Centuries. It had been centuries. Very soon, a millennium. It was a long time even for a dragon. So many years since everything went so horribly wrong...Not for the world, but for Katherine. The world falling apart for everyone else was a few hundred years later. Even so, Katherine clung to the old world she knew and loved, the one she grew up with all those years ago. Despite the world regressing so much she still tried to collect all that she could of her ancient home and its national treasures. She had, even now, still tried to reclaim her collection of family heirlooms that had been lost so long ago as well, but by this point the few that remained missing were a pipe dream rather than anything she realistically could find, and with how radically the world had changed since then, so too had Katherine's search and goals. In her endeavours however, with all that she cared about well hidden away, she eventually came to a place she had believed was the site containing one of the many missing important pieces of work from her great country...
There was much surprise when an intact and highly advanced structure, still with power, was found buried in a hill, but Katherine assumed that maybe it was just some sort of high tech museum that housed the work of art in question. It wasn't, even if it arguably did still house a piece of art. Once she got inside, however, she quickly came across an opaque display case. And so, she did the only natural thing she could in this situation and opened it with a bit of effort. Although what was housed within wasn't some fancy artwork, manuscript or anything of the sort. But someone from an age of safety, pleasure and decadence. An age long passed. A someone she'd be able to make out far more clearly and without mist or...whatever the foggy substance blocking her view was. Fortunately it was dissipating quickly enough.
The first thing she saw was an arm. The arm alone immediately shot a lot of thoughts through her. She'd uncovered a person, another living remnant of the pre-collapse world.
That was amazing, but also terrible, if the person was dead, or lost, she'd have so much to explain, and even something to fear at best and it'd be a split second of false hope at worst.
But that spiraling only lasted a moment before her mind focused further.
That wasn't just -an- arm.
That was an -enormous- arm. Veins on the forearm like cables, more raw muscle leading down to the mist than many of the malnourished peasants struggling in the world above had in their thighs. The -second- thing out of the mist after a clawed hand and forearm was the peak of a gargantuan, pulsating bicep... and as Kat watched, it took dozens of agonizing seconds to even reach the arm no matter how fast the mist cleared, the gargantuan peak simply going on.
She swallowed. It was... maybe a bit concerning... the collapse had happened first with money and second with machines, but the soldiers had been... quite a sight to see as well
Taking a step back, Katherine examined from a slightly further distance away. Watching the clearly very much still alive individual who was trapped in that stasis for god knows how long. They could be completely unaware of the collapse for all she knew. That didn't really matter though. What did was the fact that whoever was in that chamber was certainly stronger than even her. Sure, she had become quite athletic, a wiry sort of strength that came from surviving. But this was something else. That arm was at least twice if not thrice the thickness of her own, and her legs would probably be more comparable, even if likely still a bit smaller. It got her to blink at the absurdity before her. Sure, the modded and specially chamber induced soldiers had always been muscular and beyond peak human performance but this? This was excessive. It immediately got her to wonder...Was that machine training its occupant's body while maintaining it the entire time?
She never actually got to interact with those fancy machines, but the fact it was able to keep someone from ageing, or at least slow ageing enough to ensure its occupant's survival, was impressive. It had been a while since she was able to utilize her skills but right now she was mostly curious about the implications and it was almost as if a switch was flipped as she, after centuries, finally could do a proper medical evaluation on someone who probably wouldn't be confused or distrustful of anything that wasn't stabbing themselves or letting parasitises drain their blood while drinking some mish mash of potentially poison herbs. A genuine excitement started to fill her as she wondered if she might need to help whoever was inside that pod get out of it.
Though boy, she was not looking forward to explaining everything that happened in the last seven hundredish years.
"Keff, keff," a high, feminine cough was the first sign of life from the occupant, followed by a husky - but somewhat nasal in tone - voice from inside. "God, is that -me- fogging things up? I don't think I turned the sauna on..."
Jack was waking up. A couple hours ago she'd won a round in the ultra-spa; for a rapid combination of skin treatment, psychological detox, and customized workout. She had to admit, she did feel great, even if she was absolutely covered in sweat and probably needed a -normal- shower.
She considered just basking in the moment a bit more, but they'd probably try to charge her for extra time if she did, so she wrapped her fingers around the lip of the chamber to pull herself out...
And -immediately- heard a screeching of steel as something bent and broke.
"What?" she jumped back in surprise... and the unchecked jerk of her feat sent her careening back several feet. THROUGH the back of the chamber. One bounce and the mist swirled like a cyclone before eventually following her out the back, her tail, ass, and shoulders crashing through the metal like it wasn't there as she flew away from the pod and into stone.
"Oh my God I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed immediately, looking at the broken machine as she landed on her ass.
