To the clinic, where Mary and Pepper are treating Rapi

The outing with Sugar had proven both Lilith's destructive power and the otherwise alluring power of the Custom Girls app to the commander. He realized now that it wasn't something he could ignore, due to the potential it had to help humanity, but it wasn't exactly safe to goof around with either. Sugar had left seeming pretty happy-- perhaps more than happy-- but too much of that was due to the influence of this suspicious app. The commander would need to find a way to proceed that didn't place the girls in unwarranted crises, be those physical danger or emotional distress, while still guarding the secrets that the central government had demanded he hold close to his chest.

Still... as bad as he was framing it in his head, when he really thought about it harder, wasn't this all like something out of a dream? A power that was capable of easily repelling Raptures that just happened to hinge on acting out sexual fantasies with the beautiful soldiers that surrounded him every day was too good to be true. Once again, he'd been entrusted with far more power than he felt like he could handle.

He found himself wondering how badly things had spiraled out of control in Rapi's case. He hadn't gotten a single message from her since they parted ways and given what happened to Sugar, it was likely the effects had compounded in unpredictable ways. He owed it to Rapi to at least check in and make sure she was okay.

The commander was a known face at the clinic, not because he was often there by choice, but because he, as a human, was routinely injured due to his ridiculous habit of taking bullets meant for his Nikkes. That penchant for self-sacrifice endeared him to some people while baffling others, but whatever one might think of it, it had resulted in a lot of hospital visits. The receptionist recognized him and asked him if he needed a room, to which he responded by chuckling and shaking his head. "Not me this time. It's one of Counters Squad, Rapi. You probably saw her come in here earlier today. Do you know which room she's in?" he questioned, while watching his phone out of the corner of one eye for any updates.

"Oh, the one with the pink hair who wouldn't stop doing jumping jacks? Yeah, that was ho-" the receptionist began, then coughed into one fist. "That was hardly the kind of state most patients arrive to the clinic in. Frankly, she seemed like the picture of perfect health. All the same, when I told the doctors about it, they assigned Mary and Pepper both to watch her. Kind of seems like overkill to me."

The commander frowned. That wasn't a good sign-- that level of concern for Rapi's health was way out of proportion. Had someone caught wind of what he was doing with the app already? That shouldn't be possible as long as global awareness was turned off. Still... even if they couldn't recognize the strangeness of that, there was a trail of clues to follow in the form of the Rapture he'd had Lilith attack, his earlier conversation that Rapi had heard a piece of, and even Andersen's and Central's assignment of the app to him. Central wasn't just one person that assigned tasks with total objectivity. There were a lot of players in there who each had their own agendas.

He shook his head and tried to refocus on the task at hand. "Her room number, please."

"Oh, right! 222. If you take the elevator up, you'll see it near the end of the hall on the right side."

"Thanks. And hey... if you don't mind, keep quiet about all this. Okay?"

The receptionist guy gave the commander a guilty frown that clearly said he'd already spread this news all over the hospital. "Uh, yeah. Sure, buddy."

---

Surprisingly, even though he'd been told that two of the clinic's most stalwart staff were supposed to be watching her, Rapi was alone in her hospital bed when he arrived, with no doctors in attendance. Actually, it was more like she was on her hospital bed than in it... When he walked in, he was treated to the sight of the woman lying on her back, then sitting upright, performing twisting sit-ups while wearing just the leotard that normally went underneath her suit. It was quite a sight, as her breasts swung with momentum and direction equal to the twist of her body. Her elbows remained bowed, with her hands crossed behind her head, giving him an unobstructed view of her chest. Her legs were totally bare, resting atop the bed's sheets.

Her face was already a bit red from the exertion of doing this for so long and only became redder as the commander walked in and spotted her. "Commander. Please wait outside while we discuss the situation," she half suggested, half-pleaded.

"Understood," the young man answered, although he only half-complied. He couldn't quite tear his eyes away from the sight, so he ended up standing half-turned in the doorway, watching occasionally out of the corner of one eye. "What's your status? Did the check-up turn anything up?"

