Harem Hero

Bulma, Batgirl, Belfast and Android 21

It put you on edge, but somehow everyone managed to get away without being collared by the police. Every explosive monitoring device was recovered and stored safely in a blast-proof chamber that Lala had built in the laboratory. Mitsuru and Rias had tried to engineer a situation where they could summon Asia and cover up some injuries she had received, but both her and Rias were too honest with you to keep it under wraps. You understand that Mitsuru thought you wouldn't be able to come help in time, but you asked that she call you regardless next time just in case.

Aside from that, Mitsuru was so eager to begin reverse engineering the components taken from the bombs that you had to remind her to sleep every now and again. They're small and low-power, but the simple system used to transmit the data did include a CPU system unlike anything you can find on earth. These are computing units that surpass even the fastest of NASA supercomputers, capable of sorting and threading an immense load without breaking a sweat. Mitsuru quickly reached the conclusion that building the machining necessary to produce your own will take a lot more than just toy money. Rather – it will be completely impossible.

With many reserved for parts, the few that remained were for the sole purpose of cracking open and trying to figure out how they worked. Unfortunately, even the combined intelligence of Lala and Mitsuru wasn't enough to solve that particular puzzle. A week after the bombs were defused and they've made almost no progress. Even Lala thinks that they're far beyond the technology level of her own intergalactic empire, which really boggles the mind.

On the seventh day you open the door and walk in to find Mitsuru sprawled out flat on the floor with a despondent emptiness to her gaze. A clearer sign than any that she has been completely and utterly stumped by her current project. When things don't go Mitsuru's way, she tends to get like this and loses a lot of her motivation.

You look around the lab for the pink-haired terror, "Where's Lala?"

"I sent her home yesterday."

You sigh and hoist a selection of groceries up onto one of the empty tables. The CPU has been disassembled to some extent, but it's slow and painful going lest she break something important.

"Any news on cracking this thing?"

"No."

"You have to have something."

Mitsuru rolls over and climbs back up onto her feet, listlessly poking through your shopping and picking out something to eat. "We understand the requirements for plugging one of these into our own systems. We'll need an immense cooling solution, lots of memory, and a power supply that I'll have to order custom, but it should be possible."

"Isn't that the big thing?"

"We were lucky that these bombs also included a miniature motherboard. Otherwise, none of that would be tenable. In terms of discoveries made by us that require any actual thinking, no – we have nothing. Having them will make simulations and calculations lightning fast, but understanding them would be even better."

"How fast are we talking?"

Mitsuru calculates an estimate in her mind, "Presume you ask me to find you three girls who match our requirements. Polyamorous, willing to help, in love with a fictional version of you. Each one of those choices multiplies the amount of time needed to locate a suitable universe to pull them from, and there may be more factors depending on the person in question. The current system is always working. I have a hard-coded list of all of your favourite things, and it repeatedly scrubs the multiverse for ones that match. From input to pull, it takes around three months at max."

"Three months? That means you were working on this long before you told me about it."

"I wasn't sure it would work. Anyway, once I have a suitable universe it's stored for later reuse. Saves us time and computing power, and makes connecting with other girls easier. With this new CPU, we could hypothetically cut that time from three months to a few days."