Prototype Pump Unit with Liens

You found Liens in her workshop, focusing hard on her self-imposed tasks, even at this late hour of the night. The workshop was brightly lit with a series of lanterns, as well as by the titular white sparks, which jumped from the grinding gears and whirring machinery piled on every table. Neither the noise nor the light was preferable for those around the camp trying to sleep, but it couldn't be helped-- the woman seemed to do a lot of her best work after the sun went down. The heavy-set inventor was in the middle of some delicate operation, using a long set of tweezers to manipulate a dull, gold-colored twist of wire inside of one of her machines. Instead of interrupting her, you waited silently, allowing her to finish.

After just a minute more, she closed up the small door on the palm-sized box and began screwing its hatch back into place, twisting the screwdriver in her fingers with amazing speed. When she was all finished, she set the tool aside, lifted her goggles, and wiped at her forehead with the back of one sleeve. “Good. Didn't interrupt. That's a bomb. Explosive. If you surprised me. Or just annoyed me. Boom. Whole workshop. Up in smoke,” she finally spoke, turning with a wide frown upon her face that relayed none of the joy you thought this outcome called for. “Anyway. We'll find a bad guy to throw that at. Later. Hopefully. Want to test it.” Suddenly looking a bit eager, she turned her eyes back to you, her pointed ears twitching. “Wait. If you're here. Enemy? In camp? We can use the bomb-!”

You shook your head wildly, defusing the situation as though it was a bomb itself. You told her that you'd come to deliver her a gift.

All of the excitement faded from her face and it took on its usual sour disposition. “Ugh. No offense but… don't like gifts. Don't like courtship. If you want me to like you just. Don't get me stuff. There. Easy enough?” she grumbled, turning to get back to her work and showing you her back-tied apron strings. “Good? Good.”

You fished out the present from your pack and asked her to take a look before she dismissed it.

The woman sighed deeply, put her goggles back up once again, then turned to look at the package. “What did you get? Roses? Something dumb? Perfume? Something stupid?” Her predictions were a little insulting, but they quickly tapered off to silence as she inspected the prototype you'd handed over to her. You waited quietly, watching and listening for any kind of response, as she stood statue-like in inspection. Her eyebrows raised and she finally turned her eyes upward, staring into your face. “Do you. Uh. Know what this is?”

{if Craftsmanship = True]You were well-versed enough in machinery to know it was some sort of mechanical pump, but you'd never seen anything like it in your own work. You had every reason to believe it was just like Mot told you: a prototype for a potent sort of energy transfer device, to be used in powering machines.{else}You tried to repeat back what the salesman had told you, but all you could remember was the name of it: a prototype pump unit. It had something to do with the weird machines she was always working with. {endif}

“You're half right. It is a prototype pump. Obviously new. Interesting design. Probably expensive? So uh. Thanks?” she responded, frowning with a somewhat vexed look herself. She crossed her arms and closed her eyes. “But you don't quite get it. Not really a 'machine pump.'”

A fake, you asked? Your estimation of that shady salesman was lowering even further. Wasn't his motto “You are never misled?!”

“No. Just. Uh. Different. Not for machines. It's for you. A you-pump. Get it?”

No, you did not.

“Dick pump. Attaches to your dick. This can be used to. Extract. Stuff. From your dick. That's probably its main purpose. Would actually be weird to use it on machines. Dick pump first. Mana pump second.”

You took another look at the seemingly heavy duty pump she'd set on her work table. It seemed pretty dang unwieldy for that purpose. What even was that purpose? Why would you attach it there? It looked like, sure enough, the nozzle was designed to affix around a man's penis, now that you examined it more closely. You'd need to kind of fold the plunger's walls inward, forming a hood around your penis. What you couldn't figure out was why anyone would sell or purchase such a thing…

“It's got two purposes,” Liens continued, seeming relatively unabashed about the whole business as she held up two gloved fingers. “One: make it bigger. Suction. Stimulation. Pulls blood there. Makes it big. Get it? Usually for old men. Not you. Unless you've got a limp dick? I don't know. Don't care,” she sighed, shaking her head. “Two: semen extraction.”

You gulped, taking a look again at the pump.

“If that salesman said I could use this… Wasn't entirely lying. Just being weird about it. Not surprising. Bet he's a creep,” she concluded, picking the pump up off the table once again and turning it to inspect the lever handle. “This might be good. Clearly angel-work. Those guys know what they're doing with tech. If not governance of humans. So it probably works. Works well. And if they sold it to him? For squires to gift to saintesses? Probably works real well.” She paused, biting on the leather of her gloves thumb pensively. “What do you think? Want to try it? If you do, just. I dunno. Whip it out. Stick it in. We'll see how it goes. I do need some of your stuff at some point for experiments. This could be a good way to do it. Right?”

You weren't quite so sure. Geod had asked you to lay with saintesses, or so the church said. The artificial insemination she was always talking about as her goal was already a little off from that objective. Nowhere in any holy text or prophetic vision, however, had a man ever been asked to stick his dick out and have a machine suck him off. She was basically asking to milk you.

This was your last chance to say you weren't cool with it.