With the crash and apologies, Katherine realized the whole 'explain everything' issue was going to be long, arduous and quite possibly painful, mentally speaking anyway. Despite this, she would state the most practical question first. "Well then...Given you broke it. Are you going to eat that chunk?" Practical for her, that is... She was getting a bit hungry. And sure, there was more metal in this place she could eat, yes. But given there were no replacement circuit boards and those things had copper, gold, silver, tin, and more in them which made them an absolute delicacy once all that plastic crap was removed... Katherine liked the idea of enjoying the nice meal.
Of course, such a statement right out of the gate was probably not going to make explaining everything that much easier, especially given she could count the number of fellow metallovore she had met in her now thousand plus year life on one hand. It also wouldn't help she followed this up by saying "Oh, where are my manners. I've not properly introduced myself! My apologies, I'm Katherine von Loffen."
The mist slowly cleared up a bit more and as Katherine got a better look at her she was a bit surprised. This woman clearly had genetic mods, and the fact she seemed to have a mix of feminine and masculine traits in the form of both pairs of sex organs was a surprise to be sure... She forgot how far those sorts of things could go if you were wealthy or intelligent enough. It was a bit of an awkward sight, but she tried not to think about it and in the process realized something.
This woman stated something about a sauna and turning it on.
This wasn't some sort of training or stasis pod. It was a fucking miniature sauna.
Kat couldn't tell what she was feeling in the moment beyond an overwhelming feeling of surreality. Surely, she must have misheard or misunderstood something, and so her second question would be one likely far more reasonable to the shark woman. "What do you last remember doing? Miss..." Trailing off a bit to try and get her name as well after her prior questions filled with her skewed priorities.
"Eat it? The pod?" Jack blinked at that, at first she panicked, seeing a dragon girl in a military uniform, but the more she squinted the more it seemed like she -wasn't- in trouble for destroying a very expensive piece of tech. "I mean sure? If it's yours? It would hide the evidence..." She belatedly answered the actual question.
"Just... if you find my glasses, please pass them to me." Jack couldn't see very well and currently her world was mostly shapes and outlines. She could tell that the person who came for her was in a military uniform, but it didn't look entirely modern. She could tell they were a dragon... but not a whole lot else.
Looking around the room confirmed that -something- was wrong, though. The ad screens were out, the vitals monitor was gone, her gym bag had disappeared, and there weren't -any- lines.
Instead it was just brown.
If she didn't know any better she'd say she was in a cave instead of a gym.
"And I'm Jack, I was just using the pod for 'health reinforcement'. I couldn't usually afford this so I just took the recommended options."
Jack stood up -carefully-, making sure to focus on not moving -too- much given that she was apparently concussed or something and moving very wrong. Just breathing in her gills felt too far apart and her chest felt too big, but she managed to at least walk up to the dragon girl without incident and look her level in the eyes... while those eyes looked down at her body and Jack felt the cold tingle of air passing sweaty skin.
"...Also if you find my clothes, those too."
Katherine casually strolled over to the pod and casually took some of the broken chunks from it, breaking bits of them off and tossing these smaller chunks into her mouth, chewing on them like they were chips, glancing around a bit as she did so, only pausing to make sure she didn't accidentally eat any plastic, mainly looking for any wires or circuit boards rather than Jack's glasses. Not because she didn't care about the new find, but more so due to the fact she already considered Jack's possessions a write off, which she would be all too fine to share with her...after one more bite of properly treated steel... God how long it had been since she had some REAL steel, properly treated to a perfect industrial grade carbon content.
"I have reason to believe you might have trouble finding those even if your vision wasn't impaired. Unless your clothing is some sort of rubber jumpsuit or something and made to fit someone like yourself."
This was followed by another crunch and screech of metal as she soon chomped into the remaining part of the piece she had taken, just before her eyes lit up and she reached into a hole in the machine and ripped out a circuit board, breaking off golden pins and pop them into her mouth like pieces of candy. With one of these, she stood up and walked over to the large shark girl before asking a simple question.
"So, what did you do to earn the modifications and a nice spa day? I assume you are in logistics given the need for glasses would be a major flaw in the genetic compatibility between that serum and your body. But given the physical attributes, and how desperate things got, I can make assumptions as to why you were still accepted."
Katherine just assumed that she was roided up to an almost comical degree like this because of prior events and that the pod simply stabilized her rather than actually did all this to her on top of keeping her alive for over a century. Yet she did have a few things in mind to ask shortly, though before she could Jack was likely to fix the misunderstanding.
Jack opened and closed her mouth a few times, trying to respond to that, missing the key context, and instead dazedly moving a bunch of razor sharp teeth around uselessly.
She told herself to focus on answering the question. "Third prize for a young inventors contest. The spa I mean. The modifications were just because my parents..." Jack briefly paused, wondering if she should actually share a reason that embarrassing, eventually deciding that FUCK NO she shouldn't. The only reason she had even -considered- saying that outright was because she was trying to distract herself.
