All life through, must I go on pretending?

Sadly, in spite of Sylvia’s pleas, Amelia remained steadfast.

“It is not necessary to upgrade one of my transformations,” she said bluntly.

Sylvia had tried everything. Pleas. Cajoling. Justifications.

Nothing worked.

She’d even tried leveraging legitimate concerns about the exploitation of transformations, explaining that if she upgraded Frigid, it might make it so that someone like Rose wouldn’t be able to exploit it anymore; transformation upgrades were beneficial, for the most part!

…That last one might have been more persuasive if Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin had not just received a transformation upgrade that increased the amount of sensitivity she would get from putting things in her mouth.

There was only one option Sylvia had left on the table now, since threats were out of the question.

“What about accepting some Bonus Points in exchange for an upgrade?” She asked hopefully.

Bribery. Maybe bribery could work? Amelia didn’t exactly have an alternative source of revenue like some of the women on the season, and she wasn’t likely to rank very highly in the character popularity rankings, either. This may have been an act of desperation on Sylvia’s part, but she figured there was a pretty decent chance of it working out.

“What would I spend BP on?” Amelia bluntly replied, and realization dawned on Sylvia that Bonus Points tended to be more beneficial for people who actually wanted to compete in the show and get closer to the master.

Yeah, that wasn’t Amelia.

“Well… you could always buy a prophetic dream!” Sylvia pointed out. “Something to give you a leg up in the next challenge?”

Amelia raised her eyebrow. “That only costs 2000 BP,” she reminded the former host. “That is within what I can afford, if I were so inclined.” Frankly, even after looking at the descriptions of everything for sale, Amelia didn’t see much value in purchasing the prophetic dream. Even with foreknowledge, it was very likely that the nature of the challenge could end up being something that she would find objectionable to begin with; if it was a challenge like “Who Can Perform the Sexiest Striptease for Nick” then all the foreknowledge in the world wouldn’t get her a winning score.

So again, Sylvia’s arguments remained unpersuasive.

It didn’t help either that Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin was standing on the sidelines listening in on the conversation, while rocking back and forth on her heels and tapping her fingers against her lips.

Sylvia needed something, some way to convince Amelia to get an upgrade…

“Yo, how’s it hanging, ladies?” Gina sauntered into the lounge, dressed rather lightly, a loose shirt hanging off her curvy figure and a pair of loose pants around her hips. Her hair was a mess (not that unusual) and she looked like she’d just woken up for the day.

It was dinnertime, so that was a little strange. Amelia noted her appearance with a raised eyebrow, but Gina didn’t seem to mind.

Her sly grin and half-asleep appearance seemed to carry an air of relaxation with it.

“Oh, Gina, hey!” Sylvia brightened when she saw her former roommate. “You didn’t just wake up, did you?”

“Nah, ‘course not,” Gina said, shaking her head. “Just went down for a little cat nap.” She held her finger to her lips and winked. “Don’t tell Dawn…”

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin held her hand over her mouth and silently snickered, earning her a nod of approval from the bottle brunette.

Gina turned to Amelia, and rubbed the crust out of her eyes. “Oh, uh… hey,” she said awkwardly. She glanced down at her sloppy clothes. “Sorry, um…”

She looked sheepish for a second- a rare feature for Gina DeAmico. Amelia looked at her with a note of concern on her face, which just made Gina’s awkward blush deepen.

“So, uh… about… about my clothes, I usually dress nicer than this,” Gina partially lied. She tugged at the loose collar. “I, um… Actually, I did my laundry today.”

Her voice turned up hopefully and she leaned forward slightly, looking at Amelia. Amelia just stared blankly back at her.

If Gina was expecting Amelia to praise her for doing the absolute bare minimum of self-maintenance in cleaning her own clothes, she would be waiting for a very long time.

Apparently Gina realized that herself, and quickly pushed past the awkward tension hanging in the air. “Um, well, anyway, I’ll be going to, uh, check on that right now…”

Amelia nodded. “Excellent. Please continue to take care of yourself.”

That was enough for Gina to perk up, and a small smile touched her lips. She headed towards the Laundry Room, only to be intercepted by a certain former host.