"Unfortunately not. Right now, both Mary and Pepper are stumped. Mary asked me if there was someone I'm trying to impress, but..." the Nikke muttered, turning her eyes towards the window as though something very interesting was flying by that made her unable to look at the commander. "There isn't anyone like that. Instead, it's as though I'm powerless to stop these motions, unless I can set my mind on doing something else with my body. For instance, if I show you a salute," she paused to stand up and do so, "I can control my motor functions. Likewise if I jog in place."

Even her jogging in place was an eye-popping sight, as her bosom bounced up and down in the thin leotard. At some point, she probably meant to stop, but going idle just told her body "keep exercising," so the motion persisted. "I apologize. I'm going to be no use to Counters in this state. Mary and Pepper both left to try contacting Ingrid, to see if she can send an engineer who can examine me from a different perspective."

"Wow... They're getting the CEO involved," the commander mused. That wasn't good. If things went that far up the chain and no answer was found, he'd become the subject of investigation quickly.

"I'm sure she'll send someone. My malfunction is certain to be treated as a high priority."

It may have sounded as though Rapi was saying the Elysion CEO cared for her individual soldiers, but the commander knew it was more like Ingrid couldn't stand to her that one of her Nikkes was acting in a way that would embarrass the company. Ingrid was nothing if not intensely prideful of Elysion's manufacturing. If Suien, the bratty Missilis CEO, caught wind that one of Ingrid's prized soldiers was disobeying orders and unable to control her own body, one could only imagine the field day she'd have with it.

"I'd better find Mary and Pepper quickly. Hang in there, Rapi," the commander finished, returning a salute of his own.

"This is no trouble for me. I apologize once again that I can't be of help to you right now," Rapi responded, although it had to be at least a little troublesome. Still, thanks to her enhanced endurance, she was barely even breathing heavily. Who knows what would have happened to a regular human by this point?

---

"Commander! How rare of you to visit the clinic without me calling you here for a checkup," the so-called "White Angel" of the clinic greeted the commander. Mary's serene smile and motherly attention to patients had earned her that title, but that facade tended to fade away after people got a load of her physical examination techniques and over-enthusiastic medical injections. She was always pleasant to look at, with her hair in a neat black braid, her blue sweater-dress covered hugging her bosom and buttocks both quite snugly, and her long legs ending in white slip-ons, but she could also handle a shotgun on the battlefield like any other Nikke. Right now, she was sitting in the hospital's communication room, seated nearby the phone.

"If you ever do come by, it's because someone dragged you here half-dead! I hope you're not injured!" Pepper followed up, moving from where she was standing near the door-way to do a visual inspection over the commander. "Wow... It looks like he hasn't been shot, burned, or stabbed anywhere!" Mary's assistant was a younger-looking Nikke with vibrantly pink hair worn in a cute side ponytail under a large set of white headphones. Her sweater-vest matched Mary's, although it was just a bit less filled out, as did her gloves and slip-on shoes. This doctor was popular all throughout the clinic for her boundless cheer and optimism, though she seemed plenty capable of scolding the commander if he let himself get in danger. Plus, like Mary, she was quite a hand with a shotgun.

"That's amazing! Could it be... are you here for your yearly physical? I must be dreaming!" Mary giggled.

"And I thought I was supposed to be the optimist!" Pepper laughed along with her jokingly.

The commander frowned, sensing that the two were probably acting jovial to downplay their concerns about Rapi. Rather than call them out on that, since he understood it was in his own interest, he addressed the subject he needed answered ASAP: "I spoke to Rapi. She says you two are about to contact Ingrid. I need you to hold off on that for now."

"Why?" Mary questioned, frowning with a sudden, stern expression.

"... I'd rather have someone I know take a look at Rapi. You know how the CEOs get when it comes to malfunctions. Sometimes it's memory wipe first, ask questions later," he explained, coming up with a good excuse.