Which of course meant that the distraction didn't work. And she was starting to put a whole lot of twos together.
"...What date is it?"
Katherine blinked. This woman with an awe inspiring body that'd make Hercules look like a wimp really wasn't military? She looked like all of that. All of this...And was just some civilian? And a modification done by her parents no less. In some ways, she was in awe. Of course, had she thought about it for more than a few seconds she probably would have recognized this made little sense, but she completely refused to believe that a spa machine did all of this.
"Your parents did all of that? You look more muscular and taller than the average genetically enhanced special forces soldier and that was just your parents? There must have been some real stiff competition at that inventors contest considering your parent's clear background." She gave a slight pause before recognizing that she really should answer the more quiet question. "746 PA. I really was not in the mood to go through the long and arduous explanation of what happened in the interim so I didn't open with that." Although she continued under her breath a bit further. "Plus soldiers take this kind of news badly enough without being displaced temporally."
She knew the implications would likely be a bit painful for the woman she was in front of now. Though she really couldn't do anything about that and socially she was kind of awkward given she hadn't really adapted much to more casual conversation that wasn't among nobility, and what she considered normal or not too much of a bother was...just a bit skewed.
"Oh! Given how long you have been in there. Do you mind if I do a short medical examination and go through some tests?"
Jack did look a bit hurt. Which was slightly surreal on the huge, juggernaut body Kat had been staring at, but Jack herself had yet to notice. It was a huge thing to hear and nobody wanted to mention it because it was -awkward-?
But...
Jack was smart enough to realize that... there wasn't exactly anything she could do. She didn't recognize the date. She recognized the implications. It was -possible- that the date system -didn't- choose a year other than zero when it was implemented, meaning it was possible she wasn't 750 years in the future.
But she was definitely there -some- way.
That cave -was- the gym, or had been, or had been where people stashed the ruins, and her job was gone and her parents were probably gone and the military fanatic dragon girl thing was modded to eat metal which was probably because that was a good idea and apparently expected everybody to be military so whatever happened was...
Almost certainly not good times.
...Wait. What did she say about muscle?
Jack couldn't really see anything of her own body except tits and shoulders, especially without her glasses... but... that itself was wrong wasn't it.
And even if her pod was old, it was still -functional- up until now, as evidenced by the fact that she hadn't starved and was only a little dehydrated. So that crumpled steel was...
Jack blankly took a gentle step back, then brought both her arms in front of her chest, pressing her hands together and compressing her chest. She had a -lot- more boob than she remembered, and it was spilling everywhere as her biceps pushed them out of their way. She took a deep breath, and flexed her triceps; the air in the chamber -pulsed- as entire feet of arm muscle flared out like wings.
Jack mumbled in a voice drained of emotion.
"...Yeah okay let's do some tests."
"Now then, normally I would check your height and weight to get a good view of your BMI, check your heartrate, blood pressure, and so on and so on. But I don't have all the equipment I need with me on the virtue of the fact that none have been made for over five hundred years so... Give me a moment"
Katherine stated before casually walking off out of the building oh so briefly to return with what looked like a very old doctors bag that had been repaired with leather patches on five separate occasions. The first thing she did after putting the bag down was walk over to Jack and stare at her for a bit, examining something behind her shortly after before going over to what she examined and then walking back muttering to herself.
"Similar height to myself... Roughly two meters and a quarter, shorter than a third."
After she glanced around again, shook her head and moved to the bag to take out a few things, including a thermometer, stethoscope and even a somewhat makeshift slab of wood vaguely similar to a popsicle stick before asking "Do you feel strange at all?" She really wanted to try and do everything she could to give the girl a proper evaluation. Of course, her BMI was by technicality probably well past the morbidly obese section as it didn't really account for muscle mass, especially not of this size, but she could still make a few rough guesses and estimations. Not like that ever was a problem in medicine.
She sighed at the thought. This was mostly going to be nothing more than theater before she had Jack do some experiments as to what her body could do, wasn't it? At least it allowed her a good examination of Jack's body. Not that she was interested in it for any other reason beyond research! Certainly not! She'd not be so unprofessional... Besides she was a traditional noble who had yet to find a good husband while this woman was, well, just a woman. A normal, non noble woman. One with...extreme muscles that made her own look pathetically small in comparison...and such a massive...long...cock... but that was besides the point! She tried shaking the thought of Jack's body out of her mind again. At least, the physical appearance of it.
If Jack had her glasses, she'd notice one of Katherine's eye's twitching.
Despite it all, Jack was bemused at the impromptu examination. She'd assumed that was a request to get out of here and back to a lab, but seeing her discoverer act like a kid playing nurse was kinda funny.
Hearing how tall they -both- apparently were was less funny and Jack squinted hard at the pod remains, trying to remember how tall it had -seemed- going in for lack of comparison points, but it was just another thing to add to the list.