“Wait, hold up a sec!” Sylvia jumped in front of Gina and flung out her arms like a lineman on the football field.

Gina paused, curious and also a little incredulous as she looked at Sylvia and wondered what the other woman wanted. “Yeah?” She scratched her tangled hair. “What’s up?”

“I need your help.” Sylvia’s eyes flickered to Amelia for a fraction of a second, and Gina frowned. While she was amenable to lending Sylvia a hand if the other girl needed something, she had to refrain if that “something” involved Nick’s stepmother.

Her relationship with Amelia wasn’t exactly contentious (which was more than could be said for most authority figures in her life, including her own mother) but given how much she’d changed in the years since Amelia had been a part of Gina’s life, it just made her feel really awkward and uncomfortable to spend too much time around her.

She wasn’t that little girl in blonde pigtails and frilly pink dresses anymore, and whenever she felt Amelia’s eyes on her, it always felt like that was who the older woman was expecting to see. Which just made her feel out of place.

At least she didn’t have to worry about Amelia using the riding crop anymore, not after the conversation they’d had about it.

“Look, uh…” Gina’s eyes flickered over to Amelia just like Sylvia’s did, and she tried to hide her discomfort behind a smile. “Sylvia, um… Amelia’s already doing me a huge favor by letting me have some of her date day to hang out with Nick, just the two of us… trying to get more out of her, I don’t know about-”

“No, it’s nothing like that,” Sylvia interrupted her, shaking her head.

Gina blinked, and perked up slightly. “…Oh. It’s not? Well… okay then, what do you want?” She was a little more open to the idea now, especially since her curiosity had been piqued. Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin, Amelia, and Sylvia were an odd combination, and she had to admit- she wanted to know what the story was here.

“I’ve been trying to convince Amelia to upgrade one of her transformations!” Sylvia explained excitedly, and Gina immediately realized how much of a shitshow this was going to be.

In her relatively short life, Gina had made a lot of mistakes. Really bad mistakes that kept her up at night, no matter how hard she tried to pretend that they didn’t bother her.

Point was, she had a lot of experience, and zero intention of making another mistake right here.

“Yeah, well… good luck with that.” Gina moved for the elevator again, and Sylvia intercepted her again. This time, she clasped her hands together tightly in a plea.

“Please help me convince her?” Sylvia’s lip was outright quivering. “Please?” She really wanted to get Amelia on board with this stuff.

“Dude, fuck…” Gina pulled at her hair, irritated by her split ends. It was maybe the only thing she really missed about her first transformation, the one she’d traded away. “It’s not a big deal if she doesn’t get an upgrade, yeah? Just live and let live.”

Gina may have been a burnout but even she understood that not everyone was going to be a part of Nick’s harem. Sylvia may have given Dani a pass, but it had taken practically the whole show to get there- Couldn’t she just accept that some things weren’t going to change? That Amelia wasn’t going to sleep with her own kid?

Evidently, Sylvia refused to get that memo, and Gina was way too wiped to be bothered with getting her to see things that way.

“…Look, she doesn’t want to, so just let it go, ‘kay?” Gina held up her hands. “Would it be cool if Amelia did something daring like that? Totally. But come on, she’s not into that sort of thing. Even if it would be hilarious!”

Yeah, maybe she was a little twisted, imagining the comedy of Amelia trying to put the moves on her stepson. Especially since she had actually seen their relationship grow up close and personal.

Still funny, though.

Sylvia sucked on the inside of her cheek. “But it’s not about her and Daddy doing anything together,” she whined. “It’s about helping her out!”

“Oh?” Gina raised her eyebrow, suddenly a little more open to what the other woman was proposing. “What do you mean?”

“Well, think about it like this,” Sylvia said, overjoyed to finally have an “in” with someone. “Amelia probably doesn’t have a lot of fans right now. She doesn’t want to have a relationship with Daddy, after all! I’d bet she’s right at the bottom of the polls!”

Gina nodded slowly, seeing the logic in that assumption. “Okay, but-”

“And saying she doesn’t want to get an upgrade to her transformation isn’t going to help those numbers,” Sylvia quickly added, shaking her head adamantly. “Just the opposite! It’s going to make fans like her even less!”