"... You may have a point," Mary admitted. "But the clinic doesn't have anyone on staff who can figure out what's wrong with her. And you have to admit: there is something wrong. I tried not to worry her, but it's very clear that the girl isn't in control of her own body. Speaking truthfully, it reminded me of corruption."

The commander winced and grit his teeth. Corruption was the worst plague on Nikke-kind: a sort of disease with a dark origin, one that causes Nikkes to move out onto the surface and surrender themselves to the Raptures with no control over their own body or their will. Mary had the wrong idea: this wasn't a case of corruption. The fact that she thought it might be showed him how dangerous this lie of his was becoming. "Don't worry, Mary. I'll get Exia to take a look. That seems like a good place to start."

"Okay. I'll trust your judgment. But in the mean time..."

The commander began to feel an ominous shift in the air, as Pepper moved from where she was standing to now guard the doorway, waiting in close proximity behind him. He could hear her give a sinister giggle.

Mary's smile widened, looking just as foreboding. A dark shadow fell over her eyes, which were squeezed shut to accompany her otherwise pleasant expression. "You've been exposed to contact with Rapi for a long time, Commander. I think it's only proper that you get a physical examination yourself."

There was one thing the commander feared even more than the surface or the raptures that waited there: having to submit to one of Mary's physical examinations. Suddenly, all of the worries about his lie, about the app, about Lilith, about Rapi's plight, about spies or corporations or whatever else, seemed to dissolve away, as his survival instinct kicked in and warned him that he had to do something to get out of the upcoming medical checkup.

"The app!" he suddenly remembered. Instead of responding to Mary, he looked down at his phone. By this point, he'd generated a total five gems. Just using those against Pepper to get out the door or Mary to change her commands wouldn't be enough: he needed to somehow lock-down both of the two doctors so that he could be 100% sure he managed to escape this room without being turned into a human pincushion by their various needles full of vaccines and serums.

Thankfully, the other two were in no hurry, seeming to think they had him right where they wanted him. "Come now, commander. It's rude to play on your phone while two young ladies are speaking to you," Mary laughed, standing up from her chair and crossing her arms.

The commander held his tongue, trying hard not to point out the apparent age gap between Pepper, who did appear to be a young lady, somewhere between 18 and 20 years of age, and Mary, whose appearance indicated she was modeled to look as though she was in her thirties. It turned out to be surprisingly difficult to figure out how to allocate 5 gems to neutralize the threat of both Nikkes. A simple one cost modification generally wasn't enough. Three gems was more effective, but he was one gem short of allocating those two both of them.

Finally, he came to an answer, but it wasn't ideal for one reason: it crossed a line he wasn't entirely sure was okay to cross.

The sight of Mary rooting eagerly through a surgical tray full of long, pointed needles caused him to shiver and make the decision:

Any time Mary would perform a medical procedure, she will instead perform sexual foreplay.

Pepper will always follow Mary's directions without questioning them.

Could this work? With this combination of modifications, it ought to be impossible for Mary to stick him with anything dangerous and hopefully, Pepper wouldn't protest to whatever bizarre task Mary assigned her to during the course of the exam. There was a lot of potential in this sort of scenario, in terms of "harvesting sexual energy," but he didn't intend to take advantage of the two of them any longer than was necessary. Once they had their backs turned, he'd slip out of the communication room and escape the clinic.

Or so he thought.

"Pepper! Please prep the patient," Mary instructed her protege, gently pushing the commander down into a low-backed chair by pushing down on his shoulders as she spoke.

"Yes, Sensei!" Pepper answered, then paused, pressing one finger to her lip. "Um, what is the preparation procedure for an examination, exactly? We almost never get the commander to sit down for one of these."

"The first step is to restrain his wrists to the chair. This chair doesn't have arms, so I'd recommend tying them to the back slats. You should be able to find some extra thick gauze in the bottom drawer their that will work perfectly!"