That probably was the strange part.
"I guess I feel happier than I should?" Jack said as she watched Kat press a stethoscope to her chest only to immediately -wince- and cover her ears at the loudness of the shark's heart.
"The runner's high makes sense, given the... where I was," hopefully later Jack would be grateful her brain was absolutely flooded with endorphins when the world was pulled out from under her. "But even beyond that I don't feel... that panicked?"
Kat could tell. Jack's heart was too loud to miss and too slow not to notice, she -might- be pumping at 25 bpm, but that was a generous estimate.
"I guess I could be disassociating, but I don't feel disconnected from -reality- just my body, a bit, and I feel like that's understandable given, um, how much more of it I've got to get used to."
Katherine took a few steps back before taking the stethoscope off and putting it back in the bag before stating the obvious. "If it wasn't for your extensive musculature, the fact you seem to be moving just fine, and your heartbeat is so loud I probably could have heard it by just standing close to you quietly enough, I'd have stated you likely needed surgery. I'm glad that despite everything you feel happy, though. But what do you mean by runners high? I thought that was just a spa machine, not a physical trainer."
Katherine didn't have too much else she could say. Frankly, with her proportions, the fact steel seemed to be like wet cardboard to her given how effortlessly she broke things by accident, and the lack of all the tools Kat required, what she was really doing was theater. It didn't do much other than reinforce just how different she was from anything else she had ever seen. So, Katherine decided it was best to move on to something else with all of this.
"Alright, I think I'm going to skip the rest of the usual procedure. You are a marvel of genetic engineering and modern..." She briefly paused, recognizing the term was about a century too late. "Ancient medicine and even if I had all the tools I needed you'd probably break some of them and I'd get information that would normally indicate severe health problems when you are very clearly fine. So, I suppose we should see just how far that goes then? Do you feel up to some strength and endurance tests? And do please start off somewhat easily if you are fine with it. Just in case it turns out I am wrong in my assessment and you are suffering from severe heart issues or something else."
She really knew how to be reassuring, didn't she?
"Sure, I don't have a problem with that... well I can't -see- very much so I might need some direction, but it's nearsightedness so I can see a barbell or whatever."
Jack looked around, failing to see an exit.
"I would definitely like to get out of this cave without collapsing it."
She didn't mind Kat's manners too much, having somebody focused on the practicals was encouraging. She'd probably be feeling worse if people were spray painting themselves with chrome cake frosting and shouting about water being an addiction.
"And it was an -ultra- spa, that's why it'd be too expensive for me normally! It puts your consciousness in stasis while applying skin treatments, massages, muscle stimulation, and nutrient injections. I really hate lotion and have skin-mods that don't play well with most things anyway; so I just turned all the settings on 'optimize for health' instead of cosmetics or relaxation."
Which was... an extremely correct decision, given the evidence.
"Just follow me and you'll be fine. Although, considering there was and still is power to this place, proven by the fact the pod was still functional when I arrived, it might be worthwhile to investigate for something to help cover you up. Or help you see, for that matter. But we can do that after a couple tests. Now, can you please go into detail as to what your full suit of genetic mods are? Just for the record so I understand what I'm dealing with." She was going to be very surprised soon when the 'so muscular you could rip out a fully grown tree and throw it a good hundred meters if not more with one arm' body that Jack had wasn't entirely due to the modification. Though, it wouldn't be hard at all for her to put together what happened once she revealed the little else that was modified.
She started guiding Jack out of the room and added "Now, I'm going to make a bit of an assumption here, but once we are outside, I'd like you to try and do push u-" She paused as she looked back at Jack and realized her massive bust atop that muscular, powerfu-...Would get in the way. "Jumping j-...No. That will probably cause tremo- ah! Sit ups! Or squats, whichever you prefer. Do them for as long as you possibly can. I have a pocket watch and I'll start the timer once you begin and stop when you are too tired to continue. I'll leave it with you so you can stop it once you tire out. A simple endurance test to begin with while you are as rested as you can be. In the meantime I'll look for anything potentially important that's inside."
She fully expected Jack to be at this for a few hours minimum. Long enough for her to explore. So, once Jack was outside she'd take out the watch and say "Go!" before briefly watching Jack, force herself to not watch and enter the building again in the hopes to find some glasses, a functional mutagenic syringe that improved one's eye sight or, at the bare minimum, something that could be made into makeshift clothing for the amazonian super soldier shark that would probably be working out until she got bored more than tired.
Going for length rather than strength after what Jack had -just- been doing for centuries felt like the kind of thing she should protest, but as the shark took one step onto the surface world, she kinda understood the protest.
Everything was small. And delicate. And -wild-. There were -plants- everywhere. The facility wasn't in an urban jungle it was in an -actual forest-. One that looked -older- than 800 years old, even. The kind of primordial European landscape that was so easy to romanticize.
