A flustered peck

Ivy's voice was low, as Lucas made her look back up at James. "This is all you're getting for now." She seemed hesitant, before she leaned forward to plant a quick kiss on James's cheek, and then stepped back, standing awkwardly, like she was off-balance.

James shrugged a bit, still annoyed that he had to deal with this situation in the first place. Something about it felt like even in this situation, Lucas was somehow in a more intimate spot than James was with his own girlfriend. And he couldn't shake it off that it felt like this weird, twisted way his girlfriend was somehow cheating on him.

Ivy frowned, and then knocked James on the shoulder, still speaking low but raising her voice a little more, as Lucas seemed frustrated in his own way at how James was reacting. "Cut the crap, Jim. You know Ivy can still see and hear everything, right? And she's talking to me right now. She's not thrilled that you're acting like this towards me--towards her."

With a shake of his head, James backed off. "Look I'm sorry, but I can't get over this. It feels too weird, how am I supposed to be comfortable enough to pretend? C'mon dude, you don't look and sound like her, this is going to fail hard."

"Well help me then..!" Ivy hissed. She reached into her bag, and shoved a booklet at James. "Read up on the headset some more, maybe you'll find some way to, I dunno, make it so I sound more like her. Or maybe she and I can trade off control somehow, I don't know. We're just on default settings, but Hideki crams a ton of features into their stuff."

With that, Ivy stormed off, though her gait was strange, almost like she was frightened to let her hips sway in the slightest, so she just shuffled away, presumably to her first period class. Most of Luke's classes were shared with Ivy, probably four out of five, and that would be plenty for keeping up with schoolwork to keep his grades up. James, however, wouldn't see her again until lunch and then the last three classes of the day, which meant a few hours with this knowledge of his girlfriend being paraded around the school by his friend rattling around in his head.

James headed off to his class, but he took a seat in the back to tune out Miss Stevens' history lesson. He was usually knowledgeable when called upon to answer questions, so his teacher was happy to challenge the other students of the class while he opened up the Ascend V5 user manual.

Very quickly, he realized what an impressive device the Ascend gear was. This device had a city-wide range, barely any latency, and a three day battery life, which was amazing in its own right when his own phone couldn't hold a charge. The outer membrane of the mask could replicate a ton of facial features and skintones, but was still a sophisticated screen, and could be used as a computer monitor, or as a way of diving deeper into the settings of AscendOS, the operating system of the device.

Inside the headset, however, was where the real magic was. Thousands upon thousands of small nodes could make contact with the skin and somehow project and intercept electrical fields in the brain without actually using an implant. It both allowed for full sensory information as well as full movement control. For all intents and purposes, Luke was able to feel every little detail about Ivy's body from the inside as if he were really in that body. James balled his hand into a fist for a moment, needing some stress release.

Finally, James found some useful configuration settings! However, they weren't in English. The English information was surprisingly sparse in documentation, like these modes weren't meant to be easily found. Fortunately, he knew just enough from his advanced Japanese class to decipher the general details about deeper settings, after looking up some kanji on his phone.

James discovered that there is a voice menu, which he could say the command words to unlock. The menu and settings system was designed in a way that if someone were to use an Ascend for some illegal purpose, for example, the police or someone else could essentially make the wearer freeze in place, to properly disarm them. But, James was seeing some advantages to being able to tweak these settings...

The default mode of the headset was Basic, where the receiver simply interpreted signals from the transmitter to move, and sent back sensory information. But in Mixed mode, James could use voice commands to change how much of Ivy's personality was influenced by Luke and how much of it was her normal self! And it was configurable in real time too... he could essentially swap them out whenever he wanted, if he could access settings with the passcode and then set himself as the administrator. James was almost positive that Luke wouldn't have changed the passcode.

There were other modes too. Split mode basically allowed James to pick which parts which mind controlled. Tandem mode would allow one mind to be the 'conscious' and one to be the 'subconscious', so memories and behaviors from the **** side might bubble up despite what the conscious mind would have done. James could even choose which brain signals affected chemical and hormonal triggers, meaning James could choose if Ivy's body is aroused by Ivy's preferences or Luke's. Clearly, he wanted to make sure Lucas would stick with Ivy's preferences...

And then, there was one page on very unexpected settings: Doll and Half-Doll mode. Doll mode totally overrode higher functioning brain signals from both sides, just sort of putting them into a temporary sleep state. Once Doll mode is active, James would be able to run custom code or functionality, like creating his own custom voice commands! It was like a hyper hypnosis, it seemed. He could use Ivy's body like an interactive machine with a screen, or run a basic AI program or pre-programmed, animated movements, using any sort of customized face shape and voice to accompany it all. In Half-Doll mode, it seemed that anything programmed from Doll mode could be carried over, but until commands are issued, the minds behave like normal. With a tweak, he could make the minds aware of their new behavior, or keep them in the dark...

James shut the book, smiling. He realized that if he couldn't get comfortable with how the situation was now, he could make one more favorable to him!

The time seemed to drag on through the morning, as James waited for the first two classes to finish so he could get to lunch and meet up with Ivy-Lucas. He saw her walking the hallway, with a couple friends like Bethany and Cameron, laughing nervously as the other two prodded them with questions. "...oh, there's Jim, I gotta go." Immediately, Ivy stepped briskly away from the other two, as she rapidly approached James, leaving her two other friends scratching their heads.

Ivy approaches James, and immediately Lucas makes her say...