Where is the dream we started?

“Come oooooooooonnnn Amelia, don’t give up!” Sylvia whined, stomping after the older woman. “We should be sticking together right now! Come on, you know that this is the smart move, you know it! Experimenting with your upgrades can only be a good thing!”

Amelia held back her sigh. “Except when it is not,” she replied to the clingy girl, shooting Sylvia a sharp look over her shoulder. She turned around and faced the girl directly, not about to let her squirm away so easily.

“What, the sex with Daddy part? Come on, that was just a joke!” Sylvia wailed. “We both know that’s not really something I’d be rooting for!”

Amelia stared at her, her expression frosty. “…Of course,” she said dully, not believing Sylvia for an instant.

“But… um…” Sylvia was running out of ideas. Because, technically speaking, Amelia was correct, there was no real need for her to upgrade her transformations. Learning more about them to keep someone like Rose from exploiting them in the future was one thing, but if Amelia had no intention of upgrading her transformations in the first place, experimenting with them beforehand would serve practically no purpose whatsoever.

What a conundrum! Sylvia was in a bit of a bind here.

“Well… what about this, then?” She flashed upon a new idea that she hoped would sway Amelia’s feelings. With a gleam in her eye she leaned forward, and Amelia felt a distinct sense of worry brew in her chest.

“…What?” She asked hesitantly, narrowing her eyes.

“Sometimes a transformation upgrade can be so good, it can actually help you win challenges!” Sylvia pointed out. “Considering you’re averse to sexual interactions with Daddy, don’t you think it would be for the best if you gave it a chance?”

Amelia could see the logic in what Sylvia was saying.

She still thought it was stupid.

“And how would any of my transformations benefit me in a challenge if I upgrade them?” Amelia demanded. In her fierce interrogation, her usual difficulty in expressing herself was practically non-existent, something Sylvia took note of.

The former host figured it probably wasn’t worth bringing that up, though.

“Well… you never know!” Sylvia said, like that was an answer Amelia would accept.

Amelia pushed her glasses up her nose and gave Sylvia an excoriating stare.

“…Okay, well, what I mean is, like, it depends on the challenges and everything, right?” Sylvia tried instead, hastily attempting to convince Amelia the only way she knew how. “For example, not every challenge is a physical competition like the last one was!”

Amelia blinked. Her demeanor visibly shifted as she leaned in slightly, intrigued by what Sylvia was pointing out. The logic was quite sound, she had to admit. Amelia did not assume that every challenge would be like the previous rounds’, but she hadn’t spent much time thinking about what the challenge could actually be.

…Dealing with Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin had consumed a significant amount of her brainpower this week.

Sylvia, seeing that she had Amelia on the hook, chose to keep pushing her luck ever so slightly.

“Think about it like this,” she continued, smiling. “I used to run this show! So I know aaaaaaallll about the kinds of challenges you might be encountering, right?”

Amelia pinched her lips into a tight expression. “And you mean to barter this knowledge in exchange for accepting your absurd proposal to upgrade one of my transformations? That is extortion.” It wasn’t technically, but as much as Amelia valued precision in language, sometimes a bit of hyperbole was necessary to move things along.

Sylvia paled. The hostility in the other woman’s voice was a bit of a surprise. She hadn’t anticipated that sort of response. She hastily shook her head. “N-no, you’ve got it all wrong!” She said quickly. “That’s not at all what I-! …Okay, um, maybe just a teeny bit, but like… it’s a win-win, don’t you think? We both benefit! Or, well, you’d be getting all the benefits really, I’m just trying to help!”

“There are other contestants who have been taking part in these challenges far longer than I have,” Amelia pointed out. “I am quite certain that Dawn would be eager to tell me whatever it is I wish to know, for example.”

Sylvia twisted her expression into a wide “O” and made a sulky face.