Except Jack crushed an entire tree like a twig when she snapped her head to turn towards an owl and stopped watching where she was going for half a second, so... being delicate was definitely forgivable.
Besides, it gave Jack a chance to at least familiarize herself with her body.
So she obligingly did the calisthenics and let the expert search.
Jack tried doing squats, and saw stars as -pleasure- lanced through her. She gasped and looked down, forcibly parting her chest with her arms as she looked down.
Her cock was -utterly gargantuan- and her balls weren't much smaller. Squatting down resulted in her foreskin dragging across tree roots, even in a shallow squat, her flaccid monster dangling below her -knees-. If she tried to squat all the way, her balls would hit too, and that felt -even better-.
Given how pent up she was, and how strong her release would likely be, she decided not to risk it in such a nice place, and just made a few mental notes.
Bodily revelation: Biggest cock I've ever seen
Squat ability: until explosive orgasm
So she tried another exercise. Kat had suggested situps. The forest was messy enough there wasn't a convenient place to lie, but that was fine, Jack just leaned back and balanced on her tail before doing some core exercises. Leg lifts were usually better, but her cock would probably get in the way of those too, so situps it was.
The only problem was Jack didn't really feel it. As far as her body was concerned, she was weightless, and her abs didn't even seem to be tensing. Admittedly she wasn't used to having a hyper-defined eight pack enough to tell, they certainly -looked- like they were tensed by the standards of a professional bodybuilder, but actually moving them wasn't changing much. Jack wasn't even that familiar with flexing - it was a skill she'd never had cause to practice when she was 'normal', so it took some doing.
EVENTUALLY she figured out how to actually flex her abs, which of course caused her entire midriff to round out into a gut of solid muscle... which she couldn't -curl over- doing situps because it was, y'know, her. Testing herself she tried doing 1000 situps as fast as she could, blowing air around the clearing, and after doing so she could tell that her stomach was a -bit- above its resting state, so that could be easily extrapolated.
Bodily revelation: great abs
Limits of situps: Abs get too pumped to physically curl forward
What had the other ones been? Push ups? Jack was why that was skipped. Specifically she saw her own massive chest all the time and she was either going to absolutely love or absolutely hate her tattoo with that star -always- being the main thing in her vision now... but just because she couldn't do front down pushups didn't mean she couldn't do pushups.
She focused first, making sure her body was -actually- responding. Her conscious mind had been gone for ages but in theory all that muscular training should include at least -some- muscle memory. Her cerebellum had to have gotten some training. But the machines were never meant to cover for a scenario like this, so she didn't -know- that. For all she knew she could be a clumsy monster. But she hadn't destroyed anything yet when she was focusing, so she was putting her trust that she wasn't...
And flipped into a handstand from her perch on her tail, palms landing in the dirt as her entire body went vertical. Her cock falling down to slap right between her tits felt -entirely- too amazing and she was dead certain she wasn't going to be soft much longer, but other than that going onto a handstand didn't have any issues, her skin was too tight for her chest to fall that much.
She still didn't feel very heavy, though. She tried doing a few dozen pushups that way, but it didn't feel like much. She was really glad one of her mods was an anti-atrophy complex in her metabolism. It was comparatively dirt cheap because it was usually given to urban office workers, but she was going to get a lot of use out of it even as a juggernaut just because 'maintenance workouts' were starting to look logistically tricky.
Switching to just one hand didn't help that much either. Although having to balance her massive amount of weight with only five splayed fingers was actually starting to approach something vaguely similar to what you could call a challenge if kept up long enough, which Jack decided to call a promising lead to follow with some other workout... Not this one though. Every time she adjusted her weight, the small point of contact and the mass behind her was making her slowly sink into a crater, even with small adjustments.
Bodily revelations: Still in control
Limits of handstand pushups: sink through the ground
Jack wasn't going to do jumping jacks, except in the sense of any of her jumps being a jumping Jack, but the idea offered a decent potential method of testing stamina and balance. If she could get a jump rope, then jumping in place like that would be an ideal test of her balance
And good practice for not crushing things as well.
Jack got down a bit of vine and swirled it in her hands a bit, it seemed like it would be long enough, and she found a stable looking portion of ground [backing away a fair bit from the cave entrance for safety, going over what she was sure was solid earth] and started trying to hop as light on her feet as possible. NOT going into the sky, and -not- landing heavily.
She was rock hard in a second from the bounce of her balls, but this made it easier, letting her compensate for the jiggle and jerk of two sets of less-solid body parts instead of three, and constantly shifting her balance to account for -all- her mass while making sure not to crush things, even using her tail as a balance agent while keeping it close enough to her body to not catch the vine on the backswing, was finally a solid challenge.
So Jack decided that would be what she'd go with, steadily speeding up over the course of 1000 jumps before the vine hit its tensile limit and snapped apart.