... "Wait a second," the commander responded, trying to wriggle out of the chair before Pepper could initiate the prep. This situation suddenly looked a lot bleaker than he anticipated. If the girls tied him to a chair, there was no way he could give them the slip during the middle of this. Unfortunately, Mary didn't seem to be listening to his protests. Her surprisingly strong grip kept the young man rooted in his spot, regardless of his attempts to writhe free.

"Be patient, Commander! We'll have you wrapped up nice and tight in a moment. This is for your own safety!" the doctor cooed, as Pepper began to bind his wrists to the back columns of the low chair. "Now, move on to the next step of the prep, please."

"Uuum... What's the next step?" Pepper questioned, bonking herself on the head with one fist as she seemingly forgot another crucial step of the completely unfamiliar procedure.

"Please pull down the patient's trousers, Pepper."

The commander stared, dumbfounded, as the cute doctor's assistant complied, circling around to the front and grabbing hold of the upper hem of his slacks to begin fiddling with the zipper. "Wait, Pepper! Don't do that!" the commander urged her, but his protests fell on deaf ears, as she continued by undoing his belt and beginning to shake his pants off, past his plain boxer shorts and down past his knees.

"He he! You always make such a fuss, Commander! It's so funny that you're okay around all those scary Outer Rim Nikke and even the Raptures, but you can't handle a routine medical checkup!" Pepper teased him, grinning up from her place kneeling on the floor between his legs.

There was nothing routine about this checkup! That point only further solidified itself as Mary nodded approvingly and continued her instructions. "We only want to make sure you're healthy, Commander! And to that end, we have to continue the checkup. You understand, right?" she questioned with a sweet smile that didn't match her actions. "Now, Pepper, please expose the patient's penis."

The commander clenched his teeth as Pepper brazenly grabbed the hem of his boxer shorts and lowered them slightly, allowing his dick and balls to flop out over the top. He was more than just a bit erect already at all the attention they were giving him. "Oh wow! You know... With all the checkups we've given the commander, I don't think I've ever seen this before," she mused, flushing slightly at the sight of the twitching shaft in front of her. "It's kind of--"

"Cute," Mary chuckled, pressing one hand to the side of her face and grinning.

"... Big," Pepper finished, lowering her eyebrows slightly. "You really think it's cute?"

"Hm hm hm. It's all a matter of perspective, I suppose. These things can be cute regardless of their size," Mary explained. "At any rate, at a glance, it appears to be in fine health!"

"So I'm free to go?" the commander questioned with a hopeful voice, wondering privately how much of this they'd remember once all of the app testing was over. It was going to be awkward if he had to share this memory with them.

"Now now, I said 'at a glance,' didn't I? We'd have to turn our medical degrees over if all we did was give you a visual inspection! There are other still further tests to run through," the head doctor chuckled. "Assistant, I want you to wrap your fingers around the base of the patient's shaft and gently stroke. Please monitor his heartbeat." She raised one finger, then took a seat across from the doctor in a similarly shaped chair to his own. "This may feel a bit uncomfortable at first, but trust me, it will feel really good in just a moment!"

"I don't doubt that, but-"

"-But you're still nervous?" she questioned, a pleasant grin spreading onto lips. "Don't worry." She placed her hands on her knees and scooted her chair forward, then reached across to place her gloves upon his shoulders and bring his face closer to hers. Her ordinarily smiling eyes opened slightly, sparkling with intent. "Since you're being such a good patient, I'll give you a special treat that will make you forget all about that nasty handjob. He he he... I've never seen a man your age so scared of handjobs!"

The commander opened his mouth to tell her that, strictly speaking, it's not like he didn't want a handjob, but before he could get the words out, the woman brought his face closer so that the two were on the edges of their respective seats and their lips were locked. Her eyes remained opened slightly, sparkling blue-purple staring into his own almost unblinking, as her surprisingly experienced tongue wrapped around his. The hot, wet movements of her tongue were almost guiding the exploration of his own, as though to let him find every corner of her mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling like it was improper to look, but every time he opened them, he found the clinic's head doctor watching him intently.

