of solitary shut-in life had produced its own peculiar order. In one corner of Sonia's room, trash bags whose contents had been stomped down hard sat stacked as neatly as a modern art installation.
In air thick with dust and the faint smell of food waste, Luce's gaze swept the scene with mild wonder before sliding elsewhere. A milky, smooth object was draped carelessly over the back of a dining chair. The current of conversation veered in a completely unexpected direction.
To Luce, a "bodysuit" was no longer the exclusive property of late-night channel ads or the brothels run by succubi.
The concept of cutting-edge armor that hardened like steel on impact was more than attractive information to an adventurer from a fantasy world.
Even so, Luce had a real reason for storming D-class hero Sonia's nest today.
A party member who'd gone dark after a coin-investment failure. Another who'd vanished overnight claiming she needed funds to buy a slave. Filling the emptied rear of the party with a new member — especially a tech specialist who could handle precision machinery like firearms — had become urgent.
"What did you haul over here making such a fuss about, Luce…?"
"That's exactly it, Sonya! Perfect timing! I came to show you this from the start!"
Green eyes sparkling with curiosity, Sonia snapped up the angler's bait whole.
The design had its share of embarrassing, perverted corners — but even Luce, who'd tested it with her own fists, had to admit the bodysuit's defensive performance was the real deal.
At first she'd thought it would be simple. Just find a technician among the non-combat personnel who accompanied dungeon runs — a porter, basically.
Of course, reality refused to match Luce's thinking. Someone with rare skills was never going to risk their life as a pack mule in a dungeon crawling with monsters.
Most of them set up small repair shops in the plaza at the dungeon entrance and made a stable living fixing adventurers' gear. A tech-specialist class was truly as rare as stars in the sky.
Over the past few weeks, through deep observation and inquiries at the adventurers' guild — that furnace of information — Luce had come to understand a few critical facts.
She'd never known it herself, swinging a sword all day, but dungeons constantly presented locked chests that needed forcing open.
She'd also learned that a precision weapon like a firearm would degrade into a lump of scrap metal the moment regular maintenance fell behind.
There was only one conclusion. Recruiting Sky City's lounging, freeloading hero Sonia was the wisest call.
She'd never asked directly, but Luce had seen it clearly: the green, mucus-like rounds fired from the little pistol Sonia used — rounds that were the very symbol of plasma energy.
Handling a plasma weapon was proof of advanced technical knowledge. Sonia only carried a few recharge kits because energy cells were expensive, but that was more than enough. Luce stamped a big fat PASS across the résumé Sonia had never even submitted, right there in her mind.
Imagining that mental stamp, a satisfied smile spread across Luce's lips. She could already picture herself sitting on a bench in the Alubi Dungeon entrance plaza, licking an ice cream, party recruitment window open.
She was nothing like the E-cup busty hero who, once she fell into a fantasy, wouldn't stop her lewd self-indulgence until her stamina ran dry.
Even as she let her imagination soar, Luce calmly drew from her adventurer's backpack the item meant "to persuade Sonia."
A specially made tough vinyl pack, designed so the contents wouldn't be damaged. With careful hands, Luce took it out and set it on the table where Sonia could see it clearly.