Manufactured for Sin 2 (Clean version)

Chapter 4: Three is a crowd

Greg sat by the fire, sharpening a crude knife as the morning sun rose up and the fog cleared. Izleena groaned and rolled over, perking her messy-hair from under the bear pelt.

"Morning, honey." She smiled, stretching and hugging him from behind as he droned on, honing the edge. "I can't tell if you're on autopilot or just exhausted." She whispered into his ear.

"Sometimes neither can I. It's hard enough being two people, let alone with the stupid dampening field blocking me from being 2 people. It's weird being disconnected from her." He yawned, taking a boiling pot of coffee from the fire and sipping it straight from the iron.

"Yea I get that. Recently I feel like I've been disconnected from both of you."

"Yea but your clones are all the same. Running one Izleena isn't like being half of a Greg/Gizzy combo. I feel like I'm half a person." He admitted.

"We're married Greg, when you two aren't talking to me, I feel like half a person too, no matter how many Izleena's I'm running that day. This whole shitty vacation feels like we took separate ones. You're camping with Gizzy, and I'm just a 3rd wheel, like some useless extra, inferior player." Izleena huffed sadly.

"Leena, I don't tell you everything because it's a lot to handle. If I filled you in on everything going back and forth between me and Gizzy, I'd spend half the day explaining crap and half the day changing the plan because we ran out of time explaining crap. You don't need to know everything and worry that half of me is in a torture dungeon while we're making stew."

"You were in a torture dungeon!?" she yelled. "Oh my gods, are you okay? We have to go right now and break you out!" she said, stammering to her feet, both naked and fumbling over things.

"See? This is exactly what I mean. I took care of it. I spent a few days getting lightly degraded and gathering information. It's fine, I didn't even have to shut down my pain receptors. They torture like amateurs over there."

"Were you afraid?" She asked.

"Nah, I was fine, mostly bored. Food was under-seasoned as hell. I forgot back now all they had was meat and salt. You'd be lucky to get a descent gravy."

"Oh good, well breakfast is ready...it's salted rabbit meat and no gravy. I guess even dungeon attendants cook better then I do." She pouted.

"Well..." He started, slowly chewing the dried out rabbit.

"Oh come on." She said, throwing up her hands and dry-sobbing."

"It's not like you had a lot of options, Leena." He defended.

"Gizzy could have cooked it better, I bet." I'm the worst wife of all time."

"Oh bullshit." Greg defended.

"You say that, but look at me. I can't plan, I can't make weapons or even fight well. I suck at wilderness survival, I can't cook without all my stupid gadgets, and the only thing I was good for was sex and now you don't even wanna do that, probably not as good as Gizzy, hell her new body is probably manufactured for sex.

"Dodged the tagline by a hair." He muttered to himself.

"I just don't understand why you wouldn't prefer Gizzy to me. You spent millions perfecting her body, and she's nothing like me. I know humans get us confused but we're so different. Am I really THAT far off from your idea of perfection?" she yelled, more hurt than angry.

"Good overlord, Leena." Greg huffed. "She isn't the perfect woman, she's just me AS a woman. You were born this way, happy in your own flawless skin. You don't know what it's like to change something like that. Of course I love her, like I love myself, I've put a lot of work into her, learning to be her, to be happy AS her. It's a very personal project, that doesn't change how I feel about you, just how I feel about myself. She's nearly perfect for what I wanna be, not who I wanna be with." He explained.