“Okay, so you think that if you can convince her to get an upgrade, that’s going to help her with the audience.” Gina could understand that. She looked over at Amelia and shrugged. “Makes sense to me, anyway.”

Amelia gave her a frosty look. “One issue with your logic,” she calmly replied, “is that I have already objected strenuously enough to negatively impact my standing with the audience anyway. Even if I concede now, after having dragged things out to this extent it is unlikely to have any significant impact on my rank.”

And that was just going off the premise that Amelia even cared about her standing in the popularity polls, which wasn’t the case.

Sylvia made a sulky expression, understanding the reality of Amelia’s words.

“Well, yeah, I guess you’re right,” Gina conceded, scratching her cheek. “What I don’t get though Amelia, why’re you so against this? I mean, I got a temporary upgrade myself, and it was really… mmm, yeah…”

A dreamy and slightly sheepish expression crossed Gina’s face as she recalled her own feelings from getting that upgrade. Dang it felt nice.

Amelia’s lips twitched into a frown. Between Sylvia’s pleas, Gina’s justifications, and Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin eagerly piling on with silent nods of agreement, she was being surrounded here.

“It isn’t that I have an issue with it,” Amelia replied. “I simply do not see the purpose in engaging in a transformation upgrade. The only goal I have on this show is to acquire enough Victory Points to be able to live comfortably after this twisted farce concludes. As long as I can make it to the 100 VP goal, the rest doesn’t matter.”

And since she had no intention of getting there through sexual acts with Nick, upgrading her transformations seemed ultimately pointless. Maybe if she had one that presented an obvious benefit for her winning challenges, but after going over her list of transformations she could not see one that stood out in that regard.

So it wasn’t that she objected to Sylvia’s proposal out of some moral crusade. She simply viewed the potential risk as outweighing the negligible benefits.

“Come on, that’s so boring, though!” Gina rolled her eyes and sighed. “Come on, this really means a lot to Sylvia!”

Gina didn’t care one way or another; normally she’d be pushing harder to get the other girls to have some fun, but with Amelia, things were a lot more complicated.

Amelia’s frown deepened. She shook her head. “I have been very patient,” she said, adjusting her glasses. “But that patience has limits. I have given you my answer.”

Sylvia slumped her shoulders and nodded weakly. Yeah, okay. She knew a lost cause when she saw one, no sense in pushing…

“Man… talk about a bad role model,” Gina muttered under her breath.

Amelia’s eye twitched. “…Excuse me?” She glared at the younger woman.

“Hmm? Oh, nothing,” Gina said, shaking her head. “I just remember you were always telling Nick that he had to eat his vegetables back at camp, even though he didn’t want to. Same with me, you were always throwing a fit over it.”

Amelia had not appreciated the finer points of Gina’s argument that cornbread should be counted as a vegetable. It had corn in the name!

“…You’re not serious.” Amelia stared incredulously at Gina, not sure if she completely understood what the other woman was saying.

Gina flashed a toothy smile. “Look, it’s not a big deal, I just think that sometimes a ‘no’ isn’t justified, that’s all! You made us eat our vegetables even though we said no. Because they were good for us! Isn’t this the same thing?”

“Uh…” Sylvia didn’t even know where to start with that terrible reasoning. She stared blankly at Gina, wondering if it was possible for her to shrink down into a little ball and disappear.

Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin was practically rolling on the ground in a fit of silent laughter, herself.

“…Upgrading a transformation cannot be compared with eating healthy food,” Amelia said, shaking her head slowly.

Gina shrugged. “If you say so. Sounds like splitting hairs to me. They’re both good for you, even if you don’t like ‘em, right?”

“I mean, kindaaaa?” Sylvia thought that transformations were a good thing, but even then her rationale had limits.

Besides, she was pretty sure Gina wasn’t serious, just going by the gleeful expression on her face. Nah, the punk girl was basically just messing around at this point she was fairly certain.

The sour look on Amelia’s face seemed to be ratcheting up the temperature in a way Sylvia wasn’t thrilled about either.

