The story continues from the previous render... We landed in one of Miho's hidden bases. Though it had taken us less than 15 minutes to fly (at hyper-sonic speed) from the mysterious orc island where it was the middle of the day to here where it was the middle of the night. I always found it very disorienting - going from bright midday sun to pitch dark middle of the night in less than 15 minutes. And we were not even traveling at full throttle. Miho's hyperplane could go around the earth's circumference in less than 15 minutes in the direction the earth moved. Even shorter via the opposite direction. That meant from any point on earth to any other point took less than 7 minutes and 30 seconds. Talk about traveling fast. It takes longer to go and get things from the local grocery store in the neighborhood! We took the 2 unconscious prisoners to secure rooms and put them there. They were going to remain unconscious until Miho decided to wake them up. I told Miho we should rest up and do the brain scanning of them tomorrow to see what they knew. Miho simply said okay, got out of what she was wearing and said she was heading for a long shower. She still was in a bad mood. I knew steaming hot long showers helped her to calm down. She just blanked her mind and let herself feel the water streams / droplets hitting her bare skin. The wolf also said he was going to go and get cleaned up. I told both of them that I will cook them a hot meal and to meet me in the kitchen (which was also in the residential part of the base) once they were done. I turned on the hi-tech bio-scanner Miho had built into the secure rooms that monitored the bio signs of anyone locked inside and alerted us if anything needed attention. With that set, I too went to the residential section, took a quick shower and went to the kitchen to cook us a hot meal. The wolf came to the kitchen shortly afterwards followed by Miho in her birthday suit. I had already set up the table and we all sat down and started eating. Miho remarked we had made a mistake by all of us leaving the hyperplane and going on foot on the mysterious island. But I countered that other than the comms which she had specifically modified for the mysterious island and the engine she used in the hyperplane, nothing else was tested in that mysterious island and there was no guarantee that they would have worked. I knew Miho was feeling we had taken more time than necessary to round up the groups and could have stopped a lot more of the animal / creature killings if we had done it faster. I wanted Miho to stop feeling guilty. I told her at least she went there and stopped things otherwise a lot more damage would have been done. She said that was no excuse. She should have told me to stay on the hyperplane and immediate take off and locate and stops the groups using it. I told her things were fluid and there was an urgency to meet Kenta and in any case she had to leave thy hyperplane to meet Kenta. I knew what she was saying was true but I told her I stand by the decision we took. With that mysterious island interfering with radio signals and almost all electronic things, there was no saying which equipment might have failed to function. And if the non lethal weapons had failed to function, we anyway would have had to stop them by hand. She reluctantly nodded. She knew though they were lucky and the non lethal weapons had worked, she had never tested them on that island before and she knew that place had weird effects on electronics and radio signals. She gave me a weak smile and I reached out and pressed her hand. She was too young to feel responsible for this crazy world. We finished our meal and then I lifted Miho off her feet and told the wolf to get some rest and I walked carrying Miho to our sleeping quarters. Morning came and I felt the bed empty next to me. Miho had vanished. She had left me a note. She said to meet her at a certain street and we will go for breakfast near there. That was a good sign. Miho's mood was improving. I took a bus near there and then walked into the street. The daylight was streaming in but part of the street was still in shadows. Miho was looking rather sexy in her deep V neck dress. She was on a low bike she had made from scraps. But what caught my eye was she had stopped in the middle of the street and I knew no one could park anywhere on any street for 4 city blocks around here. And weirdly no one was honking at her or asking her to move. In fact the guy in the car behind her just stopped his car and got off and stood looking at her as did whoever was within eye sight. I guessed she was again having that effect she had on people. Though I could see she was still a bit moody, she cheered up when she saw me. She waved at me, parked her bike there itself and walked to me. Taking my hand she said we go there pointing at a direction I came from. So I asked her what was she doing blocking traffic in that street ? She laughed. She said some time back that street was overrun by street gangs and they were causing havoc for all the shops and business there. There was an ramen noodle shop in that street run by an old lady that her friend had recommended. So when she had gone to eat there one night, the street gang had come into the shop demanding money from the old lady and threatening to break everything in the shop if the old lady did not pay up. I could straightaway visualize what had happened next. Those poor gang members. Miho said after she had taken care of the group, the old lady had told her about how this gang terrorized all the shops and businesses on this street and the next. So Miho basically had gone into the gangs den dragging the leader of the group that had demanded money from the old lady by his feet and basically taught the whole lot including the gang boss a lesson. Ever since everyone on that street treated her like a VIP and wanted to give her free things from their shop which Miho had politely declined. So they had asked what did she want and she had said the ability to park somewhere on the street. All the shop keepers and business owners only laughed. They had said she could park anywhere on the street she wanted and they would take care of her car / bike and make sure traffic flowed around it. I asked her what she was doing there in the morning. She said she had gone to meet all the shopkeepers and specially that old lady. Months had past since the last time she had met them all. We reached the restaurant. It had outdoor seating and Miho choose that. The sun always energized Miho and she loved being in the sun. It was still pretty cool as it had rained earlier. So I asked her what she wanted and well all I can say was she had suddenly developed a sweet tooth :). I brought her a plate and some fruit juice and as I was about to sit down, she said she wanted chocolate tiramisu so I went to the counter to get it and she shouted - "Get three". I rolled my eyes and smiled to myself. There was no denying her her sweet treats. I could not even tease her that she would put on weight. Well, her mood was becoming better and that is all that mattered to me... The story will continue with the next render...

After the flu, it had been another busy week at work. Finally over the weekend started to work on this render and story. The story continues from the previous one. I guess you can take it like an episode of a series. New episodes might deal with something different but the story continues from the previous episode. I had fun creating the 2 scenes with Miho being the center of attraction and everyone looking at her. The first panel was more challenging as there were more characters to pose as well as other scene elements. In both the main city prop is the Cyberpunk City (@Daz). For the first panel, I merged a bar interior set I had into the scene and placed it into one of the empty rooms in the Cyderpunk City set. I did delete away all the chairs and tables that did not fit within the room. Then lit is using Octane lighting. In Octane any surface can be made into a light. Here I just used a square primitive as a light. I then put 3 characters inside that room and posed them as though they were all looking at Miho. Then added the old man character and the car and the guy leaning on the car. Posing Miho was the toughest. Though I started with a canned pose for her, I had to do a lot of tweaking to make it more natural. The bike I re-textured to make it all shiny and I changed more of the parts to the gold / bronze color as it really looked good. I also played around with the volumetric absorption setting to make the far side of the scene darker. There was a real problem with noise on the first panel as there is light passing through a fair bit because of the specular material (I used on the glass doors of the bar) but the AI denoiser setting of Octane helped with that. Took around 21 minutes @ 4K which was pretty fast. The second panel was even faster. There is a bit of noise still there on both panels, but I decided to live with it. I think visually the first panel looks better with its variation of lighting and contrast between the well lit and the dimly lit areas. I wanted to create another scene to depict the start of this story (with us in Miho's hidden base) but that would have needed me to turn on the nudity flag and this time I wanted to keep it non nude.