As arousing as this would be on its own, he was being double-teamed, with Pepper lightly stroking his cock from below while cradling his ballsack with her other hand. Her technique was totally opposite to Mary's. Where Mary was leading the action, taking the commander at exactly the speed he needed to be going, Pepper was tentative, gentle, and hesitant, afraid to damage what she was working with by tugging it too hard or to make her patient uncomfortable by touching the wrong way. "What do you think, Pepper? Is the patient in good health?" Mary asked in a sloppy voice, speaking around a mouthful of tongue.

"He seems... really healthy. It's getting even bigger," Pepper spoke in awe, as the penis twitched and throbbed in her hand. "It's so warm..."

"That's very good. Just a bit longer now," she responded, pulling her face away with a string of saliva hanging from her lips. Her grin lit up once more as her eyes squeezed back into their usual smile. "You're almost done, Commander! How are you feeling?"

"Like I'm almost done," the commander spoke through clenched teeth, trying as hard as he could not to release his load. His dick was aching now, despite Pepper's attempts to be gentle, and he felt like he could explode all over her pretty, unsuspecting face at any moment. Truth be told, though... if this is what all of their medical checkups entailed, he might find himself coming to the clinic a lot more regularly. This beat a bunch of shots any day.

"Such a good patient! Now, move aside, Pepper. You'll need to watch this next part. If you can memorize this technique, you can do it yourself the next time the commander comes through for a checkup," she instructed her protege, who moved aside with a nod. Mary placed her hands gently upon the commander's upper thighs, rubbing them softly, and got down onto her knees between his legs. She brushed her hair away from her face. "It's so good to give you a full examination for once. I don't think we've ever gotten to the taste test before."

"Most examinations don't involve a taste test," the commander grunted, trying to shift in his chair to stop Mary from doing what he knew she was about to do. Instead, he just ended up slapping her across the cheeks with his erect shaft a few times, leaving a bit of precum on her pristine, white skin.

"Oh, Commander! Now you're being frisky. I'm still a professional, you know?" she laughed. "Though, I'm pleased you're excited. That will make this last part easier. Aaaaahn~" she mewed, opening up her mouth much wider than the commander ever remembered seeing her open it before. The ordinarily mature, reserved, angelic doctor made a lewd face as her lips extended over the head of his penis, before taking the length of it into her throat. He heard her giggle a bit, then making a noisy sucking sound as she dragged her head backward, coating his shaft in her saliva. Her head began to work back and forth, servicing him, while her eyes remained tightly shut.

"Fuck," the commander couldn't help but groan, as the clinic's White Angel gave him a noisy, sloppy blow-job in full-view of her protege.

Pepper, for her part, watched with both hands over her mouth in surprise. Without awareness on, she probably couldn't fully grasp what she ought to be feeling at this moment, but the passion of it all was impossible to ignore. "I say this all the time, but you're really committed to your patients, Sensei! That's why you're the best!"

Mary may have attempted to giggle again in response, but there was only so much she could do with her mouth that full of cock. Instead, she continued slobbering on it, moving more enthusiastically now to encourage the commander to finish. He heard her words begin to slip out, muffled, but impossible to mistake: "Cum! Cum! Cuuuum!"

The commander saw now that his only way out of this situation was to follow her orders. Even if he hadn't come to that understanding, however, he'd be powerless to stop himself. Her mouth had turned into a vacuum, displaying an amazing blowjob technique with tenderness and eroticism that he'd never thought the cute and reserved clinic doctor would have been capable of. Moaning out loud, the commander finally exploded in her mouth, bucking his hips as she sucked the semen out of him like a pump.

When he finally finished, breathing heavily with his penis slowly going limp, he felt Pepper untying his hands from behind.