“…That kinda defeats the point, though…” she mumbled. “…Look, forget about the whole ‘deal’ thing! Most challenges are super-duper sexy, and not every one puts you in direct conflict with the other contestants!” She informed Amelia free of charge, trying to win back some good will with the other woman. “Sometimes it might just be you doing something on your own, like when I hosted a cooking challenge, where everybody cooked a dinner course for Daddy!”

Amelia’s eye twitched. She had not improved her culinary talents as much as she would have liked, in part due to her own pride; while she understood and respected Mary’s superiority in the field, asking a woman ten years her junior, her stepson’s wife, to help her with her cooking…

Seeing Amelia’s expression, Sylvia hastily backtracked. “On the other hand, we can just forget about all that!” She said, waving her hands frantically. “It was just an idea! No need to be so serious about the thing! There probably won’t be another cooking challenge.”

“…Good.”

Did Amelia say that out loud? She needed to do better.

“So um…”

“Sylvia.”

“Y-yes?” Sylvia squeaked, stiffening up straight. Her eyes widened as she looked at the other woman, whose piercing gaze burrowed into her chest.

“This is unnecessary,” Amelia said calmly but firmly. …She had remembered to convey that Sylvia’s attention to this matter was unnecessary but appreciated, right? Of course Sylvia would understand that.

But the young girl’s face told a different story.

“I-I see…” Sylvia shrank back, looking down. “Unnecessary… sorry.” Finally recognizing the futility of her efforts to convince Amelia to upgrade her transformation, Sylvia felt a sudden urge to retreat as far as she could. Because she knew if she stayed here, she would very likely say or do something that would upset the other woman even more, and she desperately wished to avoid doing that.

Amelia could see the dejected panic in her eyes, and realized she’d said something wrong somewhere.

“To be clear,” she added, clearing her throat, “your concern for me is unnecessary, but… I appreciate your interest in this matter.”

“Oh?” Sylvia perked up again, her eyes widening. “You do?”

“…Yes,” Amelia answered after a brief pause, concerned that Sylvia would interpret this as an endorsement of her behavior. “Whatever ulterior motives you may have, they are not motivated by malevolence or selfishness. Your sincerity is understood. You are trying to help me, is that not the case?”

“Yes! Yes! Super-duper yes!” Sylvia nodded rapidly, her eyes shining. “I’m just trying to help! So you can keep competing with everybody, and pull your weight as a member of Daddy’s harem!”

Sure, Sylvia wanted more upgrades to help everyone see how great transformations were, but her motivations were altruistic at heart!

She didn’t see a way Amelia couldn’t be happy if she upgraded all her transformations and ended up smiling and happy with her Daddy. Wasn’t that just the perfect ending for everyone?

The idea that Amelia’s feelings for Nick could be as familial as her feelings for her own child never once crossed Sylvia’s mind. Even as Amelia’s brow crinkled with concern and her mouth twitched, looking for a moment as though she’d made a severe mistake.

“Amelia? So… does that mean you’re open to a transformation upgrade?” Sylvia asked, hoping she wasn’t pushing her luck too much with that.

She absolutely was. Amelia was about to reject her once more, but she never got the chance, because someone came storming down the hall, a person whose presence absolutely demanded the full attention of everyone in sight.

Sylvia’s eyes widened and she jerked her gaze towards the incoming tornado of fury and frustration closing in.

“Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin!?” She gasped in surprise. It was all she managed to say before the unnamed woman grabbed her by the collar and hoisted her into the air, reminding everyone just how strong she was for such a slender woman, and slammed Sylvia up against the wall.

In spite of the rage in her eyes, the assassin showed a surprising amount of deftness in her handling of the other woman. Sylvia should have been reeling from pain getting slammed like that (or the **** barrier would have triggered) but it was barely a thump. Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin had been careful not to actually move her in a way that would cause any injury or pain.

Sylvia would thank her for that as soon as she finished her struggle to not pee herself.

“What is the meaning of this?!” Amelia demanded, a faint trace of anger leaking into her expression. She raised her hand and prepared to summon her riding crop, ready to use it for its intended purpose for once. What moral objections Amelia may have had to thing went out the window the second **** became a factor.