She took a deep breath. She was coated in -fresher- sweat now, and a bit thirsty, but the idea was to run out of stamina so keeping at it made sense. She'd just need a better rope. So she checked the entrance of the collapsed facility until she found a length of cable and tried to use that.
It made it to 2000 before it snapped. Maybe she shouldn't have started at her max speed with the vine. Cable density running out was always a disaster, wild steel fibers lashing every way. Playing tug of war could be -fatal- when the rope snapped, a whip more deadly than any of the ones intended as weapons, and the steel lashing back across Jack's body made her wince.
She wasn't hurt or anything, it was just loud and she'd expected it to.
It did ruin the area she'd been so careful not to preserve, though, and she was now down even a more durable jump rope.
Bodily revelations: significantly more tensile than steel
Jump rope limits: rope snaps
Jack... was running out of good, low impact exercises. And she was sweating enough that her spot was getting really muddy even before it got all lashed up.
She was taking a drink break. She didn't have enough eyesight to see the path Kat had taken in, but she could see moss if she got close, and she worked out the nearest direction to water; eventually finding a clear-ish stream.
...Ordinarily infection would be the biggest danger of being out of her own time, but she had to drink -eventually-, and she was pretty sure the needs of her new body wouldn't wait for her to boil a swimming pool at a time, so she decided to just suck it up.
Literally, dunking her head in the holyshitcold stream and chugging down gallon after gallon until she felt properly hydrated.
If she could add 'super immune system' to her list of revelations later in the evening, she'd be much happier. She'd definitely trade at least a hundred pounds of muscle mass for it if she didn't.
But for now... the watch was still running. And she had to get back to it.
...Jack facepalmed, an obvious solution coming to mind as she walked back from the stream.
Of -course- there's a 'lowest disruption' exercise, it's always the same exercise. Yoga. She could just do yoga.
Granted she hadn't done much yoga -while conscious-, but it was the kind of thing an exer-spa would probably prioritize.
Besides, she'd seen memes.
Jack got herself into the scorpion pose outside the cave, forearms pressed flat against the ground, body suspended on forearms, back arched, and her ass over her head. It was actually convenient. Got her cock away from the ground, her balls in a stable position, let her work out the whole body at once...
It was also -impressively- difficult. Even with world-record strength, holding up that much body in that position -felt- like a workout, and Jack had to make herself breathe deep and meditatively as she finally felt the burn.
She still held the pose, of course, it was just more satisfying. And let her give a silly little wave with her forward-facing foot when the dragon finally came back.
Bodily revelations: very flexible
Yoga limits: Kat came back
Katherine for her part during all of this was somewhat worried about what was going on outside from practically the start. The thumping sound of Jack's cock initially smacking into the ground made her consider that maybe her initial suggestion wasn't as good as she thought and that she probably should have thought about that long meaty rod with those huge balls bigger than her own breast ...Thoughts of her physique lingered for more than a couple seconds to better devise what could be useful for her. Thankfully, this noise, and constant reminder, stopped fairly early on.
And so, with a bit of a clearer mind, her expedition started. The facility still seemed to have power to more than just the room, which was a major boon, and the structure itself felt wrong to her for the simple fact it was still so intact. Really, other than some filth, the place looked fine. Like looking into a picture...
Amazing to think how much time had passed.
She took a while to find anything useful as she snacked on the metal bits of the circuit board in her hand. A few computers were good finds, if only for more high quality delicious snacks later, but otherwise nothing she was looking for specifically. The annoying thing about this place is it clearly wasn't an actual hospital or medical center. There weren't any color coded lines or markings for specific wings of the facility or anything like that. So she had to do everything by guesswork. So, she spent a long, long time looking through offices. Offices, and yet more offices to the point a part of her wondered if somehow she had stumbled into another building. Thankfully, she found a different section soon enough. A major storage section filled with old boxes.
As she started exploring this large supply depot for this place, looking for anything that could be useful, she started to feel a faint rumble. That was odd, yet as it started to properly give a soft shake to the whole structure like a low intensity earthquake Katherine started to get worried about that rumbling in the distance. She was far FAR too far to the north-east for an earthquake to reasonably hit. At least as far as she knew. Though, a part of her couldn't help but be annoyed at the timing of it, especially as a loose box smacked her in the head and got impaled on one of her horns.
The good news about this storage spot however was the fact she did find something that could help Jack...Sort of. She found a lot of rubber gloves, scissors, and even a full on raincoat that had been abandoned or forgotten in here. So, they had something they could take advantage of at least. Especially as the rumbling finally died down and she went deeper into this storage section. Only for the rumbling to pick up again. Something that made her job all the harder when she found a box of serums just before they fell on her head...The second box to fall in her head in the space of ten minutes. And the first to have its contents shatter on her, getting it stuck on her hair, her uniform, a bit even in her eye...