Mary, in front of him, wiped at her mouth and cheeks with a tissue, disposing of as much of the gooey jizz as she could manage to. He still spotted a bit in her hair from the spray when she'd pulled off of him, but she didn't seem to notice, as she brushed aside her bangs and grinned. "What a healthy specimen you are, Commander! You've got virility to spare, don't you? I guess I'm not surprised, with how popular you seem to be with the girls, he he he..." she teased him. "I hope you'll consider coming by for a checkup more often, now that we've finally managed to show you there's nothing to be afraid of. You could be popular here at the clinic, too~"

"... I... I'll think about it," the commander grunted, rolling his head back as Mary helped Pepper to clean up the rest of his cum with spare tissues and they each gently wiped around his penis. Once they were finished, they put his pants back in place. If it wasn't for the lingering semen in Mary's hair, it would be hard to tell anything had happened here. On that note, he realized that must mean she'd swallowed all of the cum that was in her mouth, besides the bit that sprayed. "That's crazy..." he admitted to himself. This app was powerful... too powerful!

"Don't worry about what we talked about earlier. We'll leave Rapi to your care. I'll leave Ingrid out of it unless you instruct me otherwise," Mary reassured him. "Pepper and I have other patients to attend to, but feel free to send me a message over BlahBlah if you need us to take another look at her."

"Thank you both," the commander responded, feeling ridiculous switching back to business like this. "Wait... other patients to take care of. How?"

"Hm? What do you mean 'how?'"

"They're just routine care patients. Don't worry: I'll use the methods I learned from Mary here to give them all a proper checkup! You can count on me!" Pepper pitched in, giving a wink and a thumbs-up.

"... Oh no," the commander groaned, slapping his forehead with his hand as he quickly worked to redress himself. As soon as he'd gotten his pants on, the commander grabbed his phone and began to thumb through it, desperately searching the Custom Girls app for a way to disable the modifications he'd turned on. He couldn't let Pepper go around the whole hospital, giving blowjobs to every patient. "Okay... Listen..."

"Commander? You look nervous," Mary spoke quietly, suddenly growing serious.

"There's a chance that whatever infected Rapi has infected you as well. I don't think you should see any other patients right now. In fact, I'd like you both to quarantine inside this room," he requested. "I know that's likely to disrupt your schedule, but trust me, it's safer for your patients as well."

"Oh dear! Is it really something so terrible?" Mary questioned, lowering her eyebrows.

"I need you two to trust me. I'm going to get to the bottom of it and find a way to help everyone: both of you, Rapi, and Sugar."

"The Nikke who works at Cafe Sweetie? Is she also infected?" Pepper asked, looking worried. "I don't think she's here at the clinic!"

"... I'll take care of her too," the commander sighed. He wondered what she was getting up to while he wasn't watching her. "But for now, focus on yourselves. Quarantine here. I'll send you a message when it's safe to go back outside."

"Roger!" Pepper complied, giving him a salute. She wasn't officially part of Counters, but they'd been on missions together and it seemed he'd earned her trust.

"Alright. We'll remain isolated here until you give us the go-ahead and delegate our tasks to other staff using BlahBlah," Mary agreed. "In return, I want you to explain to us exactly what's happening when we next meet."

"... Sure," the commander lied, not knowing whether he could really keep that promise or not. Whatever the case, the Nikke finally allowed him to leave, back into the hospital. One thing was for sure: this app was too powerful, both in terms of its ability to control and alter Nikke's behaviors and in terms of the sort of power it gave Lilith. Imagining what malcontents could do if they got a hold of this technology...

... It turned out that question was especially relevant, as the commander spotted someone darting away as soon as he left the communications room. Whoever the cloaked figure was, they went straight to the stairwell and leaped down to the second floor, which gave the impression they were probably another Nikke. Without knowing who it was, he couldn't use the app to turn on any kind of stopping mechanism. "Dammit! A spy," he cursed out loud. Things were about to get a whole lot more complicated.

To deal with a threat like this, he'd need the help of someone with a wide network and a lot of authority, who could stop the spy before they managed to go underground. Luckily, he'd made such connections during the course of his work.