“…The two things are incomparable,” Amelia said bluntly. “You know better.”

The smile finally left Gina’s face. “…Yeah, I guess,” she conceded with a nod. “Look, you’re right, okay? You don’t NEED to upgrade your transformation, and clearly you aren’t gonna be swayed by our begging, right?”

Amelia shook her head. Certainly not!

“Well… then can’t you just do it as a favor to me, then?” Gina asked. She glanced over at Sylvia. “Sylvia here… she’s really been a lot of help, if you can believe it. And you have, too. Both of you, you’ve helped me grow a lot, so… I really want to do something to help you back.”

She gave Amelia a pleading look of her own. “I know you don’t see the benefit, Amelia, but I think it could really help. I could try to explain, but I doubt it would go over with you… so could you just do it as a favor to me?”

Sylvia was surprised by the sincerity in Gina’s voice. Even Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin had stopped laughing, and she looked curiously between the punk girl and the immovable obstacle of Amelia.

Then Amelia let out a sigh, and did the unthinkable.

“…Very well,” the older woman conceded, looking like she’d rather die than go along with this crazy scheme, but resigned to it nonetheless. “If it means that much to you… then I’ll do it.”

Sylvia had gone about this all wrong. She’d been trying to appeal to Amelia’s rationality, and tried to make transformations look like a reasonable and logical outcome. That was an understandable move on her part, given Amelia’s personality.

But Gina knew better. She knew how unshakable Amelia could be if she was certain that she was correct.

The only way to get her to change her mind at that point was through an emotional appeal- and that was exactly what she did.

Sylvia had tried similarly, but as good as she may have been at cajoling, and as much as Amelia seemed to like her, there was something Gina had that she didn’t.

Gina was Amelia’s child. …Well, sort of. Thanks to her transformation, anyway.

Back when they were little kids, Nick was a bit of a rebel. (Well, Dakota was the rebel and Nick was mainly following along with her whims.) Gina had seen it dozens of times- Amelia would lay down the law, and Nick would try to get around it. Usually unsuccessfully.

The few times when he had managed to get through, though, and worm his way through the chinks in Amelia’s armor?

Begging with all his might.

It wasn’t a foolproof plan, of course. In fact, it usually didn’t work. No amount of begging or “If you really loved me you’d let me do it” would convince Amelia that riding his bike over the monkey bars was a good idea, of course. (They weren’t even that far apart, anyway!)

But Amelia’s feelings when it came to transformation upgrades were more ambivalence than staunch opposition. She didn’t seem to care one way or the other, and saw more negatives than positives, so she said no out of convenience.

Gina just had to give her a good enough reason to say yes. Just enough to tip the scales.

“You mean it!?” Sylvia overflowed with excitement. “You’ll let me upgrade one of your transformations!?”

“Oh yeah, THAT’S what I’m talking about!” Gina made a triumphant fist. “Talk about ‘cool mom’ time! …Hey, can I call you that? ‘Cool Mom’?”

“No.” The iciness in Amelia’s voice was enough to freeze the room solid.

“…O-okay…” Gina shrank away, an awkward smile on her lips. She may have pushed her luck a little too far.

Sylvia couldn’t care less about epithets though. She was too enraptured by her fantasy.

Also, lost in the sway of finding the perfect transformation! Amelia had so many of them, and they all seemed like a ton of fun! She just had to make sure she picked one that wouldn’t backfire, which could be a little difficult…

“Frigid is definitely a good choice, ooh, and then there’s Maternal Instinct! I wonder how that would work… …Hey, do you think upgrading Private Lessons would do anything this late in the round? Or how about-”

“Excuse me,” Amelia cleared her throat slightly. “Before we proceed, aren’t you ladies forgetting something?”

Gina and Sylvia glanced at each other, confused. Augmented Synthetic Humanoid Assassin raised a curious eyebrow.

Amelia crossed her arms over her chest, not amused. “…Your laundry?” She wasn’t about to let Gina get distracted from her responsibilities so easily.

Gina turned red. “Oh… r-right… yeah.”

Quick detour. THEN upgrade time!