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin tore her eyes off of Sylvia just long enough to shoot a warning glance to her teacher. The look in her eyes was enough to give Amelia pause.

She isn’t just angry, Amelia realized. She’s… is that concern in her eyes?

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin’s furious face was twisted with worry and fear, two emotions that seemed quite out of place on someone who carried herself with such smug self-confidence most of the time.

“Wh-what’s up?” Sylvia breathed out, a shaky smile clinging to her lips as she tried to casually ignore the way she was being held. “…Besides me, I mean.”

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin immediately opened her hands, and Sylvia landed on her feet, uninjured.

The assassin stepped back, still eyeing the other woman down. Apparently, that had just been a very blunt method of getting the former host’s attention.

That didn’t make it an acceptable action on Amelia’s part, though.

“We discussed this,” the teacher said, trying to assert some semblance of control over the suddenly chaotic situation. “It is not acceptable for you to behave with **** towards others.”

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin rolled her eyes and started flapping her hand open and shut, mimicking it with her lips as though she had two mouths. Neither of which said a word, but the effect was clear enough.

Vivian had casually disrespected Amelia many times that way, much to the teacher’s chagrin. But she was quite used to the mute girl’s mockery by this point.

“I am speaking to you,” she said firmly, and the sneer fell from Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin’s lips.

The expression that took its place wasn’t much of an improvement, however. Her expression darkened and she looked at Amelia with complete detachment, a deadpan expression devoid of emotion. It was as though the older woman was being given a peek behind the mockery and the playful teasing, a hidden glance at what Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin hid beneath her mask.

There was an emptiness there that made her wince.

“Did-did I do something?” Sylvia asked worriedly. “Is that why you grabbed me like that?”

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin didn’t give Amelia another thought, turning back to her original quarry and squinting. She tilted her head to the side in a quizzical matter that left Sylvia with even more questions.

“…You… don’t know if I did something? Is that it?” Sylvia tried guessing. It really sucked when Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin wanted something and couldn’t express it clearly enough for her to figure out what it was.

This guessing game only seemed to irritate the assassin, who shook her head.

“Excuse me,” Amelia said, clearing her throat. Both girls turned to look at her, Sylvia with pleading hope and Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin with frustrated impatience.

“…Perhaps this would help?” Amelia held up a pad and paper. While Sylvia just looked more confused, Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin’s eyes widened.

She nodded and snatched the paper and pencil away before Amelia could even give them over.

As the assassin furiously scrawled away, Sylvia leaned forward, intrigued. “Can she actually write now?” She questioned the teacher curiously.

Amelia wasn’t sure how to answer that. In a technical sense, yes, but the assassin hadn’t even reached the level of properly parsing sentences, let alone composing one herself. She was still on whole words. Not even out of kindergarten.

They had a long way to go.

Fortunately, the assassin only felt like using one word this time, and it was one of the first words she’d learned out to spell. She turned to the two of them and held up the pad, showing what she’d written down on it. Three letters nearly filled the entire page.

KIM

“What about Kim?” Sylvia asked worriedly. “Did… did something happen to Kim?”

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin ground her teeth together in an expression of frustration that Sylvia noted immediately.

“Do… do you think I did something to Kim?” Sylvia worried. “Because I didn’t! I haven’t seen Kim all day! If she says I did something-!”

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin flung the pad on the ground in frustration. She twisted her mouth into a silent scream, and that was when Amelia decided to intervene.

“It is not her fault,” she said sharply, chastising the tantruming assassin. The short woman may have been able to tear her limb from limb without breaking a sweat, but it wasn’t like she could do that here.

Without that threat, Amelia had nothing to fear. She looked calmly at the fuming girl, trying to convey as much compassion and consideration as she could.

“You’re still learning how to express yourself,” she said, hoping her words would be taken as the gentle encouragement she meant them to be, instead of criticism. “Let us work this out. Neither of us know what you are trying to ask.”