Great. Fantastic even. The only way it could get worse is if she got cut by the glass...Thankfully, that didn't happen.
Still, it did get her to try and hurry up, at least after using a whole roll of paper towels to feel less sticky and uncomfortable. Fortunately, the thunderous rumble finally stopped and she was left in peace to continue her exploration where she really hoped she could find some sort of dry cleaning, shower or washer. But such a foolish hope was never going to be rewarded no matter how much she hoped it would be.
Slowly but surely she continued looking through rooms with a bit of discomfort before finally, FINALLY she found something else after having thoroughly searched just about everywhere but some of the offices. A pair of glasses. A broken pair of glasses, even.
It started becoming very clear she wasn't going to find a historical artefact she was looking for here...At least, not the kind she was intending on finding here anyway considering there was a super-powered one just outside.
Jack soon saw Katherine exit, seemingly a bit annoyed but holding a box full of rubber gloves and a raincoat draped on top with both scissors and broken glasses resting atop the raincoat. Katherine saw Jack, staring at her in silence for a bit too long before forcefully pointing her gaze in the opposite direction as she spoke to Jack.
"This is the best I could find. The glasses are broken, though finding the exact prescription lenses was a longshot even if they were functional. The scissors and all these rubber gloves and the raincoat can maybe be used to make some sort of makeshift attire. And before you ask how if we don't have any thread, I can breathe a bit of flame to meld it together if you want...If it'd even fit your..."
She paused and caught herself from saying anything untoward, went back in to get her old doctor's bag real quick, and got back out.
"I take it you've been keeping very busy while I was in there." She said before looking at the pocket watch and seeing just how much time had passed, having a feeling that no matter how many hours it was, she'd barely have a sweat worked up.
That was probably the wrong way to say it, as it was practically a swamp around Jack; the shark sweating quite a bit. That wasn't entirely surprising, when Jack gave the full list of her modifications she'd mentioned that her fanciest one was 'self cleaning skin... but Kat was having a hard enough time around the shark without her being perpetually wet, shiny, and amazing smelling so it was an easy thing to deny, when she'd had an eight hour break.
Especially with the shark in such an unnecessarily provocative pose.
Unfortunately Jack had had no kind of break and was throbbing violently, -reminding- Kat all at once. "Oh, heya! Yeah I tried a whole bunch of things, made a few basic notes afterwards," Jack pointed to some lines in the dirt where she's run her claws through to write the time measures; legs bobbing over her ass as she remained in the yoga pose just a moment longer, finally flipping back up.
"Not a lot left intact, then? That's disappointing. All the documents probably suffered chip decay and even a paper copy wouldn't help, huh?" Jack looked over the haul, observing most of what survived to be rubber and glass, though the box of test tubes caught her eye.
"Do you know what all you've got?" Jack started to thumb through before hitting a mental segfault, catching herself and saying, "Wait, you -actually- breathe fire? I thought you were just dragon-themed. ...What kind of mods do -you- have?"
Though in retrospect it made some sense. If the world went through some kind of disaster, 'fire at will' would be a high priority asset. It would also potentially give Jack a chance to forge herself some glasses, if they could melt down a test tube or two... after they figured out what's in it.
"Of the serums? No, most of it's completely broken. At the very least everything else in the building is intact. Even if not much of it is things I'm looking for or that could be useful for you. The genetic serums were on a shelf and all intact but those fell on my head before I could reach them because of a long lasting earthquake and aftershocks that I believe were caused by an external force..." She sighed after saying this, though she didn't take long to continue. "To answer your other question though, none."
Though she did realize that she might not be unmodified any-more by virtue of everything that fell atop her and got stuck on her, she still chose to say she wasn't, and looked back at Jack, more out of instinct and a desire to look her in the eye after saying something she knew was going to make Jack ask more questions than give her answers. But...seeing her in the pose again quickly made her turn away and constantly think the same five words of 'just don't think about it' over and over again. It practically fried her as she deliberately chose not to look at Jack and just tried clearing her mind of anything to do with her.
Frankly though, she didn't get why this was happening. She was a woman, and so was Jack. That should have been the end of that. She never felt this way about another woman yet...She felt a similar desire with her as that she felt regarding the ace pilots she grew to have a crush on back in her younger years. Just ten times stronger, if not eleven... Even thinking about this got her eye to twitch as she simply chose to just try not thinking about her at all, leaving her spacing out a bit. Though, for better or worse she was bound to be brought back to reality by her current object of desire...Even if she tried denying it to herself.
Jack was unfortunately oblivious to the gay angst currently being suffered by her rescuer for several reasons. Being immune to her own pheromones was one. Being -shamelessly- gay herself was another. Deliberately ignoring the building libido that was telling her 'START PINNING THINGS DOWN AND FUCKING THEM UNCONSCIOUS' was probably the biggest one, though. Jack was deliberately avoiding sexy thoughts as well, she was just a lot more effective at the denial.