She hoped that Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin could be reasoned with; she’d dealt with a wide array of moods from the trained killer in her days of teaching her, but never had she encountered this much anger.

It wasn’t a pleasant experience.

But then Amelia saw a shift in the assassin’s demeanor. As if she’d realized something. She grabbed the pad off the ground, and jotted something else down. There wasn’t much room to squeeze onto the side of what she’d already written, but she had just enough space to get there.

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin turned the pad over again and showed her the small correction she’d made to what she previously wrote.

KIM?

That, coupled with the insistent plea in Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin’s bright blue eyes, was just enough context for the two of them.

“You’re asking about Kim…?” Sylvia frowned. If something had happened to set off the assassin like this, it had to be serious. But if she was using a question mark like that, then…

“Has something become of her?” Amelia asked, guessing at the truth. To look so **** and frantic, to confront Sylvia so suddenly, and then to write “KIM?” in such bold letters, then it must be that not even Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin knew for certain what was happening.

Sylvia was quite emotionally perceptive; if she had Amelia’s life experience, she likely would have realized it just as fast. But Sylvia’s experience with taking care of others had been limited to a plant that she could reliably nurture and grow.

She’d never experienced the raw terror of her child going missing in a department store. The slowly burgeoning feeling of hopelessness and fear that welled up inside of a parent as they raced through the aisles frantically calling their child’s name.

Nick had been just fine, of course. He’d walked over to the toy section when Amelia wasn’t looking, and hadn’t even realized that she wasn’t there anymore. But that didn’t alter the reality that that had been one of the scariest moments of Amelia’s life.

“Ah!” Sylvia’s face lit up with realization. “I think I got it! What’s that, my girl, little Kimmy fell into the old well?! Is that it?!”

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin stared blankly at Kim, confusion all over her face.

Amelia sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, sliding her glasses up her face.

“She does not know,” Amelia informed the other girl with a swift shake of her head. “She is looking for Kim because her friend has gone missing and she is worried about her. Is that the case?”

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin’s eyes widened and she jerked her head up and down rapidly. Her combative stance finally relaxed and a silent sigh of relief passed her lips as she finally managed to express herself properly.

If the assassin still held any doubts about the necessity of learning to read and write, they had certainly been extinguished now, Amelia hoped.

“What, that’s it?” Sylvia grumbled, her shoulders sagging. “Why’d you grab me, then? I don’t know where Kim is!”

“You were once the host of this show,” Amelia pointed out. “If anyone would have an idea where you might be, it would be you.” Amelia suspected, as Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin likely did, that Kim’s disappearance wasn’t just because she was off having fun.

Obviously she suspected that it was a ploy by Dakota. And knowing her, the host would be keeping well out of the assassin’s way. It wasn’t like Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin could go around interrogating the faeries, either.

So that left Sylvia as the one person who might know something. While Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin’s relationship with Kim may not have been a parental one, Amelia could still understand the yearning protectiveness from her.

Sylvia understood it too, but she didn’t have to like being the target of it.

“Look, just because I used to be the host, that doesn’t mean I know where Kim is,” Sylvia pouted. “Trust me, she’s fine. Worst thing that happened to her, Dakota probably sent her off somewhere because she thought it would be funny.”

Sylvia remembered her talk with Kim yesterday and how staunchly the other girl had stood up for her in regards to Dakota’s treatment of her. Yeah, that probably went about as well as could be expected, huh? This really isn’t good… maybe she really did do something.

Although Sylvia doubted her creator would go so far as to directly harm one of the contestants (not only would it be bad for ratings and reflect badly on her as a host to have such hostile bias, Nick wouldn’t be okay with that at all) she could be extremely petty.

Still, this was a fight they were better off not picking. Only problem was, Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin was picking it like it was a crumbling scab.

How exactly was Sylvia supposed to handle a situation like this, when she was just a lowly contestant!? What a pain in the ass.