Her cock -might- even go down. Eventually. Probably.
But the final distraction was Kat's answer. It was probably not entirely a lie. If she'd been born after some kind of collapse, the intensely finicky equipment to ensure all but the most basic genetic modifications don't cause any of a hundred breakdowns would be gone. And the fact that she immediately took a box full of what Jack would consider 'cosmetics' to be gene mods kind of supported that assumption.
...That didn't rule out -cybernetic- modifications, though; and Jack decided that made sense. Her savior was at least half robotic, letting them include things like a flamethrower, and was scavenging the ancient sites and -eating metal- to keep her own parts running.
That was how the nano-lube Kat had salvaged worked, after all, just feed it some metal and it will replenish; and there wasn't -much- left intact but there was enough for Jack to salvage some, tossing in a few cable remnants and then taking the glass.
"Well, what fell on you is totally harmless anyway. Just in case I can salvage some and we can analyze it later, but for now, can you use your fire breath to melt this glass?" Jack gathered up a few handfuls of glass shards and held them out to Kat; just open in her palms.
Kat was snapped out of her self distraction by Jack's request, getting a brief "Hu-oh..." From her before she casually took the glass that Jack had in her palms and exhaled a modest blue flame to heat them up in her scaled hands. She could shoot a lot more fire if she wanted but that would obviously not end too well with the amount of force of what essentially her own personal in-built flamethrower was capable of. Still, Katherine wasn't too sure how Jack would mold them or get them to be the right prescription for glasses, but she had a plan, probably. And if not? Well, maybe it would help a little bit at least if all went well.
Shortly after the thought occurred to Katherine that she might have just been able to breath fire on Jack's hands while they had the glass on it, though she brushed that aside. That was ridiculous. Sure, their body was an absolute tank but they'd not be invincible like that. Right? It would be nice though, having a strong invi-...She needed an excuse. She needed an excuse for some chance to clear her mind. And fortunately, as it slowly was starting to get dark, Katherine handed the glass back before saying "Gute nacht." Although, as much as she wanted to go to sleep or something similar she found herself struggling as her mind couldn't stop thinking about the shark next to her. She wondered if it was some sort of mod or something that made her so addicting, but she just wanted to...do so many things she ought not. Things that would probably get her killed if anything considering how Jack's cock was probably over half as tall as she was, more than enough to kill her if she tried...
The fact she was even thinking, or rather fantasizing, this only frustrated her more. Though Jack could keep her awake or do something else if she so desired. Katherine just wanted some way to try and help deal with her worsening distraction .
Jack was too good about answering questions to stay mad at. That made it worse.
Kat had wondered how she was going to resist the flames and how she was going to shape the glass and got her answer immediately.
Jack -was- that invincible... and she was that endowed. After a wash of blue fire melted the shards in her hands, Jack consolidated the molten glass into one hand and -groped- herself with the other. Her cream-colored, star-tattooed chest was malleable, soft by her standards, but just as indestructible as the rest of her... and Jack knew what shape her glasses were.
Not perfectly, not to a professional standard, but she was observant and -overwhelmingly- strong. Jack pressed four glowing red discs of molten glass to her chest, then pressed her boobs together, shaping each tit into a mold roughly at the level she wanted it. She had already shaped it.
The problem was making it cool without losing clarity; cooling glass could take a long time, and Kat could already hear the sizzle of sweat and... smell the scent of... strawberries in the steam, blushing deeply. Jack's body was durable enough, but was it also -hot- enough to cool it slowly?
Well, hot enough literally, not metaphorically, metaphorically she was still way too hot and... Kat made it worse for herself, that time.
The dragon girl said a hasty goodnight, there in the middle of the forest, and started to set up camp with the supplies in her uniform.
Jack smiled at that, earnest and pleasant, her massive toothy grin looking harmless despite it all. Her own thoughts were so much more benign. She really appreciated her new cyborg friend caring enough about her one vulnerability to tire herself out melting glass - she assumed that breathing fire had exhausted her - and resolved to make the night as comfortable as possible... especially since she had to hold rather still.
"Goodnight!" Jack said affectionately, rolling a tube out of the remaining glass and dunking it in the stream, not as worried about durability or clarity for that one so much as just -having- an inert container, she packed up their one bit of loot...
And snuggled up next to Kat, close enough to actually see how the dragon girl had much larger scales than herself, and how well made the WW1-esque uniform Kat was wearing actually was.
"Huh, at this distance, I can tell you're cute," Jack teased, the warmth her massive body was putting out letting Kat know she wouldn't need a blanket -or- a mattress tonight. "I have to hold still for a while, and it's been a long time since I saw the sky, so I'll just guard your rest tonight, I hope you sleep well." Jack ran a hand through Kat's hair, and over her horns, she was so much gentler than she looked.
Which, of course, made it worse about five times over.